Two Hearts

Gravity Falls Fanfiction by Aoikami Sarah

Chapter 4

"Interesting…" Stanford paced across the hard sand with his arms folded behind him. The sun shone down on them, warm and soft, and a pleasant breeze blew from the south. "So Dipper witnessed the transformation. Perhaps when you're conscious again he'll be able to give you some more information."

"You think I'm goin' back?" Stan asked and watched him walk back and forth. He unfastened his tie and collar.

"Certainly. You're just asleep right now. Rather, we are. I am. No, we are. Yes. Hm, the pronouns are going to be difficult to get straight, forgive me."

Stan scoffed. "Of all the things… You're worried about pronouns?"

"Yes. What are you worried about?"

"The kids. Mabel, especially. Soos and Wendy. The shack. You. Everything, I guess, except pronouns."

Stanford frowned and shrugged. "Fair enough. Well, talk to Dipper when you wake. He's a bright boy. He'll be of great help."

Stan shook his head, a bit exasperated by his brother's matter-of-fact attitude. "Say, wasn't there a picnic table around here or somethin'? I'm beat. Don't know why or how since this isn't reality, but, yet, my sciatica is acting up." He dug his knuckles into the back of his right thigh.

The left side of Stanford's mouth tugged upwards and he raised a finger. A plush, yellow couch morphed out of the sand. "Stan, you don't have to be old here. See?" He shifted form from his twenties to a child and back again. Dressed in a turtle-neck sweater and corduroys and a pair of deck shoes, Stanford's preppy academic aesthetic was on point.

Stan raised a brow and looked him up and down. "Oh yeah? Like this?" He transformed his appearance, a bit awkwardly at first, into a chubby teenager, eliciting a snarky giggle from his twin who had chosen to exhibit the prime of his life. "Hey, who says I need to be exactly the same—it's a dream, right?" He waggled his eyebrows and shifted to about twenty-five. It was a good year, somewhere between the leanness of prison and the flab of alcoholism, but Stan made a few improvements—tighter muscles, less paunch, better hair. He struck a proud pose. "Likey-so?"

Stanford blinked a few times at the sight and it took him a moment to respond. "Sure. That… looks fine."

"Hey, if you're gonna be stuck with me for a couple decades, I might as well give ya something nice to look at." Stan wore a white tee-shirt, stretched tight across his broad chest with tight blue jeans—slightly worn, and low, black Converse sneakers.

"Sure…Uh...So..." Stanford took a step back and struggled to change the topic of conversation but a disturbance in the dream beat him to it. Before his eyes, Stan flickered as if he were no more than a hologram.

"Hey, what's goin' on!" he shouted and reached out for Stanford, but his hands passed right through him.

"I-I don't know! Don't go! Stanley!"

His twin opened his mouth, but vanished before he could cry out his name.

.x.

Mabel threw open Stan's bedroom door and catapulted herself onto the bed. "Grunkle Stan! Grunkle Stan, wake up! Please, wake up!" she shouted the same words she had screamed until her voice gave out just three days before.

"Wha, who, wha…?!" The man in Stanford's body gasped in alarm. "Mabel?!" He looked up at her weeping face and his chest ached. He froze in place, confused and torn between the pain of being pulled away from his brother yet again and the agony of his niece's tears. He wrapped his arms around her and held her to his chest and shushed her. When he saw Dipper appear in the doorway his eyes shot daggers at him. "I thought I told you…"

The boy stood in the doorway and folded his arms. "I won't keep anything from my sister anymore. I'm sorry I went against you, but she had to know, now."

He really couldn't argue with him seeing how devastated the girl was. He stroked her hair and did his best to calm her. "Sweetie, I'm sorry. It's ok." He made to sit up and reached for his glasses then wrinkled his nose as a wave of body odor hit him. "Wow I am really sorry. I stink! Well, he stinks. We stink. Ugh. Pronouns..." he mumbled.

Mabel screwed her face up into a fish-lipped pout and put her hands on his cheeks, pressing the flesh together and mushing his lips up into almost an identical expression. "Mabel, honey, whaddaya doin'?" he asked.

Her brows were arched up in the middle and she sniffled pathetically. "Grunkle Stan, it's really you?"

"Yeah, Punkin. Different package, same Grunkle. For now, anyway."

She sighed in relief, let go of his face and latched onto his neck again, not seeming to mind his stench.

Dipper unfolded his arms. "So you think it's a Jekyll and Hyde scenario, too?"

Stan frowned and gently pushed Mabel back to sit an arm's length from him. "Jeez, kid, I can only imagine which one of us you think is which."

"I didn't mean that you're the evil one—Hyde made the potion and they shared a body."

