Of course it wasn't that easy.
Stan got up early, found Ford in his paranoia and doomsday fever and just general Fordness had crap groceries, and headed into town. On his way, he made sure to introduce himself to literally everyone he met as Stanley Pines, twin brother of that mysterious scientist Stanford Pines. He was taking no chance on that front. It caused him physical pain to turn away all those suckers and their money but Ford had just barely agreed to let him stay the night. Stan had an uphill battle ahead of him and the Mystery Shack, much as he missed it, was only going to set him off.
He may have spent more time than he should have flirting with Susan but he'd had a crush on her for a long time and now she didn't even have that creepy eye thing!
On his way back to Ford's place with the groceries, he'd been about to introduce himself to someone who looked vaguely familiar when the man interrupted him.
"Stanley Pines. You must be him. You look just like him."
Stan looked closer. He couldn't quite tell but Stan could literally count on one hand the number of people in Gravity Falls that Ford had interacted with in any meaningful way. "Fiddleford McGucket?"
The man looked surprised. "Oh, he told you about me, did he? I hadn't thought you were in touch."
"We weren't," Stan said. "But he asked me to come and I just got in yesterday and he mentioned you used to work together." He hadn't, actually, but what difference did that make? It wasn't like the two of them, estranged as they were, were going to get together and compare notes on who revealed McGucket's existence to him. Fiddleford. He wasn't Old Man McGucket just yet. "Hey, I have to get back because this stuff will go bad but why don't you walk with me? I only just got here but I'm really worried."
Fiddleford tilted his head, considering. It was strange seeing everyone so much younger than they should be but the difference in Fiddleford defied belief. He looked like he hadn't slept in a week, sure, but it was such an improvement on the local kook he'd come to know. Maybe there was still time for him, too.
"Alright," he said finally. "But I'm not going back there."
"You don't have to," Stan assured him.
They fell into step together.
"I don't know how much Ford told you about me," Stan began.
"Not much," Fiddleford admitted. "At least not that I recall and that's somewhat of a worse indicator than it used to be. I just know that you had a falling out your senior year of high school. I was horrified you were kicked out and Ford wouldn't give me details but he did insist that he was seventeen, too, and it was your father's choice."
Stan laughed hollowly. "Well, he's not wrong. But he did leave out the part where I called out for support and he turned his back on me. It wouldn't have changed anything but it would have been nice."
Fiddleford looked curious but like he was too polite to say anything.
"I should probably add that I got kicked out because Stanford had this really advanced perpetual motion machine everyone was going gaga over. There was this college scout from West Coast Tech coming special to look at it."
Fiddleford let out a long, low whistle. "West Coast Tech."
Stan grimaced. "Yeah, I know. Big fucking deal. Nerd paradise. Well, I was standing right outside the room when the principal told my parents that Ford was a genius and that I was a future barnacle scraper or something. And Ford, as he always does, got so caught up in what he wanted that he didn't notice that I was terrified of losing him. And I went back to school and I hit the table the project was on. I never meant to break the project. But even though everything was still working when I left, I guess the thing stopped moving. West Coast Tech wasn't impressed. The minute Dad found out, I was out on my ass."
"And he still holds that accident against you after all this time?"
Stan couldn't tell if Fiddleford was surprised or not.
"Well, I'm pretty sure he still thinks I did it on purpose," Stan admitted. "He knew I didn't want him to go live on the other side of the country and he found proof I'd been there. He confronted me and I maybe wasn't as upset he couldn't go as I should have been. He accused me of sabotaging him and that's when Dad walked in. And, to be fair, if it was such an accident then why didn't I tell him about it so he could make sure nothing was wrong? And Ford's not used to falling on his face when it comes to nerdy stuff."
"Nerdy stuff," Fiddleford repeated mildly. "I think I resent that. Tell me, if it was such an accident, why didn't you tell him?"
"Eh, I don't even remember," Stan said. It had been forty years ago. "It was a long time ago. But I know I was scared and I didn't want to lose him. That's irony, right? I'm sure eventually we'll have a knock-down drag-out fight about it. I don't really want to but I know myself. Forgive me for not wanting that fight to be sooner instead of later. I just got here yesterday. All this happened in 1972."
Fiddleford nodded. "I see. And not to change the subject, but why did you want to speak with me? Surely it wasn't to make sure I knew your side of the story."
"You were his roommate at college, right?" Stan asked rhetorically. "And you've known him here."
"Yes," Fiddleford admitted reluctantly. "But we haven't spoken in months. Well, except for…it doesn't matter."
