Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You said you wanted me to have it so I'll do what I want with it!”

“My research!”

Stan was surprised at just how hard Ford hit him. His twin had always been the brains to Stan’s brawn, a skinny little nerd who had taken to their boxing lessons like a duck to tar. Something had clearly changed in the years since they'd last seen each other; there was some solid muscle on Ford's frame now and before Stan knew it he was hitting the floor with a thud that knocked the air from his lungs in a rush.

Then again, a lot of things had changed since then.

He heard the journal hit the ground somewhere nearby and Ford was immediately scrambling after it, breathing harder than the exertion really merited. Not thinking, not caring about anything except that Ford didn’t get what he wanted, not now, not this time, Stan tripped him and lunged for the journal himself.

“Stanley, give it back!”

Stan turned, back against the door, clutching the journal tight to his chest and expecting to see Ford come charging after him. But his brother only made it halfway up off the floor before collapsing back onto his hands and knees. He was shaking all over, sweating and panting like he’d just run a marathon.

“Give it back,” he whispered. “You don’t understand…”

Stan gripped the journal harder, eyes flicking back and forth between it and Ford, and part of him was roaring to destroy the book then and there while Ford couldn’t stop him, but the edges of his anger were being cooled by confusion. What was going on? Was there something wrong with Ford? Had he called Stan here because he was sick or hurt?

He didn’t know what to do.

“Please,” Ford said, and then he slumped all the way to the ground and lay still.

Stan found himself shaking as well as the sudden burst of adrenaline started to drain away. He hadn’t eaten much in the past few days-it had taken every last bit of money he had to pay for gas from New Mexico to Oregon- and he could feel it very abruptly starting to catch up with him.

He wanted to run to Ford and ask him what was wrong, make sure he was okay. He wanted to take the damn book and leave and never look back. He wanted to wake Ford up and make him watch Stan burn the book in front of him. He wanted to shout, he wanted to hit something, he wanted to cry. He wanted so many things that he couldn’t do anything at all, only stand there, muscles locked tight, paralyzed and overwhelmed, for what felt like an aching eternity though it could only really have been a few seconds.

In the end he threw the book away, hard, heard it hit something with a satisfying crack, and stumbled over to Ford. His brother was breathing shallowly, and under the sweat and stubble his face was too pale. Stan shook him gingerly by the shoulder.

“Hey. Hey, uh, bro, wake up.”

Ford moaned and shifted slightly, but didn’t open his eyes.

Stan located a wrist and felt for Ford’s pulse, since that seemed like the kind of thing you did in this situation. It felt faster than a healthy pulse probably should, not that he would really know, but more immediately concerning was how hot the skin was.

So Ford was definitely sick, at least enough to have a fever. Stan felt like this should mean something to him, but all he got was a bare handful of half-remembered sayings and childhood recollections of illness that swirled around his head for a moment before dissipating, leaving him more confused than ever. He didn’t know how to take care of someone who was sick. When he got sick there was rarely anything more he could afford to do than power through it.

So now what?

Leave him, hissed something welling up from the back of his head, hot and bitter with old poisons. Leave him here, that’s what he wanted, isn’t it? He didn’t want to see you, he doesn’t want you in his life, he only wanted you to do something for him, so go do it and leave him here like he wants.

It’s not like you’ll be able to help him, even if he wanted it. When have you ever accomplished anything good for anyone? If you stay here you’ll just ruin things all over again. Take the book and go. It’s best for everyone.

He knew that voice. It was the same one that had roared in his ears about how Ford was going to go away to college and leave him alone forever and ever, until he was angry and desperate enough to destroy something; it whispered to him late at night whenever he was knee-deep in the latest problem and struggling to see why he should bother to keep going at all; it hissed at him every time he picked up a payphone or put a pen to postcard, exhausted and lonely and aching to hear just a few words from family, prodded and tormented him until he surrendered and gave up the attempt.

Leave him. Leave him like he left you. You’re never going to make up with him, so what’s the point? He still hates you and he always will. He told you as much himself.

“Sail as far away as you can-”

“I’m selfish? I’m selfish? Stanley, how can you say that after costing me my dream school-”

“I’m giving you the chance to do the first worthwhile thing in your life-”

It’s not like he’s even wrong. Whatever it is probably would be the first worthwhile thing you’ve ever done. Look at him, look at all he’s managed to accomplish without you around to weigh him down. Meanwhile it’s been ten years and what have you got to show for it?

Leave him.

Leave him, leave your brother, he’s sick, he might be dying, you don’t know, and what are you going to do about it? Leave him to lay here on the cold floor because he won’t thank you for sticking around-

Stan crouched there in the cold blue machine light, holding his brother’s hand and shivering and waiting for the voice to run its course; and then, because in the end he knew there was only ever one thing he was going to do, he hefted Ford up off the floor and began the long, slow process of getting him back upstairs.

Stan had carried his brother before. When they were teens, and he was starting to get some muscle and heft from boxing while Ford steadfastly remained as weedy as ever, Stan had delighted in picking his twin up and running around the house with him, to win arguments or make Ford take a break from studying or just because he could. Ford had always protested, but rarely as vehemently as he could have. Then there were times that Stan had carried him because Ford had needed help: when he'd twisted his ankle in gym class, or when he had come down with the flu and tried to go to school anyway only to pass out halfway through math class.

Carrying Ford had been a regular part of life, once upon a time. But, like so many things, it was no longer as easy as it had been.

Stan was hardly in boxing shape anymore, and he had been running on nothing but caffeine and nerves for too long, and Ford might still have been skinny and sickly but he was heavy enough to knock Stan down, which meant he was heavy enough to be a real pain to get up off the floor. For a moment, feeling his knees shake as he lifted his twin, Stan wasn’t sure they would be going anywhere.

But once he had Ford mostly upright with an arm over Stan’s shoulder, things got easier. Ford didn't seem to wake up entirely, but he shuffled his feet along and took a bit of the weight off Stan. And at least there was an elevator, so they didn't have to walk all the way up. (Which, who had an elevator in their basement, anyway? Then again, who had a giant scary doomsday portal thing in their basement?)

Ford muttered and mumbled occasionally as they walked, and once, when Stan bent down awkwardly to pick up that stupid book, Ford jerked his head up and cried, “No, no, can't, I can't-” But Stan never found out what it was Ford couldn't; he subsided and slumped back down again, his head lolling against Stan’s shoulder.

Once they finally made it out of the basement, Stan was faced with a new dilemma: where exactly to putFord. The house was an absolute wreck, and he had no idea where to find a bed or couch or anything under all the mess. He tried asking Ford, but only got a faint “hnnnngh” sound in response.

Thankfully, there turned out to be a bedroom near the top of the stairs that seemed to have escaped most of the carnage. It was the barest spot in the house that Stan had seen so far, with a low couch, a desk, and little else. He lowered Ford onto the couch carefully and stood there for a moment, massaging his back and looking down at his brother.

He'd thought Ford had looked bad as soon as he'd opened the door-well, alright, as soon as he'd put the crossbow down, that had been fairly distracting- but in this first still, quiet moment, he could see that Ford was in even worse shape than he’d thought. His face was pale and ashen and too thin, and he had the heaviest shadows under his eyes that Stan had ever seen. His hair was in disarray, there was untidy stubble across his jaw, and he looked like he hadn't changed his clothes in several days at least. Not that Stan could really comment on hygiene much, but it wasn't like Ford to let things go like that.

Then again, it had been ten years. Did he really know what Ford was like anymore? What had happened to his brother since then?

Hell, what had happened to him?

Stan sighed and, not knowing what else to do, pulled off Ford’s shoes and laid them by the bed. As an afterthought he also took off his tie (why was Ford wearing a tie while he was alone in his own house anyway?) and put it on the bedside table with his glasses. He didn’t even bother trying to remove the trenchcoat, which Ford was still clutching around him like a security blanket.

Not that Stan could blame him. It was cold in the house. Did Ford not have the heat on? No wonder he’d gotten sick. And if Stan was cold, Ford had to be feeling even worse with that fever. There was one small, inadequate-looking blanket on the back of the couch, and nothing else useful in the room. It was getting dark outside, and the snow was falling even heavier than it was when Stan arrived. He’d had a difficult enough time getting to Ford’s house at all; he’d even parked the Stanleymobile back at the main road and walked the rest of the way, not trusting the look of that winding, uncleared drive. Getting away from Ford’s house was currently looking more or less impossible, but that was, apparently, exactly what his brother wanted.

“You just gotta make everything difficult, don’t you,” Stan muttered, throwing the lone blanket on top of Ford. After a moment’s thought, he shucked off his own jacket and added it over the top, then went off to see if he could find anything else.

Ford’s house was weird. Every surface was covered in clutter, most of which looked like it should be in a museum: strange scientific instruments, specimen jars with unsettling things floating in them, skulls and bones that didn’t belong to any animals he knew of, weird artifacts right out of a pulp adventure comic, and everywhere there were piles of paper like snowdrifts covering the furniture. Stan shifted through a few of them, hoping to find some clue to whatever strange situation Ford had gotten himself into, but none of them made the slightest bit of sense. Some were covered in equations or diagrams that made his head spin, some seemed to be written in some kind of code, and a disturbing few were just maddened scribbles, incomprehensible rants smeared with ink and graphite and occasionally...blood?

“Right,” Stan said out loud to the looming silence, putting down a paper that just had HE’S WATCHING written all over it in uneven letters. “I see what’s happened here. You’ve gone and landed yourself in the middle of a horror movie. Why am I not surprised?”

In one room-some kind of study, probably, judging by the way it seemed to be the eye of the paper hurricane-he found a space heater sitting in a corner. It was an innocuous enough object in the midst of all the craziness, aside from being a bit too close to an awful lot of very flammable paper, but Stan found himself stopping to consider it. How could his brother afford this house and all that expensive-looking equipment, but not afford to turn the heat on? Maybe it was just some strange quirk of frugality, but it struck him as odd all the same. He unplugged it and put it aside to pick up later; at least he could make Ford’s room a little warmer.

He also found a surprising amount of weapons-along with the crossbow Ford had greeted him with, there were some knives scattered across a desk, another one that was actually buried in the wall, a sword, some kind of sci-fi blaster looking thing, and, staring coldly up at him from an opened drawer, a pistol.

Stan stared at it for a long moment. It wasn’t like he was exactly unfamiliar with firearms, but this one, laying there unloaded and harmless, somehow felt more ominous and threatening than any other gun he had ever seen, including the ones that had been pointed directly at him. The other weapons he could maybe write off as being some nerd thing, for decoration or study rather than use, but this... What did Ford need with a gun? What did his shy, anxious, nerdy brother, who would let himself get punched and picked on and taunted to tears rather than ever throwing a blow himself, who would prefer doing a detailed drawing of a bug to swatting it, who had always needed Stan around to look after him and protect him...what was he doing with this?

He’s living out here in the sticks, Stan told himself, shoving the drawer closed. It’s probably just for protection. In case of...bears, or...hillbillies, or...whatever. Who knows what’s out there. He probably barely even knows how to use it.

Sure.

He did finally find a bedroom, or at least a room that contained a bed, albeit not one that looked like it had been used in some time, judging by the pile of books all over it. Deciding it would be easier to make Ford comfortable in the downstairs room than to move him again, he extricated the blankets and pillows and headed back downstairs. On the way, he saw from the corner of his eye something that looked like it might be a bathroom behind a barely cracked-open door and stopped. Maybe he could find some medicine. Not that he really knew what medicine he should even be using-hell, he didn’t even know what Ford was sick with-but it was worth a shot. You took aspirin for fevers, right? That couldn’t hurt him, at least.

He dropped the blankets and space heater in the hallway, pushed open the door, and froze.

There were sticky red smears all over the sink, along the edges of the cracked mirror, even on the wall and floor. Some were drawn-out splotches arranged in patterns of six; in other places there were little pools and splatters freely dribbled about. The little trash can was overfull of used bandages. A nearly empty roll of them sat on the sink alongside a bottle of hydrogen peroxide covered in red fingerprints.

Stan swallowed hard several times, trying to get the sudden awful taste out of his mouth. It shouldn’t have bothered him. He’d never been squeamish. Anyway, he’d seen more blood than this, and under worse circumstances...there wasn’t even that much, he told himself firmly, it was just all...spread around. It shouldn’t have bothered him.

But there was something eerie about it all. Something about the stark, half-told story in front of him, something about all the questions and implications he couldn’t quite pin down, something that was just wrong. The sick feeling that had been building in his stomach all evening was becoming too much to bear.

He shut the door, firmly, without bothering to look for any medicine, picked up his bundle, and hurried away.

He was almost back to the room when he heard a panicked shout that had him instantly breaking into a run. He shoved his way through the door with no idea what to expect and found Ford flailing around blindly; somehow he had gotten tangled up in Stan’s jacket and was trying to simultaneously extricate himself, find his glasses, and get off the couch.

“Stan!” he yelped, squinting desperately at the door. “Is that you? Are you alright? What happened? Oh, God-”

“Uh,” Stan said, coming forward slowly and setting the heater down on the floor. “I just went to see if I could find you some blankets, ‘cause it’s freezing in here. Do you not have heating in this place-”

“But what happened?” Ford demanded, shaking his head frantically. “How did I get up here?”

“You...passed out,” Stan said. “I carried you up here.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Nothing...nothing happened…?”

“No, nothing happened.” Ford had a wild, frightened look in his eyes, and he kept glancing back and forth between Stan and his own hands, as if expecting to see evidence of some terrible sin. “Everything’s fine, Sixer-”

Ford jumped as if Stan had swung a fist at him. “Don’t call me that!”

There was a moment of awful silence.

Stan set the bedding down on the couch with slow exaggerated movements. “Okay. Ford, what’s going on?”

“I...I can’t...it’s complicated,” Ford mumbled. “Stan, will you please-will you just take my journal and go?”

Stan sighed and sat down on the end of the couch. The anger was still there, like a heavy stone in his chest, almost too heavy to breathe around; but he was so damn tired and all his stupid tangled-up emotions felt dull and slow and far away, less like fresh reopened wounds and more like crooked old broken bones that had never been set right.

“I’m not going anywhere, Ford,” he said.

“Stanley, please-”

“Ford-”

“You don’t understand the stakes here-”

“Ford.”

“This isn’t just about me and you-I’m not trying to be cruel but you have to understand-”

“Ford.”

“I’ve made some terrible mistakes and the potential consequences-”

It was clear that Ford was on a roll now and not about to stop, a familiar enough circumstance, so Stan just patiently kept repeating, “Ford. Ford. Ford. Ford. Ford,” while his brother ambled on at length, making, as usual, exactly no sense.

“What, Stanley?” Ford finally snapped. “I’m trying to tell you something here-”

“And I’m trying to tell you something. Look outside.”

Ford whipped his head around to the little window above the couch, like he expected something terrible to be looming there. After a moment he finally pushed his glasses on and frowned. “I don’t see anything.”

“Exactly. You don’t see anything because you can’t see anything because there is a blizzard going on outside and night is falling and also, for your information, I have enough gas left to make it maybe five miles and the Stanleymobile has been making a weird noise since I crossed the state line. So you see, Ford, I will not be leaving tonight, unless you want me to either wrap my car around a tree because I can’t see anything, or freeze to death after breaking down before I even get out of the county.”

Ford opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again, and said, “You’re still driving that thing?”

Stan rolled his eyes. “She’s a good car, and way to miss the point.”

Ford bit his lip and absent-mindedly huddled under Stan’s jacket. Then he realized what he was doing and pushed the stained jacket away with a look of distaste that Stan, having seen what Ford’s house currently looked like, felt was rather hypocritical.

“Town is only a mile away,” Ford said, rallying somewhat. “You can get gas, and there’s a mechanic there-I think-”

“No,” Stan said.

“No? What do you mean, no-”

“I mean no, I can’t get gas, or see a mechanic, because I have no money, Ford.” Which hadn’t exactly stopped him more often than not, but Ford didn’t necessarily need to know that right now. “It took all I had to get here in the first place. I didn’t expect to be sent away again within half an hour. Although maybe I should have,” he added, half to himself.

Ford was staring at him like a sleep-deprived owl. Stan couldn’t bear it; he got up and began looking for somewhere to plug the space heater in.

“Were you in my office?” Ford asked, sounding peeved.

“I was looking for blankets. Your house is a wreck, by the way.” He cranked the heater up all the way and turned to find Ford still frowning at him.

“What?” he said.

“Why were you looking for blankets?”

Stan gave him a long look, just to make sure Ford had actually said what Stan thought he’d said. “You’re sick,” he said, slowly, like he was talking to a child. “And it’s way too cold in here.”

“I’m not sick,” Ford muttered.

Stan groaned. And to think Ford was supposed to be the smart one. “Did you miss the part where you passed out on me and I had to carry your ass all the way up the stairs? Or the part where you’re running a fever and shaking like a leaf? Or the-”

He very nearly said or the fact that your bathroom is covered in blood, but pulled up at the last moment. He wanted to ask about that-or, well, in a way he wanted to ask about that, and in another way he very much did not want to ask about it at all-but that was a discussion he wasn’t sure either of them were up to just now.

“I’m fine,” Ford said, apparently not noticing Stan’s stumble.

Stan rubbed at his eyes. He was very tired. “Look, Ford, can we just-can we just wait until morning? Can we talk about this then? Because I can’t go anywhere right now anyway, and you need to sleep-”

“I can’t sleep,” Ford snapped, and then immediately put the lie to his own words by letting out a jaw-cracking yawn. He looked horrified and struggled to sit up. “I can’t sleep. And you can’t stay here.”

It shouldn’t have hurt, not after everything else, not when Ford was just repeating the same thing he’d already said a million times. But it did.

Stan looked away. Snow was still falling thick and fast outside in swirls that caught the light for brief moments before disappearing into the dark. “You really want me gone that badly, huh.”

“It’s not like that,” Ford mumbled. His voice was thick with fatigue and his eyes were drooping behind his glasses. The valiant efforts of the plucky little space heater were clearly having an effect on him. “It’s not-it’s just-it’s not safe for you here.”

And that had to be just about the funniest damn thing Stan had heard in ten years, because he started laughing and couldn’t seem to stop. It just kept coming and coming and Ford was looking at him like he was crazy, which was even funnier because Ford was the one who had a house full of skulls and weird paranoid scribbling and blood in places blood should not have been, and it had been a very long day, no, a very long decade, and…

“Not safe?” he finally managed to croak out. “Not safe here? Oh my goodness me, whatever will I do? I’ve never been somewhere that wasn’t safe before.”

Ford’s only response was a light snore.

Stan blinked and looked over at him. Despite his protestations, Ford had apparently been unable to hold on to wakefulness; he was sound asleep, slumped back down with his face mushed against the couch and one arm hanging off.

“Right,” Stan said. “In the morning, then.”

He pushed the pillow under Ford’s head and spread the blankets out on top of it, and left his brother alone.

Stan, himself, would have quite liked to sleep, but there didn't seem to be anywhere in the house that would work well for that, and anyway he didn’t think he would have been able to fall asleep any time soon. He was tired, yes, god he was tired, but his head was too full, buzzing with more thoughts and questions and worries than he could keep track of, all blurring and tripping over each other in one big confusing mess. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep just yet, even if he could find anything to sleep on. Instead he paced around the house for a while, shivering, trying to figure out what to do, trying to at least stop thinking, and eventually found himself in the kitchen.

Even compared to the rest of the house the kitchen was a disaster area. It didn’t look like Ford had washed a dish in weeks. The sink was overflowing, and the mess spilled over onto the table and the stove and any other available surface. Some of them seemed to have things growing on them.

Stan paused in the doorway, chewing on his lower lip and thinking. There were a few strange odds and ends scattered about-a shrunken head, a throwing star, something’s spine-but, aside from the mess, this was easily the most normal looking room in the house. There didn’t seem to be any important experiments in progress that he might be interrupting, unless Ford was attempting to see if food gunk could become sentient.

Washing dishes was easy enough. He’d done it more often than he could count to earn meals; even he had a hard time screwing that up. And he had to do something, or he’d go crazy walking around his brother’s demented funhouse and worrying at himself.

Besides, he thought wryly as he started consolidating the dish piles, now at least Ford won’t be able to say I haven’t done anything worthwhile.

It went well enough, at first. He let himself sink into the work, concentrating on the motions: scrub, rinse, repeat, not thinking about what was wrong with Ford, or about the fight, or about what he was going to do next, or about whether he really had a chance of making things up, no, none of that, just scrub, rinse, repeat…

He didn’t know how long he’d been there, only that it was full dark outside and he had made a respectable enough dent in the dish pile, when he heard the crash.

He paused in the middle of scrubbing a particularly tough stain off a plate. Had something fallen over? There were certainly enough precarious piles scattered throughout the house…

“Oh man, this body is a mess! What’ve ya been doin’ to yerself, Sixer?”

Stan froze.

It was Ford’s voice, but it…

...wasn’t Ford’s voice.

He heard a door creaking open, footsteps, and another crash, like something-or someone- slamming into a wall.

“See, I can barely keep myself upright! Everything just keeps spinning around-whoops, here we go again!”

A painful-sounding thud. Stan winced instinctively, but he didn’t move. He couldn’t. He knew that was Ford, it had to be Ford, there was no one else in the house-but somehow he did not want to get any closer to the source of that voice.

Not that he had much choice, because by the sound of it the voice was coming closer to him.

“You’ve only got yourself to blame, you know!” Crash. Something rattled and fell over. “I didn’t put you in this state. That was aaaaaaaalll you, buddy.” Bang. It almost sounded as if Ford was deliberately throwing himself into the walls. “Things would really go a lot easier for you if you would just play along already! Not that I’m complaining. It’s pretty funny to watch you try to resist!”

Stan found himself looking around the room for a weapon of some kind, swearing quietly as he realized he’d left his knuckledusters in his jacket pocket, then pulled up short as he realized what he was doing. It was only Ford. He didn’t need to defend himself against Ford.

Did he-

“Wellllllwellwellwellwell, look who we have here!”

Stan turned slowly.

Ford was standing in the kitchen doorway, hands gripping either side of the frame, a wide, wide grin on his face.

Stan swallowed hard. “Ford, I-I think you should go back to bed.”

“You think? I don’t recall anyone asking you what you thought!” That grin was too wide. It almost looked painful. “Last I checked, I was the one who did the thinking and you were the one who ruined things for everybody! But who’s keeping track, eh?”

Ford had never talked to him like that. Ford could be exasperating and arrogant and self-centered, but Stan had never heard anything like that gleeful malice in his voice, never seen anything like that grin.

“Ford-” he began weakly.

Ford cocked his head to one side. “Ya know, I didn’t actually expect you to make it here. I mean, any sensible person woulda given up on ol’ Fordsy a long time ago. Then again, sensibility doesn’t exactly run in the Pines genepool, huh?”

He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. There was something wrong with those eyes, but Stan couldn’t pin it down-maybe Ford just looked odd without his glasses. Maybe.

“Now that you are here, though…” Ford took a step forward. He was wobbling at the knees, but he didn’t seem to notice. “What say we make a deal?”

Stan found himself backing up against the sink. Soapy water was soaking into his t-shirt. “What are you talking about?”

“A deal, smart guy! You know all about deals, right? Bit of a deal-maker yourself, aren’tcha? Bit of a hustler? A conman? Lovable rogue-well, bit short on the lovable, but we’ll work with what we have.”

Ford kept walking towards him, step by staggering step, and with every step the voice in Stan’s head insisting that this was wrong wrong WRONG got louder and louder.

“What deal?” he said, trying to back up, but there was nowhere else to go.

“It’s simple! I have something you want, and you-well, you can do a few things for me.” Step. Step.

“Ford, I-I didn’t come here to beg,” Stan said. “I don’t-I don’t want-”

“Really? You don’t want? But there’s so much I have that you don’t! A cozy house, a college degree, a dream job-you name it! Don’t you ever get jealous of that? Doesn’t it make you wish your brother could spread the wealth around a little?”

Stan squirmed, his own words ringing in his ears.

Meanwhile, where have you been? Living it up in your fancy house in the woods, selfishly hoarding your college money because you only care about yourself!

“I can offer you a lot, Stanley.” Ford was real close now, and it must have been a trick of the light that made his eyes seem so wrong. Must have been, even though there was hardly any light in the room to begin with. “Money. Power. Or...ooooh, no. Better than even that. I know what you really want.”

“And what is that,” Stan muttered, scooting along the edge of the sink.

“Why, the love of your brother, of course!” Ford threw his arms wide. Stan flinched. “That’s all you’ve ever really wanted, isn’t it? To be loved. To be wanted. Why else would you come crawling back after ten years just because of two words on a postcard? Why would you even still be here when you came all this way just to get sent off again? You truly are desperate, aren’t you?”

He was close. He was too close.

“I can give you that. You want to be back in your brother’s good graces? Want to be forgiven for all your sins? Want to be pals again just like the good ol’ days? Just say the word, buddy!”

Stan tried to speak, to say...something, he didn’t know what, but his mouth was suddenly too dry. Of course he wanted that. He wanted nothing else more than that, and only a few hours ago he had briefly thought that he would get it, just like that.

You remember our plans to sail around the world on a boat?

But it hadn’t been that simple.

Things were never that simple.

Ford was watching him, and in the dim light Stan could almost tell what was wrong with his eyes, but not quite. His own eyes had never been much good, but Ford was the one who wore glasses, because that was how it worked. Ford was the brains and he was the brawn. Ford was the smart one and he was the one who wasn’t much of anything.

“And what’s my end of this deal supposed to be?” he asked, suddenly feeling far too tired for all this. Was this how Ford thought he worked? That he wouldn’t understand anything unless it was put in terms of a transaction? “Let me guess. You want me to take your book and go far away.”

“Go far away? Absolutely not!” Ford slammed his hand down on the edge of the sink, so hard it made Stan wince, but Ford didn’t even register it. “I want you to stay, Stanley. I want you here so you can help me with this project of mine. It’s almost done. Just needs a few more touches. Nothing complex. But I don’t know if I’m strong enough. I’m wearing out. You were always the strong one. So whaddya say, Stanley? Stay here and be my muscle? The brawn to my brains? And when it’s all over we’ll have a graaaaaand old time. There’ll be adventures like you wouldn’t believe…”

Ford extended his hand.

Stan looked at it.

Ford had been right about one thing. Stan was a conman and a hustler and, in general, a rogue, though he knew he wasn’t exactly a lovable one. For ten years his livelihood-such as it was-depended on reading people. Reading body language, studying tics, listening for the subtle inflections in a voice that told him what someone was feeling. It wasn’t even something he needed to think about anymore. It had become instinct, an automatic background process.

Which was good, because right now he wasn’t thinking much of anything. Right now his head seemed to be cavernously empty, washed out by that sick sideways grin and that intense stare boring right into him, but somewhere far away all that instinct and intuition still clicked along, and it was telling him, no, it was screaming at him that this person staring him down in the dark kitchen might have looked like his brother and sounded like his brother but it was not his brother.

“No,” he said.

Ford blinked, slowly and deliberately. “No?”

“No, I’m not making any damn deals with you,” Stan said. “You...I don’t know what’s wrong with you, Ford, but I think you’re sick and you need to go back to bed and...and...we’ll figure something out, okay?”

“Figure something out? But we already have! Didn’t you hear me? What could be easier? Just shake on it, and everything will be alright.”

“You really think it works like that?” Stan snapped. “You really...it’s been ten years. Yeah, I want to make up, I want everything to be better, but it’s not as easy as just...just making a deal, okay? Christ, Ford, I woulda thought even you would know better than that.”

Ford stared at him for a long moment. Stan braced himself, waiting for the explosion, waiting for the fight to begin again.

“Hm. Pity,” Ford said causally. “I could have used the extra hands. Oh well! If you’re not going to help, I’ll just have to get rid of you.”

Stan boggled at him. “You...what-”

There was, very suddenly, a knife in Ford’s hand, and it was coming straight for his face. Stan yelped and jumped backward, almost falling on the wet floor.

“Nothing personal, you understand,” Ford said cheerfully, still grinning, swinging the knife wildly. “But I can’t have you around here getting in the way if you’re not going to cooperate, and I can’t have you going away and being a loose end either! Especially not with that journal! It’s just so much easier if I take care of you right here and now!”

“What the-Ford!” He jerked back just barely in time to avoid being sliced across the face. “What are you doing-”

“I’m murdering you! Wow, you really are the dumb one, aren’t you?” Ford was moving fast, too fast for Stan to find an opening in the flashing steel. He tried to edge away around the table, but Ford had him pinned in the corner.

“You know, you oughta hear some of the things Fordsy thinks of you,” Ford said casually. Slice. Slice. Slice. He was wavering, shaking all over, but it only made the swings wilder, harder to dodge. “It’s delicious, really! Let me tell you, you really oughta have taken my deal, ‘cause you didn’t have a chance of making up with him on your own. He hates you!”

Slice. Stan felt the metal, felt the wetness starting to run down his face, but there wasn’t any pain. There should have been pain, shouldn’t there?

“Ford…” He could taste the salt and metal on his lips. “You...you don’t…”

“Oh, but he does.” Ford paused, grinning terribly, blood running down the knife and smearing across his hand. “He does. You think he woulda called you here if he didn’t think he could get some use outta you? But you couldn’t even get that right! Between you and me, pal, he thinks it woulda been better for everyone if you’d just done yourself in a long time ago! Taken a nice, dignified swan dive off the pier and ended a life of ruining everything you touch before it could get started-”

Stan punched him.

Ford went down like a sack of bricks.

Stan stood there for a moment, breathing hard, blood running down his face, staring at his brother lying crumpled on the kitchen floor and feeling the world go distant and strange.

Chapter Text

“...unfh...what…?”

So this was it.

Stan sat down in one of the kitchen chairs, feeling…empty. Somewhere very far away, some part of his brain was still working, buzzing with urgent thoughts- what was that, what just happened, is Ford okay, am I okay, there's blood all over me, he's not moving, get up, see if he's alright, do something- but it was all distant, disconnected, like someone else's thoughts entirely, nothing to do with him.

He couldn't seem to think anything. His head was filled with white noise.

“...Stan?...oh...oh, God!”

Ford hated him.

Ford had tried to kill him.

“Oh God, oh God, Stan, I'm so sorry-”

A fight would have been one thing. He'd come prepared for a fight. A shouting match, hurled insults, even a full-on brawl- he could have dealt with that. He could have understood that. He'd wanted things to be better, he'd hoped...but it had been ten years, and there was a lot of anger between them. He knew that.

He hadn't known there was this between them.

“Stan, your face...I...oh, God, I didn't even realize he'd gotten a knife…”

He'd always clung to the hope that maybe, somehow, he could make everything up. He could make things better. If he just worked hard enough, tried hard enough, if the latest plan worked, if he made enough money... he'd buried it, hidden it under I don't need him anyway and I'm doing just fine on my own. But it had always been there, somewhere, keeping him going.

But now-

“Stan? Stan, can you hear me?”

What was the point now?

He couldn't fix this. He couldn't fix this, and he knew he should be feeling something else-anger, fear, he had just nearly died, he should care about that- but all he could think was there's nothing left, there's nothing left, there's nothing left-

“Stan? Stan!”

Click.

Light hit him like a punch to the face, blinding after so long in the dark. There was a moment of even greater confusion than before as he squinted, trying to make sense of the blur of color before him. The small grimy kitchen suddenly felt almost painfully real, as if the world were making up for its temporary absence by pressing closer than ever.

Ford was standing on the other side of the kitchen by the light switch, holding himself up with one hand against the old stove. He had fumbled his glasses on, leaving smears of blood on his face and smudged across the lenses. He was shaking hard and looked like he was about to cry or throw up or maybe both at once, but somehow he also looked so much more like Ford that for a moment Stan felt a tiny bloom of hope in his chest.

He instantly hated himself for it. How stupid did a man have to be, to believe there could still be hope of reconciliation with someone who only moments before had gleefully taken a knife to his face?

“Stan,” Ford said, his voice sounding thick and strangled, “I-I know you don't have any reason to-to trust me right now, but I...I just need...I need to know you're, you're still here. Please? Can you hear me, Stan? Can you say something?”

Stan couldn't process any of this.

“Why?” he said, his own voice sounding strange to him.

Ford stared back at him. “W...why?”

“You were trying to kill me a minute ago,” Stan said, slowly since Ford seemed to be having trouble keeping up. “Now you're concerned for me?” To his own surprise he started to laugh, because really-what else was he supposed to do? “Pick one, Ford.”

Ford’s face crumpled, and for a moment Stan thought he actually had started crying. Then he realized, with a distant jolt, that the fluid leaking from Ford's eye was a lot darker than tears.

“What- what did he do?” Ford whispered.

None of this was making any sense. “What do you mean, he? You were the only one here, Ford.”

For a moment Ford looked blank, as though Stan were the one talking weird nonsense. Then his eyes widened even further in some kind of remembrance and he swallowed hard several times. “I... I...Stan, I-I know you, you don't have much reason to trust me right now but-but I don't remember the last few minutes. I...I need you to tell me what happened. Please.”

Stan stared at him.

He should have been angry. He should have been. Not too long ago he had been furious beyond belief over dashed hopes and flippant remarks. What was that, what was anything he had ever been angry at Ford for, compared to this?

But it was...too much. Too big. He couldn't be angry, he couldn't be anything, blood was dripping down his face and he couldn't feel anything about it because it was all too much to fit into his head.

“You came in here acting all...funny,” he said slowly. “Talking funny. You...wanted me to make a deal with you.”

He wouldn't have thought Ford could get any paler, but somehow he managed it. He was almost starting to look blue around the edges.  “A deal?” his brother croaked. “Wh- what kind of deal? Oh God, you didn't agree, did you?”

“No, I didn't agree. It was weird. You...just said you wanted me to help you with a project. Be your muscle. And that if I did, you would...forgive me.”

Ford really looked like he was about to be sick. “Forgive you?”

Stan looked down. “Yeah. That...that everything would be alright between us.”

He watched distantly as a drop of blood hit the tiled floor, leaving a tiny crimson dot.

“Oh. Stan…” Ford whispered.

“And you were right, you know.” Drip. Drip. It almost looked pretty, like one of those modern art paintings. Red on white. “That is what I want. Wanted. I dunno.”

“But you didn't agree?”

“No. I know that's not how it works. I'm not that stupid.”

There was silence for a moment. Then Ford said, “You're not stupid at all. You're smarter than I was.”

For a moment, the words didn’t even make sense. Stan, smarter than Ford? No one had ever said that. No one would ever say that. It was ridiculous to suggest even in a situation as surreal as this.

“What happened when you...refused?” Ford asked before Stan could figure that one out.

“You...you said if I wouldn't agree you'd just have to get rid of me. That I was a loose end. And you took the knife out and…” He made a vague, uncertain gesture.

And then, because he had to say it, because it was stuck in his throat, because he could feel it hot and painful and bitter like rising bile and if he didn’t say it he was going to choke, “You said you hated me. And that you...you thought it would have been better if I’d...if I’d offed myself before I could ruin things for everyone.”

Ford drew in a sharp breath. “No. No, Stan, I-I didn’t. I don’t. I would never-”

“Hate to break it to you, bro, but you did,” Stan said. “You were very definite about it while you were swinging a knife in my face.” He drew in a breath of his own, shaky, trying to get some air past whatever seemed to be blocking his throat. “And...and I’m not saying that, you know, that you don’t...that I haven’t...that you might not have, have a point there, but-”

“NO!”

The exclamation was so unexpectedly loud and clear in the midst of the fog that seemed to still be circling around Stan that he jerked his head up in surprise. Ford was staring at him, fingers shaking on the wall he was holding, and that was definitely blood trickling down his nose from the corner of one eye. Had Stan hit him that hard? Had he topped off a long list of sins by half-blinding his brother?

“Stan, listen to me,” Ford said urgently, heedless of the blood that was now starting to drip off his chin. “I-I don’t hate you. I do not...think...those things. That wasn’t me.”

“Uh, yeah it was,” Stan said in abject confusion. “What, are you saying that it was some guy who happened to look exactly like you? That can’t be it, cause I can account for his whereabouts.”

Ford didn’t seem to find that funny. “No. I...listen, I know this is going to sound unbelievable-”

“That’s the third time you’ve said something like that,” Stan said.

“The...situation remains...improbable.” Ford swayed a little bit and steadied himself against the wall. “It...it was a demon.”

Stan stared at him.

Ford stared back. “Stan-”

“Your eye is bleeding.”

Ford swiped at the blood irritably. “It’s not important. Stan-”

“A demon, Ford? Really? That’s the best you can come up with? I mean I’ve spun some pretty damn tall tales, but I’ve never gone that far.”

“I know-”

“Don’t say you know it’s unbelievable, that’s not helping. It doesn’t make it any more believable.”

Ford opened his mouth, shut it, and finally just stared at him helplessly.

Stan sighed and wiped a hand across his face, annoyed at the oozing blood. The gash was finally starting to hurt, but it felt like the thoughts buzzing in the background of his head: distant, like something that wasn’t really a part of him.

He supposed he should do something about it.

The image arose, unbidden, of a sink and mirror smeared with bloody fingerprints. He had the sudden feeling that he should have pushed that issue a lot earlier.

“Okay,” he said, slowly. “So...what? You’re saying a demon...impersonated you?”

Ford made a strange little choking sound, almost a sob.

“N-no,” he said. “Or...that is...yes, but…”

“Any time you want to make sense, that would be great,” Stan said.

“He can take control of me,” Ford said. “When I'm asleep, he can possess me. That's why I can't, I have to stay awake. I have to...but it's getting harder and harder... that's why you have to leave, Stan, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but he could hurt you again, and it could be worse…I have to get the journal away from here, you see, before he can finish what he's planning-”

“This have to do with the doomsday device in your basement?”

“It's not a-” Ford began defensively, then stopped and slumped. “Yes. It does.”

“And the fact that your bathroom's covered in blood?”

Ford slumped a little further. “You noticed that, did you?”

“Kinda hard to miss.”

Ford rubbed a hand along along his arm defensively, but didn’t say anything.

Stan sighed heavily and stood up. Everything swayed around him for a moment, but it settled back down quickly enough.

“Where-where are you going?” Ford said as Stan stomped past him.

For a moment Stan was really, honestly tempted to say, “Well, you told me to leave,” just to see the look on Ford’s face; but now was probably not the time. Heh. Never let it be said that Stan Pines didn’t have any tact.

“Gonna clean up,” he muttered instead, and hurried away before Ford could say anything else. Probably he shouldn’t have just left Ford there, ashen and still oozing blood from his eye and looking ready to collapse any second, but he had to, he had to get away, just for a second, just to think, and anyway he figured that being slashed across the face by somebody earned you the right to a bit of distance from them.

Not that the actual slashing, specifically, was really why he wanted to get away from his brother at the moment.

I’ll just have to get rid of you…

Why so surprised? It wouldn’t be the first time he threw you aside because you weren’t useful to him.

Shut up, Stan told the voice, even though that never worked. Shut up, shut up, shut up.

He wasn’t exactly eager to patch himself up in Ford’s horror-show bathroom, which currently looked like an image from a PSA about Where Not To Perform First Aid, but it was where the bandages and disinfectant were and he needed a mirror and really it wasn’t that bad compared to that one time in New Orleans, so.

He flicked on the light and almost did a double take at the sight of himself in the dirty glass. The blood had run down all over the lower half of his face and dripped onto his neck and the collar of his t-shirt. It made him look downright gruesome.

“I look like a Batman villain,” he muttered to his reflection.

The casual words brought up a strange surge of memories: a childhood bedroom full of comic books bought or pilfered from the nearby newstand; sitting in Fort Stan on a rainy day, surrounded by cheaply colored paper and companionable silence; a shared case of the chickenpox spent in bed scratching at spots and arguing about which characters would win in a fight.

Ford had always preferred Marvel. He loved the science: the radiation that did this or that, the strange chemicals and lab equipment used to save the day, the adventures through space or different dimensions to encounter strange new worlds and lifeforms. He gushed over Reed Richards and Bruce Banner and Tony Stark, scientists who used their smarts to save the day. But most of all he adored the X-Men. The mutants, the outcasts, taunted and rejected by society for nothing more than being born different, but heroes all the same. Stan liked to tease Ford about his ‘nerdy science heroes’, but he never made fun of the X-Men, not when he saw the way his brother turned to them when the bullying got too much to bear.

Stan himself had favored DC. He liked the silliness of the stories, the over-the-top covers promising ridiculous exploits within, the glorious fist-fights in the name of truth, justice, and the American way. But most of all he liked Batman. Bruce Wayne was an ordinary person-relatively speaking-in a world full of extraordinary people. He didn’t have superpowers or gadgets bestowed by aliens or gods; he was smart, but in a cool, cunning way, not in that powerful, untouchable way like Ford’s heroes. Not like, well, Ford. But Batman didn’t let not being special stop him. He was still a hero, still won the day, still triumphed over the villains, was still respected and looked up to and important.

Stan had always liked that.

There had been, of course, no comic books in the duffel bag thrown at him one early summer night. What was once a collection shared between Stan and Ford became, in an instant, only Ford’s. Just like everything else.

He wondered sometimes what Ford had done with Stan’s comics. Thrown them out, he assumed. Maybe burned them in anger, or gleefully ripped them to shreds in joy of finally being rid of his brother.

Stan caught his own eye in the mirror and grimaced. “You’re a grown man and you’ve got a knife wound to treat and you’re standing here thinking about comic books,” he told himself. “Get it together, Stan.”

He washed away the gore and finally got a good look at the damage-as good a look as he could in the flickering light of the bathroom. It wasn’t as gruesome as it had first seemed, actually. The knife must have been pretty sharp; it had cut a neat, clean line, and the gash was long but shallow. It ran diagonally from temple to cheek, slicing across his nose on the way, and seeing how close it had come to his eye made his stomach twist a little. Still, he'd had worse. New Orleans came to mind again.

