isthisapidge: ([65])
Pidge Gunderson/Katie Holt ([personal profile] isthisapidge) wrote in [community profile] legionworld2017-01-30 10:34 pm
Entry tags:

We dove into the dark and stayed there

Who| Pidge and Dipper
What| An important talk
Where| Dipper's room
When| Post-Silent Horizon
Warnings/Notes| Talk of trauma mixed with awkward teenage angst

It seemed like things were making progress. Pidge had a goal, and little by little she felt more able to achieve it. In other words, she was feeling better, if only by a slight margin.

But then Pidge realized that she hadn't seen Dipper all day. And they probably had some things to talk about. His words replayed in her mind:

"I used to think I was smart, but it was, like, 'I use big words I don't know the definitions of to sound smart' smart. You're genius smart. You're 'people will always think you're amazing for something' smart."

She was fixating, and she knew it. But she couldn't help but maybe think she had some kind of hand in him feeling that way. Not that she knew for sure. It went back to the whole "understanding people" thing she was never all that good at.

"And you're actually cool."

That too. She'd been called a lot of things, but "cool" wasn't typically one of them.

She suspects he's hiding out in his room, mostly because it's exactly what she would do. And has been doing. So she rings the buzzer outside his room.

"Dipper? Can I come in?"
captainbuzzkill: (102)

[personal profile] captainbuzzkill 2017-01-31 06:10 am (UTC)(link)
He's been feeling a little better, but it comes and goes, making it so he's been feeling thoroughly moody in true teen fashion. This teen angst thing really has him acutely aware of how much he's not 12 anymore, because he never used to get in moods like this -- and he's not sure it's 100% just the trauma.

A lot of it is just...feelings. He seems to have a lot more of them now.

Hearing that it's Pidge makes him feel conflicted. On the one hand, he really likes Pidge and wants to know if she's okay after everything. On the other hand, he's mortally embarrassed that it took him almost eating his crush to realize he has a crush.

Bless the future for voice-activated technology because it means he doesn't have to get up from where he's laying upside down on the couch to turn on the intercom to answer her.

"No!"
captainbuzzkill: (098)

[personal profile] captainbuzzkill 2017-02-01 12:52 am (UTC)(link)
Dipper feels slightly guilty, because he knows she's probably trying to work through some things herself. After everything that happened, she probably just wants to check in on all her friends, and it was probably pretty disturbing for her to have to deal with one of them trying to eat her.

But the whole trying-to-kill-her thing is exactly why he can't face her. He feels like such a gross weirdo.

So he still doesn't open the door. Instead he flops right-side up again and rolls off the couch onto the floor, dragging a pillow down with him to stuff his face into. His hat gets knocked off in the process, but he doesn't do anything about it.

"Go away!" he calls out, his voice even more muffled this time.
captainbuzzkill: (098)

[personal profile] captainbuzzkill 2017-02-01 02:39 am (UTC)(link)
Dipper just lets out a cry of frustration and rolls under the couch, dragging the pillow with him to stuff his face back into. His hand reaches back out and fumbles for his hat and he drags that under too.

"I'm fine," he says, voice still muffled by the pillow. "There. We're all caught up."

He feels like such a jerk but the alternative is actually facing her and he's just too embarrassed to.
captainbuzzkill: (098)

[personal profile] captainbuzzkill 2017-02-01 04:10 am (UTC)(link)
Dipper hears the chime and lets out another frustrated noise.

"Stop hacking my door!" He should've figured that he wouldn't actually be able to keep her out. "Seriously, I'm fine!"

He's not fine. Better than he was, after talking with Wash, but definitely not fine. But that's exactly why he doesn't want her to see him being not-fine. It's bad enough she saw him freaking out at Wash during sparring. Now she's seen him as an ugly monster and she's going to see him being a sulky, pitiful lump.

It's so undignified. All he's ever wanted is to be...grown up. To be seen by people as mature and in control and totally with it. This is the exact opposite of that.

When the door pops open she's greeted by a view that's much less worse than it was, but is...still pretty bad. Dipper has started taking care of himself a little better after Wash's visit, finally taking a shower and changing out of his patient scrubs into clean, comfy pajamas, but he hasn't cleaned up much around the suite.

