"Sweet Moses, stop actin' like a damn child and just pick a pair!"

"Ford."

No response.

"Ford, talk to me, please!"

He could see his brother's small body curled up against the door in the rearview mirror. His face entirely blank, his eyes trained on some landmark of interest outside the window but bleary, unfocused. His jaw clenched.

"Ford. Sixer. Come on, listen ta' me, please! I said I was sorry…"


The moment Stanley Pines set his car into park alongside the Shack, he heard the rear passenger door swing open and little feet storm up the steps of the gift shop into obscurity. He didn't even have to see his brother's no-doubt tear stained eyes to gain explicit confirmation of what he already knew. After all— while his grasp of some of the more unique quirks and intricacies about his twin had faded over forty plus years of estrangement— the one detail he knew he'd never forget was the sound of Ford crying.

Notably, the few times Stan witnessed him cry when they were kids, he actively avoided making a spectacle of his emotions. (Men like me sure as hell don't cry, his pa had constantly chided them.) Unlike other children in their age group, Ford's sobs always remained strained and purposefully held back, as if he were ashamed at himself for crying in the first place. From the sound of it Ford's anger and hurt still materialized precisely the same way now. It was almost as if the clock had reversed and suddenly Stan too was twelve again, watching his twin run away in muffled tears after getting his face busted up by one of their childhood bullies.

Almost…

After all, this time it wasn't the bully Ford was running from.

"You an' yer stupid mouth sure messed up this time," he muttered bitterly, yanking his keys out of the ignition.

He unbuckled his seatbelt, a gnawing hollowness settling in his soul. Cloud cover smothered the sun. A hopelessly stubborn part of him wanted nothing more than to immediately chase after his brother and console him as he always did in their youth, but that desire was quickly overrun by whatever sense of reason he still possessed. He'd only make things worse if he followed now. He always did make things worse.

Guilt raged within his mind like a hurricane, uprooting insecurities and blowing old emotional wounds to the forefront of his consciousness with terrifying force. He did this to Ford. He made him cry. In his utter carelessness he jabbed at what he imagined was one of his greatest insecurities: that ultimately— even in mind and spirit— he was nothing more than the childlike appearance chance forced upon him. That all his years of experience were for naught, that somehow he'd... regressed. Stanley wrung his hands together so tightly he nearly popped his joints out of place, his mind cycling between tides of self-hatred and incomprehensible shame at the memory of watching the light of his brother's soul eclipsed by his thoughtless comment.

Old bones creaking with trepidation, he exited the car and began to make his way towards the Shack. A few stray raindrops splattered atop his head in the seconds before he reached the covered porch. He strode into the gift shop, in search of any physical sign of his brother. However, the vending machine door was closed. Same with the entry to the house. Stan halted for a moment and listened, dimly wondering if he could pick up auditory clues as to where his brother went. As much as he'd love to avoid confronting his guilt for as long as possible, deep down he knew that this would threaten to completely overturn what little camaraderie they had left. (Because at present, the sad reality was that their relationship was riding on a thin wire no more dependable than a pathological liar in an interrogation room.) He doubted he'd forgive himself if he lost Ford all over again merely a day after getting him back.

His eyes slid with disinterest over the shelves of useless overpriced wares, focusing momentarily on the rain— now falling steadily outside— and then the keypad of the vending machine. Mind now firmly set on finding his brother, he strode towards the hidden passageway and entered the code. Miraculously, Ford hadn't changed it.

At least, not yet.

Stan crept down the steep staircase, gently running his hand over the faint six-fingered handprint immortalized in glowing ink on the cracked stone. Despite not understanding his reasons for it, his twin was obviously drawn to this place in some manner. Yesterday evening, he had to fight to convince him to sleep anywhere except the thin cot he'd shoved in the corner of the basement lab. And early this morning Ford exiled himself downstairs long before anyone else woke up, only venturing to the main floor at, presumably, the insistence of his growling stomach. He'd bet his first dollar in sales that Ford holed away to his 'lair' in this instance, too.