He cleaned it out with the peroxide as best he could, wincing as it stung terribly but also, in a strange way, feeling relieved that he could feel the pain, that the fog finally seemed to be lifting somewhat.

The angle made bandaging it difficult, but he managed by tying the strip behind his head, resulting in something that looked like an off-kilter eyepatch. He doused the bandage in peroxide first; he didn’t trust anything that had been sitting on that sink. And to think Ford had always accused him of being the gross one.

He looked ridiculous, but then, he thought as he scrubbed down his hands with as much soap as was left, what else was new?

Finally he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and stepped back out into the hallway. In the blur of the confrontation and its aftermath he’d forgotten just how creepy Ford’s house was. It was even worse now that full dark had fallen, and he had the memory of those footsteps coming down the hall toward him rattling around in his head…

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right at all. Stan had been angry at his twin more times than he could count; he’d been resentful of him for ten years; on a few occasions he had even been a bit intimidated. But the idea of being scared of Ford didn’t fit in his head at all. Before tonight he wouldn’t have said it was possible.

Then again, to hear Ford tell it, it wasn’t really him that had Stan scared.

The stupid thing was, in a way it made sense. Some twisted story of demonic possession fit perfectly into everything he’d seen so far: Ford’s paranoid rambling, the eerie and disordered house, the bloodied bathroom. It did all feel like he had walked right into the middle of a horror movie. Which probably meant he was going to be killed off pretty soon, he thought glumly. The dumb brother called in for reinforcement who didn’t know what was going on and wouldn’t leave when he was told? Stan wouldn’t put any bets on that character surviving the movie if he was watching it.

What was worse, though, was that he wanted to believe it.

He wanted to believe it hadn’t been Ford who had casually tried to get rid of him like a broken appliance.

He wanted to believe it hadn’t been Ford who had looked him in the eye and gleefully told him he should have died long ago.

But. Demons.

You’re so desperate you’re willing to believe a ridiculous ghost story rather than accept what happened right in front of your eyes. How much plainer could he possibly be? He told you clear as day he hates you. He tried to kill you. If this doesn’t make you accept the truth, what possibly could?

Something about that made Stan slow to a stop in the dark hallway.

Because...because...because that wasn’t right.

Because Ford saying he had always hated Stan, Ford saying he was going to get rid of Stan...that wasn’t Ford. That was the version of Ford from his nightmares, the idea that haunted him on long lonely nights when he wondered if he would ever see his family again, the fear that pushed him to give up every time he had tried to contact his brother. It was Ford as the ever-present voice in his head wanted Stan to see him. But as terrible and persistent as that phantom was, it wasn’t real. It belonged in Stan’s beat-up broken head, not standing over him holding a knife.

I’m giving you the chance to do the first worthwhile thing in your life was Ford. Why would I want to do anything with the person who sabotaged my entire future? was Ford. Ford pushing him away, Ford turning his back, Ford shoving him to ground was real. And it hurt, oh God it hurt, but it was real. He knew what that pain felt like. And he knew what it didn’t feel like.

Ford might hate him, Ford might never want to see him again-that might be real. He didn’t really know. But Ford cheerfully trying to kill him wasn’t.

Of course, demons also weren’t real.

So the question now was, did he believe in demons more or less than he believed in this nightmare version of Ford suddenly and inexplicably existing in real life?

A strange sound from the kitchen blew his train of thought off the rails. For a moment all he could think of was something in the dark, coming toward him, something with a taunting singsong voice and eyes that were somehow wrong. He froze, hardly daring to breathe, not sure whether to run or fight or hide or-

Then the sound happened again, and this time he realized what it was.

He crept into the kitchen and saw Ford kneeling in front of the kitchen trashcan, looking absolutely miserable as he retched a third time. A quick, reluctant glance at the trashcan showed that nothing much had really come up but bile.

He abruptly found himself wondering when the last time Ford had actually eaten was. His twin had proven himself more than capable of completely forgetting about basic human needs over something as minor as studying for an algebra exam; given a situation like this-whatever this was-it was almost surprising Ford had managed to keep himself alive at all.

Stan instantly regretted that thought.

He cleared his throat. Ford glanced at him. “Oh. Stan. Your...your timing is impeccable.”

Stan rolled his eyes. “You’re the only person I ever met who could use words like that while you’re puking your guts out.”

Usually Stan would have expected Ford to respond to his crassness with irritation, but he only folded in on himself more and glanced ruefully at the trashcan. “I don’t think there’s much of my guts left,” he muttered.

For a moment they both hung there in the awkward silence, not sure what to do next.

I don’t know, Stan thought. I don’t know what I believe in. Maybe it’s because Ford’s sick, or maybe he finally snapped after spending who-knew-how-long out here alone, or maybe I really am just too stupid to see what’s right in front of my eyes.

Or maybe it is a demon.

It had to be stupid to stick around here. If he was watching this movie he would have yelled at the dumb brother for not getting out while he had the chance.

But there was one thing he did know, one certainty that was creeping up behind him: this was his last chance. For better or worse, if he left now, he knew he wasn’t going to see Ford again.

Maybe that would be the right thing, the smart thing. Maybe that was better than whatever fate was waiting for him here.

But he would never know.

Anyway, where else was he going to go? What else was he going to do? What was really the point of escaping death here if all it meant was extending a life of misery and solitude, of scrounging to survive, of one failed con after another?

No.

He crossed the kitchen and put a hand on his brother’s shaking shoulder. “You all done for now?”

Ford swallowed and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “I...I think so.”

“Okay. Let’s get you back to bed, yeah?”

Ford looked up at him in shock. “Stan-I can’t just-”

“You’re sick, Ford. You need to-”

“I am not crazy!”

Well. That had touched a nerve.

Ford glared up at him, desperate and defiant. “I know this...this all seems insane, I know you don’t believe me but I am not delusional, Stan! Think what you will, but-”

“Whoa, Ford. Time out.” Stan put his hands up placatingly. “I’m not talking about that. I mean, literally, you are sick. You just threw up in your kitchen trash. So you need to rest, okay, because whatever’s going on here, I’m willing to bet that you running yourself to the brink of death ain’t going to make it any better.”

“Stan, I can’t sleep,” Ford said. “You saw what happened-”

“I didn’t say you had to sleep. Just...look, just come back where it’s warm and lay down and...and...you can tell me what’s going on, okay? I won’t let you fall asleep, I promise. But sitting here on the cold floor isn’t helping anything.”

Ford looked at him for a long moment. Stan knew that look. It was the look Ford got when he knew he needed to rest but was too tired to actually make the decision to do so, only now it was mixed with a lot more fear and hopelessness than Stan remembered.

He was about ready to just drag Ford back to bed anyway-he didn’t think Ford could stop him at this point-but, to his surprise, Ford finally nodded. “Okay,” he said weakly. “Okay. But you have to promise-”

“I promise. C’mon.”

He gave Ford a hand up.

“Stan?” Ford said as they trekked down the hallway. Stan was idly wondering how often he was going to have to help Ford hobble back to bed before all this was over.

“Hmm?”

“I...I really am...I’m so sorry. That you got hurt. I mean, that I-”

“Hey. It’s okay.” The cut was really starting to hurt now, but that was alright. It was better than that distance, better than not being able to feel anything when he knew he should. “It’ll heal. Things can do that, y’know.”

“His name is Bill. Bill Cipher.”

Ford said the words in a low, furtive voice, as though fearful of being overheard.

“Bill?” Stan said. “A demon named Bill?”

“Technically ‘demon’ is only a convenient appellation. More accurately, he’s an extradimensional being of pure energy. But, yes, the name is somewhat underwhelming. I assure you the rest of him is...not.”

Ford paused to take a cautious sip of the water Stan was making him drink. Between the illness, the apparent blood loss from... something, and Ford being Ford and probably trying to survive entirely on spite and academia, Stan was surprised his brother had any fluid left in him at all. He didn't know how to treat whatever it was Ford had, but he knew something about being dangerously dehydrated, after Arizona.

He'd gotten Ford back onto the couch and wrapped in the blankets and, for good measure, had cleaned the blood off his face. Ford's eye was bloodshot and weepy, but he'd assured Stan it wasn't his fault.

“It happens,” he'd said. “When...when he possesses me.”

Somehow this didn't make Stan feel much better.

“Okay,” he said when Ford didn't say anything for a minute, “so... how'd you get involved with this...Bill?”

Ford shifted uncomfortably and started chewing on his lip.

“I made a terrible mistake,” he said.

Well. Yeah, Stan thought. Obviously.

“I... I've been in Gravity Falls for six years now,” Ford said. “I moved here right after college. I got a research grant to study this place, you see…”

Stan blinked. “Study...this? What the hell is there here to study?”

“A lot more than you would think. Gravity Falls has the highest concentration of anomalies in the world. It's really quite amazing…”

“Anomalies? Like what?”

“Anything you could imagine,” Ford said, continuing to be spectacularly unhelpful. “I've encountered amazing creatures, evidence of alien life, magical artifacts, the undead...and there's still more to find, I'm sure. I haven't even begun to catalogue it all.”

“Wow,” Stan said weakly. “That's… really something.”

“Indeed.” Ford took another drink, wincing slightly, from nausea or pain or some uncomfortable memory, Stan couldn't tell. “But I couldn't find the reason for it. I knew there had to be some explanation, some theory as to why weirdness was attracted to this place. But it eluded me. And I...I was getting desperate. That was when I...encountered Bill.”

There was a story and a half loaded into encountered, but Stan didn't pursue it. Ford was obviously pushing himself to the limit to say this much as it was.

“He...he tricked me,” Ford said haltingly. “He told me…”

Stan waited.

“He told me he was a muse,” Ford said at last. His voice was thick with bitterness. “That he picked one great mind in a century to inspire and that I was it. He flattered me and I fell for it like the damn fool I am.”

Stan let out a long, slow breath. It wasn't really surprising. He hated to admit it, but in many ways his brother made for a damn easy mark. Ford was brilliant beyond belief, but he had always had a dangerous blind spot when it came to dealing with people.

When they were kids, Stan had been both shield and interpreter for Ford, standing between him and the outside world that his brother so often struggled to cope with himself. Ford was the smart one, the worthy one, the important one, but once upon a time that had been okay because there were still things Stan could do that Ford couldn’t, still a space left for him that his brother didn’t occupy. Once upon a time they had balanced each other out.

Only that balance had shifted, and there seemed to be less and less space for Stan-less and less reason for Stan- and he had panicked, and he had ruined everything. Ruined it more than he’d even realized, because not only had he trashed Ford’s college dream, he’d left him alone and vulnerable. He hadn’t been around to protect Ford, to do the only thing he’d ever been good for.

He’d told himself Ford would be fine. Ford didn’t need him anymore. Ford didn’t want him anymore. He’d lived ten years on the belief that his brother would carry on just fine without him. That was what he had been planning to do anyway, that was what he had been doing more and more as they grew older. Except it turned out Ford had needed him-and he hadn’t been there.

Then again, could Stan really say that things would have been better if he’d been there? After all, he had an uncontested knack for screwing up everything he touched; perhaps things would have gone even worse if Stan had been around to interfere.

“Look, I know it’s…” Ford began. “It’s...whatever you’re going to say, I can assure you I’ve said to myself already.”

Stan snapped out of his reverie. “What?”

“I was arrogant, and stupid, and I, I know that, you don’t have to-”

“Ford,” Stan said slowly, still struggling to keep up. “I wasn’t gonna say any of that.”

Ford blinked in that owlish way he had. “Oh. Er...what were you going to say?”

Stan shrugged. “Nothing, actually.”

“Oh,” Ford said. “...Right.”

He coughed and hastily took a drink of water to cover the awkward silence.

“Anyway,” he said eventually. “Needless to say, he was...not as benevolent as he made himself out to be.

“Yeah,” Stan said. “I kinda got that.”

“Indeed.” Ford looked away. “He...he inspired me to build the portal, you see...gave me ideas, blueprints, details. He told me it would unlock the secrets I was looking for. But when we went to test it, there was...an accident. That was when I started to get suspicious-”

“Hang on,” Stan said. “We? There’s other people involved in this?”

Ford began to twist the end of one of his blankets. “Just one. I called in an old college friend to help me with some of the engineering on the portal. But when we activated it the first time for a test run he...he got tangled in the lines and pulled in...I managed to pull him back out but he saw...something on the other side. I don’t know what. I...I don’t want to think what.”

He swallowed another gulp of water, his other hand wrapping tighter and tighter around the blanket.

“He’d been...suspicious for a while, he’d tried to warn me, but I ignored him. I ignored him and he paid a terrible price for it.”

Stan had a sudden image of the melting Nazis from that adventure flick he’d caught a while back.

“Uh,” he said, trying to shoo that thought aside, “what kind of terrible price are we talking here, exactly?”

Ford shook his head. “I’m...not sure of the extent of it, to be honest, but whatever he saw... there was clearly some kind of damage to his mind. He was deeply shaken and upset... he left the project then and there, and I haven’t seen him since.”

“Oh. Alright.”

Ford frowned at him. “I’m serious, Stan. What happened to him-”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, no, I’m not laughin’ or anything,” Stan said quickly. “It’s just-when you said ‘paid a terrible price’, I was wondering if there was a body to hide or something.”

“Stan!”

“Or if maybe you had him in a straitjacket down in that basement somewhere-”

“Stan!”

“Well I don’t know, Ford! I mean you’re talking about demons and horrible accidents and all that-”

“Alright, alright!” Ford was starting to look sick again, but when nothing happened Stan decided it was probably more emotional than physical. “There’s...there are no bodies to hide...as far as I know.”

“Well that’s reassuring,” Stan muttered.

“Anyway, that was when I truly began to grow suspicious,” Ford went on hastily, clearly eager to get away from this whole topic. “I confronted Bill and he admitted...no, he gloated that the entire project had been a ruse from the start. That what I had actually constructed was a means for him to enter our dimension and take it over.”

“That sounds bad.”

For a moment the look on Ford’s face was so familiar that Stan felt a strange swell of amusement and nostalgia and heartache. How many times had he seen that exasperated look, prompted by the stupid remarks he usually made while Ford tried to explain something?

“It’s indescribably bad,” Ford said tightly. “It would mean the end of the world as we know it.”

Stan whistled.

Ford gave him a narrow-eyed look suggesting that he still didn’t think Stan was taking this seriously enough. “That’s why I have to dismantle the portal before he can use it for his nefarious plans. And why I need you to take that journal somewhere safe. It contains research that must not fall into the wrong hands.”

“World-ending research?”

“...Potentially.”

Stan blew out a breath. Well, that put getting banned from 90% of the United States in some perspective.

“Okay,” he said, holding up his hands in what he hoped was a calming gesture. “You, uh...you understand, I’m not going to do anything, I just...this is just an honest question, okay?”

Ford nodded warily.

“Why not just destroy this journal? If it’s so dangerous.”

Ford’s hands tightened around his glass. “It’s my research, Stanley. It’s too valuable, I, I can’t-you can’t-I might need it later, I don’t know, I don’t know what might be in there that could be vital to fixing all this, but I can’t just leave it...if Bill found another pawn, if he got the information to someone else-I don’t know-”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, okay.” Stan put his hands on Ford’s shoulders, steadying him; Ford was starting to shake again. “It’s okay. I’m not gonna destroy it, okay? I’m sorry for that, I just...I got mad, and...but I won’t, alright?”

Ford nodded jerkily. They sat there for a minute as Ford’s quickened breathing started to return to normal.

“So...what’s your plan?” Stan said eventually, pulling away again. “I mean, do you have a plan? Aside from getting rid of the book?”

Ford ran a hand through his hair, like it wasn’t messy enough already. “I’m...there are some caves nearby, where I first found the, um...the clues of Bill’s existence. I’m going to go back there, see if there might be anything helpful. I was just waiting for you to get here…”

Stan squinted at him. “So...your plan is to hope there’s something useful in a cave.”

“Well if you have a better idea I’d like to hear it!” Ford snapped, an angry flush creeping up his face-although under present circumstances, this only brought him back up to a normal complexion.

Stan took a few deep breaths, but oddly he found that the waspish remark didn’t irritate him nearly as much as it usually would. Maybe he was just too damn tired.

“I’m...sorry,” Ford said after a minute. Stan looked up in surprise to see Ford actually looking a little sheepish. “I acknowledge that it’s not the best plan, but I don’t know what else to do.”

Well, that was unexpected.

“‘S alright,” Stan said. “But...Ford, y’know, you barely even made it from the kitchen to here. You...you’re not up to crawling hiking around caves right now. And that’s not even advice or anything, it’s, I mean, it’s just...it’s not gonna happen.”

Ford rubbed at his eyes and sighed heavily. “I don’t have much of a choice. The longer I wait, the more dire things get. I just...I just need to rest a bit and then I’ll go.”

Stan just barely managed to restrain himself from groaning out loud. Ford would try to go spelunking in the midst of an Oregon winter while too sick to stand upright. He would.

“Yeah, and how are you going to do that?” he said. “You’re the one saying you can’t sleep.”

“I can’t. Staying awake is the only way I can prevent Bill from possessing me. I can’t take the risk that he might...that he…”

Ford trailed off, working his lower lip in his teeth and staring into the middle distance. Stan waited a moment before waving a hand in his face. “Hello? Ford? You still here?”

“That’s it,” Ford said, more to himself than to Stan. “That’s it...Stan! Tie me up!”

Stan took a moment to process that one. It didn’t really help. “You what?”

“I can’t stop Bill taking me over while I’m asleep, but if you’re here...if you can restrain me…restrain him...he would be, would be...severely limited.” Ford swallowed. “I...I could sleep. Without...without setting him loose. As it were.”

“Oo-kay,” Stan said slowly. “You’re saying you want me to, what...chain you up like a werewolf?”

“Stan! Would you please be serious about this?” Ford considered for a moment. “Besides, it’s much more like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

Stan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Alright. Alright. This...this is weird. This feels weird. But it’ll get you to sleep?”

“It’s the only thing I can think of,” Ford said.

There was a note in his voice that made Stan look up. Ford tended to avoid outright emotional displays when he could, especially anything like fear or pain. Partly it was just because he had all the prickly dignity of a damp cat, but mostly, Stan knew, it was because Ford couldn’t stand to show anything remotely like vulnerability.

They had that much in common.

But right now desperation and fear were written all over Ford’s face, impossible to miss, and there was a pleading note in his voice like nothing Stan had ever heard from his twin.

“Please, Stan. I...I don’t think I can stay awake all night. I’m trying but I...I…”

He trailed off hopelessly.

And by the looks of things, he was right, too, Stan thought. Ford looked like he was on the brink of collapse. Sooner or later-most likely sooner-he was simply going to shut down.

Stan squared his shoulders. “Alright,” he said. “You got any rope?” 

They were unable to figure out a way to secure Ford to the couch, so they adjourned to what Ford insisted was the living room. Stan couldn’t really tell the difference between it and the rest of the house, but there was, at least, an armchair there, covered in a heap of papers and books. Ford haphazardly stacked them nearby while Stan untangled the length of rope Ford had found on top of a bookcase, along with a dead houseplant, a pair of wire cutters, and what looked like a human skull. Stan hadn’t asked any questions.

“So,” he said, as Ford dusted off the chair-a fairly useless endeavor- “does, um, Bill...he doesn’t have, you know, super strength or anything? He’s not gonna just bust outta this rope, is he?”

Ford dropped down into the chair. “No. Bill is essentially limited to the constraints of the body he is possessing.”

Stan raised his eyebrows. “Essentially?”

Ford looked away, working his jaw and refusing to meet Stan’s eyes.

“Bill is...not deterred by pain or...other sensations,” Ford said at last. “He can still feel it, but he is not, erm, particularly bothered by it. In fact he...he finds pain to be...interesting. Amusing, even.” He took a deep breath and hurried on. “I haven’t exactly been able to extensively test this, but my, er, belief is that he would therefore be able to...push beyond limits that I could not. But he is still fundamentally unable to do anything that I would physically be incapable of.”

“Ford,” Stan said, cutting off Ford’s rambling before it could really get going. “Is this...does this have to do with why you’re out of bandages?”

Ford didn’t reply for so long that Stan began to wonder if he had fallen asleep with his eyes open.

But finally he said, in a voice so low it was barely audible,“Bill...enjoys inflicting various minor injuries on me when he is in control. Mostly just for his own entertainment, but sometimes...sometimes to make a point.”

Stan clenched his fists and ground his teeth until his jaw ached. He could feel the same old anger that had always swallowed him when he saw someone trying to hurt Ford, that had gotten him more detentions and reprimands and bloody noses than he could count because when Ford was in danger Stan went in swinging without a second thought. He’d never regretted it either, no matter the consequences, no matter what punishment Stan took for Ford, no matter if even Ford himself was angry at him afterward. None of that mattered, because no one hurt Ford on Stan’s watch and that was the end of it.

But now he didn’t know what to do. There was nowhere to put that anger, no target to lash out at. He didn’t even really know if this was anything other than a byproduct of some illness, some delusion that had driven Ford to hurt himself.

“Stan,” Ford said. “It’s alright.”

“It’s not alright,” Stan ground out. “Nothing’s alright.”

Ford sighed. “Well...regardless, there’s nothing to be done about it at the moment. It’s a minor problem, really.”

“Only you, Ford,” Stan muttered, twisting the rope around his hands. “Only you would call this a minor problem.”

“It is a minor problem compared to the other problems at the moment.” Ford finally looked up and met Stan’s eyes. “I’m...I’m more concerned that he does not hurt you again.”

Stan didn’t really know what to say to that.

“Now, if you would, please,” Ford said.

Stan sighed and crossed over to the armchair.

“Now listen,” Ford said as Stan tied his arms behind the chair, doing his best to make the binds gentle but still effective, “I’m sure that Bill will try to trick you in some way. He’s a master of manipulation and trickery. So it is vitally important that you do not trust anything he says and above all do not make a deal with him! Do not shake his hand! No matter how harmless it might seem, it will certainly be a trap. Don’t engage with him at all if you can help it, in fact. Maybe you should gag me as well,” he added as an afterthought.

Stan rolled his eyes. “I’m not gonna gag you, Ford. This is weird enough already.”

“Stan, the weirdness of the situation is inconsequential if it could thwart Bill’s plans!”

Stan groaned and checked the knots before moving on to tying Ford’s legs. “Okay. Is the very real possibility of you throwing up again consequential?”

“...I can put up with that if need be.”

“Yeah, well I’m not gonna. Look, Ford, I’m not making any deals with anyone, okay? I know something about liars, ya know?”

Ford grumbled vaguely. “Maybe, but Bill’s powers of persuasion are-”

“Ah, shut up and tell me if these knots are tight enough.”

Ford struggled valiantly, but the knots held to Stan’s satisfaction.

“You’re quite good at this,” Ford muttered.

“Yeah, well. Life of crime and all that.”

In point of fact, most of what Stan knew about tying knots came from their old days of working on the Stan o’ War, but he didn’t feel like bringing that up right now.

“Alright,” he said, coming out from behind the chair. “You...uh...comfortable?”

“As much as I think I could be in this situation.”

Stan put some blankets over him. It almost made the whole setup look normal.

“So uh, is there like...some way I can tell for sure if, you know, it’s him and not you?” he said as he took Ford’s glasses off and put them on top of the nearest pile of stuff. In truth, he didn’t think he really needed it; that too-wide grin and grating voice and overall sense of wrong would be pretty damn difficult to miss, especially once he was watching for it. But maybe it would make Ford stop panicking about Stan making some kind of a deal with the devil. Or at least, make him panic a bit less.

Ford stared at him.

“What?” Stan said.

“You...you didn’t notice?”

“Notice what?” He was starting to get a bit unnerved by the way Ford was looking at him.

“My eyes. In the kitchen, you didn’t...you didn’t see…?”

“What-oh, you mean the bleeding? Yeah, of course, but that didn’t happen until after-”

“No, not the bleeding! My eyes!” Ford was starting to sound almost frantic. “You didn’t notice anything about my eyes while Bill was-was-”

Stan shrugged. “Uh, well, I guess I did think they looked a bit weird, but I couldn’t really tell…”

“Stan, when Bill is...is in control of someone, their eyes always appear yellow, with slitted pupils. It’s...you really didn’t see that? At all?”

“It was dark, okay? And I was bit distracted, you know? I’m sorry!”

Stupid stupid stupid just like you just like always you never notice anything important you never get things right-

Ford blinked. “Stan, I’m not...it’s not…” He swallowed, and for the first time Stan realized that the look on Ford’s face was closer to horror than anger.

“You really didn’t know, did you?” he said. “You really...you really must have thought that...that was me.”

“Well...well, yeah, Ford, I thought you...I mean, I told you that.”

He couldn’t quite figure out the look on Ford’s face. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

“Stan…”

“Oh, go to sleep already.” Stan turned away and began clearing out a space on the floor. “Tell me if you need anything.”

There was a heavy silence for a time.

“If this were much prolonged,” Ford muttered, startling Stan into knocking a whole stack of books over, “the balance of my nature might be permanently overthrown…the power of voluntary change be forfeited.”

“What,” Stan said.

“Nothing. I was just thinking…” Ford yawned heavily. “...thinking about...Jekyll and Hyde.”

Stan rolled his eyes and went back to stacking.

“You know, the thing about Dr. Jekyll...” Ford said a moment later, “the thing about Dr. Jekyll…”

When there was no apparent follow-up to this Stan turned just in time to see Ford’s eyes close and his chin fall to his chest. He assumed that was the end of it, but as he looked away Ford spoke again, in a sleep-heavy mumble so low Stan could barely make it out.

“The thing about Dr. Jekyll was...he brought his curse on himself.”

Stan waited for a while, but Ford said nothing more.

Stan himself was achingly tired, but though he laid out the remaining pillows and blankets into something halfway comfortable, he had no real intention of sleeping. He couldn’t, really, not with the imminent promise of a reappearance from Bill hanging over him.

He wanted nothing less than to ever see that mocking facsimile of his brother again, but he knew he had to at some point. He had to know what was he was up against, what Bill really was, if there really was something supernatural at work or if this was all some strange sick delusion of Ford’s.

He had to know, before he could sleep, before he could do anything else, if it had really been Ford holding the knife all along.

He expected a long wait, but Ford had only been dozing for a few minutes when his head snapped up so suddenly that Stan jumped.

“Well, isn’t this cute!” Bill-and it was Bill, whatever Bill was, oh yes, because there was that grin- twisted and thrashed about, but the knots held firm. “You’re actually trying to stop me! Or did you just get tired of dealing with ol’ Fordsy and decide to put him out of the way?”

Stan wanted to either flee the room on the spot or punch Bill again, but instead stood up and flicked on the overhead light. He had to get much closer to that grinning face than he wanted to make out the eyes. Damn his lousy eyesight anyway.

Ford’s pupils had contracted down to long slits like the eyes of a rattlesnake, and the usual warm brown had turned a bright, bright yellow.

The sight made something cold zap down Stan’s spine. He tried to think if he’d heard of anything-a drug or a sickness or something-that could make someone’s eyes change like that, but he had a sinking feeling that there was no such thing.

Well. Shit.

“Well, I guess I can’t fool you anymore!” Bill said cheerfully, and Stan drew back at once. “Good job! Brownie points for you! You’ve found out that I am not really your brother! Honestly, I was started to wonder how long it’d take you to notice, whew-”

“Uh-huh.” There was a lamp nearby that had been knocked onto the floor at some point but was still plugged in. Stan put it up on a box next to the chair and turned it on. The warm glow cast a better light on Ford’s face than the watery overhead light, and it grated less against the pounding headache he had picked up somewhere along the way.

“Buuuuuut that doesn’t mean you and I can’t still be friends,” Bill went on as Stan settled back in his spot. “I know, I know, I tried to kill you, but look-that was ages ago, and anyway, what’s a little murder between friends?”

“We’re not friends,” Stan snapped before he could stop himself. Dammit, Stan, don’t banter with the demon.

“But we could be!” Bill finally stopped twisting around against the ropes and fixed Stan with his spotlight stare. “Look, let’s have a talk, you and me, huh? I’m sure your beloved brother probably told you all kinds of terrible things about me. But why should you trust him? I mean really, after all this time, you think he has your best interests at heart?”

“Not listening,” Stan muttered, pointedly looking away. “Do-de-do, not paying attention to the creepy demon guy…”

“Aw, c’mon, there’s no need to be like that,” Bill said. “Listen, maybe I missed the mark earlier with that whole being forgiven thing. That’s not what you want? I got more! Did I mention wealth? Power? Fame and fortune?”

“Yeah,” Stan said. “You did mention all that.”

“So? All you gotta do is throw your lot in with me instead of your dumb brother. That oughta be easy, right? He betrayed you! Threw you to the curb, left you in the lurch, flicked you off like a scab and left you to rot for ten years! He only called you here so you could do something for him! Why would you turn around and help him now, huh?”

Stan gripped the edge of a pillow and looked away.

“Oh! Ohhhhhh!” From the corner of his eye Stan saw the glaring yellow eyes widen in realization. “I get it! You don’t want to reconcile-you want revenge! That’s what it is, isn’t it? You wanna get back at him for everything he cost you! Well that’s easy! No problem! Hey, I’ll even give you a free sample! You can punch him right now! No charge, no deal required, c’mon, it’s on the house!”

Bill raised Ford’s chin and waggled his eyebrows at Stan in a come-and-get-it expression that made Stan’s skin crawl.

He could see a black eye forming where he had punched Ford-no, Bill-earlier. By the looks of it it was going to be a beauty.

“Hey,” he said. “You know what I want?”

Bill dropped his chin and grinned. “Oh, I know a great many things, Stanley. But I’ll bite. What do you want?”

“It’s not money.”

“No?”

“It’s not power.”

“Really?”

“Not fame either, I definitely don’t need that.”

“Well, what is it?” Bill snapped. “You gonna tell me or what?”

Stan finally looked him right in the eye. “I want you to get the fuck out of my brother and haul ass back to whatever slimy hellhole you crawled out of in the first place.”

For a moment Bill simply stared at him with total incomprehension. Then the anger hit his stolen face like a lightning strike.

Bill tilted Ford’s head back and screamed, a high, horrible, throat-tearing sound of pure fury.

Stan waited it out, smiling tightly.

He’d been afraid. Not that he would have admitted it, but truthfully, he’d been terrified, terrified of once again encountering that nightmare of Ford, terrified that he was going to see that looming shadow at the back of his mind made manifest and this time discover that it had been real all along.

But it...wasn’t. Bill resembled that nightmare, but only in the same way he resembled Ford himself: a shallow mockery that was easily exposed. He might have said some of the same things Stan had dreaded over the years, but it sounded brittle and fake coming from him, with none of the dark weight that that nightmare brought with it.

And besides...Bill had given up. Bill was screaming and frothing in anger and that wasn’t like the nightmare at all. The nightmare never got angry. It didn’t have to, because it never lost.

“YOU PATHETIC, INSIGNIFICANT MEATBAG!” Bill raged. “WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON YOU I’LL STRING YOUR SUFFERING OUT FOR MILLENNIA! YOU’RE GOING TO WISH YOU COULD DIE!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Stan muttered, reaching for his bag. “Heard that one before.”

“YOU’VE NEVER HEARD ANYTHING LIKE ME BEFORE YOU DISGUSTING LITTLE STICK OF FLESH! I CAN DO THINGS THAT WOULD MAKE YOUR MIND CURDLE LIKE ROTTEN MILK-”

The contents of the bag were a jumbled mess, and it took Stan an earsplitting minute or two of rifling before he pulled out the Walkman. He’d stolen it from some rich asshole that had pushed him into a gutter while he was panhandling, intending only to get some revenge and quick cash, but he’d wound up liking the thing too much to give it up. Stupid, really-it would have been more sensible to sell it. Music wouldn’t put gas in your car or food in your stomach, after all. Hell, sometimes it stole your girlfriend.

But it was...nice. A small luxury to hang on to.

He put the headphones in, cranked the volume up all the way, and grinned triumphantly as Bill’s ranting was drowned out by Queen.

A master of manipulation and trickery, huh? Well, Bill would have to step up his game if he wanted to take in Stan Pines.

The demon kept it up for a while, but by the end of the second track he was clearly flagging. When the noise finally died out about halfway through-appropriately enough-Sheer Heart Attack, Stan looked up to see Bill glaring at him, chest heaving with exertion. There was blood trickling from Ford’s eye again, and saliva dribbling from the corners of his mouth.

For a moment Bill just sat there, furiously gasping for breath, and then at long last he slumped forward and went still.

Stan waited briefly to see if this was going to last, and when it seemed like it was, he walked over and gently lifted one of Ford’s eyelids. Beneath was a bloodshot but otherwise normal brown eye.

He let out a breath and went to dig up a box of kleenex he’d seen earlier.

Ford blinked once while Stan was wiping the mess off his face and let out a quiet, slurred, “Stan?”

“It’s alright,” Stan said. “Go back to sleep.”

“Mmpfh,” Ford mumbled, and promptly dropped off again.

Stan tossed the bloody tissues away and went back to his makeshift bed. He meant to stay awake, to keep watch in case Bill tried anything else, but the little circle of lamplight was still and quiet and warm in the wake of the little space heater, and it had, after all, been a tremendously long day…

Chapter Text

Ford was fairly sure that getting some sleep after a long period of not getting hardly any sleep at all was supposed to make you feel better. That was only rational, wasn't it? Very scientifically sound.

So for him to wake up feeling worse- quite possibly worse than he had ever felt in his life- didn't make any sense, and honestly felt like a terrible injustice.

Absolutely everything ached, but most especially his head, which was pounding abominably, and his chest, which felt...wrong, but he wasn’t entirely sure why. Also, someone seemed to have dismantled his sinuses and reassembled them with a rusty wrench, he was somehow managing to feel hot and cold at the same time, and his stomach was tossing restlessly even though he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten.

Come to think of it, maybe that was why he felt nauseous.

He cataloged these symptoms one by one. Data points, building toward an unpleasant but unavoidable hypothesis: he was sick. More sick than he could afford to be right now.

He was also in an odd and uncomfortable position, but when he tried to shift out of it, something restrained him. Strange. He tried again; there was definitely something binding his arms and legs.

His eyes flew open in panic.

Several terribly urgent facts were suddenly clamoring for his attention. He was tied up. He had fallen asleep, which he absolutely could not do right now. There was someone asleep on the floor in front of him. And, judging by how difficult it was to make out who was asleep on his floor, he was missing his glasses.

Wait. No. That was Stan. Stan was...why was he here? How was he here? Had he been the one to tie Ford up? Why? Was this all part of some dastardly criminal scheme-

No. Hold on…

Ford took a deep breath-which was for some reason harder than it would normally be-and tried to think through things calmly.

It was...difficult. Trying to remember the recent past felt like trying to remember a dream. It came back to him in snapshots, bright clear moments standing out against a blurred fog of emotions and actions all smeared together like watercolors.

Stan had gotten here yesterday. Yes. He remembered that, the desperate panic of a stranger confronting him at his doorstep, followed by the shock of realizing that for the first time in ten years, he was looking at his brother.

And...he had threatened said brother with a crossbow? Hmm. Well, that had probably made sense at the time.

They had gone downstairs. To the lab. To the portal. Stan was supposed to take the journal and go, and then Ford could...could...could do whatever it was he was planning to do next. There had to be something. Yes. He’d think of it soon.

But that hadn’t happened. Because...because they’d fought. He couldn’t remember exactly how it had started, only that there had been shouting and shoving and...and…

And Stan had gotten hurt. Stan, staring at him with blood running down his face and a terrifyingly blank look in his eyes and oh God had he done that? Had he-

No. No. That was later. It had to be, because they weren’t downstairs anymore, they were in the kitchen. Why were they in the kitchen? He didn't know, he couldn't remember, one moment simply cut to the next like a bad film. Had they fought again? Had he-no, surely he would remember, if he had done something like that…

The realization hit him and sunk like a rock into his stomach. Bill. Bill had gone after Stan. Which meant it had been Ford, in a way. It had been him advancing on his brother, his hand holding the knife. His long list of mistakes that had let up to that moment.

His fault.

He could see blurry spots of red scattered across the grimy white of Stan's t-shirt. He blinked a few times, hoping they were some illusion of his tired eyes, but they remained.

Why was Stan still here? Why would he stay in a house with someone who had attacked him? Why would he not run, as soon as he saw what his brother had become?

He didn’t remember. He wasn’t even sure if there was anything there to remember, if he had ever known to begin with.

They had...talked, afterward. That was all a blur, but he thought he'd explained things to Stan. He couldn’t remember exactly what. Probably he had said more than he should have. The thought of sharing his secrets, his shame, made his skin crawl, but he had a sinking feeling he had done just that. He'd had to. He'd had to explain, to make his brother understand that it wasn't him, not really, that the words Bill had forced out of his mouth had not truly come from him, because he knew he was a monster but he couldn't bear the way Stan kept looking at him, like Ford had broken something inside him.

He couldn't fix it. He couldn't fix it, but Stan was still here.

He’d...tied Ford up, at Ford’s insistence, so that Bill couldn’t hurt him again. Right. So that Ford could sleep. Stupid. Weak. He should have been able to stay awake, should have been able to convince Stan to leave before something worse happened.

None of this should ever have happened in the first place.

He stared blearily at his twin, passed out in a nest of blankets on the floor. Stan was clutching that grungy red jacket to his chest like a security blanket, muttering slightly in his sleep. The makeshift bandage had slipped loose at some point, revealing a glaring red slash half-hidden under the long, tangled hair.

Stan had said something about that, hadn’t he? Complaining about his haircut. The comment left a mark in Ford’s memory. He’d been angry, so angry that Stan could even think about whining about something so petty after everything Ford had been through, and wasn’t that just like Stan, anyway, to only care about his problems, no matter how small they were. Just like he had only cared about his stupid childhood treasure-hunting dream and not anything that mattered to anyone else. Why had he even bothered to bring Stan here, why had he ever thought that he could trust his brother when it was obvious that he would only ruin everything all over again over some kind of petty grudge?

Looking back on it, now, he could remember the anger. Remembered how it felt, surging out of control and carrying him along with it like a volcanic eruption, furious, incandescent. He couldn’t feel it now.

Stan had said something else, hadn’t he? Something before that, something that seemed like it might be important, now, but he couldn’t remember it. It was lost in the fog, the underwater sensation that seemed to consume all of his recent memories.

Nothing made sense. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Stan wasn’t supposed to be like this. He was supposed to be doing well. Stan was a cheater, a liar, and he was good at it. He could wriggle his way out of anything. People liked him. Or at least, they liked him more than they'd ever liked Ford.

Stan should be some kind of criminal mastermind by now. Should have taken that willingness to trample on anyone who got in his way and ridden it all the way to the top. Should have contacts and resources and piles of illicit cash and whatever else it was that successful crooks had.

He should not have looked tired and wrung-out, should not have faint dark circles under his eyes and a sallow look to his face, should not have been wearing old and filthy clothes and driving the same car he'd had ten years ago.

Should not have cared enough to stay and help someone who had pushed him away, who had insulted him, who had laid his face open and laughed about it.

I'll make it on my own! I don't need you! I don't need anybody! he'd said, and Ford had taken him at his word.

It was a tendency of his that had lately shown itself to be a problem.

He sighed, at which point something caught in his chest and made him cough.

Stan had always slept like a log, often snoring away straight through not only their alarm clock but most of Ford's attempts to rouse him in time for school. On various occasions he had proven capable of sleeping through thunder, hail, sirens, their dad yelling, and Ford accidentally knocking a stack of twelve hardback books off of his desk at three in the morning.

So he had absolutely no expectation that the mild noise he had just made would be enough to wake Stan, let alone cause him to instantly spring up and hastily scan the room.

It was strange and painful to watch, one more thing that wasn't right.

Unfortunately, his surprise at this caused him to start coughing more severely, which in turn made him realize that his throat was aching a great deal as well. Stan's gaze latched on to him and he seemed to relax for a split second before his eyes promptly widened again in realization.

“Oh, shit-I didn't mean to fall asleep on ya, Ford, I'm sorry.” He hastily brushed his hair back out of his face, stood up with a groan, and shuffled over to the chair. Ford meant to say something reassuring, but all that came out was more coughing.

Stan leaned over him for a moment, squinting, before nodding to himself. It took Ford a moment to realize that Stan was checking his eyes. So he did occasionally remember something Ford told him, after all. He almost felt proud.

He finally managed to catch his breath. Everything hurt even more now.

“Eeesh,” Stan muttered, giving him a worried look. “That sounded pretty nasty.”

“I'm alright,” Ford said, or at least, he attempted to. Nothing came out but a hoarse rasp. He cleared his throat and tried again, with barely any more success.

Stan's concerned expression was deepening by the second. “You lose your voice? Or-oh. Oh, shit.”

Being evidently bereft of the power of speech for the moment, Ford settled for raising his eyebrows questioningly.

Stan looked oddly shamefaced. “I think I know...it was, um, Bill, last night. He kinda...screamed at me for a pretty long time. I just sorta let him wear himself out....I should have stopped him, I'm sorry.”

The impact of what he was saying took a moment to sink in. Bill had been screaming at Stan for...how long? Long enough to have a physiological impact hours later, evidently.

He felt sick.

“Here, let me get you untied and then we can get you some water or something.” Stan bent down and began to work on the ropes binding Ford's wrists.

It took Ford several tries, but as Stan finally pulled the binds free he managed to whisper, “Are you...alright?”

Stan leaned around the chair and gave him an incredulous look. “Am I alright?”

“Bill...what'd he say...?”

