Content warning: The next three chapters contain references to child abuse and its effects.

Mabel didn't know how long it had been since Charles had abducted her, but she guessed it had been at least a full day by now. She stood in darkness, handcuffed to a metal bracket in a stone wall. Her legs hurt from standing for so long, and she was hungry and thirsty — feelings she had all but forgotten in her perfect fantasy world.

She was exhausted, too. Yesterday, when Gideon had told her she was dying, she'd felt just fine. She'd only had his word for it. But now. . . now she could tell. She could almost feel her life draining away as she stood there, trapped and alone.

Well, not completely alone. There were the voices.

They whispered to her almost constantly. Pacifica's voice, Bill's voice, her own voice — they all told her that she was worthless, that the world was better off without her. And then Dipper's voice, Ford's voice, Gideon's voice — they'd call out for help, and Mabel couldn't go to them. Her feelings of uselessness all came back to her, and they only grew as she stood there chained to the wall.

She'd tried talking back to the voices at first. "Please," she'd said, "I can't do anything; I'm stuck. You have to help me before I can help you." But anything she said was only fodder for the voices' derisive remarks.

"You don't deserve help," said Dipper's voice. "I've spent all my life helping you, and when have you ever helped me back? It's time you helped me for a change."

"You tried to help me with the portal," said Ford's voice, "but you only made things worse. Even when you try, you mess things up."

"I'm doing a public service by killing you," Bill's voice assured her. "You're a drain on everyone else."

Those comments and more floated around the dark room. Mabel soon gave up trying to talk back.

Every hour or so, Charles appeared, his face lit by his amulet. His ethereal grey skin shone in the pale blue light. "I'm checking up on you," he explained, "to make sure Gideon doesn't find you. Not that he will. But it was a mistake to leave you alone with him." He walked closer to Mabel. "You can't send me away again."

That confused Mabel; it sounded like Charles was accusing her of forcibly sending him away rather than asking him to leave. He'd left willingly then, or so it had seemed. But now he didn't listen to her when she asked him to let her go. He was keeping her here, and he didn't seem inclined to change his mind.

Where was here, anyway? It seemed like the headquarters to the Order of the Crescent Eye. But according to Gideon, the door to the Order was actually the door out of the moon. So where was Mabel? How did she get in here, and how was Gideon going to follow?

He probably couldn't. Not because he was incompetent, but because it was probably physically impossible to follow.

"You're so stupid. You didn't even realize I had scars," Gideon's voice said. The real Gideon wasn't here, Mabel knew, but it was his exact voice. "I was at the Museum for over a week, and I was in pain that whole time, and you were so selfish that you didn't even notice."

"I'm sorry," she whispered. She whispered that over and over again in those hours cuffed to the wall. Sometimes the voices ignored her; other times they mocked her for trying to apologize. But it was all she could do. They were right, at least about some things: She was selfish; she was often useless; and when she did try to help, she often failed. She knew that about herself, but it hurt to have those things repeated back to her with the voices of people she loved.

She wanted to curl up in a ball and cry. But she couldn't. Oh, she could cry, and she did. But she couldn't lay down or bury her face in a pillow or snuggle with a family member. She was alone, in a perpetual standing position, listening to her worst thoughts said aloud.

Her energy was depleted. She couldn't sleep, but she wanted to. She wanted an escape from these voices, from this brain fatigue. She was dying. Part of her just wanted to get it over with to stop the pain.

Those thoughts scared her. She didn't want to die. But if that was her fate, then. . .

No. No, Mabel, she told herself. That does not have to be your fate. She hummed to herself to try to block out the voices, to try to get a moment to think. Sometimes she hummed lullabies her mother had sung to her as a child; sometimes she hummed theme songs; sometimes she hummed nothing more than random notes. It helped.

She didn't have to listen to the voices. She had more thoughts than the self-deprecating ones. She had more thoughts than the ones that wanted to die and be done. She didn't have to pay attention to the bad ones.

It was hard. But every time she found herself getting distracted by bad thoughts, she guided herself back to the good ones — the ones that focused on escaping, on getting home to her real family, on defeating Bill Cipher. It was exhausting, but she was already exhausted, so might as well keep going, right? She had to figure out how to get out of here. If Gideon wasn't going to find her — and she couldn't risk her life believing that he would — then she had to save herself.

She may not be able to help the people calling for her, but maybe she could help herself. And once she was safe, she could try helping others. But it was useless to sit here wishing she could go help her family when she was literally chained to the wall. So how to get free?

She thought back to everything Gideon had said over the past five days that she had ignored. Even though she hadn't listened to him at the time, the memory of what he said came back surprisingly easily. On his first morning, he'd told her for the first time that the world wasn't real. He'd called it a simulation.

Well, Mabel had read plenty of books about simulated worlds. The question, then, was who controlled the simulation. Charles?

"You can't send me away again," Charles had said. As if her telling him she wanted to be alone yesterday had been a binding command. Could she control the simulation? It was created for her, after all. Created to kill her, yes, but maybe she had some amount of control over it. After all, the voices were speaking some of her worst thoughts. They had to get those thoughts from her mind somehow. And if the simulation could get into her mind, then maybe she could use her mind against the simulation. . . .

