Chapter Text
The thing about the end of the world, is that it takes its time.
Stan’s known this for ages. Getting dumped by Carla wasn’t the end of the world. Watching her fall for some hippie loser was the end of the world. Damaging Ford’s perpetual motion machine wasn’t the end of the world. Him showing up the next night, furious and hating Stan, was the end of the world. Even getting kicked out wasn’t the end of the world. The slow spiraling realization that he wasn’t worth anything and would never get to go back was the end of the world.
And a giant triangle appearing out of nowhere to draw a smiley face across the North American continent and then taking a bite out of half the planet wasn’t the end of the world— although admittedly, it is a little more flashy than all of Stan’s previous examples.
No, the end of the world came in the days after.
The resulting natural disasters, from volcanic eruptions and horrendous earthquakes to the mantle of the earth starting to spill out onto the crust. The ensuing panic and desperation of all of the people unlucky enough to survive the original attack. Stan was one, because of course he was. The universe could never be so kind as to give him an easy death.
Ma and Pa might be alive too. He isn’t sure. New Jersey is far enough away from the original “bite zone” that they might have made it out, if they weren’t in the area crushed by the smiley face.
God, this is a weird apocalypse.
It’s also possible, however, that both of them are gone, because if they were visiting either of Stan’s brothers, they would be.
Shermie, in California.
Ford, in Oregon.
Neither of them stood a chance.
Not that it matters either way. Stan wouldn’t be able to get to New Jersey, for numerous reasons.
First of all, he’d starve to death before he’d get there, as all available resources vanished before most people could think about them, whether from natural causes or looting and hoarding. Any kind of official communication died around the same time, not that Stan would have listened to it anyway. The streets turned into a hellscape that matched up to the canyons left from whatever part of the smiley face hadn’t been bitten off. There were even more thugs and shady figures about than Stan was used to having to deal with.
And of course, there’s the fact that Filbrick Pines is absolutely stubborn enough to not have “the end of the world” on his list of reasons to let Stan back into the house.
No, Stan is on his own for however long his life lasts. Or, well, almost on his own. Because the apocalypse couldn’t seem to throw Stan a bone after killing almost every person he still gave a shit about.
Nope, the thing hadn’t even managed to take Rico off his plate. Despite the fact that most of his goons split as soon as they all watched the end of the world go down together, Stan is still running from the man himself. What on the half-earth that’s left Rico could possibly hope to get from Stan now is anyone’s guess. Before the apocalypse, he got it. He wanted the money Stan owed him. But there’s no use for money now, and there’ll be even less of one as time continues to run out. Any sensible person would lie down and die.
Except Rico isn’t a sensible person, and when it comes down to it, Stan isn’t either. He still ran, after all. He’s not sure he knows how to do anything else but try to survive. It’s all he’s known these past ten years. He can’t shut it off just because— god, what the hell had happened? No one had been able to explain it, and no one ever would at this rate. Because while Stan may not be a scientist like Ford, he sure does know how to bet on long odds, and given the current ones they’ve got, he gives the world a week and a half, tops.
So, with the long life expectancy of next Thursday to look forward to, everything else he could possibly value now meaning nothing, and zero chance to get past the smile-canyons and back to whatever might have been left of his family, Stan is doing the only thing he can think of to prolong his life. And that’s head right for the end of the earth.
Maybe if he gets close enough to the point where the planet drops off into the mantle, Rico will leave him alone. And then he’ll… fuck if he knows. Sit back and watch everything crumble until it takes him with it, probably.
The part of this plan that really sucks, however, is that Stan can’t drive a car all the way to the edge of the world. He’s known for a couple hundred miles now that his time with the Stanleymobile is limited, and when the sky catches fire, he’s finally forced to leave it at the side of the road.
Well, it’s not the sky’s fault, exactly, though the smoke doesn’t help with visibility. The main problem is the potholes. They’d been getting worse and worse for a while, and now he’s stopped just before a stretch of road with too many large holes and broken and crumbled sections that he can’t see a way to get through.