"You still know more than I do," Stan insisted. "Look, I got a postcard a week ago just asking me to come, not explaining anything. I hadn't heard boo for ten years and then this. So, schmuck that I am, I come here. Ford is…bad."
A slight crack in Fiddleford's demeanor. "Bad?"
Stan nodded. "Yeah, real bad. He nearly shot me with a crossbow and thought I was there to steal his eyes. Then he nearly blinded me with a flashlight. Not that he explained this, by the way, but I think he was seeing if I was possessed. He was really paranoid."
Fiddleford sighed and wouldn't meet his eyes. "I'm sorry to hear that."
"But not surprised."
Fiddleford hesitated.
"Look, he showed me that weird portal thing you guys built," Stan said. "He's talking end of the world. He thinks something powerful is out to get him. He gave me his journal and told me to take it and run but God knows I'm not leaving him alone like this. I don't understand everything but I'm really worried about him."
"So am I," Fiddleford admitted.
"What happened? Why did you two stop working together?"
Another hesitation.
"Fiddleford, please."
"It's not that I don't want to tell you," Fiddleford told him, looking – in fact – quite like he didn't want to tell him. "But I don't quite remember."
It didn't surprise Stan that Fiddleford had already started fucking with his head but it was annoying. And potentially very dangerous for him since he didn't have any intention of shoving a metal plate in his head like Ford had.
"You don't remember?" Stan asked skeptically, as one would when they didn't know everyone in town's dirty little secrets. "Can't have been that big of a deal if you just forgot."
Fiddleford gave him an annoyed look. "It being such a 'big deal' is why I forgot in the first place."
"Let's pretend that makes sense. You wouldn't know, would you?"
"I remember that much," Fiddleford said grimly. "Your brother and I built a portal to other dimensions. Is it really so hard to believe that someone could invent away to forget?"
Well, he came right out with that, didn't he? But then, Stan already knew about the portal. "Maybe it's not impossible but it sounds like a terrible idea." Except, well, when they needed to get nosy feds off their back. But that was special circumstances designed to save their family, not 'boo hoo I saw a gnome.'
"Is it? You've never seen something you'd just as soon forget?"
Stan let out a startled laugh. "Oh, I'm all too familiar with that. But it's my life and my experiences. I wouldn't get rid of any of it."
Fiddleford nodded. "Maybe you haven't seen the kinds of things I have."
Stan rolled his eyes but he wasn't offended. It's not like he wore his past on his sleeve. "I know you wouldn't know for sure but what do you suppose is the likelihood you've ever been to prison? In three countries? Or had to chew your way out of the trunk of a car? I'm lucky I didn't break a tooth!"
Fiddleford looked a little shocked and Stan felt darkly satisfied. Maybe Stan's past didn't involve deals with demons but it was still enough to shock Ford's nerdy friends.
"Maybe we just have different tolerances for horrible memories," Fiddleford continued, barely missing a beat. "But I do assure you that, while what I've seen is less…well, it's different than what you've been through. But it's no less upsetting or valid than your experiences."
Well, he wasn't going to be the asshole who told someone what they'd been through didn't matter. He didn't now what Fiddleford had seen on the other side of the portal or why that seemed to fuck him up more than Ford's thirty years had (not that Ford hadn't had a boatload of issues before and twice as many after). He didn't know if the gun was just somehow addictive or why else Fiddleford had used it until it literally destroyed his memory and rendered him immune to its effects. But people didn't just wake up one day and decide to invent a memory gun and a creepy secret society because they had too much free time. Old Man McGucket had always swung towards robots for that.
"I got that. But how safe is it?"
"Safe?" Fiddleford repeated, frowning. "No one has ever exhibited any ill effects. Using it too often is starting to point to some memory loss but that is outlier data."
"Well that wasn't quite what I meant," Stan said. "Although, outlier or not, that is highly concerning." He wondered who that outlier could possibly be. Was it better or worse that at least Fiddleford was aware what was happening to him?
"For the majority of people, it's not a problem," Fiddleford said firmly. "And I'm looking into it."
"What if someone needs to get their memory wiped because they, I don't know, see some gnomes stealing a pie," Stan said. Mabel had mentioned something like that had happened to Lazy Susan, hadn't she? "There are a lot of gnomes in Gravity Falls. How many times are you going to need to do that? How long before she's an outlier, too?"
"We don't go after people every time they see anything out of the ordinary," Fiddleford insisted. "This is Gravity Falls. People here are used to it and ignore or don't even notice most of the weird stuff. We just help them when they are distressed."
