Archive of Our Own ^beta

"Oh god, what the hell am I doin'? I'm such a damn idiot. I should've taken it a warning when Pa left me for dead on the streets. No good Stanley, should've called myself that." 

"If I can't get him back, I'm as good as a corpse. Nah, even a corpse has more worth than I will if he's gone forever."

"In here!" Mabel chirped, her hand still firmly grasping Dipper's wrist. It wasn't enough to hurt, but it was enough that he felt it.

As Stan announced that he was looking, Mabel glanced around the abandoned building they'd walked inside of. It was decrepit, nobody had lived here in ages. The floorboards creaked, and the curtains were torn to shreds. It wasn't completely ruined, but it was well beyond repair. The fireplace was unusable, as were most of the old appliances left behind. 

"Did you have to pick the creepiest place ever to hide in?" Dipper whispered, trying to be as quiet as possible when following Mabel up the stairs. But that was impossible when each step cried and whined when it was stepped on. Mabel shrugged, she didn't see the problem. 

After they'd moved to the second layer, Mabel led him into an old bedroom. The bed looked anything but comfortable, the mattress was rotting and the pillows were beyond the point of rot. There was clearly some dried blood, too. Dipper cringed. 

But they both sat on the floor in the bedroom's closet, even if it was uncomfortable. Mabel couldn't help but giggle, but she quickly quieted herself when it echoed across the room. Suddenly, her smile seemed to fade. 

"Maybe you were right, I don't like how I echoed." She muttered to Dipper, who simply nodded in response. A few minutes had passed, but the twins weren't impatient. After all, this was a pretty good hiding spot. 

"Hey, at least we can say we didn't play an easy game." Dipper responded, starting to warm up to the building they were hiding in for now.

But as the minutes started passing... 5, 10, 20. They not so quickly realised he wouldn't be able to find them, they were too well hidden and it'd take an insane person to assume two children were hiding in some old house in the woods. Stan was insane, but not that insane. Mabel pondered for a moment.

"I'm pretty sure the games over at this point. Don't wanna make Grunkle Stan think we went missing!" She said happily, bouncing up from the floor. The two made their way down the stairs, which creaked significantly less than before. 

Dipper opened the door, their faces immediately twisting into confusion. Somehow, they'd gone from an abandoned home in the woods to the attic of the mystery shack. But it didn't look the same as it did when they left, where once lied beds was now a vast empty room. 

"This isn't..." he started, though he'd faceplanted onto the floor once Mabel walked out into the attic.

Stan was blankly staring at the floor, cigarette in hand. Only his ashtray knew how many he'd smoked that day, it was more than the average man. He knew that for sure. If he didn't get his brother back, he really was gonna end it. He'd already faked his death, there was nothing stopping him from making it real. The only person that truly missed him was his ma, nobody else. And she already thought he was dead, he already broke her heart once. So he couldn't do it again.

He was snapped out of those gloomy, dark thoughts when a thud was heard from the attic. Did he have another infestation? It would've been the third one this week alone. Stan wasn't good at taking care of this place, at least not with his brain being as screwed up as it was at the moment. 

"Those damn rodents..." he grumbled, getting up from the chair he'd brought into the house that morning with the cigarette still in hand. He made his way up to the attic and swung the door open, startling the two children. 

"Alright ya..." Stan started, but cut himself off when he made eye contact with two human children instead of a bunch of pesky rodents. Those weren't rodents, how did they get into his attic without him noticing? Was he a goddamn idiot? 

Dipper and Mabel glanced at each other, they knew they were in deep trouble now. They didn't know who this man was, but his gaze alone felt intimidating. Mabel quietly inched closer to her brother, she wasn't necessarily scared but she wasn't confident either. 

To Stan's own surprise, his first question wasn't 'what the hell are you doing in my house' and instead... 

"Where're your parents?" The words that left his mouth were softened, even only slightly, against his own will. Even in the state of his own misery and guilt, he couldn't be mean to these kids. They were unrelated to the incident with Ford and the portal. He didn't know 'em, but he knew they deserved better than some old guy taking his frustrations and sadness out on them. 

Mabel eased up a bit, and with a smile on her face, she responded. "In Piedmont, California. I'm Mabel, and this is my twin brother, Dipper." She introduced, getting a look from her brother that read 'are you insane?' And to that, she'd shaken her head. "Chill, it's not like I gave him our exact home address and our mom's credit card information." She added. 

Stan looked between the two, they looked so...alike. Obviously, they were siblings. But despite one of them clearly being a boy, they really did look identical. Stan watched the two bicker for a minute before awkwardly interrupting. 

"So uh, you two identical or what?" He asked, shifting his weight onto his other foot. Immediately, Dipper awkwardly glanced away with shoulders more tense than a man who'd just gotten off a 46 hour shift. Mabel cringed, too, she had to save this somehow. The conversation, albeit short, had gone down an awkward path real fast. 

"Uh- no! We're fraternal?" Mabel replied, though she sounded as if she questioned her own statement. Based on that alone, Stan knew. But he wouldn't say a word, saying words is what got him into this mess to begin with. 

"Right, yeah. Well, uh.. I suppose I could let you kids stay here. I don't got any beds or anythin' but kids like the floor, right?" Stan offered, to which Mabel immediately started nodding frantically whilst bouncing up and down. 

With that confirmation, Stan led the twins out of the attic and downstairs where it was considerably warmer. Mabel looked around, this place reminded her of the mystery shack. "Your house looks like the place our great-uncle lives in." She commented, glancing around the place with a smile on her face. Dipper noticed, too, but he wasn't as keen on talking to a complete stranger like Mabel was. Once they were in the living room, Stan sat back down again. But he didn't pick up his cigarette pack, not with these kids in front of him. 

