Gravity Rises (S3)

PP: Part Nine

Fiddleford moved in and out of sleep for the rest of the day. He heard Melody talking with another female voice about Fidds' recovery; he heard the voices of children as they complained to Melody about Ford leaving without them; he heard a deep, unfamiliar voice talking with Melody and Ford about something he couldn't make out. Later that evening, he woke up long enough to eat another pureed meal and meet Dipper and Mabel Pines, but he soon slipped back into sleep.

The next time he awoke, the morning sun shone through the window. Fidds' eyes blinked open, revealing two images of the room; Fidds squeezed his right eye shut again and removed the extra image. Where was his eyepatch?

He rolled over onto his shoulder — it was getting easier to move on his own — and looked for his eyepatch on the bedside table. There it was, under the lamp. Fidds reached out for it before seeing what was next to it.

Stanford Pines sat next to the bedside table. The men's eyes locked, wide with surprise.

"Fiddleford," said Ford, his voice laced with hesitation.

Fidds grabbed his eyepatch and slipped it over his head. The slight pain in his right eye, which came from squeezing it shut, lessened as his eye blinked beneath the eyepatch. Then Fidds pushed himself to a sitting position. "Stanford," he said with equal hesitation. Everything he'd thought of in the past few days to say to the man suddenly fled from his mind.

The men stared at each other.

Finally, Fidds' tongue found the words. "I'm sorry," he blurted. "I'm — I'm sorry."

Ford blinked slowly, then lowered his head into his hands.

"Melody says that Stanley was here a few days ago." Fidds didn't know how long it had been since she'd said that, exactly, but he thought it was a few days. "Was he?"

"He was," Ford said without raising his head.

"What was he. . . like?"

There was a moment of silence. Fidds immediately regretted the question — what kind of question was that, after Fidds was the one responsible for the biggest change in Stanley since Ford had last seen him? What gave Fidds the right to ask about Stanley after what he'd done to him?

But he had to know. He clung to some thread of hope that the situation wasn't as terrible as he feared.

Finally, Ford looked up. Fidds flinched beneath his gaze: It was hard, stony, hateful. "He didn't remember me," Ford said. "He said that being around me felt familiar, but nothing more."

Fidds had no idea how to respond.

"He became the leader of the Order," Ford added, "twenty years ago. Was that your plan? To leave Lee a blank slate so that he would join your side?"

Fidds flinched again. "N-no," he said. "I was. . . I was doing what Cipher told me."

Ford glared at him. "Don't try to blame this on Cipher."

Fidds shook his head. "No, I. . . I know it was my fault. I thought. . . I thought Cipher would reward me. But I never — I never should have done it." His chest felt tight with emotion. "I ruined both of your lives."

"Yes, you did," Ford said venomously.

There was another silence as Fidds hung his head in shame.

Finally, "What happened?" asked Ford. "How did you end up in the other dimension and Lee at the Order? I remember Lee falling into the portal."

Fidds nodded listlessly. "Because I erased your memory of his rescue."

"What?"

So Fidds told the entire story. It wasn't hard: All the terrible things Fidds had done were engraved on his memory. He'd spent thirty years reliving the memories over and over again in his head and hating himself in every minute. He started the story back when he had joined the Order in 1978; he gave a brief explanation of his activity between that year and the year of 1982. He talked about the development of the memory gun (which Ford said had been destroyed, surprisingly enough) and Bill's instructions for the interdimensional portal. Fidds told of shooting Ford and Lee the first time, of ripping out the pages in the third Journal that talked about Bill, of lying to Ford about Bill's involvement with the portal construction, of planning with Bill to enter the demon's dimension with Fidds as a vessel. He related, in painful clarity, the events of that ultimate day, when Fidds had shot both brothers, made Ford believe that Lee was lost on the other side of the portal, and erased Stanley's memory entirely.