Hey guys! After over half a year of not working on this, I decided to turn this one-shot into a two-shot! I managed to write this all in just two days!
Originally, this was going to be in third person limited POV focused on Shermie, but it eventually went back to good ol' third person omniscent POV.
I hope you all enjoy!
~Emily Believes xoxo
The Pines Family really couldn't be called "normal" by any stretch of the word, and what had just happened to Sherman's brother (who, mind you, had been pronounced dead) was certainly not normal. Sherman was fully prepared to throw holy water when he saw Stanley with those haunting yellow eyes chasing around his grandson. Of course, Stanley was infamous for being a prankster and even a conman in his earlier years. But even if it was him, why would he act out in such a way and say such strange things that seemed to almost be some sort of cipher?
His brother Stanford and his grandchildren Dipper and Mabel helped Stan to his feet once he stirred. The three talked to the disorientated man in hushed voices as their family members began to gather around them. They were all curious about what happened, what the long story behind this all was.
The two sets of twins finally turned to face their relatives. Sherman simply studied them at first. He still thought he had to be dreaming, maybe even hallucinating or seeing double. Stanford and Stanley. Both of his younger brothers were there, right in front of him, alive. They didn't appear to hate each other, either. "So, Ford… Stan… Do you intend on explaining all this?" Sherman said, his voice somewhat catching in his throat. He refused to believe that both of them were there in front of them. He was waiting for someone, anyone to tell him that there was only one, that the other was simply a figment of his mind.
Stubbornness. A trait definitely earned from his father.
"Of course," Ford said, wafting his hand as if to dismiss the notion that they wouldn't. He looked at his older brother in the eyes, a simple communication gesture that almost made Sherman shutter. He could tell by merely his gaze that the story the Pines Family was about to hear was not exactly the happiest. "I suppose we should start in April 1971."
Stan rolled his eyes upon hearing this date, slouching back even more than he already was. Sherman grew solemn; he remembered what happened back then. "It was me and my twin brother Stanley's senior year at high school. There was a science fair, and of course I entered with my perpetual motion machine. Representatives from West Coast Tech, an ivy league school on the other side of the country from New Jersey, heard of my experiment and wanted to evaluate it to see if I was accepted into their university or not. It was the first time I'd ever heard my father say he was impressed. However, Stanley" - he gestured to his twin, who somehow looked apologetic and sour at the same time - "inadvertently broke my experiment. Because of this, I was not let into West Coast Tech, and Stanley was thrown out of the house and completely sheltered from our family."
Ah, yes. He remembered that day. Of course, at that point Sherman himself was out on his own with his own family, but he still remembered a daunting phone call from his father. "Sherman Pines, I want you to listen and listen good. If your brother Stanley calls, don't answer. He's not welcome in our house or our family until he gains a lick of sense and some serious money." Was that really the reason he wasn't allowed to talk to his brother for all those years? "Stanley was thrown out 'cause he broke a science project of yours?" Sherman found the words escaped his mouth before he could stop them.
"It lost me a chance to go to one of the highest ranked universities in the country," Ford replied.
"Cost the family millions," Stan grouchily interjected. "That was the reason I was kicked out, because Ford's brains could've made the family rich. Pa said I wasn't allowed to return till I made millions." His resentment and bitterness was obvious, though his older brother couldn't exactly blame him. His own complex feelings towards their father began to arise as well.
Stan continued the relatively simplified backstory, straightening himself slightly. "So, I spent the next ten years trying to find the money to get Pa's approval back. I started my own business, Stan Co. Enterprises, in which I sold cheap items to anyone who was willing to buy. Unfortunately, this caused me to get banned from… some states," Stan stated, quickly glancing over at Phil and Abigail.
"And how did you do that, exactly?" Phil asked skeptically, giving Stan a stern look, his wife mirroring such a gaze.
"Customer dissatisfaction," Stan said simply.
"His company got banned from some states. The people just didn't take too kindly to him," Ford corrected, causing Stan to roll his eyes. Something told Sherman that Stanley managed to get banned in more than some states. "Meanwhile, I was at a university that… certainly wasn't my first choice. I had to work twice as hard to get the opportunities as I would've had I gone to West Coast Tech. A few years ahead of schedule, I completed my professional degree and thanks to a popular thesis I wrote, was awarded a research grant… But what to study? I took many fields into consideration, but I eventually chose to study anomalies." Ford held up one of his six-fingered hands. "Things that were unusual, odd, statistically impossible…
"I thought it would be the perfect field of research, but it was because of this field I met the demon that possessed Stan… Bill Cipher. Unfortunately, I didn't see his true ways at first… I was blinded by his flattery and tricks. I believed him to be a friend and a research partner, letting him voluntarily come in and out of my mind. He told me I could complete my research by building a gateway into other worlds, and with help from a mechanical genius and an old friend from university, I had. But it was when my partner had caught a glimpse of the other side of the gateway that I knew Bill wasn't what he said to be. He wanted to build that gateway, the portal to bring absolute chaos dimension, which would cause a devastating sort of… Oddpocalypse."
