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dubsdeedubs · 6 years

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A Thousand Natural Shocks [15/16]

[A/N: I BET YOU THOUGHT YOU SAW THE LAST OF ME

split the last chapter into two bc i figure yall would like a six thousand word thing NOW as opposed to a 15 thousand word monster god knows when. long story short, i finished school for the term, i have a job for summer (in boston!) and i’m ready to WRITE]

[AO3]

Near the end of 1972, about halfway through earning his first doctorate, Stanford Pines experienced an Epiphany.

Though slightly less graceful and Romantic than having an apple fall upon his head, or even reciting Goethe while gazing upon the rays of a setting sun (as always, Tesla never did anything by halves), the effect on the young scientist proved no less than electrifying. Certainly no less dramatic, judging by the foot-wide spray radius of the resulting half-mug of coffee shattered onto the floor.

A particularly difficult proof had been the catalyst; specifically, a problem that had been built on such theoretical ground that the soon-to-be Dr. Pines had to navigate several levels of hypotheticals and complete nonsense - that albeit did have some meaning with three textbooks' worth of context and a state-of-the-art graphing calculator 'borrowed' from a university laboratory - to even seriously approach the question itself.

A study of the relation of objects and velocity in zero-gravity conditions outside the known universe, which in fact had nothing to do with his field of study at all. Or any field of study relevant to humanity for the next hundred years, for that matter.

(Questioning why the man had spent forty-three sleepless hours validating a concept that had nothing at all to do with practicality and usefulness would show no less than a deep, fundamental misunderstanding of the person Stanford Pines was.)

Ford lifted a hand, felt his own face slowly, contemplatively… and was suddenly, unhappily aware that he did not remember the last time he had taken a shower. Still staring at the wall with unfocused eyes, he opened his mouth, somehow managing not to recoil from the immediate stench of his own Terrible Hygiene Decisions, and spoke out loud to the audience of himself and one snoring roommate.

- It is important to note, however, that words are rarely enough to express a particularly complex idea,. Case in point, Ford's thought process had already finished the marathon when his sentence had just begun to leave his mouth, and in fact, was contemplating whether to jog back to the starting line for the complimentary juicebox.

He thought: space is enormous, space is complex, to an extent that it is necessary to accept that space is of a scale beyond all human comprehension. It follows then that most, if not all of the rules that governs it - if any existed, which was also up for debate - would not make any logical human sense. Perhaps, it was here at the edges of the universe that dimension boundaries blurred, that the divide between mind and body weakened, that reality itself gave a Great Big Shrug.

Then, perhaps -

"Space," Ford said slowly, softly, with the hesitant tone of a man who saw himself approaching a terrible, unknowable truth, "is big."

A tear welled at the corner of his left eye.

Stanford was Not Wrong. But had his roommate been awake and therefore, had thrown a pillow at Ford's head, there was no creature in the history of existence that would have blamed him. At least two would have bought him a drink for the trouble.

Unfortunately, the magnitude of Ford's breakthrough was undercut somewhat by his sudden loss of consciousness and short-term memory about forty-three seconds afterwards, after an attempt to walk straight through the nearest wall. While he would live on despite reaching this critical mass of awful life choices, the fact that his human mind had erased all of the night's events in a desperate attempt at survival would turn out to be a missed opportunity.

Had he remembered, then more than thirty years later, hanging slack-limbed and dangling in a dark place that was both completely in his head and somewhere on the fringes of a distant galaxy, Stanford would have felt greatly validated in having proved his theory correct firsthand.

...Though perhaps, with the deep, leaden exhaustion that pooled in his gut and dragged at his every limb with near physical weight, the less things his overworked mind had to deal with, the better.

Not that there were many thoughts to be had in the first place. There were only two things that Ford was aware of. One, the nothingness he could 'see' - that was, the closest approximation in English to a much more esoteric concept - spreading out before him for miles in every direction.

Then, there was what he couldn't see but could feel nonetheless: the burning weight of a gaze magnified by a hundred, thousand times, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. A mystery, one that would normally call out to Stanford Pines with a force greater than a siren's song.

