#and then i got thousands of people watching me figure out ao3 and complex sentences in real time

[hella1975]

little lion man just came up on shuffle and i was transported back to 2020 and the actual crack you put in book 1 zuko i miss him so bad

this is so crazyyyy to me you mean that shitfuck piece of shit 100k words i wrote at age 17? people specifically like that part of taob? u read that for fun?

[jennycalendar]

2019 fic roundup

december was INSANE and i spent most of january dealing with the aftermath of Terrible Parents, but i am finally doing this! in nearly-february! good grief!

tagged by @catty-words​! always a delight, cori <3

Total 2019 Word Count: 541,906 Total 2019 Hits: 29,555 Other 2019 AO3 Stats: Kudos: 3,184; Comment threads: 787; Bookmarks: 509; Subscriptions: 223.

Total 2018 Word Count: 338,835 Total 2018 Hits: 22,374 Other 2018 AO3 Stats: Kudos: 2,192; Comment threads: 453; Bookmarks: 280; Subscriptions: 69.

links and titles to 2019 works (buckle up, folks.)

[btvs] imperfections (148,374 words) y’all know about the braveryverse already but i’ll bring up some good points: jenny and giles accidentally adopt the entire scooby gang. also faith gets some actual support and is actually eventually stable enough to date buffy. good times.

[btvs] deliberate obstruction (5,492 words) the one where jenny is petty as fuck and attempts to sabotage every single one of giles’s dates after their breakup. not her best look, but it was really fun to write jenny being Not Great. she deserves to have that option.

[btvs] arch-nemeses (2,171 words) who doesn’t love some of that good old-fashioned ripper au nonsense? particularly when it’s spike and ripper being confusing nemeses who sometimes drunkenly make out (jenny thinks this is very funny).

[btvs] sick day (3,097 words) written because someone should take care of giles, damnit! probably not jenny, tho. she’s not the best at it. lucky for her giles loves her so much.

[btvs] simpatico (10,096 words) sister fic to the grieving process! set circa btvs season six! jenny is connor’s awkward aunt! giles is a repressed disaster who’s still pining but refuses to admit it! 

[btvs] honesty’s the best policy (3,830 words) that one where giles and buffy are hit with a Truth Spell that means they say exactly what they’re thinking. is that all that bad for buffy? not too much. is it a little iffy when you’re a repressed watcher man who still haven’t told your girlfriend how much you love her? uh.

[btvs comics] i router, you giles (1,111 words) GOD this was written BEFORE i knew that giles and jenny were dating in the reboot comics and isn’t that a concept? a snarky-cute first meeting! ok not really that cute bc they just yell at each other a lot! but definitely snarky!

[btvs] transitional (3,152 words) good golly this is cute and i honestly forgot that i wrote it. which makes sense, bc there is a lot of stuff on this list. set in between season one and season two, in an attempt to bridge the giles/jenny gap between “awkwardly friendly coworkers” and “oh my god i think i like you”

[btvs] across the pond (5,323 words) FUN FACT this got nominated for a headline award and i’m SO PROUD OF THAT?! epistolary fic! giles leaves for england in s6 but without his wife! his wife is very mad and writes him VERY MANY LETTERS TO YELL AT HIM! perfect for those people who sometimes think “god, i wish jenny had been in s6 to yell at giles.” 

[btvs] very really married (66,987 words) giles and jenny got drunk-married in las vegas and are keeping the marriage going so they don’t look like terrible authority figures. giles does not want buffy to know about his fake wife. giles does not want his fake wife to know about his real slayer. giles has a lot of problems and it doesn’t help that he might be catching feelings. big mess.

[btvs] bad dreams (2,267 words) GILES/JENNY/ANYA IS BEST SHIP NEXT QUESTION

[btvs comics] an open mic enthusiast (2,250 words) yet another giles/jenny comic-reboot meet-cute written before i knew they were dating!!! this time: jenny gets to see giles playing guitar. repeatedly. because she keeps going back to watch him at the open mic.

