#i know its illogical and for awhile had fully convinced myself of that but then. this feels too big to leave up to chance. what if im wrong

[tamagotchikgs]

i think for the first time ever in my life i have a Place where i belong, where im safe n maybe actually cared for & that should just make me happy (and it does, oh,h, sosos much) but also. scared. soso scared i am scared i am terrifed

[dubsdeedubs]

A Thousand Natural Shocks [16/16]

[AO3]  

[A/N:  I don’t even know what to say.  I... wrote up a lot more on AO3, and I recommend that you read this there because this is 10,405 words (!!!)

Thank you all, and I hope you enjoy the ride for one last time.]

Summary: Thirty years ago, Stanley Pines made a deal. Now, in the wake of Bill’s defeat and his brother’s disappearance, Ford begins to unravel Stan’s dark secrets

With each passing minute, Ford sunk further into the gaping maw of the beast.

It was entirely too late to escape, he realized with quiet resignation. There was simply no fight in him anymore. He had been foolish enough to lower his guard in the monster's presence, and now he was paying for it with his life.

That, and there was some deep, dark part of him that very much welcomed the knowledge that he had no options left - that, after everything, there was nothing he could do to save himself this time.

Ford closed his eyes, and waited for the end to come.

There was the heavy sound of approaching footsteps.

"Huh," he heard, and, "...You look comfy."

"Hrmg," Ford said eloquently, and pressed his face into the plush armrest. Even without the benefit of sight, he could feel the look his brother gave him like a physical thing.

Stanley leaned heavily on the back of the armchair, and the cushion sagged obligingly. "...Don't have a lot of chairs as nice as this out there in the multiverse, huh?" He asked casually.

Familiar, immature annoyance flickered back into life for a brief moment. "No, Stanley. In fact, I haven't had much comfort in general for the past thirty years," he said crossly.

...The effect of his words was somewhat undercut by how the majority of his lower body was currently propped up above his head and his voice was muffled behind his sweater neck, which was a full inch of unwashed alien wool.

His brother looked distinctly unimpressed.

"I suppose," Ford muttered after a moment, and slid down another humiliating inch.

And, alright. If he had to be honest, and he supposed he should be in the sanctity of his own thoughts, it really was a fine couch. Certainly not just because the only other in recent memory had been constructed by Bill Cipher from an unholy combination of human flesh and demonic magic.

In a moment of sudden clarity, he could understand perfectly why and how his brother could spend the majority of his free time reclining here, watching a nice, mindless cartoon duck series or two.

It was a tempting thought, and certainly, there were worse sins than sloth to add to his own budding collection.

...Ford wondered fleetingly if this truly was some kind of human flesh eating cryptid, ready to ensnare any victim foolish enough to take a seat. Stranger things had happened in this house, and it would explain a great deal indeed.

"Got it for ten bucks at a garage sale," Stan muttered nostalgically. "Well, I would've gotten it for ten bucks if I didn't steal it right out of the guy's house. Found a big ol' tomato sauce stain right under the cushion afterwards, though. Serves me right, I guess."

He paused thoughtfully. "...Least, I hope it was tomato sauce. I dunno. Guess that would explain why this thing was so cheap."

Ford winced, feeling a lot less comfortable pressing his face into the armrest than he did just thirty seconds earlier - but still not nearly enough to move. "That's horrifying," he muttered, voice muffled.

"Well I mean, not anymore. I've gotten much worse stains than that out of stuff with a whole lot less, y'know." Stan crossed his legs nonchalantly, and grimaced. "Paul Bunyan, these pants are tryin' to kill me," he announced. "Can you believe I used to fit in these, no problem?"

Ford... really, really could not believe they were having this conversation.

The universe had nearly ended. They had nearly died (or something very much worse that he really would like not to think about, thank you very much.) By any sensible standards, the past fifteen minutes of mindless chatter was entirely pointless and an obvious waste of time.

Surely, after everything they had gone through, with everything that still needed to be said, shouldn't he and his brother have more to say to each other than some truly ridiculous small-talk?

Stan poked him in the side. "...You fallin' asleep on me, Sixer?"

"It would be a miracle if I was," Ford retorted immediately, turning his face just enough to give his brother a well-deserved glare with one eye. "Considering those tights you're wearing must have the same blinding intensity of a supernova seen from its closest galaxy."

"Uh."

"Why do you even own those?"

"Yeah, well, Soos convinced me to do a special holiday version of the Mystery Shack tour awhiles back, before I got immunity to those puppy dog eyes of his. Long story."

Stan cleared his throat. "So, you done making fun of my fashion choices or what?"

It was nonsense, but the easy back-and-forth of conversation was familiar in a warm sort of way - the kind that sapped the weary tension from his aching muscles and tugged at the edge of his lips until his expression softened.

Yes, Ford decided, allowing himself a particularly helpless smile. This was entirely ridiculous, illogical, and immature - and that was exactly why he would not trade it for anything.

"I can't say about the tights. Ma did always say you had chicken legs," he said lightly.

"Oh, fuck off," his brother replied with a roll of his eyes, but there was no real heat in his words. "Ma was just teasin', and you know it. I've got perfectly normal legs for my body type. And y'know, it's really all about the tailoring of the thing."

Ford raised an eyebrow. That... sounded suspiciously familiar.

"Ma told you that, didn't she?"

Stan's expression softened for just a moment in fond memory as he looked down in his lap, before settling down into a blank poker face. "Yeah, well. Ma did tell us a whole lot of stuff, Sixer."

He nodded slightly in agreement and had just opened his mouth, a particularly ridiculous anecdote already on his tongue, when Stan spoke again.

"Sometimes, I uh. Well. I still get myself thinking about what she'd say about things." His brother's words came halting at first and then all at once, as if Stan couldn't believe that he was saying them out loud either. "...Even if it's been thirty years since she -"

He went abruptly quiet, his expression stiffening in realization of what he had almost just said.

Ford blinked, a cold pit forming in his gut.

There it was.

"Stanley," he began, slowly and carefully, entirely aware of the stakes at hand.

It was something he didn't need to bring up, he tried to tell himself even as he dug his nails painfully into the new skin of his hands. A topic that was obviously impossibly difficult for both of them to talk about. He could forget about it, move on, enjoy the rest of his life in a dimension that wasn't (usually) actively attempting to kill him with his family.

(What was left of it.)

But despite himself, despite the fact that he had been waiting for decades and certainly could wait longer, despite his own pragmatic certainty that the answer would only come painfully -

- he had to know.

