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[Ford looks at him helplessly. He already had his own freakout about this, furious that some cosmic entity would think it was worth it to bring Bill Cipher back into existence to be on a reality-show boat.

Then, he puts his hand on Stan's shoulder, and the line of his mouth goes firm.]

No. No, Stanley, it wasn't. What you did, what you sacrificed -- it killed him. He's here as an inmate. He's been here twice as long as I have. And, while he's still a dangerous individual who most people absolutely can't trust....what's happened to him on the Barge has changed him.

He's not safe. But he's...better. He's not going to destroy universes anymore, or kill indiscriminately. That's trillions of lives saved by what you've done.

It mattered, Stanley. You're a hero.

[Stan's still uncertain for a lot of reasons, but the gesture helps. Having a brother to actually comfort him helps. After a moment of weighing what to say, he smiles.]

...Eh, I guess that's something. Thanks, Sixer.

[Instead of dwelling on it out loud, he changes the subject a little so he can let those thoughts just sort of simmer by themselves.]

Heh, I dunno the guy but. If he's an inmate, he's prolly gonna be real ticked off I'm a warden around here, right?

[It's said very casually. He doesn't know Bill enough to have anger behind it; it's just a logical jump between two points. A rickety rope bridge across a void.]

I'll talk to him about it. Believe it or not, we're, ah, actually on pretty good terms.

[Ford. Ford, please.]

He'll listen to me. Probably.

[A beat.]

I'm much more certain about that than I sounded.

Uh-huh. Sure you are.

[Look at him. He looks so convinced. You're so convincing Ford, look at how sold he is.]

....we're, ah, [he clears his throat.] sort of, [a wiggle of his hands,] involved.

[better Stan hears it now, from him.]

Involved?

[...]

...You're fucking him! You're fucking the guy I can't remember! What is this, a soap opera?!

[He says that, but he playfully slugs Ford in the arm.]

[Oof, okay, this is already much better than Ford was afraid of. It really does sound like a soap opera when Stan puts it like that, doesn't it? Ford feels torn between waiting for the other shoe to drop and the inappropriate urge to laugh.]

...Actually, it sort of is.

Uh. Congratulations? Is that the right thing here?

[Prolly not. Hm.]

Look, I'm not gonna say I'm not concerned. All this memory junk, we did that for a reason. But...I dunno. You literally know more about what's going on than me right now. I don't even know who this jerk is! So...

[Stan frowns. And then squints at Ford.]

Wait, you didn't do the whole inside out nightmare thing because you're dating him, right?

[Bending reality to impress some guy is probably not a great idea. And not a thing Ford would probably do, but a thing Stan would at least think about if he had the ability and means.]

What?! No! The dating only happened after all of that went to pieces! He didn't seduce me into breaking into the real world, Stanley, don't be ridiculous.

...

[He coughs.]

If anything, it was the other way around.

[Stan just grins - the exact sort of impish grin he always got throughout their childhood whenever Ford admitted he liked a girl.]

Ha! Looks like it worked too!

[sdfhgj stanley please]

No, Stan, I mean --

-- I traded my help for making his plan less severe. You have to understand, he's very old and very dangerous. He's waited thousands of years to make a plan work before. I believe he would have made it into the Director's dimension sooner or later, no matter what. If I turned him in, he'd just find another way to do it! He would have killed millions of people -- the whole west coast, maybe. But if I got involved, I could negotiate. Make changes to the magic. Make sure nobody died, and that they all had a fighting chance to imagine their fears away.

It still went terribly wrong. The Barge wasn't supposed to turn inside-out like that. And I...I wasn't expecting so many people to have so many nightmares. He got to the person who wrote us, but the answers I was hoping to find, about the Barge....they weren't there. It was a disaster. Lucas Starrambler nearly died for good! But...no one else did. If I'd walked away, it would have been so much worse.

...

...we only started dating after that.

Gee, sounds like a real catch.

[He rolls his eyes.]

