Chapter Text
Six months prior; Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey.
The year is 1968, and Stan is seventeen when he remembers he used to be a god. And the information, despite seeming on the surface rather glamorous, ends up with Stan feeling mostly like he’s been dragged backwards up a rocky creek.
It doesn’t come back to him all at once —and thank fuck for that. Honestly this whole thing has given him enough migraines as it is.— but it is quick enough he feels- disjointed. Unsure of what to do. Squeezing himself into the past feels like tugging on an old, ill-fitting coat. Too tight in the shoulders, too loose in the heart.
Regret had been a driving force for him for a very long time. —Though the details are hazy and nonspecific; and honestly? Stan is just fine keeping them that way. Because some of that regret feels twenty years old, some feels fifty, and some feels so ancient it makes him look up at the stars and think of them as young.— And as soon as his memory of the science fair slices into his head with all the gentle subtlety of an ice pick, Stan sets his resolve to change it.
Deciding not to break something is not hard, of course. The remainder of his scheme? That’s tougher.
Because, well… the bag had already been packed.
Stan knew- well, he still knows because it's still true- he’s a disappointment.
Where Ford had spent his life looking forward, Stan had spent every conscious second wishing he could turn back the clock. —What was it his brother had once told him? ‘An unstoppable force vs unmovable object’?— And it wasn’t hard to tell that the people in his life were disappointed by this, between his father’s ever-present cold shoulder, his brother's coddling, even his Mother’s nicknames, calling him her ‘free-spirit Stanley’, the evidence had always been there; no one had ever really believed he’d make something of himself. And honestly? Stan isn’t sure he’d ever fully been able to convince himself.
But now he has a chance. If not to make something of himself, then at least to do better; be better. And if that doesn’t work… well he needs to prepare either way.
This very optimistic new life plan is not helped, however, by the a triangular yellow parasite he had gotten stuck with somewhere along the way.
The very first time it happened, Stan could admit it was rather alarming. An otherwise normal memory-slash-nightmare —and really, what’s the difference— interrupted by a sound and sensation like he stepped on and egg. A crunch, and then a damp, sticky dread.
They’re on the beach, with the Stan o’ war. So maybe it’s a shard of glass? but-
Ford is frozen, mid-sentence- when all the color of him seems to melt away to grey, and as cold spreads up from his feet, Stan looks down…
To his horror, Stan watches as the small crater under his heel spreads, black cracks branching out over the monochromatic dreamscape until it looks like he’s standing on the inside of a disco-ball. Each fractal, each splinter displaying a different dream- or are they memories?
Stan gasps and clutches his head, pain arcing through his temple like he’s been shot —And why does he know what that feels like? God, why does it burn?— as his eyes begin to blur, the dreamscape coalesces and-
Wait- dreamscape. He’s dreaming.
Stan grabs ahold of that realization like a life-preserver. Letting it buoy him in the cold ocean storm. If it’s a dream, he’s in control.
Though it hasn’t happened in a long time, Stan remembers lucid dreaming a lot as a kid. Stan closes his eyes firmly and-
Stan blinks his eyes open to… darkness.
Darkness and a triangle.
“Well well wellwellwellwell w e l l.” Comes a voice, nasally and unsettling and seeming to- to draw out of the darkness all around-
And then the triangle blinks open an eye, and pulls a bowtie, top-hat, and cane out of the ether. The last item, he uses to hook into the collar of Stan’s dress shirt —wait why is he wearing a suit? And a… fez?— and yank him toward himself.
“Stanley Pines, in the flesh; well, mostly anyway."
The thing laughs. It is not a nice laugh.
“Wow! You look so weird,” the triangle says, grabbing at Stan’s cheeks and squishing them in, “all squishy and young!” Stan smacks it’s hands away and takes a step backwards; But there isn’t a backwards, or a forwards, for that matter. No up or down. Just… dark.
‘What in the fuck is this freak talking about’ Stan immediately thinks. And then, because he’d never really been one to sit on his feelings, he says: “What the fuck are you talking about?”
