#((adding ao3 link after a day so this doesn't banish it from the tags alsdfjasd)

[fordanoia]

I Think I Saw You [Ch 1: A Place to Start]

Fandom: Gravity Falls || CW: - || Stan comes to Gravity Falls upon receiving a postcard from Ford, but he can’t find him and he has to figure out what’s going on. || Ao3 || Fic Tag

Prologue || Ch 1 || Ch 2 || Ch 3 || - || - || -

______(~3.5k words)______

After an hour he still hadn’t seen Ford, and it was still freezing. When he checked the thermostat he saw why the heat hadn’t changed, out of the side of it there a few wires poked out and when Stan pulled the cover off he saw the bundle of mangled wires that had been shakily cut and pulled.

An hour and a half ago, this would have been something he could play off, instead it just added onto the pile of everything else he had found since. The blood, the locks, and then all the writings.

The paranoid scrawls of Ford’s handwriting across papers scattered both on the floor and his desks, none of any that made real sense. Most of his cursive had turned illegible with haphazard lines and out of what wasn’t it was mostly technical talk about machinery and electric waves that Stan didn’t understand the first thing about.

There was only one idea that Stan could get out of the writings, because Ford had written it over and over in different ways, and it was creepy as hell.

‘I’m being watched.’

The idea echoed throughout the entire house - into the excessive amount of locks on the front door, the extra nails in the thick boards pressed against the windows, the barbed wire strung out in the snow around the house.

It even followed Stan himself when he had gone outside to grab firewood from the stack of cut logs near the edge of the trees. He only felt it though because he’d been reading the idea over and over while in some kind of horror movie murder hut looking cabin out in the middle of the woods.

It somehow felt even colder inside even after he closed the door. The icy wind from outside whipping inside after him and scraping at his sides and around his shoulders persisting until he was halfway down the hallway. He supposed that’s what he got for breaking a window for all the wind to come in through.

Stan carried the logs to the fireplace and lit a fire there, settling down on the floor in front of it for the heat.

His gut insisted something was wrong, but Stan had already figured that when he’d gotten the letter. Only difference now was it was a lot harder to think that Ford had sent him the postcard so they could reconnect or- or something like that.

There was no denying something was wrong by this point. He just wished Ford would show up so he could ask him what that something was.

Stan waited by the fire, letting crackling heat fill the space and time with half thoughts flitting every which way.

One particular rabbit hole of thinking kept pulling him back down every time he tried to convince himself that Ford would be back any minute.

Where would his brother have gone out in the middle of a blizzard so bad it frosted over Stan’s car in five minutes? And why?

After a half hour, the question was too big to ignore.

“Dammit, Ford, where the hell are you?” He muttered absently. Another cold wind wound its way into the room.

Grimacing, Stan got up off the floor, leaving his duffel bag in the middle of the floor and went to the kitchen. The fridge wasn’t empty, but it was clear not everything in there was meant to be food so Stan turned towards the pantry instead. As he did though, his eyes caught onto the window and stared. Between the wooden boards, the view outside was darkening.

If Ford was still outside - what if he was stuck somewhere close? Just nearby, Stan could check that far. Ford himself couldn’t have gotten that far on foot himself, and if he was in a car then he at least had something to hide in to keep himself from turning into a popsicle.

Even if he didn’t find anything, Stan couldn’t stand just waiting around and doing nothing like this, not when something bad was looming over this whole situation.

Stan turned on his heel, out the kitchen and unlocking the back door before remembering to zip his jacket closed and pull up the hood. Stepping outside, he pulled on his gloves. He didn’t bother locking the door back.

The white expanse in front of his feet quickly led to the tall forest, and Stan walked forward, keeping his hands in his pockets for the time being, only pulling them out to mark snow against a tree side to help him keep track of where he was at or for balance going down a steep little hill.

