Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/11541432. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Major_Character_Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage Category: M/M Fandom: Gravity_Falls Character: The_Author_|_Original_Stanford_Pines, Grunkle_Stan_|_Stanley_"Stanford" Pines, Filbrick_Pines, mentions_of_Bill Collections: Anonymous Stats: Published: 2017-07-18 Chapters: 2/2 Words: 2960 ****** Mistakes Made ****** by Anonymous Summary A totally non-canon work inspired by godtater on tumblr's fildick AU. Probably won't make much sense if you're not familiar with that. ***** Chapter 1 ***** Stan thinks of origin worlds as vacations. Worlds like his own. Like the one he came from, the one he barely remembers. Most of them don’t have a Ford at all, instead being the home world of one of the many portal Fords that wander the multiverse. It’s always satisfying finding an origin world for a portal Ford he’s killed. Sometimes though he finds a different state of affairs. Sometimes he finds an origin world with the Ford still in residence. Sometimes they simply haven’t gotten to the portal yet. Sometimes things went differently, and Ford chose a different path. The boss doesn’t care about those worlds, but Stan certainly does. They’re the cherry on top, the chance to kill Ford before he can start causing trouble. Sometimes Ford’s an old man, grey and infirm, but Stan’s never let that get in his way. Time doesn’t flow the way it should between worlds, and twice he’s caught a teen Ford right on the cusp of ruining the life of that world’s Stan. Those feel the best. The world he’s on is sunny and annoyingly pleasant. He’s already checked Gravity Falls and West Coast Tech. Neither shows any sign of Ford, and when he checks the paper things get weird. It’s only the sixties. Stan doesn’t remember where he lived then. Any memory he had has been strained out of his brain after a million modifications, but when he simply lets himself drive without thinking he finds himself on his way to New Jersey. A part of him still remembers, but the joy of it–of catching a Ford before he can ruin things–is already gone. His head buzzes as he winds his way through New Jersey. He’s going home, he decides, but he doesn’t know where that is. He’s driven by instinct that even a hundred deaths hasn’t managed to wipe clean, going right back to where everything started. He doesn’t remember. He doesn’t remember the town. He doesn’t remember his family. He knows that Ford must be there–assuming things haven’t deviated even more than he thought, Ford can’t possibly have graduated high school yet–and yet he feels ill at the thought. He feels like he can almost hear the sound of the boss calling him back, but he’s too close to let this Ford go free. It’s just past eight when he pulls up in front of the house. It’s dark and cold, but at least one light’s still on upstairs, burning in the window as Stan parks. He doubts anyone will notice him, and doesn’t really care if they do. He’ll do his business and then be gone, back into the multiverse before anyone’s the wiser. He doesn’t make it to the house. The buzzing in his brain has only gotten louder, and he vomits into the bushes before he even makes it to the front door. His brain is screaming at him to leave, but he can’t make himself leave either. He feels like he’s being torn in two, an all-to-familiar sensation. The door is easy to open, quiet even though he doesn’t need to be. He remembers and doesn’t remember the house. It’s strange and alien to him when he first takes a look, but he still knows it. He knows where the stairs are. He knows which step to avoid because it creaks. None of it is coming back, but he knows it anyway. He knows which room is his own, but he doesn’t stop there, even though he knows that Ford would sleep there too. He’s driven by something else, a long buried instinct, and he doesn’t stop until he reaches the master bedroom. Stan is rage. He is always angry, always frustrated, but never like this. He is nothing but his anger. He doesn’t know the man in front of him, even if a small part of his brain says the word father before it’s washed away in a red hot wave, but he knows that he has to die. No, he knows he has to hurt. Stan barely registers the boy on the bed. He is unimportant, a secondary concern. The only thing that matters is the man in front of him and the way he screams as the piranha takes him apart. Stan only comes back to himself when it’s over and done with. The body is in pieces in front of him and Stan can taste blood in his mouth, even if he has no idea how it got there or whose it is. The boy–Ford–is sobbing incoherently, but he’s made no attempt to run or hide. He’s a coward, curled at the edge of the bed as he tries to hide under the pillow. Stan’s head throbs. He vomits again, but there’s nothing left to come up but liquid. He’s already emptied his stomach, but his entire body feels so profoundly unwell that he tries to vomit again anyway. He needs to leave. He doesn’t drag out Ford’s death, just buries a knife in the back of his skull and turns away. He vomits again, dry heaving onto the floor. There’s a monster by the door, small and fragile, it’s back pressed to the wall as it stares up at him. The part of Stan that doesn’t remember tells him that’s you in the mask, but it’s drowned out by the sensation that his brain is ripping in half. He