We dove into the dark and stayed there

[isthisapidge]

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?"

Comments

[captainbuzzkill]

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."

[isthisapidge]

Pidge is silent for awhile, maybe a little longer than she should have been, but she needs to work this out. She already knew that Dipper had been through a lot of stuff, good and bad, but he's doing this in particular without his sister.

Boy, does she know how that feels. She finds herself gritting her teeth as a bubble of aggravation rises in her throat until it explodes.

"Well, I'm not used to it. And it's not fair that you are either! If you want to be not-okay then fine, I'm not-okay either, but it's- it's just-"

She scoots forward a bit, and then lies down on the floor so she can actually look at him while they talk.

"It's not something you should do alone." She lets that hang for a moment, staring at him tucked up in hoodie town, and tries to swallow back her emotion.

I'm sorry about your sister. I know how it feels to lose a sibling." And his is probably just back home, and not trapped in a space prison by an evil empire.

No, not the time to compare pain. It'll only make her bitter.

[captainbuzzkill]

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.

[isthisapidge]

Pidge frowned, mulling over what he's saying. He's...kind of talking like they're dead? Did she really never give him the full story?

"No!" She exclaims and then backs off again. "I mean, it's not like that. My brother and my dad were out on an exploratory mission to Kerberos along with Shiro, the top pilot in the Galaxy Garrison. They were looking for signs of alien life but they just happened to be in the path of the Galra Empire and were taken captive."

She sucks in a shaky breath. "Last I knew, they were sent to a work camp. I downloaded an invoice of prisoners from a Galra ship and it listed them as alive. The data was a few months old at that point but the Galra don't waste resources..."

Actually, now that she puts it like that, it isn't really all that much different from what Dipper went through, and she suspects she'd feel similarly if she found and lost them again.

"Look...I'd argue with you, but part of being a Voltron Paladin is forming a bond with your teammates and your robot cat so it literally does run on friendship."

She says it with a laugh because she's never thought of it like that, but it makes total sense. She's not willing to put the word 'silly' to it because she's seen what Voltron can do. And what her team can do.

"But you know...that bond kept me alive when I was stranded in the castle with the Galra, and it kept me from running off and exploding in space when I was so gung-ho to look for my family before then." She turns her hand over, palm up for him. She's not really used to this kind of touch but she can channel Shiro and Hunk for him if it works.

"I know our worlds are different, but we aren't in either of them right now and...I dunno, maybe there's a half-way we can meet. I mean, when the sky tears for me it's because a magic space princess has opened an escape wormhole, but we've still been through a lot of the same things. At the very least we can promise not to go it alone?"

[captainbuzzkill]

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.

[isthisapidge]

Pidge starts laughing too, but not in a disbelieving way. A few months ago, when she was an aloof and bitter cadet undercover at the Garrison she might have brushed him off. Aliens are one thing, but that's just crazy.

But after everything she's been through, all she can ask is: "OK, A...what were you fighting and B...how did you convince the dinosaur?"

Pidge kind of wishes she'd known Mabel better before she left. People thought she and Matt were twins all the time, but he was four years older than her and just had a bit of a baby face.

"That sounds really nice. Matt and I have been in so many advanced classes we didn't have much time for friends except each other for a long time." She fishes out the old picture of the two of them right before he left for Kerberos and hands it to Dipper with her free hand.

The weight of exhaustion and pain and anger is still there, and probably will be for a long time, but it's just that little bit lighter as she talks to him. She squeezes back.

"As long as we're trying, huh?"

[captainbuzzkill]

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."

[isthisapidge]

Pidge laughs. "Yeah, it really helped when I disguised myself to get into the Galaxy Garrison. They knew a little girl kept sneaking in to gather information on the Kerberos mission, but a boy who registered for classes? I went straight under the radar."

She takes it back and tucks it away for safe keeping. And then it's her turn to be speechless.

"...Wow. 30 years?" She knows portals in the context of wormholes so of course inter-dimensional technologies perk her interest. "Where did Ford end up?"

[captainbuzzkill]

"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.

[isthisapidge]

"Wait, I thought that's what the dino-mech was for."

Pidge sits up as she realizes he's about to scoot out from under it, and folds her hand up. She hasn't held someone's hand since she was a little girl being led around by her father. It was...nice.

"You didn't stop the apocalypse? Your world is dead?"

She's shocked. He has his problems with being perceived as weird, he told her as much, but this? This is way outside of what she thought the issue was.

[captainbuzzkill]

"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."

[isthisapidge]

"So let me get this straight...in your universe weirdness is a force like, well, gravity that can be attracted or repelled instead of a descriptive adjective."

She climbs up onto the couch next to him as she works this out.

"And you and Mabel were involved in almost all of it, up to and including the apocalypse? Are you sure it's not you who's the weird sink?"

And then she slaps her hand to her mouth, because what an asshole thing to say to him after everything she knows. "I'm sorry, I..."

[captainbuzzkill]

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?"

[isthisapidge]

Pidge was certain she'd blown it, that he'd kick her out and that would be that, they'd never speak again. He looked so mad at her...

And then he went over to his crafts and said that. And she can't help but laugh.

"OK. OK, I deserve it. Would green be too obvious?"

She gets up and joins him by the tray, mulling over his story. She supposes that eventually this Bill Cipher guy would have moved his mini-apocalypse out of Gravity Falls eventually, make it the actual end of the world.

"...You and Mabel really stopped an apocalypse all by yourselves?"

[captainbuzzkill]

"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.

[isthisapidge]

"So...you made your own Voltron."

Does Pidge look impressed? Because she's really impressed. No, really impressed doesn't quite cover it. She's completely astounded.

"That's...incredible! You used a tourist trap to do what it took a combination of advanced alien technology and magic to do in my world and you had to have done it in, what, days?"

She'll keep the foot ribbon with pride. Had she realized the sheer scope of what he had done, she wouldn't have been so quick to dismiss him.

"I mean, I've seen some crazy things but...wow. You're something else, Dipper."

[captainbuzzkill]

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.

[isthisapidge]

"If there's one thing I've learned piloting Voltron, it's that most everything is a team effort." And that was a difficult lesson for her so hopefully he'll get something out of her words.

She's smiling at him, because he's smiling at her and all the tension in the room is gone. They're both going to be OK, huh?

Now it's her turn to blush a little. "Thank you." She knows she's a genius, so trying to downplay the compliment would come off as insincere.

"I mean, I could teach you some tricks on building robots if you wanted?"

[captainbuzzkill]

"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."