Chapter Text
It’s strange. To live your whole life with someone standing next to you, only to have them leave. When Ford was a kid, it was him and Stanley, Stanley and him, the twins, the Stans, always side by side. That was how it was supposed to be forever. There’s no words for this feeling, to have someone stand by you disappear, not dead, just distant, existing somewhere far far away, never speaking to you, just crossing your mind. Ford is on his own now. He’s independant. From everything. Life does the impossible: it keeps going without him.
Backupsmore University. It… wasn’t West Coast Tech. But it wasn’t in New Jersey. He didn’t know anyone there. Everything was new and everyone was polite about the amount of fingers he had. It still creeped them out when they noticed, but he wasn’t mocked or excluded for it. He puts his family photo up on his bedstand, but it makes him feel sick, so he puts it in the drawer. He doesn’t talk to a lot of people. He thinks of joining the chess club, but he has to make a name for himself. His father’s expecting a future for him. Besides, Ford was never the partying type.
He met Fiddleford in his second year of college.
What really struck Ford about him was that the first thing Fiddleford did, upon meeting Ford for the first time, was take off his glasses. Not his glasses. Ford’s glasses.
“Can I see? Here’s mine. Woowhee! Your vision’s actually worse than mine! I didn’t think it was possible!”
Ford looks down at his glasses. “But you only need reading glasses.”
“Yeah, don’t matter how far away the reading material is!”
“Uh, I can’t see.”
“Whoops, sorry.” He hands his glasses back. “Fiddleford McGucket. I’m the school’s kook!”
Fiddleford quickly becomes Ford’s best friend. He isn’t always sure if Fiddleford feels the same way about him, but he’s never been sure if people feel the same way about him. He isn’t like a sibling. Friends aren’t like siblings. They don’t know everything about you. You get to tell them things. They get to tell you things. It’s strange. Ford’s never had to do that before. It’s fascinating to watch a person come together, and Fiddleford is easy to lose himself in.
It makes Ford feel… alright. He can’t remember the last time he felt alright. Mostly, he’s always felt tired and snappy and sick and sometimes guilty for whatever reason. Mostly he just feels far away from everything but Fiddleford makes him feel okay. Every time they hang out, Ford feels like he should apologize after, because he’s just so bad at talking and interacting, but Fiddleford always wants to hang out and do stuff to and it makes him feel like there’s a place for him, somewhere he belongs. It’s good to have a best friend. It’s great. Fiddleford’s all he needs. He’s bright and energetic and positive and can play the banjo. He’s funny and clever and such a magnificent thing to be around. Ford can’t get enough of him.
He finally works up the nerve to come out to him after knowing him for over a year.
Sometimes his phone rings and no one’s there.
Stanford graduates with highest honors and gets his PhD in record time. Fiddleford’s impressed. So is Filbrick. Ford wonders if he should tell Stan but Stan has never made contact with him. He doesn’t even know how to contact him. Besides, Stan never really cared about that school stuff. He asks his mother to pass on the message and his thesis is possibly the greatest of his time.
Stanford goes to study anomalies in Gravity Falls.
The real world is harder than college. You can pace yourself and sleep and do things your way, but you don’t quite comprehend what you’re doing. Ford isn’t really sure what he’s investigating half of the time, until he’s done doing the investigating, and even then he still can’t figure out how it all fits together into the bigger picture.
Everything around him just happens faster and faster. The world seemed slow when he was a child, but now he can barely remember that, he can barely remember the words he spoke and things that happened before now, and now everything is fast. Nothing ever stops.
He starts to keep a journal.
It really helps.
He pours his soul into them. He draws pictures of everything he sees. Take that, Dad.
Ford meets Bill.
Bill isn’t like Fiddleford. He pretends to flirt with Ford sometimes, so they have that in common, but he’s more like the upperclassmen in his old high school chess club, cool, suave, except he makes an effort to get Ford to interact with him. Ford’s convinced it’s a trick, at first. He’s never had someone so invested in spending time with him. But it’s no joke. Ford is the only person in Bill’s life. He’s the only person Bill needs in his life. Bill’s his muse. Bill’s the most reliable person Ford’s ever met. He fills up a part of Ford he didn’t realize had gone empty.
He calls Fiddleford to come help on the portal he’s going to build.
It hits him sometimes that Bill, and sometimes even Fiddleford, remind him of Stan. He doesn’t take things seriously. He goofs off. He sniggers and shows off and is cocky and irritating and Ford likes him but sometimes the similarities are too much.