But Ford was tired, too tired for anything that involved any kind of active consciousness. He had been on some kind of journey, one that had been long and difficult but ended too soon all the same. He had wanted more - more time, more chances, more of… something. Someone.

But that didn't matter now. He had finished. He was over, he was complete.

He could rest now.

And he did, because time had no meaning where he was now. He knew without knowing how that with a blink there would come a minute and leave a millennium. For the first in a very, very long time, there were no voices to be heard in his head, not even his own. There was no desire to think, to probe, to question. This was an ending, his ending, and because it was good and he was happy he should stay like this forever -

Ford!

- but.

It took every bit of strength he had for Ford to lift his head.

The darkness opened their many eyes.

He was surrounded from every side, every angle. He was within, somewhere deep inside the innards of some colossal existence, part of the bigger whole. But despite the cool slide of substance over his exposed skin and the eerie green brightness of the light that had illuminated his surroundings, he felt calm, safe.

He was protected here, he knew. He was theirs, after all.

And They Were His.

Distantly, Ford could see the glint of stars.

Ford, wake up already, would ya?

He could feel a pressure, a solid and physical hold that he could feel first on his chest and then tightly around his torso. It was different, incredibly so, from the distant knowing, existing, of the here and now.

C'mon, he heard, coming quick and fervently desperate, Sixer, please -

It wasn't a voice, not one that could be measured by soundwaves and governed by physical laws. He felt it more than he heard it, the superficial annoyance, the raw panic underneath, the bone-deep gnaw of familiarity that came with a nickname that had meant such different things to him over the course of his lifetime.

"Stanley."

The pinpricks of light around him shuttered,

blinked,

and

Ford opened his eyes, cautiously and slowly, with the dim confusion of someone who didn't remember closing them in the first place. He squinted groggily through a pounding pain in his head that felt somewhat like a particularly bad migraine, or if he had been momentarily been blinded by some kind of thousand-watt camera flash.

...Something had happened.

Well. Yes. Clearly, he thought irritably just a moment afterwards. It was just incredibly difficult to think while being rather roughly shaken, which did the very opposite of help his headache or sort out his jumbled thoughts.

Ford let out a long, pained groan, too dazed to form coherent words, and flung - flopped, mostly - his arm upwards. He hit something solid - and sentient, he thought, when he immediately heard a surprised yelp.

The jolting movement stopped abruptly. A moment later, he heard his brother's voice, hoarse and uncertain, somewhere on the edge of his narrow line of sight.

"You… you good there, Sixer? Genius brain of yours still - tickin' on okay?"

Stan sounded concerned, but Ford couldn't imagine what for. In lieu of an answer, he pushed himself back up, eyes still clenched shut in a vain attempt to lessen the throbbing pain in his head. A hand on his shoulder steadied him, and another handed him a familiar pair of glasses.

"I'm fine, Stanley," he said, with far more certainty than he actually felt. The cool stale air and the unyielding chillness of the metal underneath his fingers meant he was in his basement laboratory, but not much else about his current circumstances were obvious.

Ford's glasses creaked alarmingly as he unfolded them open but did not break, which, he thought distantly and somewhat ridiculously, meant the reinforcements he had had done several months back in Astucía V had been a good call after all. He fumbled them on, opened his eyes -

He hissed and slapped a six-fingered hand over his eyes, uncomfortably aware that the noise he had just made was more likely to have come from a startled alleycat than a grown man.

Just a bit too much of Stanley.

"I gotta say," his brother said hesitantly, an expression of careful concern on his craggy face. "You… don't look anything close to fine right now. Heck." Stan let out a shaky breath of laughter, and gave Ford an unreadable look that he almost didn't catch through his fingers. "...Just the fact that we're having this talk right now makes me think that you're still bit scrambled up over what just happened, and -."

"Your pants," Ford blurted.

There was a brief, shocked silence. Stan opened his mouth, closed it again. "...Uh. What about my pants?"

