AN: Title is from the song "I Will Remember You" by Sarah McLachlan
"I said get Waddles off of me."
All at once, it was like the missing color from the world had exploded back to life. His brilliant great-niece and her scrapbook and that beautiful, amazing pig were bringing Stanley's memories back. They were bringing Ford's brother back. "It's working. Keep reading."
"What? Oh, no, I didn't remember the pig's name. It was in the scrapbook," Stan said, looking vaguely uncomfortable. "See, here." Stan reached down and turned back a few pages, to where there were two pages with a large picture of Waddles in the center of each. At first Ford couldn't see where Waddles' name was written among the stickers and glitter, until Stan's finger indicated a purple block of writing detailing how Mabel had won a pig at the fair and had named him… Waddles.
Oh. Right. Ford hadn't really hoped for anything in so long, he'd forgotten why he'd stopped doing it.
Stan might be without his memories, but he wasn't, as Ford had half-feared he might end up being when he first pulled the trigger, without his ability to function as a regular person. So of course he noticed the way the mood in the room dropped after that pronouncement. "But hey," Stan said, sounding a bit guilty – which was ridiculous because this whole thing was Ford's fault, not Stan's. "This is a pretty amazing scrapbook you got here." Stan gently placed Waddles on the floor and took the scrapbook from Mabel. He made a show of flipping through it, looking impressed. "Did you make this all by yourself, sweetie?"
Mabel gave a loud sniff and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her sweater. "What, what did you call me?" Ford almost told her not to get her hopes up – sweetie was a common enough endearment and it was doubtless no more than a coincidence – but he couldn't seem to find his voice. It didn't matter much anyway; Mabel didn't sound hopeful, just confused.
"Sweetie?" Stan said tentatively. "Would you like me to call you something else instead?"
Mabel shook her head. "No. I like sweetie. And yeah, I made it all by myself."
"Wait a second Mabel, don't forget who developed all those pictures you insisted on taking with Grunkle Stan's old camera," Dipper interjected.
"And who helped you set up the perfect lighting for Waddles's photo shoot," Soos added.
"Okay, maybe I had a little help," Mabel admitted. "But I did put it together all by myself."
"Well, you did a good job on it, all of you," Stan said "I mean, there's a bit too much glitter for my taste, but other than that."
"Oh Grunkle Stan," Mabel said, the note of cheer in her voice only ringing the slightest bit false, "you can never have too much glitter. That's like saying you have too many stickers, or too many sprinkles."
"If you say so." Stan said. He walked back over to the chair and sat down next to Mabel, hesitantly, as though unsure of his welcome. "So I know I don't remember any of this, but I wouldn't mind hearing a few more of these stories, if you guys don't have anything better to do."
Ford left.
He heard Dipper call after him, but no one followed, not willing to leave Stan. And that was good, because Ford needed a moment alone. He thought about maybe going to the bathroom to take care of his wounds from Bill, or maybe going up to the bedrooms to find some relatively clean clothes for everyone to change into, so he would have an excuse for his departure later. But in the end, he only made it about halfway up the stairs before collapsing and cradling his head in his hands, trying to figure out what in the world he was supposed to do now.
Take care of Stan, of course, and take care of the kids for the rest of the summer. And Soos was bound to be a wreck for the next little while, so Ford would have to take care of him as well, for Stanley's sake, and... everyone. Ford was just going to have to take care of everyone.
But he had no idea how to go about doing that. The ironic thing was, had their positions been switched, Stanley probably could have managed it just fine. He was the one who was good with people, Ford was just the smart twin. Though, if Stanley could fix and reactivate the portal for Ford's sake then Ford could figure out how to take care of Stan. Somehow. Even if Ford's skill set was much more suited to things like the scientific investigation of the unknown and supernatural, or inventing quantum destabilizers or brain encrypters.
Ford abruptly sat up, blinking in surprise at his own genius. That was it. Mabel had had the right idea all along, she was just being a bit too low-tech about it. But if Fiddleford could invent a gun that erased people's memories, then surely Stanford could invent something that recovered lost memories. He could and he would, and then he would use it to get Stanley's memories back, and then everything would be alright.
"I don't know," Stan said as he looked down at the headset for the revamped Project Mentem that he was holding in his hands. "I'm pretty sure Dipper said something about this thing reading all my thoughts and saying them out loud, and I want no part of that."
