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Mabel’s favorite sound in the entire world – right alongside Dipper’s laughter and Waddle’s snuffling and Candy’s giggle and Grenda’s shouts of victory and the small affectionate snort Stan made which he thought no one ever caught – her absolute favorite sound was the sound of her great-uncle Ford singing her to sleep.
He didn’t do it often.
Despite her many reassurances that he had simply one of the best voices she had ever heard, no holds barred and including the cast of Secondary School Singing Theater, he rarely sang in front of anyone, even his own family. There had been times when he would sing, leading gatherings at the Shack that Stan had talked him into and impromptu concerts while stranded in snowstorms and half-drunken revelries on foreign docks that she and Dipper only heard about in secret from Stan. She knew he loved to sing – it was obvious from the enthusiasm he showed when he did sing, the way he wooed the crowd and conducted their voices like he was leading a choir.
No.
The problem, she knew, lay much deeper than that.
He would hum to himself sometimes, sing even, and then he would cut out in the middle of a word or a phrase. Sometimes it was abrupt, sometimes he trailed off as though he had forgotten the words as he sang them. But it wasn’t just that – there was a look about his face and a slight change in the atmosphere when it would happen that told her it was not mere old-man forgetfulness. Something was wrong. She didn’t know what, exactly, but it was wrong nonetheless. It was happening less frequently as time went on, but it still happened, it was still something bothering her beloved Grunkle, and therefore it bothered her.
And while she wasn’t sure how to fix it she knew, in her heart of hearts, that she would someday fix it. Somehow.
So when one night, while she and Dipper were visiting Gravity Falls over Spring Break and he was tucking her into bed in the attic room, and he was humming softly under his breath, she screwed up her courage to ask him to sing for her.
Dipper was spending the night at Wendy’s house, Grenda was in Austria for the week, and Candy was on band tour on the East Coast. Stan and Soos had gone on an impromptu road trip to Portland – Soos had something to ask Melody in person and Stan had tagged along to offer moral support (not that he would say as much). Abuelita had disappeared and Mabel had a sneaking suspicion there was a stowaway in the El Diablo. No matter. It was just her and Ford left in the house, which was perfect for her plan.
“Grunkle Ford, can I have a lullaby?”
The question seemed to take him by surprise. He quirked an eyebrow at her.
“You want me to sing for you?” he repeated.
“Yes,” she said.
He smiled at her softly, warm affection present in his eyes but something else flickering suddenly in them too. It was gone in another moment, hidden back under the cover of sweeter emotions. She couldn’t place the emotion from the brief glimpse she got but she could sense it was nothing good.
“Maybe another night, my dear,” he said, patting the top of her head. He leaned back and went to stand up, so Mabel decided to go out on a limb and just ask outright.
What harm could it do?
“Grunkle Ford, why don’t you sing more? You’re really good and I know you like to sing, so why? Why do you freeze up sometimes? What’s wrong? What happened?” she asked, eyes sincere.
There was a moment of stunned silence before the blank, emotionless mask that would sometimes cross Ford’s face dropped into place. Mabel recognized it as his version of sweater town.
Oh no.
He dropped back onto the bed abruptly. “It’s not something I really want to talk about, Mabel,” he said, the bluntness of his words making them harsher than intended.
“Oh,” she said, face dropping as she snuggled further under the blankets, trying to hide her disappointment and guilt. Mabel mumbled out a quiet “Okay” as she did so. She fully expected the conversation to end there. She had pushed too far, she knew.
The mask slipped a bit and Ford looked torn for a moment. Mabel missed the slip, too busy keeping her eyes down, not wanting him to see her disappointment and failing miserably at it.
He sighed.
“Mabel,” he said gently. “Look at me, please.”
She hazarded a glance up at him.
The blank mask was gone. His expression was a mix of indecision, guardedness, and genuine affection for her along with that other, earlier emotion that she couldn’t place. She hated to see any sort of negative emotion on any of her family’s faces, so the sight tore at her heart even more than the blank mask did.
