Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Stanley led them both to his car outside of the building. Ford got inside and Emma-May was soon to follow, sitting in the back with a bag full of things she had taken from Fiddleford and the others. He rubbed his sore wrists and looked out the window. There were insects inside of him. They had always been there, as long as he could remember, and right now they were just as upset as he was. They gnawed at the places where the rope had dug into his skin as if they were trying to help him get them off, even though Stanley had already gotten them off.

Ford’s eyes had run out of tears. He pressed the side of his forehead to the glass and curled in on himself as all of the muscles in his abdomen tensed and untensed like they were still trying to squeeze more tears from him. His body shook.

Fiddleford hadn’t taken anything from him. He hadn’t gotten the chance, because Stanley and Emma-May had interrupted him, which was - it was good. But he still felt like he had lost something, even though he knew more now than ever before, because in his mind he saw snow and blood and the ground far below.

‘He tried to throw you off a roof!’ Fiddleford had said.

Fiddleford had said a lot of things. Ford didn’t often believe him, but when he had spoken this time, Ford knew it was true, because he remembered it. He felt angry with himself now. He should have known better than to think he could have had something so unquestionably good. He should have guessed earlier that Bill had not actually been his friend.

Good things were always bad things in disguise.

He didn’t realize when they had arrived or when they had dropped Emma-May off at her house. It felt like he blinked and then Stanley was helping him out of the car and up to their room.

He recognized the letters on the table. Stanley moved past them and gently pushed him to sit on his bed, saying something Ford nodded along to without listening. He watched Stanley walk into the bathroom and come out with a white box, then drag a chair from the table over to his bed to sit in.

“Show me your wrists.”

Ford glanced down and shakily rolled up one sleeve of his sweater and then the other. Then he held them out for Stanley to see. Stanley turned them over, looking at them, and told him to get up. He got up. They washed his wrists in the sink and sat back down, where Stanley reached into the box and pulled out a short jar of something. He scooped it up with his fingers and spread it over the red areas circling his wrists and up his forearms. Then he padded them with gauze and wrapped them with tape.

Stanley asked him if he was hurt anywhere else, so he rolled up the hems of his pant legs too and showed him his ankles, and they did it all over again. Ford grimaced when they were done. He felt like - he didn’t know what he felt like, but it wasn’t fun. The gauze itched. Stanley patted him on the shoulder and told him he’d be fine and to get some rest.

He wasn’t tired, so he stayed where he was and watched Stanley move around the house. A chair was propped up under the front door handle. The blinds were shut. The windows were already locked. The letters were gathered into a pile and left on the table. A pot was put on the stove. He blinked and Stanley was putting a mug in his hands.

He lifted it to his lips and drank. It was warm and slipped easily down his throat. It tasted… sweet.

Slowly, his eyelids began to grow heavier.

At some point, the nearly-empty mug was gently lifted from his hands and he crawled beneath his blankets and fell asleep. His sleep was full of dreams and his dreams were really nightmares.

He didn’t think he liked the color yellow anymore.

---

It was better to be alone, Ford thought. No one could betray you if you were alone. No one could lie to you and flatter you and make you do things for them by pretending to be your friend if you were alone. He liked Stanley and Emma-May, but he had liked Fiddleford and Bill too, and he knew it was only a matter of time before they showed their true colors.

“Thinking about living in the woods again?” Stanley asked from behind him. He tensed and tightened his grip on the strap of the backpack on the table. It was packed. He had packed it himself yesterday. He said nothing.

Stanley took the backpack from him and unzipped it to look inside, pausing in case Ford was going to stop him, but Ford didn’t. He just stood there and watched his brother poke around through his supplies.

“Looks good to me,” he said. “You forgot your canteen, though. You’re probably gonna want that.”

And then Stanley went and filled up Ford’s canteen with tap water and screwed it tightly shut before tucking it into one of the backpack’s side pockets. He looked up at him with a satisfied smile, dusting off his hands even though there was no need to.

“There, good to go.”

Ford didn’t meet his brother’s eyes when he lifted the backpack up and slipped his arms through the straps. He adjusted it on his back, put on his new shoes, and started for the front door.

As Ford reached for the doorknob, Stanley said, “Want me to come with you?”

He sounded strange.

Ford hesitated. Then he made himself shake his head and open the door. He took one step outside.

“Will you come back?”

He screwed his eyes shut and held the straps of his backpack tightly for a second. He forced himself to keep going. He did not look back.

It was probably all a trick, anyway.

---

He didn’t really like being alone. It felt familiar to him in a way that made him feel sick. Still, he knew it would be better this way, by himself where no one could hurt him. Except, when he laid down for the night and closed his eyes, he couldn’t stop shivering. His thin blanket was not good at keeping the cold out. The sun was eager to leave in the evening and reluctant to come back in the morning, the wind was biting, and it rained almost every day.

Ford sneezed. He had been doing that a lot more lately. He gathered up his supplies and took down the shelter he had made with his blanket and set out in the foggy morning to find the river again. When his alarm went off, he had two fish to eat, and when he was finished he sighed and put his feet into the icy water to watch the still-living fish swim past him.

Rain pattered down on his head and back. It was light but if it kept up like this he would be very wet soon. He should have brought an umbrella, perhaps.

A school of small black fish began investigating his ankles. He smiled.

---

Ford was sick, probably. He didn’t mind. It felt good to be able to decide what he was going to do about it, which was stay put and drink more water, without anyone telling him what to do. His head hurt and he was tired, but Fiddleford was not here, and even though it was cold and wet he was okay.

He still didn’t know what he wanted to do with himself. The insects were happy out here. Sometimes they got excited when he saw something interesting, and sometimes he got excited, too, instead of scared. He still didn’t know where the insects had come from, and part of him wondered if they were real at all, but he didn't have a better name for them so insects they remained.

He closed his eyes as he laid on his back on his blanket. The cicadas were buzzing. They always were. In the distance, he heard the faint rumbling of thunder.

I need to move away from the river. The thought came to him as if out of nowhere, but as soon as he had had it he knew it was true. If it was going to thunder and rain then the river was the last place he wanted to be. So he sat up, sneezed twice, and packed up again.

He found a narrow cave and weathered the storm in there. He used to like thunderstorms, but now every flash of lightning made him jump and flinch. He hung his blanket over the entrance and tried to fall asleep.

---

Something had begun to grow in his can of dirt. Ford gazed at the crown of thin, pale green leaves poking up from the dirt, sprouting from the same impossibly thin stem, and poured a little water from his canteen into the can. With his knife, he worked holes into the bottom of it, careful not to tip it upside-down. Then he put it in the other side pocket of his backpack and tested to make sure it was secure before he started walking again.

---

He used to be a scientist. He didn’t know for certain what had happened to his research, but he could guess. Emma-May was a scientist too. She was building a lab in Gravity Falls right now and it was supposed to be for both of them.

Did he want to be a scientist? He thought about it as he lowered his baited hook and fishing line into the lake water. He liked learning things, or he used to. Whether or not he still did… he didn't know.

Reading was hard. He could do it, but it took him a long while. Writing took less effort because he already knew what the words were. His hands, though - his hands were shaky, and it made everything he wrote look shaky too. Maybe he could improve with practice. Maybe he couldn’t. He didn’t know that, either.

It seemed like there were a lot of things he didn’t know about himself anymore. It had nothing to do with his memory and everything to do with the fact that he was different now. He had changed, and he hadn’t had very many opportunities to figure out just how much.

Something tugged on his line. He pulled it out of the water with little effort - it was a small fish - and reached out to pull it off the hook.

When he took a closer look, the fish had two heads.

Ford set down his fishing rod and held the creature in two hands, lowering it just far enough into the water that it would be able to breathe but not so far in that he couldn’t see it. He twisted around to lay on his stomach on the rocks and peered closer at it.

It was olive green and spotted yellow, with red fins. Each head had a pair of round black eyes and fluttering gills. It thrashed around in his hands and he studied it for a moment longer before letting it go. It had looked like one head was in line with the rest of the body, while the other head was protruding outwards at an angle. His fingers twitched towards his jacket pocket, but there was nothing there.

He remained there for a minute longer before he rolled back over and sat back up. He still had fish to catch for dinner. But part of him still thought about the two-headed fish he had held in his hands.

He wished he could have taken it with him.

---

The little plant in his can was growing a second set of tiny needle-like leaves. It was probably a little spruce sapling. He liked looking at it.

If it didn’t die in the winter, maybe one day it would be too big for his can. Then he would have to find somewhere to plant it where nothing would eat or trample it. Maybe he would just get a pot for it. He didn't have any money to buy one, but Stanley did, and Emma-May always had extra. They would probably agree to help him.

He didn’t want them to help him, though. He wanted to be able to do it himself, to take care of himself and buy his own things and be his own person.

Sometimes he felt like no one treated him like an adult anymore. Stanley was nice, but he was too nice, and he never fought with him or complained about him or teased him like he had when they were kids. Emma-May had started out fine but after Fiddleford almost stole his memories again she had been acting like he needed constant supervision or he would disappear into thin air.

They were just trying to make sure that he didn’t leave them like he had left Fiddleford. They were being overly cautious and excessively nice because they wanted Ford to stay there and - and - well, do something for them. He couldn’t figure out what they wanted from him yet. Either they were lying to him, or they weren’t lying, and they actually did look at him and see someone who needed to be treated like a child.

He didn’t know which one was worse. He knew he wasn’t as capable as he used to be when it came to talking and reading and most of everything, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew every tree in the forest for miles around, he could catch fish and cook them, he knew which plants were safe to eat and which ones to avoid, and he knew the names of all the insects he saw. He couldn’t do complicated equations in his head like he could before, but he felt like if he could just try long and hard enough he could still figure it out. He knew all the steps and which processes did what. His thoughts took longer to form than they used to, but if they would just wait for a minute, he could still think.

He wasn’t a child. He didn’t need to be placated with crossword puzzles or books or television or puppies. Just thinking about it made Ford grit his teeth and clench his backpack straps in his fists as he walked. He was Stanford Filbrick Pines. He had six doctorates. Was that not enough? Did he need twelve?

…But Emma-May had said she was rebuilding his lab, not just for her own research, but for his as well. Had that been a lie?

It was hard to say.

Ford was not good at spotting lies. If he had been, maybe none of this would have happened in the first place.

He sighed and decided to find somewhere to stop and rest for a while. It was beginning to seem like the only way he could know for certain would be to go back and see for himself what happened when he tried.

He flicked open his knife and flicked it closed again, over and over and over, while he mulled it over in his head.

