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Here is something true about the Unknown: it is part of the After. And here is something true about the After: it rarely likes to give up souls it swallows.
When two brothers wake and breathe and
live,
darkness
clings to them, digs into them, claims them. They have seen the forest, they have known the Other and the After. Their hearts still beat, but they are shadows.
The hospital doesn't make them stay overnight. They're very lucky, the doctor tells their parents, that they weren't in the water very long.
They go home, and, exhausted, they sleep.
Their mother checks on them during the night. If she got closer, she might’ve noticed that neither is breathing.
“Do you ever feel like, if the shadows were dark enough, you could just walk right through them?” Wirt asks Sara one night, when the two of them are walking home from a night of studying and movies with their friends. It's chilly outside, but he barely notices. He's never really been able to shake the bone-deep cold of the forest winter. “I- I guess that sounds silly, doesn't it.”
“No,” Sara smiles. “It sounds cool. Like a superhero!”
Wirt laughs.
He avoids the deep pools of shadow between street lamps. He doesn't want to know if he’d fall in.
“Watch this!” Greg says, his classmates gathered close around him in the grass. He digs his fingers into the ground, focuses, and-- between his hands, a small black turtle crawls up out of the soil.
The other kids exclaim in surprise, laughing or demanding to know
how
. Greg just shrugs.
“I was in the backyard, and I wanted to see another turtle like me and Wirt saw in the Unknown, and there it was!” he smiles brightly. The turtle has crawled up onto his hand, and he holds it up to smile at it.
“Weird,” says one kid.
“Awesome,” says another.
“Can I hold it?” asks a third.
“Yeah! Just don't eat it,” Greg says solemnly. The other children laugh, or make noises of disgust at the mere suggestion.
(And here is something true about shadows: they can't pretend for very long to still
be
in the way living people are.)
The more time goes by, the stranger the boys become.
“I saw their eyes glow in the dark.”
“His shadow had
antlers
! No, really, I swear!”
“I bet they're demons.”
“Witches.”
“Monsters.”
Wirt is an adult. He is a husband. He goes on walks through the woods sometimes, late at night; Sara knows better than to worry after him, but sometimes she waits up, meeting his too-bright eyes in the darkness of the living room before she flicks the light on and the shadows melt off of him and he looks human again.
The trees and the shadows croon, always, ours, ours, ours. They're louder when the veil is thin. He doesn't listen. He's happy where he is.
Greg is an adult. He lives with two friends and a very old frog and a very new puppy. His roommates know better than to question the little black turtles they find in the house out of nowhere, or the way the puppy loves Greg best in the daytime but avoids him like the plague once the sun sets.
The trees and the shadows croon, always,
ours, ours, ours
. They're louder when the veil is thin. He doesn't listen. He's happy where he is.
Wirt is barely more than a child, sitting in the dirt, and the forest surrounding him is endless and dark. He looks up at the call of a bluebird, and sees a girl with red hair.
“Beatrice,” he guesses.
“Wirt,” she replies. Then Beatrice becomes Lorna becomes Auntie Whispers becomes the Woodsman becomes Enoch becomes the Beast.
Wirt can't move, can't stand, can't run-- he looks, and his legs and hands have sunken into the soil, becoming roots.
“No,” he says.
The Beast steps out of the shadows, steps out of itself, and grins with Wirt’s face-- his
adult
face, his face
now
, but with those horrid glowing eyes, spiralling antlers.
“This is a dream,” Wirt realizes.
Beast-him is holding a familiar axe.
“Oh, poor boy,” it says, stifling laughter, voice dripping with false sympathy. Its voice is no one’s and everyone’s, himself and Sara and Beatrice and Greg and every soul he's ever met. “You’re still pretending to be human, aren't you?”
“No,” Wirt repeats, and doesn't know what he means by it. Branches grow around him, but only enough to keep him held still.
No, I'm not pretending. I am human.
No, I've stopped pretending. I know better.
“Severed heads and severed eyes, are much less sweet than severed
lies
,” sing-songs the monster, slowly raising the axe above its head. The metal glints, reflecting sourceless light. “But if you're still pretending, then your head will have to do.”
The blade swings down.
Wirt wakes up, gasping as his lungs remember how to breathe, grasping at his own throat just to make sure it is whole.
Greg is a child, standing lost in a snowstorm, and the forest surrounding him is endless and dark. He looks up at the sound of his name, and sees a bluebird.
“Beatrice?” he asks.
