An AU idea, with added OC inserts. Eden is a character I created for a script I'm writing, I thought this might allow me to think about her personality a bit more. Her appearance alters a few things, plus later human!Bill, as well as mentions of Monster Falls, and Reverse!Pines (not sure how yet, but it will happen!) but that's explained as well. A lot of ideas I got from listening to a Podcast episode called "The Gravity Falls Gossiper" and the AMA where Alex pretended to be Bill as he answered questions. I would put links but as you know FF hates links.

This was also written to help cheer me up; I've been so busy with a hundred different things lately. There are fanfic stories I should get back to, I know. But I've been trying to work on real stories and voice acting, sorry. However, if anybody's interested in that. On my youtube channel, which is a gaming channel, I have a playlist where you can find my VA work. You can also ask about my original work if you're interested.

Alright, enough about me, on with the show!

"Fallen Gravity"

Chapter 1: Falling Into the Falls

The streets of the city are always full of people. Well, the streets in particular are full of cars if you want me to be real specific about it. But the sidewalks, the alleys, the shops, full of people. It's cold as balls outside and people are still risking their necks, traveling to and fro because it's the 'holiday season'. Not like I care, more business in town means more money circulation. Means I can keep doing my stupid meaningless job day in and day out and I can keep getting paid. But seriously, this time of the year is the worst, and honestly I'd rather be anywhere else.

"Eden!"

I flinch when my manager yells my name. Richard the Dick, a punny nickname if I ever heard one. Not like I care, he pays I stays.

"Lock up!"

The frat boy with bleach blond hair throws me the keys for the shop. Really, it's a family run restaurant, I cook, someone cleans, ect. He's the owner's son, so he does pretty much…..nothing. But whatever, he pays I stays, right?

I catch the keys easily; cradling them in my hands I feel the cold metal on my skin. Dick was already outside, in his nice expensive warm car. Outside it's snowing like crazy, but Dick has chains on his tires so he's set. I however, had been staring out my one window for the last hour. Barely anyone had shown up today, not surprising. Who would want to come into a restaurant with no working heaters in this weather anyway?

With one last sigh I take off my apron and set it aside. Keys in my dark jean's pockets, I head to the bathroom. The bathroom in the employee lounge was where I left my thick leather jacket. Inside the tiny bathroom I accidently catch my reflection in the mirrors. Something I try to avoid from doing on a daily basis. Bags under my dark blue eyes, natural black hair under the dyed green hair, a choker with angel wings dangling on my neck, bruises on my hands, and then there's my jacket: Hanging just behind me in my reflection.

I grab my jacket and put it on, locking the bathroom behind me. After that I head out, turning off everything and locking the big double doors behind me. Outside is below freezing, snow still falling like crazy. Quickly, I put my hands in my jacket pockets and start trudging home.

I live in an apartment building a few blocks away, it's a fifteen to thirty minute walk, but in this snow it takes twice that long. Grumbling, holding on to my anger so that it'll keep me warm, I make my way home. Sure, I'm twenty, I could have a car, I could have a better job; I could have a lot of things. But after being an orphan almost all my life, with no guiding hand, having as much as I do, well I'm thankful for it really. Little to no money, yet I have a home of my own and a steady job. It could be worse?

I live on the second floor of the old apartment building, and the stairs up are treacherous. But I know how to safely navigate them by now. Jumping up a couple of steps I find myself in front of my door. Two zero eight, that's me! I take my keys out of my brown leather jacket and unlock the door. As I walk in I turn on the lights, and now I can see everything.

The living room slash dining room is the first room you walk into. There's my TV, flat screen that I got on 'rollback', sits on an entertainment system covered by different gaming consoles. The walls are covered in either video game posters, cartoon posters, or story art. It's been a while since I've written or drawn anything; I pretty much lost all motivation for the arts three years ago.

My life can be seen by the outside as something pretty sad, but I have things that make me feel better. Like tonight, I'm re-watching some of my favorite cartoons. Steven Universe, Legend of Korra, and Gravity Falls. I haven't re-watched season 2 of Gravity Falls for a while.

