Chapter Text
True to his words, Stanford went to work after the forest dwellers visit to gather as much knowledge and information about the role and position of Guardian there was in Gravity Falls.
Which sadly turned out to be thin.
Corduroy's diary helped and provided some insight as to what this Guardian person used to do with the local lumber mill. Even if it was from an outsider's point of view, Ford would take any help he could.
The orchard's records were a dead end. Alder still kept some of his family's records but nothing that was helpful. Mainly it was just a series of information about the properties of the different fruits they produced. The pages about what they did with said fruit had been eaten away by some mouse and critters.
The local library had little to no books about anything related to it. Even the restricted area was sadly scarce. It did have an interesting series of small articles published at the beginning of the creation of the town, relating the different encounters with the locals and the forest dwellers and how each time a man had stepped up to avoid a full frontal confrontation.
It led Ford to search the town hall and that is where things became interesting.
It started with a small bronze bust of some notable figure whose name had been lost to time, sitting innocuously off in a dusty corner surrounded by boxes of books and other random flotsam. He and Stan were hoping some of the old boxes might hold less scrupulously curated notes or personal diaries, and in the middle of all but hacking up a lung from the dust, Stan managed to bump into the bust.
And tripped backwards into a secret door that cracked open in the wall.
On the other side was a tiny room, so small that the two broad shouldered brothers couldn't fit together and Ford ended up hovering on the threshold while Stan took one of their flashlights to get a closer look.
“Anything?” The elder inquired from the entrance shuffling from one feet to the other in anticipation.
Stan opened a few of the dusty boxes to peer inside and shoved them back on the shelf where they were.
“Nothing but old documents about the town’s people.” He sighed. Stan made to turn but bumped into another box slightly askew from the others making the dust fall on his head and sending him into another coughing fee.
The younger couldn’t see much but the elder could clearly see the first few letters that were cleaned of the dust. It reads: G-U-A-R-D in blotchy letters.
“Stanley! You found it!” Ford exclaimed enthusiastically as he pointed to the box behind his brother.
"Whu-?"
Dissolving into further coughing, Stan pushed to be let out of the room to catch his breath, shaking the dust from his hair and sitting down on one of the nearby crates. It had been almost two weeks since the whole mess with the screwed up transformation, and even though he'd mostly recovered, he still had some moments where he got tired easily and had some trouble with breathing. Dan had mentioned it sounded like some kind of asthma and gave him a whole pound of locally made honey drops "for that rough throat".
He dug a small baggie of them out of his pocket once he got his breath back, letting the sweet ease his sore throat.
Ford hovered anxiously nearby, worrying between the excitement of the discovery, and he visibly relaxed when Stan flashed him a smile and a thumbs up. He turned back to the little room, frowning a bit before he moved to squeeze in himself, careful not to knock anything over.
"We really ought to tell someone about this mess, important documents like all this really need to be better cared for..."
Retrieving the box was easy now that it had been found, and Ford hefted it out with a small grunt of exertion. It was heavier than it looked-!
As Stan’s coughing fee settled, the elder rested the old box in front of them and carefully opened it up. He raised an eyebrow at the content of it.
There was a pile of paper alright but what made it heavy was a strange oval black tablet that seemed to be made out of a smooth rock with weird symbols carved on it.
“What the heck is that?” Inquired Stan.
Stanford carefully took the tablet to inspect it. He had never studied many ancient languages, focusing primarily on Latin, and had never seen these before. The tablet was strange as well. Smooth and rough around the edges. Despite being unattended for many years, it was still very warm to the touch.
“I don’t know… I’ve never seen these symbols or types of rock before. It’s amazing.” Ford whispered. He could feel a shrill of excitement running up his spine. He would have a blast deciphering the tablet.
Beside him, Stan stretched his neck to check the markings and pinched the side of the tablet. He raised both eyebrows.
“Well, I’ve seen both of these before.” He said with a smile.
Both of the elder’s eyebrows rose to meet his hairline. “How?” He managed to choke out after opening and closing his mouth a couple of times.
“Figured you never quite felt it before.” He rose and pointed to the symbols and the tablet. “These are Greeks and this is a scale. Bet ya didn’t really feel what they were like when in good condition. Unlike the ones I had, this feels more like yours. Especially the big ones on your back.”
Ford blinked rapidly a moment, then looked from his brother to the 'tablet', turning it over in his hands. With Stan's observation, he could see now that the stone really wasn't stone, its carved surface much smoother than the underside that seemed textured in a specific manner. One end seemed to have been carved to match and felt slightly coarse along the edge, while the opposite end felt like the backside of a sharp blade.