If they wanted to keep him close, they were bad at it. Stanley hadn’t even stopped him from going. Did that mean he didn’t want him around after all? No, he decided, because Stanley had asked him if he could come with him, and then if he was coming back when he said no. That didn’t sound like something someone would say if they wanted him gone.

He flicked the knife closed and slid it into his pocket again. The boulder beneath him was cool against his palms as he leaned back and looked up at the purpling sky.

There had to be something he could do. His research was gone. The portal was gone. But Gravity Falls was still around, and there were so many things here that no one else knew about but him. What good would it do if he never told anyone about it? And there were still so many things he didn’t know, so many things he didn’t yet understand.

There were so many things here that he wanted to show someone, someday.

---

When Ford made the decision to go back, it was when he woke up in the middle of the night to find a light dusting of snow across the clearing and settling on his cheek. It was going to be winter soon if it wasn’t already, and even if he could find a way to survive it (and he could, he knew he could) he knew that the little spruce tree growing in his can wouldn’t. It needed to be inside, where it was warm, or it would die, because it was too small to make it otherwise.

He didn’t wait for morning. He clicked on his flashlight and packed up. He draped his blanket over himself and his backpack, strapped his fishing rod to the back of it, and started walking.

His eyelids drooped and his steps were slow. He stopped to close his eyes and rest often, but he had still made good progress by the time dawn finally began to lighten the forest and he no longer needed the artificial light from his flashlight. When his alarms went off, he stopped and found something to eat, and the rest of the time he walked.

The snow fell heavier and heavier. His shoes left prints in the white blanket covering the forest floor. His ears and nose went numb from cold and he breathed into his hands to warm his face.

It was not easy, but he kept going. He did not stop longer than he had to until he reached the edge of the treeline. Part of him dreaded going back. The other part of him thought about the spruce tree and kept going.

Stanley wasn’t home when he unlocked the door and let himself in, so he had time to put his things away, put the sapling by the window in a dish, and take a shower before he came back. When he ran his hand over his arm under the warm spray, there were small bumps and lines, but nothing caught. Nothing hurt.

He scrubbed the dirt and snow and sap from his hair and watched as the water circling the drain went from murky to clear. He stepped out and dried himself with a towel and dressed himself in fresh clothes. His nails had been kept short by digging in the ground and handling wood, but he smoothed out the edges with a nail file and ran his thumb over them.

When he looked up into the mirror he found that his hair had grown long. Longer than he had ever worn it before. He hadn’t had a haircut since leaving Fiddleford. He used his fingers to comb it out of his eyes and frowned at his reflection.

What was it about him that Fiddleford had liked so much? Whatever it was, Bill had liked something about him too. Was he desirable? Was he just gullible? Did everyone else see it, too?

He wished he knew, so that he could cut that part of himself out and put it in the trash to rot.

He slowly rubbed his glasses clean with a cloth and put them on again. Then, without looking at the mirror again, he turned and left the room.

---

Ford was painstakingly attempting to draw the two-headed salter he had found days ago on a piece of lined paper he had torn from a notebook Emma-May had given him weeks ago when Stanley came back. It wasn’t going well and he was tempted to crumple it up and flush it down the toilet so he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore, but for some reason he was still trying to smooth out the lines and make it look less like a toddler had drawn it.

It wasn’t fair. Fiddleford had never done anything to his hands, just his head, and if this were a result of Bill’s proclivities then it would only be his right hand that was affected - but it was both. Both of his hands were now too clumsy to do something he used to be able to do without even thinking about it.

As he darkened the eyes again he heard keys slide into the front door’s lock. Soon after, the door was opened and sunlight poured into the room before it was cut off again. Ford did not look, but he knew that Stanley could see him from there.

There was a beat of silence. Then Stanley said, “Ford, hey. Good to see you.”

He didn't say anything to that. He didn't know what to say. Stanley’s shoes were dropped by the door with twin thumps and then Stanley walked past him and into the kitchen, where he filled a glass with water and drained it empty in a few seconds. Then he glanced over and Ford couldn’t pretend not to have seen him if he tried.

“Is this gonna be a thing?” Stan asked, voice heavy, like he was tired. “You going off to the forest for a few weeks every so often? Because that’s - that’s fine, but I just, if you’re going to leave for good let me know.” He sat down in the seat across from him without meeting his eyes. “I won’t hang around waiting for you to come back forever.”

Ford’s grip on his pencil tightened. He looked at Stanley in horror.

“I’m just tellin’ you now so I won’t disappoint you later or something, okay?” Stanley told him. “I don’t know nobody in this town ‘cept you and Emma-May, and you know, she can be really hard to talk to sometimes. She’s almost a bigger nerd than you are and she’s never heard of the words ‘none of your business’ in her life. If you leave for - for a month or two, or longer, and I don’t know when or even if you’re comin’ back, I’m just gonna go find something else to do. Alright? And that doesn’t mean I won’t come when you call, or that I hate you, or nothin’. It’s just that staying in one place for too long freaks me out and if there’s no reason for me to stick around I’m not gonna.”

“You’re, you’re leaving?” Ford asked, feeling hollow and unbalanced.

“No, I’m not leaving,” Stanley shook his head, “I’m just saying that if you don’t need me anymore, and you need space, that’s okay, I’d just - I’d rather you tell it to me straight so I don’t have to wonder about it for so long. That’s all.”

Ford looked down at his drawing. It was a terrible drawing. He tapped his pencil on the paper. “You want me to stay?” he asked.

“If that’s what you want.”

“You don’t want me to stay?”

“I never said that.”

“Then what do you want?” he demanded, slamming the pencil to the table and frowning at his brother. He felt hot and angry. The insects were anxious, confused by the conversation, and crawling up and down his back and neck.

Stanley crossed his arms and turned away from him. “I want a lot of things, you gotta be more specific.”

“Why are you helping me?” Ford elaborated. “Why are you here? What do you want from me?”

“I don’t want anything from you!” he shouted, standing up. “I never have!”

“You’re lying.” Ford could tell. It should have hurt, but he only felt vindicated. “Just tell me what you want from me!”

Stanley looked at him. Ford saw his resolve falter. The look on his face was one of guilt. He had seen it many times on Fiddleford, right before something bad happened. He braced himself for the inevitable collapse.

“Fine. You really wanna know?”

He nodded once, firmly.

“I want to be your brother again,” Stanley admitted. “I want you to care about me. I want you to forgive me for messing up your life and forcing you to go to that stupid college where you met that stupid guy who messed up your life even more. I wanna be important to you.”

“Okay. You’re my brother, I forgive you, and you are important to me,” Ford told him.

“Augh! No!” Stanley cried. “I want you to mean it!”

He did mean it. Stanley was his brother, and nothing could change that. That was how it worked. Stanley had already explained himself and apologized for breaking the project and Ford thought it was a stupid thing to be mad about, anyway; and him meeting Fiddleford in college was not Stanley’s fault. He was certain that no matter where he had gone, he would have met someone just like Fiddleford who wanted nothing more than to control him, and he would have liked them just as much. There was something wrong with him in that way. He liked people who hurt him. He wanted to impress them and do whatever they wanted him to do. Then, inevitably, they would want more than he was willing to give, and they would take it anyway.

And Stanley was important to him. Otherwise, he would not have gone back to look for him in the forest, and he would not have come back here today. But he could tell his brother didn’t believe him. He had expected that. So he asked tiredly, “How do you want me to prove it?” because that was always the real question.

Stanley huffed and puffed wordlessly, staring at him. Eventually, he answered, “I don’t. I don’t want you to treat me like, like a problem to be solved. Just do what you want to do, and forget about what I want. Okay?”

“But you don’t want me to leave,” Ford frowned.

“I said I want you to tell me if you’re leaving for good, so that I can make other plans, instead of hinging all my hopes and dreams on you again like I did when we were in high school! I just want to know! That’s it! I just wanna be prepared if you decide that you’re tired of me again.”

Ford lowered his gaze. He was still mostly sure that Stanley was lying, but if what Stanley wanted really was just for him to inform him of his plans, then he could do that. He didn't think there was anything terrible Stanley would do with that information, and if there was, then he would deal with it then.

Maybe he was weak for giving in. Maybe he was stupid for putting his trust in someone who had already betrayed him once before. But no matter how much he wished he could, he just couldn’t see how he could do anything else. He could be alone and safe, or he could be around other people and risk everything all over again. It was smarter to be alone, but he had already decided that he didn't want to be.

Part of him would always be drawn towards things that could hurt him, he thought.

“Fine,” he agreed. “Next time, I will, I will, I will tell you.”

---

They went to their respective beds still bitter, but in the morning they were both sheepish.

“Sorry for yelling at you,” Stanley said. “It was stupid.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Ford told him, stabbing his eggs with force. “I’m not a child, I can, I can handle one argument.” Then he averted his gaze. “Sorry for leaving.”

“You’re allowed to leave, Ford. You’re your own man.”

“I know.”

They both ate in silence for a while, not knowing what to say. Ford had just finished his plate and was standing up to put it in the sink when Stanley said, “What was that thing you were drawing yesterday?”

Ford paused as he set his dishes down. He finished rinsing them off and went to retrieve the paper from his nightstand, then came back. He held it out for Stanley to take, which he did, and shuffled on his feet in embarrassment.

“It’s something I saw a few, a few days ago. I tried to draw it but it doesn’t look -”

“A two-headed fish? That’s pretty awesome. What kind of fish was it, you think?” Stanley asked.

“A brookie salter,” Ford answered. He was surprised that he knew that. After a moment of hesitation, he continued, “I didn’t, didn’t think there would be any here. It looked juvenile to me. With its mutation I don’t, I don’t know if it will survive much longer.”

“That’s too bad. I bet people would pay a lot of money to see a fish as weird as that,” Stanley considered.

He didn’t seem to mean it in a bad way, but something about that statement made Ford fold the drawing when he got it back and tuck it securely under the socks in the drawer of his dresser when Stanley wasn’t looking.

---

It was familiar to watch people moving around in the place where his house used to be, wearing hardhats and plaid shirts. Fiddleford had taken him to see the house being taken apart multiple times before it was gone. He had been an afterthought. People would come up to talk to him, thinking that he was in charge, only to lose all interest in him when Fiddleford corrected that assumption.

This felt the same. Ford sat on the grass while Emma-May spoke to the construction crew. He watched people carry a large beam on their shoulders and plant it in a hole in the ground that they then filled with either concrete or cement. Then he watched a pulley system carry a large collection of smaller planks of wood up to a part of the house with more scaffolding. People walked around swiftly because they knew what they were doing and did not have to stand around and wonder.

