Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Is that it?” Stan asked, his voice burning and rising like the coming tide, vicious and overwhelming and inevitable. Ford’s shoulders tightened involuntarily, and he threw his brother as scathing of a glare as he could manage. Couldn’t Stan see that this, Ford’s problems, were important? 

“You call me all the way here after ten years, just to tell me to get as far away from you as possible?!”

If Ford was any less exhausted, if the hole in his left hand and the hole in his heart  were any less gaping, and the fresh scrapes and cracked fingernails ached any less, he might’ve taken a step back to apologize. To explain that it wasn’t about what Ford wanted, or what Stan wanted. It was about stopping Bill, and saving the world.

If Ford were a different man, he’d reconsider his approach and find a way to fix the chasm that seemed to yawn wider with every word that came out of each of their mouths. But as it was, Ford was not a different man. He couldn’t even fix himself.

So Ford instead felt indignation sting like hot coals in his gut and urge him to step forward, closer to Stanley. His brother took an involuntary half-step back. “Stanley, you don’t understand what I’ve been through!”

“What you’ve been through!” Stan kept talking even as Ford pushed past him, fury etched onto every word like a brand. “No, no, you don’t understand what I’ve been through! I’ve been to prison in three countries, and I once had to chew my way out of the trunk of a car!”

He got up in Fords face when Ford turned back with a falter, his brows drawn low and finger jabbing into Ford’s abdomen. He didn’t realize it, because of course he didn’t, but he’d pressed right into one of the bruises on Fords ribcage from his trip down the stairs earlier that day. Ford grit his teeth and glared back.

“You think you’ve got problems? I’ve got a mullet Stanford!”

Why couldn’t Stan take Fords problems seriously? Was he really cracking jokes at a time like this?

Ford couldn’t take it anymore.

Oblivious to the dangerous precipice Fords stability had drawn close to,  Stan got bitterly sarcastic. “Meanwhile where have you been? Holed up in your fancy house in the woods and living it up, selfishly hoarding all—“

Ford went still. If he’d been a slightly different man, a slightly more composed man, perhaps, he’d have fired back another jab at his twin, because how could the man that ruined Fords life and betrayed his complete and total trust call him selfish?

There was a different voice, at a different time altogether too recent and a lifetime ago. His monstrous Muse, his most trusted friend, taking his body on a fucking joyride and then having the gall to look him in the eyes and say “YOU’RE PRETTY SELFISH IQ”

Ford had just kept on weeping blood 

As it was, Stan didn’t get a chance to finish his rant. He was much too busy receiving a solid punch to the face and staggering back against the force of it. For a moment, all was quiet. Ford was shaking, he realized distantly, staring blankly at his brother. His knuckles stung from the impact.

Stan took more time to recover than Ford would’ve thought, but when he finally did, it was with a new layer of dark fury that Ford hadn’t ever seen from him before. Stan lowered the book from where he’d clenched it to his chest, and pulled out a lighter. “Fine.” He whispered roughly, though it echoed in the cavernous room anyway. Louder, then, “Fine! You want me to get rid of it so bad? I’ll get rid of it right now!”

A challenging fire burned in Stan’s eyes, and with a flick, it burned in his right hand too. Ford’s journal dangled above the hungry, all consuming light.

Ford couldn’t breathe. Every piece of himself he’d had to let go of, that he’d lost to Bill and all that he was giving up to rectify his own mistakes, all to see Stan get rid of part of his life’s work right before his eyes.

How dare he.

Ford let out a guttural shout and lunged for the book. Stanley, evidently not expecting this, stumbled back and tried to move the lighter before Ford and him could get burned from it in the tussle.

He only partly succeeded. Ford hissed at the momentary new pain shooting up the underside of his hand as he tried to grab for the book and Stan flat out dropped the lighter in response. His brother faltered for a split second, his brow creasing.

“Sixer, I—“

Ford didn’t let him finish. The second he heard the nickname, some part of him blanked out entirely, and the buzzing in his ears sounded like an angry hornet in his skull. “Don’t,” he grit out, and he’s sure his voice was much too thick and angry and he wasn’t being rational but he couldn’t bring himself to care. “Call me that!”

When Ford lunged for the journal anew, he tackled Stan to the ground as his brother instinctively tightened his own grip on the book. Ford’s book.

“Why not?!” Stan cried out, trying to pry Ford off of him and only succeeding in rolling the two on the ground away from the portal. Ford couldn’t figure out if he sounded more hurt or concerned. The hurricane in his chest kept him from thinking on it too much.

Ford let out a wordless grunt in response, as the two of them, having grappled up to stand, slammed straight through the door and Stan tried to pin him down onto one of the control panels, before Ford managed to gain enough momentum to roll Stan off of him. They were throwing punches and shouting insults they probably didn’t mean, and after a minute long struggle where they surely broke every damn thing in that control room —and good riddance, Ford tried to think but he was too tired to think much at all— Stan had shouted with all the ferocious desperation of a drowning man, “why can’t you listen to me, damnit! You ruined my life!”

Ford had retorted, because of course he did, with “You ruined your own life!” as he finally got a good grip on the book and kicked Stan away with enough force to shove him against the side of one of the control panels.

Stan’s scream was abrupt and guttural and horrifying. It cut through the haze in Fords mind with all the precision of a scalpel, dropping a rock of dread into his gut. Ford backed away as quickly as he could, and didn’t even register his journal slipping through his slack fingers to land facedown on the ground. He felt sick.

“Stanley! Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry!”

For a few, horrible, horrible seconds, Stan laid there, slumped and unmoving from where he’d hunched onto the floor. The burn— the brand on his shoulder looked angry and hot against his skin. It had burned clean through his coat and shirt.

Ford took a few hurried steps closer, shaking so hard he could barely walk, when Stan groaned. “Stanley…” he started, but trailed off as Stan pulled himself to his feet. His eyes were darker than Ford had ever seen them before. Stan was shaking too.

“You really want your dumb mysteries that bad?”

And Ford wanted to say, no, no he didn’t, because Stan still held his shoulder stiff as he could and his grip was knuckle-white where he’d used it to brace his arm against his side, because Ford had branded his own twin.

But the words stuck in his throat, because he realized with a start that Stan and him weren’t the ones shaking. The room was. His eyes shot to the portal.

His magnum opus and his curse, his Dadaleus’s Labyrinth, was activating.

A sudden movement from Stan snapped Fords attention back to his injured, angry brother. Ford took a few cautious steps out of the control room and held up his hands placatingly as Stan advanced. His brother was blocking the doorway, but Ford needed to get in there, he needed to activate the shutdown procedure. “Stan, please,” he said weakly, not sure what exactly he meant. Let me through? Wait? Let me help you?

He didn’t get the chance to find out, though, because Stan continued talking, hefting up the journal he’d evidently picked up from the floor while Ford was distracted. “Well you can have ‘em” Stan said viciously, and Ford could hear the pain in it clear as day as he moved to shove the book into Ford’s hands.

Ford dodged Stan attempt, careful to not touch Stan’s injured shoulder, and weaved around him. “Stan, please, wait.”

Stan laughed, turning around. His grin looked painful. “I’m tired of waiting, Si— Stanford. I really am.”

Ford didn’t have time for this. His heart ached in ways Ford didn’t have the time to decipher as the humming in the room got louder, and he turned to move back to the control room. “Just a moment, Stanley, I just need—“

When Stan latched onto his arm and tried to whirl Ford back around, Ford reacted on pure instinct and deep seated paranoia, that kind that can only be born from aftermath of pure devastation. He followed the momentum and shoved Stan back as hard as he could, turning and sprinting to the control room before Stan could recover and try to stop him again.

“Stanford?”

He never got there. Stan’s voice, suddenly small and scared, ground Ford’s pace to a halt. The humming was louder now, reverberating through his chest.

“Ford, what’s happening?”

For a terrible moment, Ford didn’t turn around. He just stared at the door of the control room as if he could stop time if he tried hard enough. He didn’t want to see. Seeing made it real. It meant his worst fears had become true, it justified the cold sinking in his chest.

“Ford!”

Ford whirled around and let out a hoarse cry. There Stanley was, greasy hair floating in a halo around his face, one hand outstretched and the other holding Ford’s journal tight to his chest. Ford had pushed him over the danger line.

The look on his twins face was worse than Ford could’ve ever imagined.

The anger had drained out of him, the closer he floated to the all consuming blue light of the portal. The was naked terror in his eyes, and he cried out for Ford again.

“Stanley! Hold on, please!” Ford said, before making another break for the control room.

He needed to shut it off right this instant.

“Hold onto what, brainiac!?”

“I don’t know, Stanley! Anything within reach, just don’t let yourself go through the portal!”

Ford input the shut down code. He input it again. He then realized that they’d knocked the cords out of alignment and frantically began adjusting them from where they were wired into the top of the control panel. Shit, they really broke everything in this room, didn’t they?

The third time he input the code, the light flashed green, and the keys made themselves known on a panel adjacent to Ford’s position by the window.

Three keys. Of course. Why did he have to make it three keys, all turned simultaneously?

Metal screeched in the portal room, and when Ford dared to glance up between trying to maneuver himself to turn all three keys, a jolt of horror swept through him and nearly knocked him off his feet.

Stan has nearly entirely consumed by the light now, clawing at the edge of the portal he’d managed to reach. Ford cursed himself when he realized that the metal plate Stan was holding, as well as  over a dozen others, were loosening to the point of nearly falling off entirely from the main frame. The other objects he’d scattered across the floor of his lab, everything from basic tools like screwdrivers to bigger machine parts floated through the portal at increasingly high speeds.

