Pacifica sits down on the old, fading couch in the Mystery Shack living room.
“Alright,” she asks, “what are we playing tonight?”
“No Monopoly,” Mabel says, and Dipper voices his agreement.
“Monopoly’s a fun game,” Pacifica protests.
“Yeah,” Dipper says, “because you always win.”
“Exactly,” Pacifica says, “that’s what makes it fun!” Mabel rolls her eyes, and stretches out on the floor.
“Dipper,” she says, “go get a game. Like, a new one. One we’ve never played.”
“Mabel,” he says, “you have two legs-“
“But I’m tired,” she complains.
“Paz?” he asks hopefully.
“I don’t live here,” Pacifica says, “that’s your job.” Dipper grumbles, but he makes his way over to the game closet. He starts digging through it, and doesn’t find many interesting things. Pacifica wonders if there’s anything in that closet that they haven’t played yet.
“Through the Looking Glass,” Dipper says as he pulls the board game from the back of the closet.
“We’ve definitely never played this,” he says. He takes it into the living room, and then drops it on Mabel’s stomach. Mabel tosses it off, and then sits up and holds it on her lap.
“A game of twists and turns and alternate universes!” she reads dramatically.
Pacifica perks up at this, and says, “It sounds better than Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons.”
“Hey,” Dipper says, “it’s a very fun game!” Mabel sends him a look.
“Are we talking about the same game that almost got us all killed?” she asks.
“Well,” he admits, “that time it wasn’t very fun.” Mabel takes the board game out of the box, and looks it over. The brightly colored squares form a border around it, and the rest of it looks like a starry night’s sky. The title is written in sprawling, golden cursive along the middle of the board. She looks around the box for a set of instructions, but finds that there are none in sight. She looks the die over a little closer, and finds that there aren’t any numbers written on it.
Each side has a different symbol. One has a pair of shirts (one with a pine tree, the other with a star), one has a tiny depiction of a mermaid and some sort of centaur, another has a picture of a journal with three pine trees, another has two yellow triangles, and yet another has a shooting star, the big dipper, and a llama.
“What’s up with these dice?” Mabel asks as she hands it to Pacifica.
“The singular form of dice is die,” Dipper says, and Mabel laughs at him.
“Nerd,” she mutters affectionately. Mabel scans the game board, and makes a connection.
“Oh, okay” she says, “the symbols on the die are for different spaces on the board. You roll it, and then go to the first space on the board.”
“Alright,” Pacifica says. Dipper sits down beside her, and looks inside the box.
“There aren’t any pieces,” he says.
“I’ve got that covered,” Mabel says. She takes out her purse, and takes out a peppermint, a paperclip and a nickel.
“Um, Mabel?” Pacifica asks.
“I call the mint!” she says, and Pacifica just rolls her eyes.
“Call the coin!” Dipper adds, and Pacifica ends up stuck with the paperclip.
“Alright,” she says, “if you guys get the cool pieces, then I get to roll first.” She grabs the die, and rolls it. It lands on a set of blue amulets, and then Mabel looks over the board.
“Oh, Paz!” she says, “You get to move about halfway across the board.” She looks towards her girlfriend, but the other girl disappears. Mabel thinks that she must be hallucinating, but Dipper sees it too. His eyes widen until they look like moons. A moment later, Pacifica returns. Well, Mabel thinks that it’s Paz. The girl looks like Pacifica, but she certainly isn’t dressed like her. She’s wearing a brightly colored, nineties style outfit and has her hair pulled up into a high ponytail. The girl’s eyes widen as she looks around the room. She almost looks fearful when she looks at Dipper, but then her eyes settle on Mabel. She seems more comfortable at that.
“Mabel?” she asks softly. Not-Pacifica looks closer, and then her eyes widen.
“You, you’re not Mabel,” this Pacifica says.
“I am a Mabel,” she says, a little awkwardly. Not-Pacifica’s look darkens at that, and then she examines her closer.