So, now that I'm home I head to the bedroom and then my connected bathroom. With my bathroom door shut I start stripping. Underneath my clothes I'm a lean thing covered in scars, my legs covered in stretch marks, little marks that remind me of bad things. I ignore them as I take a shower.

After I'm all cleaned up and warm I jump into some comfy shorts and t-shirt. In the kitchen I whip up some seasoned chicken and wild rice, usually when I cook something fancy like that I marathon episodes of the X-Files. But today, on my weekend off, I've decided on something more fun.

On my couch, food on my coffee table, I put in my DVD of Gravity Falls. When I go to press play though, static pops up on my TV.

"What the hell?" I get up to check the cables connecting my TV and DVD player. I tighten both ends, and still there's nothing but static on my TV. "Is there something wrong with the cables?" I say out loud, and when I go to grab the cable under my TV screen, a hand, yes seriously, a freaking hand comes out of my TV and grabs me! "No way in hell!" I screech, trying to pull myself out of its grasp, but its grip is iron clad.

"Wrong."

A deep and inhuman voice rings out, loud enough to rock my whole room and make my ears bleed. Then the hand holding my wrist yanks, and I go flying into the TV, as if I was in Persona 4! I close my eyes the second my feet leave the ground, because of that it seems like I'm falling forever. My eyes clinched shut; it seems like an eternity, my heart pounding, before my whole body stops.

"Open your eyes."

The voice isn't so loud anymore, but it still hurts my ears. Reluctantly, I open my eyes. All around me is white, and a strange fog which kept me floating up right in this nothingness. I wanted to be angry, but I was too scared.

"W-where am I?" I ask with a fearful stutter.

"The void, the astral plane, the dreamscape, it is called many things. We just call it The Place Inbetween."

I looked around, taking deep even breathes to calm myself. I wanted to believe that this was all a dream, but the painful bruise on my wrist proved otherwise. "W-why am I here?"

"This is the only path one can take to travel to other worlds. As you have before, so you shall do again."

"Wha….What?!" The cryptic crap this guy was spewing only made me more confused. But before I really had time to complain it was back down the rabbit hole for me. I was falling again, but this time the stop was a short and painful one.

-X-

"OW! S-sh…it! Ow." Landing on hard ground, after falling at least ten feet, hurt! But surprisingly less than I thought. I was surprised I hadn't broken something; instead I just had a few scratches and bruises. "Jesus, what was that all about?" I say out loud as I pull myself up to stand. On my feet I clean myself off, in the process realizing I was wearing something completely different than I was before. "What?!"

Now I was wearing jeans; wallet in one pocket and my Samsung Galaxy and headphones in the other. Plus I was wearing my "Gaming is Life" shirt with my usual brown leather jacket, and in one of my jacket pockets was my sunglasses, the other pocket had my Kindle Fire in it with its newspaper like cover case. "O-kay, I think Mister Ominous Voice also put me in new clothes and gave me my stuff. Why?" I wondered, as well as having another thousand questions floating around in my head.

First things first though, I decided as I looked around, I need to know where I am. Looking around I noticed I was surrounded by a forest, the smell of dirt, grass, and wood caught in my nose. The scent of pine trees filled the air, as well as the stench of oak. But something was off….why did I smell smoke? Not only that, I saw smoke. It flickered past me into the wind; I followed the path it left behind. Looking down I saw I was standing in a giant circle of burnt grass. "What the hell?"

Swiftly, I jumped out of the circle, hoping my shoes hadn't been burned, or that the fire had caught on anything else. I wasn't sure if I had caused that, but if there had been a forest fire as a result I'd never let myself live that down. Out of the circle, I shake away anymore thoughts about it, it was hella creepy, that's all I needed to know. Instead I started walking straight, hoping to find a road.

'Okay, so some douchebag pulls me through a portal in my TV, and leaves me….newly clothed in a forest a million miles from nowhere? What! The! Hell! I don't care if that was some god or demon; if I get my hands on it I'm getting some damn pay back! No one…..drops Eden Nem like trash without getting burned!' I think angrily, fists clenched, as I stumble through the forest.