Stan lets the car shudder to a stop just in front of the first hole he can’t force his car over, then sighs and shuts off the ignition. He slips the keys in his pocket as a memento.
He starts to push open the car door, and immediately pauses to cough his way through the terrible quality of the air outside. It’s about the same as the air around Pa when he could afford cigars, except about a hundred times worse. Long-term, it’s probably not great to breathe in, but Stan isn’t too worried about lung cancer these days.
After he manages to adjust to the smoke, he pushes the car door the rest of the way open and steps out onto what’s left of the highway he’s been traveling down. He can see the ruined remains of a city ahead of him. Given how much of New Mexico was bitten off, and how close he’s actually able to get to the part that was, it’s probably Roswell. There are worse places to reach the end of the line.
California, for instance.
Or Oregon.
Stan turns back to the Stanleymobile, and pats her a couple of times on the steering wheel. “You did good,” he says, because he has to say something. It’s too monumentous of a moment to leave to silence. The Stanleymobile has been all he’s had for the past decade, he can’t just leave her without thanking her for all she’s done for him.
He reaches out to close the door, then hesitates for another moment. There’s not much in the car worth taking. He’s got his knuckle dusters in his pocket, and has had them there for long before the world ended. He stopped and grabbed that squirrel that had fallen on the windshield a couple dozen miles back, dead from either smoke inhalation or starvation. It’ll make for a good— well, it’ll make for a last meal. There’s bound to be a fire somewhere in the city for him to cook it with, even if it’s just an already-lit pile of rubble.
But that’s about it. Pretty much everything else in the car is trash that came from before the world ended, or products that are now even more useless. Everything except…
Stan pulls the driver’s side visor down. The photo of him and Ford boxing isn’t in very good shape. Not that it was in great shape before, but it was in “hasn’t been through an apocalypse” shape. If he takes it with him, it’ll probably get crushed or burnt or otherwise lost. It definitely won’t stay in this “good” of shape.
But the other option is to leave it in the Stanleymobile, to not carry it with him. Abandon Ford’s memory to a car on the side of the road.
Both of his brothers are dead, and he doesn’t have any photos of Shermie. This is the best he can do.
Stan reaches out and pulls the photo gently off the visor. He tucks the strips of tape that held it there around to the back of the photo rather than risk tearing it pulling them off. He puts the photo in his jacket next to his knuckle dusters, takes a deep breath, pauses to cough through the smoke, and then starts picking his way through the remains of the road in front of him.
Now that he’s not trying to peer through both smoke and a filthy windshield, it’s slightly easier to see. There’s a couple other cars abandoned on the crumbling road, but none of them are worth trying to hotwire. Either the car itself is too destroyed, or the road around it is. The city in front of him is a mess of crumbling and collapsing buildings. It doesn’t look like there were a ton of skyscrapers in the first place, but what is still there would hardly count anymore. The air smells strongly of smoke and fire, and the sky is bright red to match. There looks to be some burnt-out shells of trees just inside the city limits, to contrast with the desert Stan’s been driving through. The state of them ruins any hope of finding water here, but he had some yesterday, and this is going to be his final stop one way or another.
Stan picks his way around the cars as he tries to plan out his next move. He doesn’t expect to find many people alive in the city, except for Rico, if he doesn’t give up and finally leave Stan to his own devices. Stan doesn’t know how likely that is. Rico might not be a sensible person, but he’s always had goons to do most of his work for him. Stan’s not sure if he’s enough of a risk taker to keep following him here.
It’s probably safer to keep acting as If he is, though. And that means the first thing Stan needs to do is get rid of this squirrel.
The building rubble doesn’t seem too bad as Stan reaches the edge of the city, though he’d wager a bet it’s worse in the center of downtown. That’s also probably where he’s going to have to go to find a fire secluded enough that Rico won’t find it, though, so he starts to make his way around the rubble that’s there, which is easy enough for now. There’s some pieces he has to climb over, but most of the concrete he can walk around, and the holes aren’t deep enough that he has to climb down into them, just step.
