Reader & Collector of Stories

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Where are they?

Stan had tried not to think about it. He’d tried, in fact, to think about almost literally anything else. The problem, though, was how little else there really had been to think about since the end of the world. He’d been able to wander through the museum as though he was giving a tour - but since there were no tourists, the only thing worse than hearing his footsteps echo off the ceilings was hearing his voice do so when he spoke to the empty air. He’d found dozens of things that needed repair - but Soos never answered when Stan shouted for him. He’d even tried going to bed, hoping to sleep and wake up to find this had all been a nightmare - but that had involved going through his door, which had involved seeing that now-pointless sign forbidding Dipper from trespassing. He’d even gone to the basement, trying to recapture some feeling of control over his life - but without Ford’s first journal waiting for him in the desktop compartment, the basement had managed to feel more horrifyingly empty than it had since the very beginning of his thirty years of nights inside it. And so, again and again, the thought came back to him.

Where are they?

When just not thinking about it failed, he’d tried to convince himself that he knew the answer after all. There were two rooms which he never entered, no matter what. Ford’s room (otherwise known in the daytime, or what would have been the daytime, as the break room) and the attic room the twins shared - those two doors he never opened. He walked up to them, sure. Stood outside them. Put his hand on the doorknobs. Rested his forehead against the wood. Cried, a couple of times. But he never, ever opened them. He knew that Dipper and Mabel and Soos and Ford weren’t on the other sides of them, that they might never again be on the other sides of them - but he couldn’t bring himself to confirm it. And so he went on worrying, wondering….

Where are they?

It would have been bad enough, just not finding Soos where he was supposed to be - but Ford and Dipper and Mabel, he had thought they already were here. When the sky had broken apart and the goat had become a mammoth, Stan had run into the house through the back door, slamming the door behind him. He had heard the front door slam at the same moment, and when he had turned around, it had been to see Ford bolting toward the basement while Dipper ran up the stairs to the attic, where Stan assumed Mabel had been. He couldn’t say for sure, of course, because he hadn’t seen her with his own eyes, but Dipper and Ford - 

I saw them! They were right here! They were safe! So where are they now, and why aren’t they here anymore?!

He hadn’t heard the door the next time - had he? He didn’t think he had, but maybe he just didn’t want to remember. What he couldn’t forget, though, was the moment he’d finally decided to stomp downstairs and demand to know what was going on…only to find the basement empty. When he’d started shouting around the house, shouting all their names…only to be answered by silence. When he’d first walked up to those doors, put his ear against them praying he’d hear something to suggest they were inhabited, only to find there was…nothing. 

Eventually, he’d put a few pieces together about what had happened - had figured out that that triangle thing, Bill, the one which Stan had a very personal interest in de-Euclidianizing for the things it had done to Ford and Dipper and for the worse things it had planned to do to them, had come to Earth. Eventually, he’d been unable to help but realize what that meant. Ever since, every time he’d passed a mirror, he’d seen someone else’s reflection and he’d promptly broken the glass.

Of course Ford didn’t have the sense to stay in here where it was safe. Of course he didn’t. He had to go fight that damn thing, didn’t he? Had to show it, once and forever, show it which of them was stronger, show it that he wasn’t a pawn, a victim, whatever - so of course he ran out there to die, and automatically made the past thirty years of my life not matter, since he just had to go get himself killed a month later. Typical. That jerk. But that wasn’t enough. Oh, no. It couldn’t be enough to just get himself killed. No, he had to let Dipper follow him, didn’t he? For the same stupid reasons, probably. They both had to prove they were freakin’ heroes, and now they’re freakin’ corpses. And Mabel - oh, God, Mabel - 

Even if Mabel had had enough sense to realize how stupid the mission was (which was doubtful in and of itself), Stan had known at once that there was no way she’d have allowed Dipper to go alone. No way, no how. It was as unlikely as it would have been for Stan to have allowed Ford to go off and die on his own back when they’d been twelve. No, it had all made a sickeningly clear picture: Mabel had followed Dipper, and Dipper had followed Ford, and Ford, damn him, Ford probably hadn’t batted an eye at leading two children into his private war against the Dorito demon. And now - 

I don’t know that they’re dead. They could be alive. They could have - I don’t know - found some new voodoo and they could be out there building an army right now. They could think I’m dead, for all I know, and maybe that’s why they don’t come home - 

He’d told himself that, again and again. It had never really started to sound any more convincing, though.