Because they couldn't move on without talking about this. Not really. Not in any way that mattered.

"...Yeah?" Stan muttered tensely.

"What happened with Ma?" The words flowed out all in a rush, coming much harsher than he wanted. Ford regrouped. "With... with the both of them," he finished his sentence awkwardly, words clumsy and inelegant around the one topic, one person he could not bring himself to mention out loud.

His brother wouldn't meet his eyes.

"Look, Stanley. It's - it's alright." There was a strange kind of desperation in Ford's voice, one that he didn't want to think about too hard. "I... It has been three long decades. I am fully aware of the most likely answer to my question. And to tell you the truth..."

He swallowed. "I haven't held any real hopes for any kind of reunion with them for years. I've always assumed that they had - already passed, but I would just like to -"

"They're gone," Stan said shortly, cutting off his ramblings like a knife through hot butter. Ford went abruptly silent, not necessarily out of surprise but... really, because of how bluntly his brother had put it.

Neither spoke for a long moment before Stan winced and said, "Sorry. I shouldn't have told you like that." He let out a ragged breath. "You were right. They... got old. Got sick."

Ford nodded slowly, with a touch of bewilderedness. Like a dog chasing after a car, now that he had gotten what he had wanted for so long, he wasn't quite sure what to do with it. He had not lying at all about the fact that this was the answer he had entirely expected. And yet, it still sent a familiar pang of loss through him.

Hearing it from his brother made it... real, concrete somehow. Concrete in a way it never felt when he was hundreds, thousands of light-years away from Earth.

"It was cancer with Ma," Stan continued, without any real prompting. He kept his eyes fixed on some distant thing, carefully not meeting Ford's gaze. "Years and years ago, at this point. But it - took its time with her. Turns out her pack a day habit was no good for anybody, but uh. You don't needa be a fake psychic to know that, do ya?"

"Stanley..."

"...Dad went a few days after," he said finally, his expression suddenly, carefully blank. "And who knows what it was with him?"

Ford went quiet, though not for lack of desire to speak. There was, well.

He had always wondered, in the way humans instinctively sought resolution, if their father had ever... well, change was a strong word, stronger than Filbrick Pines - for all his demeanor and his bluster - could ever be. But if he ever understood what he had done all those years ago. If he realized even a bit of what Ford had understood over all these years, if he had caught a glimpse of what Ford saw now in the brutal clarity of hindsight.

He knew better than to ask.

His brother grimaced. "Rabbi waxed poetic about broken hearts, but I've always figured that Pa's more - like a golem, or somethin'." He spoke with a strange. uncertain softness in his eyes. Something that could be, in a far kinder world, be called fondness. "Like the stories Ma used to tell us. Keeps chugging as long as he's got that little scroll in his head, take that away and."

He cleared his throat. "Y'know."

"...Yes." Ford said roughly. He wasn't sure why it was so difficult to speak. "Yes, I remember those stories."

Stan let out a low chuckle, one without much humor. "Yeah, I know. You were there for them too, I know. It - was a weird thought. But somehow... I knew you were the one person I wouldn't hafta explain it to."

Ford didn't know how to reply to that. All he knew was that the warm rush that washed over him upon hearing those words and left him breathless... that was a feeling he wanted to keep forever.

"...Did you - did you go?" he asked hesitantly. "To their funerals, I mean."

Stanley looked at him for a moment, as if in surprise.

"I - yeah," he said haltingly. "Actually, I - I was still decidin' whether I could risk goin' to Ma's funeral when I got the second call from Shermie about Dad. Tellin' me to get my ass over there in the next twenty-four hours if I wanted to keep it."

"That sounds like her," Ford noted, smiling despite himself at the thought of the little girl he had last saw decades ago yelling into a phone with Ma's Jersey accent. "Maybe not the - profanity - but -"

His brother lets out a bark of laughter. "Sixer, you have no idea."

They're both quiet for a companionable moment, and oh, oh, Ford had missed this. He had missed this more than words could say.

There was something - had always been something deeply heartening about being able to talk to someone who could understand. Especially given Ford's own experiences with fitting in, or rather, the lack thereof.

Relaxing in this way, soaking in the easy silence that only came from the knowledge that he did not need to speak to be understood... it was something he had not felt for a long, long time.

Maybe, time had not changed them as much as Ford had feared.

"...Ma had called a coupla times before," Stanley said slowly, clearly reluctant to break the moment of calm. "She sent me some money before when things were really down, but… first time I had actually seen either of 'em for a decade was at - well, my own burial."

He winced. "And that had been risky enough already, even with my corpse lying there in a box several yards away. Guess that was for the best. With Shermie the only one hanging around, I didn't have much of an excuse not to go and ah, see 'em off."

"I wish..." Ford said slowly, without knowing exactly how to end the sentence. I wish I had been there. I wish I had seen them one last time. I wish, I wish, I wish.

Judging from the look his brother gave him, he didn't need to.

"I'm sorry," Stan said roughly, a new tenseness in his body language that made his movements frantic, jerky. "I'm sorry ya couldn't be there."

Ford didn't reply for a long minute. This was one of those points, he knew, that the two of them could never completely forgive and get over. It had to be - doing otherwise would be a lie, a disservice for both of them. It hurt beyond words that he had lost everything he could call his own for thirty long years, that he had missed the funeral of his parents, that he did not get to watch his younger sister growing up.

But it had not been a one-sided hurt. It had never been a one-sided hurt when the two of them were involved, not even at the very beginning.

Blind forgiveness had never been the answer, Ford thought to himself with a strange calm. The problems that had stolen most of their lives from both of them would have lingered on, simmering until the moment they could not be ignored again.

He didn't know if it was possible to move on and forwards without forgetting the past. Ford certainly had not succeeded before.

But then, he had never really wanted to try, before.

"I am sorry as well," Ford said quietly. "I am sorry that you could not attend as yourself. That you - lost them so early."

They both knew well that he wasn't talking about their parents' passings.

"...Don't apologize for that, Sixer," Stan muttered. "It was my own stupid mistakes."

"I could have said something."

"No, ya couldn't." His brother said flatly. "...You saw the look on Pa's face. It wasn't some… spur of the moment kinda thing. I'd been packin' my bags for weeks up till that point, just waitin' for the last straw or until I turned eighteen, whichever came first. Nothin' you coulda said woulda changed his mind."

He grimaced. "He already knew I was a loser, Sixer."

