[Stan thinks, he really thinks. But with this amnesia, it's like gazing into absolutely nothing. His eyes never adjust to the dark.]
I'm guessing that's the big...thing that happened? The one the town's banned from telling me about?
[The one he definitely got tased for asking about when he got a little too curious, before he understood why he couldn't have that last memory back. Stan shakes his head.]
No, nothing. There's this...
[He frowns, trying to explain it in a way that would make sense to literally anyone else. On the upside, the two of them are old enough that the only thing coming to mind is something Ford would understand.]
It's like when a record skips? It's me hanging up signs in the woods and then zzzt--! [And he makes a gesture as though he's suddenly turning a record wrong.] --I'm on the ground with no idea who or where I am. But the record's all scratched, so it won't play right.
Basically -- Bill caused a localized Armageddon. He warped the whole town into what he thought would be fun: weirdness waves brought inanimate objects to life, monsters from other dimensions ran wild in the streets, and eyeball bats turned people into stone and brought them to his floating pyramid to make a giant throne of frozen human agony.
I tried to stop Bill on my own, but I was captured. He turned me into a statue, too -- until he realized that his power couldn't affect the world outside of the town. Gravity Falls' Natural Law of Weirdness Magnetism kept him and his weirdness inside the city limits, and he needed an equation I'd discovered years ago to collapse the barrier.
You and the kids came to rescue me, but Bill captured you, too. He said he'd kill Dipper and Mabel unless I gave him the equation. He'd have done it, if you hadn't figured out a way to stop him. We erased Bill from existence, but we also had to erase your memory to do it.
I thought he was gone for good, until I came here.
[Stan nods along, looks appropriately horrified and disgusted at the right moments, but Ford probably recognizes Stan's lack of recognition from when his memory was first erased. Sometimes when they told him stories about himself, the reaction was as though he was listening to a story about someone else. He could pick up on the emotional beats, but the connection to it wasn't there.]
So...the memory erasing was my idea.
[He sounds...unsure if he's surprised or not. It wasn't like anyone could tell him - not without telling him what they did or who they were up against. It hits a little different knowing for sure that he volunteered to wipe himself out completely. It shuts the impostor syndrome up for a minute, and that's kind of a shock.
But...given what he's pieced together of the rest of his life, maybe it's not a surprise at all that he'd throw it all away.]
No wonder he's so pissed off - it's not that I killed him, it's that I beat that lousy two-bit con artist at his own game - with my own lousy two-bit con arting!
[That had to have been it. They had to have tricked him. Nothing else would make any sense.]
You knew that once he went into someone's mind, we could erase him with the memory gun. You also knew that the memory gun wouldn't work on me, thanks to the metal plate. So you came up with the idea to trick him into thinking you were me, so he'd go into your mind looking for the equation. We switched clothes, you made the deal, and then....
[Ford makes an uncomfortable face for a moment. Stan knows the rest.
[He does know the rest, and knows that uncomfortable face pretty well. But the explanation does clear up one other thing.]
And that's why you guys didn't want us doing the Pines Twins Switcheroo around here.
[That loops them back around to the uncomfortable elephant in the room. Stan doesn't exactly look happy, but he's not flipping out quite as much as when he first came in the room either, so that's something. He decides to just rip this band-aid off now.]
So...you gonna tell me how you wound up dating the guy who almost murdered the kids and literally turned you to stone or what?
That -- that's a long story. It's complicated by the fact that I am very angry that he went behind my back about this. I'll tell you, if you want to hear it, but I need to talk to him soon too, about what the hell he's trying to pull here.
[Yup card table's where they're goin'. Ford clears some miscellaneous science supplies off of it and sets down two glasses and a bottle of scotch he's clearly already been at, it's like 3/4 gone. As he pours:]
Bill and I go back a long time. I first met him in Gravity Falls, back in 1981. I was looking for an explanation, a theory that would explain why Gravity Falls was so weird. Something that would account for the ghosts, the aliens, the cryptids, and magic. My research had come to a standstill, and I was getting desperate. That's when I found writing in a cave, describing a being with answers. It warned me not to summon him, but I did it anyway. After all, they'd left the instructions. How bad could it be?
Horrible. He convinced me that the only way to complete my research was to build an interdimensional portal. He said it would lead to the dimension that all of the weirdness was coming from.
Instead, it led to him. He was trapped in an unstable, decaying, nondimensional space, and he'd been planning to use me to get out of it.
[He takes a drink.]
He's been trying to physically reach our world for thousands of years, Stan. The pyramids used to look like him, but the arms all fell off. George Washington made a deal with him to win the Revolutionary War, which is why his face is on all our currency. He even helped Stanley Kubrick fake the moon landing!