—He figures the ‘you freak’ is implied.—
“Awe, Stanley, you don’t remember me? I’m hurt,” it pouts. As much as anything who’s eye is it’s whole face can pout, that is. It floats a tight circle around him. Stan doesn’t bother to track it with his head; simply glaring forward.
It’s about when the thing has just passed his nose on the left, that Stan realizes he’s wearing an eyepatch.
Stanley blinks, opens his mouth to reply; but nothing comes out. To be fair, he’s still kind of playing catch-up with what the fuck is going on. He flips away the eye-patch and glowers. —There’s this… unsettling itch at the base of his skull, the burning of the bullet-hole, but faded. Like the sharp prickle of stitches being tugged at; something fever-raw and healing that’s definitely upset at being fussed with.—
The triangle rolls his eye like a particularly impatient teacher, and then-
“I’ll give you a little hint,” the triangle says. And then, he touches —And ‘touches’ feels like too strong a term, actually. It hovers his hand four and a half molecules distance from his skin. It stings like dry ice.— a hand to Stan’s forehead and-
There’s a cabin in the woods; looking like something out of a horror movie, or maybe a particularly odd snow globe. Scummy, triangular windows paint sharp shadows within that Stan can’t see. The snow is deep and soaking into his socks through the holes in the soles of his boots as he approaches the door. Then there’s a crossbow in his face. Ford looks exhausted; terrified. And then Ford-
Stan yanks free from his grasp with a pained gurgle. Stumbling backwards into an instinctual fighting stance.
“Bill,” Stan growls finally.
Bill’s eye slowly creases, an invisible smile growing.
“There we are,” the demon grins.
And then Stan punches him. Right in his big fat eye.
“Fucking- OW!!" Bill exclaims. "Do you know how long it takes to regenerate that?!” Bill snarls. And Stan doesn't, but he hopes it takes a very, very long time, and that it hurts all the way through.
And then, as he's rearing back for another hit, he is yanked backwards by an unseen force. (Because Stan can’t ever have anything nice.)
—He ignores how his own right eye throbs.—
“Now now,” comes a gentle croon. "Both of you, play nice." And then the darkness… fades. Replaced by a soft, swirling pink mist that dawns like the sunrise.
“Bill,” The voice addresses, in a musical tone, like wind chimes in a springtime breeze and strawberry syrup and the vibration of a just-plucked guitar string, “what have we talked about when it comes to baiting others into fights?”
“Both of us-?!" Blue fire in his hands gutters out as his eye pops back into place like a balloon reinflating. "-But he hit me!” Bill whines. Twisting back toward the... silhouette, with a big pleading, slightly swollen looking eye. Stan's jaw drops at the audacity; like Bill hadn't totally started it.
“And you injected him with a volatile, emotional memory about someone he cares deeply for. Where you caused that person great psychological harm.”
Bill doesn't quite flinch, but he also doesn't... not.
"i was just try'na help his memory along," he says stiffly.
"You were wanting him to fear you again," It corrects easily. "Those are not the same."
Stan overhears Bill muttering something akin to ‘psychological harm, smichological shmarm’ in a sarcastic tone as he glides backward; but Stan is a little distracted with the huge pink lizard that has come into view, floating not thirty feet in front of his face.
“Hello Stanley Pines, it is good to see you again,"
“Yeah, uh,”—Stan snaps a finger gun, which he instantly regrets and shoves both hands deep into his pockets—“right back at’cha. I guess.”
Stan knows, the same way he knows how to breathe or swallow, that this is an Axolotl. The Axolotl.
“I appreciate the sentiment, but you do not remember me,” it turns it’s head, just a bit. The little whiskery-things on the sides of it’s face twitching up and down slightly. It's big black eye is like a onyx mirror. “Do you?”
“I, ah... no,” Stan pauses. “I actually don’t get… any of this, really.” Stan admits. Usually, the idea of not knowing something as basic as ‘what’s going on’ would rankle him, but perhaps due to the unique strangeness of the situation, or maybe just the aura of complete comfort and acceptance the Axolotl provides, Stan doesn’t feel so bad about admitting it.