"Then he should have learned that he was wrong!" Ford exclaimed, a familiar indignant anger rising in him - the same kind he felt at Crampelter and the bully's ugly laughter, at the recruiters from West Coast Tech and their cruel, calm rationality, at Bill grinning and cackling in laughter and saying, Fordsy, did you really think I would have chosen you if I wanted someone significant?

Stan winced. "Be honest with yourself, Sixer. Was he really? Just - look at what I ended up doin' after that. I just - I just kept runnin' cons. Sold cheap shit to people who were too dumb to know any better. Made deals with some - some real horrible people to keep myself going."

He sighed. "...Tell ya the truth - if you hadn't called me up here, I would've ended up dead young."

"You still did," Ford said steadily.

His brother refused to look him in the eyes. "You know what I mean. Worse than what happened here. I'd be in some - some shallow grave that no one would've even tried to look for. Moses knows I had gotten close to it before."

"Stanley..."

"You don't get it, do ya? Only good I've ever done in my life has been right here." Stan hesitated, as if he was gearing himself to say something he had wanted to say for a very long time. "...Only good I've ever done in my life wasn't even as myself."

"Don't say that," Ford retorted immediately, with an urgency that surprised even himself.

"Dunno, Sixer," Stan shrugged, not meeting his eyes. "Figured I should tell the truth. For once in my life."

Ford opened his mouth, then shut it. Took a long, slow breath, and let it all out.

He said, his voice only slightly wavering, "When I told Shermaine the truth about what had happened between the two of us, she told me how you died."

His brother went still. Clearly, this was not what Stan expected to hear. "I, uh," he mumbled, eyes wide. "I... still really wish you hadn't done that."

"Apparently," Ford continued vehemently, " 'I' had been instrumental in the destruction of some cross-border drug operation that had orchestrated your -" He hesitated. It was real. It was exactly what happened. Why was it so hard to say? "Your murder," he said at last, mouth uncomfortably dry. "Shermaine had an idea or two on how you had gotten - involved in it."

He swallowed. "Is... is that where your scars came from?"

His brother's silence was particularly telling. "Some of them," Stan said at last, voice gruff.

They eyed each other, quietly willing the other to speak first.

Ford relented. "...I haven't said much to you and the twins about my years on the other side of the portal," he said haltingly, unsure of what he was getting at himself but hoping with everything he had that he would figure it out along the way. "They were not - the best."

"Well, yeah," Stan said, matter-of-fact. He flushed at the look Ford gave him. "Not like that. I meant... You startle easily."

"I what," Ford said flatly.

He had heard many descriptors applied to him in his life, everything from 'eccentric' and 'brilliant' to 'neurotic' and - in one not particularly fond memory - 'batshit insane.' 'Easily startled' was not one of them. Perhaps at the very beginning of his career in studying the paranormal, but even that was a stretch, considering that getting one of Mothman's composite moths in his mouth was obviously enough reason to -

"Fucking - not like that, sorry. Look, I just meant -" Stan took a deep breath. "Whenever I get up close to you without warning, you tense up. Hands twitch a bit, like you want to make a grab for something. It's not that hard to tell if you know what you're lookin' for, and I - uh."

He grimaced. "I knew what to look for. I dunno. I just - kinda always figured you weren't havin' the time of your life out there."

Ford... didn't know how to feel about that, that his trauma had become something entirely readable from the way he moved and lived.

"It wasn't the individual incidents that got to me, Stanley," he said instead, refusing to let the topic change. "Certainly there were many of them, over my three long decades of living life on the run. But no. It... was the constancy of it all."

He wasn't in danger all the time, of course. A month or two holed up in a safe haven, his time recovering and learning from Jheselbraum, the very few times he had genuinely thought his journey may have come to an end - that he had come to a place in which he could live instead of just survive, at least up until he had prepared enough to face Bill for the last time.

And that was it, wasn't it? "I realized eventually that there were two ways my journey would end," Ford said flatly. "Either I would die taking Bill with me, or I would die having failed in my mission. There were no other options to speak of. I... had no hope for myself in regards to that."

"Ford," Stan said, and there was something stunned, something entirely horrified in the blankness of his expression. "How could you just - decide that for yourself?".

That made him stop in his tracks, just a bit. "I didn't decide that for myself," Ford said, almost annoyed, because how was it that his brother didn't understand? Because it wasn't a decision, not in any way that mattered.

"Really, Stanley. It wasn't as if I had simply - sat down one day and decided that I had no direction in life other than one that culminated in death. "

Stan flinched. "But -"

"There was never a choice," he said matter-of-fact. "All I was doing was to accept the cards already dealt to me. It was all I... was..."

Worth.

Ford trailed off, the ending of the thought making him stop in his mental tracks. It was - a familiar thought, that there was no doubt about.

already knew I was a loser, sixer.

But now it was familiar in an entirely different kind of way.

His brother was looking at him, he realized, in concern. There was something suddenly, inexplicably hilarious about that, considering the entire unspoken conversation of worth and sacrifice and unnecessary martyrdom that had led up to this moment.

The smallest hint of a hysterical laugh bubbled up within him.

"...Sixer?"

"But I was wrong," Ford said breathlessly. He knew what he wanted to say now. What he had to say. To his brother - and to himself. "I'm alive, and I was wrong."

Stan grinned uneasily, unsurely. "That's - great, Sixer, don't get me wrong. But uh, I'm honestly kinda lost abo -"

"And so are you."

His brother stared at him like he had gone off the deep end.

"I had been wandering the dimensions for three decades by the time you fixed the portal," Ford said, buoyed by a heady combination of adrenaline and certainty, and it felt like shrugging off weights, opening the curtains, seeing and feeling something that had been there all along. "I had been hungry, I had been cold, and I was always afraid. By that time, I... had done many things I regret."

He hesitated. "But I won't say anymore on that because I don't need to explain all of that to you. Our circumstances were different, certainly. And any comparison of suffering is inherently wrongheaded. But... something tells me that you understand my experience more so than anyone else on this planet."

"Well, perfect," Stan said after a moment of stunned silence, his voice dull. "What I've always wanted. My brother to live like a criminal on-the-run for three decades."

"But it goes both ways, don't you see?" Ford interrupted, eyes wide. "I don't know everything that happened to you, that you went through, but trust me when I say that I understand much more than you might realize."

"I'm not sayin' you don't, but -"

"The reason I was so - determined to sacrifice myself for the sake of the universe," he said, voice clear, "was because I believed that my greatest worth was to others, and not to myself. I had made so many mistakes and let so many people down in my life, that this was the only way I could make up for them."