Ford wouldn’t need to do anything, he realized, and it wasn’t the comfort he wished it was. The portal was destabilizing. Judging by the erratic pulsing the portal light was doing, it’d be closing soon.

Ford ran out of the control room and stopped short just as Stan locked eyes with him again.

“Stanley!” he called, another desperate idea beginning to form in his panic addled mind as he scanned the room for spare rope and found none. The spare rope from the first portal test must’ve gotten caught in the portals expanding gravitational pull. His brother was barely a shadow in the light now, but Ford knew Stanley had heard him. “If you toss me the journal, I can—“

“The journal?” Stan gasped out, frenzied. “Is that still all you care about!?”

“No, no, if I just had the instructions, I could fix—“ this, fix everything.

The screeching of metal and thundering of the portal reached a deafening crescendo, and Ford could see Stan open his mouth to interrupt, to say something, assent or argument or—

But Ford didn’t get to find out what Stan would’ve said. A particularly violent jolt shook the metal frame of the portal, and Stan, with a wide-eyed final look that Ford didn’t know how to decipher, slipped.

His brother disappeared into the light just as the portal collapsed in on itself with enough concussive force to send Ford crashing to the ground. He slammed onto his back hard enough to knock the air from his lungs.

Silence fell over the room. It was dark.

Ford stared at the ceiling above him, then dragged his eyes, slowly, painfully, to the portal.

The deactivated, half missing and half obliterated portal.

For a long, long time, Ford sat in the dark under the full weight of every bruise and scratch and burn he’d sustained, and it was like he was underwater, head swimming with nausea and pain and bewilderment.

He was numb.

A faint plip-plop sound echoed suddenly through the deathly silent basement, and Ford squinted at the sound through his crooked glasses, trying to identify the source.

A dark substance stained the edge of the portal, right where Stan had been holding on. Ford watched blankly as the liquid slowly rolled along the curve of the portal entrance, before reached a jagged gap in the perfect circle and slipping through. It slid down the jagged and crumpled panels, weaving until it gathered at the tip of a particularly jutting sheet of metal.

Another drip.

Another.

Ford shifted closer, simply trying to breathe. He pointedly didn’t think about how the other side of the portal had driven Fiddleford to seemingly the brink of madness in moments, he didn’t think about the glimpse into the Nightmare Realm Bill had given him when he first revealed his true hand, and he certainly didn’t think about the final look Stanley had given him, grief and rage and betrayal all rolled into one.

He finally got close enough to see the liquid for what it was. It wasn’t oil, like he’d figured, like he’d hoped and prayed with every inhale and exhale to the gods he didn’t believe in. It was too thick, congealing with familiar splatters on the floor. It was a deep crimson.

Stan must have cut his hand on the metal with how hard he’d been holding it, Ford realized, and the thoughts were the first crack in the dam Ford had buried himself beneath. This was Stan’s blood.

Stanley was in the Nightmare Realm, bleeding from one hand and burned on the other shoulder and begging for Ford to do something, asking Ford what was happening because he didn’t know, because Ford didn’t tell him, and—

It was all Fords fault.

All of it.

Oh Moses.

The dam creaked with warning, a death rattle and a laugh rolled into one, before Ford was swept into the undertow.

Ford had killed his own brother.

All alone in the dark basement with the machine he’d turned into his brother’s grave, Ford buried his burnt, bloody hands in his hair and bowed his head until it hit his knees. All alone, Stanford Pines cried for the first time in years.

Chapter Text

Ford didn’t know how long it took for him to pry himself off the floor, but it felt like hours later when he managed to trudge his way upstairs, eyes burning and throat raw. There was new blood on his knuckles, and Ford couldn’t remember if it was Stan’s or his own. He’d tried to scrub the blood off of the portal, but most of it had been too high and Ford was so tired.

He couldn’t fall asleep in the basement, he chanted to himself, again and again and again and it only occurred to him once he stood swaying at the top the of the stairs, that is didn’t actually… matter, anymore.

It didn’t matter what Bill did, or didn’t do.

The portal was broken beyond repair. His brother was dead.

The journal is gone. his mind whispered insidiously, and he couldn’t remember if he’d always been so cruel to himself, or if it was a byproduct of Bill. You got what you wanted, Sixer. How does it feel?

Ford hobbled to the bathroom as fast as he could manage, and hurled his guts out into the toilet. When all that came up was acrid bile, though, and Ford wondered idly when we he last ate. It didn’t matter.

None of it mattered, Ford decided firmly, hands clenched on either side of the porcelain bowl so hard that they looked bloodless in the harsh white light. It didn’t matter what he felt, or didn’t feel.

Not anymore.

The journal was gone. That was a good thing, it meant that the portal could never be rebuilt again. Stanley made an honorable… he. He’d made an honorable sacrifi—

Ford hunched over the toilet and heaved again. Nothing came out.

Impossibly, time kept moving.

Ford was left drifting in the current, from room to room, machine to first aid kit to paper to specimen to paper to circling the door of his lab again and again like an anxious sentry. White static buzzed in his head, followed in his footsteps, covered him head to toe and made it heard to breathe. Certain species of the Selachimorpha clade are obligate ram ventilators — he recalled idly, shuffling papers on his desk and running his hand through his hair to pull — which means they filter water through their mouths to their gills. If they stop moving, they suffocate and die.

If Ford stopped moving, he was certain he’d never get up again. 

The door to the lab, battered and bloody and sealed shut as it was, haunted him. It sat in the peripheral vision like a particularly incessant spirit, demanding that he come closer, venture into the depths of its maw one forbidden step at a time, disappear into its shadows. Daring him to turn his back. Screaming for him to run away. 

It was the only mystery left that Ford could pay any real mind to anymore, and most of the time he wanted nothing more than burn the whole thing to the ground.

Finally, sitting with his back pressed up against the door until his spine ached, head leaned back and staring at the ceiling, Ford searched his mind for something. Anything.

A plan, a goal, fuck, he’d take the will to actually get out of the house and get groceries despite the constant chance of being watched at this rate. There was near nothing left to eat in the cabinets that wasn’t rank with age, and Ford knew he was wasting away like this.

But there was nothing. No part of him cared.

He knew he’d always had the wildest aspirations as a kid and as a young man, that he’d never stop reaching for bigger and better heights, but the light had blinded him with its promise, and now he’d fallen.

Fuck. 

He’d fallen so far.

He’d said Icarus didn’t flap hard enough, when Fiddleford tried to warn him of his own hubris all those weeks ago. Now he was just glad he wasn’t an English major, because it had taken him all of this just to realize that Icarus had found the sun, been embraced by the promise of warmth, and burned for it.

Trust no one.

Ford traced an idle finger against the freshly bandaged burn on the underside of his hand.

And no one should ever trust you.

The worst part, Ford thought to himself as he brewed another pot of coffee and searched for a clean mug in the counter, was the uncertainty of it all. There was a grief in loss, of course, but not knowing could be so much worse.

Stanley could still be alive out there, among the creatures of the Nightmare Realm, all alone. He could be dying. He could be dead. He could be sitting on the other side, waiting, hoping Ford could open the portal and bring him home—

Ford slammed down the sole clean coffee cup he had left hard enough to startle himself, and then sighed.

He’d have to go clean up the remains of the portal, eventually. Before he fell asleep and Bill…

Bill…

Ford poured out the coffee and leaned heavily against the counter as he took a sharp swig. It burned the whole way down.

What did he have left that Bill wanted? What reason did Bill have to keep him around if his research was beyond saving, if he couldn’t be threatened or tortured into complying anymore?

The next time he fell asleep…

Ford didn’t know what would happen to him, and despite everything, damnit, Ford didn’t want to die. He couldn’t let Bill win, couldn’t become another footnote in the history of the world because he was just another one of the poor schmucks who fell for Bill Cipher’s lies. 

Taking another gulp of liquid courage, Ford pulled his coat tight around himself and marched to the door of his lab before he could talk himself out of it.

Forget not sleeping in the lab. Ford couldn’t sleep at all until he found a way to sever Bill from his mind for good. Project Mentem had been a bust last he’d checked, but perhaps there was something to salvage in its results. What else hadn’t he tried?

There was something… a protection spell? A charm?

Ford contemplated his options all the way down the stairs, one hand keeping him steady on the wall while the other held his mug.

He still wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted yet, or what his next step was, but Ford could do this. He just had to secure his mind, like he’d planned, and then get rid of the blasted portal once and for all. Nothing had changed.

Nothing had changed. Nothing had changed. Nothing, nothing, except that Ford felt hollow where there must’ve once been something warm and vital in his chest. He didn’t know if he’d ever feel warm again. He didn’t deserve to.

Ford remembered a detail about sleep deprivation, as the elevator neared the basement level again and his heart dropped in time with the doors hissing open. Hallucinations were a common byproduct of the resulting sensory overload and exhaustion. They could take auditory or visual form, though visual hallucinations were a more common symptom by over 52%.

That was the only explanation he could conjure for the faint singing that echoed through the dark, cavernous sub-level before him.

“It’s not real,” Ford whispered to himself, his hands a vice around the coffee mug. He felt cold. “Auditory hallucinations are an expected and well documented symptom to experience in conditions less dire than these. Focus on your intellect, Stanford. Focus, focus, it is not real.”

