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“Ford.” Nothing. “Ford.” Nothing. “Ford. Hey, buddy, I’m talking to you.”
“Hmm? Oh, sorry, Stanley, I was too busy studying these beautiful translucent scales,” he gestured to a pile of glittering stuff beneath his microscope, and alright, Stan could admit they were pretty, if only in the safe privacy of his thoughts where he didn’t have any grunkliness to uphold, “that Nayara—the redhead siren, if you don’t remember—so helpfully gifted us. Who could imagine that they can shed them, after all! Fascinating!”
In any other occasion, Stan would have asked for some to send their grandniece. This was not any other occasion.
“You sure... like... anomalies, huh. Monsters. Whatever. According to Dipper, you once dated a siren...?”
“Oh! Yes, yes. I have. I suppose that’s something I have in common with Mabel, despite sirens and mermaids not quite being the same thing.” He chuckled quietly to himself, and Stan knew his brother enough to identify the sheer fondness in that sound. It warmed his heart a little, like a single cup of sugared coffee, before the Arctic chill rushed in again. “Really charming creatures! I could write an entire book about their mating rituals, which given their distant biological kinship to humans, would soon call attention to our—”
“DoyoueverthinkaboutBill.”
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
Stan grunted. He didn’t believe in no god, double negative and all, but a mysterious force in the universe seemed to really hold it against him sometimes. Which was ridiculous, because Stan was innocent. Could it be that wretched pink lizard?
“Do you. Ever think. About Bill. Question mark.”
Ford’s sweet disposition changed almost instantly. Stan didn’t need to see his face, not when his shoulders visibly tensed. Guilt wormed its way in his stomach—he hated to be the one ruining his brother’s good mood, but he had been in a terrible one himself, ever since...
“Stan. You know I do.”
Stan cringed. Yes, he knew. He was the one to comfort his brother every time he woke up from a particularly vicious nightmare, sweating cold. Ford had learned to abandon most of his paranoia, but it had been a struggle all of its own to convince him a gun underneath his pillow was not, in fact, necessary. Bill had probably traumatized him for life, but at least that trauma could be managed with time.
“Yeah, I know, bud. I don’t... I don’t mean it like that.”
“How do you mean it, then?” His tone now had a familiar curious edge to it.
“I mean... If you still… I don’t know, miss him or something,” Stan whispered, steeling himself for the answer.
“Sorry? I couldn’t hear you.”
“If you still miss Bill!” He had to remind himself not to shout. Ford wasn’t the one with the hearing problems, between the two of them.
“Where’s this coming from?”
“Fucking guess! Like yeah, I know, you told me that I shouldn’t touch TicTac—TokTik—that strange hellish app Mabel likes so much, ever again, but! But! I couldn’t help but be curious! I wanted to know what more was going on, besides the so-called ‘thirst,’ I mean… and I knew it would be bullshit, okay?” he added, as he could almost predict Ford rolling his eyes. “I knew it, I swear, I swear. But I still wanted to know what kind of bullshit!”
“Oh, Stanley...” Ford had turned to look at him now, and reality was even worse than Stan had imagined. There was emotion in his eyes that could almost be pity, as if they were saying, Strangers on the internet, Stanley? Really?
Stan really didn’t need his judgement now. Especially not when Ford was supposed to be the focus of that conversation. Especially not when he was lying through his teeth, and TikTok remained very much untouched. He had theorized, and hoped, that just a single mention of the app that had made Ford literally shoot the phone last time would be enough to distract his brother from the truth.
(Anything would be less embarrassing than the truth.)
“So. Do you miss Bill or not?”
“Short answer: no.”
“No, what? Go on, man.”
“No, I don’t miss him. I’m relieved he’s gone.”
“Stanford. Be honest with me.”
“I am. I don’t miss him,” Ford answered easily, as if he had been practicing for years and just waiting for the chance to answer this very question. Maybe he had been. “Sometimes I do miss the being whom I mistakenly thought he was, in my blindness and naivety. Not his true self, not who he really was.”
