With the anniversary of The Last Mabelcorn coming up on September 7th, we figured we would throw something together to commemorate the occasion. We encourage people to create art, fanfic, cosplay, animations, or whatever your heart desires to celebrate these two through every phase and facet of their relationship.
A proper list of rules/FAQ will be coming up shortly, but we wanted to release our prompts to give people enough time to prepare! We can't wait to see what you will create.
In the meantime, if you have any questions, our askbox is now open!
Got inspired from the eerie fic Thalassophobia by the situationship, thanks @thesituationship, now bill the lovecraftian horror is living rent free in my head lol
Half a week later, Ford visits the statue again.
The sun has warmed the mid-afternoon air, soft yet fervent light spilling through the tall pines to dapple the clearing with gold. He has just finished another D&D&MD campaign with the kids, an activity that has become a beloved pastime at the Shack. His stories, challenges, and puzzles draw from his and Stan’s seafaring travels, his own adventures across the multiverse, and all the strange, wondrous sights he has witnessed throughout the course of his long life. Each tale is a bridge between past trauma and present connection, a way to share parts of himself once too painful or bewildering to voice. He wants the kids to see that even overwhelming fear and despair can be transformed into wonder, curiosity, and courage. That even the most terrifying horrors can be reframed, understood, and turned into something potentially beautiful, or at least easier to tackle.
After all, this is a lesson they teach him just as often, whether they are aware of it or not.
He wants to share more of himself with his family.
Today, he doesn’t bother with his trademark coat. He wears only a black t-shirt, arms decorated in temporary skin paint that transforms the jagged lightning bolt scars of old into black and yellow roses. The blossoms curl around his wrists and forearms in homage to recovery, a testament and demonstration of finding new meaning despite the heavy weight of past pains and ongoing trauma. Taking what was once proof of his brokenness and instead shaping it into art… His suffering reclaimed as beauty. His shame turned over into peace. It’s a sentiment that plants deep comfort in the furrows of his mind, even as he’s still getting used to how strange it feels.
He sits down to share in the statue’s company, leaning casually against its cooler front side, shadowed from the sun. His back turns to the carved, unyielding eye. He is loose, relaxed, the pleasant quietness of the clearing settling in his bones. He smiles easily, feeling a lightness he hadn’t believed possible for years, which is a sensation he experiences astonishingly often these days. The kids show him wonder every day and continue to teach him how to find even more. He delights in reflecting that wonder back to them, through his stories, their games, and their lessons. They remind him that magic is not only in distant dimensions or anomalous objects, but also in laughter, curiosity, and the quiet communion of hearts that trust and love one another. It is a connection of shared imagination, and it is a blessed thing. He knows, without needing to ask, that his brother feels it, too.
His thoughts drift further, floating back to the boy he once was. That starry-eyed child dreaming of the unknown, longing for a place to belong, or perhaps a place to vanish, like the Bermuda Triangle, full of anomaly and possibility. That young Stanford was inseparable from the budding anxieties that would later define so much of his life, but he was still innocent in a way that feels almost enviable now. Full of hope, full of awe, wanting only to explore and share that nascent discovery with Stanley. His brother, his closest companion, his anchor in the world and the key other half for their aspirations of a freer future beyond that ragged, sandy place.
Somewhere, in another corner of time and possibility, across the unfathomable sprawl of years, universes, and dimensions, a small triangle looks up at the same idea of stars, wishing to share them with those he loves. A wonder that only he could see, a wonder that was his own peculiar weirdness. That triangle, though already tinged with early troubles, small cracks forming at the edges of innocence, is still so small, so soft, still full of enchantment. He too has yet to be shaped and hardened by the mistakes and cruelties that await him in the coming years.
Two children. Two unrecognizable versions of themselves, separated by infinity. Two lives that will never meet, never intertwine, never recognize one another. Ford’s chest tightens as he speculates what might have been. If, somehow, they could have met… Could they have guided each other differently? Nudged each other toward lives unscarred by chaos? Could he have saved that small triangle from a path of cruelty and obsession? Helped Bill Cipher discover something to live for beyond the monstrous path he gravely adopted? Could they have shaped each other into better versions of themselves, instead of being forced to rot and grow alone, burdened by the weight of what they’ve survived?
