Chapter Text
All three Pines stared at the new man in front of them, their faces painted with various expressions.
Stan’s mouth was agape, slightly twisted in a sneer as he looked on in bewilderment.
Ford’s eyebrows were raised high into his forehead, eyes sparkling with the possibility of a new discovery.
Stanford’s face was slack, the presence of hope shining behind a thin layer of fear.
The man finished brushing himself off before addressing the three of them beyond his indignant comment from before. He finished by smoothing down his hair and straightening his nerdy goggles.
“Okay, so what’s the sitch?” he asked them directly, posture casual like he was talking to old friends.
Stan blinked slowly, hackles slowly raising, as Ford stammered uselessly next to him.
“What do you mean?” he spat out, careful of his language.
“What do you mean, ‘what do you mean?’ You’re the ones who brought me here!”
“That doesn’t mean we know who you are!” Stan countered, his irritation barely in check.
This seemed to catch the man off guard, and he raised his wrist to poke at his watch. It had a square, flat face and looked like something out of a futuristic movie. It beeped quietly as his fingers touched a pattern in it. Without warning, it cast out a grid made of light across the room. Stan had to resist ducking for cover when it flowed over their bodies-- it didn’t hurt, but it might have tingled a bit. Stan wasn’t sure if that was just his mind playing tricks on him, though.
It made a louder beep at the man-- Blendin, Stan reminded himself-- and broadcast a hologram of different symbols. It looked like it might have been text of some sort, but Stan didn’t recognize the language. Next to him, Ford made small noises of awe.
“OH!” Blendin suddenly exclaimed, using his palm to make the hologram disappear. “That explains things. This is Earth 97, you guys haven’t met me yet.”
Stan opened his mouth to make a snarky comment, demanding answers, but Stanford spoke before he could manage anything.
“Are you from the future?”
Stan didn’t have to see his face to know he was making a similar expression to Ford. There was still a little apprehension in his voice, still too worried about the task at hand to be completely swept away by this strange new situation.
“Oh, definitely!” Blendin replied with a huge smile. Stan couldn’t see his eyes through the goggles, but he would wager a guess that the slight quirk of his head was him doing a double-take at the three of them, specifically Stanford. “Wait, wait, wait!”
He did something else with his watch, and the light-grid reappeared. This time, instead of casting over the whole room, it was solely on Stanford. The text that appeared afterward had bolded and red, flashing text. Stan’s hand instinctually found Stanford’s shoulder, pulling him a step back to stand securely between him and Ford.
“Oh, thank Glob!” Blendin cried, sounding relieved about whatever he just read. “I have been looking everywhere for you!”
It was the Pines’ turn to pause, sharing looks between the three of them. Ford was the one to speak up.
“You’ve been searching for Stanford?” he asked. “Is he… in trouble?”
“No, but I will be if I don’t bring him back,” Blendin explained. His mouth opened as if he wanted to add to it, but then stopped to look around. He did a silly little spin to look all around the room. “Wait, where’s your brother? The little Stanley?”
Stanford stiffened between the adult twins, and Stan saw Ford duck his head in his periphery. He didn’t feel great about the sudden reminder either, but his throat remained unclogged by emotion. He leveled Blendin with a hard stare.
“That’s why you’re here, actually. We used a weird thingamajig to bring us something that can… fix the situation we find ourselves in. Apparently, that something is you.”
The man tilted his head, looking a bit too much like a confused dog for Stan to take seriously. He forced himself not to grimace at the display.
“What happened?” the time traveler asked. It was clear with his easy, blase tone that he was not picking up on any of their reactions.
Stan took a breath to collect himself before he continued.
“We… need your help getting him back,” he started.
“Is he lost?” Blendin interrupted. He continued to say something about the forest being a confusing place, but a glare from Stan shut him up.
“No, he’s not lost. He’s…” Stan wracked his brain to come up with a euphemism that wouldn’t confuse this guy, but came up with none. Defeated, he stated it simply: “He’s dead. A demon, or whatever, killed him last night.”
“Was it Bill?” Blendin asked. His almost bored tone sent shivers through the adults, especially Ford.
“You know of Bill?” he asked incredulously, taking a half step forward in surprise.
Blendin made a show unfitting of the situation, rolling his eyes and groaning out loud. “Yeesh, he’s been inter-temporal Enemy Number One for millennia. I hate that guy.”