"...none of my scales were this big. Were they?"
Stan frowned, head tilting a smidge to the side before he leaned forward. After a moment, he lay both hands on top of the carved scale, revealing how it was at least another full hand's width long and a solid inch wider on either side of his palm and fingers.
"Nah. Even your biggest ones are -like- hand and a half at most. Whoever this came from was huge ."
There was a moment of silence until Ford said “Do you think… Will I ever get this big?”
Staring at the scale, placing both their hands on it, they wondered how big and how old the dragon from which it belonged used to be. Stan looked at his twin and how much weight he had gained in the ten years they’ve been apart. Granted that belly and muscle growth was because of his experience but… he did raise a good question.
He punched his twin on the shoulders playfully. “Why are ya worry ‘bout that? You’ve already grown so much. Who knows how big you’ll be. Besides, ‘s not the problem at hand. We still need to figure out what all of this is.” He pointed to the carved writing on one side of the scale.
“Right, you’re… you’re right.” Ford cleared his throat and tried to read until what his brother had said caught up to him. “Wait, you recognize those as Greek letters? How?”
His brother scratched the back of his neck nervously. “Well, ‘ve been around and some of… the guys I met along the way weren’t local so… Had to learn to…” he didn’t want it to finish his sentence, not so soon after his unpleasant experience.
"Oh! You learned Greek?" Ford quickly attempted to bulldoze over the uncomfortable admittance with enthusiasm, knowing his brother didn't really like talking about his experiences in their time apart.
"This is Greek, correct? I have to admit I'm not as familiar with the script as I would like to be, I took Latin as an elective requirement and nearly flunked because the conjugation system threw me off."
Grateful for the change of subject, Stan nodded. “Yeah, I know enough to navigate around.” He squinted and looked at the scale. He waved at the lower section. “I’m not a hundred percent sure about that part but this clearly says : If you can read this, you don’t need glasses.” He snorted at that last part. “Guess I’m good for a while.”
“What! That can’t be right?” Ford glowered at the scribble, a warning growl erupting from his throat.
“Easy big guy. Let’s just go to the library and sort this out.” Stan said as he slowly guided Ford toward the exit door. Before passing the threshold, he turned around. “Should we leave all of this here?”
“Maybe just take the box that interests us?”
The younger of the twin ran back to their spot, grabbed the box and left without another glance, someone would clean behind them.
Well, that, or things would be left undisturbed until they thought to return. Either was possible in this town.
As they ran toward the exit, they bumped into Auldman Northwest on his way to talk to the maire. There was a rumour that he wanted to acquire a patch of land near the quarry the Corduroys had to build another extravagant golden pool. The twins paid him no mind, it wasn’t their business.
Dusty box in hand, they found their way to the library, much to the chagrin of the local librarians. Not that they didn't enjoy having consistent patrons, far from it! It was just-
" Stanley! Could you take a look at this?"
"Yeah, yeah, toss it here.“
"Stanley!! I'm not throwing a library book! "
Yeah.
After about an hour, one of the bolder tech manning the front desk managed to work up the nerve to approach the brothers and their table piled high with volumes from across the breadth of the building, citing the library's noise policy and informing them that -if they couldn't keep their volume down- they would have to leave before more patrons were disturbed by their commotion. Ford went beet red, and Stan just about choked on his own tongue trying to keep from laughing too hard.
“This is not funny Stan!” The elder hissed between his teeth. “I… I like coming here, I don’t want to be banned!”
“Relax, Poindexter. It’s just a warning.” His brother whispered but still managed to stay calm. He didn’t want to get his twin in trouble or banned because of him. “Besides, don’t you have enough books back home? Pretty sure I saw some here that you got.”
“Like you said: some of them I have. Not all. So it’s always useful to come back here and do research.” He smiled as he held the scale and a book on Greek in his hands. “Like this one. I don’t have one home.”
Stan just rolled his eyes and kept looking into the dusty box they had taken with them. The different papers were frail and old and he moved each and every one with care.
“We should probably make some copies of those… the pages are falling apart.” He whispered to his twin.
Stanford was so absorbed in his translation work that he just hummed in agreement, his nose an inch from the scale.
Realizing he'd lost his twin to the throws of research, Stan rolled his eyes and carefully moved to pick through the documents, trying to keep them as orderly as possible. Some of them were bound, others were tucked in folders with acid free paper tucked in between sheets to reduce the aging effect, but all of them were old, yellow and brittle with age.
The scanner would work, but would it be safe to use with the originals...?Maybe he should ask one of the librarians what to do as he was no archivist.