"Did he do it?!" asked Maxwell, a young cousin of Dipper and Mabel's, thinking the entire story being told was fictional. Frankly, many of the adults did too, but they couldn't deny that what had just happened with Stanley seemed very real. After all, Dipper seemed terrified of someone he was excited to see only moments before, and Stan's eyes were truly not human-like at all. It just left them to listen and wonder… could the story actually be true?
"Gotta wait and find out, little dude!" Mabel said energetically from beside her Grunkle Stan. She then returned her attention back to her Grunkle Ford, who continued telling a story that glossed over so many details she and Dipper already knew.
"I shut down the portal, but I didn't destroy it. I grew very paranoid, for even with the portal shut off, Bill still appeared in my dreams, taunting me. I couldn't get him out of my head. I had to hide the journals I kept my research in, so no one could fulfill Bill's plan… The first two I hid myself, but I needed the last one to go far, far away…"
Stan stood up, putting his arm in front of his twin to show that he was taking over the narrative. Ford showed to be slightly annoyed by being cut off, but conceded the storytelling anyways. After all, he didn't have much story left from this dimension. "So, I get a postcard from Gravity Falls, Oregon from my brother, sayin' I need'ta get there as fast as possible. So I go, seeing my twin for the first time in ten years, and he tells me to take his journal and sail as far away from him as possible. We're both too wrapped up in our own heads and get in an argument, then a fistfight… I accidentally activated the portal, and got Ford stuck in there. I tried to find a way to fix it on the spot, but the entire thing seemed way too complicated. I knew it was going to take a while, and I swore I wouldn't leave Ford's house until I got him back…
"But then I ran out of food. I had to go out and buy some with what little money I had… And everyone believed an a lady who said I was my brother. So I took him to his house, and tried to make something interesting out of his weird knickknacks he had lying around. The people loved it, and were willing to pay for it! So I turned that somewhat run down house into a somwhat run down tourist trap called the Mystery Shack. In order to not cause suspicion, I faked my own breath, took my brother's identity, and expanded the Mystery Shack with as many dumb things people would pay to see. I was Mr. Mystery by day, but by night… I was finding ways to fix that portal. To get my brother back."
Abigail's eyes widened in realization almost immediately after he finished his statement. "You're meaning to tell me that we sent our kids to spend the summer with some con man criminal instead of someone actually respectable?!" she questioned angrily, almost glaring at Stan. Usually, glares had no effect on Stan whatsoever, but knowing this woman could easily cut Dipper and Mabel out of his life, he grew scared.
"Well, Grunkle Ford was there for about the last few weeks of summer," Mabel said hopefully, but she knew that statement wouldn't really help anything. "Grunkle Stan got him out of the portal!"
"B-Besides! I think Grunkle Stan was the least gross and smelly monster we met during the summer," Dipper added nervously. Neither of them were really too keen on getting on their mother's bad side when she was angry.
"Monsters?" Phil said, his annoyance gradually growing into anger as well. He didn't care about the impracticality of it all; he just turned to Stan with a sharp look. "What kind of danger did you get our kids into?"
Everyone stared at the scene. Not all of them, of course, were as directly and deeply connected to those in the center of the conflict, so everything seemed like an overreaction based on a folktale. But still they watched, trying to make sense of what was going on.
Stan opened his mouth to try and explain himself, but Mabel quickly interrupted him. "He tried to protect us from it!" she exclaimed, jumping off the picnic table bench and going up to her parents. "Grunkle Stan may be a little rough around the edges, but he cares about us."
"Yeah, all summer he made sure we were safe, even with all the weirdness of Gravity Falls!" Dipper continued. He held a pleading look in his eyes almost identical to his sister's. Sure, a little bit of that might have been white lies, but it was enough to stop their parents from yelling at Stan.
Silence fell upon the park. Phil took a deep breath, looking at his twins. It was obvious they cared about this man, so he couldn't be that bad… right? Abigail wanted to believe her kids straight away, but concerns of all kinds plagued her mind. Faked his death, stole his brother's identity, got banned in multiple states, owned a sham tourist trap… It was hard to trust this man.
"Hey, what about that Bill guy? He had to have come back in order to possess Great Uncle Stan," asked Hannah, a cousin of Dipper and Mabel's in her teens.