[btvs comics] blindsided (2,024 words) my first (and definitely not last) giles/anya fic! a shorter version of a plot bunny i hope to chase down in 2020 (ahaha did i say that WHOOPS)

[btvs] uncharted (16,469 words) my jenny calendar day fic! also known as “jenny calendar has a guilt complex: a novella.” no prophecy dream outs jenny to the group -- but she tells them anyway. and blames herself. and breaks up with giles while she’s trying to Fix Things. absolute mess. (thank god there’s a happy ending, right?)

[btvs] on the mending of hearts (9,236 words) that giles/anya fic where giles shows up at anya’s failed wedding and sweeps her off her feet and they have sex in his hotel room! except uhhh there’s a lot more drama and crying and anya really just needs some cuddles, tbh.

[btvs] extracurricular activities (1,003 words) straight up this one BARELY counts as a 2019 fic. i wrote it back in 2016 and forgot about it and found it on my hard drive and wrote an ending to it. it’s tiny, but it’s cute! lots of early-relationship calendiles fluff, as is My Brand.

[btvs] cookie dough and boy talk (a remix) (3,976 words) dawn, but in the ripper au! she’s a precocious little bab and ripper babysits her and gets semi-adopted by joyce. it’s a thing.

[btvs] a history lesson (698 words) a brief ripper au interlude between jenny and dru. dru tries to point out that jenny and ripper are in love. jenny very unconvincingly denies it.

[btvs] faith, hope, and pancakes (3,236 words) ripper au, now with faith! and she gets to hang with college-age jenny! who is dating her idiot boyfriend ripper! the Most Fun of times.

[btvs] compromises (750 words) this....was supposed to be a three-sentence prompt but I Can’t Do That. giles and jenny discuss (read: jenny yells at giles about) giles attempting to attack angel on sight.

[btvs] valentine buzz (3,422 words) i wrote this in may lmao but i just REALLY WANTED to write fluffy braveryverse valentine’s day nonsense!!! lots of cuddles and kisses and softness abound in this fic.

[btvs] days in goodness spent (5,893 words) this fic's point was a little more abstract and a little less blunt than most of the rest of these, but i wanted to explore the concept of giles slowly going from idealizing jenny to genuinely loving her. i hope i did it justice.

[btvs] to have and to hold (7,861 words) giles and jenny get married in the braveryverse. that’s really all there is. also i posted this on my birthday (may 23rd) AND it is the 23rd fic on this list!!!! WILD!!!!!)

[btvs] saw her in the streetlight, making all the world bright (5,738 words) took me like a year and a half to write the first fic in the ripper au, lmao. in which jenny is a snarky eighteen-year-old, ripper is a snarky college dropout in a band, and neither of them are at ALL good at communicating. especially not ripper.

[btvs] perfect (1,465 words) ripper au: it’s revealed that jenny hasn’t had sex before. ripper handles this with his characteristic maturity and grace (just kidding lmao he FREAKS. but it’s bc he loves her.)

[btvs] respite (1,106 words) i wrote this after issue 5 of the reboot dropped bc i was very emotional about canon power couple giles and jenny. in retrospect, i gave giles’s emotional maturity WAY too much credit--esp. given what’s going on now--but it was still fun as heck to write.

[btvs] shouldn’t we be getting together (3,193 words) this fic’s existence is a combo of me reading a summer camp ya novel and liking the Aesthetic but not the Culture & me talking endlessly w/ @jackalopingintothevoid​ about ripper and jenny’s teenage dynamic. so many of these fics have her galaxy brain takes woven in and i KNOW she knows that. lov u, jack.

[btvs] fragmented (6,158 words) written because of that one time my brain was like “but what if jenny WAS haunting the school?” happy ending because it’s me and g/j deserve some kisses.