“Oh, that.” Stan shrugged like suffering extensive verbal abuse from a malevolent dream demon with powers beyond human ken was no big deal, and started untying the rope around Ford's legs. “Pretty much what you'd expect, really. Wanted me to join forces with him. Offered money, power, revenge, all that stuff.” He didn't seem to notice the strangled noise this prompted from Ford. “Anyway, I told him to fuck off.”

Ford managed to make a incoherent high-pitched noise that was supposed to have been “You WHAT?” but only resulted in a violent outbreak of coughing. Stan hesitated and then hopefully thumped him on the back a few times. It didn't do much good.

“Y...you told...Bill...” Ford finally managed to gasp.

“Yeah, that was when the screaming started. He didn't take it real well. I just put some music on and waited it out.” He grimaced and looked away. “Shit, Ford, I didn't realize how much that was gonna hurt you later...”

“N...no, no...” Ford shook his head as vehemently as he could manage without making the pain unbearably worse; which was to say, not much. Despite everything, he found himself grinning giddily. His brother had told Bill Cipher to fuck off.

“Th' was...worth it.,” he rasped. “Worth it.”

Stan offered several times to bring him anything he wanted, but Ford insisted on trying to make it to the kitchen anyway. He had less than charitable feelings towards that armchair at the moment, and anyway, he hated feeling like an invalid.

Of course, having to lean on Stan just to make it from the living room to the kitchen did not exactly make him feel less like an invalid, but at least when he was finally sitting upright at the kitchen table he could pretend that he was somewhere in the ballpark of normal health, even if Stan promptly wrapped a blanket around him.

Maybe it was just the lack of sleep affecting him like this, coupled with Bill abusing his body. He'd been distracted, not doing a good job of taking care of himself. That was probably all it was. Nothing to be too alarmed about.

Stan poured him a glass of water and then, apparently struck by a thought, muttered, “Be right back,” and left. Ford sipped at the water cautiously; it hurt to swallow, and it didn't go down too well on his stomach, but it was worth it. He hadn't realized how parched he was. He felt like he had been wrung out, everything in him drained out and evaporated away.

The tiny red dots on the linoleum kept drawing his eye, but he forced himself to look away.

He wondered idly what time it was. The light coming in from the window had a pale, thin early morning feel, but that could have been a trick of the cold winter sky and the snow piled up outside. He couldn't really even remember the last time he had had a good sense of time anyway; it had slipped underwater, like everything else.

Stan returned with one of Ford's notebooks and a pen. “Here,” he said, laying them down on the table. “This was the least important-looking one I could find.”

Ford shot him a questioning look.

“To write on?” Stan said. “So you don't have to keep trying to talk?”

Oh. Oh. That...was a good idea, actually. He rifled through the notebook to make sure of its contents; it was indeed one of his less important ones, mostly containing to-do lists and daily notes and the occasional doodles or bits of an equation. He gave Stan a thumbs up.

“Cool.” Stan smiled, just a little bit. “Okay, anything I can get you?”

Ford turned to the first blank page, turned the notebook on its side, and wrote COFFEE in giant letters that took up the whole page. Then he underlined it a few times, just for good measure.

Stan groaned and rolled his eyes.

“Some things never change,” he said. “I'd say coffee probably isn't the best thing for you right now, but I have a feeling I'd wind up on the business end of that crossbow.”

Ford glared at him.

“Eeesh. If looks could kill.” Stan turned away and began rifling through the cupboards. Ford was about to tell him where the coffee was, before he realized that he actually had no idea. Any sense of organization his house had ever had had been pretty thoroughly lost by this point.

“Jeez, Ford,” Stan said, opening the third cupboard in a row and finding not much of anything in it, “when was the last time you went shopping? I'm homeless and even I think this is pretty pathetic.”

Ford very nearly spit water all the way across the kitchen.

Stan turned with a frown at the sudden noises Ford was making. “What? You alright?”

“Homeless?” Ford croaked.

Stan sighed heavily and turned back to the cabinet. “...Use your notebook, Ford, you sound like a dying crow.”

Ford picked up the pen and turned to a new page, but he didn't really know what to write.

In a way, he supposed he'd known. Or he would have, if he had ever let himself think about it. After all, the whole reason he had called on Stan to hide the journal was because Stan was well-traveled, familiar with shady locations of the sort Ford couldn't even imagine. Stan had been all over. Stan would know somewhere safe to hide the valuable information.

Well-traveled sounded a lot better than homeless. Been all over was more palatable than living out of his car.

Eventually he scribbled but you had an address and held it up.

Stan glanced over at him and laughed a little. “That was a motel, Ford. I was just laying low there for a bit until...well, never mind.” He frowned. “Hey, I been meaning to ask you, how'd you get that address anyway? I thought I'd been covering my tracks pretty well.”

Ford started to write there's this mailbox, before deciding that going into depth about his interactions with a passive-aggressive all-knowing-but-definitely-not-all-telling mailbox that he'd found in the middle of the woods was more than he was up for just now, so he crossed that out and just wrote magic underneath it.

Stan stared at the word for a good few seconds before shrugging and muttering, “Alright, sure, whatever. Why not.”

He turned back to the cupboards. “Anyway, yeah, I dunno what to tell you, bro. I kinda figured you knew. I mean, what did you think I was doing all this time?”

Ford hesitated.

The words came back, unbidden, a blaring distorted voice and a wash of radioactive yellow like acid pouring into his head and drowning out his thoughts.

WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO KNOW A THING LIKE THAT?

He shrugged and turned the old, cracked photo over in his hands. It was very late at night and he'd been working for a long time. “I just...think about him sometimes, you know. It'd be nice to know how he's doing. I guess.”

The image of Bill floated down to rest on the desk in front of him. LISTEN, SIXER, YOU DON'T NEED TO GO CONCERNING YOURSELF WITH HIM ANYMORE. HE'LL JUST DRAG YOU DOWN ALL OVER AGAIN. YOU'RE BETTER THAN THAT. IT'S TIME FOR YOU TO FOCUS ON WHAT'S IMPORTANT, DON'T YOU THINK?

“Yes...yes, you're right.” Of course he was right. Bill always was.

Still...

HEY, LISTEN. I'LL TELL YOU THIS MUCH, ALRIGHT? Bill tapped the underside of Ford's chin with his cane. He knew there was nothing really there, but he felt a ghostly touch all the same, a faint brush of cold. Psychosomatic, perhaps. YOUR BROTHER'S NOT DONE ANYTHING GOOD FOR THIS WORLD SINCE YOU GOT RID OF HIM, AND HE NEVER WILL. HE'S SPENT ALL THIS TIME CHEATING AND CONNING AND STEALING WHATEVER HE COULD GET. YOU WERE RIGHT TO DITCH HIM.

Images flashed across Bill's eye: Stan, lifting someone's wallet; Stan playing poker in some dingy backroom, cards hidden up his sleeve; Stan in a holding cell, unshaven and glaring; Stan shaking someone's hand with a cheesy grin and laughing as they walked away; Stan fingering his brass knuckles and snarling-

Ford looked away.

THERE, YOU SEE? THERE'S NO SENSE WORRYING ABOUT HIM ANYMORE. HE'S NOT WORTH YOUR TIME. YOU'RE THE IMPORTANT ONE, IQ, YOU ALWAYS WERE. YOU KNOW THAT, RIGHT?

“Right,” Ford said. “Yes. I know.”

He knew. Bill could see everything. If Bill said that Stan had turned out to be a worthless criminal, that must have been the case. If Bill said there was no point in thinking about Stan, he wouldn't think about Stan.

Bill wouldn't lie to him-

His fingers were clenched around his glass and Stan was staring at him and he didn't know how long he'd been sitting there staring at nothing.

“I thought...” The words came out barely audible. He swallowed hard and tried again. “I thought...you were doing alright.”

His voice sounded awful and hollow and useless and Stan was looking at him the incredulity he deserved and he wanted to say something about how everything had made so much sense when Bill had explained it to him but he knew he could never find the words.

“Well,” Stan said. “I guess even you don't know everything, huh.”

Ford looked away.

The silence in the room was unbearable.

“Sooooo,” Stan said, after approximately an eternity, “I hate to tell ya this...mostly because of that whole 'crossbow' thing...but I think you're uh. Out of coffee.”

Ford groaned and dropped his head onto the table with a thunk.

Maybe he'd actually been in Hell this whole time. It would explain a lot.

Stan tapped him on the back of the head with something. “Hey. Will this do instead? For now?”

He raised his head just enough to see Stan waving a battered box of Earl Gray in his face with a faintly amused expression. “I know it's not coffee, but it's all I can find. Might go down easier anyway.”

Ford sighed, nodded, and planted his face on the table again.

He sat like that for a while, listening to Stan fill the kettle and put it on the stove. The tabletop was cool and dark and faintly soothing. Eventually, though, he started to get a crick in his neck and had to sit up.

The kettle began to sing. Stan dumped all the remaining teabags into the pot and poured the water off. Something about this seemed strange, but it took Ford a while to figure out why.

“When-” he started to say, but Stan cut him off with a look and a chastising finger. Ford rolled his eyes and wrote when did you learn to make tea?

Stan leaned over and looked at the paper. “Oh, that. Worked at this cafe for a while. Kinda pretentious, but not a bad gig, really...even got leftovers from the bakery sometimes. Didn't last real long, of course, eventually they found out about my “criminal past”and then it was out the door.”

He poured tea into a mug and put it on the table in front of Ford. “I'd ask if you wanted milk or sugar, but you kinda don't have either.”

Ford stared at the dark surface of the tea and tried to imagine Stan working in a cafe. He was not successful.

Stan sat down across from him with an old box of Nilla Wafers. Ford had an uncomfortable feeling that it was probably one of the only edible things left in the kitchen.

“You hungry?” Stan asked, tilting the box toward him.

Ford shook his head. Just the thought of eating was unpleasant at the moment.

“Yeah, kinda didn't think so. I'm half-starved, though, so hope you don't mind if I finish these. I think they're stale anyway.”

They sat there for a few minutes, Stan softly crunching his way through the remains of the box and Ford sipping at his tea. He couldn't really taste it, but it did feel good on his throat.

“So, uh. Listen,” Stan said eventually. “I've...kinda been thinking.”

He winced a little as soon as he said it, as if he expected a harsh response to this. Ford just looked at him.

“About...about your plan. I mean, about what you want me to do.” Stan tapped the cookie box against the table nervously. “It's just...there's a couple things...”

Should have known should have known of course he's not going to do what you want why would you trust him why would you think this was ever going to work you idiot-

Ford took a long sip of tea and tried to ignore the fear and desperate anger spreading slow and viscous across his thoughts like cold mercury. He said nothing.

“I, well, I really don't want to just leave you like this,” Stan said, almost pleadingly. “I mean-”

“I can handle myself,” Ford rasped before he could stop himself.

“Goddammit, Ford, this isn't about that!” Stan snapped. “If I-if I left you here, now, I don't think I'd ever see you again! And I...I don't know if I can handle that.”

The words lodged neatly in between the gears of Ford's thought process and ground the entire thing to an abrupt halt.

He...didn't want to die, of course not, but he had been starting to accept it. He had gone up against something unimaginably powerful, and the likelihood of affecting any remotely meaningful victory against it felt flimsier and more foolish every day. The likelihood of coming out of it alive felt like some kind of child's fantasy, a storybook ending, not for real life. At best, he hoped that he might be able to stymie this particular plan of Bill's-he had to hope for that, had to hold on to that thought to be able to push forward, but he knew that even if he was successful at opposing Bill on any scale, he would not do so without consequences.

And that was...well, hardly preferable, but that was the way it was. He had brought this on himself. He had started it, and one way or another he had to finish it-or more accurately, perhaps, it was going to finish him. He couldn't even complain that it wasn't fair. It was perfectly fair.

He could accept that. It had never once occurred to him that someone else might not.

Who, after all, was going to mourn him? He'd alienated everyone he'd ever known, abandoned Stan, pushed away Fiddleford...even his parents rarely called anymore, now that it seemed unlikely that he was going to bring in any substantial fortune. He'd lived in Gravity Falls for six years, but he had no friends there, knew barely anyone by name. The best ending he could foresee was that the world kept right on turning when he was gone, not noticing, not caring a whit about his absence, but still, at least, turning.

But Stan was staring at him, hands shaking, eyes wide with some frantic fear, and it didn't make any sense because Stan wasn't supposed to react like this. Stan wasn't supposed to worry about him. Stan wasn't supposed to care if he never saw Ford again because why would he, why would anyone-

“Look, I just...I want to help, okay?” Stan said quietly. “I know you just want me to take the book and go, but...but...Ford, you're up against a demon and right now you can barely make it from one room to the other...you're sick, and hurt, and-and-and...I mean, what are you going to do? Even if you make it up to that cave-somehow-you're just hoping you'll find something. What if you don't? What then?”

Ford looked down at the paper for a long time before picking up the pen.

Dead end, he wrote.

Stan's face went white as he read the words. His jaw worked convulsively for a moment before he said, “So that's it? You're just gonna give up?”

Ford shrugged. No other options left. Best thing I can do is make sure no one can operate the portal so Bill can't use it to cross into our dimension. If that happens...

“Yeah, yeah, end of the world as we know it.” Stan leaned back and stared glumly at the notebook. “So you gotta scatter the instructions to your doomsday device across the corners of the globe, yadda yadda, you know it doesn't friggin' work like that, right?”

Ford blinked at him and drew a question mark.

Stan sighed heavily. “Okay. Lemme...lemme see if I can put this in Nerd.” He looked up at the ceiling for a moment and made a prbpbpbpbbpb noise. “Alright. Alright. You remember those books you used to go on about? Tolkien?”

Ford had been starting to think that nothing else Stan could say at this point would surprise him. Evidently he was wrong.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Stan said, taking in Ford's incredulous look. “You think I don't read. Look, just...never mind that right now. Point is...what'd they do with the Ring?”

Threw it into the fires of Mt. Doom-

“Yeah, yeah, they destroyed it, right? Cause it was too dangerous. But no one wanted to do it, did they? They said, look, let's hide it, let's drop it in the ocean-”

Ford saw what was coming and groaned loudly.

“-but they didn't, because they knew that wouldn't work in the long-term, right? Someone would find it eventually and everything would just happen all over again. They had to put an end to it. You want me to just go and hide this stuff, but that's...it's not gonna be enough, is it? As long as this portal is still around, it's dangerous, ain't it?”

I can't believe you just used Tolkien against me, Ford wrote irritably.

“Yeah, well...if the shoe fits, y'know. Anyway, to be perfectly honest...I'm not really sure why you think this is gonna be all that safe with me. I mean, where do you want me to go, Ford? I don't have a boat. I barely have a car right now. And I got plenty of people who want me dead, so all it's gonna take is one of them getting lucky and catching up to me and your instructions are in the definition of 'the wrong hands'.”

Ford didn't much want to think about that.

But Stan was right. He knew it. He hated it, but he knew it. As long as the portal existed, it could potentially be used for terrible things. As long as the instructions existed, they could be found, and read.

But even if he could destroy the portal himself (even if he was willing- no, he told himself, I am willing, I am), he couldn't risk trying to do so with Bill standing by ready to sabotage him, ready for him to falter into sleep just long enough to take control and flip the wrong switch, finish the sequence-

I can't dismantle the portal on my own, he wrote, with some difficulty; his hands seemed to be shaking all of the sudden. I have to make sure no one can operate it while I try to find a way to deal with Bill. But I can't destroy the instructions because I need them to dismantle the portal safely, and I can't dismantle the portal while Bill's-

“Ahh,” Stan said. “It's one of those problems.”

Ford nodded.

Stan rested his chin in his hands, looking gloomy. Then he looked up. “Hang on, didn't you have someone who was helping you with this thing? Can't he help take it apart?”

Ford blinked. He didn't remember telling Stan about Fiddleford. Just how much had he said last night?

I haven't seen him since he left the project, he wrote. I don't know if he's still around. He may have gone back to California.

“How long has it been?”

Ford hesitated, trying to work out just how long it had been. The pause stretched out for quite a while.

It was mid-January, he wrote eventually. He knew that much: he remembered writing the date in his journal. He'd been so excited.

“It's the fifteenth now,” Stan said. “Of February,” he added, when Ford gave him a blank look. “I remember 'cause when I was driving yesterday all I could get on the radio was stupid love songs.”

A month. It had been a month, more or less. It felt, somehow, both unbearably long and incomprehensibly short. He'd been starting to feel that he was trapped in some kind of eternal otherworld, that he would eventually emerge, like in the old fables, to find that centuries had passed and everyone he had ever known was long dead. But no. Only a month.

“So you haven't seen him,” Stan said. “How hard did you look, though? You know, while you were, uh, hanging out here in your creepy house in the woods, lacking any human contact?”

Ford glared at him, though admittedly it was a rather half-hearted attempt.

“Look, I'm just saying...do you know for sure he's gone?”

No, Ford had to admit. But even if he was still here, I doubt he wants anything to do with me. He tried to get me to stop the project and I refused and he paid the price-

“Whoa, whoa, hang on. He wanted you to stop the project?”

Ford nodded. He had reservations, but I ignored them until it was too late.

“Okay, okay, but if we could just get off the martyr train here for a minute,” Stan said irritably. “He wanted you to stop the project-and now you want to stop the project. Sounds like you're on the same page now. What makes you so sure he won't help?”

He was sure, he was sure, but he couldn't find the words. It was like trying to explain the certainty that if he jumped off a cliff he would fall.

He hates me, he wrote. What happened to him-how can he forgive that?

“Well,” Stan said. “That's what I've been thinking for ten years now. But, uh...here we are.”

Ford's pen scratched to a halt.

That's different, he finally managed to write.

“Yeah, sure,” Stan said. “But-okay, so maybe he does hate you. So what? I wasn't exactly fond of most of the people I've worked with, but I did the job anyway. We're talking about saving the world here, right? I'd say that's a pretty big motivator for him to come help out even if he never forgives you.”

Ford hesitated. It wouldn't work. There had to be a reason. But he couldn't quite come up with what it was.

“Look, here's...here's a plan.” Stan leaned forward and spread his hands out diplomatically. “You're out of, like, everything, and you probably need...I don't know, some kind of medicine, more bandages at least...so, so let's drive into town, and pick up stuff, and we can look for your assistant, alright? And if we find him we'll see what he says, cause...cause it can't hurt to try, right? I mean, if he completely hates you, he can't hate you any more for asking him to come back-”

Ford gave him an oh thanks very much look.

“-and if he doesn't completely hate you, maybe he'll help. Either way, what have you got to lose?” Stan went on, ignoring the look. “But at the very least we can rule out a possibility, and you can't really do much anyway right now-sorry, but you know I'm right-so it's not like you're really delaying anything. And if I do have to take off with the journal, I'll at least feel a lot better about it if you're not sittin' here sick and starving and everything...alright?”

Try as he might, Ford couldn't really come up with an argument against this. He nodded reluctantly.

Stan grinned in open relief. “Great. Better bring your wallet. I can only steal so much in one go.”

Ford sighed.

The notion of going into town-going among people-was fairly terrifying, and also made him consciously aware, for the first time in quite a while, of just how disgusting he felt. He couldn't remember the last time he'd showered, or even put on a clean shirt. The one he'd been wearing was starting to get quite decrepit. He managed to peel it off and tossed it vaguely in the bathtub, and stood in the cold bathroom for a long moment looking at himself in the mirror.

He'd been avoiding mirrors lately. Somewhere during the long waking nightmare he had began to fear what he might see in his reflection. He'd half-dreamed, half-hallucinated looking into the glass to see manic yellow eyes looking back-shadowy figures gathered behind him, watching, waiting-his face carved away by Bill's hand, exposed bone gleaming white-

What he saw now was not quite the stuff of nightmares, but it wasn't exactly pleasant either. His arms and chest were covered with the marks of Bill's amusement, old white scars and new red ones, and bandages dried stiff and dirty and peeling. His face looked hollow and sunken and not the sort of color human skin was really supposed to be, not to mention crawling with stubble. He scratched at it irritably; he'd always hated being unshaven, but he hadn't trusted himself to hold a blade to his face any time recently. His eyes were-not yellow, no, not yellow-bloodshot and drooping, and one of them had developed a magnificent, luridly purple swelling. Well, that explained why his glasses hadn't been sitting quite right.

Stan had punched him last night, hadn't he? No-not him. Bill. He didn't remember feeling it, but he remembered the apology afterward. Bill could do whatever he felt like, and Ford would always be the one to bear the consequences.

He splashed some cold water on his face, finger-combed his hair-it didn't help much-and peeled off the remaining bandages. There wasn't much else to be done right now. He was already feeling dizzy from just that much exertion. Proper hygiene would, apparently, just have to be put off until he could stand up straight for more than a minute at a time.

He stumbled back to his room and managed to put on a t-shirt and sweater that, if not exactly clean, were at least cleaner, and certainly warmer. Had it always been this cold in his house? Surely not. He tossed his trenchcoat on the bed and found a winter coat that was less stylish, but had fewer bloodstains on it.

Fishing around for a scarf in the landslide mess that had once been his closet, a sudden impulse made him grab two, along with an old sweater that had languished in the back on account of being too big for him. He didn't even remember where he'd gotten the thing; he had a vague notion that Fiddleford might have given it to him at some point, or maybe not.

Stan was waiting for him by the door in his knit cap and jacket. Ford wasn't sure which of the two of them looked less presentable. It might have been an even contest.

“You ready to- oofh!”

Stan glanced down at the bundle Ford had tossed at him. “What's this?”

“Sweater,” Ford whispered. His throat did feel a little better after the hot tea, but it was still easier to keep it low. “And scarf. It's too cold for just a t-shirt.”

Stan grumbled inarticulately, but to Ford's relief he pulled the sweater on without argument.

The drive to town was quiet and, by necessity, slow. The road was a mess, thus far untouched by any snow plows. Technically Ford lived on a county road, but service of any sort tended to come slowly to it. He wasn't sure if this had more to do with fear, personal dislike, or if the road crews had just forgotten it was there.

They passed Stan's car, still parked at the top of the road and now with a considerable pile of snow on top of it. Ford felt a strange pang looking at the old El Diablo.

The last time he had seen that car, Stan had been standing beside it, begging for his help.

He turned his head away and sunk a little into his seat.

He knew they had fought last night. He couldn't remember the words, but he could remember the feelings, remembered tackling Stan to the ground in rage and panic. Ten years gone by, and they had only been reunited for a few minutes before they were at each others' throats.

And now...Stan was still here, and they were not talking about it, not fighting, not throwing blows. But it wasn't gone. The air was thick with all the things that went unsaid from moment to moment, a decade's worth of resentment held back only with great effort.

He felt as if he were walking across a frozen lake, and only had to look down to see an infinity of black water below him, deathly cold and teeming with monsters. For now the ice held, but he could hear it creaking. Eventually it would crack.

“This assistant of yours,” Stan said, startling Ford out of his thoughts. “What's his name, anyway?”

“Oh...Fiddleford.”

Stan nearly veered off the road. “Fiddleford?”

“He's from Tennessee,” Ford said, somewhat lamely. “Anyway, we're not really in a position to talk, Stan.”

“...Fair enough,” Stan admitted after a moment. “Still...Fiddleford.”

He was still muttering to himself about this when they pulled into the Dusk 2 Dawn. There was a surprising amount of cars already there for this early in the morning. Or perhaps not so surprising; people in Gravity Falls seemed to have a pathological need to buy bread and milk whenever it snowed.

“You coming in?” Stan asked.

Ford handed him his wallet. “No. Coffee.”

“Mmm.” Stan opened the wallet and flipped through the bills. There were not too many of them. “...Why is there ash in your wallet?”

“I burned all the ones,” Ford muttered.

“...Alright. Alright, sure. Fine.” Stan closed the wallet and put it in one jacket pocket. “Back in a few.”

Ford wasn't sure quite how long “a few” actually turned out to be, but it was long enough that he was getting antsy-not to mention cold-by the time Stan finally came back out with a precarious arrangement of grocery bags and two paper coffee cups. He slid into the driver's seat, dropped the bags in the back, handed Ford one of the cups, and gave him a look.

“What?” Ford said.

“How long did you say you'd been living here?” Stan asked flatly.

“About six years.” He fumbled open the pop-tab on the lid of the cup and sipped at the coffee greedily. It was terrible, and scorched his mouth, but he didn't much care. “Why?”

“Six years,” Stan said slowly. “Do you want to tell me how it is that you've been living here for six years and you're still such a stranger that everyone in the store thought I was you?”

“Um. We're identical twins?”

“Not right now we aren't!” Stan made a broad gesture in the general direction of his face. “Honestly, Ford! The way they talked about you, people round here think you're like Dr. Frankenstein or something. They didn't even know your name! Do you ever talk to people?”

“Not if I can help it,” Ford muttered, before the subject of the conversation finally caught up to him. “Wait. People were talking about me?”

He had a sudden, horrible image of faces turning toward him, each with glowing yellow eyes-you can't run and you can't hide, Sixer- they'd caught up with him, this was it, they were going to come after him and then-

“Whoa, whoa, calm down, eesh.” Stan put a hand on his arm and Ford realized he'd started to shake. “It was nothing that bad. Mostly they were just curious what you do out there. Actually, some of them even said they'd pay you for a tour of the house.”

“What.”

“I said you'd think about it.”

“I will not!” Ford's voice nearly broke. “Why would you tell them that-”

Stan rolled his eyes. “You don't actually have to think about it, I just said that to make them leave me alone. People will take a 'maybe' a lot easier than they'll take a 'no.'”

He pulled an indeterminate packaged pastry out of the inside of his jacket, tore the wrapper open with his teeth, and took a bite.

“Anyway,” he said, his voice muffled with concentrated sugars, “I got you some rolls, and ginger ale and stuff, but they didn't really have a lot of food, or any of the medical stuff.” He swallowed noisily. “There a drugstore around here? Or should I even bother asking you, since apparently you don't actually live here-”

“There's a drugstore downtown,” Ford said huffily. “Near the grocery store.”

“There's a-of course there's a grocery store. Why did we not go to the grocery store in the first place?”

“Coffee,” Ford muttered.

Stan groaned and started the car. “You're impossible. Don't blame me if you throw up coffee all over your own car.”

Ford opted not to dignify that with a response.

Stan left Ford in the car to sulk over his coffee and shuffled into the drugstore while trying to keep as low a profile as possible. This was difficult when you had a conspicuous open wound on your face, and also apparently looked a lot like a popular cryptid, but he did his best.

He stocked up on bandages and antiseptic, and was going through various medicines trying to figure out the right thing to get-did demon possession mix badly with any medications? Should he be looking for warnings like do not take if you have made unholy covenants in the last 12 hours?-when someone said, “Stanford?”

For a moment he just sighed, preparing for a repeat of the whole Dusk 2 Dawn incident. Then the significance of the word sunk in.

Someone had called Ford by name.

He looked up.

He was being watched from halfway down the aisle by a weedy man with longish brown hair and the sort of face that was permanently nervous. Something about him put Stan in mind of a rabbit, ready to bolt at the slightest movement.

“Y...you're not...are you?” the man said. He had a high voice with a Southern twang. “Sorry, I thought you were someone I...actually I'm still not sure...this is very strange.” His fingers clenched compulsively around the bottle of NyQuil he was carrying. “You wouldn't be a hallucination, would you?”

“No, I don't think so,” Stan said slowly. If this was who he thought it was-all signs pointed to yes; how many people in a tiny Oregon town were likely to have a Tennessee accent?-then he need to tread carefully. “I'm Stanley Pines. Ford's brother?”

“Oh,” the man said. “You look...very much like him.”

“We're twins,” Stan explained.

“Oh. Oh, I see. I see.” The man's eyes flicked from side to side as if checking for escape routes. “Erm...what are you doing up in Gravity Falls, Stanley? If I may ask.”

“Ford called me up. I take it you know him?” He took a few cautious steps closer. The man didn't look nearly as bad as Ford, but he didn't look too good either; there were lines under his eyes, and there was a sickly look to him. Something about the way he was staring at Stan was very disconcerting, like his eyes were open a bit too wide.

“Uh...yes, I do...I did.” The man slowly unwrapped one hand and offered it to Stan. “F-fiddleford McGucket, at your service...I used to work for Stanford, actually.”

Stan gave him his best good, firm trust me handshake. “You can call me Stan. It's, uh...it's a good thing I bumped into you, actually, Fiddleford, cause we were sorta looking for you.”

Fiddleford stiffened. “Oh?”

“Yeah, see, the thing is-Ford kinda, he kinda needs your help. He-”

“Do you know what your brother's up to, Stan?” Fiddleford said quietly.

“Well, actually-”

“Because you should know...what Stanford's doing, it's, it's dangerous. It's dangerous and I'm not going to help him with it, not any longer. If he's trying to get you involved, y-you should know...he thinks it's some great service to the world, but it's not. I know, I've seen.” His eye began to twitch slightly. “I should never have helped him as much as I did. That project should never have happened at all. It could lead to terrible things-”

“Like bringing forth an extradimensional being of pure energy into our dimension to wreck havoc and bring about the end of all we know and hold dear?”

Fiddleford's mouth fell open.

“Yeah, Ford figured that out,” Stan said. “Might have, uh...taken him longer than it should have, but trust me, he's aware. He's trying to stop it.”

“Oh,” Fiddleford said. “...Oh. Ah.”

“Yeah, but, uh, the thing is, Ford...he's in a pretty bad way right now. He's trying to fix things, but he's...he needs help.”

Fiddleford looked down at his shoes. “I...don't know how much I can help him, anymore.”

Anymore? What did that mean?

Well, never mind that for the moment. “Would you at least try talking to him?”

Knobbly fingers tightened around the bottle. “I-I-I...I don't think I can go back there. To that house. Not now, not yet-”

“Forget the house,” Stan said, jabbing a thumb towards the parking lot. “He's in the car right now.”

Fiddleford blinked at him.

Ford was very nearly at the point of actually considering listening to Stan's music to stay awake when Stan finally came out of the drugstore with someone beside him. It took Ford a moment to realize who it was.

If he had not been in a car at the time he probably would have fallen out of his seat.

Fidds. Stan had actually managed to find him-just by walking into the damn drugstore, of course, of course he would. It was infuriating, really.

He slunk down in his seat, suddenly feeling extremely nervous. The last time he'd seen Fiddleford had been when Ford's own stupid recklessness had led to him getting pulled into the portal and seeing something so terrifying it had shattered the poor man. What on Earth could he have to say to Ford now? I hate you, most likely. I want nothing to do with you ever again, and rightly so.

Stan pulled the passenger door open and suddenly Fiddleford was right there, staring at him, a look of absolute shock on his thin face. Ford cringed, waiting for the judgment, the anger, the vitriol-

“Sweet tapdancin' Christ, Stanford, what happened to you?” Fiddleford squawked.

Ford looked up slowly.

“Uh...which...which part do you mean?” he asked.

“All of it! You look like a drowned dog that's been beat up six ways from next Tuesday.”

“It's...it's a long story,” Ford stammered. “Listen, Fiddleford, I-I was wrong. I was so, so wrong and you were right and I'm so sorry-”

Fiddleford actually leaned back in surprise. “Wow. Those are some words I never thought I'd get in that order from that source.”

“It's amazing, ain't it?” Stan said.

Ford glared at both of them. “Fidds, look, I-I know what happened to you...there's no excusing it, but, but you can hate me all you want, I deserve it, I know, but please, just help me fix this. Before it's too late f-for all of-”

His voice ran out on the last few words and he started coughing again. It went on and on, so long that when the fit was finally over he was gasping for breath, eyes streaming, his chest aching horribly. He stared at the floor of the car, dizzy and exhausted and unable to look his old friend in the eyes.

He wished desperately that Fiddleford would just say no and leave already so they could go home, so he could rest, except he couldn't rest so what was the point, really, what was the point of anything-

“I see what you meant,” Fiddleford said quietly.

Ford looked up, confused.

Fiddleford was shaking his head slowly. “Alright,” he said. “I guess y'all had better come back to my place.”

Chapter Text

Fiddleford's place was in a rather seedy apartment block on the edge of town. Seedy for Gravity Falls, at any rate; it was downright posh compared to most of the places he'd stayed in, Stan mused as they pulled in. Fiddleford seemed to find it shady enough, though, judging by the way he glanced around nervously as he scurried to the door and fumbled with his keys so long it was almost comical.

Then again, he might have rather less mundane threats in mind than Stan usually did.

The inside of the apartment wasn't exactly unwelcoming, but it had a decidedly temporary feel to it. It was sparse, with nearly no decoration or personal touches, just essentials. Albeit essentials that were scattered all over the place. Fiddleford had achieved an impressive amount of clutter with a limited amount of resources.

He hastened them inside and all but shoved Ford onto the ratty old couch that took up most of the main room. Stan watched with some amusement as the engineer performed a remarkably matronly examination of Ford, putting a hand on his forehead and listening to his chest.

“I shoulda known,” he muttered. “I shoulda known as soon as I left you alone you'd wind yourself up in trouble. This happened all the time in college,” he told Stan. “Never met anyone so unable to take care of himself. Stayed up all night, skipped meals, wouldn't go to the damn doctor 'cause it took time away from studying- I told him, slow down and just get a degree like the rest of us. But no, he wanted a PhD. Nearly killed himself doin’ it.”

He bustled out of the room in a cloud of ambient muttering, leaving the twins in a somewhat stunned silence.

“You have a PhD?” Stan asked.

“Four,” Ford muttered. “Working on the fifth.”

Stan sighed and sank down onto the couch next to him. He'd always supposed Ford would excel without Stan around to hold him back, but this was something else.

He stared at the coffee table in front of them, which was actually just a large piece of wood balanced on a couple of boxes. The mess on top of it could have fit seamlessly into Ford's house: papers covered in a mix of equations, weird symbols, paranoid ramblings, and coffee mug rings, mixed with an assortment of books, chewed pens and wadded-up scraps.

No wonder these two got along, Stan thought. Talk about nerds of a feather.

“There's no need to scoff,” Ford said.

Stan blinked, momentarily wondering if Ford could read minds now. “What?”

“Acquiring a doctorate is no easy task,” Ford said stiffly. “Just because it's not what you think of as work-”

“What? I wasn't-”

“Tea's going,” Fiddleford said, coming back into the room. He was pushing a heavily duct-taped swivel chair, which he parked across from the couch, and carrying a blanket, which he threw over Ford.

“Why do people keep putting blankets on me?” Ford grumbled.

“'Cause you're sick,” Stan said.

“The presence of a blanket is hardly going to-”

“Shut up and huddle under your fleece,” Stan told him tiredly.

Ford looked sour, but he did huddle.

Fiddleford climbed into the swivel chair and folded himself up like a jackknife, drawing his knees up to his chin and wrapping his arms around his legs. “Gotta say, I've never seen you looking this bad,” he said. “Where'd you get that shiner?”

Ford and Stan glanced at each other uncomfortably.

“It's...complicated,” Ford said.

“Ah,” Fiddleford said.

“Not like that,” Ford said. “We didn't fight, if that's what you're-well, we did fight, but that's not why-”

“What is all this about, Stanford?” Fiddleford said quietly. “What's goin' on?”

Ford looked away.

“You...asked me where I was getting my ideas,” he said eventually. “My blueprints...if there was someone...”

Fiddleford said nothing, but he began to bounce one leg up and down nervously.

“You were right,” Ford said. “I...I encountered an...entity here, some time ago. Well before you arrived. He...”

He clenched his hands around the blanket, pulling it tight across his shoulders.

“I trusted him,” he whispered. “I shouldn't have-I should have trusted you, Fidds, I should have listened, I'm so sorry but I...I thought...I didn't want to tell you, I didn't think you would understand, and you wouldn't have, you wouldn't have and you would have been right not to...”

There was still no response from Fiddleford, but if he started bouncing that leg any faster he was going to take off, Stan thought.

“I thought he was a force for good,” Ford said agonizingly. “I thought...”

He swallowed harshly a few times.

“I...I thought I was...he told me I was special. I was important, I was chosen...I was going to do great things...and I believed it all. I wanted to believe it. He gave me the blueprints, equations, ideas...but it was all a trick. The portal was only ever meant to serve his plans.”

“What finally got it through your head?” Fiddleford’s voice wasn't angry, exactly, but it wasn't sympathetic either.

“After the...the accident-”

Fiddleford twitched sharply at the word, but his expression didn't change.

“...I got suspicious. I confronted him...he told me, he gloated. I'm so sorry, I was an idiot-”

“What do you want?” Fiddleford broke in.

Ford blinked. “Wh...what?”

“You didn't come here just to tell me how sorry you are,” Fiddleford said sharply. “You want something. You want me to come back, don't you? Come back and work with you again, help you fix this mess.”

Ford looked completely flabbergasted. It was almost funny.

“I...well, yes. That is...please, just, just for a little while. I need your help, Fidds, your mechanical genius -”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Fiddleford said.

“I'm being completely literal!” Ford burst out. “The portal has to be dismantled, and I can't do it on my own.”

“Why not? You mantled it in the first place. Didn't even need my help, apparently.”

“That's-that's not true, Fidds,” Ford said weakly. “I couldn't have done it without you-”

But Fiddleford was shaking his head. “Said you didn't need me. Didn't need me, or anyone else.”

“How many times do I have to say it?” Ford snapped, cracking his voice. “I'm sorry! I was wrong!”

For a moment Stan thought a full-on fight was going to break out then and there. Or at least, an attempt at one; both men looked like they would probably pass out long before anything really got started.

“Hmph,” Fiddleford said finally. “Well...I do know you'd just about rather spill your own blood than admit you were wrong about anything. So I guess that counts for something. But you ain't answered my question. What d'you need all of the sudden that you can't manage on your own?”

“I can't dismantle the portal on my own. Not...not right now. I can't. I can't risk the possibility that he'll sabotage it...make things even worse...if his plans come to fruition, Fidds- we're talking about the fate of the world here-”

“And what makes you think he couldn't sabotage me just as easy?” Fiddleford said.

Ford tensed suddenly, sharply, and Stan realized what was about to happen about a second too late to stop his brother from lunging across the table.

“Did you talk to him?” Ford's voice was high and wild with sudden panic. “Did you make a deal?!”

Fiddleford shrieked and tried to dodge away, inadvertently sending his chair rolling across the room and crashing into the opposite wall. Stan grabbed Ford around the shoulders and managed to yank him back onto the couch.

“Calm down, bro!” he yelled as Ford struggled against him rather ineffectually. “He didn't do anything!”

Across the room Fiddleford had untangled himself from the chair and was staring at them with huge, terrified eyes. Ford was starting to gasp, and the scant amount of color in his face had fled completely. He looked like he might pass out again.

“C'mon, just...just breathe,” Stan said desperately. “Just breathe. It's okay. It's okay.”

Slowly, painfully slowly, Ford's breathing steadied. His eyes were streaming, though thankfully without any blood this time, and his whole frame was shaking hard.

“Did...did you...make a deal?” he demanded.

“Jesus, Stanford, what are you talking about?” Fiddleford cried. “A deal with who?”

“With him,” Ford wheezed. “You...you said he could sabotage you...”

Stan coughed. “I think he was talking about more of a, y'know... abstract possibility there, Ford.”

“Damn right I was!” Fiddleford said. “I don't know what you're on about but I ain't made no deals with nobody!”

There was a moment when Ford tensed up all over and Stan thought he might jump at Fiddleford again; but then the moment broke and Ford slumped so suddenly that Stan briefly thought he really had fainted.

“Sorry,” Ford whispered. His voice sounded wretched. “Sorry...I thought...”

“Thought what?” Fiddleford spluttered. “You're making even less sense than usual, Stanford, you know that?”

“You don't understand,” Ford said. “He's...he gets in your head. He got in my head. I...I made a deal with him...he tricks people, Fidds, he can trick you and take you over and I can't, I can't trust anyone, he could be anyone...”

Fiddleford had gone very still. It was an uneasy contrast from his manic fidgeting.

“When you say he gets in your head...” he said quietly.

“I mean he gets in your head, I mean it! He can control people if...if they let him. I was foolish, so foolish...I fell for his lies and now, now if I slip up, if I fall asleep...he tried to hurt Stan, he used me to do it because Stan was in his way...I thought he was helping me, but it was all a trick, because that's what he does-”

“So this...this ain't a person you're talking about, here,” Fiddleford said. “This is...some kind of demon-”

“Yes, Fiddleford!” Ford snapped. “We're talking about an incredibly powerful entity from another dimension! He wants to come here and he used me as a pawn to do it and if we don't stop him he'll take over everything! His name-”

“Don't say it!”

Ford drew up short. Fiddleford was starting to twitch like a malfunctioning machine, like he was going to shudder himself apart any moment.

“Don't say it,” he said vehemently. “Don't say it! I don't want to remember-”

The kettle shrieked.

Fiddleford screamed and fell out of his chair. Stan made a strangled noise that wasn't quite a coherent expletive and nearly dropped Ford on the floor. He watched Fiddleford make a dash for the kitchen and slowly managed to release all the muscles that had suddenly clenched tight.

“What...what was that all about?” he muttered to Ford, who was squirming out of his grip. Stan let him go, since it seemed like the immediate threat of violence was over. “I thought we were trying to get him to help us, not strangle him.”

“I panicked,” Ford muttered back.

“Yeah, no shit.”

“I just...I thought he might have...I can't trust anyone, Stan, I can't, he could be anywhere, he could be using anyone-”

“What about me? You don't trust me?”

Ford opened and shut his mouth several times. “I...that's not what I meant, Stan...”

“Sure,” Stan said. “Okay.”

He couldn't exactly argue anyway. He was, objectively, untrustworthy.

They sat in an awkward, shaking silence for a few minutes. Ford stared at the papers scattered across the table in front of them. Then he frowned and began to shuffle some of them around.

