Work Text:
He wonders what he could have done to undo this.
Ford, after leaving that dreadful space, had landed in a very odd-looking dimension. Not that he had seen weirder, but weird enough for him to do a double take. The ground beneath him … is made out of calm, clear water that ripples everytime he walks. He didn't fall in, and upon reaching to touch it, his hand stayed dry - better yet, he did not sink in. This is fascinating , he thinks. The leaves that are floating around are wet, but he isn’t? And neither leaf nor his feet sank? That’s so odd.
Well, he huffs. That’s the multiverse for you.
He looks up at the sky and sees the trees are upside-down, lying low enough for him to touch its leaves. Its shape is similar to the ones floating near his feet. Dark green and abundant; it almost reminds him of pine trees.
It makes him think of home.
However, those trees back in Oregon don’t bear fruit like these ones do. The fruits of the trees seemed similar to grapes, but larger. He can maybe test those out after it it’s edible or not. The smooth, green skin of the large fruit tempts him, but he refrains from plucking it out and eating it.
Instead he goes and finds a fallen tree a few ways from his location. He sits down, his gray hair ruffled. His hand comes up to shake out some debris, his fingers straightening it out. A memory strikes him dead center. Someplace else, somewhere else. A place far from here and from a long time ago. A safe place, on the couch in his newly-crafted cabin in the woods, with you sitting on one end.
Oh, he muses. He can still remember it clearly as day. He was exhausted after tallying his findings about the gnome he brought back from the woods, wandering around and looking for you. You had been the source of his comfort and solace, despite your weekly visits to his place growing more and more scarce as time went on. The time you set aside for him is appreciated, though he did feel a bit selfish wanting to take your time for himself.
He finds you on the couch, sitting so prettily with a new book in your hands. You are never found without a book in your hands, and without your eyes probing and scanning listlessly about. A pearl headband nestled on the crown of your head, shining like a very small tiara. You beam at him and pat your lap wordlessly. Beckoning him to come rest. To stop being Dr. Pines for a moment and just be … Ford.
He remembers sighing in genuine relief as if the world’s weight had disappeared on his shoulders gradually. He drops his books on the counter and cheekily grins as he hurriedly lays down, his face facing upwards.
Your smile. Blindingly beautiful and pure. You are smiling at him, and only him. Has he seen any other gorgeous sights? Certainly not.
Heaven speaks once more as you whisper gently. He doesn’t exactly remember what, but he thinks it’s you asking about how his day went, and if he had eaten anything else other than the occasional bite of fruit and a few jellybeans you brought in his lab. You prod him about his research and he acquiesces. He tells how the gnome, named Shmebulock Sr., is holding up with the constant sensation of Ford’s tape measure wrapping around his limbs and torso and silly hat.
(Suddenly, the imagery of you petting his hair glitches and fades into black. Are you trying to do something? The voice comes back again, hissing and scorning him. Ford tries to ignore it, forcing his mind to come back to that blissful scene. Nothing happens. Wanting to taste something you missed? Something that you craved? Something you pushed away? How pitiful. )
He opens his mouth to retort. But he silences himself, his heart aching. His elbows come to rest on his thighs as he hunches over. He lets his fingers run through his grayed locks, rubbing in a very familiar way. Ford thinks he gets the patterns right. A small bit of pressure here, and he almost falls asleep with the way it felt so similar to yours. He adjusts the angle of his fingers, letting the nails on his fingers scratch lightly against his skin.
(Similar, but not identical. It’s not the same.)
He shapes his hand in an upside-down closed lily position, and then slowly unfurls. He repeats the motion several times, a faint thrumming and humming reverberating in his chest. You always laugh at him whenever he does this. You think of a touch-starved cat who only wanted to be spoiled rotten with cuddles and pets.
(Once upon a time, you carved a path of love and affection across his scalp, tender and sweet and slow. Hands, smaller and gentler and kinder, once etched a path underneath his hair. Humming accompanies the journey of your nails massaging the aching skin, soothing it with lullabies of a kindred soul.)
There is a stinging sensation behind his eyelashes, but he ignores it. His nails, or rather your nails never aimed to hurt him. Never had you any reason or intention to hurt him. Only to love, to adore.
