Dipper and Claus have a talk about coping strategies, in the middle of their talk about how to rob a pharmacy.

This takes place in the Gravity Falls Transcendence AU! It’s another Mother 3 crossover – I can’t be stopped! This is in a completely different continuity to the other crossover I wrote. Claus survived in this one and all four twins are friends.

To the untrained eye, the two young men leaning against the wall of the laundromat were nothing out of the ordinary – just a couple of kids loitering who’d probably be asked to move along soon. On closer inspection, however, one might notice a couple of things were off about them. Like how one of them had a piercing red eye that didn’t match the green of his other eye. Or how the other boy seemed to flicker at the edges occasionally, like a broken computer monitor or an ice cube on a hot griddle. Almost as if he wasn’t really fully there.

That one also appeared to be in the middle of a minor freakout.

“Oh stars, what are we doing?” he exclaimed, rubbing his face in his hands.

The boy to his right, who was wearing a blue and yellow striped shirt, rolled his eyes. “Knocking over a pharmacy,” he said flatly, as if that was a perfectly normal thing to be doing.

“Why are we knocking over a pharmacy?” the first – the one in an orange shirt and a blue vest – hissed. In the moment, his eyes seemed to go completely black, but a second later they were white and brown again.

His friend rolled his eyes back the other way, and went back to examining his hand. “You said they’ve got medicine in there.”

“So?!?!” the boy in the vest squeaked. “Who needs medicine – we’ve got ibuprofen and stuff at home already! Besides,” he said, leaning in and trying to make his squeaking even softer, “it’s not like you or I really need medicine anyway.” His attempt at stealth was made less successful by the fact that every word he spoke echoed unnaturally in the air.

If the striped shirt boy rolled his eyes any more, they were liable to fall out of his head. “Yeah, I know, but you said you missed taking your ADHD medication because it made you feel human again.” The setting sun glinted as if metal off his right hand as he examined it.

“It- it- it- it doesn’t actually MAKE me feel that way,” the first boy sputtered, beginning to pace back and forth. “My body is just an illusion. A projection from the mindscape. Matter that I consume goes into a pocket dimension but it isn’t actually absorbed or processed by anything even remotely resembling human physiology. In fact I’m pretty sure my stomach just pulverizes ADHD medicine because it’s getting payback for how bad those meds wrecked my stomach back when I actually needed them, when -“

The striped shirt boy gave his friend a look, and the latter gulped.

“Okay I’m rambling. The point is, stimulant medication only ‘makes me feel better’ as like a psychological crutch. I don’t actually have ADHD anymore. Or, wait… Do I?” He paused to ponder this for a moment, and then started anxiously running his hands through his fluffy brown hair. “Oh my stars I’m immortal and I think I still have ADHD. Fuck… Ugh. Either way, taking stimulants is like eating a tasty memory instead of something that Big Pharma pooped out.”

“Exactly!” The striped shirt boy jumped up and rubbed his hands together. “I want to see if it’ll make me feel any better to take antidepressants again. Don’t get me wrong, I know they won’t really do anything. Half my body is electronic now, I don’t have a liver anymore, and my brain is so full of microchips that the only real antidepressant I could take would be an SD card with antivirus software on it. But I think taking SSRI’s again might help me! I wanna try it just so I can pretend for a minute that things are normal. You don’t want me to be depressed, do you Dipper?”

Dipper groaned so animatedly that it almost seemed as if his physical form were about to disintegrate and he’d become a puddle. “No, of course I don’t, Claus! But -“

“Cool! That’s why we’re doing this. Your question is totally answered. I’ll get me one of those psychological crutches, and you can get some of your old meds back too!”

Dipper didn’t look convinced, and Claus sighed.

“Listen. When I first met you, you used to cry almost as much as my brother.”

“What’s your point?”

Claus threw his hands up. “Okay! Okay, I’ll skip the backstory. Why am I doing the emotional explain-y stuff right now anyway? That’s usually your job. It’s not like IIIIIIII’m the one who had all his feelings sucked out of him for three years with a bendy straw or anything!”

He sniffed at that, then laughed weakly. “Actually, it was a scalpel, but Dr. Andobutts sure made it suck. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that all four of us – you, me, and our twins – have a hard time with brain stuff, and we’ve all got our ways of coping with it. I think you and I need as much help as we can get. What’s the harm? It’s not like we’re going to hurt anybody.”

Dipper screwed his face up. “If Mabel knew what we were doing -“

“She’d be thrilled and invite herself along!” Claus interrupted. “Then she’d eat all of the expired candy, go mental, and get us all caught!”

Dipper puffed out his cheek in irritation, but then deflated. “Okay. Fine. We’re knocking over a pharmacy. For illegal, controlled substances -“

“Hey, maybe you’re in trouble, but Prozac is not a controlled substance!”

”- for non-prescribed drugs,” Dipper corrected, glaring, “that we are going to take. Even though they do nothing to us and might as well just be sugar pills. Stars, it sounds even worse when I say it like that.”

“Don’t say it like that, then.” Claus elbowed his friend, who was shrinking back against the wall again. “Call it an adventure between bros – I know my bro isn’t here, you know what I mean – an adventure where two brave, strong, and super cool young heroes go on an epic quest to regain their humanity while also bonding and becoming better friends?”

“And maybe also picking up some of the illegal, expired candy for Mabel,” Dipper added.

“And a cowboy hat with a frog on it for Lucas,” Claus continued, nodding.

The two boys looked at each other, and each took a deep breath in and out.

“Alright,” Dipper said finally. A pair of dark, shadowy wings extended from his lower back, and he shivered. “I guess I’m ready.”

“Heck yeah!” Claus replied. He reached into his pants and drew out a long, yellow sword he’d been hiding in his pant leg. “Traumatized Monster Bros, setting out on their first mission! I’ve been practicing my sword fighting and I’m probably even better now than when I was brainwashed! Hiiiii-yah!”

He waved his sword around wildly, making lots of over dramatic sounds as he did so. Then he tripped over a tree root and accidentally threw the sword into the air, where it cut off a tree branch which narrowly missed hitting him in the head.

“Okay,” Claus said, chuckling as he picked himself up. There was a flash, and the sword teleported back into his hand. “Uh, it’s a work in progress. Hey, you got any demon magic tricks you’re going to use today?”

Smiling, Dipper floated a few feet off the ground. “I can envelope the building in darkness, dragging it and everyone inside into an abyss of everlasting nightmares.”

“Cool. Don’t do that,” Claus replied. “Stick with the blue fireballs that go fwoosh.”

Dipper snickered. “Sounds good.”

With a high five, the two boys headed into the store.