Disclaimer: I don't own Gravity Falls!
Title: Gain And Loss
Summary: ("Not What He Seems") Stanford Pines has just lost everything. But he's also gained a lot too.
Warnings: Spoilers for parts of season two, "Not What He Seems" especially. Small hints of fan theory, but I tried my best to keep it vague and canon, so go nuts.
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Stanford Pines has just lost everything.
Well, 'just' may not be the correct term, but the sentence would probably work with 'again' tacked onto the end.
He's just lost Dipper- or Dipper's trust, which might as well be the same thing- and he's probably lost Mabel because he's lost Dipper's trust. His workers- upon finding out he's been lying about his understanding of magic and the whole 'nah, I don't got any secrets! Just stay away from my vending machines' thing- were probably going to pick sides and rebel, which wasn't going to make things any easier. So, yeah. He's pretty much lost everything. Again.
Of course, he'd already lost everything a long time ago. He'd lost when the feds came knocking on his door just hours before everything he'd been planing for over thirty stinkin' years was set to go down. (Because, seriously, guys. Cut him some slack. He had a reunion to get to.)
It could've all been lost when he finally fessed up to Dipper, but those had been desperate times. It's not every day you almost get eaten by zombies. He did what any smart parental figure would do; told part of the truth and left the juicy bits out. Adults did that all the time. Going to his grave with his important life-saving secret sounded noble enough to him. You only lived once; what was stopping him from giving it a try?
Things had really started going downhill when Fiddleford started blasting himself with that memory gun of his. Seriously, dude. Stanford wasn't a genius. He left all the smart stuff to him and his brother for a reason. What would take Fiddleford two or three years to build and run took him thirty. Not Fiddleford's best call there, really. The coward couldn't take the pressure.
But, in all honesty, things really started to fall apart when that special red button was pressed for the first- and hopefully last- time.
And, yeah, Stan hasn't really been helping things. He didn't go the squeaky-clean legal route, not even on the parts that he probably could've done legally. He'd already gotten himself neck-deep, what was a few more inches? But it didn't matter. Stanford had, in his own twisted way, won the battle for the first time in over three long decades. The war wasn't just his problem anymore. That was enough for him.
Sure, he's probably messed up Dipper and Mabel's summer by 'turning' on them like this, but they'd been the one's who originally plunged themselves into the mysteries of Gravity Falls in the first place. He'd tried to deter them, and that was all he could really do when it came to damage control. Stan knew from experience that once you got sucked in, you never really got back out.
Alright, so it wasn't just their summer he'd ruined. It was probably more like the rest of their lives. You got him on that one. But when hadn't Stanford ended up ruining something, right?
But, thanks to him, maybe they'd be able to get all their lives back and he could fix what he'd done wrong for once. That didn't sound half bad, now, did it?
For the first time in all his life (not just three decades, but ever) Stanford Pines can say 'It's all my fault' with pride.
Because the author of the books is back, baby. And it's all his fault.
Stan has just lost everything all over again, and not for the first time in his life either. But, watching the familiar figure of his brother come into his line of sight for the first time in way too dang long, he's also gotten the world that had been ripped from him (not all of his world's, of course, but his most precious, first one) back. And that would always make it worth it.
Author's Note: It's incredibly vague, the shortest thing I've typed out in awhile, and my first Gravity Falls fanfiction. Man, I'm firing on all cylinders here, aren't I?
I just really wanted to get out my feels from the episode, but I didn't want to intrude on any future canon and make it sound like meaningless dribble (not that it's bad to intrude on the show's canon or anything, that's just not what I wanted for this drabble in particular) That's also part of the reason I left out Stan's brother's name. I mean, it'd be pretty mean of the creator's to have the Stan's twin theory be true, only for his name to be something weird like 'Rob' or something, but it doesn't hurt to be safe.