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Stan Pines wakes up like a cinder block falling onto a trampoline: hard, ineffective, and a projectile danger to everyone else around him. Muscle memory is the second thing to kick in, right after the nausea: he yanks his head to the side to vomit where he won’t choke on it and barely anything of substance comes out. Great, what a joy. Praise Paul Bunyan and his stupid blue cow.
He’s no stranger to waking up with post-bender amnesia. The sun is usually shining right into his eyes, there’s a bottle or needle or scratcher in his hand, and in the other, a deep sense of dread for the things he’ll discover he’s torn apart and the apologies he’s going to have to make. Good morning, get to work, probably should have killed himself when he had a chance. A couple more seconds and he remembers he’s no longer living in a Colombian prison, or chewing his way out of the trunk of a car, or a fresh high school dropout, so scratch the casual suicidality. He can probably think a bit longer without someone stealing his pilfered knife from the commissary or ending up in a ditch or getting caught sleeping underneath the ‘Now Leaving New Jersey’ sign. (And anyways, something in the back of his mind says it’s not just him all on his own anymore: if he goes, he has a sinking feeling that he’ll be dragging someone down with him.)
Okay, back to business. Check everything and anything that might reveal what current moment he has the displeasure of residing in. Stan’s got glasses now, so that rules out anything before moving to Gravity Falls. A painful crick in his lower back says it’s got to at least be 2010. But where the hell is he? Stan blinks at the fragmented colors trying desperately to coalesce in front of his cataracts even an updated prescription can’t fix. There’s rocky soil underneath his back and tree roots that caught his puke, but there’s something soft shoved underneath his head. It smells like… oranges and kittens? He sneezes and is pretty sure glitter’s also in the mix. Definitely not at the Shack then, but also not alone. No random sparkle kittens exist in the woods… well, at least not any that wouldn’t already have eaten him. And he swears there are voices somewhere above him, but knowing Gravity Falls, they could just be gnomes or sentient woodpeckers. So he’s moderately safe for now: the situation’s just a miserable migraine and aching body and murky memory with no giant looming terror above. That’s fine then: just a regular day for Mr. Mystery. With his newfound knowledge and control of self, Stan attempts to sit up, and promptly blacks out.
The whispering voices hovering just outside of his consciousness burst into full being, as hands attempt to shake him awake and simultaneously push him back to the ground. Stan’s head slams onto the thin plush surface, which smells nice but provides little more comfort than moss on a log. The world slowly spins back into focus. Wait. The surface is a sweater. Oh fuck.
“Kids,” Stan croaks. “Easy on the ole noggin. Can’t lose any more brain cells than I already have.”
A blue baseball cap pops into his line of vision, a face blurry and indistinct in shadow underneath it. “Stan! Oh my gosh, Grunkle Stan, don’t move. Mabel’s getting something from the journal, I… Just lay down, okay?”
He doesn’t want to think about the thread of… something in Dipper’s voice, so instead he just nods and hopes his vision doesn’t give out again. He sneezes out a bit of glitter and blood and phlegm, and tries to aim for the existing bodily fluids pile. “Sounds good. It’s pretty relaxing here anyways. You picked a good spot.”
“Picked a good… Stan, do you not remember what happened?”
“Yeah, sure I do.” He does not. Forest, journal, probably some kind of adventure gone wrong? “You two wanted to get the thingamawhat of doohickey and I refused to let you wander off into the woods alone and get eaten by a bear. I tripped on a rock or something and a magical time was had by all.”
“Um. Not quite. Something came out of the trees and you… you saved us.” Dipper suddenly won’t meet his eyes, suddenly at a loss. Stan wants to punch whatever paranormal creature that put that tremble into his nephew’s words. “And you got hurt. Really bad.”
He scoffs. “Can’t be that bad, I still have my head attached to my body. Get it? Like the wax statue? You should probably see the other guy.” Oh god, that one was bad even by his sorry standards.
Unfortunately, the kid seems more worried than annoyed. “Stan, it’s fine, I’ll explain the rest later. Just stay with me, okay?” Stan can finally understand the waver in Dipper’s voice: it’s fear. He knows it like his oldest friend, like his missing half. He almost can’t control the recoil: it dissolves into tremors that shake his limbs and chest. The twins shouldn’t have to be around for this, wasn’t Gideon’s stupid robot enough? Why can’t they have a normal summer and he be a normal Grunkle and this town be a normal place that doesn’t chew up and spit out every Pines that comes within a mile radius?