Bill’s great, though. He always cheers Ford up. He’s always around. Fiddleford is much the same.
And Bill knows everything. Ford can ask him anything and get the most intricate and incredible answers.
He’d trust him with his life.
Ford works more on his journals and puts more and more of his heart into them.
He starts to draw a sailboat one day, without realizing. He has to scribble it out. He can’t look at it.
He tells Fiddleford the portal was his idea. It was his idea. Wasn’t it?
Fiddleford is gone. He’s ruined. He’s probably never going to speak to Ford again.
Bill lied to him. He can’t trust him. He can’t trust anyone. He shouldn’t have trusted anyone.
He’s laughing at him. He’s always laughing. He creeps in when Ford falls asleep so Ford can’t fall asleep and he doesn’t know what to do and Ford finally ends up putting a metal plate into his head and it works, but he still dreams about him, he taps on the plate and teases and mocks and makes fun of him and Ford was such an idiot, he was such an idiot, he’s such a fuck-up, he should never have gone to college, he should never have left New Jersey, now that stupid portal, his idea, his creation, the one he’s slaved over, staying up late, losing sleep, putting everything into, is going to tear their whole world apart. Why the fuck did he grow up and get stupid and fuck up again and again and again?
He needs someone reliable.
He needs someone who’ll come as quickly as he can.
He needs someone who’ll take the journals far away.
Ford can’t sleep. He’s forgotten how to function. He feels dizzy and buzzing and shaky and sick and guilty and guilty and tired and awake and anxious and bad. He feels awful.
It all keeps happening, fast, moment after moment, with no pause for breath.
Ford calls Stan.
Stan comes.
Stan says he’ll understand.
Stan smiles at Ford. Ford almost melts. He almost smiles back.
And Stan almost destroys his life’s work.
And Stan doesn’t understand. Of course Stan doesn’t understand.
And the portal gets turned on-
And Ford starts to fly back-
And he- shouts- and-
Stanford is good at assigning blame. He feels guilty, all the time, almost, but he can never tell why. He’s good at thinking that if only, if only, if only. He’s good at thinking that if he’d just gone to West Coast Tech. If he’d just gone to New England instead of Gravity Falls. If he’d just done something else. Aimed higher. Seized every opportunity. Had a better life.
Bill is the main object of his hatred and his blame. Stanley often falls second. Sometimes his father and his dean are there too. Ford is so, so good at blaming them. He’s so good at finding their faults.
Stanford feels guilty all the time. He feels like vomiting. He feels anxious. He can’t tell why. It probably doesn’t help that his home is gone forever. He’s never going back to Earth. He’s never thought of New Jersey or Oregon or Backupsmore as a place he’d miss.
Thinking about them makes his chest feel hollow.
Stanley, too. Stanley is someone he’ll never see again.
If a part of him was aching before, however well ignored, it is torn out now.
He blames Stanley. He also misses him.
He stares at the photos he happened to have on them when he fell through like he’s memorizing them. He is. He is etching every aspect of his family’s face into his head forever. He does not know when he’ll lose the photos. He does not know if he’ll ever see them again. Actually, he does. He knows he won’t. They’re gone. They might as well be dead. He might as well be dead.
He has no hope of reunion in the afterlife, or a chance meeting, no chance of a phone call or hearing about them from a friend. They’re gone. Forever. And ever. And ever.
Sometimes it feels like he’s been cut in two.
Ford draws the picture with charcoal. He rubs it onto paper and it turns his fingers black and smudges a little but it’s real. It’s there. It fills his heart up for a single second, then it overflows and spills and Ford is almost crying.
He looks at the picture. It doesn’t look like Stan. It’s shitty and it doesn’t look like Stan. Ford tries to call his brother’s face to mind, the face he sees in his nightmares but is never quite right, the last thing he saw in his home, but he just can’t do it. Something about it’s always wrong. He doesn’t know what. If it’s the hair. The skin. The eyes. The nose. Ford sees him every time he sees himself but he never sees him, he never sees Stan, just shadows of him. The paper gets wets and smudges, and he’s crying. He’s sobbing.
He crumples up the paper, smashes it, tears it in two and crumples it up again, then throws it as far away as he can. He wants to get rid of it. He wants to get rid of everything inside of him. Ford’s life is a trainwreck. He’s just going to have to accept that. He’s just going to have to move on and live a life here.
