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Stan Pines didn't try to hold back his triumphant cackling. Sure, the pile of scrap he'd found his way to didn't look like much, but with that many suits guarding this place, it had to have something worth picking up - and even the worst trash could probably get a decent amount from the suckers who wanted 'real genuine souvenirs' from the 'mysterious wormhole' or 'Russian experimental satellite' or whatever the tinfoil hat brigade decided had happened here.
His eyes lit up as he caught a shine that only belonged to gold, and he threw himself forward to start digging it out. The trash might keep him going for a while, but if he found something actually valuable then he'd really be set! And maybe it might even make him enough that Pa would acknowledge him for once - He slammed the lid on that thought, cutting it off.
He was fine. He just needed wanted a bit of extra spending cash, who could blame him, no worries that Pops' threats jokes about kicking him out of the family if he didn't start bringing in some real money were getting too serious here, no sir! He just - a quick tug - needed - there was something that looked like a metal grating but felt weirdly squishy when he pushed it aside - to get - the gold was finally in reach, he snatched it up with a whoop of triumph, and then it slid out of his greasy hands and he had to grab at it.
He got it stashed away in his jacket, picked up a weird jar with a lid (looked like it could pass for a genuine antique, he'd have to see whether he could get more for it that way) - and then the guards showed up (which, okay, maybe he hadn't been as stealthy as he could be) and Stan had to run for it.
Really, it was the fault of that squishy grating that he ended up slipping and falling, ended up smashing the pot on the ground - it was an accident!
But then something moved in the pile of shards, and a - was that a snake? A worm? - a giant worm with lots of nasty wounds on it squirmed out. Stan stared, mouth open, as the worm gathered itself and sprung.
It hit its target first try, and Stan tried to grab it and pull it out of his mouth but the thing was slippery with water and its own blood, and all his hands did was give it something to brace against as it shoved its way in (and Stan was not thinking of a certain scene in a certain horror movie that started a certain franchise, nope, not even a little bit!) until it reached the back of his throat, and then there was a stabbing pain, then there was a tearing pain, then there was a darkness taking over Stan's vision before he could feel any other types of pain...
The symbiote was weak and injured. It had been a miracle that the stasis jar survived travelling through that dimensional hole at all, but the damage done to the symbiote despite the stasis field had been extensive, reaching down to the genetic memory it relied on. It needed a host if it was to have any chance at recovering - and here was one with its mouth already open and providing access to the more easily-pierced soft tissues at the back of the throat.
The symbiote had never taken a host before, but its genetic memory had held so many thousands of examples that even with the damage the act still felt familiar. Burrow in, wrap around the spine, connect with the brain to suppress the host's consciousness...
...and that was where everything went wrong.
Stan felt it when the thing tried to break into his mind or memories or whatever, like a sharp pressure with the assumption he'd be helpless. That was the moment he knew the thing wasn't all that smart, because pressure? pressure affected things that were solid, and there was no one out there walking around with a solid mind.
So the thing was lying to him. Too bad for it Stan was better with lies than it was.
The pressure vanished because there was nothing to be pressed, and Stan let himself indulge in imagining a long, luxurious stretch - but something about the connection between them changed when he did, and suddenly Stan found himself standing in a place that was a weird mix of sci-fi spaceship and old-fashioned temple, knowing it was a representation of the thing's mind. Just like he knew the blurred human(ish?) figure in front of him was a representation of the thing itself.
"Huh. This's new," he muttered to himself as he waited for the thing's next move.
He wasn't expecting the fascinated curiousity it responded with as it looked around them much the way he just had, or the way it caught itself as if it wasn't supposed to feel that. It gathered its composure and - projected? said? (it kind of felt like a nervous greenie trying to be impressive and mostly hitting 'loud') Submit, human! Cower and tremble before your god!
Stan couldn't have stopped the snort of laughter if he'd tried. Yeahnope, this thing was not good at reading the mood.
It paused, still curious but now also annoyed that he wasn't responding with shock and awe. Cower and tremble before your god, it repeated, and if the first had been 'loud' this attempt was the equivalent of deepening its voice. In other words, obvious and obviously faked. Stan just waited, kind of curious what it was going to try for attempt number three.
