Chapter Text
Things were oddly quiet after the world ended. Well, nearly ended, Stanley supposed. Or began, from his perspective.
It had been a couple of days since he came into consciousness in the middle of a forest with no memory of anything at all. He'd been steadily regaining memories since then about himself, his life, and his family. But when he was first told that all of the damage around the house and the town was the result of a literal apocalypse that had ended right before he woke up… well, he expected his life to be a bit more chaotic.
So far, though, all he'd really done was sit around and talk to a bunch of people and look at pictures and try to remember things.
He was making some progress. Many of the memories of the summer and the kids had come back easily enough, thanks to the scrapbook Mabel had made. The man with his face, though—that was another story.
He said they were brothers, and a glance in the mirror could prove that they were, but every memory he'd recovered with him so far had been laced with so many conflicting emotions it made Stan’s head spin.
His brother greeting him with a punch to the face. His brother yelling at him. His brother telling him to get out of his house at the end of the summer. His brother fighting with him even at the end of the world.
Logically, Stan knew he loved his brother. He could feel it in the aching memories he had recovered: that desperate desire to be wanted in return. Surely they'd had many wonderful times before whatever caused the distance between them, and these wonderful times had endeared him to Stan, had made him miss his brother's love like a fish squirming on a hook missed the sea, but Stan couldn't remember them right now. It was strange to feel the yearning without really knowing what he was yearning for.
One thing was clear, though. In the memories he had recovered, his brother had not felt that same longing for shared affection. When Stan had stood at that portal with open arms, the other man had met him with a white hot anger and violence which had not seemed to cool since. Until, of course, Stan lost his memories.
Since Stanley came to consciousness in that clearing, his brother had been nothing but calm and gentle with him, and there was no question of why. He could recognize the guilt in his expression every time Stan struggled to recall details of his life or the people around him. So the care wasn't really sincere, wasn't because he suddenly liked Stan. It was just because his brother felt bad for him.
It made sense; if there was one thing Stan remembered, deep in his bones, it was that people didn't like him. They tolerated him at best and tried to kill him at worst. Except for Soos, maybe, but that kid had always been weird, and Stan was sure he'd wise up eventually.
So while Stanley knew, logically, that the care and attentiveness he was receiving from his brother right now should be everything he'd seemingly ever wanted, it just felt hollow. He felt hollow.
“Stan?” The voice of his brother came from behind him, startling him from his thoughts. “What are you doing out here by yourself?” Ford closed the door behind him as he moved to sit next to Stan on the front porch. “And do you know where the kids are?”
Maybe he should amend his earlier assessment. Despite their rocky start, the kids–especially Mabel–did also seem to have grown to like him a little over the past couple of months. At least until he'd blown it all by lying to them. And introducing them to his smarter, less sweaty twin. Not that he necessarily regretted that given he'd apparently rescued him from some kind of hell dimension, but still.
“Nope, haven't seen them since lunch.” He elected to ignore the other question. He definitely wasn't gonna tell Ford he was out here alone to contemplate the intricacies of their relationship. Somehow he didn't see that going over well.
“Hmm. I haven't been able to find them inside so they must have gone into the woods earlier.”
“Heh. You’d think looking for weird shit in the woods would have lost its appeal after everything.” Stan shook his head fondly. “We gonna start up a search party?”
Ford frowned. “No, no. I'm sure I can find them on my own.”
“Sure, but it'd go faster with help,” Stan said with a raise of his brow.
“Stan. You're still recovering, and the woods are dangerous. I don't want to have to worry about you, too.”
“Then don't worry about me!” Stan crossed his arms over his chest and fixed his brother with a stern look. “Just 'cause my memories aren't all back yet, that doesn't mean I'm helpless, ya know? You can quit treating me with kid gloves, Ford.”
“Stan, that's not-”
“Grunkle Stan! Grunkle Ford!”
Ice shot through Stan's veins as he heard the panicked shouts of the kids as they burst from the forest. He stood from the porch immediately and raced to the kids, with his brother following close behind.
“What is it? What happened?” Looking over the two of them, there didn't seem to be any obvious injuries, which quelled the anxiety just a little.
“We found this huge crack in the ground in the forest and next to it was… well, it looked like a smaller version of the portal,” Dipper explained, still trying to catch his breath.
“Are you both okay? Did anything come out?” Ford asked, moving forward as if to check them for harm. He was doing a decent job of disguising the panic in his voice, but Stan could hear that edge of frantic energy.
“We're fine, and it doesn't seem like anything came out yet—at least that we could see—but it looks like it's getting bigger!”
