Archive of Our Own ^beta

Ford, do you trust me?

Of course I do, Stanley.

The words reverberate through Ford’s head, becoming his own personal inner mantra of tangled thoughts as the elevator slowly descends into the darkness below.

Of course I do. Of course I do. Of course I do.

Do you trust me?

Of course.

He hasn’t been down here in weeks. Not since… Not since…

Of course I do. Of course I do.

Not since that day after Weirdmageddon. He’d come down to try to find that neural pathway stabilizer he’d thrown together after Fiddleford told him about the memory gun. It had been a fail-safe, a way to reconnect damaged synapses if Fiddleford ever decided to actually build that blasted contraption and attempted to use it on himself. It was meant to minimize permanent damage.

Do you trust me? Do you trust me? Do you trust me?

He had thought to use it to speed up Stanley’s recovery, to lessen the long-lasting effects.

I do. I do. I do. Of course I do, Stanley.

The elevator grinds slowly down the shaft, the light above his head flickering on and off, on and off, on and off, the mechanical pulleys whining and groaning against the weight, the light humming with electricity. It reminds him of that bug zapper Ma bought for their backyard all those years ago so that he and Stanley could play outside without getting eaten alive by mosquitos.

He remembers sitting in front of that light one night, watching the insects get drawn in by the enticing brightness only to die moments later in a pitiful pop, their lifeless bodies falling into the grass and getting lost among the roots.

Trust me? Trust me? Trust me? Do you?

It’s been weeks.

Stanley Stanley Stanley—

The floor shudders beneath his feet, the metal cage giving one final rattle before going silent, the scrape and moan of the lift’s mechanics dissolving into the air, leaving only the hum of the flickering light above his head.

Of course I do. Of course I do. Of course. Of course.

The air is heavier down here, denser, smelling of soil and metal, an entire atmosphere filling his throat. Some unnamed thing, some familiar dread, hangs in the air, suspended like dust particles caught in a beam of sunlight. That dust settles into his lungs as if it never left, as if the thirty years he spent coughing it up and convincing himself he’d be fine without it was all a waste of precious energy, as if he’d been foolish for thinking he’d ever be free of it.

Trust me? Of course. Of course. Ford? Do you? Do you?

That night, after Weirdmageddon, he’d told himself he’d come down here and destroy the portal once and for all, finally rip apart the pieces and smash every circuit board, finish the job he’d begun before discovering the Rift.

And then he’d come down to get the neural stabilizer and…

He hadn’t been expecting…

It shouldn’t have been…

Do you? Do you? Do you?

He doesn’t want to be down here.

Ford, do you trust me?

Not again.

Do you trust me?

Ford?

Ford? Ford? Ford? Ford?

“Ford?”

He snaps his head to the side only to meet his brother’s concerned gaze, the panic that was settling into his bones stopping, freezing in place at the sight of the face so similar and yet so different from his own. His entire world seems to pause, caught in the span of time between one moment and the next, seeming to decide whether it wants to continue or finally implode in on itself. He lets the universe decide, his mind caught on the reflection standing next to him.

“You okay?” Stan asks into the silence. The words cut through the air, filling the space and seeping under his skin, slicing through the fear and the hurt that threatened to choke him, leaving him feeling exposed, vulnerable, but somehow safer than he was mere moments ago.

Stan is here with him.

Stan is here.

He’s not alone anymore.

He’s not…

Of course I do. Of course I do. Of course…

The mantra in his head dissipates like smoke, lost in the exhale of breath that had been trapped in his lungs almost the entire way down.

“I’m fine, Stanley.”

He still swears he feels the dust coating his throat.

The universe keeps moving.

It takes him a moment to catch back up to it.

“Right,” Ford coughs into his hand, running a quick course correction in his head as the elevator doors slide open, the rusted metal screeching, grating on his ears. He steps out into the darkness, onto the packed-dirt floor of the sub-basement, immediately disconcerted by the silence, the general absence of the whirling of the servers’ cooling fans and drone of the old tape drives. All the machinery in the control room is quiet, shut down for good, nothing more than relics that he had planned to wipe and destroy before— He turns around to face Stanley as the other man walks out of the elevator, flipping on the light switch that Ford had left off, causing the darkness to recede to the corners of the room under the dim, flickering, fluorescent bulbs. “What was it you wanted of me?”

“I, uh, wanted some help with somethin’, if you’re feelin’ up to it,” Stan says, his hand coming up to lightly squeeze Ford’s shoulder as he passes by. The cautious ghost of his brother’s fingers feels like an imprint left on his skin, the nerve endings humming.

“Something down here?” Ford asks, pretending not to have heard the blatant concern in Stan’s words. He doesn’t turn to where Stan is now standing, surely in front of the main control panel of the room. Instead, he moves over to the side of the room, eyes and fingers skimming over the genetic tracker and the rest of the cannibalized dimensional locking controls that Stan had redesigned and built to find and bring him home from the multiverse. Of course he’d already examined it with intense scrutiny when he’d first arrived back in this dimension, his initial distaste at the mutilation of his life’s work (no matter how wrongly conceived it had been) eventually wearing away along with the forty years of resentment it stemmed from, his impression of the work turning to objective acknowledgement, and later to outright appreciation of how much his brother had accomplished.

Now, he examines it thoughtlessly, flipping dead switches and leaving sets of six parallel tracks in the dust and dirt settled on the panel. He refuses to look in Stan’s direction, even when he hears the man flipping some switches from his side of the room.

His shoulder still tingles in the shape of a five-fingered handprint.

“Yeah, well I figured,” Stan says, buttons and switches still clicking under his fingers, “since we’re settin’ sail in a couple weeks, we should probably make sure all this stuff is completely out of commission before we go, ya know?” Ford doesn’t look, doesn’t have to look, to know that Stan is only half paying attention to what’s in front of him, his body probably angled just slightly to allow him to keep an eye trained in his direction out of concern. Ford appreciates the sentiment but would never say so aloud. “Protectin’ the universe and all that jazz?”