His brother looked deeply uncomfortable. "Ford..."

"I thought that because I had already given up all hope for myself," Ford said steadily. "But Stanley, you believed I was worth more than that. And you gave - so, so much of your life to give me another chance."

He hesitated. "I suppose... I just wish I could have done the same, when it was you who needed me."

It was all too easy to think back to a much younger Stanley, newly homeless, newly brother-less, and see their parallels. Even easier to put himself into the shoes of the familiar-unfamiliar man who had showed up at his door all those years ago, stinking of exhaustion and defeat, a strange desperation in his eyes when he asked Ford why he had finally asked him to come back. What he could do so he didn't have to go away again.

And instead...

take this book, get on a boat, and sail as far away as you can!

Ford's expression tightened. "I should have," he said, voice rough, "and I am sorry I didn't."

"You couldn't have known," his brother said automatically.

"I shouldn't have needed to," he snapped with a ferocity that surprised even himself. "I - Listen to me,. You might have never wanted me to give up so much for you, but - I never wanted you to give up so much for me either."

Stan sucked in a breath. "But - Ford -"

"Stanley," Ford said, slowly, steadily, "if we want to make this work, we have to be worth just as much to ourselves as we do to each other."

His brother stared at him for a long, frozen moment.

Then, as if waking from a dream, Stan opened his mouth. Maybe to protest, maybe to agree, maybe to throw out some terrible unfitting joke that only related tangentially to the situation like he always did whenever the circumstances became emotionally dire.

Ford didn't know, but what he could be certain about was that this time, he would not let his brother shrug off his words with false nonchalance, that this time they could finally -

And, of course, it was at that very moment that the doorbell rang.

Both brothers froze at the sound, faces gone slack in the exact same blank expression of disbelief and confusion.

As if in reply to their unvoiced question, the bell rang yet again, almost plaintively.

It felt as if a spell had been broken. "Who the hell…?" Stan trailed off, patting at his wrists as if looking for a watch that was no longer there. "It's dark outside, but - shit, what time is it?"

"It's - late," Ford replied blankly, mind too fuzzy to be at all helpful. There was something nagging at the edge of his consciousness, something important that he had forgotten. What was it?

"...Y'know what," his brother said decisively, and stood straight. "I'll go and tell 'em to fuck off. How do I look, Sixer? Decent?"

He looked at Stanley's wildly mismatching, garishly colored outfit cobbled together from the tourist shop lost and found and Ford's wardrobe from when he was 28, which could only be described as "hopelessly tweed." Certain pieces somehow, against all laws of physics, managed to be at once too tight and too loose.

"You look absolutely terrible," Ford said bluntly.

"Perfect." Stan adjusted his three overlapping collars. "Then maybe I don't even have to say anythin' for them to run."

Ford bit back an exasperated sigh. "Stan, would you just wait a moment? There's something about this that's -"

The doorbell rang again. It was clear that their visitor had no intentions of leaving without an answer.

Stan gave him a Look. Ford relented, an entirely terrible decision he would later chalk up to a combination of sleep deprivation and the multiversal destabilization all the molecules in his body had gone through not even an hour before.

Decision made, his brother limped over to the door and fumbled momentarily with the inner locks. There was a satisfying click as the door unlatched and he turned the handle.

And, of course, it was at that very moment that Stanford remembered exactly what was so significant about having a stubborn visitor to the Mystery Shack so late at night.

"Stanley, wait!" He exclaimed, jumping to his feet, watching the door open in slow-motion. "It's Sher -"

"MISTER PINES!"

Ford blinked. The voice was - a familiar one, undoubtedly. Just... not even remotely close to what he was expecting to hear.

A quick, stunned glance confirmed his initial suspicions. The late night visitor to the Mystery Shack was Soos the handyman, the rather gopher-ish man who had become close friends with the niblings over the summer. And, he remembered with a twinge of sheepishness, the same person who had accompanied him on his trip into the woods and experienced with him the aftermath of his brother's ridiculous plan.

Without warning, the handyman in the doorway rushed forwards to enclose Stan tightly with two pudgy arms.

"I'm so glad you're okay, Mr. Pines!" He wailed, eyes moist. "After everythin' that was going on and all the stuff that other Mr. Pines told me, I was so worried that somethin' had -"

"...Soos?" Stan said slowly, clearly lost. Just slightly more so than Ford felt, a fact that gave him some reluctant pleasure. "Uh, Soos, what the heck are you doing here?" A moment passed, and then he added, completely unconvincingly, "Oi, leggo of me, ya big lug. Yer getting sweat all over me. And - " He squinted. "Is that my fez?"

Soos loosened his grip reluctantly and wiped at his gushing tears - not an exaggeration, Ford watched on with awe, despite possibly being not humanly possible. "I just wanted to see if you were alright, sir. And, oh yeah! Your fez!" His eyes widened. "I was gonna return it, Mr. Pines, I swear!"

"Yeah, I don't doubt that," Stan muttered, and squinted. "Uh, what are ya doing here anyways?" His eyes widened as the realization hit. "Wait, Soos, how did ya even know I was here?'

Soos paused, a sheepish expression on his face. "Oh, uh, about that, Mr. Pines -"

A familiar-unfamiliar figure stepped into view in the doorway. "Ford," it said dangerously, eyes glinting behind thick glasses, "you scared the shit outta me."

Stan blinked, entirely bewildered. "...Shermy? What the hell are you doin' here?"

She punched him directly in the jaw.

The next few seconds of movement passed too quickly for Ford to intervene.

His brother staggered backwards with (no, not a squeak, because Ford will give his brother that little bit of dignity even in the sanctity of his mental narration) an 'oof' of some pain and mostly surprise. "What the fu - hot Belgian Waffles was that?" He groaned, raising one hand to rub at his sore cheek.

"What the hell do you think I'm doing here, Ford?" Shermaine demanded, her left fist still clenched pale and bloodless against her side.

"I... don't know?"

She faltered. Her anger seemed to dissipate, replaced by something much more real.

"Why did you call me?" She asked, voice ragged. "What were you - what have you been thinking?"

Stan took a step backwards, confusion written clearly across his face. He glanced quickly at where Ford was standing, just slightly out of sight, in an obvious plea for help. "I... don't remember calling you? I mean," he added, in what seemed like a futile attempt to hold up his false identity, "not saying I didn't call you, but uh -"

For just a moment, her face fell - no masks, no guards, no performative fury to cover up the raw grief in her expression. "...What happened to you?"