And then Ford thinks of the Bill Cipher of today, locked up and contained within the Theraprism. Even as Ford’s inner child heals, thanks to his family patiently mending him back together one day at a time, Bill viciously refuses to let go. He chooses denial, distortion, and cruelty, twisting the innocence he once had into proof of his own righteousness. He claims the world should bow to him, and that his terror is a gift of liberation. Bill chooses to rot, to claw, to scream, to point fingers. He chooses to distort the wonder he had as a child, claiming it was always dark in order to justify the ashes left in his wake.
Ford allows himself a somber, quiet pang of heartache. He laments for the one-eyed child who would never reach the stars in anything but lonely ash and shadow.
It’s a comforting thought to imagine that in the impossible world where Bill and Ford had crossed paths as children, their future together might have begun with a couple of outcast children discovering the strange, freakish friend they didn’t know they needed. That Ford might have been able to steer him from the path he chose. That, in some gentler version of reality, Stanford Pines could have saved Bill Cipher.
Alas, Ford knows it is too late and that they never could have met at such a young age, anyway. They aren’t children lying in the grass, staring up at a shared sight of the stars together. They aren’t rejoicing, small hand in small hand. They don’t see the same stars. Bill may not even see any stars at all right now, stuck as he is at the Theraprism. But Ford has a shooting star and the Big Dipper and the blazing heart of his brother. The most beautiful galaxy out there, and he’s seen many. It’s a galaxy worth holding close. These are wonders he can reach, wonders that will not poison him, wonders he can nurture and protect. These are his stars, his light, and he vows never to let them be dulled or stolen.
Leaning against the statue, Ford allows himself a wide, genuine smile. He turns to face the familiar pawn, sitting below him very small in the grass and dirt, standing tall beside the tansy bouquet. The chess piece no longer feels like only a token of bitterness or pain, but a symbol of perspective, of choice, of the life he has built and been given despite everything. He rises, brushing his hands clean on his jeans. His back remains to Bill’s unmoving stone face, yet he feels no obligation to linger, no need to stare down the shadow of what was.
The past is heavy and cannot vanish entirely. But the present is real, and the future is his to live. Ford walks away from the thoughts of what could have been. He carries with him the stars he can hold, the family he can love, and the stories he will continue to share. He looks forward to returning to the Shack to plan the kids’ next game campaign with Stanley. He wants to practice his artistry, hoping to use ink and watercolors for the maps, and he wants his brother’s guiding hand to teach him more about wood carving in order to make little miniature game pieces for the kids to use. To better foster their imaginations, their delight, and the immersion of the scene. Also, it would be nice to flex his art muscles.
The chess pawn and the bouquet remain behind, silent tokens of reflection and remembrance alongside Bill’s stationary forest monument.
They are also a message, one that Ford hopes is received by the recipient.
But even if they are not, it is not difficult to pretend that the whistling breeze lilting through the clearing might have sounded something like, “Goodnight, my old Muse.”
Ford finds himself at the statue’s backside the next day. Back-to-back, knees drawn up, the chess pawn turning idly between his fingers. The forest around him is still and watchful, leaving room for thoughts he isn’t sure he wants. He can hear the wind in the pine needles above, a few distant birds, the soft scrape of the pawn against his calloused skin. Each tiny sound grounds him to the present, tethering him after the recent emotional storms.
What if there really had been a future for him with Bill? Was that ever possible? Or was it doomed from the start, the difference in chaos and cruelty between both individuals far too great? The thought circles like smoke, twisting and curling just out of reach. Ford knows the answer in his gut. Bill never changes. But Ford… Ford does. Ford has.
What if Bill had been the one to change him?
He imagines a Stanford who chose to stay, never walking away. A Stanford who never learned the truth, or worse, one who did and embraced it. Someone who agreed with Bill’s vision and delighted in casting off all his humanity, all of his restraint, all of his ties that bound him to who he was before. A Stanford Pines who would have handed over everything, his conscience, his freedom, his choices, in order to happily serve Bill’s design.