Sounds like he hasn't gotten that far if he's been trying that long.
[Sure, Bill almost destroyed their world, but Stan refuses to be impressed. He takes a swig of his own drink and mulls it over though - and probably skips a few steps to cut to the chase.]
So, he's your ex? You got back together with your ex?
[Even Ford has to know that never ends well, right? ...Right?]
No! I told you, nothing happened before the Barge! True, I admit, I had some -- unprofessional feelings back when I thought he was actually going to help me, and he developed a huge crush sometime in the '90s, but we were never involved!
[Even in this serious conversation, making Ford uncomfortable about a crush is always funny, so Stan can't help laughing at the reaction. It's entertaining, but the moment doesn't last.]
Then you got together after that whole... [Fuck, he already forgot the name of it.] ...Weird Apocalypse thing. What changed?
[Ford's shoulders slump, and he looks down at his scotch glass.]
A lot of things.
When I first showed up here, I hated him. I couldn't believe that he was still alive. It seemed so unfair, that after everything we'd done, after everything you sacrificed, that someone had decided to bring him back! I thought the Admiral had to be an idiot to take the risk, and I knew that if Bill had enough time, he would find a way to escape. He's been around for trillions of years, and he's destroyed entire universes before. I was torn. Did I trust the Admiral to keep him here, or did I need to find a way to stop him again?
At first, I....I tried to let it go. He wasn't my problem anymore. The Admiral brought him back, and the Admiral could deal with him. I just wanted to learn whatever it was I needed to in order to graduate, and then go back home. For the first few months, I just ignored him!
But then I met Steve, who had damaged the Barge's systems before. If he could do it, so could Bill. I had to admit that this place wasn't secure.
Uh. ...None of that sounds like a reason to get "involved" with somebody. [Finger quotes and everything, since he's stealing Ford's word for it.] And I oughta know! I've had terrible reasons to date people!
I'm getting there! First I have to explain why I decided to even give him the time of day, after everything he did to you and the kids!
Anyway, I knew the Barge wasn't a safe place to keep him, but I also couldn't fight him here. Even if I managed to kill him, he'd just come back! On top of that, everyone and their brother was giving me the same advice: stop fighting him, because people just get hurt. So, when he had an emotional breakdown, let me out of an old deal I'd made with him in the '80s, and admitted in a fit of rage that he actually cared about me, I thought that the most efficient way to make sure he wasn't a threat anymore and get back to our sailing adventure was to wait for Bill to graduate. After all, if Bill Cipher could develop an actual attachment to a human, that meant that whatever the Barge was doing had to be working. I'd just wait it out. Either he'd graduate or he'd disappear. And, since I figured being ignored by the one person he cared about would slow down the process, I agreed to talk to him.
When we were working on the portal, I....I made a deal with him to take over my body while I was asleep, so he could keep working while I rested. To...keep the project on schedule.
The point is, I had to deal with Bill differently on the Barge. I was still angry about what he did, but I had to find a way to move past it if I wanted to get anything done.
Let me see, did anything else important happen before the Bargeyard? We agreed to play Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons....Horseriver sacrificed me to give Bill a conscience for a few minutes...Bill was flirting but I had no idea....
Oh, yes. It was a blood ritual. Apparently, Horseriver had a score to settle and my blood was the only stuff that'd do. I was better within a week, and he graduated and left shortly after. I made sure it wouldn't happen again, though: my coat's got anti-magic wards on it, and I've made it so my blood can't be used for anything like that ever again.
That kind of thing happens around here, Stan. Sometimes, you just get killed! It's a little bit like taking a punch. It hurts, and you're sore for a while, but you can't punch back without ticking off all their friends. And, if you're a warden, getting demoted. Usually, revenge just isn't worth it.
...besides, some people are popular enough that they can kill a bunch of people in horrible ways and then nobody blinks when they start offering to give other people therapy.
[Stan sputters. Even though he's pretty flippant over his own mortality, he can't believe Ford would be like that. It actually kind of pisses him off enough to snap a little.]
I know people can die here, Ford! I got the spiel and that's not the problem! You don't get it!
[He blurts it out without thinking, a quick flare of temper that gets the better of him. Of course Ford doesn't get it. He wasn't the one who had to watch his brother get knocked overboard in a storm by some goddamn overgrown squid. He isn't the one whose brother sank into waves just two weeks after they'd finally made up.
As soon as he says it though, he realizes he doesn't actually want to talk about it, and it's enough to force him into a simmer. He crosses his arms and manages to pull back into just irritation.]
