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“You want me to get rid of this book? Fine! I'll get rid of it right now!”
“No! You don’t understand —”
Stan’s not even sure how it happens, but one moment Ford’s lunging for the journal like a starving wild animal, and the next, he has the book in his hands again but he’s lurching backwards as his legs collapse underneath him. His head hits a pipe half-buried in the ground, but he doesn’t even flinch from the pain. He just goes limp.
“FORD!” Is this my fault? Did I let go of the journal? Did I hurt him? “Are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay, I’m so fucking sorry —”
Ford’s body twitches, and a faint smile spreads across his face.
“No need to apologize!” he responds without opening his eyes. “We both got a little carried away — just like old times, eh?”
Stan’s heart pounds in his chest. All of his instincts are telling him to bolt.
“Uh… are you s-sure you’re okay?” he asks through chattering teeth. He buries his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, but they don’t feel any warmer.
“Of course! What’s a little head injury to me, Stanford Pines? I’ve got plenty of brain cells to spare!” His eyes still closed, Ford gets to his feet and turns around to face away from Stan. More quietly, he adds:
“If anything, I should be apologizing to you, my dear brother. I let my impulsiveness get the better of me and pushed you away, but really, I wouldn’t want to change the world with anyone else at my side.”
That brazen lie is all it takes to confirm Stan’s suspicions. This thing in front of him in the trenchcoat and glasses isn’t Ford, not anymore.
“Hitting my head gave me an epiphany,” Not-Ford prattles on, gesturing towards the portal. “I was so afraid of what my research could do if it was released into the world, and people with less noble intentions than I got their hands on it — but with your street smarts backing me up, I know we could change the world for the better! What do you say, Stanley?”
“I say you better turn around and face me right now,” Stan growls. “Open your goddamn eyes and turn around and look at me.”
Not-Ford’s limbs jerk unnaturally as he whirls around, blinking catlike yellow eyes as he shoots Stan a toothy grin.
“You caught on after all!” he exclaims. “Now we’ll get to have some real fun!”
Not-Ford feints to the left and Stan falls for it, raising his fists to block a punch that never comes as Not-Ford scampers towards the control panel instead.
“Get out of his body, you — you demon!” Stan shouts, giving chase.
“I’m just borrowing it!” Not-Ford whines. “He said I could!”
“Liar!” Stan makes a grab for the hem of Ford’s trenchcoat, but Not-Ford narrowly dodges out of the way, twisting one last key into the control panel as he darts across the basement.
“Careful, Stanley!” the demon jeers. “You wouldn’t want to hurt your brother! You might even push him into another dimension at this rate, if you’re not careful!”
He wants to turn the portal on, Stan realizes. And I can use that. I just have to find a way to make sure he can’t hurt Ford —
He twists the key back into its initial position and watches the light above it go out, then pulls the key out of the panel and waves it above his head. “Hey, body snatcher! Look what I’ve got!”
“What?! Put that back!”
“Try and catch me with it, sucker!”
Stan makes a break for the elevator room, and Not-Ford gives chase only to trip and fall on his face. Stan flinches, but takes a deep breath and throws open the door anyway, scouring the room for rope, electrical cords, anything that he could use to restrain Ford’s body while looking for a way to get rid of the demon.
His eyes come to rest on a mannequin stuffed in the corner to his left. It has a rope tied around its waist, and he kneels down to untangle the knots —
“Look what I found!” a too-cheery voice sings behind him, followed by the sound of a door being kicked open and a flame hissing to life.
Stan whirls around to find the demon wielding a blowtorch, its blue glow reflecting in Ford’s glasses and almost hiding those horrible slit-pupiled eyes.
“Let me strike a deal with you, Stanley! You help me turn the portal on, I’ll give you your brother back, and I’ll let the both of you live when I conquer this dimension! Heck, I’ll even give each of you your own continent to rule! I sure won’t need ‘em all when I’ve got the whole galaxy under my command!”
Back against the wall and staring down a grinning demon and a searing butane flame, Stan knows he’s cornered. But with a rope in one hand and a key in the other, he still has one last desperate idea.
“Well?” the demon asks. “Deal or no deal?”
“Go long!” Stan hurls the key over Not-Ford’s head and the demon dives backwards, dropping the blowtorch as he outstretches his arms —
Then the back of his shoulder slams into a red-hot sigil etched into the side of the desk, and his body spasms for several terrifying seconds before dual beams of yellow light fly out of his eyes and Ford slumps to the ground, unconscious.
***
The first thing Ford processes after waking up is the rope chafing around his wrists, restraining him as he attempts to bolt to his feet.
“Well, look who’s finally awake.”
“Go to hell, Bill!” Ford spits. “Why are you still —”
He blinks. “Stanley?”
“Oh, are you you again? I wasn’t sure.” Stan steps forward and puts a hand on Ford’s shoulder, stopping the chair Ford’s tied to from toppling over before leaning in close to take a look at Ford’s eyes. Then Stan nods, apparently satisfied.
“You know, actually telling me that you get possessed by a fucking demon when you’re unconscious would’ve been really helpful an hour ago.”
Ford allows himself one tiny sigh of relief. It’s good — better than Ford could’ve hoped for, really — that Stan has picked up on the nature of Ford’s predicament, but that doesn’t mean all is well. Far from it.
“Bill didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“Nah, he was waving around a blowtorch for a minute or two, but I don’t think he really knew how to use the thing.” Noting what must’ve been a truly horrified expression on Ford’s face, Stan frowns. “Why do you care anyways?”
“Because — because you’re my brother?!” Ford splutters.
Stan looks away, and Ford can just sense that another argument is imminent, though he can’t imagine why. (Other than how he’d told Stan to get out of his house earlier, and how he’d certainly never given Stan any reasons over the past decade to believe that he did care, and… alright, he can imagine quite a few explanations why.)
