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tinfoil-jones · 4 days ago

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Gravity Falls: What Did You Do? Ch. 2

Summary: "Sixer... what did you do?"

“Nine Lives Lee”, a rare Stanley Pines who ended up on the other side of the portal instead of his brother, literally falls into “The Better World”, the dimension that many versions of Stanford Pines tend to be jealous of and hold over Lee’s head as ‘proof’ that everyone would have been better off if he’d just done what his brother asked him.

The Ford of this dimension, however, isn’t quite what he seems. And neither is his version of Stanley.

Rating: T+

Warnings: Language, violence, medical related gore, and mentions of graphic violence. Cross-Posted on AO3 Here.

Disclaimer: Reverse Portal Stan "Nine Lives Lee" is owned by @urdadsceilingfan

This version of the Better World AU is owned by @mother-ofthe-universedraws

First - Next

Ch.2

Dimension-GB1100.

Yes, Lee had heard about it

It was known more commonly as “The Better World.”

Throughout the decades, Lee had met several versions of his brother, but fewer versions of himself. In most cases, it seemed, Stanford Pines was the one who ended up pushed through the portal, not Stanley Pines.

These meetings with alternate versions of his brother usually didn’t go well. The first ten years of separation in his own dimension had taught Lee that his twin could hold onto a grudge, and the following near-thirty years in the multiverse taught him that it was impossible for his twin to let go of a grudge.

Almost every version of Ford that he’s met projects their own feelings of frustration, anger, and resentment onto Lee himself, despite only being a variant of their Stanley, and not their original twin. They also conveniently looked past the fact that Lee was pushed through the portal by his Ford, underhandedly muttering under their breath that that must have been Lee’s fault too since he’s the Stanley of his dimension.

Lee was not above frustration or resentment himself - the first decade or so in particular was difficult as hope that his brother would do something to bring him back was dissipating and Lee had to come to the grim conclusion that he was on his own (not that it was a new concept to him, but nonetheless a painful pill to swallow). But it’s almost been three decades, he isn’t mad at his brother anymore. He just wants to see him again! His real brother, not bitter multiverse-weary versions of him.

“Name.” Dr. McGucket, the Fiddleford of Dimension-GB1100, asked him from across the table, taking Lee out of his thoughts. A sane McGucket this time, and he held a clipboard in hand as he questioned Lee.

Ford stood in the corner, leaning on his cane with his other hand hooked over his elbow. He was pretending to look away, but sneaking glances over at Lee every now and then, in an anxious way, almost like Lee might disappear or become uncooperative if he looks away for too long.

It was strange that Ford would be here for this interview, according to the other versions of Ford who’d come to this dimension “Dr. Pines” wasn’t one to give his dimensional variants the time of day.

“Lee.” He replied dryly

“Full name?” McGucket looked up from his clipboard.

“Lee.” He repeated, with emphasis. Whether it was the streets on Earth in his home dimension, or the streets amongst the vast multiverse, using your real, full name was dangerous. It was asking for trouble it was asking for-

“You…” Ford spoke up in the corner, his voice still rusty and seeming to sound older than they actually were “you used to go by ‘Stan’.”

-asking for vulnerability. You can’t be vulnerable and survive, you didn’t have that luxury anymore. Lee hasn’t had that luxury since he was seventeen years old.

Lee squinted his eyes slightly at him past his cracked, blocky glasses “Things change.” He replied, feeling the flickering embers of resentment and despair in his gut. He stomped those embers out quickly; this wasn’t his brother, he reminded himself. “I changed.”

Lee hadn’t gone by Stan in a long time, not since he came to the multiverse. Something about Ford - his Ford - telling him to leave with his journal and be as far away as possible from him, and then pushing him through a portal that did just that, something about that had snapped something in Lee all those years ago.

He wouldn’t let himself be defined by that shared suffix ever again, Ford already made it clear he wanted nothing to do with him, he could keep it.

