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It’s damn stupid, Stan would say, to be up in the middle of the night at sixty years old, thinking about high school.
If it were Ford doing this, Stan might laugh at him, grunt or groan or sigh, tell him to turn that big, stupid brain of his off and just go to sleep, for once. Of course, he’s tried those well-meaning, if brusque, directives on himself, but given up rather quickly, reconciling himself with a guilty, sleepless night.
Whatever. He’ll add that to the endless list of double standards he holds for himself and his brother, right? The things that Ford should do that he doesn’t have to—sleep, eat, quit beating himself up over shit that happened decades ago.
Because Ford is the one who hasn’t lived on Earth for the past thirty physical years and sixty mental ones, and thus the one who needs help in self-actualizing. The one who needs to learn what it’s like to live normally.
Well, Stanley, his brother’s obnoxious, nerdy voice echoes in his head, I wouldn’t exactly say life as a daytime petty criminal slash tourist trap mogul (okay, maybe Ford wouldn’t say mogul, exactly, but Stan would) and nocturnal engineer slash doomsday prepper is normal, either. If you think about it, your life’s been pretty alien too, ever since—
Shut up, Sixer, he retorts in his head, pulling the blankets up to his chin, irritated. It’s not like any of that shit exactly compares—
Great. Now he’s arguing with his brother mentally, having to remind himself that Ford didn’t actually just say any of that, that Stan-Ford said it in his head, not Ford-Ford, actual Ford, the Ford who says real things out loud and not just inside of his own pea brain—fuckin’ hell.
See, this is the problem with you, Stanley, you’re always picking a fight. Finding trouble when there was none, then running from the consequences. Is this Ford’s voice, or his dad’s, now? Stan’s head hurts. You know, a real man wouldn’t worry about all of this—okay, it’s Filbrick.
Can it, Pa. I’m allowed to fight with myself in my head, leave me the hell alone.
God, he’s messed up in the brain, isn’t he? What’s he even laying here awake for, arguing with imaginary people, anyway? Everything is fine, everything is normal, nothing even happened!
It was just some stupid memory. It’s always some stupid memory, these days. Stan hadn’t realized just how much he’d been actively repressing until his mind was completely erased, and now everything is rising back to the surface, boiling up in hot, steam-filled bubbles of guilt and shame.
The thing is, this one wasn’t even that bad, compared to some of the others. He hadn’t woken up screaming, or shaking, or thinking he was somewhere else entirely—so he’ll thank whatever isn’t up there for engineering that small miracle. And yet, here he is, thinking about it. Thinking about high school. Well, a memory from high school, anyway.
It had been a few days after their conversation on the beach—no, the night after, that sounds right. It was late, late enough to hear precious little, save for the off-key chirp of the Glass Shard cicadas and the distant flap of bird-wings—birds who, like his brother, were flying off to roost somewhere across the country—going west, in Stan’s mind.
At least, he’d thought so at the time. More recent ornithological (bird-science, in normal people terms) knowledge provided by his twin has contradicted this assumption, of course. The gulls were actually arriving in Glass Shard from the South to mate and start their families, just as they did (and presumably still do) every spring. So really, it had been in with the birds, out with the brothers. Contradicting patterns. Ford might call himself an irregular migrant—would probably take pride in the term, now. But back then, he was just following the food—or, more likely, safe living conditions.
Still, Stan thinks he would have been jealous of the birds anyway. At least they’d get to leave when winter came.
Regardless, he’d been up at this odd hour, mulling over the concept of flying brothers and stranded fledglings, lying uncharacteristically still and motionless on the bottom bunk, when he’d heard the small sounds begin to drift down from above.
They’d been soft and pillow-muffled, hard to make out with certainty, but Stan would know the sound anywhere.
Ford had been crying.
At the time, it had been over a year since he’d last heard Ford cry. When they were little kids, they’d both kind of been crybabies—Ford would lose it when he got called names on the playground, or when Stanley used to get into fights (usually over said name-calling), but by the time they were seventeen, emotional and physical wounds had long since become sloppily cared for without tears being shed. Their father had made sure of that.
So, it was a bit of an odd thing to hear, especially because from Stan’s perspective, things had seemed to be going nothing but well for his brother lately—and nothing but the opposite of well for him.
