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They’re his family. This is what he thinks lovingly, late at night when the two children are draped across his chair deep in sleep. Accepting them into the shack had been selfish on his part, having been estranged from any family for some thirty years. Logic had told him that two twelve-year olds that he didn’t really know coming to live with him was a bad idea, one that could be full of awkwardness or full of danger, depending on how things would turn out. But still, he wanted them to come-- wanted to see how it would be to share something with people again, even if the only thing in common was a last name. Stanley Pines has always loved his family, even now that he is Stanford Pines.
They’re the best thing that’s ever happened to him. This is what he thinks sorrowfully, staring at the cracked gravel of the road that is busing them away from him. Maybe some small part of him had expected that he would love them, but none of him had prepared for the thought that they might love him back. And they did, they did. Stanley has known love to come hand in hand with hurt since he was eighteen years old, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that loving these twins hurts. It isn’t, really, it’s more of his own faults . It hurts that no matter how much he loves them, he still failed them-- even as Stanford Pines. They were his real chance to show the world that he didn’t break everything he touched. He wanted to be able to take care of them, to show them even a sliver of the love he has felt in every one of their hugs. Even when he’s dead, it seems, Stanley Pines is still a failure.
They’re still kids. This is what he thinks wistfully, watching as they haul mini-golf clubs onto a darkened pitch, preparing for a golf-off at midnight. He can’t say that he was ever in such a situation when he was a kid, but Stan knows times have changed. If breaking into a mini-golf course after hours is how the twins want to enjoy their childhood, he’ll let them. Even he sometimes forgets that they’re only twelve with all of the trouble they get into. It’s important to him that Dipper and Mabel have fun here-- that they don’t grow up too fast like he had been forced to. Once upon a time, Stan had been a happy twelve year old with his own twin. He hopes that Dipper and Mabel will be the ones to get it right.
They’re just like him and his brother. This is what he thinks apprehensively, leaning against the doorway of their room up in the attic. Dipper has fallen asleep with a half-chewed pen in his mouth and a book in his hand, and Mabel is covered in glitter and snoring loudly. He hates when the sun sets now, a time he used to spend his days waiting for. It was easy before, when Stanley could muddle his way through notes and distract himself with the work that was supposed to set things right. But now the kids are here, turning everything he’s known upside down. They remind him of what he’s lost, and that terrifies him because they are being set up to lose just as much, and he never wants them to lose anything. Sometimes he thinks, he hopes, that he is just looking at them in the wrong light. They are not solely Ford and Lee, they are a mixture of both. Dipper has a thirst for knowledge and Mabel is odd, but Dipper is insecure and Mabel is obnoxious. They are Mabel and they are Dipper, and he loves them for it.
They’re everything he has to lose. This is what he thinks uneasily, his stomach a rolling pit as he runs back to the Mystery Shack. For thirty years, his life has been hinging on these moments, a faraway goal he’d always been too stupid to reach. A small, cowardly voice in the back of his head is screaming at him to just take the kids and run away, to get them as far away from the portal as possible. With each aching step closer to the shack, his terror increases. Losing his brother was an accident that he’d spent decades trying to fix, but even before the portal, Ford had been the one to abandon Stanley. The kids had always been loyal, had given him a reason to get up in the morning instead of at night. A giant scale seems to bob in front of him as he runs; Ford on one end, and the twins on the other. He doesn’t think he’s strong enough to keep one or the other from tipping.
They’re the only family he has left. This is what he thinks tiredly, sitting outside on the shack’s porch steps. Night has fallen once again in Gravity Falls, and it’s the first one in three decades he hasn’t spent toiling away in the basement. He feels lost again, the same way he did when his father had kicked him out at eighteen. He feels stupid again, for foolishly hoping that his brother would want him back after thirty years. He tells his brother not to go near the kids, and the venom in his voice is pure. Ford hasn’t done anything but hurt Stanley since they were kids, and he’d rather die than let him hurt Mabel and Dipper.
They’re his kids. This is what he thinks bitterly, sitting next to them at the town meeting. Stanley has been told multiple times that he was the lesser twin, and he’d learned not to care. Besides, taking care of these kids was worth something, worth everything to him. It didn’t matter what his high school principal thought, what his father thought; it mattered what they thought. And since Ford had returned, they’d been eating him up. He didn’t want to care, but he couldn’t help the jealousy that was ebbing into him. Stanley had been the one to take care of them, to support them, to love them. He knew what family meant, not Ford. Once more, it seems that Stanley Pines is shaded by Stanford’s shadow.
They’re worth anything and everything. This is what he thinks sincerely, his last moments slowing everything down to a hazy blur. He hopes they will keep their promises, he hopes they will be able to overcome their faults and do what he and his brother never could. He wants to tell them that they gave him happiness, a home, and that he never could have repaid them. He wants to tell them that he loves them. He wants to tell them that he is proud to be their Great Uncle. Stanley Pines will die for his family, and he will have it no other way.
He was their hero. This is what they think, full of grief and regret. When they bury their Grunkle at the end of the summer, they make sure he has a big a headstone as they can get. They make sure “our hero” and “family man” is inscribed on it, and they make sure that it his resting place is beautiful. They vow to never to forget him, and they vow that they will always love him. The second time Stanley Pines dies, he does not die a criminal or a bum; he dies as their Grunkle Stan, and that is everything he had ever wanted to be.