Chapter Text
When Stanley C. Pines dies, it's in a fiery explosion, but not because of a gang member hell-bent on finding and killing him, or a jilted ex lover determined for demonic revenge.
Of course, both of these were a possibility, but simply not how Stanley goes. It's not his style. He'd always wanted a fiery, energetic, dramatic ending. And so that's what he gets, the universe for once listening to his last wishes. Or any of his wishes at all.
Careening off a cliff, no one was to know that the car was lit before the brakes were even cut, the brakes cut before the car even started and left the ground.
Stanley Pines still dies, even though no one but a sole woman is there to watch and to recite the Mourner’s Kaddish for him. She does, not because she cares for Stanley but because she thinks it's funny.
***
Stanford Pines is having a shit morning even before he learns his twin brother is legally dead.
For one, his coffee beans had burned this morning, leaving an acrid taste in his mouth as he reluctantly drank the pot anyways. Fiddleford was away visiting his wife and child, meaning of course that groceries had been ignored and there was a bit of a stench coming from the trash can, so this was the last pot of coffee until Ford finally traveled into town for necessities. And it was burned.
For another, productivity on the portal had slowed significantly, and not just with Fiddleford gone for a week. Ford was feeling himself slow, the constraints of his human body and mind catching up to him. Despite this, Bill was nowhere, yet again on a pilgrimage that was too long and too cryptic for Ford to feel inspired from it, at least yet.
But, most importantly, he had this terrible feeling in his gut that something important was happening and he was missing it. At first he had attributed the feeling with nausea or something he ate, but the feeling persisted and nagged no matter what techniques he did to soothe it. It was getting in the way of his productivity with the portal, prompting him to attempt to make the last pot of coffee, starting this whole spiral to begin with.
Stanford Pines is close to throwing the damn coffee pot when the phone rings.
Groaning, he gets up and answers the phone.
"Stanford Pines speaking, how may I help you?" He says, trying and failing to hide his annoyance.
His annoyance quickly turns to concern at the sound of a woman - his mother - sobbing.
"Oh, Stanford," she wails.
"Ma?" He asks, dread pooling in his stomach. "Ma, calm down. What's wrong?"
"Don't tell me to calm down," she snaps at him, voice still thick with tears. "My baby is dead and you tell me to calm down?"
"What?" Ford says intelligently. His heart feels like lead. Heavier, even. "Who - who died?"
He asks but he knows. Deep inside him a dying and decaying part of him knows its Stanley that's dead, the same part that hasn't felt right for nearly 9 years now.
Caryn lets out another sob. "Stanley's gone." She confirms.
Ford hangs the phone up, in shock.
He stares at the ground for a few seconds before coming to his senses and redialing his mother's number.
He's rewarded by her picking up the phone, sobs significantly harder.
Ford can't find it in him to apologize, not when there are more pressing matters at play. "How did it happen?" He asks, voice strangely numb even to him.
"His car went off a cliff, exploded. They say the brakes were cut." Caryn says, voice fatigued.
"The Stanley Mobile?" He asks, for some reason relieved that if his brother has to go his beloved car goes with him, as if it could follow him into the afterlife, or reincarnation, or whatever you believed in.
"No, that got stolen a day before he..." Caryn swallows hard. "It got stolen. He even reported it stolen. He was in a rental car, apparently."
Ford pauses, puzzled. "He reported it stolen? Stanley did?"
Caryn hums. "I know it doesn't sound like him, but he loved that car. We do crazy, uncharacteristic things when we love something." Or someone, goes unspoken.
Ford feels a second of hope. "How do we know that it was even Stanley if it wasn't his car? Maybe somebody else stole the rental car too."
"His ID was on the body they found." Caryn says gently, and Ford feels the light drain. "They found him in Colorado, where he last called me from. It was his clothes. It was his hair on the floor. He was burned almost beyond recognition, but Stanford...it's him."
This time Ford hangs up and sinks to the floor and does not call his mother back.
***
Carolyn thinks for about five minutes before deciding this is a good plan. Actually, this is a great plan. Who are you to judge, anyways?
Killing Stan Pines is the first and easiest thing she's ever done. Cutting the breaks feels like cutting chains. Lighting the fire feels like lighting a celebratory torch.
After Stanley dies, she goes out and gets a drink. Something fruity that she never would have normally drunk in public. She does her makeup the way Sarah taught her, with the wing sharp and a black lip. She wears boots that make her tall figure even taller and enjoys the way it looks. For a second, she doesn't feel like a weirdo or ... Or to borrow a word, a freak. She feels like a goddess.
Carolyn Leah Woods goes out after killing him and drinks a toast to idiots like Stanley Pines who died so she could live.
***
The first thing Stanford Pines does after learning of his brother's death is stare at the floor for twenty minutes, moving in and out of his body.
The second thing Ford does is get to action.
Stanley died in Colorado, so next he figures out where in Colorado he was found and where his body currently is. At first he plans to call every hospital in Colorado but abandons that plan after four calls and learning of medical privacy laws from a very angry receptionist. Instead, he calls Ma a third time and learns the exact location of the remains of Stan Pines, promising his mother not to worry and that he would go get what was left of Stanley and bring him back.
Maybe Caryn thought Ford simply meant bring Stanley's remains back to Oregon or even New Jersey, but from her tense but weary, "ok", Ford thinks she knew what his true resolve was.
Stanford Pines wasn't ready to let go of Stanley Pines quite yet, wasn't ready to close the door, and who's to say he had to?
Not only was he determined to bring Stan back to Oregon, he was going to bring Stan back to life.
***
See, Carolyn thought of a lot of things way in advance of killing Stan. She had a way to get away without anybody seeing her. She had prepared a new license plate for the Stanley Mobile and had redecorated it so that to anybody else, it was just another red El Diablo. She had even littered evidence of a rival gang, so that when foul play was suspected due to the cut brake she wouldn't even be considered. Not that she would have existed for longer than a few days, legally or illegally, by the time Stan Pines' obituary ran and any motive was considered.
One thing Carolyn did not think of was Ford. Ford complicated things.
He was the one thing she could never plan for, even if he used to be the one thing she understood.