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For the nth time that day, Stanford stopped and stared in the mirror as he passed it by.
He had never been a very vain individual. The most he’d ever cared about was keeping his hair at an acceptable length, although that had been more about preventing himself from looking like even more of a social outcast than any kind of stylistic choice. He had far more important things to be doing than worrying about his looks, and it wasn’t as though he had anyone he needed-slash-wanted to dress up nice for. He showered when he had to, his clothes all fit him, he looked like a living human and not a corpse, what else mattered?
This lack of vanity had only been bolstered by the “thirty years on the other side of a portal” thing. No time to worry about what you looked like (aside from whether your face was on any wanted posters) when even something as simple as surviving was a challenge in every other dimension.
And yet there he was, stopped in the middle of the hall and staring at himself in the floor-length mirror Stan kept there for whatever reason. Not critiquing or preening like one might, just… staring.
Actually, now that he thought about it Stan was probably the issue. When they’d been kids they’d been near indistinguishable from one another. As they got older, though, the differences only increased with each passing year. Ford got their father’s cleft chin, Stanley didn’t. Stan’s hair was straight as a pin, Ford could never get his own to lie flat. Ford had the metabolism of a hummingbird, while even with a regular boxing regimen Stan had been prone to thickness around the waist.
He’d been used to them looking noticeably different since they were teenagers. So why was it getting to him so much now?
“So are you just gonna stand there admiring the goods all day, or were you planning on letting other people through?” said a voice from off to his right. “This is a communal hallway, y’know.”
“I’m not taking up that much space, Stanley,” he retorted. “You can go around.”
“What, and miss the chance to bug you?” his brother stepped up beside him, and he dutifully shuffled to the side to let them both fill the mirror’s surface. Stan stared at their reflections for a moment, then made a face. “Christ, we’re old.”
“We look different,” Ford mused. In an effort to, quote, “stop bottling shit up and talk about his feelings once in a while,” he’d started saying everything that was on his mind that wasn’t horribly offensive or incriminating. It had led to some very awkward conversations, but on the plus side he had been talking about his own emotions more.
“What?”
“We’re still twins. Same face shape, same overall features, but we’re…” When words failed him, he reached up to pat down his hair somewhat, then placed a thumb over the reflection of his chin. “...Different.”
“Well, I’d certainly hope so. At least people’ve stopped having to sneak a peek at the hands to see which twin they’re talking to.”
He huffed. Words were eluding him. “But it’s more than that. It--” There. That was it. Grab that thought and don’t let go. “It shouldn’t have worked.”
“What shouldn’t have worked?”
“Our… identity swap. I can understand you pretending to be me-- I was something of a recluse, and it was doubtful anyone in town had gotten a good look at me aside from the general features when I was forced to leave the house. But the family. And-- And Bill.” The crux of his internal dilemma. “We should not have been able to trick Bill."
“I dunno. Seemed like a pretty fool-proof plan to me.” Counter to Ford’s earlier motion, Stan reached up to fluff up his hair until it more closely resembled Ford’s usual style. “We’ve got the voices down still. You could use a little practice, though.”
“And I suppose you’re an expert on-- actually, nevermind.”
“Yeah, no, you don’t want me to answer that. Here’s a pointer, though; you sounded like you were trying to say a tongue twister whenever you used a contraction. I know you can, so don’t let my Jersey take on them slip you up. Nice going getting rid of your accent, by the way, I sure as hell never managed it.”
“Right, well, if I ever need to pretend to be you again, I’ll keep that in mind.” He didn’t even notice the bitterness that slipped into his tone until he saw Stanley side-eyeing him in the mirror. “What.”
“Alright, what did I say?”
“What?”
“Real broken record today, huh? You’ve got that look like you just ate something sour. So what did I say wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said, then paused. That was wrong. Honesty about your feelings, Stanford. “I don’t like the implication that there would be any future need for either of us to impersonate the other. Aside from when we were kids trying to mess with our relatives, all the times we’ve had to pretend to be one another have been born of some kind of strenuous circumstances. I don’t like that you took my name and made a mockery of my work, but I understand why you had to do it.”