He took a small pile, glanced at his brother to make sure he wasn’t going anywhere and walked up to the counter. Putting on his best charm, he smiled at the librarian and leaned on the counter.
“Hey beautiful, do you think you could help me with some of these old papers?” He asked eagerly.
The woman, who looked as if she could use a good coffee or two, sent him a deadpan stare and sighed, clearly she wanted to be anywhere but here on a Saturday morning. She glanced at the papers in his hands and then him before moving around the counter.
“Just follow me.” She said as she walked toward a different section of the library.
The lackluster response was less than encouraging, but Stan decided not to take it personally. Really, he couldn't blame the lady, she looked like she either hadn't slept in a week or desperately needed a hug. Or booze, whichever came first.
Hefting the stack as carefully as he could and wishing he'd grabbed the box lid or something to make it easier not to harm the pages, he followed the lady towards the back of the library, where the more active bustle of parents and children wandering through the more popular sections faded to the calmer, quieter sections where students and elders sought their sources. The lady led him through a door labeled Archival Department on a faded bit of stock, a slightly less faded Post It underneath reading one more coffee spill and the strangling begins . Another Post It underneath simply had a number 6 written on it.
"Uhhh... What's the..."
"High schoolers."
"Ah."
She opened the door to let him into a small room with barely any books or shelves in it. What it did have was all the computers and electronic gadgets the building could afford. Amongst the different screens and monitors was a single copy machine. It looked older than Stan but still in good condition.
The young woman motioned him to hand one of the pages. He did so and, despite a lack of energy, she carefully placed it on the glass surface. She closed it up and turned to the control panel.
“Alright, this is quite easy, a baby could do it. You just carefully rest the pages you want copied here, press this switch here and voila.” She explained as she moved her hand around.
Stan didn’t believe her. “That’s it? I mean those are old documents and… it’ll be enough?”
She rolled her eyes and sighed. “This is the machine for old documents. The town hall uses it to scan and archive some of the older stuff.” She pointed to another device Stan hadn’t seen before. “That one will wreck your old stuff in seconds. It’s modern and used to copy anything else.”
Nodding absentmindedly, he dismissed her and went to work alone. She didn’t stay much longer and exited the room, but not before instructing him to close the door when he was done. He grabbed another piece of paper and scanned it on the older model. Every sheet he would retrieve was intact and in good condition and new fresh copies came out of the other end.
Thank goodness it was actually a simple process. A little dull and mind numbing, sure, but he'd take that over unwittingly destroying whatever information the pages might hold.
He was nearly done with the stack when he heard a low creak of floorboards, frowning a moment and glancing idly deeper into the small room before looking back towards the open door. And just about having a minor heart attack at seeing bright amber eyes peering worriedly around the threshold.
" Moses -! Fucking say somethin' if ya gonna go sneaking around, Sixer, shit!"
The eyes blinked a moment before his twin finally decided to step inside and meet him at the machine. He still had the scale in his hands and when Stan looked at his eyes he raised an eyebrow upon seeing them slithered.
“What got you all riled up?” He asked. “Your eyes are weird.”
Ford cleared his throat and shuffled a little. “You were gone for a while and… didn’t say where you went… I just…” his brother’s words seemed to register and his eyebrow shot up to his hairline. “My eyes?”
Stan reached up, pushing his twin's glasses up his nose and pointedly drawing attention to the very subtle glow glinting off the lenses. "Mmhm. Got some mojo goin' or somethin'."
The copier bleeped in an almost forlorn tone, and the younger twin turned to address it, idly noting his brother following him over.
"Librarian lady says this oughtta work okay for the older papers, so we can make doubles if we gotta write on anything."
“That’s a great idea!” Ford beamed as he found the nearest reflective surface he could to check his eyes. There was a beat until he spoke again. “I don’t think I would’ve thought of doing copies… I would’ve just… been really careful with the paper.” He turned to Stan with a worried look on his face. “Do my eyes stand out too much?”
Stan snorted. He never would have pictured his twin to be self conscious about anything else but his hands but then again he never would have pictured him able to turn into a dragon. He picked up the stack of freshly copied paper and pile of old paper before spinning toward Stanford.
The eyes were still slithered and amber but the glow was becoming dimmer by the second. Ford did say he got worried about him disappearing for a while, so seeing him safe and sound must do wonders on his dragon psyche.
Laughing it off, Stan rested a reassuring hand on his worried twin. “Don’t sweat it. Around here, they are normal. So did you find something on the scale?” He smiled.
