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[matchmade]

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[matchmade]

[ Mabel freezes, her eyes go wide. Oh, no. Nope. This is not okay. She doesn't want to talk about that. In fact, she's been trying really, really hard to not think about it at all.

But she can't really lie about it, either. ]

Remember when I fell asleep for, like days and days?

[pinetree]

Of course.

[He had to drag her back to the house by himself, after all. Sixty pounds of dead plant weight.]

[matchmade]

Weeelll--

[ Her tail curls around her a little, to the point she almost looks like a little shrub. ]

I had a dream, I guess. Except I don't think it was? It was so real, like I'd gone home, but then I woke up and was back here, like I hadn't actually gone anywhere.

[pinetree]

So, all of that... You dreamed it?

[And what's more, she dreamed it after they'd already talked about time shenanigans. So that explains why she didn't tell him back then. But...]

Why didn't you say anything?

[matchmade]

[ She shrugs a little. ]

Yeah, I guess. I think it might have actually happened, though. Or is going to happen? I mean, it was cray cray how real it seemed. And I dreamed, like, a few weeks of stuff. Not just the whole portal thing.

[ She sighs and shakes her head. ]

I dunno, it was pretty freaky. I needed some time to figure stuff out and by then a few days had passed and...how the heck do you even bring some weird dream vision thing up?

[pinetree]

[That's kind of a flimsy excuse, and it irritates him (much like a lot of stuff lately, he's noticed). He tries not to let it creep into his voice when he replies.]

Like this: "Hey, I had a weird dream that our grunkle was building a portal that could destroy the entire world. Crazy, right?"

[matchmade]

[ She feels bad, because she knows she should have told him. She just kept seeing her choice any time she thought about it, and she just...she just didn't want to face it. ]

I'm sorry, okay? I just--I didn't want to make everything all weird at home, between you and Grunkle Stan.

[pinetree]

[Okay, that's a good point. He and Stan had been kind of on edge for a while there, so he can't fault her for that. But Mabel mentioning him brings up another thought.]

...Does he know about this?

[matchmade]

[ She shifts a little uncomfortably and shrugs. ]

Not really? I was kind of freaking out when I woke up and he helped calm me down, but he doesn't really know all that much. Just that I had a real freaky dream.

I asked him what was under the shack, though.

[pinetree]

What did he say?

[There's urgency to it. If Stan said anything to validate what Mabel saw, if all of it was true...]

[matchmade]

He didn't say anything about the machine thing, but--when he was calming me down, he said a bunch of stuff that sounded a lot like what he said in my dream.

[ It could be a coincidence, but at the same time she feels like it's probably not. ]

[pinetree]

[That's...only slightly helpful. He frowns, wondering if he should confront Stan himself. He's now armed with the same information as Mabel, he could easily push where she hadn't.]

Like what? Seriously, Mabel, just...tell me absolutely everything, okay? This is important.

[He doesn't want to scare Mabel off of telling him more, but it's getting harder to keep the impatience out of his voice.]

[matchmade]

[ Mabel nods quickly, Dipper's impatience worrying her. She scrunches her nose up in thought, trying to remember stan's exact wording. Before that, though, she needs to know what Dipper saw. ]

How much of my Dream did you see? I'll tell you what Grunkle Stan said, but I wanna make sure you know everything else first.

[pinetree]

[That derails his impatience for the time being, as he takes a moment to recall all the weird memories he got from other people and sorts them.]

I think I got the whole thing. The FBI showed up and took Stan away in the morning, right? And we didn't get to that machine until it was almost dark. I got everything in-between.

[And most importantly, he got Mabel's decision, being put on the spot to choose whether to shut down the portal. More than anything, he wants to ask what she chose, but he's got to sort this out first.]

[matchmade]

[ Mabel bites her lip and nods. Yeah, then he definitely got the whole shebang. She sighs and wiggles around a little, to try and think of how to explain. ]

Okay, so remember when I was about to press the portal's big 'ol off switch? And then Grunkle Stan said all that stuff about how everything he's done has been for his family?

[ It's so weird, talking to him about a memory that he he's only experienced through her eyes. ]

Well when he was trying to calm me down, he said pretty much the exact same thing.

[pinetree]

[That doesn't sound terribly important or relevant to him, because it doesn't confirm if Mabel's vision was true. It just confirms that her Stan hallucination was on-point. He can't keep the disappointment out of his voice when he just replies] Oh.

[And that's it. It very well still could be true, but short of demanding a clear answer from Stan, neither twin is gonna find out for sure. There's just one thing he's still curious about.]

That...vision, or memory, or whatever-- it cut off before you pushed the button. You were gonna push the button, right?

[matchmade]

I--

[ She hesitates. She's not about to lie to him or anything like that, she just doesn't know what she was going to do. There was so much going through her head at the time, and now...well, time hasn't helped things. She's even more confused than she had been before. ]

I dunno, Dip. It was so freaky, and I still don't know what the right choice is. I'm so worried that no matter what I pick, it'll be wrong.

[pinetree]

[He may not have experienced his own anger, but he definitely felt it watching the memory, and he can sympathize with...himself(????) on how insistent he was to shut down the portal. Every sign pointed to Extremely Bad Consequences. So the fact that she doesn't know what she would have done worries and kind of terrifies him.]

It's not about right and wrong! Think about it, Mabel -- if you'd let the portal activate, you could destroy the world. If you didn't let the portal activate, what's the worst that could happen? Stan gets disappointed? Is that really worth more than the entire planet?

[Maybe this doesn't matter considering they're nowhere near the portal physically (and in Dipper's case, chronologically), but it's suddenly very important to him that he gets this point across.]