Chapter Text
Stan gritted his teeth as cool, slender fingers probed the searing wound on his shoulder blade. “Ya really got yourself messed up here.” The voice behind him was taut but matter-of-fact. “Musta slammed right into the control panel.”
Stan grunted in response; a damp cloth scraped against his raw flesh, igniting a fresh wave of pain. He squeezed his eyes shut and held back a groan. The events of the day played through his mind: the drive through the sleepy valley; the crazed look in his brother’s eye when he answered the door; the anger that bubbled up in Stan’s gut when he realized he was being pushed away again; the sizzling of his shoulder; the flash of blue light. It all led to the numb realization that he had once again fucked up beyond belief.
Nausea roiled in Stan’s stomach. Deft fingers smoothed an ointment over his burns, cold metal nosed around the raw edges, and the memories kept going. The stranger who had knocked on the door, rousing him from his near-comatose state on the lab floor; the snow piling high on the porch, practically cold enough to freeze the tears on the stranger’s cheeks; the slender hand that had pushed against his chest, forcing his way into the shack as the killing blow fell from his lips: “ Yer not Stanford .”
Stanford he was not. He was just the other twin—the extra, the spare. They’d had the bare minimum conversation, enough for Stan to explain the postcard, the journal, and the fight that had led to Ford’s disappearance. For his part, the stranger—his brother’s lab assistant, McGucket—seemed to believe him. He offered no explanation for his own disheveled appearance, only shoved his glasses up his nose and asked if Stan would like for him to take a look at his shoulder.
Stan had hesitated only briefly before deciding that his day couldn’t possibly get any worse; he had shucked his torn shirt and slumped into a kitchen chair, too defeated by the past decade to put up any more of a fight.
“Yer brother’s the same way—always gettin’ himself tore up,” McGucket said softly. “Always pushin’ the limits of what I can do to fix him, too.”
His words hung heavy in the air. Stan worked them over in his mind; the fact that this stranger knew his brother so well, could speak about him so casually, hurt him more deeply than the burn on his back. His heart twisted. McGucket continued, his soft, steady voice laced with nostalgia.
“When we were in college, Ford was more afraid. He was... cautious. But after he moved out here to the valley, he got more bold. More foolish, too,” McGucket chuckled, losing himself to his memories. “One time, he came home covered in these little tiny bite marks. Said it was gnomes. Spent the better part of the evenin’ trying to stitch his forearm back together.” Stan could hear the smile in his voice; as he worked on Stan’s back, McGucket kept talking, telling Stan stories of Ford’s time in the Falls.
Stan tried to reconcile his nerdy, hesitant, brother with the adventurer McGucket described: a brave explorer who discovered new species, explored caves, and looted UFOs. A reckless, foolhardy man who uprooted his cushy university life and left the sterility of the lab for the wilderness of Oregon. A man who had trusted the wrong people and lost himself in a futile quest for... for what? Stan couldn’t figure it out.
McGucket’s hands finally stilled. “That’s about as good as it’s gonna get.” He moved around and slouched into the other kitchen chair. “There might still be some fabric stuck in the wound, but I don’t wanna keep pokin’ at it tonight. I’ll look at it again tomorrow, if...”
Stan looked up, catching the flicker of vulnerability in McGucket’s eyes. Stan’s heart clenched; he was no good with feelings, with comfort, but he recognized the desperation etched into McGucket’s face and posture. Memories of his own loneliness flooded back—seventeen, curled up in his car, wishing someone else could squeeze him back together so he could get up and live another day. Nobody had; there was nobody left. He had blown up his life, and the world had no empathy for an asshole like him.
But here, tonight, he felt a wave of empathy for the skinny, tear-stained man in his estranged brother’s kitchen. Whatever he had done, Stan reasoned, McGucket deserved kindness. At least, as much kindness as Stan could muster.
“This place is more yours than mine,” he replied gruffly. “’Sides, it’s been snowin’ this whole time. You ain’t makin’ it back down the pass tonight.”
McGucket’s relief was palpable. “If’n you don’t mind, I’m gonna take myself off to bed, then. I’m tuckered out. Too much adventure, I reckon.”
Stan nodded stiffly. “Sure, sure. I was gonna take the couch, unless—?” he left the question to hang in the air.
McGucket waved him off. “I got a room, of sorts, upstairs. Just a bed and all my books’n’such.” McGucket shrugged. “You could sleep in Ford’s bed; that couch folds out, but the mattress inside is the devil.”
Stan nodded, slotting this new information into the puzzle he was piecing together. McGucket had spent enough time out here in Ford’s hidden cabin that he had his own space. The implications made his mind race. Stan thought back to what McGucket had said a little earlier, about the burn on his back looking like the portal’s control panel. “What all do you know about the portal?” he asked, looking up at McGucket’s face.