”And who did you think he was?”
His brother sighed, as if exasperated, but Stan had spent long enough on a boat with him to get used to his quirks. This, for example, was his ‘I’m embarrassed but I don’t want Stanley to know’ sigh.
“The being whom I thought he was—I am free to admit it now—was especially fashioned to enchant me. It reminded me a lot of you, Stanley, in a period of my life where your absence was especially felt, down to the very nicknames you called me. Sixer, Fordsy...”
”Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He made what Stan was Pavlov-conditioned to identify as a self-deprecating noise. “He took advantage of my loneliness, of how much I missed my brother and human companionship. He was imitating you, not fully, but at least a little. I am ashamed of how well it worked.”
To his dismay, Stan could feel his own cheeks warming. Not the time to be a sap.
“But that isn’t news for you, is it, Stan? I had told you before about how I always needed that… second, other person. You, and then Fiddleford, and then of course Bill, and then even poor Dipper…”
“Uh. Yeah. That’s… that’s not it.”
“What is it, then?”
Stan sighed audibly, exaggerating his frustration for theatrical effect.
“I just want to know: Bill’s true self, for you, is...?” He didn’t finish, hoping his brother would understand the opening to elaborate.
Ford looked puzzled again, though, and trying really hard not to show it. Stan knew him. Fucking damn it.
“You have read my old Journal 3, haven’t you? It is indeed as I have described him in there, both visibly and in blacklight. A monster, a screeching, graceless lunatic, an angular psycho, a—”
It seemed Stan was going to have to spell it out, word for word. This often happened with Ford, to the point he wondered how a man could be both so brilliant and clueless, often at the same time.
”I mean, don’t you think there’s more to it?” He prompted, cutting Ford off. “More to him than that?”
Ford’s eyebrows furrowed in surprise, then in thought.
“Oh. No, no... The good guy he pretended to be never really existed, and it was that nonexistent guy whom I once thought I loved, if only in an obsessed, quasi-religious sort of way. What he truly is doesn’t… doesn’t attract me in the slightest.”
Loved. Past tense.
That was enough, Stan thought. It was more than enough reassurance. Any reasonable person would be satisfied with that and not continue to push further, not with something that clearly made their brother uncomfortable.
Again, Stan was not a reasonable person.
“But what if he became that?”
“Huh?”
“What if Bill became exactly that, Ford. The good guy you thought he was. For real, this time.”
“He won’t.” He had never heard Ford sound as certain of something. “There’s no hope for a being like him, Stan. He’s irredeemable.”
“Suppose he isn’t.”
Ford sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose like an exasperated teacher begging for retirement.
“He’s irredeemable exactly because he doesn’t want to be redeemed, Stan. He’ll never want that. The only thing he wants is to act without consequence, and he doesn’t understand the concept of true remorse, because he regrets only the aftermath of his failures and its impact on him. Not, you see, the pain and suffering he brings others. I don’t think he could even wrap his little toddler mind around that.”
“Pretend with me, okay? Indulge me, like you say.”
Ford was now massaging the spot right above his eyebrows, and Stan wondered if the metaphorical teacher was about to actually retire before his brother spoke again, proving him wrong.
“Well, then... good for him, I suppose. It would mean the Axolotl’s therapy actually fulfilled its nominal purpose instead of being the worst ever punishment for someone like him.”
“And?”
“And, what? Stanley, if you’re not clear with me, I can’t know what you mean. Communicate, remember? Imagine Mabel is here. Imagine her saying what you know she would say if she knew—”
“Can it, Poindexter! What I want to know is if you would forgive him!”
“The Axolotl? There’s nothing to forgive, really. Do you mean it in a classic ‘God wasn’t here when I needed it’ way? No worries about that. I understand that, in the end, the Axolot’s ways are not our ways and things would have turned out—”
“Not the fucking lizard, you dumbass genius! Bill! Bill! Would you have forgiven BILL!” To hell with the no shouting policy.
