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anistarrose · 5 years

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Some Sunny Day - Ch. 12: The Ancient Power (Gravity Falls - Same Coin Theory)

Summary: We’ve seen how Stan remembers. Now: how Bill forgets.

Warnings: none

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14947964/chapters/45565759

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The Beginning

(The Same Coin Theory is by @dubsdeedubs and @renmorris!)

***

It was when he first encountered the Axolotl — eons and eons ago, while giving the more obscure and least comprehensible corners of the multiverse a quick look-over as he often did when bored — that Bill Cipher first realized that there was someone who knew and saw more than he did.

It wasn’t a pleasant realization. He was the All-Seeing, All-Knowing Eye; omniscience was his brand. He was the ancient, elusive god of mysteries and answers — and, on good days, brief little glimpses into the future.

(Not that he often acted on those glimpses — they tended to be about things he either couldn’t change, or didn’t want to change — but dropping cryptic warnings into conversations with mortals was always fun, as well as a good way to remind them who was really the brains of the operation.)

But the Axolotl existed outside of time entirely. It had already seen what was yet to come to pass — it had seen it last night, and a century ago, and would see it fifteen million years down the line. It was seeing it now, and seeing it always: if Bill could occasionally switch the metaphorical channel of his sight from “present time” to “five hours in the future,” then the Axolotl was constantly watching every channel, every second and millisecond and nanosecond of existence and so on to an infinitesimal degree. It not only knew everything, but had always known everything and always would.

And Bill hated that.

“This only upsets you because you fear the unknown,” the Axolotl told him, its voice echoing like Bill’s own, but also more pleasant on the ears, more musical.

“Psssh, yeah! Right!” Bill scoffed. “Do I look like I have anything to be afraid of, Frills? I’m the incorporeal king of nightmares and my throne is built from intangible screams of mortal terror! Fear is — is breakfast for me! Serve me up all the fear in the world!”

The Axolotl tilted its head. “Deny it if you must,” it replied, “but your actions will tell another story.”

“Oh, so we’re playing the cryptic remarks card now? Well, I’ve got nothing left to gain from this conversation.” With that, Bill willed himself out of the time and space between time and space, leaving behind a triangle-shaped ripple in the fabric of the universe.

But in his haste, he failed to notice the Axolotl’s massive tail curling around five human figures, all of them shrouded in pink mist as they watched his exit intently.

***

It was during his second encounter with the Axolotl, somewhere in the realm of a million years later, when Bill Cipher was warned.

“One day,” it told him, “you’ll be so afraid of the inevitable unknown that you’ll beg me for help, and I will help you.”

“I’m not afraid,” Bill blurted out immediately, cringing as he realized how much he sounded like a naive little kid pleading his case to stay up late and be told spooky stories.

The Axolotl kept talking, as if it hadn’t heard him. “But it won’t be a free pass onto a new life of your choosing. It will be a catalyst for an unimaginable change, and the start of a long, hard path — but I know you will have it in you to succeed.”

“I don’t need you to believe in me like some proud, overinvested parent,” Bill shot back, making a show out of straightening his top hat and bow tie. “Do I look like a guy who has problems with self-confidence?”

The Axolotl just smiled at him, with its big, smug, frill-wreathed face.

“Invoke my name, Cipher, and time itself will contort to bring you back from the ashes.”

Once again, Bill willed himself back to the Nightmare Realm without noticing the five figures — not even the one that stood further forward than the others, the one that had first stared at Bill slack-jawed and dumbfounded, but now straightened his back with a confident, imposing sort of determination, and curled his fingers into fists.

***

Bill rifled through Ford’s memories — high school bullies, college all-nighters, a fiercely regretted discovery of a cave in the woods of Gravity Falls — as simply as one might flip through the pages of a book, scoffing at the man’s loneliness and need for validation. But Bill already knew all about that — it was what he’d preyed upon, how he’d gotten his portal built in the first place. No, tonight he was looking not for a general weakness, but for some specific memory, something he could purposely throw back in the six-fingered freak’s face later —

But now, he was struck with a wave of… familiarity?

A hand reaching to mess up a head of brown hair.

“Don’t listen to them, Sixer. I think you’re pretty cool!”

A knock on the leg of a bunk bed.

“Morning, smart guy!”

A reassuring hand on the shoulder.

“You heard it here first, Stanford Pines is gonna be known as the guy who changed the world!”

Switched outfits, a striped shirt in place of a brown jacket.

“Okay, Brainiac, today I’m gonna teach you how to lie…”

Bill withdrew from Ford’s memories with a jolt — not quite angrily, not quite sadly, but driven by something fierce and consuming, some feeling that he wasn’t used to and wanted to be rid of as fast as he could. Wrenching Ford’s body out of its slumber, he flipped through a journal with shaky hands and just so happened to notice a code he’d scrawled a few nights ago —

I ASK YOU WHY MUST TIME ONLY MOVE FORWARDS

WHY MUST CAUSE PRECEDE EFFECT

WHO VOTED ON THE LAWS OF PHYSICS

***

The third time he encountered the Axolotl, Bill Cipher was trying to save himself, but ended up killing himself in more ways than one.

Blue-white flames consumed walls from the ground up, and transformed exit doors into impassable infernos. Bill had practically forgotten what hot truly felt like, but he knew this was worse than anything he’d ever felt before — it was eating away at his very essence, suffocating his own flames and threatening to choke out everything that made him him.

Stanley’s mouth moved, but the voice felt like it was coming from inside Bill’s own mind, words spat through gritted teeth threatening to rip apart his consciousness.

“You’re a real wise guy, but you made one fatal mistake. You messed with my family!”

“You’re making a mistake, I’ll give you anything! Money! Fame! Riches! Infinite power, your own galaxy!!”

He was struck with a sudden vision — a static-corrupted and not quite real-time clip of a triangular statue resting in a forest, dark beneath the shadows of pine trees even as bright afternoon light spilled down from the blue summer sky above.

“PLEASE! HELP! WHAT’S HAPPENING TO ME?!”

In a panic, he fumbled after the last few sparks left in his draining pool of energy, trying to channel them into his form and grow big enough to smash right out of Stan’s strangely well-disguised mortal mindscape, but his body melted and struck the floor almost instantly, only growing more unstable and difficult to hold together by the second — and seconds were all he had left.

