Chapter Text
It’s cold that winter. His Ma is in the kitchen, cooking dinner hoping that the power won’t cut out on them at any second. But it's silent through the house. She isn’t playing the radio like she usually does, singing loudly along and off key. It’s because she doesn’t have anyone to sing with her. Not anymore. It’s cold this winter. Colder than it was last year and even then they had two days off of school due to freeze warnings. This time it's a snow storm, the radio that morning said it was going to be the worst they’d had in decades. That’s why Filbrick was away, making sure Martha and the baby were well prepared where she was staying with her aunt. Shermie wrote home telling them he and Martha would move out west when he came back from overseas. Everyone is leaving
Stanford watches the city outside their window, a flurry of snow coming down and reflecting the light so that even though the sun is long gone, the sky remains a dusty pink. No one is outside, it's far too dangerous. He doesn’t want to think about who might be out on the streets on a night like this. He doesn’t want to think about why the house is so quiet and why his mother isn’t singing. It's empty at home. He wants to think it's better that way.
Stanford is cold. He shouldn’t be. He's dressed in the soft sweater his mother got him for hanukkah and heater is on for once. They can afford it this winter. They don’t talk about why. He shouldn’t feel cold, so he moves away from the window, quietly padding over to the kitchen to see where Ma is at with dinner.
“Is there anything you want me to help with, Ma?” He asks, shivering like he’d just been outside. The cold seems to seep into his bones. His fingers feel stiff.
“Hm?” She doesn’t look up at first, stirring her pot over the stove. “Oh, no. Just uh, set the table in a bit will ya? Food’ll be ready in twenty.”
“Just for you and me then?” Ford asks, and she finally looks over at him. Her eyes are rimmed with red and there are the ghosts of tears still glistening on her cheeks.
“Just us tonight, sweetheart.” She smiles in a way he thinks might be sad, or maybe its relief? He was never the one who was good at reading faces. “Ya Pa’s still upstate with Martha and the baby. Can’t drive back through this.”
Ford nods, but his stomach clenches tightly. He feels bruised from the pit of his stomach. The house has been so empty lately. Shermie is still overseas and Martha finally has more stable housing. He knows when Shermie finishes his tour this spring, they plan to move to California. As far from New Jersey and their family as he could get. In a few months, Stanford will graduate and he’ll be gone too. What will the house sound like then?
“Ma, is it cold in here?” He shivers again as if on queue. His hands feel stiff like he’s been outside.
“Hm, no? I don’t think so?” She sets down her ladle on the edge of the pot and comes over to press the back of her hand to his forehead. Ford isn’t usually much for physical touch, but as her hand, warm from the heat of the stove, presses on him, he can’t help but lean in. “Hon, ya not gettin’ sick are ya?”
“I don’t know.” Maybe he is getting sick. He feels a bit unwell and the chill that leeches from his bones is unrelenting.
“Well, we’re having cabbage soup for dinna. That’ll warm ya right up.” Her hand moves to his cheek and she smiles up at him. Her eyes crinkle at the corners and a stray tear slips down her cheek. “Go lay down, bubele. I’ll come getcha when the food’s ready.”
He heads up to his room, methodically walking along the edges where the stairs won’t creak as loud. Then a wave of chill hits him again. Something is different about it this time. His knees buckle and his whole body shakes. Ford can’t feel his hands. Can’t feel his face. He’s so cold. His body aches like he’s been hit by a car. His vision blurs as tears leak out, boiling hot against his frozen face. They freeze there, hard and painful against his skin. Even breathing hurts, a dry chilling sensation in his nose.
Then the fire comes. It starts like an itch, but quickly rages through his skin. Every inch of his skin burns. Is he hot? He can’t truly tell. It’s all just a blur of pain. He can’t move. Or at least he can’t tell if he’s moving. Why does everything hurt?
“--r–d?!” Someone is calling him. But everything is so much. He’s cold and he’s starving and he’s all alone. “St–r–!”
He’s all alone. It’s so cold. It’s so cold he feels like he’s burning. He’s tired. He just wants to sleep, but it hurts so much. He doesn’t want to be alone anymore.
He’s going to die here. Alone.
“STANFORD!” And then it all stops. Stanford blinks the tears from his eyes and finds himself at the top of the stairs, his head cradled in his mother’s lap. “Baby, what’s wrong?!” Her eyes are full of tears too. “Please, what’s wrong?”
“I’m okay, Ma.” But his voice comes out much more strained than he anticipated. “Just one of my migraines. I slipped.” He lies poorly, knowing nothing he says will actually reassure her that he’s alright.
“Okay.” She nods, recognizing that she can’t do anything more. That he won’t let her do anything more for him. His mother knows him well enough to understand that she isn’t the comfort he needs. “Please go lie down?”
And he does, trying to will away the shaking in his hands as he sits on top of his blankets. The top bunk is stripped of everything it once was. He looks up through empty wooden slats, trying to cling to his anger so that he won’t feel anything else. Sleep does not come for him. He can’t stop thinking about the aching burning cold that struck him before. It’s not there anymore. If anything, he feels sweaty and warm in the small stifling room. Ford had read once that freezing to death feels a lot like burning alive. The nerves in your skin are dying either way, the cells can’t understand the difference. At least with burning to death, the smoke inhalation usually gets you first. Freezing to death could take hours or even days depending on the circumstance.