“All that jazz,” Ford chuckles, casting his gaze down to his hands where they lie flat on the metal panel, his palms coated in dust as he lets the cold seep into them. He breathes in and tastes dirt in the back of his mouth. “Stanley, only you could make the preservation of our entire dimension sound like a casual—”

Bright, white light fills the room, and whatever words had been about to leave Ford’s mouth wither and die on his tongue as he instinctively turns to look, catching sight of it and wishing he hadn’t. Memories rise unbidden, shaking off the chains he’d locked them away with, some decades ago, others months ago, all rushing back to him at once as his pulse pounds in his ears. He’s back in that room, fear and adrenaline coursing through his veins as he yanks Fiddleford back at the end of a rope. His body trembling as he curls up bruised and bloody in a corner and tries to remember how he got down there in the first place. His own shouts and pleas echoing off the walls and drowning in the whirl of the machinery as he’s dragged backwards through the air and engulfed by blinding white. And then there are other things, too. Lying alone in a cave with his own blood coursing through his fingers, and his screams as he presses a white-hot metal bar to his side to stop it, the smell of burning flesh filling his nose and suffocating him. Metal shackles holding him in place as lethal levels of electrical current tear through his body, every muscle seizing and vibrating in excruciating pain as his skin smolders and burns. Light shining in his eyes as some unseen creature growls out demands and accusations, breaking a random one of his fingers with a pitiful snap anytime it deemed his answers unsatisfactory, and the agony of setting each of the seven digits after he escaped hours later. Waking up with a knife at his throat and tell-tale slitted-yellow eyes staring at him, the creature’s lips pulled back in an unnatural, feral smile as it regards him, LONG TIME NO SEE, SIXER. Staring at his own blood-soaked hands in the first-floor bathroom, desperately trying to remember whether or not the blood is his. His lungs filling with water as he’s pulled down to the bottom of a sea, the last circle of light up above disappearing in the inky blackness of the deep as his chest burns like acid.

There’s so much.

It’s too much.

It’s every memory of fear and confusion and pain bottled up into one moment, one instant, one flash of bright, white light.

It was destroyed. It was in pieces. How could it possibly—

It’s been weeks.

It’s still there. It’s still there. It’s still—

He came down for the neural pathway stabilizer after Weirdmageddon was over.

He’d ripped the portal to pieces weeks before.

But somehow it’s…

Ford turns back to the panel in front of him and squeezes his eyes shut, as if doing so will make the monument built to his mistakes disappear from this plane of existence, as if doing so would slow his pounding heart and quiet the blood rushing in his ears and allow him to finally swallow past the dust and grime choking him from the moment he got on that elevator. His mind screams at him to run, to get as far away as he can because that thing in there is wrong, is dangerous, has already taken so much of his life from him, has already been dismantled and broken and yet it’s back, and no matter how hard that small part of him tries to reason that of course it’s fixed, Fiddleford had to fix it to fight Bill, of  course it’s not in the three pieces he left it in, that small part of him drowns in the memories and screams ricocheting in his head and the overwhelming fear that it’ll never be over, that Bill’s still waiting, that it was all for nothing and it’s all still going to end in chaos and flames—

Ford…

His feet are firmly rooted to the floor, as if the birch trees themselves finally decided to reach through the soil and wrap themselves around his legs, their eyes fixed on him with an all too familiar sadistic mirth as everything inside him cries for an escape, for some means to run and never look back and pretend like all his demons really were back in the past where he left them. But his body won’t move, refuses to respond, his chest heaving for breaths that just won’t come as his heart slams into his ribs, the trees rising around him and cutting off his air, yellow eyes cutting into his skull from every direction—

Ford, buddy, I need you to listen to me.

He should have known better than to come down here. He should have known he should have known he should have known he shouldhaveknownheshouldhaveknowntrustnoonetrustnoonetrust—

Ford!

Something buckles under his fingers with a metallic thwop, and it’s like a switch that suddenly snaps the whole world back into focus, his eyes shooting open in an instant.

The first thing he notices is the way the bright white light bends around the warping metal under his fingers, creating a soft halo around each hand that dissipates into the surrounding darkness.

The second thing he notices is that his chest aches, his heart still hammering away like a drum.

He takes a deep, shaky breath and slowly lifts his hands, the aluminum panel popping back, his trembling fingers cold to the bone as he draws them close to his chest, the exhale shuddering just as much.

The trees can’t see down here, he thinks, drawing another breath into his burning lungs. He can’t see.

There’s the sound of shoes scuffing on the dirt-packed floor somewhere behind him, and he immediately bristles, his entire body going rigid before he even has time to think.

“Ford? You with me again, buddy?”

The voice is gruff, cautious, familiar in a way that drains the tension from his muscles like water going down a tub drain, leaving him absolutely empty and hollow, his mind still humming. He doesn’t turn away from the panel.

That’s right. Stan’s still here. Stan’s down here, too. That’s right.

Stan’s here, and he’s okay. He’s okay this time. That’s good. That’s progress.

Bill isn’t here anymore. Bill is gone, and Stan is okay. That’s good. Good. Good.

He lets the thoughts rampage through his mind in an attempt to drown out the echoing laughter still reverberating around in his head.

It doesn’t work all too well.

“You okay?”

His hands twitch, his mouth opening slightly with the hope that something will come out, something reassuring. But any words he could have said stick to the back of his throat, dying before he realizes nothing would have rectified this situation as it was. His lips fall shut once more.

Bill keeps laughing.

“Ford?”

Do you trust me?

The bright white overhead lights from the portal room are still blinding in the corner of his eye, relative darkness encroaching in the other.

Of course I do, Stanley.

He turns and calmly walks back over to the elevator, stepping back into the metal cage and letting the door groan closed behind him, unable to meet his twin’s eye through the grating as he hits the button and ascends without a word.