It doesn’t take long for him to realize the real problem, however, that being that very quickly once he starts into the city he has to hold his sleeve over his mouth to prevent coughing from all of the smoke. There’s not a chance he’s going to be able to make it to the center of the city. He’ll have to find something on fire around here or find one of the tree husks and start one. And given that most of the smoke seems to be coming from closer to the center of the city, the second option is probably his best.
Lighting a fire might as well be lighting up a giant neon sign that says to Rico “Here I am!”, but if he does it fast enough he might be able to eat the squirrel and find a space to hide. And he really needs to eat the squirrel. He ran out of food in his car almost three days ago, he has to eat something soon.
Stan casts his gaze around until he finds a decently large tree sitting on the side of the road. It’s hollowed out and looks very dry, so he’ll have to be careful enough when starting the fire to leave himself an easy escape route, but it’ll serve his purposes just fine.
Stan pulls out his knuckle dusters as he walks over towards the tree, but then pauses for a second and sets them back in his pocket. He reaches up and yanks one of the still-intact branches down, long enough that he can cook the squirrel at a distance. He sets it down behind him, then grabs another to use as a piece of kindling. He pulls his knuckle dusters back out, then flicks one of them against the concrete below him a couple times until he gets sparks, aiming them for the second branch. After a couple tries, it catches, and he picks it up and sets it inside the tree husk. It doesn’t take long for the whole thing to catch, but it looks like it’s going to burn bright and fast, so Stan steps back just far enough to stick the squirrel onto the first branch he grabbed, then holds it out over the fire like he’s roasting a marshmallow.
He has no idea what a properly cooked squirrel looks like, but it’s not like he has to worry too much about long term effects. It just has to be edible.
The fire is burning up fast, however, so after a minute or so, Stan decides to cook the squirrel the way Ma likes to do marshmallows— catch it on fire.
The smell of cooking meat hits his nose as soon as the squirrel catches, and Stan takes as deep a breath as he dares with all the smoke around, savouring it for just a moment. It’s not going to take too before the squirrel will be tough and black if he doesn’t get rid of the fire. But he doubts blowing on it like a marshmallow is going to work in this case, so instead he waves the stick back and forth harshly until the fire goes out, then blows the final remaining embers onto the ground below him.
Alright then, food acquired. He should probably pick a new location to eat it, though.
He picks his knuckle dusters up from the ground and slips them back into his pocket, then walks past the fire, aiming for a good hiding spot that isn’t too close to the center of the city.
Finally, he finds a spot where he can lean against a building that looks stable enough to not fall down, and sits back against it. He pulls one of the legs of the squirrel and takes a bite. It’s small enough that his teeth hit the bone, and it certainly doesn’t taste like it was cooked at a five star restaurant, but it’s the first food he’s had in days, and the first cooked food he’s had in who knows how long. Stan can’t quite help a pleased groan at the taste, closing his eyes to savor it.
He should really know better than to do things like that.
“There you are, Hal.”
Stan’s eyes snap open, and he’s on his feet before he even knows where Rico is. A second later he spots him, standing at the entrance to the street, knife in hand. Honestly, come on. He can’t bring a knife to a knuckle dusters fight.
Stan’s not doubting his chances too much, however, because Rico has definitely looked better. The hand gripping the knife isn’t exactly holding it steady, and his legs look like they’re about to collapse out from under him. While the idea of seeing Rico like this would have made him laugh a couple weeks ago, Stan isn’t too surprised to see it now. He doubts Rico has had as much experience as him dealing with hunger, being the head of a formly-very-scary drug empire. Prison probably helped, but it’s been a while since then, and going three days without food isn’t a skill you can pick right back up. Stan’s been working on his skillset in that regard for over a decade, thank you very much.