There's a dent in the wall panel, but the book that was lodged into it was at least taken out. It still flickers back and forth between static and the splotchy mess of colors Mabel and Dipper had "painted" on it when trying to decorate their suite. The TV is cracked, but still working, and a dumb cartoon is on. A set of shelves is broken and books are piled on the floor in front of it.

In the corner, there's a creepy mannequin, one of Mabel's "souvenirs" from Murderworld. A happy face is painted on its creepy blank face and it's wearing a half-knitted sweater. Mabel's knitting supplies lay at its feet. In fact, her belongings are the only things that haven't been wrecked. There are craft projects all over, completely intact, glitter piles left undisturbed. It's all Dipper's belonging that are trashed.

All the broken glass was at least cleaned up by the cleaning drones and the worst of the broken furniture and dishes were thrown out, but it's still...depressing. Even more so with most of the lights off.

He says nothing when he hears the door open, hoping that she'll get frustrated over him hiding and go away.
Edited 2017-02-01 04:12 (UTC)
captainbuzzkill: (077)

[personal profile] captainbuzzkill 2017-02-01 06:27 am (UTC)(link)
Dipper doesn't come out from under the couch. Instead, he shoves the pillow out from under his face, and turns his head away from the side of the couch where he can see Pidge's legs. He yanks up the hood of the hoodie he has on over his pajamas to cover his head and pulls the strings so that even if she were to try to look under the couch at him, she wouldn't see his face.

Then he tucks his legs up into his hoodie until he's just a ball of hoodie and red-faced embarrassment. For a moment, he considers telling her he's not here right now because he's in hoodie-town, just like Mabel often claims to be in sweater-town when she's sad, but the thought of Mabel being sad makes him sad.

And the realization that he's hiding in his hoodie like Robbie Valentino did, in true lame, over-dramatic teenager fashion, makes him want to toss himself off a cliff due to the sheer mortification.

He's fallen so far. And in the end, it doesn't even matter~

The embarrassment, and if he's honest with himself, the shame he feels from almost hurting her, feels like it's choking him. He wants to say a lot of things, wants to chase her away, but there's something else that's more important than his own feelings.

In the depths of his hoodie, his face softens.

"Are you -- are you okay?"
Edited 2017-02-01 06:50 (UTC)
captainbuzzkill: (086)

[personal profile] captainbuzzkill 2017-02-01 09:06 pm (UTC)(link)
Not hurt is not really the same as "okay," but he's not going to really push her. If she's not okay and needs to talk about it, it'll happen somehow. He doesn't particularly want to talk about how he's doing, either, but again, if she was concerned enough to break into his room, she wants to know. Maybe needs to know. He thinks back to what he saw in that repeating house -- something with her family.

It's not just about you.

It's no different than if Mabel were still here: he has someone else's feelings to think about.

With one sentence, he finally adds a little context to the talk of monsters, and cursed wax figures, and why he freaked out and attacked Wash during sparring.

"Well," he says conversationally, "after surviving the apocalypse and one thousand screaming nightmares, and getting brainwashed into a monster, like, again, I've decided to stop doing the whole 'resilient' thing and I'm trying out being not-okay for while. Just giving it a whirl."

He idly twirls a finger that she can't see.

"My sister got zapped home. Perfect timing, right?" He sniffles a little, but he manages to make it stop and rubs at his eyes. "I'll be fine, though. Eventually. This is just...it's just another thing. I'm used to it by now."
Edited 2017-02-01 21:07 (UTC)
captainbuzzkill: (114)

[personal profile] captainbuzzkill 2017-02-02 08:52 am (UTC)(link)
In his hoodie, he drags his hand down his face in frustration because of course she's not going to understand that the way he thinks is what's helped him survive. He remembers her talking on the network about how she's from a world where she and her friends have lion robots that turn into bigger robots. Some worlds are just like that. Some worlds have threats, yes, but they don't have eternal, otherworldly, eldritch nightmares -- they have bad people that can be stopped before the apocalypse happens.