[btvs/hp crossover] buffy summers, muggle-born (22,070 words) i CAME BACK TO THIS in 2019 and wrote a few chapters and DROPPED IT LIKE A HOT POTATO. hopefully 2020 will bring me the courage to pick it up again!!!!!! who DOESN’T want a carelessly-mashed-together crossover where the scoobies and the golden trio are all going to hogwarts together for some reason????

[btvs] in bloom (8,452 words) this was SUPPOSED to be the end of the jenny-anya-tara trilogy. it was not. (more on that later.) this was also supposed to be a fic where giles and jenny get together. jenny and anya got together. writing things is wild sometimes.

[btvs] i still want to be your girl (35,165 words) straight up i am so proud of this fic! s7 au: jenny was chased out of town by angelus. giles does not know this. jenny has been working with angel in la, but left with faith to try and help defeat the first. giles is not the guy she remembers. (but jenny’s not exactly the lady giles remembers, either. so maybe things might work out.)

[btvs/leverage crossover] what’s in a name (4,421 words) sophie’s & jenny’s relationship to their names & identities always so totally fascinated me! this fic was my way of exploring that. (also i got to give giles and jenny a toddler. that was fun too.)

[btvs comics] live a little (6,700 words) i had so much fun coming up with a backstory for giles and jenny in the comics that i am kinda tempted to eventually try and do it again. this one was fun to write, tho.

[btvs] kind of like hydrogen peroxide (7,501 words) THIS was FUN. ripper au, but it explores both jenny’s longing for High School Normalcy AND ripper’s fucked-up relationship to magic. also senior prom is a thing.

[btvs] mending fences (6,093 words) sequel to the aforementioned epistolary fic! lots of first-person self-loathing from giles, but also a LOT of love for jenny and his kids. also the man really truly needs to stop repressing.

[btvs] her father’s daughter (1,982 words) 2020 will bring us another chapter of this fic i swear to GOD. literally there’s only one chapter up so i cannot even TALK about my plans for it but uhhh if you want giles and jenny and their three daughters pls feel free to go to that prologue and check it out.

[btvs] a thousand different ways we fell apart (4,888 words) the au fic to encompass all au fics! inspired by the comic reboot and me being like. christ. do they go through this ridiculous shit in EVERY universe? ....and then i wrote a fic where jenny was a space traveler looking through multiple universe to try and fix her marriage with giles. extra fun.

[btvs] no such roses (4,814 words) this one turned out a TINY bit rushed, but the concept of jenny bringing giles back from the dead is always something that i love exploring. i might come back and rewrite this, someday.

[btvs comics] no perfect choice (4,801 words) OOF. wrote this one after issue 8 dropped. a lot softer and more tender than what actually happened, tbh. maybe i will reread it again to make myself feel better about comic calendiles and their brutal split.

[btvs] family (3,545 words) wrote this one p early in the year and came up with an ending to it much later! ripper au: the story of how xander came to live with giles and leave his parents. angst-with-a-happy-ending abounds.

[btvs] a california january (2,206 words) jenny and giles attend a funeral together. that’s pretty much it. this is defs one of the best things i wrote this year, tho.

[btvs] how i survived my summer vacation (volume two) (25,027 words) swear to god this is gonna be the next thing i update. the braveryverse NEEDS to continue. it’s got married calendiles, for god’s sake.

[btvs] clear and impartial judgment (3,977 words) that fic i wrote when i got mad at a lack of resolution wrt helpless. like!!! giles drugged buffy!!! do we not get to talk about the psychological ramifications that would have on her???? (well. canon doesn’t. but i do.)

[btvs] sunshine ladies (10,188 words) THIS FIC WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN and i say that with incandescent love in my heart. i intended for the ‘verse to be giles/jenny, and then i intended it to be jenny/anya, and then i was like....jenny has two goddamn hands, and there’s foreshadowing here for endgame giles/jenny, and i wanna write some giles/anya. let’s fuckin go. (DEFINITELY writing another installment in 2020 about this iconic ot3 of mine.) 

