Winged Falls

//Chapter Nine//

Half an hour earlier

As he walked out of the gift shop, Stan briefly wondered if it was a good idea to leave it in the hands of a bunch of teenagers— he certainly knew that he would have never entrusted something like this to his teenage self. But they were good kids, and Soos had been working there for long enough that he could surely keep everything from getting too out of control. Besides, how much trouble could they get up to?

Right now, Stan had more pressing matters to attend to. 

As Stan had suspected, Ford was in his room. It was a disaster, as usual, with Ford’s bed shoved into a corner to make room for the books, papers, and occasional conspiracy theory sprawled across any available surface. Ford sat at his desk, hunched over the same Journal he’d had at breakfast.

Stan crossed his arms and lounged against the doorframe. “Oy, Poindexter.”

There was no answer. Ford continued his scribbling, occasionally looking up to stare into space and mutter to himself.

Stan was undeterred— he’d seen Ford in this state more times than he could count. Normally he was fine with leaving his brother to his nerdiness, but Stan wanted this conversation over with sooner rather than later. “Sixer.”

Ford’s head snapped up, staring straight out the window in front of his desk. For a moment Stan thought he’d broken through the trance, but then Ford hunched back down, writing more furiously than ever. 

Stan sighed. “Ford!” he yelled, and finally Ford whirled around. 

“Stan! Don’t do that!”

Rolling his eyes, Stan pulled himself off the doorframe. “We need to talk.”

“That’s informative,” Ford said dryly. “Are you sure it can’t wait? I’m kind of in the middle of something.”

Stan shook his head. Ford sighed, but closed his book and rotated his chair to face Stan. “Considering that no good conversation ever began with the words ‘we need to talk,’ I’m guessing it’s bad news.” When Stan nodded, Ford frowned. “Stan, if this is about those pixies, I told you they were a bad idea. They aren’t fairies. They’re going to escape and infest the whole house— do you know how hard it is to get rid of a pixie infestation?”

“What? No, the pixies are doing fine. Wendy figured out that if you give ‘em a little bit of sugar, they’ll love ya’ and do just about anything you want them to.” Ford’s mouth opened, probably to tell Stan that giving sugar to pixies was a terrible idea, but Stan held up a hand to forestall him. “Ford, it’s—” Stan hesitated. He’d had this suspicion for a while, but saying it out loud made what had been a distant possibility seem all too real. “I think the Emporium is going out of business.”

Ford’s eyes widened, and anything he was going to say about the pixies vanished. “Stan, are you sure? I know business has been a little slow lately, but—”

“No customers whatsoever in two days is hardly ‘a little slow,’” Stan interrupted. “I know you don’t really handle much of the money and business side of things, but— we’ve been losing profit for a while now. Business is like that— sometimes it’s better, sometimes it’s worse, but this is— not good.” 

“If it’s been happening for a while, why didn’t you talk to me about it?” Ford asked, his tone hinting towards the accusatory. Stan’s shoulders slumped.

“I know, I know, I should have. It just— it was so gradual that it didn’t really seem like a big deal, and—” Stan dropped his gaze to the ground. “I guess I thought it was just a slump, that we’d pull out of it.” He sighed. “This is my fault.”