It took two days after Fiddleford returned to town before he came to them, eyes flashing.

Stan rather considered that a good sign. It meant that it had taken him two whole days to realize that his little cult was no more and that his memory guns had been confiscated and his secret hideout shut down. It meant that he wasn't in too deep just yet and he might have been trying to pull back given what he and Stan had been discussing.

They had discovered some alarming things in the society records. Some of the members had indeed been pushing for a more liberal application of the memory erasure while Fiddleford, mindful as always of what had brought him to that point, continued to insist that it should only be used to help people who wished to forget.

It made him wonder about that accident that was supposed to happen sometime in the next few months. Was it truly an accident, truly a result of erasing his memory one too many times? He knew that the McGucket he knew had been rendered immune from the gun because his mind was already broken or whatever. He knew it had been a steady slide down before he had lost everything all at once.

But why had the society been so quick to abandon one of their own? That was Dipper's question. He had thought maybe they just erased their guilt and the knowledge of who he was but why? What did they have to feel guilty about? Watching Fiddleford destroy himself? Was it even an accident? Why had they just left him with nothing and not tried to offer him any aid as he was forced to live in the dump?

Well, other than the fact that they were all terrible people. That much couldn't be denied.

Had there been a coup? Had they decided that they were going to police who was and was not permitted to remember the supernatural whether they wanted to forget or not?

He couldn't imagine Fiddleford, stubbornly principled even as he was wrong, agreeing to that.

And somehow, Blind Ivan had either erased his other life or his connection to the society had been too deep to allow him to remember anything else once its existence had been erased from his mind. (If he were in charge of such a society, not that he would ever do something so stupid, rule one would have been no using the gun on yourself. That's just kids' stuff.) Stan still rather thought allowing Mabel to name him…whatever that was…was a form of cruelty but it was a little late to be worrying about that now. He was still Jeffrey now.

Fiddleford was so angry, it seemed, that he actually barged into the house for the first time since he had tried to erase Ford's memory which had been the first time since he had quit their project (and, Ford loudly complained, had refused to actually give his reasoning for wanting the portal shut down and making Ford figure it out for himself then getting mad Ford hadn't immediately agreed the second shutting it down had been first suggested).

"Oh, hey, Fiddleford."

"Don't 'oh, hey' me," Fiddleford snapped. "What did you do?"

Stan and Ford exchanged a glance.

"Would you like to be more specific?" Ford asked.

"Don't play dumb," Fiddleford said. "It's beneath you."

"And I would have thought it was beneath you to form a cult dedicated to police the memories of innocent people under the guise of helping them like something out of a dystopian novel but I guess we were both wrong," Ford said.

Stan winced. What Fiddleford had been doing was abhorrent to him in every way but he understood why the guy was doing it and he knew he would only end up hurting himself the most in the long run. And they had never met before sometime in the 1980s when he was already crazy and homeless and looked far older than he actually was. He had been Ford's friend and, well, when Ford's relationships ended they had a tendency to just wondrously implode. Not that that was Ford's fault necessarily; it was just the kind of thing that happened when the fate of the world was at stake or abusive fathers were involved.

He might have tried to calmly explain it to Fiddleford (while still not giving him any choice about it because it was a fait accompli) but evidently Ford was going to insist on behaving like an actual human being not from thirty years in the future and get emotional about it.

Fiddleford's face darkened. "So, what? You decide to protest the potential for erasing people's memories without their consent by erasing the memories of the Society of the Blind Eye? Exactly how consensual was that?"

"Not even a little."

Ford shot him a look.

"Well it wasn't…"

"Thank you, Stanley, for at least being honest with me," Fiddleford said. "I can see that I wasn't even going to get that much from Ford. Don't you dare try to claim that you have the moral high ground. You didn't before and you sure as fuck don't now."

"I did what I had to do to protect the people from your society."

"Yes, congratulations, you erased their memories. You took my guns. Well I can rebuild them. I can find new members. I could probably even convince those same people," Fiddleford said. "And what are you going to do about it? Erase my own memory."

"It wasn't a coincidence we struck when we knew you were gone," Stan said quietly.

Fiddleford laughed. "Oh, I see. I get special treatment because you know me. Because I was your friend."

"We're still friends," Stan insisted.

"We can talk about that some other time when you haven't just, what was that charming little term you used? Oh right, mind-raped eight people."

"It's not the same. This hasn't been going on for very long and it's not a chapter of their lives they should be proud of," Ford said. "They can go back to their normal lives and nothing has changed. They're not the problem."

