It happens like this:
There's the faintest whiff of pine sap in the air when he opens his eyes, blearily, against the piercing brightness of unfiltered sunlight. It's quiet except for the occasional rustle of leaves, and with the fuzzy, comforting calm that blankets his mind, he feels no need at all to move from his spot in the woods.
That's when they come for him: an old man in an ill-fitting suit and raw devastation on his worn face, a bright pastel girl with a widely grinning mouth of shining metal, a stumbling boy with a cap and red-rimmed eyes. They say to him, 'Grunkle Stan, it's me, don't you remember?' and, 'Stanley, I'm sorry, I should've,' and, "Please come back."
When they tell him that he's a hero, he smiles at them. They cry when he asks them, what for?
But they are all very nice to him, even though he doesn't understand what they're talking about, although he feels bad because nothing he says seems to make them smile. But he doesn't apologize anymore. Not after he tells the old man who said he was his brother that he was sorry for forgetting, and sees his large frame crumple like newspaper in the rain.
He thinks, then, that he might hate Stanley Pines, whoever he is.
They walk him through the woods to somewhere new. It's nice because the kids hold his hands, their warm palms startling small in his own. His brother puts his black suit jacket on his shoulders as they walk, and tells him quietly that it's his.
Along the way, he meets another man, one who looks very different from Ford and Dipper and Mabel, but they tell him that he is family nonetheless. The man sobs wretchedly when the kids explain, and through his tears, calls him something else on accident. It has one syllable, but doesn't sound anything like 'Stan.'
He is led to a house that smells vaguely of burned up oil and rusty metal, with cracked glass windows and a half-collapsed roof. It's slumped a bit sideways, but it stands despite its crumbling walls and creaking foundations. He's a bit nervous about walking in, but his family seemed to have a faith in the old place that he doesn't have.
Inside is a familiar couch that sags in warm welcome under his weight. The girl thrusts a pink scrapbook under his nose, hope clear and gleaming in her eyes, and there's pictures in there of the kids with a man who looked like his brother, who was wearing the same red fez that teetered on his own head.
There is a heavy knot of guilt weighing down in his gut when he stares hard at each colorful page and tries to recall emotions and memories from uncharted regions of his mind, then realizes that he cannot.
He starts to tell them so, regret heavy in his voice, when a pig jumps on his lap.
...Waddles is on his lap, slobbering all over his face with his disgusting swine saliva.
Stan pulls the pig off of him and as far away from his face as possible in one fluid motion, his body moving as if possessed by some force other than himself, because this was not the damn time - not when his family was moping around like someone died or something, all because of this damn amnesia that was messing him up.
Waddles just stares at him with his little beady pig eyes, even as Stan shouts directly at his perky snout, and hell, maybe he shouldn't have punched that pterodactyl after all - what do you think about that, pig?
A few feet away, Soos says something about boss-employee relationships, and geez, did he think Stan was made of money? The kid's already got a raise, and sure it's been a few years since then, but hey -
And then he stops in his tracks, whatever presence in control of his arms and limbs receding back underneath the dim fog that obscured most of his mind, leaving Stan (?) standing awkwardly in the middle of the living room, a pink pig held loosely in his hands. He claws after it mentally because he needs it back, because they are staring at him with a kind of incredulous hope and there are tearful smiles on their faces, and it wasn't him they wanted.
Whoever he was.
But it's gone, and he's left only with a vague sense of emptiness and the sour aftertaste of defeat in his dry mouth.
"I, uh," he says out loud, and then Mabel is squealing and dragging him back to the couch and Dipper has his arms around his neck in a (choke hold) hug. Ford leans over his shoulder, smiling, and Soos is making choked noises of happiness while simultaneously ruining his suit with snot (damn it Soos, this is coming out of your next paycheck), and.
He knows them. He knows them, even if he doesn't know himself. Mabel and Dipper and Soos and - poindexter, fordsy, sixer, six-fingers - Ford. His family.
When Mabel starts flipping through the scrapbook again, the only stranger he sees in those pictures is himself.
It isn't so bad, he thinks - Stan thinks.
So what if he isn't Stanley Pines? Big deal. The guy seemed like a bit of a mess anyways, with everything the kids were saying about stealing wax figures and punching teenagers.
But if a screw-up like Stanley Pines could make his family so happy, and make even a grumpy nerd like Ford smile this wide…
...Maybe he could try to be him.
[A/N: Half "my own headcanons on how the memory gun worked", half Stan's side of the previous work in the series. Don't worry guys... Bill (or what's left of him) will be rearing his head soon enough.
Written in present tense, because I'm trying new things with my writing. Let me know how it works out!
[Title from 'Stressed Out' by Twenty One Pilots, which is a pretty fitting song for these two]]