Stan wasn’t sure what Ford’s next reaction meant. He turned away from the time traveler, clearly lost in his thoughts. He looked as if he were trying to solve a complex puzzle, and he didn’t look happy about it.
He shook his own curiosity off, and continued the conversation at hand.
“Yes, that’s the guy. We dealt with him, though, what we need from you is to go get Stanley for us,” Stan instructed. “You can do that, right?”
Blendin shrugged at him. “Sure I can. It shouldn’t mess with this reality’s laws of temporal preservation, you’ve already been messing with that.”
He continued talking as he configured something new in his watch.
“According to the laws of Earth 97, I’ll have to bring him to this timeline, since this is the longest timeline of this reality. Thankfully, it looks like Stanley should be operating under similar laws.”
Ford cut in with a question, now back in the present. “Is that how we were able to bring Stanley to us?”
“Nah, I’m not sure what you did to bring Stanley to this place,” Blendin chuckled, as if it was a fun little mystery. Stan’s fist itched to punch his round, hairless jaw.
A new hologram appeared out of the watch, and it looked like it was moving. It was too dark for him to make out anything, so he wasn’t sure what it was supposed to be depicting. They watched on as Blendin viewed the images, hovering his finger over them to browse back and forth.
“Alright,” he muttered to himself as he seemed to lock in on a particular section. “Point of no return, locked in.”
He looked up at the Pines, and flashed a smile as he pulled out a… tape measurer? Stan didn’t have much time to question it before Blendin pulled out the tape, released it, and was consumed by a flash of light.
The three blinked at the now empty space.
“What the actual fuck--”
A light quickly formed back in front of them, slightly off-center from where Blendin had just been standing. The light finished taking his form, and began to take shape of a smaller form right next to him.
In a literal flash, Stanley was falling to the floor in front of them, coughing and clutching at his neck. He was wearing the same clothes from last night, hair mussed and face a scarlet red. From underneath his own hand at his throat, Stan could see the beginnings of bruises.
“Stanley!” Stanford cried from his side, rushing forward out of Stan’s grasp.
Stanley looked up, eyes wide and glassy and so relieved to see Stanford alright. Stanford fell to the floor with him, stopping only when Stanley held his face.
“Stanford!” he shouted, removing his glasses to get a better look at his brother’s eyes. They were brown. “You’re okay!”
Stanford blubbered something, scolding Stanley for being worried about him, before pulling him into a tight bear hug. Tears steadily streamed down his face as he clung onto his brother.
Stan stood by, feet planted in the ground, as Ford stepped forward as well. He only took a few steps before being right over them, falling to his knees. Stanley looked up at him, eyes still a little bloodshot, but alive.
“Stanley, I--” Ford stammered, hands hovering over the boys. He must have been debating whether it was appropriate or not to pull them both into a hug, or if it’d be better to wait for Stanford to finish. His impatience won, and he pulled both younger twins into his arms. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Stanley.”
Stan felt something unravel and fill up inside his chest as he watched his brother-- of both ages-- cry in relief and joy at Stanley’s return. There was still the old, darkest part of himself that tried to wiggle in with its ugly words, but it felt almost drowned out with this new brightness. He didn’t have the words for it, until he suddenly did.
Even as a child, he’d never felt wanted. He and Ford were a matched set, but Ford was the preferred twin, the smart one, the responsible one. To him, that must have translated to Stanley becoming undesirable, unwanted, and unloved.
In front of him, he saw the exact opposite in hard evidence.
Not only was Stanford, the younger match to Stanley, sobbing and clinging to him, but so was Ford. The older, jaded twin that had been angry at him, the one who hadn’t had a single connection to Stan in the past ten years. There he was, openly crying, apologizing to a younger version of Stanley.
Ford’s eyes looked over at Stan, spearing right through him. Stan felt cut open, exposed under that look. Like a slap to the face, he was reminded of Ford’s confession to him last night.
For all of their problems and strife, Ford had been glad that Stan wasn’t the one to die. Even though he had, arguably, had more contact with little Stanley than him, Ford had chosen him .
That feeling still appeared on Ford’s face now, even as the death itself was reversed. The two brothers remained staring at each other, sharing feelings and experiences without words.