Invoke my name, Cipher.

“NRUTER YAM I TAHT REWOP TNEICNA EHT EKOVNI I!”

And time itself will contort to bring you back from the ashes.

“NRUB OT EMOC SAH EMIT YM L-T-O-L-O-X-A!”

Stan pulled back his fist, winding up for a punch, and time slowed to a crawl. Blue flames froze in place, and the frenzied roar of a collapsing mindscape faded to a drawn-out, agonized groan before at last giving way to silence.

Then the scene began to fade as Bill found himself paralyzed, helplessly watching pink mist seep into the room. The fires grew dim, all colors turning pastel and all clarity lost to a clouded blur, until all he could see were pink cumulus clouds drifting carelessly across a blue, star-speckled sky.

(He was thrust back to the independent demises of a million different civilizations across billions of years, but he hardly heard the screams as he found himself in a flat world, a gray world, a despised yet fiercely missed world where he struggled to leaf through an oversized book that spoke of Points and Lines and Spheres and colors…)

Two beady black eyes opened in front of him, and a familiar head emerged from the clouds with a satisfied smile on its face.

“I see you invoked my name,” the Axolotl said, a hint of smugness dripping from its melodic voice. “So you do fear what lies beyond death.”

“Ya got me, Frills!” Bill shouted, hoping that sheer volume would be enough to disguise how much he was shaking. “You really did! I panicked and I invoked you, so — so what’s the fuckin’ catch already?”

“Catch?” the Axolotl asked innocently, gills twitching.

“That shtick you gave me last time about a ‘hard path!’ I know how you work, Frills — you’re not gonna let me go without some lesson as punishment — so have at it already! Dump me into whatever new existence you’ve decided I deserve, and get it over with!”

The Axolotl frowned. “You misunderstand, Cipher. It’s not about what you deserve.”

“Then what the fuck is it supposed to be about?!” Bill could feel the fire rising up in the core of his essence once again, about to rupture him beyond any hope of repair, but he kept shouting. He couldn’t stop. “WHY DID I EVEN INVOKE —”

“It’s about where you’ve got the potential to change,” someone interrupted, and for a moment, Bill thought that the Axolotl’s voice had inexplicably grown low and gruff, abruptly developing a Jersey accent as it spoke with a quiet confidence —

But then a flicker of motion towards the Axolotl’s tail caught his attention, and finally, he noticed the five familiar figures — less bruised and battered than he’d last seen them, yet still impossible to mistake. Four of them stood in a straight line, Pine Tree and Shooting Star close together and flanked by Question Mark and Sixer, while in front of them…

In front of them was the Pines that Bill had always paid the least attention to — the one he’d never had a nickname for. With tousled gray hair and and a plain white shirt, Stan looked unassuming and out-of-place here at the fringes of the multiverse, but his narrowed eyes took in the scene exactly like they had seen it all before, bright golden sparks of recognition dancing within brown irises.

“It’s not about what you deserve because you don’t deserve anything, Bill,” he calmly explained. “You don’t deserve to live in the first place. But about six decades later, in your future…”

He took a deep breath, and recalled from Bill’s perspective that his family was currently smiling at him from behind his back, proud and encouraging as ever.

So Stan smiled too.

“I will.”

“No,” Bill stammered. “Are you — are you saying that you’re me? ‘Cause I’m nothing like you! There’s no way I’ll become you, I’ll —”

Stan snorted and extended a hand in Bill’s direction, palm facing up as blue flames danced across it. “Man, we’ve always both been good at lying to ourselves, haven’t we?”

For the first time in nearly a trillion years, Bill Cipher felt the physical sensation of a chill running through him.

What had he ever truly been if not a con man? If not a stubborn, scheming scam artist?

“But hey, you’re half-right!” Stan went on. “You’re becoming me and there’s nothing you can do about it —”

He made a fist, and the flames were instantly extinguished. “But I’m definitely nothing like you.”

“You — you — you can’t light your hands on fire and seriously believe that!” Bill sputtered. “If you really are me in the future, then you’re the one lying to yourself if you think you’re anything other than a ticking time bomb! You’re still gonna be Bill Cipher forever, buddy, and you show it whether you know it or not!”

Stan directed his gaze towards the clouds below, biting his lip. A ways behind him, Dipper started to step forwards, but Ford gently rested a hand on his shoulder and shook his head.

“It’s almost hilarious how bad you are at playing the hero! All you’re good at is lying and stealing — oh, and ruining and destroying things too, can’t forget that! You know, I never got why you were so obsessed with turning the portal back on to save someone who hated you so much — but all this time it was just a favor for your past self, wasn’t it? Kickstarting the apocalypse for an old pal! We want the same things, you and I — no matter how incompetent you are at actually getting them!”

Stan’s fists trembled at his sides, but he still didn’t look up.

“But don’t worry, ‘cause your pathetic existence is gonna come to an end real soon!” Bill cackled, rubbing his hands together with glee. “You don’t have to pretend to be these dumbasses’ family anymore — we’ve pulled off the perfect con, you and I! We’ve got a physical form all set up in your dimension and no one’s standing in our way — no quantum destabilizers, no memory guns, no zodiacs! You can rule the world again now — you WILL rule the world again, whether you think you want it or not!”

“That’s all?”

Bill’s delirious laughter cut off abruptly. “What?”

“That’s your whole argument,” Stan murmured, a hint of a smile beginning to develop on his face.

“You’ve got some good points about me ruining everything,” he went on slowly, “and I think I believed it, for a while — I think I believed it before I remembered, even. I never thought I was good for anything, and part of me never believed it whenever anyone told me I was a hero…”

His head snapped up, and Bill flinched when their eyes met.

“But I know something about myself that you don’t.”

“Wh-what?”

“I know that you offered me money, fame, riches, infinite power, my own galaxy, and I didn’t understand how anyone could choose that over their family. I still don’t — and talking to you now, seeing what an egotistical little shit I used to be and how much I’ve changed since — now, I’m sure that I’ll never understand again. I’m better than you, Bill, and I always will be.”