The closer the elevator dropped to the basement however, the more tongue-tied he felt. What was one supposed to say in situations like these? Had he already made a fatal mistake, stalling for as long as he did? Or were the wounds still too fresh? How did he know that he wouldn't bungle everything up all over again like he always seemed to do whenever he interacted with him, or that Ford would even be receptive to an apology? How long would he have to tip-toe around him, interact as if he were only fragile glass?

By the time he reached the lab, his skin felt clammy to the touch and his nerves were twisted into a steel ball. A sum of him just wanted to get this over with, like ripping the soiled dressing off of an infected wound, and yet he couldn't deny that insidious voice within his core that desired nothing more than to run away. When had he ever improved the quality of his life by bending on his knees and groveling for forgiveness anyways? In his experience, 'sorry' hadn't driven him any further than the Stanmobile running on two flats and fumes.

Besides a few computer backlights that were active and a few dull red lamps fixed around the perimeter, the lab was dark. Stanley felt the hairs on his neck prickle as he inhaled the stale air. Euugh. Despite spending years of solid time down here, he'd never gotten used to just how damn creepyFord's sci-fi mystery basement felt. It didn't take a genius to figure out his brother hadn't hidden down here, however. Rather, the lab was empty and near-silent, except for the faint whir coming from one of the old IMB computer's fans. He peaked into the portal room out of curiosity, finding much the same. Though interestingly, it appeared someone had begun to dismantle the machine.

The twisted metal frame was detached from its girders and wires, with a choice few parts cannibalized and scattered across the bedrock. So thismust have been what kept Ford so busy early this morning. Stan didn't understand how his brother managed to disassemble this much that quickly considering his size, but leave it to him to figure out a workaround, he supposed. He couldn't help but sulk at the sight of thirty years of his work lying in ruins, even though he knew he'd succeeded in the end.

As he turned to leave, a glint of reflected light coming from Ford's bundled up overcoat on the desk caught his interest. Tentatively, he approached the small mangled coat. Whatever caused the light to bounce astray, it appeared metallic. Intrigue brewed within him as he captured the edge of the object with his index finger and thumb.

"Let's see what you are," he murmured, pulling it into the rosy glow of the safety lamp that was mounted over the entrance to the portal room. The object was a nondescript metal tin the length of his hand, with a clasp on one side. He unlatched it gently.

Inside were… photographs, mainly. A few scraps of paper with windswept notes or sketches on them. The photos were mostly polaroids, but a couple were fashioned out of a holographic material that projected the images into the air. Stan filtered through the contents, his gaze lingering with awe on a rather impressive photograph that depicted— he assumed— the night sky on an alien world. A lot of the objects inside the tin were similar, each acting as a small window into Ford's travels: images of exotic, almost unearthly landscapes, rough sketches of creatures even stranger than those contained in his journals, a thin strip of blue dyed cloth, an elongated, pointed tooth. His hands brushed against a slip of paper covered in tallies. Written below those lines were a series of numbers ranging anywhere from fifty-five to sixty-four that had long since been scribbled out and replaced with a question mark.

The edge of Stan's lips slumped downwards the longer he thought about what that hesitant question mark really meant. He set this piece of parchment aside to look at the next object in the tin.

To his surprise, Ford was actually pictured in the next photo— an adult Ford like he remembered, but appearing far older than he'd last seen him in 1982. In the photograph, his brother stood with his arm slung around another man's shoulder, a wide smile on his face. His tousled hair had gone almost completely grey— peppered with silver around his ears— and deep creases lined the corners of his eyes and the contour of his cheeks. The wrinkles suited him, honestly. Made him look distinguished. Nonetheless, Stan's heart dropped in his chest at the sight. He held the thick paper with white knuckles as the significance of this hit him. This was close to how Ford would have appeared if he hadn't been reverted into a child. Now obviously, Stan only needed to glance into the mirror to imagine what his brother would have roughly looked like at sixty two, but actually seeingthe way age settled on his face- even merely memorialized as a polaroid- was its own shock to the system.

