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Ford lines up his shot. He braces the quantum destabilizer on the lip of the roof, and through the optic lens he sees all three sides of that familiar yellow demon’s back. One shot. That’s all it will take. He exhales softly, adjusts his grip on the trigger, and —
Pauses as his watch beeps three times in rapid succession, warning him of the presence of a dimensional weakness in his near vicinity. Ford glances over his shoulder and sees a blue portal beginning to tear through reality on the roof behind him. Portals like that don’t just pop into existence randomly, so someone must have found him.
He turns back to his target, but Bill has since moved, and he no longer has a clear shot. If he lingers much longer his presence will stop being unnoticed, so he decides to confront whoever it is on the other side of the portal, instead of Bill’s backyard where he will certainly be outnumbered. He quickly deactivates the quantum destabilizer, swings it up onto his back, and strides forward with his hand on his gun.
Only, no one jumps out at him when he steps through.
He falters, for just a moment, and slows down. He’s been here before, but he can’t remember when. It just feels... Familiar.
Then he sees it. His journal.
He’s... back? Back where? He isn’t sure, but that’s his journal. He kneels down and sets his hand atop its golden twin. It still matches. He tilts his head and picks it up, sliding it into a pocket on his cloak where he used to keep his fourth journal before — before.
He stands up when he realizes that he’s not alone down here, that there are voices speaking, some high-pitched and small, some deeper and larger. He can’t see much here with his goggles on, so he pulls them down to rest at his neck along with his scarf.
This place feels more and more familiar. The air rests comfortably in his lungs. He does not have to breath rapidly or deeply to replenish his body’s oxygen supply, and nothing in the air stings or makes him want to cough. It is warmer here than in the Nightmare Realm. Ford’s irritation at being interrupted before he could kill Bill all but vanishes in the face of his blossoming curiosity.
A deep and gravely voice is talking. He doesn’t catch what it’s saying — it all sounds like gibberish to him — but inexplicably, one word stands out from the rest, its meaning suddenly starkly clear in his mind.
“—brother.”
Ford looks at the creature that said that word. It looks like him. All of the creatures here look like him, but this one most of all — it is his height, his colors, his general shape, and if it weren’t for the difference in clothes he would almost wonder if he was looking into a mirror.
“Brother!” the creature says again as it moves forward, claws outstretched and teeth bared.
Ford doesn’t think. He reacts. He curls his hand into a fist, reels back, and punches the creature in the face, knocking it back before it can attack. The creature yells at that and retaliates, but it is not as strong as Ford is, so he quickly brings it to the ground. He pins its arms behind its back, baring his own teeth at it even though it can’t see, and growls a warning.
Then, one of the smaller voices speaks up again, timid at first, and then scared and loud. Ford’s head jerks up at the sound and sees the little creatures, the ones he hadn’t properly registered the first time.
Children.
Immediately, Ford feels bad. The creature — he will nominate it ‘Brother’ because it is a significant thing that he understood it say — must have only been protecting its young from a perceived threat. And here he is, scaring them.
Hoping this doesn’t backfire horribly on him, Ford releases Brother’s arms and gets off of it, backing away quickly. He watches closely, but when Brother gets back up it doesn’t show any signs that it will attack again, so he hesitantly relaxes.
Brother is talking again. Its tone goes from angry to confused, then to worried.
“I don’t understand,” Ford tells it. “But I won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt me.”
This only seems to make Brother more upset. It repeats a few sounds from earlier, with increasing distress. Ford is used to getting confused reactions when he talks, presumably because no one else understands his language, but this level of distress is unusual.
The little ones talk again, and Brother gives him another confused and worried look before it turns to reassure them. Ford relaxes when it turns its back to him. This is going surprisingly well after that disastrous first introduction! He sits down on a large piece of metal debris — what happened here? — and studies the creatures from there.
There are four in total. Two children of similar heights, Brother, and a large, hairless gopher of some sort. Brother seems to be in charge, even though the others seem apprehensive. That is most likely due to Ford’s sudden and unexpected arrival.
Portals don’t happen by accident, though. Ford examines the rubble and determines that this is, without a doubt, the remains of a polydimensional metavortex. He recognizes almost every single part of it. This dimension must be particularly stable, or such measures to breach the multiverse wouldn’t be necessary — but that means activating this portal could have collapsed this entire reality. Ford glances over at the creatures again.