“No, it’s okay Grunkle Ford. You don’t have to sing for me, and you don’t have to explain why. I’m sorry I pushed. It’s up to you what you do, not me. I just … wanted to figure out how to fix whatever is wrong so you can be able to sing, and to be happy singing,” she said, biting her lip and casting her eyes downward again.
Ford reached out and gently cupped her face in his hands, turning it up to face him.
“Mabel,” he said, trying to reassure her. “It’s okay. You did nothing wrong. It was just an unexpected question is all. It fills me with great joy that you would consider such a minor problem of mine worth your time and energy to fix.”
An appalled look crossed her face. She brushed his hands away from her face, leaning forward and grabbing his surprised face in her hands. “Grunkle Ford! Any problem you have is worth my time to fix! I care about you, and anything I can do to make you happy while singing I’ll do!” she announced vehemently.
He kept eye contact with her and blinked rapidly several times, but she refused to break eye contact with him. He needed to understand how important this was to her, because it was important to him.
A small trembling smile crept up his face, and his eyes softened almost to tears. Mabel kept up her determined stare. Without a word he swept her up in a hug and squeezed her tightly. She hugged him back with just as much vigor. He mumbled something into her hair and had she not had ears like a wolf, she wouldn’t have caught the soft words.
“What did I ever do to deserve you?”
Mabel hugged him even tighter, trying to let the nonverbal form of affection say everything that she couldn’t put into words.
The room grew darker as the time grew later, and eventually Ford pulled back from the hug. He pulled off his glasses and wiped a few stray tears from his face.
Mabel snuggled back into her blankets and waited for him to break the silence.
Ford sat on the edge of her bed for a while, staring off into the darkness outside the window. He fiddled with his glasses in his hands, absentmindedly tracing their outline with his fingers. Eventually, he spoke without facing her.
“Sometimes, old songs carry old feelings, and not all of them are good,” he said, voice soft and contemplative. His eyes still searched the darkness outside as he continued.
“There are times when a person wants to sing, but the song doesn’t want to be sung. And sometimes, the things the song are saying are so many that it can’t be sung. There’s too much in it that it gets overwhelming, and you can’t even force your throat to make the tune. It’s not a problem with your voice, it’s a problem with your heart. Music is supposed to be uplifting, freeing for the soul. It is, in itself, an expression of that deepest part of ourselves that simple words cannot convey. It is the truth itself,” here he trailed off into silence again for a few moments.
He spoke again, almost in a whisper.
“And that means that sometimes, a song is the heaviest thing to bear.”
Ford finally turned and looked at her.
Mabel recognized the emotion in his eyes now – or at least, parts of it. A desperate, aching loneliness mixed with regret and guilt, the hollow emptiness of loss, and the deep-seated pain of seeing what you love destroyed before your eyes. She recognized it now, because he was showing her openly and because she knew those emotions herself.
He turned back to the window a moment later and continued.
“I’ve always loved to sing,” he said quietly. “I have rather a gift for it, as I have a gift for many other things. But music, singing, was somehow different than most of it. It wasn’t something I did with my head, it was something I did with my heart.” He jokingly knocked on the side of his head, and a metallic banging echoed out of it. “Well, technically the brain does control the vocal chords and breathing, but that’s beside the point. The point is, singing always meant something to me. The songs I sang carried the things I felt and believed and experienced inside of them.”
Mabel pulled her pillow into her hands and hugged it close to her chest, eyes and ears wide. Grunkle Ford was so enveloped in his explanation that he didn’t even notice the disturbance. The words were spilling out of him now, as though a long-built dam had broken open inside of him.
“Ma used to play music all the time on an old record machine my father acquired through the pawn shop. She loved the old thing so much he never sold it, even though it probably would have sold for a fair amount of money.”
He lapsed into a momentary silence as his eyes grew misty in remembrance.