"That's no way to teach coping skills," Stan grumbled. "And if the sight of gnomes distresses them?"
"I can honestly say that that hasn't been a problem."
Stan crossed his arms belligerently. "And when it does? If you're going to be doing this to people you should have a goddamn plan."
"Point taken," Fiddleford said evenly. "Why do you take such an issue with me helping those who are distressed? I'm well-aware of Stanford's objections but somehow I don't think they'll be along the same lines as yours."
Stan snorted. "Yeah, I don't give a damn about scientific advances. I just know erasing people's memory without their consent is some shady shit."
"It's not without their consent." Fiddleford sounded offended.
"You up and kidnap them, right? So you don't have to go shoot-er, hitting them in public. Of course they're going to be distressed after that! Do you, I don't know, get informed consent or something? Don't you scientist types have ethics?"
"We do," Fiddleford conceded. "But, as always, these things are far simpler in a classroom."
"Don't abduct people and erase their memories," Stan said flatly. "Seems pretty straightforward."
"And leave them to be traumatized by the horrors of Gravity Falls? That would be irresponsible."
"They somehow managed before you did all this," Stan pointed out.
Fiddleford nodded. "There's a difference between just surviving and the quality of life that comes from a lack of trauma and my memory guns can be the deciding factor there."
"And if someone was upset about what they saw and started screaming for you to leave them alone and they wanted to remember?" Stan challenged.
"It's never come up," Fiddleford said with a tight smile. "We haven't been doing this for very long."
"Maybe you should have thought these things through before you started," Stan suggested pointedly.
"Maybe we should have," Fiddleford acknowledged. "It's a little late now, though. I can just do my best to make this process better."
"I feel I should mention that I don't care what I see, I don't want anybody erasing any of my memories. Ever."
"I had gathered that, actually," Fiddleford said dryly.
"And I'd like it in writing, just in case you forget," Stan continued. "I just want to make sure that we're clear. But I was going to bring up safety. Gravity Falls is a pretty dangerous place. I ran into a freaking pterodactyl. It makes sense that all this weirdness and, more to the point, danger is really distressing. But knowing about something that wants to kill you makes you safer than not knowing about it. Take you, for instance. You're sure whatever happened was really bad but you don't know what. Ford's in over his head. What if knowing would make the difference between life and death, between just another day and an apocalypse?"
Fiddleford sighed. "To tell you the truth, Stanley, I do worry about that. It's hard to know you've made the right choices. Take me and Ford. Why exactly did I leave the project? I know there was a, shall we say, lab safety failure and I fell halfway into the portal before Ford could pull me out. But I remember none of this. Was it what almost happened? Was it what I saw? I just have to trust myself. But it's hard to trust yourself when you don't understand why you made the choices that you did. And, in the end, how much can you really ever trust yourself?"
That sounded like the same kind of paranoia that was consuming Ford. Stan had never been so grateful that that had never been one of his many problems.
"I would hope you could trust yourself," he said finally. "How else would you know who to trust?"
Strangely, Fiddleford seemed pleased by the question. "That is exactly the issue."
"You fell through the portal," Stan said, shuddering. He could still see the look on Ford's face as he had been pulled in. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to go back and make sure that practically teenage Ford was still right where he left him. But he needed to finish this first. "Even if only partially. Even if it wasn't for very long. Even if you don't remember. I don't blame you for quitting."
"For the most part, I don't either. I think Ford does, though he denies it. But I don't remember." He sounded frustrated. "And I know that was my choice and I must have had my reasons but that just brings up questions. I don't know what's coming, what your brother will do, but I don't trust it."
"Ford," Stan said. "What's going on with him? What's he so afraid of? Why does he think this portal is a bad idea? Is it just what happened to you?"
"I don't know everything," Fiddleford cautioned. "I don't think I did even before."
"You know more than I do," Stan said. "Come on. I just want to help him."
Finally, Fiddleford nodded. "He didn't tell me everything. I suppose that thing told him not to. That I wouldn't understand. Of course, I look at it as me seeing right through him."
Bill?
"What?"
"Apparently he was having problems trying to find the source of all the anomalies here in Gravity Falls," Fiddleford said. "And that was real important to him. It wasn't enough to just study all the strange creatures and happenings here, though he did that, too, and extensively. He wanted to figure out just what it was about Gravity Falls that led to it being such an epicenter for weirdness. I don't know how he made contact with Bill or even what Bill is, exactly, but it's become a real problem."