His world isn't the darkest place it could be, because there's so much he and his sister stopped in its tracks, but he's still had to accept that sometimes you lose. Sometime the bad will happen and you'll be powerless to stop it -- and what happens after matters more. The staying-alive. The trying to find your loved ones. The braving monsters and convict road warriors and demons to fix it.

Sometimes things can even break your mind, too, a place that's supposed to be sacred and untouched for all people, and you just have to accept it's something that can be broken and learn how to get good at putting it back together again.

It's a big idea he doesn't know how to articulate, and when he uncurls and turns to face her, yanking on his hood so that his face is actually visible, he...he realizes that she's just saying all this because she's hurting, too.

"I know how it feels to lose a sibling."

She just cares. That's all this is. She just empathizes and cares. What she's saying, that it's not fair, like fairness is even supposed to factor in, chafes against his sense of reality, but how he can even get upset when her shouting is half being upset over the mission and half outrage on his behalf? How can he get upset after she's said something like that. (Is her sibling even still alive?)

"We are so totally from different genres," is what he finally says with a nearly delirious-sounding, self-deprecating little laugh. "Like, I'm from 'tell Grunkle Stan to get his brass knuckles, it's zombies again' and you're from 'let's fire up our giant robots powered by friendship.'"

It has a gunsword. He bets the giant robot made of other robots totally has a gunsword. Her cool bayard thing is pretty close to being something like one.

He adds quickly, trying to make it clear he's not belittling the danger for her back home, "I know you have to fight back home -- or you wouldn't be as good at fighting as you are now." His voice is incredibly gentle. "And I'm so sorry about your sibling. I know she's okay, but this isn't the first time Mabel and I got separated and the first time was...bad. Like...I didn't even know if she was alive bad. It was only a few days, but a few days feels like a long time at the end of the world. But that's still not the same -- it's not even close to --"

To not getting her back right away. For all he knows, Pidge means her sibling is dead.

He shakes his head.

"But the way you have to think to get through giant robots and aliens is different than the way I have to think to get through demons and zombies. Because when the Faceless showed us the sky ripping open? I already knew what that looked like. Neither's magically worse or better than the other, just...different. It's not even about 'fair' for me anymore."

He lays there on his side and just looks at her, not even caring about how his fringe falls away from his birthmark. He's too busy just...looking. Awkwardly, he reaches out his hand and puts it on her own, hoping it's comforting instead of...weird.

"I'll be okay. Eventually." Because he'll eventually pick himself back up again. He's getting good at it. "And if you need someone to be not-okay at, because, y'know, monster-people, and friends getting possessed and unhinging their jaws, and blood fountains or whatever..."

Another awkward pat pat of her hand.
Edited 2017-02-02 08:59 (UTC)
captainbuzzkill: (115)

[personal profile] captainbuzzkill 2017-02-02 10:23 pm (UTC)(link)
He's speechless when she's done. It's not that he hasn't had someone offer to look out for him or help him through a rough time. He's made some great friends here that've been extraordinarily kind, especially during some very dark moments, but a lot of them are older, so them wanting to look out for someone younger makes sense.

She's reaching out and trying to help him because she's his friend, but there's no protective older instinct behind this or something, not when they're obviously close to the same age. She's coming at this as an equal and --

And then she does the hand thing. Not only did she not reject his awkward gesture meant to comfort her, she does that. After everything with Wendy, he knows not to read into it, he knows she's just doing it as a friend, but even as a gesture of friendship, it's still nearly unbearably sweet. His cheeks go a little pink as he threads his fingers through hers, and he ducks his face a bit more into his hood.

Luckily for him, the bashfulness can probably just be read as someone trying to reach out to someone else who's just feeling slightly embarrassed about it, not someone shrieking internally because he's holding a girl's hand in a way that only dogs could hear if he was doing it aloud.

"Maybe there's somewhere we can meet in the middle. Some really weird zombie-fighting robot gray area." He laughs himself. "I mean, we did turn my Uncle's house and tourist trap into a giant mecha to beat the demon we were fighting, at the end of it all. It had a dinosaur arm. Not a robot dinosaur arm, either. A dinosaur arm."