They must be fairly technologically advanced to construct this, but unfamiliar enough with it to understand the risks. He pulls out his old journal and flips through the pages, only stopping when he realizes that he can’t read his own writing. For a moment, as he stares at the neat cursive scribbles on the aging paper, white-hot rage flares up inside of him.
Of course he would take this, too. Of course it wasn’t enough to take his entire history from him.
Ford’s vision begins to blur as tears prick at his eyes, but he scrubs them away quickly and shuts the journal, putting it away again. He wonders how these creatures came across it. He wonders if he’s been here before. He has no way of knowing.
He sits there, watching the creatures talk and occasionally look his way, and feels just as lonely as before. After some time, though, Brother slowly approaches him again, gently prodding the children along with it.
Ford blinks, tilting his head to display his interest. Brother seems to have gotten over its apprehension about him if it’s letting him meet its young. His gaze flickers down to them and back up at Brother a few times as he tries to gauge how much he is allowed to interact, and eventually decides that it’s probably fine to do so.
The children still look apprehensive, but now they are also curious, and the one with the hat looks extremely nervous, while the one with the sweater is baring its teeth at him. He curls his shoulders inwards a little, shrinking in on himself to appear less intimidating, and hesitantly says, “Greetings.”
Sweater stares at him, then says something back, thrusting out its hand. It’s a familiar gesture, so although he isn’t certain the expectation is the same, he attempts it anyway and reaches out to gently take its hand and shake it. It continues to bare its teeth as it talks, though it makes no move to run or attack. Perhaps it is not meant as an aggressive expression?
Encouraged, Ford turns to Hat and holds out his hand, but instead of taking it, Hat stares at it for a really long time and flushes a bright red before turning away and gasping for breath. Concerned, Ford pulls his hand back and looks to Brother for guidance.
Brother shrugs. It still looks concerned, but interestingly more directed at Ford himself than its child. Subtly, Ford glances down at himself, trying to figure out what’s making it so worried. Perhaps it is his weapons? If that is the case, that’s unfortunate, because he is not going to part with them even for a moment. For all he knows, Bill could be coming after him this very moment!
He turns back to the ruined portal and reconsiders. If this really is a mostly stable dimension, Bill will not have an easy time getting here, if it’s even possible. This is probably a safe enough place to lay low for a while until his next opportunity strikes, though he will have to find his own way back into the multiverse that won’t doom this dimension.
He frowns at that.
“...I’m stuck here. Aren’t I?”
He looks at Brother, who is still looking back at him, and sighs. “That’s why you’re so concerned,” he realizes. “You weren’t expecting me to come out of your portal, but I did, and now I’m stuck here unless you fix it and risk the fabric of your entire reality.”
Well. Ford has been in worse positions.
Perhaps this is a very similar dimension to the one he originated from. That would explain why the people here look so similar to him, as well as why everything else about this place seems so familiar. He briefly considers the notion that this is in fact where he came from, but the very idea makes him feel vaguely nauseous, so he doesn’t dwell on it for long at first.
Either way, the people here have been very hospitable to him after realizing his situation. They had to shoo away a large number of other creatures all dressed in black and wearing guns — perhaps guards of some sort? Members of a military? — and then after that, the children and the gopher man were sent away, while Brother stayed with him.
Brother tried to talk to him for a long time. It — or, if Ford is going with his instincts, he — was very tactile in his efforts to communicate. He would grab Ford’s hands, his shoulders, and his arm, speaking softly one moment and muttering angrily the next. When he started yelling, Ford firmly separated himself from him and told him (though he wouldn’t understand the words) to stop.
After that, Brother settled down somewhat. He still gives him sad looks when he thinks Ford isn’t looking, but at least he isn’t yelling. He shows Ford to the place where food is kept, waits for him to eat, and then leads him through a series of doors to a room that feels almost unsettlingly familiar.
Ford swallows as he looks around, taking everything in, and finds himself walking across the room to the mirror. It’s been a while since he’s last seen his actual reflection.
He’s gotten older. His hair is gray, streaked with white where he got that plate put in, and he has a few more wrinkles than he remembers having. Still, it’s his reflection, and nothing in it truly comes as a surprise. The real surprise comes when he sees Brother join him at his side through the mirror, because now that he is looking at their reflections side-by-side there is no denying the resemblance.
Brother glances at him, brows furrowed.
Ford draws in a shaky breath. Like it or not, he thinks it is most likely that this is where he came from. There are too many signs for it to be purely coincidence. He considers parallel universes — but it’s even harder to cross those than dimensions, and he knows what he saw in the basement.