doesn’t want to remember. He doesn’t want to know what the mask is or why it’s important. He simply walks, scooping the little monster up in his arms and leaving the way he came. He stumbles the whole way. He can’t find his feet, can’t make his head stop throbbing. He keeps having to stop and dry heave, flashes of memories coming and going. The boss will fix him. The boss will take him apart and take away all the old memories that Stan doesn’t want to remember. Stan doesn’t acknowledge that there’s someone beside him until he’s almost out of New Jersey. He’s never cared much for local law enforcement–never has, as far as he can recall–but he’s sure that the sight of a small naked boy in a monster mask sitting in his passenger seat would raise more red flags then was ever comfortable. He doesn’t know what to do with his younger self. He doesn’t have emotions about him, doesn’t have feelings. He doesn’t really care, but he’s sure he probably did once. He’s sure he should probably take the mask off and send him in to the police to tell his strange and terrifying story about a monster with sharp teeth and an eyepatch and how it tore apart his family. He’d still be better of then he’d be with Ford. He considers for a moment taking him with him. Back to the boss. But he can’t make himself do that, even as heartless and empty as he is. So he pulls the truck over, his head still aching, even if the ache’s fading the farther he gets from New Jersey. The mask is still an issue. He can’t look right at it, has to avert his eyes. Too much of a glance makes him feel like throwing up again, and before he makes an attempt at actually removing it he has to brace himself against the hood of the car to catch his breath. The boy–young Stan–doesn’t move. He’s as still as he ever was, so silent he might as well be dead. “Lets get this off you so I can go home,” Stan manages to say, but it takes three tries before he can make himself take the mask off. He treats it like a bomb, dropping it in the ditch. He wants to set it on fire, but he settles for blasting it with the shotgun in his car in the absence of a flamethrower. The moment it’s gone–little more than ash–he feels better, the worse of the ache gone. He turns back to the car and it hits him like a punch to the gut. The boy in the passenger seat isn’t himself. The face shape’s wrong for it, and even though there’s no glasses, it’s clear enough who it is. He’s mixed them up. There was no reason for it, no way to know, but he knew that the boy in the mask was him. But he was wrong. Stan forgets how to breath. He vomits again, dry heaving bile into the grass by the side of the road. He can’t calm down, can’t remember how to breathe, and after a few terrified seconds he simply runs. He can’t go back. He can’t face it. Thirty miles later he activates the device that calls the boss to get him and never goes back. ***** Chapter 2 ***** The Piraña is never caught off guard. Never. So it comes as a pretty big surprise when he is. One minute he’s cutting through a market, hot on the trail of a portal Ford, and the next his body feels like it’s on fire as he convulses on the ground. A hand grabs the back of his jacket and hauls him into an alley. Something metal and overly tight clamps around his neck and Stan suddenly finds himself vomiting onto the ground. It’s agony beyond anything he’s ever experienced, the sensation of every cell in his brain being ripped in two. And then it’s gone. There’s nothing but silence, the sudden loss of what he’s had for years–his connection to the boss. “Fuck,” he hisses between gasps of pain, the phantom sensation lingering despite the fact that the pain itself is gone. He should be able to move–should be able to function–but the sudden loss of his connection to the boss makes him feel like he’s forgotten how everything is supposed to work. Someone–probably the guy who caught him, maybe a Ford–pulls the eyepatch off, inspecting his eye. Stan can only half see it, his left eye effectively dead in the socket. “Disgusting,” comes a voice that is undoubtedly Ford’s own. “Your eye’s pretty much juice now, without Bill to hold it together. It’s leaking.” Under his breath, Ford mutters something about damage to the orbital bone and Stan stops listening. He growls, showing his teeth–human and boring and not at all the teeth the Piraña is famous for–and the Ford in front of him lets out a laugh. “You haven’t changed at all, have you? Haven’t aged a day. Any signs of aging, Bill probably just strips out of you. Effectively immortality, except you’ve already died a few hundred times in the process.” Ford doesn’t sound scared. He sounds like he has Stan right where he wants him, agitated and so helpless he can do little more than flop around like a fish. Even as his motor control comes back to him, it’s in bits and pieces, leaving him useless and defenseless. Ford straightens up, catching Stan by the collar of his jacket and dragging him down the alley. Stan struggles desperately, but there isn’t much he can do, and even lifting his arms seems like a monumental effort. The Ford must have been waiting for him in particular, because he doesn’t have far to go. The room is musty and mostly empty, but it’s also private. This Ford has business with him. The moment the door is closed, the Ford bends down, stabbing Stan in the neck with a large auto-injector. Things go from bad to worse very quickly. Stan