Some of them recognized Ford. He could tell because he recognized them, too. At first he could ignore the looking and staring, but then with every glance his way the insects grew more and more angry and eventually the discomfort urged him to get up and leave.

It was a good thing that they were rebuilding his house. But it wasn’t really his house. His house had been broken down and taken away and nothing had been left behind, and this new, new house was Emma-May’s. How could it be his when he was not paying for it, when he was not the one approving the plans, and when his name was nowhere on the documents? He was an afterthought. He was an addendum.

No one was ever going to take him seriously ever again. He was always going to be a charity case or a sad story, no matter what he did. Fiddleford had taken him and turned him into a doll for people to move around and play with, a thing to be gawked at.

Or maybe Bill had.

Or… maybe he had always been this way, and he had never realized. Like a two-headed fish that people would pay money to stare at.

(He had thought it was beautiful. He still did, but he was starting to think no one else would.)

Well, he didn’t want to be a doll, or a puppet, or a two-headed fish. He wanted to be a person. He just… wasn’t sure how to do that, anymore.

---

Ford thought about leaving again when he woke up for the third, or maybe fourth, morning in a row with a gasp. He rolled onto his side and buried his face in his pillow, breathing heavily, and grimaced as the insects crawled all over him. Face hot with shame and belly churning with sickness, he held himself very still until he was certain that he would not cry, and then he very carefully got out of bed and quietly hid himself in the bathroom. He turned the shower knob as cold as it would go and forced himself to step inside. It made him shudder and shiver, but when it was over with the insects were still and quiet and he felt more like himself again.

When he sat, still damp and cold, in his chair at the table, he rested his cheek on his arm and looked out the window. He could see the trees from here. He wanted to leave so badly. But as he sat and watched and slowly warmed back up, the desperate longing faded until he was calm again.

The sapling by the window had a third row of leaves now and was beginning to look more and more like how he thought a small sprig should look. The dirt seemed dry, so he picked up the can and held it under the tap for a few seconds before putting it back by the window in its dish. He lingered there for a few minutes longer. It softened something inside of him.

Maybe it was okay if people wanted things from him. The sapling wanted water. Stanley wanted his love. Fiddleford had wanted that, too, but not as much as he had wanted Ford to be someone else. Fiddleford had wanted someone to do everything he asked, without question. Fiddleford had wanted someone to hold and dote on and have sex with, and he liked the illusion of love, but he did not want Ford. Stanley – Stanley wanted Ford. Stanley wanted Ford to love him.

That wasn’t a hard thing to do. Ford did not know the difference between like and love, because everything he liked he loved and everything he loved he had to also like, so if they were equivalent then yes, he did love Stanley. He liked knowing he was around. He liked listening to his stories. He liked that Stanley listened to him back, even if he did treat him like he was fragile and delicate most of the time. If Stanley was in trouble, he would try to help him out of it, and if Stanley was sad he would do his best to make him feel better; not because he was scared of him, but because he didn’t like the thought of Stanley being hurt.

That was love, wasn’t it?

But the fact remained that Stanley didn’t see it that way. Ford would have to find a way to show him. He could tell him directly, but he had tried that and it hadn’t worked. The problem was that Ford could not think of any other way to do it. He could do what Stanley wanted and tell him when he was leaving and when he was going to come back, but would that really convince him that he loved him? There would always be something else. It might start with telling him, but then it would escalate to asking for permission, and then it would become staying inside no matter what, and even that might not be enough to convince him.

Where did it end? Where was the line? He could not give nothing, because then Stanley would have nothing to hold onto and he would drift away. He would leave, like he said he would, and then Ford would be alone whether he wanted to be or not. But he had a rope in his hands and he did not know how much of it was safe to give.

He wished someone would just tell him, but he didn’t know who he could trust to have the right answer.

---

Ford was sitting with Tate at the edge of the playground while Emma-May was shopping for groceries and Stanley was at work. He did not know what Stanley did for work because every time he asked it seemed like Stanley had a different answer. There were a lot of bugs at the edge of the playground underneath rocks and pieces of bark that had fallen off of a tree. At first, Tate had been uninterested in any of them, but after Ford pointed one out he had started a game of trying to find different ones for Ford to name.

“Roly-poly,” he said when Tate pointed at the balled up bugs under a rock.

“Roly-poly,” Tate echoed with a small giggle. “Really?”

He nodded. “Some people call them, call them pill bugs.”

“Eugh.”

“Yes,” Ford agreed, “That’s why I prefer roly-poly.”

Tate carefully dropped the rock back over them and resumed his search. Ford thought to himself that it was a shame none of the other kids seemed to want to play with him. He was a very smart kid.

“This one?” Tate asked, looking over his shoulder and up. Ford crouched down and peered at what he was pointing at. It was an ochre brown and had a wide, flat elytra. He smiled.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t?” Tate looked shocked. “What? But you know all of them!”

He shook his head. “Only some. There are, there are too many bugs in the world for any, any one person to know. This one…” he paused, waiting for the words to line up in his head. He tapped his fingers. Eventually, he continued, “This one is a beetle. It doesn’t look very good at biting. I think it might be a… detritivore.”

“A what?”

“Detritivore,” he repeated.

“What’s that?”

“It eats… dead leaves, or rotten fruit.”

“Huh.”

They kept playing the game until he saw Emma-May walking closer to the playground again. Her arms were empty so she must have already put the bags away in her car. He sighed and stood up. Tate glanced up at him, then at Emma-May. He brightened.

“Mom!”

Ford watched him run off towards Emma-May and followed behind at a slower pace. He was careful not to step on any of the bugs they had found. When he caught up, Emma-May shot him a bright smile as she talked to Tate and began to walk back toward the car. He followed and sat in the front, just like everyone had him doing now. It was like none of them doubted that he wouldn’t push open the door and stumble out into the street at the first stop they made.

He had only done it once, that he could remember. Twice, if he counted that time with Stanley. It had not gone well.

Emma-May asked if he wanted her to drop him off at his place. He was tired, so he nodded. He waved goodbye to them when he got out and trudged up the steps to the door. He stopped in front of it, feeling too heavy to move.

He did not want to go inside. He did not want to eat and he did not want to talk to anyone and he did not want to go to sleep. He looked at his watch. It was almost time for his dinner alarm. He did not want to hear it beep at him again. He was tired of listening to it three times every day, over and over and over. It was too much, it was all too much, and he wanted to be done with it.

He gritted his teeth and attempted to take it off. Pushing at the end of the strap with the pad of his thumb, he slipped it out of the loop, and then he pulled. The band tightened around his wrist. He attempted to pull at the other side, but the buckle caught on a hole and refused to let go. The insects buzzed angrily in his ears. He tugged and pulled at the watch, trying as many ways as he could think of to get it off of him, until finally he was frustrated enough that he brought his wrist to his mouth and used his teeth to hold one side out of the way while he used his hand to loosen the band without letting it catch. The watch fell. His wrist was bare.

He sat down on the steps and grabbed the watch and threw it as far as he could. It clattered distantly on the asphalt.

He buried his face in his knees.

He wished he could take it off and put it on again by himself without taking so long. He wished he didn’t need it at all. He wished he could be like Tate, who was smart and good and small and still more competent than him and did not have to wonder if he wanted to be a person or not.

Ford was tired of trying to be a person. It was just as bad as belonging to someone else, because he still had nothing and he was still nothing and there was nothing he could do about it, but he didn’t get the satisfaction that came with being someone else’s. He didn’t have anyone to blame except himself, and if he messed up, they wouldn’t bother with getting rid of his memories and trying again – instead, they would just leave, and then he would be on his own.

He didn’t know how to be on his own anymore, unless it was in the forest.

That wouldn’t be so bad.

But he would be alone, and his sapling would die.

---

“Hey, Sixer,” Stanley said when he pulled up in his car and stepped out. “Whatcha doin’ there?”

The answer was nothing. Ford didn’t bother to say it because he felt it was obvious. He didn’t object when Stanley nudged him and said, “C’mon, let’s get you inside. I’m dyin’ for somethin’ to eat – how much time we got left on your alarm?”

Ford shrugged, and that’s when Stanley seemed to realize something was wrong.

“Where’s your watch?”

“I don’t want it anymore.”

“…Okay,” Stanley agreed, sounding skeptical, even though he did not ask again. He asked if Ford wanted to eat and Ford shook his head. They went inside anyway, and Stanley made something for himself while Ford just sat in his chair and rested his head in his arms.

“Did somethin’ happen?”

“No.”

“Bad day?”

“No.”

“Well, you sure look like it was,” Stanley huffed. “Wanna go drown your sorrows with booze in a bar somewhere?”

Ford lifted his head and stared at his brother in shock. “You’d let me?”

Stanley gave him a look like he was being obtuse. “You’re thirty. You don’t need no one’s permission to have a drink, least of all mine.” He sounded amused at the thought.

“Fiddleford never let me,” Ford told him. “He said, he said it made me ‘impossible’.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

“Wanna find out?” Stanley gave him a mischievous grin, the kind he remembered seeing so often when they were teenagers. It always promised trouble, but it also promised a good time.

Ford leaned back in his chair and let out a breath. “God, yes.”

---

He and Stanley drove around town, looking for a bar and judging every one they found with a scrutinizing eye to see if it would be good enough for them. One of them looked ‘too nice’ and one of them looked ‘too old’ and one of them turned out to be an oddly named hardware store. Ford had had no idea that Gravity Falls had so many bars, or bar-like buildings, until today. Eventually, when they were both starting to get tired of looking, they found a place that Stanley deemed suitable and found a place to park.

“Now, I dunno how big of a drinker you became after high school, so you’re gonna have to enlighten me,” Stanley told him. “You a lightweight, a heavyweight, or what?”

Ford remembered very suddenly drinking with Bill. He felt his face grow hot and said, “I didn’t, didn’t do it much.”

“Alright. Well, we should probably start off easy anyway.”

“Are you drinking too?” Ford asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“We, we, we drove here.”

“And?”

Ford rolled his eyes. “You’ll be arrested for drunk driving, Stanley.”

“I won’t be drunk, I’ll be lightly buzzed,” Stanley defended, punching him lightly. “Trust me, bro. No one will even notice!”

“If you, if you say so,” he agreed skeptically as he followed Stanley inside. He shrugged when his brother asked him what he wanted to order, so Stanley ordered for the both of them and they made their way to a table as far out-of-the-way as Ford could find. They sat down in the booth and Stanley set their cups down with two clicks on the wooden table.