“She kept every record that came into the shop, from old jazz and ragtime to big band albums and rock and roll. She even had a few of the newer psychedelic albums, but she mostly played those when she spoke to customers. What she really loved were the albums of Bing Crosby’s music, for some reason. The woman was obsessed with him!” he laughed, a fond smile breaking across his face as the memories came back.
“His St. Patrick’s Day album was one of her favorites, interestingly enough. I learned all the words to Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral and When Irish Eyes Are Smiling when I was very young, because she would sing them to Stanley and I to get us to go to sleep. She sang other songs to us as lullabies too; she didn’t do it often, mind you, but I treasured the times she did. Stan and I would both sing when we worked on things, a habit we picked up from our mother. I sang more than he did, though. Probably because it was one of the few ways I really felt comfortable expressing how I felt. Stanley was always more expressive with his emotions than I was – wore his heart on his sleeve.” Ford snorted. “Still does, really, no matter how much he tries to play up the grumpy, cold-hearted old man bit.”
He grew contemplative again and stared down at his glasses in his hands, tracing circles around the lenses.
“As I grew older, I sang less and less. I suppose that should have been a warning sign of some kind, but I am notoriously poor at paying attention to those kinds of things, as many people have taken the pleasure of reminding me,” he joked. His voice turned far more somber a moment later. “When our father kicked Stan out, I stopped singing altogether for a while. There was too much to feel, and so much I didn’t want to feel, so I stopped singing and stopped feeling.”
Mabel’s breath caught tightly in her chest at his words.
Oh Grunkle Ford.
She opened her mouth to say something to him, but he continued on relentlessly before she could interrupt.
“That is, until I met Fiddleford.” Ford’s face brightened significantly at the mention of his old friend. “While I detested his banjo-playing and his inability to carry a tune, his friendship and camaraderie broke down many of my walls and gave me something to feel that wasn’t pain or regret or a need to succeed. I started singing again. Only a little at first, but once Fiddleford discovered I could carry a tune he would never let me hear the end of it. We actually recorded a few covers and original pieces while at Backupsmore, though I’m sure the tapes have been lost to time now.”
His voice dipped back towards sadness again at the end, and he lapsed into silence.
Mabel considered asking him to continue but decided against it. She would let him speak on until he finished, without interruptions and regardless of how long it took. Somehow, it seemed like the right thing to do – that a distraction would somehow stem the flow of old emotions and thoughts that he very obviously needed to talk about. It was never good to bottle things up inside for so long, and Grunkle Ford was far overdue for a spill-your-guts-and-emotions session. Good thing Mabel was a great listener and had the patience of a saint, then! Take that, Celestebellabethabelle.
Ford took a deep breath, then another. He continued on after a few more moments of silence.
“After I graduated and came to Gravity Falls, I sang only when the occasion warranted it – which was almost never. Once Bill entered the picture, I stopped altogether. Again, another red flag I should have caught on to but didn’t.”
At this point he stopped tracing the frame of his glasses with his hands and put them back on his face. He turned to Mabel, seeming to remember that he was actually having a conversation and not just spilling his guts to a book or to the empty air again.
He smiled a little sadly.
“Songs became my refuge in the Portal, at least at the beginning. I had very little else of my home dimension that I carried with me, and the old tunes and words held many memories and feelings. They kept me going, even at times when most else was trying to beat me down. I had a thirst for adventure and knowledge, of course, and it was a fascinating experience to get to travel through so many new worlds and cultures and experiences!”
He became animated as he talked, the sadness leaving and a bright joy replacing it. Mabel could see a glimpse of the wide-eyed adventuring spirit that had driven him to and through the ups and downs of his life. Warmth and affection spread through her at the thought, and she smiled softly, eyes crinkling.
“There was also a large amount of music I learned while on my travels. Many cultures pass their histories down through song, and a few dimensions deal exclusively in musical transactions! Fascinating things … but still, the ache of missing home remained, and the songs I had learned in my childhood were of much comfort.”
He gained a wistful expression as he continued.