Stanley stared at the photo for a long while, committing the image to memory. He flipped to the next photo.

His eyes blew wide. His wrists trembled as he held the last object in the tin with nothing less than reverence, than proof that perhaps he and Ford might still see eye to eye more than he initially realized. That maybe, they still had a chance to truly be brothers again.

"Oh Sixer, you old sap…" he said in a half-laugh, trying to blink away his tears.

In the tattered, faded image he held, two young boys stood proudly on a wrecked sailboat at the edge of the sea, shirtless and sunburnt.


The rain still pummeled away at the roof and walls of the Shack by the time Stan returned to the main floor. He frowned for a moment, distantly wondering if Dipper and Mabel brought anything to keep them dry while they tromped through the woods, but these fears quickly faded. They were resourceful kids. He knew they'd fare fine. He couldn't say the same for Stanford, who hadn't uttered a peep for the past goodness-knows-how-long.

As he quietly made his way through the hall, his eye lingered on the door of the spare room his brother slept in last night. The door was shut, but he could swear he heard something rustling inside. A hunch brewing in his gut, Stan knocked on the ornately carved wood.

"Hey, Ford?" he called softly. "You in here, buddy?"

As expected, no response.

He bit at his lip, considering his options: steel his nerves and face him while the wound was still fresh, or bide his time and risk destabilizing what little of a relationship he had with his brother all together. Inhaling steadily, he placed a solid hand on the door and pushed.

"Ford?"

He found the man in question huddling on his side against the couch cushions, his face hidden away and his legs curled tight to his chest. Both pairs of boots- shoplifted and his original- sat together on the floor, lined up perfectly side by side. Stan almost hated himself for letting his mind linger on such thoughts after what he'd said earlier, but... when juxtaposed by the size of the couch, Ford looked every bit of his apparent age. Slight. Defenseless. Perfectly childlike, like he were peering through a looking glass into the shadow of their glory days.

And yet there was a clear dissonance between the brother he remembered then and the person who wore his face now.

"I'm not in the mood for your excuses," his brother muttered bitterly, burying his head further into the cushion.

"I- uh, I mean I'll leave if ya' really want me to," he replied, scratching at the nape of his neck. "But just for the record, I didn't come in here to make excuses, I came to—" Stanley swallowed his pride— "to apologize."

At those words, his twin turned to glance at him with a dry, withering expression, mouth slackened and eyes hooded with distrust. "All right, cut to the chase. Which fey kingdom do you originate from and why did you replace my brother?"

The doubt of his sincerity sent a spike into his chest. "Come on," he insisted, opening his hands. "It's me, I swear."

"The Stanley I know doesn't apologize for anything," Ford said bluntly, further narrowing his eyes.

Both brothers fell silent at this statement. Truthfully, Stan couldn't argue with its accuracy. He took the occasion to drink in the sight of the brother's face- to truly see him as he was in this moment- Ford's seemingly youthful yet haunted gaze caught in Stan's own. He tried to ignore the recognizable trail of dried tears that crossed his cheeks, or the lingering dampness of his eyes. They were messed up, the pair of them… old men with a lifetime of troubles to sort through and now on top of that, appearing generations apart. But Stan desperately wanted to make it up to him. His heart sank at the idea of his twin truly believing that his rare, vulnerable word- his apology- wasn't sincere.

"Listen," he began, slowly sinking to rest on the couch, adjacent to Ford. "The last thing I ever want ta' do is hurt you. But I have ," he said, voice wavering slightly. "And I hate seeing you like this, especially when- uh, w-when I know it's 'cause of me. I know it may not be worth nothin' to you after everything I've done to ya' over the years, but... I am sorry. You deserve better. I'll try better."

He took a breath, and he could swear the rainstorm outside paused alongside him within the span of that inhale. None of the oscillating emotions expressed in his brother's features were anything he could easily recognize. The quirk of his lip or the incline of his brow possessed no meaning, for at this precise instant in time, Stanley simply couldn't determine whether Ford intended to throw him out of the room, break into tears, or envelop him in a hug tighter than a person his size had any right of giving.

