Screw it, I'm just gonna post the rest of what I've written so far and hope someone reads it.

For Ford, the day began just like any other day.

Wake up at the crack of dawn, do some research until the children were awake and Tate called him down for breakfast, then head out into the woods to study the latest anomaly that had caught his interest.

He had to admit, researching had become a lot easier now that the children had finally made some headway in organizing his notes; he no longer had to try and remember what he had already written down or make a futile attempt to search every room in the house for it to double-check, he could just grab the pages that referred to a specific creature or group of creatures and take them along, adding little extra scribblings as needed. He was even amused by Mabel's habit of tying them together like parcels with pieces of multicolored yarn, or drawing little hearts around pictures of creatures she found particularly adorable (not very scientific, but he found himself oddly looking forward to seeing them).

Today Ford was watching a herd of cervitaurs, creatures that were half-man, half-deer, which were grazing and playing together in a nearby meadow.

He smiled as he watched two of the bucks raking their antlers together, clearly fighting for the attention of a nearby doe who seemed more interested in munching the leaves of a nearby tree. Nearby, a nervous fawn, which oddly reminded him of Dipper, skipped back and forth on his hooves as he watched the battle; his little fists were clenched in excitement, and Ford wondered which of the bucks he was rooting for.

The fighting ended when the bucks noticed that the doe had wandered off to the other side of the meadow, and was grazing with a group of other does. They both looked a little crestfallen, and sheepishly turned and knocked their heads together more affectionately this time, before sitting down side by side and starting to groom each other.

Some things are the same no matter what species you are.

He only decided to stop for the day when thunder began rumbling overhead, and the skittish deer folk began heading for the shelter of the trees.

Ford hurriedly stuffed the precious pages into the inside of his coat, turned up his collar, and began making his way home.

It occurred to him that he was going to be back earlier than usual; perhaps that meant he could actually contribute to the twins' work in organizing his papers! They'd been surprisingly efficient for twelve-year-olds, but he needed to figure out a better way to organize the cross-references-maybe some sort of filing system? Maybe he ought to make copies of the notes that corresponded to two different anomalies, so then he could-

"DIPPER! MABEL!"

Ford stopped short.

That was Tate's voice.

Why on earth was Tate yelling at the children? Had they done something-

"DIPPER! MABEL!"

...That didn't sound like angry yelling, actually. It sounded more like he was calling for them, like-

A sudden cold feeling rushed down Ford's spine, and he jogged the rest of the way to the house.

The first thing he saw was Fiddleford, rushing out of the forest and absentmindedly brushing a clump of leaves out of his beard. When he saw Ford, he half-galloped to his side.

"Stanford! Are the kids with ya?!"

The cold feeling grew.

"What-no, I-I haven't seen them since this morning! What are you-!"

Fiddleford turned white, and tugged the sides of his hat down over his ears, before doing a little nervous jig while standing in place.

"Oh banjo polish, this is bad!"

Tate came clumping out of the house, and when he saw them he rushed over.

"They're not anywhere in the house-not even any of the crawlspaces."

Ford's stomach curdled with worry and horror-that quickly turned themselves into anger.

"Why didn't you two keep a closer watch on them?!" he demanded. "You're both here all day anyway, you should have been making sure they didn't go running off like this-"

Fiddleford shrank back, gibbering a little and tugging on the end of his beard-but Tate just turned red, and snarled back, "Maybe it's because they're not our responsibility! They're YOURS!"

Ford recoiled at the silent accusation.

For a moment they just stood there glaring at each other (as best he could tell, since Tate's eyes were still hidden under his hat).

Then Tate turned away and muttered, "Let's just go look for 'em. They can't have gone far, maybe they just went down ta the village or something."

He went stomping off, his boots leaving deep grooves in the earth as he marched.

Fiddleford put a tentative hand on Ford's arm.

"...He didn't mean that. He's jes' worried 'bout the kidlets, same as you."

Ford didn't answer, not even with the thought that crossed his mind: He's not exactly wrong, though.

They decided to split up. Tate would ask around in the village, since people were more likely to talk to him; Fiddleford would fire up his best-functioning automaton and search the forest behind the house; and Ford would head down to the road on the off chance that they had decided to go-

But where on earth would they have gone, if they'd decided to head that way?

A little part of Ford wondered if maybe they were homesick, and had decided to try and make it back to their old town. If so, that seemed like an incredibly foolish idea; based on the letter he'd received, they wouldn't exactly be welcomed back, even if they managed to survive such a long trip on their own. Most of the people there were still picking up the pieces of their lives before the plague struck, and had no room to accommodate a pair of still-very-young children. Their old house might not even be standing, or if it was, most likely someone else had claimed it for themselves by now.

But what if they did decide to go back?

Is it my fault?

Was I too neglectful?

Did I do something to upset them?

The possibility made a sick feeling rise in Ford's stomach, and he decided that when he found the children, they were going to have a very long talk.

After he grounded them for the rest of their childhoods for frightening him like this.

Ford was about to head down the main road, since that seemed like the most logical route, when something bright caught his attention in the corner of his eye.

He twisted his head in that direction-and saw the side path.

Specifically, the large, shiny pebble lying there, where no such pebble had a right to be.