Ford tilted his head like a confused dog. He had seen that gesture on the twins, before. It was cuter on them.
“Me... forgive... Bill...?” he repeated, dumbfounded.
Stan nodded.
“Stanley, are you feverish? Drunk?”
Stan shook his head.
Something too quick for Stan to identify passed like lightning through Ford’s face.
And then he smiled.
“Alright, then,” he said in a far, far too cheerful tone. “I’ll just have to be a little more specific, Stanley! Just a little bit.” His smile didn’t reach his eyes. An almost manic expression he had never seen on Ford’s face. “What do you want me to forgive Bill for?”
“I—I dunno, the—the whole—”
“For deceiving me and making me distrust my brother and my friend and traumatizing poor Fiddleford and haunting my dreams and giving me sleep aversion and controlling my body like a puppet and bruising it all over? For threatening to commit suicide with it just because he could and using it to ruin my reputation with the townsfolk and tattooing it without my consent as a sign of ownership and making my eye bleed and driving a nail through my hand and making me eat live spiders? For persecuting and terrorizing me and pulling my bones out of their sockets and subjecting me to excruciating pain and threatening to erase my memories and messing with the meaning of words in my brain and calling my brother’s number and threatening to commit suicide and, let me see, ruining my entire goddamn life?”
Stan was impressed, if nothing else, with how quickly Ford was able to name all of those things. Did he keep a mental list? Less impressed, however, with the clear annoyance behind them. Directed at Stan? Uh-oh.
“Stanford, I didn’t mean—”
“No, no! Let me guess!” The fake cheerfulness was grating in Stan’s ears, so out of place in Ford’s usually serious, deep voice. “For deceiving and possessing Dipper and leaving a message to Mabel threatening Dipper’s suicide? For hunting me down like a fucking prey animal in the multiverse? For taking advantage of Mabel’s feelings and mocking one of my deepest insecurities and humiliating me publicly and turning me and the townsfolk into statues and torturing and electrocuting me and attempting to blackmail me and turning Fiddleford and five more people into tapestry and threatening to kill the three people I love the most in the world and wanting to destroy the entire planet and relishing in human agony, and… and…” He took a deep breath, as if recovering his energy, and Stan was also impressed it took that long. He shouldn’t be, though. Ford had insane physical preparation, old man or not. “... and being one of the most feared beings in the entire multiverse and terrorizing other dimensions to the point that their inhabitants were afraid to pronounce his very name?” Another deep breath. As if getting ready for more. “For—”
“Stanford, I’m sorry, okay? I really am! You don’t have to keep listing shit!”
Especially not shit Bill had done to his family. Stan wanted nothing more than to bring him back and kill him ten times over.
Something in the tone of Stan’s voice—or the fact he was offering a sincere apology, and those didn’t come easy to him—must have finally snapped Ford out of it. His visible anger gave way to deep-seated exhaustion.
“Oh, Stan, no. No. I’m sorry. Remembering all those things... I couldn’t help but... take it out on you. I forget myself sometimes. It wasn’t fair and I... I apologize.”
“It’s all good. I didn’t mean to offend you, I just...” He didn’t know what to say.
“You didn’t offend me, Stanley,” Ford assured, even though he was now rolling his eyes. “I was angry at him, not at you. I am just surprised with how forgiving you are.”
“Forgiving? Me? Oh, that pointy jerk can fucking rot, I—”
“Not towards Bill. Towards me, damn it! Only a few months have passed since we decided to sail away together and you’re already forgetting the forty years I spent holding a grudge against my own twin brother for two mistakes he never even meant to make? Have you forgotten, perchance, the kind of unforgiving bastard I am?” The grin on Ford’s face was genuine, now, and Stan had to smile at that. “Mabel hasn’t forgiven him. Mabel. You saw her drawing about what she would do to him if she ever saw him again. And you think I would? Me, of all people?”
The unbidden image of Mabel eating the demon like a crunchy nacho came to Stan’s mind, and yeah, he was fully laughing now.
