Memento.

      They win by the terrible price of several broken lives, by the price of hurt souls, but in the end the sky overhead again becomes blue and cloudless. It all ended, Bill left, disappeared in his freaking hell, where he got out more than thirty years ago, leaving behind only destruction, and tears, flowing from the eyes of innocents.       Dipper holds a cap in his hands and bites his lips, seeing how bad all this had affected Mabel, how sad became her eyes, and movements - nervous and jerky, as if she is afraid that something would collapse again from an incautious wave of her hand. She keeps apologizing, running in her room and locking the door, hides herself in a sweater, and cries, burying face in knees.       "I'll stay here," Dipper says hoarsely to uncle Ford, coming in his cellar in the morning before they have to leave. "I'll stay with you, but before that..."       Ford says that he will drive them himself, and takes his brother's car, promising to bring it back intact. Dipper is silent all the way, like Mabel, whose red eyes are already the same color with her sweater. Dipper is silent, but in his head there are thousands of thoughts and plans, and even more doubts and regrets. But he already firmly decided everything.       Parents greet them with joy and embrace, and Mabel tries to smile for them, but it looks too strained. Parents think that she is simply longing for the summer. Let it be, Dipper thinks. It will be better this way. The device for erasing memory lies in his pocket as an unbearable burden. Ford offers to do everything himself, but Dipper refuses.       Passing through the apartment, he quietly removes from the walls all the photos, takes all the children's albums, books and necessary, obviously boyish things into Ford's car. Ford entertains their parents with stories, while Dipper sneaks away everything that could somehow remind about him. Tears persistently turn into the eyes, but Dipper wipes them, because there is no time for sentiment.       "Mom, Dad," he says, walking into the kitchen where his smiling parents are sitting. "I love you."       And presses the button.       Mabel sits on a swing in the backyard when Dipper calls her, asking to come closer, and almost immediately, without waiting, he runs towards, embracing and almost knocking her over, squeezing her in his arms as much as he can.       "Live as you want, don't listen to anyone, be happy," he says with tears, burying his nose in her hair. "And sorry for everything. I love you."       Mabel notices the device too late, but Dipper forever remembers her gaze, full of misunderstanding, raised eyebrows and the "Dip" fleeing from her lips. His hands are shaking, but he hits the target.       "Uh..." Mabel shakes her head, looking at him, and Dipper's heart falls down. "Who are you?"       Dipper wipes out the tears and responds as unconcernedly as possible:       “A neighbor.”       That evening, he and Ford return to Gravity Falls, where Ford introduces Dipper to Stan as "my apprentice". Dipper couldn't erase Stan's memory - it was done by Ford, immediately as they entered the house and heard "hey kid, did you forget something and came back?".       Dipper locks the attic door and cries in the pillow for a long time, gripping his teeth so that no one would hear. He still has to remove himself from the memory of everyone else.       It's too dangerous to drag someone in these miracles and mystery. The consequences are too fatal. Dipper decides that he will cope alone, even if he has to lose half of his heart for this.       ***       Five years later, he enters the university on the other end of the country. He has a gaunt look, a scar on his cheek, which he got in a fight with a troll, and great knowledge in almost any field. On his hands there are strange patterns-tattoos and worn out friendship bracelets, on his head - time-worn cap.       And an absolute emptiness in the soul.       He enters without problems, and only to occupy his mind with something, to dig into books and not think about anything. How many times had he dreamed of shooting the same beam in his head, but he couldn't, every time dropping his hand with a groan and gasping for breath from the pain in the chest. He deserved it, he must remember. Remember, and keep in soul fragments of mutual memories, even if they pierce the heart like sharp glass.       Dipper hardly sleeps, reads a lot, doesn't look people in the eyes and is known as a psycho-genius, the ghost of the university, that comes before everyone and leaves after everyone. It doesn't bother him at all.       In the corridors, too narrow for such a large university, he looks at his feet while he goes to the library, and when someone bump into him, he just says "sorry" and wants to go further, but when he sees who it was, he stops, opening his eyes wide, and takes a step back, as if this person is a zombie.       "Oh, it's okay, I'm sorry too," the girl is rubbing her head, smoothing out her warm (not for this season), and a colorful (not for her age) sweater. "I'm lost, do you know where..."       Dipper doesn't listen anymore, it doesn't matter what she says. He looks into the brown eyes like in the mirror, peers at native facial features and curses the universe. The other end of the country, why, why her, how, for what...       "Oh, you make friendship bracelets?" She says enthusiastically, grabbing his arm, and it seems to him that he can fall down. "I was making such in my childhood, and sometimes make now, look!"       She rolls up her sleeve and shows her own bracelets, the same ones, made with the same care and love. Dipper smiles with a strained smile, and images flash in memory, where she taught him to make it, and then just made a couple and put on his wrist. He then unleashed them, idiot, and almost threw out, but finding in a few years decided to never take off again.       "So, do you know where the library is?" she looks in his face, but he only exhales "no" and moves forward with a rapid pace, rushes into an empty audience and slams the door. Drops the books on the floor and goes down the wall, hides his face in his lap and sobs, shivering.       At night, he doesn't sleep. And the next night, too.       ***       He walks in empty corridors, hides his face under the cap, and several times a week still stumbles upon her, almost always running in the other direction. But one day he doesn't succeed, and he finds himself between her and the bookshelf, can't just squeeze and leave.       "What's your name?" She asks, leafing through the pages of the dusty textbook. "Are you the "ghost of the university"?"       