Fiddleford McGucket nearly had a panic attack when reading the paper that morning. With the headline, "Stan Pines Dead," he felt a painful ache in his chest. Did the beings his old partner feared were pursuing him finally get to him? Had he killed himself in a fit of insanity? Fiddleford had sent spies to keep an eye on his old friend, and knew that his mental state had been degrading for months. He knew that Stanford would try to stay awake for weeks at a time, and with all of the other stresses in his life, F felt that it was only a matter of time before his friend's mental state would degrade so much that he would kill himself. Intentionally or not.
As he continued to read the article, he let out a guilty sigh of relief. Stanford hadn't died after all. Rather it was some guy named Stanley Pines. He knew that it was terrible, but he felt glad that someone else had died instead.
However, through his feeling of relief, something tingled in the back of his memory. Something that he hadn't quite erased. As he put on a cheap suit and tie, he remembered what it was. Ford would sometimes write about a brother in his journals before immediately scribbling the entry out. This had always piqued his curiosity, and he eventually found that when Ford was in a particularly good mood, he could sometimes coax him into reminiscing about his childhood in New Jersey. F always liked watching him reminisce about how he used to work on fixing up an old, abandoned boat with his brother. The nostalgic sparkle in his eyes always put F at ease, even immediately following a scare. But Ford's mood would always sour at the mention his brother and the topic would have to be dropped.
Maybe it was finally time to talk to Ford. To confront him over everything that happened. The end of the world hadn't come, and no anomalies had happened in months. Maybe Ford had actually heeded his advice and gave up on the portal. At the very least, he could be there to comfort him over the loss of his brother. F knew that if he had lost his family, that he would do anything to have them back. And while he knew that he must not have been on the best terms with his brother, F thought that at the very least, he could help Ford forget any pain it brought him.
When arrived at their former shared lab, however, F was horrified at what he saw.
Stanley Pines had been in Gravity Falls for a few months and had finally started making a steady profit with this whole, "Mystery Shack," scam. With the issue of keeping the lights on out of the way, he could finally get started on his real work.
Every night, he would comb through his brother's journal over and over for any detail that could help him. He tried to work on the portal as best as he could, but had long since hit a dead end. There was not enough information in this first journal to even begin repairing the portal, and he did not have the mechanical genius that this device obviously required. While he was able to make some progress with the mechanical engineering books he checked out from the Gravity Falls library, this portal was far beyond any normal, modern human's understanding.
With everything else failing him, he only had one lead left. Once every few dozen entries in the journal, Ford would mention someone that he always called, "F." Usually it would only be a small anecdote such as, "Keep away from F," "Show F later," or "Tell F to store with the other samples." Though sometimes he would include a story about him and F confronting some monstrosity together. From what Stan could tell, "F" was some kind of assistant of his brother's, but he couldn't help but feel that there was something more there.
He would investigate "F," soon, but he knew that he had to take it easy for the next few weeks. Stan had just faked his own death, and it would be suspicious for him to go running around looking for this F so soon after he was supposed to have lost a brother. Certainly, it was something his brother would have done, but he wanted to keep as much suspicion away from him as possible.
Still, he had bills to pay, and he may as well try to profit off of his, 'grief' one way or another. Putting on his worn, red, jacket, 'Stanford' put on a despondent expression and went to work. But as he went about his day, trying to convince everyone that giving, 'donations' is exactly what his dead brother would have wanted, he didn't expect anyone to actually confront him.
Author's Note: Welcome to the prologue of a rather self-indulgent little fanfic idea that I pretty much just came up with in the past week and quickly typed up between classes when I should have been doing homework. Basically, I saw how little there is of Cultist!Fiddleford in the Gravity Falls fan community, and decided that needed to be fixed. (Can I just say those robes look very cute on him, or would that be weird?) So this story will be delving a lot more into the Society of the Blind Eye and cultist themes in a bit, so expect some bad, violent stuff. There will probably be some implied Ford/Fiddleford (A ship I have decided to affectionately call Ford²) throughout the story, but nothing explicit. That is if I actually ever decide to finish this.