“But — but don’t you remember all the fun we had? We could have that again! Don’t you want —”

“I remember plenty,” Stan growled, “but torturing people isn’t fun. Killing people isn’t fun. Those things are going to keep me up at night for the rest of my life, and I don’t want either of them ever again.”

“No, no, no! You’re wrong! I’ll always —” The heat inside Bill was intensifying, making it harder to hold his form together, but he wasn’t going to let this happen, couldn’t let this happen, had to remind his future self who he was before he forgot everything —

His gaze landed on Ford, watching the argument with eyes that looked tinted red from recent tears.

“Sixer, you can’t possibly believe this! You’re just gonna trust him — trust me — and let us burn you again? You of all people musta let us stab your back more than enough times to get tired of it, right?!”

Stan hid it quickly, but he cringed a little at that line, and shot a nervous glance to Ford, who closed his eyes and took in a slow, deep breath.

“By choosing to be reborn, all you’ve done is ensure that you’ll die more definitively, more completely, than if you had simply been destroyed,” Ford stated. “You could have just been gone — but now, you’ve been changed. You’ve been replaced.”

“No! You can’t get rid of me that easy! I’ll —”

“Oh, yes,” Ford growled. “You will become the antithesis of everything you once were, to the extent that you will even erase your own legacy. You’ll be the one to reverse your own apocalypse, to protect the family you tormented…”

His voice cracked. “And you — you’ll be the one who teaches me to trust again, after all the time you spent isolating me and driving me to paranoia. I don’t trust you, Bill, but I trust my brother — because there is a world of difference between the two of you. You destroy senselessly, but he protects us. He’s helped heal the wounds that you’ve caused.”

“I’ll never really leave your side, Stanford! Is that what you want? No matter what you tell yourself, you know you’ll never be able to really let your guard down around your brother again —”

“The era in which I let you manipulate me into distrusting my friends and family has long since ended, Bill,” Ford shot back without flinching. “You left my side long ago.”

“You really think that I can change? Me? Bill Cipher?!”

“I do,” Ford answered. “It may be a stretch to call my brother mature, in any sense of the word, but he’s most certainly more mature than you. He has changed for the better — in a way that does not often tend to revert.”

“Yeah, you want to know why time is so meaningless?” Stan added. “It’s ‘cause I grew up more in sixty-two years than you did in a trillion. You’ve been around for too many eons to count, but you’re still just a selfish little brat who’s obsessed with playing puppet master.”

“NO!” Bill shrieked. “I won’t become you! I WON’T! I am Bill Cipher, and SO ARE YOU, YOU HEAR ME?! The person you call Stan is — is — is NONEXISTENT!”

“Oh, I hear your whiny little screams in the back of my head all the fucking time,” Stan spat. “Telling me I’m a shit person, telling me I don’t deserve my family, telling me everything I think of myself as being is a lie. Telling me I’m just going to turn into a demon again, and the one good thing I’ve done in my life is going to end up being less than worthless…”

Columns of blue flame erupted from his hands, and he stepped towards Bill, teeth bared. “But you’re an even bigger liar than I am.”

“You — no, we could have ANYTHING! Power without limitations, minions to obey our every order, revenge on anyone who’s ever wronged us! BUT YOU CHOOSE TO BE STANLEY? YOU CHOOSE TO BE MEANINGLESS?”

“I hate to break it to you, wise guy, but you’re already doomed.” Stan took another step closer. “You’re going to be meaningless soon. Everything you think of yourself as standing for is gonna fade away, and all you’re gonna be is just another one of my memories.”

“And memories,” Ford added, “will never take away my brother — not by their absence, and certainly not by their presence.”

Stan’s hands curled into fists, and the columns of fire wound themselves around his fingers, solidifying into shining golden knuckledusters engulfed in a crackling blue aura.

“Hey, Bill?” he asked, smiling innocently.

Bill let out a whimper.

“Will you please say hello, to the folks that I know? Tell them I won’t be long?”

Two scenes play out overlaid upon one another, blurring together into the same decisive, time-defying moment as the burning of Stan’s mindscape resumes from where it left off. Two versions of Stanley Pines swing at Bill — one standing unflinchingly before a backdrop of flames about to consume him, the other channeling a reawoken fire of his own into his resolute, superhuman punch, but both sharing an absolute confidence in what will happen next.

And what happens next for Bill Cipher, as their fists collide with him, is excruciating pain.

The blow from the mindscape is blistering hot with vengeance, the weight of a tremendous but unregretted sacrifice behind it. It’s the love and compassion of a selfless protector that fans the oxygen to these white-hot flames, that fuels Stan’s particular stubborn brand of heroism against which no demon can possibly stand.

This one’s for my family.

The blow from the time and space between time and space is metallic and colder and spiteful in an intimately personal way, as Bill watches his own flames punch a hole in his body — but these flames, this fist, they’re bolstered by a family’s returned love and kindness that brings Stan back from the ashes but doesn’t just stop there. The weight behind the punch is as much Ford and Mabel and Dipper and Soos as it is Stan; it’s their stubbornness and refusal to give up on the good they know they see in their hero, it’s the trust they place in him and foundations for a trust in oneself that they’ve planted for Stan to rebuild upon.

It is fueled by a fresh spark of something new, something defiant, burning deep within Stan’s chest — an ember glowing faintly at first, but holding the potential to become a roaring blaze of self-confidence, of self-acceptance, even self-love.

And this one’s for me.

The punches shatter Bill with ease, eclipsing his own power by countless orders of magnitude, and his fragments scatter, cast adrift in spacetime. Yet a long, pink and blue-finned tail sifts through the fabric of the universe, curling protectively around the shards of a consciousness as it collects them together once again and then carries them back to where it all began…

The sunny New Jersey day of June 15th, 1951, where an all-seeing eye closes, two human ones open, and Bill Cipher forgets.

***

The flames around Stan’s hands died down, and the Axolotl, who had spent most of the confrontation watching from a distance, drifted up to face him.

“Why were you doing in the fishtank all those years?” Stan blurted out.

“Now, there is a limit to how completely I can be somewhere,” the Axolotl told him, “a limit to how much of myself I can manifest in the spacetime that you all are capable of perceiving. But to answer your question, Stan… to the greatest extent that I could, I just wanted to make sure that you wouldn’t be too lonely for those thirty years.”