“Hey, now, mockery is a little strong--”
“We’re not rehashing this argument right now, Stanley. My point is that the two major times I can remember identity fraud being necessary-- my disappearance and the deal with Bill-- were disastrous scenarios in one form or another and I’d like to avoid any more disasters if we can help it.”
“...I did say sorry for taking your name.”
Apparently they were rehashing it. Stanford heaved a sigh. “You did. And as much as seeing the criminal record I now have in this dimension is somewhat appalling-- what’s even the point of pug trafficking-- I understand that you were in something of a stressful place at the time and did what you thought you needed to.”
“I did need to.”
“Stanley, did it ever occur to you that you could just tell anyone who asked that you were my brother? That you were staying in my house while I was out of town on serious science business? Eventually the townsfolk would forget about me.”
Stan crossed his arms. There was a look on his face that Ford couldn’t parse, and he damned his inability to read people.
“Stanley--”
“I couldn’t have gotten anything done as me, alright?”
“And why’s that?”
“Because nobody cared who I was,” he said. “I know you don’t like the shack, but the only reason I was able to get the money to do things like eat and get gas for the car was because folks thought I was you, and you had created a mysterious enough image that I could profit off of it. I’m not good at things like you, Ford. I can’t just pick up a skill the second time trying it. Any job I could’ve gotten would’ve been minimum wage, and that wasn’t enough to keep myself afloat.”
“I paid off the house when I had it built, and all the utilities are wired into the house. Minimum wage wasn’t enough for food and gas?”
“You seem to be forgetting the giant fuck-off portal you’ve got in the basement.” He gave Ford a glare. “That thing eats power like no one’s business, and getting the stuff to fix it up wasn’t cheap either. Textbooks are a scam. And not even the kind I’d run.”
Right. Somehow, Ford had forgotten about the portal. Stan had been working on it non-stop for the thirty years he was gone, hadn’t he? And-- if the recounting of the time he’d missed was any indication-- he’d gotten it mostly fixed with just the plans from one journal. By the time he got the other two it had only taken him a few more weeks to get it back into working condition.
And he thought he wasn’t good at things.
“I really think you underestimate yourself.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes, Stanley. I had to study day and night to keep up with my physics and engineering degrees, and I was learning in a school environment with years of prior study behind me. You managed to teach yourself complex theoretical physics that are-- quite literally-- beyond our world.”
Bill had given him the plans for the portal, after all. A lot of the science behind the portal wasn’t anything humanity had discovered yet. Ford had the aid of a literal omnipresent otherworldly assistant practically feeding him ideas. Without Bill to correct his math, he’d have hardly managed to make a fancy lightshow, much less a functioning portal. But Stan didn’t have Bill. All Stan had was one journal, (reportedly) some college textbooks, and a whole hell of a lot of determination.
“Ok, sure. Only took me, what, thirty years?”
“Less than. Stanley, humor me-- if you had all three journals from the very start, all the plans and materials you’d need and the only thing you had to do was learn how to operate it, how long do you think it would’ve taken you to get the portal functioning?”
Stan frowned, clearly putting thought into it. “I-- I dunno, a couple years? Maybe?”
“It took me several months and that was with two assistants and a background in the necessary subjects.” He reached up to ruffle Stan’s hair, messing it up further. “Face it, Stanley. You’re a physicist. Which makes you a nerd.”
“Ugh.”
“Don’t ugh, it’s a valuable field of study!” He shook his head. Defending one of his majors was so not important right now. “My point is you might not have an instant talent for a wide variety of disciplines, but you do have something even more valuable; the capacity to learn and a healthy dose of stubborness.”