It's not long before I find the end of the forest, beyond it is a dirt road. I take a deep breath, happy to finally see some sign of civilization! That happiness however….did not last long. When I turned to see where the dirt road headed all the oxygen left my lungs and my heart nearly stopped. At the end of the dirt road, in all its glory, was the Mystery Shack, in real 3-D!

"WHAT THE HELL?!"

-X-

My scream echoed; people going into the Mystery Shack had stopped to look around; even birds flew off in a huff. Suddenly, I'm breathing quickly and unevenly, my fists clenching even tighter than before. I went to rip my hair out; rage is surging through me so much. I feel like I'm on fire. 'What am I, some character from a terribly cliché fan fiction? This is bullshit! If only I could….' The thought cuts off as my mind spirals. I was thinking about how to get back, how I could find out what brought me here, how I could figure out why I was here. The thoughts came so quickly I felt like my head was filling up with water.

The only place that might hold answers was….the Mystery Shack. It seemed like, for whatever reason, I was tangled up in somebody's web of plans. Putting me next to the Mystery Shack, one of the only places that might have answers; I was the fly to someone's spider.

Suddenly, I grinned wickedly. 'But this fly's got fight in her; if someone tries to take me down I'm going to make sure they burn with me.' The thought was very satisfying. Odd; how someone would see fit to put me, a very non-kid-friendly kind of person, in a kid's cartoon. With that same grin I start walking towards the shack. 'Let's tear some shit up!'

-X-

Heading towards the Mystery Shack I remember that one podcast I had listened to. They called it the Gravity Falls Gossiper, like the newspaper in the show. For that episode Alex Hirsch himself had guest starred, but he had pretended to be Grunkle Stan the whole time. I remember him, as Stan Pines, saying that he could always use more workers for the shack. With that in mind, I had formed a plan.

I'm at the door to the Mystery Shack before I know it, my hand trembling as I opened the door. I was trying to play it cool, trying to keep an evil revenge filled mind set, but honestly I was terrified. There was too many unanswered questions, too many possibilities, too much that could go terribly wrong. As much as I try to shrug it off, since I was little, the 'weird' kid in the orphanage, I had had issues with anxiety. But after years of dealing with it I found little tricks that helped me through it. For a little bit it was drugs and then drinking, but after I graduated high school and stopped getting caught in fights I had less trouble with anxiety.

Now I just had to do the breathing exercise and think about….kittens, yes I said kittens! So what? Kittens are cool! Anyway, point is I had to take a few breathes before the shaking stopped. After that I went inside.

-X-

It seemed the last of the tourists had left right before I had arrived, even the people who I had disturbed earlier with my shouting. Realizing this made me wonder what time it was, thinking about that made me take out my phone. I turned it on to see it was almost five pm, meaning it would be dark soon. 'Not good!' Quickly, I put my phone back away and came further in. At the register I saw Stan counting the money he had made today, after hearing me he looked up and swiftly put his money in his pocket.

"Welcome to the Mystery Shack! Where mysteries live and money stays!" He shouts with a smile, trying to be friendly. I've never been fond of people that remind me of used cars salesmen, but I knew after watching two seasons of Gravity Falls that he was a good guy, just one with lots of secrets; secrets that I knew….some of.

"Ummm…yeah." I rub the back of my neck nervously as I step up to him. Being a bit closer I look everywhere but at him. "You think I could get a job here?"

Stan squints at me, not so sure.

"Uh," I fumble in my pocket with my wallet. I pull out my ID, hopefully still valid, and show it to him. "I'm a really good cook, I can clean, I'm great with tech, good with people, and I have lots of experience!" I say that sentence so fast, I'm not sure if Stan even caught half of it. My last job interview went a bit better, but then again I had known that guy for the last four years, so I wasn't so nervous. "I'malsoreallygoodinafightandlockpicking!" I say that sentence even faster, with a shaky smile on my face.

"I don't know kid; I already got a fix-it guy and….. a girl who disappears a lot." Stan slowly takes off his fez and scratches his head as he thinks. He sounds very unsure, but luckily I know his weakness.

