Stanford "Ford" Filbrick Pines (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cryptograms) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
deercountry2022-04-12 08:09 pm
cryptograms) wrote in deercountry2022-04-12 08:09 pmEntry tags:
cryptograms) wrote in deercountry2022-04-12 08:09 pm
( mabel, dipper ) i call your name into the dark
Not permanently. Not beyond the point of repair. Not even for more than a long afternoon. But between the inherent grief of the situation and the familial bond creating a feedback loop they all need a few hours to simply huddle in a miserable pile together.
The grief doesn't pass, but it does reduce from a boil to a simmer. Ford can't tell if the kids are asleep, pretending to sleep, or simply too exhausted to stop him, but eventually he extracts himself from the pile. He's not sure of exactly how long it's been, but a glance out the window tells him that the sun has made considerable progress across the sky. He heads towards the stairs to the basement, asking Castor to wait in the living room just in case (though truthfully she seems as heartbroken as the rest of them, and the thought of forcing her to stop huddling next to Alcaid and Waddles strikes him as pointlessly cruel).
He goes downstairs intent on doing something that'll let him feel productive, but when he reaches the final landing he suddenly doesn't think that's possible. Wandering past his bookcases and work tables, the shelves lined with specimen jars and reagents, the chalkboards covered in calculations and maps, he cannot escape the thought that every last bit of it is completely pointless. Nothing he can do down here can help. Stan is gone, the kids are increasingly capable of looking after themselves, and no amount of tinkering with death rays or gravity spells or invisibility potions is going to improve the situation.
A spiteful, destructive urge creeps over him. Decades ago, after Stan had been kicked out and the knowledge that he wasn't going to return finally sank in, Ford had given into a similar urge. It had started with a mostly empty soda bottle, abandoned by Stan only a few days ago, flung across the room at one of Stan's old posters; it eventually ended with Ford shredding a photograph and its negative into such tiny, spiteful pieces that it wouldn't be recovered for another forty-odd years in the depths of Julia Sodder's Dream. It hadn't helped at all, ruining half of Stan's possessions had failed to change the fact that Stan was gone, and looking over the now single-occupancy bedroom and seeing the wreckage did nothing to stop Ford from feeling like it was his fault. He wants to turn that same destructive spiteful rage on his things now, like maybe destroying the wrong person's stuff is why it didn't work last time.
But Ford isn't seventeen anymore, and while the extent to which he's matured emotionally is up for debate he knows it won't help. All it'll do is upset the kids and generate a mess for him to clean up later. So he sets himself to the much less volatile task of tidying up. He'd done this the last time disappeared, after he was killed in the Dream; it hadn't helped then and it doesn't help now, but at least it provides a little bit of that productivity he was so desperate for.
He has no particular goal in mind when he starts, but partway through he opens one of his reagents drawers and finds the collection of family bloodstones. His, Mabel's, Dipper's, and... Stan's. There's not quite a dozen of each. Unbidden, he finds himself reflecting that this single handful of Stan's Coldblood stones are the only one's left in the city. He'll find a project for them eventually, but even the thought of using them on something frivolous makes him bristle with unease; hoarding them would be better than actively wasting them. He needs to make sure it's a project that counts. Something Stan would like, or approve of, or even just find funny. A dozen possibilities spring to mind but none of them seem appropriate.
He decides to think about it later. He reaches into a pocket to retrieve some unused bloodstones to add to the collection so he can continue cleaning up - and then his fingers brush over the four-handed Pines compass. It's another gift from Julia, just as precious as the photograph. Unlike the photograph, it's imbued with a peculiar power, one that Ford has never managed to fully replicate. A lot of effort and experimentation allowed him to create an inferior one-handed copy, but whatever trick it is that allows the four hands to operate and turn independent of one another has evaded him.
But maybe he's been too limited in his experimentation. Maybe it doesn't have to use the same materials. Hell, maybe it doesn't even have to be a compass. He has resources and reagents that he never did in the Dream, so maybe...
Ford abandons his cleanup task. He snatches up a spare leather sachet, gathers the necessary supplies, and hurries up the stairs.
He doesn't call for Dipper or Mabel as he makes his way to the kitchen table, though he moves with a brusque urgency they may recognize as 'Ford just thought of a new project that he needs to work on right this instant'. If they try to interrupt he acknowledges them with the equally familiar mhm he so often offers when he's too preoccupied to give a coherent answer. Fortunately, whatever he's setting up doesn't take long - it's just a matter of sorting everything out into the correct piles.
The moment he's done he lifts his head and calls out, "Kids! There's something I'd like your help with."