It’s at this point he also realizes there’s a small dagger sticking out of his gut, and it’s glowing bright green. Probably not the greatest sign that he hadn’t noticed it yet, but Stan reserves the right to be grumpy about it anyways. He narrows his eyes and gestures at the knife, at which point Dipper turns pale as the ghost haunting the outhouse. “Really buried the lede there, Dipper. Get it, buried? Because I’m stabbed. These are the jokes.”
Oops. Stan might have killed Dipper with that one. His lips press into a thin line and he worries the edge of Journal 3’s page on magical cures. Damn, he forgot to give the kid a real sense of humor this summer—might need to put that on the docket if he survives this. “Come on, this isn’t my first rodeo. You focus on making sure the coast is clear.” He reaches past Dipper’s hands trying to keep him from examining the wound. The area around the handle is numb to the touch, but touching the stupid thing itself feels like getting stabbed, and makes him so dizzy he almost hurls again. Even the empty space around it funnels the pain into electric clarity. The air smells like raw flesh. Stan is suddenly so, so tired.
Dipper slowly pulls him back from touching the thing that’s probably killing him, and gently squeezes his arm. “The Journal says there’s some kind of fae remedy that can heal poison, but they only give it to people that can beat them in knitting contests. Mabel had to unravel her sweater for the yarn so that took extra time, but she’s coming back soon. Just, don’t go to sleep. Promise-” His voice cracks a bit, and Stan doesn’t tease. “Promise me you’ll be okay.”
“I promise, kid.” Stan closes his eyes and attempts to keep it.
—
“Mabel, help me keep him steady.”
The next time the world is slightly less hazy, there’s some kid wearing a sweater taking his temperature. Their brow is furrowed in concentration, journal in one hand and thermometer in the other. They almost look like…
“Ford?” Stan croaks. “I thought…”
The figure starts and almost drops the thermometer. “No, it’s me. Remember?” There’s patient exhaustion in their voice that says they’ve had this conversation a lot recently.
“Me who?”
“It’s…” they pause, and reset the thermometer. “It’s not important right now. Spend all your cool brain energy on getting better.”
There’s something bitter and viscous held to his lips, and in his attempt to wrench his head away, a majority spills onto his clothes. His suit is in tatters, a burning feeling coming from inside his skin even in the shade from above. But why is he wearing a tie and loafers? It’s still the summer and Glass Shard Beach is ripe for exploring and he and his brother don’t even dress up that much when their family bothers to go to the synagogue. Nothing makes sense, not even the name he calls himself in his own head.
He feels like a stubborn ass, but it doesn’t feel right, being sick without his twin. They do everything together: colds, flu season, broken bones. He isn’t meant to sit here alone, one half of a whole. “But where’s Stanford? Is he okay?”
“That’s you, Grunkle Stan,” they sigh. He wishes he could stop disappointing the person that just seems to want to help him. But he can’t, because that’s not true.
“No I’m not,” he repeats petulantly. “Stanford’s the smart one. I’m just the extra, I’m not Ford.”
A frustrated snap. “Then who else would you be?”
The words float up, up and away from him. Stan tries to grab them, but they turn into yellow eyes and green veins and blue swirling portals. Nevermind. Ignore that. Just let the darkness take him once again, far away from the sinking feeling that he’s losing everything he once worked for.
—
A1BC3. Stan wakes up to the dim light of the moon in the gift shop, the triangle windows casting pyramidal ghosts onto the dusty floorboards. He’s slumped against the vending machine, the combination almost fully entered before he must have fallen asleep. Another long eternity searching for a brother that might be long dead. His limbs ache with exhaustion and his thoughts feel as cloudy as the overcast night sky. He chases a wisp that seems to make the setting shift around him, walls replaced with leaves and rug underneath with a makeshift gurney, rattling around over rocky terrain. The infection is spreading. His innards groan and twist into knots, pulling his body taut into painful tension and exhausting release. But too soon the confusion is gone, and he is alone once more, the pain a half-conscious nightmare with no end in sight.
“What if he’s just gone?” he asks the empty room. “What if I left him there?”
A boy’s voice answers, almost shocking him back to wakefulness. “Left who? A1B… what? Stan, we just need to get you home.”
The spark is back in his gut, for this stubborn little shit daring to interrupt his spiral. “He’s never coming back, and I keep looking like the careless idiot I am. He’d hate me even if he did.”
“Come on man, no one hates you,” the kid sighs. “But fine, I’ll play along.” A rock hits his shoulder and the flash of pain clarifies Stan’s thoughts to at least inform him of Dipper’s exasperated tone—and his name. “I’m sure you’ll find whoever it is and then you guys will talk it out.”
Kids. Fucking think they know everything. “Can’t find someone who left you behind. Can’t save someone who’s dead.”