And there sure had been a lot of them believing in each other.

"This is just always weird for me," he admits slowly. "When you're a twin, there's always like...just one person you always go to when you're sad. And it's always the same person. You have this sort of built-in best friend that always knows the perfect things to say. It's hard going without that and it feels weird to accept that from other people."

It's like he doesn't even know how to comfort himself or reach out to someone that's not Mabel for comfort. He's still learning, and only some people, like Wash or Gwen, have worked their way in to where it feels a little more natural.

It's something he supposes he always would have had to learn because as he and Mabel grow up, they're not going to be there to put band aids on every single one of each other's boo-boos, but there's still a learning curve. He has to learn how to work himself out of these things on his own, and has to learn how to let other people into that place more easily.

This...this seems to be working, though.

"I guess I can try a little harder, though."

He squeezes her fingers very gently and feels...he doesn't even know how he feels. Everything still hurts a little but in a slightly different way now, a way that he doesn't entirely hate.
Edited 2017-02-02 22:27 (UTC)
captainbuzzkill: (094)

[personal profile] captainbuzzkill 2017-02-03 06:58 am (UTC)(link)
He chuckles when he sees the photo.

"Wow, I thought he was you for a half a second. You guys could seriously be twins." He can tell they're not only because it looks like there's at least a slight age difference. "Mabel and I could totally confuse people with the right clothes and haircut, too."

He looks at the old Pidge, with long hair, dressed more like a girl, and wonders what brought on the change. It feels like it's not his business to ask, though. Maybe it's to honor her brother or something. Or maybe she just wanted a haircut or whatever, what does it even matter?

She's the kind of pretty where it comes through no matter how she's dressed. Like with those giant brown eyes and -- annd he decides he needs to stop thinking about how pretty she is before his face turns redder. (Even if she wasn't pretty, pretty isn't everything.)

"You'll find him. And your dad."

He looks up at her and hands the picture back.

"My Grunkle Stan got into a fight with my Great Uncle Ford and accidentally knocked him through an interdimensional portal and it took him like 30 years of trying to find his brother again, but he fixed up the portal and found him." He realizes that's a long time, so that's probably not encouraging, so he adds, "And it only took him that long because he didn't know anything about science or engineering? So he didn't know how to interpret Ford's notes. With how smart you are, I bet you'll be able to find your dad and brother a million times faster."
captainbuzzkill: (005)

[personal profile] captainbuzzkill 2017-02-10 06:08 am (UTC)(link)
"He ended up basically everywhere. He just traveled from world to world trying to find out stuff to destroy Bill Cipher."

A pause.

"...who was the demon I mentioned us fighting with the Shacktron. He was a triangle. Great Uncle Ford knew Bill was going to cause the apocalypse so he was trying to stop him before it happened."

Another pause.

"He didn't manage to. Uh. Stop it. Hence...the apocalypse." He lets go of her hand. "You know what, I feel lame for hiding under here now."

He lets go of her hand -- reluctantly -- and scoots out backward from under the couch. It's mostly to give himself a moment to collect himself because...Bill. Talking about Bill still makes him want to punch things. He climbs over the back of the couch and sits down on it, looking down at her.
Edited 2017-02-10 06:08 (UTC)
captainbuzzkill: (033)

[personal profile] captainbuzzkill 2017-02-12 03:50 am (UTC)(link)
"No no no, it didn't die. See, my Grunkle Stan lived in Gravity Falls -- which is where Great Uncle Ford lived before he fell through the portal and got lost in the multiverse? And the town is like a gravity sink for weirdness. So the apocalypse happened and the entire town turned into a waking nightmare filled with eldritch abominations and human suffering," he says very casually.

He holds his hands together to mime a little bubble.

"Except the natural weirdness-attracting force of the town meant the apocalypse was localized around Gravity Falls. We were able to stop Bill Cipher and make everything go back to normal before he figured out a way to spread it over the entire world and turn everything into a dystopian nightmare where people had to resort to cannibalism or whatever."

It was a mini apocalypse. Fun-sized.