And if this world used to be his home... If this house used to be someplace he was familiar with... Then it stands to reason that maybe, the inhabitants thereof are also supposed to be familiar to him. Familiar in a literal sense of the word.
“Are you really my brother?” he asks hesitantly.
The man beside him lights up, baring his — no, smiling broadly. He says a few things, but only one Ford understands. “Brothers.”
Ford looks at the two of them in the mirror and lets the corners of his lips twitch upwards like they want to. Bill may have taken his memories, but he couldn’t take the actual, physical reminders of his previous existence. It feels good to rediscover something he’d lost to that demon.
“Brothers,” he echoes, tasting the word on his tongue and pleased with what he finds. He nods once, firmly. It feels right.
“Stan,” Brother says, pointing to himself. “Stan.”
“Stan,” Ford repeats, even though he knows it is futile. He is growing increasingly frustrated with this exercise, though he knows it is not Brother’s fault. Brother has been trying to introduce himself for the last half hour and every time he tries to copy the sound, Brother just frowns and shakes his head.
He knows what he’s trying to say. He knows the sound Brother is making, he’s heard it a hundred times by now. The problem seems to be that it gets stuck somewhere in between his eardrums and the language center of his brain, and when he tries to replicate it, he never seems to get it right.
Brother’s expression makes it clear that he has once again failed in the attempt. He sighs. “Look. I know you want to help, but this obviously isn’t working. If this were a case of me simply forgetting the language, then it would have. But it hasn’t. So, logically, it must be a different problem.”
He’s gotten used to the blank stares Brother gives him when he tries to say something. It doesn’t make him any less frustrated, though, so he stands up and makes his point by retreating to his room, where he can look at his journal (finally perfectly encrypted — but only to his eyes) and try not to tear it into pieces.
Eating is hard, too. He hates the sound of people chewing, so he tries to avoid the communal meals, but that makes it harder to obtain readily available food. Sometimes someone leaves a plate for him, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes he has to brave opening the cold storage unit and looking for something on his own.
Nothing looks edible. There are jars and cans and bottles and boxes and bags, almost all of them labeled in one way or another, but he has no idea what the labels mean. He has no way of knowing what he would be putting in his mouth. If he’s lucky, there will be something fresh, a fruit or vegetable that something inside of him deems appropriate for consumption, but the logical side of his brain tells him that not everything is edible raw.
He resorts to studying the eating habits of the other creatures — the other people in the house. It gets him a few strange looks, but eventually he figures out what things are safe to eat without preparation and what things he should leave alone.
It’s still hard to swallow anything and keep it down long enough for it to get digested.
Eventually, Ford’s go-to place when he needs to retreat for a while becomes the basement. At first, he only ventured down there because he wanted to make sure that the portal hadn’t had any other unforeseen consequences, but then when he discovered the rift he had bigger things to worry about. He tried to alert Brother to the danger they would all be in if the orb he used to contain it were to break, but Brother couldn’t understand anything he said.
So now Ford spends most of his time in the lab in the basement, running calculations in his head and lining up old jellybeans to keep track of his numbers, trying to come up with a way to keep the rift from expanding any further. It would help if he could read any of his notes. (He found the other two journals. He can’t read any of them.)
He does discover the existence of an old extraterrestrial spacecraft buried under the ground after it crashed. He knows this because there are drawings of it and certain things that were inside of it. It feels wrong to rely on pictures for such important information, but he’s mostly just glad he thought to draw pictures in the first place.
It is with that discovery that he decides to get out a sheet of paper and draw what he needs to say. He draws the rift in its container, then draws an arrow to a drawing of the same container broken and the rift escaping. He draws an arrow from there to a drawing of the rift the way it would look if it grew out of control. Then he draws a vague picture of a planet torn in half.
On a second sheet of paper, because he ran out of room on the first, Ford sketches what he assumes their portal machine must have looked like, then crosses it out with big, bold lines. Hopefully this will discourage anyone from rebuilding the portal — though he isn’t too concerned about that specifically, since he’s the only one who ever seems to enter the basement.
He gives the drawings to Brother after everyone else has had dinner.
Brother looks at the pictures for a long time before he looks up and says something.
“I don’t understand you,” Ford reminds him tiredly. He turns the portal drawing over and hands over the pen he was using earlier. “Maybe you can draw what you want to ask?”