You would always start by tracing his name, followed by the phrase, the greatest .
It was the norm for him, for his intelligence to be acknowledged and applauded. Somehow the same acknowledgement from you differs so much more from the others.There was no specific endearment, no specific title. Just that. He wanted to hear it again and again and again. Ford knows it was not borne from a simple congratulatory remark from someone in his field, or fields, but it was borne from a loving heart that supported him wholeheartedly. Unconditionally.
Ford stifles a laugh. Behind every successful man, there is a woman supporting him. And he hit the jackpot. You, his dear wife; ever-supportive and helping whenever you could. Despite your degree being rooted in Literature, you were of great help in cataloging and pointing out sources for his research. You were a great help in general, a good friend, lover, wife, and confidant.
( Ford, your voice echoes in his mind. He does not remember when exactly you had said this to him, but he sees you in his mind’s eye; beautiful and sincere and gentle.
You are my love, my husband, my friend. I put my life in your hands as you have put yours in mine. I will never leave you. Never. )
A praise he so yearned to hear from you once again, even if it's just your fingers tracing it into his head. As if blessing him with a future that he would eventually gain; that we would be someone great, someone the people would look up to and idolize.
Then you would trace your name. And then his surname. And then the phrase, Stanford Pines’ Wife. Ford’s fingers stutter to a halt. His surname after your given name. He traces it again, and again, and again.
He opens his eyes.
His hand stills from its ministrations, freezing in a memory far gone. He is alone in the middle of the universes and dimensions far beyond his home. Far beyond you.
That was once upon a time.
Now, he tries to emulate the feeling of your hands in his hair; something you have not done since … well. He is at fault for that, pushing you away further and further until you are left in the same state as everyone else. Behind thick walls, barbed wire and thorns blocking your feet from even taking a step forward.
But you try to climb the thorns, scale the walls. Your hands red and scarred from clawing your way though the distance set between you. Once, gaslit by his Muse that you were only doing it out of obligation. Obligation as his wife.
(Out of pity, he once said. He should not have believed it. After all, the soft light in your eyes whenever you look at him is more than genuine. More than enough.)
But now he had time to ponder and to think about everything … you would never do something out of superficial, shallow reasons.
No, you did it because you love him.
And now look at what he did.
(He thinks his eyes burn up with unshed sorrow. But he doesn’t make a move to wipe nor blink it away. He continues the motion, recreating and remembering and reminiscing.)
He lets out a sigh. The creature from the other dimension had got him. It got him good. Pushed through the weakest spots of his soul. He was also physically tired, with the aftereffects of traveling between universes had frayed his energy. Spotting a low branch, he gets up and forces himself to walk to it.
Sitting down, he leans against the thick bark and closes his eyes. As if having a mind of its own, his hand reaches up to bury itself in his hair, emulating the way you scratch at his scalp. It felt silly, a grown man putting himself to sleep by repeating motions his wife used to do while petting him, but a man has to cope.
He has nothing else, anyway.
(Slow strokes of fingers against skin. If he could delude himself enough, he could hear you sing. The familiar sensations of his fingers in that upside-down closed lily position, and then slowly unfurling as it spreads through his gray-brown hair.)
A minute passes.
A fantasy long-abandoned and weathered down by time and doubt and fear. It comes back like a rushing stream of water from a hill. Crashing and cold and prickly. He could almost hear it. You, aged and gray and bent over the table mending his brown coat. Humming a song, a wordless melody that seemed to transcend the gaps of each year he has been away.
A lullaby of the doomed. A lullaby for the doomed. For him, and for herself.
With the wind whispering lullabies, he closes his eyes.
You wonder what you could have done to redo this.
There had been doubts all over the place in which you wanted to be the one to save him. To save your husband. You loved him - as a friend, as a lover, as a wife. Try as you might, you dared not be a courageous fool to try and twist fate.
You know this story well; woven by years and cultures and myths. What was set is set. What you wanted to do was not set in the stars. It was not carved into stone that someone would save him from that dreadful portal. It was already written that he would go to a place - several places - where no one can follow.
Where you cannot follow.
It was your understanding that the canon plotline must not be disturbed so that the predictable events would flow through and that everything will turn out well. Because it did turn out well. It turned out fine; Stan got his memories back, Bill Cipher was gone, and all is fine.
