After a minute of thought, Stan realized that he could follow Ford by flying through the ceiling, his body passing through the wood and stone as easily as through thin air.
A quick glance around the gift shop revealed that the place wasn't too bad off, given what it'd just been through. Sure, most of the knick-knacks that he always tried to pawn off on tourists had fallen to the ground during the mayhem (half of them breaking in the process), but all things considered, the damage could have been a lot worse. A bit of debris here and there was the least of his problems right now; once they got the rest of this mess sorted out, cleaning up the Shack would be a cinch.
He followed the sound of Ford's voice into the kitchen, where his brother stood among fallen knives and broken jars, the kids standing side by side near a scuffed but otherwise undamaged wall. Stan hovered in the doorway as he caught the tail end of Ford's speech.
"-something to tell you children."
"Is it about Grunkle Stan?" Mabel looked up at her great-uncle as she spoke,her eyes wide and dark, their depths tinged with despair and curiosity and the slightest spark of hope.
"No... well, yes, but there's more to it than that." Ford took a deep breath, shuddering slightly before continuing. "Bill is still here."
"What?" Dipper began speaking just as Ford finished saying his last word, leaving no pause between the two. "How do you know? W-what has he done? What can we do? Should we-"
"Dipper." Mabel's voice was soft but firm as she flopped her arm onto her brother's shoulder. "Don't flip out on us, bro-bro. Just breathe a little."
"...listen to your sister." Ford didn't make eye contact with either of the twins, instead resolutely staring at some point above their heads. "Things may seem bleak, but the first step to defeating Bill is to stay calm. Because if you give in to your emotions, you won't be able to think clearly, and that's what Bill's counting on."
Ford's arms dangled just behind his legs, so the kids couldn't see that his hands were balled into tight fists, dirty and ragged fingernails digging into the palms of his hands.
Dipper's shoulders slumped as he took a long, deep breath, his gaze moving between Ford's face and Mabel's half-hearted smile that disappeared whenever her brother's eyes wandered elsewhere. "But- but he-"
"No buts. What we need to do is focus on putting together a plan to take down Bill for good."
"What you need to do is stop dancing around the elephant in the room."
Ford turned his head as he finally registered Stan's presence, and as Stan floated into the room, he returned Ford's frosty glare with a frustrated stare of his own.
"What do you want from me?" Ford threw his hands in the air, indents from his fingernails still visibly cutting into his palms. "Why won't you just leave me alone?"
Dipper and Mabel's eyes started to water, and Mabel tightened her grip on her brother's shoulders, the one-armed hug growing closer to a choke-hold as they both edged back towards the wall.
"G-grunkle Ford, what did we do wrong?"
Ford sighed and rested one hand against his temple. "No no no, not you kids- you can't hear him, that's right, you wouldn't know-"
"Hear who?"
"...Bill."
"You mean Bill is here?" The boy's warbling voice cracked in the middle of the sentence, and Stan was suddenly, violently reminded that those two were just children- they were twelve for God's sake, kids their age shouldn't have to deal with the end of the goddamn world, they shouldn't have been involved in any of this, this never should have been their battle to fight...
"No he's not, you dense m-" Stan looked over to the kids- Dipper was digging around in the pockets of his vest for god-knows-what, while Mabel's eyes were darting back and forth as if she could see what Ford saw if she just tried hard enough- and paused, considering his choice of words anew. Then he looked back at Ford, remembered that the latter was the only one who could hear him anyway, and spat out the obscenity he had in mind, though his hesitation softened the word's force.
Ford cleared his throat and pushed his glasses up before speaking up again. "I believe he's been here this whole time. Whatever... happened... between Bill and Stan must not have been enough to get rid of him. We need to make a plan to ensure that we can finish the job."
"Right, because your last plan worked out just great. Not like I gave a shit about that whole 'staying alive' thing anyway, huh? And you don't seem too concerned either... though I suppose that's not much of a surprise."
Dipper gently pushed his sister's arm off of his neck and back onto his shoulder. "But the rift was sealed, right? So what could he be after now? Or..."
"I'm not sure yet, but our first step should be finding out exactly what he has planned."
"Aaaand you're ignoring me." Stan folded his arms against his chest. "Real mature of you there, Sixer."
"I am not going to discuss this with you." Ford hissed, turning his back to the children as he faced Stan once more.
"What's he saying?"