Stan rubbed his eyes. “You’re such a — a sentimental old salamander. You know that, Frills?”

“An eternally young salamander, actually,” the Axolotl corrected him teasingly, with a gleam in its eyes. “Was there anything else you wanted to ask me?”

“We had another question when we came here, but…” Stan wiped away a few tears, and took a deep breath. “But I know the answer now.”

“I thought so.” The Axolotl beamed. “I have a few messages for you all as well. First of all, Ford — Jheselbraum has asked me to say hello. She says that she’s proud of how you fared in the Mindscape… and that she’d like to visit your dimension sometime, which I think could be arranged.”

Ford blinked a few times in owlish confusion, but then a smile spread across his face. “Tell her… tell her I’m immensely grateful for her help, and that I’d love to see her again sometime — and I’m sure the kids would love to meet her, too.”

The Axolotl nodded. “And Stan, one last thing. You invoked me in the clearing as you were beginning to remember, and I heard you, but I did not reply. That was because there was nothing for me to do. You asked me to stop Cipher, but he had no need to be stopped — though you understand that now, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Stan answered, giving up on wiping away his tears as his voice grew choked-up. “Thanks, Axolotl. For everything.”

He turned around to face his family, and spread out his arms. “And thanks for not letting me go.”

The kids were the first to run towards him, and he lifted them up and hugged them tight. Soos quickly followed, wrapping his arms around all of them as he buried his head into Stan’s left shoulder while sobbing with joy.

Ford was the last to join the embrace, but may have hugged the tightest and most fiercely of all of them — not letting go even as the stars and clouds of the Axolotl’s dimension faded away, replaced with sunbeams and trees and a familiar old swingset.

“Thanks for staying with us, Stanley.”

***

pssst reread the beginning of chapter six and you might notice a few familiar lines, I’ve been plotting this scene for a while ;)

This writing experience has been a hell of a journey, and now it’s finally coming to a close! I’ll save my big mushy ramble for the end of next chapter, but I’m getting sentimental over it already.

But although the end of this fic is nigh, that’s not the end of this specific continuity — I’ve got a few different ideas for sequels (as well as potentially prequels and deleted scenes!) to write once I finish with Some Sunny Day itself, so keep an eye on the series for those! Jheselbraum’s visit will probably be one such sequel, since it doesn’t quite fit into the final chapter I have planned but would feel like a waste not to expand upon.

#gravity falls #same coin theory #stanley pines #bill cipher #stanford pines #the axolotl #rosalia writes fic #fic: some sunny day

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rmjagonshi · 6 years

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Visions of HeartBreak Past

On AO3

It was almost done, Soos was finishing up the last few stitches before they let the thing into the air. If he could pull this off, he might actually get more customers into the Mystery Shack. There might actually be an upside to this ‘Woodstick’ Festival yet. He’d seen the way these kids spent money – heck, some of them were adults not that much younger than him – and with any luck, he might just be able to top off the budget for this month. He was short on the utilities payment by a good three-hundred-bucks. If there was one thing he never counted on, was that his brother’s dumb sci-fi portal mess drove the electricity bills further up the ‘dear god why’ charts. He does kinda feel bad for the kids; he’d had to come up with some lame-ass old man excuse for never turning on the lights or air conditioner during the day. He’d make it up to them…somehow…maybe. He sighed.

If he was gonna pull this off, he was really gonna need to prepare the kids for the eventuality of their entire world upending. But for now, he just needed to advertise. And the balloon was…abso-fucking-lutely not like he had anticipated. It was a fucking horror show, looked nothing like the blueprints and very much like what he saw in the mirror every morning. Although, Soos’s comment that the nose looked like a sausage and that it reminded him of the story that his Abuelita told him about a couple who find a genie and they fight over the wishes and one ends up with a sausage for a nose, kinda made it better. Soos was a good kid – er, man. Man-kid. Stan was sure he didn’t deserve the kindness and loyalty that the man gave him. He was honest enough with himself to admit that he’d used that unwavering loyalty to his advantage a few times.

Stan gritted his teeth in frustration at his own mind. Everything came back around to that, didn’t it? Everything he did, every time he felt even the tiniest bit of happiness, it all had to circle back and remind him that he was a sad, tired and despicable old man that didn’t deserve the friends and family he had. Hell, until the kids came, he didn’t have any family to call his own. But…maybe, just maybe, after all these years, he could do something right. Be less of a fuck-up. Which brought everything back to the hideous hot-air balloon that he was beginning to doubt was a great idea. He took another look at the blue prints and tried to make sense of the horrid scribbles he had jotted down in the margins when the sound of a lot of hot air being released into the night sky caught his attention.

“Wuh-oh. Mr. Pines. Think we got a problem.” Soos gestured to the ripped seam up near the balloon’s fez. Sure enough, the patchwork fabric they’d used to make the fez was flapping wildly as the hot air trapped in the misshapen balloon escaped with force, threatening to burst adjacent seams with every second. Well, shit. It would take a good hour for Soos to deflate the balloon, repair the damage and get it back up and running. Why is it that everything always had to go wrong? Why couldn’t one of his plans go off without a hitch? Just one? Oy!

“I’m on it Mr. Pines! I’ll have this balloon fixed in a jiffy. Now, what lever turned off the do-hicky again?” Make it two hours until Soos figured out how to fix this. He should probably scope out the venders and see what the young people were spending their money on. I couldn’t hurt to expand the gift shop merchandise to include things his new customers were actually interested in buying.

“Hey, Soos, I’m gonna go walk around, scope out the competition, ya’know. Figure out what these kids are into.” Or he really just needed to walk around and think and didn’t need Soos to pick up on it. As oblivious as the kid was, he always had a knack for knowing when Stan was moping around. It seemed every time, without fail, that he was feeling particularly depressed, he would open the door to see Soos standing there with cookies, or breakfast, or something sweet his grandma had made, or some kind of ‘Boss Appreciation’ gift. While he adored the boy, sometimes, he just needed to stew. He was sixty for Pete’s sake, he was entitled to a few days where he could just be a sad and grumpy old man. He’d earned it.