[btvs] spirit-touched (4,769 words) the first smut i write and it’s calendiles ghost sex. i really think this is on brand for me, esp. considering that swath of asks in 2016ish where everyone wanted to know if ghosts could jack off. incredible.

[btvs] dear friend (28,865 words) this fic had such a rushed ending :( it’s a cute premise (you’ve got mail giles/jenny au!!!!!), but i lost interest halfway through, and as a writer i can rlly see that when i read it. another thing i might like to go back and rewrite at some point, tbh!

[btvs] familiar (2,034 words) AUGH i am SO proud of this fic. SO SO PROUD. it’s a concept i really can’t explain and the little twist at the end is something i really really like, so...just read it.

[miss fisher’s murder mysteries] unbearable (5,670 words) i need to write more mfmm in 2020 but the amount of good fic out there is deeply intimidating/delightful. this one was my little “what if it was phryne who thought jack was dead” and tbqh i had a lot of fun with it? bc pining phryne (who makes brief but extremely poignant appearances throughout the series) is an awkwardly, heart-meltingly sincere lady.

[ace attorney] man’s duty to society (544 words) wrote this as my first foray into aa fic while getting emo about miles edgeworth. would absolutely still die for that man.

[ace attorney] fancy running into you (5,887 words) lots of schmoopy narumitsu fluff! gregory edgeworth is alive! miles is trauma-free! phoenix is an artist! just!!! goodness!!!!!!!

[ace attorney] big sister (2,741 words) set in the same gregory-edgeworth-is-alive ‘verse: babey franziska comes to live with miles and his dad. she is a little impossible but miles kinda does love her.

[ace attorney] prince charming edgeworth and his incredible tux (8,042 words) this fic came from me being like “i want to write phoenix swooning over miles in a tuxedo and being like HE LOOKS LIKE A DISNEY PRINCE” and spiraled into something much longer!

[ace attorney] fate, choice, and everything in between (4,384 words) SOULMATE AU. nothing i love more than deconstructing soulmate aus. but like. in a romantic way. also phoenix and miles ARE soulmates and that is JUST facts.

Favorite Fic: I WROTE SO MUCH STUFF THO LIKE !?!??! how can one expect me to distill it to just one fic? i’ll make it my top threeL

a california january (I AM SO PROUD OF THIS FIC. it is soft and angsty and silly and devastating and tender. all the calendiles feels.)

i still want to be your girl (same mood!!! i’ve wanted to write this fic for literal years, and it’s one of those rare occasions where the picture in my head actually turned out BETTER when written out!)

sunshine ladies (this is like my giles/jenny/anya ship manifesto and it still makes me happy to think about them all co-running the magic box together and smooching a lot.)

Hardest Fic: OOF uh i went through a rocky period of writing when transitioning into college? no such roses and dear friend were hit the hardest by my insecurity & my desire to Finish Things rather than actually spend time on the craft. but i’m much more settled in now and my writing is DEFINITELY in an upward swing (as my newest fic -- as day follows night -- attests to quite nicely, imo)

Do You Plan to Take Prompts in 2020? always always yes! (i’m bad at following through with them, but am ALWAYS accepting them.)

What was the best thing about 2019? there were almost too many good things to COUNT, but i think all of them were made possible by me working extremely hard to get myself the FUCK out of my abusive parents’ house and into my first choice college!! i’m thriving, y’all.

What was the worst thing about 2019? realizing that both of my parents are fundamentally terrible people. that part kinda sucked.

Any last thoughts for 2019? i finally understand what it’s like to fall asleep feeling safe, and to notice the way the leaves change color, and to get excited about self-indulgent things like food and cuddly stuffed animals and my own fic and art. 2019 brought a lot of happiness into my life, and oh yeah also i’m in love! lots of cool stuff going on.

Goals for 2020

finish the latest braveryverse installment!