Bill had whispered sweet promises in his ear once upon a time, laying fanciful expectations upon Ford’s shoulders that he was better, smarter, more worthy than anyone else on the planet. Stanford could change the world for the better, reshaping his home’s reality to fit his vision while forcing the ignorant naysayers to acknowledge his provable, pivotal truths. If they didn’t want to accept Ford, then he would change the framework by which their acceptance was defined, rewriting the terms of acceptance itself. He would bend things into place the way he undoubtedly knew was best. He could prove all his doubters wrong and stand taller than their narrow-minded selves who dared shun him for what made him special.
Bill would be his guiding star, his partner in crime, his Muse, and Ford as an instrument of that light would carve out a future within Bill’s chaos, and together, they would have each other while they changed the future just for themselves. Isn’t that kind of power, status, and knowledge incredibly compelling? Galaxies in his hands, the thrill of divinity and endless multiversal data. Bill expecting Ford to reach for the stars, and Ford expecting Bill to elevate him into something better. Together, the touch of god and man. No, god and god, doing as they pleased and knowing they were right as they had everything they needed in each other.
Remaking the stars together, convinced that it was enough.
Together, they could have had everything, stepping in unison through an endless dance at an infinite, undying party.
Ford feels the pull of it even now, the seductive hum of not only being “enough,” but of being elevated beyond his baseline human limits. It would have been intoxicating. To be seen as the most brilliant, the most capable, the most deserving, especially by the one person he had felt truly understood and accepted him the most. The temptation of that fantasy strikes dizzily at his chest, a ringing pang of what could have been.
He imagines that kind of Stanford as someone who cloaked himself in lofty “improvements,” using them to excuse indifference to the lives beneath him. An idea to cling to for why he should bother caring about a planet which wronged him. Maybe even a trick to persuade himself that he did care. And always, a defense to prove that he was right. Fully convinced that he was justified, that he wasn’t corrupted, and that Bill’s path was the only way. Bill’s path was never wrong. Stanford would claim that it was about improving the future for his people, about making the greater good even greater, but such sophistry would only be one small piece of the game he was winning.
Well. Maybe there truly was a Stanford, once, who could have been drawn deeper into Bill’s orbit. A young man who was even more enraptured, whose heart was lined with star-speckled Fordtramarine and whose six-fingered hands weaved oblations with fibers made from his own blood and teeth. A man who was never shaken awake by Fiddleford. Who never reunited with his brother. Who gladly surrendered the reins without hesitation, yielding full control to his Muse whenever the world grew too heavy and thought that to be something gracious. Someone who saw his limiting humanity as weakness and was overly eager to cast it aside for the sake of Bill, craving only Bill’s attention, Bill’s favor, Bill’s sanction, and Bill’s promise that he could be somebody, the best somebody, in Bill’s eye.
A Stanford who would give every piece of himself to the one entity he truly wanted to impress the most. He would let himself be dressed up as a golden trophy and take it as proof of being a cherished equal, of being something as radiant as the golden triangular idol of his Muse he had proudly procured and offered up, prior.
And yet... That man is gone. That Ford is gone.
He has lived, survived, and been shaped by far more than Bill’s avaricious expectations.
He has spent three decades too many in the multiverse, and two years too many with his family now, to not just scoff at the thought. Once, it was “trust no one, except for Bill.” Then it was “trust no one, including Bill.” And now… trust has become something else entirely. He has now seen trust restored, nurtured, and extended in ways Bill could never have conceived. Love, too, fragile and flawed, but entirely genuine, divorced from cruel sadism and dehumanization. Forgiveness isn’t deserved, but can still be given. He has seen it in Fiddleford’s eyes, in Stan’s steady presence, in the twins’ boundless affection. These bonds, these connections, all the laughter and care, as fragile as they are, have healed him far more than Bill’s shallow galaxies could ever have crowned him. That is what he would like to think, at least. He is committed to holding the belief deep in his heart.