McGucket paled, the playful glint in his eyes dying. He fidgeted with his fingers, sitting back down. “I... helped Ford build it,” he admitted, his voice barely above a whisper. “But...”
“But?” Stan prompted, trying to contain his impatience.
“But I don’t remember a whole lot,” McGucket murmured, shame flickering across his face.
“Whaddaya mean, you don’t remember?” Stan’s frustration bubbled to the surface, but he quickly tamped it down.
McGucket sucked in a deep breath, seeming to steel himself. “I toldja I was Stanford’s lab partner, but... I didn't tell you everything.” McGucket planted his elbows on his knees and rested his head in his hands. “We turned on the portal one time before. I... fell in.” His voice was hardly higher than a whisper. “After everythin’ else, what I saw... it broke me. I thought... if I could forget, I could move on—go back home to Emma-May, get my life back.”
Tears began to flow down his cheeks. “But Ford didn’t understand. We argued. He said I shouldn’t tamper with... with my mind.” He looked up at Stan, seeming unaware of the tears dripping onto his collar. “He used to be my friend, but toward the end, I think he only cared about what I could do to help him finish the portal.”
Stan’s heart sank as he fought the urge to reach out, grappling with the palpable weight of McGucket’s grief. “What happened?” he breathed.
“I left, didn’t even take my things. Hell, I used that damn gun so many times on the drive from here to California. But... the memories of what I saw were all tangled up with other stuff, I guess, so... a lot got erased. A lot of building the portal. A lot of the last few months. Most of Gravity Falls is just...”
“Gone,” Stan finished, feeling hollow.
McGucket nodded. “I lost so much. The erasing... it’s not precise,” McGucket explained, his words starting to run into each other as he desperately tried to explain. “It messed me up. My wife, she got scared. Kicked me out. Said I was different. Divorced me. Won’t... won’t let me see my son.” He looked up, a manic laugh escaping him, stark against the stillness of the kitchen. “She’s probably right. I done messed somethin’ up in my head. But... I can’t remember what I forgot. I came back here to... hell, I don’t know, to beg Ford to put me back to right, I reckon. Found you instead. I don’t—” He gasped out a sob, cutting himself off.
Stan finally reached across the empty space between them, resting a hand on the man’s shoulder as his thin frame was wracked with gasping, terrible cries. Stan cursed under his breath wrestling with his own guilt. “I’m sorry. I...” he ran a hand over his face, feeling the stubble. “I fucked this up for everyone,” he finished quietly.
McGucket barked out a laugh through his tears. “You?” He wiped his eyes, trying and failing to stem the flow of the tears. “Stanley, not a man who’s ever set foot in this cabin is innocent. I’m a coward; Ford’s damn near a megalomaniac. You might be angry, but I got a feeling you deserve to be angry.” He gasped in a breath, resting his head in his hands again. “But that damn portal... that’s all me and Ford.”
They sat in silence for a moment. “The memories you lost... there’s no way to get them back?” Stan tried not to let his despair color his voice.
McGucket wiped his eyes on the back of his hand, rubbed his glasses on his shirt. “I really messed myself up,” he admitted. “I feel... unwell. But... I don’t think it’s permanent. When I drove back into the Falls, I... remembered a few things. It hurt like a sonofabitch, but I think I can undo at least some of the damage. If we could find the journals,” he said slowly, “I think maybe I could reverse engineer whatever’s broke on the portal.”
“You’d—you’d do that?” Stan asked, feeling a spark of hope. “Even after... everything?”
McGucket smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m no good to anyone the way I am now,” he whispered. “I have to.”
Stan felt like he’d been shot. He recognized the reflection of his own desperation in McGucket’s words. He knew he would to whatever it took to bring Ford home, not matter how much he hurt himself in the process.
Stan held out a hand. “I ain’t too smart,” he said, “but if you’re in, I’m in.”
McGucket considered Stan’s hand before holding out his own, shaking it. “Deal.”
McGucket retired to his upstairs room shortly after their conversation, leaving Stan sitting at the kitchen table, the harsh yellow light casting his grief in sharp relief. In the kitchen, alone, Stan finally cried.
Afterward, Stan lay awake on the couch’s thin mattress. Despite his bone-deep weariness, sleep was eluding him. He had considered McGucket’s comment about Ford’s bed, but he just couldn’t stomach the thought of sleeping in his brother’s bedroom; not so soon after...
He groaned and rolled over, feeling his burn throbbing, white-hot against the coolness of the tee shirt he had excavated from the trunk of his Fleetwood. Above him, McGucket’s footsteps hadn’t slowed, pacing back and forth.
He wondered what his brother’s lab partner saw when he looked at him. A defective version of Ford? A scruffy jerk, gifted with a silver tongue and not enough brains to use it? A sad, sorry asshole who fucked up the lives of everyone around him?
Stan clenched his jaw and tried to get comfortable on the lumpy, rough mattress. He squeezed his eyes shut, begging for sleep to release him from his own head.