These ideas came to her over hours of humming, thinking, redirecting harmful thoughts, and thinking some more. When she finally came to the conclusion that she could control the simulation, she felt both a surge of triumph and a wave of hopelessness. She didn't have the energy to try controlling the simulation. She didn't have energy for anything. Her body ached; her mouth begged for water. It was all she could do to think about controlling the simulation. It sounded impossible to actually control it.

She stood there in her hopelessness for who knows how long. She stopped humming, and the voices took the opportunity to rail her with more insults. It took a long time for Mabel to get ahold of herself, to start humming again — could vocal cords hurt from humming so much, or was she just crazy? Never mind; she had to block out the voices somehow.

How to control the simulation? Would it work if she just wished really hard? She'd asked Charles over and over to let her go, and he wasn't listening. But he was a person. Well, a fake person, but some kind of intelligence. She couldn't control him, it seemed, but maybe she could control the world itself. Maybe she could teleport out of this dark stone room.

She thought about different ways to teleport. She'd read about people teleporting by imagining the place they wanted to go, or by refusing to believe they were in their current location in the first place. There were spells, handheld devices, portals. She didn't have any of those objects, but she did have her mind. And though it was feeling very battered, very tired, her mind was the most trusted thing she had. Sometimes she struggled to trust herself — and right now, with voices whispering her insecurities, was one of those times — but she couldn't trust anyone else. So her own selfish, immature, useless mind would have to do.

Okay. Teleporting. Where should she try to teleport to? She had no idea where Gideon was. But he'd wanted to take her to the library, where the exit from this world was. So that's where she would go: the library. Funny how libraries had mentally transported Mabel to many a fantasy world, and now this one would physically transport Mabel to the real one.

The library. She could imagine a library easily: shelves of books, chairs to read in, sunlight through the windows. But she wasn't just trying to teleport to any library; she was trying to teleport to the Gravity Rises library. And, surprisingly, she could only think of one time she'd gone to that library, plus the two times she had gone to the Order headquarters. She didn't really remember what it looked like.

She could remember what the back side of it looked like, though. She'd only seen it with the ground around it covered in snow — that's right, it was winter in the real world right now — but the sight of the metal door came to her mind with a thrill of fear. All of her memories with the Order were bad ones. Just thinking about the door brought those memories back.

No, she told herself, don't be afraid of it. Right now, that door is your ticket home. Think of it as a good place, not a scary one.

How to get to it? She could pull it up in her mind's eye — at least, she could for a moment before scathing whispers broke her concentration. But in order to teleport, Mabel didn't think she could just imagine what the place looked like. She had to imagine it with all her senses: her wrist, free from this metal cuff; sunlight, shining down on her; the whispers, gone, replaced by a wordless wind.

That was going to be a lot harder. And it might not even work. But it was the best place she could think of to start.

She tried to focus. Tried to imagine all the sensations she would have while standing outside the library. But she couldn't. The whispers pulled at her attention; she hummed louder to drown them out, but then her own humming distracted her, too. Then there was the tight metal cuff around her wrist — how could she pretend to not feel it? And it was hard to imagine light in the darkness.

"Stop," she finally said. She tried to inject firm confidence into her voice. "Stop whispering. You're not real, and what you're saying isn't true." Well, she believed some of it, but not all of it. She didn't believe she deserved to die, for one. She took a deep breath. "Everybody stop talking. If I'm alone in here, then I'd better actually be alone."

The voices stopped for a moment. Mabel didn't know if it was in response to what she'd said — after all, the voices hadn't been talking all the time since she'd gotten here. Maybe this was just a natural lull.

They started up again. "You think you can control us," Pacifica's voice said scornfully.

"She's so controlling," Dipper's voice said. "It's stifling."

"Yes," Mabel said, "I do think I can control you. You're not real, after all. I should be able to control my own dream world, don't you think? So nobody gets to talk."

She'd had lucid dreams. This world wasn't quite like that — too lifelike — but maybe it worked on a similar principle. Just like in her dreams, and just like in Robbie's mind that one time, Mabel should be able to do anything if she could just imagine it.

Theoretically. The voices kept whispering; Mabel imagined silence, but that was pretty hard to do. Finally, she tried imagining the places where she usually found silence — her room, the climbing tree in her backyard, the school library — and thought back to the peace and quiet she sometimes felt in those places. Then she did her best to translate that thought into actual silence.

"I am alone here," she said out loud. "No one is going to respond to me."

No one did.

A thrill raced through her chest. She did it! She still had a lot of those demeaning thoughts in her head, but she was able to push them out of the forefront of her mind. Now to get out of these handcuffs.

That proved to be almost impossible. The metal was cold and tight on her wrist. Tactile sensations were really hard to imagine, especially in reverse. So could she do something else? Imagine the handcuffs as pliable? That'd work in a dream; she may as well try it here.