Ford took in a deep breath and takes a - the single step forward.

"He didn't call you up here, Shermaine," he said, speaking to his younger sister face-to-face for the first time in three decades. It took every bit of self-control he had just to stop his voice from shaking.

"I did."

Shermy turned around slowly, face pale.

She looked at him like she had just seen a ghost, a dead man risen, like if she blinked even once he would disappear back into the realm of her imagination. Which, if she was anything like the rest of her family, were all entirely accurate descriptors of what she must have immediately - and understandably, he supposed, given the circumstances - concluded.

A long moment passed and gone. Ford just stood there, a small, sad smile on his face. He said, as gently as he could, "It's really me, Shermaine."

She looked at Stan, then back at him, then back at his - at their brother again.

"The two of you," Shermaine said thickly, a single hand held shakily to her mouth.

"You're both - both -"

To Ford's confusion, she fumbled in her purse for what he only barely recognizes from Dipper and Mabel's brief show-and-tell as a modern phone. Shermaine held it up, her arm visibly shaking, and looked at him through its screen.

"Um," he said.

"You can't take a picture of a hallucination, Sixer," Stan explained quietly. He looked on calmly, like he had seen the process many times before. More likely than not, he had, Ford realized, reminding himself of the many years of shared life between the two that he had missed out on.

Shermaine made a small, broken sound. The phone slipped from her slack grip and smacked loudly on the ground.

The handyman reached out a hand as if in pain.

"Don't worry 'bout it, Jesús," she said distantly, slowly putting her arm down to dangle limply at her side. "I got an Otterbox. That thing can survive a nuclear meltdown."

There was a brief moment of silence as the three Pines siblings stared at each other, none of them particularly willing to be the first one to speak. Just when it got to the point of becoming truly uncomfortable, Shermaine sighed.

"Do me a favor, will ya, sweetheart?" She said to the handyman with easy familiarity. "I'm gonna have a talk with my idiot brother." A hesitation. "Brothers. Fuck. ...You might want to come back in a bit."

The handyman fidgeted, sneaking a look at Stanley. "Well -"

"Probably a good idea," his brother sighed. "Sorry about gettin' you involved in all of this, kid. We'll talk later, yeah?"

That got Soos in motion. "Sure thing, Mr. Pines!" He saluted. "By the way, Mrs. Pines! Abuelita told me to tell you, uh, felicidades!"

"On winning the 9th annual Pines-Ramirez pickle-eating contest, or on the Pulitzer?" Shermaine asked after a moment of thought. Ford gave Stan an incredulous look.

The handyman paused in contemplation. "Sorry Mrs. Pines," he said apologetically. "I think Abuelita only follows the pickles."

Then he was gone, and it was just the three of them. The silence in the house felt suddenly, uncomfortably oppressive.

"So," Shermaine said. She looked between the two of them like she wasn't sure whether she wanted to hug them or kill them.

Ford tried his best not to seem apprehensive. "Yes?"

"You're both alive." She hesitated. "You're both - here."

"Yeah," Stan said awkwardly. "Well. We've got a, uh, whole lot of explaining to do, I know, and we can definitely -"

"Are you kidding me?" Shermaine exclaimed, clearly caught between exasperation and astonishment. "Do - do I look like that's what I want from you two right now?"

"Er -" Stan said, but whatever he wanted to say after that was forgotten as he was promptly yanked into a bone-crushing embrace.

"Thank God I didn't lose you too," she muttered, voice muffled against the scratchy cloth of his shirt. Stan let out a pained wheeze when she squeezed.

After a long moment, Shermaine loosened her grip. She turned and shot Ford a look of pure disbelief. "What are ya doing still standin' there?"

"Er," Ford said unsurely, "I -"

She groaned. "Get over here and let me hug you, ya dingus."

He approached them slowly, carefully. But really, it was all over the moment he got into grabbing range.

Ford and Stan stood tense and breathless for a long moment as Shermaine held them tight and pressed her face into both of their shoulders, at the space where the two met.

After a long, frozen moment, she let out a long, ragged breath. Her grip slackened, and let go. "You assholes," Shermaine announced, voice low. If there was a moistness in her eyes, no one was idiotic enough to mention it. "I can't believe you two. Fuck."

"Shermaine -"

"You - absolute - fucking - assholes."

Stan winced. "Fair enough."

All three of them were quiet for a long moment.

"How long?" Shermaine asked finally, voice choked.

"Just a couple weeks, Sherm." Stan said tentatively. "Ford hasn't been back for long at all."

Shermaine blinked slowly. "'Ford,' you said," she intoned flatly.

He coughed, alarm written bright and clear across his face as Stan realized the mistake of what he had said. "Um, yeah, about that -"

"Either you've picked up the habit of referrin' to yourself in third person in the past week, or -" Her eyes glinted. "I've been missing the wrong brother for the past thirty years."

Stan hung his head.

"I'm Stanford," Ford said, cutting in hurriedly because clearly Stan needed some help sorting out the hurt his - at the time - convenient lies had dished out to everyone involved. "He's Stanley. I was the one who called you, but..." He hesitated. "He was the one you've known for all of these years."

Shermaine stared at him for a long moment, as if she hadn't been expecting him to talk at all. Considering he - or at least, 'Stanley' - had been some sort of cautionary tale for their family for decades, he supposed that was more or less understandable.

"Oh," she said finally. "Alright. Okay."

There was a beat. "No, actually, that's not okay. Ford - Stanley - whoever you are," Shermaine brandished a finger furiously at Stanley, who winced at the sudden attention. "You've had thirty years to tell me all of this. Any of this. And now it turns out you're our long-dead brother that you've been - pretending to grieve for all this time and -"

Her voice cracked.

"Sherm," Stan said slowly, "I can explain."

"Can you explain why you lied to me for all these years?" Shermaine snapped immediately. Then she paused, her eyes widening in slow, horrified realization. "...No, not just to me. Our whole family." Her expression hardened. "Our parents died thinking you were gone."

"I know. I know, Sherm." He took a long, ragged breath. "There's nothin' I can say that can fix things, but I... gotta explain. Maybe it won't make up for any of what happened, but just - gimme a chance, alright? To tell ya everything I couldn't during all these years."

Shermaine looked at him quietly for a long moment. "...This is a lot," she said, voice low. "You know that. This is a fucking lot."

"Yeah, Sherm," Stan said hollowly. "It - really is."

She sighed and massaged the bridge of her nose with two fingers.