He wishes he could forget.
He starts thinking about Fiddleford and can’t remember his face either and cries some more.
He tries to hear Stan’s voice. He tries to hear what he tried to say to him the night their father kicked him out. He tries to hear what he was shouting when he was getting sucked through the portal.
But Ford just can’t pull it into his head. Something’s always off or wrong or a mistake.
Ford thinks about high school and books and tries to remember important comic arcs and franchises, the plot of popular movies, what songs he liked, if he was ever really into pop culture. It feels like his life is fading. He tries to remember Carla McCorkle’s middle name and the guys on Stan’s old football team and everything else. He closes his eyes and carves it into his head. Bill is always laughing in his head.
If Stan were here he’d have some joke. If Stan were here he’d convince Ford to get back up.
This is all Stan’s fault.
But Stan was the kind of guy who couldn’t get knocked down. He’d never let Ford get knocked down. Until that time that he did.
Ford’s a really awful person, he decides, after he catches himself wishing Stanley had fallen through instead. Ford’s an awful person. Everyone in his life is awful and he’s awful and it’s all everyone’s fault.
He finally figures out how to keep track of time, but he still doesn’t know how much time passed before then.
He thinks about being a kid. He feels like a kid now. He wishes he were a kid again. He wishes he could turn time around.
Ford starts drinking.
There’s no word for this. There’s no word for everything disappearing. There’s no word for knowing you’ll never see anything you know again. America might as well have been blown up. All of Earth might as well have been destroyed. There’s no word for when you have something with you all the time every day and don’t even realize it, there’s no word for having your feet torn up from the soil you grew in, there’s no words for everything you know being dead, there’s no words for everything is gone forever. There’s no words for this feeling. It transcends his heart, his head. It melds them together in a mix of reckless and reason, survival and erasure, instinct and strategy, and Ford tries to erase everything inside of him that would still be on Earth. There isn’t a word for this. It’s just moving forward, moving on. It’s just continuing. It’s just forgetting and leaving and trying not to want to go back. It’s just giving up and going on.
The days pass slowly, excruciatingly, but they pass. Days turn into weeks into months into years. Every minute hurts and aches and burns but it happens and passes. Ford grows number and number. He winds himself up tighter and tighter and hardly ever erupts. He can finally say, with confidence, it has been a decade.
So Ford does it. He gives up on his home and tries to go numb for good.
It doesn’t always work. Sometimes it does. He doesn’t think about the photos he has on him. He doesn’t look at them. He pretends they aren’t there.
Ford does his best. He tries to fight Bill here. Fight the portal here. He tries not to think about what’s happened to the world on the other side, if Stan managed to take the portal down and hide the journals, or if Bill’s already forcing his way through. He almost wishes Bill would find him, kidnap him or whatever, just so he knew what had happened. Like Bill would tell him.
Thirty years pass.
The time passes so, so, slowly, but then suddenly, it’s all passed so fast. Suddenly, it’s all over. Suddenly, it’s all gone again.
It’d been thirty years. The first exact number Ford’s heard.
That’s what Stan and the two children with him say. And also the other guy.
Thirty. Years.
Ford’s life is gone. Stan’s dragged him back, like he always does, and his life is over. He’s taken it. He’s taken his name and his house. And he’s activated the portal. He can hear Bill laughing now.
Ford is lightheaded and shaking. He can’t comprehend that this is happening. Seconds, no, it’s minutes now, time isn’t dragging by in that excruciatingly long and painful way- minutes ago he was in the world that would be his tomb, he’d given up, he’d moved on, he’d let all of this world go years ago, he’d let Stanley go years ago, and now there’s children here and Stanley here and Ford thinks he just hit him and Stanley’s getting upset and that man is here too and Ford doesn’t know what’s going on. He’s in shock. He doesn’t understand it. He’s here. He’s… home.
The world has kept going without him. Life on earth has kept going without them.
This isn’t his home anymore.
It’s not just that Stanley has, of course, remodeled Ford’s entire house that he spent his own money building without his permission and turned his life’s work into cheap gimmicks in a tourist traps, although that doesn’t help. Something just isn’t clicking. It’s like something’s missing.
He loves those kids, though. He’s glad he got to meet them. They make him think of better times. He hopes they get the life he deserved.