"Your pants," he repeated, suddenly unsure of how and why he had ended up in this specific, current conversation, "are not on you."

In fact, there was not much of anything on his brother at all. Not the cheap suit he had been wearing like a uniform for the past several weeks, not the musty old fez usually perched on his gray hair.

(though of course Stan wouldn't be wearing that fez, he didn't have it anymore, which Ford knew because -

because - ?)

Which begged a question. Many questions really.

Starting with what happened in the past week why can't I remember any of it to why do I feel like someone just tried to force their way into my head with a wooden spoon, and most likely ending with why are you sitting naked on the floor of my private lab.

Typical concerns.

His brother opened his mouth slowly, as if he had only just realized the fact himself. Judging by how Stan glanced down at his own nude form with a look of dawning comprehension and inexplicable relief, was probably more or less accurate.

"Oh," Stan said blankly. "Well. I mean, yeah. It sure does looks like it."

He snorted, a sudden chuff of air through his nostrils. "Geez, Ford. That's it? That's all you're going to say to me, after everything that's happened?"

"Is…" Ford paused, reconsidering. He put his hand back down, suddenly feeling very foolish for his earlier dramatic reaction. He had grown up with his brother, after all. Why, had he been expecting to see something more when he opened his eyes than a gut and a truly frightening amount of body hair?

"Is there something that I should be asking you about?"

Stan's immediate, stunned silence was reply enough. Then, Ford realized unhappily, there was just one possibility, really. The only thing in the world they still both cared deeply about.

"Did - did Dipper and Mabel call? Are they facing some kind of trouble?"

"T-the kids?" Stanley repeated, utterly bewildered. "Oy, shouldn't I be the one askin' you that? They called you. Not - not me."

"They - did?" He replied weakly. "I can't… recall."

His brother looked at him for a long moment. Somewhere along the way, his shocked stare had evolved into a hard look of leaden understanding.

"...Y'know what, don't worry 'bout it," Stan said finally, voice hollow. He suddenly looked very drained and small, huddled without clothing in the dim light of the laboratory. "It doesn't matter."

There was something unsaid, something Ford was missing without knowing what. "What - what were we doing down here?" He asked hesitantly.

"...Dunno," Stan said blandly, not meeting his eyes. "Maybe we sleepwalked."

It was a clear lie, even by his brother's bottom standards. Ford bristled. "This isn't the time for jokes, Stan. If you're attempting to lie, at least put even a smidgen of effort into it!" He paused, tried to figure out a way to ask his question without sounding like a confused old man, and failed.

"...Stanley, what's going on?"

"I'm. I'm not sure how ta explain." His brother grimaced. "And maybe... maybe you don't remember it for good reason."

There was much unsaid, but Ford got the sense that the conversation had hit its last wall, at least where Stan was concerned. Still, he wasn't quite yet willing to let go of the mystery in front of him.

"While I was unconscious," he said haltingly, blinking through the clouded thoughts and muddled memories that haunted his every attempt to remember, "I thought, maybe, that I saw - some type of, creature, entity, a green light -"

Stan jerked. "Don't," he snapped, in a way that made Ford flinch despite himself. "...Sorry," he said after a long moment. "I just. Don't…. don't think 'bout what you saw. Not too hard. Let's just -"

His brother took a deep breath, let it back out. "Let's just let them go."

"Them -?"

The dead serious look in his brother's eye killed any questions Ford had felt compelled to ask.

"Alright," he said carefully instead, mentally filing the topic away for a less... volatile time. "I… shall."

His brother nodded, then drew himself up with a grim look, slow and hesitant, movements carefully deliberate other than his subtle shivering from the cold.

But then, just as it seemed he had made it, his knee (distorted) bent the wrong way. Stan crumpled to the ground almost immediately with a grunt of pain, large frame folding like a house of cards. Ford jolted at the familiar sound.

Familiar?

"New knees," Stan hissed inexplicably. He pushed flat against the ground, hefting himself up in slow, careful jerks. "Hell. New everything. Ford, can ya give me a hand? Just for this one bit."