Stanford, Stanley, Dipper and Mabel all gave each other worried glances. They couldn't talk about it without talking about Weirdmageddon, and explaining to angry parents that you put their kids through the apocalypse wouldn't exactly be the best decision. But they'd already gone too far…
"Bill was a dream demon. He appeared and haunted you whenever you fell asleep," Dipper started, everyone's attention turning on him. The three who truly knew Bill simply stared at him, confused. What was he doing? "But you can see him outside your dreams if you summon him. That's exactly what someone from Gravity Falls did to get the Mystery Shack from Stan. He summoned Bill to go into Stan's mind to find the combination to a lock where he kept the deed to the property. We managed to get Bill out of Stan's head, and he hasn't really liked us since. He hasn't really liked the Pines family since Ford shut off the portal… But, one day, Bill made a deal that allowed him to gain physical form, and he captured Ford, and to save him, Stan willingly let Bill into his mind so we could erase his memory and Bill's existence along with it. Thankfully, Stan's memory came back, but unfortunately so did Bill. I guess he's just been laying low in Stan's mind since then until he could get revenge on me and Mabel."
Maybe most of that was lying by omission, but it was still the truth to some extent. It fit right into the rest of the story, and they didn't even have to bring up the terrors of Weirdmageddon-
"Does that mean he caused the Oddpocalypse?!" Zara asked excitedly, holding her doll that Mabel returned. Dipper's breath hitched slightly. Shoot.
"Course not! Grunkle Ford made sure he couldn't!" Mabel interjected, sounding confident in her answer. Also not exactly a lie.
Everyone else seemed to buy it, either by thinking the explanation was true or just a cool story to accompany a prank, or some mix of both. Everyone seemed to return to their own devices after moments of nodding and mumbling and shrugging. Dipper and Mabel even left, pulling their parents away to convince them to return to Gravity Falls next summer. But that was when Sherman decided he'd had enough of this. He laughed, looking at the older of his twin brothers as everyone spread out around the park once more. "You're really letting old age get ta ya, aren'tcha, Ford?" he asked, his joking tone not matching his dread-stricken face.
Ford turned to his older brother, raising an eyebrow. "What do you mean?" he asked, holding his arms behind his back. He could finally get a good look at his older brother instead of just a glance. He'd aged so much… He wasn't in his twenties anymore; Ford guessed he was likely in his mid-sixties. He really hadn't been in this dimension in a long while…
Sherman's face dropped further. He looked over at Stan wistfully before facing Ford with pain in his eyes. "Stan's dead, don't ya realize?" his voice was hardly above a whisper. Only Ford could make out what he was saying. "He died thirty years ago, Ford. I dunno if no one wanted ta tell ya, but he's not actually there. Phil and Abi, Dipper and Mabel, they were just playing along." Unshed tears began to burn his eyes. "I know it has to be a thing for us old men, because I can see 'im too. I know he isn't there, course, 'cause he's dead."
Ford gave Sherman a sympathetic look. He truly thought his brother was gone, didn't he? "You're really that stubborn?" Ford asked his brother, causing the former to earn a confused look. "I suppose all of us are, but trust me when I say this, Sherman: my mind is probably the healthiest it's ever been, and I still see Stan. Ask Dipper and Mabel yourself. He's here. His death was just faked." Stan looked over at them and raised an eyebrow.
"That story was a bunch of hogwash!" Sherman whisper-yelled, swiping his arm dramatically. "There's no way it could've happened. There's no way Stanley's alive. He can't be…" He looked over at Stan, who's confusion had turned into subtle concern. Sherman's tone grew slightly more gentle."There's no way…"
Ford stayed silent. He thought for a moment, trying to think of something to convince his stubborn brother that his other stubborn brother was alive. "Sherman, listen to me. You and I can't possibly have the same hallucination of Stanley. There's neither a science nor an anomaly that could contribute to that. No one in this family would let there be an eerily long moment of silence as a hallucination talked on inside your mind. Besides, even if you did happen to have a hallucination of Stanley, then it would be of when you last saw him when he was seventeen, not a depiction of him now in his late fifties," he said.
Sherman let the words resonate with him. Actual science. Actual facts about the situation… His chest tightened, all thoughts except for his newfound realization ceasing, just for a moment. He turned to the younger of his twin brothers, tears threatening to fall from his eyes. His voice seemed to be lost in his throat, because all that came out was a croaky, "...Stanley?"
Stan smiled, genuinely smiled. "Alive," was the only word he replied with.
Sherman couldn't hold it in. Tears fell from the old man's eyes as he tackled his kin in a strong, tight hug that he had been waiting for. "Forty years," he said softly, his mind going through everything he had experienced without them. "Forty years, I've been without my brothers… It's been so long… Oh, ya knuckleheads."
They didn't have to know about Weirdmageddon. They didn't have to know about the true mysteries of Gravity Falls. They didn't have to know that Bill was still lurking in the mindscape, waiting to make just the right deal. They didn't have to know about what they'd experienced over the summer. It was better that way.
They'd be safe, and they could finally enjoy their family reunion.