"It used to do that, yes, and it also displayed those thoughts up on the monitor here," Ford said, gesturing up at the screen that he still hadn't gotten around to fixing or replacing after the mishap with the memory gun. "But I've redesigned it now so it exclusively looks for memory engrams, or fragments that look like they might have once been a part of a memory engram. Then that raw data gets fed into this machine here to analyze it for… well, anyways, you get the idea."
"So you're saying this thing isn't going to be reading my mind?"
"Of course it's going to be reading your mind, that's exactly what it's designed to do!" Ford exclaimed. Honestly, he'd thought he'd been very clear. Then he saw Stan get nervous and shifty, and Ford realized what it was that Stan had been trying to say. "But no, it won't be reading your mind in the colloquial sense."
"Okay good," Stan said, sitting down on the stool, though he still looked rather nervous Ford thought. "It's not that I don't trust you, Ford; it's just, I guess I'm just not too crazy about the idea of letting someone go poking around in my head, is all."
The words hit Ford like a punch to the gut, though he tried valiantly to cover it with a smile. "That's understandable. If you'd rather not, I'm sure I can figure something else out. Maybe –"
"No," Stan interrupted, jamming the helmet on his head. "This is going to help you get my memories back, right? So let's get it over with."
Ford nodded, then turned to the controls to start the machine up. "Alright," he said once he was finished, "now all we have to do is wait for it to be done scanning your mind."
"How long's that going to take?" Stan asked.
Ford rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "It should go much faster now that it's only focusing on memories rather than the entirety of your mindscape and now that it's only scanning and not encrypting your thoughts as well, so I would guess… about six hours?"
"Ford!"
Nearly the whole town came to Dipper and Mabel's thirteenth birthday party, which pleased the kids to no end. Ford was happy about it too, and not just for the kids' sake, but because it gave him the opportunity to observe something that boded very well for Stan's recovery. Stan had met most of the people who had come to the party before at that point, since nearly all of them had shown up at one time or other to help rebuild the Shack or to help clean it up, or to bring food or replacements for items that had been irreparably damaged. But those meetings had typically only been in passing, and there had been a lot of them. So many that it was astounding that Stan never once the entire party forgot or hesitated over someone's name. Ford didn't think Stan was remembering the names from before his memory wipe, per se, but the fact that he learned them so quickly seemed to indicate the knowledge was still in his brain, just inaccessible.
(None of this was a replacement for the hard data that Project Mentem would be able to give Ford, but since Stan refused to 'waste' six hours under the helmet until after the kids left, it was a nice start.)
And then the next day when they had taken the Dipper and Mabel to the bus stop, Stan wore the sweater. It was over eighty degrees outside, but Stan had still put on Mabel's goodbye sweater, just to make her happy. Stanley's memories had to be in there somewhere; Ford was sure of it.
It took three weeks for the Mystery Shack to be ready to re-open for business. The first week very little of the work being done went toward the Mystery Shack portion of the house directly, instead being focused on rebuilding the place and making it livable again. Which meant it wasn't until week two after Weirdmageddon that effort was put into fixing up Stanley's tourist trap. Soos lead the way in remaking all the exhibits and recreating the tour, line for line, from memory, with help from Stan, who was apparently just as good at sewing together taxidermy monstrosities as he'd ever been.
Ford got dragged into watching a trial run of the tour; he didn't know what good he'd be as a judge, since he'd never seen the tour before, but he told them he thought it was fine. Honestly, he thought the whole thing was a bunch of junk, but it was junk that Stanley had cared about, so Ford wasn't about to force them to get rid of it, and given that it was junk, he thought it was fine. The other test audience members – Soos and Wendy mostly, though Wendy's other friends, as well as Mabel two little friends showed up sometimes too, and Ford was pretty sure he had seen the llama girl from the zodiac with the rather unfortunate name that escaped him at the moment on one occasion – all seemed to think the tour was lacking in something. Finally, in what Ford understood to be a fit of desperation, they dragged Gideon in to give his expert opinion on the matter. Ford was made to attend that trial run as well, for back-up on the grounds that Gideon seemed mostly harmless now, but he had been fairly evil before, to the point of being sent to actual adult prison.
"Well I think it's pretty obvious what y'all's problem is," Gideon said after watching only a few minutes of the tour. "Your Mr. Mystery here is just doing an imitation of an imitation, no offense Soos, when what he needs to be doing is just being his natural Stanford Pines self. Excuse me, natural Stanley Pines self."