He’d remembered thinking—and oh, it had been an awful thought—that if anyone oughta be crying, it was him. Stanley had remembered his twisted sense of pride, thinking about it: that he’d been fed the short end of the stick time and time again lately, from the incident in the principal’s office, to their conversation on the beach, to every damn night in this tiny, cramped house, and never once cried.
Back then, he’d thought there was some strength in that—he’d thought so for a long, long time, really. But this summer shattered that illusion. In fact, he’d cried more over those three months than he had in the past forty years. Nowadays, he cries over the things he should have cried over back then. It’s like it’s all built up inside of him, bottled then shaken, pressurized, and those two damn kids twisted the cap off without a second thought.
He misses them.
Stanley shakes his head, staring up at the wooden slats supporting Ford’s top bunk, just as he’d done back in the day. And that’s all he had done, too. He remembers it with that shiny, returned-memory clarity, now.
Before their conversation on the beach, despite things clearly having been different between them as high school drew to a close, Stan would have never even thought of letting Ford cry alone, doing nothing, despite being three feet away. Comforting his brother was his job, it was what he was good at, what he’d grown so used to doing over the seventeen years of their life together—but, he’d thought, what’s the point, now? What’s the point, when he’s going to throw it all away? When he’s going to leave me here, alone?
A bitter scowl had twisted across his face, and he’d rolled over onto his side, pulling his pillow over his ears, muffling the sound.
Why should I care? You’ve already given up on me.
The time period between their conversation on the beach and the day of the science fair incident was short, no more than a week, but during that week, Stan had oscillated between two ends of an emotional spectrum. One day, he’d be desperate to hold on to his twin, prevent him from leaving, wanting to grab Ford’s arm tightly enough to leave crescent nail-marks—and the next, he’d be preparing for the worst. If he’s leaving, Stan thought, I might as well be ready. He’s going. He doesn’t want me in his life anymore? Fine! I should just…I should just quit while I’m behind, right?! Get used to the distance. He should too.
That night, he’d fallen squarely into the latter mood. He’d listened silently to his brother’s tears, stock still. He had done nothing—nothing to assuage or distract, nothing to harm or worsen. And, really, isn’t that where it had all gone wrong?
He’d allowed himself not to make things better—a simple segue into making things worse.
Stan had let go. He had given up on Ford as soon as Ford showed real signs of leaving for something better. He’d thought, as he had so many times after, in his ten years on the road and thirty years in Gravity Falls, that he’d better get out before he got hurt.
He’d ended up hurt anyway.
So, here he is forty years later, still thinking about it. Well, to be fair, he’s only just remembered it, but perhaps a younger, less introspective version of himself would have just brushed it off and gone back to sleep—or harbored the guilt in secret, hardly letting himself feel it.
Now, he feels it pour out of him into the open air, filling the room like a cloud of smoke. Maybe things could have been different, Stan thinks, If only I’d cared to know what he was crying about.
He takes in the small, dark bedroom, lit only by the dim glow of an octopus-shaped nightlight—a gift to Ford from Mabel. His eyes moisten. It’s picture-perfect, really, the cramped, messy little cabin, strewn with vague shapes that he’d recognize in the light to be discarded winter gear and experiment components. It’s filled with little tokens, like the night-light—reminders of their family, souvenirs from the trip they’ve taken as brothers, a reunited pair. Family. For a moment, he has to blink hard, reassure himself it’s not an illusion. How has he ended up here, with everything he’s ever wanted? Luck, certainly, some undeserved kindness from the universe. With everything he’s done in his lifetime, all the crimes and sins he’s committed, the tears he’s ignored, literal and metaphorical, how has he earned this safety? How has he earned his dreams?
His efforts seem so insignificant, compared to his mistakes.
You saved the world, Stanley, a gentler Ford-voice echoes quietly in his head. When he’d had fewer memories, when he could hardly recall himself, nevermind the past versions of himself, that was what Ford would repeat to him, his story.
How did I get here, Stan would ask, What happened to me?
You’re a hero, Ford would reply, his voice infused with a deep, sad, earnestness. You saved the world, Stanley.
Only, here in the dark, he doesn’t feel like some superhero. He never does, really. He feels like the same old Stan he’s always been. The same liar, the same cheater, the same teenager who’d let his brother cry alone all those years ago.