It’s his second day of single-handedly dismantling the portal, and Stan feels like he’s thirty again, sitting in the basement control room surrounded by an assortment of tools, electrical components, and wires. It’s like being down here, sitting at the work station in the same well-worn swivel chair with his brother’s machine lain bare at his hands in front of him has tossed him back thirty or so years in time, back to the time when his bones didn’t ache and his hair wasn’t gray. It’s a strange feeling that he can’t help but consider, his screwdriver methodically working through the fasteners of the hard drive in front of him.

The thought doesn’t bring with it a soft touch of nostalgia and longing like the idea of youth would for most others. No, for him, the thought drags up feelings of hopelessness and desperation, of pushing through the fear of irreparably damaging what lay hidden behind the control’s metal panels and finally digging into the electronics themselves, replacing blown circuits and damaged motherboards like he might actually understand how some of this stuff works. He remembers thinking that it’s only been a few years, that Ford could still be alive after all that time, that there’s still a chance, if only he could get this damn thing working again or find the other journals. He remembers accidentally frying one of the smaller hard drives and subsequently driving himself into an hour-long panic attack, his mind dead-set that he’d just killed his brother. He remembers long nights spent without sleep and even longer days spent waiting for the sun to set so he could get back to work. He remembers thirty years’ worth of fear and anxiety and doubt, all centered around the triangular structure the next room over.

The memories are hard and unforgiving, and while he wouldn’t give them up for anything (he’s more sure of that now than he ever was before), they still burn in the back of his mind at moments like this, when his hands fall into familiar work patterns and the only sounds are that of his own breathing and the soft clinking and scraping of the screwdriver working on whatever part he has in hand.

He almost forgot how quiet it could get down here, with all the machinery shut down and still. All these years, he’s grown so used to the constant humming and whirring, the sounds turning to a comfortable white noise, a backdrop to his work as he toiled day and night, a single constant in all the mess. Now, with the silence spreading thin throughout the room, the dirt floor absorbing whatever small sounds he and his screwdriver throw at it, he can’t shake the feeling of unease that seems to settle around him. It permeates every shadow, every crevice, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on-end and his ears hum in an attempt to drown it out. The air is charged and brittle, like the tension in a cracked window one touch away from falling to pieces, the walls around him watching, everything collectively holding its breath and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The silence is shattered when he picks up the hammer and starts beating at the hard drive enclosure. The whack of the hammer on the metal case reverberates through the quiet room, making his hearing aids crackle and assaulting his ears in a way that’s almost a relief compared to the quiet.

He considers how hard it would be to shoplift a small hand radio the next time he goes to the store and wonders how many people in this town would actually try to stop him after everything that happened. Consider it a perk of being the town hero and all.

He pulls the hard drive enclosure open, yanking out the metal disk drive before dropping the now-useless case into the bin at his side. The important part, the part with a small piece of the information necessary to work the portal, is the metal, magnetized disk in his hands, no bigger than a standard CD.

He sets it on the table, picks up his hammer again, and gives the metal disk a few solid dents, even going so far as to flip the hammer around and use the claw to carve some nice scratches into the shining metal. He only stops when his reflection becomes completely indistinguishable in the disk’s surface, a smear of distorted color and features against a dented and destroyed silver back. Only then does he set the disk aside in a box with all the others, kept safe until he can get around to burying them later.

Better to be safe…

He grabs the next hard drive on the stack and starts the entire process again.

He knows dismantling the servers is going to be a whole other animal.

Not to mention the behemoth in the next room.

He’ll be working on this for weeks, and he knows there’s nothing he can do to remedy that fact save for burning the entire house to the ground (and he’s not sure Soos would ever forgive him for that).

He hadn’t wanted to be doing this alone.

He’d been beyond grateful that Ford had agreed to come down to the basement with him. He knew the perfectly-restored portal sitting just under their feet had been bugging his brother as much as it had been bugging him, so finally getting rid of it once and for all seemed like the best solution.

But to Ford, it was more than just a bitter reminder, and Stan thinks he should’ve realized that sooner than he did.

It wasn’t until they were halfway down the elevator, his brother as stiff as a rod and completely lost in his own head, that Stan realized bringing him down may have been a mistake.

And then he had to go and turn on the portal room lights, and Stan could only watch as any semblance of stability Ford had managed to scrape together evaporated like smoke on water.

Every bone in his body had screamed to run over to that side of the room and hold his brother tight until the storm passed, to at least let him know that he wasn’t alone.

The first time Ford had panicked, Stan had done just that.

It was some time during the week after the kids left to go back home. As it always seemed to go, he and Ford had been up late one night, still working on piecing together the last few missing fragments of his memory, filling in holes and gaps as well as they could, just catching up in general. Ford had mentioned running down to the basement to grab something, something he said he’d made all those years ago when McGucket had first conceptualized the memory gun, a way to reverse its effects and fix his brain or something, a way to minimize the lapses that happened on occasion.

Ford had been gone for ten minutes before Stan decided to go after him, to make sure nothing had happened. The Shack had taken a beating in all the chaos of last week, not getting repaired by the magic burst Ford told him about that apparently fixed the whole town in seconds. He’d said something about a weirdness barrier around the house probably being the reason, that it had apparently saved a lot of lives, too. Stan wouldn’t have been surprised if the elevator was in just as bad of shape as the rest of the place and wouldn’t put it past his genius brother to get stuck in the damn thing.

He’d entered the gift shop, full moon illuminating the room in an eerie white glow, only to find his brother braced up against the vending machine, his fingers splayed on the glass, elbows locked as if he was forcing it closed, trying to stop something from coming out, gasping for breath like he was trapped underwater or all of the air had been sucked right out of the room, his whole body trembling.

Stan had been over in an instant, a hand coming up to gently touch his shoulder, meant to be reassuring.

The next thing he knew, he was on his back with a boot pressed into his chest and a gun pointed at his face.

Stan remembers the look he’d seen in his brother’s eyes at that exact moment, the lack of recognition when they stared at one another for what felt like an eternity, a cold distance spanning between them in his brother’s devoid expression.