Frowning at the pen, Brother does seem to get the idea and pulls the paper closer to himself to start drawing. Ford gets a glass of water in the meantime, tapping out nonsensical patterns against the rim of his cup.
Eventually, Brother slides the paper back over to him.
It’s a sketch of the two of them standing side by side, one of each of their hands pressed together in the air and big smiles on their faces, while the rift in its container is buried underground with only a gravestone with its image telling Ford that it’s there.
At first, he is confused. Then he looks at Brother’s earnest face and figures out what he’s trying to say. He nods. “Yes, you can help me. I don’t know if I’ll be able to destroy the rift completely, but there are ways to contain it that would hopefully last for a very long time.”
Brother does not understand what he says, but Brother grins anyway.
It’s a lonely existence.
Ford thought he knew the worst of it: surrounded by strangers of a different species, in dimensions that weren’t his own, chased by people who wanted nothing more than to offer Bill his head on a platter — or people who just wanted him imprisoned. He thought that was as lonely as it got, but now he sees that he was wrong.
It’s lonelier to be in his own dimension, surrounded by his own species, chased by no one, and still unable to communicate with anyone.
This becomes most apparent one day when he recaptures an escaped cycloptopus that had managed to make its way upstairs. He knows he’s being watched, but he’s more focused on not getting injured, so he doesn’t think much of it until he has it safely in his grasp. Then, he looks up and sees three pairs of eyes looking at him.
Then, the child with the hat runs up to him, chattering excitedly. He has one of Ford’s journals pressed against his chest, the third one by the looks of it. Ford is uncertain of where he would have gotten it, but he can’t ask and he can’t just take it back without explaining, so he lets it go.
“Ah, I’m sorry, Hat,” he says. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”
Hat looks upset by that, but Ford really has to get this specimen back in containment, so he awkwardly waves a goodbye and heads back down to the lab. The incident continues to trouble him for hours, and then something truly bizarre happens: Hat falls through a hole straight down into the basement!
“Hat! What are you doing down here?”
Hat says something in reply, but Ford finds his gaze drawn to the small object in the boy’s hand. He gasps. “Is that a thirty-eight sided die from Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons?” He steps closer to affirm his suspicions and his delight grows. “That’s my favorite game in the whole multiverse!”
It’s been so long since he last got a chance to play, this will be — this will be nothing, because Hat is just gaping back at him uncomprehendingly and a little nervously, and there is no way to play a game based on roleplay and math without the ability to understand the written or spoken language. Ford deflates sadly and backs away, giving the boy some space.
“Sorry. I suppose it doesn’t —”
Hat hesitates, then holds up the dice, tilting his head in question.
Ford nods. “Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve seen one of those.”
This seems to improve Hat’s mood considerably. He begins talking some more, and though Ford doesn’t understand a lick of it, he can tell he is excited.
Unfortunately, it seems Hat’s tumble also broke the cycloptopus free again, but once that’s taken care of Ford retrieves a stack of graph paper and a pencil for the boy. He may not be able to play, but he can at least help him get started.
But Hat doesn’t appear to have anyone else to play with, if the sad look directed up at the hole in the ceiling is anything to go off of. The two of them end up sitting on the floor, setting up a game they can’t play.
Except, Hat seems to want to try anyway. Ford can’t tell if the number rolled on any given dice is high or low, since all of the symbols are incomprehensible to him, so he grabs his bag of jellybeans and plops it down, demonstrating counting with them until Hat’s face dawns with understanding.
Then it’s a matter of charades. Ford sketches some things that are harder to mime with his hands, and Hat does the same, and although their understanding of the actual campaign they’re playing might be different from the other’s, it is — somehow — still enjoyable. Hat ends up smiling and laughing on several occasions, and very focused on others. Ford himself is having a lot of fun miming dangerous monsters and deadly traps for the boy to defeat.
Eventually, Hat has to stop for dinner and bed, but Ford has no doubt that the two of them will be playing again sometime soon.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s not all that lonely after all.
Bill comes back in a dream. In his dreams, Ford can speak and be understood. In his dreams, he can understand what other people are saying. It doesn’t make him feel better.
“We need unicorn hair,” Ford explains as he draws the annoying creature and the item he requires from it. He sighs, disappointed that his plan to keep Bill out of the house would be all but impossible to pull of. Then the girl, Sweater, sees his drawing and squeals loudly, jumping up and down in excitement.