“Your eyes are brown,” she says.
“Um, yes,” she says. Where is her Pacifica, she wonders, and is she alright? The other girl sighs, and she looks up at the ceiling.
“Do you know how this happened?” she asks.
“Um,” Dipper says, “I’m fairly sure that this board game is magic. It must have switched you with our Pacifica.”
“What were you doing before you came here?” Mabel asks. But she’s really wondering, if her Pacifica will be alright. She eyes the two, and seems to be debating whether or not she should trust them with the truth.
“They were about to perform a spell,” Pacifica says, “but I doubt if Mabel’s letting him go through with it right now.”
“What sort of spell?” Dipper asks. Pacifica almost cringes, but she puts on a fake smile.
“It was just a little one,” she says, “changing the color of the stars for a night.” Mabel can tell that it’s a like easily enough.
“That sounds-“
“Dipper,” Mabel says, “how about you go try to figure out how to send this Pacifica back to her world.”
“Mabel?” he asks. He seems concerned, but hasn’t picked up on the signals that Mabel’s been sending off.
“Just go,” she says. He looks concerned, and a little bit hurt, but he leaves the room without complaint. Pacifica actually sighs in relief, and then blushes.
“I take it that you don’t… get along with your Dipper?” Mabel asks.
“You could say that,” the other girl mutters, “no one gets along with Dipper, not even Mabel half the time.”
“What’s your universe like?” Mabel asks.
“Well,” the girl says, “I’m not from Gravity Falls.”
“You’re not from Gravity Falls?” Mabel asks.
“Um, no,” Pacifica says.
“Sorry,” Mabel says, “it’s just, my Pacifica’s family has lived in Gravity Falls since it was founded. They’re the Northwests.”
Pacifica grins at that, and says, “That’s actually pretty funny. My last name is Southeast.” Mabel grins at that, and for a moment, she forgets to be mind-blowingly worried.
“My parents never cared much whether or not I was there, so they sent me away this summer. I came to stay with my Uncle Bud and my cousin, Gideon.” Her voice cracks at Gideon’s name, and Mabel wonders what happened to him. She supposes that she’ll find out soon enough.
“Then, I went to go see the Pines Twins put on a show at their Telepathy Tent,” she says, “and Mabel pulled me onstage as a volunteer. I found out, slowly, that all of the magic was real, and I sort of became her assistant. Dipper dropped out of the show pretty soon after that. He’d always hated it.” Mabel could imagine that. She could never imagine her own brother doing anything like putting on a show all of the time. She wonders if their counterparts wore clothes like Gideon’s.
“I ended up falling in love with her,” Pacifica says, and she sounds guilty about it, “and I think that Mabel might have fallen in love with me too. She cares for me, at least.” The way that Pacifica is telling it, this doesn’t sound like a very sad story.
“Your Mabel doesn’t love you?” she asks.
“Mabel loves flirting, Dipper, glamor and voodoo dolls,” Pacifica says, “and sex.”
“What happened afterwards?” she asks.
“My cousin Gideon was using this journal all summer to try to unravel the mysteries of the town,” Pacifica says, and Mabel almost gasps.
“And then, I found out that Dipper had been looking for that journal for months,” she says.
“What did he want the journals for?” Mabel asks. She doesn’t think that she wants to know.
“To open a portal,” Pacifica says, “and destroy the world.” It sounds like a joke, but the way that she delivers it Mabel almost can’t tell.
“I mentioned it to Mabel,” she says, and her voice is getting heavy by this point, “and then we decided to help steal it. Gideon found out, and ran off into the forest, clutching his journal. Dipper- Dipper lit a fire in his path, to try to get him to give it up.” Her voice has gotten heavier, almost wet, and Mabel’s almost certain that she knows where this story was headed.
“Gid was smarter than me,” she says, “and he knew that Dipper couldn’t want it for anything good. He tried to throw it into the fire, and we watched it burn.”
