Chapter Text
The first time Dipper Pines touched a star, he was honestly too young.
The world beyond the Earth’s atmosphere was new to him, and he was new to it. It stretched before him like a vast beast, uncaring and immense, and the constant pressure of it on his omniscience, the absolute knowledge of the sheer distances involved, was the first thing to make him truly feel small since the day he woke up and found he had changed the world map. From up there even that incident seemed insignificant.
He flitted through the solar system on wings made out of children’s dreams. He mapped the mountain ranges of Mars, swam through the rings of Saturn, traced the outline of the heart on Pluto, and then he turned his attention towards the Sun. Towards this unrivalled champion star of importance for humanity, and he felt he wanted to dip his hands in it.
He was still so young at the time, and perhaps he overestimated his own power.
Nevertheless, while his hands grew back eventually, he acted the part of a burnt child for a long time thereafter.
The second time Dipper Pines touched a star was spurred by much less whimsy.
There were few creatures left in the universe who would even think of challenging him, yet few is not none.
There was a challenge raised, and in such a way that he could scarcely refuse. The battle that ensued whipped up enough chaos to break a continent in half, and so it was just as well they took it somewhere else than the planet.
This time, while racing for advantage between known and unknown stars, his wings were made of nightmares and righteous vengeance, and yet the challenger moved just as fast and hit just as hard. In the end, he grabbed a desperate hold of his opponent and ended it, by diving headfirst into the closest star.
It burned him worse than anything had for a thousand years, but it did not kill him as it did the challenger, and in the end, he rose victorious over both it and his own ages-old fear.
The third time Dipper Pines touched a star was also the last time he touched the Sun.
He knew it was coming, of course. He had known this day was coming since before the first time he soared this high.
Before him, his own beloved Sun swelled to devour the planets humanity had once called home, ready to die in one final explosion.
His wings were made of old nostalgia and ties of regret, and as the Sun reached the peak of its transformation, he held a hand out and said, no.
It burned his hands as he plucked it out of the sky, burned the skin off his chest as he placed it there for safekeeping, beating a steady rhythm right above his own quiet heart, but soon it accepted its new placement. He flew away one last time with the solid glow of home as close as he could get it.
The last time Dipper Pines touched a star was the last time this universe had stars.
They were all of them long since dead and faded by now, but he gathered them all meticulously anyway.
His wings were made of chaos and light, of the very fabric between realities, and they carried him from one end of the universe to another as easily as though, and he gathered stars and other things until there was truly nothing left beside the things he held in his hands.
And the stars burned.