Archive of Our Own ^beta

Stanley felt his muscles move without his input, repeating that stupid, stupid push even as he screamed to take it back. His cries changed nothing, though--Ford still flew into that nightmare-blue light, staring back at him with wide eyes of terror and betrayal.

"No, no, no!" he repeated, flailing to get to him, to change something--but he couldn't do anything, as immobile now as he'd been the first time.

What was the point of being a lucid dreamer if he couldn't change anything?

"Stanley! Stanley, do so--"

A searing blue light overwhelmed everything--everything--in sudden, blazing pain.

Stanley found himself jolted out of the dream, but not out of sleep--instead, he hung in the pain-blanked whiteness of his unconscious, trapped in his own mind.

"What the--"

Danger! Threat! Pain! the deepest parts of him screamed. He pulled himself together--he knew to listen to his gut, after all these years--and gritted his teeth to register the warnings' urgent cause.

There was something in his head.

He didn't think about how he could tell--in his still half-dreaming state, he just did. There was something glaring and poisonous inside his mind, trailing wrongness like acid in its wake.

Can't let it find me, he realized, can't let it find anything but especially not me, and instinctively he pulled/darted/moved, because this blankness was no cover at all, and found himself surrounded by--

"Wait up!" his brother's voice laughed breathlessly.

He laughed, throwing a teasing grin over his shoulder. "You should keep up!"

Shore and sea and sun. The glee of discovery. Running across the pebbly beach in the summer heat, his partner always in arm's reach.

This was better. This was safe. This was right. He sank into the flow of these moments. . .

But the acid-bright invader was still there, moving through the parts of his mind he wasn't using right now.

What if it finds something it shouldn't? (The portal--his name--the past--his guilt--)

What if it finds Ford?

Ford was hidden in the most guarded depths of his memories--but it had been a lot more stirred up this summer than it had before. Just by being around, those kids were breaking the locks.

He had to fix that.

"Kings--of--New Jersey! Kings--of--"

With a wrench, he pulled himself free of the memory, into something less absorbing.

He stayed in his memories--camouflage, his instincts whispered, because if there was already a him in the picture how could anybody tell the difference?--but from inside the memories of empty days and quiet nights, he focused on his other memories, on the shape of his mind.

He buried his real secrets deep and hid the entrances, and then hid the entrances to the entrances. Everything else important (Soos) (the kids) (all those feelings that would shatter his image to smithereens and turn into ammunition if anyone found them in the open) got hidden too, only a layer or two above what he figured would be his Mind Basement. A minute's thought (literally--ha!) filled his surface-level "Top Secret" departments with all the embarrassing stuff he'd pulled out to freak the kids during that stupid Troothache Incident. And then everything--everything--got twisted and turned into a labyrinth that would've made David Bowie green with envy (if you could tell under all that makeup).

The thing was still there, of course, still wandering around. he didn't even really know why it was there. But his mind was as defended as it was gonna get now. Now he just had to . . .

Um. What next?

Stan paused. He didn't really know what to do next . . .

. . . Keep moving.

Yeah. That'd work.

(You can't run forever, something in him whispered, but he dismissed it with the ease of long practice. He didn't have to do it forever, after all--just keep moving long enough to get a step ahead.)

(He ignored the fact that he'd never in his life gotten ahead in anything until he'd been forced to hold still first.)

He ducked and moved from memory to memory, weaving between them, careful to leave no traces behind--

And then he felt something new.

Something opened on the fringes of his mental landscape, and suddenly three other presences appeared. And--though these presences being here felt weird and unfamiliar, given that they were in somehow in his head--they themselves weren't unfamiliar at all. On the contrary, he would know them anywhere.

One, warm and steady and unconquerably cheerful--Mr. Pines, dude! One, burning with determination, protective and anxious with a stubborn edge of anger--Stan, c'mon! One, bubbly and effervescent, bright with self-assured affection for everything in sight--Don't be silly, Grunkle Stan!

It was his family. Somehow, they'd come in after him.

And--even as the poison zipped through his mind to meet and clash with them--Stan found himself relaxing at the realization.

The kids could save the day, he knew, if they really needed to. They'd beaten the wax creeps, after all, hadn't they? And Gideon, and the Summerween Trickster, and who knew what else that he'd missed hearing about. Nothing could take down Mabel and Dipper when they were teamed up--definitely not if Soos was with them too. They'd get around where he couldn't right now, find that acid-thing, and throw it the heck outta his head.

Heck, now that they were here, it felt less like an emergency than like a free show. 

Though he still didn't know what was going on . . .

He winced, as a new shock of the glaring-bright pain went through his head. Okay, there had to be some way he could make this go faster.

Make things harder for that, at least, to start with.

He concentrated, pulling on all his long experience with deliberately not cooperating with jerks over the course of his life. Don't do what it wants, don't do what it wants . . . He focused on that alien presence with the same stubborn dislike he'd give a Northwest, or Gideon, or any one of the people he'd known all his life that thought they could make him do anything.