The thought strikes him, a little incredible— he could beat Rico. He might be able to kill him, right here and now, and then enjoy his squirrel in peace. And man, is the idea tempting. Rico has put him through a lot. If the apocalypse hadn’t happened, he’d probably still be trying to run from him, panicking about a debt he has no hope of paying back, a debt that could not matter less now. Rico would still have hoards of goons at his disposal, most of whom Stan doesn’t know by name, all of whom would kill him without a second thought, either to impress Rico or to pay down debts of their own. Stan has a literal knife scar in his back from Rico. He has a set of poorly made dentures that work just as well as he needs them to and not any better. He has a slew of bad memories and nightmares that he doubts are ever going away. The idea of getting to pay Rico back for all of that is… well, shit.
It’s strangely disappointing.
What the hell would he get for it now? A week and a half of struggling through hell trying to find another malnourished squirrel to cook? Dammit, Rico. How do you manage to take the fun out of killing you?
“Rico, come on,” Stan says anyway, because if he’s not going to kill him he really doesn’t want to fight him. “What are you even going to get out of this?”
“How about that food you’re hoarding for yourself,” Rico growls, taking a shaky step forward.
Stan pulls off another leg and the tail and then leans the stick the rest of the squirrel is sitting on against the building next to him.
“Come share it with me,” he says, which feels patently insane, but he says it anyway.
Rico seems to think it’s insane too, judging by the slight hysteria that takes over his face. Stan takes a couple steps back away from the squirrel, so Rico knows he won’t try to jump him when he gets close. He puts his hands up, holding nothing but the parts of the squirrel he took for himself. He even left Rico the majority of the meat, which is just unfair, but Rico would definitely try to argue for more if he didn’t.
For a long moment, the two of them just look at each other. Rico’s always been good with evaluating people just like Stan is. Stan can’t help but wonder what’s going through his head. Not much is going through his, except for how tired he is and how much he just wants to sit and eat the squirrel and how little he wants to fight about it.
“Come on,” Stan says. “You can stay over there, I’ll stay over here. Just— just sit with me.”
Rico watches him for another long pause. Finally, though he doesn’t lower the knife, he takes a small step towards the stick on the building. Stan doesn’t move or lower his hands until he reaches it, and picks it up. He peers at Stan suspiciously, then looks back at the squirrel.
“How did you guess,” Stan deadpans, because he knows what Rico is thinking. “I poisoned just the top of it in the seconds after I sat down, with my giant supply of poison that I’ve acquired during the apocalypse.” As if to prove his point, he takes another bite of the squirrel leg he’d been eating before.
Rico huffs, like he doesn’t want to acknowledge the good point Stan’s made. But finally, after another second, he sits down with the stick.
Stan feels the tension in his shoulders rush out of them, more than a little amazed that worked. He sits down right where he’s standing, and goes back to eating the squirrel leg, though he doesn’t close his eyes again this time.
It doesn’t take long before he realizes the other problem with this plan, however, that being that sitting across from Rico and trying to calmly eat a meal isn’t really something he can just do. Rico seems to all but attack the part of the squirrel he was given, not really seeming to want to savor it like Stan is with his, and watching him do that is both bizarre and unsettling. In the end, Stan keeps the majority of his gaze on his own meat and his peripheral view on Rico, and works his way through one squirrel leg, then the second.
Rico doesn’t say much, which is probably good, because Stan can’t think of much the two of them would have to talk about. What is he supposed to say to the guy who’s wanted him dead for ages? “Hey, how are you handling the apocalypse?” The answer is written in his shaking legs and the desperation in his eyes that Stan hasn’t seen since they were escaping prison together.
Maybe this is where Rico’s at too, though, because as Stan continues eating, the tension slowly seems to drain out of the air around them. When he casts a glance back up at Rico, he finds him eating his meat and not paying Stan much attention at all.
For a moment, the hysteria of the situation gets to him. He’s sitting surrounded by burning rubble, eating meat from a malnourished squirrel, with Rico of all people. A laugh bubbles up in Stan’s throat, and he just barely manages to swallow it down.