MORE ART JUST IN GENERAL. i love drawing, but there’s not a lot of free time for artsy celia when they prioritize writing so often!

write one of the many incredible longfic ideas that’s floating around in my head. it’s honestly probably only like two or three big ones, but at least DECIDE which one i’m gonna focus my energy on.

more giles/anya this year!

more giles/jenny/anya this year!

diversify! still gonna be writing about jenny forever, but like. it might be fun to write about a few new things here and there.

maybe some more ace attorney fic? maybe even some mfmm fic again? phryne and jack are never far from my heart.

not tagging anyone bc this is....january. but if you wanna do it, feel free!

[dubsdeedubs]

taken for turns

[Previous parts] 

[AO3]

(this makes some sense without that context, but it’s good to have.  The ending of this is confusing enough.)

[A/N: Here’s a little something that needs a bit of context, since it’s been roughly a year and a half since I’ve last touched it.  It’s a weird thing of identity issues, general creepiness, and a lot of self-indulgent ruminating on parallels between Bill and Stan that I started right after the finale came out. There’s some elements of the Same Coin theory about it, but it’s also very much not that.  It has gone through several revisions and rethinks over the years, and I know what I want to do with it now.  My version of a happy ending might not be everyone’s, but this is heading somewhere around there.

Here’s the general gist of things:

Stan doesn’t get his memories back as easily as in canon, but he’s picking up the pieces anyways.  Not all of them are the right pieces.

Thanks for dropping by, and I hope you enjoy the ride.]

So this is the thing: Stan's been having dreams.

That's already a bad start, all things considered. His brother has a gazillion and one horror stories to tell with that exact beginning, which Stan knows because he had been the unlucky bastard to sit through each new edition of Stanford Pines' Scary Dimension-Traveling Stories to Tell in the Dark, hot off the presses. About a month's worth of them now, updated whenever he and Ford sat on the deck of their boat watching the bright stars that hung above the wine-dark waves of the Pacific Ocean. With the warm end-of-summer winds and the clear skies, that was becoming more and more often.

(He'd never admit it, but he likes it a lot. Just him and Ford and a dozen stories about Ford's encounters with horrifying, grotesque abominations of creation in the wide multiverse. He doesn't remember enough to say for sure, but he thinks it has been a long, long time since Ford trusted him enough to let his guards down entirely for him, like this. It makes him happy, in a way that makes some forgotten part of him crave.)

Anyways, the point is: Stan knows that Ford would have a heart attack just at the thought of it.

Actually, no. He'd lock himself in his room for a day or two, coming out only to stare at Stan with big ol' guilty eyes, like he had gotten him some terminal flesh parasite disease or something. And then one day Stan would tell him to just cut it out because look, you really can't avoid someone when you're the only two people on a boat, so how 'bout you sit your ass down and tell me again about the nth time you didn't get with an alien babe?

And then Ford would have a heart attack.

So yeah, that's the reason why he hasn't said anything so far. Part of it, if he had to be honest.

Because, well. The other thing was, he actually kind of likes those dreams.

That sounds bad. He knows it does, which is why he tries not to think about that too often. Doesn't even dare to bring it up with Ford, because he thinks his brother might just combust.

Really, it's just peaceful. In his dreams, he's in a forest, just like the ones in the Pacific Northwest, the ones that surround Gravity Falls and cut it off from the rest of the world in more ways than one. He's not moving at all. He thinks maybe he can't move, but he hasn't tried. The thought just doesn't cross his mind. It doesn't seem like a real possibility.

And it's really kind of nice, because he's just sitting in the forest, admiring the vivid colors of the leaves and waiting for something to change, something that he knows to have nothing to do with the seasons at all. It's a little taste of what home had been for thirty years, even when he and his brother were now hundred of miles away from land.

Not that it's all perfect, because nothing really is. He figures he doesn't have his glasses in his dreams or something, because everything always looks just the slightest bit off in a dizzy kind of way, like he's seeing the world through one eye.

