Autumn was coming to Gravity Falls but Stanley Pines wouldn't be around to see it. He was rifling through what was left in his room at the Mystery Shack. Almost the entire collected debris ended up in the trash. Some was left for Soos. Everything he wanted barely filled his duffle bag. It's funny how a life acquires things. Unpaid bills, gum wrappers, bits of cheap broken jewelry, glasses with old prescriptions. Stan mercilessly and unceremoniously threw the last handfuls into the trash can. There was no more looking backwards. No more holding onto the past. For the first time since he was a teenager, he was excited about his future.
"Stanley?" His brother called from somewhere down the hallway.
"In here."
His brother, a mirror image of himself, opened the door.
"Wow, you cleaned out quick."
"Not giving you time to change your mind."
Stanford Pines, reunited so recently, already felt like a fixture in his life again. He would say it was like he had never left but that wasn't entirely true. Ford started poking through Stan's bag.
"Not much in here. A few clothes. Brass knuckles. Fake IDs?" He raised an eyebrow. Stan chortled and shrugged.
"A lot has happened. Stan Pines is a well known name in some police stations."
"A lot has happened," Ford said. He hesitated as if he wanted to say more but lost the nerve. Instead he turned his attention back to the back. He pulled out a photograph of Stan, huddled with Dipper and Mable. Stan turned back to his closet as his brother went on. "You know, Stanley, I've been doing some research since I got back to this dimension. A lot has changed in the last 30 years. Did you know about calculator watches? Ingenious!"
"All you ever do is research, egg head."
There was a beat of silence.
"I looked up mom and dad." Ford said. The sentence fell like a stone between them.
"Oh."
Silence.
"They've passed away. Almost a decade ago." Ford went on.
"Yeah."
More silence.
Stan felt his brother's gaze boring into his back. He fiddled with the last few moth eaten pieces of clothing and refused to turn around. What was he expecting him to say? Mom and Dad slammed the door on him and never looked did he care if they were alive or dead?
"Were...were you there?" Ford asked. Stan heaved a sigh, his shoulders falling.
"No. I...I wasn't.."
The bed groaned as Ford stood up, his boots clomping against the floor. Softly, under his breath, flat and emotionless -
"Damn."
The footsteps retreated out of the room.
Ford had left his picture of the kids on the bed. Stan placed it back into his bag, tenderly wrapping it inside a shirt to protect it. He zipped the duffle resolutely. He should have known Stanford would ask about their parents. He should have been ready with an answer.
Before computers, a man like him could skip town and disappear into the horizon. When he left Jersey, that's exactly what he did. But it worked in the other direction, too. He had no way of knowing what was happening in some little nowhere town in New Jersey. News didn't travel far past city lines in those days. As far as he was concerned, Glass Shard Beach no longer existed.
How old was he when it happened? Maybe in his 30s or 40s? The phone at the Mystery Shack rang one night and the answering machine clicked on automatically as it always did after business hours.
"Stanford?" A woman's voice came through the tinny mono speaker. Stan froze. It'd been years but he knew his mother's voice. "We...we haven't heard from you in a while... I've got bad news, Fordsie. Your father...he...he passed away last night. A heart attack. It was quick. Doc says he never felt it." Her voice hitched and there was rustling. A hitch in her voice. "Call me back, baby." The phone disconnected.
Stan reached for it immediately but he stopped halfway through the familiar number. She didn't call him, she called Stanford. He rewound the message and played again. Dad was...gone? Truly gone? It didn't feel true. It felt like a joke. He fell into a chair and stared at the machine, feeling empty and numb. Just like that. Gone.
The next night Stanley Pines faked his death. He cut the brake lines of his car, doused the ragged seats in gasoline, lit a match and pushed it off the cliffs outside the town. He threw his burning car in the ravine. He climbed a nearby tree, hands cold and wet from the snow. He hid himself among the branches and watched it burn. Watched the cops show up and the firetruck hose it down. His ear went numb in the air. The whole world was dark except the circle of lights from the emergency vehicles.
Hidden in the cold, watching the fire engulf his car, he cried. Heaving, silent sobbing. He cried for his father, his mother, his brothers. For himself. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and shivered. Filbrick Pines was dead and now Stanley Pines was dead. He was just a ghost, walking in a mask of his brother's face. He thought he'd already grieved his father when he disowned him but a new pain hit him now. A great empty cavern opened in his heart that would never close. Anger and hurt and regret and longing and rage pulled him apart at the seams. He thought there was no way to be whole again.
The pain of loss was still there, even now. It never did go away but it ebbed and flowed. It would always be there. So would the anger. He wasn't sure if he was whole again but he was happy and what more could he ask for at his age? If only for a moment, he could be happy. He had his brother again, doesn't he even get that? Or was dad gonna take him away again, even from the grave?
Stan left the packing and wandered back into the shack. It was much quieter since the kids had gone home for the school year. He used to think he'd miss the silence but he missed the noise more. He was not surprised to see his brother at the kitchen table, pouring over nautical maps and charts. He was plotting their trip to the Arctic. He didn't acknowledge Stan as he walked in. He muttered quietly to himself making rapid marks and notes on the oversized maps.