The three on the floor slowly unraveled themselves from the embrace, and Ford was the first to stand. He almost bashfully made his way to Stan-- still standing in the same spot-- and pulled him into a hug. It wasn’t as tight and desperate as the one for little Stanley, but carried the same weight.
“I’m sorry to you, too,” Ford whispered to him in the safety of his arms.
“We both have a lot to be sorry for,” Stan agreed. It didn't quite cover everything, but was enough for now.
An awkward cough suddenly reminded him of their time-traveling guest, and he gave Ford a final squeeze before releasing him.
“Thank you,” Stan told Blendin. A quiet chorus of thanks echoed after him.
“Of course,” Blendin smiled at them. “I’d lose my job if I didn’t help out, after all. That being said, are you two ready to go back? I, uh… didn’t want to interrupt a tender moment.”
The younger pair of boys looked a bit startled at the sudden question.
“Go back already?” Stanley asked. His voice was hoarse, and it rubbed something raw in Stan.
“That’s also part of my job-- protecting the sanctity of space-time.”
It wasn't that they were disagreeing, per se, but... it felt too soon.
Stan wasn’t sure what to do, so he decided to stay silent. Hoping Ford would have a better handle on the situation, he glanced at him. Ford looked a bit lost in thought again, but present enough to lead the conversation.
“Earlier, you said this Earth’s laws stated that you must continue the longest-standing timeline,” he started.
“Yeah.”
“What happens to the shorter timelines?” he asked. He gestured to Stanley. “For example, now that Stanley has been removed from the shorter timeline, what will happen to the Stanford from there?”
“Oh,” Blendin answered easily. “That timeline will become unstable and eventually dissolve into molecules to be reused in the construction of the longest timeline.”
Stan stiffened. That didn’t sound good.
“Right,” Ford said slowly. As if he were following along perfectly-- par for the course. “So how will you get these two back to their original time? Wouldn’t the same laws apply to that as well? Their timeline is the shorter one, or at least shorter than this one.”
A brief look of confusion passed the time traveler’s face.
“I mean, yeah, the same laws would apply. If they were from 1960-whatever, and have been here for a few days, then the 1960-whatever that they originally came from would be disintegrated by now,” he stated blandly.
Again, the man was clearly not picking up on the mood of the room. The boys slowly began to panic, looking back and forth between Blendin and Ford.
“Wait, does that mean we can’t go home?” Stanford asked quickly, voice pitching up.
Blendin stopped him before he could devolve into anxiety-inducing scenarios. “What do you mean? That law doesn’t actually apply here.”
“And why not?” Ford asked. His tone wasn’t as pressured as Stan or the boys felt, almost like he was poking around for a specific answer. Did he know something?
“This is Earth-97. They’re from Earth-1225.”
Any emotion Stan had been feeling before that moment suddenly stopped. It felt like his brain decided to pack up and leave for an impromptu vacation, leaving him there without a thought in his head.
Ford snapped his fingers. “I was wondering!”
Oh, the look Stan shot him.
“Earlier, Stanley was insistent on a key detail from his original time,” Ford explained shortly. “It wasn’t the case here, but the way he spoke about it made me wonder if, for him, it was the truth.”
Stanley craned his head back to look at Ford. “You mean the Stan-o-War?”
Ford smiled brightly down at him, and impulsively ruffled his hair.
“Precisely. Now, Stan--” he looked at his adult twin. “How did we spell Stan’o’War?”
Stan’s brain had to make a hard reset before he could speak again. It took a beat too long, but he answered. When prompted, he said, “It was with those little apostrophe things. Like in li’l, or y’all, stuff like that.”
“Stanford, how do you spell Stan’o’War?”
“Not like that,” the boy said, confused but following Ford’s line of logic. “We spelled it with dashes, like in lolli-pop or Kit-Kat.”
Ford laughed, proud of himself for coming to the correct conclusion, even as Stanley stuck an accusatory finger in his face.
“I was right!” he near-yelled at Ford. “You were just being a butthead about it!”
“No, no,” Ford chuckled, not offended at all about the outcry. “That’s my exact point. We were both trying to win a useless argument. We were both right and wrong.” At the last word, something in him softened. His hand found Stanley’s shoulder and gave it a small squeeze. “I… I am sorry for how I reacted.”