It felt like kind of a long shot, but Ford cautiously approached, and knelt to pick it up.

It was an average piece of granite, worn down by time and erosion until it was smooth and rounded at the sides, with a few flecks of mica that sparkled here and there. It also had a slight spatter of bright blue paint along one side.

There was only one person Ford knew who seemed to be consistently covered in paint, or other crafty substances that seemed to smear everywhere no matter what, and his mouth went dry at the thought that she and her brother must have come this way.

Especially because it was getting colder, and starting to rain, and he was pretty sure this was a part of KillBilly territory-

Ford shoved the pebble into his pocket, and drew his crossbow as he rushed onto the trail.

He could feel the back of his head throbbing again, pounding in rhythm with his footsteps, but the fear over what might be happening to Dipper and Mabel, or what would happen if he didn't find them in time (a hundred horrifying possibilities were running through his brain), outweighed the pain.

Ford kept his eyes peeled for any signs of blue (for Dipper) or extremely colorful (for Mabel) cloth, and occasionally he'd pause in his footsteps and call their names.

But he didn't stop or turn back, not even when it began raining in earnest.

It rapidly became harder and harder for Ford to see, as rain splattered across his glasses and misted them up. He just ran his fingers over them, or occasionally tried to wipe them on his soaked sweater, which wasn't all that helpful but still better than nothing. The problem was that as he ran, many times he thought he would see movement nearby, but more often than not it turned out to be just a droplet of water sliding down his lenses.

Other times it was just trees being pulled back and forth by the storm, or once even a flock of startled birds that had no idea how close they came to getting themselves shot when they burst into the air right in front of Ford.

A small voice in the back of his head attempted to point out that he was no good to the children when he was wandering around the forest practically blind, and a more prudent approach would be to turn back and find Fiddleford and Tate and tell them that he'd found where the children had gone so they could all search together.

The rest of him slammed the idea down on the grounds that he'd come too far to turn back now, and the children might not be able to afford that kind of time.

As intelligent and (probably) resourceful as he'd seen they were, in the brief amounts of time he'd spent with them, they were still just children who were unfamiliar with this part of the forest.

He needed to find them now.

And then, as he stomped through a particularly muddy part of the path, the toe of his boot kicked another pebble.

Ford knelt, and scooped it up, cleaning his glasses again with his other hand and squinting at it.

It was the same kind as he'd found earlier.

He couldn't tell if there was any paint on it this time, but it was too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence.

Ford got to his feet and scanned either side of the trail eagerly-and managed to lay eyes on another pebble, lying in the brush off to his left.

Bravo, children. Clearly you know your fairy tales. Even if you are now also grounded for straying from the path.

He stepped off the path to follow this new trail.

The pebbles were somewhat erratic in their frequency, but at least they gave him somewhere to go.

Ford barely noticed the way the pounding in his head was getting worse, or the way his thoughts were starting to fog around the edges, because at least the most important one was still in force: Find the children. Dipper and Mabel are in danger.

He barely even noticed that some of his thoughts had been about how this place seemed vaguely...familiar.

At least until he found the wall.

When he stepped around a particularly large tree and laid eyes on it, the throbbing in Ford's head reached a fever pitch, sending him to his knees with a hoarse cry as he clutched at his scalp.

It felt as though rocks were rolling around in his brain, smashing into each other with reckless abandon and threatening to break his head apart. Never-never had it been this painful before, he had to-

Needed-

What had Ford been-

His thoughts felt as though they were covered in syrup, so he could barely get one of them to manifest freely for long before it was sucked back down into the goop.

He-he was out alone in the rain, letting himself get soaked as he knelt in the mud.

What was he doing out here?

Dazedly Ford got to his feet, picking up his crossbow with one hand and rubbing at his still aching forehead.

...He should go back home. Tate and Fiddleford were probably worried about him, wondering what "that idjit" had gotten up to this time, they were going to give him an earful for wandering around in the woods all by himself during a storm. And perhaps Dipper and Mabel were worried too-

Wait.

Dipper. Mabel.

The headache began to shriek with life again, but this time Ford stubbornly pushed through it.

Dipper and Mabel were out here somewhere, that's why he was here. And he was pretty sure they were on the other side of this-

He forced himself to look, to ignore the agony.

This wall.

This oddly familiar stone wall.

He didn't know how or why he recognized it, but he stepped towards it, even as his eyes watered with the pain, and followed it until he found a gate, which at some point had had something enormous smash into the top of it so that the metal was bent almost in half.

Ford reached out, with an effort, and put a hand on it, pulling until it moved just enough for him to stagger inside.

Immediately he was pitched to the ground again, and for one horrifying moment the inside of his head was so overwhelmed with pain that he was sure he was about to die-

And then, just like that, it stopped.

For a moment Ford lay there, trying to understand what had just happened, while rain pattered on the back of his head and back and wet grass brushed against his face.

Then he lifted himself back up on his arms, and took a look at the ruins of the castle standing before him.

There was a light of some kind flickering in one of the upper windows of the tower.

And he didn't know how, but he knew that he knew this place too.

A determined glare settled on Ford's face, and he got to his feet again, before marching towards the broken-down front door.

I've worn glasses out in the rain many times.

The struggle is real.