“No,” he whispered. “No, no, no...I was right...”

Stan looked down at the sheet Ford had uncovered. Most of it was covered in technical jargon that he had to assume made more sense to Ford than it did to him, but there was also a symbol drawn several times in the margins: a crude image of an eye with a red X over it.

“Fiddleford...” Ford whispered, the paper creasing in his hands. “What did you do...?”

“Made y'all tea.” Fiddleford shuffled hesitantly back into the room with three steaming mugs clutched precariously in his hands. “Lemon and ginger, with a lotta honey in yours, Stanford-it'll do your throat some good...”

He stopped a few feet away as Ford slowly turned his gaze on him.

“What is this?” Ford said, holding the crumpled paper up.

“Just a project of mine,” Fiddleford mumbled, taking a step back. “Nothing to concern yourself with...”

Ford stood up so suddenly that Stan jumped. Fiddleford squeaked and spilled tea all over the floor.

“You're involved with them, aren't you?” Ford demanded. “The people in red hoods-the symbol painted everywhere-the dreams-what are they doing, Fiddleford? What are you doing? What did you do to me?”

“It-it ain't nothing bad!” Fiddleford protested. “We're helping people, Stanford! It's a good thing!”

“Helping people? With, with, with what, that gun of yours? That's what this is about, isn't it? You're erasing memories! How can you call that a good thing-”

“What,” Stan said, but no one paid any attention to him.

“Because there are some memories people don't want to have!” Fiddleford yelled back. “Especially around here, with all the...the things that happen...people shouldn't have to remember things like that! I didn't want to-I couldn't live with what I saw, Stanford! Whatever it was we did...what happened to me...it was eating me alive! I'm better now, and I can make other people better too-”

“This is a cult,” Ford snapped, taking a step forward and crunching the paper into a ball in his fist. “You started a cult!”

“You made a deal with the devil!”

“I once got tarred and feathered for selling bad air conditioners in Albuquerque,” Stan said.

Everything stopped. Both Ford and Fiddleford slowly turned to look at Stan.

“You what,” Fiddleford said.

“What does that have to do with anything,” Ford said.

“Nothing, really. Just didn't want to be left out.” Stan shrugged. “You know, if we're talking about really bad decisions that we've made.”

The silence hung heavy in the air for a moment before Ford sighed and sunk back down onto the couch.

“So you did erase my memory,” he said. “I thought so. About the people you hired...about building the portal...”

Fiddleford cautiously put the now rather less full mugs onto the table and scooted back. “You were making such a damn fuss about it. About the portal not being secret anymore. So I made it secret, but you were still so angry and you wanted to destroy the gun and...I couldn't let you, it was the only thing that was working...I...I guess I panicked. And afterwards everything was better, so-”

“You call that better?” Ford said bitterly. “Messing with someone's mind-”

Fiddleford retreated to his swivel chair and pulled his knees back up defensively, glowering over the top of his mug. “It is better. I'm better now. I'm not having screaming nightmares anymore.”

Ford likewise glowered into his own mug. “So you erased your memories of the...the accident?”

“And a few other things.” Fiddleford took a rather sullen drink of tea. “Not...not all of it. Didn't want no big holes or nothing. But...there were a lot of things I didn't want rattling around in my brain anymore either.”

“So...how much do you remember about building the portal?”

Fiddleford looked away. “...Didn't even remember it was a portal til you brought it up. Knew we were building something down there. Something dangerous. But I-I didn't want to think about it.”

“Right, so you decided you were just going to ignore it. You knew it was dangerous, but as long as you didn't have to think about it everything was just fine-”

“What was I supposed to do?” Fiddleford snapped. “I tried telling you to shut it down! I tried over and over and you wouldn't listen to me!”

The words evidently hit a mark; Ford slumped in on himself, the righteous anger dissipating off of him like steam. “You did. You did...”

He took a sip of tea and grimaced slightly. “I suppose...you don't remember a lot of technical details, then...”

“No.” Fiddleford shook his head adamantly. “I'm sorry. I can't help you.”

“There must be something you could do,” Stan broke in.

He couldn't believe this. He'd expected that maybe they wouldn't be able to find Fiddleford, or that he wouldn't be willing to help; he had most certainly not expected to find him just fine and then hear that he couldn't help because he'd erased his own damn memory with some weird science thing. What was the matter with these nerds? How did they manage to make absolutely everything way too complicated in the most unpredictable manner possible?

“You're still a smart guy, right?” he said. “Can't you, like...figure it again?”

Fiddleford glanced at Stan in surprise. Evidently he hadn't expected Stan to actually contribute anything to the discussion. Well, that made two of them.

“...That's not a bad point,” Ford said, which was even more surprising. “Your technical genius should still be fully intact. Besides, I have doubts about the permanency of the memory gun-I've already regained some recollection of our, uh, our encounter. With some prompting you could most likely remember-”

“I don't want to remember!” Fiddleford said. “I erased those memories for a reason, Stanford! I don't want them back!”

“I know that, Fiddleford, but-but the danger's still there! If I can't dismantle the portal, if his plan succeeds-you think you won't remember then? You think you won't have even worse things to remember?”

Fiddleford flinched away and somehow managed to ball himself up even tighter.

“Please,” Ford said. “After this...I won't ask anything more of you. You don't have to ever talk to me, or, or see me again. But for this one last time...I need you for this, Fidds. I need you to be brave just a little longer. I won't let anything happen to you again. The portal's shut down now, and we know what went wrong, it won't happen again-”

Fiddleford sighed.

“It ain't just the machine I'm scared of, Stanford,” he said. “It's...you.”

Ford stiffened. Stan did as well. A whole childhood's worth of memories suddenly rushed into immediate recollection: taunts of 'freak' and 'mutant' and 'monster', exaggerated reactions of disgust and horror, mocking laughter endlessly directed at his brother for being different. He found his hands curling into angry fists out of muscle memory ten years gone, ready to defend Ford one more time.

“I thought you at least were able to look past differences like that-” Ford said tightly.

“Oh, for...I ain't talking about your damn polydactyly, ya idiot,” Fiddleford said. “I'm talking about you. About...the way you go at things. You're the most stubborn man I've ever met by a long shot. You see a goal and you won't let anything move you. Sometimes that's alright, but the kind of goals you pick, the things you go after...it don't always lead to a good end. And...you draw people in. I dunno, maybe you got so much determination that it's catching, but...I left my wife and child to come help you on this! I ain't seen them in months! And I knew, I knew something was wrong, I knew we should have stopped, I should have left way before I did, but I didn't. I did things I shouldn't have ever done. Because...because I got caught up in it. In all that drive, it was like a magnet pullin' me along. I'm scared of what'll happen if I help you again. I'm scared of where I might end up. You can say it'll be simple, it'll just be one job and over with, and I don't doubt that you mean it, but...that don't necessarily make it true.”

Ford looked completely and utterly lost.

“I...I didn't...I didn't realize it was...like that,” he said distantly. “I never...”

“I know you didn't. You never see anything that ain't in your immediate sights, Stanford. That's always been a problem of yours.”

Ford looked down at his hands and said nothing.

Stan wanted to say something, but he didn't know what. He took a drink from the remaining mug of tea. It tasted like plants.

He couldn't really argue with this one. He couldn't respond to that with a punch to the face. Or, well, he could, but it wouldn't help anything. It wouldn't make Fiddleford wrong. Ford was...like that. He got caught up in his plans and he couldn't see anything else and it was so damn hard to argue with him. His conviction started to feel like a law of the universe, as pointless to argue with as gravity.

Of course...Stan had argued with him a considerable amount anyway. Maybe because he didn't know when to give up either, but still. It could be done. Besides, if Fiddleford's response to all this had been to go off and start a memory-erasing cult, he didn't think the man could put all the blame for bad science decisions on Ford.

He took another drink of tea, mostly because it was hot and the apartment was almost as cold as Ford's house, and also because it gave him something to do, and stared at the papers scattered out in front of them. He supposed some of them were schematics for whatever this gun was, but he couldn't really tell.

A memory erasing gun. Of all things. He didn't much like the thought of that, of someone mucking around in his head, deciding what should be in there and what shouldn't. Not to say that there weren't things he'd rather not have in his head, thanks...

And there was a thought there, but he couldn't quite pin it down. He frowned at the papers. Things he didn't want in his head. There was a lot of that going around lately, wasn't there...?

“So you won't help?” Ford said wearily.

Fiddleford had invented the gun because there were things he wanted to get rid of. Memories. Information. Ford had information he wanted to get rid of, too...and...

“I don't know, Stanford.” Fiddleford's leg was tapping again. “I know it's important. But I...I don't know if I'm strong enough, and that's the truth.”

...and...

It wouldn't work. It couldn't work. There was no way, because if it would work one of these brilliant science guys would have thought of it already. He didn't know anything about all this stuff. It had to be a stupid idea because Stan had thought of it and there was no way he was going to come up with any kind of smart answer to this mess.

But...

But Ford and Fiddleford were both sitting there staring glumly at nothing and the sense of despair was hanging heavy on the room and it was going to bother him unless he said something, and what could it hurt, really? They'd tell him it was stupid and then he could stop thinking about it and they could move on to...something else, maybe, if there was anything else.

“Hey,” he said. “Um. This...this gun thing. It erases memories?”

Ford glanced at him dully. “Yes.”

“Like...something in your brain...that you don't want to be there...this gun can remove that?”

“Yes, Stan, that is indeed an extremely basic grasp of the general concept,” Ford said, in that Long-Suffering Smart Person voice he got when he had to explain things to lesser intellects.

“It produces a radiation wave designed to target a specific area of the brain,” Fiddleford said. “It doesn't have any tangible effects. You can't just go around erasing things.”

“Oh,” Stan said.

Ford frowned slightly. “What were you thinking of?”

“It's nothing. Forget it,” Stan muttered, looking away. “It was a dumb idea.”

“No...no, what were you thinking of? Stan?” Ford's voice was oddly insistent.

Stan tapped his fingers together nervously. “Well, it's just...you know...if this gun, if it can affect what's in your head...and he's in your head...”

Ford said nothing.

“I don't know,” Fiddleford said. “You could target the gun to erase your memory of...him, but...I can't think it'd stop him any, if he's some kind of demon-”

“I said it was stupid,” Stan muttered. “Look, just-”

“No...no, hold on, hold on,” Ford said. His fingers were starting to tap frantically on his cup. “Bill manifests in the mindscape, which would necessarily be affected by anything having a significant impact on brain function...if you could just target it correctly...it would take some modifications, but potentially...”

He pushed several of the papers in front of him around, muttering something incomprehensible under his breath. There was a manic light growing in his eyes.

“Fiddleford,” Ford said, “I need to see your notes. All of them.”

Chapter Text

There were a lot of notes.

When they started creeping onto the couch, Stan got up and went out for a smoke. It was not terribly relaxing, since it was so damn cold outside it hurt to breathe, and even clenched inside his jacket pockets his fingers ached. When he came back in, the note-covered area of the couch was up to about two-thirds, Ford and Fiddleford were deep in discussion over something having to do with the elasticity of the amygdala and psycho-thaumaturgical practices of the ancient Egyptians, and he was pretty sure neither of them had noticed he was gone.

When the paper started piling up on the floor, he went out for food.

He came back with a stack of styrofoam to-go cartons, snow in his hair, and the phone number of the waitress from the local diner. He had not, in fact, been intentionally soliciting this, given that there were rather more pressing concerns on his mind and anyway he didn't even have a phone. But as soon as he'd started talking to her, he'd turned on the charm without even realizing it. It was just force of habit, at this point. He turned everything into a show, a larger-than-life act, because he didn't know how not to.

Anyway, he wasn't really used to not needing the extra help to get what he needed. Pulling out Ford's wallet to pay for the food had felt...strange. Like he was going to get called out, like someone was going to point and shout, any moment, because what was he doing with money, anyway? He must have stolen it from someone. He wasn't sure he hadn't.

He took his lukewarm waffles to the kitchen-if it could be called that; the tiny little side-room didn't even have a table, just a chair in the middle of the floor for some reason-because he knew that if he got syrup on any of those notes Ford would probably try to stab him with his own plastic fork. Besides, the constant rattle of nerd-talk was starting to irritate him. Stupid, he knew, but every stream of jargon those two spewed out felt like a pointed reminder of how smart they were, and how smart he wasn't. That, and they would periodically make high-pitched noises of excitement or disappointment at each other, which was not helping his headache any.

He did, eventually, manage to get them to take a break, once it looked like they had about come to some sort of standstill anyway. Fiddleford was looking especially glum, so Stan offered him the second box of waffles, which the man attacked with a gusto that was frankly rather astounding from someone so weedy.

Ford, unsurprisingly, expressed no appetite for cold diner waffles, but with Stan and Fiddleford flanking him, he was eventually coaxed into taking some of the cold medicine with a little of the chicken noodle soup Stan had bought. Mostly he just drank the broth, but that was still more calories than Stan suspected he'd had for a while.

“So...what's the verdict so far?” Stan asked as Ford stared at the papers and aimlessly tapped his spoon against the cheap bowl.

There was a long silence. Ford and Fiddleford looked at each other, and then looked away.

“It...should work,” Ford said. “I think...well, the theory seems sound anyway. Seems. Of course it's difficult to tell, dealing with...something like this...”

Stan rolled his eyes. “You sound so optimistic.”

“The memory gun would have to be modified to be able to effectively target Bill,” Ford said. “Which would require some additional materials, not all of which I have on hand...and...erm...the gun wouldn't be usable for its original purpose afterward.”

Those sounded like fairly surmountable problems to Stan, but the tension hanging in the air between Ford and Fiddleford seemed to say otherwise.

“It's...alright,” Fiddleford said tightly. “I can make another one.”

“I- Fidds, I, you know I don't approve of your use of this device, but-but that's not-”

“I know that's not what it's about.” Fiddleford crossed his arms tight to his chest and pressed himself back up against his chair. He didn't look entirely convinced by his own words. “I'm not...I know this is serious. I ain't that petty that I wouldn't help you get a world-endin' demon out of your head just...'cause it happens to destroy my own work along the way.”

Ford fidgeted with his bowl. Fiddleford rocked the swivel chair back and forth, making a very irritating squeaky noise.

Stan coughed loudly, eager for both the awkward silence and the squeaky noise to end. “So, uh, what kinda additional materials are we talking here? Is it stuff we can get?”

“Well...” Ford shuffled some papers around and extracted one with a list scrawled all over it. “Some of it we can get at a hardware store, but the rest of it is a bit more difficult. Let's see...I still have some moonstone, I think, and...gold...”

His face darkened for a moment, which baffled Stan; that was certainly not the look that would have been on his face if he was declaring that he had gold. Maybe Ford was just upset about having to use it for the device. That...probably made sense.

“...but we also need some pyrite, if my calculations are correct,” Ford went on. “Which I don't have any of. I don't think. Also mercury and, erm, I think I have some ectoplasm left over, I'm not sure-”

“Ectoplasm?” Stan said incredulously. He was ignored.

“I think there's some pyrite in the museum,” Fiddleford said. “In the gold rush exhibit.”

“Oh, good call.” Ford frowned. “They...probably wouldn't just give it to us if we asked nicely, would they?”

Stan perked up. “Hey, do we need something stolen? I can do stealing.”

Ford groaned and rubbed at his eyes. “I suppose we don't really have any other options...”

“Sure,” Stan said. “So, where do we steal the mercury from?”

“Don't need to,” Fiddleford said. “I've got some.”

Stan blinked. “You just have mercury laying around?”

“I do not have mercury laying around,” Fiddleford said haughtily. “I have mercury in a secure container. Which, uh, happens to be under my bed at the moment, but there's not a lot of room in this place-”

“You know what, never mind,” Stan said. “Okay, what else...you did say ectoplasm, right? Like...from ghosts?”

“Yes,” Ford said, in a distinctly underwhelmed voice.

“You're telling me ghosts are real.”

“Yes. And they're very annoying.” Ford blew out an intensely frustrated sigh. “But not as annoying as...who we need to go to for the last thing.”

“The last thing?” Stan said. “There's something else?”

Ford looked despondent.

“Oh no,” Fiddleford said. “Not-”

“Unicorn hair,” Ford said, in the sort of tone someone might use to say we need to steal plutonium with our bare hands or possibly the only way out of this is through the sewers.

Stan had to take a moment to process this one.

“Unicorn hair,” he said. “Did I hear that right? Unicorn hair?”

“Yes,” Ford said glumly.

“Okay, this is like-some kind of science joke, right? Like there's some plant or something called 'unicorn hair' that we have to find-”

“No,” Ford said. “I'm talking about real hair. From real unicorns.”

Stan sat down on the couch and stared at the wall.

“Well, that's sunk it, hasn't it?” Fiddleford said. “Are you sure we need it?”

“Believe me, I've thought very thoroughly about whether there was anything else we could use,” Ford said. “There may be some substitutions, but they're not promising at all. There's simply nothing else that can channel the thaumaturgical energy well enough to power a working of this magnitude. Without that hair the entire operation will most likely short out before it can function.”

“Unicorns,” Stan said.

“Yes, Stanley,” Ford snapped. “Try to keep up.”

“Oh, sorry,” Stan said, voice oozing with sarcasm. “Sorry I had a wee bit of trouble keeping up with the revelation that UNICORNS EXIST.”

“Why is that more unbelievable than ghosts?” Fiddleford asked.

“It...it just is!” Stan threw his hands in the air. “So what? What's the problem? Let me guess, unicorns are super rare. Or, or they all live in Canada. Or they went extinct with the dinosaurs. Or we can only contact them by journeying inside the magical land of a nine year old girl's trapper keeper-”

“Unicorns are rare, but they're not impossible to find,” Ford said tiredly. “There are some who live not too far from here, in a secluded magical glade deep in the woods. The problem isn't finding them, it's dealing with them. They're the most frustrating creatures on the planet.”

“Um, excuse me,” Stan said. “Are you saying that some dumb horse with a pointy forehead can be more frustrating than me? Because I take offense to that.”

That actually got a very small smile out of Ford. “Perhaps not...but all the same, this is no easy task we're talking of. Unicorns are extremely...selective about who they will interact with. In fact I'm not sure there's anyone that meets their standards. They will only deal with those who are pure of heart...which I evidently am not, they were very emphatic about that.”

Stan snorted. “Are you kidding me? No one's pure of heart. That's bullshit.”

“The unicorns disagree,” Ford said. “They have some degree of telepathic ability which lets them judge people, that much I know, and it doesn't seem to be swayed any by arguments about moral relativism.” He shrugged despondently. “Not that I could make much of a case for myself at the moment anyway, given that I have an ancient force for hedonistic evil camping in my head.”

“Eh, you're doing better than me,” Stan said. “Well...we could always find someone who's 'pure of heart' and shanghai 'em.”

“...I don't think kidnapping will make the unicorns more favorable to us,” Ford said, though Stan was pretty sure he'd actually considered it for a moment. “Also, that's highly unethical.”

“Just thought I'd put it out there.”

“Do you think there's any chance they'd be more amenable under the...circumstances?” Fiddleford wondered. “I mean, there's a fair difference between wanting hair and such for scientific samples, and wanting it to prevent the end of the world.”

“True,” Ford said. “I suppose there's no harm in trying, at least...but I'm disinclined to stake my hopes on it.”

“Well, let's burn that bridge when we come to it,” Stan said. “So...hardware store, museum, mystic glade. Anywhere else?”

“I believe that's it...for the moment, at least,” Ford said. He moved the notes into a loose stack and set his bowl down on the table. “We might as well get started-”

“Hold on a minute now,” Fiddleford said, looking sharply over at Ford. “You're in no shape to go adventuring.”

Ford bristled. “We don't have time for me to be coddled. I'm perfectly capable-”

“Can you finish that soup?” Stan asked.

Ford glanced down at the still half-full bowl. “Well...”

“Yeah, uh huh,” Stan said. “Fiddlesticks has a point. You can barely stand up. You can't just go charging off into the woods, it ain't gonna work. You'll just fall over in the snow and die of hypothermia or something.”

“Don't call me that,” Fiddleford said.

“We can't wait for me to recover,” Ford said, glaring sullenly at the table. “The longer this takes, the likelier it is that Bill will realize what we're up to.”

Fiddleford flinched slightly at the name. “Well, that's another reason you shouldn't be coming along. What if...if it comes with you and finds out what we're doing?”

Ford looked stricken.

“You're right,” he murmured, running his hands through his hair anxiously. “We can't risk attracting his attention that way...”

“Look, this is easy,” Stan said. “Let me go out and get this unicorn stuff while you smart guys work on the gun or whatever. I'm good at acquiring things.”

“Stan, we're not talking about robbing a convenience store,” Ford said huffily. “This venture will require dealing with powerful, dangerous supernatural creatures, and I can't guarantee that I'd be able to give you all of the information you would potentially need. Finding the unicorn glade alone will be difficult, it's deep in the woods...maybe if you and Fiddleford went together, he has some experience with the area, but-”

Fiddleford paled, an impressive feat considering the state of his complexion to begin with.

Stan shook his head. “I'm not leaving you alone. What if you fall asleep again? Or we come back and you've coughed your lungs out onto the floor-”

“Honestly, Stan, I'm not-”

“He's got a point,” Fiddleford said. Ford glared at him, but the engineer held steady. “And I ain't just saying that because I'd rather set my hair on fire than go back in those woods again. You're in a bad state, Stanford, and anyway if what you say is true it's too dangerous to leave you alone when you've got that thing in your head.”

Ford sighed and slumped back against the couch. “I don't like it.”

“Join the club,” Stan said.

“If only there was some way we could communicate long distance...” Ford mused. “So we could stay in touch-”

“Sure there is,” Fiddleford said. “You still got those radios we were using?”

Ford blinked and sat up a little straighter. “That's right!”

“Radios?” Stan said.

“We had a pair of two-way radios we were using when we were working on the portal,” Ford explained.

“Cause it was a pain in the ass to have to keep going all the way from the basement and back for every little errand,” Fiddleford added.

“...Yes, that,” Ford said. “Anyway, I still have them back at the house, so that works out perfectly.”

“Excepting that we have to go back to the house,” Fiddleford muttered.

“What? We were going to have to do that anyway,” Ford said. “That's where all my equipment is.”

Fiddleford made a face and looked away.

“Suppose it was inevitable anyway,” he muttered. “Well, if we're doing this, there's no sense dawdling, is there?”

“Quite right.” Ford stood up abruptly, and just as abruptly swayed and almost collapsed down again before Stan and Fiddleford caught him.

“Oh yeah,” Stan said, steadying Ford against him. “Off to a great start.”

“Oh, shut up,” Ford said.

They stopped by the museum first. It was on the way.

“Huh,” Stan said as he stopped the car. “This is bigger than I expected, for a town this size.”

“Gravity Falls has quite a bit of very interesting history,” Ford said. “For one thing, I believe there may be a conspiracy regarding-”

“Yeah, okay, don't wear yourself out,” Stan said, shoving the car door open. “Why don't you two nerds stay here and talk about nerd things. I'll be back in a minute.”

“But-” Ford began, but Stan was already gone. Ford huffed in annoyance and slumped back in his seat.

The two of them sat there for a while in a fidgety silence.

“So that's your brother, huh,” Fiddleford said.

“Yes.”

“He seems...uh...” Fiddleford chewed on his lip. “Well, he's not what I expected.”

“Oh?” Ford said. “What were you expecting?”

“Erm...well...well, I'm not sure, really.” Fiddleford thought for a moment. “I...suppose I wouldn't have expected him to stick around this long.”

Ford looked down at his hands.

“Yeah,” he said. “...Neither did I, really.”

The quiet stretched out a moment longer. Ford stared straight ahead at the doors to the museum. Fiddleford moved his foot back and forth across the floor of the car.

“Y'know, there's a lot of unused space in this museum,” Fiddleford said. “I've been thinking it might make, uh. A good headquarters.”

“For what?” Ford said snidely. “Your cult?”

“It's not a cult, stop calling it a cult-”

“You've got a bunch of people running around in hooded robes,” Ford said. “Red hooded robes. With an ominous symbol on them. And they chant. What were you expecting it to be called?”

“...In retrospect I can see how that might be taken the wrong way,” Fiddleford admitted. “But it's not a cult. It's, it's more like...a secret society. Like the Masons.”

“Oh, don't get me started on the Masons,” Ford said.

Thankfully the door to the museum opened and Stan came sauntering out before the conversation could disintegrate any further.

“That was remarkably quick,” Ford said as Stan got in.

“Would've been quicker if I hadn't had to wait for a school group to get out of the way,” Stan muttered, starting the car. “Never would've thought anyone could talk so long about coal.”

“Oh.” Ford frowned. “So...did you get it?”

Stan sighed and pulled a small chunk of glittering rock out of his pocket. “Here.”

Ford took the pyrite and turned it over in his hands. “You don't sound very happy-”

“There is no security in that museum at all,” Stan grumbled. “None! I didn't even have to pick the lock on the case, I just pulled on it and it came off!”

“Are you...disappointed?” Fiddleford asked.

“Hell yeah I'm disappointed!” Stan gunned the engine, making Ford wince. “I've always wanted to do a cool museum heist. But there wasn't any challenge! Not even a little bit of challenge! Honestly, that's no way to run a museum. I mean, I wasn't expecting laser grids or anything, but the least they could do is put proper locks on their display cases.”

Ford rolled his eyes. “Well, I for one am happy that you got what we needed without undue risk or difficulty.”

“Oh, shut up, you're never happy,” Stan said.

Ford opened his mouth to respond, but whatever he meant to say was swallowed as Stan shot the car out of the parking lot.

Despite extensive and loud trepidation from the passengers, they made it to the hardware store without any undue vehicular mishaps. Fiddleford was made to wait in the car. Apparently he wasn't to be trusted in hardware stores.

Stan followed Ford through the aisles, keeping one eye on his slightly swaying brother and one on the old man behind the counter in case they needed to make a quick escape. He wasn't too worried; the guy looked about a hundred years old and probably couldn't see much more than a foot in front of him. Still, best to be careful.

Ford collected a small armful of things, including a packet of screws, some wire, drill bits, and a part of some kind that Stan didn't recognize. He weighed this last one in his hand for a while, looking back and forth between it and the shelf.

“What's the matter?” Stan asked. “Not what you want?”

“...17, 18...no, this will work,” Ford said absently. “I'm just not sure if I have enough money left to pay for all this...how much did that food cost?”

Stan rolled his eyes, grabbed all the little items away from Ford and, after a quick look at the proprietor-he was reading a newspaper about two inches away from his face, perfect-tucked them all into his jacket.

Ford looked aghast. “Stan-”

“Shhh, would ya keep it down, bro? Kinda defeating the purpose here.” Ford shut his mouth, but he was still glaring indignantly. Stan sighed. “Look, it's for the greater good, right?”

“Do you realize how many atrocities have been committed in the name of the greater good?” Ford snapped.

“Yeah, enough that lifting a few things from a podunk hardware store doesn't even rank,” Stan replied. “If it makes you feel better, we can...uh...come back later and pay for it. After, y'know, the fate of the world isn't at stake.”

Ford still looked unhappy, but from the look on his face Stan knew he didn't have an argument.

“Alright,” he muttered finally. “But we're paying for this, at least.” He waved the part in his hand.

“Whatever floats your boat,” Stan said evenly. “Though, you know, if you're so worried about paying for things, it might help if you didn't literally burn money.”

“I had to burn it,” Ford said as they made for the counter. “It was watching me.”

“It was...oookay. You know what, I'm not even gonna touch that one.”

Ford muttered something else under his breath that Stan didn't catch.

They paid for the part; the old man rang them up with excruciating slowness, peering uncertainly at the price tag on the part for a long time, and taking just as long to pass the bills Ford gave him. Probably they could have easily walked out with the entire inventory under their coats and gotten away with it, Stan thought with considerable annoyance. But no, Mr. Rich Guy had to pay for the part.

“You get everything?” Fiddleford asked as they got back in the car.

Stan took the things out of his coat one by one and handed them back to Fiddleford along with the controversial part. Fiddleford stared at him.

“Did you...you paid for all this, didn't you?” he said.

“Sure,” Stan said.

Ford glared out the window.

“Wh...I can't believe you two,” Fiddleford said as Stan started up the car.

“You were alright with stealing from the museum,” Stan pointed out.

“I'm not alright with stealing from a museum,” Fiddleford protested, tugging on a strand of his hair anxiously. “But that was...that was the only way, we couldn't buy pyrite anywhere. This is... you can't just go in somewhere and take what you want just because you don't want to pay for it!”

“Sure we can,” Stan said easily. “It's a lot easier than the alternative, actually.”

“But it's not right!”

Stan ground his teeth. “Well, if it bothers you that much, why don't you just erase it and you won't have to think about it anymore?”

Ford threw him a startled look. Stan could hear Fiddleford spluttering angrily from the backseat, but he kept his gaze locked on the road.

He had no memory gun to wipe out bits of himself, no demon to blame things on. He didn't even have the luxury of holding some kind of moral high ground. There was nothing lofty about his goals, nothing superior about him; he knew damn well what he was, and he didn't pretend to be anything else. Or, well, alright, he did pretend to be something else quite frequently, but to himself, to the two other people in the car, to the universe in general-on the rare occasion that he got up the nerve to look it in the face-he was a cheat and a liar and a thief, and he made no claims otherwise.

He didn't need Fiddleford's stammering recriminations, or Ford's chiding, as if he might somehow not know, as if he had spent ten years conning his way to get by without ever having the faintest spark of self-awareness until these two high and mighty geniuses came along to point it out to him. Especially not when they were happy for his criminal expertise when it came to pursuit of their goals, then turned around to sneer at him the rest of the time.

And probably that wasn't entirely fair, but then again, nothing was.

The drive back to the house was very quiet.

“Good Lord above, it's cold in here,” Fiddleford said as they stepped into the house. “What happened to your heating, Stanford?”

“Oh. Uh...” Ford looked around, as if he were only just now noticing how cold it was in his house. Which, Stan thought resignedly, was entirely possible. “I...hm. I don't really remember when it went out...I suppose they must have shut it off at some point. I haven't really been keeping up with, um. Things. Bi-payments.”

Fiddleford shook his head. “No wonder you got sick.”

“It's not that bad,” Ford said defensively, as he made his way through the clutter to what was probably a desk.

“Nah, I gotta agree with Fiddler on this one,” Stan said. “It is that bad.”

“Don't call me...ah, never mind, I've heard worse.” Fiddleford joined Ford at the desk and rifled through some of the papers. He briefly unearthed one with a lot of red stains on it, which he stared at in horror before hastily covering it up again.

Ford, meanwhile, found a notebook under the mess, flipped it open, and hastily began writing in it. “Now, Stan, there are some important things about the woods that you need to know if you're going out there. I'm going to write down directions to the glade and I want you to follow them exactly, do you understand?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Ford looked up at him. His eyes were shot through with red and wide with a strange urgency. “Stan. This is important.”

When they were kids, reading comics in their blanket fort on rainy days, Stan liked to point out the mad scientist characters, the ones with wild hair and wilder eyes bent on some zany evil plan. “That's you,” he'd say, elbowing Ford. “That's what you sound like when you get going.” And Ford would roll his eyes and point out some goon or monster and say, “Oh yeah, well that's you!” and they would both dissolve into helpless giggles and usually wind up slapping each other with their respective comics.

Ford looked like that now, like a caricature, like the very idea of an raving, unstable genius ripped off the page and into real life right in front of him, and it wasn't funny, it wasn't funny at all.

Stan put a hand on his brother's shoulder and felt it shaking slightly.

“Hey, okay,” he said. “I'm listening. Really. It's okay.”

Ford closed his eyes briefly and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Alright. Alright. There's no time to tell you about everything that's in the woods, even if I knew for sure... you'd better take my journal. That will help. It has information about the unicorns as well...where is it?”

His head snapped to the side in a sudden panic and he started frantically digging through the mess on the desk. “Where is it? What... what did I… I don't remember. I don't...I can't have lost it, I can't, I-”

“Whoa, Ford, buddy.” Stan finally managed to get his twin’s attention. “I've got it. See?”

He pulled the journal out of his jacket pocket. Ford stared at it.

“You... you've been carrying that all this time?”

Stan shrugged. “You told me to keep it safe.”

“Oh. Um. Well...yes. Good.” Ford took the journal and began rifling through the pages. “Here. I'll...I'll mark the relevant sections.”

Stan perched on the edge of the desk and watched as Ford dogeared various pages, muttering to himself all the while. “Generally the best strategy in dealing with the denizens of these woods is to avoid confrontation. Mostly, things will leave you alone if you leave them alone-”

Fiddleford laughed.

Ford turned to glare at him. “What? I realize there are some creatures that will attack unprovoked, but the larger percentage-”

“And how would you know?” Fiddleford said. “When have you ever left anything alone?”

“...I do sometimes,” Ford mumbled.

“Uh huh,” Fiddleford said. “Name one time.”

Ford mulled over that one for a moment.

“Well, how would you know, anyway?” he said eventually. “You've forgotten-”

“Yeah, I forgot a lot of things, but not so much I don't know you, Stanford.”

“Guys,” Stan broke in, “This is very entertaining, but-”

“Right, yes, yes,” Ford said hastily. “Where was I? Yes, so, your best bet is to be non-confrontational. And polite. I realize this is a tall order for you, but-”

“Hey now. I can be non-confrontational.”

Ford gave him a look.

Stan gave him a look. “ You want non-confrontational? I put up with you for eighteen years and didn't murder you once.”

“Sounds like a good track record to me,” Fiddleford said.

“You be quiet.” Ford thrust the journal at Stan and turned back to the notebook he had been writing in. “Now, you may encounter some gnomes...”

“Gnomes?”

“Yes, gnomes. Now-”

“Like...with beards? And little red pointy hats?”

“Yes, Stan. The gnomes are very common in the forest. They're...ah...”

“Freaky,” Fiddleford muttered.

“I was going to say 'unsettling', but that also works. They have no particular weaknesses that I've found, but they don't pose a significant threat, by and large...”

Stan sat and nodded as Ford went on and on about various things that he might encounter in the woods. Most of it sounded completely unbelievable (aside from one far too causal comment about “oh yes, there are mountain lions around here”) but it felt increasingly futile to point any of that out.

“...and it would probably be best if you took a weapon,” Ford said finally.

Stan blinked and stirred out of the half-trance he tended to fall into when listening to Ford talk. “What? Oh. Don't worry about that. I have my knuckledusters and-”

Ford, as usual, wasn't listening. “I have a gun you had better take. And there's the crossbow-”

“No thanks,” Stan said.

Ford drew up short. “What?”

“I said no thanks. I don't like guns.”

Ford stared at him like he'd just started speaking in Latin-although, actually, Ford would probably understand Latin better than what he'd just said. “How do you...what do you mean, you don't like guns?”

“I mean I don't like guns,” Stan said bluntly. “Like...uh...Batman. Yeah. Batman doesn't like guns and neither do I.”

“Stan,” Ford said sternly. “This is no time to be silly-”

“You ever been shot, Ford?”

The words came out before he even knew he was saying them and he instantly regretted it because dammit, he didn't want to get into this now, he didn't want to get into this ever, but Ford just didn't know when to shut up, did he-

“...Well...no,” Ford said, staring at him with that stunned rabbit look he always got when people said things that he hadn't planned for them to say.

“Good for you,” Stan said. “Here's an interesting fact about guns. People can take them away from you. Especially if they can tell that you're not really, totally sure that you want to shoot someone...and then you have a gun pointed at you and it's really hard to talk your way out of that one...”

Fiddleford was staring at him now too and Stan hated it, hated it because dammit Ford could get mutilated by a demon and loftily wave it aside and he was supposed to just act like it was no big deal but if he brought up one thing, one thing that well in the past now and didn't even matter anyway.

“Look,” he said. “I don't like guns. I like punching things. Okay?”

Ford rallied himself the tiniest bit. “...The crossbow?”

“I have no fucking idea how to use a crossbow, Ford.” Stan sighed heavily. “Look, I'll be okay. I can handle myself, y'know. It's not like this is the first dangerous situation I've ever been in.”

He expected to be challenged, expected for Ford to say something like this is nothing like you've ever experienced Stanley, but he didn't. He just swallowed and looked away.

“Just...be careful, please,” he said.

And then, in a voice so low Stan was sure he wasn't supposed to have heard it: “...I just got you back...”

Fiddleford coughed awkwardly into the ensuing silence.

“Erm, say, Stanley, you, uh-how's about I take a look at that cut before you go out? Might, er, might wanna put something on that.”

For a moment Stan didn't even know what he was talking about. Then he realized, and his hand went up unconsciously to his face, and he saw a look flash across Ford's face that made him squirm.

“Yeah, um, that. That sounds good,” Stan said, hastily lowering his hand. “Good idea. Yeah.”

“Let's, ah...go somewhere with better light, then.”

Stan trailed after the nervous engineer, throwing a guilty glance at Ford, who was staring at the wall and twisting his fingers back and forth.

Lost in thought, he didn't realize where Fiddleford was headed until the man had a hand on the bathroom doorknob.

“Oh, you might, uh, not want-” he said hurriedly, but the door was already open.

Fiddleford stared.

“What in God's good name...” he whispered. “What happened?”

“Uh,” Stan said. “Bill, I think.”

Fiddleford flinched at the name. “You mean...using Stanford?”

“...Yeah.”

Fiddleford's shoulders tensed, and when he finally turned around, Stan was surprised to see that although his face had gone milk-white, his eyes were sharp and angry.

“To who?” he said.

Stan blinked. “Uh. What?”

“Who's the damn victim?” Fiddleford insisted. “Or is it victims? Who's he been doing this to? Are they-well, they can't be alright, but are they alive?”

It took Stan a moment to realize what he was thinking. “Wait, you mean-”

“I know Stanford ain't been himself, and I know this...B-Bill is...I know it's an evil thing, but you might have told me it had gotten this bad! What else is going on that I don't know about? What else has it done-”

“Hey, hey, hey.” Stan put up his hands placatingly. “You've got the wrong idea. This isn't...I mean, there wasn't anyone else. It was...it was just Ford.”

Fiddleford stared at him, and Stan saw comprehension dawn on him slow and horrible. “It did all this...to Ford?”

“Yeah.” Stan looked away. He wished Fiddleford would close the door again. “He, uh...he said Bill thinks it's...funny.”

Fiddleford swallowed hard. He looked a bit like he might be sick. “Why didn't he say anything?”

Stan shrugged. “I don't think he really wants to talk about it. He said it wasn't important.”

Fiddleford groaned. “He would.”

His eyes slowly tracked onto Stan's face. Stan avoided his gaze.

“Stanley,” Fiddleford said slowly. “How did you get that...that cut?”

Stan sighed.

“Last night,” he said. “Uh, when I got here, Ford and I...we, well, we argued and he...he kinda passed out on me. And then I guess Bill...well, he found me and he tried to, y'know, strike a deal with me. And when I wouldn't, he...tried to get rid of me, basically. So I wouldn't get in his way.”

“...What stopped him?”

“Well, you've seen that shiner Ford has-”

“I see.” Fiddleford stared at him a moment longer before, thankfully, pulling the door shut. “If I recall, there's a bathroom off of Stanford's study. Is that one any...ah, cleaner?”

“Oh,” Stan said. “I...have no idea, actually.” He'd completely overlooked that door in the study last night. Well, that would have been nice to know about earlier.

“Well, let's see. It, uh, I think it might be best to wash that cut out a bit...”

He turned and positively scurried down the hall. Stan followed in silence.

The bathroom attached to the study was tiny but thankfully free of bloodstains. Stan sat on the couch while Fiddleford washed the cut out with warm water, then dabbed a generous amount of peroxide over it. It stung like hell, but Stan did his best to sit still.

“This ain't quite as bad as it looks, but you still oughta be keeping an eye on it,” Fiddleford said, opening one of the fresh rolls of bandages Stan had bought. “It'll be real nasty if it gets infected.”

“You're telling me,” Stan said, thinking of New Orleans.

Fiddleford measured out a length of bandage, held it up to Stan's face, and frowned. “It'd probably be easier if you could tie your hair back.”

“What, like a ponytail? Ew.”

“What's wrong with ponytails?”

Stan scowled. “People will think I'm a hippie.”

Fiddleford rolled his eyes. “Okay, one, I seriously doubt anyone would mistake you for a hippie. Two, you're going out into the middle of the woods, there ain't gonna be anyone there to see you in any case. And three, don't you think all three of us are a bit past the point of keepin' up appearances?”

Stan couldn't really argue with that one. Having a mullet, after all, didn't give him a lot of ground to stand on in the first place. “Alright...but I don't have anything to tie it back with.”

Fiddleford considered this for a moment. Then he cut out a long, thin strip of bandage, tied it in a loop, and handed it to Stan.

“Fair enough.” Stan tied his hair back awkwardly, hoping the engineer wouldn't ask how he knew how to do that in the first place. Thankfully, Fiddleford set about bandaging the cut with no further comment than, “Yeah, that helps.”

“You got some experience with this or something?” Stan asked as Fiddleford tied a firm knot behind his ear. His bandaging was a lot neater than Stan's, not to mention a lot more confident.

“Ah, well, my wife has some medical training. I suppose it's rubbed off here and there.” Fiddleford stepped back to examine his work. He seemed satisfied.

Stan raised his eyebrows, which felt strange with the bandage on. “You're married?”

“Sure am. Is that surprising?”

“Well...no...I guess not.” Stan shrugged and scratched the back of his neck where the bandage itched. “It's just-I mean it looked like you were living alone.”

“Oh, she's not here with me. I just came up for a little while to help Stanford. Maddie's back in Palo Alto with Tate-that's our son.” Fiddleford smiled fondly. “I sure do miss them. Tate was so tiny when I left...”

