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It started like this: as Bill's footsteps grew fainter in the distance, all Ford could do was sit there and surrender to the silence.
It’s too late. He stared at the floor of their prison, despair chasing itself in circles in his brain. What else was there to do? We’re done, we’re finished, I failed, I brought him here, we’re all going to die, or worse—
And then the silence was shattered by a laugh. Stan’s laugh, sharp and sudden and almost incredulous.
Ford jerked his gaze up, staring at him. Has he—has he lost it? But no, Stanley didn’t look mad—if anything, he looked more sane than he had since this whole mess had started, staring back at Ford with a light in his eyes that made him look like a teenager again.
“So, he wants to get into your brain, but we want him in my brain, right?” he started, jumping into an explanation before Ford had a chance to ask for one. “Then we could kill ‘im?”
“…Then we could kill him,” Ford agreed cautiously, putting aside the rest of the sentiment for the moment. It was a pipe dream, anyway, at this point.
And then Stanley threw open his arms, that same manic light in his eyes. “Twins, Stanford!” he proclaimed, as if that were an entire plan in itself.
Truthfully, though, it might as well have been. Because Ford understood instantly, a childhood of tricks and tests connecting the dots for him more quickly than his conscious mind ever could.
His insides froze, as he grasped the full implications of this—this insane, absurd plan.
“Absolutely not. ”
Stanley blinked at him, puzzled and frustrated. “I haven’t even laid it out—”
“I don’t need you to lay it out, Stan, I’m not an idiot,” he snapped. “You want to pull a twin-switch—as if that weren’t insanely risky—and let Bill Cipher into your mind and use the memory gun on you!”
“Okay, great, so you do get it! Let’s go!” Stanley was already standing and shrugging off his jacket as he spoke.
“NO.” Ford took a deep breath, trying to slow his racing heart. “It won’t work, Stanley. Do you really think we can fool an interdimensional demon with perceptions far beyond our own by changing outfits? ”
Stanley, pulling his tie loose from his collar, glared at Ford. “Why not? He’s physical right now, right? And anyway, we literally have nothing to lose. I mean, what? You think we’ll make him mad? ”
There was a wealth of bitter derision in his voice (as there had been so frequently since Ford had found himself in this dimension again), but Ford pushed past it. “Yes, actually! Do you want to lose our chance to make a deal because he’s angry we tried to—”
“Beat him?” Stanley interrupted. “We’ve been doin’ that. News flash, Poindexter: he’s already mad. If our leverage wasn’t good we’d already be inside-out.”
Ford winced at that, the pain in his neck and wrists and—well, all of him, really—vividly reminding him that, yes, Bill was already about as hostile to them as it was possible for him to be. (Which was very.)
“This is a better chance than we’ve got with you makin’ a deal, anyway—that’s slim for the kids and zero for the rest of the universe. If this pans out, they’ll have a world to live in, right?”
Ford opened his mouth, not sure what to say or how to oppose this plan articulately. “It won’t work, Stanley!”
His brother threw his arms into the air. “Would you just trust me? For once? When there’s nothing to lose?”
Ford jumped to his feet, suddenly equally angry. “Maybe you forgot the fact that the person holding Bill Cipher in their mind when we use the gun will have their mind erased?” he exploded. “This—destroying Bill Cipher is my job. My sacrifice!”
“Well, get over it,” Stanley growled, stepping closer to him. “I don’t care about your hero complex, Poindexter—the entire friggin’ universe has a better chance this way! My way!”
Now it was Ford’s turn to throw his hands into the air. “You don’t!”
“So what?”
“So…!”
Ford gave in to his impulses and actually reached out and shook him.
“So this isn’t about trying to save the universe, Stanley.” It never was, not really—he just needed a goal big enough to counterbalance his mistakes, to make the guilt and shame worth it. And now, now of all times… “I’m trying to save my family! ” he finished.
Stan stared at him, eyes blown wide in shock and…something like hope. For the first time in this whole conversation he was visibly thrown off. Ford held his breath…
But then the gleam returned to his eyes, and he delivered the knockout blow.
Putting his hands on Ford’s wrists and lifting them away, beginning to unbutton his shirt agian, Stanley said, “The kids’ll be better off this way.”
And…it was true. When it was said in that calm, final tone, Ford couldn’t even muster any outrage to shield himself from the truth—this was the best way for Mabel and Dipper. Even if Bill took his deal, Ford was by no means sure he would keep it…and even if he did, as Stanley had pointed out, there wouldn’t be much left for the kids to live in. This way, if it failed they’d be no worse off, and if it succeeded…they’d still have Earth. They’d still have futures.
Ford shut his eyes. He couldn’t fight that.
Stanley clearly saw the surrender in his face, because he just tossed his shirt at him and held out an expectant hand. Ford began to pull off his coat and sweater—he knew they needed to work fast, but it was still hard, in the shape he was in.