Ford held his cup in two hands. He took a moment to look at everything. It had been so long since he had been in a place like this. Discomfortingly, he thought the last time he had been was when he went with Fiddleford, back when they were friends. Actual friends, during college, and not whatever partners were. He sighed and rubbed his head where it hurt. It was often hurting.

Across from him, Stanley grimaced and set down his cup. “Blegh. Not the best I’ve ever had, that’s for sure. Maybe I should get us something else.”

Ford tilted his head and lifted his own cup curiously. The first tentative taste of liquid on his tongue felt like nothing, and then it tasted like something sharp and foul. He winced and swallowed, feeling it slip warmly down his throat, and set his own cup down.

“…Yeah, maybe,” he agreed.

Stanley laughed as he stood up. “It’s always trial and error with this stuff, anyway. Alright, I’ll be back. Hang tight.”

Ford rested his cheek on his palm and let his gaze drift towards the window a few feet away. He felt like he was already feeling the effects of the drink. The insects beneath his skin were buzzing with it, or maybe that was just the anticipation. He watched a car drive past with its headlights on. The clouds in the sky drifted slowly across his field of view. His head felt heavy.

When Stanley returned with new drinks, he accepted his and immediately tilted it into his waiting lips. It wasn’t much better, but it made Stanley relax into his seat with a satisfied sigh, so he said nothing and let his sip begin to warm his stomach from the inside out.

“Still don’t wanna talk about whatever’s getting you down?” Stanley asked.

He shook his head.

“Alright, just checking. You know, I used to be a real regular at this kind of place. Wallowing in a bar feels better than wallowing in a car – feels like bars are just made for wallowing in. No one looks at you twice if you’ve just had a bad day and you want a drink or two, ‘less ya make a scene. It’s an expensive habit, though, so I kicked it eventually. Not that I was ever really an alcoholic, I think, just liked the uh, the atmosphere, you know? Just felt weird to go to a bar and not order anything.”

Ford nodded along, slowly spinning his cup between his hands. It took him a while to come up with something to say in response. “I never spent much time in, in, in, in bars. When I went out it was, it was usually a party or something I was, was being dragged to. Only went to bars for cele-celebrations.”

“You went to parties? On purpose?” Stanley teased.

He shrugged, but he was smiling. “Not often, remember.”

“Yeah, yeah, but not often ain’t zero. Can’t believe it – my baby bro’s all grown up!”

“I’m older than you.”

“By fifteen minutes! C’mon, let me have this.”

“No.” Ford crossed his arms. “I’m older. It’s, it’s, it’s a fact.”

“Why do you always get to be older?” Stanley complained. “You’ve been older for so long, I want a turn!”

“No.”

“Jerk.”

Ford smiled as he reached out and took another small sip. He felt lighter already, falling into a pattern so old he felt like he had never forgotten to begin with. He set down his cup a little more clumsily than he meant to and splashed liquid onto the table before he could right it. His head felt fuzzy and full. His stomach felt angry.

Stanley was good at talking. For once, he didn’t have to think much about how to respond. Some part of him seemed to have all of the right answers before Stanley had even finished talking, and the way his brother laughed and grinned felt good. He had missed it. Even when he wasn’t really sure what they were talking about anymore, and he couldn’t tell what he was saying himself for how dizzy he was, it was good. It was good until it wasn’t.

“I feel sick,” he announced through a thick sludge of pain and nausea. He was close to tears and it wasn’t because he was sad. He wasn’t sad, it was just that his head hurt so bad and his stomach was hurting now, too.

Stanley got him a glass of water. He tried to take it and it slipped from his grasp. It didn’t break. It spilled water all over the floor. He clutched his head and whined. It hurt so bad. He opened his eyes and all the colors of everything blurred together and spun around and around. Something sour climbed up his throat. He covered his mouth and clutched it tightly – he did not want to throw up.

He was in a bathroom. Something stung in his mouth. His stomach heaved. Someone rubbed his back, up and down and up and down. He tried to look and see who it was but he couldn’t tell. It was all so blurry.

When he was done he leaned back into the touch. Breathing was hard. He did not want to get up, but someone made him, so he staggered to his feet and clumsily tried to walk while someone led him. He did not know where they were going.

Someone was talking. He frowned and tried to pay attention, but the effort died in his skull before it ever made it to his ears. Everything hurt. He clutched onto someone. It was getting hard to stay upright, so he began to sink down, down, down…

The rumble of a car. He was in the backseat, laying on his side. Someone was driving. He didn’t know who it was. He didn’t really care. He shut his eyes and tried to sleep.

“Mm,” he slurred. Someone was shaking him awake. He groaned and looked up. He squinted. It was all so blurry. He was helped out of the car.

He didn’t know where he was.

That was fine.

He didn’t know what he had done wrong. He would just have to do better next time. Someone brought him… somewhere. They pushed him to sit and put a bowl in his lap. He held it, confused. His eyelids couldn’t seem to stop blinking. Everything hurt.

Someone said something.

Something was pressed to his mouth. He opened. Something cool and wet slipped inside. He spluttered and swallowed and coughed, and then he leaned over and something came back out, dragging fire up his throat.

When he was done he asked for the bathroom. He went inside and locked the door and sat in the tub. He did not know how long he stayed there. Everything was so blurry. Someone came back – they weren’t supposed to be able to, but maybe he was wrong. His face was so wet and everything hurt.

Someone stayed with him.

Then he was going somewhere. Things moved around him. He fell into something soft. Softness settled over him and he heard a laugh. Maybe it was… someone. He could not remember.

He was so tired. Everything hurt. He closed his eyes again and went back to sleep.

---

“Yeah, so, turns out Emma-May’s neighbor is a nurse, and she said you’re not supposed to drink anything when you’ve had a traumatic brain injury or… a few dozen,” Stanley told him in the morning when everything hurt marginally more but at least he could remember where he was. “Something about bein’ more sensitive to alcohol, I think.”

Ford made a noise of disapproval and kept his arm over his eyes to protect them from the light. He had not bothered to get out of bed.

“No alc’hol?”

“No alcohol.”

“Fuck.”

“Fuck,” his brother agreed.

“Worth it.”

“Worth it?” He could hear the astonished disbelief in Stan’s voice. “Sixer, you had like three sips and lasted half an hour before you were completely wasted! You threw up so many times!”

Ford snickered beneath his arm. Everything hurt and he felt horrible and he was probably never going to drink again. Still, he repeated, “Worth it.”

---

“You know, you can talk to the contractor too if you want to,” Emma-May told him as she held out another digital watch and waited for his opinion. They were in the store, getting him a new one after he broke his last one. Luckily they did not cost that much, but Ford was still embarrassed. He inspected the watch and shook his head. The strap was made of rubber and would get uncomfortable very quickly.

She put it away.

“You don’t have to just stand to the side and keep quiet,” she continued. “It’s gonna be your lab, too, you know. Plus your house. You probably have some idea of the way you want things to be, right? I’ve been trying to get them to copy the original layout as best I can, but I don’t know, maybe you want something different now. Maybe you don’t want an exact replica of your old place.”

Ford turned his head away from her. He still didn’t know why she was trying so hard to give him his house back. She wasn’t the one who had taken it from him. He didn’t even know if he wanted to have a house or a lab at all, or what he was going to do with himself. He sighed.

“I don’t, I don’t know.”

“Like I’m falling for that one. Come on, Ford,” Emma-May wheedled with a sly smile. “I know you’ve got some ideas rattling around in your brain. Just tell me, I won’t bite.”

Ford looked at her, at her casual sincerity, and looked away again. He hesitantly allowed his thoughts to wander towards the subject. The things he missed the most about the old house were hard to list. There were a lot of things he did not miss, like the feeling that one wrong move would make Fiddleford send him plunging back down into the same static oblivion, over and over and -

“I don’t want a roof,” he said.

“You don’t want a roof?”

“No.”

“…I’m pretty sure all houses need to have a roof, or everything inside will get rained and snowed on and your insulation will be shot,” Emma-May said to that with one eyebrow raised: incredulous. “Is there something specifically you don’t like about… roofs?”

“Too tall,” he told her. “Too easy to fall.”

“Ah. Got it.” She went quiet. A few minutes later, after they had found a suitable watch that he thought he might actually be able to slip on and off without too much trouble, she asked, “What if we made it harder to fall from? More windows, so more awnings, more things to grab onto if you slipped?”

Ford looked up from the watch to say, “I like windows.”

“Now we’re talking,” Emma-May grinned. “What else do you like?”

“Chairs,” he said, remembering. “Blankets. Closets.”

“That’s easy enough.”

“A basement?”

“Could be tricky, since they’ve already started construction, but I don’t see why not.”

He thought more about it, and as he thought more about it he realized that he really didn’t know what more he wanted, so he asked to see the plans they were using and Emma-May promised to show him tomorrow. He nodded and she told him to think about it in the meantime, which he agreed to do. They paid for the watch and he pulled off the tag and put it on. The woven cloth band stretched, and so he simply had to pull it on, instead of dealing with the hassle of the buckle every time.

He still didn’t really feel like a person. He didn’t know how to move forward from here, how to find his footing in a world where he felt like nothing truly belonged to him anymore, but if nothing else Stanley had shown him that he could still have fun. Even if it turned out terribly, he could still make choices. He wasn’t some puppet being dragged along whether he liked it or not.

For better or worse, he was in control now.

Chapter Text

Ford held a pair of scissors in his hand.

He had not had a haircut since leaving Fiddleford, and it was getting to be more than frustrating having to untangle knots all the time and feel it itching at the back of his neck and getting in front of his eyes. It was awful. Some days he couldn’t handle it at all and pulled on his hair until his scalp stung hard enough to drown out the itching. Stanley had suggested that he go to a barber and get it cut, but he had stood on the other end of the street from the shop for two hours before finally deciding that it wasn’t going to happen.

For how many bars there were in Gravity Falls, there was only one barber shop, and it was the same place Fiddleford had taken him twice before they moved to the new house out of town. He could not stand the thought of going in there, seeing the same man, and letting him anywhere near him with anything sharp. What if he asked about Fiddleford? What if he commented on how long Ford’s hair had gotten? What if he treated him the same way he had treated him when he was with Fiddleford? What if he talked over his head like he wasn’t even there? Or, if Ford went in alone, would he even agree to cut his hair at all?

The shame would have never left him if he had gone inside and been refused, or worse: if the man saw him, assumed he was lost, and attempted to contact Fiddleford. That was how Fiddleford had gotten everyone to treat him, after all. He had been nothing more than an invalid who needed to be supervised, lest he injure himself further; a child in all but age who could not make decisions for himself.