(Your heart sings with terror when you realize these are events that have not happened yet. You have done nothing out of being so careful.
You are so cautious. So cowardly. At this point, you do not know where the line threads or blurs and separates the two. It might as well be a conjoined idea. A conjoined idea that made up your heart. That made up your place in this world.)
But it’s difficult not to meddle. Since childhood you have always meddled, but in the smaller ways you know how without seeming too invasive and probing. You did want to improve lives, whether it be on a miniscule level or on an astronomical level.
( Ha, you think to yourself. Only miniscule; do you hear that? You are one cowardly woman. )
You see yourself as a child once more, helpless and pliant and afraid. Afraid to touch the threads of fate that intertwine around a person’s soul, around their lives. It was always simple, subtle, hidden. Nothing too large or obvious; last time you tried is when you were faced with odd looks and sneers.
Cowardly. Cautious. Careful. Cassandra of Troy. All of it echoes in your head, thrumming through your chest.
It was all you have. All to your name and existence.
(What to do, if not allowed to meddle and manipulate? What to do, when one’s love is taken away? Stand there and gawk, apparently.)
You had excused yourself from the Shack earlier, using the excuse the kids have heard a few times, and several more times that Stanley had heard it. I’m going for a walk, I promise I’ll be back.
Mabel chirps from her seat at the table. “Be safe, Grauntie!” Dipper only nods and waves, a spoonful of dinner in his mouth preventing him from even saying anything.
Meanwhile, Stan stares. Something he has done before. Your protector, alert and wary whenever you go into your moods . Not because he was tired of it (slightly) but because he cannot keep doing this. Where you disappear into the woods for an ungodly amount of time before returning at the first flicker of dawn.
You’re still smiling and patiently for his response, but your eyes flash with indignation. I may be your sister, but I am also his wife. Let me grieve him. Alone.
His eyes glaze over with the same color of grief and regret. Something the two of you share. There was silence, then he relented. He waves a hand, sighing. “Don’t get lost; I’m not rescuing your butt out there.”
You laugh, fabricated and forced. “Let’s hope you won’t.”
At the foot of the tree where you first met him, you stand and stare at it. Familiar and looming and cold. The roots are still as they are. It has long grown around the usual bed of moss and soft grass where you spend your days reading and simply pondering. Where you met him. Where you knew you loved him more than what he was in your old world.
Where you slowly grew to realize you have lost him after that fateful day.
You have grown old with this tree, and this tree matched your age. Ford would have grown old as well, the grays of his hair and the wrinkles on his soft skin be a testament to Kronos. The old rings on your hands are a testament to your Aphrodite and Hera and Hestia. The same old tree where you have built your love, your marriage, and your home. Filled with scriptures of your story; carved by his pocket knife of the days you spent together.
You turn to look at one of the carvings. It reads the date of your wedding day. It reads the date of when you proclaimed your life is in his hands and his is in yours. It seemed more like a nod of mockery than a symbol of love.
You take a deep breath in. With grief and rage fills your lungs, skin meets bark in a harsh punch. One, and then two, and then three. You cannot count anymore; it just keeps coming in several successions.
(So do the memories. Your first conversation. Your first date, your first encounter with the unknown with him . Your first kiss, your first dance after your wedding day. All of it was witnessed by this tree.)
Red trickles down your skin. You don’t stop even as your knuckles are rubbed and scabbed raw and red. You sob, broken and bruised. The carvings still remain, scuffed and forever.
And so is your grief.
You sit down, your bones and the roots and the wood creaking. You have grown old with this tree, and this tree matched your age. Ford would have grown old as well, the grays of his hair and the wrinkles on his soft skin be a testament to Kronos.
But Kronos is relentless. He continues on with the Wheel of Time even if your husband was not here. The only reminder was this tree. With the roots underneath your thighs and the carvings on its thick bark. Faint scratches and carvings of words and phrases of your courtship and then of your marriage had never faded. The stinging pain on your fingers is too old to hold, too frail to grasp.
The only reminder that you still remain. Waiting. Forever frozen in time, in love, in desperation. In rage of wondering what you could have done to stop it. In loneliness. In grief.
(The grief stays. It will stay for a long, long time.)