For now, that something may not make much sense, though it's clear what its components are: a spool of leather cord, a pile of silver clasps, and four sets of four different bloodstones arranged into neat piles.
no subject
Dipper has no desire to leave that initial family pile of misery, but as someone who's been particularly sensitive to the emotions of those around him, he soaks a lot of that in and it doesn't take much to completely exhaust him into what will became a restless nap.
He feels hungover, a feeling he now really understands, thanks to Eddie's party from the Dream. He feels dehydrated, with a needle-like migraine pounding against his temple. Worse than any of that, though, is the hollow feeling left clinging to his heart from residual empathy.
He thinks, maybe he doesn't actually want to be awake right now. Maybe he will go back to bed until things are better. Until Stan is back, and they don't have to address any of this stuff that's hanging over them. How the three of them are going to get along without him. He just doesn't want to do it.
He gives into that urge, and finds himself back in his room, laying in bed with just his omni on, playing old episodes of Ghost Harassers. It's a similar scene to his recovery from the exorcism. It's a similar feeling of helplessness, too, and he winds up zoning out into his own thoughts such that he nearly misses Ford calling out for him. After a moment, he finally peels himself out of bed and peers down the hall towards the stairs.
( john )
Still, he's in a fine state now. He'd been hoping to get out of the Archives in time to scramble home and slink off into his laboratory, but of course Never Mind has decided this is a good time for him to get trapped somewhere in the depths of the stacks. At least there's no one else around to see, especially since he's had to shed his shirt and coat to avoid getting stuck in them.
Even that's only so reassuring, of course. Though he's never descended into Beasthood prior to this he can tell that's what's happening now. He's seen Castor's more monstrous form before and he recognizes the signs here. Two spiraling horns have sprouted from the side of his head. A long tail sprouts from behind him. Most of his fingers, and the webbing between them, have stretched into wings, and even the ones that haven't been extruded into a more spindly form are tipped with black claws. Soft fur is spreading across his torso and limbs, mostly a dark brownish gray but black where it grows over his tattoos. He has his normal legs and feet for now, but he's not counting on it much longer.
And so there he stands: halfway between man and monster, hunched over one of the Archive tables, claws scratching deep gouges on the wood as he tries to keep himself calm. He's having only middling success in that area, but that's better than no success at all.
cw: some emphasis on body horror transformation
And then, in a voice brimming with open delight, someone says:
"Now that's a tattoo."
Standing among the stacks is the hand-melting problem who still routinely sits at Ford's D&D table. His portal-building buddy, his research colleague. One of the few men in town who would look upon this slow, consuming horror and go Huh.
There is not a speck of fear apparent in him. He chews his lip in open thought as he surveys the scene: a man half-devolved to Beasthood, and the metallic ghost that looms behind him, and among it all Ford's tattoo displayed clearly at the nape of his neck.
no subject
He knows what tattoo Sasha must be talking about, since there's really only one that ever elicits that response. Ford lifts one wing-slash-arm and runs newly clawed fingers over the back of his neck. In doing so he becomes aware that his ears have also changed, growing into more elongated, more dish-like shapes. Even without seeing them he can tell it's just another reflection of Castor.
"It's actually a gang tattoo," he explains. That's not entirely true, but it's close enough to pass - and it seems like the sort of thing Sasha and his sense of humor might appreciate.
Ford turns after he speaks, the process a little slower than he'd like given that the slow distortion of his body is still creeping along. When he looks towards Sascha and speaks two more changes become apparent: his eyes are a bright, lurid yellow all the way through, save for the slits that now serve as pupils, and when he speaks it's evident that several of his teeth have elongated to sharp points.
"Hello, Sasha. Are you trapped here as well?"
no subject
He steps forward, even as he says it. Even as he fucks around. He circles neatly around the metallic specter until there is nothing between God and the half-ruined Stanford Pines but empty air, nothing at Ford's back but the gouged table and a few yellowing sheets of paper. With the stacks encircling them, high and dark, it feels like a clearing in a forest.
It's anyone's guess who the predator is supposed to be.
"It does look that way," he says, without apparent concern. "They cut it a bit fine on the timing, looks like."
A few more minutes and anyone shuffled into this corner of the stacks would be here as a meal, not a healer. But he knows what their options look like. Second verse same as the first fifty times the Pthumerians have done this to them: it's always about intimacy.
no subject
Even Ford realizes this is a weird and overly casual conversation to be having while he's undergoing a slow and painful descent into Beasthood (in fact, as they speak the horns sprouting from the side of his head curl out a few more inches with a painful crack). But that's better than considering what he knows about this particular curse, about how he knows full well what the best way to handle this is.
"I think Never Mind would say you're just in time." Ford doesn't feel like he's on the verge of losing himself - not yet. Though even if he could... "Though I don't think it would make differences even if you weren't."
no subject
He steps forward, steps closer. His voice lowers with the proximity.