Stanley, despite his original aggravation, grinned up at the man. Stan wasn’t sure if it was because he ended up being right, or because Stanford had actually said he was sorry for something. (He’d been doing that a lot more, lately.)
“It’s okay, I know you’re a sore loser,” he teased. Ford’s lips tugged up into a slightly embarrassed smile.
“So, does that mean we can go home?” Stanford asked Blendin, drawing them all out of the little moment. They turned to look at the man.
Blendin nodded. He looked incredibly uncomfortable at the displays of familial connection. Stan wasn’t quite ready yet, but knew that it would be better to say goodbye to the younger twins sooner rather than later. Who knows what else they would be able to get up to if they waited?
He looked down at them, and they looked up at him. A thousand things swirled in his head at once, and he wanted to say so many things. He wanted to warn Stanley about upcoming events, even if it would go against some time paradox bullshit. He wanted to stick around to protect Stanford for longer, even if he knew Stanley was fully capable of doing it. Most of all, he wanted them to stick together. His throat was too tight to say anything.
Instead, Stanford took the initiative and made intense eye contact with Ford.
“Promise me you won’t kick Stan out,” he firmly demanded. “He might be big and tough, but he’s been through a lot and he needs his brother back. It’s your turn to protect him, too.”
Stan had several moments over the past few days that left him feeling shattered, cracked like an old teacup. Now, with that earnest request, he felt a few pieces of himself stitch back together. This little boy, thrown into his world, had seen through his hardened outer shell and carefully crafted mask to see the rawest parts of himself.
Then again, “this little boy” was one of the smartest people he’s ever met.
He wanted to pick up that kid and swing him around the room in a big ole bear hug.
To his surprise, Ford did not hesitate before saying, “Of course. I promise.”
Stanford did something unique then, raising his hand and sticking up his sixth finger. “Promise on the sixth?”
Surprised enough to chuckle, Ford looped his own sixth finger with Stanford’s. “I promise on the sixth.”
“Good,” Stanford said as they shook on it. With all seriousness, he added, “If you break it, your extra fingers will fall off.”
Looking left out, Stanley gazed up at his older counterpart. He looked as lost as Stan felt in his own thoughts, words not coming easily. The look they shared conveyed more than words could, anyway.
“Try to do better?” Stanley offered instead. Stan could tell it wasn’t quite what he wanted to say, but more that he failed to come up with anything else. If anyone could understand that, it was him.
Stan held out his fist as he said, “Promise.” He narrowly avoided saying, cross my heart and hope to die. He didn’t feel it wouldn’t be quite as light-hearted as it was in his head.
His younger self-- younger alternate self?-- smiled a toothy grin and fist-bumped him. Stan suddenly had a new thought.
“Hey, make sure you do some homework sometime. Not having a high school diploma sucks.”
The look he got was not enthusiastic, so he looked at Stanford. “Don’t let him copy off of you. Make him do it himself.” Glancing back at Stanley, now pouting, he winked. “He’s smarter than he gives himself credit for.”
That seemed to soothe whatever ego was hurt, and both boys agreed to the terms. Stan wasn’t sure if they’d follow it-- he did always like the easy way out-- but he could trick himself and believe that this Stanley would lead a better life.
He pushed down the grief that came with that thought, and turned his attention to Blendin.
“We, uh… I guess now… fuck.” His mouth wasn’t cooperating, unwilling to say the simple words that would send the boys home.
“Wait!”
The single word was all the warning he had before being pulled into a tight group hug. It was an awkward thing, too many arms and faces to be comfortable. Still, it was a good hug. They all relished in the closeness until time once again became a pressing concern. Stan’s arms felt empty and cold when it ended, but he forced himself to step back. He told himself the hotness in his eyes wasn’t tears, but some weird chemical that was in the air of the lab.
With a frail, forced smile, he wordlessly waved the boys over to Blendin. Next to him, Ford took a shuddery breath.
Words having all been said, the two boys simply waved at them. As Blendin activated a new device from his tool belt, a gentle light consumed them.
And just as suddenly as they appeared, they were gone.
The two brothers now stood alone in the lab. The years between them felt all-encompassing and irrelevant all at once as they looked at each other. There were many things to say, and much more to share.
But, that could all wait.
For now, Stan had a brother to feed a proper breakfast to and look after, and Ford had a brother to keep sheltered from the outside world.