Ugh, just forget it! Alright, you got sacrificed so your shitty soon-to-be-boyfriend could have a conscience for two minutes. Next!
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I'm guessing that's the big...thing that happened? The one the town's banned from telling me about?
[The one he definitely got tased for asking about when he got a little too curious, before he understood why he couldn't have that last memory back. Stan shakes his head.]
No, nothing. There's this...
[He frowns, trying to explain it in a way that would make sense to literally anyone else. On the upside, the two of them are old enough that the only thing coming to mind is something Ford would understand.]
It's like when a record skips? It's me hanging up signs in the woods and then zzzt--! [And he makes a gesture as though he's suddenly turning a record wrong.] --I'm on the ground with no idea who or where I am. But the record's all scratched, so it won't play right.
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I see.
Basically -- Bill caused a localized Armageddon. He warped the whole town into what he thought would be fun: weirdness waves brought inanimate objects to life, monsters from other dimensions ran wild in the streets, and eyeball bats turned people into stone and brought them to his floating pyramid to make a giant throne of frozen human agony.
I tried to stop Bill on my own, but I was captured. He turned me into a statue, too -- until he realized that his power couldn't affect the world outside of the town. Gravity Falls' Natural Law of Weirdness Magnetism kept him and his weirdness inside the city limits, and he needed an equation I'd discovered years ago to collapse the barrier.
You and the kids came to rescue me, but Bill captured you, too. He said he'd kill Dipper and Mabel unless I gave him the equation. He'd have done it, if you hadn't figured out a way to stop him. We erased Bill from existence, but we also had to erase your memory to do it.
I thought he was gone for good, until I came here.
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So...the memory erasing was my idea.
[He sounds...unsure if he's surprised or not. It wasn't like anyone could tell him - not without telling him what they did or who they were up against. It hits a little different knowing for sure that he volunteered to wipe himself out completely. It shuts the impostor syndrome up for a minute, and that's kind of a shock.
But...given what he's pieced together of the rest of his life, maybe it's not a surprise at all that he'd throw it all away.]
No wonder he's so pissed off - it's not that I killed him, it's that I beat that lousy two-bit con artist at his own game - with my own lousy two-bit con arting!
[That had to have been it. They had to have tricked him. Nothing else would make any sense.]
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You knew that once he went into someone's mind, we could erase him with the memory gun. You also knew that the memory gun wouldn't work on me, thanks to the metal plate. So you came up with the idea to trick him into thinking you were me, so he'd go into your mind looking for the equation. We switched clothes, you made the deal, and then....
[Ford makes an uncomfortable face for a moment. Stan knows the rest.
Then, Ford shrugs.]
He's also mad you killed him.
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And that's why you guys didn't want us doing the Pines Twins Switcheroo around here.
[That loops them back around to the uncomfortable elephant in the room. Stan doesn't exactly look happy, but he's not flipping out quite as much as when he first came in the room either, so that's something. He decides to just rip this band-aid off now.]
So...you gonna tell me how you wound up dating the guy who almost murdered the kids and literally turned you to stone or what?
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Wow, I'm so shocked he went behind your back here! That doesn't sound like something the literal villain of our stupid show would do at all!
[He crosses his arms.]
If I didn't wanna hear it I wouldn't have asked, you knucklehead.
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You had probably better sit down. ...do you want a drink?
[pitt soda? scotch? this thread's not gonna be Y7 anymore in a minute.]
We can drink for real here.
[None of this "expired apple cider" nonsense.]
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Heh. That's the first good news I've heard all day. I could go for a drink - and it sounds like you're gonna need one too.
[He heads right over for the card table, since it's usually a good spot for drowning sorrows and having pity parties.]
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Bill and I go back a long time. I first met him in Gravity Falls, back in 1981. I was looking for an explanation, a theory that would explain why Gravity Falls was so weird. Something that would account for the ghosts, the aliens, the cryptids, and magic. My research had come to a standstill, and I was getting desperate. That's when I found writing in a cave, describing a being with answers. It warned me not to summon him, but I did it anyway. After all, they'd left the instructions. How bad could it be?
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Hm...I'm gonna go with...pretty bad. Right?
[No good story starts out with "How bad could it be?".]
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Instead, it led to him. He was trapped in an unstable, decaying, nondimensional space, and he'd been planning to use me to get out of it.
[He takes a drink.]
He's been trying to physically reach our world for thousands of years, Stan. The pyramids used to look like him, but the arms all fell off. George Washington made a deal with him to win the Revolutionary War, which is why his face is on all our currency. He even helped Stanley Kubrick fake the moon landing!