“Hey--”
“It’s a compliment. Being naturally gifted at whatever pastime you happen to pursue at any given time is as much of a benefit as a curse. Yes, in the short run it does give you a leg up on the competition, but in the long run it makes it very difficult for one to improve to any meaningful degree. When you’re good at something without having to try, you start to believe that you don’t need to try, that you’re already the best you can be. So while others who started from a less-skilled point may start out worse than you, eventually they’ll keep learning and surpass you and you won’t be able to keep up, because you never learned how to learn.”
There might have been a little bit of his own grief slotted in there. It may have been nearing on forty years at this point, but he could still remember the first time he’d realized he wasn’t going to be able to just skate by effortlessly as he’d been doing. The first time he’d gone into a test without studying and failed it. Then promptly realized that even if he’d wanted to, he had no idea how to study.
“Stanley, being able and willing to learn a new subject will always be more worthwhile than natural aptitude. You claim you’re not able to just pick something up and be good at it, but how many assorted skills have you taught yourself over the years for one odd job or another?”
“Is that rhetorical? Cause I can probably figure it out, but I dunno if you wanna be here all day.”
“Yes, it’s rhetorical. I’m making a point.”
“You make a lot of those. Not all of them good ones.”
“I’m trying to say you’re intelligent, Stanley, can you stop being belligerent for five minutes?”
“You gonna start a timer on that?”
Ford put a hand on his head. Stan burst out cackling. There was almost a guaranteed likelihood Stan was only doing it to rile him up. A slight margin of error was necessary to account for the idea that Stan was deflecting with brash humor because he didn’t know how to take a compliment.
Actually, now that he thought about it maybe it was less a margin of error and more an equal probability.
Or a high probability.
“If I must.” He bumped his fist against Stan’s arm. “You’re very smart, Stanley. Even if you weren’t book-smart-- which, sorry to say it, you are-- you’re wickedly street-smart. More than I could ever hope to be, certainly. I said it before and I’ll say it again; if you had been in my shoes, you wouldn’t have fallen for Bill’s tricks or flattery. He was a con-man through and through, and you would’ve recognized that.”
“I dunno. I think if he’d come to me right after you disappeared… Well. Can’t say what I would’ve done. Probably something stupid, knowing me.” He frowned, looking years older for just the briefest of moments before his easy-going posture returned. “But I think you’re giving me a little too much credit here.”
Had he always been like this? Had Ford just missed it? (Had he been so blind?)
“Of course I’m not. Frankly, I don’t think I’ve been giving you enough credit. Need I remind you the idea to trick Bill was yours in the first place? I wouldn’t have come up with anything like that on my own.”
"Yeah, yeah. I guess it felt pretty good to pull one over on the little ass-wipe.” He huffed a laugh. “You should’ve seen his, uh, not-a-face when he opened the door and found me there instead of you. I was surprised he didn't recognize it, honestly, I told him--"
And Ford went cold all over.
"Why," he said, all at once very quiet, "would Bill recognize your mindscape?"
"Did they--" Stan paled a bit, looking away and reaching up to run at the back of his neck. He grit his teeth, sighed. Glanced at Ford. Looked away again. "They didn't tell you, huh?"
"Didn't tell me what."
"Alright, don't freak out." He dropped his hands. "Yeah, the creepy triangle was in my head once before. Only the one other time, though, and not in the same way he was for you or the kid. No weird human puppetry. He made a deal with this little twerp, uh, Gideon. He'd sneak into my head and steal the code for my safe. Wanted the deed to the shack. I didn't even notice and-- I can tell you're freaking out."
Alright, maybe he was. Just a little though. Or, well, a moderate amount. He wasn't in full panic mode, but that wasn't saying much.
"Seriously." Stan turned to face him and set his hands on both Ford's shoulders, leaning forward to bump their foreheads together. "I am fine. And I was fine then, too. Honestly, I didn't even know it'd happened 'til the kids told me way later. Hardly noticed the freak was there."