Instead, Ford sighed deeply, hunching over on the couch and cupping his cheeks into his hands. "I really appreciate that," he said quietly. Then, his words bleeding into one another: "Of course, it's not fair to say this was entirely your fault. I could have at least attempted to communicate my needs beforehand, o-or not have reacted so strongly, o-"

"Ford. Ford. Who's sayin' sorry here? Stop hijacking my apology, you nerd."

This made his brother laugh a little, softly, but an unmistakable laugh. The sound of it touched Stan's heart in a way he couldn't quantify in words. Dimly, he came to the realization that this was the first laugh he'd heard out of him in over forty years. But same as the seasons changed, same as all the days Stanley's bombastic, dramatized work persona slipped away past closing to be replaced with a long withered melancholy, so too did Ford's brief moment of peace pass. A shadow passed over his countenance.

"I only wish I could find my place in all this," he said in a broken whisper, pointedly avoiding eye contact.

Stan frowned, feeling the creases in his face deepen. "W- whatdya mean?"

His brother shrank into himself, pulling his knees to his chest.

"All that happened earlier only served to prove in my mind that everything's just… wrong . It feels wrong. Changed. Put simply, I- I guess the world's moved on without me." Confession released to the world around him, he buried his head from sight once more, and took a deep, shaky breath to- Stan assumed- calm himself down from a cliff's edge of emotional release.

"Oh, Sixer…" He attempted to lay a comforting hand on his brother's shoulder, but to his disappointment Ford shrugged away from the affection entirely. "Come on, there's gotta be some way we can fix this, right?"

"There's no way to reverse this," he said, voice cracking with emotion. "Trust me, I've tried nearly everything, but I've still been like this for three goddamn years."

"Three years?" Stan exclaimed, face painted with a polarized mixture of horror and remorse. "And this was when you were alone in that space sci-fi dimension? Threatened by enough danger 'round the clock that you were forced ta' keep a damn gun at your hip at all times?"

Ford nodded slowly, eyes meeting his for an instant before flitting away.

He pressed his face into his calloused hands, roughly rubbing at his temples. "Sweet Moses. How the hell did you stay alive?"

"Honestly? I can't rightly say."

The two sat in relative silence for a while after that, allowing each other's mere presence fill the gap their lack of words left. Outside, the storm continued- rain pouring in rivulets down the glass pane of the window. At some point, Ford had let his legs back down, allowing them to lightly swing over the side of the couch. Stan sat hunched forward, leaning on his elbows. He couldn't say for certain at this point what Ford's opinion of him was, but in all honesty he supposed this was the vital difference between the predictable, amicable brother who existed for thirty years in his daydreams and the real item. Perhaps it was better not knowing.

Whatever the thoughts the man held towards him however, he was fairly confident that hatred was not one of them.

"Stan," the man in question said eventually, wringing his hands together. "Can I tell you something?"

Hearing his name pass through his twin's lips, he instantly perked up. "Yeah? What's on your mind?"

"Despite what I said yesterday, despite the anger I held towards you then, I'm really, really glad you rescued me…"

As he spoke his voice faded into obscurity, masked by a crushing sense of fear that no person bearing the childlike appearance he possessed had any right of knowing. He crossed his arms tight around himself, chin sinking into the folds of the dark maroon scarf he hadn't taken off since his return home. Fledgling tears dotted the corners of his eyes. Before those could gain any traction, he blotted them away with tightened fists. Watching this, Stan froze, worried that even the slightest movement or uttered syllable might be enough to burst the emotional dam Ford evidently wanted to remain closed.

Luckily, Ford himself chose to orient the direction of their talk once more, taking the conversational anxiety off Stan's shoulders completely.

