Oh man. What i am about to type is completely your fault. Get ready.
It takes Ford a long time to look through Stan's memories.
It's after the world has been torn apart, reshaped, and tied back together with a piece missing. It's after the summer, the funeral-this time with a couple more people in attendance, and two less- the kids have gone home, loaded back onto the bus with emptier eyes and shoulders dragged further to the earth. It's a solemn couple of months, but Ford does what he's always done.
The portal has prepared him for this. He keeps going.
He doesn't ask himself what he keeps going for.
It takes a long time for him to decide to watch Stan's memories. At first, the idea itself disgusts him. The invasion of privacy, but worse, the lingering sense that he doesn't deserve to know.
He never asked. He had days, weeks between the time when he was back, and when the sky tore itself apart, weeks to actually ask. But he didn't. And now all Ford has left is a glass vial, smooth and cool under his fingers, uncomforting and distant as his brother was.
Ford slots the vial into the machine, and sits.
He's invited no one else to watch these with him. He feels bad about that fact for a moment, until the video actually starts playing.
The memories are in reverse, and the first thing Ford sees, the last thing Stan ever saw, was Bill.
Cackling, grinning, and moving towards him and even in the memory Ford can hear the alarmed, scared noise his brother made.
Ford shuts the video off there, 10 seconds in, and has to go outside to breathe again.
He gets through it. He keeps going, like he was prepared to.
The last memories of Stan fly by. The machine doesn't seem to capture everything, sometimes the video stops and stutters and jumps like an old VCR because there's simply too many memories crammed into that little vial. There's a life in there, and its never how the gun was supposed to be used.
Mcgucket had dozens of vials. Labeled and dated (ever the scientist, even out of his mind he would label things) but for Stanley, there is only one.
There's no need to label it. Ford would never set it down.
The memories jump, cut around like a stuttering movie. The end of the world is a clear progression, the memory itself sharp and crystal, but as the memories go backwards, everything gets fuzzier.
Ford sees the children during the summer, and every once in a while he sees himself, and isn't that a strange feeling? To see his own silhouette, to see the shape of his out face, the scowl that was clear as day everytime he looked at his brother.
One of the memories jumped over is that of his actual return. He knows it happened, at some point, but suddenly the memories show the kids coming off the bus for the first time and Ford realizes that he didn't notice. He doesn't know exactly, from this jump cut, when it was that he returned.
These memories, from before the children came for the summer, before Ford returned, feel invasive, but still Ford watches.
These memories are faster, the jumps in between longer, and it gets Ford that he'll never actually know everything. He will watch what he can, but he'll never get the full picture of Stan's life, because he wasn't in it.
Ford sees thirty years blink by in less than an hour.
At some point in the rewind, the quality of the video takes the sharpest decrease yet. When no amount of toying with the screen, or the vial works, Ford is forced to simply watch through the memories the way they are, fuzzy and a little blurrier than is tolerable.
It takes Ford an embarrassingly long time to realize that the memories have gotten fuzzier not because of distortion of the vial or screen, but because at this point, Stanley didn't have glasses.
He didn't have glasses. He couldn't see all that well.
Ford doesn't take a break, determined to see the whole thing through, but his voice does fill with saliva like he's going to throw up, the realization heavy and rotting in his gut.
The rest of the memories are blurry, but still Ford watches them.
There is a jumble of quick, fleeting stuttering glances of memories. They are too fast to see individually, unless one pauses the tape, which Ford does.
They are Stan at 31, 30, younger and simultaneously older than Ford ever got to see, an age after the portal, not long after.
These memories are of sleepless nights. Cold stone and cement of the basement, the portal, looming and terrifying and broken, as as the time reverses, as the tapes play, Ford wishes he could pull his brother back upstairs, board up the lab completely, because this, this is desperation.
It's hard to watch. All of it is, but the moments where Stan is plagued by infection, then fever, and then, finally, Ford knows what it was that caused it. The brand.
He has to swallow back bile. He'd forgotten about it.
He watches still. The thirty years blink by in less than an hour, and soon the memories flutter back to something Ford remembers.
In contrast, despite the fuzzy screen, this memory is clear.
That day Stan had arrived in Gravity Falls. The day Ford fell into the portal.
Without his input, Ford stands a little closer to the screen.
Watching the moment again, seeing himself when he opened that door, scares him. He doesn't look like himself-didn't. With a crossbow and a manic look, Ford doesn't remember the things he even said.
Stanley does, and Ford sits back on his haunches stunned and silent, as he hears the words spit out of his own mouth thirty years ago.
The words are clear, even if his own face in these memories is blurry. Stan really couldn't see all that well.
For a moment, Ford wishes, desperately, that this time, Stan will take the journal and leave. Get back into his car and go, far away, back to wherever it was that he was staying before Ford called him and live, get away from the dangers Ford brought to him.
But Stan doesn't, and they fight, and the scream that Stan lets out as he gets branded is a reminder Ford doesn't need, doesn't want. But its one he deserves.
Ford is lifted up, into the portal, screaming and terrified, and the light goes out.
Its so dark that for a moment, Ford is gripped by fear, terrified that the memories have stopped completely, that the memory gun has recorded no more.
There is a flutter, and the memories roll on.
This time they are faster, and each one flits by shorter and shorter. They are the years before, when Ford was getting his degrees and excited for new discoveries.