loses control of his entire body, pissing himself in the process, and not more than thirty seconds later he can’t even sit up straight, sagged against the wall soaked in his own mess. He can move his eyes, but everything else has suddenly been jerked out of reach, and so to have his chances of murdering the Ford the way the boss intended. “You look awfully pathetic,” the Ford says as he squats down in front of him. Nothing about him stands out. He looks like any number of other Portal Fords–the same general outfit, the same glasses, the same physique. He’s the very picture of the man that Stan’s always despised with the very fiber of his being, and if he could growl, he absolutely would. Ford reaches over, grabbing his chin as he tilts it up to get a better look at the left side of his face and the damaged–maybe even missing–eye. He doesn’t say a thing as he checks the damage, letting out a little sigh that only serves to infuriate Stan more. “You don’t even know who I am, do you?” He can’t respond, of course. He’s not capable of telling him that he’s yet another fucking Ford, another bastard that deserves to take a harpoon to the face. “But I know who you are,” Ford says, his other hand reaching up to match the first. Stan suddenly finds his head being held in such a way that he has little choice but to stare at the other Ford’s face, an almost romantic position that makes him want to vomit. “I know who the Piraña is, the man with sharp teeth and an eye patch. The man who looked just like he’d have looked if you’d given him another twenty years.” Stan doesn’t remember. He doesn’t think he’s ever run into a Ford that didn’t end up dead, but he’s not quite cocky enough to believe it’s impossible. Maybe he left a bit too soon and someone managed to get them help. Stan manages to slur out a noise that doesn’t sound at all like the fuck you it should be. He’s dealt with a lot of Fords, so it comes as a surprise when the man in front of him slams a fist into his gut. Stan chokes, vomiting what remains onto himself. He can’t even properly clear his airway, each breath desperate as he tries in vain not to choked to death on his own vomit. He’s deal with pain before, and the pain isn’t nearly as bad as what came before, but his inability to fight back is driving him mad. He can’t do anything–can barely even watch without moving his head–as Ford stands up, staring down at him with no expression at all. He looks bored, resigned to what’s happening. “You don’t know who I am, but it doesn’t really matter,” the Ford says, and then there’s suddenly a heavy boot pressed to his groin, a new kind of agony–but also humiliation. “I don’t even know how I should feel about you. Thankful? You saved me, but you did it in the worst way possible. Everyone knows. Everyone pities me. I’ve had that hanging over my head my whole life. But I wanted to come out here anyway. To see you again, to remind myself that I hadn’t imagined it. Did you know some people think I did it? Not that they’d ever blame me, not poor old Ford, but the idea was there.” The pressure on his groin only increases, and Stan lets out a choked wheeze. He has no idea what’ll happen to him if he dies here like this, cut off from the Boss. Will the Boss know where to find him? Will he be able to put him back together again? Stan has no idea. “Even when I got out here, it took a while to find you. To hear stories about the   Piraña, about what he does. The Ford killer. It took me ages to understand, to really get what had happened. You mixed us up, didn’t you? You killed the wrong one.” Stan doesn’t remember. His head feels like his head is splitting again, a memory trying to surface that’s been removed entirely. “Only he even took that from you, didn’t he? He took the memory of your own failure so that you’d keep doing his dirty work. Only now you’re out of date.” The panic is starting to set in. Stan didn’t think he could panic, not anymore. Not with the boss on his side. But now he doesn’t have anyone on his side. He can’t even move, can’t do anything but lie there on the floor, covered in piss and vomit as Ford–a fucking Ford!–steps on him like he’s a piece of trash. Ford’s doing something–he can’t see, his heads at the wrong angle–but the sudden silence and lack of movement makes him feel even more anxious. He needs backup. He needs the boss. He’s never been out of contact for this long before, and he hopes that means boss will send someone to get him back. He’s useful, isn’t he? The one man Ford killing team. The Ford above him lets out a sudden laugh, long and harsh. There’s something nasty in the laugh, and there’s something even worse in the way that Ford shifts his weight, practically crushing Stan underfoot. “You’re mine now,” Ford says, practically yelling it to the ceiling. He seems manic, but the behavior seems painfully familiar. Ford leans down, grabbing Stan by the hair as he twists his head up to look at him properly. Ford’s eyes are glowing yellow. His teeth are just as sharp as the Piraña ‘s should be. “You’re out of date, Stan,” Ford says. “Turns out your boss’d rather have a Ford on his side. Someone who knows the others inside and out. Who isn’t going to be such a fuck up. And as it turns out, your boss things losing one fish is a pretty good trade.” Stanley Pines isn’t ever good enough. Stanford Pines is always better. Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!