He wasn't listening. There had been something there, then in that split-second of pain and dropped guard. As if a glint of residue light from the machinery had came and caught a moment too long in his brother's eye -

Oh, Ford thought stupidly, and it dawned on him like sun through the clouds.

The rest was autopilot. He moved forwards the final few steps and knelt down to catch Stan's look of pure confusion, saw his brother's mouth open in confused, kneejerk protest, and thought, with the most adamant certainty he had felt for a very long time, Stanley must be so, so cold -

Ford shrugged off his worn coat in one fluid motion and pulled the weathered warm cloth around his brother like a shield. There was a kind of reassuring certainty in the way it settled and pooled around him, as if it was tethering him to the ground with its comforting weight.

In ways his coat frankly shouldn't, logically. It had been a close fit on Ford himself, and despite the muscles gained from decades of space travel and the differences that came with the many years passed, he was still obviously of a smaller built than his barrel-chested, big-gutted brother. The old coat should not have covered Stan completely, let alone have practically enveloped him in the way that it did.

But then again, logic and logistics rarely had a place in the old tales. Ford should've known they wouldn't have much weight here.

He clung onto his brother in an embrace that was not returned, partly because Stan hadn't been given much time to react, mostly because Ford was near certain that he had inadvertently trapped his brother's arms against his body in that initial covering of not-quite-mantle. He had no complaints nonetheless.

The warm weight of his brother under his arms felt like an ending.

Stan shifted against him. "Ford?" His voice came in barely a whisper.

"Stanley," Ford said wetly, partly as an address, partly as a confirmation. "If you ever attempt another ridiculous, utterly pointless sacrifice in our lifetime, I will singlehandedly paint that Stanmobile of yours the brightest yellow I can find."

His brother jerked in his grasp in any unholy mixture of a twitch and a shudder. "You wouldn't dare."

"I would. And you know what else?" He continued, relishing every word. "I will sell it at a quarter of the market value. To a teenager."

"Over my dead bo - urk!" Stan wheezed as Ford tightened his grip even more. "...Huh. Too soon?"

He almost did not dignify the question with a response. "Yes."

His brother said nothing for a long moment. "I… I guess this means you do remember, after all," he said finally, hesitantly. "For a moment there, I thought ya wouldn't. I figured that -"

Stan broke off with a deathly wheeze. "Sixer, if you don't let me take a breath in the next five seconds -"

Ford let go immediately, even took a step back from the realization that he had been holding on just - a little bit too forcefully. "I didn't realize," he tried, watching his brother gulp in air as if his life had depended on it. "I was just -"

"Don't worry 'bout it. I'm fine," his brother interrupted, putting a hand up to halt Ford from babbling further. He thumped himself on the back and winced, sounding just like the old man he was supposed to be. "Whew. My nerd brother got strong. You spend a year in the cow throwing dimension or somethin'?"

That gave Ford pause. "There's - a cow throwing dimension?"

"Yeah. 'Course. There's some real weird places out there, deep in the multiverse. Even before they got there." His brother scratched his nose thoughtfully. "Don't get me started on the one without depth perception. Though, that was funny in a 'Three Dupes' kinda way, sure. Would make a great TV channel. Just wouldn't wanna live there."

"...No," Ford said slowly, "I don't imagine I would either."

They stood there for a long and awkward moment, perched over the smoldering remnants of a conversation that had only ever been a distraction from much harder topics lurking under the surface. Stan shuffled a bit and clung onto his brother's coat as if it was tethering him to reality, sneaking wary glances at his brother whenever he thought he wasn't looking.

Ford, on the other hand, stood silent and hesitant, unsure of how to broach a subject. The subject, as it was.

"You were going to let me forget," he said instead.

That, at least was somewhat familiar ground - accusations, arguments. Anger. But despite himself, he couldn't muster up the usual fire. It was as if he was reading off lines off a sheet, fully aware how they should sound but utterly unable to put himself into a mindset that now felt so utterly alien to his own.