This lead into the third week, where they were revamping all the exhibits and Stan completely rewrote the script. Ford managed to avoid getting pulled into watching the tour a third time, but he was assured that this version was much better than the previous one.
"It's just like watching Mr. Pines from before his accident," Wendy told him one day when she caught him coming up from down in the basement. "Except before he took the money-grubbing up to eleven, but now he's only at, like, a ten. Ten and a half. But other than that, he's pretty much the same guy, you know?"
Ford did not know that, but it seemed a bit beneath him to get into a debate over memories and the nature of identity with a teenager. "He certainly seems happy. And that's what's important, right?"
Wendy grinned at him, like he'd just done something particularly clever. "Totally right, Dr. Pines."
Since he was trying undo what had been caused by the memory gun, redesigning the gun itself to reverse its effects had seemed like a logical place to start. Ford hadn't anticipated how hard it would be to aim that gun at Stan again, or how hard it would be to pull the trigger. He definitely hadn't anticipated Stan falling down to his knees and then crumpling to the floor unconscious.
Ford wasn't sure how he ended up at Stan's side, holding the man in his arms, nor could he recall what all he said to him while he was passed out, though Ford was fairly certain the words 'please wake up' had been heavily featured. Finally after an eternity – which later consultation of a clock would prove couldn't have been longer than a minute, and most likely only lasted only ten or twenty seconds – Stan's eyes slowly opened and he sat up. "What? Where am I? Who are you?"
Ford felt his heart sink down out of his chest until he was nothing but hollowed out and empty inside. "I…"
"Wow, I immediately regret that joke," Stan said, the confusion coloring his tone a moment before completely gone. "In fact I think I regretted it before I even told it."
"Stanley? You remember?" Ford asked, not really daring to hope, not again, but unable to help himself.
"Yes. I mean no. I mean, yes I remember the last two month, but no, I don't remember anything from before that. Seems like that gun didn't do anything but knock me flat on my rear for a minute," Stan said.
Ford took a few moments to just breathe. When that failed to steady the wild roller coaster of his emotions, he took a few moments more. And a few moments more. And a few moments more. And –
"Ford?"
"What the hell were you thinking, Stan?" Ford exploded. "That was one of the worst moments of my life, and you think you can turn it into a joke?"
"I'm sorry. It was a horrible joke in poor taste because I'm an idiot, and I'm really sorry," Stan said, and Ford managed to slowly return himself to a semblance of calm, even if his emotions were still churning at full speed. "I was only trying to lighten the mood a little bit. It's just, especially since the kids left, you've been walking around half the time like somebody died or something."
He might not be the most emotionally aware of people, but even Ford knew it would be poor form to say 'somebody did' while Stan was sitting there and was, to all outward appearances, still perfectly alive. So he didn't say anything at all.
Ford was sitting at the kitchen table – his private study was great, but sometimes Ford enjoyed working in natural lighting, something that his study, seeing as it was in a basement, had a bit of a dearth of – reading through the photocopy Stanley had made of his third journal, with the idea that it might contain some forgotten piece of information that might in turn trigger a clue as to how to recover Stanley's memories. It was unfortunate that the copy hadn't preserved what had been written in invisible ink, and that the other journals hadn't been copied as well, but there was nothing that could be done about that now. Besides, Ford was used to making due with what he had.
The door opened, and Stan walked in, singing to himself "Do do do, bringing in the groceries."
"You're in a good mood today," Ford remarked.
Stan shrugged a little as he proceeded to put the food away. "It's a nice day out. Oh, and I managed to catch a whole baker's dozen of eggs today at the store."
"Doesn't an egg carton only hold twelve eggs?" Ford asked, confused.
Stan reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a single, miraculously unbroken egg and held it up in the air for a moment before gently placing it on top of the rest in their carton. "You know, according to Jimmy I've never been able to catch that many, not even before I lost my memory. I am a natural at that game."
"It's because your procedural memories, that is your memories of how to do things, remained largely intact when the others were erased," Ford informed him. "It's the same reason you can still drive a car."
"Huh," Stan said, digesting that information. "So that means, for example, if I had a bike right here I could just hop on it and ride?"
"You could," Ford agreed, "if Dad had ever taught us how to ride a bike in the first place."
"Hey, you tell me if I'm way off base or outta line here, but I've been kind of getting the impression Pa was a massive jerk."
Ford hesitated for a moment. It wasn't that he'd been avoiding the subject, exactly; it was just with all that Stan didn't remember, their father hadn't seemed worth dwelling on. But if Stan was asking… "He wasn't the greatest of fathers, no."