"Ah," Stan pursed his lips. "Yeah, that fits. I switched with Stanford and he's stuck in here," he said and tapped a finger against his temple.

Dipper's posture relaxed and he slumped against the doorframe in relief.

"Grunkle Ford's in your head?" Mabel asked, perplexed.

"Yep. Weird, huh?" Stan smiled thinly and noticed for the first time that Mabel was wearing his hat. His heart twisted again."Fez looks good on ya," he said with a wink. She made to take it off and he waved his hand. "Keep it. I been through a few of em over the years. I'll get a new one." Stan slid out of bed, put Stanford's glasses on and gently shooed the children from his room. He patted the top of the fez on Mabel's head a few times until it dropped down over her eyes. She giggled and his heart lightened, just a little. "Dipper, we'll chat after I get cleaned up. You eat?"

"Ramen," he replied.

"Ugh. We'll do better for dinner. Promise."

Dipper nodded, gave him a small smile and closed the door behind his sister, who held his hand, tightly.

Wearily, Stan pulled a open drawer and stared at his clothes for a long while, then pushed it closed again with a huff. How could he wear the clothes of a dead man? He wondered what they buried him in. Must have been the same suit. He couldn't imagine that they'd changed him. That's fine. That suit was shot, anyway, he thought. His glasses were long gone, but the prescription was probably different, anyway. So what to wear?

In his closet, behind the Stan Vac and other mementos of a life long-lost, Stan found a cardboard box and unfolded the flaps. From it he pulled turtlenecks, corduroys, khakis, button-downs, polo shirts, blazers, sweaters, socks, y-fronts, and a few pairs of brown shoes. Everything but the underwear was colored in earth-tones. He cast aside some items that had succumbed to time and moths. "Yeesh," he muttered and made a face. "Some fashion sense you had, Stanford. Looks like a prep school exploded in here." He hadn't thought much of the clothes when he packed them away almost thirty years before. At that time he had tried hard not to think about them at all as he made way for his own things, knowing it would be a very long time before Stanford would need them again. "Any of this still fit?" he wondered, holding up what looked like an impossibly small pair of pants. He patted his belly and chuckled darkly. "Touché. Forgot you're in better shape than I was." He lumped several items over his arm (but left the ancient y-fronts in the box—Stan was a boxer guy) and headed for the shower.

He started the water and stared at his brother's face in the mirror. The cleft in his chin was gone—he'd have to ask Stanford about that if when he fell asleep again he could talk to him as he had done earlier. "Poor Ford," he mused, remembering the look of panic on his face as Stan woke up. "Must be worried sick. That's a nice change." He grinned a little and felt the stubble on his chin then ran a hand through his hair—so much darker than his had been. Though they were identical twins, the Stans had always been slightly physically different. Stan was a bit fatter (but his eating habits were also poorer) and Stanford had a cleft chin and additional fingers. As the thought of this deformity entered his mind, Stan stopped and looked at his hands closely for the first time since he'd entered his brother's body. "Jesus," he whispered. He'd been intimately familiar with them when he was younger, but being on this side of them was deeply unsettling.
The additional finger seemed to be the one between where the middle and ring finger would be, but it was so seamlessly part of the hand as a whole that it was hard to tell which was the different digit. The hands were also wider than usual. Earlier, he had noticed as he clutched his niece to comfort her, that her head seemed smaller by comparison.

Stan shuddered and took a deep breath. In order to shower he'd have to be naked, and if he thought looking at Stanford's face and hands from his perspective was difficult, he knew he was nowhere ready to see the whole package. But he had to get clean. Stanford's body stunk to high heaven due to many days without bathing.

Stan reached behind him and grasped the collar of his sweater. "Welp, here goes nothin'," he said, and pulled the sweater off over his head, dropping it and the shirt under it to his feet.

He choked and grasped the edge of the sink for support as his legs almost gave out at the sight in the mirror. Stanford's torso was covered with more scars than he could count. Some seemed medical in nature—evidence of stitches and incisions near the center of his hairy chest; some looked decidedly less voluntary. There were burn marks, lacerations, skin-grafts, and more, over eighty percent of his upper body. Trembling, Stan turned his shoulder and glanced at the reflection of his back. "Oh God…!" He gasped and fumbled for the hand mirror he used to trim his nose hairs. Holding it up and looking through it at the vanity mirror he could see the lash-marks that crisscrossed his brother's back. Stan's imagination flashed scenes from Roots (the only time he'd ever seen a man get whipped was on television) and he gripped the little mirror so tightly it cracked. He spun around and dry heaved into the sink. "Oh Christ. Oh Christ. Oh fuck. Oh. Oh fuck," he repeated, trying to catch his breath as an anxiety attack overtook him.