"Bill," Stan repeated. "Is that some sort of a person or something? What do you mean what he is? Like he's an elf or wizard or whatever?"
"I have never seen Bill," Fiddleford said. "Not in his true form. If that's even his true form. But judging from what Stanford has said and the rather alarming shrine he had built in his house, he's some sort of triangle. I think he's a demon. He promised Ford answers and he seemed to be providing them. He gave us a lot of help on the portal. I didn't like him or trust him because I'm a god-fearing man and something about all this possession stuff wasn't right."
"Possession?" Stan asked. He knew that, distantly. But it had all been years ago and he'd never seen it. Fiddleford had. "My brother's been getting possessed?"
"It was consensual," Fiddleford replied distastefully. "Or as consensual as these things get, at any rate. I told him it was a bad idea but he thought I was being unfair to Bill. He said there is nothing inherently wrong in body-sharing as long as both sides know what they're getting into and don't try to take advantage. And I suppose I can see the logic of his arguments but I could just never…" He trailed off and shuddered. "There was just something so unsettling about him, even when he was being helpful. Or we thought he was being helpful. You can tell a possessed person from their eyes. Their pupils are like a cat and their eyes are all yellow. I didn't have any real concrete reason to distrust Bill, except for him being a body-stealing demon and all, until…Well whatever it was that happened. If Bill provided us with so much information for the portal and it was his idea in the first place and something happened…Well I'm not so inclined to think there was some sort of mistake."
Stan nodded. "That seems reasonable. I don't really like the idea of demons and possession, either."
"I wouldn't have thought that that would be a controversial subject but you know how your brother gets when it comes to beings he feels are being unfairly stereotyped."
Stan just sighed. "I mean, I love the guy. I really do. Probably more than he'll ever wake up and realize, to be honest. But I will never understand his need to equate every weird thing in the world with the fact he has six fingers. Is that uncommon? Yes. Did some assholes give him a really hard time about it when we were kids? Absolutely. It's why I'm so good at punching assholes. But there is a big difference between a couple of extra fingers and demons who want to possess you and open up a portal that will probably lead to the end of the world."
"I hope you can get that through to him," Fiddleford said. "If he hasn't already worked it out."
"I think he already figured out he was wrong about Bill," Stan said. "Not that he's mentioned Bill. But he has mentioned the portal being a terrible idea and creatures after him. And not that I'd know what the house looked like before but I haven't seen a lot of triangles lying around. I mean, I can't say that I've seen none but not what I would consider an excessive number of shapes. You say you haven't really talked to him since it happened?"
Fiddleford hesitated. "I'm really not the best person to ask about that."
"You were there," Stan said flatly. "Or weren't there, as the case may be."
"That's true," Fiddleford agreed, looking away.
"Damn it, Fiddleford. Not wanting to remember whatever was on the other side of the portal I can understand. Maybe not agree with, especially if you didn't write it down or warn someone before you did but I can understand it. But if you know that there's a good chance the end is coming and you just rip that knowledge right out of your head…I hope you'll have enjoyed having a little less stress when a triangle comes to kill us all."
"You're so flippant," Fiddleford accused. "It's not that easy."
"No one said it was," Stan said unrepentantly. "But this is the potential end of the world we're talking about. Fuck, I can't believe I just showed up for a reunion and now I've got this shit to deal with. Ford's all paranoid, I don't understand everything that's happening, and you won't even remember. Do you like those odds? I don't like those odds."
"I don't like our odds even if we were all functioning at full capacity."
"Yeah but you're saying that completely out of the loop and not even knowing everything you should be knowing," Stan pointed out. "Ford's a mess but he seems to have had a plan."
"I'm pretty sure Ford's plans are what led us here," Fiddleford said pointedly.
"Hey, let's not blame him for whatever crap Bill's up to," Stan said firmly. "Though to the extent he listened, that just means he should probably stop it, right?"
Fiddleford stopped suddenly. "We're here."
Sure enough, the Shack had just come into view.
"I don't suppose you're coming to come in after all and finish this discussion?" Stan asked, knowing that there was no way he was going to agree to that.
"I think it's about finished," Fiddleford said. "I don't know what else I can tell you, I really don't."
"Yeah, okay," Stan grumbled. "But if the next time I see you you have no idea who I am I swear to God I'm egging your house."
"I'll keep that in mind," Fiddleford said, turning to go.
"I mean it!" Stan called after him. "And I'll TP your house, too! I've done it for far less than deliberately ignoring the end of the world!"
