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inkyrainstorms · 3 months ago

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The Martian Stan AU - The Beginning

“Is that it?” Stan asked, his voice burning and rising like the coming tide, vicious and overwhelming and inevitable. Ford’s shoulders tightened involuntarily, and he threw his brother as scathing of a glare as he could manage. Couldn’t Stan see that this, Ford’s problems, were important? “You call me all the way here after ten years, just to tell me to get as far away from you as possible?!”

If Ford was any less exhausted, if the hole in his left hand and the hole in his heart were any less gaping, and the fresh scrapes and cracked fingernails ached any less, he might’ve taken a step back to apologize. To explain that it wasn’t about what Ford wanted, or what Stan wanted. It was about stopping Bill, and saving the world.

If Ford were a different man, he’d reconsider his approach and find a way to fix the chasm that seemed to yawn wider with every word that came out of each of their mouths. But as it was, Ford was not a different man. He couldn’t even fix himself.

So Ford instead felt indignation sting like hot coals in his gut and urge him to step forward, closer to Stanley. His brother took an involuntary half-step back. “Stanley, you don’t understand what I’ve been through!”

“What you’ve been through!” Stan kept talking even as Ford pushed past him, fury etched onto every word like a brand. “No, no, you don’t understand what I’ve been through! I’ve been to prison in three countries, and I once had to chew my way out of the trunk of a car!”

He got up in Fords face when Ford turned back, his brows drawn low and finger jabbing into Ford’s abdomen. He didn’t realize it, because of course he didn’t, but he’d pressed right into one of the bruises on Fords ribcage from his trip down the stairs earlier that day. Ford grit his teeth and glared back.

“You think you’ve got problems? I’ve got a mullet Stanford!”

Why couldn’t Stan take Fords problems seriously? Was he really cracking jokes at a time like this?

Ford couldn’t take it anymore.

Oblivious to the dangerous precipice Fords stability had drawn close to, Stan got bitterly sarcastic. “Meanwhile where have you been? Holed up in your fancy house in the woods and living it up, selfishly hoarding all—“

Ford went still. If he’d been a slightly different man, a slightly more composed man, perhaps, he’d have fired back another jab at his twin, because how could the man that ruined Fords life and betrayed his complete and total trust call him selfish?

There was a different voice, at a different time altogether too recent and a lifetime ago. His monstrous Muse, his most trusted friend, taking his body on a fucking joyride and then having the gall to look him in the eyes and say “YOU’RE PRETTY SELFISH IQ”.

Ford had just kept on weeping blood.

As it was, Stan didn’t get a chance to finish his rant. He was much too busy receiving a solid punch to the face and staggering back against the force of it. For a moment, all was quiet. Ford was shaking, he realized distantly, staring blankly at his brother. His knuckles stung from the impact.

Stan took more time to recover than Ford would’ve thought, but when he finally did, it was with a new layer of dark fury that Ford hadn’t ever seen from him before. Stan lowered the book from where he’d clenched it to his chest, and pulled out a lighter. “Fine.” He whispered roughly, though it echoed in the cavernous room anyway. Louder, then, “Fine! You want me to get rid of it so bad? I’ll get rid of it right now!”

A challenging fire burned in Stan’s eyes, and with a flick, it burned in his right hand too. Ford’s journal dangled above the hungry, all consuming light.

Ford couldn’t breathe. Every piece of himself he’d had to let go of, that he’d lost to Bill and all that he was giving up to rectify his own mistakes, all to see Stan get rid of part of his life’s work right before his eyes.

How dare he.

Ford let out a guttural shout and lunged for the book. Stanley, evidently not expecting this, stumbled back and tried to move the lighter before Ford and him could get burned from it in the tussle.

He only partly succeeded. Ford hissed at the momentary new pain shooting up the underside of his hand as he tried to grab for the book and Stan flat out dropped the lighter in response. His brother faltered for a split second, his brow creasing.

“Sixer, I—“

Ford didn’t let him finish. The second he heard the nickname, some part of him blanked out entirely, and the buzzing in his ears sounded like an angry hornet in his skull. “Don’t,” he grit out, and he’s sure his voice was much too thick and angry and he wasn’t being rational but he couldn’t bring himself to care. “Call me that!”

When Ford lunged for the journal anew, he tackled Stan to the ground as his brother instinctively tightened his own grip on the book. Ford’s book.

“Why not?!” Stan cried out, trying to pry Ford off of him and only succeeding in rolling the two on the ground away from the portal. Ford couldn’t figure out if he sounded more hurt or concerned. The hurricane in his chest kept him from thinking on it too much.