The bird looks at him with beady eyes, sings a wordless trill. Then it is not a bird but a turtle, a frog, a wolf, a cat, it cycles through animals too fast to see until it is not an animal but a man. No-- almost a man. But those eyes and antlers are too familiar not to know.
Greg can't move, the snow is up past his knees and snaking branches keep him held still.
“No,” he says.
The Beast steps out of the shadows and looks like a person, except for the eyes, and it has Greg's face. His face now, as an adult, and-- “oh, this is a dream,” little Greg realizes.
“Very clever,” replies Beast-him. It’s holding the lantern. Greg focuses, tries to make himself older, as he should be. It works. He stares Beast-him in the face, and sees a mirror image as the dream shifts to contain him again, making him see his own empty glowing eyes, the spiralling antlers and the dripping shadows. His reflection grins. “Are you still pretending to be human?”
“No,” Greg says, truthfully.
“Good,” his reflection says approvingly. Slowly, it begins to raise the lantern, opening the glass. “Severed heads and severed eyes, are much less sweet than severed lies.”
It blows out the lantern.
Greg wakes up, blinking quickly in the deep, deep darkness, even though his eyes don't need to adjust. He doesn't bother with breathing quite yet.
(And here is a truth about shadows: even contained within a beating heart, they know what they are.)
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“I'm just… scared, I guess? I-- I dunno.” Wirt is pacing in front of her, across the living room floor. “I mean we both know I'm not… not totally…”
“Human,” Sara supplies, quietly, when her husband doesn't seem inclined to continue speaking.
“Yeah.” He sits down, finally, on the couch next to her, falling onto the cushions and letting all the air out of his lungs in a shaky sigh. Sara tries not to notice that he doesn't breathe in again.
“Yeah,” she echoes. “But you're
mostly
human. And I'm pretty human, I think--” she smiles when that gets a slight chuckle out of him, and his breathing resumes as normal-- “and it's not like we would love a little monster baby any less
anyway,
right?”
This time Wirt laughs properly.
When Sara wakes up to the twins crying, Wirt's side of the bed is already empty, and the room is dark. Sara gets up, moves across the hall to the babies’ room. The nightlight in the corner doesn't seem to be casting any light, for a moment, because when Sara looks into the room she just sees the shadowed silhouettes of the furniture, of the two cribs and a tall antlered figure standing over one, leaning down--
Sara takes a half step forward into the room, and when she blinks the nightlight is working again, the shadows are gone and her husband just looks like her husband as he lifts a fussing Maegan out of her crib. He smiles, a little tiredly, when he sees Sara in the doorway.
“You want to take Mabel?” he asks, and she nods, holding back a yawn and moving to the second crib, where Mabel is still crying, eyes scrunched shut.
She's in the house, only it isn't
right
. There are roots everywhere, grasping branches growing crookedly down from the ceiling, sticky black sap dripping from each one she breaks in an attempt to make them stop.
“Wirt!” she calls, and there's no answer. The house is silent. She makes her way to the babies’ room, goes to each crib. Both girls are there, sleeping peacefully. Both are swaddled in branches and leaves. There's something wrong, Sara thinks, something she just can't quite realize. She reaches down into Maegan’s crib and the branches recede for her as she picks up her baby, holding the little girl close to her chest. She holds Maegan’s head and feels the sharp little tips of antlers under the girl's curly hair. Something…
“Sara,” a voice she almost recognizes, and she turns, sees the doorway growing over with bark and leaves and on the other side is Wirt, human and
scared
, frantically trying to snap branches, trying to get to her, to
them
.
“Wirt, what's wrong?” Sara asks.
“Nothing,” she spins again and he's there, too, holding Mabel close to his own chest, smiling through the shadows, his eyes neon-bright in the darkness. “Here, let me take Maegan, too. You need some sleep,” he says, and Sara nods, hands the baby off. Something…
There isn't a door-- why would there be a door? They're in the middle of the forest. Sara lays down on soft moss and grass and leaves, branches beginning to curl around her the same second, and before she closes her eyes she sees a familiar antlered shadow, carrying their girls away, further into the woods.
Sara wakes silently, calmly, but there are tears running down her face. She hurriedly wipes them away.
“Wirt?” she whispers, unwilling to roll over and see the glow of his eyes in the dark.
“Hmm?” he replies, sleepy.
“Time?” Sara asks, because the clock is on his side of the room.
He hums again, and she hears him shift to look.
“Four twenty-seven,” he mumbles.
“I'm gonna go check on the twins,” Sara says.
“Mmkay,” Wirt agrees, settling easily back into sleep.