“I shared many nights around campfires and in old taverns singing with other travelers like myself, swapping stories and songs from our pasts and presents. Some songs are rather universal constants, it seems. Those brief instances were some of the brightest moments on the other side of the Portal.”
As his story carried on, Ford growing animated as he drifted deeper into anecdotes of his adventures in the Portal, Mabel was filled with conflicting thoughts.
While some of the things he was telling her definitely warranted sweater-town and a reluctance to sing, much of it seemed to be only good reasons to keep singing. With so many good experiences involving song and it seeming to be a source of pleasure and relief, why would he still be so reluctant to sing?
She had a sinking feeling in her gut that he had yet to tell her the worst of it.
Ford’s stories of the past slowed, and he grew quiet again. Mabel could see the emotions the old memories passing through his mind brought with them. The sinking feeling got worse, so she reached out a hand and gently took his, giving it a reassuring squeeze. He swallowed the lump in his throat and gave her small hand a squeeze in return.
“There were other times, though, that those songs came to mean much less happy things. I … lost friends, on occasion, on the other side of the Portal. People and beings who had shared their music and support with me, and whom I associated with certain songs and melodies. Other times, certain pieces became associated with less than savory circumstances and occurrences. As time went on it made it hard to sing them, when all I could feel when I sang was the sting of loss and remembered pain. It became easier, again, to simply silence myself,” he said.
Mabel tightened her grip on his hand, and the gesture seemed to spur him on.
“I told myself it was for safety reasons – and in a way, I suppose it was. I was protecting myself from past pain in order to get to a better tomorrow,” he said.
Ford smiled over at her, affection softening his eyes and mingling with the old pain.
“Sometimes, old songs carry old feelings – a lifetime of pain, of mistakes, of happiness, or an unbearable mixture of them all - but sometimes, they can carry new ones, too. And in time, even the ones that weighed heaviest on your heart and tongue can be the sweetest ones your soul can sing.”
Ford reached over and brushed a hand over Mabel’s hair, face somehow sad and peaceful and content all at the same time.
“Time does not fix everything. Pain remains, and you cannot always recover what you lost. But time does allow you to do one thing that is crucial to fixing anything and everything,” he said with a small smile.
Curious, Mabel spoke, breaking her silence.
“And what is that?”
His smile grew wider.
“Build anew, and live.”
Mabel sat frozen for a few moments, processing, before she lunged forward and wrapped her arms around Ford, pulling him into a tight hug. He returned the gesture, patting her back and talking.
“I stop singing because sometimes all I can feel when I sing is what I’ve felt in the past. Because the things the songs make me feel are not things you can feel and sing at the same time. But I am building new things to feel when I sing. I am rewriting the memories I associate with the songs and letting go of the past and pain I connect with them, because this,” here Ford pulled back from the hug and gestured around the room and at Mabel, meeting her eyes again, “this is far more important to me than anything in the past. I want to be able to sing freely and fully again, for you, and for myself, and for the rest of my family. You are all far more important to me than anything in my past,” he finished firmly, the previous pain and uncertainty in his eyes leaving, to be replaced by burning conviction and affection.
His expression softened a bit after a while, and he sat back, still looking at her. Now his eyes held a look of surprise and, interestingly, wonder.
“I think you’re the first living soul that I’ve actually told all of this too, even including Stanley,” Ford said, the knowledge of the truth of his statement maybe a bit overwhelming even for himself.
Mabel didn’t know how to respond at first. She broke eye contact with him after a few moments, going back to fiddling with the pillow in her lap.
She took a few deep breathes, just as Ford had earlier. After a few moments of gathering her thoughts, Mabel spoke.
“Thank you for telling me all of that, Grunkle Ford. I know how hard it can be to talk about tough stuff sometimes,” she said, fidgeting with the pillow in her lap again. “But talking about it does help, even if it doesn’t actually fix anything. Facing what’s wrong even when it’s hard is a totally icky thing to have to do, but it makes everything that’s wrong seem . . . a lot easier to deal with, when you have reassurances that you’re not facing it alone.”
