That morning Stan woke up late and slow. He knew he shouldn't be letting himself do that. Taking care of his body's needs was one thing, but indulging himself was another altogether and unacceptable when he had to save Ford. Thing was, he thought maybe he hadn't totally been taking care of his body's needs this week with regards to sleeping. Sure, he'd been climbing into bed at a not unreasonable hour and trying to sleep every night, but trying was really the operative word there. So once exhaustion finally managed to grab hold of him, it wasn't exactly eager to let him go again.

He laid there for a long time, or what seemed like it, awake enough to know he ought to be getting up, but too asleep to muster the energy to open his eyes yet. A feeling of dread struck him, but he didn't pay it much notice. There were a lot of things he had to dread right now, and his peaceful night's rest had only been a brief reprieve from that. Besides, truth was even before he'd come to Ford's house that dark tangle sitting cold and heavy like a stone in his gut had been a very familiar feeling. It was getting to the point where it was weirder if he didn't feel that way. Then Sandy called his name in a hushed tone that shook him to his core, and Stan realized that maybe this wasn't normal dread he was feeling at all.

Stan's eyes snapped open and shot over to Cass's pillow. That's was the only thing in the world he could think of that would make Sandy sound like that. But the pillow was almost pristine with only the slightest indentation in the middle. Cass wasn't there. Cass was gone.

"Cass is gone," Stan said. The words echoed dully in his chest and mind, feeling vague and unreal and only growing more so with each repetition. Cass was gone. Cass was gone. Cass was gone.

"She can't be gone. She was doing so much better last night. You saw; she was doing better," Sandy insisted.

"Yeah," Stan said. He wouldn't have said "so much," but Cass had been doing a bit better the night before it seemed like. Now, Cass was gone.

"Maybe she got up before us and went down to check on the portal," Sandy suggested. Stan didn't think Cass would have been tall enough to reach the keypad for the elevator, but he didn't say anything. He just followed Sandy downstairs to the basement and punched the code in for himself. The doors opened immediately, like they had been right there waiting for them.

Sandy glanced nervously up at Stan. "Maybe Cass sent the elevator back up for us after she went down. Or maybe she and Ford built another secret back entrance or something."

"Maybe," Stan said. They took the elevator down, but Cass wasn't in the basement either. Cass was gone.

Sandy led them on a search through every room of the house, certain that Cass had to be hidden in one of the rooms. She was frantic, digging in every corner, yelling Cass's name, and letting out distressed barks, but Stan couldn't feel any of it. He followed Sandy around and looked with her because it was Sandy, but he couldn't feel any of the desperation she was. Cass was gone, and Stan couldn't feel a thing.

"She must have gone outside," Sandy declared after they'd searched every square inch of the house. "She must have, and with all the snow it'll be easy to track her. Come on."

Stan followed Sandy back to the front room and opened the door for her. Sandy charged out. Stan followed her and then carefully shut the door behind them. Shouldn't let all the heat out. Stan turned back around to see Sandy stopped practically mid-stride, her head swiveling frantically as her eyes searched the yard. In front of them was a pristine expanse of white, this time without even the slightest indentation.

"Maybe she went out the back door. Or, or it's really cloudy out. Maybe she left early this morning and it snowed after and covered her tracks," Sandy said. "Let's go check the back first and then we can-"

"Sandy," Stan said. "Stop. Cass is gone. They're both gone."

The words hit Sandy like a blow, and she crumpled in on herself. "But she was doing so much better last night."

"Yeah," Stan said. "She was."

Stan wasn't sure how he ended up sitting down on the porch with his legs drawn up. The fabric over the knees of his jeans was starting to get very thin. They'd be getting holes in them soon.

Sandy crawled up into his lap, squeezing her way into the narrow space between his legs and his chest. Stan moved his hand to the top of her head and managed a couple listless scratches before he lost track of what he was doing and just let it rest there. Sandy didn't seem to mind. "We promised Cass we'd take the journal and hide it after… after," she said.

