Dipper POV
The world felt fuzzy as it spun back into place under my feet. Bright sunlight had been replaced by a much softer, darker, yellow glow that seemed to be coming from the ceiling, walls, and even the floors. The lacquered black tiling under my shoes was the first thing that was steading in my field of vision, the second, a large red mosaic glass eye taking up the entirety of an oddly shaped wall behind a large empty dais.
Wendy stood just as shaken to my left.
"Wendy." I groaned, reaching for her. Her head whipped in my direction like she hadn't noticed I was there yet, the in her eyes melted just a bit.
"Dipper!" She fell into me, wrapping her arms around my back. I enclosed her in a hug. Over the years I finally had that teen boy growth spurt and even though I'm not 6 foot, I am just a little taller Wendy.
She pulled back abruptly, "You made a deal with Bill Cipher!" She shouted, "I am going to need so much more information about that but!" Her head turned on a swivel at most of our surroundings, "first we should figure out where we are, and where those two demons went, and on top of that If we're safe."
I nodded along with her. Looking around the room we were in was nothing more than wide open space, blocked in by odd shaped twisting walls that careened upwards into very high ceilings and odd corners. Along the bottom of the walls was an array of several differently shaped and colored doors, all of which were closed. "Should we try the doors?" I asked.
She nodded slowly, "Yeah, I'll start on this side if you start on that one?"
I wasn't a huge fan of the idea of splitting up, but it was just across the room and I told myself that Wendy was different from my family. If one of those doors opened, she wouldn't just leave me behind.
Starting at the wall furthest from the dais we both tried the largest set of doors in the room, they didn't budge. She moved down the doors on the left, I went to the right.
Some doors were wide, short, thin, long, double doors or singles, it didn't matter because not a single one of them opened.
I met Wendy back on the steps of the dais, she looked a little defeated and worse for wear, none of her doors had opened either.
I sat on the edge, leaning back on my hands, looking out at the open and empty space, "Ok so, want to tell me about the deal you made? Or should I go first?"
She dropped down next to me looking just as deflated as I felt.
"You go first, cause, dude. Bill Fucking Cipher."
"Come on, stop saying it like that." I groaned, "It will only make what I say sound stupid."
She placed her hand over her heart, "I swear to you, nothing you could say to me right now will make me think any less of you. Besides, I am 100% sure that my deal sounds much worse than yours."
"I doubt it-"
"You're stalling."
"Right sorry," I cringed, "It's complicated, the deal won't make sense if I don't tell you a little about the last few years first." She turned to sit fully facing me, I did the same for her, taking in the openness of her green eyes. Eyes that I used to be so in love with. "Me and Mabel went back to California, we had a big fight over it. I wanted to stay here, I don't remember if I told you but Ford offered me an apprenticeship with him before we left." She shook her head, "Ya well that's what we fought about, I gave in and promised to go back for at least our freshman year of high school. If I still wanted to come back by the following summer we'd talk about it again then. But something changed with her, I don't know if it was the girls she met or what but-" I hadn't talked to anyone about what happened that year. "I'm sorry this is gonna sound awful and whiny." I groaned.
"No! No no, believe me Dipper I know what high school does to teen girls. I went, I've seen it." She placed a hand on my shoulder, "I know it's Mabel, but you can tell me. It's gonna sound cheesy as hell but your experience is valid." Her nose scrunched up as she said it. "Sorry I couldn't think of a better way to put it." She cringed.
I laughed, falling victim to the calming effect Wendy has always had, "Mabel told everyone about our summer as a part of those stupid ice breakers we had to do in each class. But she told them I was playing ghost hunter, and played it off like none of it actually happened! And then she told them she spent the whole summer dating and spending time with her new friends. She'd distanced herself from me and practically fed me to the wolves. I got harassed on campus, and after a while off campus, just around town or on my way home. Oh and the nightmares, I developed really bad insomnia."
"The next time I see that girl I'll smack some sense into her."
I eyed the weirdly still empty room, "Yay as on board with that as I am, I don't know when or even if we will ever see her again. Or any of them for that matter."
She ran her hands through her hair, "Man, what a girl would do for a hair tie right now." She pulled her honey ginger locks back from her face, but without an actual hair tie, when she let go they came crashing back down over her shoulders, "Go on, that can't just be it right?"
