busket:

au where stanley was pushed in to the portal instead of stanford

stanford continued on his research in gravity falls, keeping the first journal but leaving the other 2 hidden. he couldn’t bring himself to dismantle the portal knowing stanley was in there, but couldn’t risk the destruction of the universe to power it up and bring him back. he spends 30 years indecisive about if he should save him or try to forget. against his best judgement he agrees to let dipper and mabel stay for the summer, even though the “mystery shack” is still just his house and research lab. 

seeing them together convinces him that he should save stanley. as he starts up the portal, his conviction wavers, still worried that the portal would tear the universe apart. but events similar to nwhs causes dipper and mabel to loose faith in ford and they come across the portal themselves and unwittingly perform the last events to open the portal and bring them back. stanford tries to stop them, convinced it will bring the end of the world, but the twins do not press the emergency power down button and stanley exits the portal. 

first he’s happy to see stanford again and happy to be out of the portal, until he quickly realizes that ford is not the reason he’s back, and becomes furious believing that his brother didn’t even try to save him