He doesn't quite manage to sail all around the whole world with Ford, but they make it down south a decent way before they decide they're both sick of ship's rations and hard cots on aging bones, and spend a few days on shore at a small coastal town in México.

Stan orders their dinner, because while Ford knows something like half a dozen alien languages, he just can't deal with the reflexive pronouns of Spanish.

It just wasn't the way he was used to thinking, Ford admits morosely into a cup of something bright and colorful, which meant it probably had some obscene amount of alcohol. Memorizing vocabulary and tenses were easy, but grammar was logic was thought. He was used to a certain way of viewing the world, a set chronology of people and actions, and changing his fundamental way of thinking - well, that had never been something he could wrap his head around entirely. An entirely different matter from an additional complexity of algebra or deriving some law of physics.

Stan shrugs, and takes another shot of straight tequila. He's on his third, and he's not quite sure if he's feeling it. He hasn't gotten drunk since his brain got erased.

It burns like hell on the way down, but he finds that he's really liking the pain. There's a novelty to the sensation, and an illogical quality to this entire - strange routine that he and Stanford were engaging in that he wanted to laugh and laugh and laugh. It was just so human to pour poison down your gullet, set the glass down, and say with no irony at all, another, please!

"Can't say I get it," Stan admits. "Hey, Sixer, you know? In Mandarin Chinese you gotta set the whole stage of a sentence before you say anything actually important. You wanna take a piss? First you hafta figure out the place, the weather, the time -"

Ford eyes him. "Just how many languages do you know, Stanley?" He asks.

"Dunno. A lot. It's not that big of a deal. When you go to a lot of places and you meet a lot of people, you have to pick up a few languages to make sure they don't end up screwing you over."

"Well, it's a big deal to me," Ford says. "That's an impressive ability to have, Stanley. It means you have a talent for thinking on the fly and adapting to new situations. You have to really understand human thought to navigate it in that way."

"Ha," Stan scoffs, trying hard not to let his lips curve up into a pleased smile. "Don't think I don't see you trying to butter me up, Sixer."

Regardless, it's working. Stan had never - well, he thought he had never - thought much about his ability for languages, just because it had always seemed so intuitive. Why did it matter in what order information was conveyed, or who was doing what to whom, or a dozen, hundred other fiddly bits when he knew exactly what was going on at the core of things? It seemed so static, so limiting to think in a way that was so fixated on the details.

But Ford found it impressive. He thought it was a talent.

And, if Stan wasn't mistaken... he seemed proud. Of him.

"Hey," Stan says, leaning a bit closer. "You wanna test just how many languages I know? Start countin'."

So he just keeps spitting them out, hello's and random words that pop up in his head, as many as he can think of. Ford puts down all twelve fingers within a minute, and has to wrap around.

In hindsight, it's a mistake. Stan's so focused on impressing Ford that he entirely misses when his brother's expression turns from pleasant surprise to neutral shock to a sharp kind of concern, and then, on the eighteenth, to a suspicious kind of worry.

"What language was the last one?" Ford asks calmly, and Stan knows him well enough to know that it is with the specific note of calm that his brother had in his voice only when he wasn't really, not in any way.

He's not sure. "Uh," he says, "Swahili, I think. Why?"

It's not Swahili. He knows that because he knows Swahili, too.

"That's not Swahili."

Stan smiles uncomfortably. "Huh, yeah. You're right. Dunno how I mixed that one up. I, uh, don't actually know what language that is. I must've picked the phrase up somewhere, just stuck in my memory."

"I know that language," Ford says, and there's something in his eyes that makes Stan go quiet. "It's from the planet Tixchenfanuh, located several million lightyears from this solar system. It's been dead for thousands of years."

"Oh. Cool." "Stanley, how on Earth do you know a dead alien language?"

He had no reply to that. "I don't remember," he says, and maybe it's a low blow to use that but he really doesn't know. "Maybe I just picked it up somewhere, it could happen."