“What’s your Dimension’s name?” Dr. McGucket interrupted the short exchange between the other two men.

“Dimension-CF9L.” Lee replied.

“Your designation is St– Lee-CF9L?” McGucket deduced, quickly correcting himself. At least he respected his preferences, and didn’t deadname him the same way so many versions of Stanford did.

“Ya got it.” Lee nodded half-heartedly.

Each dimension vibrated at their own frequency - and anything from that dimension, be it an object or a person, vibrated at that same frequency. No matter what dimension you were currently in, or how long you’d been away fron your dimension of origin, you were always going to be permanently set to that frequency.

That’s how universes were named, and designations for multiversal vagabonds like him were made. How Lee knew that his dimension was Dimension-CF9L even though he hadn’t stepped foot in it since half of his life ago.

Knowing the frequency of your dimension wasn’t enough to find home, though. Of course it wasn’t, it’s never that easy. You need to know the frequency, and the grid position. And grid positions on a multi-dimensional scale weren’t as simple as latitude and longitude like it was when he was on Earth (his own Earth); there were four ‘major’ coordinates, and two ‘minor’ coordinates. You couldn’t chart a course on a flat map when it came to dimensional travel, you needed an interactive 3D map.

Lee was fairly good at navigating dimensional grid coordinates– much better than he ever did with flat map grids; it was surprising, considering a lifetime ago when he dreamed of sailing the seas, he’d struggled with reading maps, but he had someone who was willing to to navigate those maps and charts. Or, he thought he had someone.

“Are you trying to imprison me?” Lee asked McGucket, while also glancing at Ford, who was the big boss of this institute according to, quite smugly, other Fords. “Ya definitely lookin’ at me like I’m about to jump ship.”

“You’re not a prisoner, Lee.” McGucket replied flatly. Even the rare sane versions of Fiddleford McGucket were anxious, so seeing one so collected was throwing Lee for a bit of a loop when it came to reading this one. “This is a necessary interview and quarantine.”

“Quarantine, huh? I don’t remember being sick, or agreein’ to stay here.”

“I can tell just by looking at it that your portal gun is low on charges. You’ll be needing more portal fluid soon, or you’ll be trapped where you are two jumps from now.” McGucket challenged, and quirked a white eyebrow at him.

Well damn, engineering genius got him there.

Ford spoke up, his words coming out surprisingly quick “We’d be happy to help you, Stanley, if you’d just-.”

“Lee.” He practically spat his reaffirment that time. He hated how Fords did that. They always disregarded what he said, especially when it came to his preferred name. And none of them ever bothered to-.

“Lee, we’d be happy to help you get the necessary resources for your portal gun.” Ford continued, and Lee blinked in surprise at him.

This was certainly new, most versions of his brother stubbornly refused to call him anything aside from what they wished. This was the first time one had actually listened to him.

Lee would almost find it sentimental if he wasn’t too busy finding it suspicious as Hell.

Ford had paused to see if Lee would respond, and continued to speak when he did not. “If you give us a list of materials we should be able to retrieve them for you, I only ask that you stay in quarantine while we do so.”

“Mhmm…” Lee replied, narrowing his eyes at this alternate version of his twin.

Most versions of Ford were on the thinner side compared to him, but it’d always been that way with Lee and his original twin so that wasn’t surprising, but this Ford was skinny. That was why in the dark he’d initially assumed he was McGucket.

Compared to all of these dimension hopping variants Lee had met, with their straight backed posture and confidence that bordered on smugness, this Ford looked very much frail. He even seemed a bit older with how little he weighed, with the way he was slightly hunched over his cane, and the eyebags that had eyebags.

This Ford was… hollow. It was hard to explain, but it was unsettling to Lee, and woke up something protective within him, something he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager and felt the need to protect his own brother. Is this what his real brother was like now, back in their original dimension? Older than his years, faded and weary?

