A/N: Oh hey everyone, it's my first Gravity Falls fanfiction. For those who were expecting batjokes fics, I'm sorry. I'm working on it. For everyone who who doesn't know me, I'm Alex, and I write AUs, sometimes very messed up AUs.

This is one of them. I read Home Not Home (ao3) and An Outsider's Look at the Pines Twins (ffnet) and I really liked the idea of Mabel and Dipper going home to their parents while being really messed up from the near-apocalypse. I love writing messed up characters.

This ignores a lot of the episodes - while it contains the events of several episodes and storylines, they are done out of order or in different ways. It's told in flashbacks - it'll start with Dipper and Mabel going home, and switch to flashbacks to talk about how they defeated Bill and what they dealt with.

Note: This story has some mentions of blood, harm, abuse and trauma. Characters are subjected to mental and physical nightmare realms. There are a few incidences of non-suicidial self-harm (defacing and creating marks). Please read at your own risk and take care of yourself.

Two and a half weeks after Jack and Julia Pines send their twin children to Gravity Falls, Oregon, the whole town and much of the surrounding area completely falls off the map.

They'd received a couple of phone calls at the start of the visit - they hadn't been completely sure about sending their kids to their reclusive uncle, but they'd needed some space, and the twins needed to get away and outside. Stanford, according to Jack's father, Sherman, had been a scientist, and was a good person, even if he'd gotten a bit odd over the years. The kids had been fine. Enjoying themselves.

Still. One day they'd been expecting a call, and it hadn't come. They'd left it until the next day, wondering if perhaps the kids had merely gotten carried away and forgotten to call.

But when they picked up the phone and called Stanford, the tone just dialed, dialed without going to an answering machine or being picked up. They left it for an hour or so, and tried again.

The phone just toned on.

They tried some family friends, and it went through. They tried their cell phones, and still the line toned.

Jack could see his wife beginning to become nervous. He dialed again and listened to the tone as she looked up the number of the "Mystery Shack". It dialed without break. Julia tore apart the dish of paper scraps on the phone stand, looking for the number of a man named "Soos" who Mabel had said had looked after them once or twice.

The number dialed. Julia looked up the number of the Gravity Falls police station. No answer. The library. No answer.

Julia pulled up a list of businesses in Gravity Falls, and they sat at the table, calling every grocery store, clothing outlet and supply shop that they could. There was nothing but the dial tone.

Then they looked up the next town over, and the one after that and the one after that. By the time they'd gotten about fifteen towns over, the sun was going down, they'd missed work and both were crying, tears streaming down their faces and hands trembling as they held their phones.

Finally, a line picked up, a small town about an hour and a half away from Gravity Falls. The voice on the other end was frazzled and hurried, and Julia near sobbed into the receiver.

"Hello? I'm trying to contact Gravity Falls. Mm-my children are visiting a relative aan-and I can't get ahold of them." Julia said.

Jack leans forward, hears the silence on the other end of the line.

"I'm so sorry, ma'am." Came the saddened answer. "But I think Gravity Falls is gone."

When the twins were five years old, Mabel named her brother Dipper.

He'd loved spaceships, the universe, the stars. Their father had taken them out onto the lawn at night and shown them the constellations through an old telescope.

"Do you recognize that one?" Jack had asked, showing them the Big Dipper, situated in the sky.

Mabel's answering squee had been all the answer he'd needed. That, and she'd slapped her brother's forehead.

Her brother Marvin lowered his gaze, tugging his bangs over the birthmark. Mabel took little notice.

"It's like you're the Big Dipper except I was born first so I'm bigger except it doesn't look like the Little Dipper so maybe you're just a Dipper, Dipper, ha, ha!" Mabel's energy had never known any boundaries and never would.

Marvin smiled, a true smile, one that was rare even at his age.

Dipper. Thought Jack. Hopefully that wouldn't last too long.

It hit the news the next day. A chunk of Oregon a hundred square miles or so had suddenly become completely impenetrable. It glowed a bit, arched over the trees like a dome. Some trucks had run into it and been completely totaled. Locals could walk right up and place their hands against it, but they could not go through.

Jack and Julia watched the news footage with a horrible, horrible feeling. They'd already called the Piedmont police, and some police or forest troopers or federal agents or someone from Oregon. They'd been told to wait.

They watched footage of birds passing through the barrier with no resistance. They watched bullets bounce off a wall that could barely be seen. They watched people try to dig under it, fly over top. They shuddered at the horrible images of houses torn in half, the dome's edge having sliced right down the middle.

At some point, a reporter watching the barrier saw someone run up from the other side, banging their fists against that invisible wall. The man yelled, but nothing could be heard.

Jack and Julia watched as something the size of a horse and a hundred times more dangerous - something made of black fur, claws and teeth - came tearing out of the trees and ripped the man to pieces, right on live television.

The world got a lot scarier after that.

Dipper found the third journal within days of getting to Gravity Falls.

He wasn't afraid to admit it - Mabel had fit right in like she had been living there her whole life. Dipper had not.

So the journal - it's strange, but intriguing. He doesn't really believe it at first, but he does very quickly. He'll probably never gain a fondness for gnomes.

The journal is like a hand reaching down from the dark. It whispers take my hand and I will show you great things.

There is nothing he regrets about taking that hand.

There is nothing he regrets more.

It takes five months for the twins to come home.

But that's partially a mistake.

The children that come back from that town may look like their children, maybe sound like their children, but there is nothing familiar in their eyes.

It's Mabel and Dipper.

It's something far, far worse.

A/N: I will be posting shorter chapters quicker, so expect another update in the next couple of days.