Eventually it becomes clear to him that she wants to go find the unicorn herself, so he gives her the journal that will be of most help and arms her with a crossbow just in case. He doubts that she will be successful, though, so he leads Hat down to the basement to employ Project Mentem — a project he has remembered working on before, though he doesn’t quite remember why.
He explains it as best he can, but Hat still seems confused by the end of his explanation. Thankfully, the boy sits down in the chair anyway, accepting the strange helmet that goes with it without much argument.
His thoughts begin to appear on screen, and Ford can tell he’s embarrassed, but Ford just glances at the screen and shrugs helplessly. He has no idea what the words are. Hat seems to relax at this.
Project Mentem takes a long time to work, so Ford ends up taking a short nap at a nearby desk. When he wakes up, he sees images on the screen, flickering past.
He sees himself shaking hands with Bill, over thirty years ago, saying something he can’t comprehend even though the words came from his own mouth. He knows what he’s saying though. (Bill never took any of his memories of him.)
Hat is scared. Ford is scared, too, but he doesn’t know how to fix this. Thinking fast, he realizes that Hat must be able to understand his thoughts when the computer reads them aloud, so he keeps the helmet on — no matter how much he wants to take it off.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he says. Hat briefly glances over at the screen, then back at him. Good, it must be working.
Hat starts talking, voice shaky and scared.
“I’m sorry, I can’t understand you,” Ford interrupts quietly. “I won’t hurt you, just let me explain.”
Hat backs up, knocking the curtains off the wall, revealing rows upon rows of tapestries and statues of Bill Cipher. Ford flinches back involuntarily, then reaches forward, trying to pull Hat away from the computer. Hat is holding the rift.
“Careful!” Ford gasps. “Hand me the rift!”
Hat continues to back away. Then he pulls out some sort of gun and points it at him, hand trembling.
“Now just, calm down, p—”
Hat shouts.
“Please!” Ford holds up his hands in surrender. “It’s me! It’s Ford! Hand it to me!”
Hat shoots.
Ford flinches again, a full bodied stutter, and the beam the gun emits misses by a millimeter. He freezes in place. Fear runs through him like lightning in his veins. Slowly, he removes his glasses and kneels down to Hat’s level.
“Look into my eyes, look at my pupils,” he begs. “It’s me. It’s me.”
Hat exhales and slowly sets down the gun and the rift on the table beside the computer. He says something, sounding calmer now, but not by much.
Ford does not know what to do. He wishes he could understand when Hat talks, too. Hat glances at the computer again. Right — he can hear his thoughts. Ford shakes his head. “It’s alright. If I really was possessed by Bill, you would’ve done great. I should have been more like you when I was young.” He sees the boy’s confusion and continues, “That being you saw on the screen, that’s Bill Cipher. He’s... a demon. He tricked me. It’s the biggest regret of my life.
“He wasn’t always my enemy, though,” he admits. “I used to think he was my friend.”
He doesn’t remember much about the exact circumstances, but he remembers Bill telling him that he would change the world. He remembers looking up to Bill, becoming infatuated with him, working with him by his side. Making that stupid deal. There was a project? He isn’t quite sure. But at some point, Bill turned mean. Bill started hurting him and using him. Then, somehow, Ford ended up in the multiverse — maybe Bill dragged him there?
It is when he’s trying to explain that part that Hat gestures for the helmet. Worried, Ford takes it off and hands it over. Hat puts it on, frowning deeply in concentration, and then there is a new sound from the computer.
Ford looks over and sees images, blurry and hazy, like they have been imagined instead of witnessed. There’s a ratty old man with a long white beard and overalls, and then a picture of a younger man with a lab coat. There’s a portal — whole and unbroken. Then there’s Ford himself, working on the portal next to the other man. A few images he can’t make out fly by rapidly, and then there’s Brother and him in the basement. He’s being sucked into the portal and Brother looks devastated.
Ford reaches for the helmet back. Hat lets him.
“What are you saying?” he asks desperately. “Brother… pushed me in? I built the portal?”
Hat shakes his head, then nods, brows pinched together worriedly.
Ford can almost remember it. He can feel the familiarity settling into him, flashes of color and light that he can’t quite make sense of. Hurt curls up inside of him. “He did that? Why would he do that? Why would I do that?”
Hat shifts uncomfortably, then takes the helmet back. He projects images of himself leaving the room, getting Brother, and coming back with him.