Stanley grabbed a soda from the fridge and watched his brother. As he scribbled on the paper, Stan noticed he still used coded writing. He'd spent so long breaking those damn codes he was fluent now.
"Look at this Stanley." Ford motioned to his brother, not taking his eyes off the maps. Stan took a few steps forward. "The signals are not centralized like I thought initially. Even though Bill was contained to Gravity Falls, I think the shift of weirdness may have opened other weak spots in the dimensional tectonics. The largest signals are coming from the Arctic but there are signs in other areas as well. If we can chart the small signals we may actually find a definitive fault line in reality!"
Stan blinked. "You know, sometimes I think you just make things up when you talk."
Ford straightened and laughed. He clapped his brother on the back.
"This adventure may take us halfway through Europe! Look, signals coming from Spain, France, Italy…"
"France? Hey, you know I heard about some of their special beaches…Let's do France first." Stan said, jabbing his finger at the map.
"No no, Arctic first. The readings are coming from right off the coast of Northern Canada," Ford said, moving his brother's hand. "Just imagine what things might be happening at a site with readings this strong."
"More one-eyed monsters?" Stan asked. Ford shivered.
"Let's hope not."
"Listen Ford, about mom and dad…" Stan said. Ford waved his hand dismissively, stopping his brother.
"Not now, Stanley, not now. Let me finish my work, please." His eyes were already scanning the maps, memorizing every line. Stan hesitated but shrugged. One less thing for him to deal with, honestly. Ford pointed at the kitchen counter "Oh there's some mail for you over there. Well, it's addressed to both of us."
It was a postcard. A bright idyllic California shoreline looked up at him. He flipped it over. It was addressed to "Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford" in pink gel pen. He smiled at Mabel's familiar looping handwriting. They had just left, what in the world could she have to write about?
Dear Grunkles, It said
Eighth grade is going well. Dipper is already in all ultra-dweeby-level classes and I've started a sticker club, a scrapbooking club and a Pig Ownership club. I'm expecting other kids to join soon. We both miss Gravity Falls and all our friends. We can't wait to come visit again. I'll be expecting letters about all your great adventures!
Hugs and Kisses
Mabel, Dipper and Waddles.
(and Mom and Dad.)
"That crazy kid." Stan said laughing.
"Dippers doing well academically! I wonder if I should send along some of my old college textbooks for him…" Ford commented as Stan stuck the post card to the fridge with a magnet.
"For what? As museum pieces? That stuff's probably all outdated by now." Stan chided. "Mabel will probably end up cutting them up for paper mache."
Ford looked up from his work. He furrowed his brow and began to roll up the maps.
"She might. She'd be advancing academically, too, if she applied herself a little more."
"She don't need all that fancy book learnin'. She takes after her Grunkle Stan, all action!"
"Don't forget Stanley, once you applied yourself a little, you were able to recreate my interdimensional portal. All by yourself."
"Yeah yeah, I just followed your journals poindexter." Stan felt himself blush, regardless.
"They're good kids." Ford said, smiling. He stood shoulder to shoulder with his brother. They looked at the post card together.
"Yeah."
"And…and you know what Stanley? They were so easy to love."
"What? What does that mean?" Stan looked at his brother but he wouldn't meet his eye. He was staring intently at the card, as if it was another chart for him to memorize.
"I used to think all the time…the way mom and dad acted…the way they treated us…maybe it was because kids are just difficult and infuriating and hard to deal with. But then Dipper and Mabel…they were just so easy to love." He brought his hands to his face and pushed against his eyes "I thought if I could be smart enough, achieve enough, it would be easier for them and things would get better. But it never was. All it took was one slip-up, one mistake and they…. You were just a kid, Stan, we both were. I can't even imagine doing that, now. Not now that I've seen how easy it is."
"Hey, come on, Sixxer." Stan said softly "Times were different back then. I was a real knucklehead. Ma and Pop were just doing their best. Things are different now."
"Stanley, Mabel is 1,000 times more infuriating than you ever were. I did the math! I made a spreadsheet! She is impulsive and chaotic and selfish and has a suspicious number of scissors hidden all around the shack and-" Ford produced crumpled math equations, shoving them into Stan's hands "And look! When she is with Dipper, their mischievousness quotient grows exponentially! He is calculating and reckless and stubborn and-"
"I think you're being a little hard on them." Stan said pointedly, not even trying to make heads or tails of the papers he was holding.
"You can't argue with hard facts! Math doesn't lie!"
Stanley balled up the papers and tossed them over his shoulder angrily "Ford, what are you talking about?"
Ford looked at his brother, eyes wet with tears. His voice was steady and determined. Angry.
"Why are they so easy to love and we were so easy to toss aside? Our own parents, Stanley…" Ford said "And now they're gone…we'll never get a chance to show them how wrong they were! This isn't fair!" He slammed his hand against the fridge door, the postcard disappearing underneath his palm. Stanley wasn't a stranger to this line of thinking. It had circled in his own head night after night, on his own as a teenager…all his birthdays alone…all those years in silence. He gave Ford the only answer he'd ever found.
"Sometimes, there isn't really an answer." Stan said, shrugging. Ford growled and stormed away from him.
"I know!" He said before disappearing into his room. He slammed his door and the shack settled into silence. Stan stood alone in the kitchen.