Stan nodded thoughtfully, looking like the answer had disappointed him a bit, but not surprised him. "Oh well, just one more thing to be glad I don't remember."
Ford didn't know how he could say it so blithely like that, when every reminder of what his brother had lost sent a pang through Ford, like an ice cold shard in the chest. Sure, Ford was contending with guilt over the whole matter that Stan wasn't, but they were his memories. Then again, Stanley had always been good at hiding his emotions behind a smile, much better than Ford had ever been at detecting them, and there was no reason to think that would be the one skill Stan didn't still retain.
"Okay, time to drag yourself away from your research and get some dinner. And let's make it clear, I'm not above literally dragging you away if that's what it takes."
Ford had been so engrossed in his research, he hadn't heard Stan come into the study, and even now, he didn't look up. "I'm going to have to pass; I'm in the middle of a breakthrough right now. I promise I'll get something to eat later."
"Oh no, we had a deal. You've gotta spend at least five nights a week sleeping in an actual bed, and you've gotta eat one square meal a day."
Well, yes technically Stan was right, but how could food possibly compare in importance to the brilliance running through Ford's brain right now? If this worked, Stan would finally get his memories back. Of course, Ford was familiar enough with Stan's stubbornness by now to know that that argument would never sway him, so he offered instead, "I had breakfast this morning."
"A piece of fruit does not count as breakfast, Stanford," Stan said firmly, placing his hand down right in the middle of Ford's notes. Ford scowled up at him. "So either you can come get some dinner, or I go call kids and tell on you."
Ford narrowed his eyes. "That's playing dirty," he said. Stan looked less than impressed by that accusation, but then again, it was Stan. Ford really shouldn't be surprised. So finally he sighed and said, "Alright. Can I just…?"
Stan obligingly moved his hand and Ford completed the equation he had been working on, as well as jotted down a few notes that would hopefully allow him to remember his train of thought when he returned later. Then Ford stood up, only to be hit with a sudden head rush. "You may have been right about the food thing," he admitted, holding on to the back of his chair for a minute to regain his equilibrium before following Stan to the elevator.
"Course I was. I'm always right," Stan said easily.
"Sure you are. And don't think I'm not on to you. You're just worried that if I waste away to nothing you'll have no one to get your memories back," Ford said.
The words were meant to sound light and teasing, but Ford apparently missed his mark because Stan gave a noticeable wince in response. But, as proof that they were getting better at the bantering thing, or possibly proof that Ford wasn't any better at banter at all, but Stan's skin had gotten a bit thicker, he quickly recovered and replied with a deadpan, "Oh no, you've uncovered my nefarious plot to make sure you don't kill yourself with your own stupidity."
"Ha! Can't pull the wool over my eyes," Ford said, grinning.
Stan leaned against the elevator wall and gave Ford a long considering look. "I'd take that bet." Then, before Ford could try to ferret out if Stan actually was up to something nefarious, Stan abruptly changed the subject. "I was thinking we could go to Greasy's Diner for dinner."
Ford bit back a groan. "That place is literally called Greasy's. Their slogan is 'we have food.'"
"Hey, their food is better than anything you can make," Stan retorted. "Besides, they also have a waitress that I'm pretty sure is into me."
"A waitress who Mabel informed you that you already tried dating once and then immediately broke it off because she was a clingy crazy cat lady," Ford pointed out.
"Hey, what's the point of having total amnesia if you can't make the same mistakes twice?"
Ford was going to tell Stan that there wasn't a point in having total amnesia, except maybe to get rid of it, but before he could do so, Stan opened the secret door-slash-vending machine to reveal Soos walking through the gift shop on the other side. "Oh hey Mr. Pines, Dr. Mr. Pines."
"Soos? What are you still doing here?" Stan asked.
"I was just finishing fixing up the toilet like you asked me too, and trust me, you guys are gonna love it. Definite ten out of ten on the awesomeometer."
"I just asked you to unclog the thing; what in the world did you do to it? Never mind," Stan said, dismissing what Ford thought was a very pertinent question. Soos was actually quite good at fixing things, but his attempts at improvements often… left something to be desired. "Me and Ford were about to go down to the diner to get some dinner. You wanna come?"
"That's okay dudes," Soos said. "I wouldn't want to get in the way of your family time or whatever."
"Don't be stupid. How can family get in the way of family time?" Stan said.