Uncertain, but unwilling to go any longer wondering, Ford nods. Hat leaves. Brother comes. Hat is gently shooed out of the room, and Ford puts the helmet back on and asks, “Did you really push me into the portal?”
Brother shakes his head, holding up his hands. He looks guilty. He looks remorseful. He looks scared.
“You did, didn’t you?” Ford begins to pace in short steps that won’t disconnect the helmet. “It all makes sense now. Bill didn’t drag me in, how could he? He was stuck on the other side. You pushed me in, and that’s how I ended up in the multiverse, and that’s how I ended up like this!” He stops, pained, and stares at his brother. “Why would you do that?”
He pulls off the helmet and shoves it into Brother’s chest, crossing his arms protectively over his own.
At first, Brother just talks, but then he seems to realize what the helmet is for and images start appearing on the screen. Him holding a postcard. Him knocking on a door. Him resting a hand on a younger Ford’s shoulder. Him holding the journal, gazing up at the empty portal with horror on his face. It all screams: accident, sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to, I promise.
And then there is image after image of Brother working on the portal, fixing up the house, staring at things Ford left behind, and then eventually watching Ford step through the portal again.
Ford hesitantly takes the helmet again. “You brought me back on purpose?” he asks. Brother nods. “Did you know how insanely risky that was?” Brother nods again, wincing, and Ford releases a shaky breath. “Okay. Okay, well. You shouldn’t have done that, but what’s done is done, I suppose. It’s probably only a matter of time now before the rift grows uncontrollable and Bill finds his way into this dimension. We have to be ready when he does.”
He wants to take Brother with him to the abandoned spacecraft, but Brother shrugs him off, apparently too busy with giving tours of his money-making tourist scheme to help solve the end of the world, so he takes Hat instead. Not deliberately, but Hat just seems to follow him everywhere he goes, so it’s an easy second choice. Besides, Hat is better at charades anyways.
When he reveals the true origins of Gravity Falls’ unusual geography, the boy gapes in shock and awe. His excitement is infectious. Ford finds himself enjoying the excursion more than he ought to, considering the circumstances.
Things begin to go wrong when one of the old security droids reactivates and goes after Hat. Ford takes his place, making sure that his brother’s child is safe, but now he’s being taken to a place far away where he might never come back. For the first time in a long while, he fears for his life.
Then, Hat — maybe he should start calling him Nephew instead — saves him. He isn’t sure how, as he is unconscious for a large portion of the impromtu rescue operation, but he sees the way Nephew fearlessly stares down the droid until it dissassembles itself.
He laughs and coughs in equal measure as he climbs out of the compartment. “I thought I was a goner, kid!”
Nephew rushes over, scanning him up and down and looking worried. Ford’s head hurts a little, but he thinks it’s a minor concussion at worst, so everything’s fine. They escaped with their lives as well as the adhesive!
“You did it,” he tells the boy, beaming brightly. He laughs again, drunk on adrenaline, and shakes his head in pleased disbelief. “I should bring you on retrieval trips more often.”
When they get back to the house, Nephew’s sister is very upset. Nephew leaves his bag and goes to talk to her, presumably to see what’s the matter and comfort her accordingly, so Ford reaches into it and pulls out the rift and the adhesive. Only — the rift isn’t there. Instead, the crack in the orb has grown and split, leaving a jagged hole in the side of it and the container empty.
The container must have broken at some point during Nephew’s rescue attempt.
(If Nephew hadn’t tried to save him...)
(If Brother had left him on the other side of the portal...)
(If Ford had never built that portal in the first place...)
(...maybe none of this would have happened.)
Ford lines up his shot. He steadies his breaths, steadying his aim at the same time, and rests his finger on the trigger of the quantum destabilizer. It’s the second time he’s gotten Bill in his sight lines since he finished building the weapon, and if all goes well, it will be the last time too.
It is the last time, but not for the reasons he had hoped.
Bill grabs him around the middle like he is nothing more than a doll, pulling him up in front of his narrowed eye as he talks, loud and demanding. Ford feels disgust and anger roil inside of him, transforming into nausea along the way, knowing that Bill is the one who made him like this.
Bill continues shouting, then stops abruptly, turning his attention elsewhere. Ford follows his gaze and finds his nephew standing there, talking back to Bill with trembling rage in his voice.
Bill says something back, confused, and glances back at Ford, who sees the realization break across his face in real time. Bill squints in delight and cackles loudly. Ford cringes away from the sound.