“Sure, Mr. Pines.” Soos had already started flicking levers and pushing buttons on the engine. Stan shrugged, Soos was the better of the two at figuring out how it worked anyhow. What harm could it do? He turned and walked back to the rows of venders all in pavilion style tents. All the venders were shouting and trying to attract customers, showing off their products and…what was that? Giving out free samples!? And the kids were eating it up! How the heck can they make any money by just giving stuff away? Oh sure, keep the t-shirt and caps for full charge, but give the stickers away for free.

Stickers are where he made most of his money! People were rubes, but some of them were pretty price savvy. Show’em a t-shirt with cheap cloth that will fall apart after five washes and tell’em it’s twenty-five bucks, they’ll laugh in your face and keep their wallets tightly closed. But show them a cheap key chain or sticker and tell them it’s a buck or two, they eat it up. They buy five, one of each variety. Paint one shipment gold and call it “special edition” and charge an extra buck, they buy the whole stock. Have a stack of postcards that got wet and the ink warped during the last storm because the roof leaked? Sell them as prints of a hand painted scape of Gravity Falls and double the price. People were absolutely stupid when it came to money if you just nickel and dimed them with special editions and ‘one of a kinds’.

But he wasn't here to boat to himself about how much better a con-artist he was. He was here to figure out what the young people of today were spending their money on. The further he walked, the more food and drink stalls he came across. Okay, so having a food truck on site might be a good idea. He’d done that with the fair he’d put on at the beginning of the summer. Didn’t he make a lot of money that day? Honestly he can’t remember much – he does the fair every year to replace the county fair that the town can’t pay for anymore, and it breaks even most years – all he remembers is sitting in a dunk tank for the afternoon and bleeding the suckers dry as rube after rube tried their hand at dunking the old creep from the Mystery Shack.

Okay, food truck. He could do that. Have a tiny kitchen where he sold drinks and shitty hot dogs and icecream to the families that come from miles around. Might even call up Susan and see if she had a spare cook and the Greasy Diner can share in the profits.

Or…not. He’d not too keen on calling the resident Crazy Cat Lady again. Especially since she still seemed to want to date him. That was a total disaster. And poor Mabel. She meant well, but he was just, as Wendy had put it, ‘un-fixable’. Heck, Soos had been trying for over a decade and hadn’t gotten anywhere. He was doomed to be alone forever, he supposed. Not that he didn’t deserve it. He’d pushed everyone in his life away. He creeped most women out – most men too for that matter – with his really tired and used pick-up lines. His six hour marriage to Marylin ended with her ducking out of the El Diablo at 75 mph with their ill-gotten casino winnings. He’d really thought he’d been in love. Then again, he’d thought he’d been in love with Carla too. He’d dated her through high-school and when he’d gotten kicked out, they’d tried to go steady for a while. But his constant moping over living in his car and losing his family had pushed her into the arms of a musician. And Ford…

Well, he’d pushed Ford into a swirling vortex of Hell in a fit of rage. His guilt hadn’t let him get a full night’s sleep in thirty years.

And now he was avoiding his feelings by wandering the tents at the Woodstick Festival. Dang it! He really needed to go see a therapist like Soos said. But what was he gonna say; ‘Hey, yeah, so I pushed my brother into a sci-fi portal and have spent the last thirty years trying to teach himself quantum physics and calculus, so he could get him back. Oh, and I may or may not have romantic feelings about said brother.’ Yeah, that would go over well.

Stan sighed. He really was hopeless wasn’t he?

A yell and the sound of a cart of beads being turned over caught his attention as he saw a telltale mop of brown hair and a rainbow sweater dart around the corner. He watched as both Mabel and Dipper cut and weaved through the crowd, a rather pudgy blond man in moderate pursuit. At least, until the prop wings on his back started flapping and Stan got a nagging prickling at the back of his head whenever he encountered something supernatural. His gut reaction, the same one that had kept him from going insane in the last thirty years was to turn around and ignore, repress, and feign ignorance. A slightly more pressing gut reaction was to chase down the offender with a baseball bat for endangering his kids.

I really wasn't even a debate as he found himself darting after the three, watching in only slight horror as he saw the absolutely not supernatural man fly overhead to cut off the kids at the fenceline. Stan caught up just a moment after, quick and practiced fingers taking the bottle of black powder from Mabel’s hand as he came up behind her and tucking it in his jacket. He was braced to punch a hippie in the face to protect his children. Heck, he’d probably punch the hippie anyway.

“Sorry, kids, but you’ve left me now choice. Visions of Heartbreak Past!”

As the blond hippie raised his bottles of creepy hippy powder to throw at Mable, Stan darted in front of her, grabbing her shoulder and pushing her back to fall to the grass and was coated in the pink and purple smoky haze instead. He inhaled and immediately regretted his need to breathe as he doubled over, hacking so hard he was surprised his dentures hadn’t fallen out. Whatever this guy was using to drug people, it was doing a number on Stan’s lungs. He really was lucky to have quit smoking when the kids showed up. He’d probably have passed out by now if he hadn’t. The residual powder coated his mouth and throat. It tasted of bittersweet hope, and…was that jelly beans? God, he hadn’t had jelly beans since…

“Stan?”

Stan froze. He knew that voice. Knew it better than anything else. That voice, that scream that haunted his nightmares.

“Wait, wah?”

“Why is there a pink flavored Grunkle Stan? Hey Love God, what was that supposed to do?”

The ‘Love God’ gaged.

“Ewwww, Man! I knew this bozo was weird. I didn’t think it was this bad.” The twisted face of disgust on the Love Gods face confused the twins, but was completely lost on Stan.

As the smoke cleared, a pink tinged hand extended out to him. A six-fingered hand, wreathed in pink light reaching out to him. When he looked up, it was like looking into a mirror, one that reflected only his best features. His tired, half-blind eyes meet soft pink ones, ones he knew were supposed to be blue so his mind filled in the correct color.

“It’s supposed to show you romances you’ve had and lost. It gets people off my back when they get too suspicious.” Spat ‘Love God’, momentarily recovering from his aborted retching.

Stan heard none of it. Eyes fixated on the phantom in front of him.

“Himself? Huh? Guess it’s not that surprising.”

“But, why would he have ‘lost’ himself? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Man, you kids have one freaky family.” The ‘Love God’ gulped down something from his belt of potions.