It took a solid ten minutes after that to get Soos to stop crying for joy and hugging them, but the three of them did all end up going to Greasy's Diner together. And Ford had to admit the food was better than he thought it'd be.
"Well?" Ford said expectantly.
"My fingers are kind of tingling," Stan said, attempting to stretch the aforementioned appendages without loosening his grasp on the ball-shaped machine that was Ford's latest attempt. "But I don't think it's triggering any memories. I already knew Waddles was the pig, right?"
"Yes Stan, you already knew that," Ford said, exasperated. "I don't know why you keep bringing that up."
Stan shrugged. "I guess I just think it's funny that all of you believed that stupid pig would be the first thing I'd remember. I don't even like that pig."
"I have it on good authority that Stanley once punched a pterodactyl in the face to save Waddles," Ford retorted.
There was a brief flash of something in Stan's eyes, gone almost too quickly for Ford to even notice it, much less figure out what it was a flash of. "Ha! You can't fool me. I punched that pterodactyl to make Mabel happy; saving Waddles was just a side-effect." Stan said with so much of his usual bravado, Ford decided to dismiss the barely noticed micro-expression completely.
"I suppose that's possible," Ford acknowledged, taking the device from Stan and switching it off. "I'm going to take this back down to the lab and see if I can't figure out what went wrong. I may need to run a few scans on you again later as well. I'll let you know."
"Alright," Stan said. "I'll just… be here, I guess."
"The kids swear up, down, and sideways that it's my favorite movies series and I cry 'gross old man tears' every time I watch it, but I think they might be having me on. What do you think?"
Ford made a hum of acknowledgment, then belatedly realized that Stan's comment required an actual response. "Sorry," he said, placing his pen down on top of the neuron he had been sketching. "It's called The Duchess Approves you said? I don't recall you ever mentioning it to me, but that hardly sounds like the kind of thing you would have wanted to advertise."
"Good point," Stan said. "Anyway, the reason I bring it up is they're playing it tonight on the Black and White Period Piece Old Lady Boring Movie Channel and I thought we could watch it. You know, see if it actually is good, or if the kids are just full of it."
"Oh. I would, but… I told you about the idea I had about the neuroplasticity in werewolves, didn't I?"
"Right, you did," Stan said, aggressively spearing his fork into his dinner. "I guess I didn't realize it was a full moon tonight."
Ford frowned for a moment, considering. Greg had been proving to be a most cooperative subject, and Ford had witnesses to the fact that his wolf form was very docile. So, strictly speaking, Ford probably didn't need help. "Why don't you watch your movie tonight, I'm sure I can handle everything I need to do on my own. If the movie's good, then I can watch it with you next time."
"Right sure," Stan said, not looking up from his plate. "That sounds like a plan."
Every Sunday night at 6:55 pm, an alarm went off in Ford's study and in his lab. Most days he was already up in the main house when it happened, but he liked having the alarm as an extra security measure. Because every Sunday night at 7:00 pm, the kids gave him and Stan a video call on their computer. ("Skyping, it's called skyping Great Uncle Ford. Nouns as verbs have gotten pretty big in the last decade.")
It was always great seeing Dipper and Mabel, of course, and on one of the calls Ford even got the chance to be reintroduced to the nephew he hadn't seen since before Ford had moved up to Gravity Falls. But there was a small part of Ford that worried each and every time that the kids would do or say something to upset Stan about his memory loss. It wasn't that they weren't good kids, but Mabel had a tendency towards thoughtless selfishness at times and Dipper wasn't all that much better at social interaction than Ford had been at his age, and they were both teenagers, a group not noted for their boundless empathy. These worries always turned up unfounded, though, with the kids doing an excellent job of walking the line between not bringing the subject up and not avoiding it in an overtly conspicuous way.
It wasn't until at the end of a call with the kids at the beginning of February that the probable reason for that occurred to him. Most of their conversation that day had been dedicated to Mabel excitedly relating her plans for Valentine's Day and attempting to convince Ford and Stan to get valentines of their own, including at one point suggesting that they be each other's valentine, which had thrown Ford for a loop – he hadn't been gone from this dimension that long had he? – before he realized she meant it in a familial, platonic way. But as they were saying their good-byes, Dipper commented that they were just over half way to next summer, and that's when it hit Ford.