"No," Ford says flatly, shaking his head. "No, it couldn't."

There's something about that, that makes Stan bristle. "Then how do you know it, huh?"

"From a friend," his brother says guardedly. "One who has lived for millennia, and had harbored many refugees from the worlds that perished under Bill's domination."

And, yeah. That was it. Ford had said the name, which meant that he wasn't even trying to be subtle anymore.

"You think it's a Bill thing," Stan says flatly.

"I'm not saying it has to do with Bill," his brother says quickly. But he has always been a terrible liar, ol' Fordsy.

They're quiet for a moment, the two of them and their respective poisons. It's a stifling kind of silence, the flat kind that's familiar in the worst kind of way, the kind that makes Stan want to get up and break something, shout at the top of his lungs so he can breathe again.

He doesn't do that. "I'm sorry, Sixer," he says instead, because he doesn't know what else to do. "I just remember things. I don't know where they come from. I, uh. I take what I can get."

Ford picks up his bright, colorful drink and starts chugging. When he's done, he wipes at his mouth and looks at Stan with an expression he can't read.

"I think it would be a good idea," Ford says steadily, "if you told me what exactly you remember."

The sea waves are slow and soft today, washing darkly onto the side of the Stan o' War and never getting farther than a few inches before receding. The breeze is brisk without being cold, with a cool saltiness to it that makes Stan lick his lips again and again and again. There's the soft flap of wings somewhere in the starry sky, and he wonders distantly how birds could ever find their way home when they spent so much of their lives that far from the ground.

It really is a perfect evening. Stan says so out loud.

"I wonder if we could ever have imagined this for ourselves," Ford replies, eyes looking up, up, up. "When we were young, and the future felt like it would never come."

Stan doesn't know. He doesn't remember. So he sits there and pretends that that's fine, like he has for the past three months.

They start off with the easy stuff.

He tells Ford about accidentally pickpocketing the keys to the ship's cabin from him a couple weeks back, and only noticing when one dug painfully into his right buttock when he squatted down to tie a knot. He tells him about waking up and hearing the last fading notes of piano music, about waking up and just really craving toffee peanuts. And there was once, he says to Ford after thinking for a long while, when he woke up to the darkness of the main cabin and remembered, with uncomfortable clarity, what it was like to be trapped in a place with no light and no way out. Only the sound of his own furious screams in his ears, and something burning and terrible certainty that he would escape, he would, no matter what he had to do.

Then there's a pretty ridiculous caper he had just remembered about a week ago, and almost decided to write all of it down until he remembered he probably didn't want anything on paper that would incriminate him in a court of law. He had gone through with it back in the day, and it had involved a dozen pugs and an especially furious hotelier. He tells Ford about it, and something unwinds and relieves within him at the slight upwards curve of his brother's lips.

For a while, Stan rambles about a flat world with flat minds, of rules and restrictions, where difference was feared and creativity even more so. There's something that bothers him about it, that sets his teeth on edge. He gets really emotionally into it before Ford tells him that he's pretty sure that was just the plot of that show he used to watch obsessively, The Duchess Approves.

It is with a pause that he tells his brother that sometimes, he remembers facts that don't make sense. He knows that they're true, so says that feeling nestled deep in his gut. He just doesn't know how they could be.

"Like what?" Ford says, like he's dreading the answer.

"Do you hate me?" Stan asks. His fingers hurt from digging into the wood of the ship's deck.

His brother makes a strangled kind of noise, somewhere between surprise and discomfort. "Stanley, I - " He says, and his voice sounds so small. "No. No, of course I don't. I never did."

"Huh."

"Why," Ford breathes, tries again. "Why do you ask?"

"I think I did something bad. Not like the, screwing up on the anchor knot and making us swim a hundred meters into the ocean at midnight, kind of bad." He feels cold, suddenly, like the wind is blowing right through his layers and into his bones. "I think I did something bad enough that you didn't forgive me for it, and there was nothin' I could say to get you to change your mind."