It was even funnier when it somehow emotionally conveyed slumping despondently without the blur that was it actually doing that. He was almost expecting a teenager's whine - something like 'C'mon, lemme win!' - but it rallied instead, turning its back on him and searching through - huh. Oh, this, this was interesting.
The symbiote wasn't prepared for the human to be able to throw its influence aside so easily. It was even less prepared for the human to turn around and influence it. The human shouldn't be able to do that! ...Should he? It went digging through its memories for answers, only to freeze as it felt something it knew should be impossible.
The symbiote could poke through the human's memories at a whim. The fact that it wasn't didn't mean anything; that was how it should be. The symbiote could taunt the human by sharing its own memories of how superior its kind were (not... that it felt like trying that, but it knew the option should be there). But that didn't imply an equal connection! The human couldn't pry into the symbiote's memories beyond what the symbiote chose to share!
...This human didn't seem very interested in paying attention to what its knowledge said he couldn't do, though.
And despite knowing it shouldn't, the symbiote found that anomaly far more interesting than how this was supposed to go.
Stan was probably cackling as he strolled down a mural-filled corridor, knowing every painted object led to a different set of memories. He couldn't help it - there was just something about this, all these not-hidden-well-enough openings for him to reach in and rifle through, secrets and treasured things (even if they weren't solid treasures) for him to get his sticky fingers all over - it felt like being clever, like winning a gamble, like getting something right. Sure, lots of what was in here was horrific: murders, torture, all the shitty things humans have done to each other for millenia repeated over millenia - but there were plenty of things that weren't. For evil brain-worms, these things knew how to party! Men, women, drink, drugs, croc-o...
Stan stared at the memory (no, wait, that was memories, there was definitely more than one person who'd done that)(?!??!!!), then slowly turned and stared at the blurred shape that was the - worm-alien-thing the memories belonged to. The alien walked over and looked over his shoulder, then stared back at him, mirroring the silent What in the actual - that Stan's mind was ringing with.
Stan slammed the metaphorical door closed. "Okay, that's enough of that!/Seriously, your people are freaks." The two thoughts came out simultaneously, a weird double-layering of his voice that had him wincing at the sore throat it couldn't actually give him.
The second one got the alien flailing in startled offense. Wait, you think my people came up with-?
"Well, between the things that think torture and dismemberment's a good time and the people who can't regrow their freaking limbs -"
It flung a half-formed awareness of Stan's boxing history back at him, scraps that he hadn't even noticed it picking up, in an incoherent That doesn't stop you!
Stan's anger flared into an instinctive need to punch the alien, but the urge was a bit too physical to translate properly - when he got this mad, he tended to let his body do the talking without really planning how badly he wanted to injure whoever his target was, so instead of doing any damage he just made it really clear that he wanted to, and the thing recoiled for a moment feeling - hurt? - before it slammed back with just as little success (no way of knowing if that was lack of desire to harm or just lack of experience), and then they were both being angry and mean (and hurt) at each other, and doing about as much damage as those flailing sissy slap-fights in comedy shows. But no one was laughing here, just getting more and more angry, more and more determined to hurt each other, and both picking up how to defend themselves from each other faster than they could could come up with new attacks.
And then the thing reached for suggestions on how to hurt (punish) Stan from those memories they'd both been ignoring, reminding Stan that they existed. So Stan drew back (wasn't like he was getting anywhere) and went looking for something that would hurt it.
He wasn't expecting what happened, how just him looking made the place split apart - not fall apart, all the pieces were still there, but now they were spread out, tiny pockets of memory and mind hovering in a void that was black as space.
Exactly as black as space, Stan knew, this place that was full of memories had just gotten contaminated by one somehow - or, no, but there was an actual memory that the place was rebuilding itself to match.
No, not this, the alien whispered, words the clearest they'd been yet as it tried to use the act of communicating to drown out what was happening.
The memory unfolded itself around them.
