Archive of Our Own

The first morning of Stan’s life is assumedly like any other morning, because he can’t fucking remember anything different.

He wakes with a lingering, deep-set exhaustion, and fumbles for his glasses. His brain is slowest to catch up, lagging and stuttering painfully. But by the time his migraine has died down, he remembers enough to pull himself through a morning routine.

His name is Stanley Pines. He repeats the name to himself—as he washes his face, as he brushes his teeth, as he dresses. It still sounds clunky and unfamiliar in his mouth.

Robotically, he makes his way downstairs, subconsciously remembering which floorboards creak and bend under his footsteps. The house is far more quiet now than it was when he had first arrived in this strange place, when a scrapbook was shoved in his hands in a fruitless attempt to jog Stan’s memory.

The aforementioned scrapbook now lies, forgotten, on the armrest. Tentatively, he sits down and begins to leaf through it once more. Unfamiliar photos stare back at him, hauntingly. There is a man who shares his face, who grins crookedly in photos snapped by small hands, who dredges up nothing but a hollow guilt.

Engrossed in lost memories, he barely notices when a man wanders in. Stan tenses, reflexively. The kids are easier to read—they wear their emotions on their sleeve—but he finds his supposed twin brother more difficult to decipher. Well, not difficult, it’s more like…

Ford looks at him as one would an open casket. It’s unsettling to dwell on, so Stan tries not to.

Ford offers him a strained smile. “Good morning, Stanley. How did you sleep?” His words are measured. He’s a researcher and scientist, Stan recalls. After the scrapbook had failed to jog his memories, Ford had disappeared into the basement to research a cure. It’s a lot of effort, just to revive a dead man. Stan’s not sure he’s worth it.

“Slept fine,” Stan says dismissively. Then, taking in the lines on Ford’s face, “Slept better than you, evidently.”

“There’s a lot to be done,” Ford replies vaguely. He’s cradling his left hand, and a smudge of blood blots one of his fingers. At Stan’s questioning gaze, Ford smiles sheepishly. “I cut my hand on some broken glass,” he explains. “Normally not a big deal, but blood is quite the biohazard when working with experimental medicine.” He begins to rifle through cabinets one-handedly, clicking his tongue in exasperation each time he opens and closes one.

“Top left,” Stan says automatically.

Ford freezes and turns to Stan with a frenzied light in his eyes. “You remember?”

“Nah,” Stan says, and flips a scrapbook page to avoid seeing his disappointment. “Just seems obvious.”

Ford opens the top left cupboard and Stan watches out of the corner of his eye as he grabs the first aid kit. There aren’t going to be band-aids small enough, Stan thinks dimly. They had been used up, when Mabel had taken her hot glue gun and—

Ah, lost the train of thought.

Ford wraps a comically large bandage around his pinky finger, and sets the first aid kit back in the top right cabinet. Something deep within Stan cringes at that.

“We’re out of small band-aids,” Ford murmurs to himself as he retreats back into his lab. And then his supposed brother has vanished, without another word his way. That makes sense. He doesn’t want the stranger sitting, dull and faded, on his armchair. He wants his brother back.

Stan closes the scrapbook. It doesn’t help much, anyways.

The twins trail into the kitchen not long after Ford disappears. There’s the girl, who looped her arms around his neck and cried when he first woke up in the forest’s underbrush. And her brother, who dragged her away with lost eyes.

“Good morning, Grunkle Stan!” Mabel chirps brightly, with a big, toothy grin on her face. It can’t be genuine—he knows he’s not what she wants—but Stan appreciates her for trying.

“How are you feeling?” Dipper asks, gaze disconcertingly perceptive for a child. It’s a loaded question.

Stan, of course, chooses bravado over honesty. “Doing great as the so-called town hero.” He cracks a grin. “You two sure know how to make an old man feel good about himself.”

Mabel’s smile wobbles. Fuck. He doesn’t know how to talk to them at all. “You are a hero,” she says firmly. “Even if you don’t remember. You saved all of us.”

“Uh-huh.” Stan doesn’t mean for it to come out as dismissive as it does.

Mabel opens her mouth but Dipper tugs at her arm, and they share an unspoken agreement. “Have you eaten breakfast yet?” she asks instead.

Stan doesn’t know what the correct answer is. “Ah, not yet. Have a bit of a headache.”

“Ohh.” Dipper snaps his fingers. Stan’s expecting him to start harping about his amnesia, but then he continues, “It’s probably the caffeine withdrawal.”

So they show him how to make coffee. Stan’s pretty sure he remembers how to use a coffee machine, but he’s not complaining about the lesson. It would’ve been embarrassing if he had tried and failed.

He takes a sip while Dipper and Mabel fuss around in the kitchen. His mug says #1 GR UNCLE in big bold print, with the ‘GR’ handwritten in hot pink, loopy letters.

“The milk is out.” Dipper peers into a battered carton, before tossing it into the trash. He looks down at his dry bowl of cereal, then to his twin sister. “Have any genius ideas?”

“I’ve been waiting for this moment!” Mabel declares, and promptly cracks open a can of Pitt Cola to pour into her own empty bowl. Stan winces because he may be an amnesiac, but who the hell prepares cereal liquid-first?

“That’s gross,” Dipper says, and Mabel throws a handful of soda-soaked cereal at him. “You’re gross.”

Stan lets the siblings duke it out, it’s probably healthy for them.

But as he watches them, something nags at him. That’s another thing—all they eat is cereal. Stan himself can barely muster up any bites of food lately—it all tastes like cardboard— but does this household have any food? Yesterday, breakfast had been cereal, lunch had been more cereal, and dinner was canned beans and meat. Cold.

A quick cursory glance into the fridge and cupboards tells him that, no, they do not, in fact, have any food. He suspects the kitchen is usually in a state of dysfunction but this…this is just dismal. And to make matters worse, he doesn’t even think Ford eats, instead relying on numerous pills to probably avoid becoming the first person in Gravity Falls to die from scurvy.