"I can work twenty four seven, for free!" I shout quickly, as it physically hurts me to say such an awful sentence.

"Deal!" Stan says quickly, the moment I had said free his eyes light up. After that he holds out his hands and we shake on it.

"But uh….I kind of need living quarters, if you want me on call twenty four seven." I add, after taking a deep breath, not realizing I had been holding it.

"Hmmm," Stan takes back his hand and rubs his chin. "I…I might have a room for you." He seems reluctant to say it, like he might not be so sure. But he still waves for me to follow him. I do so, going past the EMPLOYEES ONLY door.

'This almost seems too easy.' I think as I follow him, but I have to shake myself, waiting for the other shoe to drop was just a bad mind set to have. I tried not to do that anymore.

Stan and I end up passing the kitchen, and then the living room. After that we take a right down some stairs. Stan, looking back towards the stairs, making sure no one's coming, moves a bookcase out of in front of a door. It was the room from Carpet Diem, the one with the body swapping carpet! But I thought…. I guess Stan hid that room on purpose then. I wondered quickly, as he opened the door, if this would change things: If just me existing here would change some of the events to occur; if I was maybe making a ripple in time and space of this reality. But thinking that just made me super nervous, so I tried not to think about it.

"Here you go! All yours kid!" He opens the door like a game show host, and lures me inside.

"My names Eden." I say quickly, walking into the room cautiously.

"Whatever." He grumbles, standing just inside the room. Quickly, he picks up a pair of glasses unlike his own on the drawers beside him and hides it in his crossed arms. Not like that was suspicious or anything. "Rooms all yours, you can clean it and sleep on the couch."

Sleeping on a couch to most people sounded like a down grade, but for a time I ended up sleeping on cardboard and blankets, so a couch was nice. The room itself was decorated in cob webs, ugh spiders. There was also a rat, but rats I could deal with. However, the first thing I saw that had to go was Experiment 78: That god awful blue shag rug. No thank you!

Swiftly and carefully, I rolled it up and handed it to Stan. "You can….ummm…burn this?" I requested, after the terrible eye sore was out of my hands.

"Yeah…that's probably for the best." He nodded in agreement, holding the thing away from himself. Apparently he had an idea of what that was too.

Looking back at the room, I studied it. While casually watching the episodes I had never noticed many things about this room. At the far end there was a nice fire place, meaning this was definitely once considered a bedroom. There was a glass prism on top of the fireplace too, probably meant to be a Pink Floyd reference at one time. To my left there was a bathroom, one only connected to this room. That was nice. The couch looked pretty comfy, and was a long one in an L shape. Without the rug you could see the old wooden boards on the floor, some were loose. There were also a set of file cabinets with a big trophy on top, I might get to snoop inside those to see if there's any useful information in them.

Other than that, the one window was boarded up, meaning whoever slept here probably worked nights and slept days. There was a large standing mirror as well, near the bathroom, covered up by a large blanket, probably for a reason. Plus there was another table next to the other side of the couch; it held a clock and a lamp on top of it. With some elbow grease this place would become just as good as my old apartment.

"Umm…thank you, this is great!" I saw honestly, smiling at Stan with the best smile I could. He still looks at me like 'I'm-still-not-so-sure-about-you' but that was understandable. "Could I get some cleaning supplies or….should I buy some?" Due to Stan being a cheapskate I was worried I'd have to go buy cleaning supplies with the last bit of money in my wallet, really I knew I'd need that for clothes and hygiene products.

"I'll have my handy man bring you some down, you start seven sharp missy!" He says with authority as he turns to leave, still watching me as he walks out. "Night!" He calls over his shoulder as he finally edges out of the doorway. "SOOS!" I hear him shout as he walks up the stairs. I flinch at his yell.

Well, things could be worse.

….God, why did I have to think that?

-X-

Shortly after, Soos appears and hands me some cleaning supplies. He tips his hat and greets me with a friendly smile. He even helps me clean up; I asked him if he could maybe nail down some of the loose boards, he does so happily. With his help it takes maybe an hour. After that the cobwebs are gone, dust is taken care of, the floor is clean, the bathroom is in working order again, and the couch is clean with new sheets and a pillow on it. After we put some effort into it, the room turned out great!