Ford didn't bother to suppress the small smile that curled his lips at his brother's immediate reassurance. He honestly had no idea how he would have managed without Stan to help him balance things out, probably would have gotten lost in the woods doing dragon stuff and never come back out again...
"Less than I was hoping, if I'm honest. The scale itself is at least three, maybe four hundred years old, judging from what I was able to dig up in those herpetology texts, and the color itself seems to have been mostly induced by age. We have no idea what the original coloration was, only that it darkened significantly over time."
He ran a thumb over a few of the carved in details.
"I can't be one hundred percent certain without testing a couple samples with my chemistry set, but I have to assume that the scale was carved while still attached to the original subject or very very shortly after removal and probably painted at some point to make it easier to read."
"...like a tattoo?" Stan guessed.
The elder thought for a moment before nodding in approval. “A tattoo… it would have more likely be as if carving a stone… or… a brand maybe? But the heat of the tip would have been lava levels of warmth to carved anything in this. Because as you have noticed, I’m quite heat resistant.”
“Yeah, boiling hot cauldron resistance.” Stan peers at the scale then at his brother. “So what did it say? Besides not needing glasses.”
Ford rolled his eyes, but he smiled some anyway at his brother's levity.
"From what I can tell, the phrase itself isn't all that important. The way it's been formatted is another story."
He moved towards a bit better light so his brother could see what he was talking about.
"I thought at first it was carved in this odd stepped pattern because the scale wasn't large enough for the whole phrase, but then I noticed that certain letters were lined up because of the position..."
“Oh! Like a crossword! Or hidden words?” The younger twin inquired.
“Yes, something as such.” Stanford encouraged him.
It was subtle, but Stan noticed that so far, almost none of his observations had been dismissed or turned down by his brother. Almost as if he thought his opinion counted. It wasn’t something the young twin was used to. Someone actually caring about his thoughts and… him. He felt a warm feeling in his chest and scratched idly at it.
“You okay?” Stanford asked upon seeing his behaviour.
Stan smiled again, the eyes were still slithered but down to their normal brown colours. “Yeah, yeah.” He cleared his throat, there must be some dust in this room. “So what does it say?”
Waiting to make sure his brother was truly fine until he turned back to the scale, the elder cleared his throat as well before speaking. “Everything the light touches, should be protected.”
A soft chuckle, and Ford gave a little shrug.
"At least, that's my understanding of it. I did mention I'm not fluent in Greek."
Stan rolled his eyes, but smiled as he moved in closer to get a better look at the writing. "Yeah, yeah, way to be subtle, bro..."
He squinted a little, the low contrast making the carving hard to make out in the dim light, but he could see a faint silvery sheen where his twin had likely traced the letters with a pencil, trying to puzzle it out.
"Well, you're not wrong. Definitely got a whole thing about light and protection there. Though... Huh."
Ford quirked a brow, but said nothing, watching his brother's thoughtful expression as he puzzled over the words.
"... The sun shines where your guard is needed. I think? Greek's not my best..."
“I still think it’s impressive you can read it without any books. You are talented.” He had a proud smile on his face as he stared at his brother, the slithered irises dilated with excitement.
The warm feeling was back in his chest, engulfing him and making his cheeks blush. He turned his head to avoid his brother’s eyes and coughed.
“Yeah, yeah… whatever. The sun shines… does that mean we gotta get to higher ground?” He asked worriedly.
The elder of the two brought a hand to his chin, deep in thoughts.
“My first idea would be to take the fruit again and soar high to take a look at the valley… but it might not be the best idea if we want to keep this treasure hunt going.” He rambled on. Stanford even started to pace inside the small copier room. “We could always get to the cliffs to have a look. It’s the highest point we can get to. I… I want you to come but you won’t have to come near the edge.”
Stan sighed in relief. “I appreciate that… So it looks like we’re going on a hike! Let’s pack and head out.”
With high spirits and the lure of adventure, the twins rushed to finish making copies before packing up and heading back towards home.
As they exited the public library, their path met that of Auldman Northwest. They nodded in greeting to the old men, but didn’t stop for a conversation. Stan couldn’t help but find it strange to bump into the men two times in one day. He shook his head, he was probably thinking too much about it, the men had better things to do then chase around a pair of twins.
They ended up stopping for lunch on the way, as Ford's stomach grumpily reminded him that it was getting quite late in the afternoon and Stan's echoed the complaint, resulting in them arriving back at the house juggling a bag of leftovers along with the box and an elevation map that Stan had glimpsed while heading to the check out.
"Right, so-! Check the map for high spots we don't know about, get some packs, go on a hike... Should we call the Corduroys an' tell 'em what's up? I mean, s'technically m'weekend, so we take a day, it'll be fine..."