"And there's an easy fix." It would be cruel to ask whether Ford knows it, when the inevitability hangs unspoken between them. This feels, somehow, like punishment for his unspoken lie to every local who comes seeking a miracle worker: that he needs contact to remold a body. It's always put people at ease, thinking he needs to lay hands on them to rummage through their insides. Now it's been made into an ugly feature.
"We can halt the damage, even see about turning it back... If you'd like me to give it a try."
no subject
It's also, he knows, his only option. He could do the 'right' thing and reject Sasha's offer - and then he'd be left to wander around the Archives as a Beast, attacking random civilians until a Hunter managed to take him out. Or he could accept Sasha's help and...
... Actually, it's kind of hard to imagine any downsides to this that aren't strictly social, like disappointing his nephew. Sasha is dangerous, capricious, and perhaps even outright cruel but not, as far as Ford has seen, in a way that suggests he's likely to use this sort of encounter for a chance to murder someone.
Ford takes a long moment to deliberate, but in truth it's over the instant he thinks that it might be an interesting encounter. Curiosity has always been Ford's most powerful motivator, and he biggest weakness.
"If you think you can," he finally allows. In the time since he last spoke his voice has taken on a deep, gravelly growl, and his speech has become more careful and deliberate as he tries to work around his newly sharpened teeth. That spark of interest is still in his eyes.
cw: body horror, limb removal
"Let's find out."
He closes the distance.
The first thing he does is set his warm brown hand upon the stretching skin of Ford's right arm-wing, just below the shoulder. He slides his hand down over the bend of the elbow, to the elongating wrist, watching with genuine fascination at the interplay of bone and muscle below. The dusting of grey-and-black fur is soft under his palm.
"Best I can tell," he says, this time wholly serious, "contact will stop the progression." How much contact is the question of the hour. "We'll see what settles down without direct intervention... and what we'll need to fix manually."
Manually is the kind of thing a flesh magician would find fascinating, and which most Sleepers would flinch from. But for all that they didn't end on a great note with the last demonstration, he suspects Ford will react more like the former than the latter.
Easy way to find out. He releases Ford's wrist and begins the motion again— hand upon his upper arm, sliding down and across tattooed fur— and this time he presses his thumb to the growing ridge of wing-membrane which seems intent on joining Ford's wrist to his shoulder. He carves it away as though his thumbtip were a blade, shearing wing membrane from the arm as though cutting off stray plastic.
It doesn't hurt, exactly. It doesn't not hurt. There is a viscerally strange burn-and-shift of cells dying off, cells regrowing, God reworking skin and blood vessel back to shape beneath the whorl of his thumbprint. The removed strip of wing-membrane falls to the floor like a piece of cut sailcloth, then withers to nothing.
no subject
Ford moves his arm-slash-wing with Sasha's touch, extending it out like some sort of eerie dark kite. The skin of the membrane is sensitive, but not as sensitive as Ford expects given that it's existed for all of fifteen minutes. Regardless, he can feel every second of it when Sasha slides his fingers from shoulder to wrist.
He's especially aware when John starts to slice away the new skin - though he's immediately aware that 'slicing' isn't quite the right word. It's too neat and tidy for anything like that, but not so neat and tidy that he can easily compare it to anything else. Amputation, perhaps?
Defining the sensation is even harder than defining the act. The pain-but-not is one of the strangest things he's ever experienced in his long, long life of strange experiences and he struggles to find an apt comparison. A shave with a razor that's too dull, or a stretch that goes on a little too long, or an itch that's scratched a little too deep? Probably that last one. He holds very still, expression one of disquieted curiosity.
It doesn't take long before the severed membrane drops to the floor. Any physical or emotional discomfort Ford was contending with is forgotten in favor of studying said membrane as it withers itself out of existence. Immediately, he sets aside the matter at hand to ask:
"Did you cause it to do that, or is that a natural reaction?"
cws will continue
"That was me." He quirks his eyebrows up, openly amused. "You're welcome to the rest of the scraps, if you want them."
His grip shifts, tightens, on Ford's wrist. He flexes his hand as though expecting Ford's wrist to reshape like putty in his palm, and it does; John pulls the warped bone back into place. Ford's arm shortens back out of its horrible new proportions, reasserting human shape with a spasm and a pop. It still isn't quite painful, but it still isn't quite nothing, either.
Ford seems willing enough to handle it, so he carries on. John backtracks to cut away the lower membrane of the developing wing, fingers sliding up the dark fur of Ford's side, crooking in towards his armpit, down again along the underside of his arm. This time, the skin he shears away falls to the floor and lies there, glittering with Darkblood along the wet edge.
His hand comes to rest at the base of Ford's sixth finger. They still have plenty of this to go, if he's to carve out the webbing between Ford's fingers.