"...Yeah," Stan admitted, voice carefully neutral. He avoided his gaze adamantly. "I would have."

Words swirled around in his mind, questions and demands, but none of them felt real or right for the moment. There was only one thing he could ask - "Why?"

Because so much had happened since the moment Dipper and Mabel had left town. Because he had learned and experienced things that had forced him to reconsider the views and beliefs he had clung onto throughout his life, because he himself had changed so greatly that he could barely recognize his past self.

Because if Stan had just let him forget, because if he hadn't seen the green glint in his brother's eye and the pieces hadn't all came back together, he would've just -

"Wasn't worth it." Stan looked up at him, gaze level. "Normal human isn't made to look into certain parts of the universe and come out with all their mental bits intact. And - " He grimaced. "Ya already know what happened to the last guy who saw me like that. So, I figured ya couldn't remember for a reason."

He let out a breath. "And I… just decided to take the hint."

"It wasn't just your choice to make," Ford said quietly. "I didn't -"

"Well, it wasn't all yours either, alright?" Stan snapped, a surprising explosion of sound that made Ford flinch. "And it wasn't like I could just ask you then for permission to drive you insane -"

"Stan, that's not what I meant."

Stan stopped at that, and sucked in a deep breath, clearly surprised by his own vehemence. "...I know it wasn't a great choice, Sixer," he admitted. "But as far as I could tell then, that was the only one I had." Until you just - came around. ...Just typical, y'know? How you end up side-stepping my entire moral conundrum just like that."

Stan paused, grimaced, clearly attempting to phrase a difficult question. "...What was it, in the end?" He asked at last. "That made you remember?"

"I saw your eyes," Ford said without thinking.

Immediately, an expression of pure horror burst into existence on his brother's face as his hands flew up to scrabble at the soft skin of his face.

"Stan, Stanley!" He exclaimed, grabbing his brother's hands to keep them still, to stop him from hurting himself. "That's not what I meant, your eyes are perfectly normal! They just - caught in the light, I suppose, and I was reminded of -"

"Oh," Stan said blankly. His fingers unclenched. He pulled his hands carefully out of Ford's slackened grip and lowered them slowly, awkwardly tangled with each other, to chest level. "Yeah. I, uh. I knew that."

Another silence fell on the two of them. And - wasn't that just perfectly ironic, that the two of them finally escaped the constant arguments and bickering by just not talking at all?

"Stan," Ford said at last, as steadily as he could. He needed to know, nearly as much as he didn't want to. "Are you alright? Honestly alright?"

"Sure I am," his brother replied with exaggerated nonchalance. "Look, you might be a sci-fi adventure hero or whatever, but all things considered, you're not that strong -"

"You know perfectly well that I'm not talking about that," Ford said, cutting despite himself. He put his hands behind his back to hide the way they were trembling. He had quite enough of diversions. "There were -" he paused, trying to find words that would not come to describe the things he had seen in and around his brother. "...You were coming apart in front of me. Before."

Stan winced and pulled Ford's coat tighter around himself. "It's fine, Sixer."

"No," he said frostily. "No, it really isn't. I saw you disintegrating, crumbling away -"

"...Don't ya think that's a little bit too dramatic - ?" Stan tried.

" - and all I knew," Ford continued, tone biting, "as I saw my own brother disappear into Gods knew where, was that there was nothing I could do but watch."

Stan shut up, clearly realizing correctly that his brother had no patience left for self-deprecating jokes and digressions from the topic at hand.

He took full advantage of the silence. "I was out of my depth," Ford admitted. "Every resource I had at my disposal, every bit of knowledge I had collected in years and decades traversing the multiverse, and yet I was utterly useless to help my own twin. I didn't - I didn't know what to do."

Ford paused, unsure how to explain how devastating of a fact that was to him. Him, Stanford Pines, the man who had the facts and a dozen university degrees under his belt, at a complete loss. He… might not have made the best choices in his own life, but knowledge was something he prided himself on possessing. It was how he defined himself. He - he had needed it.

And without that...