“I just,” he said defeatedly, pulling the sweater over his head “…It’s my fault, Stanley. All of this…you know it’s on me that it’s even happening. I was the one who made the first deal with Cipher, I should be the one to pay the inevitable price…”
And as he pulled the sweater fully off and bent to grab his coat, he looked up at Stanley—only to be cut off by the murder in his twin brother’s eyes.
Those eyes were fixed on Ford, and after a moment Ford realized that he was focused on the newly-exposed electrical burns spiraling out from his wrists and neck.
“You’ve suffered enough, from where I’m standin’ ,” Stanley snarled, and his gaze snapped to Ford’s, full of a seething, unbridled rage. “That thing’s never gonna touch you again, Stanford, got it?”
Ford could only stare, for a moment. Somehow, Stanley’s anger sparked a warmth in his chest that was both foreign and intensely, breathtakingly familiar…and, after a moment, it clicked.
Somewhere in the decades, Ford realized, he’d forgotten what it was like to feel protected.
One last time, though, he struggled to reframe it, to make it make sense to Stan the way it did to him. “I brought this upon myself—upon everyone,” he repeated helplessly. Stanley needed to know, needed to understand this. “It….it should be my price to pay.”
“Yeah?” Stan said, still holding out his hands for Ford’s clothes. “Well, I don’t care. I’m payin’ the rest of it for you…and then I’m punchin’ the collector in the face.” He wiggled his fingers impatiently. “So hand that over.”
Ford stared for a long moment more, wadded-up coat clenched in his shaking fists, but Stan was as unwavering as he has always been. He….
He was choosing this.
Choosing Ford.
Swallowing, Ford handed it over.
It felt like something much heavier and more burdensome than a set of clothes.
He turned to pick up and put on Stanley’s clothes. “Y’know,” his brother said, “it barely even counts as an outfit swap. I mean really, both of these are yours!” He even laughed, brief but seemingly genuine, as Ford’s brow furrowed in puzzlement.
Oh, right, he remembered. These were Dad’s.
He’d forgotten, somehow, that this was one of their father’s suits that had been passed on to him. It belonged to Stanley, now, this older Stanley, and he wondered how he could ever have thought the man before him was like their father. Even in the short, divided weeks he’d known him, Stanley’s character had shown through in everything. He just…
He just hadn’t wanted to pay attention.
And soon there wouldn’t be anything to pay attention to…just relics, a Shack without an owner, bobbleheads of a man who no longer existed, the detritus of a life left empty. A suit that wouldn’t fit anyone anymore, not really.
He pulled the jacket close around him. It felt odd in the shoulders, loose and constricting at the same time—but it should fool the casual eye, at least. He pulled the tie around his neck, and began fumbling with it.
“Here, gimme that.” Stan appeared in front of him, taking the red ribbon in expert fingers. “Geez, can’t even tie a tie, huh, Mr. Genius Superhero?” he muttered. But somehow, the bite was gone this time.
“I know how to tie a tie,” Ford huffed anyway. “I just…haven’t worn one in a long time.”
Stanley shook his head with an eyeroll, stepping back to survey his work. “Well, now you are. Here, switch glasses with me.” He plucked his own off and held them out to Ford.
“Right, of course.” Ford completed the switch, slipping on Stanley’s lenses—the frames weren’t that different, but every detail counted. And, he discovered, their prescriptions were still close enough that it shouldn’t impair either of them.
“We should switch shoes as well,” he suggested, sitting down to pull off his boots. They were definitely a more noticeable difference than the glasses, anyway.
“Oh yeah, guess so.”
Stanley’s shoes fit him, too—a little oddly, and predictably tight in the toes, but better than many pairs Ford had been forced to settle for in other dimensions.
Looking through his brother’s glasses, wearing his brother’s clothes, Ford felt a stab of grief and anger at how well they fit—at the way their bodies had so manifestly aged in harmony, even when their lives had been so far apart. True, it had been a piece of his brother, a link to him, carried through the multiverse in Ford’s physique and blurred vision and reflection, whether he looked for it or not. To know that, even in hindsight, was a strange relief. At the same time, though, it pinpointed the terrible irony of their lives—the wrongness of an estrangement that had defied so many and such persistent bonds.
His hand went to his breast pocket at the thought, only to meet Stanley’s suit jacket instead of his own coat. He froze, for a second.
“Lookin’ for this?” Stanley asked, and he looked over to see him holding out Fiddleford’s accursed memory gun.
No, he thought, taking it.
He tucked it away inside the jacket, and it hid there as an unfamiliar and a terrible weight. He wished for the reassurance of his talisman there instead, the soft and aged paper of a fifty-year-old photograph…
But looking at Stanley, and feeling the weight of his weapon, he couldn’t bring himself to ask for it back. There wasn’t time, probably, but also…how much reassurance could he take from that photo, now? How could he find stability in the memory of a bond he was about to destroy? How could he find comfort in it, knowing that the comfort it truly represented had been in front of him for weeks and he had ignored it, and that said reality would soon be irreparably unmade?