It’s after Stan finishes the second leg, however, that his luck takes another turn, one he probably should have seen coming. Rico stands up, and Stan does too before he even really processes what’s happening, gaze flicking to him. Rico’s got his knife back out.
“Give me the tail,” he says.
Yeah. Figures.
Stan looks down at the tail, trying to debate how little he wants to fight versus how hungry he still is. Apparently his second of debate is a second too long however, because Rico starts for him with the knife.
“Oh, come on, man,” Stan says, stepping backwards. But it doesn’t matter at this point. Rico’s either going to kill him and take the tail, or take the tail when Stan gives it to him, then go right back to killing him afterwards.
And, well. Stan’s hungry.
So he shoves the entire tail in his mouth, trying to chew past the less pleasant texture of the tail fur, and slips his hands into his pockets for his knuckle dusters.
Rico gives a cry of desperate rage, and sprints right at him.
Stan dives to the side just in time to avoid the knife and swallows the last bit of the squirrel. Running back the way he came isn’t going to do any good. At this point, it’s pretty clear Rico isn’t going to be outrun. Stan’s going to have to fight him, and see what happens.
He turns to face Rico as he runs back at him again, and ducks under the knife before bringing his left hook up against Rico’s jaw. The knuckle dusters clang against bone, and Rico cries out and stumbles back.
Stan aims another fist for the side of his head, but Rico manages to take a couple extra steps back with his stumble, leaving Stan’s fist to hit empty air.
Rico takes another swing with his knife, and Stan takes another step to the side. He aims again for Rico’s head, but Rico sees him coming this time.
He steps far enough away to leave Stan stumbling for a minute, which gives Rico time to make it behind him.
Stan feels a rough grab at his arm, and aims a blind elbow back behind him. He hits something, though he hears more of a muffled grunt instead of a cry of pain, and the arm doesn’t let go.
So instead, he switches gears and spins himself around, twisting his arm but allowing him to see where Rico is at least. Just in time, it seems, because Rico’s knife is coming straight for Stan’s head.
Stan manages to duck just far enough to avoid it, though his wrist starts to protest.
Stan aims his free hand upwards as the knife passes over his head, but Rico’s grip on it is too tight for his knuckle dusters to knock it away.
Rico’s arm now hovers unnaturally over Stan’s, which gives Stan just long enough to aim a right kick at Rico’s arm. Unfortunately, it doesn’t hit as hard as he’d like, and Rico has too much time to tighten his grip again.
Stan spins back around before Rico can yank him closer, which gets rid of his visual but untwists his arm, and aims another elbow behind him, this one higher and towards where he remembers the face.
He hits what feels like a nose with a loud crack, and Rico cries out in pain. But instead of letting go, he brings the knife back around from his other side, and Stan feels a large slice across the back of his elbow.
He bites down on his own cry and dodges the knife’s return blow for his face. It whistles as it passes over his nose.
He can all but see Rico swinging the knife back around towards his neck, but his attempt to knock it out of his hand didn’t go well, and his elbows to the face haven’t lessened the grip on his arm.
Stan throws his head back against Rico’s face, a final attempt to get him to let go if he hits his nose again. But Rico must lean his head back just far enough to avoid it, because all that happens is Stan’s neck snaps painfully.
Rico’s other hand grabs his hair and he’s yanked back into Rico’s chest, where he does not want to be, he’s not going to make it out of here like this.
He leans forward, preparing to try and snap his head back again, but the knife is coming too fast towards his throat, and Stan has just enough time to process that this might be it, he might be ducking out of the apocalypse a week and a half early, but instead something far more strange happens.
Out of nowhere, a muscular man in ugly black and gray armor with bright green gloves appears in front of both him and Rico.
Clearly neither of them were expecting it, because they both give twin noises of surprise, and Rico changes the direction of his knife. The man, however, does not seem at all interested in Rico, and instead reaches out and grabs Stan by his free arm.
Before Stan can even attempt to figure out how the hell to fight two guys when he was barely handling one, the man grabs something attached to his belt. It looks sort of like a gun, but far more futuristic looking than Stan’s ever seen.