This is my head and my life and trying to change that'll be harder than pulling teeth, you magical freak.

He felt his mind stiffen into resistance against the thing, doors locking, corridors of thought freezing into immobility.

There you go.

But . . . there were other people here too. People on his side. This wouldn't affect them, but . . . 

Could he do the opposite?

Doing his best to ignore the enemy, he switched focus to the other three . . . or. Five now? He didn't feel anyone else come in . . .

Oh. Okay. Those two were extensions of Mabel's mind, judging by their feel and general . . . aura (bright, simplistic, extremely radical). Okay, that was . . . Well, to be honest, that was terrifying, but probably not an urgent danger. Certainly not malevolent.

Regaining his focus, he concentrated on the three real people in his head, and thought about working with them. Make room. Bend a little, when they want it. Give them what they need. . . It wasn't easy, and with basically anyone else it might have been impossible--he had a lot less experience in that than in the opposite, after all. But with these three? He had something to work with. (Mabel's enthusiastic urging, Soos's stupid puppy eyes, Dipper's dejected looks . . .)

Okay, okay. Show me what you need, what'll help you, and you got it.

He felt his mind shift around them, softening and changing to present what their minds were looking for and give them the shortest route.

There we go. He grinned from his hiding-spot, safe inside the memory of a Mystery Shack tour back when Soos had been sixteen (best exhibit then: the Clock-o-Dial, retired a year later when too many of the clocks that formed its body ran out of batteries). Good luck, kiddos.

He kept memory-hopping for a bit, leaving the kids' trek mostly to his subconscious--until, with a jolt, he felt one of his secret memories come to the forefront of his mental map.

He focused in again, and--it was Dipper. Of course it was Dipper, looking for memories of himself--who knew why, but his mind had pulled up a whole dang collection of them. There could be worse things, but he'd really rather not open his inner thoughts up to his determined twelve-year-old nephew--

Aaand he was going in. What a surprise.

Stan felt him poke around, catching echoes and run-off from the collection of memories--all recent, he realized, from the last few weeks, probably. Wasn't it around then that he'd started trying to toughen the kid up more? Pushing him to see how much he could really handle?

He focused back on Dipper, paying more attention to that fuming anger and how it flared at the memories.

. . . Well. He wasn't doing it to make himself popular. But this kind of anger . . . he might've miscalculated a little.

Before he could decide, Dipper found another memory--summer day on the porch, Dipper chopping wood like a champ, Soos--and Stan realized it didn't matter. The kid was about to find out what he really thought. (He wasn't sure whether he was more relieved or embarrassed.)

Dipper opened the memory, listened--

--and Stan reeled in shock as the anger suddenly surged, turning into a blazing storm of hurt/shame/betrayal that completely consumed the rest of Dipper's presence.

That . . . that should not have happened.

Dipper left the memory behind before Stan could gather himself together, mind-presence turning cold and cutting-edged in a way he hadn't imagined the twerp capable of till now. Bewildered, Stan poked cautiously at the memory Dipper had found.

It was the one he'd thought it was--Soos confused, a little worried, him admitting how much of himself he saw in the kid--and it didn't feel wrong or confused in any way. It should've been embarrassing for him, maybe, but not the bad kind of embarrassing. He would've thought Dipper would like knowing Stan was proud of him--if anything, the kid was way too eager for other people's good opinions. 

. . . Had he been wrong about that?

Nah. There must have been something else wrong. Must've been.

Before Stan could talk himself out of it, he dove back in. Not into the memory itself, this time, but zeroing in on the part of his mind Dipper had seen it through. It looked like a hallway, when he got this close, old and worn and with the memory seen through a doorway. . .

A doorway with something wrong with the frame?

Stan examined it more closely. Then he pulled away, quickly, before he got found out by punching his own dang brain in frustration. There were traces of that poison-acid-invader-thing on the doorframe. It had been there, messing with Dipper--he could feel how it had gone, now that he was looking from the right side. It hadn't been able to mess with the memory itself, no. It had just filtered it, instead. A little garbling of some parts, a few volume changes . . . not a big deal, right?

"Wanna know what I really think? . . . The kid's a loser. He's weak! He's an utter embarrassment! I just wanna get rid of him."

NO.

Stan snarled aloud, burning with rage himself at the thought of Dipper having to deal with that--of protective, snarky, nerdy little Dipper believing that someone in his family had felt like that about him.

"I gotta--I gotta fix this." He rubbed his head with one hand, barely registering that he wasn't in his memories anymore--he'd pulled himself away to some other, darker space, but that didn't matter right now. He was hidden, that was good enough.

And then he felt Mabel flare up in panicked distress, followed a second later by Soos's fearful confusion, and a searing flash of acid-bright wrongness right next to them. 

That thing just couldn't stop, could it?