Yes, the kind of future he wants is not one the other Stanford would be able to recognize from within the bubble of fantasy he so inhabits. That other self would never see the sorrow in opportunities lost, never know what he was missing, never feel the malady of what Bill really demanded of him. No, no, if there were ever a future in his life for Bill, it would not look like that. A life reshaped and bent to meet Bill’s expectations versus having a family whose only wish and love are for Ford to be himself and to heal from his deeply-rooted suffering… He knows which future he prefers, and it is the path which is tangible to him today. It is the family he has back home. Not some theoretical reverie of evil his mind has concocted for him to chew on.
The pawn spins once more between his fingers, this time feeling less bitter as Ford stares down at it. He closes his hand around it, rising to his feet and pulling his back away from Bill’s weathered stone. He decides he has wasted enough time mulling over this fanciful what-if.
A part of him still hums at the ghost of Bill’s influence, at that thrill of a Ford untethered, unbounded. But the pull is weaker now, softened by what he’s gained in life, in family, in connection. The chess pawn is a small, tangible reminder of the choices he has made. A choice that led him here, to this quiet clearing, to a moment of reckoning and acceptance.
He exhales slowly, letting his shoulders relax, letting the tension in his knees ease. The weight of what he has endured, all the grief, the rage, the longing, does not vanish, but it dominates him no more. He can feel every inch without being consumed. He can remember every moment without falling apart.
He places the pawn down at the statue’s frontside base again, back beside the yellow tansy bouquet as before. A quiet offering, a small acknowledgment of what was taken and of what he will not allow to take him again.
When Stanford wakes, the weight in his chest is unbearable. His lungs pull air, but it isn’t enough. His skin prickles as if every nerve is demanding more. It can’t be over. Not like this. Not when he still feels so raw, so unfinished, his frayed seams taut with such overwhelming tension. It can't be over yet, not when he still feels like this. He isn't finished, it must not be finished, and he refuses to let any version of Bill, dream or memory or otherwise, draw the line on when enough is enough. Bill doesn’t get to choose.
Ford decides.
It wasn't enough. He needs more.
The house sleeps undisturbed as he slinks through, silent as a shadow. Not one floorboard creaks to betray his late night wakefulness. Not one light stirs awake as he steps through the threshold to the outside. His hand closes around the backyard woodcutting axe, its handle worn smooth, its blade dull with familiar use. The weight steadies him, staunching all of his thoughts, a gravity that lulls him forth. The look on his face is vacant, his eyes glassed over, as his feet drag him away and into the woods. The ringing in his ears is deafening, a frantic noise that matches the jittery, restless twitch in his hands and the tapping of his fingers against the handle. Were he aware enough, he might think the motion was soothing.
Harsh steps. His boots chew through the mud, snapping twigs and splattering dirt. Step after step, one foot in front of the other, harsh and graceless as he stomps ever deeper into the forest. Surrounded as he is by the canopy of pines, his feet guide him down a lamentingly familiar path. These woods are easier to traverse than the ones in his dream. It’s easier to breathe. Yet the further he goes, the more he idly wonders if he may still be dreaming.
Finally, the woods give way and he steps out of pitch black nightness into a small clearing accented by moonlight.
Ford almost lets out a hideous, terse, half bark of a laugh at the sight.
A stone statue. Crumbling where time and weather have gnawed at its unusually triangular shape. Pine needles have collected in the brim of its top hat like rotting laurels, spilling down to the slanted edges beneath. Moss drapes over the hand, down the arm, and crawls across the grotesque curvature of a large eye, as if to smother the stone beneath and reclaim it as merely part of the forest floor.
Ford doesn’t hesitate. He barely pauses for a moment before damn near charging his body into the clearing and raising the axe high overhead.
The first blow crashes against the statue’s central eye. The reverberation shoots fire through his arms, shockwaves rattling his every bone, but he does not care. The sting only makes him tighten his grip and haul the axe up again, higher this time, bringing it down just as hard as before. Ford doesn’t realize he’s screaming, the sound feeling as distant as his body feels alien, the world dampened and sluggish as if underwater. But still he swings the axe, again and again. He needs more.