A moment ago, he had thought of the physical likeness between himself and Stanley as an enduring tie between them. But knowing that soon it would be the only tie between them? That…no. That was nothing, in itself. It was only given the meaning they had attached to it, and without Stanley’s memories, his past, his self…
Well. Ford would a thousand times rather rewrite his own DNA, and risk the consequences to his mind and moods, if only Stanley would still know who he was.
Perhaps that had always been true. In all his years of wandering, whether he had dwelt on it or not, there had always been the stubborn insistence in the back of his mind that Stanley was okay. It had eased his mind, on strange nights when he pulled out his photo, or grim days when he had no breathing-space to rest, to tell himself that Stanley was still in their own dimension, still all right. He had imagined that Stanley would have sold his cabin, that his inheritance as Ford’s next-of-kin would have set him back on his feet (on those days when he remembered Stanley’s angry shouting in detail, including the prison and the car trunks and the rest), that now he was thriving in his own way, with a business and a home and perhaps a family. Ford would imagine them, his hypothetical sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, some nights when he was very tired and all his barriers were down.
Occasionally, he’d had dreams of Stanley teaching a gap-toothed, bright-eyed boy how to sail.
But now—now he would know. His brother was going to be gone, erased, never to live out a single one of either of their dreams, and it was Ford’s fault, and it would be by Ford’s hand, and he would have to look his brother in the eye and see him lose everything—
“Hey.”
Ford looked up, more startled than he should have been. Stanley was looking at him, those familiar eyes still focused and knowing, and his face was very serious.
“Ford…promise me something.”
And in that moment, thirty years of paranoia tripped and died on the events of the past ten minutes, and Ford said “Anything,” without a second thought.
(Somewhere inside, far deeper than the paranoia, his child’s self was raising a protest over ever giving Stan that kind of leeway. But…what could Stanley possibly ask of Ford that was worse than what he had already agreed to?)
“When all this is over…” Stanley started, still somber. But then he paused, and his face split into a wide, ridiculously self-satisfied, ever-so-slightly-evil grin. It was a grin Ford had only seen once or twice since his return, but still recognized instinctively (his child-self now pointing and yelling in vindication). It was, in fact, the very, very specific Stan Pines grin that said someone’s about to get suckered.
“Promise me,” Stan concluded, voice now full of glee, “you’ll tell me how you got those tattoos.”
Ford stared at him; half bewildered, half instinctively embarrassed.
“I’d make you tell me now, but then I’d just forget,” Stan continued, still with that glint in his eye. “And there’s no way I’m gonna let you off that easy, Poindexter. So promise. ”
As the bewilderment faded, Ford realized that his embarrassment was softened by amusement, and familiarity—it was the safe kind of embarrassment, the kind that expected nothing worse than affectionate teasing, the kind that meant family. And in its wake came a rush of relief, one that he struggled to understand for a moment. There shouldn't be anything relieving about this nonsense in such a perilous moment, but….
But this was reassurance, in Stanley’s own inimitable way. It was Stan’s promise that there would be an “after,” even if it wasn’t the same. He wouldn’t have his memories, but he would still be there to laugh at Ford’s embarrassing life choices, to tease him and share a joke.
They would both still be there, after this day was over.
So Ford rolled his eyes, as was proper procedure when being mocked by one’s sibling, and said, “All right, I promise.”
And that was almost the last thing they said to each other. But as Stan smiled at him, and as they heard Bill’s approach (too soon, much much too soon), Ford suddenly found one of the other things he needed to say….or do, at least.
He looked at Stanley, standing there in his tattered trench coat, eyes narrowed and distant, with only a tinge of something like fear under the determination. Our bonds are what we make of them, he thought, and remembered by an odd leap of association what had first made him value his polydactyly—how, once upon a time, it had not been something that made him special, but simply something that was special because it was his.
How it had been a bond, before it was anything else.
“Stanley,” he said. As his brother looked to him, he held up one hand. “For luck?” he said, more tentatively than he had meant to.
Stanley froze for an instant, eyes flickering between his hand and his face—then slapped his palm against Ford’s, quick and vehement.
“High-six,” he said, and it was the first time in this whole affair that Stanley’s voice had sounded less than steady.
Ironically, though, Ford felt steadied by the contact, a new rush of determination filling his veins.
He hadn’t high-sixed anyone since he was seventeen—he had so many hand-related quirks, after all, that no one had ever thought much of that one. But now, after over forty years, the gesture took him back in an instant to Kings of New Jersey, to us against the world, to the days when the two of them had known they could do anything.
“High-six,” he breathed in response, eyes locked on Stanley’s, head held a little higher than it had been.
And then Stan was shoving him over to the bars suddenly, taking a place beside him. “Lights camera action!” he hissed, as giant footsteps shook closer and closer through the Fearamid’s halls, and it was time.
It ended like this: as Bill appeared, as they began the oldest of all their cons, all Ford could think was, I should have hugged him.
All he could do was grab Stanley as they argued, in one last moment of instinctive contact—and then hope, when he had to let go, that his perceptive brother had understood what the terror in his face was really for.