His brother doesn't reply at first, and by the light of the lantern Stan can see the muscles of his jaw working at something that he couldn't get out.

"You made a mistake," Ford says at last. "You were young, and you made a mistake, and for a while, I thought I hated you for it. But I didn't, and it took me too long to realize that." He bows his head a bit, and then he says, "I'm sorry, Stanley."

Stan hears him, but he doesn't know what to say. There's something in him that's honestly, well, freaking the fuck out. He's caught somewhere between shock and disbelief and a strange warm sensation he didn't know how to put into words, and he doesn't know why. He feels like an actor thrown into the middle of a scene he hadn't had the chance to prepare for.

"I never had the chance to tell you before, so I'm telling you now," Ford continues rapidly, like he can't believe he's saying it either. "I'm sorry I ever thought that that was enough reason to hate you."

"I'm sorry too," Stan says, and that is the one thing he can think of saying that doesn't come out like a memorized line. There's a certainty in it that he didn't know he had.

He's remembering something, more like splotches of paint on a canvas than anything at all clear and defined. They're emotions more than thoughts, but on some strange level he knows that they're completely and utterly his.

"I think I hated you," he continues. "For a real long time."

Ford flinches, but he's not done, not even close.

"If you hadn't left, we could've had everything we ever wanted. But nothing I said could convince you to stay, not even a bit." He's quiet for a long moment. "I think I was angry. I think - I think I wanted to make you hurt, the way I did."

He hears his brother swallow. "Stanley..."

"But you came back."

Ford is quiet. "You brought me back," he corrects.

That was right, except where it wasn't.

"I think I was happy, then," Stan says. "I think I was happier than I had been for years and years and years. With you back, everything was right again. I don't know how I could've ever been so angry, before."

He leans back, both hands on the wooden board of the deck, and listens to his brother's soft breathing against the slow sound of the waves.

"It sounds like," Ford says slowly, "there's a lot we need to work out. Not just about your memories."

They sit there in silence for a long moment, looking into the darkness of the vanishing horizon. All at once, it doesn't seem so comforting anymore.

He thinks about the warm rays of the summer sun and how the trees of Oregon cast dim shade on ground that could have never seen the sun, and he feels suddenly, painfully homesick. There's some part of him that wants desperately to be back there, something pulling him back even though he knows the kids are at school and Soos is probably busy making the Mystery Shack his own.

Stan says, voice distant to his own ears, "Ford, let's go home."

That night, Stan doesn't dream of the forest again. Instead, he's in a room that he recognizes immediately, because it was here where his first clear memories began, all those months ago. But here and now, the living room of the Mystery Shack is at once entirely familiar and utterly strange, as if he was seeing it from the perspective of someone else.

There’s a man with yellow eyes sitting on the couch. He's staring at the television, idly bouncing a paddleball in his hand, a can of Pitt Cola grasped tight in the other. There's something familiar about his features, about his lantern jaw, the easy way in which his square frames settle on the bulbous rise of his nose.

When Stan walks in, he looks down at him like he's been expecting him.

"Hey, pal," the man says with a wry smile. "It's funny how things work out, yeah?"

"Uh," he says, and takes a wobbly step forward on legs that feel too short.

"Why don't ya take a seat?" The man snaps his fingers.

And then he's sitting, just like that. The cushion of the chair hugs his butt just like the one back in the Shack. It feels a lot bigger, though.

"Glad ya dropped by," says the other. "See, I've been meanin' to talk to you for a while now. I was gettin' a bit worried that you wouldn't ever show up."

Stan has no idea what's going on. He looks into slitted, yellow eyes and that really should be explanation enough, except it isn't.

"Who are you?" Stan asks.

"I'm Stanley Pines," says the stranger who isn't. It doesn't make any sense, except it does. "Thought that'd be obvious."

He grins, and there's something vicious about it.

"So the real question here, buddy, is - who are you?"