“If you’ll wait here, we’ll get the necessary preparations.” McGucket picked up where his co worker left off, he also pulled a piece of paper and a pen from his clipboard and slid both items over to the other side of the interrogation table with Lee. “Write down the components of your portal fluid. We’ll be back with you shortly, if you’ll just stay patient.”

Lee kept his arms crossed and didn’t say anything, he just nodded quickly. They’d already confiscated most of his gear, including his weapons, so he wasn’t in a position to negotiate.

McGucket nodded back and walked towards the door, using his lanyard keycard on a scanner to open it. The door - which was made of some kind of interactive, projected hardlight, turned from red to blue, and McGucket was able to walk right through it.

Ford lingered for a bit before following, noticeably slower than his fellow researcher. Lee didn’t need to turn his head to know that he kept glancing at him, though.

“Take a picture, Stanford.” Lee said flatly, boredly. “It’ll last longer.” Ford didn’t respond, he only somehow deflated even further, before scanning his own lanyard ID and leaving the interrogation room.

---

“‘Back with you shortly’- my ass.” Lee muttered to himself out loud. After having been waiting there for at least two hours. Hard to tell when they swiped his watch.

He weighed his options. He could just keep waiting here, but the antsiness and anxiety was only making him more paranoid the longer he waited.

He knew that this was par for the course - other Fords had explained that they had been held here too, to avoid contact with their alternative self. It was a known phenomenom that if you make physical contact with an parallel version of yourself while either of you is in your home dimension, that dimension will collapse.

Rick had confirmed this to him, and explained further that he and his many alternate selves didn’t have to worry about this phenomenon because of an after effect of their own portal fluid ‘distorted’ enough of their dimensional frequency to prevent a ‘crash-out’. Stan’s portal gun utilized a different fluid though, and it didn’t have the same effect on him.

The way Lee came so close to collapsing that swamp dimension when he almost got into a physical altercation with the frog version of himself, ‘Mr. Ponds’...

But, he’d heard about this dimension enough times to know its vague history. The Ford of this dimension had sent his twin brother away with his first journal decades ago. That was the kicker of this dimension, and what every Ford variant who had been here liked to hold over Lee’s head like a noose.

Everything would have been better for everyone if you would have just listened to me, Stanley.

I'm giving you a chance to do the first worthwhile thing in your life and you won't even listen!

They never brought up Lee’s parallel self from this dimension, but knowing Ford they either didn’t ask because they assumed he was fine (they always assumed that about their own twin, after all), or he just wasn’t in Ford’s life at all and they never saw him.

Gambling man Lee was, he was betting on the latter. Ford didn’t have his twin in his life and he was going to use that to his advantage. He didn’t have a dimensional collapse to worry about.

Thankfully, when the nerds and their goons had confiscated his gear, they did leave him with something they’d assumed wasn’t important.

He had a thin gold chain around his neck and on that chain was a very old-fashioned looking key, looking like it was made of iron and thick enough to think it was just a decoration or, if being generous, it could open a lock the size of a softball.

But looks were often deceiving.

Guards did their arounds around this cell, doing a rough square around this wing of the building every fifteen minutes. Lee couldn’t see them, because the hard light door was opaque, but it wasn’t an effective barrier to sound, and judging from the footstep pattern Lee had been mentally keeping track of, there were only ever two guards together at one time. Two guards he could deal with, but if he got his timing just right, he could avoid the guards entirely.

He heard the steps fade in, then come close to the door, and then begin fading, and he made his move.

Taking the key off of his chain, Lee walked up to the hardlight door and pressed the large, pronged key to the scanner box.

There was a confirmation sound from the box, and the door turned from red to blue, allowing Lee to slip out finally.

The key may have looked like it was archaic and medieval, but it was one of Lee’s most sophisticated pieces of tech; The Space President’s Key. It opened any advanced sci-fi lock, the only drawback being that it didn’t work on traditional locks. He’d won it in a poker game a few years back in Dimension-HG42; it turned out that his opponent, Something Beeblebrox something, was the president of that galaxy.