Ford stopped mid movements as he was about to put two large canteens of water into their backpacks to think. After a while, in which Stan could almost hear the cogs turning inside his head, the elder nodded.
“I think it’s the best course of action. We shouldn’t encounter any problems whatsoever but… better safe than sorry.” He agreed.
“Great! I’ll make the call.” Stan left his twin to finish packing whatever supplies they’ll be needed for the trip and walked to the kitchen where the phone hung on the wall.
He kept it short and direct. He explained to his boss how they had found an interesting scale in the town’s archive, in a hidden room nonetheless. Daniel didn’t sound to be the least surprised and simply wished them luck in the woods. He promised to come look for them if they didn’t hear anything from them after a few days.
Stan hung up shortly after and went back to help his twin. Stanford was in the middle of trying to cram all the amount of dry meat they had in the house into his backpack.
An amused snort, and Stan went to help, eventually managing to convince his twin to split the supplies more evenly ' just in case somebody drops something '. Nearly half an hour of fussing later, Ford still ended up with the larger pack, but only because he wanted to carry some of his extra field gear that Stan couldn't convince him to leave behind.
An extra extra blanket in case the pup tent sprung a leak and the heavy duty binoculars could come in handy...
While Ford fussed some more, Stan decided to take a step back and just let his brother have his way for a bit while he checked out some of the copied documents, skimming idly through a series of some kind of form letter than didn't make much sense to him thanks to the rather untidy handwriting. Ford's somewhat rushed cursive was one thing, but this stuff looked like that spidery shorthand only doctors and Russian grandmothers managed to pull off.
"Hmm..." Stan peered a bit closer at a document, squinting at the writing. "Hey Ford? You know any Cyrillic?"
About to open the door to head out with a somewhat oversized backpack on his back, Stanford stopped his movement, his hand clutched on the doorknob. He slowly turned toward his twin with a raised eyebrow.
“A few.” He left the door and trotted back toward Stan, his backpack pouncing over his shoulders. “What did you find?” He inquired as he came closer.
“Not much, but these pages seemed to be written in it. I just can’t really make any heads or tails of this stuff.” He snorted. “It’s worse than your cursive writing.”
Ford snatched the paper from his brother’s hand and put on a fake hurt expression. “I'd appreciate it if you would leave my handwriting out of this, thank you.” He glanced at the paper and his brow rose to his hairline. “Okay, I’ll admit that it’s worse.”
He observed the page from some time, mumbling indiscernible words to himself and passing a hand through his hair. It took some minutes until he raised the volume of his voice for Stan to hear it too.
“I can’t speak for the other pages, but this seemed to be a… description of the different forest dwellers and their favorite ground… or to be exact where their territory or habitat should be.” He rambled.
Stan whistled. “So that’s definitely going into the important paper pile.” He picked up another paper and tried to read it but came up blank. He mulled over a foreign thought that crept up in his head, chewing the inside of his cheeks before finally taking a hit and opening his mouth. “Stanford… do you… you could teach me to read this stuff?”
Squinting at the spidery writing, Ford didn't reply for a second, his features scrunched with concentration that was broken once his brain caught up with his ears.
"Hm? Oh, yes, certainly! I... Have to admit, I'm rather rusty at it myself. I haven't read or spoken Russian since I took it as an elective in college so I could more accurately review some foreign language papers." He frowned a moment, thinking, before he gave a soft laugh. "I think maybe the only actual phrase I can recall in full is idi nahui and I'm 99% sure that's a curse of some kind."
Stan laughed and slapped his brother on the back. “Yeah, that’s usually the first thing you learn and remember in a foreign language.” They both stared at one another with a lopsided smile until the younger twin broke the contact and coughed awkwardly. “Anyway… we are already packed, you wanna stay and decipher that or head out?”
Ford tapped the page in his palm to think. “Mmmm… I think it would be best to leave the bulk of these pages here and bring one or two with us.” He smiled proudly at his twin. “Your first lesson with a rusty teacher could start earlier that way.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Stan said as he shoved two or three pages into his own backpack and hoisted it over his shoulders. He motioned to the door with an exaggerated theatrical bow. “Lead the way, professor, Dr Guardian Pines.”
Ford spluttered at the title, then laughed, shaking his head as he hefted his own pack. "I'm not the Guardian yet , Stanley..."
Pack settled, the twins headed out, Ford locking up while Stan tacked up a note on the door. Just in case someone came to find either of them for some reason or they were gone too long.
A moment to consult the elevation map, and they headed off into the forest side by side.