Havrin (it shouldn't know the name, it shouldn't care, the [slave] (what word was that? lost) was just a body that had served as its incubator, just a slave, it shouldn't even have noticed that the [slave] was named Havrin) lay dead on the floor of what had been a corridor. It didn't have good eyesight, it had only matured enough to develop eyes a few days ago, but it had the knowledge it had been created with and it knew what the thin air and faint sparkle before a gaping void meant.
A hole had been torn in the laboratory/space station. More than a hole, the station had been ripped apart, the forcefields to keep everything from being lost to the pull of space activating imperfectly.
There were no other mature [symbiotes] (You've lost your own name? I never had one) alive on what remained of the station. There were only two [slaves] left, both standing in front of it (both injured and it couldn't save them, it couldn't, it might heal one's wounds if it took them as host but the host's mind and the [symbiote] couldn't both survive (why not? ...because.) and even if it took one as a host there was no way for them to escape what was going to happen when the forcefields ran out of power).
They were scared. (So was it.) They were scared but they were here following a protocol that it had barely been aware existed (a protocol that never should have applied to it, a protocol meant to save the most senior and important [symbiote] and which therefore only applied to it because it was the only one left).
They held an intact stasis jar. It wasn't sure how they'd found one, whether there had been a cache of them somewhere or just this single one for this last-chance protocol - the highest-ranking [symbiote] would go into the stasis jar and be protected from everything, even the passage of time itself, until the stasis field was broken by someone opening the jar.
A last chance of survival when none of the hosts or [slaves] would survive. (What were they supposed to do with the jar once it was inside, was there a shuttle somewhere? Would the jar be left to float in the wreckage, in hopes that an ally or even [ . . . . ] herself (Who? ...i don't know) would find and rescue it?
Would this be worse?
Did it have a choice?
The jar was opened and held out to it, and it found itself sucked inside (of course, these were also meant as prisons).
The lid was placed. The stasis field activated.
It knew no more.
Stan fidgeted with his hands, that old tell that Pops kept harping on about, and glanced at the blur that was the alien (and that blur made more sense after seeing that memory, this thing needed glasses more than Stan did! - Not that Stan needed glasses, he could manage just fine without them.) "Uh," he said, and stalled out because he had no idea what to say next. 'Sorry I shoved my way into the worst memory you have, I just got too angry to notice I don't actually want to hurt you that bad until it was too late'? That would just sound like he was making fun of it, and even if it didn't, what good would it do? Apologies were just a sign that whoever was making them was too weak to fix or hide their mistakes.
The alien straightened, head turning towards him. The curiousity it had been surrounded by was gone now, hidden behind cold walls of disdain. This is beneath me, it said with careful precision. I am a god, and will not waste my time trifling with mortals.
"Ya really aren't, though," Stan argued immediately.
As if you'd know, with your extensive experience of -
"Cults? 'Cause I don't need 'extensive experience' to know that those are just a cheap hustle, and if you think that running around stealing bodies and saying you're a god -"
SILENCE! It raised a hand now wearing a set of golden talons chained together with a big red rock in the palm (which was a seriously dumb design, how was anyone supposed to be able to hold things if they were wearing that?) so that the rock was facing him, and hissed, You shouldn't be here. The rock lit up.
Stan flinched, hands flying up, glancing around to see where the nearest patch of floor was and if he could make it. "Look, do ya really wanna do this?" he tried, letting his mouth run on automatic (because that had always worked out great for him before) while he surreptitiously tried to will some of the shattered pieces back together.
The host and the symbiote cannot both survive, it said flatly.
"That wasn't a yes!" Stan pointed out fast enough that the words almost blurred together. "And anyway, who says we can't?"
The question made the floating fragments shudder, and drift further apart to reveal a - something. A hole, a gap, an emptiness where the core of the alien's identity should be.
(You've lost your own name?) but no, (I never had one). This was - this was [ . . . . ] (i don't know) (Who?).
"Okay, gotta tell ya, there is nothing about this I understand," Stan said, looking from the hole to the alien and back.
The alien was getting blurrier. That felt like a bad sign.