“Oh.” Something twisted in Stan's stomach. “That must be nice.”

“Hmm?” Fiddleford said vaguely.

“Uh. Nothing. I mean, just...having a family to go back to.” Stan flushed and looked away hurriedly. “You uh, that is, if you are going back-”

“Of course I am! I just have to...” The dreamy look on Fiddleford's face turned into something lost. “I just...I have to...do...something...”

His confused expression was rapidly shifting into one of horror and it was terrible to watch.

“There must be...there was something...” His foot started tapping frantically. “I-”

“You know what? I'd better be going,” Stan said, getting up quickly. “Gotta...gotta find those unicorns...”

“Right,” Fiddleford mumbled, still staring straight ahead. “Right. Yes.”

He followed Stan out of the room at a slow, lagging pace. Stan hunched his shoulders and didn't look at him.

They found Ford in the so-called living room, throwing various things into a satchel. “Ah, Stanley,” he said, not looking up. “I'm packing a few things for you, just in case. Here's the radio-it's very simple, just press this button to turn it on and this one to talk. And it would probably be best if you wrapped up well-it's quite cold out there.”

“Really?” Stan said. “I hadn't noticed.”

This, predictably, sailed right over Ford's head.

“Yes, well, I found an extra sweater and a sturdier coat...” He gestured at the armchair, which did indeed have a pile of clothing on top of it. Stan made a face, but at least the sweater and coat were fairly inoffensive compared to Ford's usual wardrobe. Besides, as Fiddleford had pointed out, it was a bit late to start caring about looking cool, especially when the alternative was feeling very cold.

“Ah, I've thought of one other thing,” Ford said as Stan struggled into the second sweater. “I think...you should probably retrieve my third journal.”

Stan managed to tug the collar of the sweater down over his head without dislodging the bandage-no easy task-and frowned at his brother. “Your third journal? Wait, how many are there?”

“Just three. I hid the first two here in Gravity Falls but I was concerned about them all being so close together, which is why I called you...” Ford shook his head, completely missing the look of abject exasperation on Stan's face. Because of course his brother had decided the best way to conceal highly sensitive information was with a damn scavenger hunt in his hometown. Of course he had.

“Anyway,” Ford went on. “The second journal would be...difficult to retrieve at the moment, but the third journal is hidden in the woods, not too far from here. It has some information about the Dreamscape that we may need for the modifications.”

“About the what-scape?”

Ford sighed and held out a folded piece of paper. “Just get the journal, Stan. I've written down instructions here for how to find and access it.”

“Sure,” Stan muttered, taking the paper a bit sullenly. Maybe a lot sullenly. “Not like I need to know what you're doing or anything.”

“It would take a very long time to explain-”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. It's alright.” Stan shrugged into the coat and re-wrapped his scarf around his neck.

Ford followed him to the door, wringing his hands. “I can't think of anything else to tell you...and you do have the radio...but-”

Stan paused in front of the door. “Oh, wait. Actually, there is something I need to know.”

“Yes?” Ford said frantically.

“These unicorns, they're not the kind that only approach virgins, are they? Cause-”

“Stanley!” Ford yelped. “This is serious!”

“It was a serious question! I'm just askin'-alright, alright, geez, I'm going, I'm going.” He shoved the door open and stepped out onto the ice-slick porch. The temperature differential wasn't nearly as noticeable as it should have been. “Try not to die until I get back.”

“You try not to die until you get back,” Ford replied.

“That would be preferable. Now close the door before you get even more sick.”

Ford closed the door and watched through the little window as Stan waded out through the snow.

“You think he'll be alright?” Fiddleford said.

“I hope so.” Ford stared mournfully at his brother's retreating back. “I used to think he could survive anything. Now I'm...not so sure.”

He sighed and turned away. “Come on. We'd better get to work.”

Chapter Text

By the time he found the third journal, Stan was extremely tired of snow.

Everything was white, white, white, from the ground to the sky, with the black and gray sketch-marks of trees the only points of distinction in the emptiness. The woods were weighted with silence, as heavy and cold as the snow, into which his own little noises fell and disappeared like pebbles sinking into a deep lake. He felt as if he was walking across an alien landscape, somewhere that time moved differently; within a few minutes of the house disappearing from view he had already lost track of time and distance and begun to feel as though he had been walking for years.

What did not feel distant and unearthly was how extremely cold and wet he was.

Loathe though he would be to ever admit it, he was grateful for Ford's extra clothes, but the coat and sweaters didn't do anything to stop the snow soaking into his pants, or falling into his boots and freezing his feet. He had wrapped his scarf up around his nose and mouth and he could feel his breath in it, hot and wet, the only warmth to be found anywhere in this frozen limbo. The cold sunk in everywhere else, bit by bit, sliding under his clothes, chafing and scraping at him as he walked.

He remembered hearing, somewhere, about people dying of cold, how it felt a lot like falling asleep, how the temptation would start to tug and whisper at you to lie down, close your eyes, just for a minute, just rest a little while, and never wake up again.

Don't sleep, can't sleep. Like Ford, staring at him red-eyed, saying: I cannot rest, not yet, not yet. Like Stan, moving, never stopping, for ten years, because he couldn't, not yet, not yet. Miles to go. Miles to go...

He hated the silence for letting him think. Thinking never got him anywhere good. That was Ford's job.

Last I checked…

He couldn’t take it anymore. He started humming aimlessly, a long and rambling tune that meandered through every song he could think of, trying to focus on the imagined lyrics instead of...anything else. It didn't help a great deal.

He did, at least, have to concentrate a fair amount of attention on not getting lost. Ford had scribbled out something that was half map and half directions, with comments like “follow the path until you get to the big rock that looks like this” and “once you hit the creek turn left and keep following it”. It probably would’ve been more helpful if the snow hadn’t blotted out most of the landmarks, making the woods an identical, featureless expanse. At least Ford had also thrown a compass into the bag. Stan rapidly began to suspect that it might turn out to be the only thing keeping him from never finding his way back to the house at all.

Somehow, mostly by aiming in what seemed to be the right general direction and hoping for the best, he eventually managed to find a patch of woods that looked more or less like Ford’s disjointed description. There were instructions on how to find the correct tree, but after a minute of staring at them, Stan gave up, broke off a nearby branch, and just started banging it against every tree he saw.

Whack-Whack-Whack-Whack-Whack-his arm was starting to get tired-Whack-Whack-had he hit that one already? They all looked the same-Whack-Whack-Whack-Whack-CLANG--

Stan stopped and squinted. It looked like all the other trees, but when he tapped the branch against it again, it definitely made a metallic sound. Huh. Well, he had to give Ford this much: he sure could make a surprisingly convincing fake tree.

He brushed the snow and moisture off the tree with the back of his sleeve until he could make out the faint outline of a panel. Getting it open presented some difficulties; the metal had frozen shut, and with his gloves on he couldn’t get a purchase on the thin crack. Exposing his bare hands to the icy metal did not feel like a particularly appealing idea.

Well, Stan, what kind of criminal are you, if you can't even get into a basic unlocked compartment? C'mon. You can do better than this.

He fished out his pocketknife and used the flat of the screwdriver attachment to pry the panel open just enough to get his fingers under it. The panel resisted, but after a few moments of struggling, it finally sprang open, very nearly smacking him in the face in the process. Behind it was a hollow compartment with a strange device sitting in it, something like a radio with a lot of dials and buttons that he couldn’t make heads or tails of.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to. He pulled out the paper again and followed the instructions Ford had written. Turn this dial this way, and toggle that switch back and forth three times, and…

He heard a muffled sliding noise, and a soft whumphf, and turned to see an indentation in the snow that had definitely not been there before. Oh. Because of course Ford had hidden his journal in an actual hole in the ground. Which a bunch of snow had now fallen into. Great.

Groaning out loud to the empty air, he trudged over to the indentation and began clearing the snow away, first with his branch and then, as he got closer to the bottom, scooping it out with his hands, until he saw a sudden flash of gold. He gently brushed the snow away, uncovering red leather embossed with a gold-foil six-fingered hand like the one on the first journal.

“What the hell, Ford,” Stan muttered into his scarf. “You could at least have put it in a box or a bag or something. Now it's all wet.”

He lifted the journal clear of the snow and shook it off. His gloves were soaking wet by now, so he yanked them off and shoved them in a pocket, wincing as the cold bit into his fingers, before doing his best to dry off the book against his sweater. It was still a bit damp, but fortunately it looked pretty sturdy.

Curious, he flipped the book open. He'd never actually looked inside the journal Ford had given him, what with all the...distractions. Probably he wouldn't understand most of it, maybe any of it, but still, he kind of wanted to see what all the fuss was about. It wasn't like Ford had told him not to look at it. As such.

He expected something alien, more of the equations and technical gibberish that littered Ford's house, but in fact what greeted him was achingly familiar. It looked like the journals Ford used to keep when they were kids, full of doodles and notes on things he had read about, or things he and Stan had found on the beach or the boardwalks; piles of notebooks crammed tight with monsters and cryptography and dreams. The handwriting was a lot neater, the drawings more lifelike, all contained within a heavy and professional-looking tome instead of a cheap dime-store composition book, but the heart of it was the same.

Some things about his brother hadn't changed at all.

He stood there in the snow, almost forgetting about the cold, flipping through accounts of folklore and secrets. Dangerous creatures, lumberjack legends, ghosts and zombies...some of the pages had been ripped out or scribbled over angrily. Some had splatters of red on them.

The journal ended abruptly halfway through, on a dramatic note about how Ford was being watched and had to hide this journal immediately.

“Great job on that,” Stan muttered. “You hid your doodad in a tree. In lumber country.”

The pages immediately before that were a mess of paranoia, ravings about seeing things, not being able to sleep, bleeding from one eye, the whole deranged plan to travel into the caves, and then...

Ironically, the only other person left that I can trust is the least trustworthy person I know. He is a thief and a charlatan-but a well-traveled one. I have no doubt that he is familiar with mob hangouts and back alleys the wide world over. He will find somewhere to hide Journal 1. I have sent word to him and now must await his arrival.

Perhaps he can yet prove his worth to me.

Stan stood there, forgetting the snow almost up to his knees, forgetting his shivers and sodden clothes, forgetting the feel of his hands against the damp leather, forgetting everything but those words and the way they burned cold and bright inside his chest.

It was true after all, then.

And he wanted to be angry, he wanted it desperately, for the anger to rise up and burn away the cold that was settling inside him like snow, like frostbite, turning everything numb numb numb until he was frozen all through and he knew he would shatter at the faintest touch, but it didn't. It wouldn't. Anger should have been the one thing he count on but the cold just kept coming and he couldn't stop it.

He'd been kidding himself. He'd forgotten. He'd let himself forget. He'd said: it was all the demon, it was Bill, it was Bill holding the knife, it was Bill saying those things, and he had stopped remembering that Ford had said things too. That Ford had turned his back on Stan. Had left him out in the cold for ten years and only called him when he wanted something.

It was pathetic, really. He'd been so relieved that his brother didn't literally want to kill him that he'd forgotten that Ford still hated him.

Or no. Didn't hate him. Hate might have been...better, worse, he didn't know, but that wasn't what was written here. This wasn't hate. If Ford had raged and spat across the page, he might have understood that, might have been able to rise to it with hatred of his own, but the words were flat and uncaring. Ford didn't hate him because Ford didn't even think he was worth hating. Ford didn't think he was worth anything at all.

And he knew this was no demon's doing, because he knew the demon and he knew Ford, and there was none of that gleeful spite here. The words weren't calculated to sting. They were only stating a fact.

That was the worst of it. It was a fact. It was true. He couldn't argue for his worth because he knew he didn't have any. What, in ten years, had he done to prove his worth to Ford, to anyone? Sold a bunch of dodgy products, got in trouble with the wrong people, wound up broke and getting more broke all the time. He'd been falling so long he knew he didn't have a hope of ever climbing out of the pit he kept on digging for himself, let alone recovering the millions he'd carelessly lost.

He snapped the book shut, dropped it in the satchel, and fished for the radio.

“Ford?”

A faint crackle, and then: “Stanley?”

“I found your journal.”

“Oh. Good.” There was a staticky pause. “Any problems?”

He'd hoped that hearing Ford's voice would spark some anger, something to drive him on, push him righteously forward.

“No,” he said. “No, there's...nothing. Just wanted to let you know.”

“Oh. I see. Thank you. Well, uh...carry on, then.”

Stan dropped the radio back in the bag and pulled his sodden gloves back on.

Maybe. Maybe there was finally a chance here. To do something. He couldn't make himself worthwhile, but maybe something he could do would be worthwhile.

He was going to get that damn hair and no overdecorated fairy horse was going to stop him.

Stan took a deep breath and pushed forward.

Ford put the radio down with a frown. Stanley had sounded...odd, but he couldn't pinpoint why. But then, there was nothing new there.

“Sounds like he's doing alright so far,” Fiddleford said from across the room.

They were in Ford's workshop, which, like the rest of the house, was an unholy mess. Ford had mostly just shoved everything off to the sides in a disordered pile. He'd sort it out later. If later ever happened.

“Yes,” Ford said absently. “So far.”

He picked up the wire he had been shaping and resumed working on it. Fiddleford was constructing the main device they were going to attach to the gun, while Ford was working on the spell components. It was delicate work, but this was what he was good at. Science. Studying. Equations and precision. Here, at least, was one thing he could understand.

He really wished his hands would stop shaking.

They'd moved the space heater in there with them, but it was still damn cold. Fiddleford had put a blanket on him-again-but it wasn't helping all that much. It felt like the cold was coming from inside him, somewhere deep in his core that no outside warmth would reach.

They worked in silence for a while, with only the sounds of their tools and Fiddleford's occasional quiet swearing to disturb the dusty air. Eventually Fiddleford laid down his pliers, cracked his knuckles, and slumped back in his chair with a sigh.

“This is a damn odd project we're doing here,” he said. “I don't understand the half of it.”

“I'd be happy to go over the advanced theory with you sometime when it doesn't hurt to talk,” Ford said.

He didn't turn around, but he could feel Fiddleford's eyeroll from across the room.

“You stick to your advanced theory,” the engineer muttered. “I don't want to know any more about this than I need to.”

“That's not a very scientific outlook-”

“Well it hasn't done you a lot of good, has it?”

The words hung for a moment in the cold air.

“...'m sorry,” Fiddleford said eventually. “That wasn't called for.”

“Maybe not,” Ford said heavily. “But it wasn't wrong either.”

By the time he found the magical glade or whatever it was, Stan was so exhausted he could barely stand. The walk from the house to the standing stones would have been long enough already without also having to push through the snow, not to mention getting lost and having to radio Ford for help three times. He'd seen the silhouettes of things he couldn't quite identify darting between the trees, and once caught a flash of red that looked an awful lot like a pointy red cap, but by and large everything looked the same, just endless blank whiteness that was starting to make his eyes hurt.

But there was no mistaking the place now that he'd found it. He'd started to pass strange carved stones poking up through the snow, and now he could see a circle of them up ahead, like some kind of knockoff Stonehenge. According to the first journal, he had to stand in front of them and perform an 'ancient druidic chant' to open the gateway. There was even an illustration of a druid on the page, as if this might in some way help.

Well, there was nothing else for it now. Stan stood in front of the stone ring, coughed a few times, and then, feeling like a total idiot, began chanting.

Just as he was starting to think that absolutely nothing had happened, he felt the rumble.

Slowly, ponderously, the stones pushed up from the snow, extending taller and taller, bringing the snow and dirt up with them in a thick wall that seemed to age and solidify into as it rose until it resembled some forgotten settlement from the Bronze Age. As Stan watched, slack jawed, vines and flowers pushed out from the dirt, winding around and around over the sheets of shaggy moss that were spreading over the stones, while the snow and mud rapidly melted away to reveal a huge set of golden doors inlaid with fist-sized pink jewels.

Stan reached out a hand, touched the burnished metal of the doors, tugged gently at a flowering vine, tapped the side of the gemstones, just to make sure this was a real thing that had actually happened and not some hallucination born of cold and sleep deprivation. It felt real. One of those jewels alone could set him up for life...but they looked very well attached, and anyway, thief and charlatan and knucklehead he might be, but he wasn't stupid enough to think stealing right off the front door of a magical garden that had appeared out of nowhere was a good idea. That sounded like a great way to get cursed.

Besides, he had other business.

He took a deep breath and pushed open the doors.

Before him was was a beautiful, sunlit forest clearing, unmarked by any sign of winter. The grass was lush and deep, a rich green dotted here and there with brilliantly colored flowers attended by gently buzzing insects. A clear, bubbling stream ran through it, fed by a rushing waterfall that danced with rainbows. The air was warm and soft and smelled faintly of wildflowers and honeysuckle and something else he couldn't identify. Everything about it felt more...just more, a little more intense, the colors brighter, the scents clearer.

And there in the middle of the grove were two unicorns.

For a moment Stan just stood there, staring at them dumbly. Up until this exact moment he hadn't actually, really believed he was going to see any damn unicorns. He'd expected...he wasn't sure what, maybe some weird mutant creature that Ford had just called a unicorn for convenience, or a misshapen goat Ford had seen from a distance, or maybe he would just find that Ford had hallucinated the whole thing. Because sure, by this point Stan had more or less accepted that there was something not normal going on, something weird, something he didn't really understand, but there was a pretty big difference between that and actual real fucking magical unicorns.

But here they were, right in front of him, undeniably real and undeniably unicorns.

Inasmuch as he'd been expecting anything, he'd had a vague idea of a horse with a pointy bit on one end, which had made him a bit nervous to think about, not that he would ever admit that to anyone. He'd encountered horses a few times-sleeping in barns, picking some fruit for an old guy for an afternoon's salary and a bag of apples, legging it through a field without any pants after a con attempt gone especially wrong-and he'd found that horses were, well. A lot bigger than they had looked on TV back in Glass Shard Beach. And people said horses were all timid and frightful and maybe they were, relatively speaking, but all Stan knew was that they had feet like chunks of iron and they could kick harder than any punch he'd ever throw, and there had been nothing timid and frightful off about the huge black mare he'd intruded on during his escape. Suffice to say it had been a lot harder to make it out of that field after that encounter.

The unicorns did look a bit like horses, but they looked more like deer, all slender and pointy and delicate, with dainty hooves and long tufted tails like lions. One of them, which was perched majestically on a rock and catching the light, was a blue so pale it was nearly white, with a mane that was a swirl of rainbow colors. The other was a rosy gold dappled with star-like spots of white and a gold-flecked blue mane, and was somewhat more prosaically chewing the grass in a corner of the glade.

Stan felt betrayed by reality.

The blue unicorn lifted its head and tossed its mane dramatically before turning to look at him. Its eyes were pink and glittering and really quite uncomfortably large for its face.

“Welcome, visitor,” it said-or at least, its horn glowed pink and it seemed to produce a voice, somehow, though its mouth didn't move. It was a high, flouncy sort of voice, and...probably female? It was a little hard to tell, honestly. “The world outside is harsh. Come inside and rest a moment.”

“Uh,” Stan said. “Thanks.”

“But do take your shoes off first,” the unicorn added quickly as Stan stepped forward.

Stan did a double take. “What?”

“Your shoes. I have a thing about shoes.”

Stan glanced down at the lush, deep grass, shrugged, and pulled his boots off. At least it would warm his feet. He'd lost feeling in them some time ago.

As he stepped forward gingerly in his wet socks, the unicorn rose to its hooves and paused for a moment to pose in the spray from the waterfall. “Greetings, weary traveler. I am Celestabellabethabelle, last of my kind.”

Stan's eyes automatically flicked to the other unicorn still calmly eating grass in the corner.

It was hard to tell with the horse face and all, but Stan could swear the first unicorn looked annoyed. “By which I mean, I am the last female of my kind. Skystardancechaserton is the last unicorn stallion.”

“Call me Chase,” the gold unicorn said languidly. “Please.”

“What happened to the rest of the unicorns?” Stan asked.

There was a very long pause.

“That's a very sensitive subject and I'll thank you not to bring it up,” Celestabellabethabelle said. “Now, if we're done with the rude questions-”

“Sorry.”

“-what is your name, o traveler?”

“Oh, uh. Stan. My name's Stan.”

It felt...weird. Aside from meeting Fiddleford, he hadn't introduced himself by his real name in...well, longer than he could really remember at this point. Years, at least. It wasn't even really a matter of hiding any more; there was just no point. It wasn't a name attached to anything anyone cared about.

But the unicorns could probably detect lies or some shit like that, and anyway he doubted they were going to do a full background check and call him out for selling dodgy dishtowels in New Jersey ten years ago. Although, at the rate things were going, he didn't think he'd be all that surprised if they did.

“Welcome, Stan.” Celestabellabethabelle cleared the stream in a graceful leap and paced towards him. Stan backed away instinctively. Alright, so the unicorns weren't quite as hefty as horses, but they were still big enough to be getting on with, and that horn looked sharp.

“Pray tell, what is the purpose of your quest, Stan?” Celestabellabethabelle fluted at him.

“What?” Stan said, distracted by the presence of a very pointy object on level with his face. He was suddenly acutely aware of the bandage over his face, and the tingle of the cut underneath it.

Celestabellabethabelle s eyes narrowed slightly. “Why are you here?”

Oh. Oh, right. Stan straightened up a bit and tried to put on his most charming expression. “Ah, yes, about that. I, uh, I came to ask for a bit of your hair. You see, there's this-”

“Very well!” Celestabellabethabelle tossed her head again and struck a pose. Stan got the feeling he had finally managed to wander back on script. “Step forward, and let us see if you are truly of pure, perfect heart.”

“Oh, uh, well, about that-whoa!”

The horn was very suddenly extremely close to his chest and oh man, it was sharp. Stan instinctively stumbled back, temporarily forgetting about anything other than getting some distance between that thing and his precious vital organs.

He'd barely had time to chastise himself for this-great, he'd probably screwed up even before the test had begun-when the unicorn reared up with a wild bray. The sudden movement tripped frantic alarm bells in Stan's head-horn, hooves, limbs moving blow incoming, get down, cover face, cover chest-and he was flinging himself onto the frozen ground and rolling away without even thinking about it.

“NOT PUUUUURE OF HEEEEEAAAAART!” the unicorn bellowed.

Stan flinched and curled in on himself, waiting for the attack.

It didn't come.

“Are you even listening?” Celestabellabethabelle demanded. “And why are you on the ground?”

Stan slowly raised his head. The unicorn's tail was twitching, and it definitely looked annoyed, but it didn't look like it was about to smite him.

“Sorry,” Stan mumbled, clambering to his feet.

“I said you are not pure of heart,” the unicorn repeated huffily. “You have done bad things!”

Stan's people-reading skills didn't work quite so well on unicorns as they did, well, people, but he got the distinct impression that Celestabellabethabelle wasn't angry at him for being impure so much as she was angry at him for not reacting properly to this revelation.

“I mean...I coulda told you that without all the theatrics,” he said, brushing grass out of his hair.

Celestabellabethabelle gasped dramatically. “You knew you were not pure of heart? And yet you dare to come here and ask a boon of a unicorn?”

“Well...it's for a very important reason,” Stan said. “My brother-”

“I will hear no more! Leave!” The unicorn reared up again and Stan flinched, but this time she only turned her back on him and strode back toward the stream. “We grant our hair only to those who are pure and perfect. You do not qualify!”

“I know I don't qualify, but-”

“No arguments! Take your shoes and go!”

“No,” Stan said.

Celestabellabethabelle jerked her head around in surprise. “No? What do you mean, no?”

“I mean, no. It ain't that easy to get rid of me, lady.” Stan folded his arms and looked steadily back at her. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that the other unicorn had stopped eating and was watching the scene with interest.

“You dare-”

“Let me ask you something,” Stan said. “When was the last time you actually met a person that was perfect and pure of heart?”

He watched for the hesitation. He wasn't disappointed.

“It's...been a very long time,” Celestabellabethabelle said. “Such hearts are very rare-”

“If they're so rare it shouldn't be hard to remember the last time you encountered one.”

Unicorns, it turned out, had very bad poker faces.

“Why do you ask these impertinent questions?” Celestabellabethabelle said eventually, after too long a pause. “It is no concern of yours-”

“Yeah, yeah, cut the crap,” Stan said. “I know a con when I see one. Let me guess: you've never encountered someone that was pure of heart. Probably because they don't exist. Everyone's got some bad in them. Maybe...maybe some of us more than others, but-”

“And I suppose you know everything, do you?” the unicorn snapped. “Who are you to argue with a unicorn on matters of the heart? We can see within you, we know-”

“Yeah?” Stan said. “So if you know so much, tell me, just what bad things have I done? If you know all about them it shouldn't be hard to name a thing or two.”

“It...it doesn't work like that,” Celestabellabethabelle muttered. “It's more of a vague-”

“It doesn't work at all, does it? You didn't even get near me with that thing before you were brayin' about impurity. I told you, I know a con when I see one, and I gotta tell you, this one is pretty weak. You just think no one will argue with you 'cause you're pretty.”

The other unicorn broke out laughing.

“Chase!” Celestabellabethabelle hissed angrily, shooting the gold unicorn an evil look. “Don't you have somewhere else to be-”

“I do not,” Chase replied. “It's not your glade, C-beth, and I'm tired of you hogging it just so you can play your stupid games. Anyway, why would I leave now? This is the funniest thing I've seen in years.”

“Chaaaaaase,” Celestabellabethabelle whined.

“You got in one, dude,” Chase said, tossing his head at Stan amiably. “She's been pulling this stupid trick over on people for ages. We can't see into anyone's heart. Our horns don't do jack 'cept glow and play disco music.”

He raised his head and, sure enough, his horn glowed and emitted a snippet of obnoxious music.

“Urgh,” Stan said.

“I know, right? It changes from time to time. Not sure why.” He twitched his tail in what might have been the unicorn equivalent of a shrug.

“I am protecting our glade,” Celestabellabethabelle insisted. “If word spread among the outside world of the properties of our hair, why, we were would be hunted to extinction, our land destroyed-”

“Yeah, no,” Stan said. “I think you just like screwing with people.”

“Alright, maybe I do!” Celestabellabethabelle snapped. “They're so...so...whiny and stupid! 'Oh, please, beautiful unicorn, may I have a lock of your mane to protect my family'-blah, blah, blah! It gets tiring, you know! And they're so gullible, they fall for anything! I say they deserve it! After all, how would you like it if I came into your house and demanded you give me some of your stupid hair?”

Stan was done with this.

“Boo fucking hoo,” he snarled at the pouting unicorn. “You want to know how I'd like it if I got to sit around in a magic glade doin' nothing all day and the worst thing I had to put up with was having people come by to flatter me? I think I'd like that a whole hell of a lot! It'd beat the shit out of being homeless, broke and on the run for ten years! You know when the last time I got to have a shower was? Wash my clothes? Eat a decent meal? Sleep in a damn bed? Listen, you overrated carousel reject, you want some hair? Is that your problem? Because you can fucking have it!”

He grabbed at his pocketknife, yanked the blade open, and, in a fit of towering spite that had escalated well past any rational thought, hacked off his tied-back hair and flung it in the unicorn's face.

Celestabellabethabelle stood there, blinking, nostrils twitching, looking considerably less elegant and otherworldly with chunks of brown mullet all over her, and made a small horsey sound of distress.

“Now,” Stan said, breathing hard and drunk on the feeling of pure unthinking anger, “I did not wade through two feet of snow for hours to get here just to turn around and go back empty-handed. You want to talk about being hunted to extinction? Fucking try me.”

The unicorn stared at him for a moment longer before bursting into tears-somehow-and running away.

Chase bellowed with laughter.

“Dude, that was amazing!” he gasped, doing a kind of gleeful tap-dance with his front hooves. “The look on her face! She's never gonna live that down! Listen, buddy, you really need that hair, you can have some of mine. You deserve it after that performance.”

“Oh,” Stan said, slowly lowering the knife. “Uh, thanks.”

He pulled his boots back on, wincing at the feeling of his wet socks squelching around inside, and picked his way across the grass over to the gold unicorn.

“Actually, if you could take it off the front, that'd be great- yeah, like that.” Chase cocked his head to the side and let Stan cut a few locks off the front of his mane. “Yeah, that's the ticket. It's been getting in my eyes, and lemme tell you, man, it is hard to get a haircut when you don't know anyone with opposable thumbs. Oh, wait'll I tell everyone about this...”

“So you're not really the last ones,” Stan said.

“Oh, Epona, no,” Chase said. “That's just part of her stupid game. Honestly, she's taken so many people in with that, I cannot tell you how great it was to watch someone call her out on it for once. Usually they just run away crying. Although I heard one guy challenged her to an arm wrestling match.”

Stan carefully tipped the glittering blue hair into the little plastic baggie Ford had put in the satchel and tucked it away. “Well...uh...thanks. For this, I mean. It really is important.”

“Sure, dude. Least I could do, I'm gonna be riding that story for months.” Chase swished his tail and went back to chewing on the grass.“And hey, good luck on your quest!”

“Thanks,” Stan muttered, turning back toward the gateway. After the brief reprieve of the warm glade, the cold waiting outside felt even worse. “I think we're gonna need it.”

“Ford?”

Ford jerked upright at the touch of a hand on his shoulder and realized with a sick jolt that he'd been drifting off over his work. He couldn't afford that. If Bill got loose, here, now, alone with Fiddleford...he didn't want to think about that.

The engineer in question was standing over him, holding a steaming mug and looking concerned. “I, uh. I made some more tea. That coughing sounds like it's getting pretty rough.”

He held the mug out tentatively.

Ford took it. It was his favorite, he realized, the one with the NASA logo on it. A graduation present. It had gotten chipped at some point.

“Thanks,” he muttered, setting the mug on the tabletop and wiping at his eyes. Just a little longer. He just had to make it a little longer, and then he could rest.

“Stanford,” Fiddleford said quietly. “I...I need to ask you something.”

His tone sounded ominous, but Ford was far too drowsy to properly process it, so he settled for making a questioning noise.

Fiddleford perched on the edge of the desk and kicked his legs back and forth across the floor. “This...this demon...is there, ahm...anything it's done that I should know about?”

Ford squinted at him. “I thought you didn't want to know things.”

Fiddleford blew out a tired, irritated sigh. “Look, I just...I...Stanley said it'd been, uh, it'd been...hurting you. And-”

“Stanley told you that?” Ford broke in, feeling a faint sting of betrayal. He'd rather hoped Stan would get the hint that it wasn't something Ford exactly wanted to be talked about.

“The issue was rather pressed when I started seein' all the blood around your house,” Fiddleford said, a faint touch of his old dryness creeping into his voice.

“It's not important,” Ford muttered, staring into his mug.

“We could debate that,” Fiddleford said. “But...well, it's just-I had a moment, y'know, seeing that...it made me wonder, well, what you'd been doing. I mean, if there were...other people...”

“If I'd been hacking people up in Satanic rituals?” Ford said. “Corpses hidden in my basement? That sort of thing?”

Fiddleford looked very tired. “Stanford...you told me you made a pact with a demon that wants to end the world. There are...weird sigils and idols and things all over your house. And an awful lot of blood. I hate to break it to you, but you've kinda lost the benefit of the doubt on this one. So yeah. I guess that is what I'm asking.”

“Technically he's an extradimensional being-”

“Yeah, yeah, it's as close to a demon as makes no difference, from where I'm standing.”

Ford stirred his spoon around in his mug aimlessly.

“As far as I know I'm...the only one he's hurt so far,” he said eventually. “Well. And Stanley. Last night.”

Fiddleford nodded jerkily. “Right. And this pact-”

“It was just...an agreement. To work together. I didn't sign over my first born or anything, if that's what you're thinking.” Ford shrugged listlessly. “I thought he was a friend. He said he could help me, he could...keep working when I couldn't...I didn't see any reason not to let him. It was...easier, for him, if he could move in and out of my mind. And then later I...it turned out I couldn't take it back.”

“Why?” Fiddleford said.

“Well...the mechanism by which Bill is allowed access-”

“No, I mean...why was it so important for you to be working so damn hard?”

“Oh.” Ford took a sip of the tea. His throat felt raw, worn and chafed as an old rope. “I suppose Bill was very motivated to complete the portal as fast as possible.”

“Probably,” Fiddleford said. “But that'd be its reason. What was yours?”

“What?”

Fiddleford took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes.

“You work yourself to the bone, Stanford, and I've never understood it,” he said. “Even before...all this. You get as much done as any three people could and you still push yourself to go harder. For as long as I've known you it's been like you're...you're racing towards something, but I don't know what. I'm not sure you do either.”

Ford looked away.

“You wouldn't understand,” he said. No one ever did.

“Yeah, sure,” Fiddleford said wearily. “Handy excuse to not bother tryin' to explain it.”

Ford bristled. “You know, I could be asking you the same question.”

“What? I'm not racing towards nothing. I take my own time-”

“No. Your first question. Is there anything I should know about?”

Fiddleford began to jog his leg nervously. “What would you be needing to know about?”

“Did you erase anything else?”

“I don't know if it's really any of your damn business what all I chose to forget-”

“I wasn't talking about what you forgot,” Ford said. “I'm talking about what I forgot. What did you erase from me?”

“Ah. That.” Fiddleford looked down at the floor. “Well...I...when I first made the gun, I used it on myself, to try and forget the, uh...something bad we encountered...”

“The Gre-”

“I don't want to know.” Fiddleford rubbed at his temples. His Southern drawl was coming on strong now, always a sure sign of stress with him.“You're not really getting the point of the whole 'erasing traumatic memories' thing, are you?”

“I get it, I just don't-”

“Anyway. After...after that happened, and we had that argument...” He closed his eyes and rubbed at the back of his neck. “I said I wasn't going to use it anymore, and, and I meant it, but I had...I had some things to take care of first...and you caught me...you were going to break it. To stop me using it. And I...I couldn't...so I used it on you. I didn't mean to. I mean, I never meant to use it on anyone who...who didn't need it. But I guess I panicked. And after, it was like...like rewinding time. Like I'd just gone back and we had the whole argument over again, except this time I knew what to do right. And it was just...easier to leave it like that.”

“Easier,” Ford said flatly.

Fiddleford shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah. Easier. Then later, when I brought the men round to help excavate...you...you got real upset. You were yelling about how we couldn't trust anyone, couldn't bring anyone else in, how things had to be secret...you-you were scaring me, Stanford. I'd never seen you so angry...”

“I...” Ford swallowed hard. “What happened to not using it on people who didn't need it? Not exactly the most beneficial usage of your wonderful device, is it, cheating honest men out of free labor?”

“It wasn't free labor!” Fiddleford said, scandalized. “I paid them! I just let them think it was for something else! Anyway, I reckon it was pretty dang beneficial to them, considering it was a choice between them forgetting what they'd worked on and you comin' after them for knowing your precious secrets!”

“What?” Ford's voice caught and he began to cough violently. It went on for some time. Fiddleford reached out a hand, hesitantly, but he didn't seem to know what to do with it, and eventually he took it away.

When Ford finally caught his breath enough to speak again, it was in a harsh whisper. “I wouldn't...I wouldn't hurt anyone...”

There was open concern on Fiddleford's face now, but he shook his head. “I heard you talking to yourself. You, um...I heard that a lot, actually. I don't think you realized...but that night, I thought you'd fallen asleep at your desk, and I went to get coffee, and when I came back you were talking about having to clean up...”

Ford's red-rimmed eyes went wide in horror.

“Bill,” he said. It was barely audible. “He...he must have...must have been planning...It wasn't me, Fidds, it wasn't...I wouldn't...”

“I didn't know that,” Fiddleford said.

Ford wrapped his arms tight around himself and said nothing.

“That was all, though,” Fiddleford said after a little while. “That was all I did. I've...been keeping an eye on you. When you came into town, and... I came around to the house a few times, to see how you were doing. I kept meaning to talk to you, to say something...but I always lost the nerve. But that's all. You, you worry me, Stanford...what you're doing worries me...but I haven't used the device on you again. I swear.”

“I thought I saw you,” Ford mumbled. “Watching me, but I wasn't sure...I thought it was a dream. Or maybe not.”

He rubbed a hand over his face, fingers pausing over his swollen eye. “I've been losing time, Fidds. Losing...bits of myself. I wake up in places that I didn't fall asleep in, I find...cuts and bruises that I didn't inflict, I...everything blurs together. Dreams, and visions, and I don't know what's real anymore, things just...come and go...”

Fiddleford frowned and rubbed his hands on his knees. “Stanford...”

“Listen to me, Fiddleford.” There was a sudden urgency in Ford's voice that made Fiddleford jerk his head up in surprise. “This is why, this is why what you're doing is dangerous, do you understand? This is what happens when you start...when things get erased. You lose yourself, more and more, and, and eventually you're...you're more negative space than positive. There's more of you gone than there is left. You don't want this, Fidds. Please. Don't do this to yourself. Don't make my mistakes.”

Fiddleford swallowed, bobbing his head nervously. “That's, uh...that's different, though...”

“How?” Ford said sharply. “How is it different?”

“Because I'm choosing what I want to forget!” Fiddleford snapped back at him. “Because I'm in control! I'm not just...at the mercy of...”

He caught himself and looked away.

“I only use it when I need to,” he said. “It's all worked out fine, so far...”

“So far.”

“I've been studying it, there's no side effects-”

“Don't you see, Fidds? You're...you're erasing symptoms, but you're not handling the problem. You say you take away the memory of what frightens you and you're fine...until something else frightens you, so you have to use it again...it's not solving anything! Unless you do something to deal with your fear, you're just going to keep erasing memories until there's nothing left-”

“That's damn easy for you to say, isn't it!” Fiddleford burst out. “Deal with my fear-like you have any idea what that's like! What do you know about fear? When we went up against those things...I never saw you blink! You, you laughed like you thought it was all fun! A game! And then you give me this spiel about finding 'creative solutions' and those damn meditation techniques of yours that didn't do anything...who are you to tell me how to handle my fear, Stanford? You never worry about anything, you just charge ahead!”

He trailed off, gasping, into a ringing silence. Ford was looking at him very strangely.

“Fidds...” he said quietly. “Why do you think I knew those meditation techniques in the first place?”

“I...I don't know. I thought you...went and looked them up. Got them from a book or something.”

“No...well, I did, but...not for you. Not then, I mean, I...I've been using them for a long time. For myself.” He shook his head slowly. “Just because I'm not scared of monsters doesn't mean I'm not scared of anything.”

“But you...” Fiddleford frowned at the reflection in front of him. “What are you afraid of-”

There was a pounding on the door.

Ford jerked his mug, narrowly avoiding spilling tea all over his schematics, while Fiddleford squawked and very nearly somersaulted off the table.

“That's...that's probably your brother, right?” Fiddleford said nervously, when they'd both recovered a bit.

“We can't be sure,” Ford said darkly. “Could be anything-”

“Ford, open the damn door before my fingers fall off!”

“We can be fairly sure,” Fiddleford said.

Ford took the crossbow with him the door all the same.

“Is this going to be a thing with you now?” Stan said when Ford opened the door with the crossbow ready. “Because it's getting old already-”

“Prove you're my brother,” Ford said.

“Uh, what.”

“Your hair is shorter. Did you think I wouldn't notice?” Ford brandished the crossbow threateningly. “I know how shapeshifters work. They always get one thing wrong-”

“Oh for fuck's sake.” Stan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, things...happened, alright? Long story. But I swear it's me.”

“Prove it. Say something only Stan would say.”

Stan stared at him for a moment. “You know what? Screw this.” He took the satchel off, shoved it at Ford, and stomped inside while Ford was struggling to balance both the satchel and the crossbow. “I got your journal, I got your unicorn hair, I think I might have hypothermia now, shoot me if you want, I don't even care anymore. Go do your nerd stuff. I'm gonna steal some of your dry clothes before I shiver myself to death.”

Ford stared at Stan's retreating back, nonplussed.

“Did you get a haircut?” Fiddleford said as Stan passed him on his way upstairs. “How even-”

“Don't ask,” Stan growled. “Go do something with Ford before he tries to shoot his own reflection.”

Fiddleford blinked after him and turned back to the door to find Ford, crossbow forgotten on the floor, staring at a plastic bag filled with sparkling blue hair.

“He got it,” Ford muttered. “He actually got it. How?”

“Does it matter?” Fiddleford said. “At least we have it. That's good, right?”

“Of course it matters,” Ford said, and Fiddleford noted with alarm that he was beginning to shake again. “It means...it means...all this time...Stan's a better person than I ever gave him credit for. He's better than me-”

“Or maybe he just mugged 'em and took it,” Fiddleford said, gently taking Ford by the arm. “Let's worry about it later, yeah? You don't look so good, why don't you take a break-”

“No.” Ford shook himself free and staggered off back towards the workshop. “We can't stop now. We're so close. Just...just a little longer.”

Fiddleford chewed unhappily on his lip, but he followed Ford back to work without another word.

Stan's duffel had one spare pair of jeans that were mostly hole, and one spare t-shirt that was mostly stain, but they weren't wet and cold-not colder than anything else in Ford's house, at any rate-so at the moment they were preferable. He threw his wet outer layers into the bathtub for Ford to deal with and rubbed off with a rather manky-looking towel before changing. The dry clothes definitely helped, but he was still so cold he felt like he was turning blue, so he dug around in the heap of clothes spilling out of Ford's closet and found another sweater (how many sweaters could one man own, anyway?), an old green thing which was tight but manageable on Stan.

When they were kids he and Ford had shared a lot of their clothes, swapping back and forth; they were the same size, after all, and money was tight, and Sherman only had so many hand-me-downs.

“It won't kill 'em to share a pair of pants,” he remembered hearing his father say to his mother. “What am I, made of money? They're basically the same kid anyway.”