Ford let out a wordless grunt in response, as the two of them, having grappled up to stand, slammed straight through the door and Stan tried to pin him down onto one of the control panels, before Ford managed to gain enough momentum to roll Stan off of him. They were throwing punches and shouting insults they probably didn’t mean, and after a minute long struggle where they surely broke every damn thing in that control room —and good riddance, Ford tried to think but he was too tired to think much at all— Stan had shouted with all the ferocious desperation of a drowning man, “why can’t you listen to me, damnit! You ruined my life!”

Ford had retorted, because of course he did, with “You ruined your own life!” as he finally got a good grip on the book and kicked Stan away with enough force to shove him against the side of one of the control panels.

Stan’s scream was abrupt and guttural and horrifying. It cut through the haze in Fords mind with all the precision of a scalpel, dropping a rock of dread into his gut. Ford backed away as quickly as he could, and didn’t even register his journal slipping through his slack fingers to land facedown on the ground. He felt sick.

“Stanley! Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry!”

For a few, horrible, horrible seconds, Stan laid there, slumped and unmoving from where he’d hunched onto the floor. The burn— the brand on his shoulder looked angry and hot against his skin. It had burned clean through his coat and shirt.

Ford took a few hurried steps closer, shaking so hard he could barely walk, when Stan groaned. “Stanley…” he started, but trailed off as Stan pulled himself to his feet. His eyes were darker than Ford had ever seen them before. Stan was shaking too.

“You really want your dumb mysteries that bad?”

And Ford wanted to say, no, no he didn’t, because Stan still held his shoulder stiff as he could and his grip was knuckle-white where he’d used it to brace his arm against his side, because Ford had branded his own twin.

But the words stuck in his throat, because he realized with a start that Stan and him weren’t the ones shaking. The room was. His eyes shot to the portal.

His magnum opus and his curse, his Dadaleus’s Labyrinth, was activating.

A sudden movement from Stan snapped Fords attention back to his injured, angry brother. Ford took a few cautious steps out of the control room and held up his hands placatingly as Stan advanced. His brother was blocking the doorway, but Ford needed to get in there, he needed to activate the shutdown procedure. “Stan, please,” he said weakly, not sure what exactly he meant. Let me through? Wait? Let me help you?

He didn’t get the chance to find out, though, because Stan continued talking, hefting up the journal he’d evidently picked up from the floor while Ford was distracted. “Well you can have ‘em” Stan said viciously, and Ford could hear the pain in it clear as day as he moved to shove the book into Ford’s hands.

Ford dodged Stan attempt, careful to not touch Stan’s injured shoulder, and weaved around him. “Stan, please, wait.”

Stan laughed, turning around. His grin looked painful. “I’m tired of waiting, Si— Stanford. I really am.”

Ford didn’t have time for this. His heart ached in ways Ford didn’t have the time to decipher as the humming in the room got louder, and he turned to move back to the control room. “Just a moment, Stanley, I just need—“

When Stan latched onto his arm and tried to whirl Ford back around, Ford reacted on pure instinct and deep seated paranoia, that kind that can only be born from aftermath of pure devastation. He followed the momentum and shoved Stan back as hard as he could, turning and sprinting to the control room before Stan could recover and try to stop him again.

“Stanford?”

He never got there. Stan’s voice, suddenly small and scared, ground Ford’s pace to a halt. The humming was louder now, reverberating through his chest.

“Ford, what’s happening?”

For a terrible moment, Ford didn’t turn around. He just stared at the door of the control room as if he could stop time if he tried hard enough. He didn’t want to see. Seeing made it real. It meant his worst fears had become true, it justified the cold sinking in his chest.

“Ford!”

Ford whirled around and let out a hoarse cry. There Stanley was, greasy hair floating in a halo around his face, one hand outstretched and the other holding Ford’s journal tight to his chest. Ford had pushed him over the danger line.

The look on his twins face was worse than Ford could’ve ever imagined.

The anger had drained out of him, the closer he floated to the all consuming blue light of the portal. The was naked terror in his eyes, and he cried out for Ford again.

“Stanley! Hold on, please!” Ford said, before making another break for the control room.

He needed to shut it off right this instant.

“Hold onto what, brainiac!?”

“I don’t know, Stanley! Anything within reach, just don’t let yourself go through the portal.”

Ford input the shut down code. He input it again. He then realized that they’d knocked the cords out of alignment and frantically began adjusting them from where they were wired into the top of the control panel. Shit, they really broke everything in this room, didn’t they?

The third time he input the code, the light flashed green, and the keys made themselves known on a panel adjacent to Ford’s position by the window.

Three keys. Of course. Why did he have to make it three keys, all turned simultaneously?

Metal screeched in the portal room, and when Ford dared to glance up between trying to maneuver himself to turn all three keys, a jolt of horror swept through him and nearly knocked him off his feet.