Somewhere around the millionth time he’d looked out the window, though, something had happened which had almost, for a few seconds, allowed him to believe it. As he’d looked out into the abnormal parody of a sunset, he’d seen human figures walking toward the Shack, and for one moment, he’d thought - 

Then, of course, he’d gotten a good look at them, but he thought he’d known they weren’t really his family even before he’d flung the door open to get that good look. Once he had, though, there had been no more denying it: none of the people and things outside were parts of his family. They had, however, occasionally been familiar.

Old Man McGucket, town loony-tune, had been at the head of the party, which he had seemingly been leading toward the Shack on purpose. When he had seen Stan, he’d stopped for a moment, and they had just stared blankly at each other. Finally, McGucket had spoken.

“You ain’t Stanford.” 

“Hey, look who’s noticing the obvious these days.” 

He’d thought about telling them all to go find their own apocalypse shelters, but ultimately, he hadn’t had the heart. Not when he’d seen Candy and Grenda with them, and imagined what Mabel would have said, and how could he take in Candy and Grenda and turn away the other kids? Or even McCuckooclock, who seemed incapable of accepting Stan’s curt assertion that Ford wasn’t coming back? The guy - if he was who Stan had put it together that he was, then…he’d always been pathetic, but if he was who Stan thought he was, then ‘pathetic’ was really too mild of a word to describe him. If he was who Stan thought he was, then they had a bond, of sorts, too. They were the losers Ford had left behind. Twice. Each. At least. 

“Stanford tole me about you, once,” McGucket informed him later, sitting across from him in the kitchen while the army of monsters and refugees made itself at home. 

“That so.” 

“Yep. He was drunk offfa his posterior at the time, of course.”

“Of course.” 

“I ain’t remembered this long, you understand.”

“Mm.”

“But if I remembers it right…he didn’t make no whole lot of sense, but as best I can recollect, it seemed like he thought y’all had the psychic twin powers. At least enough that he’d know if…anything real bad happened to you.”

“If he had opinions about the three separate times people tried to murder me, he hasn’t mentioned it since he’s been back in town,” said Stan. 

“But you didn’t die,” said McGucket. 

“Nope. Not yet.”

“So…maybe he was right? You reckon?”

Stan realized, then, what the town crazy was really asking him. McCuckooclock wanted to know if he thought Ford was still alive - or, more specifically, for him to say that he did think Ford was still alive, even though he didn’t. McCuckcooclock wanted him to say that yes, they had enough psychic twin powers that one of them would just Know if the other had died, and for him to then say that Ford hadn’t done that. Because for whatever reason, McCuckooclock, of all the people with no reason to do so, was still, apparently, clinging to belief in Stan’s brother, in the freakin’ hero somewhere out there who’d probably just gotten the rest of everyone Stan considered family killed…and who was probably dead himself, no matter how often Stan told himself that if Ford was really dead, he’d somehow just...Know it. 

“I told myself that for thirty years, McCuckooclock,” said Stan. “Every night, working on his doom portal, trying to get him back - told myself he had to still be alive, because how would I just not know if he'd died?”

“And you was right!”

“No, I wasn’t,” Stan corrected him. “I didn’t know anything then, and I don’t know it now, either. Just because I told myself something doesn’t mean it was true.”

“How do you know?”

Stan looked back out at the unchanging light of Bill’s frozen day. “Because I don’t feel any different than I did then, and this time, I know he’s dead,” he said. “Him and the kids, too. You’ve seen more of that thing than I have, and I saw enough to know it can’t be beat. Bill won, and Ford’s dead through his own stupid fault, and that’s it. Nothing to do now but wait for our turns to get dead too.” 

“You don’t know that,” said McGucket stubbornly. 

“Yeah, well, I do know that I can pick you up with one hand and throw you out of this house if you start telling other people to hope for anything except maybe stretching the brown meat through the rest of the year,” Stan snapped. “If you’re going to invade my supplies, you can at least not prolong everyone’s misery by delaying our communal acceptance of the inevitable, y’know?”

McGucket didn’t say anything…but neither did he go away. Shrugging uncomfortably after a few seconds, Stan opened the refrigerator, carefully ignored half a pitcher of Mabel Juice, and got himself a beer. After a few more seconds, he shrugged again and got McGucket one, too.

“Here’s to me and you, McCuckooclock,” he said, mockingly raising one can toward the wreck of a human being in the other chair. “Here’s to being the cowards who stay alive for a while.”

“Until them that can do better’s able to do it,” said McGucket.