"I need a fucking drink." 

"So," Shermaine said, an hour and an impromptu scavenger hunt in the Mystery Shack later. She nursed a small but very dangerous amount of whiskey from Ford's - or possibly Fiddleford's, which was even more alarming - thirty-year-old stash. "Armageddon."

"We've been referring to it as Weirdmageddon, actually," Ford ventured. "But in hindsight, 'Oddcapalypse' certainly has a ring to it -"

"Ford, shut up." He flinched. She went quiet. "...Sorry. I didn't mean that. I just. God."

"I know it's a lot to take in," Ford said tentatively. "And certainly very difficult to believe. But I swear to you, this is the truth."

"Demons, dimensional portals and coming back from the fucking dead," Shermaine said dully. "No, actually, I got that part just fine. Honestly, Ford - fuck, it feels weird to even call you that - I've seen enough weird shit in my life and especially as part of this family that I really have no place to say what's make-believe in this world and what's not."

"Oh."

He... had no idea what to say to that. There should be some sort of relief, shouldn't there? Ford knew better than most how entirely unwilling to believe people could be when it came to the strange and abnormal. "That's - wonderful, Shermaine, I'm glad you're taking this so well -"

He realized almost immediately that that was the wrong thing to say.

"The only reason I seem to be taking this so well," Shermaine said calmly, dangerously, as she set down her cup, "is because seein' the two of ya here, even if I don't have a goddamn clue how this is happenin', is infinitely better than what I was afraid I was gonna find once I made it up here. Which, just so you know, is that the only brother I've got left had lost his goddamn mind on me - and had brought my grandkids along for the ride."

"That's -"

"Here's a secret, Stanford. I'm not takin' this well at all. Because what I don't get," she continued, a promise in her words as she turned to stare down Stanley, "is exactly what part of that was stopping me from getting told the truth for thirty goddamn years?"

Stan had been quiet for awhile now - a particularly guilty silence, Ford saw with the clarity of hindsight. "I was gonna tell you all of this once I got Ford back, Sherm," he said gruffly, not meeting Shermaine's angry look.

(No, he wasn't, Ford realized with a burst of horrified understanding. Because he had never expected to survive long enough to tell the truth, and he had thought Ford would have been perfectly fine with stepping into the hole he left behind.

...After this, after all of this, he was going to give his brother a good talking-to.)

"So in the meantime, you decided to impersonate him and let us all go on believin' you were dead?" She asked disbelievingly.

"Sherm, I wasn't even sure if I was myself -"

"I coulda told you that, you knucklehead!"

Stan stared at her with wide eyes. "Uh -"

"We both remember what you did for me, Fo - Stan," Shermaine said through gritted teeth. Ford watched on in confusion.

He winced. "That doesn't have anythin' to do with this, Sherm -"

"Yes it does," she bit out. "Because decades ago I was a scared kid because I was gonna have a kid, and I didn't think there was a single person in the whole world who wouldn't flip their lid on me if they knew. You were holed up north so you didn't have to risk giving yourself away, but you still picked up when I called. And you said yes and cleared out the spare room in the Shack, and -"

"What the hell are you talkin' about, Sherm?" Stan exclaimed, disbelief written large across his face. "Of course I did, what kind of brother would've left you hanging? Hot Belgian waffles, what kind of monster would've..."

He trailed off in slow realization.

"Exactly!" Shermaine shouted, eyes wild. He stared at her as if she had yanked a rabbit out of a hat and promptly threw it at his face. "So Stan, how the fuck did it take you three whole decades and the almost end of the world to figure this out yourself?"

Ford looked between the two of them in a strange mixture of morbid curiosity and a sensation of inexplicable loss. Inexplicable, because it was entirely illogical to expect to understand, to feel as if he had lost something he had never had, to -

To feel like an outsider looking in.

(Thirty years was a very long time, he felt - really felt - for the first time since returning to this dimension.)

"I - look. Stan. I get why you didn't want to tell Dad. Even Ma." Shermaine took a long, deep breath, her grip tightening on the glass in her hand.. "But, at the very least... why couldn't you tell me?"

Stan flinched, and looked away.

"Did ya really think I would've ratted you out if you told me what really happened between you an' Ford?" She demanded thickly. "Or did ya think I wouldn't believe you? Because I would've believed you, seeing how for some reason, I trust you!"

"I know, Sherm," he said roughly.

"So why?"

They looked at each other for a long moment. "I dunno," Stan said at last, each individual word coming out slow and reluctant. "I was stupid, I dunno. I don't have a real good answer for you."

"Well, ya better think of one, or -"

"I guess." He swallowed. "I guess, I just didn't wanna disappoint you."

Shermaine stared at him. "No," she said tonelessly. "No."

Stan's expression didn't change.

She exploded. "You knucklehead, what the hell made you think I would be disappointed if I knew you were actually you?"

He didn't meet her eyes, and that was answer enough.

Shermaine let out a long, deep breath. "Do I - do I look like Dad to you?" She demanded, eyes wild and just slightly moist. "Because I'm not him. Lord knows I've tried my best not to be, all of these years. You know that."

"I'm sorry, Sherm," Stan said roughly.

The silence hovered around them for a long moment.

"I still can't believe you're him," she said at last, voice blank. "That - you're you. Everything I heard growing up, all those files I searched up, those fucking pictures - that was you. This whole fucking time."

"That - doesn't change anything, Sherm," he tried.

"No, Stanley. It changes everything." Shermaine sighed. "I - can't talk about this anymore. I need time," she said roughly. "Enough time to sort out this clusterfuck that's in my head right now."

She glanced over at Ford, who had been sitting rather stiffly to the side during the whole exchange, unsure of how - or even if he should - add anything to the conversation.

"Hi, Stanford," Shermaine said slowly, deliberately.

He fidgeted slightly under the weight of her gaze. "Hello, Shermaine," Ford replied rather awkwardly.

"I wanna apologize to you right now," she said, matter-of-fact. "Because now that I think about it, I don't remember much about you at all, and you deserve a whole lot more than that. Just that..."

Shermaine trailed off in thought. "That your hands always smelled like chemicals, and you dropped an apple on my head once, so you could tell me about Newton."

He remembered that too, in some distant part of his brain he had thought lost to time and hurt. It suddenly became very difficult to speak. "You don't need to apologize to me, Shermaine," Ford said gently.

"Yep, I do," she said, just as calmly. "Someone does, because you've missed out on a whole lot all these years, Ford. You've missed out on meeting two whole generations of Pineses because you had to go all - Stargate-y."