He watches Bill raise his free hand and snap his fingers, tensing every muscle in his body as he waits for the pain to hit, but it never does. He peeks through his eyelids at Bill, but the demon seems just as confused as he is. He’s pulled closer, and then Bill flicks his head with a metallic CLANG! It hurts, snapping his neck to the side and nearly giving him whiplash.
Bill reels back, angry, and that’s the last thing Ford sees for a long time.
Ford doesn’t so much ‘wake up’ as he does ‘become conscious again in an instant.’ He struggles against fingers that are no longer there, stumbling until his ankle catches on a shackle that wasn’t there before. What is this place? One cursory glance tells him that this is Bill’s doing.
He hears music. He hears Bill singing — and for some reason, these words actually stick in his mind, laid out in a neat line instead of scrambling up. “…We’ll meet again… don’t know where, don’t know when ~ but I know we’ll meet again, some sunny day!”
“Wh-where am I?” Ford demands when the demon shows his face, rising up with a grand piano into the extravagant room.
Bill floats up from the piano, arms folded behind his back, and gives him an intrigued once-over. When he speaks again, it’s all incomprehensible again. In spite of himself, Ford is disappointed. He had hoped, if only briefly, that Bill would have reversed the language thing. It seems not.
As Bill speaks, Ford finds a glass of alcohol in his hand that wasn’t there before and takes a seat, only to hop back up in disgust when it moves beneath him. Bill’s laughter only makes him angrier.
“Quit your games, Cipher,” he snaps. “If I’m still alive, you must need something from me. Just fix what you did so we can talk.”
Bill doesn’t lose his intrigued expression as he continues to chatter idly. It’s almost as if — Ford hesitates. Why would Bill make it so that even he wouldn’t be able to understand Ford? That makes no sense. How will he get anything out of him if he can’t understand him?
When Bill sees the expression on his face, he laughs and claps his hands together before projecting an image in front of them both. A caricature of Ford tries to speak to others but the words in the speech bubble twist and tangle on their way out. An image of Bill floats by, whistling a tune, utterly oblivious. The image of Bill turns to Ford and watches for a moment, then looks surprised. He tries to snap his fingers, but the image zooms in on Ford’s head and arrows point to the metal plate, visible only through an x-ray filter.
The small Bill shrugs helplessly, then holds out his hand to the small Ford. They shake hands, and then Ford’s speech bubble stops tangling — and though the actual Ford still has no idea what is written there, he knows enough to get what Bill is saying.
Bill didn’t know.
Bill didn’t know that it would be permanent, or that he hadn’t removed it before he left, and now Ford has a metal plate in his head that prevents Bill from doing anything to his brain — including fixing it — unless he makes a deal with him.
(This affliction, this often lonely existence he has been subjected to, it was all the result of an accident. The thought of it burns.)
The projection disappears. Ford looks at Bill. Bill looks back at him, hand extended expectantly.
Ford does not take it. He is angrier than he has ever been in his entire life and outwardly the only thing that shows is the clenching of his jaw. The anger is cold as ice beneath his skin.
“If you expect me to shake your hand after what you did to me, to my family, you are out of your mind, Bill.”
Bill glares at him and snaps his fingers. Chains shoot out from the walls and snap around his ankles and neck. He’s pulled up into the air, the shackles digging into his skin painfully, and then he is transported into a much larger room.
The next few hours consist of nothing but pain, humiliation, and hatred.
Caged with Brother by his side and Nephew and Niece somewhere else in the pyramid being chased by a vengeful Bill, hurting in a hundred and one places and still unable to communicate in any meaningful way, Ford thinks this is where it ends. There’s nothing he can do now. He couldn’t remember Bill’s weakness until it was too late, he couldn’t fix the rift before it was released, and he couldn’t even keep his family safe. It’s... It’s over.
But then.
Then, Brother pulls out a gun. A familiar gun that he has learned has the power to erase memories. He looks from the gun to Brother, unsure of what he plans to do with that.
Brother points at him, then himself. He holds out his hand to the side and mimes a handshake. Then, he lifts up the gun, miming firing it like a pistol. He looks back to Ford, one eyebrow raised.
Ford has gotten fairly good at charades over the last couple weeks, so his brother’s plan becomes clear to him the moment the question is posed. He shakes his head immediately. “No. I can’t — I won’t.”
‘But would it work?’ Brother seems to ask with his eyes.