A few minutes later he lifted his head, relieved to find that the mirror had fogged over. The shower had been running for at least ten minutes by now, and he still had to get clean. The idea of the hot water washing over him gave him a small feeling of comfort, so Stan choked back his fear and unfastened his pants.

The damage to his lower half was significantly less involved than the upper, and he was pleased to find that Stanford's privates seemed to be in order, but one major scar stood out. Around the circumference of his left thigh were a series of metal staples and the flesh from there down was not exactly the same color as the flesh above it.

"Oh fuck, who's fucking leg is this, Stanford?" Stan shook his head and stepped determinedly into the shower. "Nope. I don't wanna know. I do not want to fucking know. What leg? What fucking leg?!" he asked hysterically. The water was a little too hot, but he didn't mind. Stan put his face under the showerhead and let it soak him. The hysteria passed and his heart grew heavy again. "Stanford…" he whispered. "What the hell have I done to you?"

When he'd been sufficiently soothed and calmed by the water's warmth, Stan lathered up and washed the body gently—carefully, running his fingers slowly over each scar, each burn, each stitch. He was surprised to find that most of them appeared to be very old—only a few were still bright pink, pinker thanks to the hot water. The staples on his leg were less than comfortable when heated and the mere thought of them made his stomach turn. The leg and foot were the same size as the one on the right and just about the same shape, but the skin was softer, younger. Stan shuddered and hurriedly finished up. "You been through so much 'cause 'a me," he whispered and turned off the tap. "I'm gonna take good care 'a ya. I promise."

.x.

When Stan emerged from his shower, he found Mabel and Dipper waiting for him in the living room. Dipper stood next to the fish tank holding his elbows. Mabel sat in Stan's armchair and both of them froze and stared when he entered. He put a hand behind his head. "Ta-da," he laughed sheepishly. Though his voice, hair, and glasses were Stanford's, and the grey corduroys and orange turtleneck came out of Stanford's wardrobe, his posture and grin were entirely Stanley. Mabel charged him and hugged him tightly. "You look great, Grunkle Stan!" she beamed.

"Thanks, Sweetie." He looked up and met Dipper's eyes but the boy quickly looked away. Stan sighed and took a seat on the arm of the dilapidated chair in front of the television. "Dipper, he's ok."

His head snapped back. "What?" he asked, surprised.

"Ford's fine. He's happy that the spell he cast worked on me and he's excited to talk to you when he's on the outside again. I'm not sure when that'll be but…"

"Sunset," Dipper blurted out. "You transformed with the sunrise. My guess is you'll go back at sunset. Or more precisely, seven-fifty-two."

"Dipper!" Mabel folded her arms and glared at her twin.

Stan was rendered speechless for a moment. "Oh. Ok. Huh." His mind raced with dark thoughts, but instead of spouting something self-deprecating or venomous he shook his head. Mabel wrapped her arms protectively around his bicep. "This isn't easy for me, Dipper. I died. I should be gone. This was Ford's brilliant idea." He bowed his head.

"No no! I didn't mean…!"

"He couldn't let go even though I begged him to. You two are so much alike it's scary." He looked up at him. "I'm sure you'd do the exact same thing for Mabel."

Dipper blinked back tears and nodded his head emphatically.

"Now, how 'bout we order up some 'za? I'm starvin'!"

The Pines family talked over the dinner. It was hard for Stan to keep the conversation light because there were so many heavy topics that directly involved the children. Despite the difficulty, they talked candidly about his death and how it had affected them. He admitted that he'd been a ghost but that no one but Ford had seen or heard him. Mabel was relieved to hear that he didn't attend his own funeral. He apologized for putting them through all of this, but Dipper pointed out that the only one who was to blame for anything was Bill Cipher, and that while they were changed by everything that happened, they were happy and grateful that Stanford saved Stan the way he did.

Mabel beamed from across the table with a large mouthful of pizza that this experience made her treasure life even more, and that though things would change, she'd learn to hold onto things while she had them and never take them for granted one single second of one single day. Stan thought that was a very good lesson to have learned, for all of them. There were a few laughs over planning for Thanksgiving and breaking the news to their parents that they had gotten Ford back then lost Stan then got him back—sort of.

When they'd finished dinner, Dipper and Mabel called Soos and Wendy and broke the news to them, then put Stan on the line, and there were a great deal of happy tears on all sides. Stan promised to visit them after he'd dropped the kids off at the bus station in morning.

Wanting to make sure that Stanford could chat with Dipper before he left, Stan excused himself to go take a nap and set an alarm for nine o'clock. At seven-thirty, he put his head on the pillow and was out in minutes.