“Frankly, it sounds like you don’t know me at all,” added Ford in a mock-hurt tone.
“Oh, you shut your yap! I do know you, okay! It’s just that... the fans of—I mean—those people on the internet...”
“I haven’t observed a lot of insightful, sensible discussion on this inter-net.”
“Internet,” he corrected, just for the petty satisfaction of being the one to point out his brother’s mistakes for once.
“Yes, yes. An impressive pool of human brilliance.”
Stan really could do without the sarcasm.
“As I was saying,” he continued, perhaps a little too defensive, “it’s just that those people on the internet... they seemed to think you would feel...” He swallowed. “Incomplete. Without the triangle.”
And just like that, any remaining anger vanished from Ford’s face.
“Oh. Oh, Stan.” His brother’s tone was very, very familiar, now. Guilt. Ford’s best buddy since Weirdmageddon and the bane of Stan’s life. “I’m—I didn’t—” He seemed to fumble with his words. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were feeling so, uh…”
“Worried?” Stan prompted, after a few seconds in silence.
“... Neglected.”
“I—what?”
“Stan. You’re one of three people I love the most. The most important person in my life in this new phase. You know that, or at least I hope you know that. I’m sorry I haven’t demonstrated that in forty years, I’m sorry I’m not being as loving as you perhaps thought you would be, but I promise you, I’ll do better. You’ll never again think Bill was more important than you, because he never, ever was, and I’ll make sure that we learn how to—”
“Ford, what the fuck! I’m not feeling neglected!”
Ford’s eyes widened at that. Mabel was right. He did indeed look like a startled owl.
“No? I thought that perhaps this whole conversation stemmed from your low self-esteem. It was the only explanation why you would think I was feeling incomplete when my twin half is right in front of me. Bill couldn’t ever compete against you. Obviously.”
Paul fucking Bunyan.
“Stanford, I’m not having a self-esteem crisis.” He sighed. “I am worried about you, because I happen to know that many... abuse victims... have mixed feelings about their abusers, and... um. that’s, uh... that’s valid, you know. Totally valid.”
“Do you? How do you know that, Stanley?” He raised an eyebrow. “Who ‘abused’ you?”
“Stanford, again, I don’t—”
“Pa... Of course!” Ford spat, brows furrowed, protective rage all over his features. “Pa was your abuser. I’ve never associated this particular word with him before, but now I see it. I really do. I’m so sorry, Stan... I’m sorry it took me so long to see it...”
“Pa wasn’t an... an abuser! He just didn’t—”
“See! Defending him even now!” Ford ran a hand through his face. “Stanley, I know that this happens. You are the living proof of that. Dipper told me about how you talked about Pa’s ‘tough love’ approach, as if it was something you were grateful for.”
“We are talking about you, Ford!”
“Are we? Because I think we’re talking about you. I think you’re projecting your own experiences with abuse onto me and expecting me to feel as you do. We may be identical twins, but we’re different people, too, Stan. Remember that.”
Wow. Candid as ever.
Some of his hurt must have shown on his face, because Ford’s face softened.
“I’m sorry. That was mean. We can—we can leave this conversation for another time, if you’d prefer,” he offered, tone equally soft, and Stan knew in his bones he wasn’t escaping that. Fuck. “But… Stanley, what’s up with that kind of talk? It almost seems like you’re the one going to therapy, with that... uncharacteristic wording.”
Oh, to hell with it.
“Alright, alright! You got me!”
Slight surprise flashed across Ford’s face. An arched brow was quick to follow, a knowing ‘caught you with your hand in the cookie jar’ glint in his eyes.
The pomposity. The audacity. Stan would bet his ass Ford couldn’t guess the truth in a million years.
And that was why, obviously, he crossed his arms. Exactly like the petulant, immature child Ford thought him to be. Because he wasn’t like that.
“Well?”