Thwack. Board games laid out on the table, laughter at his lips as he eagerly plays with the children. Until he catches sight of that chess set tucked away in the corner, suddenly leaving him stunned on the spot, the joy all freezing in his chest and choking him silent like he’s been doused in ice water―
Thwack. The kids at the pool, cheering him on and coaxing him into short sleeves and sunlight. For one moment he believes he can do it. For one moment, his skin feels like his own and he is unstoppable. Until his gaze snags on the scars, the marks, and he feels the weight of even the tattoos burned into his flesh. Shame gores him from the inside out, this was a mistake and he’s freaking out and he’s ruining the experience for his loved ones yet again—
Thwack. An old record player whirs to life, music filling the room. He wants to share it, wants to laugh about the past with his brother. But the wrong song spills out, wrong chords, wrong lyrics, and his heart convulses into panic, airless and wild, his hands raking at his throat as the walls tilt and spin around him—
Thwack. The kitchen smells of his brother’s cooking. He tries to eat, trying to take care of himself and playing the part of a healthier man. He wants to support his brother. But as he tries to force it down, he only finds his mind back in the multiverse, back in the patterns of hunger and fear and eating only for necessity and function. He needs his nutrition pills, he needs the controlled sterility of routine, not this achingly sensitive reminder of how fragile he still is, not this lovingly prepared food he can’t stomach—
Thwack. The bathroom mirror. Washing his hands in the dead of night only to catch a glimpse of his face and startle backwards at what he swore was a glint of yellow. Something sinister, something wrong. He stares, unblinking at his own features and willing them to stop feeling mostly unfamiliar. Staring until the details all blur into nothing and exhaustion forces his gaze away. But the unease festers, trailing him into sleepless hours and restless vigilance of the shifting shadows in his bedroom—
Thwack. These six-fingered hands that sometimes don’t feel like his at all. As if he’s separated and distant from his own motor functions, never knowing what he’ll wake to find they’ve done next. Unrecognizable twitching claws soaked in wet crimson, the twinge of lingering frost burn and nails hammered through his palms. Of course, these freak hands are only good for ruination and desecration—
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Ford roars, the sound wrenched from the depths of his bones. Over and over and over the axe falls. Chips of stone lay strewn across the dirt. He strikes and pounds away until his arms throb, until his muscles scream, until his hands tremble so violently he can no longer keep hold of the weapon. The axe slips free, thudding to the ground.
Ford is shaking too hard to stand. He collapses alongside the weapon, crumbling to his knees at the statue’s base. His chest heaves. His shoulders quiver. He folds inward, head hung low, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and his glasses fogged. His body is wrung ragged by rage and grief alike. His limbs feel like one giant throb, one that is matched by the ache in his heart.
Beneath the fury is something worse. Something he can no longer keep buried.
Guilt and misery and shame and…and… Ford is exhausted, tired and aching from the sheer loss he shoulders. He misses the years Bill stole from him. He misses the years Bill is still taking from him every time he flinches at a shadow, even when he is just trying to exist with his family and they have to pay the price for his scars by witnessing his brokenness. He misses who he thought Bill was. The good memories of creative fire and the illusion of companionship.
He misses the sense of purpose he felt even after the betrayal, even if it was poisoned, even as it destroyed him, because there was a simplicity to hating himself and living only for penance. It was a cage, but at least it made sense. Healing is messier. Living is messier. And Ford doesn’t know if he’s strong enough for it. The struggle feels like corrosion cannibalizing away at his insides. Wearing him down until he feels like even less of a person. Grinding him down until he no longer knows who Stanford Pines is.
The fury ebbs into grief over everything Bill has taken from him and every ugly mark that has been left on his life. The grief plummets into sobbing, bursting from his chest in raw, despairing jolts that rattle his frame. He clutches his arms to his stomach as though to hold himself together, but his hands shudder and convulse far too much for it to be comforting.
It’s always been easier to be angry.
It was easier to blame Stanley, easier to buy into Filbrick’s words as the truth, than to have to face the gaping wound skewered into his soul by the betrayal and lost brotherhood. Than to have to admit how much he missed his brother and knew he should have reached out, yet continually neglected to.
It’s easier to think of Bill as nothing but a demon who exploited and tortured him than to remember when he’d once been a friend. A peer who looked directly into his heart and saw something worthwhile, something worth polishing. Someone that Ford fears he might still love, despite it all. Someone he struggles to believe could ever have truly loved him, in turn. All the good memories between the two of them plainly dismissed as cold lies crafted by triangular manipulation.