Now Stan, and all his body aches, would never call himself the picture of perfect health, but even he has some ground-zero standards.

The next morning, he wakes up early. Forgotten memories still cloud the forefront of his mind, but he determinedly pushes them away. He has a goal, and a simple one: grocery shopping.

He assumes the red car parked out front is his, given the license plate, yet it still feels vaguely like stealing either way. But according to the kids, that’s never stopped him before, so he jerkily pulls the car out and heads into town. Muscle memory keeps him from crashing, although it does not keep him from cruising above the speed limit.

For a town that had just escaped the apocalypse, the grocery store is impressively intact and in-stock. He pushes a cart around aisles he doesn’t recognize. One of the workers joyfully throws him a dozen eggs to catch (seriously—what was his life?) and he spots a hoard of little men trying to steal a watermelon (is this normal? Maybe this is normal.) Unfamiliar faces greet him, wave at him, ask cheerily when Mr. Mystery will be back. He doesn’t know who that is.

“I think I sucker punched an evil triangle,” Stan tries to tell them, because he’s still a bit wary of the knowledge fed to him by his family. “Know anything about that?”

All he gets is a resounding: Never mind all that!

Well, fine. Never will he mind, then.

It’s almost too much, so halfway through trying to figure out where the bread is, his mind retreats in itself. While his body runs on autopilot, he occasionally glances down to find his shopping cart steadily filling up. Pancake mix. A pack of lightbulbs. Extra band-aids, but specifically the ones with cartoon ponies on them.

As he waits in line behind a stream of other bored shoppers, he checks his wallet and mentally tallies the costs. The longer he stands in line, the antsier he gets, because, well—

The thought of paying for all these groceries seems deeply, morally wrong. Or at least deeply, morally wrong for the health of him and his wallet. Surely no one would mind if he just…inched towards the exit…and maybe made a break for it…

It turns out he’s really good at running from cops. He likes to think his former self would be proud.

The excursion—the driving, the shopping, the people, everything—has Stan feeling weirdly drained, and he lingers on the threshold of the kitchen, plastic bags in hand, strongly debating whether to drop everything on the counter and just return to bed.

Instead, he takes out the pancake mix.

The instructions are easy enough to follow. Simple math to make four portions—no, five, in case someone is hungry. They’re missing a measuring cup, so Stan painstakingly uses the half-cup instead. Heat the pan, add a pad of butter. He’s not useless.

While he’s waiting for the pan to reach temperature, there’s a rustling behind him, and he turns to see Ford walk into the kitchen. “Did you go out?” he asks, sounding mildly distressed at the fact, and Stan shrugs.

“We needed groceries,” he replies simply.

Ford’s brow furrows as he examines Stan searchingly. “And you made it town all right? Driving, navigation, everything?”

Stan shrugs, eyes fixated on the pan. The butter is starting to sizzle. “It was fine,” he mumbles, feeling like he’s sitting at an interrogation table. Huh. He knows how that feels, doesn’t he? “My body knew what to do, I guess.”

“Interesting,” Ford muses, and flips open his journal to scribble a note. “Your muscle memory returns first. It’s what I had expected, but it’s nice to have confirmation. Basic, everyday tasks…maybe I should have taken you to town sooner.” He slips into the kitchen, still furiously writing in his journal.

“Why did you buy…” Ford rummages through one of Stan's grocery bags. “...sixteen packs of gummy koalas?”

“Uh.” Just looking at the sticky candy makes Stan’s gums ache. “It was on sale? Get off my back, I’m an amnesiac.”

“I know you didn’t pay for any of this,” Ford counters, as he continues to unpack groceries. He picks up a bag of jellybeans—another snack Stan has no idea why he bought—and pauses. Stan braces himself for another grilling, but instead Ford’s face crumples.

“Whoa.” Stan whips around to fully face Ford, spatula in hand. “You alright over there?” Okay, maybe he went overboard buying candy. It just seemed like the right thing to do!

“I’m fine,” Ford says dismissively, even as he’s swiping at his eyes. “I like jellybeans. That’s all.”

“Oh.” Stan turns his attention back to the stove, and flips the pancake as it begins to bubble. He grins—a decent golden brown. “You can have it all, then. I don’t even eat the stuff.”

At that, Ford shakily sits down at the kitchen table, firmly shuts his journal, and closes his eyes. He must really like jellybeans, Stan thinks, slightly concerned.

As Ford recovers from his jellybean-induced breakdown, Stan half-expects him to leave and return to the basement. He doesn’t, however, instead settling his chin in his hands and watching Stan quietly. Strangely, he finds he doesn’t mind the stare. He’ll need someone to eat these, anyways.

It doesn’t take long for Mabel to barrel into the kitchen, dragging Dipper along by his elbow. “We smelled pancakes!” she announces, clearly the one to force Dipper out of bed. Then, she notices Stan at the stove, and her eyes lit up. “No way! Stancakes!”

The simple sight of Stan making breakfast seems to be enough to wake Dipper fully up. His eyes widen and he turns to look at Ford with an unasked question. Ford simply shrugs and smiles, and that non-answer seems to delight Dipper even more.

“I’ll make Mabel Juice!” Mabel says eagerly. “Dipper, grab the glitter!”

“Not Mabel Juice,” Dipper despairs, but he follows her instruction anyways and helps her conjure up some horrific concoction in the blender.

The background ambience is nice. It fills his head with a comforting static, easing his mind of the gaps in his memory. He gives Dipper the first pancake, since the boy and his twig arms look like he could use a good breakfast, and Dipper looks at the shitty, slightly overcooked pancake like it’s the most precious gift he’s ever received.

(Should Stan be concerned? Perhaps the entire family is this emotional over food).