It would. He averts his gaze, ashamed of himself for even considering this, and nods.
Brother speaks. Ford imagines he says: ‘It’s the only option we’ve got left.’
They swap clothes. Brother catches a glimpse of the burns on his wrists and winces. He sees the mark on Brother’s back and knows, instinctually, that it was his fault. Brother inputs the right word into the gun for him. He surges forward and embraces him, holding him tightly.
“Thank you for bringing me back,” he says, voice strained. “I wish I could get to know you again before you go.”
Brother pats him on the back, more gently than he thinks he would if he weren’t injured, and mumbles something too. Then, it’s showtime.
Ford lines up his shot. He steadies his aim, lets out a shuddering breath, and finally pulls the trigger.
The kids are a miracle. Niece with her scrapbook brings light back into Brother’s eyes. It isn’t much, but it’s enough. Ford has no words for the relief he feels knowing that his brother isn’t gone forever.
Eventually, it is explained to him (by Niece, with a series of pictures on a small portable computer) that Niece and Nephew are not actually Brother’s children. Rather, he has another brother, one who had a son, who then had his own children, which are Niece and Nephew. Or, more accurately, Great Niece and Great Nephew, but that is quite a mouthful to call them in his head.
That eases his mind when they leave on the bus at the end of summer. They are not being taken away, they are simply going back to their actual parents. Ford feels a little foolish for thinking Brother — who is as old as he is — would have two very young children living with him full-time. In his defense, he hasn’t been in this dimension in over thirty years.
He and Brother help each other remember. There are video tapes in one of the small storage rooms; they watch all of them over the course of a couple afternoons. He remembers Glass Shard Beach. He remembers bullies, the Stan’o’War, and sleeping on the top bunk of a bunk bed. He remembers that they are twins, and that that’s why they look so similar.
With the aid of Project Mentem, Ford explains to Brother why he can’t talk correctly anymore. He tells him about Bill capturing him, making him forget things just for the fun of it, scrambling up his brain and leaving him like that for years and years. He tells him about Bill not even realizing what he did.
They fight about the science fair project again. They fight about the portal again. They fight and fight and fight, and Ford still can’t help but be happy that he has someone to argue with in the first place.
He remembers Fiddleford. Fiddleford remembers him. It’s a little amusing how many of them are just trying to remember their past. Fiddleford comes up with an incredible invention, inspired by Project Mentem, that connects to an implant in his brain and unscrambles the words other people say so that he can understand them. It doesn’t work for his tongue, but it uses a sample of his voice to speak what he means to say when he flicks a switch on the side.
It’s not perfect. He still can’t read or write, and he has to charge it at night, but it helps a lot. He has to hide in the bathroom to cry about it whenever he thinks about it for too long.
No one comments on it.
“Stan,” Ford says, through the device. The two of them are standing side by side on the Stan’o’War II, breathing in the ocean air.
“Yeah?”
“...My name is Stanford, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“And your name is Stanley.”
“Yes. Where’s this going?”
Ford turns to face him, utterly indignant, and says, “Did you seriously steal my name while I was gone?”
“Hey, what was I supposed to do?” Stan defends, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “I couldn’t exactly let the cops go snooping around your house wondering where you went while I was still there trying to bring you back home! I had to fake my death for you, you know. And — wait a minute. Are you only just realizing this now?”
“I couldn’t understand anyone before,” Ford says, raising an eyebrow. “And then once I could, it just didn’t occur to me that you would steal my entire identity.”
“Oh, please. I couldn’t steal your entire identity even if I wanted to. No one’s as big of a nerd as you, Sixer.”
“We should probably still do something about that, though. If only because it might cause problems in the future if you’re legally dead and I’m not legally myself.”
“Yeah, yeah. We’ll see about that,” Stan replies. “I’m not resurrecting Stanley Pines though, that’s more trouble than it’s worth. How about... Stan Lee?”
Ford laughs. “I don’t think naming yourself after a famous comic book artist would make you less conspicuous, Stan.”
“Hey, I bet I could pull it off. They ask me about it at the border and I’ll just say, ‘No relation,’” Stan lowers his voice dramatically, deadpan, and chuckles. “If you sound confident and serious enough, people will believe anything you say.”
He rolls his eyes. “If you say so.”
“I do. I do say so. In fact, I bet you ten bucks I can get everyone at the next port to call me Stan Lee and no one will even bat an eye.”
“I think I’ll take those odds.”