It was like he had been looking at a completely different person.

His finger had been on the trigger.

And then it passed.

Stan doesn’t blame him, could never blame him for reacting the way he did to everything that happened to him. Ford had already shared some of his adventures across the multiverse, telling tales and weaving stories that would’ve put their childhood sci-fi books to shame. But Stan knows there’s more that Ford isn’t telling him, certain stories that he refuses to touch, tries not to think about. He knows all too well the feeling that flashes across Ford’s eyes sometimes when he thinks no one can see, that far-off look, a deep-seeded pain and dread simmering just below, threatening to erupt should the memories be brought too close to the surface. He knows it because he sees it in the mirror sometimes, when the forty years’ worth of memories and turmoil just feels like too much, like it’s not really over and everything he’s worked so hard for will crash and burn around him, as if reality will step in and end whatever little bit of happiness he has managed to find for himself.

They each have their own traumas.

There’s no use pretending they don’t.

Ford distanced himself for days after that incident.

Stan made sure to keep a t-shirt on around the house to hide the purple and blue splotches across his chest, back, and shoulder blades. He learned to keep his distance during the attacks, to speak soft words of comfort from feet away, at least until Ford’s eyes showed some spark of recognition once again.

They moved on, together.

And then he brought him down here.

He hasn’t seen Ford since yesterday morning.

The elevator chugs to life behind him, the old pulleys and motors creaking awake and filling the room with a soft hum. The sudden noise startles Stan out of his thoughts and makes him drop the screwdriver, the damn thing hitting the table, bouncing off onto the floor, and rolling under the desk.

“Shit.”

He scrambles out of his chair and crouches down on the floor, his back protesting the movement as he feels around in the shadows under the desk, hoping to find the thing before it inevitably rolls somewhere he’ll never see it again. He always has a hard time keeping track of that darn red screwdriver, and he’ll be damned if he loses it down here too.

The train of thought is fleeting, getting wrapped up and smothered by his curiosity regarding who’s coming down the elevator shaft instead.

Soos refuses to come down here. Not since what happened that summer day with the portal.

Melody’s at home today.

The kids are still home in Piedmont.

McGucket would never willingly come down, even if he decided to visit the Shack.

His hands feel gritty, dirt coving his palm and getting between his fingers as he searches the ground half-heartedly.

No one else should know about this place.

Except…

The elevator shudders to a stop right behind him just as his sand-dusted fingers curl around the handle of the screwdriver, the silence instantly settling back into the space like a thick fog.

Except… Would Ford—

The elevator doors creak, metal scraping on metal as they slowly slide open.

There’s a moment, a short pause, in which Stan can’t find it in himself to breathe, let alone adjust his aching back from this position.

Then, there are hard, resounding footsteps, a little too quick to be comfortable, the dirt unable to fully hide the impact of each footfall as Ford (surely it’s Ford) comes into the room.

Part of Stan doesn’t want to move, is afraid that even the smallest twitch would be catastrophic for whatever is happening, for whatever finally drew his brother back down here. If Ford finally found it in himself, finally found a reason to come back down to the place that stole the last thirty years of his life, then the last thing Stan wants is to accidentally ruin that for him. He can’t do that to him. (Not again.)

Part of him, that small, curious part that he always tried to smother because it always got him in trouble back in the day, wills him to turn his head. If it’s Ford, he needs to see him, even just to make sure he’s okay.

And if it’s not Ford…

The footsteps are almost on top of him, each dampened thump somehow echoing off the metal surrounding him.

Slowly, carefully, Stan turns his head towards the approaching figure to look.

Ford’s back is ram-rod straight, his steps purposeful, his eyes hard and his mouth set in a grim line. He’s beyond disheveled, with his hair mussed in a way that suggests he must have been running his fingers through it repeatedly, his glasses slightly askew, his coat's collar partially popped and bent, the bags under his eyes so dark they almost look like bruises. Everything about him is just slightly off, like he’s just been barely holding himself together since the last time Stan saw him almost two days ago…

He looks like mom after her tenth cup of coffee.

Stan opens his mouth to say something, to ask.

Ford breezes right past him, not even sparing him a glance, his eyes fixed resolutely ahead. The door to the portal room glides open as if to get out of his way, and he enters the next room with such an air of determination that Stan almost has to do a double-take.

Something’s… different.

Stan pulls himself to his feet, standing and watching through the cracked viewing window, not willing to intervene thanks to some parts morbid fascination and other parts genuine pride.

Ford grabs the sledgehammer on the far wall, the one that Stan brought with him this morning when he came down, hoisting it over his shoulder as he strides towards the towering inverted triangle at the back of the room.

Stan’s eyes widen the slightest bit.

Ford stops in front of the monolithic machine, craning his head back to look up at it, the harsh lights in the room glaring off the metal structure, glinting off his cracked glasses, his knuckles going white on the wooden handle of the hammer.

He steps forward, draws the sledgehammer back, and in one fluid moment of resolution, swings.

The impact creates a shockwave that shoots up through his arms, into his skull, rattling his teeth at the same frequency of the resounding metal-on-metal bang echoing through the cavernous room. It leaves his head vibrating, his ears ringing in a high-pitched response to the decaying crash, taking its place even after the last remnants of sound dissipate and erase any proof of what he just did.

Except, there’s now a dent in the metal structure, a large circular pock-mark marring the face of the machine’s base support.

He stares at that mark for a long second, needing to confirm its existence, to prove to himself that he really did it.

The sledgehammer winds back behind him once more, his eyes locked on the mark, the overhead lights distorted and ringed around it like a target.

He swings again.

This time, he’s ready for it, his muscles tensed in anticipation of the blow and the resulting recoil that runs through his body like an electric current, the noise slamming into his ears and beating around in his head.

Memory is a tricky thing, Ford has realized.

