[closed] but i wonder where you are

[cryptograms]

Who: Ford & Closed logs
What: April Catchall
When: April
Where: Throughout Trench

Comments

( mabel, dipper ) i call your name into the dark

[cryptograms]

Stan disappears and the rest of the family crumbles.

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.

( john )

[cryptograms]

Well, he probably should have expected something like this - but in his defense, it's not the first time he's been followed around by a weird facsimile of himself.

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.