There was less of that as they'd gotten older and farther apart in size and style, but they would still occasionally steal shirts or socks from each other. When he'd gotten kicked out, Stan had found one of Ford's shirts buried in the duffel bag his father had packed. He wondered if Filbrick had simply not noticed what he was grabbing in his hurry, or if he just didn't think it mattered what belonged to who. It had to be the first, he decided, because everyone knew the difference between him and Ford by that point. Everyone knew Ford was the better one, the one who was going to excel. Their father certainly did.

He wondered what their father would think of them now.

At first glance the bedroom looked mostly like the rest of the house, an indistinguishable mess of paper and clutter and paranoia, but, standing there looking around and feeling at a loss, Stan picked out a few buried traces of Ford as Stan had known him, as he must have been before all this had started. A poster on the wall of a mustached man in an old-fashioned suit, and another of a man in a turtleneck sweater smiling in front of a background of planets and stars. A mug on the desk with a broken handle and a cartoon alien face on it, full of chewed-up pens and pencils. Dog-eared Popular Science and National Geographic magazines scattered about. A set of Lego astronauts posed on the edge of a shelf along with a little stuffed platypus and a Spock action figure. In one corner there was a small, dusty bookcase, filled not with the heavy technical tomes that took up the rest of the house, but with fiction.

Stan picked his way over to it and ran a finger along the spines of the books. Some of them were familiar to him: beloved old pulp paperbacks worn soft and cracked, the Tolkien boxset Ford had cherished like it was his firstborn child, the matched set of classic early sci-fi titles he had rescued one shining afternoon from a book sale at the local library, H.G. Wells and Jules Verne and Mary Shelley. Others were just as battered, but unfamiliar to Stan; he could imagine Ford in college, scouring libraries and yard sales and dinky little used bookstores with that particular gleam in his eye, like a prospector panning through mud for a glint of gold.

Stan sighed and looked away from the bookstore, towards the desk that stood beside it. It was buried under a sea of paper like most other surfaces in the house, but something caught his eye, a tiny triangle of color poking out from the mess.

He probably shouldn't pry-ah, who was he kidding? He was definitely going to pry.

He moved aside the papers and pulled out...

...a photograph.

Him and Ford, tiny and shirtless and sunburned, posing triumphantly in the Stan o'War on a long lost summer's day.

Stan stood there in the cold, dark room, holding the photograph like it was made of ash, like it might crumble and dissolve if he moved his fingers.

He didn't understand.

Ford had moved on. Ford didn't care anymore, not about Stan, not about their boat, not about the dreams they had been basking in on that sun-bathed afternoon a million years ago. He had said it himself: those things had no worth to Ford, not anymore.

But here was this photograph.

It didn't make sense.

Stan set it down, gently, and stirred his fingers through the mess of paper, looking for some clue, some context. His own name jumped out at him, and he realized with a jolt that it was written several times across the sheets.

Dear Stan-

Dear Stan, I know it's been a very long time, but-

Dear Stan, I am in trouble and I need your help-

Dear Stan, I've made some terrible mistakes and I don't know who else to turn to-

Dear Stan, I'm sorry for everything.

The letters all ended abruptly, or trailed off into hopeless, angry scribbles. Some had been balled up, or torn to shreds. Mixed in with the papers were bits of a postcard like the one that had been sent to him; this one looked like it had a lot more writing on it, but it was too thoroughly destroyed to know what it had said.

He wondered how many times Ford had started writing to him before giving up and simply putting down only two words. There seemed to be an endless amount of the half-formed letters, spilling over the desk, overflowing the nearby trashcan with paper wads, torn up postcards, and...

A book?

That was odd. Ford didn't throw out books.

Stan fished it out carefully, curious. It was a thin paperback, extremely battered, cracked and dog-eared with a huge tear down the cover, which was hanging on by a thread. He recognized it, another one of Ford's treasured old classics. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

That rung a bell. Ford had been talking about this just last night, hadn't he? Stan frowned and flipped through the pages gingerly. The inside of the book was more of a mess than the outside, dog-eared and marked up, passages circled or underlined or marked out altogether. One page in particular was covered with yellow highlighter, outlining a long passage that was strangely familiar. It took Stan a moment to realize where he had heard it before: from Ford himself, last night, as he had been falling asleep. If this were much prolonged...

As he flipped through the book, a sick feeling growing in his gut, a page fell out onto the desk. Its edges were torn, like it had been violently ripped out, and the passage at the top of it was underlined so heavily Stan could barely read it.

Under the strain of this continually impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought possible to man, I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one thought: the horror of my other self.

Underneath that the rest of the page was obscured by a scrawl of large, red-spotted childish letters that made Stan think of a too-wide grin and staring yellow eyes.

NO ONE TO BLAME BUT YOURSELF, SIXER.

Ford had gone quiet.

They were close, very close to finishing. Ford had done whatever it was he needed to do with the unicorn hair, and now they were down to the last few small but vital details. Fiddleford, concentrating on a bit of delicate soldering, didn't initially realize that the sound of Ford's ragged breathing and clinking of tools had died away until he finally put the iron down.

He frowned and glanced over at his colleague, sitting beside him. Ford was slumped on the desk, his head on one arm, chest rising and falling very slightly. For a moment, Fiddleford was tempted to simply leave him; God knew the man needed the rest. Then he remembered exactly why he couldn't do that.

He swallowed hard, trying to wet a mouth that had suddenly gone too dry to speak. “Ford.”

There was no response.

“Stanford.”

Nothing.

Hesitantly, fearfully, Fiddleford reached over to shake Ford by the shoulder. “Stanford, you need to wake up-”

Ford's hand came up far too fast and grabbed Fiddleford by the wrist.

“Hello, four-eyes!” Bill crowed cheerfully. “Long time no see, eh? Probably not long enough for you, though!”

Fiddleford stared, terrified and enraptured, at the venomously yellow eyes. “No. No, no, no-”

“Yes!” Bill grinned, achingly wide, and yanked Fiddleford closer. Ford's hand was burning hot and shaking in its grip. “I was wondering if I'd ever see you again! Couldn't take the heat, huh? See a little bit too much for your fragile little mind?”

“You-you-”

“You know, humans really are funny things!” Bill leaned close, too close, and Fiddleford could feel breath hot against his face, see the veins popping in Ford's eyes. “You know how hard I have to work to get into your heads? To really get the power to just wreck the place? It's not easy! But you, look at you! You did it all to yourself! You actually put this thing to your head and blew holes in your own mind! I didn't even have to suggest it!” The grin twitched, faintly, from side to side, teeth grinding against teeth. “And the really beautiful thing is, you have no idea what it really does! You don't know what you're in for, four-eyes! Oh, it's going to be a fun time for you-but I won't spoil it. Why don't you just tell me what you're doing with it now?”

“N...no...”

“Aw, c'mon, four-eyes, you won't share your secrets? I shared mine with you!” Bill cocked Ford's head to one side, slightly, like a carrion bird considering a potential meal. “I could share a few more, if you like! Wouldn't that be funny? If I just erased all that hard work you put into melting your own brain? How's about I remind you what you saw-”

“No!”

Fiddleford yanked his hand out of Bill's grip and stumbled back across the room, tripping and hitting the floor hard. His throat worked desperately, struggling to cry out, but no sound emerged.

“You and Sixer were testing my portal,” Bill said gleefully. “You had a dummy tied to a rope, but the rope came loose and then was another dummy tied to it! You! That's funny, see-”

Fiddleford dug his fingers into his scalp, his breath coming in rapid, panicked gasps. “No. No, no, no, not again, not again-”

“And it pulled you along and you went flying right on in and if Sixer hadn't caught you, you would've been lost forever-”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up-”

“And do you remember what you saw, on the other side?”

Fiddleford moaned and clamped his hands around his ears. There were tears streaming from his eyes.

“Tell me. Tell me what you're doing and I'll let it stay forgotten.”

“I...I can't...” Fiddleford whispered. “Please...”

“You saw me.”

Bill watched dispassionately as the engineer quivered and sobbed into the floor.

“Huh,” he said. “I really thought that would work. Oh well!” He picked up a hammer from the table and rose out of the chair. “More than one way to skin a southerner!”

He took one step towards Fiddleford and promptly collapsed to the floor in a sprawl of limbs.

“Aw, what the fuck?” Bill raised Ford's head slightly, groaned theatrically, and let it drop back down with a crack. Ford was shaking all over now, all the color long since fled from his face. “What's the point in me hijacking this stupid meatsack if it's not even going to work properly?”

“Y-you...c-c-can't...” Fiddleford hiccuped in-between sobbing breaths. “You c-can't...”

Bill narrowed Ford's weeping eyes. “Don't get too cocky over there, four-eyes. I have a few more tricks up my sleeve.” The grin reappeared, sudden as a striking snake. “Maybe I can't make it over there, but I've still got one human to work with. How about a little demonstration?”

Fiddleford's eyes widened in horrible realization. “What-no-no, don't-”

Bill held up one hand thoughtfully. “He doesn't like these extra fingers much, does he? Always whinin' and bellyachin' about being different and being a freak. It gets real tiring to have to listen to, four-eyes, you know that? Why don't we take care of that for him?”

“No, no, no, no, please-”

Bill raised the hammer.

Fiddleford clenched his eyes shut.

CRACK.

“Wooohoohoohoohoo!” Bill cackled. “Man, that is some good quality pain there! You wanna tell me yet, four-eyes?”

“Stop it,” Fiddleford whispered.

“Why stop now when I'm having so much fun?” Bill shrugged, pulling back and forth on the broken finger like it was an interesting toy. “Of course, you could come over here and stop me, but, hah! We all know you're too scared to do that! You always were a fair weather friend, four-eyes. Things get a bit too hot and you bail out! But I'll make it extra easy for you this time. Just tell me what I want to know! What could be simpler? No skin off your nose, just leave your friend to hang like you did before! Don't have to look, don't have to see anything you don't want to-”

Fiddleford opened his mouth, but nothing came out but a faint, strangled whimper.

“Need more time to think? Well, I've still got eleven fingers left! Course, it'll probably get trickier to aim as we go along, but that just makes it more interesting. Ready? Here we go!”

He raised the hammer again.

“NO!”

The hammer went skidding across the floor as Fiddleford lunged, crashing into Bill and pinning him to the ground.

“What the-”

“SHUT UP!” Fiddleford got a knee onto Ford's chest and pushed his arms down flat to the floor. He was shaking hard and tears were still streaming down his cheeks, but his eyes were wild and angry. “I've had enough of you, you fucking snake-eyed son of a bitch! You've caused enough pain, goddamit, no more! No more!”

“Oh yeah?” Bill said cheerfully. “What are you gonna- mmphf!”

Fiddleford grabbed up the corner of Ford's coat and shoved it in his mouth. “STANLEY!” he screamed as Bill made muffled angry sounds around a mouthful of grimy fabric. “Stanley, get your ass in here!”

Bill glared at him and struggled as Stan's footsteps thundered nearer, but to no avail; there was no strength left in Ford's over-abused body.

“What? What's going-holy shit!” Stan drew up short in the doorway, boggling at the scene before him. “What-”

“Bill,” Fiddleford spat. “Now you wanna help me here or what?”

“Right, right. Shit.” Stan moved to help pull Ford up off the floor, yanking his arms behind his back while Bill twisted and kicked. “Oh, shit-oh, his finger-”

“I know,” Fiddleford said. “Help me tie him up and we can do somethin' about it.”

Bill managed to spit out the corner of Ford's coat as they shuffled him towards the chair. “Wow, you two just aren't gonna play ball, are you? Listen, I'm a generous guy, I'll give you one last chance to tell me before I really get going on Sixer here-”

“Shut up,” Stan snarled.

“You can't hurt him anymore,” Fiddleford snapped, pushing Bill down into the seat. “If we have to tie every finger down we will-”

“You really think that's the only way I can hurt him?” Bill said. “Wow, you two are dumb!”

Stan and Fiddleford stared at each other.

“What-” Stan said.

“I'm in his brain, knucklehead! You can tie me up, but you can't keep me out of your brother's mind! And, hooo boy, you have no idea how much I can hurt him there.” Bill grinned happily at them. “I'll find what I want to know. Eventually. Might destroy a few things along the way, but hey, don't say I didn't give you a chance!”

“You-”

The yellow drained from Ford's eyes and he slumped against Stan, suddenly as limp as a puppet without an puppeteer.

“Oh, God,” Fiddleford whispered. “Oh, God, oh God oh God-”

“How close is that gun to being finished?” Stan snapped.

“It's...it's...almost, it's nearly, but, but I-it'll still take time! There's things-I know the theory, but-”

“Well you'd better get to work on it now, then!”

Fiddleford yelped and scrambled towards the desk.

Stan gently settled his brother into the chair. Blood was trickling slowly from Ford's eye. “Time. We need more time.”

“Maybe...maybe Ford can hold him off for a while...” Fiddleford said desperately.

Stan shook his head. “Ford can't bluff worth anything. He's no good at that sort of thing. That's...that's always been...”

That's always been my job.

Stan lunged across the desk, startling Fiddleford into very nearly embedding a screwdriver into the opposite wall.

“What are you doing-”

“The journal. It said...something about...” He yanked the red book out of the clutter of parts and tools and began flipping through it hastily. “I saw. Earlier. Something-there!”

He stopped and stabbed a finger that the page open in front of him. Fiddleford glanced at it and flinched away. On the opposite page was an ominous black drawing of a triangle with one staring eye.

“It is possible to follow the demon into a person's mind and prevent his chaos,” Stan read frantically, ignoring the way Fiddleford was staring at the illustration. He flipped to the next page impatiently. “One must simply recite this incantation...”

Fiddleford looked back and forth from the page, to Stan, to Ford. “You're...you're gonna go into Ford's mind?”

“Do you have any better ideas? We have to stall Bill until you can get that gun finished. We need a distraction. And I make a damn good distraction.”

“But-won't that put you in danger too-”

“I don't care.”

And he didn't.

He didn't care if Ford hated him, didn't care if Ford thought he was worthwhile, didn't care about the scar on his face or the hands shoving him to the floor, didn't care about ten years alone on the streets, didn't care about the anger and bitterness and betrayal, didn't care about anything right now except getting between his brother and that thing.

Fiddleford nodded slowly and pushed the remaining chair towards Stan.

“Give it hell,” he said.

Stanley sat across from his brother, grabbed Ford's unbroken hand in his, and began to read.

Chapter Text

Ford's mind was dark and full of watching eyes.

Stan found himself somewhere like the woods he had been in not long ago, but here everything was cast in stark black and white, like an old photograph, only somehow inverted: white tree trunks, bare and dead as midwinter, stretched up like skeletal hands to a sheer black sky. The shadows stretching under the trees were static-gray and crackling, and full of...things. They moved in the corners of his eyes, whispering and pointing. Whenever Stan tried to look directly at them, they were gone. But he could feel the eyes, hot pinpricks all over him like cigarette burns sinking into his skin.

He stood in the dark and shivered. He didn't know what was normal for the inside of a mind, but this didn't look like a nice place to have to live in.

“Ford?” he called. “...Bro?”

There was no response. He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting. He didn't know how this worked. Was Ford in here somewhere, or was all this Ford?

He set off in a random direction, trying not to look at the shadows. Bill had to be here somewhere, didn't he? That much seemed clear, but how would Stan know if he found him? What did a demon look like, anyway? Was he one of those watching shadows? Was he something worse?

He went past tree after tree, and if he'd thought the woods outside were featureless and confusing, they were nothing compared to this. This was a treacherous, twisting maze, each tree indistinguishable from the next, each path somehow folding in on itself and disappearing behind him. He hoped desperately that leaving Ford's mind did not require finding the same place that he had entered it, because if so he knew he would be lost here forever.

There was something else too, something he wasn't sure he had actually seen at first, but the more he walked the more it caught his eye again and again: the occasional scratch of color here and there, standing out starkly against the monochrome background. He paused to look closer the next time he saw it. It seemed to be an uneven line in the air, like a tear or a crack, or perhaps a scar. Light was shining through it in irregular pulses: a bright, searing, poisonously yellow light.

Stan swallowed hard and kept moving.

He wasn't sure how long he walked; it could have been two minutes or a million years. He didn't even know if time worked properly here.

But at some point he became aware of a light ahead of him, spotlight-bright. He didn't like the look of that light at all, but it was the only different thing he'd seen so far and he had a sinking feeling that he needed to go towards it if he wanted to make any progress.

He crept through the trees and saw the demon.

It was a triangle. A floating yellow triangle, with stick-figure arms and a thin little top hat, and one eye in the middle of its...it. For a moment all Stan could do was stare at it in a kind of outrage. This was the horrible thing destroying his brother and threatening the world? This was what had tried to kill him while wearing Ford's skin, had driven Fiddleford to destroy his own mind rather than think of it ever again? A geometric shape with a Mr. Peanut hat?

Except...as ridiculous as it was, there was also something unsettling about the stupid little thing. It was too bright, too...toxic, like something that stained anything it touched, corroded even the air around it. There was a quality about that yellow color that made Stan think of something radioactive. And-

It saw him.

WELL WELL WELL WELL LOOK WHAT WE HAVE HERE!

He knew that voice. He'd never heard it quite like this before, but he knew the cadence, the sense of it. He had heard it before, hiding beneath his brother's voice.

He looked up at the single slitted eye and gave it his best poker face, trying to hide the trembling in his jaw. “So you're Bill.”

STANLEY PINES, WHATTA SURPRISE! Bill crowed. From where, Stan wasn't sure. He didn't seem to have a mouth. I GOTTA SAY, I DIDN'T EXPECT YOU TO FOLLOW ME ALL THE WAY IN HERE! HOW ARE YOU LIKING YOUR BROTHER'S MIND? PRETTY DARK, EH? DIDN'T USED TO BE QUITE THIS BAD, BUT BETWEEN YOU AND ME AND THE TREES, FORDSY HAS ALWAYS BEEN KINDA MESSED UP.

Bill put out a hand and tickled one of the tears in the air nearby. It pulsed angrily, with a color that made Stan think uncomfortably of infection.

COURSE, SOME OF THAT'S MY DOING, Bill went on, not seeming to notice or care about the strangled shout that Stan couldn't hold back. YOU LOT AREN'T REALLY EQUIPPED TO HOST SOMETHING LIKE ME FOR VERY LONG. TENDS TO LEAVE SOME MARKS ON THE FURNITURE. BUT HEY, HE INVITED ME IN! NOT MY FAULT HE DIDN'T READ THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FIRST.

“You-”

SO, WHATCHA DOING HERE, STANLEY? Bill twirled his cane around thoughtfully-a cane Stan was sure he hadn't had a moment ago. DID YOU COME TO SAVE YOUR BROTHER FROM ME? WHAT A WEIRD MORTAL THING TO DO. WHY DO YOU EVEN BOTHER? WHAT HAS HE EVER DONE FOR YOU? HE PUSHES YOU AWAY AGAIN AND AGAIN AND YOU JUST KEEP CRAWLING ON BACK-

Stan clenched his fists, feeling the tremors of an earthquake rising up through his chest, and he ached to throw a punch, to hit that stupid fucking thing square in its stupid fucking eye, to scream at it to shut up, shut up, it didn't know anything-

But something in the back of his head hit the brakes.

Because-

Because he'd been here before.

Back up against a wall, a taunting face leaning close to his-oh, he'd never faced off against a demon, alright, but he knew what it was to be cornered with someone else holding all the cards, someone who didn't give a good goddamn if he lived to see the morning, someone who'd wipe him out of the world as easy as a fingersnap and never give a second thought about it.

And he knew that defiance felt good, oh yes, going down bleeding and spitting and screaming to the end, not backing down-but walking away with all your bits unbroken felt a hell of a lot better. And you couldn't do that if you closed off all your avenues, if you didn't give yourself any room. And there was almost always room, if you were willing to look for it. Even up against the wall, there was one thing you could still do, and that was talk. Because when the other guy had all the power it was no good trying to pretend that he didn't, trying to go head-to-head with him, but sometimes, if you were lucky, you could convince him to turn that power somewhere else. You could talk him into thinking that his real goal was something else entirely, something that didn't involve you getting your head beat in.

And-

He knew Bill.

That surprised him. But it was true. At least, he knew Bill's type. He knew the sort that didn't care for any other living thing on the planet but themselves, and-here was the clincher-didn't get how anyone else could. Just straight up didn't understand the idea of putting yourself on the line for someone else when there was nothing for you to gain from it. He knew the type because he'd tried to be it for so, so long, and he gotten pretty good at pretending that he was, even to himself. Especially to himself.

But he wasn't. He knew he wasn't. He couldn't keep up that lie anymore, not after he'd answered Ford's postcard. Not after he'd picked Ford up off the floor of his basement and carried him upstairs and stuck with him even when he was bleeding and scared out of his wits.

Not when he was here.

But maybe-

“You're wrong,” he said, cutting Bill off-was he still going? Bastard sure liked to hear himself talk- “You're wrong. Ford does care about me. And-”

-he didn't want to do this, God, no, he didn't want to know, he was so, so afraid, but this was the only thing he could think to do-

“And you can't convince me otherwise.”

He waited.

That lone glaring eye watched him back...and narrowed.

OH YEAH? Bill said.

Gotcha.

“Yeah,” Stan said, glaring back and not letting it show, the way his heart was racing away from him and his head was filling up with electric dread. “I know my own brother.”

He didn't. He knew he didn't. He had ten years of fear of not knowing his brother, ten years of hiding and running from what he feared, and he was good at running, he was good at not facing what he didn't want to face, and the last thing he wanted to do know was to turn and look that fear in the eye.

To find out that maybe the fear had been right all along.

But the other thing that he knew about Bill's type was that they liked to gloat.

And they needed time, and they needed a distraction, to save Ford, to get rid of Bill once and for all, and if he had to take a beating to do it, then-

Then there was only ever one thing that he was going to do.

I THINK THERE'S A LOT YOU DON'T KNOW, STANLEY, Bill said. I THINK THERE'S A LOT THAT WOULD SURPRISE YOU ABOUT YOUR BELOVED BROTHER.

Stan raised his chin and gave Bill his best too-dumb-to-be-afraid smirk. “Prove it.”

Bill spun his cane around like a carnival barker and pointed it down the line of trees. HEY, WE'RE IN HIS MIND. WHY DON'T YOU TAKE A LITTLE LOOK-SEE FOR YOURSELF?

Stan turned slowly and looked along the line of Bill's cane. It was pointing to one of the spots between the trees, where the shadows lay heavy.

He really didn't want to look.

WHAT'S THE MATTER? Bill said. SCARED?

Stan made a noise of disgust in the demon's general direction and walked forward.

The closer he got to the swirl of flickering shadow, the more it seemed to resolve into recognizable shapes, while the frantic whispering twisted into coherent words, until suddenly-

“You never told me you had a brother.”

“It's not important.”

He was looking into a cramped little room-a dorm room, most likely, judging by the beds stacked on top of each other at one end of the room, plus the general detritus of college scattered across every surface. Ford was sitting at a tiny desk, surrounded by a veritable fortress of books. On the lower bed was Fiddleford- younger, but not that much younger, and easily recognizable by his general lack of chin. He was looking at a photograph.

“You two don't get along?” he asked.

“Not anymore,” Ford muttered without looking up. “He's the whole reason I'm here in the first place.”

“What? At college?”

“At this stupid school,” Ford growled. “I could have gone to West Coast Tech.”

Fiddleford whistled sharply, impressed. “You never told me that either.”

“I don't like to talk about it,” Ford said. “It was the opportunity of a lifetime, and he took it away from me. Because all he cared about was himself. He couldn't handle me going away to college without him, having something he didn't, so he sabotaged my project. West Coast wouldn't look twice at me after that.”

“Oh,” Fiddleford said quietly. “So I guess you, uh...don't talk to him much, then.”

“Dad kicked him out,” Ford said. “I haven't seen him since. And I don't want to.”

Stan looked away. The figures of Ford and Fiddleford receded back into shadows.

He felt like he'd just been punched in the stomach, but he turned to Bill with his head held high and said, “That's all you got? One conversation?”

The eye watched him, lazy and amused. WHAT, YOU WANT MORE? TAKE YOUR PICK. PLENTY OF MEMORIES HERE.

He'd been afraid of that.

Hurry it the hell up, Fiddleford, he thought, and turned to the next memory.

Ford was screaming.

Standing in the middle of their old bedroom making an incoherent noise of rage and destroying things.

Stan watched in horrified amazement as Ford threw a book across the room, followed by one of Stan's old jackets. He'd never seen his brother like this before. When Ford got angry, he usually got-sort of compressed, all cold and closed-off, like all the anger funneled itself into one sharp point. This was something else, a wild, reckless fury he hadn't realized Ford was even capable of.

A moment later, Stan realized that all the things Ford was throwing around were his.

His old boxing gloves, his magazines, his action figures. Ford was wiping out every possible trace of his twin from the room, chasing it to a heap in the corner where a trash can waited. He watched Ford rip one of Stan's posters off the wall, tearing it in half in the process, wad it up into a ball and fling it at the opposite corner. It bounced off the wall and missed the trash can, but Ford didn't seem to notice.

“You fucking jerk,” he snarled, reaching for another poster. “This is all your fault! Why couldn't you just let me get on with my life?!”

Stan swallowed hard.

Alright, so he was angry, he told himself. Not like you didn't know that-

He looked away, only to be caught by a sound.

Ford had sunk down onto the lower bunk, and he was-crying. Big, heaving, undignified sobs. And that was something else Stan hadn't seen him do, not since they were very small children.

“Why couldn't you-” Ford gasped, face pressed against his hands. “Why-why couldn't-”

Stan began to reach out a hand, but then let it drop.

It's only a memory.

He turned away.

Bill didn't say anything that time, just watched him, smug and knowing. Stan glared at him and shoved his way into another memory. It made him feel sick, skin crawling, like he was seeing things he wasn't supposed to see, barging into places he wasn't supposed to go and leaving dirty fingerprints on every surface, but what else could he do?

Ford in the principal's office, holding a West Coast Tech brochure with an awed look on his face. “You have two sons. One of them's a genius. The other one-”

And: Ford at the dinner table, picking at his food, while their father ranted on and on. “I don't want to hear any more of this nonsense. You need to focus on what's important, and your no-good layabout of a brother isn't it. He's gone and good riddance.”

“Yes, Dad,” Ford muttered without looking up.

And: Ford, a little older, uncomfortable in an ill-fitting suit, standing in front of Sherman. Stan almost didn't recognize his older brother; he was wearing a suit too, a much nicer one, and he'd grown a beard. The cramped hallway they stood in was dark and empty, but the sounds of a celebration could be heard not far off.

“I just wondered if you'd heard anything-”
“No, I haven't,” Ford said, clipped and irritable. “And I don't intend to. He's none of my business anymore.”

“He's your brother,” Sherman said. “He's my brother. I wanted to invite him-”

“It's a good thing you didn't,” Ford snapped. “You don't want someone like that around. He'd have ruined it just like everything else.”

Sherman looked at him sadly for a long moment. “You've been listening to Dad too much.”

Ford flushed. “Dad has nothing to do with it.”

“He made one mistake, Stanford-”

“He ruined my entire life,” Ford said.

“One school isn't your entire life, Ford!” Sherman snapped back. “There are other things-”

Ford's face closed off. “Not for me,” he said.

And:

“I just...think about him sometimes, you know. It'd be nice to know how he's doing. I guess.”

Stan paused.

Ford was sitting hunched over at a cluttered desk, holding that damn photograph. At first Stan couldn't figure out where the hell he was; then he saw, in the faint ghostly glow of work lights, the half-finished shell of the portal rising up in the room beyond.

LISTEN, SIXER, YOU DON'T NEED TO GO CONCERNING YOURSELF WITH HIM ANYMORE. HE'LL JUST DRAG YOU DOWN ALL OVER AGAIN.

Bill.

Stan watched the image of the demon, hovering next to his brother, telling him that he was important, he was destined, he was great. And that Stan was anything but. He recognized the images Bill showed Ford to prove this point and wasn't sure he could argue with them.

Ford certainly didn't argue, only mumbled some vague assent. Eventually he shoved the photograph into a drawer and went back to shuffling the papers on his desk around. His eyes were clearly drooping and he yawned almost constantly, but he kept working. Stan wondered how long he'd been down there.

He wondered how much else Bill had told Ford about him.

He left the memory of his brother alone in the dark and returned to the clearing.

SO, YOU CONVINCED YET? Bill said, floating down to eye-level. I GOTTA HAND IT TO YOU, IT TAKES A LOT TO GET THROUGH THAT THICK SKULL OF YOURS! BUT SOONER OR LATER EVEN YOU GOTTA GIVE IN TO THE EVIDENCE!

Stan ground his teeth. “How do I know any of this is real?” he snapped, edging away from the hovering figure. “You could just be making all this up.”

It was a lie. He knew damn well it was all real.

But the question seemed to be successful at goading Bill. The eye narrowed again.

TRYING TO BE SMART, HUH? he said. IT DOESN'T SUIT YOU. WELL, HOW BOUT WE TRY SOMETHING YOU BOTH REMEMBER?

He shoved Stan toward another memory, harder than Stan would have thought possible for the demon's apparent size and shape, so that he found himself tumbling forward hard, going through the shadow and all the way into the memory itself-

“Stanley, you don't understand what I'm up against! What I've been through!”

Oh, no-

Stan hit the ground hard, and this time he could really feel the memory: the harsh cold basement air, the eardrum-level buzz of the portal machinery against his skull, the glare of the blue light against his eyes, the grit of the dirt against his hands and knees-and his own voice, gravelly and tired and full of heartbroken anger.

“What you've been through? What about what I've been through?”

It was all familiar, but it felt...different, here. The walls seemed to lean in closer than he remembered, the light felt haunting and accusatory. He could feel the clammy press of fever against Ford's skin, the trembling in his knees, the way everything felt both unreal and too real, swimming nauseatingly in and out of focus. And he could feel...himself. His own memory of what had happened here: standing there hungry, exhausted, shakingly angry, betrayed to his core and ready to destroy that damned book here and now just to make Ford hurt a little-

It's a memory, he told himself, it's all already happened-you lived through this once before, you can do it again-

“I'm selfish? I'm selfish? Stanley, how can you say that after costing me my dream school?!”

Take it, just take it, be strong a little longer and it'll all be over soon-

“I'm giving you the chance to do the first worthwhile thing in your life and you won't even listen!”

And just like that-

He was too, too tired, too hurting, the air was cold and aching in his lungs and he could feel everything too much and it all came crashing down on him.

The first worthwhile thing-

Take this book, get on a boat and sail as far away from here as you can! To the ends of the earth!

Why would I want to do anything with the person who sabotaged my entire future?

You think he woulda called you here if he didn’t think he could get some use outta you? But you couldn’t even get that right! Between you and me, pal, he thinks it woulda been better for everyone if you’d just done yourself in a long time ago! Taken a nice, dignified swan dive off the pier and ended a life of ruining everything you touch before it could get started-

You've been riding on your brother's coattails for too long!

Your brother's not done anything good for this world since you got rid of him, and he never will-

Perhaps he can yet prove his worth to me-

He wasn't strong enough.

He slipped.

It wasn't even an argument, it wasn't even words, it was just...a sound. Some inarticulate outburst of anger and pain.

It shouldn't have mattered. It was only a memory.

But Ford...turned.

“Stanley?” he whispered.

Stan stared back. The image of himself standing across from Ford hung there, frozen, waiting for the memory to continue as it should have.

“Stanley, what-what are you doing here?” Ford took a step toward him. “How did you even-?”

For a moment Stan was too shocked to muster any response. He'd thought the memories were just that-memories, no more real and aware than a film reel. But this-was this really Ford at all, or just some phantom, some image behaving as Ford would?

“I...I had to help you,” he said at last, levering himself up onto his knees. “Bill-”

“You can't,” Ford insisted. “You can't-you have to leave. It's not safe here.”

A faint, bitter laugh spilled out of Stan before he could stop it. “Not safe. Right. Because you care so much about that-”

Ford stopped. The fever-bright intensity in his eyes was unnerving.

The memory-image of Stan flickered out like a snuffed candle. Behind them, almost unnoticed, the portal began to glow with a faint blue light.

“What are you saying?”

“Nothing. Look-”

“Explain.”

Stan snapped.

“I'm saying I haven't been safe for ten years, and you never gave a rat's ass about that!” he yelled, and Ford jerked his head back like he'd been struck. “You didn't care if I was starving in a ditch until there was something I could do for you! The only time you ever cared about me being safe was when it was an excuse to make me get away from you!”

The words hung in the cold air, damning and horrible.

“That's not true,” Ford whispered. “You-you were the one who left-”

“Left?” Stan spat. “Left? I was kicked out and left to rot, and you didn't lift a finger to stop it!”

“You brought it on yourself-”

“It was a goddamn accident! I was eighteen!”

The light was growing-blinding-a sheer, cold blue that burned the eye, and it was reaching out and pulling them-Ford's coat was swirling behind him, caught in the sudden grip of a new gravity, but he didn't notice-

“Some accident,” Ford snarled back. “You ruined my entire future! All over some stupid childhood dream that you weren't ready to give up! You never cared about what was important to me-what was I supposed to do, throw away the opportunity of a lifetime just because you wouldn't benefit from it?”

Stan could feel the force of the portal now, lifting him. His feet left the ground. He didn't care.

“Your future?” he said quietly. “Your future? Your future looks pretty fucking good to me, Ford! You still went to school, you got your money, you still got to do your goddamn crazy experiments! And you're still whining that you didn't get the best possible school! At least you got to have a future! I lost everything, and I'm never going to get it back!”

“You could have gone your own way! You-you were the one who could talk your way into anything, who could get by-you were the normal one! I thought I had finally found a place where I could fit in, and you took that away from me because you wanted to go treasure hunting-”

“It was never about the fucking treasure hunting!” Stan screamed. “How dense can you be? It was about being left behind! We were supposed to go together, we were going to escape together, but when the chance came along you were ready to leave me behind!”

The noise was becoming terrible, a crackling whirlwind, an electrical storm-

Ford was starting to look shaken, but he didn't back down. “And how is that my fault? So maybe I wanted to do something on my own for a change! It was fucking suffocating, always being part of a pair, always having to be two people- you could have found your own way out! But you just didn't want to-”

Stan was shaking so hard he could barely speak.

“Suffocating?” he said. “Suffocating? You thought it was suffocating? You-you were the important one, you were the one everyone cared about! You were smart, you were incredible, you were going to do great things, and I was-I was a fucking afterthought! No one wanted me! Dad was ready to get rid of me as soon as he possibly could! I barely even got my own goddamn name!”

“I-I was a freak. I am a-I can't go anywhere without standing out, without people making fun of me-you don't know what that's like-”

“Yeah, you're right,” Stan said flatly. “I don't know what it's like to have people hate me for being smart and important and different. I only know what it's like to have people hate me for being useless and stupid and unwanted! At least you only have people making fun of your stupid fingers-at least you have something to blame it on! People hate me because-because of me!”

Ford went white, and Stan knew he'd gone too far.

The vortex beyond the portal led out a hideous sound, like space being rent, like a dying star, and they were both falling now, being dragged back into the hungry light, and Stan couldn't stop it, and he couldn't take it back. He felt sick and shaking, like he'd just thrown up, ejected some horrible poison that had scraped his insides hollow on the way out, and now-

Now he'd finally said it. And there was nothing else left to say.

Ford opened his mouth and closed it again. He didn't seem aware of what was going on around them, even as he fell, the light flooding his glasses and blanking out his eyes. Stan was barely aware himself. It all made sense, somehow, that the world was ending here in this dark corner of Ford's mind, and anyway he didn't care anymore.

“How-how dare you-” Ford managed to spit out after a minute.

“Because it's true,” Stan said tiredly. “And they-they're not wrong, you know. I don't blame you for hating me. I hate me.”

He was so tired. He'd been so tired for so long.

He closed his eyes. He could feel himself falling. He didn't care. He knew he should-he had come here for a reason, there was something he had to do-but he couldn't remember what it was anymore, and it didn't seem important. Ford could take care of it. Stan would only screw it up anyway.

He was ready to let go.

Something grabbed him by the wrist.

“I don't.”

Stan opened his eyes.

“I don't hate you,” Ford said.

Stan blinked at him. He'd fallen very close to the portal, and Ford was so drowned out in the blue light that Stan could barely see him.

“I...I've been angry at you for a very long time,” Ford said. “And I've...believed a lot of lies, for a long time. About a lot of things. And I...I should never have let Dad...I should never have let any of this happen. But I don't-I don't want to lose you, Stan. Not again. I know that much. ”

For the first time in ten years, something eased in Stan's chest.

“I don't want to lose you either, bro,” he said. “I never did. I just...I'm sorry.”

Ford looked at him strangely, almost disbelieving, and then something passed over his face like-a relief that he'd never expected to receive.

They fell through the light together.

Stan didn't know where he was, only that it was dark. He didn't mind that. It felt soothing and peaceful after the harsh light. He could have floated there for a long time, maybe forever, just-peaceful.

But-

“Stan...why are you here?”

It all came back to him in a rush. They hadn't been in the basement falling into the portal at all. They'd been in a memory- it hadn't been real-

Except maybe some of it had been real, because Ford was still there, hand wrapped around Stan's wrist like he was never letting go.

Ford-

Ford didn't hate him-

“He was going to hurt you,” he said. He couldn't see Ford-he couldn't see anything-but he knew he was there, somewhere in the darkness. “He-he wants to know what you're planning, what we're doing-I had to stall him until-”

WHAT'S THIS?

There was a terrible light in the darkness, and suddenly Stan could see the trees again.

The relief he had been feeling shattered in him like a bones under a sledgehammer, because he was here for a reason, and it wasn't over yet, and he suddenly remembered-

Why it was a bad thing for Ford to be here, because he was supposed to be protecting Ford from-

BOY, YOU TWO REALLY CAN SCREW UP THE SIMPLEST THINGS, CAN'T YOU? ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS ADMIT HOW MUCH YOU HATED EACH OTHER. SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE EASIEST THING IN THE WORLD!

“You're wrong,” Stan ground out. “We don't-”

IS THAT REALLY WHAT YOU THINK, KNUCKLEHEAD? Something about the familiar nickname spoken in Bill’s ringing voice made Stan's skin crawl. YOU REALLY ARE IMPERVIOUS TO THE EVIDENCE, AREN'T YOU-

“It's not going to work, Bill,” Ford broke in. “You can't use us against each other. And you can't hurt me, not like this. You need me. Break me and you'll be throwing away your only puppet.”

He spat the word out with a kind of hateful triumph. Bill glared back at him, that lone eye narrowing like it could burn a hole in the world.

I DON'T HAVE TO BREAK YOU TO GET WHAT I WANT. WHATEVER YOU'RE PLANNING IS IN HERE SOMEWHERE, ALL I HAVE TO DO IS FIND IT-AND IF I KNOCK A FEW THINGS OVER IN THE PROCESS, WELL, YOU'LL LIVE. PROBABLY. AT LEAST ENOUGH TO STILL BE USEFUL.

Ford raised his head and looked at Bill, squinting like he was looking into the sun, and Stan saw something pass over his face. If he didn't know better he would have sworn it was-

-something almost cunning-

“It's over, Cipher,” he said. “I'm not letting you do this anymore. You want a fight, then come and get one!”

He actually raised his fists defiantly. Bill stared at him.

And laughed.

YOU'RE FUNNY, SIXER! YOU REALLY THINK YOU STAND A CHANCE AGAINST ME?

“We're in my mind,” Ford snarled. “I'm in charge here-”

Bill laughed even harder. YOU'RE VULNERABLE HERE IS WHAT YOU ARE, IQ! YOU LET ME IN, REMEMBER? CAN'T TAKE IT BACK NOW! BUT IF YOU NEED A LESSON IN OBEDIENCE THEN I'M HAPPY TO PROVIDE!

Stan braced himself, ready for a blow, but Bill didn't throw one. Instead he reached out to one of the crackling scars of light and wrenched it open.

Ford screamed, and the woods screamed with him, trees shaking like they were caught in a sudden storm, and that toxic light was pouring out and out and swallowing them up-

They were falling-

Falling through blinding light-

The room was dark, very dark, lit only by a single guttering candle on the desk, surrounded by a heap of dead matches. In its flickering glow the blackened pages of the journal could be seen, a frantic litany of mistakes laid bare to the world.

Ford was hunched over it, head in his hands, smeared all over with ink and blood, sobbing.

“What have I done,” he moaned. “What have I done what have I done what have I done-”

“Just give up, Sixer.”

Ford jerked backward, scalding his fingers as the coffee mug before him went flying. He looked around the diner frantically and saw the eyes, everywhere, yellow and taunting.

He screamed and stumbled toward the door, and the eyes followed him, relentless. “Get out of my mind, Cipher!-”

Fiddleford stared up at him, unseeing, pupils dilated huge and uncanny, his thin frame convulsing in Ford's arms.

“Is it working? What did you see?”

The engineer sat up and spewed out a string of impossible gibberish, still staring blindly and oh God, Ford thought, oh God his mind's gone he's lost forever it's all my fault-

Ford stared back at himself in the mirror. There was a new bruise on his chest, spreading purplish across his ribs, in the shape of a six-fingered hand.

He was so tired. He had to sleep. He couldn't sleep.

“...Stan?...oh...oh, God!”

There was blood all over Stan's face and there was a knife in Ford's hand and he didn't know how he had gotten here he didn't know what was going on he didn't know if he'd done that-and Stan was just staring at him, just sitting there staring and staring and he wouldn't respond and-did Bill get to him? Is Bill in his head right now?

He couldn't stand this, he couldn't, his head was ringing, this was all his fault, his brother was gone, gone, everything was gone-

Stan raised his head.

