Chapter Text
When he can’t remember their names, it’s the symbols that stand out.
The bright, energetic girl placing the fez upon his head is unfamiliar, as is the name she calls him. He doesn’t have the faintest idea why her brilliant smile fades as he asks her who she is, but deep down, he knows that the Shooting Star on her sweater is no coincidence.
She’s pulled away from him by a boy with a Pine Tree on his cap. There’s a sense of duality between the two, between the quieter nervous energy and the unrestrained, unashamed creativity and chaos —
Or at least, he has an uncanny feeling that there should be, but right now they’re both on the verge of tears about something, and he can’t for the life of him figure out what.
There’s an older man talking to him now, calling him a hero, but it feels distant. He doesn’t feel heroic — he feels confused. He keeps making people cry, and he doesn’t know how to stop it.
His gloves have six fingers, he realizes, which is odd because he’s pretty sure that’s one too many…
But then the man hugs him, and he feels a six-fingered hand on his back.
He’s not sure what to think, especially not as he feels something wet on his shoulder. He kind of wants to say something, but he doesn’t know what — doesn’t know how to address this strange man.
(Strange yet familiar, as one tends to become when the bonds of self-selected destiny connect two souls across lifetimes.)
He nearly calls the man “Sixer,” but something makes him hesitate. The name feels… not wrong, really. If anything, it feels right, righter than anything else that’s popped into his head so far…
It feels charged. It has a whole heap of emotions behind it, none of them explicable and most of them conflicting. There are faint ghosts of memories floating on the tip of his tongue — trying to convince him the nickname will feel best when paired with a mocking laugh, or when spat like a curse…
And there are other instincts, stronger instincts, telling him to speak it casually, or even better, with a reassuring tone…
But all those recollections and instincts are background at best, straddling the border between conscious and subconscious. When he tries to think about them, they fade away.
Finally, he blurts out: “I think I’m wearing your gloves?”
Sixer withdraws from the embrace, and for some reason it feels disappointing.
“Yes,” Sixer replies, expression strangely hopeful. “You are…”
“Why?”
He can see the hope drain out of Sixer’s face, and it both perplexes him and destroys him.
“Let’s switch outfits,” Sixer says, speaking like every word is a chore for him to choose. “Maybe… it’ll help you feel better, Stanley. More like yourself.”
It doesn’t. He doesn’t feel any more like “Stanley.” Of course, he doesn’t know what being “Stanley” is supposed to feel like, but he’s pretty sure that it isn’t like being torn apart at his core. Like there’s two minds inside his head, and no matter how much stronger one of them is, their hatred for each other still burns bright and violent like exchanged blows from flames and fists.
After the outfit switch, as they begin to walk through the woods, he finds himself clinging to the symbols like a lifeline. Pine Tree, Shooting Star, and Sixer most of all — for some reason, they’ve been seared into his mind too completely to be erased like everything else.
He’s literally clinging to Sixer’s arm, too. His feet tremble beneath him and every few steps, he feels like he’s going to lose his balance, but Sixer is always there to guide him over tree roots and through uneven terrain.
A much younger man joins them, one with a Question Mark t-shirt. Initially, his eyes are bright with relief, but after the exchange of a few words that Stanley doesn’t entirely process — one of them “erase,” another “saved” — tears begin to run down Question Mark’s cheeks.
It only gets worse as Stanley’s companions lead him into a wreck of a building and sits him down in a dusty chair, where Shooting Star jumps into his lap and starts reading from a scrapbook. Everyone crowds around them, watching with hopeful, desperate, pleading eyes.
Though he tries not to show it, at first he just wants to disappear, to melt into the back of the chair and fade away because he doesn’t want to see their faces when he lets them down — but suddenly, he feels a familiar frustration for a familiar pig, and everything abruptly changes for the better.
He remembers names, and he stops thinking about the symbols. For a while.
***
“Was it Mom taking this video, or Shermie?” Stan asks. His eyes are glued to the wall, onto which the projector beams familiar childhood memories.
“To tell you the truth, I don’t actually remember in this case,” Ford admits. “It was around this point that she finally started trusting Shermie with the camera, so it could be either.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right.” Stan snickers as he watches younger versions of him and Ford punch each other in the shoulders. “Hey, Sixer, can you pass the popcorn? I —”
His mouth snaps shut as he realizes what he’s said, and the fog of panic and disjointed memories fills his brain. He’s sure that he’s uttered something forbidden, that he’s somehow exposed some deep, dark secret that he doesn’t himself remember —
“Stanley?” Ford asks. His eyes are still fixed on the video, but Stan can tell from the unsteadiness of his voice that he’s upset. “What did you just say?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I blurted that out —”
“What do you mean, sorry?” Ford turns around, and puts a hand on Stan’s shoulder. “I was afraid that you weren’t ever going to remember that nickname…”
“I… I thought you didn’t like that nickname.”
Ford blinks, and in the dim light, Stan finally realizes that his eyes are damp. “I missed that nickname more than almost anything in the world, Stan.”
Stan forces a smile, and at some point in the process, it transforms into something genuine. “I’ll keep that in mind then, Sixer.”
The nickname feels a lot better when he says it this time, but he still can’t shake the feeling that there’s something he’s forgetting.