He aims it at Rico’s arm and fires, and to Stan’s horror, the entire arm disintegrates and the knife clatters to the ground.
Rico shrieks, animalistic and pained, and doesn’t stop.
The man, however, doesn’t react except to grab Stan and yank him forward, away from Rico. All of Stan’s instincts start screaming run, despite how little that will likely matter in a couple seconds, but before he can even try, the man grabs something else from his belt. Is that a tape measure?
The man lets go of Stan momentarily, pulls the tape measure out almost as far as it seems to go, and then reaches forward to grab Stan’s arm again.
He hits something on top of the tape measure, and everything around them vanishes all at once.
…
Stan immediately tries to wrench his arm away, and is surprised to find no resistance as he does so. In fact, the man from before, still there, just lets him pull free and take a couple steps back, not seeming to object in the slightest.
“What— what the hell,” Stan snaps, hands going up in front of his face, as if they’re going to do anything against the futuristic laser gun whatever thing that just disintegrated Rico’s arm. “Who are you? Where am I? What’s—”
“Stanley, please, calm down,” comes a new voice. “We can explain everything.”
Stanley.
“No one’s supposed to know that name,” Stan snaps, though he doesn’t take his gaze off the first guy with the laser gun. “Rico doesn’t know that name. Who are you?”
“I’m happy to explain everything,” says the new voice. “Just please, lower your hands and talk with us for a bit.”
“Not until that gun gets put away,” Stan snaps, keeping his gaze firmly on the first guy. Now that he’s not running from a knife, he notices he’s wearing what looks like a name tag that says “Lolph,” which, what kind of name is that?
Either way, Lolph sighs, lowers his gun, and straps it back to his belt. Stan narrows his eyes slightly. He wasn’t expecting him to actually do that.
“Alright, there,” the new voice says, a note of attempted soothing in his voice that Stan isn’t particularly a fan of. “Guns are away. Can we talk now?”
Stan glares at Lolph for another couple seconds before finally casting his gaze around at the rest of where he’s ended up.
There’s not a ton of fun aspects to the room. It looks more like a holding cell, which, to be fair, could very well be where he is. The room is featureless and dark, with the only things there being three chairs to his right, himself and the two men in ugly armor, and a square table in between the chairs. Lolph stands opposing Stan, with his gun and tape measure both clipped to his belt, and some weird green eye piece that looks like suspiciously like a gun scope. He doesn’t look particularly happy to be there. On the other side of the chairs stands the other agent. His name tag reads “Dundgren.” He’s got dark skin, as opposed to Lolph’s pale variety. He’s got a green eye piece too, and a scar on his other eye. He’s got the same gun, tape measure, and muscles as Lolph, but he’s done all the talking so far, and he’s holding a third of those tape measure things, so Stan’s willing to bet he’s the one in charge.
Stan levels his gaze back at him, trying to gauge what his intentions are. “Where are we, and why did you bring me here?” he asks.
“Well, I would hope that latter answer would be fairly obvious,” Dundgren says, raising an eyebrow. “You were about to die.”
Stan scoffs and crosses his arms. “No I wasn’t,” he says, aiming for an “overconfident idiot” tone.
A lot of people have been about to die lately. Stan hasn’t heard of a sudden rise in guardian angels with teleporting tape measures.
Dundgren gives Stan an unamused look. “The man was aiming a knife at your neck. An injury like that in your time period is a death sentence.”
“Please, I almost had him.” In his time period?
Dundgren rolls his eyes, and a little bit of the tension in his shoulders vanishes. Good. Let your guard down.
“As for the first question,” Dundgren continues. “That’s a little more complicated.”
“Great,” Stan says, walking over towards one of the chairs— the one alone on its side of the square table, clearly meant for him. He plops down in it, then kicks his feet up on the table and folds his hands behind his head. “You don’t mind if I sit then, do you? I haven’t gotten a chance to relax in a while.”
