Everything Is Different Now (Ford Pines x Reader x Stan Pines)

Thirty Long Years

"Stanley! Stanley, help me!"

"Oh no, what do I do?"

"Stanley, (y/n), do something! (y/n)!"

You sat bolt upright in your bed, your mouth opening wide as you gasped in a deep breath of air. You could feel your heart racing in your chest as you struggled to catch your breath, reaching your hand up to wipe the sweat off of your forehead. You blinked your eyes hard, glancing around at the dark room that you were sitting in. It was your bedroom, not the basement where the portal was. Yet that dream had been so real; you still felt as if you were standing in front of the portal, your entire body frozen in fear as you watched your worst nightmare unfold in front of you. But it wasn't just a dream. As hard as it was to admit to yourself, you were reliving a memory.

Three days ago, a man you had never met showed up on your doorstep. He was a stranger with a familiar face and a familiar name. Of course, you knew that Ford had a twin brother, but it had been so long since they had cut ties that you had never even seen a picture of him. The first time you saw Ford's brother, Ford was ushering him in out of the cold, waving around one of his journals and rambling wildly about showing him something he wouldn't believe. As Ford started making his way toward the stairs, you knew he was talking about the portal.

That portal, as far as you were concerned, was nothing but bad news. Ford had been so excited about building it. He had even confessed to you that he was getting the instructions from a being who called himself Bill Cipher. You had lived surrounded by Gravity Falls' weirdness for long enough to know that things weren't always what they seemed, so you were fairly skeptical of Bill's apparent helpfulness. But Ford trusted him, and you didn't want to stir up trouble, so you didn't voice your concerns. All was fine for awhile, until Fiddleford was almost sucked into the portal. At Fiddleford's urging, Ford finally confronted Bill about the portal, and discovered his true plans.

After that, Ford became paranoid and decided he had to hide his journals to keep the portal from ever being used. You hid one of the journals, Ford hid another, but you were still left with one journal to hide. Ford decided that he needed to get this last journal as far away from Gravity Falls as he could, so he sent a postcard to the one person he thought would be able to help. About a week later, Stanley arrived.

You watched as Ford led his brother down into the portal room. You knew that it was important to Ford that he convinced Stanley to take the journal, so you stayed upstairs and waited. For a few minutes, all was quiet. Then you felt the floor start to shake beneath your feet. You knew from the many times Ford had tested the portal that the rumbling meant the portal had been activated, which was something Ford said he would never do again. Feeling worry start to well up in your chest like the slowly overflowing water in a plugged up sink, you raced down to the basement.

Once the elevator reached the ground, you practically sprinted through the basement. When you reached the doorway to the portal room, your arms reached out to grab onto the doorframe as a means of stopping yourself. Your forearms hit the sides of the doorway, but your body was still being propelled forward by the inertia you had created as you ran, so your upper body leaned into the portal room before being stopped abruptly by your arms' inability to stretch any farther.

As you looked through the doorway and into the portal room, you saw Stanley shove Ford backwards over the caution line that Ford had drawn in front of the portal. Before you could react, Ford was lifted off the ground and pulled towards the portal by an invisible force. You felt frozen, unable to even breathe, as you watched Ford getting closer and closer to the opening of the portal. He called out to Stanley for help, but Stanley didn't know how to stop it. As Ford reached the mouth of the portal, he caught sight of you standing in the doorway. The last words you heard him say were, "(y/n), do something! (y/n)!"