"I - still don't know," Ford said at last. "I don't understand how we're both alive. I don't know why you're corporeal again." He paused. "...Why you lost all your clothing. I can't be sure that this isn't some kind of - complex hallucination, and that I'll be waking up to actual reality in a few minutes. I…"

He trailed off. Had to swallow down something leaden to continue.

"I don't even know if you can stay."

Stan jerked at that. "Of fucking course I'm here to stay!" He exclaimed, his eyes wide. "Moses, Ford, I wouldn't just be sitting around here wasting time if - alright, look at this," he said, brandishing a single hairy arm in front of Ford's eyes. "This is one hundred percent human here, yeah? Nothing else. No more - green eyes, no weird cosmic… stuff. What you see is what you get."

He glanced down and grimaced. "...Ugh. Just wish I coulda thought myself up a smaller gut."

"But how do you know that, Stanley?" Ford demanded, tamping down on the smallest flutterings of hope in his chest. These were not answers, not yet. Just - blind reassurances, vague promises, and he had quite enough of those over the past few days. "How is this - even possible? Just before this, you told me your - your original body was gone, that all you had was -"

The wriggling star stuff, the gaping rip in reality, how his brother's skin had ripped to show empty space underneath.

"- that. How can you be back, how can you be human, if -"

"The deal, Sixer."

The words were said simply and matter-of-fact, but it cut through Ford's protests like a hot knife through warm butter. "What?" He said at last, after a moment of confused silence.

Stan gave him a pained smile. "Yeah. Just typical, huh? It's... always about the deal, in the end."

"I don't understand," Ford said slowly. "Your deal was to bring me back to this dimension, and you fulfilled that weeks ago. My presence here should be proof enough of that. What does that have to do with any of our present concerns?"

"Well, it was to get my brother back, to be specific. But yeah. Simple. Straightforward. Least," Stan said with a shrug, "that's what I thought when I made it. And in my defense, I wasn't in the best state of mind at the time, what with crashing straight off the mortal coil and all, but."

He shook his head disbelievingly, a helpless grin on his face. "The wording. The wording."

"The… wording?"

"It was pretty damn vague, wasn't it?" Stanley exclaimed, and the glint of excitement in his eyes reminded Ford suddenly of how his brother had always loved playing with words and meanings. It… was a comfort, seeing how that hadn't changed. Even if he had ended up using the ability to scam summer tourists instead of becoming a truly fearsome lawyer.

"Think 'bout it. Even after I fixed that portal, got it activated and brought you back home… I still didn't get my brother back, did I?"

"...Actually," Ford said slowly, "I would venture to say that that's exactly what it means."

"Aaaand that's why I'm the con artist and you're not, Sixer. See," Stan waved a hand wildly, as if gesturing to an invisible whiteboard with circled words and highlighted passages. "I brought Stanford Filbrick Pines back to this dimension. You. But getting my brother back - cuz in the way I really meant it, it wasn't just physically -"

He paused, as if genuinely waiting for the drama of it all - "That didn't happen 'til much later."

Stan gave Ford a meaningful look. "Couple weeks and about an hour or so later, if I had to really guess."

It took Stanford an embarrassingly long minute for the pieces to click. Remembering what exactly had happened a couple weeks and an hour or so after his return from the portal (which… was right now, wasn't it? Give or take a few hours. It had been a couple weeks and he had returned in the late afternoon and, oh) required substantial effort after the amount of rattling his brain had gone through.

But once he did -

i'm here. you did it. now fulfill your end of the bargain and

- the realization came quickly.

His eyes widened despite himself. "No. No."

"Hah." There was not much humor in that single bark of laughter. Stan looked away, an unreadable expression on his face. "...Yeah."

"That's - absolutely ridiculous!" Ford exclaimed, flabbergasted despite himself. "That's just semantics!"

"It always is with these things, Sixer."

But he was too caught up in the middle of an indignant rant to reply. "Not to mention, it's utterly pointless! I mean, surely, you must have already known that you had me back in every meaning of the word there is, the moment I stepped through that portal, you didn't need me to tell you that I -"

The uncomfortable look on Stan's face stopped him short.