Sara gets up, moving across the hall. The twins are asleep, wrapped up in their blankets, and everything is normal and fine.
Sara reaches down into Maegan’s crib, brushes the baby’s already-thick hair out of her face, looking at her strange birthmark. Maegan stirs, face scrunching as if ready to cry, and Sara makes a soft shushing noise.
“It's okay, little dipper,” she whispers.
And yet--
She can't help but brush her hand gently down the side of the baby's head, can't help but breathe a small sigh of relief when there's nothing there. She moves to Mabel’s crib, does the same thing again, with the same result.
“My little monster babies,” she whispers anyway, rubbing at her face. God, she's tired.
“Hey, you okay?” Wirt asks, so
so
softly, as he pads into the room.
“Just had a nightmare,” she replies. She wraps her arms around him and he rests his chin on top of her head, returning the hug.
“You going to stay up, then?” he asks.
“Probably,” she admits.
“I'll get coffee started.”
He kisses the top of her head, and leaves her in the babies’ room, and she sits in the armchair by the door and keeps watch until the sun peeks through the blinds.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Daddy's turtle,” says Mabel cheerfully, holding the creature up toward Wirt. “Found it under the shoe shelf!”
Wirt has to take a moment and process the situation before he accepts the little black turtle from his five-year-old daughter. “Daddy's turtle,” she says again, nodding in satisfaction now that the turtle is, apparently, back where it belongs.
“Um...yeah, it is,” Wirt agrees. He has no idea whatsoever how she could have known that.
The turtles are one of the less worrying and more
annoying
aspects of being...
whatever
Wirt and Greg are. They can summon them on purpose-- Greg figured that one out early-- but more often than not, they kind of just show up in strange and unexpected places. Sara found one in a cereal bowl in the closed cupboard, the other day.
Wirt is still trying to puzzle out how Mabel might have known where the turtles come from, glancing between his smiling daughter and the critter in his hand, when he feels a small hand tug at his pant leg. He looks down. Dipper is standing there holding out a second turtle, which is a little weird, because they don't tend to show up more than one at a time.
“Where’d this one come from?” Wirt asks, taking the second turtle with his free hand.
“Bathtub,” Dipper replies simply.
“Huh,” Wirt says.
“Wirt! There was a turtle in my jacket pocket!” Sara calls from down the hall, footsteps approaching, and Wirt turns so that when she enters the front room she can see the two turtles he's already holding. “Oh. Huh.”
“Too many turtles,” Dipper says.
“Are you sad?” Mabel hugs Wirt’s leg, apparently just in case he
is
sad.
“Wh-- sad?” Wirt exchanges a perplexed glance with Sara. “No, I'm not sad. Why do you say that?”
“Bad turtles for bad feelings,” Mabel says. “
Duh
.”
“Oh, I see,” Sara grins. “I think your Daddy is scared about your first day at school.”
“I’m not
scared
--” Wirt begins to protest.
“But it'll be fun!” the twins exclaim at the same time, echoing the reassurance they've been told a thousand times by now. “Right, Mommy?”
“Of course!” Sara hands off the third turtle to Wirt, pauses long enough for him to kiss her on the cheek, then sweeps toward the door, scooping up her car keys on the way. “Everybody ready to go?”
“Yep!”
“Yeah!”
“Almost,” Wirt puts the turtles down for a second, scrambles to get his sweater on, then scoops them all back up. “Ready.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
2000:
It's impossible not to realize when he's stepped back into the Unknown. The trees get louder. The sounds of the city fade away to nonexistence. The wind gains an extra chill. Wirt keeps walking, and makes no effort to keep his human form from disappearing under the shadows. He has no use for it here.
“
Fear not the trees, they don't mean harm,
” he sings, the words of a lullaby he wrote to sing to the twins. Sara always tells him it's a little scary. “
They'll bring you to my waiting arms.
”
What small animals exist here scurry away before he can see them. He doesn't see anyone, anything, for a while, until he's grown tired of singing and has gone back to walking in silence.
Then he sees the man, completely out of place in these woods with his dark, heavy clothes, a scarf hiding the bottom of his face.
He sees the man, and the man sees him.
Ford freezes at the sight of the creature ahead of him. It’s got twisting, wicked antlers, glowing eyes, a body that looks darker than shadow. Ford’s brain scrambles to come up with a plan, any kind of plan. His leg is still healing, he won't be able to run on it properly. He doesn't know where his pack went, so the only weapons he has are a plasma knife and his crossbow. This dimension(?), this place, has stories of a terrible beast, but Ford hasn't been able to get a decent
description
out of anyone so far, so he has no clue what he's facing other than the fact that it feels
wrong.