“A brilliant invention,” Ford is telling Mabel after he tries his first sip of Mabel Juice. His entire body is jittering. “I thought I had found every possible way to heighten human sense but this is pure genius.”

“It’s the plastic dinosaurs,” Mabel explains. “Grunkle Stan, is the maple syrup free for drinking?”

“Knock yourself out, kiddo.”

Dipper and Mabel eat four pancakes each, and Stan makes sure to pointedly set down a plate in front of Ford. He eats it plain, no added butter or maple syrup, and chews each bite carefully. But he still eats, and Stan will take that as a victory.

They eat pancakes for dinner, too. Stan cooks with an extremely limited menu, but no one complains.

Stan’s room is a treasure trove of his past. He spends hours leafing through the numerous boxes he has hidden under the bed, under floorboards, behind panels. A pistol tucked away in a drawer. Stacks of textbooks: thermodynamics, theoretical physics, fluid and solid mechanics. Newspaper clippings, old photos, fake IDs. Could it be possible that Stanley Pines is just another fraudulent identity? No, his semblance to Ford is too uncanny. He’s clearly a Pines, and he can’t see the other three sticking around for no other reason than blood relation.

The answer, he reasons, is simple: Stanley Pines was just not a good person.

Maybe I deserve the amnesia, he thinks, when he opens a worn notebook and finds pages filled with unfinished erotic fanfiction of some period drama. Maybe my past finally caught up to me and this is the consequence. It's a pretty good story, all things considered. Stan kinda wishes he remembered how the ending was supposed to go.

The day drags on, quiet and unassuming. Dipper and Mabel are in town, catching up with friends and townsfolk. Ford has once more locked himself away in his study, but not before taking Stan’s pulse, his temperature, and scanning his forehead with some weird, sci-fi laser device.

That leaves Stan alone in his house (his? Ford’s? He’s not sure, and Ford won’t answer him) with nothing to busy himself with. He takes it as an opportunity to properly explore outside his room. The twins sleep up in the attic, and it looks exactly how he’d think it would: bright posters on Mabel’s side, discarded clothes on Dipper’s. It feels wrong to peek into Ford’s room, but he can’t help himself. There’s a thick layer of dust covering the furniture and the calendar is still open to the year 1982. It sends a chill down Stan’s spine, so he closes it quickly, half-wishing he could board it up.

But the unease of Ford’s room is quickly pushed out of his mind. There’s a leak in the roof. Several, in fact. It irritates the hell out of Stan. He finds himself dialing one of the few phone numbers he knows: it was given to him that day he woke in the woods, by a man who claimed to be his employee.

He picks up on the first ring. “Mr. Pines!”

“Listen,” Stan says gruffly. “You’re the handyman, right? Think you can come fix up the shack?” He hesitates on what else to say. Maybe this guy quit, and he doesn’t even know it.

“I’m on my way, dude,” Soos declares, evidently taking Stan’s silence as cue for him to speak. “Abuelita told me I shouldn’t waste my day sitting next to the phone and waiting for you to call, but I knew you would eventually!”

Stan splutters. “You’re coming right now?” And then: “Wait, you’ve been waiting—”

“I’m always ready to fix stuff up!” Soos assures him. “That’s, like, my job.” For some reason, the pure genuinity in which he speaks causes Stan’s heart to clench. Add cardiovascular issues to the brain damage. “Be there in ten, Mr. Pines!”

The more Stan stalks around the house, the more atrocities he spots. The roof is more busted than he had thought, there’s a gaping hole in the living room floor, and the porch looks like it’s hosted the apocalypse at its front door. Which it had.

“Wendy won’t mind helping,” Soos says cheerfully, when Stan starts listing off the various afflictions that no one appears to be fixing. Stan is not one for luxury—he has too many recollections of cold nights in a car for that—but something about the shack’s prolonged state of ruin just feels frustrating. It should be dingy but not broken. “She used to work for you, too.”

Wendy is a lanky fifteen year old girl that smiles at Stan in the same sad way Dipper does. She calls him Mr. Pines too, and arrives with an axe strapped to her waist. “You better pay me for this,” she warns, but her tone is light. “This is above my paygrade.”

Stan squints at her. “And how much did I pay you before?”

“Twenty an hour,” Wendy replies automatically.

“Kid, I know I taught you to be more believable than that,” Stan snaps back and Wendy grins.

“You did,” she says, and starts listing off with her fingers. “Also how to shoplift, lockpick, and hotwire a car.”

“...How old did you say you were?”

“Fifteen,” Wendy replies, and Stan nods in approval at his past self. Teach ‘em young.

They set to work immediately. Well, Soos and Wendy set to work immediately, and Stan heckles them with a can of Pitt Cola in hand. There’s a strange ease in talking to them, one that isn’t there with his family. Sometimes they look at him like he’s casket-bound, too, but the shared work has them slipping into designated roles that he didn’t know they had.

“You’re not gonna bother fixing up that S?” he calls up to Wendy as she hammers the roof. The aforementioned letter had been lying unceremoniously on the ground for as long as Stan could remember. Which, granted, has only been three days.

“It’s a lost cause, Mr. Pines,” Wendy replies flippantly. “Maybe for another fifteen dollars…?”

“Not happening.”

“I’ll do it for free!” Soos offers, with that toothy grin of his. Something flashes in Stan’s mind at that: a twelve-year-old with starry eyes and an oversized T-shirt. Gumdrop.

“What, do you think I’m easy?” Stan complains at him, then pushes a lukewarm Pitt Cola at him so he doesn’t dehydrate and pass out on the front lawn. “Just get back to work.”

Towards the end of the day, Stan wouldn’t call the shack fixed, but rather…passable. And, if memory serves him correctly, he’s never been very good at passing anything before, so he calls it a win. Dipper and Mabel haven’t returned yet, so he takes this as opportunity to grill Wendy and Soos for answers.