You can't run from fate, try as much as you want. He answers her, and she listens admiringly, asking questions about his scar and birthmark, which she sees right away, even under the cap.       Dipper tries to convince himself that he is wrong. It's someone else, it's not her.       "And I'm Mabel. Let's be friends?"       And everything for him collapses in a moment. Let the name be a coincidence, but no one at eighteen will say "let's be friends". Except her.       He wants to say no and forbid her to talk to him, don't greet at all, bypass for three kilometers. But he says a hoarse "yeah", grabbing the window sill with a dead grip.       ***       Avoiding her is already pointless, she still somehow finds him, he attracts her like a magnet, wherever he is, and she says it's a luck. Dipper doesn't understand why she needs him, if there are always a lot of friends around her, and handsome guys sit down at her table at each dinner. She grew up a great girl, and for a couple of seconds Dipper imagines a scene, where he would tease her for her first teenage pimples, receiving in response the same kind of dorky taunts.        Dipper blinks tears, and sits down at the furthest table in the cafeteria.       It doesn’t work.       "I'm sorry, can I?.." she asks quietly, nodding at the place before him, and Dipper nods habitually without looking at her. But she is silent, and this is strange.       She has red eyes and a tired look, she pokes her fork in the food too languidly, and doesn’t say anything at all, chewing her lips.       "Something happened?" Dipper asks, forcing himself not to take his eyes off her. Inside, something starts to flare up, some familiar and strong feeling.       "Nothing. Just a little problem in my personal life."       And like nothing happened, but with one hand she imperceptibly touches her neck, and Dipper notices a blurry bruise next to the drawn-out collar. So that's what this feeling was. And he almost forgot it. Exactly as then. As in the battle with Gideon and his giant robot.       The desire to protect.       "Hey," Dipper says, and touches her shoulder. "Don't be sad."       And removes the bracelet from his wrist, giving it to her. Giving it back.       "Here. It will help." He smiles. "The person who gave it to me said that this bracelet brings happiness."       "It's strange," Mabel sniffs, staring at the bracelet. "I also say this to people."       Dipper smiles and leaves, not finishing his food.       It's easy to find her ex, a dumb guy, who has a lot of muscles and zero brain, and Dipper has no doubts about his fault. Who else, if not he, who walked with Mabel hand in and just yesterday? Dipper can't fight, at least with people. But he has Uncle Ford's gun, and Uncle Stan's mask, and a strong desire to make everything as painfully as possible.       The next day Mabel looks a little happier, and her "boyfriend" is no longer visible in the university and on football training.       ***       "Do you have any siblings?" Mabel asks completely out of topic, just like that, and Dipper chokes on hot coffee, not knowing what to say, but she continues. "Eh, if I had someone, I would have done so much with them... For example, I would catch monsters. They exist, I know it! You fought with the troll, you said it. And hey, do you know the Evans twins from the third year of aerodynamics department? They are so cool! You can’t tell where she is and where is him! So cool to have a twin, am I right? You can ask them to go to the classes instead of you..."       She talks endlessly, brings options and arguments, long-long list all that she would talk about with such a twin, and then sharply and enthusiastically leans toward him.       "And you know, I've been thinking for a long time that we are so similar, and we often end some phrases one after another. You're definitely my lost twin, torn from me with me as a child, as in the series! That would be cool!”       The knife seems to turn in Dipper's heart, tearing the inside out with a rusty blade.       "No," he pulls the cap over his eyes. "I'm an only child. But if you want, I can become your twin. Only for fun."       Mabel happily rushes to hug him, and Dipper curses himself for a long time after this, breaking his fists against the rough wall, adding a couple more scars to his battered knuckles.       ***       "Happy birthday," Dipper says and hands her a big soft pig toy with a red ribbon and a bow on its neck. "It's today, right?"       They meet at the library to get books for the new academic year, and Mabel can't remember whether she told at him about the holiday or put her date of birth on some websites. She didn't plan to celebrate, her friends are still busy, and the weather is disgusting for the last day of summer, but how did he know?.. And it's not just this, how did he guess with the gift?..       "Yes..." she takes a toy, and looks at him for a long time, trying to nevertheless understand and find the answer to the question. "But how…"       "I asked your friends back in the spring," Dipper shrugs, as if it's nothing. "Do you like it?"       Mabel buries her face in a warm soft cloth and nods gratefully.       With a toy it's uncomfortable to go into the library, and Mabel asks to hold it, saying that she needs some special textbooks and she can grab something for him. Dipper gives her a student card and sits down next to the entrance, and Mabel, who entered the library, sees almost identical with her photo in the student card, the same date of birth, and can't believe her eyes. A voice rings and sounds in her head, but she can't understand whose, and for some reason she recalls that strange neighbor's boy she met on her thirteenth birthday, a boy with tears in his eyes with a strange toy gun in his hand.       A boy with the same sad eyes as Dipper's.       On stiff legs, she returns to him, not understanding why she is without books, grabs him by the collar and looks intently into his eyes. Come on, Mabel, where, where have you seen this before?.. Where have you heard this intonation, this pronunciation, where have you met such a gait?       Realization rushes to the head like a huge sledgehammer, knocking out bitter tears from her eyes.       “Bro-bro…”       And the world, destroyed several years ago by Dipper himself, is restored, collected in pieces, like a mosaic, and the words are pronounced for the first time in all the time, words he needed to say when he found her in the forest, in the day of the terrible apocalypse.       "I won't leave you again."