So Ford was in the bathroom and holding a pair of scissors. He knew exactly what would happen if he tried to cut his hair himself. His hands would shake, the scissors would not cooperate, and his hair would end up a choppy, embarrassing mess that everyone would be notice immediately. But he did not want to go to the barber and he did not want to tell Stanley why he did not want to go to the barber and he needed his hair to stop itching.

He stood in front of the sink, paralyzed by indecision, for a very long time. On the one hand, there was the short-term shame of seeing the barber, and on the other hand there was the long-lasting embarrassment of having a bad haircut. This wouldn’t be a one-time decision, either; it was a decision he was going to have to make every few months for the rest of his life. It would make more sense to just see the professional and get it over with, but he did not want to. He really, desperately did not want to.

But he could not do it himself, either.

Stanley knocked on the door, telling him to hurry up in there. He put the scissors back in the drawer with the first-aid kit and opened the door to leave and let his brother have the bathroom. The only option he had left, then, was to learn to get comfortable with having longer hair.

Or, he considered a moment later, he could ask someone else to cut it for him. Their hands would be steadier than his, and if it turned out poorly it wouldn’t be his fault, but theirs.

---

“…What’s this for?” Emma-May looked up from the pair of scissors he had given her, sounding confused. He remembered then that he hadn’t actually asked yet, so he shifted his weight from one foot to the other and awkwardly gestured towards his head.

Comprehension dawned on Emma-May’s face. “You want me to cut your hair?” she asked. There was wariness there that he did not understand, but it was soon replaced by thoughtfulness. “Well, I guess it can’t be that hard to do. Alright, follow me!”

They draped a towel over his shoulders and he held it closed at his neck to catch the hair when it fell and spare his clothes from the mess. He was seated in the dining room, sitting backwards in a chair, and Emma-May had propped a hand mirror up in front of him so that he could see what was going on. He waited as Emma-May inspected him like his head was a complex equation and she was deciding where to start unraveling it.

“I think I’m just gonna go for it,” she announced eventually. Her fingers slipped through his hair, brushing against his scalp as she found a lock and pinned it in place. Snip, the scissors went. The first tuft of hair fell onto the towel and tumbled to the floor. The insects shuddered at the feeling.

Snip, snip, snip.

Ford watched through the limited view he had in the mirror as her hands moved and the scissors followed soon after. Often, Emma-May stopped to reinspect her work, squinting hard, and though Ford was still nervous he found her inner turmoil entertaining.

Snip.

“You know, if this turns out badly, you can always start wearing hats. Or you can shave yourself bald and buy a wig,” she told him. Snip, snip. “There’s a lot of wigs you can get nowadays, actually. I saw one with hair six feet long in a window once.”

“No, thank you.”

“You sure? I think it’d be fun to see that.” Snip. “You walking around with hair long enough you’d have to tie it up to keep it from dragging. Shit, you could wear it backwards,” snip, “and call yourself a wookiee!”

Ford… paused. Then, slowly and hesitantly, he frowned.

“A what?”

Snip.

“Oh, come off it, Ford, I know you’re a trekkie through and through, but you have to know what Star Wars is.”

Trekkie… Star Trek? Ford felt the knowledge settle into place. Yes, he remembered. It had been one of his favorite shows when he was growing up, and he had continued to keep up with it sporadically throughout his college years. But, “What is Star Wars?”

“Oh, it’s great. You’ll love it. It’s about – well.” He could spy her sly grin in the mirror. “Actually, I think it would be more fun if you found out for yourself. We can rent the tapes and watch all three of them!”

“There are three of them?” Ford felt distinctly unbalanced at that thought. He turned his head to look at her, but stopped when he poked at him and told him to keep his head straight. He could feel his free time in the future rapidly dwindling, but the thought did not bother him as much as it would have before.

“Sure are!” Snip. “Does your brother like science fiction, too? Or, I guess it’s more like science fantasy, but whatever. We could watch it with him?”

Ford knew instinctively that the answer was no. Stanley had never been very interested in Ford’s favorite shows, just like he had never been very interested in Stanley’s. But as he opened his mouth to say that, he stopped and considered it anew. It was true that Stanley probably wouldn’t choose to watch them of his own volition, but Stanley had been so staunchly supportive of him since their reunion that he wondered if he might be able to convince him anyway. The idea was unsettling.

He didn’t know. So he said ‘maybe,’ and plans were made for Tuesday next week if Emma-May could get her hands on the tapes from the rental store. By then, Emma-May had declared his haircut finished, and Ford ruffled his own hair to dislodge any loose strands before holding the mirror up to look at the results.

It was… a little lopsided, and definitely jagged on the sides, but it was short, and it did not itch. He ran his hand through his hair again and again and smiled. An invisible tension leaked out of him.

“Thanks,” he told Emma-May.

“No problem,” she said, dusting off her hands. “All in a day’s work. Guess I can add that to my resume, eh?”

---

Stanley looked happy when he came back from work. Usually he was calm and unhurried, unbothered by everything, but today he held his head up high and moved around with poorly hidden exuberance.

“Hey, Sixer!” he called as he unlaced his boots and left them by the door. Ford glanced up from his sapling, which he had been carefully inspecting for new growth, and set the can back down. He blinked. Stanley moved past him, loosening his tie as he went, and grabbed a can of soda pop from the fridge.

“Hello,” he echoed a few seconds too late. He was still trying to get back into the habit of responding when people spoke to him, even when it was nonnessential conversation. Then, feeling curious, he asked, “What happened?”

“Hm?” Stanley hummed absent-mindedly and sat down at the table, kicking his feet up and leaning dangerously far back. He took another sip of his soda.

“You look, you look happy,” Ford explained, checking his watch before deciding whether to sit down or not. He remained standing and leaned against the doorway, arms crossed. “You never look this happy, so, so, so something must have happened.”

“Eh, nothing really.” Stanley shrugged. His smile returned not even a second later. “Just feelin’ pretty good about this job. Who knows? Maybe this one will finally stick.”

Cautious of spoiling Stanley’s good mood by prodding too much, because Stanley could get oddly defensive about things like that, Ford changed the subject. “Emma-May wants to know if, if, if – if you wanted to watch a series of films with us on Tuesday.”

“Oh? What sort of films?” Stanley shot him a skeptical look and took another sip. “Because I swear, if it’s some kind of documentary about squid…”

“Not a documentary. Science… fantasy? I don’t know. She said I would, I would like it, but I don’t know.” He could tell Stanley wasn’t any more convinced by that, so he asked outright, “Will you come?”

Here was the true test. How far would Stanley go, just to make him happy? How far did he have to go to make Stanley stop? He watched his brother’s face contort into several interesting expressions that he could not decipher.

“Tuesday, you say? That’s too bad, I’ve actually got an afternoon shift that day.”

“We could do it in the morning.”

“Oh, uh, actually it’s an all-day sort of shift. 9-5.”

“We could do it on Wednesday.”

“I’m -”

“If, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to come,” Ford told him. He did not let his voice betray how much he wanted Stanley to just tell him no. He was well-practiced at keeping his tone mild and unoffensive when he needed to, so he knew he could not be influencing Stanley with his feelings on the matter. Stanley’s expression hardened into a firm resolve.

“No, I’ll come,” he said, like he was daring Ford to challenge it.

…Ford did not understand what was happening anymore. This was what was supposed to happen: he would ask, Stanley would say no, and he would be satisfied knowing that Stanley was not discarding his own feelings unnecessarily. That, or Ford would ask, Stanley would reluctantly agree, and then he would regret it so much that he would refuse to do it again, even if Ford wanted him to.

He was not supposed to change his mind halfway through. He was not supposed to be so determined about it, either. He hadn’t had any issues trying to get out of it a moment ago, and Ford could not figure out what had happened in the meantime to make him change his mind.

Uncertainty made him feel lost.

He did not challenge Stanley on it.

---

Soon, the day arrived. Stanley complained loudly about everything ‘Luke Sky-walker’ did that he found stupid. Emma-May shushed him every time, but it did not work. Ford watched in silence and thought to himself that none of this was scientifically accurate. Or even scientifically plausible.

Still, the popcorn tasted good. He did not know when the last time he had eaten something he enjoyed had been, but he enjoyed the crunch of the popcorn in his mouth. For some reason, neither Stanley nor Emma-May seemed to want any anymore, so he kept the bowl in his lap and continued to eat it one popped kernel at a time.

By the time they made it to the last movie, Stanley was fast asleep and snoring, Emma-May was still enthralled with the film, and Ford had run out of popcorn and was somewhat sad about it. He twisted the bowl in his lap while the film finished playing, and then when then the credits began to roll he set the bowl down and said, “I’m going to get some water.”

“Oh, bring me some too, will ya?”

Ford stiffened and stopped walking. “Um,” he said. “I don’t…” He held out his hands. They were shaking. “I can, I can make two trips?”

Emma-May blinked. “Oh, right. Nah, I’ll get it myself.”

She stood up, stretched one arm over her head after the other, and followed him into the kitchen. Ford knew where the glasses were because he visited often when Stanley was busy. He brought down two, one at a time, and filled one with tap water while Emma-May picked up the other to fill for herself.

“So,” she began, leaning against the counter, “What did you think of it? Pretty awesome, right?”

Ford looked down at the water in his cup. “I thought it was, it was, it was not very believable. But once I sus-suspended my disbelief… it was…” He searched for the word in his brain, discarding ‘silly’ and ‘confusing’ because he knew who he was talking to and he knew she would not think of those as a positive descriptor, and then finished, “fun.”

Emma-May visibly puffed up: proud. “I told you so! I love those movies so much. You know, I think we should get together and watch stuff more often. It’s nice.”

“Yes,” he agreed.

For a while, it was just the two of them, standing in the kitchen and saying nothing. Ford could feel Emma-May watching him, so he looked up at her. She looked away. He wondered if she knew.

“Maybe we could even get you caught up on your favorite show again, eh?” she suggested a half-second later, turning to smile at him. “I bet there’s whole seasons you haven’t seen yet.”

That was probably true. He thought he might have watched some while he was with Fiddleford, but he hadn’t paid attention to much of anything back then. It had been easier not to. Ford turned the thought over in his head as he drank half of his glass. When he lowered it again, holding it in two hands to prevent himself from dropping it, he said quietly, “I’d like that.”

---

Stanley continued to join them when they watched shows or films. When Emma-May asked him if he had any shows or films that he wanted them to watch, after getting fed up with his constant critical commentary, he went quiet. Ford noticed because Stanley was rarely quiet, even if Stanley answered a moment later that they ‘wouldn’t get it, anyway,’ and pretended nothing had happened. It wasn’t right. He didn’t know what to do about it.