Ford glanced back before sighing and shaking his head. "Nothing you children need to concern yourselves with."
"Just talk to them, will ya? I'll go in the other room if it'll make you feel better, sheesh. But if you want people to give you a hand, you should probably actually explain things to them first. Maybe then we wouldn't be in this mess."
"That's funny, coming from you. Talk all you want, but you're not going to get anything out of me. I've learned my lesson about that one."
"Dammit, Ford, for once in your life would you just lis̵t̶e͘n͘ to me͡-"
Stan's statement was punctuated with a loud crash!
Four pairs of eyes quickly pinpointed the source of the noise, one of the few shelves that had remained standing in the kitchen. The shelf itself still stood perpendicular against the wall, as straight and sturdy as ever (which, truth be told, wasn't saying much), but its contents had shifted though the shelf itself had remained still. On what had been a mostly-clean section of the tile floor, there was now scattered a number of glass shards and grains of salt, the remains of a salt shaker that Stan dimly remembered having nicked- er, "borrowed"- from a diner near the state border a few decades back.
After looking around the room to make sure that nothing else had fallen and nobody was hurt, the members of the Pines family breathed a collective sigh.
"We'll have to clean that up too now, I suppose." Ford said, shaking his head.
"What was that?"
"An earthquake, maybe?"
"Or an aftershock?"
"Did Bill do that?"
Ford glanced over at Stan at the mention of Bill's name before shifting his gaze back towards the kids. "Perhaps. It's hard to say for sure."
"Really? What makes you think this was me?" Stan threw his hands in the air. "Look, if you keep acting all crazy like this, nothing good's gonna come of it."
"I am not acting crazy." Ford hissed. "And I'm not going to let you-"
His sentence was interrupted by the sound of a ringing phone.
After a second of hesitation, Ford muttered "I can get it," as he walked over to the phone's receiver; upon reaching the phone, he forcefully yanked the receiver off of the handset and shoved it against his ear.
"Hello?"
Stan slowly floated closer to his brother in an attempt to hear the other end of the conversation, but the voice coming from the receiver was too soft and muffled for him to make out.
"Yes, this is Stanford."
Stan couldn't help but snort upon hearing that. Because it was true, it was Stanford, after thirty long years it was the real Stanford Pines on the line, but he'd bet everything he owned and a lot that he didn't that Ford wasn't the one who the person on the other end of the line had in mind.
Ford shot an icy glare at Stan, then turned to the kids and mouthed It's your father before returning to the phone call.
"I know, I-" Ford coughed twice, and when he spoke up again his voice sounded different, his tone slightly rougher. "I've got a bit of a cold, that's all. Nothing to worry about. So, why are you calling?"
The silence dragged on as the caller spoke- thirty seconds went by, then a minute, then two. And when the other end of the line fell silent for a brief moment, all Ford got out before the caller continued speaking was "Oh my."
Another long minute went by before a pause in which Ford could get out more than two words.
"Actually, things have been pretty normal around here..."
The children shared a long, uncertain glance before simultaneously shrugging, while Stan let out a snort even louder than the last.
"All things considered, anyway, nothing like what you mentioned. Though, you know, Gravity Falls always has been a bit... different." He hesitated for a moment before adding, "That's why I came here in the first place, you know."
More jumbled words came from the other end of the line.
"Not much, no, though we've been inside all day. So there's no need to rush out here. I'm fine, the kids are fine- we're all fine, I swear."
Only a few seconds passed before Ford spoke up again. "Of course."
He lowered the receiver and turned back to the kids, his voice back to normal. "Your father would like to speak with you."
Mabel was the first to rush to Ford's side and yank the receiver from Ford's hand. "Dad?"
Dipper scowled as he reached the spot a split second after his sister.
Ford cleared his breath and mumbled, "I'll give you kids some privacy while you're on the phone," before shuffling out of the room.
"Well, a lot has happened since-"
Stan silently followed Ford out of the kitchen, ignoring Mabel's rapid speech and Dipper's requests for her to let him talk. Ford walked into the living room, each footstep small and careful as he circumvented the fallen and broken objects that littered the ground, and collapsed into the armchair. He took a deep sigh and cradled his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking.
And as Stan inched closer, the children's speech growing quieter until it became mere background noise, he could hear his brother's quick breaths turn to sobs and see tears stream through the cracks between his fingers.