It can help you out of the toughest binds, give you reason to smile on the darkest days, take you back to a time before the world fell apart and pieced itself back together one jagged shard at a time. It can be a certain smell, like a light tinge to the air of some nameless dimension that faintly reminds him of the fry oil his Ma used when she made potato pancakes. It can be a thought, like a visceral reaction to an excessive amount of sweet-talking and enthusiastic praise, a deep-seeded mistrust that tips him off to a dodgy situation just moments before someone turns on him and things go sour. Or it can be something to carry with him at all times, like a small picture of two boys and a boat kept in his pocket close to his heart, a sad reminder of the life he was thrust out of.

But memory can also lie to you, play with your reality, color your perception of every aspect of the world around you. It tells him for ten long years that he should hate his twin brother for something that couldn’t have possibly been a mistake, that ruined his life. It melts together the color yellow and the hasty, mad scribblings in the back of his old journal, warnings to “trust no one” inseparable from the marred bark of the birch trees surrounding the Shack. It makes him flinch when his brother accidentally calls him “Sixer”, and it makes the nightmares all too believable when he jolts awake in the middle of the night and swears he can still hear laughing. It turns a small static shock from shuffling his feet on the carpet into something a little more, or a hand on his shoulder in a moment of vulnerability into something dangerous. The memories sometimes sink their fingers into his skin, nails digging into raw flesh and dragging him down into the depths with them, kicking and screaming and gasping for air until he’s sure that this is all that is left for him, this state of drowning in what came before.

If there’s one thing that Ford has learned, it’s that memory is both a blessing and a curse, one that he’s learned to live with, one way or another.

The hammer swings home again, almost as if of its own volition, the earsplitting clang an abrasive interruption to his thoughts. The metal paneling on the outside of the base structure visibly buckles very slightly inwards, and he immediately knows that he needs to get the damn thing off, that he needs to obliterate the internal support beam just behind it and bring the entire thing down.

He brings the sledgehammer back again, swings, the crash echoing through the room as he resets, swings again, resets—

When he and Stan were six years old, Ford remembers their father threatening to feed them to the bogeyman hiding in the closet if they didn’t quit fooling around before bed. Ford, knowing the few things he did about the horrifying creatures, had been terrified and hidden under the covers for the next three nights, scarcely getting a wink of sleep for fear of the beast creeping out and looming over him in the dark. On the fourth night, Stan took it upon himself to sleep in the closet just to prove there wasn’t really one in there, marching in with his blanket and pillow dragging behind and making himself at home among the clothes and shoes much to his brother’s horror.

It wasn’t even five minutes later that Ford, afraid to leave his twin alone, grabbed his own pillow and blanket and joined him in there.

—swing, reset, swing, reset—

When they turned eight, Ford remembers coming home from school one afternoon and finding a picture of a hideous, six-fingered monster stuffed in his backpack. He’d cried, his brother’s arms wrapped around him in a big bear hug, the paper crumpled up in his small hands. Around the time his sniffling had started to subside, he remembers Stan going partially rigid against him, eyes locked on something outside their window, and then bolting for the door. Ford only had enough time to stare after him in confusion before he heard the sound of yelling outside, and he turned and watched out the window just in time to see Stan run out of the shop and deck a passing Crampelter right in the jaw. The older boy had reeled back in surprise, and the moment he’d looked back at Stan, his hands already clenching into fists, Ford had been halfway down the stairs to join his brother.

Stan ended up getting a black eye and a split lip for all of it, but he wore them like a badge for the next two weeks. Ford managed to get away with only a few scrapes and bruises before their father came out and broke up the scuffle.

—swing, reset—

At thirteen, Ford remembers that Stan stopped wearing glasses, but not of his own choice. Their father had had enough of buying new frames for him every time he broke them in a fight, said it was a waste of money. Little did their Pa know that they were almost always Ford’s broken glasses that Stan would waltz in the pawn shop door wearing, causing enough of a distraction that Ford, bruised and bloody, could slip upstairs unnoticed to clean himself up and cover the worst of the bruises with some of their Ma’s make-up. Stan would take the fall every time that he could, knowing that their father would just sign Ford up for more unwanted boxing lessons if he knew he still couldn’t hold his own in a fight.

Ford never once asked him to do it, but Stan never hesitated, not if it meant protecting his brother from Filbrick’s anger.

He never hesitated.

—swing, reset, swing, reset, swing—

He was crazy to ever think he didn’t need Stan.

He resets his grip, readying for another swing when he realizes that the panel is bowing outwards at the top. He adjusts his hands on the handle, raising the sledgehammer over his right shoulder, the thing arcing perfectly over his head as he slams it down on the top edge of the panel. The whole sheet of metal buckles, straining against the fasteners barely holding it in place.

Two more solid hits are all it takes to snap the screws, and he sidesteps as the crumpled and bent panel falls onto the hard-packed dirt with a weak thump, the sound lost in the thundering clang of the hammer’s blow still echoing through the room.

Inside the machine is a whole other set of memories he hasn’t touched in thirty years.

Circuit boards that he and Fiddleford spent weeks soldering components to and programming. Wires tied back in organized clusters because Fiddleford claimed he couldn’t stand the mess. Status lights, dull and lifeless now, once a twinkling array of stars to guide him. Coolant channels, carefully designed and monitored to keep the machine warm enough for the chemical reactions to take place at optimal levels while also preventing it from overheating after only a few moments of operation. All of it coiled around reaction chambers, now empty and flushed clean, once housing one of the most volatile and energetic chemical reactions on the planet. It was the only way to generate the amount of energy they needed to punch through to the other side, at least that’s what Bill—

His knuckles go white on the wooden handle, his lungs pulling in a deep breath of air even though his mouth tastes like dirt and dust again, reminding him of the months he spent down in this very room all those years ago, so assured by the lies he was being fed. So sure of who he could trust.