I should have done more, he thinks. I should have worked faster, worked harder, quit being so damn hardheaded. I should have spoken when I picked up that phone. I should have asked him what was wrong.
His eyes are moist. God, he thinks emptily, I’ve let so much slip away by virtue of telling myself it was bound to leave.
Stan heard Ford shifting in bed above him, tossing and turning, and his ears prick up, listening to his breathing. Long, measured, steady breaths. No nightmare. His twin is asleep. There are no tears, not now. No way to conveniently make up for the past in the present—not one that will float by naturally.
For tonight, Stan supposes, he will steal sleep from guilt. He will simply have to live with it.
The next morning, after the sun has risen, Stan finds himself sitting at the small, wooden table in the cluttered kitchen corner of the ship, hands wrapped around a mug of black coffee, staring into the middle distance. Half of him is considering the most optimal method of wringing Ford’s neck for trying to slip him decaf again (‘better for your cognitive function,’ says the damned hypocrite), while the other half remains fixated on his guilt and exhaustion from the previous night.
He wonders if Ford remembers that night, the night with the tears and the birds and the silence, but he doesn’t want to jumpstart the whole regained-memory routine. It goes the same way every time—if it’s something that hasn’t shot him into a state of abject terror, his twin always requests every gory detail. He’s well-meaning, really, but it’s obvious that the exercise is mostly meant to force Stanley to give Ford a picture of life in his absence, rather than to test his cognitive function.
He’d prefer not to cause a scene—Lord knows he’s done enough of that lately, in this process. Still, he wants to know. It might help to talk about it.
God, Stan thinks, resisting the urge to stick out his tongue and gag at the sentiment, Who have I become?
He settles for a mild silence, for a while—but it’s unusual behavior for him, and his twin’s irritating, ill-timed perception interrupts it rather quickly.
“You’re quiet this morning,” Ford observes in that factual way of his. Stan sometimes thinks a pair of antennae must be sticking out of his twin’s head, helping him take in every room he enters.
“What, that’s a crime, now?” Stan replies, trying to keep his tone light and funny, rather than snappish or defensive. It only half-works, and makes him want to cringe. He takes a deep sip of his drink.
“I suppose not,” Ford muses, genuinely considering Stan’s rhetorical question. “Something on your mind?”
He opens his mouth to ask about that night—Do you remember why you were crying?—but finds himself snapping his jaw shut, directing his gaze out the window, and pushing down his frustration at himself.
“Nah,” he says instead, “Nothing’s ever on my mind.”
It’s a weak, self-deprecating joke he follows up with an equally weak chuckle, and it doesn’t surprise him to see his twin purse his lips in disapproval. Stan’s certainly set off the sensors now. Shit.
“Don’t say that,” Ford chides. “What’s bothering you?”
The question is direct and borderline interrogatory, as so many of his twin’s questions are—he can’t help it, really—but beneath the general Ford-ism of the inquiry, it’s genuine, worried, and the best his brother can manage at being soft, outside of a life-threatening situation. In short, he’s trying.
Stan sighs.”Do you ever—“ He can’t formulate exactly what he wants to say, what he needs to say—a position he’s found himself in too many times for his liking. Still, he powers through, wanting to put something out there.
“Do you ever just…think about how easy things could’a been different?” He swallows dryly, his eyes searching for Ford’s. “You—you know, between us?”
A twin, deep-brown stare, a moment of connection. His brother’s face looks more deeply lined, suddenly, older and more full of regret. His grip tightens on his coffee mug.
“Every single day,” Ford replies, his voice small, a near-whisper.
There’s a long moment of silence, after which Stan can only offer a dull, “Me too.”
Something hangs between them in the air for a minute: a comforting word that neither of them reach for quickly enough, a rapidly-closing portal to emotional conversation—but they’re snapped out of their thoughts by the toaster popping.
“There’s breakfast,” Stan offers awkwardly, tipping his head towards the two browned slices. “Eggs on the stove, jam in the fridge if you want it. The blackberry kind you like.” He makes no move to claim food for himself, still staring down at the cheap grounds at the bottom of his mug.
His brother clears his throat, then reaches for the fridge door.
“Thank you, Stanley,” he offers.
Stan tries to shove the guilt down. “Sure thing, Six.”