It feels dangerous, and almost unreal. Ford slowly pulls his scarf down, puts a hand on the hilt of his plasma blade, cautious, as the creature comes closer. It seems almost curious in the way it moves, slow and intent, head tilted, its unblinking eyes fixed on him. Ford doesn't dare move.
There's something
familiar
about the man, Wirt thinks. He approaches slowly, without speaking, just trying to place the face in his memory.
The man pulls the scarf down, and Wirt places him.
Uncle Stan
. Dead in a car crash
years
ago, and still here, apparently. Poor guy. Wirt is surprised, but he knows his shadowed face doesn't show it. The human part of him wants to say something, but there's nothing to say. He can't help people move on. He can't make this better.
The creature comes to a stop right in front of Ford, and it's tall, taller than him, and gangly and inhuman. It makes no sound, just stares, like it's giving him a once-over. Ford is still frozen, hand curled tight around the handle of his knife. He meets its eyes.
The creature stills, meeting his gaze for a moment before turning, and walking away. Silently retreating back into the trees. Ford lets out a breath, heart thumping in his chest.
(Wirt goes home, human emotions coming back to the forefront as he steps free of the forest, and spares a few minutes to mourn his uncle’s fate, before heading home to his family.)
Ford’s been in the woods another day when he meets a family with bright orange hair and too many children, and they offer to let him stay with them a while. He accepts, grateful.
He describes the creature he saw to them. The eldest girl gets a look in her eyes that Ford can't decipher.
“The Beast,” she says, confirming his suspicions. She looks away, not meeting his eyes anymore. Ford gets the feeling she's hiding something, not telling him everything, but he doesn't push. He just needs to get out of this dimension; their Beast is no problem of his.
.
.
.
2012:
The bubble comes down. Apocalypse averted. Bill is gone. So Ford doesn't know why the Beast’s damn
turtles
keep showing up. He’d been trying to ignore them, because he already
knew
his whole family was likely to die, thanks, he didn't need these damn little omens to tell him that. But they're
still here
.
“Mom and Dad are on their way here,” Dipper announces, two days after the end of the world, while Stanley is asking them all questions he can't yet remember the answers to, and Mabel is putting together a smoothie to go with the eggs and toast Ford is trying not to burn.
The twins’ parents drive non-stop, apparently, because they arrive in the middle of the night. Ford wakes to Mabel shaking him, “they're almost here they're almost here!”
(He’s too tired to think to ask how she knows.)
She and Dipper run downstairs to the door, just in time for a car to pull into the parking lot. A woman steps out of the car, and the twins run to her, crying and laughing and talking over each other. Ford is too focused on them to notice much when the driver’s side door opens, until a figure comes around the car-- Ford goes on the defensive immediately, starting to lurch forward, ready to protect the kids from the Beast. But when Mabel sees the creature, her shriek is one of delight.
“Dad!” she and Dipper yell, tackling the Beast, and Stanley finally flicks the porch light on, the antlers and shadows blinking away, a lanky man left in their place.
“My memory ain't perfect, but I'm pretty sure that kid didn't have antlers last time I saw him,” Stanley mutters.
“We got your turtles!” Mabel says.
“I didn't mean to send so many. We were
so
worried,” her father hugs her close, and Ford relaxes a bit.
“Don't squish her, Wirt,” the twins’ mother jokes.
“You will not
believe
all the crazy stuff we've done this summer,” Dipper announces, already pulling his parents toward the house, toward Stan and Ford.
And Wirt finally notices them, and does a bit of a double-take.
“Uncle Stanley? Uncle Ford? Wh-- I thought--
you were dead!
” he exclaims. “I
saw
you, in the Unknown!”
“That was you,” Ford says, mostly just trying to wrap his head around the concept.
“Let's get inside, and freak out after,” Stan suggests.
“I'm not freaking out,” Ford and Wirt protest at the same time.
“Uh huh,” Stan sounds unconvinced. “
Inside.
”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
On the couch in his old study, Ford is deep in thought. He’s… hesitant, to say the least, to trust a creature so feared in its domain as the Beast. Then again, he knew his nephew when
Wirt
was
Walter
and just a toddler, running around at Shermie’s heels. And Sara, Mabel, and Dipper clearly know what Wirt is, has been, and trust him anyway, which rules out most possession or doppelganger situations.
Ford’s tempted to run a few tests, just to be
totally
sure-- he looks down at weight on his leg, broken out of his thoughts, and finds a little black turtle crawling over his blankets.