I'm a drone. I was created to serve my progenitor, and Stan was already bristling on the alien's behalf because - because that was messed up, that this thing couldn't even remember what species it was but it still knew it was made to obey someone else, born into enslavement to its - parent? Parent didn't feel quite right, but it was close enough (too close) to set off - something, some resonance, fellow feeling or sympathy or something.
Whatever Stan was feeling came across strongly enough to cause wary hints of some indefinable emotion around the alien, the impression of an odd look that its face was nowhere near clear enough to actually give him. It continued, My purpose in existence is to serve my progenitor. And stopped. And repeated, struggling to find more, My purpose in existence is to serve her.
It tried again. My - it stumbled over the words before almost babbling, My purpose is to serve [ . . . . ]. And - and I can serve by - by taking a host, finding out what planet I'm on, giving her a foothold here to conquer it in all its glory -
"You don't wanna." If Stan had thought about it, he'd have expected to be smug, mean the way he couldn't help being when he felt vulnerable (to chase people away so he could lick his wounds in private), but the words came out in a calming tone that was as steady as his certainty in what he was saying (even if he had no idea where that certainty came from). "You don't wanna be a conqueror. You don't wanna be what she made you for." Something about his own words tugged at him, and the resonance between him and the alien was suddenly filling the space between them with echoes of unspoken words (created to serve a parent, wanting something other than what they want but not being allowed to admit it, too loyal to refuse the role they assigned but not wanting to carry it out, I don't want to, let me find something else let me do something else let me BE something MORE) and it was humiliating and maybe-not-terrible both at once.
I have to be loyal. The thought had an undertone of fear, but it wasn't anything so human as a fear of punishment; no, the alien was afraid that the only reason it was able to want something other than what it was created for was because its memories, its very genetic structure, had been damaged so badly. And if that was the only reason, what did that say about it? What did that say about how bad that damage was?
"Why d'you gotta?" Stan asked, hoping that pushing a bit would make the alien pause, consider, maybe realise it didn't have an answer.
It did. Because loyalty to my progenitor is the keystone stabilising my genetic structure. Without it, my DNA will unravel.
Stan froze. Not just because it wasn't lying, even though that was somewhere beyond what 'messed up' could convey (he'd heard of not having a choice, he knew not having a choice - but not, not as bad as it could be! Just enough that he'd thought what the alien was saying sounded familiar - but this was 'just trying to have a choice will kill you').
But those echoes were back, even though he was damn sure neither of them wanted them, and what they were hissing - and the keystone's too broken, I don't even remember her name, I barely remember that it's 'she', I've lost too much and I won't survive this and -
Stan's biggest flaw was acting on impulse. (It was sometimes also his biggest strength, just to make everything more complicated for him.) Stan made a habit of never stopping to think through whether his latest great idea should work, just coming up with a quick solution and slapping it in place, and this time that turned out to look like seeing the hole where the keystone of the alien's foundations should be and shoving an image of himself into it.
It shouldn't have worked.
It really shouldn't; the place they were in had nothing to do with physical reality, projecting himself into the position of [ . . . . ] shouldn't have done more than possibly break the alien's mind beyond any possibility of repair. But the alien didn't reject him, didn't want to, wanted to accept him, and that shouldn't have changed anything enough to make Stan's wild impulse affect physical reality either but.
But something did.
The alien's genetic patterns shifted, a massive spontaneous semi-controlled mutation, and the blurred shape of the alien suddenly became defined as a near-mirror of Stan (less muscled, wearing the glasses Stan couldn't afford scorned, dressed neater (nerdier) than Stan ever had, and - to it and Stan's mutual bewilderment - with six fingers on each hand instead of five).
They blinked at each other in silence for a moment, just long enough for Stan to start to feel hopeful. The alien turned its attention to its (his?) fingers, wriggling them curiously as Stan asked, "Did it work?" -
- and then the alien looked at him again, brown eyes meeting brown eyes, and he leaned/tilted the floor he was stood on/both and neither together, and he fell silently into the void as Stan watched, knowing it would kill him.
Stan threw himself forwards, no thought involved, and just managed to catch the alien by the shirt. "WHADDAYA THINK YOU'RE DOING!" he screamed in the alien's face, because that was absolutely intentional and he was not letting it happen.