For a long stretch of time, seconds, or perhaps minutes, Fords feet were glued to the floor of the elevator. No matter how hard he tried, no matter what he said or did, the singing, or the static, remained steady and quiet.

It wouldn’t go away unless Ford made it.

Finally, Ford forced himself to creep into the basement, and then the control room to set his mug down on the desk. The music was louder now, more distinct here than it had been before. Had Ford left a radio on down here? Was that it?

Holding his breath, Ford crept around the trashed room, checking behind spare sheets of metal that had been propped up against the walls, kneeling to look under the control panels, and then behind them too. All the while, the music droned on, buzzing and humming and settling under his skin like an itch.

-any- wind blows—

It got louder as he neared the very back of the room, the words filtering through the humming static and becoming clear. Ford couldn’t deny it anymore. That was a voice. He shivered hard, jolting like ice had been pressed to the back of his neck, and hurried forward.

-really matter to me… To me.

There was a pile of debris, in the back of the control room, farthest from the door where he’d entered. Stanley must’ve crashed into it, when Ford and him had been… when he’d…

-just killed a man —a gun against his head…

Ford slowed his pace, staring down at the dented metal plates and machinery that had fallen loose in a heap on the floor, the stray wires and screws jutting out of the mess every which way. Slowly, Ford sank to his knees and pressed his aching palms onto the cool floor beneath him.

He could hear the singing now. Warbling, staticky. Familiar.

-Life had just begun, and now I’ve gone and thrown it all away.

Ford choked on his next inhale, thin and trembly as it was, and searched through the wreckage with wide eyes.

There. Nestled between a dented panel with half its screws undone, and a jumble of wires and smaller panels of sheet metal, was the source of the sound.

For a long, long moment, all Ford did was stare.

Oh mama… oh ohh oh. Didn’t mean to make you cry.

If I’m not back again this time tomorrow…

Ford’s hands trembled as he reached out, carefully prying the radio out of the scrap heap and holding it up in the dim light.

Carry on, carry on…

As if nothing really matters…

The voice faded out. Static.

Ford set the radio down on his lap, gently, as it would shatter into a million pieces otherwise, and pressed a trembling hand to his mouth.

“Stanley?” Ford choked out, and it was like trying to breathe glass. But he had to know, he had to, because— because…

He sat there, dully staring down at the radio Fiddleford had cobbled together months ago, when they’d still been in the implementations stage of the data and blueprints they’d collected, just before the preliminary tests had begun. A device to send and collect waves — and other information— from beyond this dimension without actually opening a rift.

And here it was. In Fords hands, dented and scratched and still whole despite everything. Ford had turned his sights completely to the portal before the it’s completion, since Bill had deemed the entire endeavor a waste of time and energy. And an ineffective outlet for his genius.

Fiddleford must’ve completed it, back when he was still just as enthralled in the project as Ford was. He missed his old friend, but Fiddleford was likely back home by now, in California to try and reconnect with his wife and child. As bitter as Ford was, he hoped Fiddleford was successful. His old friend deserved as much and more.

There was no reply to Ford’s question, except, Ford brought the radio to his ear and strained to listen through the faint static.

Was that… humming?

Doo- doo doo, yeah, no poindexter, I‘m done, man. That’s the last song of the evening, I’m not paid for overtime.

Moses, wish I were getting paid for this.

Ford jumped, wincing at the sudden burst of noise loud enough to make his ears ring, then processed what Stanley, because that had to be Stanley, had said.

“Stanley! Where are you? Are you in the Nightmare Realm? You must be… what sort of method did you find to transmit your signal? Are you al—“

But Stanley continued speaking as though he hadn’t heard him. A thrill of irritation went through him.

Was Stanley ignoring him? Was this some kind of petty revenge tactic?

When’d that song come out anyway? ‘75?

He hummed.

Sounds about right.

Ford shook the radio and bit back a growl, before he remembered that the technology in his hands was damaged and sorely in need of a repair and upgrade, and loosened his grip again. He set it down in his lap.

“Stanley, I need you to take this seriously, please, for once.”

Wow, that song was everywhere back then, wasn’t it? I remember thinkin’ Ford probably liked it when it came out, wherever he was. The nerd was probably in college.

“Stanley?”

He wasn’t expecting a reply anymore, fingers digging into the edges of the radio hard enough to ache.

Stanley soldiered on, rambling about everything and nothing and Ford could almost hear the smile in his voice if it didn’t sound so tired.

Hell, where’d I first hear it? Must’ve been over at a gas station in… eh, Kansas? Somewhere over there, the big ol’ middle states.

We sure aren’t in Kansas anymore.

Ahh, those were the times. Me, the open sky, and so, so much dirt in my hair. Seriously, where did the dirt come from. I roll around in one haystack and suddenly i’m fishing filth out of my hair a month later.

Stanley went quiet again, before he laughed.

Aw man, I actually like this story. Buckle in folks, and I’m taking us back to that weirdly cold summer day in Kansas, where I had to steal 5 prized chickens. For some reason.

Look man, when someone pays you a hundred bucks and tells you he wants chickens, you don’t ask questions.

Anyways, I’d been-“

Ford’s brain buzzed as he pulled the radio — the warm, alive radio to his chest.

For the past few… well, it had to have been days since Stanley fell through the portal by this point, if Fords state was anything to go off of, Ford’s mind had been eerily blank. He’d been a hollowed out shell of his former self, a ghost in his home and life that held onto the living plane by only the barest threads of will, and pure spite.

It was like a switch had flipped.

Ford’s fingers drummed on the outside of the radio as he forced himself to his feet, mind whirling at a hundred miles per hour and making calculations and theories and discarding some and contemplating others, and he was nearly jittering as he walked out of the control room entirely. He’d need to find a way to secure this side of the portal from Bills influence, recollect his journals, and then, he was bringing his brother home.

Ford skidded to a stop just outside the elevator door. He abruptly spun on his heel to stare down the wrecked portal that loomed overhead. The once perfect inverted triangle, now ruined and warped nearly beyond recognition.

He grinned in a way that was more just like baring his teeth.

“You may be a god, Cipher, and you may think you can control me, but never forget. I am a scientist.”

The portal stood just as dead as it has been, but Ford didn’t care. He whirled back around and stalked into the elevator, jabbing the button to close the door.

He felt more awake than he had in days. And he had research to collect and a demon to banish.

Stanley was still talking, as the elevator began to shudder and rise, and Ford’s adrenaline shot began to ever-so-slightly wane. Something about… attack pigeons?

-And when I finally think I’m in the clear, I duck around one of the hay bales and come face to face with, and I’m not kidding here, a cow wearing heavy duty armor, like a helmet and shit the guys in ‘Nam would wear. It even had holes for the ears!

There was a strange sound then, and Ford realized with a start that it was coming from him. He was laughing. It wasn’t even than funny, really, but something about Stan delivery made Ford wheeze.

When was the last time he’d laughed? It must’ve been before this whole thing started, when he’d been with Fiddleford or B—

The laughter died in his throat.

Oblivious to Fords inner turmoil, Stan kept on jabbering.

And there I was, 5 chickens smuggled into my coat and in my bag —and if you’ve never tried to carry 5 chickens, never do, it’s hard as hell and not worth it at all— staring down ol’ Bessie.

And then, because this fucking farm couldn’t get any weirder, the cow started moo-ing like it was setting off a tornado siren, and all the other cows in the whole place started mooing in sync too. It was fucking terrifying man.

They must’ve been calling the attack pigeons, because those suckers came back, and they started dive-bombing my sorry ass, and really, that was when I reached my limit.

I dove into the hay bale like a damn football player going for the end line, and even though it was by far the itchiest thing to ever happen to me, it saved me from death-by pecking so I’ll take take it.

The itchiest, of course, save for my stint in Albuquerque.

Ford could almost imagine Stan shaking his head as he paused again. With a start, he realized he was still smiling.

Just. Don’t try selling pillows in Albuquerque is all I’ll say.

Stan gave an audible shudder.

So many feathers… And itch powder. The itch powder didn’t help.

Ford couldn’t help the chuckle that slipped out of him at that.

Chapter Text

If one were to ask Ford what his plan was now — how he was going to finally fix everything — he'd likely insist that nothing had changed, just on principle. He still had to lock Bill out of his mind, still hadn't slept in over half a week, still ached something fierce in places he didn't realize he could hurt. And yet, despite it all, there was a definite shift in the way he carried himself. He felt lighter, if numb.

Ford had become a shell of himself in the weeks before Stan's arrival, he knew. But there was no time to waste wallowing now, no time to falter or stumble in his steps. So he simply wouldn't.

And he would save his brother, even if it meant declawing the Nightmare Realm to safely pry Stanley from its grasp. That meant he’d live to see the other side of this whole mess. They both would.

There was no alternative.

“Hold on, Stanley,” Ford muttered, though the radio that he’d shoved into his coats cavernous pockets was still spewing nothing but gritty static. He kept talking anyhow, as he pulled an unassuming gray coat over his trench coat and grabbed a shovel from the pile of detritus beside his front door. "We've got a long day ahead of us."

If he was going to do this right, he needed to recollect all his research and formulate a real, solid plan.

…For a moment, he wondered if Stanley had been right to try and refuse taking the third journal as far away as he could, if they could have figured something else out.

Then he brushed it off with vehemence.

They wouldn’t be in this mess if Stanley had simply agreed.

Of course, he had to concede, they wouldn’t be here if Ford hadn’t been hubristic enough to fall for the flattery of a demon either. Clearly it was more complicated than a simple laying of blame.