“No, please,” Dundgren says, though Stan can hear the subtle disgust in his voice. Likely at the dirt Stan is now getting all over the table. On the other side of the room, Lolph makes less of an effort to hide his disapproval, and lets out an exasperated sigh.
After a second, however, both of them walk forward and take the two chairs on the opposite side of the table.
“Alright,” Dundgren says. “There isn’t really a way to ease into this. You’re not in your own time anymore.”
Stan raises an eyebrow. “You’re telling me Lolphy here came and grabbed me and we time traveled, yeah?”
Both of them seem surprised.
“Well, yes,” Dundgren says. “Usually people are more shocked.”
“Don’t call me Lolphy,” Lolph mutters.
“Buddy, not too long ago a giant nacho chip took a bite out of the planet,” Stan says, ignoring Lolph’s comment. “At this point I’m leaving everything on the table.”
Both of them at least have the decency to look a little sheepish.
“Well, yes,” Dundgren says again. “You’re in what we call a time pocket, it’s a place time agents can go outside of the normal time stream if the period they’re trying to reach is unavailable for some reason. But to get back to the Bill Cipher incident—”
“Who?”
Dundgren grimaces. “The giant nacho chip,” he says, with some difficulty.
Stan snorts. “Yeah, I figured, I just wanted to hear you say it.”
Dundgren gives him an unamused look.
“Come on, man, go easy on me,” Stan says. “I’ve been dealing with an apocalypse. What about the nacho chip?”
“None of that was supposed to happen,” Lolph says, sounding frustrated. “Can we get on with this explanation?”
Dundgren shoots him a look, and Stan pulls his hands out from behind his head, attention officially piqued.
“What do you mean ‘none of that was supposed to happen?’” he asks.
Dundgren sighs. “Well, suffice to say Lolph and I are from more than nine days into the future, which is how long your current timeline has left.”
Stan tries very hard not to show anything on his face. “Huh,” he says, “neat.”
Lolph does not seem particularly fond of that response. Stan does not particularly care. He doesn’t want to know how long he has left. He’d wanted to live in blissful ignorance while he tried to gather up the courage to take care of himself first. Thanks a lot, asshole future guys.
“How does that not bother you?” Lolph snaps. “Do you have any idea how much is riding on you?”
Stan plans to shoot back some kind of comment that he stopped being bothered after he’d finished hyperventilating the first time, the day after the apocalypse started. Instead, his attention is immediately drawn to Dundgren, who’s giving Lolph an extremely frustrated look.
So something important is riding on him, then.
Well, he could think of a couple better options they should have picked first.
“Why would I?” he says, putting his hands carelessly behind his head again. “Neither of you have actually bothered to explain anything.”
“We’re getting there,” Dundgren says, sounding significantly more tense. “The point is no, the apocalypse that you’ve been living through was not supposed to have happened. We were in a time pocket like this when the anomaly occurred, so we have a chance to fix it, even though the future we came from is technically gone. We are reaching out to you in an attempt to stop the apocalypse from occurring.”
Stan coughs out a surprised laugh. “Me?” he asks. “Interesting choice.”
“Are you saying you won’t do it?” Lolph snaps.
“Yeesh, calm down, Lolphy. Didn’t say anything of the sort.” Stan glances over at Dundgren and rolls his eyes, as if to say, “This guy, right?”
Dundgren does not seem amused.
“Look, I’m not saying I wouldn’t be willing to help, necessarily,” Stan says. “I get it. End of the world and all that. Generally bad. But what makes you think I can do anything? That Bill guy was so huge that I doubt he could even, you know, see me trying to stop him.”
“The apocalypse was not caused by Bill Cipher,” Dundgren says.
Stan blinks at him. “Uh. Did you guys, like, read the timeline screwup wrong? ‘Cause he’s the one who ate everything.”
Dundgren sighs, and looks back at Stan. The calculating he’s doing is obvious on his face.
“If left to his own devices,” he says slowly. “Bill would not have been able to invade this dimension at all.”