They were fast approaching six months now since his brother had lost his memories. Ford had known that already, but he'd never thought the implications of that for the kids through before. From what Ford understood, Dipper and Mabel had never really met Stanley except in passing before coming to stay with him in Gravity Falls for two months last summer. That meant they had known Stan as he was now for almost three times as long as they had known Stanley from before his memory loss.
It was a disquieting realization, and one that added another layer to Ford's ever growing pile of guilt. Not that the kids would ever blame him for not getting Stanley's memories back quicker, but still. They deserved better. They all deserved better.
Ford made a noise of frustration as he took yet another failed device from Stan.
"Hey Ford?"
"Yes?" Ford responded, not looking up from the helmet he was examining in the vague hope that the reason why none of his inventions were working would just suddenly come to him.
"How long are you going to keep working at trying to get my memories back? I mean, if everything you try keeps not working, then eventually you've gotta throw in the towel and admit it never will, don't you?"
The tone of his voice, soft and uncertain and not at all like Stan took Ford by such surprise that he almost didn't notice the words themselves. And then when he did process the words, he was taken by surprise all over again. "I honestly never even considered giving up," Ford said. "Stanley worked for thirty years to reactivate the portal and bring me home again, so I owe you at least that much, I should think."
"Thirty years? We'll be dead by then," Stan objected.
It certainly was possible. Probable even: lifespans were getting longer, but 89 well still well over the median for men in the US, and both of them had lead very stress-filled lives, which was hardly going to help them live longer. But that wasn't a very cheery topic. "I 'm not actually planning on taking thirty years," Ford said instead. "I just meant it as… a measure of my commitment to getting your memories back."
"Right," Stan said. "I don't think anyone was ever going to question your commitment; it's obviously pretty solid."
Ford grinned at him. "I guess I'm like my brother in that way."
"I guess so," Stan said, his answering smile strangely tight. "Well, I'll leave you to it then."
Ford started awake with the bleary thought that Stan was going to kill him in the morning if Ford slept hunched over his desk in his lab for the third night in a row. Hard on the heels of that thought was the assertion that Ford didn't care if Stan killed him in the morning, so long as he could go back to sleep now without having to deal with the elevator, or the stairs. Ugh, who had ever thought stairs were a good idea; first thing tomorrow Ford was getting rid of all their staircases and replacing them with escalators.
"I could pretend, you know."
Ford slowly turned his head, not even lifting it completely up off the arm it was resting on. He looked over at the door where Stan was standing, lit only by the faint blue glowing lights of the machines. It occurred to him distantly to wonder what Stan was talking about and also what he was doing way over there, rather than hoisting Ford up and forcing him to walk all the way up to his bed.
"You could come upstairs tomorrow with your next great invention to restore my memories and, hey, maybe it'll work this time," Stan continued softly. "Or maybe it won't, and I could just pretend that it did. I'm sure I could pull it off. It wouldn't be perfect, but of course a guy is going to get confused sometimes after recovering from having his whole mind erased, so I think I could make it believable. I've done a lot of digging, and I think I know most of what I'm supposed to. I even called Ma and Shermie up to talk to them about when we were kids; let me tell you, I was not prepared for how awkward those conversations were gonna be. Sorry I didn't let you know I was phoning them, but you were busy. I didn't want to bother you."
Stan sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm doing this all wrong, ain't I? Course you aren't going to be fooled if I come down here and I tell you I'm going to do it. I just would've felt too guilty lying to you like that without knowing you wanted me to, you know? But that's my problem. Stanley would have just done it, I bet. He wouldn't've cared about feeling guilty or nothing like that. He was a real self-sacrificing type when it came to family, and all he ever wanted was for you all to be happy. That's all I want too, Sixer, for you to be happy."
"So forget I said anything," Stan said, pasting on smile that Ford, even half-asleep and as bad at reading emotions as he was, could tell was fake. "Just go back to sleep and I'll see you in the morning. You can… you can bring your latest memory invention, if you want."
A cold feeling of dread stole its way through Ford, sending him into sudden alertness, and he sat up and called out, "Wait, Stan!" But there was no response, and when Ford clicked on his lamp, it was apparent that Stan was gone. If he'd ever even been here at all.
Now that the room was bathed in the warm light of the lamp, the whole interlude with Stan was starting to take on a surreal quality, like something out of a dream, or a nightmare. Had Stan really come down to the lab at… 3:17 am and offered to pretend to get his memories back, just to make Ford happy? But Ford was only doing this, well, maybe not only, there was no denying that restoring his brother's memories was something that Ford wanted for his own sake as well, but mostly the reason Ford was working so hard on this was because Stan wanted his memories back.