Bill had been a shining light, a beacon in the darkness, drawing him in with all the promises of the universe and the knowledge it had to offer, the recognition he deserved. He’d strived after his Muse, always reaching, hoping to maybe one day touch whatever brilliance shown out of him and get a part of it for himself, a glimpse of the inner-workings of the world around him. It had been the one thing pushing him, telling him to keep working even after reading the ancient warnings written on the walls of the cave, even after Fiddleford begged him to end it before something went wrong, even after the accident…

He’d been so blinded by the light that he never really saw it for what it was.

Not until he was being dragged backwards through the air towards it.

He remembers…

He remembers the feel of it tugging on his clothes, something akin to a wind, something pushing him back further and further, pressing his clothes flat to his body and pulling at his hair. But the air had been deathly still, no gusts, no pressure, nothing rushing past his ears. No, instead it had been almost like gravity. It was the feel of an unstoppable force dragging him closer and closer no matter how much he kicked and screamed and begged, an inevitable end, almost fitting that the light that he strove towards would also be his demise.

He had liked to compare himself to Icarus, thinking his story an incredible tragedy because he dared to get close to the sun only to get burned and left behind.

He realized all too soon how incorrect the thought was.

He saw truth around the time the blue light engulfed his vision, the air around him charged and buzzing with static electricity and more raw power than he’d ever experienced before, too bright, too much, the hum of energy drowning out his cries for help as he realized that he was too far gone, that he got too close to something he should have realized was dangerous, that it was over.

It was then that he saw that he was just one of those bugs in their backyard at Glass Shard Beach, a fool drawn in by an alluring lie, struggling to touch something that would only leave him dead and forgotten as another came crawling up to take his place.

He’d been too convinced by the beauty to see the lie hidden just beneath.

And then it was gone, everything he ever knew left behind as he spiraled out of the light and into the darkness beyond, a speck in a realm of chaos, a stranger in the home of his enemy.

He… he hadn’t expected to last as long as he did.

He’d expected his barely-gripped sanity to finally slip through his fingers like Fiddleford’s had, or he’d expected Bill to get bored toying with him and just let him fizzle out of existence.

He’d expected to die within the week.

The hammer swings home, again and again, crashing through circuit boards and sheet metal support structures, green fiberglass cracking and splintering with each hit as he tears a hole through the inner structure of the machine.

He’d expected to die within the week.

And then it was thirty years later.

He keeps ripping into the interior, blowing through every bit of computer hardware and every piece of metal in his way, the portal yielding to his hammer piece by piece, small bits flying back and clipping his arms and legs. A soft ache settles into his muscles, a bone-deep weariness born of exhaustion from sleep deprivation and exacerbated by every swing of the sledgehammer. It burns into his core, slowly setting his muscles on fire from the inside-out. He grabs onto the pain, the discomfort, grips it hard and uses it to tell him to keep swinging, to grit his teeth and keep going. It’s nothing compared to what else is there, writhing under the surface, an agony too raw to name and too painful to forget. He’s lived with it for thirty years, that yawning pit of betrayal and pain and fear, a gaping hole screaming for relief even as he latches onto it and learns to depend on it to survive.

Trust no one, and you won’t lose anyone.

Trust no one, and no one will betray you.

Trust no one, and you will survive.

Trust no one. There is no one you can trust. Trust is weakness. Trust is betrayal.

Trust no one.

Do you trust me, Ford?

Thirty years later…

He stops, the hammer frozen mid-swing, his chest heaving as he draws in gasps through a dry throat. Every bone in him throbs, every muscle burning with fatigue, his arms shaking as he keeps the hammer drawn back.

What was he supposed to do now that Bill was finally dead?

Behind the last bits of scrap and broken motherboards, it’s there, plain-as-day, the lights glinting off the silver metal.

Ford?

Fiddleford always warned him of the dangers of putting the entire structure’s weight on a single compression member at the base of the inverted triangle. Buckling due to a geometric imperfection. One dent, one solid hit, and the whole thing goes down.

His Muse had insisted on the design, spouting nonsense about dimensional surface optimization and energy balance through triangulation and other seemingly-advanced concepts that Ford simply figured he’d never fully understand.

Years after falling into the portal, he was completely unsurprised to find out there wasn’t an ounce of truth to any of it.

Ford?

Bill always did have an ego. Hindsight made it obvious. Three decades spent learning as much as he could about the dream demon made it a universal truth.

It wound up being his downfall in the end.

It was almost Ford’s.

He hoists the sledgehammer up again, the weight of it something daunting, promising, in his hands.

One solid hit…

His muscles scream in defiance.

His fingers tighten on the wooden handle.

The hammer arcs through the air.

Strikes the singular support rod head on.

Ford!

The resulting clang is lost as the entire structure groans, the support buckling backwards almost instantly, giving in to the weight of the portal’s body as the whole thing creaks and shifts.

There’s a moment when everything seems to stand still, a short span of time between one breath and the next as the portal looms above him, and he’s left watching in morbid fascination as the once imposing figure begins to list forward, the metal twisting and whining as the base crumples, the sledgehammer slipping out of his sore fingers.

He’s too entranced by the falling portal to register the arms wrapping around his waist and dragging him out of the way. At least, he doesn’t recognize it until he finds himself sprawled out on the ground off to the side of the room, his brother’s arms still tense and braced around him.

Not even a second later, the room is filled with the cacophonous boom as the entire metal structure strikes the packed dirt floor. It’s so loud, louder than he ever would have imagined, the sound vibrating his teeth and shaking the very ground under him as the metal shrieks and gives under its own weight of impact. He shuts his eyes against the thick cloud of dust and dirt kicked up, sand carried by the resulting rush of air slapping his face, stinging his nose and throat.

There’s something beyond satisfying about it all.

The crash carries for a few long seconds, bounces around the room, echoing back against itself and distorting and ringing, persisting in its existence for more moments than the entire event took to occur. But, eventually, it too dies, leaving just the soft rain of dirt settling back on the ground, a gentle white noise against an otherwise silent backdrop.

His entire body hurts, his muscles heavy and sore, burning, his back pressed to the ground.

