To quote Bill Cipher: "Oh, Gravity Falls, it is good to be back!"
So now I'm back. Yay.
Okay, so, I wrote this as a challenge in fifteen minutes. Some details are missing and I haven't gone through and re-edited it. My challenge was to write something depressing and angsty within 15 minutes. That's hard for me. Very little Dipper, implied alcohol abuse, broken families... It's like I'm breaking every GF fanfic rule ever.
Anyway. I don't own anything in this fanfic except for my own headcanons Alex Hirsch rightfully deserves all the credit, as do Jason DeRitter, Kristen Schaal, and everyone else who works on the show. Thank you.
"I've had enough of you, Stanley! I want you out of my house, I want you to give me my name back, and I want you out of my life forever!"
Stanley Pines had never heard words that stung so much in his entire life. His father had disowned him and literally threw him onto the street. Carla had taken his heart and crushed him thoroughly.
And now his own brother had disowned him.
He kept his façade up, his mask of placidity and anger managing for just a few more seconds as he was chewed out by his brother.
Stanford was livid. In his mind, all Lee had done was make things more difficult for everybody. More dangerous for everybody. His portal was too dangerous to keep active, even inactive. So much so that he had no bone in his body that was happy to see his brother.
A few decades can change somebody.
He realized that Stanley had stayed the same person he always had been: a lying, criminal, failure of a man who deserved to be kicked out of the family because of costing the Pine's name millions.
Especially the Pines name that began with Stanford.
"I'm so angry right now!" Ford yelled, throwing one of his journals to the floor.
"Grunkle Stan?" A voice behind him peeped. It was ten in the evening, and Dipper and Mabel were supposed to be asleep. Yet here Mabel was, a look of worry on her face.
"Is everything okay? Grunkle Ford?" Her voice wavered. Stan's heart broke for the little girl, who hated fighting in general. The fact it was between her grunkles made her cry.
Ford didn't seem to care. It actually made him worse. "You even put the innocent lives of these kids in danger! This great niece and nephew I didn't get to see until now because I was stuck in the goddamn portal!"
Mabel ran up and hugged Stanley's leg, horrified. Even Stanley, considerably the most vulgar of the Pine's family, didn't lose control of himself and curse around the children of the house. Heck, even Soos hadn't ever heard a curse come from the old man's mouth.
Stanley's mask was breaking. "Ford, please..."
"No!" Ford advanced on Stanley, indirectly pushing the little girl onto the ground. Grabbing Stanley's shirt, Ford began hurling insults into his brother's face.
Mabel, watching from the ground, was breaking herself. She'd only known Ford for a few days, and here he was breaking the family apart already.
It killed her.
Her vision fogged as tears streamed down, thoughts of a happy reunited family crumbling before her very eyes.
Dreams of family fishing trips at the lake.
Gone.
Dreams of family dinners with everybody in attendance, talking about the old stuff, like Dipper's crushes and Soos' gut.
Gone.
Dreams of sitting in the living room watching TV on the last day of her stay in Gravity Falls.
Gone.
She had woken up when she heard the yelling. Looking across to see Dipper, wide awake with a placid face, staring at the ceiling, Mabel then ventured downstairs, not followed by Dipper.
Dipper would have gone with her a week ago. Now he hardly talked to her.
Stan took the insults head on, each one a different take on the same phrase.
"You're a failure!"
"You've failed this family!"
"You've failed the kids!"
"You failed Dad!"
Stan's mask could hardly take it anymore. The strain was too much, the guilt too strong. Each second made him believe each insult was true.
He had failed the family. He caused the failure of Stanford's experiment, which lost him a spot at a prestigious college on the other side of America. All he wanted was to spend more time with his brother. He'd never felt more pride in anyone before, and he honestly felt like a failure when he broke it.
He felt even more like a dunce when his angered father booted him out of the house. He'd screamed at Ford for reassurance that his brother, for who he felt so much pride, still believed in him.
Still loved him.
He got shut curtains and a thorn implanted in his heart.
Stanley looked to the side when silence returned. A paper was on the ground where Mabel once was, the girl now sobbing as she dragged herself up the stairs back to the attic, where she would undoubtedly get no sleep.
Ford, seeing his change in eyesight, dropped his brother and huffed downstairs, grabbing a new bottle from the counter and heading back to his secret lab. Lee never saw his brother he missed so much during the day. A handful of decades of work trying to get him back were basically useless.
On his aching, aging knees, his fez knocked off to reveal his graying hairs that weren't 25 anymore like they were when he started this mess, Stan crawled in intense arthritis pain to the page that Mabel had dropped.
It was stained with tears, as the girl was probably hugging it closely during the fight. It was closed, a message written in glitter marker that addressed the note to "My Favorite Grunkle."
She'd picked a favorite.
Reluctantly, he opened it up. He was greeted by a drawing of himself and Stanford hugging with a heart above them, Dipper off to the side with his arms open wide, and Mabel being overly happy like she normally was.
A crack appeared in Stanley's mask.
He read from a paragraph Mabel had written.
"Dear Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford," he read aloud. So she meant both great uncles when she talked about her "favorite Grunkle." He couldn't help but smile at her mind's viewpoint. She and Dipper were such polar opposites it made living with them fun.
He continued. "I'm writing this letter to you to ask a simple question to you both. I'm super excited that you two are together again, and I want to know if we can do something... together..."
He took a deep breath to silence the sobs threatening to escape his throat before continuing. "...like a family again. We can all be together and happy again. Like how it should be."
It was not how it should be.
"Like a family again..." Stanley mumbled. He continued reluctantly.
"Dipper's been a bit reclusive lately. Normally he'll talk to me all the time, but now he won't talk to me unless he wants to. He called me an embarrassment today. I'm not an embarrassment, am I?"
Stanley's shoulders sunk. He knew that the boy witnessing his sister betray his trust and listen to another would hit the kid hard, but he never thought it'd destroy his relationship with the one friend he'll always have. He'd noticed that the boy had become more silent ever since Ford had come back.
"No, sweetie..." He said aloud.
"He hasn't said anything in hours. I hope he's okay. I notice he doesn't talk to you anymore, Grunkle Stan. I know he loves you still. I hope. That's why I hoped we could get together and have family time! Just the Pines. One big happy family."
"Happy family..."
The mask broke. His cracked glasses began to cloud with teardrops.
The inner promise Stan made to himself long ago was shattered as he lay on the shag carpet in the gift shop of the shack, the same place he was crying in the same position thirty years ago.
He'd broken a family twice.