“It's not real,” he said.

“Wh-what?”

Stan reached over and grabbed Ford's hand in his. “It's not real, bro. It's a memory. C'mon, we can do this. Just-”

The walls closed in around them.

It was pitch dark, save for the faintest tiny line of light somewhere in the distance, and horribly, crushingly hot. The close, heavy air smelled of metal and dust and the faint tang of blood, and there was no room-no room to turn over, no room to sit up, not even room to push out cramped and aching legs just a little bit-and it didn't make sense.

“This isn't-” Ford's throat ached and his mouth was so dry he could barely whisper. “This isn't mine.”

you're not the only one here, Sixer

“It's my mind!”

and it's got a guest.

The fear was thick in his throat, gripping his heart, churning his stomach, oh God, oh God, not this, not again-

“But this isn't-Stan's not claustrophobic!”

Somewhere in the dark Stan made a noise, high and thin.

there's a lot you don't know, Sixer.

Something clicked in the back of Ford's head.

-I once had to chew my way out of the trunk of a car-

He hadn't even noticed at the time. He hadn't taken it seriously. He'd been so angry-what did Stan have to complain about anyway-

Stan made that noise again, more like a frightened animal than anything human, and Ford could feel the tape chafing his wrists and the sun baking through the metal, turning it into an slow oven, and he knew with horrible certainty that he was going to die.

And-

And he was angry.

This was his brother. Someone had done this to his brother-

He wasn't going to let it happen again.

Ford shoved upward with all his might, pushed out all his anger like a concussive force, and the hood of the car came flying open-

They were on a road, a long, barren highway that stretched out endlessly both ways, winding through monochrome countryside, and in the middle of it all was the El Diablo, grayscale and battered but moving ever onward. Ford stood in the road, but somehow he was moving, or else everything else was moving past him, and for a moment he didn't understand, couldn't line up this new scenario with what they had just emerged from-that car hadn't been moving, it had been somewhere hot, somewhere not here-

Then he realized where here really was.

And as he realized that he also began to realize-

-everything looked so sad here, so tired and worn down, so hopeless-the car was never going to reach its destination, there was no destination, but it was never going to stop either-

“Stan,” he said. “Is this your-”

The car shot forward into darkness and took them with it.

“You think you're funny, don't you?”

The man was absolutely huge, straining the seams of his orange jumpsuit, looming over Stan like a mountain. Stan scrabbled his hands on the concrete floor, shaking, prison-issue glasses askew, he had to run but he couldn't run, there was nowhere to go-everyone was watching and jeering, licking their lips, waiting for him to get what was coming to him-

“I wonder,” the man said, his voice rumbling up thick and slow from some cavernous depths, “how funny you'd be with a broken jaw.”

“No-look, I'll be quiet, I swear-please-

The man drew back his hand.

He sunk down into the mud and filth of the alley, pulling the dingy old jacket tighter over him, and his head hurt, shit, it hurt, his eye hurt-he didn't know if he was ever going to see out of it again-the bandages around his hands were filthy and his eye was weeping something unthinkable. He had to get help and he couldn't get help, he needed a doctor but he didn't know where to find one. He didn't know where he was. The city spiraled out around him, mockingly unfamiliar.

A few late-night revelers passed by, talking and laughing at the top of their lungs, and he tried to curl up even smaller, pressing his back against the rough wall behind him. Just a little while, he just needed to rest a little while longer and then- the air swam around him, thick and humid, but somehow he was still shaking with cold. Fever? Was he dying? Was this how it was going to end, alone in this stinking alleyway-

The sirens were getting closer and he didn't think he could escape them this time but he had to. He couldn't go back to jail. Not again.

Someone shouted something at him from the pursuing vehicle, but he didn't pay them any attention, just gunned the engine and blew straight through the crumbling fence and the DEAD END sign and kept going, and now he was flying, and there was only one way out but it was better than what lay behind-

The car hit the edge of the hill and kept going and he was flying, he was falling-

No. No, this isn't right. This isn't what happened-this isn't real-

had enough yet?

Ford watched himself in the mirror as his hand moved on its own, his own eyes leering back at him, bright bright yellow and bleeding, he was raising a knife toward his face, and he couldn't stop it, he could only watch, until his knees gave out from under him and he fell-

Stan was standing on a cliffside looking down at the crashing waves while behind him the crowd cheered him on, calling jump already until he couldn't stand it any longer and he fell-

Ford was running, running through the woods and the trees were watching him and laughing and he had to get away, the thing chasing him was almost upon him, but his legs weren't moving right and he was stumbling and he fell-

Stan was surrounded, everyone had come to look at him, to laugh, the whole world, and they were closing in, pushing him, shoving him forward, telling him to stay down already, when would he learn, when would he stop trying to get back up, and someone's hand caught him in the back, and he looked up to see the face of his brother as he fell-

They were tumbling through the light and it was burning them, leaching straight through to their bones, exposing everything, blinding and toxic, falling through the fear.

Falling through everyone hates you, everyone's always hated you, you're never going to make anything of yourself, every time you try you just dig yourself a little further-more debts, more enemies, more marks on your record-it's all become impossible you're never even going to get back up to where you started, you're never going to make the money back, you're never never never never going to be worth anything-

Falling through you're never going to make it up, you're never going to make it better, there's blood on your hands, you've done terrible things, you were supposed to be great and you've failed everybody and it's all your fault you idiot you arrogant fool you thought you were so perfect but you've been a puppet all along and now there's no way out no way out no way out-

They were going to fall forever there was no stopping it and the light was everywhere-

We were better than this once-

We were-

You sank too low. You crashed too far. You'll never make it back up again. All you'll ever do is weigh him down.

Just let me go. Let me fall. Don't let me drag you down with me-

You flew too high. Too close to the sun. Burned yourself and now you're falling. All you'll ever do is hurt everyone else.

Leave me, let me go, I'm burning, don't let me hurt you too-

You're alone, you're alone, everyone hates you, everyone should hate you, after everything you've done-

I don't.

You know what happened to Icarus? someone said once, but what they don't tell you is how the story originally went-

I don't hate you.

Daedalus said, don't fly too high, too close to the sun lest the heat melt the wax of your wings-

And I'm not leaving you now. Not again.

-but do not fly too low, too close to the sea, lest the water dissolve the wax of your wings-

I said I could go it alone, but everyone needs a counter-balance-

-the story's never as simple as it seems on the surface-

You know what happened to Icarus?

Somewhere, an eternity away, Fiddleford raised the memory gun.

“God forgive me,” he whispered, “If this doesn't work-”

and

they were

flying

rising up, up through blue fire-

-up high above the trees into a black, black sky-

WHAT IS THIS?

The fire was sweeping through the forest, flames crashing over the trees like tidal waves, but they stood proud and unharmed.

“Fidds,” Ford whispered. “You came through-”

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

“I told you it was over, Cipher!” Ford yelled triumphantly, grinning wildly as the fire circled and swirled toward Bill. “This is the end! You're finished!”

Bill's eye flicked back and forth desperately, furiously. THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING!

“Sooner or later,” Stan said, “even you gotta give in to the evidence.”

Bill screamed and began to writhe desperately as the fire rose up and caught him. His form caught at the edges and began to twist and flicker into something else-

NO---NO--YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT I COULD OFFER YOU! MONEY-POWER-ANYTHING YOU WANT-

“Yeah, you're gonna give me what I want, alright,” Stan snarled back, showing his teeth.

SIXER! Bill screamed. YOU-YOU'RE DESTINED-YOU COULD DO GREAT THINGS-LET ME HELP YOU-

“Never again,” Ford said. “No one is ever going to fall for your lies again, Cipher. Not me, not anyone.”

YOU'LL NEVER MAKE IT ANYWHERE WITHOUT ME! YOU NEED ME! YOU'RE NOTHING WITHOUT ME-

“Hey, Ford! Catch!”

Ford threw up his hand as Stan tossed something toward him, something glittering and heavy and cold.

A set of brass knuckles made for six fingers.

“You remember our boxing lessons, right?” Stan yelled over Bill's desperate screaming, over the writhing chaos hanging in the air between them. “Go on, show him what you're really made of!”

Ford slipped the knuckledusters onto his hand, slowly, feeling the weight of them-unfamiliar, but somehow not, because they weren't unfamiliar to Stan-

SIXER-!

Ford drew his arm back, let Stan guide him, the memory of the two of them in the boxing ring, the memory of being up against a wall and going out defiant, and threw the punch-

-and Bill shattered-

There was an explosion like a dying sun and a scream like the end of worlds, stretching out for infinity, and a trillion years of vengeful petty pointless cruelty blew apart into light, into ash, into nothing.

And it was over.

Stan opened his eyes to find Fiddleford shaking him by the shoulders.

“Well? Did it work?”

“What...?” Stan blinked, confused, and then shot up out of his chair. “Oh fuck -Ford-”

Ford stirred and moaned faintly as Stan shook him frantically. One eye slowly slipped open. “Stan?”

Stan sagged in relief. “You're okay. You're-”

“It's alright,” Ford murmured, smiling slightly. “It's...he's gone now. He's gone.”

His eye closed again and his head slumped forward.

“Ford!” Stan shook him again with increasing fervor, but there was no response. “Oh God, no, Ford, this can't be happening, not now-”

A hand caught his, gently pulling him away. Fiddleford put a hand against Ford's neck. Ford was breathing, shallowly, and his skin was soaked with sweat but still burning hot.

“What's wrong with him?” Stan demanded. “We fixed it. We won. He was alright-”

Fiddleford shook his head slowly.

“I think,” he said, “we need to get him to a hospital.”

Chapter Text

Ford woke up.

This surprised him. He hadn't really been expecting it.

For a while he just lay there, floating gently towards consciousness. There didn't seem to be any rush. For once there was nothing urgent he had to force himself to attend to, no predator pacing in the back of his thoughts and driving him forward.

It was...nice. Peaceful. The only problem was that he felt completely awful.

Everything hurt, either with a sharp, stabbing pain or a deep and heavy ache. Someone seemed to have scoured his insides with sandpaper from his throat to his stomach, and then dropped a fifty-pound weight on his chest for good measure. And he was tired, so tired he didn't think he could so much as lift his head up. He felt all used up, drained out and slowly drifting away.

This must be dying, he supposed.

It could have been worse.

There were quiet voices somewhere nearby. He stirred slightly, feeling an unfamiliar, papery rustle. The voices stopped suddenly.

“...Stanford?” one of them said.

Ford reluctantly opened one eye. The other one hurt too much to bother with.

Wherever he was was very white, or at least it seemed like it at first. White floors, white ceiling, white walls, all lit with a tingling white light. He squinted ahead of him and saw the slightly fuzzy shapes of Stan and Fiddleford sitting on cheap folding chairs.

Stan grinned at him, a mix of relief and worry creasing his face. “Hey bro.”

Ford frowned and glanced around, trying to see as much of the room as possible without having to actually move his aching head. He was laying on a bed in a small room, surrounded with various machines. On second pass, the walls were actually light blue and the floor a somewhat worn gray; it was just all washed out by the fluorescent lighting on his tired eye.

Hospital. He was in a hospital. That...made sense. He hated it-he'd always hated hospitals-but it made sense.

“How you doing?” Fiddleford asked quietly.

Ford considered this question, then quickly decided it didn't bear considering.

“We...did it, didn't we?” he said. It came out as a hoarse whisper. “It worked...”

“It sure did,” Stan said triumphantly. “Yellow sonuvabitch is history.”

“Good,” Ford said, and closed his eye again. “Good. That's alright then...”

It was more than he'd expected, more than he'd dared hope for. He'd been prepared to die just to delay Cipher's plans for a while. Dying to defeat the demon forever seemed almost an unfair bargain.

“Uh,” he heard Stan say after a moment. “Ford?”

“S'okay,” Ford mumbled into the pillow. “I knew this might kill me...”

There was a sound rather like someone spitting out a drink in shock, except without an actual drink being involved. Ford opened his eye again in surprise.

“It's alright-” he began, trying to be comforting. This was difficult, as Fiddleford was coughing frantically and Stan was making a sort of garbled incoherent noise of general outraged disbelief. “We defeated Bill. That's all I-”

“Oh my god, Ford, you're not dying, you drama queen,” Stan said.

“Though I wouldn't blame you for feelin' like you were,” Fiddleford added, finally catching his breath. He sounded faintly amused, but not unsympathetic.

Ford frowned. He didn't really know what else this could be. He certainly felt like he hurt too much to be alive.

“Doctor said it looks like you've got a real nasty bit of flu,” Stan said, still rolling his eyes. “Which was, uh...what was it?”

Fiddleford started ticking things off on his fingers. “Exacerbated by sleep deprivation, dehydration, blood loss, uh, possibly some mild malnutrition...”

“Just generally being all jacked up,” Stan put in.

“Er...yes,” Fiddleford said. “He didn't put it quite like that, but, um, yes. Essentially. They gave you a couple shots and an IV to get some fluid in ya. Said you should be alright but they're worried about it turning into pneumonia so they want you to stay the night just to be sure.”

“They were real concerned about all the uh, you know, bruises and cuts and stuff,” Stan said, looking away, with a tone suggesting that the doctors weren't the only ones concerned.

“We told them you got in a fight with a raccoon,” Fiddleford said.

“I still can't believe they bought that.”

“Spoken like a man who's never lost a fight with a raccoon.”

Ford took a moment to process all this. Dying still felt like the preferable option.

“Didn't...feel this bad before,” he muttered.

“You didn't notice before,” Fiddleford said. “You were runnin' on...well, I'm not sure quite what you were running on, but it was a hell of a drug, whatever it was. But you had to come crashin' down eventually.”

Ford narrowed his good eye at Fiddleford. “There's no need to be quite so smug about it.”

“There may be a little need to be smug about it.”

Ford groaned and flopped his head to the side. There was, sure enough, an IV needle sticking into his arm. He stared at it moodily.

There was something else, too.

“What happened to my finger?”

Silence.

He tilted his head back towards the other two. Stan was looking uncertain. Fiddleford was looking down and chewing on his lip. The trace of quiet amusement had entirely fallen from his face.

“It was my fault,” he said. “I wasn't...I didn't stop it.”

All of a sudden, Ford understood.

“Bill?” he said.

Fiddleford swallowed. “You fell asleep,” he said. “And it...it wanted me to tell it what we were doing, and when I didn't...I could have stopped it, but I didn't. I was too damn scared.”

“You did though,” Stan said, glancing at him in confusion. “You had him pinned to the floor when I got there.”

“Not soon enough,” Fiddleford said bitterly.

Ford's stomach felt cold. The idea of Fiddleford alone with Bill had been too terrible for him to want to even think about.

And it had happened.

“Are you alright?” he said. “Did...what did he...”

“...It talked,” Fiddleford said. “But it couldn't...uh, you were too weak, I think. It couldn't do much. So it hurt you instead, tryin' to make me fess up.”

“But you didn't.”

Fiddleford shrugged one shoulder. “No. Guess not.”

Stan glanced between the two of them, looking uncomfortable and out of place. Fiddleford twisted his hands around each other and stared at his battered shoes.

Ford looked at the splint on his finger.

“Fidds,” he said. “You...without what you did, we...Cipher is dead and gone because you fixed the gun in time. Compared to that...I don't care about one finger.”

Fiddleford glanced up slightly. “...I'm still sorry it happened.”

Ford shook his head. “I'm sorry you had to...go through that at all. I shouldn't have fallen asleep. I shouldn't have let him...”

He trailed off into a painful silence. His throat grated horribly.

“Cool, we're all sorry,” Stan said, breaking the taut atmosphere. “But you know what? He's dead and we aren't.”

Ford had to smile slightly. “That's true. He's...”

He's gone.

Bill Cipher was dead. Gone. Forever.

He was free. He could live.

It was the absolute last thing he had ever expected.

“Ford?”

He should have been happy but he didn't even know how to feel, he couldn't, the realization didn't fit inside him-

“Ford, you alright?”

He was shaking. He couldn't stop. He couldn't breathe, his chest was aching-maybe this was it, maybe he was going to die after all-everything hurt-

There was a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey. Hey, it's okay,” Stan said. “It's okay.”

Ford leaned his head against his brother's arm, and felt Fiddleford steadying him and telling him to breathe, and he shook and shook and maybe he was crying, or maybe he wasn't, he couldn't tell. Nothing was real and everything was real and it was all too much.

He didn't remember falling asleep again, afterwards, just a sense of relief as his thoughts blurred out again and left him in quiet darkness.

The next time he woke up, he didn't initially know where he was. The room was dark and his first thought was I fell asleep oh God oh God I fell asleep-

He struggled upright, gasping, and everything was wrong, he didn't remember this place, he hurt, what had Bill been doing-

“Hey-hey, whoa! It's okay! Easy there, bro-”

There was a firm hand on his wrist, and a voice in the dark.
Stan.

He remembered, suddenly-he was in the hospital. He was safe. Stan was safe. Fiddleford was safe. And it didn't matter that he'd fallen asleep because Bill Cipher would never again steal into his mind when his guard was down, would never again hurt anyone else using his hands.

He took in a few shaky breaths, as well as he could-his usual deep breathing techniques weren't working so well right now.

“It's okay,” Stan said.

“Right,” Ford said slowly. “...Right.”

He settled back against the pillow. There was just enough light coming from under the door and from the various machines around the bed for him to make out Stan sitting nearby, and to give depth to the shadows. He swallowed at that thought and gripped the sheet with his good hand. Nothing there, there's nothing there, it's all in your head-

“Where's Fidds?” he mumbled. His mouth was painfully dry and tasted horrible.

“He had to leave,” Stan said. “Visiting hours, ya know.”

Ford squinted at him. “But-”

“Well, I thought...maybe you wouldn't want to be here alone all night,” Stan said, bumping his fingers together awkwardly.

“But if Fidds-”

“Ya know,” Stan said, “security in this hospital is really lousy.”

“Oh,” Ford said. “Right.”

He stared at the light under the door, shifting gently as someone walked past. His arm itched; someone had taken out the IV at some point.

“Is there...water or something?” he said.

“Oh, um, yeah. Here.” Stan handed him a half-full plastic water bottle that had been sitting on the bedside table. Ford gulped from it greedily, which he instantly regretted as soon as he realized how much it hurt to swallow.

“Easy there, bro,” Stan said, watching him with concern. Ford almost laughed. There was something funny about Stan looking so...motherly, almost.

Maybe he was just tired.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Uhhhhhh...” Stan shrugged. “I dunno. Late.”

“Mm.” Ford sighed and closed his eyes. Then he opened them again. He'd gone so long not being able to sleep no matter how desperately he wanted it, and now that there was nothing stopping him, he was wide awake and the night was stretching out ahead of him, infinite and grueling.

Dammit.

He glanced over at Stan, who was silhouetted against the window. He couldn't make out much of Stan's face-especially without his glasses-but he could see the shape of his head, odd-seeming now without all the hair. Which reminded him.

“You never told me how you managed to get a haircut,” he said.

Stan coughed. “Oh. Um. It's...a long story.”

“No, go on, tell me,” Ford said, eager for something, anything to break the lurking silence.

“We-ellll...” Stan ruffled the awkward haircut in question. “So, I went to go see the unicorns, right? And I...kind of got in an argument with one.”

Ford frowned, suddenly concerned. He hadn't put much thought into how exactly Stan had gotten the unicorn hair. A great deal of less than pleasant ideas were suddenly filling his head.

“They didn't attack you, did they?” he said, not sure if he was more disturbed by the idea of Stan being attacked by a unicorn, or Stan attacking a unicorn.

“Um, no,” Stan said. “Not as such. But she was being very rude, so I uh. May have cut off some of my hair and thrown it at her.”

“You what?”

“She was goin' all, 'how would you like it if someone came to your house and asked for some of your hair' so, y'know,” Stan mumbled. “...it made sense at the time.”

Ford frowned. “And...that convinced her your heart was pure? Was this some kind of a test?”

“Noooo,” Stan muttered with increasing awkwardness. “One of the other unicorns just thought it was real funny, so he kinda...just let me have some of his...I may also have threatened a bit. I mean, I wasn't in a real great mood, y'know, my boots were full of snow...”

“But...” This wasn't making any sense. Whatever standard the unicorns used to judge humans must truly be beyond mortal comprehension. “I don't understand. He just gave it to you? Did he say you were pure of heart?”

“Not exactly.” Stan sighed. “See...the thing is, uh, I didn't really want to tell you this, but...the whole thing was kind of a sham.”

Ford's brow furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“The 'pure of heart' business. It was all made up. They just didn't want to have to give their hair away.”

“But...but...”

He was sure, he was sure there was something that could prove that the unicorn he'd met hadn't been lying, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that there wasn't.

He groaned and flopped his head against the pillow. “Why am I such an idiot?”

Stan stared at him. “What are you talking about? You're like the smartest person in the world.”

“No, I'm not, I'm a damn idiot who keeps getting tricked!” Ford found himself smacking his head into the pillow with the words, his voice rising angrily. “Why am I so fucking gullible-”

“Whoa, whoa...Stanford.” Stan put a hesitant hand on Ford's shoulder. “Look, it's...it's not like that-”

“Yes it is!” His voice had gone up almost to a yell now, every word hurt, and he couldn't care. “I fell for Bill, I fell for the unicorns-I trust all the people I shouldn't, and none of the people I should! I didn't trust Fidds, I...I didn't trust you...”

Stan sighed. “Well, maybe...but it's not like you're the only person who didn't trust who he should have.” He let one shoulder rise and fall in a heavy shrug. “Anyway, from what I, um, saw...Bill seemed to me to be a really, really good liar. It's not your fault.”

“Yes it is.”

“No, it isn't. Take it from someone who's spent the past ten years lyin' to people, okay? It's not your fault for being conned. It's the fault of the conman who came along sellin' to you.”

Ford stared at the ceiling and said nothing.

“Look,” Stan said, a little desperately. “You're not all bad at this. You pulled one over on Bill there at the end, didn't you? All 'you want a fight, come and get one'-that was a good one.”

Ford laughed into his pillow. It came out as a kind of choking noise.

“That, uh, that was a bluff, wasn't it?” Stan asked worriedly.

“Do you know where I got that?” Ford said, still making muffled hysterical noises.

“Um. No?”

Ford lifted his head up slightly. “The Lord of the Rings.”

“What?”

“The Lord of the Rings. That's what they do. At the end. When it comes down to it and they know all they can do is try to give Frodo and Sam enough time to destroy the Ring, all the armies of men attack the Black Gate and Aragon says to Sauron, come out and fight. They know they don't have a chance against him, but they also know that he'll fall for it because it would never occur to him that it was a bluff. That they were really trying to destroy the Ring.”

He fumbled for the water bottle and took another careful sip. “I thought...that would work on Bill too. What we were really doing...it'd be easy to lie to him about that because he wouldn't think of it. He was far too narcissistic to think he could ever be destroyed like that. But if I was so angry and desperate I challenged him to a fight...one I had no chance of winning...he'd never be able to resist that. It'd be far too amusing to him to watch me fail.”

“Oh,” Stan said.

“You,” Ford said. “You made me think of that. You brought up Tolkien-”

Stan covered his face with a hand and groaned. “Oh, jeez...”

“You did,” Ford said gleefully. “All on your own.”

“You're never gonna let me live that down, are you.”

“Nope.”

Stan groaned inarticulately. Ford smiled.

“You never told me about that, either,” he said.

“About what?” Stan muttered.

“How you wound up reading The Lord of the Rings.”

Stan dropped his hand and glowered. “Is it so unbelievable that I just happen to read a book once in a while?”

“Yes,” Ford said bluntly.

“...Fair enough,” Stan said after a minute. “It's...really not that interesting, though.”

“I still want to know.”

Stan sighed and looked down at the floor.

“It was that first winter,” he said eventually. “After Dad kicked me out.”

Ford's smile froze. “Oh-”

“I had to leave New Jersey,” Stan went on, apparently not hearing him. “For...uh...reasons we don't need to get into. And I wound up in this little town...hell, I don't even remember the name anymore. I wouldn't have stayed there at all except the car broke down and I couldn't afford to fix it. So I was stuck for a while.”

He sighed heavily. “It, um. It wasn't the best time of my life, ya know? Things...weren't looking so good. I didn't know what to do or where to go, every other plan I'd had so far had gone down like a lead balloon...I was starting to feel like I'd already hit the end of the line.”

Ford caught himself wondering where he had been at the time. Pulling all-nighters in a crummy dorm at Backupsmore? At home on break struggling through long, thickly silent dinners with his parents? Either way, at least he'd had a roof over his head, he thought bitterly.

He wondered what he would have done if Stan had called him, then, and said please come.

“Anyway,” Stan said, “One thing I learned that winter was about libraries.”

Ford shook himself slightly at this unexpected detour. “What? What about libraries?”

“That they're really great when you...don't have anywhere else to go,” Stan said. “You can just go in and it's warm and out of the weather and there's bathrooms and comfy chairs and you don't have to pay at all. You don't have to do anything. They just let you.”

Ford blinked. He had long thought of libraries as sanctuaries, but never in quite that sense.

“So I spent a lot of time in the little public library that winter,” Stan went on. “I mean, it was that or my car, and my car was pretty cold most of the time. And I didn't really have much else to do. I got some work, here and there, but it never lasted very long. So I'd go in and take a nap or whatever...try not to think for a while. But I started feelin' really awkward about it. I didn't want them to know I was homeless. I mean, I didn't wanna know I was homeless. I tried to keep tellin' myself that I was just in-between jobs or whatever...didn't work real well. Anyway, point was, I was tryin' to look like I wasn't just in there cause I had nowhere else to go, so I actually tried to find a book to read.”

“Heaven forbid,” Ford muttered.

Stan snorted. “Yeah, I know. It was a real small place, they didn't have much...I guess it shouldn't have mattered since I wasn't really planning to actually read anything, but...I dunno. It all looked so boring I thought I'd fall asleep as soon as I picked any of 'em up. But then I found those books, and they were familiar. I remembered you goin' on and on about them all the time, readin' bits of them to me...”

A memory drifted back to Ford: sitting on his bunk, excitedly describing the Black Riders chasing Frodo to Rivendell. Stan, on the bunk below him, had made only the occasional vague noise to indicate that he was even still awake. Ford had been too wrapped up in the story to notice; later, he'd assumed that Stan had never even been listening.

Because when had Stan ever payed attention to his 'nerd stuff'? To what was important to Ford?

All the time, really. He'd listened to Ford go on about science and cryptozoloogy and aliens and all sorts of things that Ford was passionate about, even if Stan didn't understand a word of it, because no one else cared, no one else would have listened if he hadn't. It had just been easier, later, for Ford to tell himself that Stan hadn't cared either-that Stan blowing off his college dreams that had been the last in a long string of similar crimes, rather than something unusual that Ford should have paid attention to.

“I guess...I missed you,” Stan said. “Or it was something familiar, at least...”

It was easier to think that he was all alone, and always had been.

“I wasn't even plannin' to read it,” Stan said. “I mean, I didn't think I was smart enough to get through one book like that, let alone three of 'em. But I had it open so it looked like I was reading it, and...well...it just kinda happened, I guess.”

The room was quiet for a while.

“I mean, I didn't exactly read the whole thing,” Stan said after a while. “I skimmed some of it. Like the songs...and, uh, some of the descriptions. You know, that guy sure could go on about trees.”

Ford let out a breath of quiet laughter. “True.”

“But...I liked some of it. The hobbits, you know...I mean they just wanted to stay home and eat and smoke, pretty much. I could get behind that.” He hesitated. “I guess I...”

Stan trailed off and didn't finish.

“What?” Ford asked eventually.

“It's stupid,” Stan muttered.

“No, what?”

Stan shrugged and looked down at the floor.

“I guess I liked it 'cause...it was about someone ordinary,” he said eventually. “I mean...there were lots of really special people in that story. Elves, and kings, and, ya know...all that. And I kept waiting for the story to be about one of them instead. There was no way it was gonna follow this little hobbit guy all the way to the end-I mean, what did he have going for him that someone else didn't? He didn't even want to be on an epic quest or anythin'. But...he kept going anyway. And in the end he won. He saved the day. And everyone called him a hero...”

Ordinary.

Ford looked at the hand stretched out in front of him. In the dim light the splint made his sixth finger blocky and awkward, drawing the eye toward it.

He'd never been ordinary, never even close to it. He'd wanted to be, sometimes. Being different had brought him more than enough grief throughout his life. But it had never been an option, so he'd tried to embrace it. He wasn't ordinary, he was extraordinary. He was going to do great things. He had to do great things, because otherwise, what was the point of him?

He'd felt like a hero, when Bill had first appeared to him. Like the protagonist of a great story. Destined for glory.

And then when it had turned out to all be a ruse, and Bill's laugh had echoed in his head for days on end, he'd thought that perhaps there might still be a chance to be a hero, if he could only bring Bill down with him.

Now, beyond all reasonable hope, Bill had been defeated once and for all. But he didn't feel like a hero. He wasn't sure what he felt like.

“That's not stupid,” he said slowly, still trying to work out what he was feeling. “That's the whole point.”

Stan looked up. “What?”

“That's...it's what Tolkien was going for. For someone ordinary to be the hero...he thought that was important.” He'd had extensive arguments with Fiddleford about that, sometimes very late into the night. Fidds had always liked the hobbits and argued for their importance; Ford had, for a long time, found them irritatingly prosaic and a distraction from the much grander things going on around them. He'd never understood the point of having an ordinary hero.

“Huh,” Stan said. “Well...look at me. Stan Pines, literary critic.”

Ford had to smile a little at that one.

“So...what did you do after that?” he said.

“Oh...I, uh...found some work, eventually. Got my car fixed, moved on...nothin' really worth talking about.” Stan looked away, and Ford, thinking of the memories he had briefly seen in Stan's mind, realized he did not really want to ask more.

“I called you sometimes, you know,” Stan said, breaking into Ford's morbid recollections. “Or, I mean, I tried to. Always hung up as soon as you answered, though. Guess I just...never had the guts.”

“Wait, that...that was you?” Ford remembered the occasional mystery phone call, but he'd always written it off as a wrong number or some kind of prank. “But you...how did you get my number?”

“Shermie.”

“Sherm-” Ford nearly sat up in surprise. “You've met Shermie? I mean, since-”

“About five years ago,” Stan said. “He saw one of my infomercials and tracked me down. Gave me a right earful...he wanted me to come stay with him, said he'd help me get back on my feet. Dragged me back to his house...his family's real nice, you know. Well, I guess you do know.”

“Uh...yeah.” Ford was still having trouble processing this. He hadn't heard anything about this from Shermie. “So...so how long did you stay with them?”

“Coupla nights,” Stan said. “Made a break for it as soon as I could.”

“What?” Ford spluttered. “Why didn't you stay?!”

“Why, so I could go back to being a burden on the rest of the family?” Stan said, looking nonplussed at Ford's surprise. “Even after all that time after Dad kicked me out, I hadn't gotten any closer to making it up...so why would things be any different that time? Shermie, he's got a wife, a kid, a job, a nice house, hell, a dog...I didn't want to ruin all that. So I left. And I made it a lot harder to track me down after that, in case he got the idea to try again.” He shrugged. “But he told me some about what you were doing before that-he was really wanting us to make up, you know. Gave me your number and told me to call you. But you know how well that went.”

Ford stared up at the tiled ceiling. Come to think of it, he remembered Shermie calling him and asking if Stan had contacted him. He'd assumed, at the time, that it was just another desperate hope on Shermie's part that the twins might reconcile. Now he realized Shermie must have been hoping Stan had gone to him after he left.

He hadn't heard from Shermie lately. He'd assumed his older brother had eventually given up on him, like everyone else. He'd thought things were better that way; better if there was no one to miss him.

He seemed to be wrong about a lot of things lately.

“Stan,” he said quietly into the thin darkness. “I'm sorry.”

Stan stirred, as if rousing himself. “What? What for?”

Ford hesitated.

“I don't know,” he said at last. “For...a lot of things.”

“Mmm,” Stan said. “Well...I'm sorry too.”

Ford yawned. He could feel sleep circling back around again. For once it didn't seem so bad to let it come to him.

“Do you think...” he mumbled tiredly, “...do you think the two of us are ever going to be alright?”

Stan was silent for a moment.

“I dunno,” he said eventually. “But...I reckon we're both a lot more alright than we were this time last week. So...that's something, yeah?”

Strange to think it hadn't been that long, but it was true: a week ago, no, a few days ago, he'd been all alone in the world, his mind full of monsters and with no hope left for himself at all.

Now...

“...Yeah,” Ford said. “Yeah, it is.”

Chapter Text

They took Ford home in the morning, under a strict prescription of bedrest and a lot of fluids. He had to lean on Stan most of the way out, but flatly refused any offer of a wheelchair.

“I'm fine,” he insisted doggedly. “Just...a little unsteady.”

“You thought you were dying yesterday,” Fiddleford put in helpfully.

Ford gave him a look that could have withered flowers. Stan had to jam a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing.

The trip back was considerably more sedate than the drive to the hospital had been, in large part because Fiddleford insisted on driving this time. Stan shrugged and got in the passenger seat. “I don't know what you're complaining about. I got us there quick.”

“We very nearly went off the side of a hill,” Fiddleford said, gripping the keys tighter than necessary at the memory. “Three times.”

“Yeah, but we didn't, did we?”

“Also,” Fiddleford continued, ignoring this, “I'm wearing my glasses.”

Stan grunted vaguely. “Ain't got glasses.”

He'd worn them intermittently over the past ten years; there were times when the need to see real well outweighed his dislike of looking like a nerd-oh, call it what it was, looking like Ford. Plus, they could make for a great disguise. Put a big pair of glasses on and it was amazing how people struggled to recognize you without them. But he'd lost his last good pair quite a while ago, and it was hard to make an appointment with an eye doctor when you were homeless and on the run.

“Maybe not, but you need them, don't you?” Fiddleford said. “I've seen you squinting at things.”

“Why do you care?”

“Because I don't want to die in a horrible car crash,” Fiddleford said calmly.

Stan shrugged and looked out the window. “You worry too much. I've been driving all over the country for the past ten years. My car's still in one piece and so am I.”

“That's not the same thing as not being in a horrible car crash,” Fiddleford pointed out.

Stan didn't feel the need to answer that one.

Despite his protestations, Ford promptly dozed off almost as soon as they got him into the car, and they made it back to his house with no more incident than having to stop for rabbits a few times. Stan roused Ford and helped him into the house, where he promptly staggered off towards the basement.

“Um, excuse me,” Stan said, as Ford headed for the the stairs. “Where do you think you're going?”

“The portal,” Ford said, as if this should have been obvious. “We have to take it apart.”

“Not right now this minute, we don't!” Stan said. He turned to Fiddleford. “We don't, do we?”

Fiddleford shrugged uneasily. “It's been down there all this time...I don't like it, but I don't see why a few more days should make any difference. As long as it's shut off. You did shut it off, didn't you?”

“Of course I shut it off,” Ford snapped, fumbling with the stairway door. “But as long as it's down there, it's a potential threat. If someone were to activate it...”

“Who's gonna activate it?” Stan gently-more or less-put himself between Ford and the door. “Look, Stanford, I get it, you wanna get rid of the thing, but you don't have to do it right now. Not anymore. Right now you're supposed to be in bed, remember?”

Ford faltered somewhat. “I...I have to...”

“Look at it this way,” Fiddleford said. “That's gonna be delicate work, dismantling that thing. If you try to do that now, while you're still sick, you're a lot more liable to make mistakes. It'd be safer to wait until you're doin' better.”

Ford slumped. His face gave away his exhaustion, but there was still a spark of desperate, driven panic in his eyes.

“Look,” Stan said. “I promise you, no one's gonna do anything to that portal while you're getting better, okay? I don't know who would, but if anyone tried, they'd have to go through me.”

And then, before he could stop himself, he added, “You can trust me.”

Ford opened his mouth and closed it again. Stan wished he hadn't said that; he could see the struggle written all over Ford's face, the force of deepset paranoia still not shaken. Trust no one. Trust no one.

But then, to his surprise, Ford nodded once and turned away from the door.

“Alright,” he said. “Alright...but as soon as...as soon as I can...”

“Yep,” Stan said, guiding his brother back towards the study with relief. “As soon as you can. But not any sooner.”

Once situated back in the study with the space heater and a lot of blankets, Ford's resolve wore out pretty quickly. Stan turned the lights down and left him sleeping soundly. Maybe it was just his imagination, but he thought that Ford was already starting to look better, despite his still-swollen eye and horrible pallor. Of course, cleaning up all the blood had probably helped a fair amount.

Fiddleford muttered something about cleaning up and shuffled off towards the workshop, leaving Stan, for the second time in as many days, standing alone and adrift in his brother's cold, dark house.

The thought made his heart catch in his chest and he had to take a moment to steady himself. Don't be stupid, he told himself, you're fine. Everything's fine now. Bill's gone and Ford's going to get better and there's no threat here, not any more.

Had it really only been two days, though? It was bizarre to think about, after everything that had happened. It felt like it had been years since he'd gotten here, but no: it was only the day before yesterday that he'd been standing on the porch, waiting to see his brother again for the first time in over a decade.

He wondered just how close things had come to it being the last time.

This was no good. If he stood here doing nothing, he was just going to get tangled up in his own stupid thoughts again. There had to be some way he could occupy his time. He thought about taking a nap--he was certainly tired enough--but he didn't think he'd be able to sleep, not yet. Not when his head was still buzzing like this.

Without quite realizing it, he found himself wandering towards the kitchen.

He caught himself in the doorway and stared into the room. There was still a sink full of undone dishes, and clean ones, long since dry, waiting to be put away. And there was still a spatter of blood on the floor, now dried a dull brown.

Stan walked over slowly and put a hand on the edge of the sink.

Wellllllwellwellwellwell, look who we have here!

No.

He braced himself against the sink and took a few deep breaths, willing his suddenly rapid heartbeat to calm down.

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. What was there to be afraid of? It was just a bunch of dirty dishes--just an empty kitchen--just him standing here, Ford asleep in the study, waiting--no.

A thought occurred to him. He shuffled out of the kitchen, back toward the mess of the living room. It was in even more disarray now than it had been two nights ago, but it didn't take him too long to find his duffel bag underneath the mess of papers Ford had been throwing around, and inside it, his Walkman.

Music had drowned out Bill once; maybe it could do it again.

Stan went back to the kitchen, tucked the cord for the headphones under his shirt to keep it out of the way, and turned the tape on.

He took another deep breath and then, humming quietly, turned the hot water on and began to clean.

Ford woke up to another brief thrill of panic, but it passed sooner this time. The room around him was warm and calm and soothing. He didn't know how long he'd slept; the world outside was still a persistent, timeless white, but it might have had a sense of afternoon about it.

He stirred under the heavy quilt, stretching some very stiff muscles, and wondered if he would feel that fear upon waking for the rest of his life. But then, not too long ago he hadn't thought the rest of his life would be very long at all.

Floorboards creaked outside, and Fiddleford poked his head in the door. “Oh--you're awake.”

He pushed the door open and came in, awkwardly burdened with a bowl, a glass, and several packages of cold medicine. “Here. I brought ya some stuff.”

“Oh.” Ford pulled himself into a sitting position and fumbled for his glasses while Fiddleford set the things down on the bedside table. The bowl had what looked like clear soup in it; the glass was full of orange juice. Ford blinked at it.

“Did I...have orange juice?” he asked.

“Nope,” Fiddleford said. “You didn't have hardly anything. That's why I went grocery shopping for you last night.”

“You didn't have to do that,” Ford muttered.

Fiddleford shrugged. “Someone had to, and evidence suggested it wasn't gonna be you.”

Ford couldn't come up with an appropriate rebuttal to this, so he sipped at the orange juice instead. Fiddleford opened the medicine boxes and tore off a couple of blister packs.

“Take these,” he said, putting them next to the soup bowl. “And try to get that soup down. I don't reckon you have any calories left in you at this point.”

He turned to leave.

“Fidds,” Ford said. “Wait a minute.”

Fiddleford paused at the door. “You need something else?”

“No--that is--I just--”

Ford swallowed hard, feeling the ache in his throat all too keenly.

“...I...didn't thank you,” he said at last.

“Ah,” Fiddleford said. “...Well, uh...you're-”

“I--I wouldn't be here without you,” Ford stumbled on. “I mean. You fixed that gun right in the nick of time.”

“I'm glad,” Fiddleford said.

Ford looked down at his lap and twisted his fingers around. “How's, um...so, um, the gun, is it-”

“Busted,” Fiddleford said. “Whole thing melted in on itself. Couldn't repair it now if I wanted to.”

“Oh,” Ford said. “...I'm sorry.”

Fiddleford folded his arms and leaned against the doorframe. “No, you're not.”

Ford hesitated over this for a long moment.

“You're right,” he said at last. “I can't honestly say that I'm sorry the gun is destroyed. But...I am sorry that your work was destroyed. If that makes sense.”

Fiddleford tilted his head to one side contemplatively. “Fair enough.”

Ford sighed.

Then he looked up suddenly. “Wait. What was that about even if you wanted to--”

“I'm not remaking it,” Fiddleford said.

Ford opened and shut his mouth a few times. “You...you're not?”

“No.” Fiddleford wrapped his arms even tighter around himself and stared at the far wall.“I...everything that I did to try to forget...what I saw, what I did...in the end it didn't matter. When it had me cornered, all it had to do was say a few things and it all started coming back...you were right that it never permanently removed memories. I don't...know that it ever worked the way I intended it to.”

“Oh,” Ford said. “So...you want to try to improve it, then--”

“No.”

“...no?”

Fiddleford took a while answering.