“You know I like writing my own The Duchess Approves, uh, stories, right? And I might or not have mentioned it to Soos and he might or not have told me it’s apparently called ‘fan fiction’ and that there’s a big public on the internet for that. I might have asked him to teach me the basics. Turns out there was a, uh, fandom of The Duchess Approves—if you don’t know what a fandom is—”
“Stan. To the point.”
“‘Kay. People were saying that the Duchess’ mother was a ‘narcissistic mother’ and an ‘emotional abuser’ or something and using all kinds of shrink talk and that got me feeling weird because her mother was just... she was just like Pa, Six.”
“And?”
“And I may or may not have created a self-insert ‘fan fiction’ with characters based on all the people I knew and written about our whole story under the guise of…” He sighed. This was humiliating. To know this at all was humiliating. “... an AU. ‘Alternative Universe,’ y’know. Kind of like a different story from the original. Soos… Soos of course understands way more about this. I’m not like him. It’s just a casual hobby.”
“If you say so.”
“I think deep, deep down… I might have wanted… to know what they would think of us. Just a little. Not that I really cared, but like, I was curious, right? A bit of curiosity never harmed no one. But I didn’t actually… care care. Not for real.”
Ford hummed, unimpressed, not even correcting the double negative.
“And?”
”They all thought Pa was an abuser.”
“Understandable.”
“And that while I could have been a better caretaker for the kids, I did try my best.”
“Agreed. Especially with the way we were raised.”
“... But they’re also getting weird about you and the triangle.”
It probably sounded angrier than he intended, because Ford burst out laughing, looking tired but genuinely amused.
“Oh, only you, Stan...”
“No, no, really! I mean, they loved the fucking thing and that made me over the moon, like wow, Soos was right for once in his rainbow-colored life! No one cared about the shitty grammar, they made ‘fan art’ of my six-pack and everything—”
“Congratulations!” Pride was added to Ford’s amusement, and even though Stan was sure his brother didn’t know what “fan art” was, he felt like a petted dog. “Your talent does deserve more appreciation!”
“But for some reason they adored your relationship with that godsforsaken demon and kept drawing your characters exchanging saliva and at first I was cringing but then I was sighing, you know, ‘cause that had been my own fucking fault for writing it based on my stupid fucking life. Folks thought it was fictional, and... and I suppose you did have a relationship with Bill, right? So to each their own, I guess.”
Ford didn’t seem very surprised. Nor impressed. Nor disgusted. Stan supposed that the “Thirst Comments” Incident had left him thoroughly desensitized.
“But?”
“But then it started getting out of control! Now some of them are pretending Bill was just a silly little guy or I don’t know, a misunderstood outcast—”
“Ah, perhaps delusion extends even to fictional characters!”
“—who just wanted some loving—”
“I would wager it’s typical of the inexperienced youth, as well, so a man our age would be easily put off!”
“—shoving even his most fucked up shit under the rug—”
“A phenomenon easily observable with corrupt politicians, for charisma and lying skills can get one very far indeed!”
“—and twisting everything I write for their own purposes and—and they’re saying that ‘the text’ meant things it didn’t mean! They’re seeing clues where I didn’t intend them to be at all and now... now everything is fucking fuel! And it’s my fault!” Stan was aware his desperation was seeping into his voice, but he didn’t care. Ford had to know. “No matter how much I try to make it obvious that you are totally over Bill! For real, Poindexter, I tried, I swear I did! I tried answering their comments, I tried making a disclaimer, I even tried—”
Ford started laughing again, now, which was more annoying than endearing.
“I take my stuff very seriously, okay?”
“I can see that.”
“Some of their comments were really smart-sounding, too! Like as if it was you talking to me, with your boring nerdy ‘evidence’ and stuff! So I thought that maybe, just maybe, they knew what they were talking about, maybe...” maybe more than me, he didn’t say, because that would be ridiculous. They couldn’t know Ford more than his own twin brother, right? Even though Stan hadn’t lived with Ford for four entire decades...
“Hm-hmm.”