Stan didn't remember promising that. He remembered promising Cass that they'd find a way to save them, that they'd bring Ford back home again and reunite her with him. He'd promised it over and over again and he'd failed. Like he always did.

"Stan?" Sandy prompted.

"Yeah, we'll do that," Stan said. He didn't remember promising Cass, but he remembered Ford asking him to. Maybe if Stan had listened Ford and Cass would still be… "I just need a minute."

"Okay," Sandy said. She rested her head down against his chest and closed her eyes. Stan looked down at her. It really wasn't fair that foxes couldn't cry.

Hiding the journal. Ford had wanted Stan to hide his journal where no one would ever find it. Stan owed his brother that much. He owed Ford more than that, but hiding the journal was something he could do. He'd take it to the heart of the rainforest or deep within the Sahara Desert or to the North Pole, then dig a hole and bury it six feet under. One last favor for his brother. Then Stan would be done with all of it forever. Then Stan could… One thing at a time. First he had to hide Ford's journal. He'd get up and do it, in just a minute.

Some time later, maybe a long time, maybe a short time, probably more than a minute, Cass's ears pricked up. She wriggled around in Stan's lap until she could stand with her front paws on his knees and her ears angled towards the woods out in front of them. "Did you hear that?" she asked.

"Hear what?"

"That," Sandy said. She jumped free of Stan's hold and took off bounding across the snow.

She got about fifteen feet away before Stan felt himself come roaring back to life when agony and pain worse than anything he'd ever felt came tearing through his chest. Every kid tried it when they were little, seeing how far they could get away from their dæmon. Some kids tried it more than once, seeing if they could stretch themselves further and further each time. Stan and Cassandra had only done it the one time though. Stan could stand physical pain, bumps and scrapes and broken bones, but the feeling of being torn apart from the inside, the threat of being utterly and completely alone was more than he or Sandy could take. They'd gotten pretty good at working through the pain and doing it when they had to over the past ten years, just like they'd gotten pretty good at doing anything they had to to survive, but it was always an absolute last resort. Yet here was Sandy tugging away at him like Stan was locked up in a cell and some stupid guard had left the keys twenty feet from the door.

"Come on Stanley, we have to go." She was probably further away now than she'd ever been before, with her paws sunk deep into the snow as she braced off against the ground to creep forward step by agonizing step. So what could Stan do but stumble to his feet and go after her?

Sandy waited until Stan got into a comfortable range, then took off running again. She went slow enough for Stan to keep up, but only just. "Where the heck are we going?" Stan asked as he sprinted after her through the woods.

"Listen!" Sandy called back. Stan thought about pointing out that wasn't any kind of answer, but he decided to save his breath for running instead.

A minute or so later Stan realized that maybe it was an answer after all when he heard… Well, he couldn't be hearing what he thought he was hearing. He couldn't let himself get his hopes up; he didn't think he'd survive it this time if he was wrong. He wouldn't think about the voice he definitely was not hearing, wouldn't think about what Sandy had started calling back to the imaginary voice, wouldn't think about the feeling rising up in his chest. But he would push himself to run a little faster.

The thing about running through the woods was you could rarely see more than a few feet in front of you. That meant that one second Stan was dodging around a tree and the next a silver-grey cat was bursting out of a bush in front of him yelling, "Cassandra!" at the top of her lungs.

"Cassiopeia!" Sandy cried back, leaping at Cass. Her tail wagged furiously as she licked Cass's face with abandon, hindering Cass's attempts to groom her right back. Somehow between the licking and Cass's purring, the two of them managed a rushed conversation as well, their words tumbling over and into each other. "Cass! What're you doing out here?"

"I was trying to find you and the cabin, but I got lost."

"Should have just followed the road."

"Through the woods is faster."

"Not if you don't know the way, knucklehead."

"I'm here now."

"Yes! You're here, you're here, you're here!"

Meanwhile Stan had fallen to his knees, heedless of the snow soaking through his pants. The relief was almost more overwhelming in its own way than the despair had been, and this time he was feeling every bit of it. "Cassiopeia," he finally managed to croak out.