"It comes to my attention that I haven't been forthright with you yet," he said, staring at the wooden floor slats- and knowing him, likely analyzing the patterns formed by the grain to keep his mind stimulated. "About- well, about how all this came to be." He gestured broadly at himself, at his gangly twelve year old body.

"Now, I don't wanna force ya' to talk about somethin' that obviously bothers yo-"

"No. No, it's okay... I want you to know. You deserve as much."

"You sure?" Stan confirmed.

His twin nodded resolutely, and curled up on the couch so that he was facing him, legs crossed one over the other. His eyes peered as far up as they could reach, a clear signal that he was searching through his memories, beginning to piece together his past from the scattered recollections those neurons held.

"Not to complicate the story with superfluous detail," Ford began, nervously clasping his hands together, "the events that lead me to this point started with… well, with the desire to construct a weapon powerful enough to eradicate an enemy who was hunting me down throughout dimensions."

"And this enemy was, what, strong enough that your normal weapons wouldn't do the trick?"

He gave a short, staccato nod. "Correct. Essentially, to destroy them, I needed to find a way to destabilize their very molecular makeup at a quantum level. I knew how to build it, but one of the required components could only be found in a single dimension, colloquially known by its inhabitants as the 'Do-Over' Dimension. And yes- where you think this is going is probably right" he said, jabbing his finger at him, and Stan knew at that moment that his attempts to conceal the fledgling dread he felt was all for naught.

Ford began gesturing with his hands as needed as he continued to explain his experiences. "You see, the problem with this dimension is that their time stream was fragmented . The very nature of time was in constant flux. Here, time could move forwards or backwards in any sequence without pattern or warning. Inhabitants might experience hours, weeks, or even entire years of their lives completely over again, all while still retaining full memory of every cycle. Even visitors to this world weren't absolved from its effects"

"And you willingly stepped into a place like this?" Stan asked his twin quietly, brow furrowed.

"I had no choice. Like I said, this dimension was the only place I could find the specific isomer of a rare element stable enough to use in my weapon. I knew the dangers of entering far in advance… and yet I went anyways."

"So, you made a gamble."

"Put bluntly, yes. It was a gamble against the universe that the time stream would remain relatively stable during my visit. One that, ultimately, blew up in my face. Ironically however," Ford continued, his eyes narrowing with deep irritance, "the Do Over Dimension hadn't experienced a Great Rewind for centuries until the one I was caught amid."

Stanley watched as his brother limply fell backwards, meeting the rear cushion of the couch. Frustration and bitter anger painted his face when simply recalling his story; as such, Stan couldn't begin to imagine what it must have been like to live through such a traumatic experience. Slowly- so as to not spook him with unexpected movement- he slung his arm over the couch back.

From outside, a distant roll of thunder sounded alongside the July rainstorm.

"And I was so close to completing my mission!" he growled, shaking a tight fist that likely had little half-moon indentations in his palm where his nails were. "I had the element in hand, I was only hours away from exiting the dimension… when without any warning, time slipped about fifty years into the past, and I found myself physically reverted to the size of a eight or nine year old kid. What's scary is that despite my misfortune, I still got lucky. For any visitors to the dimension who weren't over fifty years of age, they would have simply perished. Ceased to exist."

"Well damn," Stan muttered, right hand pressed to mouth and left still lightly slung around his brother's shoulder, resting on the seat cushion.

"Damn is right. I had a hard enough time traversing the multiverse as an adult, so to add this as a hinderance?" Ford looked up, meeting his gaze. "It was hell. Most days I barely managed to get the nutrients I needed to remain healthy in this growing body. I'm sure I've fallen close to malnourishment more than once. Adding onto that, physically defending myself the way I used to became a near impossibility. And thanks to the constant threat of… of the interdimensional child slave trades, I feel like I can't trust anyone in a crowd anymore."

Fresh teardrops prickled at the corners of his eyes as he spoke, glistening in the dim lighting of the parlor. Ambient light from outside shone through the blue and green stained glass window. It cut a clear path through the shadows cast by the rest of the room, illuminating one side of each of the brother's faces. With a soft, sympathetic sigh, Stan let his hand drop onto Ford's shoulder. Letting him know he was there beside him as he blinked through the tears.