“If you’re stuck in a damn ditch right now...” He swore aloud, nearly losing his balance and falling. With the light of the sun dying he couldn’t stay outside long, and he knew it and he knew walking into the woods when it was getting dark was stupid, but it was better than nothing.

As Stan turned right, walking in a large circle around where he knew the shack was, he shouted for Ford as he went. Nothing around him looked like a person and the only colors around were white and brown.

Stan got increasingly frustrated as the light dimmed to the point that he had even less of a chance of making anything important out.

Ford was supposed to be here. Not outside here, but- but when Stan had showed up! Instead Stan came up to an empty cabin. Something was wrong enough for him to call Stan and he couldn’t tell what because Ford couldn’t even just be here for when Stan showed up!!

He looked like he’d been the one needing help though. Maybe a gang was after Ford. He didn’t really think Ford would have gotten involved with a gang much less people at all looking at the state of his house, but it’d at least make sense.

All the little details inside the house screamed that Ford was scared of something or someone, and that wasn’t even bringing into the fact that Ford wrote like someone was after him, watching him.

Stan’s foot snagged onto a covered tree branch and he tipped forward with a curse - hands going out to catch himself. He hit the snowy floor on his gloved hands and then down the hill, sliding onto his side.

He stopped halfway down the hill, his entire right side covered with snow. He turned to a sitting position and carefully stood up, wobbling against the wind. He numbly wiped the snow off of himself before it all melted, gloves wet by the time he was done.

He sighed, biting down on his lip and taking in his dark surroundings. He wouldn’t be able to see Ford even if he was here.

Stan took in a deep breath, then cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted one last time. “Ford if you’re there then just say something!”

He waited in the dull hum of wind broken up by dense trees and softly shifting snow, straining his ears for a response.

Standing still like this and waiting for a noise only made him feel all the more alone.

He glanced down at his hands and took the wet gloves off to shove into his pockets up against the brass knuckles. Turning, he headed back up the hill towards the shack, pushing his hands into his pockets.

He started shivering after a couple minutes, clenching his jaw tight to stop his teeth from clacking.

Stan pressed his arms into his sides bracing himself as he made it back onto flat ground again. The wind has since started to die down, at the very least.

A little while later he finally saw the shape of the shack through the trees, and turned direction to make a beeline towards it.

His right arm and leg felt like they were overheating by this point, but he’d been around enough to know when he was actually in danger of frostbite. That being said, he needed to change and light that fire again because the house was cold enough he’d definitely catch frostbite if he didn’t do anything about it.

Still shaking, he started the fire again. It took a few minutes because his fingers weren’t exactly cooperating right now, but hey.

He went upstairs to swipe some clothes from Ford’s room. He snorted at seeing the few sweater vests hanging in the closet, instead going for a plain black shirt and some pants.

After he changed, he raided through closets until he finally found one with a blanket inside and wrapped it around himself before going back down and sitting in front of the fire to warm up. He was still hungry, but he could deal with that later.

The more he warmed up the more bone tired he felt.

Stan tried to let himself fall asleep, and he was well beyond the point of being tired enough for it, but it took a while. He knew he’d wake up if Ford did come back in the middle of the night, he was a light sleeper. Not knowing what was going on though wasn’t helping.

Eventually though Stan fell asleep.

______

When Stan woke up the fire in front of him had burnt out and the cold was creeping in at him where he wasn’t covered.

He sat up, rubbing his eyes and blearily staring at the burn out embers turned black and gray now.

After a while he finally got up and changed into his dry clothes, calling a couple times into the empty house for Ford. It was worth a shot, even if Ford was nowhere to be seen, of course.

Stomach growling and rolling in on itself, he went to the kitchen and pulled a sleeve of crackers out from the pantry to eat on at the small kitchen table and sitting near the window so he could look out between the wooden boards.

Finding Ford was- hell Ford was the only reason he was here in the first place, he had to find him. And if he hadn’t showed up by now he wasn’t coming back here.