They’ll give it to me straight, he reasons. Underpaid-employees-turned-jobless, yeah Stan is sure they won’t mince their words.

“So who was I, really?” he asks, when the sun is setting and he slaps a wad of cash into each of their hands. Soos stares sadly down at the bills. Was he really serious about working for free? “‘Cause I know my family’s got these grand opinions, but I find it hard to believe.”

Wendy turns and exchanges a look with Soos. It’s strangely weighted.

Soos smiles at Stan and shrugs, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “You’re our hero, dude.”

There’s a beat of silence, as Stan peers at the pair, waiting for a negative to come. It never does. That word is beginning to haunt him.

“I’m not your boss anymore,” he points out, and Soos’ eyes get a little damp at that. “You can be honest.”

Wendy clears her throat. "There's a new Ducktective episode tonight,” she says instead. “If you let us stick around to watch it, we’ll tell you all the shit you’ve put us through.”

“Language,” Stan says automatically, then screws up his face. God, what was that? “Fine, but this doesn’t count as overtime.”

“You never paid overtime,” Soos reassures him.

Dipper and Mabel return home just in time for the episode to air, and they all pile into the living room to watch. Stan can’t keep half the plot straight between four people talking over each other to explain every detail about the show, but it’s not bad. Stan’s got nothing against ducks.

(Wendy and Soos end up telling him a lot: stories from summers before Dipper and Mabel, complaints about tourists, how terribly the Shack operated when he went on a three-day vacation. And after everyone falls asleep, The Duchess Approves starts playing, and, hey, that’s pretty good too.)

Stanley Pines is a ghost in the Pines family.

He finds photos buried in a box deep within one of the many nooks in the shack. There’s what must be his parents’ wedding photo (the man with sunglasses—his father—makes him shiver inexplicably). There’s a photo of Ford’s college graduation. He’s beaming, one arm slung around a lanky student with glasses. Stan is nowhere in the photo. Baby photos, childhood photos, grainy photos of cryptids…Stan is in none of them.

A horrible, cold sensation slithers down his spine, one that feels like dread. Ford’s voice: Selfish? I’m selfish, Stanley? Dipper staring up at him with a cold fury he’s never seen before. Mabel, crying tears that drift up in the anti-gravity.

These lingering memories only further confirm his greatest fear: they’re hiding something from him. Something bad.

Stan tries to avoid his family for the rest of the day. Out of, what, guilt? Shame? Respect? They make it difficult to avoid, however, and it’s made even worse with the turbulent weather. By midday, a summer storm has swept the town, and Dipper and Mabel are stuck inside with him.

At least the roof doesn’t leak.

It’s after dinner, when Ford is just beginning to retreat back into his lab, that the rain worsens, thudding down hard on the windows. A particularly brutal gust of wind sweeps through the woods, and the shack shudders and goes dark.

Ford clicks his tongue, peering outside. “The winds shouldn’t be strong enough to take out the power,” he mutters. “Perhaps a gnome got into the fuse box…”

A pit forms in Stan’s stomach, and it takes him a moment to decipher the feeling. He hates paying for anything, hates it with a passion, but there was one exception to the rule: the Shack, which he could never afford to lose.

“...Did anyone pay the electricity bill?” Stan slowly asks, even though he already knows the answer.

Ford sagely taps his chin. “It completely slipped my mind,” he says thoughtfully. “I haven’t had to pay bills in thirty years. Well, except in the Utility Bill Dimension, in which every inhabitant was a different type of utility bill…”

Stan still can’t fully remember his brother, but that sentence does unlock a deep-seated resentment about mortgage payments.

The sun has long since gone down, so they cobble together the various lanterns and candles hidden around the shack. Ford had assured them he could easily figure out a way to rig up power to the house, but Mabel was vehemently against that idea.

“It’s more fun this way!” she argues. “We’ve never had a non monster-induced blackout before!”

“When we were younger, we used to build pillow forts and hide out in them,” Dipper remembers. He grins at Mabel. “Remember when we snuck a lit candle in one of them and your favorite blanket caught on fire?”

“Mom was so mad,” Mabel says, sounding a bit too delighted.

“There’s still work to be done,” Ford frets. “I have residuals from Weirdmageddon I needed to clean up today. Not to mention,” and then a precursory glance at Stan, “I’m still yet to figure out a cure…”

A mischievous gleam sparks in Mabel’s eyes. “Didn’t you say you wanted us to all play that nerd game? Seems like the perfect time now!”

Ford pauses in his erratic pacing. “I did fill out character sheets for you and Stanley,” he muses. “And I have the perfect campaign for three players…”

Fifteen minutes later, Stan finds himself sitting on the floor with an obscene amount of graph paper littered atop it. Ford unfolds a cardboard stand-up of a cartoon wizard with entirely too much glee. And why do they need this many dice?

“I’m playing a fairy princess with multicolored eyes who tragically lost her family in a boating accident,” Mabel is telling Dipper, who just looks enthused that his sister is actually taking the game seriously. “Great Uncle Ford says I can burn stuff down with—oh, what was the spell again?”

“Fireball,” Dipper answers, pointing to something on Mabel’s sheet. “It’s one of your starting cantrips.”

“Cantrip?” Mabel says cluelessly, which propels Dipper into a very long-winded explanation on spellcasting modifiers and dice rolls and character levels.

While Dipper is rambling, Stan squints at his own sheet. “My background is charlatan? Is this a joke?”

“I worked very hard to balance strength with your charisma points!” Ford protests. “Not many DMs could cook up a rogue-barbarian multiclass this masterfully.”

“You’re saying I gotta do math to be charismatic—”

“It’ll be fun,” Ford says, but there’s a fragile tilt to his voice that confuses Stan. So he closes his mouth, and lets Ford hand him a set of dice. “Now, remember to do your character voices, everyone—”

Stan cheats, of course, because it’s shockingly easy to lie on a 38-sided die roll. Insultingly easy, even. But he doesn’t mind rigging the roll in order to help Dipper and Mabel pull off a complicated joint acrobatics check in front of a dragon, and, from the way Ford’s eyes soften, he doesn’t mind either.