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[Sure, Bill almost destroyed their world, but Stan refuses to be impressed. He takes a swig of his own drink and mulls it over though - and probably skips a few steps to cut to the chase.]
So, he's your ex? You got back together with your ex?
[Even Ford has to know that never ends well, right? ...Right?]
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No! I told you, nothing happened before the Barge! True, I admit, I had some -- unprofessional feelings back when I thought he was actually going to help me, and he developed a huge crush sometime in the '90s, but we were never involved!
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Then you got together after that whole... [Fuck, he already forgot the name of it.] ...Weird Apocalypse thing. What changed?
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A lot of things.
When I first showed up here, I hated him. I couldn't believe that he was still alive. It seemed so unfair, that after everything we'd done, after everything you sacrificed, that someone had decided to bring him back! I thought the Admiral had to be an idiot to take the risk, and I knew that if Bill had enough time, he would find a way to escape. He's been around for trillions of years, and he's destroyed entire universes before. I was torn. Did I trust the Admiral to keep him here, or did I need to find a way to stop him again?
At first, I....I tried to let it go. He wasn't my problem anymore. The Admiral brought him back, and the Admiral could deal with him. I just wanted to learn whatever it was I needed to in order to graduate, and then go back home. For the first few months, I just ignored him!
But then I met Steve, who had damaged the Barge's systems before. If he could do it, so could Bill. I had to admit that this place wasn't secure.
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Uh. ...None of that sounds like a reason to get "involved" with somebody. [Finger quotes and everything, since he's stealing Ford's word for it.] And I oughta know! I've had terrible reasons to date people!
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I'm getting there! First I have to explain why I decided to even give him the time of day, after everything he did to you and the kids!
Anyway, I knew the Barge wasn't a safe place to keep him, but I also couldn't fight him here. Even if I managed to kill him, he'd just come back! On top of that, everyone and their brother was giving me the same advice: stop fighting him, because people just get hurt. So, when he had an emotional breakdown, let me out of an old deal I'd made with him in the '80s, and admitted in a fit of rage that he actually cared about me, I thought that the most efficient way to make sure he wasn't a threat anymore and get back to our sailing adventure was to wait for Bill to graduate. After all, if Bill Cipher could develop an actual attachment to a human, that meant that whatever the Barge was doing had to be working. I'd just wait it out. Either he'd graduate or he'd disappear. And, since I figured being ignored by the one person he cared about would slow down the process, I agreed to talk to him.
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Guess that makes sense, in a completely non-romantic way. What deal did he let you out of though?
[That seems like a big thing to just gloss over, pal!]
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When we were working on the portal, I....I made a deal with him to take over my body while I was asleep, so he could keep working while I rested. To...keep the project on schedule.
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[It's more out of exasperation and belated worry than anything else though, and it's worth a good swig of his drink.]
Sheesh, no wonder you were a wreck when I got there...
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The point is, I had to deal with Bill differently on the Barge. I was still angry about what he did, but I had to find a way to move past it if I wanted to get anything done.
Let me see, did anything else important happen before the Bargeyard? We agreed to play Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons....Horseriver sacrificed me to give Bill a conscience for a few minutes...Bill was flirting but I had no idea....
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You got sacrificed?!
[HE'S GONNA GIVE STAN A HEART ATTACK OVER HERE.]
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Oh, yes. It was a blood ritual. Apparently, Horseriver had a score to settle and my blood was the only stuff that'd do. I was better within a week, and he graduated and left shortly after. I made sure it wouldn't happen again, though: my coat's got anti-magic wards on it, and I've made it so my blood can't be used for anything like that ever again.
That kind of thing happens around here, Stan. Sometimes, you just get killed! It's a little bit like taking a punch. It hurts, and you're sore for a while, but you can't punch back without ticking off all their friends. And, if you're a warden, getting demoted. Usually, revenge just isn't worth it.
...besides, some people are popular enough that they can kill a bunch of people in horrible ways and then nobody blinks when they start offering to give other people therapy.
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I know people can die here, Ford! I got the spiel and that's not the problem! You don't get it!
[He blurts it out without thinking, a quick flare of temper that gets the better of him. Of course Ford doesn't get it. He wasn't the one who had to watch his brother get knocked overboard in a storm by some goddamn overgrown squid. He isn't the one whose brother sank into waves just two weeks after they'd finally made up.
As soon as he says it though, he realizes he doesn't actually want to talk about it, and it's enough to force him into a simmer. He crosses his arms and manages to pull back into just irritation.]
Ugh, just forget it! Alright, you got sacrificed so your shitty soon-to-be-boyfriend could have a conscience for two minutes. Next!
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