Mabel smiled up at Ford, a small sad smile very unlike her usual cheerful ones.
“Believe it or not, there was a while after last summer that I didn’t like to sing either. It wasn’t everything that I didn’t like to sing, but after that almost-zombie-apocalypse and the fiasco with my failed sock opera, after being stuck in Mabel Land with its own awful soundtrack, any songs that reminded me of those things just made me feel … icky. I know everybody came out alright from all of it, and everything worked itself out for good in the end, but it still made me scared and upset and guilty and sad to think about that stuff. It still does.”
Ford reached out a hand to Mabel’s shoulder. “Mabel,” he began, voice comforting, but she cut him short with a dismissive wave of her hand. She leaned forward, as though to emphasize the urgency and importance of her words.
“But I’m okay with it now, because I have Dipper to talk it all through with when I’m feeling bad about it again. Because I have you and Grunkle Stan and Candy and Grenda and Wendy and even Pacifica to tell it all to, and you guys have helped me deal with all of the bad stuff and replace it with even more good stuff.”
The need to speak out everything she was thinking and feeling seemed to overtake her, words spilling out faster and more vehemently.
“I didn’t get better and deal with my stuff overnight, and I’m not asking or even expecting you to get better overnight either. You have lots of stuff to work through and deal with – years and years and years of stuff I can’t even hardly think about! But you have to realize that even in the little stuff – or the things that you think are just little stuff, like having to deal with bad memories while singing – all of it is important to me. It’s important to Dipper and Grunkle Stan and Mr. McGucket and Soos and Wendy – it’s important to all of us, because you are important to all of us. You don’t have to work through it all alone, and you are not alone.”
She took a deep breath, eyes shining with emotion.
“I am so, so glad that you shared all of what you’ve been feeling with me tonight. It makes me so incredibly happy to know that you trust me so much with something that means so much to you, and I want you to know, really know, that me and everybody else? We’re all here for you, and we’ll all keep helping you make new memories and work through it all, no matter how long it takes. I will personally be your karaoke buddy if it means you’ll be happy singing. Besides,” here she scooted closer to him and affectionately squished his face between her hands, “how could you possibly live, knowing that you’re keeping that beautiful voice from the world, Grunkle Ford? It’s an outrage, a scandal!” she said, pretending to swoon at the horror of it all.
Throughout Mabel’s speech, Ford had felt his heart growing tighter and tighter with emotions. They burned in his throat and in his eyes and his lungs, a mixture of pain at her troubles and pure love and wonder and thankfulness at her words of affirmation. Even after all this time spent around people who told him daily how much they cared for and valued him, it still healed a place deep in his heart to hear it again. Ford wasn’t sure if he should weep, or hug her, or fling himself into the bottomless pit instead of having to feel so much and so deeply.
So it was a surprise (even to himself) when all of it finally burst out of him in peals of laughter at her unexpectedly lighthearted antics, a full-bellied laugh full of joy and brightness and everything good that Mabel filled the people around her with.
He caught her up in his arms again as she pretended to swoon, still laughing, and blew a raspberry on her cheek.
“Eeeeeeewww Grunkle Ford you got old man cooties on me!” Mabel laughed and squirmed, swatting him away from her. The next moment though she had wrapped her arms around his neck and tugged him into another warm bear hug.
“I hope you’ll keep trusting me, Grunkle Ford. And I’m glad that you’re going to keep trying to make good memories to replace the bad. That makes me very happy to hear,” she said, squeezing her arms tighter around him to emphasize her words.
He squeezed her back, letting the comfortable silence around them grow as her words sunk in. After a while, he answered her, repeating his words from earlier with a chuckle. He meant them even more now.
“What did I ever do to deserve you?”
They stayed like that for a long while, both too warm and content to let go of each other and break the spell.