"Thank you so much man, I really appreciate it!" I say to Soos as I'm putting the cleaning supplies away.

"No problem, dude!" He puts his hammer back on his belt. "Oh, and hey there's two little dudes staying here too. I…uh, think they went to go fight zombies or something."

I blink, thinking about that for a second. 'Zombies? Does he mean gnomes?' I wonder, but shake my head. It didn't matter. "Okay, thanks for the heads up!" I reply, waving to Soos as he heads upstairs. After he's gone I head back into the room, close the door, and collapse on the couch. I was exhausted!

I sigh deeply then get up; my jacket was now hanging from the bathroom door. Before I started cleaning I had put the stuff from my pants into my jacket pockets. With a shaking hand I fish out my phone and headphones. I put my earbuds in my ears, connect them, and I go to turn off the lamp in the room. With it off the room is dark. Carefully, music already playing in my head, I take off my shirt and pants. Then I drag myself under the covers on the couch and fall asleep with music flowing in my head.

-X-

"Protect them!"

"Who?"

"The forest, the trees, the oaks and the pines!"

"What?"

"The darkness is coming. The demon is near."

"You mean Cipher?"

"Nightmares are not the only danger!"

"Speak clearly! I don't understand!"

"You have been gone for far too long."

-X-

I woke up that morning with a cold sweat and a frustrated scream on the edge of my throat. The dream was fuzzy, I couldn't remember anything I saw, but I could just remember the conversation I had. The thing from before had been speaking to me, with a mission objective. But he still hadn't learned how to not speak in cryptic bullshit. So I only caught about half of it. He was worried about the Pines, clearly and Bill Cipher too. Just thinking about the triangle of doom gave me shivers, luckily, if I was correct, he hadn't been summoned yet so I still had some time.

It was early morning; my phone said it was six. So I decided to get a head start on the day. Putting back on my only clothes, I got up and went to the kitchen. No one was up yet, so quickly and silently I made breakfast for three. I put chocolate chips, strawberries and whip cream on Mabel's, the bacon, eggs, and a question mark of syrup on Dipper's pancakes, and lastly a Stan shaped omelet for Mister Pines.

After that was done I headed into town, trying to avoid Dipper and Mabel a bit while also needing to get myself a few things. I walked, thinking as I did. I thought about the different things that I'd have to go through, and things I needed to avoid. I hoped I wouldn't run into any creatures myself. But if my mission was to protect the Mystery Shack and its inhabitants, I'd gladly take on that job. However, I'd watch my step along the way; I would never be anyone's puppet again! My hand unconsciously went to my left wrist and rubbed against the burnt tattoo of angel wings there. Never again!

It takes a bit to get to town but after I do it's easy enough to find a super market. There I buy the essentials; a few shirts, some shorts, underwear, a tooth brush, some diphenhydramine, pain killers, soap, shampoo, female products, a switch blade, some books, stuff I can use to lock pick, and a journal to write in. I have just enough to pay for that and then I carry the bags all the way back to the shack, my stomach growling.

By the time I'm back to the shack it's around ten and there are tourists already showing up. I hope Mister Pines won't yell at me when I walk in. He's busy with a tour though, so I just walk through and head straight to my room. Through the door I set the bags down and start unpacking. I put clothes up in the drawers, which are now empty but weren't before. I put my hygiene stuff in the bathroom, my pills in the bathroom cabinet, and my books and journal on top of the file cabinet. But I put the knife and lock picks in my pocket.

Running back to the front I realize Wendy wasn't minding the register, so I slipped in behind it and smiled. This was my new job after all….my new life even.

-X-

End notes: I have some ideas for original concepts as well as I plan on expounding on some of the shorts. Plus if there's anybody who have mythological creatures in mind, I'll write those in too. (I know this chapter was pretty boring, but it's a slow start and a set up chapter, next chapter will be a lot better!)

PS- The next four chapters have already been written at this point, so I can upload weekly for a while.