"Great-uncle, huh. What's his name." Stan didn't really know why he was asking, maybe it was his own poor attempt at bonding with these kids whom he knew nothing about. He knew it was a weird question, god he was stupid. Stupid Stanley, that's what he was mentally calling himself repeatedly. A part of him was saying that because he didn't want them freezing themselves to death outside in the snow, and the other part of him thought that he should try to get to know them if they were gonna stay with him for however long. 

But this girl, she answered regardless. "Uh, well his full name is Stanford, but we just call him Stan for short." She explained, her thumbs fiddling with each other as she spoke. Dipper didn't necessarily enjoy that she was giving out all this information for free to some guy they barely knew, but there was two things about that. One, that they'd basically already done that with Stan himself. And two, that this guy didn't seem like he had the energy to try and kill them. 

Upon hearing the name "Stanford", Stan could feel his heart drop deep into his chest. In fact, maybe his heart and lungs had finally fused into each other to create a deformed organ. But he sucked it up, he wasn't gonna let his mood get the best of him. Not when he had kids to temporarily take care of. 

"Stanford, huh. That's funny. Guess I and your great uncle share a name, he must be a pretty cool guy." Stan remarked with less shame than he thought he would. He was already stealing his brother's identity, he might as well be a little smooth with it. Dipper's eyebrows shifted a couple times as a new thought was stabbed into his brain, almost repeatedly. Mabel was about to speak, but he had interrupted her. 

"So, uh. What's your last name exactly?" Dipper asked, trying his best not to be weird about his own thoughts. 

Stan was confused at the sudden question, but in his quest to attempt to at least serve as a temporary guardian for the kids, he responded. "Pines. Dunno where it originated from, never bothered askin'." It was a little blunt, but hopefully the kids wouldn't mind it. 

Mabel's jaw dropped. Both her and Dipper made intense eye contact with each other, trying to comprehend what they'd both just heard from the brunette man's mouth. There was no way this guy was their great uncle who was also a con artist. There was no way the most depressed looking guy in the world would eventually be their great uncle. 

Dipper had never been in the past, so he was mentally debating the ethics of explaining to Stan who they were now. But then he'd gotten stuck in a different rabbit hole, did current Stan know about this? Did he know they'd be coming when their parents sent them off for the summer? Did Stan already know about them when he was younger like this? Did he predict their mother's pregnancy? Did he predict it to be twins? Had he predicted their genders? Their clothing styles? Their hair and eye colour? Was this a weird time travel effect? 

But the most important question was: is Dipper currently going insane because of the insane situation they were thrown into?

As he did so, Mabel's smile grew impossibly brighter. "Holy crap!" She yelled without even thinking about it, getting a very confused and even somewhat concerned glance from her brother. 

"We're in the 80s! Dipper, don't ever tell Grunkle Stan about this because he'll never let us leave the house ever again if we do!" Mabel insisted, suddenly begging to vibrate in place. Stan was, for lack of a better word, deeply concerned about this girl. She seemed to be a whole new breed of child, one he hadn't recalled seeing before.

Dipper stared at her for a moment, a long pause enveloping the room for a split second before it was snapped into two pieces. "Mabel, he's right in front of us!" Dipper frantically whispered in fear of Stan overhearing it and taking offence, as if that calmed her down at all. In fact, it only made her way more excited about where they were. 

If Stan had to be honest, he didn't get what these kids were talking about. Maybe he was getting old, or maybe they really were just talking nonsense. The girl, Mabel as he knew her, immediately dumped about 15 questions on him all at once. And while it took a couple seconds to process, Stan managed to get her to calm down even a little bit. 

"Sheesh, you're energetic. What, you have about 30 pounds of sugar for breakfast?" He asked though it wasn't too serious. And the next thing he knew, he had a hyperactive 12 year old girl crawling all over him. Stan was glad he never became a parent, these kids weren't even his and this was already somewhat tiring to deal with. But if it meant the kids wouldn't die, he'd put up with it. 

His eyes shifted to Dipper, who immediately looked away. He didn't know why he did that, it was kind of an instinct. Shortly after Mabel made herself comfortable in probably the strangest spot imaginable, she responded to his question.

"30 pounds of sugar is too little for my daily intake, Grunkle Stan. And I think the mullet looks good, you should keep it." She said that so innocently, and that's when it finally hit. These weren't just some kids, they were relatives from who knows what year. Time travelling relatives sounded straight out of a sci-fi novel, and yet here was Stan. 'Surrounded' by two children who were biologically related to him in some way. 

Stan could guess pretty easily who's grandkids they were. Ford had been pushed into the portal and Stan probably wouldn't get him back for a good while so he couldn't have kids, Stan wasn't in a relationship nor had he ever tried to have kids with a woman, so that only left Shermie. Shermie's grandkids, they had definitey lifted his mood. Maybe it was because he now had something to look forward to several years down the line, or maybe because the girl was a living example of the phrase "sugar for breakfast." 

He'd noticed it, that her brother seemed to be more worried about offending him somehow. Another frown crossed his face, this kid was just as panicky as Ford was when Stan initially arrived to see him. 

"Geez, you act like I'm gonna yell at ya for talkin'. Relax a bit, why don't ya. You're gonna be here for a while." It probably wasn't the most comforting thing Stan could've said, but at least he tried. Dipper nodded as a response, which Stan would take as a very small victory.

"Guess I'll have to plan my own death another day. These kids need someone to look after 'em, it'd be cruel to leave them outside." 

"No good Stanley, huh? Well, looks like I'll be good for somethin'."