Symbols ~A Gravity Falls Fanfic~

Epilogue

   After everyone returned to Gravity Falls and found one another in hugs and tears, Mabel and I spent a crazy amount of time with, well, everyone. We relocated Waddles, Grenda, and Candy. We spent I don't know how long goofing around with water balloons, at the arcade, and at each other's houses, watching movies. We enjoyed our time as much as we could, trying to forget the horrors we had seen and experienced.

While we spent a little over a week trying to get back into a normal life, Stephen was silently suffering. Mabel and I had forgotten about Grandma Pines but he hadn't.

By summer's end, Stephen offered to drive us home to Piedmont. It was a long drive, but he wanted to at least see Grandma one last time. I'll always remember that day. God, that was awful.

Grandpa pulled the El Dorado into Grandma's driveway. When he got out of the car, I thought he would have cried then and there. He said it looked about the same it had 30 years ago...or three months ago as he had experienced it. Dad always came over to do anything she needed when the hospice lady, Talia, isn't there. So, any housework was done in an instant.

When we pulled up, Dad's car was actually there. Grandpa was anxious to see his family again, but he was terrified to see his son and wife, aged 30 years since he last saw them. Mabel took one of his hands and led him to the door, wobbly legs and all.

Then, when we were at a very serious point, Mabel rung the doorbell a good 27 times. That was one way to break the tension, I guess.

Dad opened the door, a glass of orange juice in his hand. He was in the middle of sipping it when the realization hit him. There was his father, not aged a day the last time he saw him.

"Hey, Quincy. It's been a while, huh?" Stephen said cautiously.

"Kids, who's your...friend?"

Grandpa placed a hand on Dad's shoulder. "It's me Quincy. It's your old man... I'm just not that old."

The glass in Dad's hand slipped and Mabel caught it just before it hit he ground, avoiding any shattered glass and soaked socks. Dad's mouth was ajar and I couldn't read his face exactly. He was confused but thrilled?

Before saying anything directly to his father, Dad engulfed Stephen in a hug. "I thought I'd never see you again," he said, slightly muffled.

Dad began to usher him inside, "Get in here. You have to tell me everything! Where you've been and how you look so...young," and then stopped him before he could cross the door's threshold. "I don't know if you should see Mom."

I thought about it for a moment as we all exchanged looks. "She always got weird when we asked about you," I added quietly. I wanted Grandpa to see Grandma again, but all the implications we didn't see before were too obvious then.

Grandpa had held a bouquet in one hand, and he squeezed the plastic wrap that encased the flowers' stems. He had gotten Grandma daises - her favorite. He bought them with hope and now he held them in fear.

"I have to at least try. It's been so long."

Dad tapped on the doorframe absent-mindedly. "She's been depressed for a long time, and she has dementia." He glanced at us. "The doctors say it's stress-based. I've always figured it was because you left."

"Trust me, I would've stayed if I could have. It really wasn't my choice."

Dad sighed. "Mom always said you had gone to be a monk off in the himalayas." He smiled nervously. "I never took that to heart. You were too sciencey to be even remotely religious, I thought."

"Tch, you've got me there," Grandpa chuckled. He looked down at us, a little discouraged, and back at Dad. "Well, can I come in?" He was far from prepared to confront Grandma. Mabel and I weren't prepared either but who would've been.

"Y-yeah, just brace yourself, Dad. This hasn't the best week for her." Dad took back his orange juice from Mabel when she stretched it up to him. "Her parakeet died Monday and the neighbor was playing BABBA at midnight last night for some reason."

We trailed behind Grandpa as we entered the house, that old person smell tip-toeing to meet us. Dings and cheering sounded from the living room. Grandma sat in her easy chair, a crossword book in her lap and a pen in her hand. Stephen stopped walking the moment he saw her.

She was wearing a blue shirt with a simple floral design and eccentric pink pants that nearly matched her slippers. Her hair had held onto its original brown with several streaks of grey that were progressively taking over her head. She kept it in a neat bun behind her neck.

"Quincy, who was at the door? I swear, if it was one of those Provolone Witnesses, I'm gonna start turning on the sprinklers when they show up."

Grandpa turned to us with concern and sighed. "Sweetie?"

"Dammit, Quincy, I know you're a nice boy but," Grandma scooted forward in her chair and grabbed a fly swatter, "you can't be letting those people in here." She stood slowly but surly and turned towards Grandpa Stephen. "Well...you're cuter than most of those Clover Witnesses, but get out!" She smacked him in the chest with her flyswatter. "Just because my Birdie died doesn't mean you can come down here with your pamphlets!"

"Karla, it's me, Stephen. I'm here for you again." He held out the bouquet. "I got your favorite flowers. It won't make up for the last 30 years but..."

Grandma stared at him, her dull eyes searching her husband. She blinked a few times and looked at the flyswatter in hand. Then she looked at Grandpa again. "Who are you? Are you one of those Noah Witnesses? You're awfully cute for one of those."

That was when something broke in Grandpa. "Karla...it's me. Stephen Estaban Pines. The Spanish teacher used to call me 'Doble Estaban,' remember? You called me that for years," he blurted, each word faster than the next. He gulped. "R-remember?"

"My husband is dead. He, uh, he's a preacher in England. He'll be back soon."

"No, Karla, I'm here. I'm alive and I'm here in California...with you."

Grandma squinted at him with an uncertainty, unknowing but searching for some sort of recollection. I could see her eyes searching him, looking for that single detail that would bring back her memory of what she had worked so hard to forget. She twirled the flyswatter in her hand and looked past Grandpa. Behind him was Birdie's cage, void of the parakeet but still holding her mirror, food dish, and so forth.

She must have not let Dad take the cage out of the house; or Dad tried to remove it and she refused to let him do so. One way or another, she shuffled around Grandpa and approached Birdie's old cage. The bars were thin and rusted in most places, a dent here and there from that time I dropped it down the attic steps - and relax, Birdie wasn't in it then. It was somewhat of a family antique that had housed many Pines birds but now it held no purpose.

"Quincy, I want another bird. Something green," she announced, laying the swatter on the edge of the table the cage lived on, which was shined to the point of being reflective. "And get that solicitor out of my house. I don't want your father thinking I broke our vows with a man who sells phonebooks for a living." She shuffled back to her chair, past Stephen as he stood silently crying into his hand, and returned to her crosswords. She moved her glasses to the tip of her nose and committed her focus to her usual activity.

As Grandma scribbled away, Mabel and I rushed to comfort Stephen in his weakest moment. I don't know what exactly he was expecting, but he never could have been prepared for that.

Grandma could never recognize Stephen, and, as time went on, she couldn't recognize anyone else, either. Eventually, she thought Mabel and I were the same person - someone named Dakota, specifically. It was painful to watch her slip further into senility but there wasn't much we could have done. We ruled out using any magic because we decided it would be cruel to set back the clock where she could still be stuck in her state of mind.

On her deathbed, she could only recognize Stephen as some rabbi she knew in her youth. It gave her some comfort to think someone she thought she knew was by her side, and it gave Stephen some closure as she wanted to hold his hand as she faded in and out of our reality. Grandma's last words were, although probably part of a delusion, "I love you." 

I like to think that, for a brief moment, she recognized Stephen and remembered how much she loved him and how much she missed him when he disappeared, but I can never be sure.