Slipping the key back onto his chain, Lee followed the direction that the guards were going, matching his steps to their cadence to avoid detection. If they were guarding him, it stood to reason they also guarding his gear.

Rounding a corner, he found a door labelled ‘Misc Storage’. His Space Presidents Key couldn’t help him here, because it was a traditional lock that needed a traditional key. But this was no problem for Lee either.

Pushing the hand on his prosthetic all of the way back, he opened up the compartment space where he kept many small tools; these were mostly to maintain his prosthetic, but also his weapons, and even a small repair kit for his glasses frame (can’t do anything about the crack down the left lens, though).

A pick and a small screwdriver were all he needed to get through the locked door, which he silently closed behind himself.

The walls were lined with built-in drawers, reminding him of a post office. He could at least narrow down his search to the ones that would be big enough to hold his gear.

Many of these were civered in dust, so confiscation wasn’t something they did too often. There was one large cubby drawer however, that looked as though someone had tried to brush the dust off of it, but half-assed it leaving large, obvious hand trails.

Bingo.

Lee had echoic memory. He could remember things he heard, he could take the things he heard and make realistic and accurate deductions based on what he heard, but that didn’t mean his hearing was sensitive. Lee was still an old man who had to get one of his eardrums replaced with a sci-fi implant last year to avoid having to use a hearing aid.

But it was still strange when he didn’t hear the door open, and the footsteps that approached him so silently.

“Hello?”

Lee whipped around in an instant and pointed his blaster at the offending source of the words; only to almost drop it at what he was seeing.

A kid, no older than fifteen, yelped in surprise at the sight of a gun pointed in his direction and stumbled backwards with his hands up. Or, shoulders up, really; he was on elbow crutches.

How had he managed to move so silently with those?

“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” The kid stammered with a strong, familiar, Jersey accent. Lee instantly put his blaster back into it’s proper holster.

“I won’t- yeesh, kid, ya trying to give me a heart attack or somethin’?” Lee chided, and the kid had a still worried, but sheepish look on his face. How had he managed to move so silently? Especially with crutches. Was Lee just losing his touch?

A kid being there wasn’t the thing that was making Lee feel like his brain had tilted. It was how he looked. With his braces, top heavy build, glasses, acne, and greaser-style slicked back hair, it was like looking into a window to the past.

“I know I’m not supposed to meet you guys but I just had to at least once!” The kid prattled, and even his voice was like hearing himself from that age.

Lee felt his heart both twist and flutter - the Ford of this dimension must have had a kid. It was reasonable the kid could look like him, since they were identical twins.

Did his own brother, back in their dimension, become a father in Lee’s absense? Like their older brother Sherman? God, it’d been so long Sherman’s son could be a father himself now too.

“You should get back to your dad, kiddo.” Lee told him, trying to keep his voice soft. It wasn’t a tone he was used to using, he wasn’t usually around kids.

“My pa? He’s…” The kid shifted uncomfortably “Well, you’re one of the other versions of Sixer, right? You’re him from a different world? I didn’t think ol’ poindexter could look this cool!”

Did he really think that Lee was - well, he supposed that looking past his prosthetic arm and the difference in weight, he was still mostly identical to Ford. Even if they were from different dimensions, they were still twins.

…Who called their dad by a nickname like that? Was this not Ford’s kid? Was he another son or even a grandson of Shermies?

Or… could this even be his own son? As in, the son of his alternate of this dimension? Was his parallel self still close enough with Ford to let his kid stay with him?

“That’s a really cool arm!” The kid continued, not picking up the confusion or the thoughtful look on Lee’s face that he’s sure he was poorly concealing. “Does it shoot out rocket fists or-?”

“STANLEY!” They both bristled as they heard Ford’s deep, rusty voice shouting down the hallway, a distinctive series of clicks from his cane and his soles indicating that he was rushing over.

The man slammed the door opened and his eyes trained onto the two figures in front of him, as if he couldn’t decide who to berate.