The next time Stan wakes up, he’s in Colombia.

Now, this isn’t exactly surprising. The last time he woke up, he was also in Colombia, because this is where he’s been for the past year. But what he doesn’t understand, however, is why he’s sleeping in this nice plush bed instead of fleeing the country, because Rico’s about to track him down any second.

His knees flare in pain as he stumbles out of bed. The room is dark and dizzying, shadows merging confusingly to form foreign shapes. A bag. He needs to pack his bag and leave.

He fumbles for where he usually keeps his duffel bag but it’s not in its usual place under bed. There's only clutter: scraps of paper, loose coins, a few mothballs. His pocket knife is still nestled under his pillow, however, so he snatches that instead, and gives up on packing. He doesn’t have time; he needs to run now.

Stan freezes at the sound of light footsteps. Flicking open the knife, he inches his way towards the door. He’s brought brass knuckles to a gunfight before, maybe he can get lucky and fight his way out of this one too.

When Stan cracks open the door, he’s not staring down at the barrel of a gun. Instead, there’s a boy standing at the stairwell near his room. He can’t be more than twelve or thirteen, and he’s staring at Stan in surprise. Then, his gaze drops to where Stan is gripping onto his pocket knife and Stan follows his eyes down. His own hands are wrinkled and worn with age. He knits his brows together. That’s…not right.

He doesn’t get a chance to dwell on it, because the boy finally speaks. “Grunkle Stan?”

Stan’s shoulders rise. “How do you know my name?” he spits out. And where is he? He could’ve sworn he was camping out at some cheap motel, but no child would be wandering around an area like this. And the building is made out of old wood; it looks more like a northwestern cabin than any run-down lodge.

“Oh.” The boy seems to relax a little. “Do you remember who I am?”

Stan frowns. “No. Am I supposed to?”

The boy smiles a little. “Yeah, we kind of know each other.” His eyebags are too pronounced for someone his age, and Stan feels a twang of pity. Dipper always had trouble sleeping, hasn’t he?

“Oh,” Stan says aloud. “Dipper.” It’s like waking up from a dream: the vestiges of the life he was living slip away. He’s in a worn out house called the Mystery Shack. His grand-nephew is standing in front of him. He still doesn’t remember much about Dipper, but he remembers who he’s supposed to be. And he remembers his typical bedtime hours. “What’re you doing up at this hour?”

Dipper shifts, uncomfortable. “I couldn’t sleep,” he admits. “Nightmares, I guess.”

“Am I supposed to, I dunno, give you some comforting words?” Stan asks, woefully out of his depth. He realizes he’s still holding onto the knife, so he hastily closes it.

“Not really.” Dipper’s clutching onto a journal, one that bears strong resemblance to Ford’s. “Usually you just. Ruffle my hair or something. Maybe put me in a chokehold.”

Sounds about right. They stare at each other, as if sizing up who’s going to initiate the chokehold first. Finally, Stan jerks a finger at Dipper. “Come downstairs with me. I can’t sleep, either.”

Dipper sits in the living room as Stan makes them both a cup of hot chocolate using packets that are so old, the powder has nearly hardened into a brick. Eh, it shouldn’t kill them.

He hands one mug to Dipper, who takes a sip and looks down at it fondly. “Mabel likes to eat hot chocolate mix by the spoon,” he says absentmindedly. “Once, she downed a whole pack, and started coughing up chocolate dust all over your suit.”

“You kids are menaces,” Stan grumbles, but it comes out more fond than he means it to.

The wind whistles, and Dipper jumps. His hands curl over his mug and Stan frowns. He knows, logically, the kids were put through the apocalypse, but to see the aftermath of it is jarring. Dipper’s not supposed to be this twitchy, he knows this somewhere deep in his soul.

“It’s too quiet,” he decides. “Wanna see what records your great-uncle has hiding away?” He’s not sure which one he means.

Dipper gives him a wavering smile. “That sounds good.”

Stan settles down on the armchair (it’s rapidly becoming his favorite place in the entire shack) and Dipper perches on the armchair next to him. He deposits a stack of records in Stan’s lap, all unlabeled.

“I’m convinced at least one of these has to be haunted,” Dipper says seriously, “but I never got the chance to go through all of them.” He had been rapidly clicking his pen before, and has now started gnawing at the end. Stan automatically reaches out to gently push it away from his mouth before it explodes in ink. “If we actually do find a ghost and I mess up the exorcism, promise not to tell Great Uncle Ford.”

“I make no promises,” Stan says, and plays the first one. They both wince. It’s a banjo solo that goes on for far too long.

“Is this Ford's?” Stan asks in disbelief. Then, in even more horror: “Is this mine?”

“McGucket's old records are mixed in this too?” Dipper sounds delighted. “Oh, there’s gotta be something supernatural in here.” He tips forward and Stan holds out an arm to stop him from falling over in excitement. “Play the next one, play the next one.”

After the sixth record, Dipper falls asleep against him. Stan absolutely refuses to move, even when his back starts cramping.

The worst part about the emptiness is the nauseating familiarity about it.

Ford had assured him it could be another side effect of the amnesia, but Stan has a horrible inkling that it’s not. It’s a vestige from his past, a grief-anger that’s set deep within his bones. If only he could just piece that past together.

He’s tried to, subtly, bring up his flashback to Ford, but his brother had only stared at him blankly. “Why do you want to know about Colombia?” he had asked. “Personally, I’ve never traveled outside the states. Well, unless you count the obvious.”

His own brother hadn’t known Stan had spent a sizable chunk of his time in Colombia. Colombian prison, if his solidifying memories serve him correct. He—the past him, anyways—must have kept that a secret.