And none of that was of importance, not now.

Ford’s head pounded with newfound vengeance the moment he stepped out into the blinding, snow-reflected sunlight, and for the first time, Ford seriously considered how much time had passed since…

Well.

Since his betrayal?

Since Stanley’s arrival and subsequent departure?

How many days had it been? When was the last time Ford had gone outside? Or eaten?

No, don't dwell on that. Focus, Stanford.

Ford squinted against the harsh light as he sized up the ice crusted wooden steps ahead of him. Down he went, one foot after the other, placing each one firmly as to not slip and crack his head open. That would be counterproductive. The space behind Ford’s eyes throbbed in time with each footfall, jolting through his whole body. His own harsh breathing, muffled static, and the crunching underfoot were the only audible sounds in his ears.

Shovel in a knuckle-white grip, he approached the familiar treeline.

The forest was silent. Bright, crystalline icicles hung from swooping branches over his head, and the drifts of snow were thick enough to reach over his ankles and his bury his boots. A low sweep of wind over the clearing at Ford's back ruffled his coat and sent a cloud of flurries swirling into the air. Cold pricked at the back of his neck, dusted his hair.

In a different world, a different year, Ford would have stopped to appreciate the landscape. Maybe he'd find himself sitting under one of the trees to draw it, to try and capture the way the light refracted through the icicles and splashed bright, refracted shapes on the snow underneath.

Ford let out a long stream of mist as he breathed deep, pulled his coat around himself tight enough to make his bruised ribs ache, and glared at the trees as he stalked past.

He couldn’t let his guard down.

He knew better than most exactly how deceiving looks could be out here, in these familiarly unpredictable woods.

He could taste the ashes of his home here, despite the deceptively pure blankets of snow surrounding him. It was acrid and bitter in the back of his throat. The cold cut through his overcoat like a blunt, slashing knife to his abdomen, but Ford didn't let himself slow.

Ford didn’t need a map to guide him to the right tree. He installed it himself, metal plating and mechanisms and all, cannibalized from  Fiddleford’s old gear he’d left in the basement. Why his old friend had so many schematics relating to secret entrances and trap doors was truly a mystery, and one that almost made him smile. F had always had such an obsessions with ‘mad science’ and robotics.

It was Fiddleford who’d suggested a fake tree to hide their bunker all those months ago. It had only felt right to do the same here.

His old friend was always such a natural with technology. Ford hoped that he hadn’t left yet, that Ford still had a chance to apologize and convince him to help save Stanley, as selfish as the thought probably was. Fiddleford was at his own home now, probably reconnecting with Emma-May and Tate. He didn’t need to clean up Ford’s messes anymore.

Ford had to focus.

It had been one of the trees in this particular clearing, he was sure of it, one of these dozen. He simply had to determine which one…

Ford let himself grin momentarily when his knuckles finally rang a hollow metallic echo, instead of the dull, thick sound of wood.

He traced a hand along the trunk in a slow circle, before prying open the panel and punching in the code. There was a low hiss behind him, one that nearly made him jump and pull the shovel close to his chest. His breath shorted out as he whirled around with a cry.

He let the shovel drop when he saw the indent in the snow, and embarrassment swirled in his gut.

Right.

The secret compartment. Of course.

Ford was acting ridiculous, he needed to get it together.

He hurried to the center of the clearing to rescue the book from the layer of snow and dirt that had caved into the new opening. Then, discarding the used shovel beside him for a moment, he kneeled to pull the book free. Stray clumps of snow stuck to his pants and socks, melting through and leaving spots of cold on his legs. Ford barely felt it, holding the book in his lap and brushing the snow off of it with his thumb instead.

The cover was the same red fabric that it’d always been, dirtier than Ford had last seen, and the golden metal plating shone in the distinct light of a winter afternoon. He gently laid his palm on the center of the cover, and tried to breathe.

He never thought he’d hold his books again. He’d believed wholeheartedly that he would die with his research still buried, hidden, to be found centuries later by people who’d consider his work a historical relic. An artifact of a forgotten, foolish man of a forgotten time, in his darker moments.

And yet. Here it was, still fitting in his hand perfectly, half its pages blank.

Ford could still fix this. Fix everything.

He just had one more journal left to retrieve.

With a grunt, Ford heaved himself to his feet again. He tucked the journal away in the internal pocket beside the radio, which was still giving him nothing but static. Stanley had been quiet for hours now, nearly half a day.

Ford refused to dwell on it.

“I’m here, Stanley, I’m coming. I promise,” he said, and his voice was barely a whisper, but it still rung out like a gunshot in the dead silence of the frozen woods.

The second journal he had hidden more recently, on his way back from town the last time he’d dared to go. He couldn’t remember exactly when that was, when he reached back in his fuzzy memory. Weeks ago? 

Regardless, he at the very least remembered where he hid it.

“Why did I hide it here,” Ford asked himself, and he hunkered down lower behind the bush just outside the fence when his voice was significantly louder than he’d meant for it to be.

Himself unfortunately didn’t have an answer to give. Well, no answer besides that ‘Ford had been really tired’ and ‘He’d already hidden the third journal very well’ and ‘Bill wouldn’t think to look in an elementary school of all places’.

Ford had never figured he’d need to retrieve the journal, though, so he’d never accounted for the fact that he would need to go look in an elementary school of all places to do so.

Fortunately, the entire building seemed to be abandoned, so it was likely a weekend day. Unfortunately, however, the journal was buried on the other side of the chain link fence that surrounded the play yard of the elementary school.

Ford really wished he could have some strong words with his past self. He settled for making a face and shaking his head.

How had he managed this the first time?

Ah, yes.

Ford approached the fence and rubbed his hands together, trying to breath some life into his frozen finger. With a quiet hup, he leapt and hooked them into the mesh.

“This was a lot easier the first time around, for the record,” he grunted as he clambered up and heaved himself onto the other side. It was then that he lost his balance and his fingers, already raw from climbing and altogether too numb, slipped.

He hit the ground with an oof.

It was only after a mad scramble to make sure the radio and journal were still intact that Ford let himself regain his breath properly. He laid back down in the snow and stared at the clear blue sky.

Gently, he rest the radio on his chest, and shifted so that he could see it. The static rumbled against his chest. Like a phantom heartbeat. “I’m glad you didn’t break,” he told it, heart throbbing with residual pain. “I’m not sure what I’d do if my foolishness destroyed my one last connection to you.”

The only response he received was more static. If Ford shut his eyes, he could almost pretend that the sharp crackle that followed was a word, a reply.

But it wasn’t. His heart fell, just a little.

His limbs ached and burned, numbing where he’d begun sinking ever so slightly into the snow. The cold cut into his skin even through his clothes, but everything else hurt even more, so it was very nearly okay.

After a long moment, Ford pulled himself to his feet, setting down the radio to lever himself up.

When he stooped to pick up the radio again, the faint bloodstains left behind on the snow where he’d laid caught his eye. From his hands? His head? Somewhere else? Ford honestly couldn’t tell, and it only occurred to him in passing how that wasn’t… normal. Probably.

For a moment, he lingered on where the blood on his hands came from, the ghost of chill of twisted steel and damp rags under his knuckles, and went still. His breath misted into a cloud that wafted up into his face, and he shut his eyes.

Was the blood even his own?

He straightened up, kicked the snow enough to cover the stain, and pulled himself away.

He’d left the shovel lying beside the fence on the other side when he’d climbed up, but now he reached under the mesh to pull it to his side. Ford straightened, shovel in hand, and winced at the protest of his ribs.

He’s buried it by the tree at the edge of the yard, he remembered. In a box, perhaps ?

There was only one way to find out.

It took a good half hour to dig out the box, and another five minutes to find the key ring in his cavernous pockets and unlock it.

Ford let out a silent sigh of relief as he reverently pulled his journal, still as gleaming and clean as the day he’d kept it away, from its hiding place and slid in into the opposing pocket from its counterpart. Symmetry, and all. Ford didn’t need to be weighed down on one side when his balance was all but shot already.

Mission accomplished, Ford turned back to the fence. His fingers and ribs twinged in anticipation, but he steeled himself as he marched back over. He wasn’t about to let a fence, of all things, best him.

Things had been going remarkably well thus far, and Ford, despite himself, must have let his guard slip ever so slightly on his way through town, back to his house.

This was, of course, his first mistake. Ford had gotten lost in thought, fingers drumming on the back of the radio in his pocket, when he stepped off the curb.

There was a deafening screech.

Shouting,

Fear and shock and horror and lights—

Ford stumbled back with a sharp cry, hit the curb again, and went sprawling, radio pressed to his stomach and books jabbing into his sides. His ears rung from the impact as his breath left him with a whoosh. His visions narrowed momentarily to a pinprick, and Ford forced himself to stay awake, eyes squeezing shut and gut heaving.

A woman’s voice floated over his head.

“Are you alright?!”

Ford squinted his eyes open, wincing. He found a young, brown haired woman leaning over him, uncomfortably close. She wore violently blue eye-shadow, as well as a uniform from the nearby diner, Ford noted distantly. Greasy's? Was that it?

He shifted away and sat up with a grimace, radio still against his chest and a hand in his hair.

“Wh—“ he coughed, gasped again. When he was sure the wind was no longer knocked out of him, he tried again. “What happened?”

The woman had straightened up and put a hand over her heart while Ford recovered himself, turning to scan the opposite side of the road. She turned back when he spoke at last, relief and some other tenser emotion coloring her features. Ford couldn't name it.