Cass looked up at him, and there was a moment of hesitation before her eyes narrowed in pleasure and she said, "Stanley."

"You're alive." She was alive. Ford was alive. Stan hadn't let them down.

"Of course I'm alive," Cass responded.

"When we woke up you were gone," Sandy said. "You hadn't moved in a week, and then you were just gone. We were scared you and Ford had died." She licked Cass's cheek again.

Cass gave her a quick lick back. "Sorry. I got up early and went to go do… something. I was going to try and be back before too late, but I got confused, and then I got lost." Stan was going to ask what kind of something she suddenly had to do right that morning without even waiting for Sandy and Stan to wake up when she hadn't seen fit to do anything at all for the past week, but Cass's next statement had the words dying in his throat. "Who's Ford?"

"Ford," Sandy said. "You know, Stanford."

Cass shook her head. "I don't know who you're talking about."

"Knock it off; it's not funny," Stan said. "Ford. Your person."

"But Stanley, you're my person. I mean, I don't… it doesn't… but you have to be. You and Sandy are the only ones I can remember, so you have to be my person and Sandy is your other dæmon."

"Me?" Stan asked. "No I'm not… you gotta remember Ford. Stanford Pines. Sixer. A huge genius and a huger nerd. He looks just like me except for the big coke bottle lens and the cleft chin and the six fingers. My twin brother. Your person. Ford."

Cass shook her head again, but this time like she was trying to clear it or shake something loose. "I remember you and Sandy. And, oh, brother, I remember Shermie and Clara. And Ma and Pa and their dæmons. But they all only have one dæmon; why would you have two unless… No. No, you have to be."

"I'm not," Stan said his voice breaking. "C'mon Cass, please. You've gotta remember Ford."

"But I don't. If he was really my person, then why isn't he here? Why don't I remember him? Why don't I remember…?"

Sandy snuggled in as close to Cass as she could and looked at Stan. "You think maybe it's a side effect?"

Stan had never heard of severing having a side effect like that, but then he wasn't exactly an expert on it. And thinking about it, this hadn't really been a regular severing either. Who knew what kind of effects being torn apart across dimensions would have. "Maybe."

"Side effect of what?" Cass asked sharply. "What are you keeping from me?"

"We're not keeping anything from you," Sandy said. "You just forgot is all."

"Remind me," said Cass.

"About a week and a half ago me and Sandy got a postcard from Ford, asking me to come up here to Gravity Falls. I don't know what kind of stuff the two of you had been getting into, but I don't think it was good. You showed us this big machine you'd built, some kind of portal to another dimension or something. Then me and Ford got into a fight and ended up accidentally turning the thing on. We weren't really paying attention, and then…"

"It was bright," Cass said slowly. "It was so bright and loud and I was screaming and you were holding me down, Sandy and, and. And I lost something. The most important thing, but I can't. Why can't I remember?" She was kneading at the ground, her paws sinking down into the snow.

"Ford," Stan said softly. "You lost Ford. We all did."

"Then let's turn the portal back on and get him back," Cass demanded.

Stan and Sandy looked at one another. If Cass didn't remember she didn't want the portal turned back on, and they conveniently forgot to mention it, then maybe they could get her help with it. Then maybe…

"You told us not to," Sandy said. "Me and Stan have been trying to fix it up anyway, but you told us we shouldn't because if we did it might cause the end of the world."

"I don't care," Cass said. "There's a hole in my head, and I don't care if the world burns; I need him. I need him back, please."

Stan couldn't take it anymore. It was so wrong seeing Cass sitting there breaking down all alone without Ford to comfort her. She needed him, but all she had was Stan. So Stan picked her up and held her in his arms. She froze for the briefest moment, apparently instinctively aware even without her memories that Stan wasn't hers and shouldn't be touching her. Then the moment passed, and she burrowed in close against his chest. "Please, Stanley."

"We'll get him back," Stan said. "Screw the rest of the world; they can all go hang for all I care. No matter what it takes, we'll get Ford back."