Stan has nearly entirely consumed by the light now, clawing at the edge of the portal he’d managed to reach. Ford cursed himself when he realized that the metal plate Stan was holding, as well as over a dozen others, were loosening to the point of nearly falling off entirely from the main frame. The other objects he’d scattered across the floor of his lab, everything from basic tools like screwdrivers to bigger machine parts floated through the portal at increasingly high speeds.

Ford wouldn’t need to do anything, he realized, and it wasn’t the comfort he wished it was. The portal was destabilizing. Judging by the erratic pulsing the portal light was doing, it’d be closing soon.

Ford ran out of the control room and stopped short just as Stan locked eyes with him again.

“Stanley!” he called, another desperate idea beginning to form in his panic addled mind as he scanned the room for spare rope and found none. The spare rope from the first portal test must’ve gotten caught in the portals expanding gravitational pull. His brother was barely a shadow in the light now, but Ford knew Stanley had heard him. “If you toss me the journal, I can—“

“The journal?” Stan gasped out, frenzied. “Is that still all you care about!?”

“No, no, if I just had the instructions, I could fix—“ this, fix everything.

The screeching of metal and thundering of the portal reached a deafening crescendo, and Ford could see Stan open his mouth to interrupt, to say something, assent or argument or—

But Ford didn’t get to find out what Stan would’ve said. A particularly violent jolt shook the metal frame of the portal, and Stan, with a wide-eyed final look that Ford didn’t know how to decipher, slipped.

His brother disappeared into the light just as the portal collapsed in on itself with enough concussive force to send Ford crashing to the ground. He slammed onto his back hard enough to knock the air from his lungs.

Silence fell over the room. It was dark.

Ford stared at the ceiling above him, then dragged his eyes, slowly, painfully, to the portal.

The deactivated, half missing and half obliterated portal.

For a long, long time, Ford sat in the dark under the full weight of every bruise and scratch and burn he’d sustained, and it was like he was underwater, head swimming with nausea and pain and bewilderment. He was numb.

A faint plip-plop sound echoed suddenly through the deathly silent basement, and Ford squinted at the sound through his crooked glasses, trying to identify the source.

A dark substance stained the edge of the portal, right where Stan had been holding on. Ford watched blankly as the liquid slowly rolled along the curve of the portal entrance, before reached a jagged gap in the perfect circle and slipping through. It slid down the jagged and crumpled panels, weaving until it gathered at the tip of a particularly jutting sheet of metal.

Another drip.

Another.

Ford shifted closer, simply trying to breathe. He pointedly didn’t think about how the other side of the portal had driven Fiddleford to seemingly the brink of madness in moments, he didn’t think about the glimpse into the Nightmare Realm Bill had given him when he first revealed his true hand, and he certainly didn’t think about the final look Stanley had given him, grief and rage and betrayal all rolled into one.

He finally got close enough to see the liquid for what it was. It wasn’t oil, like he’d figured, like he’d hoped and prayed with every inhale and exhale to the gods he didn’t believe in. It was too thick, congealing with familiar splatters on the floor. It was a deep crimson.

Stan must have cut his hand on the metal with how hard he’d been holding it, Ford realized, and the thoughts were the first crack in the dam Ford had buried himself beneath. This was Stan’s blood.

Stan was in the Nightmare Realm, bleeding from one hand and burned on the other shoulder and begging for Ford to do something, asking Ford what was happening because he didn’t know, because Ford didn’t tell him, and—

It was all Fords fault.

All of it.

Oh Moses.

The dam creaked with warning, a death rattle and a laugh rolled into one, before Ford was swept into the undertow.

Ford had killed his own brother.

All alone in the dark basement with the machine he’d turned into his brother’s grave, Ford buried his burnt, bloody hands in his hair and bowed his head until it hit his knees. All alone, Stanford Pines cried for the first time in years.

Alternate Titles: The Worst Conversation Ever

Or: Ford started disassembling the portal early and everything went to shit accordingly.

Tags! @aroace-get-out-of-my-face @pleasantartisanhottea @empressofsamoyeds @littlelilliana15 @pinefamilycatsau @thejaxindianrizzler (I saw your comment in the og post and it made me laugh cause I was in the middle of working on this when I noticed it) (I hope you don’t mind the tag :))

if I missed anyone I’m sorry about that! The tag is always a fair option to follow too (#martian Stan au)