"Yeah, it's not even really the bulk of it." A cold sweat broke on the back of my neck, "I came back to Gravity Falls at the end of the school year as you know," she nodded, "Well it wasn't what I was expecting. Ford was- not good at teamwork. I still couldn't sleep and after something happened in the shack I couldn't sleep at all anymore. So I started going out into the woods to whittle away at the extra hours I had each night. But a couple of times I ended up passing out and always in the same place." I had to divert my gaze from her, suddenly feeling embarrassed, "Bill's statue was the only place I could actually get any rest. I started going out there every night." Explaining how I basically woke up in his lap that morning to her was far too much, so I didn't.
"What was the deal?" She didn't ask about Ford or the sleepless nights, or the nightmares, she simply expected them and let them drop from the conversation for me.
"He needed to get one of the Zodiac's out of the loop so we couldn't use the circle against him. He also- I don't know said that he finds me interesting, he said all he wanted was for me to join him. In return he promised to leave Mabel and everyone at the shack alone." The words trailed off, the deal sounded way too weak coming from me, but it hadn't felt that way when I made it. I suddenly felt very ridiculous, "I mean I wouldn't have taken it you know, if things had been different. I've just been really fucked up lately. It's been awhile since I've had someone actually talk to me, or hell listen when I talk, so I don't know what I was thinking."
"I know what you were thinking," she sighed leaning back on the next step up, "I met Ana out in those woods too. College was a bust and I am the only one out of the whole friend group who actually stayed in town. It's lonely as fuck, and man no offence but you and your Grunkles are some serious hermits." She winced, "Tho maybe that wasn't really your fault, sorry."
I waved the apology off, "No it's ok, I could have, and probably should have reached out, I just convinced myself you'd moved on and didn't need me as a friend."
"I do need you as a friend, I'm sorry I didn't do more to see you, you don't have to talk about what happened if you don't want to, I'm just sorry I wasn't there for you." She hugged me, and I hugged her back. I had let myself become so isolated for so long, keeping myself from her because I always believed she would side with Mabel in the fight, or that she'd realized that she was too old to be hanging around me like everyone said.
"So you met Ana in the woods?" I let the conversation move on, only a little worried that the two of us could go on for hours apologizing for everything under the sun to one another.
She hummed, "yeah like a year ago or maybe a little less than that."
"A year! You made a deal with a demon a year ago and didn't say anything!" I was having trouble picking my jaw up off the ground.
She shoved my shoulder, "No! I didn't know she was a demon ok!" Blush creeped up over her checks but she was smiling, "I was just out on a hike. She was sitting on the ground slumped into a tree, I honestly thought she might have been dead. Low and behold she was alive, and we scared each other half to death. She looked homeless, and starving. I took her into town, offered to buy her lunch. We spent the rest of the afternoon just talking, she told me she was from Corvallis and was a run away. She was homeless, and I had extra space in my apartment. So yeah I met a strange girl I'd only met once before moving in with me." Her fingers twisted into her hair.
"So when did she tell you? When did you make a deal with her?" I asked, adding to my timeline as she explained, Ana has been in Gravity Falls for at least a year. But Bill was only able to get out of the statue just a few days ago. Everything in between was still a very large blank.
"Oh she told me she was a powerful being like right off the bat. That mark on her eye is pretty hard to not notice, but she explained that it was damaged and she was very weak because of it. When I'd found her in the forest she'd overused what little power she had and was trying to recover without knowing that human bodies need food and water and sleep. But I didn't know she was a demon like Bill. I guess I just didn't make the connection, after all she wasn't turning people to stone or a large floating triangle, she was just able to levitate things and make little things out of thin air. It was cool, you know, and she seemed so harmless." She smiled softly down at her hands, her eyes searching for them as she recalled the memory, "I didn't even know we had made a deal when it happened. We had just-" her eyes flicked to me, then away, "Our relationship got closer. She simply asked me what she could to convince me to stay with her. I didn't understand what she meant at the time, I told her just being with me would be enough. We even shook on it and I just laughed, I thought she was joking."
She laughed, "I didn't even know she knew Bill till today! I just can't wrap my mind around her not telling me."
"I think there's a lot those two demons haven't told us." I groaned, the echo in the room made it even more apparent that they were off doing the fuck knows what.
"No kidding."
We sat in this odd room, for what we could only guess was an hour or two more. We talked and talked trying to stave off the worry growing in the space between us, in the glances at the large central doors or kaleidoscope ceiling.
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Wendy and Dipper are literally so wholesome together. I may be gay and therefore blind to straight people/relationships but I honestly don't understand how they could have ended up together, or how people ship them. Tho I also don't understand how Dipper can be shipped with anyone but Bill so-