An odd vertigo settles in his stomach. A master con-artist, pulling strings and playing faces. Who’s to say he hasn’t conned his family as well? The guilt is beginning to rise again; he wants to claw it off his skin. It’s fine. He’ll just work on repentance, he’ll earn his family’s seemingly boundless love. He’ll do what he never could.

The urge to do something never quite goes away until he finds one of Mabel’s sweaters lying on the floor. It’s the one she had wore when he had first met her, hot pink with a large cupcake decorating the middle. It’s clearly gone through the rough of the Weirdmageddon, dirtied and torn.

Stan thinks he knows how to sew. It’s dubious at best.

(His memories flood: threading a needle through his own gaping skin, patching up a burned hole on a worn red jacket, clumsily stitching letters onto two fishing hats.)

Either way, he’d like to figure out if he can do something right. So he settles down, needle in hand, and sets to work attempting to patch it. It’s knitted but surely he could manage to fix it up. Except knit yarn is nothing like fabric, so he’s at a loss where to begin. Oh well, he thinks, and starts threading the needle anyways. If he fucks up severely, he’s protected by the Good Samaritan law. Or something.

Mabel bounces into the living room twenty minutes later, when Stan has barely made any progress in his attempt to patch up the sweater. In fact, it looks worse than when he started out.

“Hi, pumpkin,” Stan says distractedly. “How’ve you been?”

When she doesn’t respond, he looks up to see her staring at him with wide eyes. He’s so terrible at handling these kids. He sets down the needle and winces. “Does it look that bad?”

“You called me pumpkin,” Mabel says slowly. “You always used to call me that.”

“Oh.” Stan doesn’t really know how to respond to that. It had just tumbled out of him, as easy as breathing. “Well…does it look bad?”

Mabel leans over to squint at the sweater. “It has…personality!”

“I think an insult would’ve felt better,” Stan says dryly.

Mabel waves her hand. “Listen, Grunkle Stan,” she says firmly. “Art isn’t about what looks good! Art is about feeling! And you put a lot of love into this!”

“Okay,” Stan says, “but I really don’t think this is even wearable—”

“Nonsense!” Mabel scolds, then punches his leg in what she probably thinks is encouragement, but actually hurts quite a bit. “Here, I’ll show you how I patch up my sweaters! You’ll learn in no time.”

Mabel runs off in a hurry, and when she returns, she’s holding a ball of yarn and some needles. She settles down on the floor and beckons Stan to watch. “This is called Swiss darning,” she explains as she takes the sweater and begins to stitch a pattern with thread. “It’s pretty easy to get the hang of.”

“Weird name,” Stan mutters, but he watches her anyways. Her hands work, quick and precise, and Stan’s quickly lost even as Mabel explains her every move. “I don’t think arts and crafts are my thing.”

“You’re good at it though!” Mabel argues, as she works on mending the next hole, “The Mystery Shack is full of your projects!”

Yeah, and that’s held together by cheap glue and petty lies. But he humors her and asks, “Is there anything else I’m good at?”

Mabel hums thoughtfully. “I taught you how to French braid,” she suggests. “You’re better at it than Dipper, though.” Then, her eyes light up, and suddenly she’s tossing her sweater to the side. “Oh my gosh, you should totally braid my hair!”

“Uh.” Mabel takes off her headband and positions herself directly in front of Stan, even as he’s stalling. “What if I, I dunno, rip off your hair?”

“Then I’ll rip off yours so we can match,” Mabel replies and that seems fair enough, so Stan tentatively gathers a few strands of hair, hoping muscle memory will kick in. It does not.

As Mabel instructs him, she flips through her scrapbook once more. But instead of attempting to jog his memory, she’s simply recounting memories of the summer. It’s nice, even when he stops paying attention to focus on braiding.

“And done,” he announces, looping off the braid with a hair tie (he was going to use a rubber band, but apparently that’s sacrilegious). “Hm. Maybe don’t look at it.”

Even with Stan’s limited knowledge, he can see that the braid is terribly done. It’s loose on one side and tight on the other, and strands of Mabel’s hair poke messily out on all sides. “Sorry, sweetie,” he says as Mabel turns to admire it in her hand mirror. “I guess I really don’t remember how to do anything.”

“No, it’s perfect.” Mabel beams. “It’s like you’ve always done it.”

There's much of the Mystery Shack that remains unfamiliar to Stan: the old walls, the hidden passageways, the patterned glass windows. The vending machine, however...this Stan knows as his. The moon is hung high in the sky as he stands in front of it, his reflection peering back at him through the glass. He’s not sure why he's here, why there's this insistent voice in his head, this dread that settles on his shoulders. He needs to work. He’s missed too many nights.

This is Ford’s lab, the logical part of his brain points out, confused even as he’s punching in a password he doesn’t remember. This isn’t yours, why are you here?

The vending machine heaves open, revealing a long staircase. Ford has always discouraged Stan from wandering around his lab, but Stan…Stan has work to do. He lets his feet carry him, fingers automatically typing a code in the elevator that brings him down to the third floor. It’s dark down here, and he fumbles for a light, but can’t quite find the right switch.

Sitting down at what looks to be some control panel, Stan stares down blankly at the array of buttons and screens. He needs to do something. The needling in his brain grows sharper and he groans, cradling his head in his hands. He’s running out of time.

“Stanley?” A hand on his shoulder. He jolts back, peering up to see Ford hovering over him worriedly. “What are you doing down here?”

“I—” The fear mounts. “I need to find him.”

“Find him?” Ford kneels down to look him in the eye. “Find who?”

“I don’t know, I just—” Stan sucks in a breath. “He’s stuck. Because of me. I need to—I need to save him.”

“Oh, Stanley.” The tension drains out of Ford’s shoulders. “No, he’s okay. I promise, he’s—” His breath hitches. “You saved him, Stanley, don’t worry.”

