Guided by demons

Scars

Dipper knew it was a dream. He could tell from the giant sign in front of him, telling him: You are asleep. Please wait here for further assistance.

Well, all he had to say on the matter was this; it was one hell of a dull dream.

"That can change..." without warning, he reality around him warped into a room full of monsters. Ones he'd fought before. Gnomes, Zombies, Probabilitor, Giffany, The Shapeshifter, even Bill himself! "Chose your first opponent, Pine Tree. Or have them all at once." Bill's voice was calm, and for some reason that really annoyed Dipper.

"Whatever, fine! The Shapeshifter, I guess!" He knew this was a dream, the fight didn't matter really. He imagined himself an axe and halfheartedly swung at the monster, trying to get the fight over and done with fast. The monster did the same, but at full force...

And didn't miss.

*    *    *

He woke up screaming, his hand instinctively flinging to his neck. "Dipper?" Mabel turned on the lamp to look at him. "What's up, Bro Bro?" He shuddered.

"Just a nightmare."

"If you're sure...hey, at least your throat's better. Besides, I was just about to get up and wake you for Breakfast. I kinda felt bad about not doing that yesterday..." she smiled at him, and he tried to return the favour. "You need a hug bro?"

"Yeah." He walked over to her, and hugged for a second. "Pat pat." They said in unison.

"Let's go. Stan promised to make actual pancakes instead of Stancakes!" She started heading downstairs. "I'll be with you in a sec!" He called.

He stood in front of the mirror and sighed. The dark circles under his eyes were growing day by day. "Mabel was right, I really need more sleep..." he yawned, and turned to leave, before something caught his eye. A small red line on his neck. "Huh. How'd that happen? Could've sworn it wasn't there yesterday..." he pulled on his vest to hide it, shrugged and went downstairs. "I'm here."

He was greeted by a crowd of smiling faces. "Good to have you back , Kiddo." Stan ruffled Dipper's hair and laughed. "Here, have a pancake. Stan hair free...probably." Dipper laughed. "That's the spirit!" Stan said, lightly pushing him towards the table with Mabel. "You kids eat your food and stuff. Me and Ford need to go out for a while." The pair nodded, and said their goodbyes in perfect unison.

"Hey, don't copy me!"
"No, why don't YOU stop copying ME!" The pair argued for a minute, but neither took it seriously. They both knew it was dumb, but sometimes that's all you need to make something fun. Just you and your dumb sibling.

"You wanna have an at home day today?" Mabel suggested once they'd finished breakfast. He smiled. "Yeah" he said. "I'd like that a lot."

She turned around and searched the board games shelves. "Let's see, we've got D, D 'n' More D-"

"Pass!" He hadn't played that game since it nearly killed him.

"Agreed. Ooh, Ducktective: the game!" Mabel continued looking through the games. "Everything else here seems kinda dull" she sighed.

"Do you wanna help me with my Journal?" Dipper suggested. He'd barely let Mabel see it at all, but he decided it was probably high time she ways let back into his life.

"That'd be awesome! I'll grab some photos of what we saw last summer for you to stick in!" She ran up to their room. Dipper had a bad feeling she'd come back with glitter glue...

He took out the journal. He opened to the first page and waited for Mabel to come back. She came bounding down he stairs, a box full of photos in her arms and some sellotape placed on top. "I couldn't find any glue, so..." she painted, catching her breath. "That box is HEAVY!" She laughed, and sat down next to her brother.

They spent the afternoon writing about various monsters and adventures, Mabel drawing and Dipper writing. Then they added photo after photo, whilst still making sure to leave space for more entries.

"Mabel?" Dipper asked, as soon as she'd stuck the last picture down. "Would you mind doing something for me?" She shrugged.

"Depends what it is, Bro Bro. Wait, are you gonna dare me to eat glitter again? Because I will SO do that!" She laughed as Dipper flipped the journal to the front page.

"No sis. Just sign your name here." He handed her a pen.

"Dipper, really? But I-"
"No buts. Just do it."

She smiled, and signed her name underneath Dipper's own. "There!" He said. "Now you own this book as much as I do, okay? The tree on the cover isn't MY pine tree. It's the Pines' tree!" He laughed slightly at his joke. Mabel just smiled at the line that now read 'this book belongs to Dipper Pines and Mabel Pines!'.

"One more thing..." Mabel frowned at Dipper as he said this, and rummaged through the photo box. "Here!" He was holding the photo of the two of them together. He stuck it over the top of words "trust no one" on the first page. He stuck it over last summer's scar, and this summer's burden.  He stuck it over his fear, paranoia and loneliness. Metaphorically, of course. This was him, starting anew...or so he'd thought.

He snapped out of his reminiscence of last summer, and quickly added an annotation to the bottom of the photo: 'the authors'.

"Thank you, Bro Bro."

"No problem."