Ford's expression tightened at the reminder of what he had lost. "I'm well aware," he said stiffly.

"Might not be anyone's fault," Shermaine said contemplatively. "But as far as I'm concerned, someone's gotta fix it."

She paused. "And that someone's me."

Ford blinked. Shermaine downed the rest of her drink in one go, and began to get up shakily.

"Sherm -" Stan - tried - to interrupt, a look of concern on his face.

"Stanford," she announced, voise rising in volume as she stood, "consider yourself back in school. You are officially enrolled in a little crash course I like to call, 'Pines Family 101: A Drunk History,' starting..."

Shermaine checked her watch, only swaying slightly. "Right fucking now. Who's gonna help me grab my bags from the trunk?"

"Hell, Sherm, you brought the family photo albums?" Stan asked, pained.

"Every volume," she said cheerfully, and Ford could not miss the resemblance to a certain glitter-loving nibling. "And we're going through all of them. Together."

Life moved very quickly after that.

Maybe it was making up for lost time. There had been, after all, many, many photos to be seen. It was a pleasant surprise to realize that blood relation was quite possibly the least important factor of what it meant to be part of the Pines family as it existed now. Ford blinked blearily as he was introduced to second cousins and adopted aunts and more in-laws than he could count on both hands.

At one point, he thought he had seen a man with his niblings' wide grin, his arms around a woman with their curious eyes.

By the time he had 'graduated' from Shermaine's crash course, dazed and overwhelmed but full with emotion in a way he could not put into coherent words, Ford had been told the date of the next big family reunion and been made very aware of the fact that a great number of people attending would Very Much like to meet Great-Uncle Ford-But-Not-The-Other-Great-Uncle-Ford-Who-Was-Actually-Great-Uncle-Stanley-This-Whole-Time.

("But you should definitely ease yourself into it," Shermaine had said sheepishly, upon catching the expression of pure panic on Ford's face. "We're a bunch of weirdos and I love them to pieces, but I'd be the first to admit that we are a whole lot. So take your time, y'know? They'll understand.")

And then Shermaine was gone, because apparently - to his entire lack of surprise - she hadn't said much at all to anyone else when she started on her cross-country drive over to Gravity Falls. Now that she was satisfied that neither of her brothers was dead or dying or would be in the foreseeable future, she had a great deal of explanations to give herself, back home in California.

The Shack was very quiet after that.

But even so, between giving more-or-less adequate explanations to everyone who had a right to know (which was quite a bit more than Ford had expected, even knowing how deep his brother's connections ran in this town) and dealing with the constant crowd of townspeople clamoring for a reopening of the Mystery Shack, a few long days had passed before Stan and Ford got a moment to themselves to just... pick up their pieces.

It finally happened on a particularly nice summer evening, the kind with just enough of the occasional breeze to have a comfortable chill to it. The two of them sat perched on the back porch of the Shack, looking up at the many brilliant stars that hung distantly in the sky.

Ford could never say what triggered the thought in his mind, or if there even was a trigger at all. Maybe it had been there all along, just waiting to be spoken into existence.

There was something about the heavy darkness of the sky that made him contemplative and thoughtful. After that, it was just a matter of time before it slipped out.

"Stanley?" He spoke, his voice uncomfortably loud in the ambient noise of the Pacific Northwest woods.

His brother shifted next to him. "Yeah?"

"What happened to Six-Sights, in the end?"

Ford's words came out all in a rush, and he wanted to take them back the moment he realized he had spoken them out loud.

Stan was still, and for a long moment, it felt as if the entire world was holding its breath.

"I figured this was coming," his brother said finally, but there was no fear in his voice, no surprise. He leaned back, propped himself up with his own arms. "So. There's a long answer, and there's a short answer. Which one you wanna hear first?"

"...Maybe for once the universe will allow me to take the simpler path," Ford mused to himself, and found it entirely impossible to believe. Still... "The short answer, if you would?"

"They're still here."

Ford blinked. Opened his mouth, closed it again. "...I see," he said at long last, mind racing through more doomsday scenarios than he wanted to count. "Stanley, I mean this in the best possible way, but that particular answer brings me a great deal of fear and anxiety for the immediate future of the world."

"Not like that, geez." His brother rolled his eyes. "I meant, still here." He patted himself on the chest.

For a moment, it felt as if there was no more breath in his lungs. "But you're - you're human now," Ford said faintly, and it sounded more like a question than a statement.

"'Course I am, Sixer. I wouldn't have lied to you about that, geez. I'm just sayin'..." Stan was quiet for a moment. "The deal that we had going on. You remember that it goes both ways, right?"

"Yes," he said slowly, unsure of what his brother was getting at.

"So I get what I want. And they get what they want. You already know what I wanted, and it was easy enough when all they wanted was whatever Cipher told them to want." Stan hesitated. "Things... got a lot more complicated once they got a taste for what consciousness was like."

"They began to want something different," Ford said with no small amount of trepidation. He had trusted an eldritch being knowing that it was mostly his brother holding the reigns, but the thought of an existence beyond all human comprehension given access to whatever they wanted was entirely - and understandably - terrifying.

A particularly upsetting question popped into his head. "But - what could something like them want?"

Stan snorted in laughter. "Sorry," he muttered when Ford turned to stare, a strange smile still on his face. "It's just. I remember asking that too, way back when. Exact same question. Fiddleford had been giving me the whole spiel about eldritch whatchamacallits, and this was the only one he couldn't answer. Didn't want to answer, more like."

He grinned to himself. "But I figured it out, in the end. Figured it out before you two, even."

"I believe you've had," Ford said delicately, "what most would call an unfair advantage."

Stan shrugged. "Point taken. But just think about it, Ford. People can't make sense of them, but... we couldn't make sense of people either, y'know? Humanity was a whole - way of existing we'd never even considered. It was ridiculous, it was overwhelming, and y'know what?" He grinned, only slightly maniacally. "It was addicting."

He blinked, unsure if he had heard wrong. "I'm not quite sure what you're -"

"See, you've got some - ageless, all-knowing fact of the universe, and they've got everything that anyone could possible want." A strange, distant expression passed over his brother's face. "But what the hell is any of that good for if you're not living?"

For a moment, it felt as if the night got just that much darker.

"Of course we wanted more," Stanley said, voice rough. "After the deal, we never could've gone back to the way we were before."

"Um," said Ford.