The six fingered hand reached for his own, tugging gently at first before pulling Stan to his feet and interlacing their fingers. A shy smile pulled at that lips he used to catch himself staring at. He knew, logically, that he wasn’t looking into the face of his brother. Stanford was likely older now than his memory allowed. And Stanford wasn’t pink, he knew that. Logically he knew that. But his heart couldn’t take it. The phantom embraced him, twelve fingers digging into his suit jacket.

“Please…” God, he wanted to. Whatever it was, he would do it. But his mind clouded, his eyes clouded and all he could do was cry.

He gripped the phantom tightly, the twins watched, even more confused but thankfully silent. The ‘Love God’, true to his name, showed somewhat of a heart and stopped gagging and even frowned in empathy. He barely noticed when the phantom pickpocketed him. The phial was tossed to the ‘Love God’ and the phantom Stanford shot a wicked smile at Stan. One that, while it was supposed to look like betrayal, only shot a bolt of heat down his spine. The ‘Love God’ was right, he was a freak.

Panicked screams echoed as the night sky lit up orange and red. Stan turned in time to see his would-be advertisement scheme in flames and headed directly for them. Through residual tears, he launched forwards and scooped the twins up and out of the range of the fall out. The ‘Love God’ was not so lucky.

When the dust cleared and the fire crew crowded in to put out the flames, the kids squirmed their way out of Stan’s grasp and raced back to the spot where the pudgy aspiring musician stood.

“Love God? Are you ok?”

“Please be immortal, please be immortal.”

It was just Stan’s luck that Cupid was invulnerable. He still got a good punch in before the freak got to the stage.

*~*~*~*~*

When they found the portal in the hidden basement and everything literally almost turned upside-down, it made sense. When the author of the journals walked out from the glowing blue light and introduced himself, they understood. When Stan told them the stranger was his brother, everything fell into place.

Mostly.

Mable was still struggling to understand what had happened at the Woodstick Festival. Climbing out of bed, Mabel made her way downstairs and out the back door, hearing muttering from the open door to the gift shop.

She found Stan leaning back into the couch on the back porch, glass bottle in one hand, lit cigar in the other. Eyes red rimmed and blinking slowly at the treeline like he was a million, billion miles away. He was letting he cigar burn down, the ash dropping off the end to land in the ashtray he’d absently left on the side table. She tentatively took the cigar from between his fingers, squashed the lit end into the ashtray to put it out, and climbed up on the couch beside him.

He startled when she took his cigar, but just watched her as she put it out and sat down; not speaking, not accusing, not asking. He knew why she was up, why she’d come looking for him. Ford was still in the basement working on something or other; the clang of metal occasionally reverberating enough to be heard through the floorboards. He settled back, moving to set the bottle down before wrapping an arm around her. She curled up into his side, fingers picking at stray hairs on his dress-shirt – the suit jacket left somewhere inside. She knew they hadn’t hugged, and that Stan would need one. She liked her new Grunkle, he was cool, and super smart, he just, had some anger issues to deal with. But as mad at Stan as he was, he couldn’t hate him, could he? They were twins, like her and Dipper. They could never hate eachother. She felt her Grunkle slump further into the couch.

He really didn’t want to talk. But like pulling out a loose tooth or a splinter, it was the best thing for him.

“So…the Woodstick Festival?”

Stan flinched. He tilted his head so that the glare from the open door blocked his eyes and withdrew his arm. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, but his voice caught in his throat and no sound escaped. After a few seconds, he just gave up, closing his mouth with a click and turning away from her.

The ‘Love God’s’ words had stuck in her head. Not love, ‘romance’. As in, crush, as in stay awake all night thinking about them. But, Grunkle Ford was Stan’s brother. Love God had to have been wrong, maybe he used the wrong powder, or maybe it applied to familial love too. Her head jerked up when she heard Stan’s ragged voice.

“I…I…understand…if you want to…go home early. I won’t ask you to stay. It wouldn’t be right. Just…all I’m askin’ is that you not tell your parents about that. I don’t care what they think of me, but Ford deserves a chance to know his family. He never got the chance to meet your dad. Shermie told me that they are a lot alike. Probably where Dipper gets it.”

He chuckled to himself. Voice dry and lacking any sense of real warmth. He reached down and took a swig from his bottle, draining it and staring at the label as if it held the cure to his every ailment.

“But he didn’t know. Nothing ever happened. I was all me. I’m the freak. Ford didn’t know, still probably doesn’t know.” His movements were jerky, bottle dropping to the porch as he turned and grasped Mabel by her hand. “Oh God, please…please don’t tell him! I’ll do anything!” He had clasped her hand in both of his. He was pleading with her, just like he’d done back in the basement. Begging her to trust him, begging her to not do this.

She felt scared. Why on Earth would she not tell Grunkle Ford that his brother loved him enough that their falling out broke Stan’s heart? Why would she not tell her parents that, either? Why would it even need to be a secret? Why would Stan call himself a fre…unless……oh. OH! He meant, as in, oh wow! That changed things, didn’t it? He meant it like, he ‘loved’ his brother. He loved Stanford.

Something in her expression must have showed recognition because his eyes filled with shame and he turned away, letting go of her hands and picking at the tear in the couch cushion.

“You love him. And I mean, like, love love, like lay awake at night thinking about them, love.” It wasn't a question. But all the same, Stan nodded.

She didn’t know what to say. Usually, she’d tell Stan to go tell him, go confess your feelings. They either liked you back, or didn’t. But this was way different than everyday romances. This wasn't even just forbidden love between a snake and a badger or like between Dipper and Wendy. This was taboo. This was all kinds of wrong. What could she say to that? ‘Oh, hey. Grunkle Ford, I know that we just met and all, but did you know your brother is in love with you? No? Well he is, and spent the last thirty years trying to get you back because of it.’ She shook her head. There was no real way to talk this through.

She tried to imagine feeling about Dipper like that. Like, tried to picture Mermando and the feelings she got when thinking about him and tried to put Dipper there. But, she just couldn’t. Every time she pictures his face, all she felt was good natured affection for her bro-bro. He was cute…she guessed. But he didn’t make her heart beat fast like Mermando did.