Didn't he?
There was no more rest for Ford after that, just thinking, thinking, and more thinking, all of it centered like the eye of a hurricane on the one thing that Ford didn't know, had never thought to ask. So finally he got up, called down the elevator, and made his way upstairs to Stan's room.
"Wake up," he said, shaking Stan's shoulder.
"Wazzat? Ford? What time is it?"
"A little after five-thirty," Ford told him, and Stan groaned.
"Look Ford, I know you're excited for me to test your next memory whozit, but can't it wait until after breakfast at least?"
"No!" Ford shouted, assaulted with a sudden vision of Stan spending the rest of his life pretending to be someone he was not, because he'd somehow gotten the idea that Ford was worth that. "I mean no, this isn't about testing out a memory device. I have something very important I need to ask you."
"How important?" Stan asked, peeking at him with one eye.
"Extremely," Ford assured him.
Stan sighed, then sat up against the headboard and put on his glasses. "Alright, I'm up. What is it?"
"Do you want your memories back?"
"What? Course I do; I know how important it is to you," Stan said easily.
"No, don't worry about what I want, what do you want?" Ford insisted.
"Well," Stan said, playing with his fingers and refusing to look at Ford, "it's the same thing, ain't it? If you get what you want, that'll make you happy, and that's what I want. So what you want and what I want are basically the same."
"Stanley please, can you just answer the question?"
Stan looked up at him sharply. "How much sleep did you get last night? There's a reason we agreed you'd sleep five nights a week in your own bed, and don't think I don't know you didn't this week."
"I promise you, I will sleep in my bed every night for a whole month, if you'll just tell me whether or not you, and only you, want your memories back."
"Geez, this really is important to you, huh?" Stan said. Of course it was important to Ford, Stan was his brother, everything he cared about was important to Ford. "I guess if it's just me, then yeah, I would like to have them back. I know there are some not so good things buried in this brain somewhere, but I've got a pretty great family, and I wouldn't trade a lifetime of memories with them to get rid of the bad stuff if I had a choice. Plus I can't help but think that if there are all these amazing people that care about me, then I must have done a thing or two in my life that was pretty worthwhile. It'd nice to be able to remember it."
Maybe it was Stan's use of the word 'worthwhile,' harking back in Ford's mind to the horrible things he'd said to Stanley in their fight thirty years ago. Maybe it was the way that even after making a huge sacrifice and saving the world, Stan could still sound so down and unsure of himself. Maybe it was the fact that Stan's first thought was to his family, proving that no matter what else, he was still the same man he'd always been. Or maybe Ford was just exhausted from a minimum of sleep the past few nights, all of it poor quality, and it was making him emotionally overwrought. Whatever the reason, Ford found himself blinking back a stinging in his eyes as his vision rapidly blurred. "Stanley," he said, voice cracking. "You've done so much more than just one or two worthwhile things; you've saved us all. And I don't mean just the one time, I mean every day. You're an amazing person too, Stan, so much better than I am, and I-"
"Oh crap," Stan said, throwing off the covers and standing up. "C'mon Ford, don't cry. Look, you're gonna get me started."
Ford didn't know what Stan's plan had been to comfort him, and he didn't care. As soon as Stan got within arm's reach, Ford grabbed him and held him tight, and he wasn't ever letting go. How long had it been since he'd hugged his brother? There had been that time in the woods right after Weirdmageddon had ended, when Stan had still been dazed from being hit with the memory gun, but before that? It must not have been since high school. Ford had gone over forty years without seeing his brother, aside from one brief interlude, so why hadn't he ever taken even a moment to show his brother he cared? Why hadn't he taken a moment to do it every single day? What was wrong with him?
Ford hadn't realized that he'd said that last part out loud until Stan's grip on him tightened. "Nothing. There's nothing wrong with you, aside from us both being a pair of idiots," Stan said, and Ford choked out a wet laugh.
It would have been hard to say how long it took for both of them to regain their composure – true to his threats, Stan did start crying as well – but after some time, maybe a minute later or maybe ten, they were able to pull away from each other without it feeling immediately and intrinsically wrong.
"So you do want your memories back," Ford confirmed, returning to his original question. In that case, he wouldn't give up, no matter how long it took. He would re-prioritize a bit, so he could spend more time with his brother, but he wouldn't stop searching until he found a cure.