It’s easier if Bill can simply be painted with a single brush, stripped of all complexity. It’s easier to lash out and choke on the rage than it is to confront the harder truth that Bill cared about him and yet still chose to do everything he had, and thought himself right for it. Was that the only value Ford was worth? Was that everything Stanford Pines deserved?
Yet… as much as healing hurts, he certainly would never give up what dearly beloved relationships he has now. His great-niblings. His twin brother. His second chance. He’d fight Bill again, fight every battle this universe could throw at him tooth and nail, if it meant keeping his family safe.
Bill isn’t a part of the fight anymore. Ford doesn’t have to keep waging war.
The war is over. He can rest. He can live. He can still love, and be loved.
He truly wants to believe that he can.
The Stanford Pines he thinks he wants to be is Grunkle Ford―a retired sailor and unusuologist who spends his days divided between boating with his brother and returning to Gravity Falls to see their great-niblings each summer and some winters. A man who has begun to mend and rekindle an old friendship with Fiddleford McGucket after a lifetime of mistakes and regrets. A man with a whole life ahead of himself that is free of Bill Cipher.
But even here, kneeling in the dirt before Cipher’s corpse, it just…feels as though there will always be a little Bill in his brain somewhere. A lingering presence, some shadow tucked into the corners of his skull that watches, waits, and whispers. A voice in his brain that judges, accuses, and abuses. Sometimes this little Bill sounds like Filbrick’s voice. Sometimes it sounds like his own. He wants to think that it is always devoid of love.
He grips his knees, shuts his eyes, and trembles against the quiet.
Still, in the silence, he can almost hear a familiar, shrill laughter.
…
By the time Stanford makes it back home, dawn has spilled over Gravity Falls. The world is still mostly quiet, filled only with the faint hum of waking insects and the whisper of trees stirring in the early light. When he steps inside the front door, he is greeted first by the smell of bitter, rich coffee. The kitchen light is on. Ford intuits that the kids are still asleep.
Stan is at the counter, pouring the substance into two mugs. His silhouette is steady, unhurried, shoulders loose in a way that only comes from having accepted genuine comfort and safety after decades of hardship. He doesn’t look surprised when Ford walks in. He doesn’t ask where Ford has been. He simply slides the second mug across the table for his brother, steam rising in the soft morning air.
Ford sinks into the kitchen chair. His movements are measured, a little stiff, his arms still sore. He wraps his hands around the mug before carefully lifting it to take a sip. The warmth seeps into his fingers, into his sore upper extremities.
For a long while, neither of them speaks. It is a silence that feels like a gift. There is no pressure, no expectation, even with Stan clearly aware of Ford’s outing. Just a quiet moment of comfort, the twins side by side at dawn, sipping the warmth of fresh coffee in the easy company of their other half. Stan’s presence is an anchor, his unspoken acceptance a soothing balm.Eventually, Ford clears his throat. “I… had a nightmare.”
Stan nods. He doesn’t push.
Ford stares into his mug, brows furrowed. He lifts it carefully this time, deliberate. “It made me angry. So furious that I… took it out on the statue.” His voice thins, hesitant. He doesn’t mention the grief, the weight, the memories that won’t let him be. Just the anger. Anger is easier.
When Stan’s hand lands on his shoulder, it’s firm and grounding. Ford flinches only at the suddenness, not the touch. Stan doesn’t let go, pulling him into a quiet hug. Though Ford stiffens for a breath, he immediately lets himself lean, just enough. Stan doesn’t comment on the dried tear tracks Ford forgot to wipe away. He doesn’t need to.
Ford swallows hard. He is less certain about bringing up anything else, but he knows that he and Stan have made considerable progress in learning how to be vulnerable with each other, how to talk about things they never used to. He still has a right to his closely held woes, but he does feel a duty to try and open up when he can.
“I don’t know who I am anymore.” The admission feels fragile as it leaves his throat. But he knows that Stan can understand him to a degree. That knowledge gives him the comfort needed to let the words slip free. “I’ve lived too many roles over the years. Kept reinventing myself just to survive, or to atone for who I used to be. Somewhere along the line, I… lost track. Sometimes it feels like all I remember is who he wanted me to be. What he forced me to endure.”