“Well, you almost got hit, hun! You got real lucky there, but I could’a sworn there was another poor fella on the street too…”

Ford felt faint. He pulled himself to his feet and forced the shaking of his limbs to still, with limited success. “… Was there, now.”

The woman hummed, entirely too cheery. “Could'a sworn!” she repeated, which was evidently answer enough. Other people in the street had stopped to stare at him, he noticed with a sharp spike of alarm. In all likelyhood it was due to his near-collision. His skin itched despite the rationale, and he fought the urge to visibly prickle under their gawping.

Across the road, deep in the shadows of the opposing alleyway, there was a bright flash of red. Ford nearly jumped, breath catching, but the moment he focused on it, it was gone.

Visual hallucinations are a common symptom of sleep deprivation, he told himself, and it should have hardly been a comfort, but it was. At least hallucinations could be explained and quantified and ignored.

The woman continued after a short pause, when it became clear Ford had nothing to say. “Seems he got away unscathed as well. Dear me,” she laughed.

“Yes, well,” Ford nodded awkwardly as the woman turned to him. “I’ll take my leave, then.”

It was only once he’d walked a few yards away that the woman called out again. he stifled a sigh.

“Wait, mister! I think this is your book?”

Ford whirled around and felt his heart momentarily stop. So it was. His third journal in all its dirt stained glory, was held pinched between two fingers by the diner woman Ford still couldn’t recall the name of. He jolted, sprinting over and snatching it to his chest.

The woman pulled back slightly, brow furrowed. “You’re welcome?”

Ford had already half turned, but gave an incline of his head in acknowledgment before he sped away again.

He needed to get home, regroup, and drink another cup or three of coffee. Immediately.

Then he could figure out the rest.

Chapter Text

The door swung open with a screeching crack-thump against the inner wall.

It hung a bare half inch above the floor, creaking on its hinges as it lazily swayed through the dust-ridden air, before going still.

Ford braced an arm against the doorway and heaved in a series of ragged, wheezing breaths. The woods had gotten dark by the time Ford was just over halfway home, and he'd felt like a scared, pathetic child, running to escape the shadows that danced in the corners of his vision. But it didn't matter now. He couldn't even dredge up the energy to feel ashamed.

The front entrance of his house was nearly as cold as the outside, dim and shadowed in the dying evening light. Stray clumps of porch snow drifted in with the momentum of the door, landing on floorboards and stray papers and books and old experiments Ford never got to cleaning up. Ford forced himself to straighten and shut the door behind him, methodically locking every latch and bolt he’d installed. He ignored the clutter in the hallway as he wove his way to the open doorway and into the kitchen.

On the far side of the room, on the kitchen table, Ford sent a sweeping arm to push the stacks of paper and books to the side, before setting down both of his journals, and the radio beside them.

Still nothing but static. Nothing since the first time, nearly a day ago now.

Ford bit the inside of his cheek as hard as he could without breaking skin, and turned away.

He had his research, he had the bares bones of a plan and… what else did he need?

“Coffee,” Ford muttered to himself, and he scurried away from the table to the coffee machine on the far counter. There was still some left in the pot from that morning, when he’d drank two cups before he set out, he remembered. Thank Moses.

He poured himself another cup of bitter liquid gold and took a sharp gulp. He shuddered. “This absolutely awful cold, did you know, Stanley? But some sacrifices are necessary, in war.”

Ford stared down at his collection on the table, cradling the mug against his chest. “Not that I have the right to talk about sacrifice,” he murmured, taking a sheet from the nearby stack of detritus he’d accumulated and flipping it to its emptier side. He pulled a pen from his breast pocket and clicked it a few times before starting to write.

He continued, brow furrowing as the scratching of pen against paper filled the air.

“Not after what you….”

Static.

He sighed and pulled back to read what he’d written.

“Well, either way, Stanley. I can’t speak of sacrifice, but if there’s one thing I can do, it is wage war.”

It was a simple list, really, once Ford put it down on paper. He needed to secure his mind and the portal, the whole house if he could, and then rebuild it using the blueprints left behind to bring Stanley home. He’d done it once, he could do it again.

He had to be able to do it again. Failure wasn’t an option.

Ford sighed and hunched forward even further. He pushed up his glasses to rub at his eyes. What he needed was a breakthrough, more than anything. Trekking back to the mountains in this weather wasn't exactly feasible anymore, not with the radio in tow.

He pulled the second journal toward him, gently prying apart the pages that had been melded together with dried blood, and began flipping through. He’d focused primarily on the magical side of Gravity Falls once he’d run out of space in his first journal, both of the naturally occurring and ritualistic varieties. He’d found several tomes and records in forgotten archives of the woods and mountains, bartered with the people of the forest for more, and recorded what he couldn’t keep on his shelves in his journal.

If he recalled correctly, he’d written a whole section on shields and protective spells, and there should be—

Ford froze.

His fingers tightened instinctively on the page he was flipping, enough to crease. He tilted his head.

There it was again.

Louder.

A hollow rat-a-tat-tat of knuckles on wood, from the hallway behind him, from the front door.

Ford’s mind raced as his head shot up.

He didn’t know anyone it town well enough for them to visit him, of that much he was certain. It had been far, far longer that 72 hours since Bill made his threat of stealing his eyes, but perhaps he’d simply been biding his time, trying to make Ford break under the uncertainty of his radio silence.

He was a fool if he thought he could break Stanford so easily, after everything else.

Ford gently shut the journal, tucked the plans into the inner pocket of his coat, right by his heart, and backed away from the table.

Another series of knocks.

Ford peered through the kitchen doorway, pressing himself against the wall, and eyed the contents of the hallway critically. There was decent cover by the walls where the boxes and books had piled up, but Ford could see bottles of toxins and vials, most of them unlabeled, scattered throughout the room. Those could be either a problem or an advantage, depending on how things went south.

Another spatter of knocks.

They weren’t leaving.

Ford spotted his crossbow hung beside the door, arrow already snug on the flight deck and string notched. Distantly, Ford worried that the bow might not launch at all. The string wasn’t meant to stay taut for as long as it had been, but he simply hadn’t had the time to rest and reload it.

It would have to do. Ford crept down the hallway, keeping low to the ground, and took up the crossbow, carefully unhooking it from the wall and testing the stress of the wire as he did. Good enough. It would all just have to be enough.

Holding his breath, Ford crouched beside the front door and steadied the crossbow in his non-dominant hand. One by one, he undid the locks as quietly as he could, unlocking the clasps and sliding the chain until it came free and rifling through his pockets for the keys to the rest. One, two, three, four, five, six. Six locks. Hm. He’d never really bothered to count them before, when he’d installed them in a frenzy all those weeks ago.

Hand braced flat on the unlocked, closed door, Ford all but pressed his ear against the wood.

Nothing but the dulled roaring of blood in his ears. Quiet static at his back, filtering in from the other room. Silence.

Then.

The creaking of wood, a murmur too loud to simply be the wind, a breath not his own.

Ford let his finger tighten a hairsbreadth on the trigger.

He turned the doorknob, slowly, slowly, wincing at every creak the metal gave. He didn't dare to straighten up and look through the diamond window on the door. If he could see them through it, they could see him.

But he needed to install a peephole before he shot someone he didn't mean to.

Stanley’s face as he stumbled back from near-certain death at the end of Ford’s crossbow swam through his minds eye as he carefully pried open the door, peeking out. He’s almost pulled the trigger then, from shock, from the tremors that wracked his hands as a consequence of fear, hunger, and a million other excuses that wouldn’t even begin to make up for what he’d almost done.

And then what he had done.

It was only those thoughts that stayed his hand this time. The only thing that prevented him from throwing the door open and shouting to begin with.

But when Ford caught sight of the man on the porch, his breath left him, and he nearly dropped the crossbow entirely.

He could feel his eyes widen, could taste the words rising in his throat like floodwater that he couldn’t have stopped if he tried. A bitter, surprised, overwhelmed wash of thoughts garbling until nothing made it out at all.

Stop.

Ford took a deep breath.

He tried again, opening the door a little wider. A tired smile pulled at his mouth, even as apprehension burned a hole in his gut. He opened his mouth,

—ot to talk. Y-  need h—

-no,

NO    —     DON’T YOU D—

Static, in his ears, buzzing in his brain, numbing, stinging, bright.

When the floorboards closed in on him, he shut his eyes.

And he opened them.

The world trickled back in pieces, static and

color

and sound filtering

in.

Slowly.

From a dream he couldn’t quite recall.

His mind was blissfully silent,

for once.

Chapter Text

When Ford awoke, he couldn't help but smile.

He hummed quietly as he pulled himself out of the sheets, folded up his blanket, and draped it across the foot of his bed. He pulled back to survey the room with satisfaction.

The sun had barely risen, according to the watery light filtering in between the curtains and painting pale shapes on the floor and sheets. The atmosphere was still cool and indistinct, quiet in the way early mornings typically were.

It was a new day.

He’d had so much planned, hadn’t he? There was a faint jittering in his brain, an itch in his mind. There was something he'd needed to do.

Of course, he needed to find… he’d needed to fix—

Hm.

He had a headache. Ford tried to remember if he had any aspirin left in the bathroom cupboard as he walked out of his bedroom, straightening his coat and massaging the bridge of his nose.

What exactly did he need to do today?

Ford was certain he’d had plans. Important ones.