Ford reaches to pause the tape, so he can get a glimpse of whatever is happening, before there is a loud Crack from the screen. It's within a memory.
Someone has just broken Stanley's kneecap.
It's a memory from the ten years, and someone has just broken Stanley's kneecap. With a crowbar, it looks like.
Horror is not the right word to describe the emotion that hits Ford like a sledgehammer. Horror is not right. This is terror, plain and simple, and sickness.
The memories flick by. This time, what is clear, what is preserved by this vial, is pain. Fights, injuries, times when the word "fight" doesn't apply, because all that actually happened was Stan being attacked. Drugs and alcohol flicker across the screen, gambling, winning money and losing it, good deals morphing into bad ones-and isn't that familiar, except Stanley didn't have a brother to save him from his bad mistakes- sleeping on motel beds, sleeping in his car, Stan, sleeping curled up on a freezing sidewalk, back to the car again. Years, a decade of this, flickers by in a moment and Ford cannot move.
It ends, finally, with a door. A familiar one, shut in Stanley's face, and Ford knows this door, grew up opening it, because it was never closed to him, not like this.
Ford pauses the memories.
He is shaky, when he stands.
It's been hours since he started watching, but he knows, without a doubt, that he will not be able to sleep without finishing all of the memories, even so.
Ford walks into the mystery shack, and lets his eyes rest on meaningless, meaningful trinkets and bobbles and little things that Stan had. Ford makes himself travel, like a ghost, through the house that Stan truly made, and remind himself that in the end, Stan made it to a place where he was, at the very least, safe.
Ford doesn't go into Stan's bedroom. The room feels sacred, and small, and Ford simply stares at the bed, crumpled blankets and orthopedic back pillow and all, and tries to remind himself that, at least for some time, Stan slept in a place that was warm.
It isn't much comfort, but Ford clings to it anyway.
He walks back to the memories like a zombie, sits in front of the screen, and presses play.
He watches Stanley get kicked out again.
He watches his father lift him by his shirt, yelling and shaking and blurry, and watches Stan get thrown backwards onto hard cement.
He flinches when he sees his own face. Tear streaked and forlorn and angry, as he shuts the curtains.
The person-the child, they were both children, didn't know what Stan was going to do. Going to live through, but even still Ford can't stand to see his own face.
Ford would be lying, to himself most of all, if he said that part of him was not still hurt by what happened at the science fair.
He remembers it himself, the pride turned to humiliation, the hurt spiraling into rage. There are lots of things he would change, even more added on with knowledge of what was to come, but even still, the science fair hurts. Continues to linger. A betrayal.
As he watches Stan, young and naive and a child, still a child, hit the table, and then frantically try to put it all back together again, Ford stops.
He has to lunge, quickly and savagely like an animal, to reach a trash can in time.
He doesn't vomit, because he's eaten nothing but nutrient pills for months now, but he does dry heave into the can, sick and with his insides rolling.
Ford watches from where he fell, as the memories continue to roll, the terrified mumbling Stan makes as he frantically shambles the project back together, terrified and guilty. He watches Stan plug everything back, and then has to heave again when everything works, when the machine moves again and Stan lets out a small, punched out breath of relief.
Stan leaves the autotorium, and the perpetual motion machine swings and rotates and does all the things it was supposed to.
It's hear, kneeling over his trash can and weak limbed, that Ford starts to cry.
Tears bubble up uncontrollably, loud sobbing and still, again the dry heaving until Ford is a horrible mess on the ground.
It was an accident, it wasn't a betrayal.
He had believed, rationalized, that Stan had broken the machine on purpose, covered it up, and allowed him to go to the science fair unaware, let him be humiliated, all in-what? Revenge for being better? To keep him in New Jersey with him?
It all didn't make sense. Never, made sense, if Ford had ever truly thought about it.
But he believed, Sweet Moses he had believed, for years, for his entire life, that Stanley had done it all on purpose. That Stanley had a moment of hatred for him, for what he was becoming, and that, although he regretted it later, Stan had truly broken Ford's project on purpose, aware of every consequence.
That's not what happened.
It was an accident. And suddenly, it makes sense. The guilty nature, the frantic, pleading eyes weren't a disguise, weren't a ruse, that wasn't a lie. Stan wasn't trying to weasel his way out of punishment, he had genuinely believed that the machine was working, and it was.
The machine was working when he left it.
Another wave of rotting despair rolls through Ford.
It'd been an accident. Stanley had never done it on purpose. He'd made a mistake, a bad one, and he should have told Ford, should have, but it was never a purposeful thing. He tried, Stan tried, and its like the wedge that was forced, that Ford had forced to rationalize why his brother would do such a thing has been completely burned away.
His brother had always tried. Even in the time that Ford had thought was an exception, Stanley's true nature shining through, that had been an accident.
Ford looks up, slowly, at the tape of memories still rolling.
The light is bright, and warm, and while it's fuzzy, and from a distance, he can still make out the quiet, soft memory that's playing.
It's the two of them, on the Stan O War. Young and smiling and together, laughing and playing without a care in the world.
The sun is shining in that memory, and Ford can hear himself, the youngest version of himself, shouting back. Come on Stanley! He says. And Stan follows.
The reel of videos ends there. The vial shown all that it has to show, the memories spoken bare out into the silence of the room. The screen goes dark, a life lived in reverse.
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