But hey-- it sounds like you did what you could. And nearly died isn't the same as dying, so that's pretty good, right?

...he stood by me when not many other people did.

Everyone else on the ship who hadn't been part of the plan thought what I did was reckless and selfish at best -- inhuman at worst. They blamed me for being involved more than they blamed Bi--him for actually doing it. No one else seemed to understand what I'd been trying to do.

[It had been lonely -- Steve Rogers had understood, but Steve had his own troubles, in and out of comas with his husband. Jon had come the closest, out of everyone not involved in the plan. Laura had gotten it, but she'd disappeared not long after.]

Sure, I wanted to see if we had really been written by who he thought. And he had me convinced that the people running this ship were in that dimension, too, and I wanted to ask them a thing or two. But getting to the people writing us was his real goal, Stan. All along. And I thought that if I was there for it, I could keep him from hurting anybody.

...anybody who hadn't turned our lives into sci-fi drama, anyway.

[R.I.P. Mr. Hirsch.]

Edited 2020-03-24 03:59 (UTC)

Heh. Been there. Not the sci-fi drama part, but the getting blamed when you're just fixing a mess. I got real good at that trick over the years.

[Hell, he's even been on the other end of it from Ford himself. It's not something he usually sees Ford catch flak for though, and now that he is Stan's not sure he'd want to actually wish it on him.

This time, Stan's the one to place a hand on Ford's shoulder.]

Hey, you're in good company though. And I'm here now! So from now on, even if no one else gets it, you've always got me in your corner.

[What Stan says is simple, but it's such a relief.

Ford knows what he did wrong, and why. But to hear Stan get it, that it was a mess when Ford got here and he was just trying to fix it -- it helps lift some of the uncertainty and confusion that he's been carrying around.

He looks at Stan with relieved gratitude. The hand on his shoulder is immediate, reassuring. This is real! Actually real.

Ford loves Stan Pines so much.]

Thank you.

[Stan loves Ford too. And he's so, so grateful he's here and alive. Ford's alive, and he's here, and this isn't the end of everything he's ever wanted.]

Don't sweat it, Sixer.

[He give Ford's shoulder a little shake before he pulls his hand away.]

So, you graduated, huh? [He grins.] Does that mean you're telling people you've got thirteen PhD's now or what?

Ha! It's not that kind of graduation, Stanley.

[He sobers.]

Frankly, I'm convinced it's all a scam anyway.

Yeah, figures.

[Stan grumbles.]

I still can't believe I fell for it though.

It gets worse. Stan, I'm pretty sure this ship is actually a reality show.

[Stan's not sure he has any shock left in him at this point, just sarcastic sass.]

We don't even get a cash prize for it, do we?

Well, we do get a deal from the Admiral. That's what he's offering, to get wardens to buy in. Inmates get to come back to life, and wardens get something that would otherwise be impossible. Or, at least, something they think they can't get any other way. It works, Stanley. But that's not what it's for. If this place were meant to redeem inmates, it'd be much more efficient. Security cameras would actually work! But I think someone out there's more interested in watching us run around having adventures and interpersonal drama than in how many people actually graduate.

So, it's Baby Fights, except we're the babies.

[That's the closest he gets to reality shows, really.]

I never agreed to that! Where's the fine print?!

There is no fine print, Stanley. Just an extremely frustrating cosmic being who's depending on us needing miracles badly enough to cooperate.

So, what are we gonna do about it? We're gonna do something about it, right?

[Is there a plan? He wants in on the plan!]

I don't think we can.

I tried. And -- terrible things happened. This whole ship is full of people who need what the Admiral has to offer. They don't want the place to change, and they don't want to accept that we're all being used.

I'm going to keep working on the ship. And I'm going to keep collecting data in case something turns up we can use. The person I told you about is working on a long-range scanner to see if we're being followed by the people who are supposedly the Admiral's boss.

...has anyone told you yet that the ship we're on is stolen?

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