Worry
, Wirt said. Worry makes the turtles appear. They aren’t spies, or omens, just a father’s concern for his family. Ford sighs, and settles in to sleep.
No tests will be necessary, he decides.
“What about the twins?” Stan asks, the next morning, after stories have been traded. Everyone else is still asleep, so it’s just Stanley and Sara at the table, sipping coffee and mutually deciding that it counts as breakfast. Sara doesn’t need to ask what he’s implying.
“Human,” she says. “...Mostly.”
Stan raises an eyebrow, curious, and waits. Sara sighs.
“It’s just little things,” she assures him. “Weird dreams. They never get lost in any forest, even unfamiliar ones. Things like that.”
“Weird dreams?” Stan asks, thoughtful, and Sara remembers the story they told her last night, an apocalypse averted, a dream demon.
“They used to have the same dreams as kids sometimes,” she explains, “I think it’s a twin thing.” She doesn’t mention her own dreams, the ones where her children grow antlers, the ones where their father steals them away. She does mention, though-- “I started dabbling in… well, witchcraft, when they were little. Trying to get rid of nightmares, when nothing else worked.”
It’s an obvious attempt to change the subject, but Stan doesn’t call her on it.
“What kind of witchcraft?” he asks instead, frowning. “You know how to steal hands?” “I-- what?”
“Nothing,” he waves her off.
“...It’s mostly crystals and plants and tarot,” she says. “It’s all worked, though. Got rid of the nightmares, at least.”
“Huh,” Stan says, nodding a little. “Ma’s the same. Psychic, she does the--” he makes a shuffling motion with his hands-- “the cards and stuff.”
“I think I remember Wirt mentioning that.” Sara smiles, gaze flicking over Stan’s shoulder to the man in question, as he walks into the kitchen with his eyes half closed. “Sleep well, hon?”
Wirt makes a noncommittal, wordless sound that Sara knows to mean
well enough.
He mentioned last night how ‘loud’ the trees around Gravity Falls are; Sara’s never gotten a clear explanation on what that means to him, but she knows it must be hard to sleep through.
“Want the rest of my coffee?” she asks. Wirt makes another, longer wordless noise, this one more or less meaning
yes, please, thank you, I love you so much
. He drops into a chair, and Sara slides him the mug.
(Mabel and Dipper actually didn’t realize their mom was a witch for a long time. Not until they were about eight, and a friend from school insisted that the sigils hanging on the walls, the cards and the incense and the crystals, the teas and tinctures and altars, weren’t just Normal Mom Things that everyone had at home.
Though, to be fair, the twins also thought their dad having antlers and glowing eyes in the dark was Normal, until kindergarten when Mom and Dad explained that no, it wasn’t, and they were only going to make their teachers very concerned if they kept drawing him that way.
A lot of children tend to think of their experiences as being universal, until they learn better.)
“You’re mom’s giving out bags of
rocks
as party favors,” Pacifica points out, one eyebrow raised. It’s not as disdainful as it might have been a month ago-- or, hell, a
week
ago. She mostly just sounds confused. Mabel grins.
“They’re for nightmares,” she replies. “You put them under your pillow. Mom thought it would be nice.”
Pacifica looks dubious, but she slips the bag into her purse, just the same.
“Your mom is very cool,” Candy says solemnly, examining her own crystals closely, one at a time.
The twins go home with their parents, on the last day of summer, after a long series of goodbyes, promises made for next year.
“Note to self, put the twins in self-defense classes this year,” Wirt says, once they’re on the road. Sara smiles.
“If you wanted them to learn how to fight, you should’ve just asked your uncles,” she replies.
“Not if you want us to learn to fight fair,” jokes Dipper.
“Fairness is irrelevant,” Sara says flatly. “You fought
monsters
, and demons, and we-- we weren’t
there--
”
“Sara,” Wirt says softly, and she takes a deep breath, loosening her white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel.
“Mom, it’s okay,” Mabel says.
“It’s
not
. It’s not,” Sara takes another breath. “But… it’s over now, and you two are safe, and that’s the most important thing.”
“...We
can
go back to Gravity Falls next summer, right?” Dipper asks, a little unsure. Wirt and Sara glance at each other, having a silent conversation, and the twins share a worried look in the backseat.
“Of course,” their dad eventually says. “Just… next time call us
before
the apocalypse part?”
Mabel grins.
“Sounds good to me,” she says. “Does that mean I can have a new phone?”
“
Don’t
push it,” Sara says, but she’s fighting a smile.