"The apocalypse only happened to us and then it got undone."
captainbuzzkill: (124)

[personal profile] captainbuzzkill 2017-02-14 03:52 am (UTC)(link)
For a second, all Dipper can do is stare at her. Then his mouth presses into a thin, little line, and he narrows his eyes.

"Okay, first of all, Great Uncle Ford studied the phenomenon and it was definitely centered around the town. Secondly, Mabel and I had totally normal lives before we went to visit, no weirdness at all, so it definitely wasn't either of us. Thirdly..."

He holds up a finger.

"Hold that thought."

He gets up from the couch and goes over to a little tray table where Mabel's crafts had been left behind, and kneels on the floor next to it. Then he picks up a pair of scissors and starts cutting out some weird oblong shape out of construction paper, sticking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth as he does it.

He briefly looks up at Pidge again.

"If you're wondering what I'm doing, I'm making you an Awkward Award. I feel, as the reigning multiversal champion of putting my foot in my mouth, that there should be some kind of official handing down of the title. What color glitter do you want your name in?"
captainbuzzkill: (125)

[personal profile] captainbuzzkill 2017-02-15 01:23 am (UTC)(link)
"Not all by ourselves, but everyone else had given up, Great Uncle Ford had been captured and turned into a trophy on Bill's giant petrified throne of human agony..."

The paper shape turns out to be a yellow foot, perfect to represent a foot shoved in one's mouth. He takes out a glue stick and starts writing the letters of her name, putting green glitter on the glue as he goes.

"Some of the survivors were hiding at the Mystery Shack. A unicorn spell Uncle Ford put on it beforehand kept it protected. So Mabel and I convinced all the survivors to fight back. Then we all worked together, Uncle Ford's inventor friend McGucket engineered a design for the Shacktron, and we managed to fight our way into the Fearamind." He briefly stops and gestures vaguely with the glue stick. "It was like a pyramid of unholy horrors? Hence: Fearamid."

He figures he should explain the name.

"Anyway, we got in, freed most of the town and Great Uncle Ford, then Ford and Grunkle Stan messed up this group spell thing we could've used. So Mabel and I fought Bill ourselves to keep him busy, and that was long enough for our grunkles to arrange a trap. That part's...complicated."

There's a lot to explain there, with their feud, and the plate in Ford's head, and the memory gun, and...

"But it worked." He smiles slightly as he pours more glitter onto the foot. "Bill was a liar, and a sneak, and he cut shady demonic deals. Grunkle Stan won because he's a conman, so he out-conned another conman. Then everything went back to normal. Nobody outside Gravity Falls even knew what almost happened to the world."

He shrugs.

"We didn't really do that much. Mostly it was just getting everyone to stop giving up." A pause and he waves the glue stick around again. "And then coordinating the operation of a giant mecha where everyone was responsible for a different part."

Surely that's not something she'd know about, no sir.
captainbuzzkill: (117)

[personal profile] captainbuzzkill 2017-02-27 05:13 am (UTC)(link)
Now he's blushing like crazy. He rubs the back of his head..

"It wasn't really a big deal. I mean, I just, like, steered it, but McGucket was the one that designed it. Everyone did their part, and Mabel and I just sort of...enabled it."

He adds, "But that means a lot coming from you. You're like this robot space hero hacking genius."

His face flushes even hotter.

"So...thanks."

He feels a lot better now.
captainbuzzkill: (050)

[personal profile] captainbuzzkill 2017-03-24 03:44 am (UTC)(link)
"That would be so cool." He appreciates science, but it's not like he's gotten that far along in school with it.

But that's a later thing. There's no way he's leaving his room right now. He needs to just...be somewhere comfortable.

And he is. He's a lot more comfortable and a lot less upset.

In fact, he's comfortable enough to use what he learned in all that stuff with Wendy. Instead of tripping over himself, he just...goes for it.

"For right now, though, I bet with that genius brain of yours that you're probably pretty good at video games. I mean, I bet I can still beat you," he says slyly, "but do you want to maybe hang out and play something? I probably have like fifty downloaded that I haven't gotten to yet."