#not much fiddlestan here but rest assured it does eventually happen because i say so

[imaredshirt]

It takes Fiddleford a while to realize it.

It takes years, actually. Which he theorizes could be a side effect of using the memory gun so often - one downside of many, apparently - but it finally hits him one day when he's exploring his new mansion.

He's only been living in the place for a few months at this point. The Northwests left a lot behind but they didn't leave a map, so Fiddleford spends a few hours a day drafting up blueprints of each floor and every room. He's looking through a printout of his current draft and as he's distracted, he doesn't notice that there's a staircase three feet ahead of him.

The fall takes him by surprise. He tumbles down, hitting every carpeted step with a yelp, and when he finally reaches the end, he lands wrong.

Very wrong. He should be permanently injured. He knows it. Landing on your head at his age after a tumble like that - can't be good. No siree.

But he gets to his feet and dusts his knees off and rubs his aching head and he's just fine.

So he sits on the first step and thinks back and realizes with snap of his fingers - he can't die.

Which is not to say that the fall would have killed him or that he's completely invincible, but he thinks back to all the mishaps he's had.

People have hit him with cars (multiple times) and he's always walked away with a spring in his step. Piles of trash and scrap metal have toppled over him in the scrapyard (also multiple times) and he's climbed out from under them without a scratch. He's been eaten by a pterodactyl, electrocuted by multiple inventions, tumbled off a cliff, struck by lightning, attacked by supernatural creatures around Gravity Falls, and has used the memory gun more times than anyone in town.

His arm's not even injured. He just likes how the bandages look.

Stanford would likely be stunned and worried by everything Fiddleford has survived (understandably so) but he would also find it all fascinating.

Fiddleford's not sure he would agree with that. He's worried. But the researcher in him is convinced it has something to do with the Portal Incident, when 1/3 of his body spent all of fifteen seconds inside the portal.

That's when it started, he thinks. It has to be.

But then, he wonders - if the portal has had this effect on him from something that happened years ago, what has it done to the Pines brothers? Stanley, who spent years working on the portal, and Stanford, who spent just as long on the other side?

It just so happens that at that moment, the doorbell rings. Fiddleford throws the massive doors to find the very brothers he's been pondering standing there, still in their travel gear. They've returned from their voyage on the Stan o' War II three months early. He can smell the sea on their coats.

Stanley barges in, pulling Stanford after him, and when Fiddleford shuts the doors, Stanley throws his coat open to reveal the metal end of a broken harpoon head sticking out of his chest, right over his heart.

"Fiddleford," Stanford says as Fiddleford stares, aghast. "We need to use your machinery. We can't exactly walk into a hospital with our very new statuses as, ah, very wanted criminals--"

"We got on the wrong side of the law, what's new about that?" Stanley interrupts. He gestures wildly at the metal sticking out of tender, reddened skin. "Anyway, you think any old doctor is gonna be able to fix this? Ford says you're the only guy who can help, so I'm just gonna get to the point, McGucket - four days ago, some stupid pirate got lucky and hit me. Four days ago! Why aren't I dead?"

Fiddleford pulls out his trust notebook, and as Stanford details the attack and how well Stanley has fared with a metal spear stuck between his ribs and likely puncturing his heart, Fiddleford thinks he knows that the brothers are well aware of the possible cause, but are perhaps too shocked to admit it.

Even months after Weirdmageddon and the dismantling of the awful invention beneath the Mystery Shack, it just seems that messing with an inter-dimensional portal is not without consequences.