"...You - didn't know," Ford finished lamely.

"What can I say, Sixer?" His brother sighed. "Punching me in the face didn't exactly - help with that.. Or tellin' me that you were kicking me out the moment summer was over. Those just… kind of gave out a certain impression, y'know what I mean?"

Ford opened his mouth, already preparing an indignant defense… and closed it.

If nothing else, he had learned in his time back on Earth not just when to admit that he was wrong, but how to do it. This was a conversation to be had somewhere other than the basement they had just almost died in, sometime when they weren't tired to the bone and struggling to keep themselves upright.

Perhaps it was a conversation never to be had at all in terms of words and arguments. One that would do, would've done, much better with actions and apologies.

Regardless, not here. Not now.

"I have to admit," Ford said evenly, "this all sounds very… sadistic. Like... some kind of cosmic joke. A poor one, at that. Didn't you make your deal with yourself?"

He paused, realizing he had no desire to delve into that specific tangle of identity issues and questions of existence now. " ...Ah, more or less. Did - did neither of you know the rules behind the bargain?"

"Well," his brother said, scratching his head. "I get why you ask. But you hafta keep in mind that ol' Six-Sights wasn't exactly an experienced con-whatever back then either. Baby eldritch consciousness' first soul-stealin' deal. That kinda thing."

"What I'm saying is. They... didn't really know what they were getting into, I didn't really know what I was getting into, and… there we went." Stan helpfully illustrated the magnitude of the ensuing disaster by wiggling his fingers of both hands widely. "Complete and utter disaster, classic end of the world kind'f stuff. Though... it could've gone much worse than it did. Much, much worse."

Stan lowered his voice to an aside. "And, ta tell ya the truth, I'm pretty sure the rules existed a paygrade or a twenty above us. Both of us. Six-Sights and I - we were just hopping along to some cosmic playbook."

"But surely, there must be something out that decided how this all works?" Ford exclaimed, aghast. "Some kind of creature that created them in the first place?"

"Well, whatever it is, it strikes me as something that smiles a whole lot. Plays a lotta cards." His brother paused in deep thought. "....Amphibious."

"Amphibious," Ford repeated blankly, a tiny spark of memory from his multiversal adventures nagging at him briefly before dying without much fanfare. Just a coincidence. "Amphibious?"

Stan smiled ruefully. "...Whatever it is, at least its got a soft spot for the misfits. The universe isn't usually too kind to a force of nature with a conscience, or a useless knucklehead who can't even scrub barnacles off a ship bottom."

Ford twitched.

"'Specially when the two are the one and the -"

"Don't."

Stan turned his head slowly to stare at the hand gripping his shoulder, bloodlessly tight. It takes Ford a moment too long to realize it's his own, that he had moved without even realizing it himself. It's an immediate reaction, that's what he will explain it to himself afterwards. Instinct.

"...Don't say that about yourself," Ford said haltingly. "You're not useless. Not by any measure. And -"

He doesn't know what to say for a long second, cursing his inability to speak even somewhat intelligently about his own thoughts and emotions. But what else was there to say? Just the idea of valuing his brother in those terms of worth and purpose felt unfamiliar and ridiculous.

(But he had, hadn't he?

He dispelled those thoughts with a grimace. That had been… long, long ago. A lifetime, by any standard. He had all of this one to prove himself wrong.)

Stan looked to Ford's face, then to his hand, then back again, clearly at a bit of a loss for words.

"Y'know," his brother said conversationally, an extra slight roughness at the edge of his voice. "I feel like I should be lookin' for a hidden spy camera. 'S like… like I'm waiting for that mindless reality TV guy to jump out of the floor screaming at the top of his lungs."

"There's - really no need to worry?" Ford offered, slightly confused with the direction the conversation had gone. "There are no hidden spy cameras in my laboratory. I've checked quite thoroughly."

"I didn't mean it seriously, Sixer -"

"...Other than the set gifted to me from the shadow government, of course."