His brother blinked, and grinned a bit sheepishly. When he spoke again, the strange tone in his voice was gone. "Sorry. It's, uh, a bit... hard to separate things out nice and clean after all of that, y'know?"

"But what you are now is human," he said searchingly. "Entirely, completely, human."

"That was the deal, wasn't it?" Stan said, matter-of-fact. "I get my brother back. And we get to be human."

...Ford could not help but notice that he hadn't actually answered the question. Somehow, he couldn't bring himself to be concerned.

They sat in companionable silence for a while, occasionally slapping at the mosquitos that had begun to emerge from the nearby lake.

"So you're okay with that?' Stan asked suddenly.

The question was so ridiculous Ford had to fight the urge to laugh out loud. "I - Stanley, did you forget every single word I said to you while you were having your world-ending identity crisis?"

"No! I just - this is different, Ford." He fidgeted. "And it was the end of the world back then, I figure maybe you had -"

"Yes, Stanley, I'm okay with that," Ford said, and could not keep the exasperation from his voice. "It really isn't as entirely offputting as you seem to think. It's not as if you're not you." He paused. "They're just - you, too."

A thought popped into his head at that, and he found himself looking up at the dark sky. The entirety of the existence that Bill called 'Six-Sights' must have spanned - planets, galaxies, even, perhaps even outside of the human perception of physical size.

"...But you're not all of them, are you?"

"Yeah, I mean," his brother shrugged. "We never were. There was a lot of - us. The bit of us that got let onto Earth by Cipher was, uh, just one part in a billion billions. Maybe more."

"And the rest of them is - still out there, in whatever corner of the universe they existed in before Bill prodded them awake," Ford muttered out loud. "Doing whatever they've always done."

It was a strange thought. He had been vaguely aware of the entity's existence in his years traveling across the multiverse, but with the revelations of the past few days, he could not help but - perhaps wrongly - think of them with some degree of sympathy.

A strange expression flickered over Stan's face. "...Yeah."

Ford blinked. For a moment, he could have sworn - "You know something," he accused.

"What? No!" His brother hesitated. "...Maybe. It's nothin', honestly."

"Then it shouldn't be any issue for you to catch me on what exactly it is that I don't know. Right, Stanley?"

"Alright, alright. Just, uh." Stan paused, cleared his throat. "We were part of the same them for thirty years. Everything we saw, and felt, and got... they did too."

Ford didn't get the significance of that for a long moment. When the realization finally hit, it hit like a battering ram.

"What you're saying," he said slowly, "is that there is - at least some part of them remembers being you. Being my brother."

Ford tensed, his thoughts barreling towards a conclusion he did not want to accept. "And... it knows full well that they can never come home."

His brother's silence spoke volumes.

Cold horror flashed through him. "That's -"

"Ford, we don't know that," Stan said quickly. "You're overthinking it, honestly. This is thirty years of living compared to what, eternity?" He sighed. "See, what I think is, all of that was probably just one long blink for Six-Sights. Then it's all back to status quo."

"You don't actually think that," Ford accused.

"Sure I do," his brother lied, and let out a sigh. "C'mon, Sixer. Don't do this. Even if you're right about that, what can ya do about it?"

He didn't know, and that was bothered him the most. Ford felt a chill that did not come from the summer breeze.

A hand landed heavily on his shoulder and almost sheepishly, patted him sympathetically.

"Hey," Stanley said awkwardly. "Don't worry about them, alright? If they're anything like me, they'll figure something out. They'll - make it work for them."

Ford swallowed, hard. "...I suppose," he allowed.

They sat in silence together for a moment. When Ford looked at the night sky again, the darkness was almost solid.

For a long moment, he felt surrounded, from every side, every angle. He was within, somewhere deep inside the innards of some colossal existence, part of the bigger whole, and -

...There was something deeply familiar about the blackness of the night, the faint glint of stars that he could have sworn he had seen somewhere before, in a memory of green so deep in his mind that he could not be sure if it existed.

For a reason that he could never put into words or explain, not even to himself, he knew he was protected here.

...Maybe his brother was right, after all.

Ford thought about how Stanley had managed to repair the portal with a few dozen textbooks and pure tenacity, had subsumed an eternity-old fact of the universe out of sheer willpower, had out-manuevered a demonic con-man purely on the basis of his love for his family.

If there was anyone who could make the most out of being an age-old eldritch abomination suddenly given human consciousness, it was him.

"Ford," Stan said suddenly, his voice crashing through Ford's thoughts like a bull in a china shop. "I've been thinking about what you said."

"Hmrg?" He managed.

"Y'know. Before Shermy knocked on the door."

Oh. His mouth suddenly felt very, very dry. "Have you."

Stan didn't speak for a moment. Then, with no small amount of panic, blurted, "We need to make it work, don't we?"

"Er."

"Shermy knows there's two of us now. So does the rest of - well, everyone else." His brother fidgeted. "And they're not gonna settle down for any less than that, huh?"

With a burst of clarity, Ford saw exactly where this was going, and almost couldn't keep the relief off his face. "No, I daresay they won't," he said lightly.

They sat there, a silence stretching out into eternity.

"I can't promise anything," Stan said suddenly. "I just - can't, Sixer. I care about you and the kids too much to put myself above you all, and it ever comes down to it, then -"

"I'm not asking you to do that, Ley," he said gently. "Just to not put yourself below us."

A moment passed and gone. "I'll try," Stan said, voice hoarse.

Ford let out a breath, long and slow.

"That's enough for me," he said, and meant it.

And, despite himself, his thoughts began to drift, far, far away from the little town of Gravity Falls and the patch of Oregon forest that surrounded it.

Shermaine must have made it home by now, to Dipper and Mabel, and to a Pines family that Ford - should - have found strange and terrifying, because there was no one left that he knew.

And no one left that knew him.

But... what had surprised him was that when he had looked through those albums, learning a history he had thought lost to him with Stan and Shermaine throwing out embarrassing stories over his shoulder, he had not seen strangers. Ford had seen people he knew in parts, again and again - in bright grins and expressions of wonderment, to - a distinctive raised arch of an eyebrow that was all Ma.

...All the parts that made a family when shared.

Ford did some calculations in his head. 

If this year's reunion was in Piedmont, Northern California, then - that was near the ocean, wasn't it? 

And that really wasn't too far from Gravity Falls, geographically speaking, though one should - theoretically, completely theoretically - have some degree of nautical experience before attempting the journey.

Which, as far as he was concerned, just meant that they needed to get right on it.

"Stanley," Ford said, "how do you feel about buying a boat?"