His sapling had six rows of needle-leaves, now. They looked like they were meant to be sharp, but touching them they were soft and bent easily to his fingertip. He liked looking at it. It settled something inside of him.

Sometimes he wondered if he really was stuck like this; stuck trudging through thoughts, words, and actions, like wading through a thick mud in his brain, stuck not understanding things he knew he could have understood before – or if he just wasn’t trying hard enough. He had regained his memories easily enough, even though Fiddleford had tried to get rid of them too many times to count. He could think more clearly than he could before, when he had been living with Fiddleford. He felt real in a way he hadn’t, before.

Did that mean that he could improve even more? Did that mean this slowness in his head was temporary? Curable? He didn’t feel like he was stuck. He felt like clarity was only a half-step away, just out of reach, and if he only got up and tried he would be able to grasp it like nothing had ever happened. He felt like he was just… taking a break.

He was scared of trying any harder than he was already. He was terrified of what it would mean if he reached for clarity and found nothing there. He didn’t want to be stuck like this forever. He didn’t want to be -

The phone was ringing.

Ford did not know how long it had been ringing. He drew in a slow breath and exhaled, pushing away those grim thoughts. It did not matter right now. He looked at the phone. It was still ringing. Was someone trying to reach Stanley? Or was Stanley or Emma-May trying to reach him? Stanley was at work. Emma-May was at a science convention, or something along those lines. It could be Emma-May.

He picked up the phone.

There was silence. Then, a confused, “Hello?”

It was not Emma-May, and it was not Stanley. It wasn’t a voice he recognized so he hung up the phone and ignored it when it started ringing again. He looked out the window at the trees.

He wanted to leave so badly. He wanted to go back to the forest, where things made sense. The backpack was in the closet. It was mostly unpacked now, but it would not take long to pack it again.

He forced himself to sit down and wait for Stanley to come back, first, but by then the longing had faded.

---

The problem was, Ford decided, that he had too much free time. Stanley had work most days, and when he was in-between jobs he was still out looking for them. Emma-May did not have a job yet after quitting her old one, but she was still busy with building the lab, taking care of Tate, and getting permits and licenses for everything. Ford… did not have a job. Theoretically this was because he did not have a lab yet, but he was wary of the idea of trying to be a scientist again.

He spent a lot of time by himself. When Emma-May was busy but Stanley wasn’t, he stayed near Stanley, and when Stanley was busy but Emma-May wasn’t, he went to Emma-May. They usually found some way for him to be included in whatever they were doing. Sometimes he watched Tate for Emma-May when she was busy, but not often. The rest of the time he did not have anything to do.

He did not have any hobbies, either. Reading for too long made him tired and frustrated. Drawing was just as frustrating because it never turned out the way he wanted it to. He hated watching TV, the sapling did not require much attention, and if he ever had to do another crossword puzzle again he would scream.

There was only so much time he could spend appreciating being alone before it was no longer novel. He felt restless. He felt angry. He felt a burning shame inside of himself because his brother was working to look out for them both and Emma-May was paying for them in the meantime and here he was, doing nothing but laying down and staring at the ceiling.

There had to be something he could do. Some way to give something back, so that it was a transaction instead of… whatever this was. Charity, pity, or misplaced responsibility; it didn’t matter. He wanted to be important to Stanley, in the same way that Stanley was important to him. He wanted to help. He wanted to be useful.

He didn’t know if there was anything he was good at, anymore. In the forest, yes, but not here. No one would pay him for being good at living in the forest. He could not do customer service. He could not do anything that required fine motor skills. He could, maybe, get a job carrying things – heavy things, big things that he wouldn’t drop just because of having shaky hands. He would get tired too easily, though. He had only just started being able to finish his food when he ate.

Even if there was a job he could do, he would have to go find it, and then he would have to apply, and then he would have to do an interview. He did not want to do that. He very much did not want to do that. They would mock him for his stutter and his six-fingered hands. They would laugh at him, or they would pity him, and he didn’t want either of those.

Ford watched the ceiling fan turn around and around. There was only one thing that he knew he could do that he knew he was good at, and that he knew some people would pay for, and that was sex. Thinking about it made the insects beneath his skin stir to life and shift restlessly over him, but the thought didn’t scare him. Still, he thought, it wouldn’t be a good idea if he wanted to rebuild his reputation. It might even damage Emma-May’s and Stanley’s, by proxy, which was the last thing he wanted.

…Maybe he really was useless, now.

---

“You? Useless?” his brother echoed when he brought it up. Stanley barked a laugh that had Ford bristling with embarrassment and crossing his arms in the passenger seat of the car.

“Yes!”

“I’m sorry, but that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life, and I once heard someone call oranges ‘polite lemons.’” Stanley gave him an amused look before turning back to the road. He laughed again, more of a chuckle this time, like he couldn’t help it. “Stanford Pines, useless. Now that’s a new one.”

“Well, I am,” Ford snapped. His face felt hot. The insects were displeased as well, as they had been all day. He gripped his seatbelt tighter, needing something to squeeze. “I can’t do anything anymore. I’m slow and clumsy and, and, and, and -”

“Sixer -”

“- and stupid.”

“Sixer!”

“Don’t lie to me, Stanley,” Ford bit out. “I know you think I’m incapable of, of taking care of myself, and I know you pity me, and I know you’re just - treating me like I’ll break at the slightest mishandling! I don’t want to be handled, I want to be – I want to be a person!”

“You are a person, genius.” Stanley looked at him: wary. “And don’t tell me what I think, because it’s not true.”

“Really?” He rolled his eyes and glared out the window. “So you haven’t been coming with me to Emma-May’s ‘movie nights’ just to make me happy? You haven’t been changing your whole schedule around my meal alarms? You haven’t been working for months to save up money just because you know I can’t do it myself?”

“No, I haven’t.”

Ford didn’t bother looking at him. He just furrowed his brows, pressed his temple to the glass, and muttered, “Liar.”

“I haven’t! Jesus fuck, Ford, let a man speak for himself!” The car lurched as Stanley pulled to a halt. Ford startled, confused until he looked around and realized that they had made it back home. He hadn’t been feeling nervous – frustrated, yes, but not nervous – until he registered the upset in his brother’s voice and the close quarters.

Suddenly he did not feel quite so confident.

Stanley turned to face him. “So maybe I want to hang out with my brother and his friend! So maybe I don’t have a whole lot else going for me, so I put up with some nerd movies every once in a while! Maybe I like eating at the same time as you, because eating alone is dumb and lonely!” He threw up his hands. There was a tell-tale sheen in his eyes that Ford didn’t like. “And maybe,” he continued, “I dunno, having money is nice? Maybe I like not having to rely on the charity of someone I met only a few months ago! Maybe I want to know that if something happens with Emma-May or if your shitty ex figures out a way to stop having to send money that we won’t be completely and utterly fucked!”

Ford swallowed, watching his brother’s chest rise and fall heavily as he calmed himself down. There was a ringing in his ears.

“So, yeah,” Stanley said. “Maybe I’m a pathetic loser, but don’t you fucking dare act like I don’t wanna be here. You’re not stupid. You’re not useless, either. You’re my brother.” Their eyes met. Stanley glanced away and deflated. “Just… That doesn’t count for nothing, okay?” he mumbled. “Wouldn’t matter if you were the biggest, dumbest idiot on the planet. I’d still want you around.”

Ford’s gaze fell to his lap. He was gripping his pant legs so tightly his knuckles had gone white. He consciously unclenched them, pushing them beneath his thighs instead.

“I don’t understand.”

“Whatever.” Stanley drew in a breath and pushed open the driver’s side door. “You don’t have to understand, but that’s what it is. Nothing’s gonna change that.”

---

“I’m leaving,” Ford told Stanley the next day while Stanley was putting on his shoes and heading out the door. Stanley stopped. His shoulders rose once then fell again before he turned around to face him.

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

Stanley looked tired.

Ford clenched his hands into fists at his sides and said, “I will come back. Soon.”

He just needed to… he just needed to go. He was trying hard to live, to be a person, to be Stanley’s brother and Emma-May’s friend, but he was tired and angry and he just needed to do something or he would explode. He didn’t want Stanley getting caught in the blast radius again if he did. He wanted to be able to help, not make things worse, and if that meant taking a few days to shut up the insects bothering him every second of every day, then that was what it meant.

“How soon is soon?” his brother asked stiffly: tense.

“A few, a few days,” he assured him. He would not worry him again. “Less than a week.”

“Okay.” Stanley relaxed. “Okay. Uh, thanks.”

He left a few minutes after Stanley did, bag freshly packed. Stanley’s car hadn’t left yet, but he refused to look at it and walked across the street and started towards the forest.

Once he made it past the treeline, the anger and frustration began to drain from him and the insects began to settle back down. Something about being in the forest made it easier to think, easier to remain calm, even if it was cold and the ground was covered in snow and he had to wear a large fur-lined coat and mittens to stay warm. He remembered having gloves that fit him, once. Fiddleford had them now.

He walked until he could not walk anymore, and then he brushed the snow off of a log and sat down. The snow drifted down and landed softly all around him. His heaving breaths made a cloud in front of his face that he watched move away from him and disappear. The trees stood tall and protectively around him.

He rubbed his wrist and let his shoulders fall slack.

At least he could still do this.

At least he still had this.

---

Stan sighed when he got back from work to find the motel room empty. Again. Part of him was still hoping to see Ford there, sitting at the table like he’d never left. He glanced out the window and grimaced. It was cold as hell out there, and he hadn’t even spent that long outside. He knew that Ford could take care of himself now, and that he would come back if he couldn’t, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t worried.

He had never enjoyed being cold. That was why he had stuck around the warmer states, for the most part, and dipped down to Mexico and then Colombia when he couldn’t anymore. Canada had been nice for a while but, again, it was way too damn cold to be worth it. But Ford was different; even when they were kids, Ford had liked the snow more than him.

‘Less than a week,’ Stan reminded himself. It had only been four days. Three more, and then he could start getting worried about it.

He went about making himself some dinner, relishing in the fact that that was something he could just do now, and sat down at the lonely table in the lonely room all by his lonesome self. He sighed and checked the clock. 6:11. He had missed Ford’s alarm. Not that it mattered, because Ford wasn’t here.

The phone rang.

Stan put down his fork and went to pick it up. “Hola, ¿quién es?”

“Sorry, I think I’ve got the wrong… Uh, ¿hablas inglés? ¿Está… Emma-May there?”

“Nope, sorry,” he said. Of course it would be for Emma-May, not him. What was he expecting? (Nothing good, that was for sure. Honestly he was very relieved that it was a wrong number and not what he was expecting.) “She moved a couple months ago.”