Still, something isn’t clicking. Stan tells them he’s dangerous to be around. He’s probably right. The world has done the unthinkable. It’s moved on without him. There’s a family living in his house, and it isn’t his. It’s Stan’s. This was the life that was supposed to be his. This was the life Stan took from him. Of course he asks Stan to leave.
He wants to make sure those kids don’t turn out like him.
Maybe that’s why he asks Dipper to stay. Maybe he would have asked Mabel too, if she’d come along. If she’d tried a little harder. It’s not fair of him to think that, he’s sure. When he asked Dipper if it was smothering, he wasn’t just talking about her, though he did remember Stanley’s clinginess in high school, the ruins of his dreams and West Coast Tech, burning in the back of his brain. He’s talking about normal life. School, parents, pressure. He’s talking about this world, because it’s hard to come back to this when you’ve been so far away. Ford is a traveller now, a traveller who lives in one place. He’s seen too much to contain in one head and one world.
Maybe he should have asked Mabel to stay. But he think they might be better apart. He thinks they shouldn’t grow to close. He thinks that might have been the mistake he and Stanley made. He thinks no two people should rely wholly on each other. No human being should rely fully on someone else.
And then the world ends. And surprise, it’s his fault, and bigger surprise, it’s also mostly Bill’s fault, and biggest surprise, it probably wouldn’t have happened if Stanley had just dismantled the portal.
Everything falls apart.
Ford was bad at accepting his place back on Earth, but he’s great at accepting that things are a nightmare.
He’ll fight it, even if he’s doing a shitty job. Even if he’s getting pulled away from Dipper and tossing the journals at him, hoping he can figure out what to do, hoping he won’t be killed too horribly, and he’s humiliated, and then-
He’s waking up and he’s in chains and this has to be the worst thing that’s ever happened to him and why is Bill singing and now-
The kids are here and Stan is here and they’re making the circle, they’re going to do it, Ford’s going to save the world and his family and town- if Stan just gets in the circle-
It’s a retort. It’s not important. It’s just something he had to say. He’s always known grammar usage. He’s in a sore spot with Stan, it just slips out, without him even thinking-
“Grammar, Stanley.”
And Stanley snaps.
Ford feels guilt and knows why instantly. He’s doomed the world. He couldn’t hold his fucking tongue. Fucking-
Stanley springs on him and the kids rush at them and are shouting and-
That’s it, then.
That’s it.
That’s it.
That’s it.
He’d already accepted Stanley being gone forever before. He’d already gotten over him before. He’d already made himself numb.
So why, now-
Everything hits him like a train. His life’s a trainwreck, and the train’s finally hit him, for real this time. He hadn’t comprehended how big a disaster everything was. He hadn’t comprehended how much of a fuck-up he was. Ford hadn’t realized how badly he’d ruined everyone and everything around him. He empties all of his heart out in one moment; it has not overflowed because it’s fucking empty, he’s sure, and now he’s draining out whatever water remains. He’s ruined everything. He’s going to fix the town, save the world, maybe, hopefully, there’s a chance, but he’s destroying someone. He’s destroying something. The person he shared his life with. The life he used to have. The life he could have had. They could have had. The thing that shouldn’t have fallen apart, but did.
Stanford has a picture that’s almost as old as he is.
“Stanley,” he says, reaching into his coat. “This is- I was wondering if- I have some photographs, if you don’t remember-”
Stanley looks at him coolly. “Course I remember you, knucklehead. We were kids together. Spent thirty years looking for you.”
Ford swallows and nods. “Right. I just wanted to check.”
“Never said thanks,” Stanley mutters under his breath. Ford doesn’t think he was supposed to hear. “Some brother he is-”
“Well, thanks,” he says shortly, and Stan looks up like he’s surprised, and Ford coughs. “For, uh, your time, I mean. Thanks. That’s it. So… bye.”
Ford starts toward the basement, but isn’t really sure why. This is his house. He’s kicking Stan out.
He stops.
He’s kicking Stan out.
Their dad kicked Stan out. He didn’t stop him. He didn’t chase after him. It’d happened so fast.
Now it’s happening again.
Ford pulls the photo out from his coat and stares at it. It’s almost as old as he is. It’s gone everywhere with him. He turns around. He can’t see Stan directly, but he knows what he’s looking at.
Mabel barrels past him, chasing after her pigs. “Sorry, Grunkle Ford! What’re you looking for, Waddles, no wait, the door’s open no wait-”
“Great uncle Ford!” Dipper sticks his head in. “Have you looked at any of those movies I told you about yet?”