Something had been wrenched in his mind--not a big thing, but something he could feel just wasn't there now that he was paying attention, like . . . a missing tooth, or something. Going by Mabel and Soos's reactions, he guessed the thing had done that--and yep, there it was, trailing wrong behind it again, but with something that felt like his in its clutches now.

It was much harder to figure out than the kids--he couldn't feel anything from it remotely like the stuff he could pick up from them--so he focused on them again.

Mabel was burying her fear under determination--good kid--and Soos was following, though he seemed calmer than her. Dipper . . . Dipper was with them, again, but he wasn't with them.

The anger and the hurt and the coldness were all still there, even stronger than they had been before. Even Mabel's upset couldn't pierce Dipper's shell now--that stubbornness was working against her, for once. The kids split up.

Stan slammed his fist into his forehead, torn. Two of them (and Mabel's imaginary friends) were going after the thing, but Dipper was wandering around alone and enraged now. Who needed to be focused on more?

Mabel and Soos felt like they thought they knew what they were doing, at least . . .

A feeling suddenly borne out by experience, as he felt his mind open a memory next to them just in time for whatever the invader-thing had stolen to be flung into it.

He didn't know that could happen--but obviously it could, at least for now. Pulled in by the disturbance, he'd found himself in front of the Bottomless Pit, but now with . . . something . . . falling down it that he did not think had been there in real life. He hadn't caught what it looked like, but who cared?

"Whoo!" he said from within the memory, peering into the pit as smugly as he dared. "Whatever that was, it's gone forever!"

Then the door closed again, and he was free to laugh and, reassured, focus back on Dipper.

. . . Who was wandering the memories again. Well. Stan could use that.

He concentrated, more precisely than he had since this whole mess started. He needed--Dipper needed--one particular memory in the right place, right next to the kid. If Stan could get him to open it, that would be enough.

(. . . It had better be enough.)

C'mon, c'mon . . . Why I've been a jerk to Dipper lately. Why I've been hard on the kid . . .

The memory opened. He threw himself into it, determined that it wouldn't give Dipper reason to turn away this time, and force-started it at the most important part.

"'He's a loser.' 'He's weak,'" he said in memory. "'I just want to get rid of him.'" He chuckled, trying to lighten the sting for himself and Soos. "Yeah. Those are all things people said about me when I was a boy."

The part of him not engaged in the memory felt the startled softening in Dipper's presence.

The change as the rest played out--as memory-him explained to Soos, for real this time, why he'd been hard on the kid, what he'd been through himself, and how he really felt about Dipper--that was even more dramatic. By the end, Dipper's presence was practically glowing, full of surprised pride and relief and . . . Well. Something else, softer, might have been there too, but it hurt a little to focus on that part. So Stan didn't.

Anyway. The kid was settled now, happy and relieved and . . . whatever else. Stan's work here was--

Dipper was on the memory-porch.

Fully present now--just like he had been with the Pit memory--Stan stared at him.

He stared back.

Stan looked over to the chopping block, just to make sure--yep, there was memory-Dipper. "Whoa, kid," he said, looking at the clearly startled real-Dipper again. "What're you doing here?"

He just stood there, speechless. Huh. He looked pretty normal, for a mental construct or whatever--Stan would've expected Dipper's mental self to look taller, or something. Go figure. Although . . .

He laughed. "Nice hole in your chest, by the way. Let's fix that up." He pointed, and with a second's thought Dipper's body mended itself up.

(That hole had felt just a little too much like the acid-thing, when Stan looked closely, and like heck was he letting that thing leave any more marks on his nephew.)

Dipper spluttered hilariously--apparently he was really out of his depth in this whole mind thing. Man, Stan didn't think it was that complicated . . . but maybe even the mini-nerd needed a tip or two.

"Word to the wise, kid," he said, cutting him off with a chuckle. "We're in the mind. You can do whatever you imagine in here!"

How to prove his point . . . Oh, yeah. With style. He grinned, brought a Pitt can out of thin air, and popped it open.

Dipper stared, slowly beginning to grin. "Well," he said, and Stan could see the possibilities in his wondering eyes, "how about that?"

Then Stan felt a wave of fear--real, unadulterated fear--from Mabel and Soos at the same time, rudely jolting his focus away from the memory for a moment.

Dipper didn't notice, apparently picking up whatever was going on with them at the same time. "Oh, my gosh!" he exclaimed, self-reproach sweeping through him. "What am I doing? I gotta stop Bill!"

By the time Stan pulled himself fully back into the memory, he'd already dashed out of it--burning with a bright, clear determination now, one absolutely certain of what to do, and why, and how.

Stan grinned at the feeling, knowing his twin and friend were as good as saved already. "Huh," he said aloud, taking another drink from the imaginary Pitt. "Fighting back."

Maybe the kid didn't have to learn to stand up to all his authority figures. Maybe he just needed a little help standing up to actual threats.