Stan sighed heavily. It was either finding him or figuring out what happened so he could find him. Neither one was going well right now though.

“Okay,” he said to himself. “Okay.”

“So-” he ran his hand through his hair and sighed again. “So, what do I got? He thought someone was watching him, built this place up like he was expecting a raid or something, and now he’s not here.” Stan tapped his finger on the table and chewed on another cracker.

Both doors were locked too so it didn’t look like he was dragged out. Even if someone did drag him out of here, locking the door wouldn’t have made a difference and would have been more work than it was worth.

Stan pulled the postcard Ford had sent him out of his pocket now, looking at it and flipping it over. It had gotten crumpled and the texture had changed from where it had gotten wet last night, but everything was still readable.

He frowned. No send date stamped on it, so that didn’t help him. It could have taken the mail system anywhere from a few days to a few weeks for the post card to reach Stan from Oregon.

So... why would Ford have left this place after he’d fortified it this much. He couldn’t have had somewhere more secure than this, right? Not unless there was secretly a castle in the woods he could hold up inside. Did being watched matter so much that he had to get out of here?

Stan was still looking down at the postcard, thumb tracing over the bent corner that was close to falling off.

Where would he go if he thought this place wasn’t safe?

“Who’d even be watching you out here...?” Stan muttered, tucking the card away and getting up.

Stan went back through the rooms, grabbing any scrap of paper he saw with writing on it and dumped it all onto the desk in a relatively empty study.

He turned the lamp overhead on and started going through the papers for any information, quickly slapping all the stuff that only had equations on it into one pile to look if he got desperate.

What he was left with was - still hard to read just like yesterday, but this time he took the time to try and figure out the actual messy scrawls where they happened and find anything that could help point to what was going on.

The most legible stuff was full of technical jargon and Stan had to focus hard to not read the same sentence over and over again or look at the occasional doodled triangle.

It seemed to be about some machine to do with... electric omega waves? Some kind of waves. The more Stan read the more he picked up on the less scientific stuff inside. Supernatural barriers and rituals that definitely hadn’t come out of a physics textbook.

There was a room here that had been half filled with photos and samples of supernatural things, like mushrooms three times as tall as Ford himself and the needles of whatever a gremloblin was. It was a nice reminder that even if he hadn’t seen Ford yet, his brother still hadn’t changed that much.

After reading through most of the boring stuff Stan was able to piece together at least something. Ford had made two machines.

The first one, which Stan was going to call the problem machine, had made some kind of problem that Ford was trying to fix. He kept briefly mentioning this problem - a hole, a rift, a breach, never anything specific enough to know what it actually was though. No matter what though it always sounded like something about it was a problem or had made a problem.

The second machine was supposed to fix that. Stan didn’t really know how, kinda didn’t look like Ford had figured that out either, but it had something to do with waves and something supernatural.

Going from knowing zilch to knowing something was great, really it was better than the absolute jack all he had yesterday, but he still didn’t know what these machines were actually for.

If he was trying to use the supernatural with the fixer machine though maybe the problem also had something supernatural to it. And whatever the problem was, it was definitely big. Big enough that someone was after him.

Stan nearly gave up on the really illegible stuff, but half way through one page he realized that for several lines Ford was writing the same thing over and over ‘can’t sleep.’

Stan felt a pit drop into his stomach, looking for the very worst writing he could find across the pages and nearly every sentence he managed to trudge through sounded like that. Over and over again, Ford kept talking like even a nap like it was the end of the world.

Finally- god damn finally- Ford mentioned someone.

‘I have to stay awake. I can’t let Him win.’

“Come on, give me a name or something here." It was like the most annoying game of 'Guess Who' but from a vague piece of paper that nobody else besides Stan probably would have bothered to read through considering it was torn nearly in half and smudged in dirt.

Tapping his foot, Stan tried to quickly read and just winded up getting frustrated when he couldn’t, before he finally tossed the paper away from him.