Ah, well. They’d come back to him. Perhaps he’d written them down somewhere, it couldn’t hurt to check. He’d retrieved his journals just a short while before, from, for…

Ford rubbed at his temples with newfound ferocity, eyes pinched shut, as he walked down the stairs and crossed the foyer to the hallway, stepping into the kitchen. Why did his hands burn?

He stopped, hands lowering.

Stared.

…What had happened in here?

He didn’t even know where to look first, in the veritable hurricane that had swept through the room. Books and papers and schematics were strewn across the kitchen table and even on the floor, and he couldn’t help but cringe at the tacky brown stains that covered a good half of them. A half shattered coffee mug laying beside the table was a clear culprit, ceramic spraying across the floorboards from there to the far wall.

He ripped eyes away from the mess on the floor to the rest of the kitchen, almost genuinely afraid to examine it any closer.

He wasn’t disappointed.

Filthy dishes piled up in the sink overflowed out and onto the stained counter-top on his right, some balanced precariously close to the precipice. The only thing that seemed even slightly untouched and cared for was the coffee machine that was tucked against the wall. There were still dark stains in the pot.

Ford forced himself to take a deep, calming breath, and nearly gagged.

The whole room was rank, days old coffee and whatever was in the dishes, clogging the air of the closed room and leaving Ford suffocated. It was dim, window on the far side shuttered with wooden boards against the gentle morning light, and smelled like something or another had died there and been left to rot for weeks. There was a decrepit mausoleum within his own home. A crime scene frozen in time.

Ford backed out of the doorway and sank against the opposing wall, legs folding up beneath him like a puppet cut down from its strings. Struggling for a breath, he tried to take it all in.

He couldn't unsee it now.

The hallway that connected the kitchen to the foyer where he’d come down the stairs, it looked just the same as the kitchen, if not worse. Boxes piled precariously along the walls, with schematics and pages upon pages of research, some of it illegible with water stains, spread out across the floor, and specimens that even had Ford appalled to find discarded so carelessly. Who left his miniature Tesla coil prototype on the floor?

To be honest, he’d probably be more upset if he wasn’t so damn nauseous.

Ford pushed his hands into his eyes and groaned. A fierce, pulsing ache roared to life in his rib-cage, in his hands, in his head. Pain sank its spindly, razor-like teeth into Ford's hippocampus, like it was trying to rip it out of him, trying to jam pieces into a place that didn't fit anymore.

His face was in his hands, breathing, breathing, just trying to breathe into his bandaged hands — why were they bandaged? Why did it still hurt? Why did everything hurt?

What had been done to him?

…What had he done?

Ford wasn't sure who that last thought was directed at — himself or some outside, foreign entity that's evidently wrecked his mind and body. Both, perhaps.

There were holes burning in his mind, like a careful match pressed to wood, just hot enough to char and blacken and render his own thoughts incomprehensible to him, words and voices and pictures faded, buzzing, lost, records scratched looping looping faded missing, lost, lost,

where was it,

what had he done —

Ford didn't know how long he sat there, knees to his chest and face in his hands. Too long. Long enough for things to come back to him, fragments of thoughts and wishes and plans — long enough that Ford could taste the things he was missing on the tip of his tongue. Long enough that he could distinctly feel the places where things had been carved away in swathes, gaping, dark holes in his memory, his mind—

A long time.

Long enough.

Ford dragged himself to his feet, bracing an arm against the wall behind him, and forced himself to turn a more critical eye to the mess made of his home, of himself. The first step of an emergency was to take stock of his situation. It was all he could do.

The kitchen was just as bad as he'd previously thought, if not worse. The hallway too. The foyer was noticeably cleaner, though, couches only shifted slightly out of place, books piled up on the tables and laying crumpled on the floor. If the first two rooms were struck by a freak tornado, this one had been hit by an earthquake.

The trek through the foyer and back upstairs was weighed down by trepidation. Ford clenched the railing with every scrap of might left in him as he did.

He only faltered twice. Once, when he noticed the dark, dried, splatters painting the lip of the bottom stairs, his gut lurching, and once again, right before he reached the landing. He closed his eyes and forced in a deep, calming breath, before continuing on.

His bedroom, the first door to the left, was neat and perfect, everything exactly where it belonged.

Ford stuttered to a stop only a few feet in, and he couldn't help but feel as though he'd walked into a painting someone else had painted for him. Had he truly folded up that blanket, not even fifteen minutes before? Had there been books stacked on his bed-stand and the floor Before too, or had they been scattered on his bed?

He couldn't recall, but he should know, he should, because it was his house, and his life, for fucks sake.

Ford growled and slammed a fist against the door-frame, then jolted at the white-hot spike of pain that shot up and through his entire arm. He hissed through his teeth as he cradled his bandaged hand to his chest.

Enough was enough.

Ford marched out of his room and to the bathroom with the air of a man to a war he didn't know what war he was fighting, but would put up hell to win anyway. He needed answers. And painkillers certainly wouldn't hurt, to start. It would give him a clearer head, at the very least.

The door to the bathroom was plain, smoothly carved wood, sturdy as the day he'd had it installed 6, or 8, or some number of years ago that made spots dance in his eyes thinking about. He reached for the brass handle.

He paused.

On wood, as Ford had found out quite recently — weeks ago, so long ago that he'd had lost track, forgot how to care except he did, he did, because it hurt, it hurt and he couldn't stop it, how did he make it stop — large quantities of blood tended to stain a dark crimson brown, near black where it pooled and dried thickest.

The six fingered hand-print on the center of the door, the other one on the wall beside the door-frame, and the splatters on the floor, they weren't as dark as the blood on the stairs. He could say that much.

That was all he could say.

Ford stared at the center of the hand-print to the right of the door, the spot where the blood was dark as pitch against the grain of wood, from where it had dripped down several feet to the floor, and his throat closed up. He cradled his right hand closer, distinctly aware of the firm wrap of the bandages around its midsection.

If he wasn't struggling to draw in a breath, if his knees hadn't locked, Ford knew he would've screamed. He could feel his chest tighten, and his heart pounded in time with the sudden throbbing anew in his hand. His eyes burned, turned away, somewhere, anywhere else.

He didn't understand.

He didn't— he…

Who did this? Why can't he remember?

He carefully brought his focus back to the doorknob, trying not to tremble at the stars exploding behind his eyes.

Blood didn't soak into metal the way it did on wood. When Ford turned the knob and pulled it open, his hand came away speckled with coppery-brown, flaking off his palm, his fingertips, drifting to the hallway floor.

The inside was worse.

Ford's stomach churned, first with disgust and fear, then nausea. Could his head shut the hell up? It was going to put him in an early grave before whatever had done this to him got the chance to.

Ha. Ha.

Hm.

He shifted forward slowly, one tiny step after another, and took in the veritable hellscape that had been wrought within his bathroom walls. The heavy, sharp scent of copper stung his nose.

When he'd first had this house built, Ford had decided on white tiles for his bathroom floor. He'd been debating between white and brown— no, grey, not brown — but he'd always had a white bathroom when he'd been growing up in backwater Jersey, splashing in the bath as a kid, hoarding the hot water while his brother banged on the door for him to hurry the hell up, finding himself in Stan's position the very next day, getting in the shower and getting drenched with ice-cold water and screaming while his twin cackled from somewhere else in the house—

Well. It had just been a matter of preference. It didn't matter.

He was getting the tiles changed as soon as fucking possible anyway.

Ford grimaced as he tried to take another step, his foot shifting, straining for a moment before the stickiness sharply gave way. The floor was tacky, splattered and smeared with a stark red-brown. Blood stained the wall, the mirror, and the shower curtain on the far side, carving a damning path through the small room.

It was a murder scene straight from some fucked up horror movie, in his very own home.

Ford bit back a soft, horrified noise, grip on his hand tightening. He was by no means a particularly small man, smaller than Stan in stature, sure, but not small.

Right now, he felt no bigger than a child.

Ford didn't want to die.

He stumbled closer to the sink, barely avoiding gripping the bloodied sides as he did, as he tried to take the rest in. The small trashcan between the toilet and the sink was overflowing with used, bloody bandages, as well as crumpled yellow post-its betrayed by the dark ink seeping through their backs. He stared at them, breathing picking up.

He could leave, he thought to himself, and it was the final grasping of straws that had already long slid from his hands, a desperate bid for control. He could close the door, walk out of there, clean up the kitchen for the first time in who-knows-how-long to make it as picture perfect as his bedroom and he could go to the bathroom outside in the woods for the rest of his life and everything could be fine.

Ford laughed, a hoarse, hysterical little sound he'd never admit to.

Yeah, no.

He'd already come this far.

The blood on the floor was still tacky against his pants when he kneeled down, keeping his hands as far up as he could without losing his balance, then resting them on his knees. The trash can was nearly at eye level now, tucked between the sink and the toilet.

Ford reached forward and hooked two fingers against the plastic lip, dragging it closer.

One, by one, the post-its were pressed flat against the floor, and though the blood was dry enough to not seep through them, it was still viscid enough to hold most of the edges down. It was the little things, really.

The first thing that Ford noticed immediately, was that there were two very distinct handwriting styles spattered throughout the notes. One was aggressive, written in a black pen that had been nearly stabbed through the paper in places, with dark, jagged lettering. Jeering, and demanding, and sadistic. Familiar. Ford couldn't place it.

The other one was blue, smudged and shaky, but pressed hard enough to leave grooves in the paper anyway. Ford pulled a blue pen and flipped one of the post-its to its blank side. Carefully, he tried to copy one of the messages down.

