Chapter Text
Mabel hasn't slept in two days and she's starting to get really tired (ha!) of it all.
It's one in the morning, and Mabel has been getting more knitting done than she has in a while. Dipper has noticed the increase in production, but he hasn't said anything. Yet. Mabel knows it's only a matter of time; if this goes on for much longer, she's not going to be able to get him to leave her alone.
Tonight, he'd tried to stay up with her, the way he always does when Mabel gets like this. But just like he always does, he fell asleep by midnight and hasn't stirred since.
Mabel knows that Dipper needs a lot of sleep, and so she isn't holding it against him, but sometimes she does wish that this task didn't always have to fall to her.
Several stitches slip off of her needles, her hands are shaking, the yarn feels gross under her damp hands. Her idle rocking becomes a little more urgent.
Sometimes flickers at the corner of her eye.
Her breath catches, and her head jerks back, giving her a full view of the rest of the room from her corner, and it's empty.
Or, at least, it seems to be. It's entirely possible that whatever that was is hiding in the room. (There's two spaces, at the feet of the beds, that Mabel can't see, but she's too scared to move over and look, but she really should.)
Mabel swallows hard and tries to take a deep breath.
It's alright, you're alright, they can't get you, take deep breaths, she reminds herself.
She manages to get all of the stitches back onto her needles, and finishes a few more rows in relative peace when she hears footsteps thundering down the hallway.
A cry catches in her throat as she jumps backwards, knitting forgotten, pressing her back against the corner of her wall, her hands reaching out for something, anything, her heart is beating a gazillion times a minute and she can't breathe and they're coming and...
Nothing happens.
Nothing moves. The door remains shut, the door doesn't move, nothing shows up from under the door. Mabel holds her breath, keeping her eyes open despite the panicked tears that are beginning to well up in them.
Was that sound real?
She doesn't know, and Dipper isn't awake to do a check with her. She doesn't move, and nothing happens. The door remains shut, nothing is trying to force its way through or under it, she can't hear anything else.
She forces herself to relax, but she doesn't go back to her knitting, not yet. She has to keep looking at the room to make sure. Who knows where they might be tucked away; she might have missed them before, she has to make sure.
She's suddenly hit by the thought that she doesn't know if the front door is locked.
Grunkle Stan is usually really good at locking it, and either he or Ford always checks it before they go to bed, but what if they didn't today? What if something gets in?
She doesn't think that anything really would, but now that the thought is in her head, she can't stop thinking about it, and her breath is starting to come faster with every passing second, and it isn't long before she resigns herself to the fact that she's going to have to go down and check.
She stares at the distance between her bed and her door; it's never seemed so far away. She really doesn't want to have to get up.
But she also has to make sure that her family is safe, and Mabel would do anything for her family. So she grabs the pair of straight knitting needles that she isn't using, and she braces herself.
It's okay, you're okay, they can't get you, take deep breaths.
She grips the needles, and leaps out of bed as quietly as she can manage.
Her heart jumps in her chest and she holds her breath, needles at the ready, but nothing comes at her and nothing moves and she doesn't hear anything, and so she cautiously proceeds to the door, although she nearly pulls a muscle in her neck with how rapidly she checks to make sure that there's nothing behind the beds.
She presses her back to the door and surveys the room one last time, to make sure, and then she turns and presses her ear to the door and listens intently for any kind of sound, and she hears nothing.
She takes several deep breaths, and carefully opens the door, checking both ends of the hallway before proceeding.
She makes it all the way down the stairs and to the door without anything happening. She turns the door knob, and finds it locked. She peers through the peep hole to make sure that nothing is waiting out there, and then unlocks the door, checks to make sure it opens properly, and then shuts it, relocks it, and checks it once more.
Finally satisfied, she turns around to see something looming behind her, and immediately the needles are up, mouth open and ready to scream, and she moves forward only to be interrupted by a frantically whispered, "Mabel!"
She pauses, and forces her eyes to focus on what's in front of her.
Grunkle Ford.
"Oh my god! Grunkle Ford! I didn't know it was you, I'm sorry, I just had to check the door, I didn't mean to attack you, I-,"
"Hush Mabel, it's okay! I didn't mean to startle you! What are you doing up so late?" Ford asks, hands up, palms out, to show that he doesn't pose any threat.
Mabel forces herself to lower the needles, "I'm just... having a bad night, that's all." She says, because she knows that they know, but that doesn't mean it's any easier to talk about.
Luckily Ford understands what she means. "Ah," he says, fumbling a bit. "Well, you know that they aren't real," he says, but there's a hesitation that Mabel always notices.
The biggest problem about living in this place with these people is that there's always a shadow of a doubt about what's real and what's not. And the fact that Ford is awake and up at this time means that he's probably not faring any better tonight.
Then Ford's face clears up, "But I know exactly what we can do!"
Mabel is trying to pay attention to what he's doing, but she's also starting to feel herself panic. The downstairs lights are all off, and this is a very open area; looking around, she can just barely see the rest of the room, but it's cloaked in shadows that could easily be hiding anything and something could come from any direction and she wouldn't be able to see it until it was too late.
Ford doesn't seem to pick up on her panic, although he does reach over her shoulder to turn on the lights. "I've been working on a ward that's meant to keep out everything that harbors any sort of ill will, but at the moment it only covers a very small area. So, what can you tell me about these monsters? Are they generally threatening? Or are - would they be targeting you specifically?"
Mabel drags her attention off of the rooms to look at Ford and think through his question, "Uh, just me this time."
"Splendid," he says, "This way we don't have to bother our brothers. Come on, we can set up on the couch."
"Grunkle Ford, you don't have to do anything. I can just go back to bed," Mabel protests, but that doesn't stop her from following him.
He waves her statement away easily. "Don't be ridiculous. Like I said, I've been waiting for an opportunity to try this out, and this is as good a time as any. Now, sit here, and this is how it works..."
He starts drawing on the floor, explaining about what all the different lines and symbols mean, and Mabel sits on the couch and pretends to know what he's talking about. When he's finished, the circle flares a pale blue before settling back into just regular writing. Ford rocks backwards on his heels, seeming pleased, so Mabel assumes that the circle is working as it's meant to. It does help her feel a little safer, and it also helps that the couch is backed by a solid wall.
The next problem is that she's still nowhere near being able to sleep, and now that Ford is done with his task, he's beginning to take on his usual uncomfortable awkwardness that comes from not knowing what to do next.
"Do you mind if we turn the TV on?" Mabel asks, and Ford nods and relaxes. They find some old cartoon that Ford watched as a kid, and Mabel finds herself drifting off because she hasn't slept for two days and she's tired. She hesitates for a moment, "Can I touch you today?"
He takes a little while to answer, which is pretty normal for him. But eventually, Ford replies in the affirmative, and Mabel curls up against his side, and he wraps an arm around her. The monsters are still out there, probably, but Ford is smart and she trusts him, even if the ward doesn't work like it's supposed to, she knows that he'll protect her from anything that shows up.
She falls asleep not much later, feeling safer than she has in day.