Ford nodded at Dipper's words, checking his holster to make sure his gun was in place. “Show me. We'll have to find some way to close it, hopefully before anything gets pulled in or comes out. Who knows where it could lead.”
“Wait,” Mabel said, stopping them before they could leave. “I have an idea! Do you have any of that weird space glue left?”
“The adhesive from Crash Site Omega? Yes, I have it in the basement.” Then, it clicked for Ford what she was getting at. “Mabel, that's a brilliant idea! We can use the adhesive to seal the wormhole just like the rift!”
Mabel beamed as Ford raced down to the basement to gather the adhesive. He would need some kind of tool to apply it to the wormhole, though, since he couldn't get too close without getting sucked in. He would like to avoid that if at all possible.
Ford scrambled around the lab, looking for something he could use, when he heard the distinct thunk of the elevator reaching the basement. Stanley stepped out.
“Here,” Stan held out a long caulking gun with an empty canister to him. “Figured this could help.”
“How did you-?”
“Oh please,” Stan said, rolling his eyes, “you're not the only one who's worked with the physics of inter-dimensional travel. I know exactly how close you can get to those things before they pull you in.”
Ford paused, eyes filled with regret. “Yes. I suppose you would.”
Grimacing, Stan thrust the canister towards his brother with a grunt. “Might wanna get going.”
“Right, of course.”
With that, Ford quickly looked away as he replaced the empty canister with the alien adhesive. The weight of Stan’s gaze was making him nervous in a new yet familiar way, but he didn't have time to consider it at the moment.
As soon as the filled canister clicked into place, the two shot towards the elevator and back to their niblings.
“Alright, show us where the wormhole is.”
-
The wormhole was a strange, large rip through reality that, to Stan's eyes, looked eerily similar to the rift that occasionally haunted the sky of his nightmares.
Ford stepped forward with the caulking gun. “Alright, stand back everyone. This is extremely dangerous, and I don't want any of you getting pulled in to its grav-”
“Gimme that.” Stan wrested the caulking gun from Ford's hands without preamble, pushing him back and out of the way.
Stan had lost Ford to the multiverse for 30 years already. Like hell was he letting him get close to this thing, even if he didn't really understand the bubbling nausea that the thought of losing him caused.
“What- Hey!”
Ford made as if to lunge towards Stan, but before he could get off the ground Mabel shouted, “No!" Her voice was so full of fear that both men paused to look at her. "Haven't you two learned your lesson about fighting around scary inter-dimensional whatevers by now?”
She made a good point, but, “He started it!”
“Can it, Poindexter,” Stan replied, turning to face the wormhole. He held the caulking gun firmly in his hands as he approached, feeling as its gravity began to pull on the gun. When he was finally close enough to the wormhole for the caulking gun to reach, he could feel the gold chain gently float from around his neck.
Long nights standing in front of a broken machine, cursing his own stupidity and begging the uncaring universe to return a brother who hated him flashed through his mind. He swallowed against the sudden onslaught of memories and squeezed the trigger, watching as the portal—the wormhole—sealed closed.
“Heh,” he scoffed, lowering the gun. “Easy peasy.”
Ford marched over and ripped the gun from his hands. “Easy peasy? Stan, that was incredibly dangerous! Why didn't you just let me do it? You could have gotten sucked in or… or anything could have come out-”
“Oh, because it'd be so much better if that happened to you? Or are you wearing some magic wormhole-force-field thing you didn't tell us about?” Stan pushed Ford back by the shoulder. “Newsflash: I'm fine! The issue is solved and nothing happened so we can all just go home.”
“Uh, hi…” All four family members turned as a new voice sounded off from behind them. “Is this a bad time to mention that I think we're lost?”
Stanley was flooded with a fresh wave of memories as his eyes locked onto the young twin boys standing on the other side of the clearing, and he understood all at once why that nameless part of him had latched onto Ford and could never let go. Sea salt-scented memories of working on an old sailboat and dreams of escaping together folded on top of stolen glances and guilt-laden fantasies of a less innocent nature. He had been in love.
It was nearly enough to knock him to the ground. Luckily, Stan had re-familiarized himself with hiding his emotions, and his family was more than a bit distracted by the unexpected appearance of his and Ford's younger selves.
“Stay back,” Ford growled, whipping out his blaster and training it on the teenagers. “What are you, shape-shifters? How do you know those forms?”
The younger version of Stanley glanced at the younger version of Stanford in confusion. “Shape-shifters?”
Stanford shrugged. “Well, we did fall through what I suspect to be some type of Einstein-Rosen bridge. Perhaps we're in an alternate dimension where that's a concern?”