This dimension? Implying other dimensions? Stan would ask for a second to wrap his head around that one, but Dundgren is already continuing to talk. So, other dimensions. Sure, why not.
“The fact that he was able to was due entirely to the help of one man, who he tricked into building a gateway into this dimension.”
“That— wait,” Stan says. “Let me see if I’ve got this right. You’re telling me the entire apocalypse was caused by one idiot who let himself get conned?”
“Yes,” Dundgren says plainly.
Stan opens his mouth to reply, but nothing comes out. And this time, at least, Dundgren seems willing to let him process, which is good, because Stan needs to.
One person. A single individual ended the entire world. That’s… well, that’s just unfair on a number of levels.
It’s not like Stan doesn’t know how cons work. You can convince people to do some pretty stupid things. Hell, he’s convinced people to do some pretty stupid things before. But there’s usually a point, a line you have to be careful not to cross, or you give it all away. You have to learn how to walk that line of not coming off to a victim as too good to be true, or too obviously trying to screw them over. You have to make sure you sound believable.
And hey, call Stan crazy, but he would have thought most people’s lines stopped before “the end of the fucking world.”
Or at least, he would have thought that before now.
Stan pulls his feet off the table, and drops them onto the floor in front of him. He lowers his hands to his lap, and runs them along his legs.
“Well,” he says. “I guess a conveniently timed bus would have saved everyone a lot of grief, huh.”
“Funny you bring that up,” Lolph says, only to earn another ‘shut up’ look from Dundgren.
Stan narrows his eyes slightly. “What do you mean?”
Dundgren looks back at him, clearly searching for very specific words.
“We were hoping,” he says finally. “That you could help us create a conveniently timed bus situation.”
“You want me to kill the guy?” Stan asks, raising an eyebrow.
“In a manner of speaking.”
Stan narrows his eyes again. “What other manner of speaking is there? You want me to kill the guy.”
Dundgren sighs. “Yes. It is the easiest and most reliable way to prevent all of this.”
Stan looks from Dundgren to Lolph and back, but doesn’t find any more answers on either of their faces. “Why me?” he asks.
“Our options are… limited,” Dundgren says. Stan looks at him for a minute, but he doesn’t say anything else. He could easily be talking about the “end of the world” thing, but if that was the case, why not just say that? On that matter, why not grab Rico instead of him? He’d be much more willing to kill someone, especially if it benefitted him.
“You won’t even vanish from existence, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Lolph says, drawing Stan’s gaze. “Not with the individualized merger in the time tape.”
“The who what now?”
“We’ve built an individualized timeline merger into the time tape,” Dundgren says, tone very clipped and irritable at this point.
Stan raises an eyebrow. “Okay…?”
Lolph sighs, as if Stan’s a particularly slow child. “When you go back, there would be two versions of you. But with the merger, you’ll both combine into one form as soon as you land in the set time. So that way you’ll be able to continue living after you’ve saved the world, even though your timeline technically doesn’t exist. It’ll even bring your car to you, just for ease of travel. So if you—”
All of the alarm bells that Stan’s been counting up quietly in his head start shrieking, and he holds up a hand. “Wait. Stop.”
Lolph stops.
“Why would you do that?” Stan asks.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Stan says, talking like they’re particularly slow children, “that I am going to be dead in a week, when the rest of the world finishes going up in flames. What do I care if I go back to save everything and then someone else lives on in my place? I won’t be around to see it either way. At this point, saving the world is just practical.”
Dundgren and Lolph exchange a glance. Dundgren’s face has an air of “I told you so” to it.
Stan raises himself as tall as he can, and crosses his arms. “Okay, that’s it. Why do you need me to do this so bad, what are you asking me to do, and why are you trying so hard to sweeten the deal?”
Both of them look back at Stan, and Dundgren sighs. “The person who caused the apocalypse,” he says.
“What about ‘em.”
The agent takes a breath, and Stan recognizes the look of a man who’s really not going to like what he has to say next.
“It’s your brother.”