“But then- then Dipper set him on fire,” she says.
“I-“
“I begged him to stop,” Pacifica says, and real tears have started to fall by now, “I begged Mabel to ask him to stop. He would have listened to her, but she just-“
“She smiled and said that I didn’t have to worry about split loyalties anymore,” Pacifica says, her voice hollow.
“I dragged Gideon’s bones back to the Shack,” she says, “and told Uncle Bud that he’d been struck by lighting and that it set him on fire, that I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”
“I haven’t been able to look at him since,” she says, “and I just- I got deeper and deeper involved into it. Dipper restored the journal easy enough, and then he started working on plans to break into the Mystery Shack and repair some sort of portal.”
“To destroy the world?” Mabel asks, frantically. She can’t imagine her Dipper ever doing something like that, and she can’t imagine herself ever acting the way the other Mabel did. She doesn’t want to think that in some alternate universe, she and Dipper were the monsters that people fought against.
“Of course,” Pacifica says, “he’d chained a demon a few months before, and the demon had started whispering in his ear. Well, whispering whenever he wasn’t crying. He said something about a world-destroying portal, and Dipper decided that it was a fantastic idea to try to open it. He had control of a demon, after all, and he could assure his and Mabel’s safety. And mine, if Mabel still wanted me there. We’d have good seats to watch the end of the world.”
“But why?” she asks, “Why would he want to do that?” She can’t imagine wanting to do that. She wonders how much control over this demon he truly has.
“Dipper hates everyone but Mabel,” she says, “and he only tolerated me because I was important to Mabel and got him out of the magic show.”
“But why?” Mabel asks.
“People used to call them freaks,” Pacifica says, “because of their magic, because of his birthmark. Other than that, I’m not sure.”
“He’s just always wanted to watch the world burn,” she says, and she supposes that Pacifica Southeast speaks from experience.
“Are you going to stop him?” Mabel asks.
“No,” Pacifica says, but she sounds guilty and embarrassed and small, “I couldn’t.”
“You could,” Mabel asserts. There’s always a way to save the universe, and especially a way to save Dipper.
“You could talk to him-“ Pacifica laughs at that, loud and long.
“Then you could try to get rid of them, or- or stop him-“
“And die the same way that Gid did?” Pacifica asks.
“You’ll die anyways,” Mabel says. No matter what the other Dipper thinks, no one lives through the end of the world. She doesn’t think that this is worth pointing out to Other-Pacifica, though. She doesn’t know if she’d care enough to listen.
“No,” the other Pacifica says, “I- Mabel will protect me, when the time comes.”
“But what about everyone else?” Mabel asks. She- she can’t imagine letting an entire world burn. She can’t imagine that it would ever come to that.
“They’ll die,” Pacifica says, hollowly. She wonders if she and Dipper were the deciding factor in making this Pacifica the almost monster that she’s become today. She wonders if they’re the only reason that their Pacifica is good.
“What about my Paz?” Mabel asks quickly, “what will happen to her?”
“I don’t think that Mabel will let Dipper kill her,” she says, and Mabel heaves what is almost a sigh of relief.
“But Dipper might kill her before Mabel can make up her mind,” Pacifica says, nervous laughter bubbling from her lips. Mabel tries to steady her breathing. She needs to calm down after the clusterfuck that has been her entire day.
“I-“ Pacifica says, “I’m sorry. I’m sure that she’ll be fine. You’ll get your Pacifica back.” She sounds a bit bitter, though not about anything in particular, just about everything.
“You,” Mabel says, “you could stay.”
“You want your Paz back,” Pacifica says.
“Of course-“
“And I want my Mabel back,” this Pacifica says. This Pacifica is much different than her own, more broken. She has a cute ponytail and soon to be bloodstained hands. Mabel doesn’t know if she could save her.
“She sounds like a monster,” Mabel says, “they both do.”
“Yes,” Pacifica Southeast says, “but she’s mine. I haven’t got anyone else left.”