Somehow, he still feels infinitely light, like a weight that was lodged in his chest for too long was finally ripped out and left lying in the dirt only a few meters away.

Stan moves, his arms uncoiling from around Ford’s torso where he’d grabbed him, the movement hesitant even has he groans something about back pains and idiot brothers as he shuffles up in the dirt.

Ford can’t even will himself to move, too caught up in the overwhelming feeling of blessed emptiness filling his chest, his head, the quiet inside his own skull. It can’t be real, doesn’t seem possible. He feels like he’s floating, suspended in this moment of pure relief, the weight of the past far below him, distant nightmares finally feeling like nothing more than memories buried under the settling dust. All of it is gone, dead and left behind with the crash of the hammer and the crush of sheet metal.

His mind, for once, is blissfully silent.

He’s lived with that mocking laugh in his head for thirty years, and now…

Sixer? Hey, are—

“—you okay?”

Stan’s hand lightly touches Ford’s shoulder. Ford realizes that he hasn’t moved, doesn’t really want to. He’s content to just lay here, bask in the sudden lack of heaviness behind his ribcage and the twinge of his raw hands and the ache permeating his entire body.

It takes him another moment to realize…

Stan called him Sixer.

The thought gives him pause, and Stan must realize it too because the hand on his shoulder tightens almost imperceptively, a soft recognition of the word.

But it doesn’t hurt.

Ford realizes he didn’t even flinch.

He clenches and unclenches his fists, holding onto the sting of forming blisters and the stretch of raw skin, letting it convince him that this is all real. That what he did, what he’s feeling, is real. That the taste of grit in his mouth and the dirt beneath him and light burning through his eyelids is real. That he’s finally…

He smiles, a soft laugh bubbling out of his chest, breaking free into the still air, filling the room. It’s soft, barely audible, but somehow the sound seems to carry, to ring through the basement in a way that nothing else has, dissipating whatever is left of the shroud that always seemed to linger in the air. Another laugh follows it, this one almost more confident, more assured, just barely catching in his throat. It’s at that exact moment that he feels the tears dripping down the sides of his face. The realization pulls even more laughter out of his lungs, and then more, tears streaming down his cheeks in rapid succession the harder he laughs, unrestrained.

He can’t remember the last time he felt this… this…

… this free…

He thinks he could get used to how it feels.

He’s still laughing, and with each gasp, he can’t help but swear it’s the first time in thirty years that he’s finally been able to breathe.

Two men, both somewhere in their sixties, sit on a dirt floor with their backs against a set of elevator doors. The air between them is calm, the dust long-settled, unstirred by their soft, rhythmic breaths. They lean comfortably against one another, and the one with bags under his eyes and a content curve to his lips has his head rested on the other’s shoulder, his eyes closed in exhaustion though he’s still awake.

“You know, I’m pretty sure the kids went back ta school today,” the one with his head tipped backwards against the elevator doors, Stan, says. “We should probably call ‘n see how that went, huh?”

“I’m sure they’d love to hear from us,” the other, Ford, says. “Mabel had been so excited to share some of their summer adventures with their class. I’m sure she’ll want to tell us all about it.”

“No one’s gonna believe a word she says,” Stan says, snorting softly. “Kid’s got a wild enough imagination. I wouldn’t blame ‘em.”

“That’s true,” Ford says. “It’s too bad they don’t have some sort of concrete proof to show others—”

“For the last time, I am not letting you mail those kids a gnome,” Stan groans, though he can’t help but crack a smile. “I’m already on bad enough terms with their new Queen after that whole incident with the goat. I’m not about ta go and piss her off more by kidnapping and mailing one of her people to California.”

“Kidnapping is a bit of an extreme term.”

“Ford, that’s exactly what you’re suggesting.”

“No, I was not. The gnomes love the sun, so I guarantee there would be at least one that would happily leave this dreary state to live in a place where it’s sunny the majority of the time.”

“Have you ever been to California?”

“No, but I hear it’s wonderful,” Ford pauses, weighing his words. “Besides, I’m pretty sure there’s another Shmebulock working its way up the ranks. When the time comes and the current one is banished, we’d be doing it a favor.”

“Not gonna happen, bro. Besides, the kids’ parents are already not too happy about the pig. Doubt they’d appreciate something else routinely digging through their trash. Also, you need to stay out of gnome politics.”

“Their entire culture is quite remarkable, Stanley. I’d be remiss not to study it.”

“They also routinely kidnap people for extended periods of time, and they’re basically an unstoppable force of nature.”

“Actually, I was quite wrong about that assumption. Apparently, Dipper and Mabel figured out multiple ways to beat them.”

“What? Stanford Pines? Wrong?” Stan says, chuckling. “First time for everything, right?”

“No, not the first,” Ford says, his voice drifting slightly. Stan, seeming to sense a shift in his twin’s mood, lifts his head and glances down, his expression soft, eyebrows drawn slightly together in concern, ready to open his mouth and change the subject. But instead of unease and discomfort, he finds the same soft smile, eyes still comfortably closed, not an ounce of tension anywhere in his brother’s body. It’s a small relief, confirmation that whatever happened the next room over, whatever drew his brother down here and sent him spiraling into a berserker-like rage, was beneficial in some way. Not a cure; one anger session would never be enough to solve forty years-worth of betrayal and hurt.

But it’s a start in the right direction.

“If that thing ever works again, it’ll be a damn miracle,” Stan says, his head tipping back once more, satisfied to relax back against the metal doors behind him. Ford smiles, all too ready to agree.

“I’ll be down tomorrow to help you finish taking it apart,” Ford says, fingers absently fiddling with the hem of his coat. “I should be able to salvage some of the remaining parts for other projects, maybe even save some equipment for the Stan O’ War.”