“Wait,” Dipper said, gesturing to the now-empty space Stan had just sealed shut, “you two came through that wormhole?”
“Yes. We were pulled into it on our side. Rather, I was unexpectedly pulled into it while attempting to investigate it and my brother foolishly followed after me.”
“Foolishly?” Stanley looked at his brother in disbelief. “As if I was gonna just let you fall through some weird space portal by yourself and wait around all helpless on the other side not even knowing what happened to you! That would be torture.” Both older Stans flinched at his assessment. “Obviously I followed you. Someone had to make sure you were alright.”
“Wait a minute,” Mabel cut in. “Those voices. That bickering.” She turned to her Grunkle Ford. “Are they…?”
Ford finally lowered his gun with a sigh. “Yes, Mabel. I suspect they are.”
“Suspect we're what?” Stanley asked with more than a little defensiveness.
“You're us,” Stan said.
Ford nodded. “Younger and presumably from a different dimension, but yes. You're us.”
Four pairs of matching eyes sized each other up from across the clearing.
"Eeeee!" Without another thought, Mabel launched herself at the younger set, full speed. Her tiny arms somehow wrapped around both of their waists as she cooed, "Baby grunkles!"
"Who're you callin' 'baby'? You're like 9!"
"I assumed she means in comparison to our older counterparts," Stanford clarified, cutting off Mabel's indignant gasp at the assessment of her age, "though I don't know what a 'grunkle' is."
Mabel perked up, pulling out of the hug to smile widely up at the teens. "Oh! A grunkle is-"
"Wait," Dipper cut in, looking frantically between the two versions of his grunkles before settling his gaze on the older Ford. "Are we allowed to tell them things? Should we be worried about preserving their timeline? Or accidentally making it so we are never born or something?"
Ford smiled at him proudly. "Great instincts! However, since we are dealing with alternate dimensions and not time travel, different rules apply. We have no way of knowing what already has or what would have gone differently in their timeline, but since it's entirely separate from our own, they should not influence one another. So we don't have to worry about revealing information since we can't be sure it would be true for them anyway. For example, perhaps in their universe, we don't even have another sibling and you weren't going to exist anyway!"
Stan elbowed him sharply as Dipper's eyes widened. "Couldn't you have come up with a less morbid example?"
"But wait," Dipper interjected, "you said different rules apply, not no rules."
"Oh, yes!" Ford rubbed his arm, otherwise ignoring Stan's comment. "Well, it's fairly simple. Stan and I must never touch our counterparts or we risk imploding this entire dimension."
"Oh, is that all?" Stan mumbled next to him.
"Not that all this talk of timeline whosits and exploding whatsits isn't fascinating," Stanley cut in, "but can we get to the point? Can you help us get back home or not?"
Ford looked at the boy with a tender smile that made Stan's chest ache. "We will certainly try." He shifted his gaze to look at his own younger self. "Normally I would suggest that we work together to come up with a solution, but working in the same lab would be far too dangerous."
Stanford nodded. "Logical. Perhaps we could create some kind of personal force field that prevents us from touching?"
"Right," Stan said, cutting off Ford's enthusiastic response. "But you two nerds can't work on that together, either. You'll run into the same issue. It'd be better to split up at first. One of you working on locating the origin dimension and one working on creating the gateway. Ya know, each of you work on part of the problem then bring your results together."
The young Stanford looked at him with a sort of surprised awe that made him uncomfortable, while his younger self just scowled. "Am I a nerd in this dimension?"
"Call me that again and I'll risk implodin' us all to punch your lights out, kid."
"Oh, yes, of course." Ford looked vaguely nauseated and supremely uncomfortable as he turned to the teenagers. "Um… Stanford, I believe it would make the most sense to put you and my Stan in charge of the gateway. You wouldn't be treading new ground. Stan does have familiarity with the construction of interdimensional gateways. I'm afraid he's been through quite a harrowing ordeal recently, though, and his memory-"
"I'm fine."
"-is not fully recovered. However, he may prove valuable to you as a resource. Regardless, I'll give you my notes on the subject." Heavily edited, Ford thought to himself. "Myself and your Stanley can work on targeting your home dimension, as that will be somewhat trickier."
Stanley shifted uncomfortably. "Why can't we work with our own brothers?" He glanced over to his Stanford with concern before looking back at Ford. "Not like we're gonna cause the end of the world that way, right?"
"While that is true, I will need to work with one of you to determine your dimensional signature, and I obviously can't work with… me."
Mabel beamed, looking back and forth between the two sets of men. "It's a grunkle swap!" She cheered. "I'm totally making you guys matching sweaters. This is gonna be so awesome!"