Grunkle Stan had called himself a ‘freak’, maybe he was right. Loving your brother, wanting to smooch your brother was weird. She understands now why the Love God got so grossed-out when he saw the phantom Grunkle Ford. It was kinda weird and gross, but…well, Stan was a weird, gross, old man, maybe it was ok. He looked so lost now, like he wanted to jump into the Bottomless Pit and not come back.

She would be sad if he did. He would cry and cry and cry until the whole of Gravity Falls was under water. Dipper would cry too, though he would never admit it. And she doesn’t know Grunkle Ford very well, but she’s sure he would cry too.

They had sat in silence for several minutes as Mabel processed what had to be her Grunkle’s greatest secret. With a small smile, she flopped into Stan’s side and did her best to wrap him in the biggest Mabel hug she could.

Stan flinched, jarred by the contact he thought he would never feel again. He shifted his weight on the couch, turning just enough to gather Mabel into his lap and squeeze as tight as she would let him. He buried his face into her soft hair, brown strands absorbing the tears he couldn’t stop.

“I’m sorry.” He mumbled into her scalp, gravel voice hardly a whisper. “I’m sorry your uncle is a freak.”

She wanted to tell him that is was going to ok, that he wasn't a freak, and that he wasn't a bad person. But, she just couldn’t…not yet, and maybe not ever. She didn’t know how to feel about this. She loved Stan, yes, and nothing he would ever do would change that, but, this was something she didn’t know how to handle. She just squeezed tighter.

Upstairs, the triangular window was propped open, and a microphone dangled from a string from its ledge. Dipper’s – with oversized headphones over his ears – face was contorted, brows furrowed and chewing nervously on his thumbnail.

Ford leaned against the wall beside the back door just outside of view of anyone looking in from the outside. He’d left his boots downstairs to muffle the sound of his steps. His was was grim, tired, and despondent. Hand absently trailing to the inner pocket of his jacket where he kept the one photo that had kept him going the past three decades. He wondered if it would still carry the same meaning now.

#stancest #Stanley Pines #stanford pines #love god #S2Ep9 Gravity Falls #I thought about this for months #How would that have gone #Sure Carla and Marlyn #but com'on #You know Ford would have been in the lot

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thebloggitonpost · 6 years

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Warped & Wired chapter 1 sample.

Portia slid into the rain-soaked corner, grabbing a lamp post to swing herself into the adjacent sidewalk. As soon as her foot hit the ground, she leapt into another sprint. She needed to find a long, dark alley before she lost Goligger's thugs. Unfortunately, they had been picked up by an SUV which made tailing them without being seen that much more difficult. Fortunately, she had a good lay of the city even if she hadn't memorized the location of every alley, building, street and convenient flat surfaces. She skidded to a halt at the next intersection. Her gaze snapped up and down the street, looking for the cliche black SUV that the men had gotten into. She didn’t want to get too far ahead of them as she couldn’t predict where they were going and even from the rooftops; it was hard to see all the streets from atop the gridwork of buildings covering the city.

Portia finally caught sight of the vehicle as it turned down the street in front of her, throwing a puddle of rainwater into her face. Spewing asphalt-flavored liquid, she waited for them to get a bit further past her before bolting across the street and into a narrow alley the city was lousy with. The road they were on took a left turn so they would pass back in front of her if she could get to the next intersection in time. But the alley before her abruptly stopped at the side of a long apartment complex. Crouching down, Portia leapt onto its roof and ran to the opposite edge. She watched the SUV continue its past her and then turn right at the intersection. They appeared to be heading towards the mostly abandoned industrial district at the edge of the city. It was always the abandoned industrial district with these mob exchanges; she might as well just portal to the roof of any random factory or warehouse and wait for them to pull into the guest parking. Portia looked toward the dark scattering of abandoned and half-destroyed warehouses in the distance. She squinted, her eyes physically bulging outward as the roof of one of derelict factory buildings drew closer into focus. As expected, there was another black SUV already waiting in one of the overgrown lots. Taking a deep breath and closing her eyes, Portia clasped her hands back-to-back and plunged them into the roof beneath her. The chill of cold space rippled down her spine as she took hold of its now torn edges and pulled it open. The clouded sky directly above the abandoned factory greeted her.

Portia dropped through the portal and appeared on top of the factory roof, flipping onto her feet as she felt gravity reverse. She looked back at the road for the sedan and saw it turning onto the dusty asphalt road leading to the cluster of empty warehouses and factories. It seemed to be heading toward the next row of buildings from her.

Jogging a few feet back, Portia ran toward the edge of the building and launched herself across the overgrown loading area onto the neighboring rooftop. Rolling to a stop, she listened carefully for the crunch of tires but they’d apparently already stopped, as she soon heard several car doors slam. Carefully peering over the edge of the roof, she saw her original two targets approaching a group of three men standing behind a black van. Her targets carried a metal briefcase that contained the item her client had asked her to retrieve. She had no idea what the item was, nor did she care. She was simply a “retrieval specialist”. It didn't matter what or for whom she was retrieving, only that whatever desperate human she was dealing with paid her in legal tender. Cold, green tender.

Portia turned her ear as the men began to speak.

“That it?” one of the waiting men asked.

“It is.” The first target lifted the briefcase up to show as if the other man had x-ray vision.

Quickly sizing up the situation, Portia decided that a direct approach would probably be her best shot. Get in and out as fast as possible before any of them knew what was happening. She pulled a large, cone-shaped floppy black hat from under her shirt and affixed it to her head. She hated wearing it and the connotation it brought, but it provided a decent distraction for her targets to prevent them focusing on her face or her limbs.

Fully prepared, Portia let loose a loud, high-pitch, blood-curdling shriek for added distraction and immediately opened a portal beneath her. She shot out from the ground, feet-first, directly between the two groups of men. She kicked her legs apart, striking the first two men in the jaw before catching the now airborne briefcase. Twisting to land on her feet, she swung the briefcase around, knocking both men to the ground. She then released the case, sending it flying into the other man's chest. He flew backwards hitting the back of the SUV with a thud. Portia ducked as the other two men from the van fired their guns at her. She quickly launched herself into a backflip, up and over the first black van as the bullets followed her wake. As soon as she hit the ground, inches from the van’s fender, she thrust her hands forward as hard as she could. They connected to the hard metal grill with a loud bang and the vehicle lurched backwards several feet. The crunch of bone and flesh along with the startled and painful screams confirmed her remaining targets had been neutralized.