Ford shakes his head. Dipper catches sight of Mabel.
“Mabel, hey, have you-”
He runs past him and is gone.
Ford looks back at the photo. The world had moved on without him. It had forgotten him. He was back now. What did that mean for him? What did that mean for the world? What did that mean for the people he’d left behind?
He heads down into the basement to check up on some of his old devices.
He gets a curious reading. From the middle of the ocean.
Well.
At least things are working out for Fiddleford. He’s making money, probably going to have a mansion now. He calls Ford right away. Says he’ll have to visit. If the Shack needs fixing up, which it does, he can stay, room with him like old times, maybe. Ford talks to him for hours, and when the conversation ends, he finds his eyes strangely wet, his heart full of sorrow. He’d missed so much. He’d let so much happen. So much had happened. Some of it he could have prevented.
But people were still around him. Fiddleford was still talking to him. He’d called him his best friend. Ford mattered to him.
Ford’s always been bad at working up the nerve to do things. Chess club, coming out, calling Stan for help. Going to help Stan himself. He was so bad at that one that he hadn’t done it. Case in point.
He asks if he can talk to Stanley at what he soon realizes is probably the worst time. When they were kids he was always sure Stanley would say yes to whatever he wanted to drag him along on. Now he really isn’t sure. He’s wrecked Stan’s life even worse than his. He’s actually punched him. He’s been horrible to him. He’s stood by while life tossed him around like a ragdoll. Stanley would be justified in cutting Ford out for good.
But he doesn’t.
He looks up at him and smiles.
Ford wants to throw his arms around him and cry.
His life is going to work out. Things are going to work out.
They send the kids home, and promise to write. Ford wishes they could stay, but they have a home to get back to, a family in Piedmont, and it’s not like the end of the world. Apparently the kids from West Coast Tech did good on making science fiction into fact, because now video chat and instant messaging exists. Ford can’t believe he missed that bit of news. Neither can Mabel, who asked Ford if he’d FaceChat her, only to find out he had no clue what she was talking about. Now they’re officially pen pals.
Life is working out.
“Alright,” Ford says. “You’re going to have to stand perfectly still.”
“Yeah, and what about the squid? Does he have to stay still?”
Ford grins. “Just hold him still.”
“Pssh. I’m trying.”
Ford sets his pencil down. “Try harder!”
“I’m trying hard!” Stan squeezes and drops the squid. “Shit! Fuck! It’s loose! It’s loose!”
Ford nearly falls over, he’s laughing so hard. “Stanley, I can’t believe you-”
“I’ve got him! Fuck, he’s slippery-”
“This is worse than the time you-”
“He’s bleeding! He’s bleeding, he’s- the fuck is this? Ink? What the shit?”
Ford is wheezing. “Stanley-”
“Okay, I got it! I got him, I- oh my god. Ford. Ford.”
Ford looks up. Stanley is holding the squid tight. It’s inked. On his face. His face is black.
Ford throws his head back and just about dies of laughter.
“Ford!”
“Don’t move, don’t move!”
“Ford!”
He grabs the pencil, but his hand is shaking from the laughter. “The kids are gonna love this!”
“Ford!”
“No, shh! Stop talking!” He sketches it out as quickly as he can. “Alright, shading, shading, don’t move, I’m lining it, nice, nice, okay, getting the ink it, tell the squid to stop moving-”
“Hey, Ford, come over here. You gotta see this-”
Ford props up his glasses and starts over, setting the paper down. “What is-”
Stan throws the squid at him. Ford yelps and hurls it overboard.
Stan hoots and cackles, and pulls off his ink-stained glasses. “Aw, man! You should see your face! It’s priceless!”
“Stanley!”
Stan wipes his eyes. “Shit, I’m crying. That was too good. That was too good. You know what this calls for? A yuck-em-up!”
“No,” Ford says.
“I’ll get the book!”
Stan darts inside and comes out with his joke book, which is currently the only object of Ford’s hate. His mostly playful and somewhat joyous hate.
“Alright,” Stan flips through the pages. “Wanna hear a joke?”
Ford shakes his head, almost giggling. “No-”
“My ex-wife still misses me-”
“You’ve already told me this one!”
“Now I have to start all over! My ex-wife still misses me-”
“Ley!”
“But her aim is gettin’ better!”
Ford always laughs at that. Even though it’s terrible.