Stan gives him a Look. "Y'know what," he said finally. "I'm not even gonna ask."

"But," Ford tried again, honestly feeling just a bit put out. "You do understand what I just -"

"No. Yeah. I do. It's just…" Stan dragged a hand down his face, obscuring his suddenly quiet voice in a way that Ford could barely hear what he was saying. "...Just, hard to believe. I mean I do," he added at the stricken look on Ford's face. "...Mostly. I need some… time, yeah. What can I say, a whole lot's happenin' and I'm just an old, old man -"

"We're the same age, Stanley."

"Well," his brother revised with a shrug, "then we're both old men, so I say we both need some sit-down time that isn't on a cold metal surface."

He paused, a faraway look in his eyes. "Y'know what sounds real good? That old armchair of mine, in front 'f the TV. Hugs my butt. Would hug yours too, I'm sure. Same butt."

"That's not how that works," Ford protested, before he could stop himself. "...Even if all of our physical features were identical at birth - which is already a false premise, considering we have a certain major difference - after my decades of running from the galactic police and your decades of…" He paused. "...Sitting on your couch watching melodramatic avian detective reruns -"

Stan scoffed. "Just cuz you don't appreciate a finely crafted children's show with multi-generational appeal -"

"My point is, Stanley. We do not have the same butt." Ford paused, then said with the straightest face he could muster, "Mine is clearly superior."

Stan gaped at him, and he really shouldn't feel as triumphant as he did about shocking his brother into speechlessness, not when he was fifty-eight years old.

That thought lasted for about two seconds before Ford decided that no, that was exactly why that had felt so good.

"You nerd," his brother said finally, disbelievingly. "Fine, y'know what? Great. Perfect. We'll go upstairs and you can plop your 'superior' wrinkly ass right in front of that TV. Watch all the ridiculous sci-fi series ya want. You've earned it."

Ford perked up at that. "Ridiculous sci-fi TV, you say?"

Stan rolled his eyes in familiar exasperation and reached up to peel Ford's hand from his shoulder. The moment his hand took hold of his, he froze. His expression was unreadable as he felt across the palm of the glove, and when he turned his hand into visibility, Ford could see why.

The surface of his glove had been utterly destroyed, torn and melted in equal intervals, especially impressive considering Ford had gotten them tailored with both fire-proof and knife-proof material. Bubbles of congealed vlastik, supposedly indestructible by the vast majority of forces in the universe, lined the edges of his hand.

And yet, the exposed skin of his hand was untouched. Literally, it seemed, because it was the soft, raw pink of newly regrown flesh - uncallused, unscarred, unrecognizable.

It matched perfectly the shade and hue of Stan's own extended hand and wrist, which presumably continued to the rest of his body. It does not take long for Ford to understand.

"Stan," he started, and his brother flinched immediately.

"...This isn't a conversation I'm having right now," Stan said loudly, as if he could block out the possibility by sheer force of will. "Nope, nope, nope."

Ford looked again at the new, new skin on his hand. What existed before had been dead, destroyed beyond all recovery. It had become a blank slate now, missing decades worth of history written down in healed white scars and telltale calluses. They… hadn't been the best memories, but they had made him him.

"I never wanted you to give up so much for me," he said quietly.

"It doesn't matter what you wanted, alright?" Stan snapped, an outburst that seemed to surprise both of them. "...It was what I wanted. Isn't -"

He faltered. "Isn't that enough?"

There was nothing Ford could say to that. For a single moment that felt like years, they stood, eyes locked and bodies tensed, neither willing to take that final step and break their delicate silence.

Then his brother sagged. "My balls are gonna fall right off if I hafta stay down here for another minute," he muttered.

The unexpected vulgarity of the statement killed all tension in the room near immediately. Ford winced, aghast. "Stanley."

"Look. We'll talk." Stan looked at him, a pained expression on his face. "I just - I really need pants for this conversation, alright?"

#gravity falls #gravity falls fic #atns #its been so long i forgot how to tag lol #my fic

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