Fiddleford laughed again. "And I am? Lovely. Brilliant, even. I'm the problem so I'm the one who doesn't have their memory of all of this erased. I'm the one with the idea, I'm the one who founded the society, I'm the one who can create the memory guns in the first place…Yes, I do seem to be the problem, don't I? And yet you waited for me to come to you."

"We didn't think it would do any good," Ford said bluntly. "Well, perhaps erasing your knowledge of how to create the memory gun might help but if you invented it once you can invent it again. You've already forgotten whatever it was you're afraid of and it's still not enough. You can't erase the visceral fear it planted in you and you've already taken a hatchet to your own memory. Who even knows what more you can take before something terrible happens?"

Stan gave a loud, put-upon sigh. "What my brother means, of course, is that we're both very worried about you. We wouldn't dare try and use the memory gun on you again because we don't know what would happen. And we respect you too much to force you."

Fiddleford crossed his arms, unimpressed. "And the others?"

"Well, we didn't actually erase Bud Gleeful's memory," Stan said. "I thought Jeffrey's name was Ivan and I don't actually know who those other people are. As Ford said, it's not the same. You're the one we ultimately want to convince but if we didn't shut that society down, convincing you wouldn't matter. You can't let people know that they could have that kind of power. Maybe some of them wouldn't abuse it, I don't know, but it's a bad idea."

Fiddleford stared at the ceiling. "I don't want to debate this with you. I'm tired of debating this. You've forced me to defend everything I've ever thought about the matter. Nothing has changed. You'll either force me not to recreate my society or you won't."

"Do you understand why we're so against the memory gun?" Ford asked suddenly.

"Pardon?"

"Do you understand why we're so against the memory gun?" Ford asked again. "I don't agree that I'm so big a threat to Gravity Falls now that I've had my eyes opened to what Bill truly is and protected myself against him that I need to be taken out of the picture. I suppose I should be grateful you didn't feel I was a big enough threat to kill even if you would have basically lobotomized me."

"That's not-"

"I know why you think that. I don't agree but I do get it. Do you understand where we're coming from?"

"You worry about abuses and a lack of oversight. You think it's unnecessary as no one has seen whatever I have seen and they've been getting along just fine before the society. You view memory loss as akin to murder. You're worried about the effects it's had on me, the dependency I seem to be showing, and what will happen if I continue to use it. Of course I understand."

Stan jumped on that. "So if you know our concerns, you know they're not entirely without merit. You know what could happen. And I know you want to help people and let's not even look at whether you are. You just listed off the worst case scenario for rebuilding the society. What's the worst case scenario if you don't?"

Fiddleford hesitated. "I-I reckon there will be people who see things and it frightens them and they're forced to come up with their own answers."

"The people of Gravity Falls are very good at that," Stan assured him. "We set gnomes after Bud Gleeful and then he was semi-abducted by the society then witnessed up erase their memories and it was not hard to convince him of what I wanted to convince him of."

"He may believe he's now a child abuser," Ford said. "But, strangely, I think he can live with that."

"Not that strangely," Stan said.

"Say I did accept that," Fiddleford said slowly, haltingly. "Say I did accept that I didn't need to bring the Society of the Blind Eye back, that people can manage on their own. That you two wouldn't just leave well enough alone and that I couldn't even take the notion from Ford's head."

"I like where this is going," Stan said.

"What about me, then? I can't stop. You know I can't."

"You haven't erased anything important since I came to town," Stan pointed out. "Believe me. I've checked."

"Maybe not anything big but I have used it. It…it's like an impulse, almost. Like a constant itch inside of your own mind that you can never scratch and never quite manage to forget about. I start to get twitchy if I have to go too long without it."

"Fiddleford," Ford said seriously, "what you're describing sounds very much like an addiction."

Fiddleford gave him a shaky smile. "Never let it be said that I'm not self-aware. But knowing and stopping are two very different things. And how exactly do you rid yourself of an addiction to a memory gun?"

Stan had asked himself that very question a hundred times. If nothing else, one day he wouldn't be able to use it anymore but he couldn't let it come to that. Not now. He was too invested. "Maybe the same way you fight any other addiction."

"A therapist? A rehab?" Fiddleford asked pointedly. "Good luck explaining all of this. I couldn't even tell you why."

"And yet you're willing to risk your mind, your very sanity for this?" Ford demanded. "My God, Fiddleford, you have a child."

Fiddleford's eyes flashed. "I'm keeping him well away from this."

"Cold comfort when you show up having destroyed your own mind one day," Ford shot back.