He glanced between the handwritings, and his trembling grip tightened around the pen.

Okay. Blue was him.

If only he knew why.

With every note he read, a cold dread sunk its teeth deeper and deeper into his gut.

Who, or what had he been so afraid of?

I'd saved some of these, the thought came to him unbidden.

Ford blinked.

Through the carved out echo-chambers of buzzing and static and dark, there was a fuzzy memory of a handful of post-its on a page in his third journal, fingers pressing them down one by one, trembling, trembling all the same when he wrote back with indignant fury, with fear, with—

They were gone, gone, now. Burned. Buried.

Here?

Ford pulled himself away from the post-its once he'd shone the black-light from his pen-pocket on them and found nothing else of use. He stood as steady as he could, and turned to the final place he hadn't yet examined.

His shower curtain was comprised of two layers of fabric — a thick, woven cloth with thin blue stripes running horizontally through it on the outside, and a thinner, translucent one with a waterproof sheen inside. The edge of the outside one, where he'd usually grip it to push aside, was streaked with a dark red that sunk into the narrow wales of the fabric, giving the impression that someone had dragged a fork down the stain before it could dry.

Ford grabbed the fabric just above and below the blotches of blood— before he went still.

He abruptly became aware of the faint itch of the seams of his dress shirt against his arms and the press of his trench-coat between his shoulders where the fabric had been pulled near taut. Above his head, the pale square light droned. Sweat beaded against his neck and left cold, prickling spots on his skin. His breathing was choppy, short and shallow in his chest.

He shut his eyes and counted down from five, breathing in so deep that his chest ached.

He threw open the shower curtain.

Then— well.

Ford wasn't sure what he was looking at first as he instinctively staggered back, shoes catching on the nauseating stick of the tiles beneath his feet and nearly sending him toppling straight to the floor. He regained his balance with a unique mix of dread and irritation, arms out and back hunched and wondered what exactly his life had become, who the fu—

His mind ground to a halt.

Ford had shut his eyes instinctively as the smell hit him, against the sharp sting of chemical that hit his nose and then the back of his throat like a physical sensation, against the wave of copper that snuck into his mouth like the worlds worst aftertaste, like ink and blood, and

when he opened his eyes,

oh.

Ford's breath hitched, arms dropping to his sides, as he straightened against the sudden chill that wracked his spine.

On the wall of his shower, stark against the white tile, white like snow —ice and snow that seeped into the cuts on his knuckles, into his palm, as he tried to scale down from a roof, choking on his own rage and fear, wondering what Bi— was a painted eye that stretched roughly Ford's wingspan, black and dripping down the wall to the floor in wide swathes, four lashes on top and three underneath. And in the middle—

Ford swallowed back bile.

He clambered into the shower despite the screaming in the back of his mind. Parts missing, parts hidden, every bit of unfettered instinct or wit Ford had left, they all revolted in unison, because the other things he'd seen felt only like remembering. As horrible as they were, they were at least familiar.

This felt different, new, and with it came the unmistakable, horrifyingly sharp premonition of being watched.

There were more post-its on the wall beside the… message. Ford glanced at them momentarily, hands already twisting the shower knob and reaching for the yellow loofah hooked onto the wall beside it.

HOW'D YOU LIKE MY LITTLE GIFT?

PROBABLY TOOK YOU AGES TO FIND THIS ONE, IQ

I'LL SAY IT ONE LAST TIME, IN CASE THE TAPE DOWNSTAIRS DIDN'T CLUE YOU IN

O

P

E

N

T

H

The ice-cold water struck him in the face and chest with all the force of an electric shock.

Ford squinted through the sudden spray on his glasses and grimaced internally at the stick of his clothes against his skin. He shook off the surprise and turned back to the wall with a smile that was more just baring his teeth.

The rest of the post-its peeled off with the force of the pipes shuddering to life, and they melted in the pools of water until they were illegible wads of paper. Ford didn't pay them any mind as he crushed them underfoot.

He was done taking threats and sitting here helpless.

Ford took the loofah to the bloodied six-fingered hand-print in the center of the enormous eye first. The hand-print that streaked down to shape a familiar pupil, the one that trailed and splattered to dry on the floor, finally mixing with the ink and water and washing away in thick, flaky globs. It was coming off first.

He didn't know how long he stood there, scrubbing until the mesh of the loofah scraped his knuckles red and raw. Long enough. Long enough that when he finally flipped the shower off and stepped out, dripping wet, he was shivering too hard to speak.

He'd like to say the wall looked as if the eye was never there, as pristine as the day it was installed, once he was through with it. But that would be a lie.

If Ford squinted, tilted his head just so, it was still there, in the faint and patched stains left behind. Still mocking him.

He was holding the loofah, he realized, and it was dripping all over the floor, onto his soaked shoes.

With an strangled shout, Ford threw it as hard as he could.

It hit the center of the wall with a wet, pathetic splat, and dropped just as unceremoniously to the floor.

Ford heaved in a long, ragged breath.

He threw open the door and let it bang against the inner bathroom wall as he marched out. He was done. Whoever the fuck did this was going to learn to never mess with him again.

The dreadful sloshing squelches of his shoes stopped him halfway down the hallway to the stairs.

Ford could feel the fabric of his wet socks in between his toes now, once he was out of that sight of that fucking eye and he could hear something other than his own heart and running water. He grimaced, and after a long moment of debate, sighed.

He couldn't risk his research getting wet anyway.

Ford found that, at the very least, his linen closet was undisturbed when he went to grab a towel for himself.

As Ford pressed his face into the towel, half-formed thoughts carved their way through his head, drops of water cutting through stone, like a Grecian statue yet to be revealed in its full form. What was it exactly Michelangelo had said?

Every statue was trapped within the confines of the marble. It was simply the task of the sculptor to free them.

And so, Ford, a simple architect of his own mind, chased after the words as he pulled a fresh pair of clothes from his closet, and began the arduous task of peeling himself out of his wet ones.

Thank Moses I'd removed my journals from this coat, Ford thought, and it was then that he realized he'd awoken with both his usual trench-coat and his thicket overcoat on. Another oddity on top of everything else. He toweled himself off and pulled on a dry pair of pants, firmly ignoring the throb of his hand through his soaked bandages, the burning in his lower back, and the pulsing ache in his ribs. None of it was of concern at the moment.

They would have been ruined by the water otherwise. Them and—

Ford's head snapped up.

And—

And what?

This was important, Ford could feel it, he knew it like he knew his name was Stanford Filbrick Pines, he had post-axial polydactyly, he was in Gravity Falls to research anomalies.

He didn't know much else, not for certain.

Ford tugged on his dress shirt and half-heartedly fumbled with the buttons before giving up halfway through. With all the desperation of a dying man, Ford began digging through his drenched overcoat, throwing it open on the bed to expose the inner pockets.

Pens, crumpled post-its with their ink bleeding out and through, spare screws, dozens of things he'd tucked away and forgotten — the normal, soft kind of forgetting — spilled across the sheets. Ford kept going until he gently pried a clump of white, folded paper from his inner-chest pocket.

It wasn't what he was looking for.

Still, he found himself fumbling with the melted, ruined edges of the paper, hunched over the bed with his knees bent like a gargoyle. Despite his best efforts, an imperceptible tremor in his hands nearly tore the thing in half. He let out a thin, sharp sound, heart jumping to his throat.

After collecting himself, he smoothed the paper out as best as he could and set it down on the bed.

Ford could hardly make out what had been written. The ink bled and ran in thin black streaks across the paper, and Ford found himself tracing the lines with the edge of his thumb. He squinted and tilted his head, trying to pick out whatever words he could.

"In order to —" Ford read aloud, before coughing roughly into his sleeve. He might've swallowed more than a little bathwater. He'll be fine. He continued after a long moment. "…to save…" —he hesitated, straining his eyes— "someone. I must…" Ford gently lifted the paper to hold closer to his face. He raised an eyebrow. "The journals? What about them?"

There was no answer. Obviously. Because when has the universe ever made things easy for Stanford Pines?

"A shield would be ideal…" Ford murmured the next line, and it sent a bolt of anxiety through him, though he could hardly fathom why.

Then he remembered the bathroom.

He let out a breath.

"Alright. A shield. I need to secure my mind, and my lab."

Moses, did he ever need to secure his mind.

But from what?

The bottom of the page was the least water damaged from how it'd been folded, though the entire middle had been deemed entirely illegible after Ford spent a solid five minutes trying to decipher it. The last lines, at least, he could read in their entirety.

"I can only hope he can find it in himself to forgive me. He'd be a better man than I ever was."

Ford let his hands drop to his lap.

At some point — Ford wasn't sure when — he'd slid down to kneel on the floor beside the bed, legs crumpled in a heap beneath him.

"Well," he said to the ceiling. After fruitlessly searching for something, anything else to say— he fell silent again.

Chapter Text

Ford stared at the ceiling of his perfect, stupidly clean bedroom, and dug his fingers into his knees. The pain was hardly grounding, twelve faint pinpricks stabbing his thighs and a twinge of his palm against his soaked bandages, but given everything else— it was almost welcome. At least he knew where it came from.

Ford dragged in a breath, and counted to six. He let it out slowly.

In. Two, three, four, five, six. Out.

In, two, three, four, five six, out.

In—

Ford braced his elbow on the bed beside him and dragged himself up to stand. He counted to six, seven, eight until he was steady on his feet.

There was a steady, faint plip-plop, somewhere in the room.