"I'm sorry you had ta' go through this."

"It's not your fault," Ford said with a shrug, voice thick in that way it gets when one's deliberately trying to hold back the full brunt of their emotions. "It's not anyone's fault. It's just… time, really."

It's not your fault, his mind echoed his words. And inwardly, he'd love to believe that were true. He'd love to delude himself that he were entirely blameless. But as much as he wanted to take Ford's statement to heart, all he could see was the memory that had replayed in both his nightmares and in every waking moment he spent fixing the portal, flickering through his subconscious with a frightening vivacity. The force of his hands against Ford's chest. His terrified screams, "Stanley! Stanley please," shredding his vocal cords in unbridled desperation. The almost sickeningly blue glow of the portal swallowing his brother whole while he, in his worthless, wounded body couldn't do anything more than gape in abject horror.

Frankly, everything that happened to the guy on the other side was his fault, far as he was concerned. But fat luck trying to convince Ford of this. Ford, whose abject blame of the universe only served as deflection from the blame he truly placed on his own actions. Stan wasn't an idiot. He recognized what guilt spiraling looked like.

He glanced towards his twin from the corner of his eyes, and gave his shoulder a pat. "Well I'm sorry for ya' anyway." Another relevant thought from earlier today entered his mind then, and he turned towards him inquisitively. "Hey, so don't feel like ya' gotta answer this if it's anythin' too uncomfy, alright? But... why were you so adamant on the townsfolk not thinkin' I was your pa, or grandpa, or whatever?"

While it was subtle, he could visibly see the muscles in Ford's shoulders flinch at the movement of their conversation to this topic.

"Okay, we uh, w-we can talk about something else then," he said hastily, pulling his arm back to allow him some space. Or perhaps it was time to leave him alone entirely. "Guess I shouldn't 'ave brought it u-"

"It's because you're my last connection to the past," Ford blurted out suddenly. "Of who I really am. I don't- I didn't want that perverted by having to spend every day in public living a lie. Not now. Not when I'm like this," he said, gesturing broadly down at himself.

Stan frowned at the unclear wording in his statement. "What do you mean, 'perverted?'"

He stared down at his six fingers, wringing them together. "Well, I uh- sometimes, these past three years… I often found myself in a place where it felt like my memory almost- I guess, like my mind wanted to forget. Over time, it became hard to remember that I'd ever had any other childhood. And now," he said more quietly, looking for all the world as if he wanted to slip through the floorboards and away to his basement, "faced with the reality of having to grow up all over again, I- that still scares me."

Stan nodded slowly, thinking he understood the scenario from his perspective a little more. He placed his hands firmly on either side of his twin's shoulders, looking at him earnestly.

"Ford, no matter what we tell those townsfolk, you're my brother. First off. You better believe I'll remind ya' every day for the rest of my life, if I have to. And that's never gonna change, y'hear? It doesn't matter to me if ya' look like a kid, 'cause far as I'm concerned, you're still you. Still as nerdy and annoying of a twin bro as I remember, anyways! Hah!" he exclaimed, and gave Ford's head a noogie, fist ruffling through his untamed brown locks.

His brother let out a giggle, pushing his hands away in protest, and for the first time the smile on his lips truly reached his eyes.

"But hey," Stan continued, expression growing genuine again. "From now on, whatever explanation we give ta' other people about 'who you are?' We'll figure that out on your terms. I won't force ya' to behave a certain way in public or in private because of some perceived 'relation.' That fair?"

"Yeah." Ford nodded slowly. "Yeah, that's fair."

"Good. You… d'ya want a hug?"

He held his arms open. To his delight Ford accepted the offer of affection without hesitation. He wrapped his smaller arms as tight around his middle as possible, and buried his face into his shoulder.

"Stanley?" he whispered.

"Yeah?"

"Thank you."

Beyond the walls of the Shack, the rain stopped.