“You could stay here,” Mabel says. She doesn’t know how to save this Pacifica’s world, but she has to at least try to save this Pacifica.
“Mabel,” she says, with a genuine smile, “thank you. But I can’t stay here. I’m pretty sure there can only be one Pacifica per universe.” Mabel hears Dipper bounding down the stairs, and he pears breathlessly into the room. He pants for a moment, and Mabel can feel her excitement growing. He’s come up with something.
“Okay,” Dipper says, “I just- I figured out how to get Paz back!”
“How?” she asks.
“The exact same way that we lost her in the first place!” he says. Mabel looks at for a moment in confusion.
“This Paz has to roll the die too,” he says, and suddenly Mabel puts the pieces together.
“Wait,” Mabel asks, “the die landed on the two blue amulets-“
“Two blue amulets?” Pacifica Southeast asks.
“Yes?” Mabel says.
“Sorry,” She says, “that’s just, it’s a very good way to describe my universe.”
“Dipper,” She says dramatically, “go get me some gum.” Other-Pacifica side-eyes her, but she searches the room for the die. She finds it quickly enough, and Dipper comes back a few moments later with her roll of bubble tape. She rips off a bit, quickly chews it up, and sticks it in the strategic location on the die. Mabel places the die into the other Pacifica’s hand.
“Okay,” she says, “I just need you roll this die.”
“What?” she asks.
“It will take you home,” Mabel promises. The other girl looks it over, and then examines the gum, but decides that it’s worth a shot. She throws the dice, and thanks to the gum it lands on the proper side. Pacifica sighs angrily when nothing happens. A few seconds later, though, Pacifica Southeast fades in and out of focus. A moment later she is replaced by Mabel’s Pacifica, their Paz. Mabel falls forward, and collects Paz in a big hug.
“Mabel,” she says, digging her hands into Mabel’s hair. Pacifica is as grateful to see Mabel as Mabel is to see her.
Mabel pries her way out of Paz’s grasp, and asks her, “What were they like?
“Well,” Pacifica says, “Dipper wanted to kill me.” Pacifica sends him an almost apologetic look. Dipper looks shocked, but somehow manages to shrug this revelation off.
“Well,” he says, “you’re still the worst.”
“Oh my god, Dip,” she says, but she’s smiling widely and this, this is how Mabel can tell that she’s definitely got the right one this time. This genuinely wonderful interaction between the three of them. She hugs her even tighter, reminding herself that she’s here and she’s safe and she’s Paz.
“What about their Mabel?” she asks, worriedly. From what Southeast said about Mabel’s alternate, she’s fairly worried.
“Mabel was alright,” Pacifica says, but she doesn’t look like she really means the words.
She pauses a moment, and then says with a hint of actual amusement in her tone, “She wanted to keep me.”
“Keep you?” Mabel asks.
“At least long enough to have a threesome with her and my alternate,” she says. Her tone is snarky, but Mabel can tell that Pacifica’s shaken up. Mabel only ended up with the wrong Pacifica. Pacifica ended up in a whole new world with a Mabel and Dipper who must have been so very wrong.
“Are you alright?” Mabel asks.
“Yeah,” she says, “of course.” Mabel doesn’t feel convinced.
“I’m back now, Mabel,” She assures her, “there’s nothing else to worry about.”
“Paz,” Mabel says softly, “they, they were us. Do you think that we could end up like that?” Could Dipper destroy the world? Would she sit by and let him?
Pacifica holds her face in her hands and says, “You’re not her.” She presses their foreheads together, and adds, softly, “Dipper’s not him.”
“But-“
“We aren’t doomed to walk their path,” Pacifica promises her. Mabel kisses her, and kisses her hard. She thinks of Othe-Pacifica, and of what she said about her Mabel not loving her. She doesn’t know what Pacifica Southwest was talking about. Mabel doesn’t think that there is any universe where a Mabel Pines wouldn’t love a Pacifica.