Silence.

Again.

Again.

Ford looked up to the far wall, and there was a dim spark of surprise, like a scrape of static against the back of his brain, when there was nothing but an expanse of smooth, cream-colored plaster to greet him. There should be something else, he felt. Something tall and imposing, metal twisting overhead into the damaged, desiccated form of — of.

He pulled his gaze down, down to the bed.

The overcoat was half-hanging off of it, still soaking wet. Underneath it, on the bare hardwood floor, there was a dark puddle. Ford watched, blankly, as water gathered on the edge of the brown fabric, clear and glistening with whatever early morning light had managed to seep through the curtains and effuse about the room. A long, quiet moment later, where Ford counted his breaths, another drop of water splattered to the ground.

He, crouched, stuck a hand under the coat, and let another droplet hit his unbandaged palm. It was cold.

He stared at it, and let it roll off. His hand remained clean.

Ford couldn't place it, couldn't make heads or tails of the sense memory, but something was different, here. Wrong.

Ford pulled himself away, determined that whatever he was looking for wouldn't be found in either his trench-coat or overcoat, and scoured the rest of the room.

There was nothing. Or, well, there were a lot of things, but not what he was looking for.

What the fuck was he looking for?

He sighed and dragged himself to his feet after checking under the bed for the second time.

Then it was onto checking the other rooms, the linen closet, and skirting carefully around the bathroom, until he was standing just outside the door at the end of the hall.

He reached for the doorknob and—

…pulled back.

Why was he hesitating?

Ford shook his head harshly, reached forward, and pulled the door open before he could second guess himself. He didn't have time for this.

It was only when he stepped into the room and his eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness that the dread properly sunk in.

The sole window in this room was completely smothered with curtains on the far wall, letting hardly a fraction of mid-morning light in to illuminate the space. Ford's eyes tracked over the forgotten mugs of coffee — coffee and herbal tea, he'd always liked tea in the evenings, it settled his nerves — scattered on the bed-stand closest to the door, and on the work table under the window. The bed was unmade.

That wasn't right.

Ford tried to force his feet forward, but found himself stuck. The air was cold, here, clogged with dust. Nobody had been in this room for a long time.

Ford's eyes found the banjo resting just beside the work table, and the spare playing strings looped around the cup full of pens and pencils and tools on the table — a belated Christmas present, Fiddleford had been so — he'd — where is he—

Fiddleford had been here, he knew. He didn't know why, but since when had be been given the luxury of genuine, comprehensible answers?

Ford nearly stepped away, closed the door to let these memories stay buried —because he wasn't ready to confront the source of the nauseating swirl of guilt and anger and fear in his chest, he knew that much— but he then he froze, right there in the doorway.

Somewhere, muffled and indistinct but here.

Static.

That was what he was looking for, he knew it then.

Ford tore into the room, first to the bed-stands and its drawers since they were closest, then headed to the dresser on the opposite wall. He tracked across the room slowly, tilting his head. Listening.

The static got clearer and louder the farther he walked, until eventually, it started fading again. Ford quickly backtracked until he was standing just in front of F— his work table. There. The sound was strongest there.

There were schematics on the table, machine parts and, when Ford shifted the more innocuous looking papers aside, scribbled out eyes. So, so many eyes, watching him, bled out with red ink, blinded, blinded…

Ford swallowed hard and ripped his eyes away from the papers on the desk. He crouched down beside it, pulled the chair out so he could get a clear view, and listened hard.

It was under here, he knew it. He could hear it. Fiddleford always had an affinity for trapdoors and secret hiding spaces.

Why had Fiddleford hidden— what had he— where was he—?

He could hear it. Ford tapped his knuckles along the wall beneath the desk, then the floor. He stopped short when his knuckles finally rang hollow, and a half-hysterical little laugh that was more of a sobbed breath escaped him. Moses.

Knowing Fiddleford, there was probably an elaborate sequence of dials and codes, or a cleverly hidden lever somewhere in the room that would grant him access to the compartment. He'd probably find mentions of its location in the notes on the desk somewhere, if he looked.

Ford got up on his knees and grabbed the heaviest, flattest wrench he could find from the table.

He smashed the sharp edge of the wrench against the seam of the floorboard, again and again, until the wood gave way enough for him to pry it up completely and rip it out with a grunt. He tossed the board behind him, not sparing it a glance.

There.

Ford didn't hesitate, taking up the radio in his arms and holding it close, careful to avoid the antenna as he did. It was warm, buzzing from the static against his chest. Familiar. Important.

"I found you," he breathed, grinning giddily, before he felt an odd rush of shame.

What was he doing? Hugging a radio to his chest, sprawled on the floor of his old missing left gone friend's room, with blood tracking a gruesome trail through his home, and holes in his head? What was he doing?

It was when Ford was trying to summon the strength to pull himself to his feet once more, radio still clutched tight to his abdomen — and he was tired of prying himself off of the floor — that something finally changed.

The static sputtered, dropping and taking Ford's heart with it, before it suddenly erupted to life.

Captain Stan, here on Day— uh. Fuck it, I can do what I want. This place doesn't have a day or night, so we're running on Stan time now.

Captain Stan, here on Pirate-Ninja 3… 4?

Ford choked, nearly toppling back over.

Fuck if I know.

"Stanley?" he whispered, like a dream, like a memory echoed.

This. This was what he was missing.

Stanley didn't answer, which felt like it should have confused him, or irritated him. But he knew. He knew Stan couldn't hear him, knew that Stanley was lost, trapped, and Ford knew that it was him that the note referred to.

As he stood there, radio in hand, several things seemed to hit him at once. A blinding pain reverberated behind his eyes, stabbing into his hippocampus with a bloody vengeance — but with it, came something else.

Stanley was still talking, saying something that escaped Ford for the buzzing in his brain, and all Ford could manage was his brother's name again.

"Stanley," he breathed, and forced his feet to move. He pulled himself out of the dust-ridden bedroom and shut the door behind him, pulling the doorknob until he heard it click.

His feet took him back to the first room he'd woken up in a million years and a morning ago, and slowly, methodically this time, he rifled through the pockets of his trench-coat. It was less soaked than his overcoat, thank Moses, but fear still stabbed in his lungs, because it had to have survived, he couldn't, he couldn't—

His fingers slipped into his coat breast-pocket, and found the fragile edge of a photograph.

With all the intention of a doctor performing open heart surgery, he pried open the pocket and tugged it free.

His breath left him in a rush.

By a miracle, a miracle and two layers of cloth and the sacrifice of his lost plan sheet in the pocket of his overcoat, it had survived. The edges were smudged, ripped and papery, but the two boys in the middle had survived.

Ford tucked the photograph into the pocket of his dress shirt, held the still-chattering radio close, and sighed so hard he could feel his knees weaken.

As he descended in the elevator, journals in one hand and radio in the other, Ford tried— not for the first time, he knew — to figure out his next step.

Whatever had happened to his memories, whatever it had to do with Fiddleford, it had nearly taken any chance of survival from Stanley. It had nearly taken his brother from him. These people, or this phenomenon, was dangerous.

But if he went to go hunt them down and demand answers, he would lose precious time. Who knew how long Stanley had, trying to scrape by in a realm of incomprehensible nightmares.

That was where he was, right?

Ford stepped out of the elevator wishing he had a free hand to try and soothe his blooming headache — both from whatever had happened to him, and pure stress.

Then he looked up, and the journals tumbled to the floor with a rough, pained clatter of metal and leather on rock, and the radio nearly went with it before Ford fumbled for it again. He held it close to his chest, breathless.

The room was a war zone.

Oh God.

How was he meant to fix this?

Ford didn't know how long he'd stood there, a million halfbaked, worthless plans forming in his brain before quickly being discarded. The radio was buzzing against his chest with words by the time Ford found it in himself to move, and actually take inventory of the hellsite that used to be his lab, and whatever it was that he'd built.

Whatever it was. A portal? Ford reached the looming carcass of metal and ran a bruised, scratched up hand along it, almost reverent. It had to be a portal. Stanley had to be on the other side.

He had to fix this.

A tiny voice in his mind, something he'd label sanity if he had enough coherence to listen to it, screamed that portals were science fiction, comic book things, and he needed to sit down and figure out what the hell was actually going on.

But Ford knew, somewhere he couldn't place, somewhere in the dark, echoing caverns that used to be his memories, that this was a portal, and it was real, and Stan was on the other side. It was truth, and it was fact, and so he accepted it.

Stan was still talking when Ford began wandering back to the control center, dazed. Ford squinted to himself. Something about raiding an abandoned campsite?

There's something else to be said about ominous as hell abandoned campsites, though, Stan continued blabbering, before grunting and evidently picking up something heavy, Ford judged by the rustling sound that crackled through the speaker.

They've got lots of shit. Shit they don't need anymore.

Stan paused.

I'm robbing them of their incredible amounts of shit, he clarified, in case it was still ambiguous. Then he grunted again, muttering sharply.

Damn it, what the fuck did they leave in this fuckin' box, rocks?

Another rustling sound, louder.

Oh shit, they are rocks. What the fuck?

Ford, despite himself, laughed.

The sound echoed across the room, and as he continued, laughter turning almost hysterical, he realized Stan was laughing too. There was only static setting their voices apart now.

"I'm coming, Stan," Ford said, once they'd both pulled themselves together. The damage was… well, bad. But it could have been a lot worse. He had his notes, and he had his radio, and he was never going to let anyone mess with his mind again.

"I promise."