At that, Dipper goes silent, and with one last jolt, the vending machine and the portal and the trees and the argument disappear into white noise.
—
It’s probably Gideon’s fault, the little shit. Ever since Stan woke up to the twins and Soos doing some sort of seance in the living room, he hasn’t been able to sleep without weird dreams.
In this one, he’s dying. Pretty par-for-the-course, but the twist is that it’s at his own funeral. There hadn’t been much of his paper doppelganger to bury after they’d pushed the car off of that cliff filled with fireworks and gasoline, but appearances were everything. Why else would he bother to kill a man banned from half of the United States? Why else would Stan pull on his brother’s old glasses and make sure no one at the funeral suspected they’d seen each other in the last ten years?
The coffin is cheap, the attendance is sparse, and Stanford Pines rushes through the speech with an excuse that his important research can’t wait for his good-for-nothing twin. The insurance lawyer, several poorly disguised gang members, and TV commercial director seem to be in agreement, leaving as soon as the first shovelful of dirt hits the wood six feet down. He’s sure everyone had already left, but he blinks and there’s one person left.
“That was a really mean speech, Grunkle Stan,” says a small girl in the front row. Her braces flash in the midmorning light as she swings her legs on the fold-out plastic funeral chairs. “Aren’t eulogies supposed to be nice? Did you even really know this guy?”
The response is as easy as breathing, comes out before Stan can think better of it. “He wasted his life on crime and scams and never made anything out of himself. Some brother he turned out to be.”
Mabel gives him a hurt look and he desperately hopes this part is also the dream, and the real twins never learn the same lesson he taught Ford.
—
When he finally comes to—for good this time—there’s a knitted throw pulled over his legs where the comforter from his bed won’t quite reach. He’s back in his room again, the clutter tidied neatly in a pile under his bed and a glass of… rainbow glitter liquid with a silly straw on the side table. The rickety fan overhead squeaks as it turns, trying to freeze him to death with the sweat from a just-broken fever. Stan’s head is fucking killing him, and the back of his throat tastes like bile and… unmentionables, but at least he’s not dead in a ditch somewhere. He’s done that song and dance a little too often for his taste.
He really wants to just liquify and become one with the mattress, but the old bastard of a survival instinct is a cruel master, and he sits up before he can convince himself otherwise. The room spins and Stan considers hurling into the wastebasket, even with all of the papers at the bottom, but is able to hold it in long enough to get at least half-vertical. Body assessment, before he has to show any of this to the world at large, and so he knows what else is now broken and he has to adjust to until he can actually justify enough injuries to pay a stupid doctor.
A click of the door and Dipper and Mabel shuffle in, eyes downcast, far before he’s ready to face them. Stan, you asshole, what did you do?
Though, they look at him, and at least some of the stress melts from their shoulders as they run to embrace him. “Grunkle Stan, you’re okay!” Mabel’s in a blue-gray doctor-themed sweater, and it makes the hug softer than ever. Even Dipper, usually reticent and too caught up in pubescent pride, has his head buried in Stan’s shirt. He drinks in the familial love like a man drowning in the desert. Their arms around his shoulders almost cushion him from the moment the other shoe will surely fall.
“Healthy as a horse, what did I tell ya? Looks like you guys might have those Pines family genius genes after all. Hope I didn’t say anything too embarrassing while I was out.” He forces a smile into the space between them and it falls to the ground in an uncermonious silence.
The twins look at each other, exchange a look that Stan can’t interpret, but he knows like the back of his hand. It’s the look you give to someone you’d trust your entire universe to, the look of someone you’d die to protect. It stings every time he’s reminded that he’s on the outside of that now, for the indefinite future. What’s a heart without a brain? What’s a twin without his other half? Better his niece and nephew never learn that’s something you can truly lose.
He doesn’t remember a lot from the haze of blood and fever and pain, but he remembers enough to be truly terrified. It’s the end: they’ll know he’s fucking useless and cruel and a real bastard who can’t take care of them, who can barely take care of himself. What kid in their right mind would want to stay in a place like that, family or not? Everyone leaves eventually, and being sick must have been the final straw to make him destroy the only good thing in his life. To make them go now before they choose to later.
It’s Mabel who finally starts to speak, might begin to say the words he’s been dreading. Dipper squeezes her hand and she gently walks up to him, her hands around his. His heart stops in his chest and he braces for the blow like a true boxer and lets all of the air leave his lungs. Stan’s expecting to hear they’ve called their parents, that they’ll be staying with Soos, that he told them both the truth that they’re the only people worth sticking around for and they can’t be that, understand that he’s a fucked up old man beyond fixing.
He doesn’t expect this.
"Grunkle Stan… who's Stanley?”