Implied self-harm and suicidal thoughts here! so watch out!
please review and enjoy!
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It's something like Survivor's Guilt.
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When Dipper walks, runs, and the one leg fights him. It trembles, and he stumbles, struggles after his sister. When Mabel smiles bright as can be, and laughs, but is terribly silent, hugs something fierce and desperate. When Stanley loses his train of thought, fades into silence, and his eyes unfocus and slip away. When he comes back confused, a little lost, and laughs it off to old age.
When the dark of night descends upon the broken, mending town like a cradling hand, Stanford hates himself.
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What, exactly, does he have to show for all of this?
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He rubs the blood away, sleeps, and tries to find routine.
All of this, all that has come and gone, is his fault. Every flicker of fear, and sleepless night. Every crying whimper, and empty bottle of wine. Every bitter and grief stricken unicorn, mourning multibear, and sorrowful gnome. Every skittish denizen, every hurt child.
Sometimes he wants to hate the town. They don't know what they exactly sacrificed for it, and in every puzzled look Stanley gets, it makes him furious.
But, then he remembers that none of this would have happened if he'd have never came here. Then he's furious with himself, and there's not a good outlet, none at all.
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Mabel doesn't blame him for some reason, which means Dipper doesn't blame him, which means for some reason Waddles still likes him, and maybe Stanley doesn't blame him either, even if when the kids go home and never get to come back because Summer is ending and what will their parents say?
Stanley was never the fuck-up, he is.
Maybe he should just wander into the woods and never come back out. Maybe everyone will be better off without him. Maybe, maybe. Maybe not.
Stanford wanders the woods anyway, but continues to go back because maybe they still need him. For some godforsaken reason, they still might. The Local Supernatural might be mostly tame now, but what if something comes and there's no one with his expertise, as shitty as a reason that is, around to figure a way to stop it. What if. What if.
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It's barely been a day after the kids are gone that he finds the statue. He's a nervous wreck, unsure how to spin the story to the angry parents sure to come calling, screaming and yelling, and he nearly walks into the greedy, outstretched hand.
His heart skips a beat, and he backpedals, fear ugly and all-encompassing. Seconds tick by, and nothing happens. A bird even lands briefly in the palm of the demon's hand, a worm in its beak.
Names have power, and here much like everywhere else now, Stanford holds his tongue, eyes the statue half submerged in crawling flora, green inching up and up.
It stares forward, bargain hand enticing, and he honestly wants to take a sledge hammer to it. But, he gets the feeling it won't work. They may have killed his mind, the one part without power without deals, but he remembers that last transformation, reality bent and broken, and knows the body has to have been petrified, perhaps even preserved, by flailing magick.
"You're never coming back," Stanford tells it, prim and firm, because this is a waiting game Bill will never win.
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It does not answer.
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Maybe this is the closure he needs. He was never meant to be the hero, and that's got to be okay.
Stanford nods, spitefully drops a rock into the statue's hand, and then leaves. Maybe wonders how much it would cost to get a truck of dirt to bury the area. Maybe, maybe. Later, much, much later, maybe wonders what to do with a creature and its magical key.
He does not come back, and therefore he does not see the rock slide silently off the tiny palm, disappear into tickling grass. A laugh is carried on the wind, but thankfully all that's left is an imprint of what was and will never be again.
Probably, anyway.
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