"It will be difficult," Stan said. "Especially as I'm not so sure it's the memory gun you're addicted to but trying to get relief from that trauma. Whatever it is I can't even imagine if not even having entirely forgotten it will let it leave you in peace. But please. You have to let us try to help."

Fiddleford was hugging himself, looking almost panicked. "And why should I do that? I barely even know you and you seem nice enough but we argue more than we don't and you had no problem taking out my society."

"You know me."

Fiddleford laughed sadly. "That's almost worse. I do know you, Ford. I know what you're capable of."

"Then you should know that I'm not capable of doing anything that you fear intentionally," Ford said. "You should know that I know the truth about Bill and I've learned the hard way what happens when you ignore the concerns of others. This place I safe. The portal is gone. Whatever you saw can't come after you. Let us try."

"And if I did then what? How would you even help me? I can't forget. I can't forget."

Ford and Stan looked at each other helplessly.

"There's no easy answer," Stan admitted. "I'm not mental health expert. And this is a completely new area anyway. We don't know what we're dealing with but we probably can't make it worse."

"Stay with us," Ford implored.

Fiddleford blinked rapidly. "Wh-what? We've barely spoken since…we've said so many terrible things…and what you two just did! Why would you-?"

"I regretted what happened," Ford said, staring at his hands. "You have to know how much I regretted it. I was a fool and the world nearly paid the price. I know that you did. And as for me…I don't even know what I would have done if Stan hadn't come when he did and insisted on staying. But being sorry doesn't change the fact that it happened. And it doesn't change the fact that I knew that you needed help and I just turned my back."

"I didn't ask for help," Fiddleford said, staring down at his own hands. "I did everything but. You wouldn't do what I asked and then you came to me when you realized the truth and I turned you down."

"That doesn't matter. I knew you weren't right. Who would erase their own memory if they were okay? Who would still be so jumpy?"

"I knew you weren't having an easy time of it, either," Fiddleford pointed out. "I knew that you were all alone and that Bill was still after you. Stan even told me you put a metal plate in your own head. And I know that I haven't really been able to face…anything, really, since it happened but I turned my back on you just as much. And all I wanted to do was blame you and I knew it wasn't fair but it was easier than the alternative. If I blamed you I didn't have to blame myself. I didn't have to face what was still happening. I mean, fuck, I walked away with you still under Bill's sway. What if you'd never seen the truth? It's not like I was trying to convince you."

"It wasn't your job to make me realize what I fool I was being," Ford insisted.

Stan felt like an outsider here. He knew Ford longer and better than Fiddleford ever had. He'd certainly had more of a relationship with Fiddleford than Ford had lately. And yet there was a whole history here that he just wasn't a part of, could never be a part of. They had known each other since college, right? Were they roommates? He could never remember.

And this was a talk that clearly needed to happen.

"Look, I think it's clear that everyone here has made some absolutely terrible decisions," Stan spoke up. "And I'll have you know I'm perfectly capable of making awful decisions that could destroy all life as we know it. Don't leave me out of your little club."

"It's not a club anyone should want to be in, Stan," Ford said, confused.

"Well I have. We can't change that. And we can try and hold onto that anger and just keep hating and hurting each other or we can try to get the fuck over it and move on," Stan said. "Ford and I pretty much have that down. I was never actually really angry with you, Fiddleford, so that really just leaves you and Ford. And Ford's made it clear he wants to help you so he's at least partially there. So what do you say, Fiddleford? Are you going to let us help you?"

"You just want me to move in. Just like that."

"It's not like it would be the first time," Ford pointed out.

"There's plenty of space," Stan said. "And it would only be however long you needed it to be. We just don't think that you should be alone right now. And after we kind of accidentally erased the memory of your cult members, you really don't have anyone else who even know what you're going through, let alone have any chance of understanding."

"Could you maybe stop calling them my cult members?"

"It's unlikely," Stan said bluntly.

"What about stop saying you accidentally did things that were completely intentional?"

"It's for effect," Stan insisted. "I don't think that anybody is actually confused here."

"Please, Fiddleford. We nearly broke the world. We nearly broke ourselves. We're getting a second chance here, as impossible as that seems, and I don't think we're going to be so lucky as to get a third," Ford said earnestly.

Stan would do literally whatever it took to make sure they got a thousand chances if that's what it took.

"I…It would be easy," Fiddleford said slowly.

"Nothing worth doing ever is," Ford said. "And that's not a no."

Fiddleford's gaze met his for the first time since he had arrived. "No. I don't suppose it is."