“I’m so confused,” Stan grits out. Now that he’s talking aloud, he has no idea what he was on about. “My brain’s broken.”

“It’s not.” Ford reaches over, flicks on a switch that washes the lab in a dim yellow light. “Has your memory been troubling you? What do you remember?”

There’s that hope again, Stan’s so fucking sick of it. Ford’s twin brother is dead. “I don’t know what I remember,” he says, exasperated. “I remember the codes to this lab. I remember I don’t like my scrambled eggs too runny. I remember to wear my dentures each morning.” He rubs his eyes. “It’s nothing—” Nothing that you want.

“You wear dentures?” Ford asks numbly. “Why?”

“Aren't you my brother?” Stan mutters. He can taste it now, suddenly: the copper-salt of blood, the coarse grit of fabric under his teeth. “Shouldn't you know?”

Ford flinches back at that as if he's been burned. “Yes,” he murmurs. “I should know.”

There’s a long stretch of silence. This is the longest Stan has talked to Ford about himself, he realizes. He’s not sure how to go from here. There isn’t that intrinsic ease that comes to him when he’s with the twins or his employees. With Ford it’s just—wrong. Stilted. There’s no intuition he can grasp at.

“Let me show you around,” Ford says finally. “I thought keeping this from you was for the best, but…perhaps looking at this will help.” He stands up, and beckons for Stan to do the same.

Stan follows his brother through a set of doors off to the side, stepping out onto a large room with walls of exposed rock. “So what is this, anyway?” Stan squints at the wreckage of machinery. Even in its broken state, the unmistakable shape of a triangle stares back at him.

“It’s your thirty year sacrifice.” Ford’s eyes are distant. “You don't know how much you've done for me."

Stan narrows his eyes. “Ford, I know that Dipper and Mabel try to sugarcoat it, but tell me the truth. I’m an adult; I can handle it. Who was I, really?”

“I don’t understand.” Ford turns to Stan, innocently confused. “You’re Stanley Pines. My brother.”

“Oh, cut the bullshit.” Stan rolls his eyes. “I’ve seen the fake ID’s, this whole Mystery Shack scam. I have these…voices, your voice, in particular, telling me how much I messed up. I know I’m a selfish conman, but what did I really do to you? How did I fuck up? ‘Cause I’m real sick of my own family acting like they have someone important to save.”

“Don’t.” Ford’s voice is sharp. “Don’t say that about yourself.”

“What? Am I wrong?” Stan arches an eyebrow. “I may be an amnesiac, but I know myself. I know I’m not worth anything, so, really, if you could just tell it to me straight—”

“That’s it," Ford rasps. “You remember. You remember how you think of yourself.”

He makes his way towards Stan, who jerks back instinctively, but then Ford is pulling him into a hug, so tight it hurts Stan’s ribs. “You never change,” Ford says wetly. “I wish you would, sometimes.”

“Sorry.” The words fall out of him, he doesn’t even know why. “Sorry, sorry, I screwed it all up again—”

“No,” Ford whispers, and clings to him tighter. “No, you saved me.”

Eventually, Ford pulls away, and for a moment he’s just staring at Stan, expression unreadable. “I wish…” He lets out a soft laugh. “I wish I had hugged you before. I never—” He closes his eyes. “I wish you could remember how much this means to me.”

“I don’t know.” Stan swallows. “It just hurts to look at you sometimes.”

Ford takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Your name is Stanley Pines,” he says firmly. “You’re my brother. We both hurt each other a lot when we were younger, but you spent thirty years trying to save me. And you did save me. Multiple times, in fact.”

“So the whole killing-a-triangle was a lie,” Stan presumes. “Weird thing to make up, by the way—”

“Oh, no, that was very much true.” Ford waves his hands. “You saved me from an interdimensional portal and you defeated the triangle demon hellbent on destroying our universe. I’ll tell you everything soon. I promise.”

That has Stan frowning again. “I told you I can handle it, Sixer.”

He’s not sure where the nickname comes from, but it has Ford smiling. “I know you can,” Ford says softly. “You were always the stronger twin. But I’m the one who needs time.” He sighs. “It’s…a lot. I don’t want you to know that part of me.”

“It won’t change anything,” Stan replies, and the conviction of it startles even him. “I just want to know who I am.”

“You lived for me—as me—for thirty years,” Ford says, voice gentle. “I can’t tell you who you are. You deserve that much, at least.” He drags a hand across his face. The lab’s shadows age him a few more years. “We shouldn’t stay here,” he continues, casting a gaze around the room. He lingers on the portal, and something in his eyes darkens. “Let’s continue this upstairs.”

As he makes his way through the doors, Ford stalls. “The machinery looks different,” he mutters, pursing his lips. “I can’t tell what it is, but I’m certain there weren’t this many hoses before—”

“Oh,” Stan says, and suddenly words are tumbling out of him, unbidden. “Your heat exchangers are undersized. I had to hook up extra chillers and everything.”

“The heat exchangers—” Ford starts, baffled.

“Yeah, I think it was just a calculation mistake.” Stan rubs his neck. “You forgot to take into account the pressure drop and heat increase when the machine actually kicks on. Also Gravity Falls has some weird entropic imbalance, so your enthalpy calculations are off too.”

“But that’s so—rudimentary—” Ford rakes a hand through his hair, distressed. Then, he whips around to look at Stan. “What else did you observe about the portal’s energy? How much do you remember?”

“I don’t—” Stan’s a bit miffed that his memories have decided to unearth his apparent knowledge of physics rather than his actual family, but Ford simply grabs his elbow and steers him towards the elevator. “We’re going to discuss the excitation of atoms during portal operation, because I have been simply dying to understand it.”

“I really don’t think I’m an expert,” Stan says weakly, but he finds he doesn’t mind when Ford starts chattering about science, so he doesn’t protest too hard.