That damn unimpressed humming, again. It was sufficient humiliation for a single day.
“I answered your questions, so now get back on track, nerd.”
“Are you sure I am the nerd here?”
“Stanford.”
“Alright, alright. Just looks like you’re stressed over nothing, that’s all.”
“Stanford, you don’t understand. They seemed to consider your relationship with Bill more important than your relationship with your t… your family! Your family, in general.”
Ford raised an eyebrow. Ugh, his brother knew him too well.
“... Than your relationship with your twin,” Stan admitted through gritted teeth. “Yes! You were right! I was feeling pathetic and insecure all along and Dr. Pines is always fucking right! Satisfied?”
“Not if it makes you suffer, no. You do know they are wrong, certainly...?”
“Well, y-yes, but...”
“In my own experience, Stan, it really is like you said. Some abuse victims do feel like that, and it’s... it’s ‘valid,’ or whatever the kids are saying. It’s ‘valid’ if you feel this way about Pa. But the contrary is also true, and I am being completely honest with you when I say I do hate Bill.”
“You know what they say, though, right? Folks in general, I mean, not just on the internet. Hatred is close to love and all that. The opposite of love is not hatred, but indifference.”
“Oh, yes, and what an indubitably sensible, rational perspective that one is. I was feeling very loving towards Bill when I was fantasizing about and orchestrating his death and humiliating downfall at my hands, and similarly, naturally, feeling very hateful towards you and the children when I was willing to give up the entire universe for a slim possibility to save you.”
“You... you did hate me, once!”
Ford sputtered.
“Hate you? Hate you? Are you insane? I have never hated you, not for even a second! Nor did I ever think I did!”
Huh.
That… that was news. Stan could address it later, though.
“I’m not that emotionally unintelligent, Stan. Have at least a little faith.”
“Ford—Sixer—can I call you Sixer?”
Stan felt stupid even asking that, especially at that point of their sea adventures. He had called Ford by his usual one hundred nicknames, fond and teasing both, and his brother didn’t exhibit the slightest sign of being bothered.
Still, it didn’t hurt to be sure, now, with this valuable extra knowledge of how things had happened. How Bill, the manipulative bastard, had used Stan’s—
“Of course you can! And Fordsy, too, even though it annoys me. You invented these nicknames, you used them first, they were ours first. I’ll be damned if I let Bill ruin anything else for us,” he spat, much angrier than soft, and then, after a breath, much softer than angry: “I don’t want anything related to him ever remaining a taboo.”
Ford was far from a sensitive man, Stan knew, but his unflinching emotional strength still surprised him sometimes. It made him proud, how far the nerd had come from that introverted little kid whose cheeks reddened at the sight of his own hands.
“Sixer. Can you, uh, explain exactly how you feel about him as if I’m dumb? ‘Cause I kind of am.” Ford opened his mouth, probably to reassure Stan of his nonexistent intelligence, but he continued. “Just... be clear. No sarcasm, okay? It would put an old man’s mind at ease. You know what Mabel would say to that, too.”
His brother didn’t miss a beat.
“Stanley. Stanley, I loathe him. I’m over him, but I’m not indifferent. You saw, with my initial reaction to his book, that I’m not indifferent. I can’t bring myself to be indifferent, even if indifference is the commonly accepted ‘opposite of love,’” he included air quotes, then, also rolling his eyes to make sure Stan knew how stupid he thought that was, “because he utterly and thoroughly ruined my life and traumatized me. I’m but human. He made me afraid of my own shadow for decades. He will always remain my enemy, it would be foolish to pretend otherwise. It’s really that simple.”
“And... and before the betrayal?”
“It’s complicated. Have you ever had a religious experience?”
Stan shook his head no.
“Do you even have to ask?”
Unless the whole thing with Paul Bunyan counted, that is...