“Drat. I really need to talk to her… You wouldn’t happen to know her new number, would you…?”

“How ‘bout you tell me who you are first and then I’ll tell her you called.”

“Uh… okay. It’s Stacey Adams, from Palo Alto. Tell her it’s really, really important.”

“Alright, I’ll go tell her. Bye.” He hung up. He probably shouldn’t have, if it was one of Emma-May’s friends, but being honest he was probably never going to meet them anyway. He thought about finishing up his dinner and driving over, but that was a stretch even for him, and she’d probably be busy with Tate anyway. So instead he just dialed the number written on a sticky note by the phone and called her.

It rang and rang. This felt familiar. (He wished he could call Ford, just to stave off the boredom and a little bit of the loneliness, but there weren’t any rotaries in the woods.) Finally, Emma-May picked up.

“Hello, Emma-May Dixon speaking.”

“Hey, Emma-May. It’s Stan.”

“Oh! Hi, Stan! What’s up?”

“Someone called here thinking they were callin’ you. Someone named, uh, Stacey Adams from… Palo Alto? She said it was important. I told her I’d tell you she called.”

“Really? Well, thanks for the heads up. Guess I’ll give her a call, then.”

“Yep. Uh, no problem.”

So Emma-May went to call Stacey Adams, and Stan went back to his food. He took his time, really wallowing in his own misery with every bite, and tried to cheer himself up with the knowledge that Ford was coming back soon. Ford wanted to talk to him. Ford didn’t hate him. It only worked halfway, because he was only halfway sure that Ford still didn’t hate him. Their argument before Ford had left had been left… mostly unresolved.

What did Ford want from him, anyway? He acted like Stan going out of his way to make him happy – even though he wasn’t, for the most part – was a bad thing. Was he still scared of whatever he thought Stan was going to demand from him in return? That would make sense, he supposed. He had never liked not knowing what the catch was, either.

He had just finished scraping his plate clean and rinsing it in the sink when the damned phone started ringing again. He marched over to it and picked it up, annoyed.

“What?”

“Stan, can you come over tonight?”

“…Huh?” Stan blinked hard, then pinched himself. No, he wasn’t dreaming. Had Emma-May just… propositioned him? (He couldn’t accept, could he? That was his brother’s ex’s ex-wife, there had to be something wrong with that!)

“Stacey – well, it really is an emergency, and it’s time sensitive, so I really need to get down to California as soon as possible, but I can’t take Tate with me and I can’t hire a babysitter on such short notice, so it would be real nice if you could come over and watch him tonight and maybe tomorrow while I get this whole thing sorted.”

So, not a proposition, then. For a moment, he felt relieved. Then he realized that that meant that he would have to be alone in a room with a feral toddler, and even though Tate wasn’t that feral as far as toddlers went, it was still sure to end in disaster.

“I dunno,” he said, internally panicking. “I’m not really -”

“I’ll pay you!” Emma-May interjected hopefully. “How does… fifty bucks sound? Depending on how long it takes I might throw on another twenty.”

“Alright, alright, jeez.” Fifty bucks was a lot to say no to, feral toddler or not. He sighed. “I’ll come.”

---

Emma-May left in a flurry of harried intructions and thank-you’s as soon as she let him in. He barely had time to register it before the door was shut, she was gone, and he turned around to see a toddler watching him from the far end of the room.

“Uh, hi,” he tried.

“Where’s Ford?” Tate asked. “I want Ford.”

“He’s busy right now,” Stan told him, grumbling. Of course he hadn’t even made it five minutes before the kid was asking for somebody else, and of course it was Ford. Who else would it be? He sighed and dropped his bag by the couch, because he was going to stay the night and he wasn’t about to use someone else’s toothbrush, before heading over to the kitchen.

He checked the time on the clock. 6:42. Over his shoulder, he asked, “Hey, uh, you eat anything yet?”

“I’m not hungry,” Tate said.

“That’s not an answer,” Stan said automatically. A habit, from how many times he had told Ford the same thing. He almost opened his mouth to correct himself, but then he realized that the point still stood. He turned and gave the kid a questioning look.

“I ate.”

“Alright,” he agreed. “So what’s next? Bedtime? Nah, it’s too early for that… How about TV? You like TV?”

Tate shrugged.

Stan sighed. “TV it is.”

After a few hours of watching TV, playing one board game, and reading three consecutive bedtime stories, Tate was finally fast asleep in his bed. Stan put down the last book and ran a hand over his face with a silent groan. The smile he’d been wearing for the last few hours slipped away and left him exhausted. He was not cut out for this childcare shit. If this was his sign from the universe to never be a father, he read it loud and clear.

He slept on the couch under the knitted blanket that had been tossed over it, and for once he didn’t dream of anything. No nightmares of bad things happening to him or to Ford, no bad memories coming back to haunt him, nothing. He was just too tired for his brain to do anything but shut down for a few hours.

In the morning, he made pancakes and tried telling jokes to Tate before making sure he was ready to go to daycare – Tate had reminded him when it was time to go, eager to get there and play with his friend, whose name Stan did not bother to remember. Tate was largely unimpressed, but had warmed up to him since last night, and even reached up to hold his hand when they crossed the road to the building.

Stan felt like he was going to die. His insides had gone to mush and he was going to melt into a little puddle on the ground. He awkwardly told Tate to have a good day, or maybe to punch someone in the face, or maybe he hadn’t said anything at all. He couldn’t remember. He got back in his car and stared very intently at nothing for a while.

He glanced down at his hand.

Tate’s had been so, so much smaller than his. Tiny and soft. Small and fragile. And still he hadn’t hesitated to hold Stan’s hand, or more specifically three of his fingers, because his hand was too tiny to grab any more than that.

“Shit,” Stan laughed, because if he didn’t laugh, he was going to have a mental breakdown. He had only known that kid for a couple months, but he already knew he would do anything for him. “Shit,” he said again, leaning forward until his forehead hit the steering wheel.

The world was going to eat that poor kid alive.

---

When Stan went to pick Tate back up and took him back to Emma-May’s apartment, he took a second to check the mail and bring it inside. Giving it a cursory look-through, it looked like she had some bank statements, a couple magazines, and some court documents. Made sense. He left it in a haphazard pile on the countertop and set about making something for Tate and him to eat for dinner.

Tate requested macaroni and cheese, so that’s what Stan made. Tate didn’t say anything else and ate quietly until the phone rang. Then he put down his spoon and looked up, clearly interested. Stan shot him a knowing glance and picked up. It took a fraction of a second for him to remind himself to answer it like a normal person and not someone who thought he was going to get shot any second now.

“’Ello?”

“Hey Stan, it’s Emma-May, I’m going to be back in… maybe eight hours? Don’t worry about payment, I’ll make it a hundred if you get him to bed before I get back.”

“Sure, no problem,” Stan agreed. A hundred? That was pretty damn nice. “So… what was the emergency?”

“Oh, Stacey’s sister just had a baby, but her fiancé was – well, it’s complicated, and I’ve gotta go talk to some people in a sec, but I’ll explain it all when I get back. It’s a hell of a story, I tell you.”

“Alright, alright. Don’t talk it up too much, I’ve heard my fair share of crazy stories before,” Stan told her.

“How’s Tate?”

“Good. You uh, you can talk to him yourself if you want, he clearly wants to. He’s staring holes into me.” He looked at Tate as he said that, smirking at the way the kid squirmed in embarrassment.

“Sure! I’m sure I can spare a minute or two,” Emma-May agreed, so he handed off the phone and got to work cleaning up dinner while they talked. Well, Emma-May did most of the talking while Tate stood there and gave one-word answers and occasional sentences, but it was clear that he was relieved.

Then Emma-May had to hang up, and he tried to cheer Tate up by teaching him how to play poker. Tate was a terrible player but he seemed to like holding cards and bluffing. He had a great stone face, but he clearly didn’t know how many of which cards were in a deck and he kept lying out loud instead of in his head. Stan saw a great potential there, if he could get Emma-May to let him babysit again.

He had just about gotten Tate to go to bed when Tate asked him to go get a stuffed toy alligator he had left in Emma-May’s room. He refused to go to sleep without it, even when Stan tried to tell him that he had done it just fine last night, so Stan got up and walked down the hall to the master bedroom. He pushed open the door, feeling less awkward than he probably should have because it was just a room and he had done plenty of snooping around in other people’s rooms in his life.

Tate had said he had left it on the bed, but it wasn’t there, so Stan crouched down and peered underneath. He found the alligator and grabbed it, but he also saw a cardboard box. It was hard to tell what was in it for sure without pulling it out and taking a closer look, but it glinted like glass.

He sat back on his heels and stood up. It wasn’t his problem, whatever it was.

But when he turned back to exit the room, he faced the desk, and on the desk was what looked like a video player. Next to the video player, there was a glass vial. He couldn’t tell what it was, exactly. It certainly wasn’t a beer bottle and it wasn’t shaped like one, either. It could have been a chemical beaker if it weren’t for the fact that it didn’t look like it had any liquid inside and it was capped on both ends.

He walked past it, but as he went his gaze caught on the label.

Stanford Pines.

He frowned and left to go give Tate his alligator.

---

Later, when Tate was asleep and Stan knew he still had a few hours before Emma-May would return, he quietly let himself back into her room and shut the door. He didn’t know what he was going to find or if he was going to find anything at all, but no one had spared a second thought towards Ford being in Fiddleford’s ‘care’ for two years because they didn’t think anything was wrong with it, and he wasn’t going to let something like that happen again, right under his nose; not if he could prevent it.

It had Stanford’s name on it.

He sat down in the desk chair, feeling stiff, and gingerly picked up the vial. It was definitely glass. He couldn’t see what was inside of it, though, because the glass was all fogged up. He glanced up at the video player and the obvious, empty, vial-sized compartment hooked up to it and placed the vial inside. The screen didn’t turn on immediately, so he spent some time searching around for an on switch. He pushed some buttons, messed with a few wires, and flicked a few switches until finally something worked. The screen flickered to life.

That was McGucket on the screen, in a house Stan had never seen. The man looked worse than he had when Stan had seen him last, disheveled and haunted. “Listen, you don’t understand,” he was saying. “It’s for your own good.”

“If I don’t understand, then explain it to me,” Ford’s voice crackled. It was sharp and angry. “You say you’re my friend, but I don’t remember you. It doesn’t make sense.”

“I know. You had an accident, you hit your head, and you forgot some things – it’s okay,” McGucket lied. “Listen, I know it’s confusin’, and you’re rightly suspicious, but I swear that I would never hurt you.”