"This is as easy to bend as a paper clip," she said, touching the handcuff with her free hand. It was helpful to state her intentions out loud. "I'm going to bend this back, and it's going to move."

It took multiple tries, which was worrying. Who knew when Charles would be back? But Mabel encouraged herself and continued imagining the handcuff as pliable, and it finally worked. With some effort, Mabel pried the handcuff off her wrist.

She was making progress. Now to get out of here.

She didn't want to try to feel her way around the dark. She could try making it light in here, but she'd rather try to teleport if she could. Feeling along the stone wall, she made her way to the corner of the room, so that Charles wouldn't see her immediately if he appeared. Then she closed her eyes and tried once again to imagine herself outside by the library.

The sunlight pressing on her eyelids. The heat of the sun on her face. The soft ground beneath her shoes. Birdsong in the distance. Mabel imagined all of these things, hoping it'd work better if she did it with her eyes closed. That way, she didn't have to imagine all the details of the view around her. She could almost feel it. . .

"I am standing outside the library," she said.

Nothing happened. She tried not to get discouraged. You can do this, she told herself. If there's anything you have, Mabel, it's an imagination.

Deep breath. Try again.

On the fifth try, it still hadn't worked, but she thought she was getting closer. Unfortunately, before she could try a sixth time, a blue light appeared. Charles was here to check on her.

"Mabel?" he called, sounding alarmed.

Mabel's heart sped up. No. No, stay calm. You're invisible. He can't see you. If you just stay here, standing like you have nothing to hide, then he won't see you. She wanted to say it aloud, but that would defeat the purpose.

She kept her eyes closed so she wouldn't meet Charles' gaze and give herself away. I'm invisible, she repeated to herself while simultaneously attempting to teleport.

Charles walked around the room, his footsteps sounding on the stone. Mabel tried to calm her heartbeat. You're outside. It's nice and peaceful. Feel the breeze. Feel the heat of the sun. See the light pushing against your eyelids.

She felt as if she were there already. Just a moment more. . .

"Oh, there you are."

Mabel's eyes snapped open, her concentration broken. A jolt of fear shuddered through her chest. She tried to be brave and meet Charles' eyes, but they were in shadow due to the fact that the room's only light source was under his chin.

"Clever, Mabel," Charles said, "but that won't work. This is my world. I am the prison. And you won't escape me."

He waved a hand, and Mabel felt herself start to shrink. No! She wouldn't shrink. She refused. She folded her arms and glared at him and resisted his magic.

"No, Charles," she said defiantly. "This is my world."

Charles growled at her and moved forward, but Mabel moved in the other direction. As she moved, she tried one more time — desperately — to teleport to the library. She imagined the soft loamy ground giving way beneath her shoes. She thought of the heat and sweat of being outside on a summer day. She envisioned the metal door of the Order in front of her.

She could feel Charles' hand grab at her shirt. But that was just the wind. Charles wasn't here at the library. She'd left him behind.

She didn't dare speak her intentions aloud. But she thought them clearly in her mind: I am outside the library!

And then she was.

She gasped as the sensations transferred from her imagination to reality. She. . . she did it! She really did it! She teleported!

"Ha!" she shouted. "Take that, you dumb voices! I'm not useless!"

She looked around the clearing behind the library, grinning at the trees, at the sky, even at the metal door to the Order. That door was a good thing right now. She was happy to see it. There was even a flashlight wedged in the opening to keep it from closing. That must be Gideon's work — good thinking.

Speaking of which, where was Gideon? He could be anywhere. Still looking for her. How long had it been, anyway? Another look at the sky showed a bright morning sun. She'd probably been gone for two days. One day left, and then she'd die.

She didn't want to die. Regardless of the harmful thoughts that encouraged it. She'd spent two days in the darkness, trying to ignore the voices, trying to control her world. She wouldn't give up now.

But how could she find Gideon?

Her exhaustion, temporarily ignored in her enthusiasm from teleporting, was starting to come back. But she wasn't done yet. Yes, she'd been standing for two days. Yes, she hadn't had food or water in that time. But no, she couldn't lay down and take a nap on the grass, no matter how nice the prospect was.

Gideon. How to find Gideon. Could she bring him here? That was faster than going out to look for him. She had brought herself here; surely she could bring him here, too.

She thought about him in her mind's eye. She imagined his face, his white hair falling over his brow, his dress shirt, his amulet. She did not imagine his bare arms with their scars. At least, she tried not to. I'm not my scars, he'd said, and she didn't want to think of him that way.

"Gideon is standing right there," she said, pointing at a spot in front of her. 

It took a few tries, but she was getting better at controlling this world. Suddenly, Gideon was standing there, with a confused look on his face. "What—?"

Then his eyes caught Mabel's.

"Mabel!" he cried. He threw his arms around her. She hugged him tightly. She did it. They were both here. They could leave. They could go back to the real world.

She pulled back to tell him that, but the words didn't come. Gideon was looking at her with such a look of relief, of joy, that she could only smile at him. His eyes flicked down to her smile. To her lips.

Before Mabel knew what was happening, Gideon kissed her.