“He was like a god to me, and not only in the ‘powerful’ sense. He was my Muse. I worshipped him. I was obsessed. I don’t know if that counted as love, Stan, but let’s say it did, for the sake of simplifying things. Let’s make it easier for you to follow, let’s say I ‘loved’ him.” He sighed. “I thought I loved him religiously at least, and... after reading his book, looking back...” His voice grew quieter.
Stan understood. The “rejected ex” undertones of that book were very hard to miss. Bill was about as subtle as a bull in a china shop.
“I might indeed have loved the person—sorry, the demon—I thought he was, once, and he was the center of my stupid galaxy, and that—that was a beautiful but cheap illusion. An illusion that was very, very painfully shattered and cost me very, very dearly.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Any positive feelings that I could have retained for him after the initial blow of his deception—any scrap of sympathy in spite of his gut-punching betrayal, born out of my understanding of his status as a freak and outcast, what connected us in the first place—was soon destroyed by Bill himself, poisoned by my own hatred and resentment, and eroded until nothing was left. Nothing left, just like—”
Without even getting up from his chair, Ford began taking off his sweater, with the baffling nonchalance of someone who wasn’t currently exposed to whatever-degrees-below-zero climate and thought flashing his brother with his health nut muscles was a crucial thing to do.
“Ford, I know you like to show off your strength, but this isn’t—”
”Shut up, you knucklehead. I want you to look at my lower back,” Ford explained, twisting his neck to look at what he was pointing at, and it really was proof Stan was used to his brother’s antics that he didn’t question further.
”At your… tramp stamp?”
“That’s not a tramp—well, okay, it is. But ignore that. What do you see?”
”A… platypus in a space outfit? Ford, what the hell?”
”A plaidypus, not a platypus, and that’s actually a swimming outfit—might sound redundant, but they wouldn’t be able to survive in the toxic waters of the Toxic Dimension, and that’s what—sorry, I digress. Not one of my best choices. The octopus-armed warrior piglets were particularly insistent with this one, they thought it would be quote-unquote ‘unique,’ which I should have known given my history is not always a good thing, and I… I was really eager to get rid of my previous one… the one from Bill. Did your version of the damned book ever show you what he—”
”Yes. It did. He knew that I… I would be concerned about you. I think maybe we wanted to make me angry. It worked, sometimes.” No one messes with my brother, the voice of his younger self, barely a teenager, echoed in his head.
”Ah. Just as I had thought, then.” Ford sighed. “I can only be grateful that I never ended up doing the other tattoo he had suggested while I was still so naive, as I discovered later that it… certainly didn’t mean what he said it did. Bill is a liar, grass is green, I know. Small blessings.”
“I can imagine. You were retelling something, though. About the warrior pigs.”
“Oh, yeah. Right.” He pulled down his sweater again. “Before tattooing a different one in this area, I asked them to remove it for me. I had thought the ink might have been magical or cursed somehow, in which case it wouldn’t be easily removed, but Stan, if it weren’t—easily removed, that is—I would have burned my skin off. No matter how much it hurt.”
If this declaration had come from any person other than Ford, Stan would have been shocked. Maybe even gasped. Coming from the man who set his skin on fire to shave, had a metal plate implanted in his brain, and endured literal torture in Bill’s hands for hours without bending after an earlier adventure with Dipper, it wasn’t that surprising.
”And why are you telling me this?”
”Well, you asked how I felt about him. That’s a good metaphor. The piglets were actually able to remove it, but I didn’t even want to look at the faint impressions of the words I knew were there moments ago, so I risked getting another one in that same place, tramp stamp or not.”
“It sure is one, bro, but isn’t like I can say anything, heh. Questionable Pines choices, am I right?”
Ford ignored him.
“If I ever loved him—well—then I have loved him for two years, and hated him for thirty. Now I look back and only feel pity for the wide-eyed, dreamer boy that I was. I mourn what could have been, had Bill not been... well, had Bill not been Bill.”
“He didn’t get over you, y’know. Bill, I mean. His pathetic little book left that very clear, even in my version.”