“Ha!” Portia stood and threw her head and exhaled a single laugh. Even though her entire body was sore from the reciprocal pain, the adrenaline pumping through her brain was sufficient to make the feeling a net positive. She walked around the van and over to the man slouched against the SUV, the briefcase lying in his lap. Opening the case, Portia removed the thin black box from its foam bed and stuffed it into the back pocket of her jeans. She knew she wasn’t technically supposed to, but the reciprocal pain combined with the adrenaline of combat actually made fighting humans enjoyable and a decent distraction from her normally miserable life. She had already tried all of the most recklessly dangerous, death-defying human sports and hobbies she could, but the excitement for each waned as she quickly mastered each. Perhaps it was the unpredictability of a human cornered in unwinnable combat. Or maybe the constant risk of accidentally killing one of them gave her an extra shot of adrenaline.

Suddenly a loud shot rang out behind her. A searing hot knife of pain pierced her back and lodged itself in her chest.

The driver. How did she forget about the other driver?

Portia turned to face the wiry, pink-haired punk holding the gun. He actually looked kind of scared, like he’d never fired a gun before. Or maybe he hadn’t seen someone take a bullet to the chest without keeling over. Portia started towards him as one, two, three more bullets pierced her chest. She winced as the pain doubled in intensity. She could feel the blood streaming down both her back and chest now. He clicked the trigger two more times but apparently, he hadn’t been trusted with more than a few rounds. The abject fear in the kid’s face was now almost comical. If it wasn’t for the intense pain, Portia would’ve laughed.

“Y-y-you Freak!!” The kid’s face had twisted from fear to some kind of angry disgust. He dropped the gun and reached behind his back and pulled out a large knife. “Seig Heil!” He screamed, lunging at Portia.

Portia ducked away from the blade and drove her head up through his chin, his now-fractured jaw creating a satisfying crunch. He immediately fell over with a thud. “Really?” Portia scoffed. “Seig Heil up yours. Idiot.” With that, Portia collapsed against one of the vans gasping for air but choking on blood instead. Her body wasn’t healing itself fast enough. She’d forgotten how much bullets did a number on her. If she didn’t get home fast, she might actually die; and her client would not be happy about that delay.

Willing her legs to remain solid, Portia brought her hands up together and pushed against the blood-smeared van. Focusing all her brain-power on the image of her apartment, she dug her fingers into the metal side and then pushed them into the fabric of space. A sharp chill shot up Portia’s arms and down her spine as she grabbed the edges of space and tore open a hole into her apartment’s interior. The tiny, single bedroom apartment was completely stagnant and drenched in shadows. She was about to step through the portal when, despite the blood pounding in her ears, Portia barely caught the distant crack of a powerful firearm. She started to turn, but her left eye exploded. Portia screamed, the force of the blast pushing her through the portal and onto the matted carpet.

Portia lay there, gasping like an asthmatic marathoner, her brain reeling from the incredible amount of pain being pumped through her nervous system. It was almost unbearable. She had been shot before, but never this much all at once and especially not in the head.

How had she been so stupid? She should have known there was another goon behind the wheel of at least one of the cars. And what was with that the sniper? Since when did they cover their drops with snipers?

Portia tried to push herself up, instead crying out in pain again and falling over onto her back. Everything inch of her body throbbed with immense pain; like a thousand angry hornets piercing her skin while being roasted in a barbecue pit. She was also pretty sure a couple of the bullets had hit a lung since breathing felt like sucking water out of a perforated straw; each breath dragging a knife of pain through her chest. Not to mention the hole in the back of her head and missing eye. At the very least the bullets seemed to have missed her heart; as long as her blood was pumping to some degree, her body would be able to heal itself without dying. Hopefully.

Minutes crawled by. Portia moaned. Why wasn’t her body healing? She should at least be feeling something. What was taking so long?

Idiot.

Portia had barely eaten anything for a month now. Work had been light so she hadn’t had money to buy food. Her cell count was probably low. She groaned in both pain and frustration. She didn’t have time for this. She didn’t have time to wait for her body to slowly heal, or worst-case scenario, die and then resurrect itself. She was on a time crunch. She couldn’t exactly explain to her client that she was late delivering the item because she’d died. If only she could cast a healing spell, that would solve everything. But she couldn’t. As a Wryter with Aetherical Delay, casting spells was currently beyond her capabilities. She would have to find some other way to heal herself before she bled to death.

Food. She needed food. That might hasten her recovery. Maybe.

Swallowing pain and blood by the gallon, Portia dragged herself across the tiny living room to the linoleum tiled corner of the apartment the landlord advertised as a “full” kitchen. The bitter taste of her blood made her want to vomit and the insane level of pain was doing its best to drag her into unconsciousness. She half-slid, half-crawled to the refrigerator. There had to be something left in it. Right now, she’d even settle for those disgustingly sweet “energy drinks” she kept buying purely for the caffeine and sugar. She clawed at the handle, smearing it with blood.

She dreaded the cleaning she was going to have to do later.

She finally wrenched the refrigerator open, the door swinging wide, smacking into the adjacent dishwasher. Portia tried to make out what was within floor’s reach, but the blood, pain and lack of an eye made her vision blurry and distorted. Propping herself up with one hand, she blindly flailed her arm, grabbing for anything within reach, knocking half-empty bottles to the ground. A nearly empty jug of water fell from an upper shelf and hit Portia's head. She cried out from the searing pain and fell back onto the floor, her vision completely gone and her throat full of blood.

She was dying.

In her brief 40 years, she hadn't died once, despite her rather reckless lifestyle. She had no idea what death would be like. No one else had really told her or explained what death was actually like. The idea was suddenly mildly terrifying.

There was a sudden knock at the door, followed by a familiar voice, “Portia?”

Portia groaned.

Greayleesah.

Her mother.

Maybe death wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Her mother was the absolute last person she wanted to see right now; she wasn’t in the mood for a harsh scolding or lecture or anything else her mother had to say. On the other hand, her mother was capable of casting a healing spell. Before Portia could attempt to answer her mother’s continuous knocking, a glass jar of something struck the back of her head. Darkness enveloped her.

#warped & wired #warpedandwired #writing

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