In time the clock downstairs struck the hour, the soft chimes letting them know just how late it had gotten to be. Mabel slowly loosened her bear hug and crawled back up the bed, yawning and rubbing her eyes as she snuggled back under her covers.
“Good night, Grunkle Ford. See you in the morning,” Mabel said, rolling onto her side, eyes drifting shut. She would have gone straight to sleep, had Ford’s next words not jolted her awake.
“Would you still like a lullaby?”
Mabel’s eyes widened. She shot a questioning look at Ford, who merely smiled in return.
“I figured I could start making more good memories singing right now, to my favorite niece in all of existence. So, what would you like to hear?” he asked.
Mabel’s eyes shone with happiness and excitement.
“Would you sing When Irish Eyes Are Smiling please? But only if you want to, of course,” she added hurriedly.
Stanford laughed, smile growing wider and softer and infinitely fonder. He knew exactly why she had picked it, and he loved her all the more for it.
He cleared his throat, gently tucking Mabel into her covers, and then he began to sing. His voice was soft and low, the sweep of old memories through his soul and the emotions they held a familiar sensation. But now, after his heart-to-heart with Mabel, it seemed that at last the old things had lost their power over him. He still felt their pull on his heart, and the familiar aches were still present, but it was bearable now. Breathable. Dealt with. Completed.
The cure had begun.
“When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, sure ‘tis like a morn in spring.
In the lilt of Irish laughter, you can hear the angels sing.
When Irish hearts are happy, all the world seems bright and gay,
And When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, sure, they steal your heart away.
There’s a tear in your eye and I’m wondering why,
For it never should be there at all.
With such power in your smile, sure a stone you’d beguile,
So there’s never a teardrop should fall,
When your sweet lilting laughter’s like some fairy song
And your eyes twinkle bright as can be.
You should laugh all the while and all other times smile,
And now smile a smile for me.
For your smile is a part of the love in your heart,
And it makes even sunshine more bright.
Like the linnet’s sweet song, crooning all the day long.
Comes your laughter so tender and bright.
For the springtime of youth is the sweetest of all,
There is ne'er a real care or regret.
And while springtime is ours, throughout all of youth’s hours,
Let us smile each chance we get.
When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, sure 'tis like a morn in spring.
In the lilt of Irish laughter, you can hear the angels sing.
When Irish hearts are happy, all the world seems bright and gay,
And When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, sure, they steal your heart away.”
By the end of the song Mabel was fast asleep, her breathing soft and even. Stanford stood carefully so as not to wake her, leaning down to press a kiss to her forehead before leaving the room.
As he walked back downstairs through the empty house, he thought back through the entire conversation and smiled warmly to himself.
And then softly, and ever so slowly, he began to sing again.
Thirty years of interdimensional travel wears on one in the most peculiar of ways, and sometimes old songs carry lots of old feelings with them. And sometimes, old songs can carry new feelings, too.
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A/N: My Author's Note was too long, so I'm putting the first part here XD
This took a surprisingly long time to write, considering it’s only around five thousand words. So now, a bit of an explanation for a few things.
This started out originally as a cute little fluffy drabble, but in my typical way of writing it became something much longer and much more filled with emotion. As such, I feel like this warrants a bit of an explanation for several points.
At the end of last year there were several lovely fics and lots of great discussion on Ford and the rest of the Pines singing - singing sea songs, and karaoke, and carols, and folk songs, and interdimensional space songs. It got me thinking about music, and emotion, and that strange deep connection music and singing has to the soul and to memory. It got me thinking about how, if Ford was anything like me and harbored a deep regard and connection to music, he would have a lifetime of emotions and memories connected to the songs he had memorized and learned. I do believe that he would have worked through at least some of the worse emotions and memories associated with certain songs - especially considering how much of the past he and Stan would have worked through together. I don’t in any way think that he would have trouble singing when the situation called for it, especially when surrounded by friends and family and in an environment full of love.
But I know from experience that some scars run deep, and some songs take time to sing again.