"But he was still there," Ford hissed. He knew he'd failed his family in a lot of ways. Failed his friends, too. He knew there were a lot of things he should've done differently, and a lot of ways that people got hurt because of him. Directly or indirectly. But learning that Bill had been in his brother's head and he hadn't known? Yeah, that one stung. "I should've--"
"You should've done squat, Sixer. You were still off in sci-fi land. There wasn't a thing you could've done. The kids had it handled, and hey-- it's only thanks to you they were able to do anything. If it weren't for that journal of yours, we’d have been S-O-L.”
“If I hadn’t summoned Bill in the first place, he wouldn’t have had a foothold in this dimension.”
“Nope, stopping that right now. We could easily go back and forth with this for the rest of the night, but frankly I don’t think that’s a very good use of our time. So how about this; none of this would’ve happened if Bill hadn’t been such a slimy little freak. It’s all his fault.”
“Even the--”
“Nope. Bill’s fault.” Stan grinned, leaning back just enough that he could sling an arm around Ford’s shoulders. “Everything is Bill’s fault now. Spilled your drink? Bill’s fault. Lost your keys? Bill’s fault.”
“Stanley, that’s not--”
“Stubbed your toe? Bill’s fault.”
“You can’t just--”
“Dropped a plate? Bill’s fault. Ran outta milk? Bill’s fault.”
“Stanley,” he said, barely contained laughter in his tone, “this is ridiculous.”
“Oh, sure. But you’re laughing, so who’s the real winner here?”
“Much as it might be easier, we can’t blame Bill for all our problems.” Some part of him wished he could be content to just let the blame rest solely on Bill’s skinny shoulders. Satisfied with believing that somehow, the demon had been the one responsible for all their collective ills in life, from the time they were children up until now. Unfortunately for everyone involved, he couldn’t be appeased with a falsehood like that. “Many of them, yes, but not… Stanley, I’m sorry I let dad kick you out.”
“‘Scuse me?”
“I said I’m sorry I--”
“No, I mean-- I heard you the first time. I’m just confused as to how the hell you think that’s your fault.” Stan’s arm around his shoulders shifted from something like roughhousing to a comforting weight. “Ford. We were kids.”
“We were eighteen.”
“Nope. Seventeen. Was still early June.” Ford winced. It wasn’t that he didn’t want Stan to regain his memories in full, but… Well, maybe Fiddleford had been on to something there. Maybe there were some things that just weren’t worth remembering in such clear detail. “We were kids, and Pa wasn’t the kind of guy you stood up to. You didn’t let him do anything. That man did whatever he damn well wanted when he wanted to do it.”
“But if I had--”
“Alright, your turn to humor me. What would you have done? If you could go back in time right now and change something about how that night went based only on your own actions, what would you do?”
That was a pretty good question, actually.
Time travel was always a tricky hypothetical. There were a lot of rules that went along with it, not to mention whatever was left of the Time Police after… That Whole Thing. But Ford guessed that this scenario was limited to a world in which the laws of traversing the time stream as they knew them didn’t apply, and that it was strictly a thought experiment for the sake of proving a point. So he brushed aside the logistics for a moment and just thought.
What would he do?
The first option that came to mind was to stand up to their father. Defend Stanley. Take his side in his claims that it was an accident, try and protest to such a harsh punishment. There were plenty of colleges that weren’t That One School, and it wasn’t like his grades weren’t good. His SAT score alone could have gotten him pretty much anywhere. If he could explain to their dad that losing out on this one opportunity wasn’t the end of the world, maybe he’d let the whole thing go.
Of course, that entire scenario was something of an impossibility. At the time, Ford himself had been working under the belief that it was the end of the world. Now, of course, he could recognize that it had little to do with the specific school itself, and rather the abrupt and unforeseen demolishing of his carefully constructed plans, but he had no way of knowing that at the time.
And besides. Stan was right when he’d said their dad wasn’t the kind of guy you stood up to. If he’d tried something like that, chances were he’d just end up on the streets along with Stan.
Which, he supposed, led him to the second option; leaving with Stan. His plans had already been thoroughly uprooted, which meant he really had nothing else he needed to stick around for. It had always been the two of them against the world. If he’d just gotten over himself, recognized that his brother needed him… But then where would they be? Both homeless, living out of the car, having to scrounge to survive? Stan had barely managed and he had leagues more street-smarts than Ford. Especially the Ford of back then.