This is a good memory:

Two blanket swaddles, pressed into his arms. They’re warm in his hold, but there’s a fragility to them that has him terrified. A constellation birthmark on one, the telltale Pines curls on the other. Twins.

He should let them go. Shermie is at his side, hands outstretched as his niece watches, a tired smile on her face. But he can’t look away, and he can’t let go either. Something rises in his throat, fierce and unwavering.

For the first time, in a very long time, he’s not in mourning.

Stan is in the middle of falsifying his taxes when he jolts upright. Ford, from where he’s sitting across from him, looks at him questioningly. Then, Stan whips around to glare at where Dipper and Mabel are sitting on the living room floor, playing chess.

“Your birthdays are tomorrow!” he says accusingly. “You let me forget!”

“You remember?” Dipper’s jaw drops. “Grunkle Stan, that’s amazing!”

“It’s not amazing,” Stan argues, feeling rather distressed. “We don’t even have presents.”

Mabel knocks one of Dipper’s knights with her queen, then steals the piece to tuck into her sweater. “I had a whole party planned, but everything happened so fast,” she despairs. “Maybe we can still invite our friends and get a cake!”

Stan knows they’d never want him to shoulder the blame, but he still feels a horrible guilt at that. If they hadn’t been so concerned with his memories, they could’ve been preparing for their birthday like the kids they were supposed to me.

“We still have our own tradition,” Dipper suggests to Mabel. “The one where we stay up ‘til midnight together and watch the clock strike twelve?”

“Oh, yeah!” Mabel brightens. “We can do a sleepover!” She grins toothily at Stan and Ford. “With our grunkles! That’s better than any party!”

“Well,” Ford decides, smiling at Stan. “If they want to celebrate with two old men, who are we to stop them?”

The sleepover is exactly how Stan thought it’d be. Mabel strings up fairy lights across the attic and a mess of pillows, blankets, and sleeping bags is arranged on the floor. Everyone is forced to play one of her preteen dating board games (Ford gets really into shittalking a hypothetical ex) and a round of attic mini-golf ends with Stan putting a golf ball through the window (he feels some type of vindication at that). They take turns telling stories to keep the younger twins awake: Dipper recounts when he had to fight a giant bat, Mabel spills about her date with a coven of vampires, and Ford tells tale after tale of his adventures in the multiverse. Stan doesn’t have anything to add—the stories he does remember from his past are nothing to celebrate—but he asks questions from time to time, and that seems to thrill them all the same.

The clock strikes twelve, and Dipper and Mabel turn thirteen. It’s a bit anticlimatic, in Stan’s opinion, because for all the hype surrounding it, Dipper and Mabel had fallen asleep at exactly 11:53.

“They need the sleep,” Stan mutters. He’s certain they never had trouble staying up late before, but the lingering stress of an apocalypse has no doubt taken its toll on their small bodies. He looks over to where Ford is sitting on the floor beside him. “Any idea what to do now?”

Ford shrugs. “We used to do something like this too.” He huffs out a laugh. “I’m fifteen minutes older, so I’d always lord it over your head until you caught up.”

“Always had to be number one, huh?” Stan chides, but he’s smiling. “We were real close, weren’t we.” He glances down at Dipper and Mabel. “As close as these two are.”

“Do you remember any of it?” Ford asks tentatively, and Stan shakes his head. He feels it though: some horrible tightness in his throat that makes it hard to breathe.

He doesn’t say any of that. “I do remember what Jimmy Snakes and I did back in ‘75, though,” he replies. “Kinda wish I could forget that.”

Ford pauses, tilts his head. “…And what did you do?”

“I don’t think you want to know.”

Ford rolls his eyes. “At least it wasn’t anything under my name. Care to explain why I'm banned from flying?”

"Amnesia," Stan says gravely. "It's a bitch." Ford leans over and socks him in the arm, which, Stan admits, is deserved.

A silence settles on them, and the mirth slowly drains from Ford’s face, until it’s replaced with remorse. “I can’t figure out a cure,” Ford says miserably. “I’m sorry, Stanley.”

Something seizes Stan, sudden and desperate. He cares, Stan thinks. They all do. The revelation is overwhelmingly painful, and it nearly spills out of him like the rushing tide. Instead what comes out is this:

“You have six fingers,” Stan realizes. “That's why I call you Sixer.”

“Did you just notice?” Ford asks incredulously.

“It’s not really the weirdest thing about you.”

Ford grins and falls back into the mess of blankets and pillows. Then, he grabs Stan and pulls him down too. Stan yelps as he crashes on the floor, sandwiched between Ford and a sleeping Dipper. “I’m an old man with back pain,” he complains. “I’m not built for this.”

“Lower your voice,” Ford scolds, like he’s the childish one here. “Don’t wake the kids.”

Stan rolls his eyes, but he shifts onto his back to stare up at the ceiling. The exposed wood is decorated with glow-in-the-dark stars that he, Dipper, and Mabel had tried to stick up there. He remembers that, it was when they had bought a ladder to celebrate overcoming his fear of heights. “You don’t need to cure me. I think I need to figure this one out myself.”

Ford is quiet for a bit. “I have a plan for the future,” he says suddenly. “It involves building a boat.”

“A boat, huh?” A warm feeling floods his chest. Against all his instincts, Stan asks, “Think you got room for one more?”

When Ford smiles, Stan sees a glimpse of someone else in him: a young boy, with sunburned cheeks and crooked glasses. “Always.”

Mabel shifts, throwing an arm around Ford’s chest. Dipper curls closer into Stan’s side, muttering softly in his sleep. “I think we’re trapped here,” Ford comments.

Even through the blankets, the hardwood floor presses into Stan’s back uncomfortably. One of Dipper’s elbows digs into the side of his stomach, and he wishes he had the foresight to take off his glasses. But, despite it all, the phantom ache of lost memories tells him that this just feels right.