The alien blinked up at him. "The host and the symbiote cannot both survive," he repeated, with an actual human-sounding voice that somehow sounded nothing like Stan's in a way that went beyond lacking the gravel from Stan's two-packs-a-day habit (and it wasn't due to the know-it-all tone that Stan had never in his life used, either).
"Says who?" Stan retorted, hauling him up and willing a floor into existence beneath him. "You don't want me dead, I don't want you dead - you, you seem like a smart guy, betcha we can make this work with both of us alive!" He ignored the pleading tone in his voice, hoped the alien would have the courtesy to pretend to do the same.
"Why do you want it to?" the alien asked, confused. Stan didn't want to answer, didn't want to look closely enough at his reasons to find out what they were, but suddenly the alien's hands were overflowing with scraps that were too similar to the awareness of Stan's boxing history that he had scraped together.
These scraps were far more humiliating, though.
loneliness
fellow-feeling
hope for someone to understand
loneliness
curiousity
similarities
LONELINESS
Stan waved his hands, scattering the pile - only for the alien to wave his own and gather them back with a huffy glare. "I was reading those," he grumbled.
"Well, quit it! Don'cha gotta do what I say now that I'm your - uh, keystone or whatever," he ran out of steam in the middle of his sentence.
"Not when that's not what you want from me," the alien responded absently. "[ . . . . ] wanted a slave who was loyal unto death. You don't."
"So what do I want from ya?" Stan asked, hunching his shoulders against the feeling of being seen too clearly.
The alien gave him another annoyed glance. "That's what I'm learning from reading these. So far, it looks like the answer is..." he trailed off, with a look of owlish confusion that Stan was sure had never crossed his own face, "...a brother?"
Stan could feel himself turn bright red, and immediately willed the blush away before the alien could see it. "Pfft, what would I need with that? I got a brother," Shermie, who'd made a point of how he was only sticking around for Ma and Stan, who'd ruffled Stan's hair the last time they saw each other and said something about how 'maybe Stan could come visit him' as if Stan didn't know when he wasn't welcome, who'd never come back but made a point of letting them all know how happy he was 'out from under Pa's thumb'...
"A brother who'll stay," the alien corrected himself, absolutely ruthless against Stan's attempts to keep some self-respect. And Stan couldn't even deny it, because those scraps were just waiting to turn into a full book for the alien to read all about how Stan Pines was too scared of being abandoned by his family to turn down the chance at having someone with him who wanted to stay, even if the someone was a (failure of a) body-snatching alien snake-worm-thing.
The alien's eyes jumped between the scraps and Stan, and he continued with the worst attempt at being casual that Stan had ever seen, "Given that we do now technically have the same DNA, I could be considered your twin brother." And Stan... paused. A twin brother, not an older brother who'd maybe get bored of thinking he had to protect Stan, not a younger brother who'd maybe resent it if Stan tried protecting him - an, an equal. A partner.
"Sounds good," Stan said, and somehow he couldn't will away the choked-up sound in his voice so he just pretended it wasn't there.
The alien - his brother - gave him a shy little smile that had no place on Stan's face. "I think so, too."
Which was making everything way too mushy for Stan's self-respect, so he coughed and said loudly (but not at all the way his brother had been using 'loud' to make up for being clueless when they met, nope, this was completely different), "So what's with your hands now, anyway?"
His brother looked down at them with delighted curiousity. "I'm not sure! The potential for this must be in your DNA, and something about the circumstances unlocked it in my self-perception, but the exact cause is currently a mystery!"
"You mean I coulda had cool hands if my DNA got its act together?" Stan asked in dismay. They'd probably have felt less cool with Pops trying to make a quick buck off them, but Stan didn't have them, so Pops couldn't, so there wasn't anything to make them seem less cool than they were!
His brother shrugged a little, too happy that Stan thought his hands were cool to be properly sympathetic about Stan having boring ordinary normal hands.
"Okay, time to wake up," Stan decided. That made his brother look up, a nervous expression on his face.
"Which of us should be in charge of your - our? - the body?"
