Chapter Text
Mabel started going to the barges when she was just six, a little thing made of sinew and bones and fear.
(The smell of desperation: sweat and stale urine, a crowd so thick that Mabel struggles to breath.)
She knew that the other orphans waited until after the main throng had left. She knew that they waited until the excitement had died down before coming out. Little feet stepping over the dead and dying, little fingers shifting through what was left of the garbage.
(A foghorn, and the gates open, and people move so quickly forward that Mabel cannot help but follow. Her head barely reaches the waists of those around her.)
But Mabel knew that the good stuff, the really good stuff, was always gone by then. Kids died all the time on the Isle, especially the orphans. Waiting until after everyone had already picked over the monthly barge was a death sentence.
(Mabel trips, or is tripped, and goes down. Someone steps on her ankle, and she feels something give under the weight but she cannot stay there, cannot stay down and wait to be trampled.)
By the end of her first barge day, Mabel was grittier and more bruised and exhausted then she could ever remember being. But she had done it, and had a whole loaf of bread – unsliced – to show for her efforts.
(Standing, limping, diving down into the mass of people. Writhing and clawing like rats over the heap of trash. Punches and stabbings, Mabel is too small to fight back but she does.)
She had eaten it on top of a roof, one bite at a time, saving a chunk of it for later. It was stale with age and speckled with mold, but nothing, nothing, had ever tasted as good to her as that first bite of bread.
(The taste of victory: blunt teeth clamping down, warm iron in her mouth. Red drips down her lips as she eats her stale, stolen bread. Nothing, nothing, has ever tasted so sweet.)
===
Mabel sat on the flat tin roof of her house, the full moon easily illuminating her work. Drunken whoops and childish laughter filled the streets below her, but Mabel paid it no mind. Tonight was for celebration – midsummer, the one night a year when territories didn’t matter and the people stopped fighting – and she trusted that no one would bother her.
The roof clanged and shuddered as someone else jumped onto it. Well, almost no one, she amended.
“Hey, Dipper.” She feels him hesitate at the nickname. Even here, alone on a night of truce, on an island where magic has no power and names no real meaning, he worries.
He is right to do so, and Mabel wishes she could pity him.
“Hey.”
She didn’t look up from her work. Dipper sits slowly, creaking audible, before allowing himself to collapse. Prone on his back, stomach all but exposed, Mabel ignored the churning in her gut, the one letting her know all the ways he is vulnerable to attack; she was the only person who saw him like this, who knew how weak he truly was.
“Will you be missed?” She asked, thinking of Bill.
“Nah,” Mason grunted, “ceremony’s been done for a while.”
Somewhere across the Isle, someone’s homemade firework went off. High above them, sparks fluttered down, blending into the backdrop of stars.
Mabel grit her teeth. Any one of those sparks could catch, lighting the whole place up.
“Is that mine?”
Shaking her head, Mabel glanced down at the article in question. It was a jacket – made of real, genuine leather – that she had picked up a few months ago. She had spent that time cleaning and prepping it, getting it ready for tonight.
“Yes.”
Her brother tried to nod, but his smile turned into a hiss as soon as he moved. He was in pain.
Mabel wouldn’t call herself the most empathetic person even on a good day, and right now she really couldn’t afford any distractions. But this was Mason (Alcor, a small part of her whispered, his True Name), and his pain would be hers.
“Here.” It was an offer, and a command, and before he could refuse, Mabel gripped his arm.
Mabel knew pain. She knew the snap of a broken bone and the shock of a stab wound and the bruising ache of a bare-knuckled punch and still, after all these years, nothing could compare to what she felt when her and Mason touched.
It was like being struck by lightning. Every nerve of her body burned red-hot, and for a moment all Mabel could see was white, but all she did was tighten her grip and ride out the initial, gut-wrenching panic. Next to her, Mason gasped in relief. A moment passed, and then another, as the two struggled towards equilibrium.
As her eyes cleared and her ears stopped ringing, Mabel forced herself to take a shaky breath.
“I’m sorry,” he was babbling. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so-“
Mabel was not nice when she said, “Shut up.” She wasn’t. But maybe she was a little bit kind.
She dragged his head into her lap, not bothering to hide her grimace. Mason already knew that it hurt; there was no point in pretending that it didn’t.
He was still shaking – with relief, she suspected – and tears formed in the corners of his eyes. Mabel wiped them away. He was small, so much smaller than her, and sometimes it was easy to forget that they were twins. Mabel herself was nowhere near large – no kid on the Isle was - but she was strong; hard, lean muscle that came only from a decade of fighting and running, because the alternative to strength was slow death. Mabel’s brother was small because he had never known what that kind of fighting felt like.
Anyone else might have resented him for it, for the upbringing he’d had, which was as close to soft as anything on the Isle got. But Mabel found that it was impossible to envy him, at times like this.
Mason’s eyes fluttered closed, and his breathing evened out, as it often did when Mabel helped to share his burden.
Mabel looked up, and spent another moment refocusing her thoughts. She turned back to the jacket, and the thread in her hands, which she had let steep in her blood for three months and a day.
Mabel was no demon (that was her brother), but that didn’t make her useless. For inherently magical beings, the nulling power of the Barrier kept magic trapped deep under their skin, unable to leave. The same held true for anyone else who tried to practice magic on the Isle; it couldn’t escape, and with nowhere else to go, it would lash back at its user.
But blood magic? For those with the stomach and knowledge and ability, blood magic was the perfect loophole.
The jacket was a gift for Mason.
Hands wet with her own blood, Mabel stitched her will into the world. Around the cuffs and collar, she stitched runes for protection and healing and peace, and in the full light of the midsummer moon, the threads almost seemed to glow silver.
Mabel was not made of magic; she had no fiery power coursing through her veins. But for something as old and deep as this? Pure, willingly given blood would more than suffice.