"I mean, I'd like having them back, yeah," Stan said, sitting down on the bed sideways and leaning his back against the wall. "But…"
"But?" Ford prompted, sitting next to Stan, close enough that their shoulders just brushed against each other.
"But, I don't know, I guess I have a pretty good life right here and now. I don't want to miss out on any more of it because I'm chasing down what I used to have."
"Okay," Ford said. He still wouldn't give up, but maybe instead of treating it as his sole focus, the memory recovery could be just another one of his projects. That might be nice, actually.
Stan sat up and looked at Ford suspiciously. "Okay?"
Ford smiled at him. "Okay, Stanley."
Stan glared at him a few moments longer, then smiled a crooked smile of his own, and rested back against the wall again, deliberately bumping his shoulder against Ford's. Ford's smile grew and he closed his eyes, and for a while the two of them just sat side-by-side in companionable silence, breathing in the morning air.
"So, this was a good talk and all, even if I'm still not sure why we had to have it at some godforsaken hour of the morning," Stan said some time later, "but I think I'm going to go back to sleep now."
Ford launched himself off of the bed. "Wait, no you can't go back to sleep."
"Why?" Stan asked, not opening his eyes. "Are you sure this whole thing wasn't just some experiment to try and get my memories back through lack of sleep?"
"Of course not," Ford protested. "Why would sleep deprivation be a good cure for memory loss anyway?"
"I don't know. Why would dumping a bunch of dirty lake water on my head be a good cure for memory loss?" Stan retorted.
"That wasn't dirty lake water, that was water from the pixies' healing spring. Obviously I didn't realize its powers only worked on pixies," Ford said. "But no, the reason you can't go back to sleep is because it's my understanding that it's important to start in the early hours of the morning when fishing."
Stan finally opened his eyes to look at Ford incredulously. "You want to go fishing. With me. Today."
"Well, yes," Ford said. "Today's your day off, isn't it? Unless there's something else you'd rather do? I could let you sleep in and then we could go down to Greasy's for breakfast, and you could flirt with Lazy Susan."
"Actually, we may need to avoid that place for a while," Stan said, looking abashed. "Turns out Mabel was right about her being a clingy crazy cat lady."
"Okay," Ford said, racking his brain for something else Stan might like to do. "We could go into the woods and… beat up some unicorns and extort them out of their gold."
"That definitely sounds like something I wanna do some time," Stan said. "But for today, yeah, let's go fishing."
Stanley wasn't completely the same as he had been before, but that was to be expected. If Ford was being honest, Stan was hardly the only one who was different now; it would take a very particular and peculiar sort of person to live through the end of the world and come out the other side unchanged. Stan's changes were just a bit different than most. He seemed to feel things more, or at least he was more open about expressing the things he felt, but those emotions were more ephemeral than the ones he had had before. He smiled and laughed more easily, but never quite as deeply, Ford thought. But never with the keen edge of desperation to it that Ford hadn't noticed except by its absence, either. And while Stan was still wary of dangers that might be lurking out of sight, as well he should be, living in Gravity Falls, he didn't tense at each passing shadow anymore. There was also a spirit of adventure in him again and a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, the likes of which Ford hadn't seen since they were kids. It wasn't a trade that Stanley should have ever been forced to make, but under the circumstances, it was far from the worst thing that could have happened to him.
Besides, Ford thought as he dragged his soaking wet and fishing pole-less self up the shore of Scuttlebutt Island to the soundtrack of Stan's unabashed, but not unkind, laughter, Stanley wasn't completely different than he had been before either.
"I'm telling you, it was the Gobblewonker," Ford insisted. "The Gobblewonker is very real, and it just stole my fishing pole."
Still grinning, Stan wiped a tear of mirth from his eye. "Sure it did. Whatever you need to tell yourself."
"I saw it," Ford grumbled as he sat down next to Stan.
"Hey, you know what? High five for effort. Or no, wait," Stan said, looking at his own outstretched hand and then Ford's. "For you it'd have to be a high six, wouldn't it?"
For a second, Ford thought it might be a repeat of the Waddles incident, where his automatic hope that this meant Stan had remembered would be quickly dashed by the realization that Stan had merely heard it from someone before. But then he noticed the nervousness in Stan's expression, like he had said it without thinking it through, and now wasn't sure if it was okay that he brought up Ford's six fingers casually like that. Ford felt his lips curl up into a smile as he slapped his palm against Stanley's. "High six."