Stanford doesn’t have to worry about that, here at home with the heater on and his mother making soup downstairs. Soon enough, she calls his name from the kitchen. Stanford goes down and sets out bowls and spoons and glasses. They only need two sets. And they eat dinner in silence. He hates this. A few more months and he never has to see New Jersey again.
It’s two weeks later when they get the call. It’s early, a weekend. Stanford is surprised his father even answered the phone. But he hears the man growl something low into the receiver. He doesn’t dare leave his room to listen better, for fear of pissing off the man more than he already seems to be, but something strange creeps up in his gut. Something is wrong. He feels a bit like he’s going to throw up, or pass out. Something is wrong.
“I–” Stanford is startled out of his thoughts by his father at the door. When had he gotten there? Filbrick Pines was never exactly a quiet man, at least in terms of how he moved around the house. Ford stares at his father, who has an odd unfamiliar look on his face. “We–. Follow me. We gotta go somewhere.” He says curtly before turning away.
“Where?” Ford feels like he can’t breathe.
“Just shut up and do what you’re told.” Filbrick growls, pounding his fist against the door frame making Ford flinch.
“What’s going on, Pa?” He asks, doing his best to recover his composure. It still feels like he can’t breathe, like all the air has been sucked from the room.
“I’ll do it by myself then!” He sweeps a hand over his head, ruffling his normally militantly groomed hair. “Fuck!”
“Pa!”
“Filbrick, wha’s goin’ on? Why’re ya shoutin’ this early?” Caryn comes out of their room, still groggy from sleep. Stanford knows she was up late taking calls last night. Plenty of people looking for predictions about the storm or for their the upcoming Valentines Day.
“Both of you shut up!” He spits, breathing loud. “Just shut up!”
“Pa,” Stanford’s voice is a whisper, settling in an uncertain crossroad of utter devastation and dangerous rage. “Is Stanley dead?” And his father stares at him in a way he never has before. It’s more genuine than he’s seen in a long time and perhaps he sees affection in it. But that’s probably just wishful thinking.
“I have to go confirm the body.” His father says finally. His mother makes a wounded sound.
“I’m coming with you.” He has to.
“Stanford–!” Caryn reaches out to grab his hand. As if she could drag him away from all that was happening.
“Let me go.” Stanford shakes off his mother’s hand and glares at his father. “I wanna see him.”
They go to the hospital in silence.
It’s Stanley. But it’s not. The body on the slab is so pale and wrong. The eyes are sunken and purple underneath with lips almost looking darker from the lack of blood. It’s not Stanley but it is, undeniably. The face is Ford’s but rounder in the cheeks, wider in the forehead. No cleft chin. He wonders if anyone else ever saw those differences between them. His mother surely did. Stanford never truly understood how people got them mixed up. In his eyes, they were so vastly different in the ways they moved and spoke. It always frustrated him to get mistaken for Stanley. It happened less and less as they grew older, but it continued to irritate him. It did until there was no twin left to mistake him for.
“This is your fault.” The words fly out of Stanford's mouth before he has the time to think about consequences. He expects to be hit. It doesn’t come. The room is silent in the loudest way, faint hums of the lights and machinery screaming in Stanford’s ears like thunder.
“He did this to himself.” Is all Filbrick has to offer. The man doesn’t quite sound like himself right now and Stanford swiftly punches his father in the jaw. Filbrick stumbles back and says nothing. Stanley would have knocked the man out clean. But he isn’t Stan.
They have a funeral. The silence still blares loud and painful in his ears. Filbrick doesn’t attend. Stanford doesn’t want him there anyhow. Does Ford deserve to be there?
How much of this is his fault?
How could he have let Stanley go?
How could he have abandoned him?
Why wasn’t he the one out there alone?
Why couldn’t they have gone together? It’s too much. The silence is stifling. During the service, he forces his thoughts to drift to the coroner’s report. Those facts are set in stone. They are simple and objective.
Seventeen year old male.
5ft 10in 163lb
Multiple contusions to the head, forearms and torso.
Malnutrition
Cause of death: Congenital Heart Failure due to Hypothermia
His brother had frozen to death. Every night Stanford thought back to that incident a few weeks back. The cold had hurt. He had never felt so cold, hungry and alone in his life. Stanley had felt that way right before he died. Stanley was dead. His twin was dead. Stanley died alone. His other half was gone forever. Stanford had never felt so empty and lost in his entire life. Everything felt at a distance, both too quiet and ear shatteringly loud at all times.
Two weeks. It had taken two weeks for anyone to notice the body curled up in the back seat of a red and tan El Diablo parked in a snow covered lot of a shopping mall. For two weeks Stanley’s body had laid abandoned and forgotten, saved from rotting entirely only because of the same below zero temperatures that had killed him.
People give their condolences for two weeks after the funeral. Teachers who belittled Stan and ex-girlfriends that Stanford never remembered the names of, tell him how sorry they are. It just makes him angry again. He knows that's a stage of grief. Anger. But right now it feels like the only emotion he’ll ever feel again.
His twin brother had been out of his life for months now. But now Stanley was gone, truly and wholly lost to him. It wasn’t right. It couldn’t end this way. Ford could not be half of a whole. He had to fix this. He was a genius after all. Science would show him a way to fix this.
And Stanford blinks.
He blinks again̢̛͙͝.̗̦͕̟̈́̔̂̂
That isn't how it ̭̄ha̮̍pp̙̄̏͢e̢͉̞̋̀̑n̥͙̙̾̓͞è͍̰̩̋̆d̗͍͎͂̀̕.