Stan grunts, his hand tightening on Ford’s shoulder. “Yeah, I’ve been there. My answer to that question was Mr. Mystery. Then it was Grunkle Stan. Heck, I even went by Stanford Pines for a while.” He smirks, giving Ford a solid clap on the back before his voice dips softer. “But that last one? That one’s still yours. You can take it back anytime.”
Ford lets out a huff of laughter, rough but genuine. His chest loosens, just a bit. “Thank you, Stanley.”
“Eh, don’t thank me. Just means less paperwork if you start usin’ your own name again.”
Ford shakes his head, smiling. In truth, he hadn’t been sure what he was hoping for out of this conversation, but Stan had read him perfectly. He just needed to vent, to loosen the knot in his chest and feel safe. Stan’s support is grounding, breaking through the veil that had hung over him ever since he came back from the woods.
The sound of footsteps upstairs, a clear indication of the kids stirring, makes them pause. They trade a look, quiet amusement flickering between them, and without a word they begin to fall into rhythm, reaching for pans, bread, eggs. Moving together like they do on the Stan O’ War II, like a well-oiled machine. Ford’s heart feels a little lighter.
He supposes grief always works this way: dulled by a thousand small, better moments layered over the wound until it aches less over time. In the multiverse, he grieved for home. When Stan was kicked out, he grieved for his brother and for the future he thought they’d lost. When he came back, he grieved for Fiddleford. His life is riddled with what-ifs, far too many to toil over, and he can’t help but linger on them. But, more than ever, it does feel like there is a future he can look forward to, and that reassurance makes the grief feel more surmountable.
When the twins come down, their surprise is obvious. Both Grunkles awake, together, in the kitchen at this early hour. Ford can tell that the kids, as observant as they are, have caught on and know something has happened. Mabel blinks, then barrels forward and throws herself at him with enough force to nearly knock the mug from his hand. “Grunkle Ford!”
Dipper gets pulled in with her, and Ford lets himself fold into the hug. Then Stan’s arms close around all three of them at once, a bear hug that swallows the morning whole. Ford feels the ache in his ribs, but it’s the best ache he’s ever known.
Things will be okay.
…
Later, once the morning chatter has subsided and the day is underway, Ford makes his way back into the woods.
The statue waits where he left it, scarred from his blows. Chips of stone still scattered across the dirt. Moss still creeping through the cracks. Pine needles still filling the crevices as if trying to mend the shape. The axe remains where he dropped it.
He stands there for a long time, arms folded. The sight no longer drags him under. Oddly, it makes him think of renewal. Stirring thoughts about how new life manages to grow from decay. How the world moves on even when scars remain, whether in stone or in flesh. Bill, now impossibly extant somewhere else, having left this stone body behind.
Slowly, Ford kneels. He sets down a small bouquet of yellow tansies, leaning them against the statue’s front, their brightness stark against the gray. He lingers there before reaching into his pocket. His fingers close around a chess pawn, cold and familiar.
He studies it. Stares so hard it almost burns through his glasses. The weight of it drags at him. Every memory, every manipulation, every false promise. His jaw tightens. His face hardens before he leans forward and places it beside the flowers.
The woods whisper around him as he turns and leaves, the retrieved axe in hand. For the first time in a long while, Ford feels as though the path ahead is one he might understand.
Very late but getting there. Ya can't tell me Bill didn't do this at some point 🤣 I keep wanting to make these simpler and it is not working, what is happening?
I don know what to do for this day so uh have some sketches that didn't make the final cut all the way from day 2 to 7 teehee :3
(I'm tired so enjoy magical girl bill too while ur at it, why not lol)
Holy shit I'm just realizing how much Billford fanart has filled up my sketchbook😭😭
I dunno if imma do this type of thing again, but I absolutely loved doing it despite the trials and errors (cuz its billford obvi) . It was a huge honor participating. Thank you to my friend @foggyarts for introducing me to this event and to @billfordecade for hosting this‼️‼️‼️‼️