Static overtook the scene. It cleared up a moment later, showing a boarded up window and a six-fingered hand - this was when Stan realized that it was not a camera recording this, but Ford’s eyes. The fingers curled into a fist. Static. McGucket pushed Ford out of a room. Static. Ford was pulled back inside after trying the front door. McGucket told him that it wasn’t safe to leave, Ford asked why, and McGucket refused to answer. Static. Ford had a shotgun. He loaded the chamber with a buckshot shell from a drawer and pulled off the safety. He whipped around, hearing some sound Stan couldn’t make out, and pointed the gun at McGucket.

McGucket raised both his hands. “Wait! Wait, please, it’s just me!”

Ford did not lower the gun.

“I’m your friend. Please, don’t shoot. I’m your friend.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I know. I know. I’m sorry, I wish I could explain, but I can’t.” McGucket’s tone was nothing short of devastated. Even knowing the truth, it was hard not to hear him and feel bad. Stan had practice ignoring that sort of thing, though. Ford clearly didn’t. The shotgun lowered a few inches.

“Why not?” Ford asked. “Why won’t you tell me what really happened to me? Why won’t you tell me who I am?”

“There’s something inside of you,” McGucket whispered. “I can’t let it get out.”

Static.

More glimpses of the same house. Books on a shelf, books being torn from Ford’s hands while he was reading them. Static. Light behind a boarded up window. Static. This time, there was nothing but darkness, and Stan could make out something that sounded like sobbing. He yanked the vial out of place and shut the video player down.

His heart pounded in his chest. Why did Emma-May have that? Why the fuck did Emma-May have that?

He cradled the vial in his hands – it held some piece of Ford inside of it, so obviously he had to be careful with it – and scrambled over to the bed, where he pulled out the cardboard box and looked inside. The first vial he checked had someone else’s name. The second vial had another. Stan took them out one by one, lining them up in rows on the carpet, and kept Ford’s vial in his left hand the whole time.

There were a lot of names, with some repeats, but the only one with Ford’s name on it was the one in his hand. He shoved a couple random vials into the video player, but they were nothing like Ford’s – they were a few seconds long, at most, and showed glimpses of weird shadows or gnomes or giant wooden hands. He held Ford’s vial gently in both hands. Did this vial have everything Ford had forgotten inside of it? It couldn’t, because otherwise it would have started with them as kids, instead of in the cabin with McGucket, but Stan still couldn’t help but feel like it did.

He knew that Emma-May had gone back to grab some things when they had left the basement where McGucket had Ford, but he hadn’t thought to check what she might have taken. Had she known what these were the whole time? How long had she known? How much had she watched? How much of Ford’s life did this thing contain? He calmly stood up, tucking the vial into his jacket pocket, and left the room.

He had some questions that he needed answered.

---

When Emma-May unlocked the front door of her apartment and pushed it open, she was two seconds and a good pillow away from falling asleep and she barely had the state of mind to close the door softly behind herself so she wouldn’t disturb Tate. She toed off her shoes, tucked her hair behind her ear in annoyance when it kept falling loose, and dropped her bag on the corner table. She moved into the living room, and it was there that she found Stan, sitting in the plush red armchair with one leg crossed over the other and holding -

“Oh.” She stopped where she was, realizing at once that she was not going to get to hand off a hundred bucks and pass out for the night. Not yet.

“Wanna tell me what this is?” Stan asked. It didn’t sound like a question. She glanced over him and frowned when she saw the hard tension lining every muscle of his body, like he was ready for a fight.

“Sure, I’ll tell you.” She sighed. “Just let me make a cup of coffee or something first, I just drove nine hours straight and I feel like a zombie.”

Five minutes later, she and Stan were sitting diagonally from each other, with Stan in the armchair and her on the couch and the coffee table between them. In Stan’s hands was Ford’s memory vial. She knew without asking that he was not going to let go of it for anything. In her own hands was a warm cup of coffee that did little to warm her spirit.

“It’s fifteen minutes and forty seconds long,” she said quietly. “It begins in Ford’s old cabin and ends in the basement under the Gravity Falls Natural History Museum. I’ve had it for months, but I didn’t look through everything I took until a couple weeks ago, which is when I realized it was there and what it was. I went back to the museum and looked for anything I missed, but whatever you saw – that was it. That was everything they had.”

“Did they just, what, record some memories and delete all the rest?” Stan asked bitterly. “Why?”

Emma-May drew in a breath to calm her own rising anger. It was hard to think about everything her ex-husband had done, because in a way she felt partially responsible for it, but there was no point in getting mad about it now. There was nothing to be done. “That’s what I wanted to know. So I asked Fiddleford.”

“You what?”

“I went up to his stupid fancy house, knocked on his stupid fancy door, and told him that if he didn’t answer my questions I’d make him regret it,” she elaborated. “Not that he took much convincing. I told him that I found his little collection of stolen memories in the museum and that I wanted the rest of Stanford’s vials. I was pissed that he hadn’t already given them back, even after his ‘great epiphany’, and I wasn’t going to let him get away with that.”

“And?”

“And, it turned out that he had destroyed them.” She didn’t look at Stan. She that knew he would be taking that news hard. Before he could say anything, she continued, “He broke all of them until finally he disabled the recording ability completely and then he didn’t have to bother. I told him he was an asshole. This vial… this one was from the Society itself, not from Fiddleford, so it was the only one that managed to sneak by.”

Stan took a shaky breath. “So, what? This is it?” He delicately lifted up the vial. “This is everything we can give him back, now, and everything else is just… gone?”

“Yes and no.” Emma-May frowned and put the mug to her lips. She blew lightly, then took a sip of the bitter liquid. “Ford’s remembered a lot of stuff already. Is there something big he’s still missing? A chunk of life? A core personality trait?”

“…No. I don’t think so.”

“Then there you have it.”

“So, the memory gun… it’s not that effective?”

“No, it’s very effective. Remarkably effective, even. I’ve been running some tests – relax, Stan, they were just simulations. Equations. Math. Anyway, I’ve been running the numbers and cross-referencing with some of the other people whose memories got stolen, and while it’s not very precise, it’s very good at what it does.” She took another sip and sighed, anticipating Stan’s next question.

“So how -”

“I don’t know how he can remember. Fiddleford said he usually didn’t bother with specifics, so when he used the gun it was usually set to ‘self’ or ‘Stanford Pines’ or something along those lines. A broad reset, so to speak. It should have permanently destroyed his sense of self, getting hit with that so many times.”

“But it didn’t. Did it break, somehow?” Stan asked slowly, clearly thinking. “Did he build up an immunity or something?”

“I don’t know. I’m not really a neurologist, but maybe,” Emma-May told him. She had been trying to figure it out recently, when she had the time, just in case she would stumble across an easy way to help the process along on the way, with no luck. “Personally, I think he must have found some way to… hide certain parts of himself from the scope of the device. Some way to slip under the radar.”

At that, Stan smiled. “Heh. Always gotta find a way to outsmart everyone else, even when he can’t remember his own name. Sounds like Stanford.”

She smiled back, but it was short-lived. She took a sip of coffee and set it down on the table, steeling her nerves. “Actually, while we’re talking, there’s… there’s something else you should know.”

Stan straightened in the armchair and frowned, wary but determined. Now that she had brought it up, Emma-May knew there would be no backing out now. She stood up and gestured with her chin for Stan to follow her. It took a while to get her thoughts in order, but there was only so long she could stall. She led Stan to her room, asked him to wait outside, and retrieved a sizeable stack of papers that she had been working through over the last five weeks.

When she handed it over to Stan, he took it with no small amount of confusion. He squinted and skimmed over the small text on the first page, then glanced up and asked, “What’s this?”

“Guardianship papers,” Emma-May told him grimly. “Falsified, but apparently still legally binding.”

“You mean -”

“Yes.”

“He wouldn’t dare.”

“He wouldn’t,” she agreed. “I’m working on getting rid of them, but that would mean either appointing another guardian, proving that the petition was not correctly filed in the first place, or having Ford prove to the court that he can make his own decisions. Of course, the other option is to fight fire with fire; falsify some documents, destroy some others, and pretend none of this ever happened.”

“And Ford would never need to know,” Stan finished for her. He was frowning, clearly torn between telling his brother the truth or taking care of it without Ford ever having to lift a finger.

“We could still tell him,” Emma-May said. “That way, he can decide.”

“Tell him that his – that McGucket’s still legally in charge of him? Tell him that everything he did was for nothing, because if McGucket decided one day to call the cops, they’d just take him back there? Tell him that he’s gotta let a bunch of strangers decide whether or not he can take care of himself? Yeah, that sounds like it’ll go over so well.”

“Yeah.” She lowered her head as she took the papers back and methodically realigned them in her hands. “That’s why I haven’t said anything yet, either. I just… It bothers me so much that I never knew what was going on. I always knew Fiddleford was obsessed with Ford – but I never thought it would go that far. Ford was his first friend, you know? The first person who talked to him in college and convinced him not to quit. They were best friends after that.” She set the papers back down on her desk. “And then later, when Ford called him away to help with that project of his… I um. I was mad at him, instead of Fiddleford. Well I was mad at them both. I thought, ‘aren’t I just as important?’ But I never thought…”

“Well, don’t look at me,” Stan said dryly. “I didn’t know anything was wrong ‘til our mother called and said she was worried about him. Neither of us are saints. Personally, I’m more pissed at you for snooping through Ford’s memories like you did.”

Emma-May huffed. “What, did you want me not to look? I needed to know how much data was stored in that thing. If it was years’ worth of memories or only a couple minutes long, I needed to know! Don’t worry, there wasn’t anything deeply personal in there, I don’t think.”

“You should have asked, first.”

“Says Mr. Don’t-Tell-Him-About-The-Guardianship,” she shot back, irritated, but really she felt guilty. She hadn’t actually meant to watch the whole thing, it was just that by the time she realized what she was doing it was too late. She had been frozen in place after the first appearance of Fiddleford on the screen, and after that she had been too invested in learning about every other terrible thing he had done to remember that he had done it to Ford.

She groaned and rubbed the bridge of her nose with her fingers. “No, you’re right.” She sighed. “It’s like you said. Neither of us are saints.”

Stan leaned against the wall by the door, gaze lingering somewhere by the floor. “We have to tell him, don’t we?” he said. “He’d want to know. He deserves to know.”

“Probably.” She sat down heavily in the chair by her desk and leaned her head back, closing her eyes. “Let’s talk more tomorrow. We can come up with a plan or something then. I am so fucking tired.”

“Fine. I’ll stay the night, then.”

“Couch is all yours.”