It was so easy to imagine himself doing these things and berate his past self for not doing them now, with the benefit of hindsight and forty-odd years of way bigger problems along with it. Things that had felt like such calamities a lifetime ago seemed so trivial when compared to the literal apocalypse. Not to mention everything he’d gone through on the other side of the portal. Who knew all it took was a little end of the world to finally gain some perspective?
“I don’t know, Stanley,” he admitted with a sigh. “I’m no good with hypotheticals. You know that.”
“I s’pose I do. But you kind of just proved me right. What I’m getting at here is that there’s nothing you could’ve done. We were in no position to be doing much of anything about that. And yeah, I might’ve appreciated it if you'd reached out to me or something, but it wasn’t like I was making your job any easier. Hell, I can’t remember how many times I called you just to chicken out and hang up before even saying anything.”
Ford paused. Now that he thought about it, he could actually vaguely recall phantom phone calls. He’d chalked it up to being so far out in the woods, or even something about Gravity Falls affecting the phone lines. “I remember those calls,” he mused. “That was you?”
“A good percentage of them at least.”
“...I don’t know what I would’ve done if you had said anything,” he said. On one of his better days, he might’ve been willing (perhaps even happy) to talk to his brother. On one of his worse days, though… “I think it would’ve depended on when exactly you caught me.”
“Yeah, well. I was too much of a coward to try, so I guess we’ll never know.”
Ford frowned. “Stanley--”
“I know, I know. You don’t like it when I talk about myself like that. You and the kids both.” He shook his head. “Geez. Can’t a guy self-deprecate in peace?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Killjoy.”
“No, Stanley. Studies have shown that a reduction in self-deprecating humor or casual damaging comments leads to an overall improvement of mental state. Also, I’ve been told multiple times over the years that jokes about how much you suck tend to kill the mood more than they do make people laugh.”
“Who the hell told you that?”
“Well, Fiddleford, for one. But numerous people I met over my travels have said the same.”
Stan went quiet, which was odd, because he was usually the sort to try and fill a lull in conversation. Ford glanced over to find him frowning at their dual reflections. There was still an arm around him. Without a word, Ford lifted his own arm and wrapped it around Stan’s back. Probably the most awkward approximation of a hug that had ever been managed by the two of them, but it was something.
“Will you tell me about it? Someday?”
“About what?”
“Your time,” he gestured vaguely, “over there. On the other side of that… thing. You don’t have to get too specific, or recite every little detail, but… Well, I’d like to know.”
“...At some point.”
“No rush. We’ve got time..?” He finished the comment with an upwards lilt.
Of course. Their conversation right after he’d gotten himself settled. “I’m not kicking you out, Stanley. Nor am I making you shut down the shack.”
“Right. In that case, yeah, we’ve got time. And hey-- you don’t actually have to tell me if you don’t wanna. It’s your business. It’s just…” He grimaced. “You’re a lot different than you used to be. At one point I knew you better than anyone else in the world. Now you barely feel like a stranger some days. And no, it’s not a result of getting my head fried, though that probably didn’t help.”
“I’d be happy to tell you, Stanley. There’s just… a lot to talk about. I need some time to get it all sorted.” The journals had been burnt to a crisp, so it wasn’t like he could go back and reference his own recounting of his time. He hadn’t had much of an opportunity to journal with any frequency while he’d been dimension-hopping. And while his memory was pretty damn good, thirty years was a long while to remember.
…He’d been wandering the multiverse longer than he’d been in his own dimension.
In the back of his mind, he made a mental note to revise that conclusion on their sixty-first birthday.
“I’ll tell you someday,” he said, firmer this time. A promise rather than a vague intention.
“I’ll hold you to it.”
Ford looked at their reflections again. Side by side, arms around each other, he could almost ignore all the years between them.
“...I guess we don’t look that different.”