#If I had a nickel for every time one of these ended with Ford mourning his own brother and being mean to himself I’d have two nickels #If I collect enough maybe I’ll be able to afford his therapy (post fic comfort)#gravity falls #stanford pines #Stanley pines #tale of two stans #martian stan au #YES ITS A TAG NOW AHAH #This is us winning #Long post #my art #fanfiction #Once again saying for the record that Ford is a very biased guy. He’s constantly fist fighting himself and his brother and a literal god #Simultaneously #I love him and all his many many faults #Guys I might have to actually turn this into a proper Ao3 fic is this keeps up #I want to have most of it written before I do that though #So I’ll actually finish it #I think I’ll post excerpts here and there in the mean time :)) for you guys <3 #Gravity falls fic #mullet stan #paranoid ford #they’re in the trenches I fear #tw blood #Tw injury #cw uhhhh horrible miscommunication aha #Okay I’ll shut up now

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crybaby-bkg · 2 years ago

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cw: Bakugou dies but comes back to life, “comes back wrong” trope, implied fighting, angst

When Bakugou died, you’re not sure how you went on living. Grief had taken over your life, sat you in the passenger side while it cruised off the highway into icy waters. And even then, you couldn’t find the energy to drown.

It’s why there’s a sudden uptick of energy when you’re promised to have him back. Some top scientists contact you months after his death, tell you to hurry down to the headquarters labs, come and rejoice for what you’re about to witness. And you’re horrified, to say the least.

“This isn’t my husband.” Are your first words when you walk in, watch the figure on the other side of the glass examine its own hands. It looks like your husband but—but his hair isn’t the right shade of blond all over. His nose bridge had a slight bump after a scuffle with a villain. He had a scar on his hand but—but it never looked like it was to sew a pinky beside the other fingers.

“Is that really my husband?” You ask next in disbelief, slowly entering the room. Bakugou’s head snaps up, his eyes a little brighter than you remember but—they hold so much emotion. So much memory, so much panic, so much guilt.

“I left you.” He mutters, his voice raspy and ragged, and you wonder if it’ll always be like this now. It makes you cry a little harder than it should, but you only embrace each other. He’s cold and his shoulders don’t hold the same mass and his back doesn’t carry the same scars. There’s one, jagged and rough, running down his back, and you think, you think that’s where they slipped a new spine in.

“Welcome back home.” You tell him, weeks after meeting him again, new and not totally—Katsuki. He’s stiff and he doesn’t immediately take off his boots when he enters, and it worries you. Makes you think if you’ve just let a stranger into your home, one that has stolen your dead husbands face. Makes you wonder if he’ll be as loving as Katsuki once was, or if he’ll become your monster looming over you with the guilt of not being able to rest anymore.

“I’ve missed you so much.” You whisper against his mouth one night, a little while after he’s moved back. You don’t know why you lay under him, why you let him nestle himself inside of you, why you let him hold you against his chest. Katsuki always ran his hands over your cheeks and neck whenever he held you like this, but this…man, only holds himself up with his hands resting beside your head. It’s alien, how he looks at you, how his hips are methodically measured with every thrust, how he kisses you every 8 seconds. You wonder if he’s more robot than Frankenstein monster.

“Why did you come back to me like this?” You ask him one night, barricaded in the bathroom away from him. You can hear his sobs on the other side, his pleading to be let in. He tells you he never wanted to come back if he had to be like this, that he’s sorry, please let him in, he misses the warmth of your skin, he’s never been so cold before, he’s never liked the cold.

“Is this considered cheating?” You ask yourself aloud one night, when Bakugou is forced back to the lab when he becomes too…un-Bakugou. To sleep with a man that is your husband in every way but? Your husband has been dead for a year now, and yet you stroke the chin of the man that tries so hard to be him everyday, but fails so miserably at it every time.

“I’ll come back to you right this time.” Bakugou promises to you when he’s strapped down to leave for the lab and before he’s sedated. But you don’t believe him—you never did. Your husband is dead, and this animated corpse has been nothing but a cheap mockery of everything you’ve lost and something you will never truly get back.

#I was writing this and then checked my dash and saw another post about this #and felt so guilty and almost didn’t post it aidjdkfj #but I love this trope too much to delete it!!!!!#I’ve written about this in my published book before and it’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever written #there’s just such a deep heartache about having to grieve someone #and then the grieving process being interrupted by the one you lost #and battling with their death even though you still look at them everyday again #but it’s just not right?? it’s not the same??#they have the same face (kinda) but it’s truly not hem #not them* heck #it reminds me of a convo I had in a psych class about making a new cloned version of yourself #where the question was ‘is the clone/new version still you? or are they an entirely new person now?’#and at first I said they’re still me you know? they have my face n body n memories #but my prof told me no!! after they have been cloned they are sentient and are now their own person making new memories apart from you #and I thought that was soooo interesting and it makes me fall in love w this trope every time #you’re my person but only a version. you’re who I love but a newer person. you’re not them. you’re everything I’ve missed about them #so heartbreaking I LOVE ITTTT #sorry I’m rapping it’s the sleep meds kicking in #okay bai #bakugou treats! 🍬#—new treat in the streets! 🍫

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