“Are you what’s making me… remember?” Stan clarifies.
The Axolotl pauses for a beat.
“I suppose in an indirect way, I am; just as you are,” the Axolotl says with a fond, sad hum. “The barrier has been fractured. While I may speed or slow it’s breaking, there is nothing can stop it, now.”
Well isn’t that nice and ominous.
“It is part of why we are taking this opportunity to speak with you.”
“With… me?” Stan says, “or with him?” Stan gestures to the aformentioned triangle, who has halted his pouting to watch them with poorly disguised apprehension.
“Yes.” It nods.
How helpful.
“We approach the singularity; the waveform collapse.“
“I… don’t understand.”
“Fret not.” The Axolotl hums, it sounds like it’s smiling. “You will in due time.”
¶¶¶
Now, Stan feels it vital for any extra-dimensional beings listening in to know; he doesn’t always remember how long he’s lived. In fact, right now, most of the time, he’s just Stan: high school senior doing his fuckin' damndest. During the night, it’s easier to draw the lines between Stan and Not Stan; but in the daylight… it gets a lot more muddled. And sometimes, other things creep in through the edges. Like a boat slowly taking on water through a million infinitesimal broken seals in it’s underbelly. And it… collects.
And when it gets to be too much, Stan resorts to his usual coping mechanisms —like beating the snot out of a punching bag, bumming a few drinks, or (if he can stomach it) getting lost in a good book— which are usually enough to smother and bail out the memories. Stiffly ignoring the whispers that tell him to just sink under; let go and drown already. It’s not like they’re particularly new to him, either way.
So Stan… just keeps going. Weeks zip by unremarkably, and Stan does what he’s best at and plays pretend. He attends class, eats dinner with his family, takes exams, and dreams of the end of the world. He dreams of the multiverse like looking through a twisting kaleidoscope. Collapsing stars and freshly born planets. Shapes and light dancing together, twisting around themselves, like the smooth revolution of a bullet chambering.
¶¶¶
At first, because Stan forgets to tone down exactly how much he knows —and because, if he’s honest, he’s unsettled and kind of desperate to prove himself right now— he gets accused of cheating. A lot. And Stan is kind of offended; not because he’s some paragon of morality, but because if he was gonna cheat, —which he didn’t— he wouldn’t’ve been dumb enough to get caught.
He’s sixty-seven and a billion years old —though a lot of that billion years of knowledge is kind of useless in an academic context. To Bill, the laws of physics were a suggestion, a rulebook written long after he’d started playing, which he had always personally thought only suckers abide by— and repair man to the biggest, most technologically advanced and destructive multiversal hole punch ever made; all crammed into a teenage body.
High-school physics and basic algebra, while dull as dirt, are not actually hard anymore.
That said, while stubborn as a mule, Stan had always been rather easily pulled off course. It’s fitting, then, that the next element of change in his life would be such a beautiful distraction.
—Then again, last time he’d gotten into selling drugs, circumstances had been… rather different. But he’s getting ahead of himself.—
“You keep this up, people are gonna start confusing you with Ford, ya know,” a familiar feminine voice says teasingly, leaning a hip against the table where the rickety printer rests —the frills of her pink sundress catching his eye— and smiling. His heart does an unpleasant flip-flop in his chest as he is faced with another great regret; Carla McCorkle.
“People already do that; we have the same face,” Stan says without pulling his eyes away from the printer; which is currently making a whirring-gurgling sound that he doesn’t trust at all.
But it does eventually chug along, printing out the remaining copies of his resume —a shoddy, sparse thing— before choking off to sleep. Stan examines the copies.
“Mh,” she hums in disagreement, “I dunno. I always saw enough differences,” she winks. Stan laughs, straightens his stack of resumes and tucks it under his arm, leaning toward her.
“Hm, you’re as good at seein’ as you are good lookin’,” he says with a salacious grin, enjoying as she giggles softly —he always had loved her laugh— and twirls a long lock of glossy chestnut hair around her manicured finger. The motion making the flower in her hair sway like it’s caught in a summer breeze.