“When I say it didn't matter,” he said at last. “I don't just mean the gun didn't work the way it was meant to. I mean...it didn't matter. I thought I was getting better, I thought I was doing better, but it...just made no difference, when it came down to it. It only gave that thing more power over me. Something to use against me...you were right about that, too. It wasn't any good trying to hide from it, trying to run. Everything that I lost, that I was willing to lose, it didn't stop it at all. It was hurting you and I couldn't do anything and...”

“Fidds,” Ford broke in gently. “You did do something. I only have one broken finger, don't I? I could have had twelve.”

Fiddleford sighed. “Yeah, but...there was a moment, a long moment, when I couldn't do anything. And...even earlier than that. When I came here, and I thought, for a minute, that things had gotten so bad that there were...other people being hurt...and I thought, my God, I could have stopped that. I know you, uh--I mean, I found out what was goin' on, but...that thought stuck with me. Somehow it all got more real then. It wasn't...it wasn't just a boogeyman, it wasn't something I could say was just haunting my dreams, it was...it was someone real getting hurt. Right in front of me.You know what I mean?”

“I suppose I do.”

“It's not that I don't want to forget it all again,” Fiddleford went on. “Lord knows I do. I--I want it so bad, if the gun wasn't broken, I don't think I could resist...so it's gonna stay broken, from now on. There's just--too much to lose.”

Ford smiled. “Good for you. I mean--it really is better this way, Fiddleford.”

“Don't lecture me.”

“Sorry.”

There was silence for a few minutes. Gradually the awkwardness eased into something softer.

“What are you going to do about your cul--society?” Ford asked eventually. “Wasn't the memory gun sort of, erm, important to them?”

“Oh, they'll cope,” Fiddleford said easily. “I think it was more of a hobby for most of 'em than anything. They liked feeling ominous. Poor Ivan might take a bit of talking down, but he'll come around. He ain't got much choice.”

“And you?” Ford asked. “How are you doing?”

“Awful,” Fiddleford said bluntly. “Every time I close my eyes I see it all over again, with that hammer...” He sighed and ruffled a hand through his disheveled mop of hair. “But...I think it's...it does feel better, now. To know that it's gone. You know, no matter how often I used that gun, I couldn't get rid of that feeling of--waiting. Of something dreadful coming.”

He smiled slightly. “Maybe I'll try some of those meditation exercises of yours. See if they work any better this time.”

“That sounds like a wonderful idea,” Ford said, perking up a little. “I could show you-”

“Ah-ah, not right now. Right now you need to finish that soup and rest.”

“I've been resting,” Ford grumbled.

“Rest more,” Fiddleford said, and turned to go.

“Wait,” Ford said. “Fidds?”

“Yeah?”

“You--you know you can stay here, right?” Ford said. “I mean--you know--not that you have to, or anything--but-if you didn't want to be alone...I know it's hard. So. I mean.”

Fiddleford paused, hand on his chin. “I might take you up on that. If I can find anywhere to sleep, that is.”

Ford coughed and went a little red. “You might have to move a few things around,” he admitted.

“Well...” Fiddleford smiled slightly. “I suppose it's not much worse than our dorm room, come to that.”

Ford smiled as well. “Just...do me a favor? I mean, not that you haven't done enough--sorry--”

“What is it, Stanford?”

Ford looked down at his hands. “Keep an eye on Stan for me, would you? I'm--I'm afraid he's going to try to slip away while I'm not watching and I...I don't want him to leave yet. Not like that, I mean.”

Fiddleford glanced out the window. More snow was beginning to fall. “Well, I don't think he's going anywhere too soon, but...sure. I will.”

“Thank you.”

“Sure. Drink your soup.”

Ford rolled his eyes, but he drank his soup. He was surprised at how good it was; after who-knew-how-long skipping meals, the simple broth tasted like ambrosia itself, which was impressive considering he could barely taste anything at the moment.

Fiddleford left, apparently satisfied, and Ford leaned back against the pillow and watched the snow fall as he finished the soup.

The house was very quiet for the next few days. There were no more blizzards, but snow fell periodically in a stubborn, methodical kind of way. Ford mostly slept, waking occasionally to eat or take medicine or complain.

Fiddleford and Stan, by some mutual unspoken agreement, began to tidy the house. They threw nothing away, but they stacked up the books and cleared the paper from the floor, and washed a small mountain of laundry. Fiddleford organized the workshop; Stan took a bottle of bleach to the bathroom and scrubbed until all the accusatory rust-colored splotches were gone. He tried not to think very much while he was doing it.

Fiddleford slept in the arm chair, when he did sleep. Stan cleared off Ford's bed and slept there. The first night he was too tired to pay much more attention than was absolutely necessary, but the second night, he stubbed his toe on a cardboard box and, cursing, leaned down to get a better look at his assailant.

The top of the box was open slightly, and whatever was inside was brightly colored. Stan frowned, curiosity getting the better of him, and opened it all the way.

It was a stack of comics.

His comics.

In wonderment, Stan hauled the box up onto the bed and sat there, pulling out one issue after another. Batman and Superman and the Flash. Justice League. Green Lantern. Most of them weren't in very good shape-Stan had never been too gentle with his comics-but they had been stacked neatly and carefully in the box.

Ford hadn't thrown them out at all.

Stan had to put them all to one side for a little while so they didn't get wet while he sobbed into his hands. But later he fell asleep reading them.

On the afternoon of the third day, Ford shuffled into the bathroom, took a very long shower, and shaved thoroughly. Afterwards, he found Stan and Fiddleford in the kitchen, eating sandwiches.

He went over the counter, started making a sandwich for himself, and said, “Tomorrow I'm going to start taking the portal apart.”

His voice was still rough and his color bad, but he sounded determined. Stan and Fiddleford glanced at each other.

“Alright,” Fiddleford said at last. “But you let us do the heavy lifting, okay?”

“Fine,” Ford said. “But one way or another, it's coming down.”

It was a daunting task. As the three of them stood in the basement the next morning, looking up at the huge ring, Stan wondered how exactly they were going to dismantle the entire thing by themselves. Come to that, he wondered exactly how Ford and Fiddleford had gotten it up by themselves.

“This thing is safe to be around, right?” he said nervously. He remembered the noise the portal had made in Ford's mind, remembered falling into it. He knew it hadn't ever really happened, but it felt like it had, felt like a real memory in his head.

“Don't worry, Stanley,” Ford said, with more confidence than Stan was entirely sure he could back up. “The portal's deactivated. It would take a ridiculous series of coincidences to start it up now.”

Stan nodded, but he kept his distance from the thing as much as possible.

At first, the process mostly seemed to involve a lot of pulling plugs and disconnecting wires. Stan helped where he could--mostly by lifting heavy things--and loitered on the sidelines when he couldn't, keeping an eye on Ford. The more the work progressed, the more heavy things there were for him to lift, as they started taking apart larger components, and more than once he had to step in before Ford tried to pick up something that was clearly beyond him at the moment. He tried to do the same for Fiddleford as well, but the scrawny engineer turned out to be surprisingly strong.

“I grew up on a farm,” he said, by way of explanation.

Stan woke tired and aching the next day, but he didn't think anything of it. He'd spent the day before doing a lot more heavy work than he was used to, after all. It was hardly surprising. And if he couldn't seem to get warm, that wasn't strange either, considering how cold it was in Ford's house.

It didn't occur to him that anything was wrong at all until Ford had to wake him up for the third time.

“Stan, are you alright?”

Stan blinked, seeing his brother's concerned face swim into partial focus. He'd dozed off in a corner, using a toolbox as a pillow. It was hardly a comfortable position, but he was exhausted enough to not care.

“Yeah, 'm fine,” he muttered, sitting up and wincing at the crick in his neck. “Just tired. Guess I'm even more out of shape than I thought...”

He coughed.

Ford was still looking worried. “Are--are you sure? Only-”

“'Course I'm sure,” Stan said, and promptly started coughing again. This time it went on for a while.

When he finally caught his breath he looked up to see that Ford had gone white. “Stan, you're--you're not well,” he gabbled. “What's--what's wrong? What is it? Do you have a fever? Here, let me see--”

“Get off,” Stan said, swatting Ford's hand away as he tried to feel Stan's forehead. “I'm alright.”

“You're sick!” It was almost a wail. Stan stared. He didn't understand why Ford was acting like this.

“What's the problem?” Fiddleford had come over to investigate.

“Stan's sick,” Ford said, digging a hand through his hair frantically.

“I told you, I'm fine.” To prove it, Stan stood up, trying to ignore how dizzy this made him. “I was just takin' a quick nap and next thing I know Ford's over here freaking out-”

Fiddleford squinted at him. “You do look kinda flushed,” he said. “But it doesn't exactly seem like an emergency.”

“What if it's serious?” Ford demanded. “Who knows what you could have picked up, Stan, living the way you do--”

“Hey now,” Stan growled, starting to get riled. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“We have to take this seriously!” Ford insisted, wringing his hands. “Stan, if--what if you--I can't lose you again!”

The basement rang with the sudden silence.

“Ford,” Stan said, reeling. “You're not--you're not gonna lose me, okay?”

“He probably just picked up whatever you had,” Fiddleford pointed out.

This just made Ford more distraught. “So it's my fault!”

“No, that's not--” Fiddleford pinched the bridge of his nose. “What I meant was, you're gettin' over it just fine, and that was what with--well, a whole lotta things not exactly conducive to a swift recovery. So Stan's gonna be fine too. Okay?”

Ford was still shaking, but gradually and with great effort he relaxed a little.

“Okay,” he whispered.

“Good,” Fiddleford said encouragingly. “Let's take a break, yeah? I could do with one anyway.”

They adjourned upstairs. Ford kept glancing at Stan as if afraid he was going to drop dead on the spot. It quickly got irritating, but Stan tried to let it go. Ford looked so worried, and it was disconcerting.

He sat in the kitchen staring at a spot on the wall that seemed oddly interesting while the nerds conferred in whispers just outside the door. To his amusement most of the whispering sounded like Ford being gently but firmly calmed down.

Eventually they came back into the kitchen and Fiddleford announced that they were going into town after lunch. “Gonna get the heating turned back on,” he said. “I'd say it's about time, wouldn't you?”

“Definitely,” Stan said vehemently.

“Also we're nearly out of cold medication,” Fiddleford went on. “I didn't know one man could take so much in so short a time. To be honest, I was a little worried about him but he seems to have survived.”

“I'm standing right here,” Ford pointed out from over by the stove, where he was dumping canned soup into a pot with a mutinous expression.

“Anyway,” Fiddleford went on without missing a beat, “if you wouldn't mind staying here and watching the house while we go do that--”

Stan could tell an excuse to make him stay behind and not wear himself out when he heard one, but he couldn't really be bothered to argue, especially if it would make Ford feel better. So he just shrugged and said, “Yeah, alright.”

Once the two of them had left, he settled down into the armchair, intending to read some more of the comics he had found. This plan did not take especially well.

He had been dozing for a while when he was woken by a knock at the door.

It took a while for the noise to register, during which it got increasingly loud and insistent. At last he got up and stumbled toward the door, wondering who could possibly be visiting Ford's house, here on this dead-end road in the middle of nowhere. He was pretty sure Ford didn't have any friends in the area besides Fiddleford--somehow, despite how long he'd lived there. Maybe Ford and Fiddleford had just locked themselves out. That was the most likely explanation.

Or...it could be something worse. A prickle ran up the back of his neck. What if it was the cops coming by to ask questions about Ford's weird set-up, or someone from the college demanding to know what he was doing with the grant money? Or someone from Fiddleford's weird cult?

By the time he got to the door, Stan was wide awake and his heart was pounding frantically. He tried to remember all the exits to the house, but he wasn't sure it mattered. He couldn't get very far on foot in this weather and in this condition.

“Open up!” someone called, pounding on the door as he approached and breaking into his thoughts. “I know you're in there!”

Stan squinted through the peephole. There was a woman standing on the porch, tallish with long blonde hair, wrapped in a winter coat and scarf but still shivering. She didn't look especially official.

“What do you want?” he shouted through the door.

There was a brief pause. The woman looked a bit confused at first, but then her expression hardened back into determined anger. “I want my husband back, you jerk!”

This threw Stan so much that he opened the door just to say, “What?”

“I haven't seen him in months and I know you're responsible, Stanford Pines!” the woman snapped. “What are you doing up here? Where is he?”

“Whoa, hang on,” Stan said, putting his hands up as the woman advanced on him. “I think you've got the wrong--”

“I haven't got the wrong anything!” the woman yelled. “You called Fiddleford up here for your damn project and I was patient, oh yes, I was fair, never mind that we had a newborn, I didn't mind him coming up here to help you out if he wanted to! But it's been weeks since I even got a phone call from him and that isn't like him at all! What did you get him into, Stanford?”

“Lady, please--” Stan tried.

“Don't you 'lady' me!” A finger jabbed straight into his face. “I know what you're like, Stanford! I know the kind of projects you do! And I know you can talk Fiddleford into doing anything because he's too nice to say no! If you got him in trouble, I swear to God-”

“I'm not Stanford,” Stan finally managed to get out desperately.

“Not--? Do you take me for a fool, Pines? I've known you since college! You can't just take your glasses off and think I won't recognize you!”

“I'm his twin brother,” Stan said.

The woman paused, and for a moment Stan thought she might believe him. Then he realized she was just building up steam. “His twin brother? That is the worst excuse I have ever heard in my life! I always knew you were a terrible liar, but that is something else--”

“No, really! Look!” Stan held up his hands, fingers spread. “Look! Ten, see?”

The woman halted mid-lambast and stared at Stan's hands. “O-oh...”

Then she grabbed one of Stan's hands and examined it critically. “But that's amazing. Identical twins but only one expresses the polydactylism gene? How fascinating--”

“Um,” Stan said.

She flushed and dropped his hand quickly. “Sorry! Sorry, I just--I get distracted. I'm a biologist, you see. Um. Oh dear, and I shouted at you rather a lot, didn't I...”

“It's alright,” Stan said. “I just didn't want you to waste such a good rant on the wrong guy.”

The woman gave him a small, embarrassed smile. “Sorry. I'm not usually like this, I swear, but--well, things have been, um, trying lately. I don't suppose you know where my husband is? Only the last I knew he was working with Stanford, and I went to the address he gave me but there was no one there--”

“Uh,” Stan said again. “You mean Fiddleford?”

“That's right, yes.” She looked up hopefully. “Fiddleford McGucket?”

“Yeah, he's--he's safe. He--um, it's kind of a long story, but he and Ford are in town right now. They should be back before too long.”

“He's okay?”

“Yeah,” Stan said, feeling a big guilty. Safe was not a lie, but he wasn't sure if describing Fiddleford as okay right now was entirely true.

“Alright then. Alright.” The woman let out a long breath. “So why the hell hasn't he called?!”

Stan winced and drew back.

“Sorry, sorry. Not your fault.” Fiddleford's wife rubbed her brow with one hand, then looked up. “At least--it's not your fault, is it?”

“Um. I don't think so? I only got here a week ago.”

“Probably not then.” She slumped a little. “Do you-is it alright if I wait here, then? For them to come back?”

“Oh--oh yeah, yeah!” Stan drew back, gesturing inside. “Sorry--”

“No problem. I'm Madeline, by the way. Madeleine McGucket.” She held out a hand. Stan shook it.

“Stanley,” he said. “Stan, usually.”

Madeline raised an eyebrow. “Stanford and Stanley?”

Stan made a face. “Our dad wasn't real creative.”

“Hmmm.” Madeline stepped inside, and Stan shut the door behind her. “Wow. It's not much warmer in here, is it?”

“That's mostly what they went to town for--to get the heat turned back on. I think Ford got behind on his payments.”

“I see,” Madeline muttered as Stan led her into the kitchen. She sat at the table, biting her lip, while Stan made tea.

“Thank you so much,” she said as he handed her a steaming cup.

“Sure,” he said, taking a seat next to her.

“Stan, um, I don't suppose...I don't suppose you know what's going on? With my husband and--and with Stanford, I mean? Is Fiddleford in trouble?”

Stan thought about Ford saying I ignored him and he paid a terrible price for it; about Fiddleford's apartment covered in drawings of crossed-out eyes; about the way the dreamy look on his face as he talked about his family had turned to one of horror as he struggled to remember why he had abandoned them; about him holding Ford down while Bill kicked and spat in his face.

“You know what,” he said, “it's probably better if you wait and ask him and Ford about that.”

By the time Ford and Fiddleford got back, Stan and Madeline had gone through two more cups of tea and the topics of the weather, various movies, Fiddleford and Madeline's college days, their wedding, Fiddleford's dreams of making computers and Madeline's dreams of raising hybrid plants, and were in the middle of an extensive lecture on biology in which Madeline was making use of a bag of jellybeans to explain dominant and recessive genes and the concept of incomplete penetrance when they heard the car pull in.

“Hello?” Ford called as the door opened. Stan took the opportunity to steal some jellybeans. “Stan, is someone else here? We saw a car-”

They walked into the kitchen and stopped cold.

“Madeline!” Fiddleford exclaimed, and ran to embrace her. “I'm so glad to see you--”

Then he stopped and drew up. “But what are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same question,” Madeline said. “In fact, I came all the way up here from Palo Alto to ask you that exact question. What are you doing here and what is going on and why haven't I heard from you for weeks?”

Fiddleford blanched. “Um. It's...complicated.”

“It was my fault,” Ford said.

Madeline turned toward him, looking downright deadly. “I don't doubt it was your fault, Stanford,” she said quietly. “What did you get my husband into?”

Ford fidgeted almost manically. Stan couldn't blame him. “I...the project I brought him up here for...it...did not go as expected. There were complications...um...serious complications...”

“Such as?” Madeline demanded.

“A...source of information I thought was trustworthy turned out to not be so,” Ford said. “The project became dangerous, we had to shut it down...that's what we've been doing. I'm sorry, I've been keeping Fiddleford here working on it--”

“It wasn't all your fault,” Fiddleford said softly. “I've...made some mistakes, Maddie.”

Madeline's face softened slightly. “Mistakes?”

Fiddleford hesitated.

Stan stood up hurriedly, almost knocking the table over. “Hey, Ford, did you know I'm a genetic anomaly?”

“Really?” Ford said, with a remarkable amount of interest. “How very fascinating.”

“Yeah, how about we go somewhere...not here...and I'll tell you all about it.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea, Stanley, I think I'll take you up on it.”

“Don't go too far,” Madeline called after them as they beat a hasty retreat from the kitchen. “I might very well still need to have words with you, Stanford.”

Ford looked like he had nearly swallowed his tongue. “Of course,” he muttered.

The conversation went on for a quite a while. Ford cleaned the living room manically, while Stan went back to dozing in the armchair. Occasionally they heard raised voices, usually along the lines of “He did WHAT?” or “You did WHAT?”

Finally the voices stopped. Ford glanced anxiously toward the door. A moment later, Madeline appeared in the doorway, with Fiddleford trailing behind her.

She strode across the room and slapped Ford hard across the face.

Ford winced and rubbed his jaw. “I suppose I deserved that.”

“You did,” Madeline said. “Honestly, Stanford Pines, of all the stupid, senseless, dangerous things a man could do--”

She stopped and took a deep breath and said,“But you're cleaning it up now, aren't you?”

“Yes,” Ford said earnestly.

Madeline sighed. “Well, you're a right idiot,” she said, sounding a little calmer, “but I knew that. Still, you oughta be damned grateful my husband got out of this mess intact.”

“I am!” Ford said. “Erm, and not just because you would revenge murder me otherwise.”

“Damn straight I would.” Madeline shook her head. “Just promise me one thing, Stanford. The next time a demon from another dimension comes around handing out advice, don't listen to it.”

Ford gaped. “How much did you tell her?” he demanded from Fiddleford.

“All of it.” Fiddleford shrugged at Ford's glare. “What? She's my wife.”

“That's right. And right now, your wife is taking you home.”

“What, all the way back to California? Now?” Ford said, and gulped when Madeline swung her head toward him. “I mean--”

“No, not back to California, just back to my apartment,” Fiddleford said, taking pity on him. “We're gonna...sort some things out.”

“Tate is with my mom, so I can stay for a few days,” Madeline said. “It's too late to travel now anyway. But whatever you need Fiddleford for on this project, you'd better get done before we leave, because he's coming back home with me.”

“Of course,” Ford said, looking relieved.

“Take care of yourself, Stan,” Madeline said. “That sounds like a nasty bit of flu you picked up. Drink a lot of fluids.”

“She seems to like you,” Ford muttered as the two of them left.

Stan shrugged. “I'm a likable guy. Also, I didn't cause her husband to almost die and then go insane.”

Ford couldn't come up with an answer for that one. Fortunately for him, a serviceable distraction came along in the form of the heat finally coming back on.

The flu hit Stan hard the next day. He woke up late in the morning coughing, got up long enough to take some pills, and promptly went back to bed and wrapped himself as tightly as he could in the blankets. Everything hurt. He felt like he'd been run over by a truck.

He napped for a while, got up, took another pill, drank some juice, went back to bed, and discovered in disgust that he couldn't nap any more but was too tired to do anything else. He watched the snow falling outside, not thinking of anything in particular except how much his chest hurt.

There was a soft knock on the door and Ford poked his head in.

“You need help with something?” Stan asked, sitting up with a groan.

“No, no! Please, lay back down.” Ford looked nervous. He was holding something behind his back. “I...decided to halt working on the portal for the afternoon.”

Stan frowned. “But you were so worried about it-”

“Yes, but Fiddleford's still at home, and you...”

“I'm alright. I can work if you need--”

“No, it's alright, really! I insist. Anyway, we've gotten a lot of work done already. I'm...not as concerned as I was, anymore. Most of the volatile components are safely contained, and anyone attempting to use it would have to do a considerably amount of work to reconstruct it first.”

“Hang on,” Stan said. “Volatile components--?”

Ford coughed. “The point is, that's not why I'm here.”

Stan squinted at him. “So why are you here?”

Ford glanced from side to side and deflated a little. “This is probably silly...”

“Spit it out, Poindexter.”

“Well...it's just...” Ford fidgeted. “You know how, when we were kids...I used to read to you sometimes? Like when you were sick?”

Stan raised his eyebrows. “You came here to read to me?”

“You know what, this was a bad idea. I'll just leave you to rest--”

“No, wait,” Stan said as Ford turned. “I didn't say no.”

Ford paused in the doorway. “You mean it?”

“Yeah, sure,” Stan said. “I mean--only cause I can't sleep and you don't have a TV. No other reason.”

“Of course.” Ford pulled the chair away from the desk and carried it over to the bed. “So, you said you had read The Lord of the Rings. Did you ever read The Hobbit?”

“Nope. What's that?”

“Ah.” Ford got an especially nerdy look on his face. “It's the prequel to The Lord of the Rings. It's for a younger audience--Tolkien originally conceived of it as a bedtime story for his son. I thought you might like it.”

“Right,” Stan said. “You think I need something for a younger audience.”

“What? No!” Ford looked up in alarm. “I-that's not it.”

“Sure.”

“No, really. I thought you might like it because...well...” Ford rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “Because it's about someone who...goes on an adventure even though he doesn't exactly want to, and he misses his comfortable home, but he rises to the occasion and...he's very brave and clever and outwits all his enemies. Also he saves the day by stealing something at the right moment.”

“Huh,” Stan said. “Y'know, that does sound like something I might like.”

“Also he wins a lot of treasure.”

“That definitely sounds like something I would like.”

Ford smiled slightly, settled into the chair, and opened the book.

“Comfortable?” he said. Stan nodded. “Alright. Ahem. In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit...”

The next few days went by quietly. Fiddleford came over less and less, more often holding long phone conversations with Ford. They were, Stan took it, almost done with dismantling the portal, and Fiddleford and Madeline were leaving soon.

So when he was woken one afternoon by the phone ringing, he stumbled towards it and picked up the receiver without thinking, expecting it to be Fiddleford again. After all, he couldn't think of anyone else who want to call Ford. He was only half-awake anyway, which was officially his excuse for picking up a phone and giving away his location without thinking. It would come back to bite him very quickly.

“Yeah?” he said, stifling a yawn.

There was a pause on the other end. Stan frowned at the receiver. “Yeah? What is it?”

“...Stanley?” the voice on the other end said.

It was not Fiddleford.

It was Shermie.

Stan's mind went completely blank except for the thought oh shit circling around and around like an airplane trying to land.

“Um,” he said helplessly. “No?”

“What do you mean, no?” Shermie spluttered. “That is you, isn't it?!”

oh shit oh shit oh shit “Um, um, um,” Stan said. “Um, listen, you know what, I have to--”

“STANLEY PINES IF YOU HANG UP THIS PHONE NOW YOU WON'T LIVE TO REGRET IT.”

Stan winced and dug a finger around in his ear. “Alright, alright! I'm not goin' anywhere...”

“Good,” Shermie said, and took a deep breath. “Where the HELL have you BEEN? What were you THINKING just taking off like that? Do you KNOW how worried I've been?”

“I did leave a note,” Stan said meekly.

“A note! Yes! One goddamn note on the fridge in the middle of the night! One note does not fix anything, Stanley! It's been five years, I was starting to think you were dead! Why did you leave?”

Stan stood there alone in the waiting silence and didn't know what to say.

“Are you still there?” Shermie said eventually. “You'd better still be there.”

“Yeah--yeah, I'm still here,” Stan said. “Look, Shermie, it's not that I didn't appreciate what you were willing to do for me and all, it's just...I couldn't just stay there and be a burden on you.”

Shermie made a strangled kind of noise. “You...Stan, you wouldn't have been a burden on anyone. We easily had enough money to put you up.”

“So I should've just, what? Stayed there and sucked up your money without doing anything to make it up?”

“No,” Shermie said, sounding agonized. “You...you wouldn't have been...we were trying to help you, Stan.”

Stan sighed. “Shermie, you know I ruin everything I touch. I didn't want to do that to you-”

“You do no such thing!” Shermie cried. “You're my brother! I just wanted you to be safe and happy--”

Stan laughed, and instantly regretted it. It made an already difficult conversation even more awkward.

There was silence for a moment.

“Look,” Shermie said eventually. “We'll talk about that later, just...tell me what's going on with you right now. You're at Ford's? Does that mean you guys made up?”

“Uh,” Stan said. “Yeah, I guess we did.”

“That's great!” Shermie sounded genuinely thrilled. “What finally made it happen?”

“Um...well, Ford called me up here--”

“Ford called you?” Shermie said. “I didn't see that coming...sorry, sorry, go on.”

“He needed my help,” Stan explained. “And then, um...we kind of fought for a while, but...we made up eventually.”

“Ford needed help? With what?”

“Uhhhhhh,” Stan said. “He...got in a spot of trouble. It's all good now though,” he added hurriedly.

“...Right,” Shermie said. “Well, I'm glad to hear that...I suppose. How long are you going to be there?”

Stan paused.

“I...don't know,” he said, realizing that in fact, he didn't.

“Well--that's okay. I'm just glad to know that you're okay now.”

Stan mulled that one over. “I guess I am,” he said.

“Is Ford there? I need to yell at him too.”

“Uh, yeah, he's in his lab. I'll go get him.”

He put the phone down--gingerly, as though it might go off--and went to find one the walkie-talkie he'd been using to relay things between Ford and Fiddleford when he was on the phone. He could see why the two of them had gotten the things in the first place; it certainly cut down on a lot of time going up and down the stairs.

There was a pause after he first radioed for Ford. Stan could imagine Ford extricating himself from underneath some panel with a dramatic groan and fumbling about for the walkie-talkie underneath whatever it had gotten buried beneath this time.

“Stanley? What is it?”

“You have a phone call,” Stan said.

“What? From Fidds? Alright, put him on--”

“No.”

“What?” Ford's puzzled frown was almost audible. “Well, tell whoever it is to call back. I'm in the middle of--”

“It's Shermie. And I don't think you want me to tell him to wait.”

There was a choking sound on the other end, and Stan almost felt guilty for drawing the news out like that. But if he had to have a rude surprise, so did Ford.

“Shermie's calling? Why? What does he want?” Ford sounded almost frantic.

“Um, I'm not actually sure. Just to check up on you, I guess.”

There was another pause, of a rather different tone. “I'll be right up,” Ford said.

Stan grinned to himself, tossed the walkie-talkie back onto the table, and went back to the phone. “He's coming,” he told Shermie.

“Good,” Shermie said firmly. Then, “Are you alright, Stan? You sound even worse than usual.”

Stan was about to wave that one aside, but unfortunately a wave of coughing hit him first.

“I'm a bit sick,” he had to admit when it finally subsided. “No big deal.”

“That sounded like a pretty big deal,” Shermie said, concerned.

Stan sighed and searched about for something to make Shermie lay off before he got too worked up.

“Don't worry,” he said. “I'm being taken care of.”

Ford came into the kitchen at not quite a run, smoothing down his shirt as if out of some misplaced desire to look presentable, and took the phone away from a grateful Stan. “Sherman,” he said. “What a pleasant surprise. Unfortunately I'm in the middle of some delicate work at the moment, so if you could call back--”

“Nice try, Stanford,” Shermie said. “Whatever your work is, you can put it on hold. You've got some questions to answer.”

“Um--”

“Like why haven't you been calling me like you said you would? Or answering the phone? Or your mail? Why have I had to start wondering if you were dead, Stanford?”

“...I...may have lost phone service for a while,” Ford muttered. “Also my mailbox.”

“You lost your mailbox?”

“It's a long story.”

Shermie sighed heavily. “You could have made some effort. I've been worried sick about you! What's been going on?”

“Ahh...” Ford said. “That's...it's...it's a long story.”

“And Stanley's at your house now? How did that happen? Why didn't you tell me you two made it up?”

“I've...been busy,” Ford said defensively. “It wasn't that long ago anyway.”

“Busy doing what, exactly?”

Ford said nothing.

“Right,” Shermie said. “I'm coming up there.”

“What?” Ford spluttered. “No, don't!--I mean, it's really not a good time, it's a mess up here--”

“I can see that I'm not going to get any answers from either of you two over the phone,” Shermie said firmly. “I need to corner you in person. And wring the truth out of you.”

Ford swallowed hard. “Um. Um--you know what, why don't we visit you instead?”

Shermie paused. “Well...you sure about that?”

“Yes,” Ford said. “I...I could stand to get away from here for a little while.”

“Alright then,” Shermie said begrudgingly. “But I'm holding you to it. If you don't show up, I will come up there, and I won't tell you about it either. I won't even knock. I'll just be in your house. See how you like that.”

“Noted,” Ford muttered.

He managed to arrange a tentative date before hastily saying good-bye and hanging up. Stan eyed him. “Did you just volunteer me to go visit Shermie?”

“It was either that or him coming here,” Ford said wearily. “I don't think we're getting out of this one, Stan.”

Stan sat down at the table and put his head in one hand. “What am I going to say to him? After all this time? What if he wants me to live with him again?”

Ford blinked owlishly. “Why would he want that?”

“I sure don't know,” Stan muttered. “But it's what he wanted last time. Tryin' to make sure I had a proper home and everything.”

“But--you're living here.”

Stan looked up in shock. Ford stared at him, looking not much less shocked.

“I...I mean,” Ford said. “You...well, if you want to--”

“Wh--Ford, I can't stay here forever,” Stan said, still thrown.

Ford sat down at the table, rather hard. “What do you mean?”

“Well...I...” Stan stammered, trying to figure out how to get across what should have been obvious. “I can't just--Ford, I can't just stay here and mooch off you. I, I mean-”

--all you ever do is lie and cheat and ride on your brother's coattails--

“I mean, you don't want me here,” he said.

“Yes I do,” Ford said. He was still staring, like Stan was the one not making any sense.

“No you don't,” Stan said. “Ford...you've got this, this house, this college money, you're doing all this impressive science shit, and I...I'm just a failed conman. Why would you want me around, being a leech?”

“Because I like having you around,” Ford said, and to Stan's amazement his brother's voice broke. “Don't you remember what that was like? The two of us, enjoying each other's company?”

Stan hesitated.

“Of course I do,” he said. “But...things are...different now. Aren't they?”

“I don't know,” Ford said. “Do they have to be?”

Stan shook his head. “You'd get tired of me,” he said. “You're just being generous now, but you'd get tired of me real quick-”

Ford sighed. “Look, Stan, if you really don't want to stay I understand, but I promise I won't get tired of you.”

“It's not that I don't want to stay,” Stan mumbled. “It's just...”

“It's just what?”

Stan knew the answer, but it was harder to get out than he had realized. It felt like something buried so deep inside that he had to unearth a great deal of himself to get it out.

At long last, not daring to look at his brother, he said, “I...haven't earned it yet.”

He heard Ford release a breath. “Is this because of what Dad said?”

Stan blinked. “What Dad said?”

“That whole stupid thing--about not coming home until you made enough money--”

Stan shrugged. “I don't know,” he said. “I mean, Dad was right, you know. I'd never done anything useful in my life, and I still haven't--”

“No he wasn't,” Ford said.

“What?”

“He wasn't. He wasn't right at all. Stan, listen to me-Dad was wrong. He never should have said that. I never should have let him say that. And...and you shouldn't have to spend the rest of your life under that. You shouldn't have to listen to Dad anymore.”

Stan could only stare at him.

“This is my house,” Ford said. “I decide who has the right to stay here. And I'm not letting you get thrown out again. If you really want I'm sure you can find a job somewhere around here, or--or I could probably get the grant board to let me hire you on as an official assistant, there's lots of things you could do--but you don't have to earn anything. Alright?”

“Well...” Stan began, still not entirely convinced.

“You saved my life,” Ford said desperately. “Stan, I wouldn't still be here if not for you. That's got to be worth something, right?”

“I suppose so,” Stan muttered.

“It doesn't have to be forever,” Ford said. “We can just...we can take it one day at a time. But please at least give it a shot?”

Stan wanted to say yes. He wanted to so bad he could taste it, but at the same time he couldn't believe it was true, couldn't believe that as soon as he said it the chance wouldn't be ripped away from him all over again.

But Ford was looking at him, and waiting, and somehow he couldn't bring himself to turn his brother down, either.

It was one of the hardest things he'd ever had to do in his life to say, “Alright. I'll stay.”

Ford's beaming face in response was worth the effort.

Chapter Text

On a sunny snow-melt day in the tail-end of February, Stan, Ford and Fiddleford built a huge bonfire in the front yard and burned away every remaining trace of Bill.

They had gone through the house meticulously and collected everything that had even the slightest connection to the dead demon. What couldn't be burned had been painted over, or melted down in the basement lab, or otherwise disposed of.

Stan had been unable to suppress a double take when he found out that Ford had actual gold idols of Bill. Ford had only turned away and muttered something about digging them up somewhere. “The...worship of Bill in this area goes back a long time,” he said, so quietly that Stan could barely hear him.

Stan hadn't known what to say to that, so he put a hand on his brother's shoulder for a moment, and they carried on.

Everything else-blueprints, paintings, a rug, but mostly piles and piles of paper-Ford stacked up neatly on the porch while Stan shoveled out a clear spot in the snow, and then the three of them piled up all the firewood Ford had bought from Dan, everything in the woods being too wet to burn well enough.

They destroyed it all, bit by bit, watching the slow smolder of the rug and the rapid blackening of the paper. Fiddleford tossed in his notes on the making of the memory gun, and everything in his apartment that had been marked with a red crossed-out eye. No one said anything.

Afterward, when it was all gone, they left what remained of the wood gently smoking, and went back inside. Fiddleford made cocoa.

“So you're going back tomorrow?” Ford asked as Stan put a blanket over him. Ford had long since recovered, but it was still cold outside and no one was taking any chances with him.

“Yep,” Fiddleford said, testing the warmth of the milk. “Gotta get going while the weather holds out. Supposed to get more snow soon.”

Ford detangled himself from the blanket, knocking his glasses askew. “I'll miss having you around,” he said. “I'll have to come visit you sometime. That is, if Madeline will let me...”

Fiddleford poured off the milk and began mixing cocoa into three mugs. “You might not have to.”

“Oh?” Ford said, accepting a mug from him.

“Yeah.” Fiddleford handed Stan a mug and took a sip from his own. “Maddie and I are thinking of moving up here.”

Ford nearly spit cocoa across the kitchen.

“You what?” he spluttered over a hasty swallow.

Fiddleford shrugged and pulled up a chair. “Well, we've been talking about it,” he said. “Maddie's real interested in the ecology up here. I can tell she's dyin' to see some of the things I've told her about...and, well, she won't say it but I don't think she's too happy in Palo Alto. I don't know that I am either, really. We don't have a lot of space. Up here we could have a real big garden, and some animals...Tate would have room to run around... Land's so cheap around here too, y'know.”

“I wonder why,” Stan muttered.

“Anyway,” Fiddleford went on. “It's still in talks. But it's definitely a possibility.”

Ford stirred his cocoa thoughtfully. “That sounds fantastic,” he said. “But...I wouldn't have thought you'd want to stay here. After...um. Everything.”

Fiddleford shrugged and looked down into his own mug.

“I dunno,” he said at last. “I thought so too. But...it's scary up here, but it's real interestin' too. I can't deny that. And...hell, I think I've gotten a bit fond of the place, in spite of myself.” He took a drink of cocoa and brightened up a bit. “Plus, you clearly need a chaperon.”

“I'm doing my best,” Stan said.

“I know, and I appreciate that,” Fiddleford said over Ford's loud objections. “But a man like this needs all the chaperons he can get.”

Stan raised his mug. “To chaperons.”

Fiddleford clinked his mug against Stan's. “To keepin' each other alive.”

Ford scowled, but after a moment he raised his mug too. “To...friends.”

More snow did come, and then it went away again.

Stan started dragging Ford out more often, taking him to the diner for breakfast or supper and pulling him into conversations with the locals, claiming that it was ridiculous that Ford had lived there so long and still didn't know anybody. Ford initially protested, but he quieted somewhat when he realized how much more information he could get out of the townspeople once they got more comfortable around him. People were much more likely to tell their stories of cryptids and eerie happenings to an important local scientist and his charismatic brother than to a strange and scary man who did experiments all alone deep in the woods.

There were days when they went out into those woods on 'research trips' which usually involved less research and more running around and shouting with varying degrees of panic and excitement. Stan had thought that he couldn't be surprised by anything anymore. He was wrong. The words “what the fuck, are you kidding me” were uttered so many times in the first week that Ford eventually instituted a swear jar policy.

And there were days when Ford barely slept and woke up shaking, when Stan would take one look at him and loudly declare that he felt too lazy to go out today and intended to spend all day reading comics instead; and there were days when a hunted look stole into Stan's eyes and Ford would declare that he had to stay in and write up a report for the grant committee so there would be no adventures that day.

They had to learn new things about each other: Stan learned not to use the name 'Sixer' anymore, and Ford learned not to startle Stan by running into a room yelling over something he was excited about.

Bit by bit, they moved on.

“Are you ready for this?”

Stan stared out the windshield at the neat little suburban house in front of them, surrounded by a glorious California spring in full flower. Shermie's house.

“Not in the least,” he said.

Ford sighed and leaned against the steering wheel. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Me neither.”

They'd been able to stall for a while, as long as they called Shermie regularly to assure him that they planned on keeping Ford's promise. But it had been two months, and neither of them doubted that Shermie would make good on his threat if they didn't visit before too long.

Ford drummed his fingers on the steering wheel moodily. Stan glanced at him, wondering which of them was looking forward to this the least.

On the trip down they'd hashed out a story for Ford that covered things pretty well. Stan's general experience was that lying was easier the closer you stuck to the truth, but in this case that was easier said than done. Especially when it came to lying to Shermie, who was pretty much impossible to put off once he got you cornered.

But they'd done their best, and come up with a tale that hit most of the points of the story without exactly mentioning things like demons and memory guns and potentially- world-ending portals. Bill was still a conman, just a human one, whom Ford had caught onto after Bill had attacked his assistant and given him a concussion. He'd badgered Ford until Ford had contacted Stan, and later, when Bill had them cornered in the house, the three of them were able to use some experimental technology that Ford was working on to knock Bill out until the police could come. As far as what, exactly, Ford had been working on, Stan had made the fortuitous discovery that as long as Ford described his work in technical terms no one could actually figure out what he was talking about anyway, so there was at least no need to lie there, as such.

It all sounded dodgy as hell to Stan, but it would have to do. It was certainly better than the truth, which he would never have believed if he hadn't been there.

At least Ford could lie. Stan had come up with about two dozen excuses for why he had left Shermie's house, none of which sounded convincing even to him. Anyway, he'd already more or less blabbed the truth out to Shermie, which meant that Shermie was never going to let it go. There would be yelling, and then, much worse, there would be gentle words in a low voice, like Stan was some scared kid that needed to have things carefully explained to him. And he wouldn't know what to say to any of it, because the things that made perfect sense inside his head never seemed to quite work when he said them out loud.

But then again, maybe that was a sign that he did need some things explained. Because it had been two months, and Ford hadn't gotten tired of him, or shown the slightest hint of wanting him to leave. It had been two months, and Stan was almost starting to think that it was alright for him to stay, really. And that didn't make a lot of sense, but it was true.

“Well,” Ford said at last. “We might as well go in.”

“Do we have to?” Stan asked hopefully. “There's still time for us to turn around and go back home.”

Ford looked as though he was honestly considering this, but then he sighed. “A curtain just moved,” he said. “We've been spotted. Come on, it'll be even worse if Shermie has to come drag us out of the car.”

Stan groaned, but he knew Ford was right, so he opened the door and hauled himself out.

They walked up the drive together. Ford glanced at Stan as they neared the porch. He must have seen something there, because he put a hand on Stan's shoulder.

“Hey,” he said. “Don't worry. Wherever we go, we go together.”

Stan stared at him for a moment.

Then he grinned.

The door opened.

“Uncle Stan! Uncle Ford!”