“Oh, yes. I do know. Thanks to you, I now see that it was pathetic. And deluded. And most of all, desperate. Guess he finally realized what he lost.” He smiled again, although it looked more like baring his teeth, and something cold flashed in his eyes. “Good. I want him to suffer.”
Perhaps Stan should be alarmed, but he wasn’t. He felt like he was truly relaxing after a good while, a knot undone in his stomach.
“I did wonder, you know. While in the multiverse, I hated him so much, and I often wondered if I hated him only because I didn’t allow myself to feel anything else. I am very, very good at ignoring and repressing my feelings, Stan.” His brother chuckled, as if he and Stan were sharing an internal joke. His feelings for Stan, he realized. Those were the ones Ford repressed. “So, deep down, I wondered and wondered and wondered. I wasn’t sure I didn’t love him at all anymore until the moment I had to kill him. I was shocked to look inside and find no regret, no fear, no remnants of love and what have you. All that was gone, lost forever in a distant past. There was only the bleak determination to rid the world of his evil. You weren’t there, of course, but Dipper was. You can ask him. My hand didn’t tremble. I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t flinch. I was proud of myself for that.”
“I just—Dipper mentioned once as we were having breakfast that... that you cried after his defeat, and I thought... maybe... I didn’t know what to think, really, but after all I saw and read in the Duchess fandom... I was feeling unsure.” It was still hard to talk about his feelings. “That’s why I came to ask you.”
“I did, Stanley. I cried for you. It was a bitter victory, because I loved—I love you—way more than I have ever hated him.”
Woah. Stan could feel the glitter of those damned scales getting to his eyes. They were watering.
“I supposed I shouldn’t have given him the honor of a funeral, even a mock one with dear Mabel’s witty disrespect, but... I wanted to. I wanted closure. To revolve my life around my loathing towards him was to revolve it around him all the same, but I wanted visual proof that this chapter of my life was over—dead along with him. It might not be over for him, but hah! That’s not my business. Not anymore.”
Stan didn’t think it was possible for him to relax more, but it was. Oh, thank Paul Bunyan.
“And Stanley... promise me you won’t give those people on the internet the time of day, alright? If there’s one thing I learned the hard way, it’s that human beings, smart or not, always see what they want to see. I have been exactly like this once, remember? Twisting everything to fit my worldview. You could make my post-Weirdmageddon character—”
“The term is ‘post-canon’... by the way.” Stan supplied, very casual and non-nerdy. “And his name’s Duke Oglebottom.”
“Alright. You could make my... ‘post-canon’ character... Duke Oglebottom... hunt down and viciously stab Bill’s character—”
“Count Billiam—”
“Count Billiam? Seriously, Stan? Anyway, you could make post-canon Duke Oglebottom hunt down and viciously stab Count Billiam twenty-three times like Julius Caesar met his end and they would still—”
“—ship them, yeah. And think they’re meant to be.” Stan sighed. “They would.”
“Ship them? Ship them to where?”
“It’s, like, wanting them to be together. People just really, really like yaoi.”
“Ya-wee? Ya-what? It’s pronounced yacht, Stan. Are they that interested in sea adventures?”
Stan sighed.
“Forget it.”
“Well. No matter. My point is that people would still see what they want to see.”
Ford got up from his chair, then, holding Stan’s face with both of his wide hands.
“Stanley, you might not believe this, but just like my replaced tattoo, the void left in my heart by Bill, if there ever was any in the first place, has long been filled. By the children. By you.” He pressed a kiss to Stan’s forehead. “And if you can’t believe that, believe this, at least: even if I ever forgave him for the innumerous, terrible things he did to me—which, rest assured, I sure as all hell won’t—I’ll never forgive what he did to whom I love. If he ever attempts to hurt you, Mabel, Dipper, or Fiddleford, any more than he already has, I’ll rip him apart.”
Stan shuddered. His nerdy brother really could be scary when he wanted to, not that he would ever admit it. Again, privacy of his thoughts and whatnot.
“Is that good enough for you?”
“Y-Yeah.”