His imagination got away from him, seeing Rico’s guys coming after Ford - except as soon as he imagined them creeping up to where Ford was tucked into the cabin it stopped making sense and the picture in his head fell away.

There were no bullet holes anywhere around the house, not even any forced signs of entry besides the one Stan made himself. So what had been going on when Ford had been here?

He wasn’t sure if he’d prefer if it was like the people he’d dealt with before, it’d be bad, but at least Stan knew how to work with that. This guy? Stan didn’t know what this guy had been doing or what he’d been planning to do that had Ford this scared.

“What was this guy watching you for anyway?” He asked the paper, the only damn thing around here that could even answer his questions.

The lamp light flickered three times before returning to normal. “Better not be cameras in here.” Stan muttered, before picking up a new page to read.

The lamp, however, started going in and out, electricity failing for long enough that it got distracting.

Stan stood up and unplugged the lamp from the wall then securely plugged it back in, looking back at the light a moment to make sure it wasn’t about to go on the fritz again before sitting back down.

He didn’t get far though because the light flickering again, stopping when Stan turned his head to watch it for a moment. He leaned back in his chair, tipping it back onto two legs and letting his eyes glaze over in the direction of all the paper piled up in front of him.

Maybe the guy had nabbed Ford while he was out of the house. It made enough sense. It’d explain why everything had still been locked up when Stan got here and why Ford wouldn’t have come back to his fortress of solitude.

If he was watching Ford then sure he’d know when he left the house and Ford couldn’t stay inside forever if he ran out of food.

The only other option Stan could really think of was that Ford decided this shack wasn’t safe anymore, but again - Stan had no idea where Ford could have gone.

Technically, he also had no idea where anything in town was or where someone could be trapping Ford, but finding a shady place sounded a lot easier than finding whatever Ford would consider safe from this guy’s eyes when a remote cabin out in the woods wasn’t. If Ford left for a new hideout, paranoid that he was being watched, then chances were he made sure he wasn’t seen and left no traces behind.

Stan started to feel grounded, with some options finally sliding into place.

Ford was either being held captive somewhere or he had hidden himself somewhere nobody would find him. So all Stan had to do was look around until he found someone that fit the bill, or if Ford was hiding out somewhere then for him to notice Stan running around and eventually leave him some kind of sign.

Stan's eyes focused as the light from the lamp started to quietly buzz, darkening to a low light before it began flickering.

Stan tipped his chair back to the ground, and reached inside to twist the bulb in tighter.

He watched the lamp expectantly and for a solid couple seconds it seemed like it had done the trick.

Then the light began to flicker on repeatedly, flashing three times and after a pause the light held on for a moment before the bulb darkened again.

Stan watched the faulty light flicker along for a few seconds before he finally stood up and just unplugged it from the wall entirely. He was done reading anyway.

Plus he could eat pretty much anything he wanted when Ford wasn’t here. Even if Ford wanted to get mad at him about it later, he’d just say he couldn’t get to the store for food anyway. Not that Stan had any money to buy food even if he went to town.

Stan went downstairs and into the kitchen, ready to rummage something more than crackers this time.

When he flipped the light switch on though it started flickering and Stan groaned. “You gotta be kidding me.”

He flipped the switch back off. Then on. “Work.”

The light turned on and Stan stayed poised with his finger at the switch and waited. When nothing happened he finally went over to the pantry. “That’s what I thought.”

He pushed aside the box of crackers and started to inspect the cans for soup or something good when the light started slowly flickering again. He ignored it for the first couple seconds, but it kept going.

After a dozen seconds he finally shot a scowl at the still flickering light before walking back towards the switch. The instant he took a step, the light started going completely haywire and he swore he could hear the electricity from it buzzing.

“Alright, yeah that’s-”

Stan had made it halfway across the kitchen when there was a loud pop and the light over his head burst, plunging the room into darkness with the tinkling of glass and a crackling noise of uncontained electricity that soon died down.