“Stanley, get away from him this instant!”

Lee was about to retort that he wasn’t going to or planning on hurting the kid when-

“M’ sorry Sixer… I was just curious, ya know?” The kid answered, just as sheepisj as earlier, as he bunched his shoulders up closer to his head and walked over to Ford, who swifly grabbed at both sides of his arms right under his crutches and pulled him back until he was behind him. And now Ford stood between Lee and the kid, as if shielding him from something.

From Lee?

Lee blinked, eyebrows furled together as he tried to put all of these pieces together, until he asked “Ford, who is that?”

Ford hesitated for a moment, and it looked like the kid behind him was about to answer for him, but a pointed look from the man in front of him shut him up.

“...This is Stanley, my brother.” He explained, slightly strained.

…Huh?

“What?” Lee asked out loud, looking between the kid and Ford “There’s no way he’s your twin!”

“He is!” Ford insisted, still shuffling in a way to prevent Lee from getting a closer look at ‘Stanley’ “When we were very young, he was… injured, very gravely. And put into suspended animation. It was only a few short years ago we were able to take him out of it.”

Lee has met alternate versions of himself before.

Both inside and outside of dimensions.

It’s hard to explain what it’s like to meet at alternate - but it does make the ‘frequency crash out’ that Rick was talking about, the thing that made entire dimensions collapse, make sense.

Even though it takes physical contact to initiate the collapse, just being within a certain distance of an alternate caused you to feel a certain way.

Like there’s a static on your skin thay was always there, and you’re only just now starting to feel it because it’s trying to pull you closer to a very similar static that isn’t exactly the same but too similar to ignore.

Lee looked at Stanley, and there wasn’t that crawling, static pull. And even as Ford continued with his explanation, Lee only had one thought.

‘That isn’t me.’

To be continued…

---

NOTES

Dimension-CF9L (RP Stan's dimension). That’s because this version of reverse portal Stan “Nine Lives Lee” is (or at least heavily inspired by) the Reverse!Portal AU from tumblr user urdadsceilingfan or Ceiling Fan “Ceil”, with 9L referring to Lee’s nickname, he learned his dimensions name and that’s at least part of how he got his infamous nickname. At least in this fanfic.

Lee’s description how the position if a dimension is measured by four major coordinates and two minor coordinates, it’s a reference to how the Milky Way Galaxy allegedly has four major spiral arms, and two less spiral arms or ‘spurs’. This is basically just me BSing how a persons Dimensions name could be known but they still wouldn’t be able to find it.

When Lee internally narrates that he was very skilled with the interactive 3D maps needed for dimensional travel, when he’d struggled with flat paper maps when he was younger, this is a hint towards Lee having a different way of learning and different learning needs. A lot of people have theorized that Stan might have had some sort of learning problem, like ADHD or dyslexia. Lee here is hinting that he struggles reading and learning things that are second dimensional and non-interactive, while having a talent for understanding things when presented to him in a three dimensional format. He was always smart, he just had different learning needs that the education system did not or could not accommodate for. This is also another parallel with Bill Cipher, who was a two dimensional being in the second dimension, but did not fit in because he could see into and interact with the third.

“Faded and weary” is a term pulled from the song “Into the Nothing” by Breaking Benjamin.

Mr. Ponds is a one-off character from Amphibia who is a clear nod to / reference to Grunkle Stan.

The Space Presidents Key is a direct parallel to The Presidents Key from canon.

President Beeblebrox refers to Zaphod Beeblebrox from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The dimension, HG42, gets the letters of its name from “Hitchhikers Guide”, while 42 is “the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything” in the story.

#what did you do?#nine lives lee #reverse portal au #the better world #better world au #stanley pines #stan pines #grunkle stan #stanford pines #ford pines #grunkle ford #fiddleford hadron mcgucket #fiddleford mcgucket #old man mcgucket #gravity falls au #gravity falls #fanfic #fanfiction #cross posted on ao3

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