“Speaking of; what’s a pretty thing like you doin’ in a place like this?”
“Just helpin’ Aunt Bea with a new book shipment,” she says warmly. “She had to head out though.” Stan idly remembers that her aunt is one of the librarians —the McCorkle’s had always been a big family in Glass Shard— and glances up to see if she’s hanging around, but there’s no one behind the front counter. Just some tall, blond beanpole in a jean-jacket standing in front of it, watching them. When Stan locks eyes with him, the guy snatches up one of the pamphlets to read, and leans back against the counter. It’s not a very convincing front; since he’s holding the flyer upside-down. Stan narrows his eyes in recognition at the stranger… Someone related to Crampelter, maybe? An older brother? Cousin?
“What about you?” Carla asks, jarring him from his revelry.
“Flyfishing, obviously,” Stan jokes, gesturing to the resumes. She doesn’t laugh this time, just glances over her shoulder distractedly- Stan doesn’t quite know why, though.
“I’m lookin’ to get a job. Jus’ something’ part time for after school.”
“Hm,” She hums, but doesn't really seem like she's listening. “Listen, why don’t we get out'a here,” Carla says, abruptly. Coming around and hopping up to sit on the table, leaning toward him, just enough to get a whiff of her perfume; something bubblegum sweet and floral, mixed with the duller chemical tang of hairspray. Instinct immediately tells him she's got an angle; she wants something, but he tells himself he’s being paranoid. Then again… he’d always kind of had a thing for conniving women.
“The Juke Joint on the boardwalk should still be open…” She lures sweetly.
Stan bites the inside of his cheek, then sighs. Prepared to feel like a complete and total looser. Forgoing what could be a potential first date with a cute girl in favor of books… Yeesh.
“Sorry sweet cheeks, but I can’t,” he sighs, placing a hand on her bare knee, tracing his thumb in a soothing circle. “I gotta get these resume’s out, and then there’s this big English test coming up that I gotta study for… You get me, right?”
“Since when do you care about all that?” She asks; and it doesn’t sound sarcastic. It sounds like she’s genuinely asking, like she’s… perplexed.
“Since I realized I wouldn’t graduate without it,” Stan says honestly. She laughs like he just told a joke, and Stan puts on a face to make sure it stays that way.
“Seriously though. Test is Friday; Maybe this weekend?”
There’s a beat of silence, as Stan is staring down at his stack of resumes and, trying —and failing— to focus, make sure the quality’s alright and it’s all legible. He only printed out the five-
“...Stan, please?”
The way she says it is so quiet. And it’s not a flirtatious quiet either. It’s... unsettled. Frightened, maybe. Stan looks up, a seriousness clenching in his chest as he spots the way her eyes flicker back to the counter-
And oh. —Stan notices the rage in the man’s eyes. How he's slowly crumpling his upside down pamphlet in his hands…— Stan kind of feels like an idiot. Not an uncommon experience for him, really.
Then again, Carla had always been a trouble magnet.
—Something strangely possessive flares to life in his belly, something cold and selfish.—
“Ah, alright,” he says, folding the thin stack in quarters and tucking ‘em into his hoodie pocket. He stands. “You’re one convincing woman, you know that?"
She blinks at him; not quite computing.
Unperturbed, Stan takes her by the waist and lift-swings her up to stand. Using the hand on her lower back as an excuse to keep her close, he leans forward to whisper:
“Am I just walkin’ you, or am I killin' the bastard?”
He feels the way her breath hitches with a quiet gasp. Perhaps confused by the sudden change in tone; or alarmed that he’d caught on at all. Stan had kind of been an oblivious guy, once upon a time.
Then Carla pauses, and she laughs, swatting him on the shoulder, like he’d just made a dirty joke rather than threatened a man’s life.
“Just come dancing with me, Stanley,” she says, taking his hand in hers. —Soft and delicate, he can feel her bones, fragile as a dove.— But her smile is soft and real.