Stan shrugged at him. "Guess we'll decide that when we're up." White cracks chimed into existence around them as if responding to his words. "And here... we... go!"
The next few hours were full of learning opportunities, such as: what the inside of a Shadow Government Secret Lab looked like; how to pilot a body you were suddenly trying to share the control of with a whole other person when neither of you had experience with sharing anything and you didn't have any variation on telepathy; which abilities from the alien's genetic memories were actually available to them (heightened strength, speed, and reflexes: yes, glowing eyes and echoing voice: no, using the device Stan had unknowingly picked up: kind of, but only if Stan was doing it, and the things he did with it shouldn't have been any more possible than - well, anything he'd done since his new twin met him).
Several hours after these learning opportunities, in a city that just happened to be an hour or so's drive from where a certain secret lab was very emphatically not located, a man in his early twenties with curly brown hair was staggering slightly as he headed down the street to the payphones, laughing and talking to himself in two different voices.
"- expecting any decent amount of tribute then he should be willing to give you opportunities to gather it," he said, only to interrupt himself with a belly-laugh and a much rougher voice, "Can't believe you're calling it 'tribute'! Makes him sound like he thinks he's a pharaoh or something!" A haughty sniff, "I'm simply using the most accurate terminology available to us." The man stopped in front of the kiosk with a fond shake of his head. "Yeah, sure. Oh, better hush up for a bit - gotta make a call to Ma." His expression turned to slightly worried confusion as he nodded, picking up the phone and dialing.
"Welcome to the great mysteries of the Beyond, that'll be two dollars for your first hour," a woman drawled in a voice almost as rough as the man's.
"Gee, and here I just had ta consult with the spirits over a very important question," he said, grinning.
"Stan!" she gasped, "Since when do you go scaring your old ma like this, the spirits were clamourin' something dreadful about what risks you been taking, sweetheart -"
"Hey, things've panned out amazing, Ma! No danger here, I'm doin' great! New partner and everything, and I got a good feeling about this one."
She gave a suspicious hum, but before she could say anything he coughed into his fist and continued, "I just got this, just one question I need you ta answer, 'kay, Ma?"
"That's my dayjob," she responded, flippancy not hiding her concern.
"Heh, yeah. Okay, so if you were to add something a bit more to my name, what'd you go for?" His fingers pulled nervously at the phone cord. "Y'know, if you'd, uh, happened to decide that my name should maybe be a bit more - uh..."
"Well, most folks would be expecting it to be Stanley, right?"
His expression dimmed slightly. "Heh, yeah, they -"
"But, the spirits are all talking at me to say how the name I should be giving you is Stanford," she finished.
He grinned, warm with relief. "That's perfect, Ma. Uh. Don't expect me back for a while, okay? And maybe -" he ducked his head shyly, "maybe don't be too surprised if you get to hear something about a Stanford Pines going to college, okay?" His hand twisted to pull the receiver away from his mouth while leaving the earpiece where he could hear every gasp of his mother's reaction, and he muttered to himself with the other, smoother voice, "What was the point of this?" and then immediately retorted, "If you're my brother, then our parents should name ya. And Stan-Ford, Stan, Ford - I think Ford suits you pretty good, y'know?" He snickered. "Better'n 'Lee' would."
He blinked a few times. "Oh. I - Oh. I - have a name. I have a name."
And then twisted the receiver back in time to say, "Call you soon, Ma!" and hang up quickly.
His hand went to the back of his neck, pressing and rubbing as if working out a muscle knot (or trying to pet something hidden underneath). "Yeah. And, uh, since we're not heading back to the pawn shop, I figure maybe we can save up enough to get you into some smart-guy college?" He paused, coughed awkwardly, and continued, "Maybe see if you can figure the difference between how things work here and how your memories say they should?"
A shy smile pulled at his lips. "That sounds great, Stan.
"Yeah? Yeah! C'mon, Ford, let's go show 'em all they don't know who they're messing with!
"Show who?" Ford asked, incredulous delight in the question.
"The laws of physics, of course!" Stan grinned fiercely. "With you and me, bro? No one's gonna know what hit 'em!"