“Look, Stanley, there are — there are a million more productive things we can, and should, be discussing right now. Did Bill do anything to the portal? If he did, I need you to untie me right this minute so I can get downstairs and make sure it doesn’t get activated —”
“He flipped a couple switches, but the thing didn’t look too active to me,” Stan answers quietly. “After I got you — er, your body — tied up, I went and switched back the settings to what I remembered them looking like when we first came downstairs. Half your damn diary was illegible, but one of the pages I could read helped with that.”
“Then — then I don’t know how you did it, but you probably just averted a universal apocalypse.” Ford takes a deep breath. “I really should still go down to double-check the portal’s status in the basement, but… I owe you an apology. I —”
“You really don’t,” Stan mumbles.
Ford tries several times to say something before finally managing: “Are you really still that determined to disagree with me about everything?!”
Stan slumps into the kitchen’s other chair, still not making eye contact. “You haven’t got the full story, Ford. How does your shoulder feel? Not great, I’m guessing.”
Ford grimaces. His shoulder admittedly feels horrible — he’d ignored it at first only because random injuries are a given whenever Bill is involved. “What happened?”
“It was an accident, I swear. I was just — just trying to distract the demon so he didn’t blowtorch my ass, but he backed up into this brand you had on the side of your desk, and —”
“A brand? You mean the protective sigil?!”
“You think I know what a protective sigil looks like? It had a circle, a diamond, some arrows —”
“And you said Bill backed into it on his own? You didn’t push him onto it?!”
“Yeah, but what difference does it make? It was still my fault —”
Ford tries and fails to hold in a delirious, sleep-deprived laugh. “Oh my god, Stan…”
Stan cringes. “Oh, just get it over with already! Tell me you never want to see my face again —”
“Are you kidding?” Ford asks. “Why would I say that after you just accomplished what I thought was impossible?!”
Stan’s jaw drops. “You’ve completely lost your mind, haven’t you.”
“Quite the opposite! My mind is safer than it’s ever been —” Ford pauses. “Although you wouldn’t have any way of knowing that, would you? I’m sorry. I should explain.”
“Yeah.” Stan buries his head in his hands. “You really should.”
“Let me start… near the beginning. I made a deal with a demon, which was incredibly foolhardy of me, even though he initially appeared to be more of a muse than a demon at the time, and… that deal allowed him to take over my body whenever I fell asleep.”
Ford waits for the mocking, the contempt, the ‘serves you right,’ but it never comes.
“Tough break,” is all Stan mutters, in a voice that doesn’t seem judgemental as much as it does numb.
“His ultimate goal was to use that portal, which he tricked me into creating, to open a rift to the dimension his physical form resides in,” Ford slowly goes on. “Such a rift would allow him to enter our world, and then do with it as he pleased. He’d be nigh-omnipotent here — hence my desperation to get rid of the journals that explained how to activate the portal. And that was why I called you here — but that was a mistake.”
Stan flinches, and Ford quickly adds: “I don’t mean asking for your help was a mistake! I mean it was a mistake to try and send you away — except it was that argument that led to Bill getting exorcised, which wouldn’t have happened otherwise, so — I don’t know. Maybe it was the right choice, but made for all the wrong reasons —”
“Exorcised?” Stan echoes. “That’s what the sigil did to Bill?”
“Exactly. Bill’s locked out of my body until the scars disappear… which might not ever happen, for all I know.” Momentarily forgetting he’s still tied up, Ford tries to rub his shoulder.
“Except I couldn’t just brand myself with it while I was awake,” he explains. “Bill had to come in contact with it of his own free will while possessing my body, or it wouldn’t work. At first, I’d planned to turn the house into a minefield of protective sigils in hope that Bill would stumble onto one of them, but it took so long to properly enchant the one on the desk that I gave up before preparing any others, and passed it off as a lost cause.”
“Holy shit.” Stan rubs his head. “…Well, guess you’ll want me to untie you now, huh.”
“That would be ideal, yes.”
Stan fumbles with the knots for a few moments of awkward silence before simply pulling out a pocketknife and cutting through the ropes. As Ford stretches his arms, Stan asks: “What are you going to do now?”
“Double-check the portal settings. Disassemble a few key components so they’re still repairable, but we can be sure we won’t have any more close calls. Then… god, I think I might actually be able to sleep after that. I can hardly believe it.”
“…Ford?” Stan asks, so quietly that Ford might not have heard it at all were the house not so silent otherwise.
“Yes?”
“Can I spend the night here? I mean, I don’t want to get in the way of your work saving the world and all that, but… it’s still snowing like crazy outside, and I don’t know how far the Stanmobile can make it —”
“You can stay as long as you need to,” Ford says, and instantly regrets it. Not because he doesn’t want Stanley to stay, but because need implies that the stay will only last a few nights at most. And as much as he’s tried to deny it for years, Ford is lonely.
“Okay. I’m gonna go grab some stuff from my car —”
“Actually, scratch that,” Ford interrupts, and Stan freezes like a deer in the headlights.
“What I meant to say was… you can stay as long as you like. And for all I know, that still may not be very long, because I haven’t been the best brother or even paid my goddamn heating bills, but… well, I’d like to catch up with you, if that’s — gah!”
The hug catches Ford off guard, leaving him gasping for breath
“I’d like that too, Sixer,” Stan whispers.
Ford hugs him back, and Stan finally manages a laugh. “Even if we have to tell stories while sitting around a goddamn bonfire so we don’t freeze to death. Seriously, why did you stop paying your heating bills?”
“It seemed like a good way to keep myself awake at the time…” Ford murmurs in the moments before drifting back to sleep right then and there, leaning on his brother’s shoulder in the middle of an empty kitchen.