“You just want me for my muscles,” Stan says, with a sigh, as though he’s deeply put upon by this idea; a contrast to how he’s not-so-subtly flexing.
“Yeah, you got me there,” Carla laughs unrepentantly, giving his arm an obliging squeeze. And then another one, for good measure. He grins, wide and smarmy as he catches the interest in her eye.
They exit the library, and Stan keeps a hand on Carla’s waist the whole way. Even shooting the looser a glare over his shoulder, in hopes it’ll be deterrent enough.
It’s not. The man follows them out of the library for three blocks before finally, finally giving it up. Stan watches in the dark reflection of a shopfront, as he turns off into the alley between the bar and the bowling alley and lighting up a smoke. He has to try several times before it even sparks.
“Stan?” Carla’s voice is distant, like he’s got water in his ears. Stan’s eyes keep pinned on the guy's greasy silhouette, his smudged reflection tall and taunting.
Now, Stan’s anger has never been a quiet thing, and Stan has never been quiet when he is angry. But he is quiet now.
Because Stan really, really wants to kill him. And not in the abstract way people usually tend to want each-other dead; where they just want the other person to… disappear; no muss no fuss. No, what Stan really wants right now is to kill him. He wants the act of it. The sting of his knuckles after a few good swings. Hot blood on his hands and the viscera stuck under his nails. Loose teeth in his hands, like little sharp dice-
“Stan,” Carla repeats, squeezing his hand tightly. “He’s gone. It's okay.”
It’s not enough that he’s gone from their sight, Stan thinks bitterly. He wants him gone permanently.
...Stan isn’t sure why he’s so angry all of a sudden. Well, he kind of is. Maybe.
See, Stan had always aligned a large piece of his identity with being a protector. In part because it’s a role he’d played since he was young, but more than that; because it was one of very few ways his violent urges and his possessiveness lined up into something people generally considered a positive trait. It’s good branding on a shitty product, clean and simple; and Stan is nothing if not a salesman.
“Your cousin still works at the Arcade, right?” Stan says, a plan rapidly forming in his mind. She nods slowly. “Think I could drop you off with him?”
“Stan, please don’t do anything rash,” She says, reading between the lines.
Stan lets out a laugh, abrupt and strange. The feeling of it trills past just his vocal chords, resonating through the barrel of his chest like an echo in a cave.
“I won’t, I swear,” Stan hums fondly, as though the very notion is absurd.
“Trust me, yeah?” He says, still smiling wide.
She visibly doesn’t buy it.
—He’d always liked ‘em smart.—
¶¶¶
Knocking a six-foot tall stranger unconscious in an alley shouldn’t be as easy as it is. But the guy is focused on trying to light a second smoke with a failing lighter, and, well; Stan’s always been opportunistic.
—It takes two hits to bring the guy down. One blow to the back of the head sends him toppling to his knees like a sack of bricks- and then, startled and disoriented, it’s easy for Stan to grab the collar of his shirt in a balled fist- and a quick blow to the temple shuts him up nice and quick. Stan’s knuckles sting; it feels awfully good.—
It’s this same nature that has Stan rifling through the guy’s pockets while he’s down. Well, that and muscle memory. And it’s good that he does. Because on the third pocket he checks —on the left inside his tacky jean-jacket; clearly a homemade pocket if the shoddy, uneven stitching is anything to go by— that Stan finds them. Not just one, but- god, at least seven or eight little packets of-
Stan unzips one and dips his pinky into the bag, the powder is soft to the touch and clings to his skin like static. He can’t tell if it’s the lighting, or if it’s actually kind of salmon-colored. He rubs it up over his gums-
Oh. —The flavor is mouth-puckeringly bitter, like gasoline, and the numbness fizzes over his teeth is instant; like someone’s packed cotton under his lip.— Yeah, okay. Fuck.
Stan glances back to the asshole with a new found interest. Because, how the hell did some nobody, Jersey thug get access to Columbian cocaine?
¶¶¶
Well, Stan was looking for work…