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July 2nd
It’s only the beginning of my third week in Gravity Falls, and already, I’ve encountered far more strange Pokémon than I could have ever anticipated! Just this morning, Decidueye and I nearly captured a strange creature wearing a decorated rag over its body, as if to mimic a Pikachu! Based on how easily it escaped the trapping power of Spirit Shackle, I’m tempted to classify it as a Ghost-type, but the attack also seemed to do no damage whatsoever to the Pokémon itself, only busting its disguise. We’ll be keeping an eye out for this “shadow of a Pikachu” to show up again it to show up again, of course, in hopes of exposing its true form!
Beheeyem has also been especially delighted lately — I can’t help but wonder if it senses the presence of other extraterrestrials! Perhaps that’s even the origin of all the anomalies in this town?
Stan buried his head in his hands. He’d reread the damn journal four times now, and it was still half useless information and half information he was too stupid to make any sense of.
His Pokémon — except Gyarados, for obvious reasons — were milling about the basement, unsure of what to do to help but too loyal to leave. Pangoro sat cross-legged in front of the portal, as if guarding it, while Persian slowly paced around the room, sniffing things he had definitely had time to sniff before. Even Gabite, who hated the cold and would definitely rather be upstairs under a pile of blankets, was lying at Stan’s feet, wrapping his fins around Stan’s leg for warmth.
And then there was Zoroark — good old, reliable old Zoroark, who’d gotten him through more rough points in life than Stan could count — who leaned over his shoulder, offering a faint murmur of reassurance. There were no words, but twenty years of time spent together made the message clear:
You can do this. We believe in you.
But Stan was tired, so tired. His brain was crying out for coffee, but his limbs felt too heavy for him to get up and make any, his mouth too dry for him to ask any of his Pokémon to bring it to him…
He was tired of being the dumb twin, tired of being the failure twin, tired of being the twin who wasn’t good for anything but protecting others and ultimately just ended up doing the complete opposite. He was tired of being seen as a shadow, as a poor pathetic imitation of something better. He was tired of Ford and everyone who saw him like that not being wrong.
He didn’t remember falling asleep, but he must have, because a hand on his shoulder was suddenly shaking him awake.
A six-fingered hand.
“You’re not a failure,” Ford told him gently.
“And you’re not real,” Stan responded.
“I’m saying what he would say if he was here.” Ford’s nose twitched slightly, in a very inhuman — yet still familiar — way.
“Pretty sure just about the last thing he said to me was that I’d never done anything worthwhile in my life. And he was right.”
“He was angry,” Not-Ford replied. “Angry and wrong.”
He gestured around the basement, to where Stan’s Pokémon had all drifted off into sleep. “Was all the time you spent with Persian and Gabite and Pangoro not worthwhile? Was training Gyarados up from a weak little Magikarp you found stranded on the beach one day not worthwhile?”
He rubbed his shoulder, where his trench coat was singed — though subtly, in a way that Stan might have missed if he didn’t know exactly what it meant. “Was convincing your parents to adopt me and Vulpix off the street in the middle of the winter not worthwhile?”
Stan closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. “No, it was — it was worth something.”
Still wearing Ford’s appearance, Zoroark wrapped his arms around Stan and hugged him tight, in just the same way that Ford always had. Stan hugged back, and a sob caught in his throat, just in front of his heart, blocking any other sound from coming out.
“If Ford was here right now, he might still be angry,” Zoroark told him. “But I know he wouldn’t say that any of those things were worthless. You’re not worthless, and you can figure this out. We all know you can. That battle won’t be the last one Ford will ever have with us, and calling you worthless won’t be the last thing he’ll ever say to you. I promise. You’ll get to hug him again for real.”
“Thank you,” Stan choked out as the illusion melted away and Zoroark buried his long black snout in his jacket. “You’re right, buddy. You’re right.”
***
From the moment the memory gun slipped out of his hands and clattered to the ground, the end of Ultramageddon dragged on and on for Ford like some kind of eternal punishment, even as it only registered in his memory as a series of blurred and disjointed images. He barely registered the bricks of the Fearamid flying out from underneath his feet as he grabbed Dipper and Mabel and Decidueye and Ninetales and held them tight as stared up to the chaos that was the sky.
The Ultra Wormhole closed itself like cracked glass being melted down into one cohesive whole again, colors streaking from horizon to horizon and until they finally, finally subsided to a uniform blue dotted with white clouds, a faint rainbow forming above the falls in the distance.
Ford thought, for a moment, that he saw the silhouette of a winged creature above that rainbow, lit up from behind by the blazing summer sun — but he blinked and it vanished, and he had a million other things to worry about, the most horrible being the man who wore his face but was no longer his twin.
It wasn’t hard to find Stan (he almost wished it was), because Zoroark, whose bright red mane stuck out in the woods like a sore thumb, was waiting by his trainer’s side, standing down on all fours like he hadn’t since he was a Zorua and whimpering faintly as the others approached.
Mabel, wonderful blessed optimist that she was, ran up to Stan, returned his fez to his head and and was greeted by a confused smile and a question. “Uh, hey there… kiddo. What’s — what’s your name?”
“Grunkle Stan?” Mabel asked. “Grunkle Stan, it’s me! It’s me!”
“We had to erase his mind to defeat Bill,” Ford explained, the words sounding hollow in his mouth — because no explanation could ever make this any better, could ever lead to anything but more sadness. “Stan has no idea, but — he did it. He saved the world.”
Ford let out a ragged breath.
“He saved me.”
Not a full minute ago, he’d made a promise to himself that he wouldn’t expect Stan to still be Stan, wouldn’t expect him to behave like his brother would, wouldn’t say anything to this poor confused man that we wouldn’t say to a stranger.
