All Our Broken Pieces // {A Gravity Falls Fanfiction}

Prologue: From the Mountain Tops

T h r o u g h  T i m e  &  S p a c e . A n o t h e r   D i m e n s i o n . X X X X

At first, he didn't even know he was running.

He started when he hit the ground -- legs struggling to support himself up from the after the impact of the fall. The window he'd jumped from was farther from the ground than he thought. Trembling, he managed to make his thin legs peddle him up and forward, straight into the rushing crowd, the force of their panic pushing him back with the intensity of a raging flood. 

As he ran, he felt his breath come in short, uneven gasps, pointy elbows and sharp ends knocking the wind out of him as he slowly, painfully, made his way through. The mass of struggling bodies surrounded him, their eyes watching in disbelief and horror as he ran in the opposite direction and towards chaos and hellfire growing in the near distance.

A few distinctly familiar voices cried after him, pleading for him to stop -- swearing he'd be killed.

He ignored their desperate calls, their bemused stares.

He did not have time to listen.

Nor did he have time to worry.

He had to find his brother.

Ignoring the pain growing in his chest, the limp in his step, he continued his struggle till he found a break in the crowd, releasing a breath of relief as he reached the back of the fleeing mass. As he made his way closer towards the growing heat and smoke, he barely avoided being burned by the leaping, searing blue flames engulfing an abandoned home, devouring everything precious it still held inside. As it moved to the next home, he kept on the cracked asphalt path, the family neighborhood turning more and more into a burning ghost town by the minute.

He had to find his brother.

Here, in the middle of Tutus Lane, there were only a few stragglers of the throng left, bleeding wounds and crooked limbs causing them slow and quickly fall behind the rest. Their voices shouted for the crowd to wait for them -- to slow down and help them.

Not a soul turned to help and neither did he, rushing towards the one thing he had on his mind.

Brother. Home. Brother. Home. Where's my brother? Where's my home? Dear God, where are they?!

That's when he spotted it. The flames -- the body. It was understandable how he almost passed it by, with the bellows of fire and smoke merged together as one in the blood-violet sky. 

Home...

It was surreal, to see the massive mess he once called his home. All that was left of the wooden two-story Victorian home was its collapsed and charred skeleton, any security his family had built around him, surrounding him and his brother with love, dead and gone. 

His eye quickly scanned the scene, taking in the desolation and destruction of the ongoing inferno. The charred front door was the only thing left standing of the house, the thick wood busted in and desperately clinging onto the one remaining hinge on it's crumbling frame. He stepped forward to reach out and touch what remained but, before he could, it creaked and fell with a heavy thud, stirring up the blue embers laying beneath.

Lowering his hands shielding his face, he stared, fighting back the sudden lump forming in his throat.

Gone... Gone... Gone... Was the mantra that played on repeat as he fell to his knees, heavy tears falling to the ground.

He rubbed his eye, a choked sob threatening to escape his mouth. He shook his head, viciously wiping the streaks rushing down his cheeks with the back of his hand.