“Whatever floats your boat,” Stan says, only considering his own words for a moment before barking out a laugh. “That was a good one.” Ford snorts in acknowledgement, adjusting his head into a slightly different position on Stan’s shoulder. “But seriously, bro. Only come down if you think you’re comfortable doing it. I don’t want you tryin’ to do something you’re not ready for just because you feel bad or something and are tryin’ ta make my life easier. I can survive on my own.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Ford says, touched by the sentiment no matter how oddly worded. “But I think, after all is said and done, I’ll be alright.”

“You think so?”

“Yes. I…” he pauses, debating his next words carefully. “I think that, what happened in there… I think it helped. Quite a lot, actually.” Ford finally realizes his fingers are playing with the edge of his trenchcoat of their own accord, a nervous habit that has its roots in childhood. Now, it just feels like something to keep his hands busy. “Besides, you shouldn’t have to do it alone.”

The admission is small, an almost-constant in their lives now, a recognition of what drove them apart all those years ago and an apology for letting it happen. Ford will probably never be able to get past the guilt of everything that happened between them, and he’s not entirely sure he wants to. Let it live on as a reminder of what he almost lost.

Stan loops an arm around Ford’s shoulders, Ford having to readjust his head to the new position, his hair tickling the side of Stan’s neck as Stan squeezes his arm, hoping he’s conveying his gratitude.

Ford remembers for the millionth time how nice it feels to be this close with someone, how much he really missed having his twin around for all those years.

“You ever heard of the word ‘catharsis’?” Stan asks. Ford lets out a breath of a laugh.

“Yes, Stanley, I have. It’s a rather well-known word.”

“Says who?”

“Says anyone who has ever picked up a book in their life.”

“Hey! Be nice, ya jerk,” Stan says, giving Ford’s shoulder a gentle shake and lightly nudging his knee with his own. Ford finds himself smiling even wider at the playfulness. “Not all of us went to college and got ten fancy nerd degrees.”

“It’s twelve, not ten.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Stan says teasingly. “Gotta keep you humble somehow.”

“By making me correct you about the number of PhDs I have?”

“Anyways,” Stan quickly pushes on. “I was on the phone with Dipper and Mabel the other day, and I was telling them about how I finally got around to destroying all those old IDs I’d kept from… before.”

“You finally did it?”

“Yeah,” Stan wistfully closes his eyes. “And, ya know, I think I kept putting it off because I was scared I would regret it, like I was tossing away an entire part of my life, no matter how miserable it was. I mean, I’m not afraid of forgettin’ it or anything. The lapses are pretty rare now-a-days.” Ford’s lips twitch down into a momentary grimace, what happened to Stan still a bit of a touchy subject. Stan keeps going. “I just, I guess I’ve had the damn things for so long, it was just hard to finally get rid of them, no matter how much I hated knowing they were there in the back of the closet. That make any sense?” Ford nods his head, Stan feeling it against his shoulder and taking it as a signal to continue. “But then, I finally just decided I had enough. Took the box outside, lit it on fire, and I’ve honestly never felt as good as I did in that moment. It was… sorta freeing, I guess.”

“It was cathartic,” Ford supplies.

“Yeah, that’s what Dipper said,” Stan says, laughing softly as he remembers the phone call. “Kid gave me some textbook definition of the word, stuff about repressed emotions or something. You know how he gets sometimes, all ramble-y and fast-talking, sorta like when we were kids and you got excited over something nerdy.” Ford nudges Stan for the tease, a fond smile pulling at his lips again. “But, like, in all the encyclopedia nonsense he threw at me, I got the gist that it’s like,” he pauses, searching for the word, “an emotional release, I guess? Sorta like, getting rid of a bunch of pent up feelings all in one go, breaking something’s hold on you and finally taking back from it control of your own life.”

Ford is silent, taking in his brother’s words.

“Like, those IDs were a reminder of a life I never wanted,” Stan continues, “and while I don’t want to forget all of it, I don’t need that constant reminder staring me in the face every day, ya know?”

He hadn’t been down in weeks. Couldn’t stand to come down and see it.

“So, I burned ‘em, and afterwards I just felt so much better. Finally made it feel possible to move on without that shadow hangin’ over me. I could finally believe that I’m not really that man anymore and that I’m… finally not alone.”

There’s a soft pause, one in which Ford digests the words Stan just said to him, let’s them move around in his head a bit as he considers them.

Ford remembers how he felt after the portal fell, how it was like the chains that had been dragging him down for years finally just fell off, each swing of the sledgehammer feeling like another bit of the pain of the past wearing off bit by bit.

After Stan brought him down here what feels like an eternity ago, he threw himself into his work, doing the only thing he knows will let him forget everything for a while. Because of it, he hasn’t slept in over forty-eight hours, hasn’t eaten in close to thirty-six. Logically, he shouldn’t have been able to get in more than a few swings of the hammer before collapsing. He knows that, has done worse to himself and figured out his limits the hard way.

Yet, he somehow brought down the portal all on his own.

It needed to be done.

Every bang of the hammer had felt like a small bit of relief, a taste of the freedom he so dearly desired, giving him enough strength to swing one more time. Again and again and again.

It was…

Stan stays silent, listening to the even cadence of his brother’s breathing, letting him sort through everything like he knows he needs to. Let him realize the importance of what he’s just done the next room over, the progress it signifies.

“It’s a nice feeling,” Ford finally says, his voice soft, barely audible. Stan grunts in agreement.

They both know they have a long way to go before they’re whole again. They have their problems, bridges to mend and their own things to work through. But they’ll get there. Bit by bit, they’ll learn to heal and move on. Today is proof enough of that.

One step at a time.

“Stan?”

“Hm?” Stan hums, opening his eyes to look back down at his brother again. Ford hasn’t moved, his eyes still closed, his brows slightly furrowed, lips set in a soft line. It’s not the same smile that he had before, but Stan knows him enough to know he’s thinking.

“Thank you,” is all he says. Stan smiles softly, tipping his head back again and smiling up at the ceiling, tightening his grip on his brother’s shoulder.

“Any time, bro.”

Any time.