But he’d known, in his heart, it would been a promise he wouldn’t be able to keep. All of a sudden he was hugging Stan and crying, tears seeping into his own trench coat, the coat of the man who should have taken the fall.
“You’re our hero, Stanley.”
Stan remained limp and silent, not making any move to return the embrace.
I’ll never hug my brother again, Ford realized. I haven’t in forty-three years and I never will again.
Soos joined them on the way back to the Shack, his Bibarel tailing after him, and Stan just blinked at them slowly. Zoroark pressed his nose to Soos’s shoulder and let out another mourning whimper, as Soos’s smile melted away and he wiped at his eyes with the end of Zoroark’s tattered mane. Waddles waited for them at the doorstep of the Shack, as if he’d known they were coming, but his expression remained as blank and innocent as a Pignite’s could be as he followed them inside.
Stan settled into his chair in his chair comfortably, his expression a little brighter, a little less confused-looking, and for a moment it was as if a stream of pure oxygen was being blown at the last spark of hope in the back of Ford’s mind. Maybe, just maybe, there was a bit of Stan left —
“Hey, what’s wrong? You guys look like you’re at someone’s funeral!”
And then it was gone, extinguished by the deluge that was reality, and while Ford knew the kids needed him, that their Pokémon needed him, he couldn’t stay, couldn’t keep looking at this — this shadow of a brother.
He remembered the time when he’d convinced himself that Stan had always just been his shadow, an inferior imitation, and hated himself for ever thinking it. He deserved to be hated for thinking it. If anything was a shadow, a warped reflection, a mockery of what it was supposed to be, it was the stranger sitting where Stan should have — which wasn’t fair to this amnesiac man, Ford knew, but he couldn’t keep looking at his once-brother like this, couldn’t stay here —
Hurriedly, awkwardly, he excused himself and rushed to the wreck of a kitchen, where sitting amongst the rubble was… Stan.
Except it wasn’t, because this Stan’s suit was singed and ripped over his left shoulder. The place where Ford’s Ninetales had struck Zoroark with a far more powerful than intended attack in the heat of that fateful battle thirty years ago, an attack that still left a scar to this day.
“Why are you doing this?” Ford blurted out. “Why are you being him?”
“I don’t know,” Zoroark replied, voice close to that of Stan’s yet somehow different, as if with a very faint accent. “Denial, maybe? I — I miss him. I miss him a lot already.” The sorrow in his voice, on the other hand, sounded very, very believably human.
Ford flinched as Zoroark leaned towards him, only to be drawn into a hug just like the one he’d hoped so desperately that he’d receive from Stan back in that clearing.
This isn’t real, he told himself. It’s just an illusion. It’s not really Stan.
But he also hugged Zoroark back.
“He didn’t hate you, you know.” Zoroark murmured between sniffs. “Was frustrated by a lot of things you did, maybe. But he forgave you for all of that in the end.”
Ford nodded slowly. “Do you want to go back to Stan? Together? The kids… the kids need us.”
“Mmhm.” Zoroark let its illusion fade away and withdrew from the hug. When the two of them got back to the living room, Mabel was sitting on Stan’s chair with him and crying, flipping through pages of a scrapbook.
“This’ll work! This has to work! Here’s the first day we came to Gravity Falls, Grunkle Stan, and here are the seals I used on my ball capsules that ended up blinding you!”
“That time we went fishing with you and Gyarados?” Dipper offered. “That time a giant Aerodactyl kidnapped Waddles and you punched it in the face?”
Stan shook his head sadly.
“I’m sorry,” he told them, “but I don’t know what any of this is, or who you are — ah, quit it, Waddles, I’m tryin’ to remember my life story here!”
Ford nearly collapsed with relief, and next to him, he felt Zoroark jump.
“What did you say?” Dipper gasped.
“I said get Waddles off of me!”
“It’s working!” Ford exclaimed, rushing over to Mabel’s side and putting a hand on her shoulder. “Keep reading!”
“Skip to my page! He needs to remember our boss-employee relationship!”
“Hey, just because I have amnesia don’t go tryin’ to give yourself a raise, Soos!”
From somewhere above them, something let out a caw, so loudly that it had to have been from an absolutely giant Pokémon. Between the cracks in the roof of the Shack, Ford could see a rainbow of colors in the sky — and for just a moment, a giant red and white winged creature flying past.
Ho-oh, the Pokémon of rainbows… and revival.
“You okay, uh… Ford? You’re Ford, right?” Stan asks. “My brother? Or is that just short for somethin’, or —”
“No, that’s my name — and I am fine, now. I just…”
He shook his head. “Never mind. It’s not important —”
Stan frowned, and met eyes with Zoroark, who also frowned.
“Alright, fine. Could — could I have a hug?”
Stan got a strange look in his eyes, but Zoroark nodded to him, and he stood up and let his head rest over Ford’s shoulder.
“I missed you,” Ford told him, and for a moment Stan was quiet and Ford was afraid he’d said something wrong, triggered some unpleasant memory to come rushing back without context.
“I don’t know why,” Stan finally said, “‘cause as far as I know I’m the only one who got my mind wiped lately, but… I missed you too. I don’t know what happened, but… I get the sense I’ve been really worried about you lately. And maybe, uh, not on the best terms with you.”
He sniffed. “But I’m… I’m really glad you’re here.”
Ford nodded. “It’s thanks to you that I am. You and your team.”
Overhead, Ho-oh cawed again, and a single feather drifted down between the crack in the roof, shining in red, white and green.
“To new beginnings?” Ford asked, catching it.
“To new beginnings,” Stan agreed.