Disclaimer: This story is going to have swear words, have queer people, disregard so much canon, and spoil everything immediately. This is the July update so I'm gonna edit some things I got wrong the first time.

This is a labor of love and I really do love it. I've been rewatching Gravity Falls and rereading Journal 3 and I just want to do this right.

There are a lot of things that arguably don't make sense, mainly the ages of Stanley and Eda, but my plan for tackling that is to not. This is a fanfic, it's not always going to make sense. I just wanted to write a fun (angsty) little fankid story. I have ten chapters planned out in arc 1, and then arc 2 will go on probably for at least ten more, etc. If there's an arc 4 it'll probably be set in the distant future of 2020.

That's right! Most of the story is set in 2012. The first chapter is set in 2011, right before the events of the Halloween story, Birds of a Feather, that I wrote last October. Go check it out if you want after you read the first chapter, it might help things make more sense. If you have any further questions leave them in the comments and I'll try to address them as best as I can!


Caryn "Cary" Leigh Pines was best described as a question mark, like the ones on the shirts her father sold in his tourist trap gift shop. The Mystery Shack had been operating longer than she'd been alive, though it had been The Murder Hut back then. But mystery apparently sold more tickets than murder, and when she entered the picture she brought a hell of a lot of mysteries and a hell of a lot of business.

The first mystery was how she came to exist. She'd heard about the birds and the bees of course, but her origin story seemed to be more birds than anything. Her father, Stan Pines, after a one-night stand and short-lived marriage, found her in the back of his stolen car. Or, to be more precise, he found the egg she had hatched from. Her mother had fled the scene, leaving the car she had stolen and the egg she had presumably lain behind. At first, Stan had been confused about the events that were unfolding but he was even more confused when the egg hatched and a little girl with thick, bright orange hair, golden eyes, and six fingers on each hand had been born. Cary hadn't fully understood Gravity Falls' abstinence-only sex ed but she had gotten the impression that most little girls didn't hatch from literal eggs.

It had always tugged at her brain that maybe this was one of his stories, one of his farces that only existed to con someone out of a dollar. But that wouldn't explain why it was the story he told her since she was one of the few people he was honest with, and it wouldn't explain the visions.

Cary's past was a mystery but her future seemed sure, her visions had always come to fruition. She would be in a calm, dreamless sleep when suddenly a prophecy would grab her. She would sleepwalk down the hall, the whole reason her room had been moved downstairs, and then she would see something horrible or confusing or both. The most vivid vision of all saw her one day turning into a wretched bird monster, with soulless eyes and six talons on each hand.

Her dad tried to comfort her, to assure her it wouldn't come to that, that he would protect her. He would bring her back to bed and get her a glass of cold water and tell her that none of her nightmares were real. And she always wanted to believe him. But other visions through the years had come true. She knew, deep down, that the beast awaited her, and she knew that the only way to get answers was to find the person who had left her behind.

That was what scared her the most, what scared her more than the horrific monster she knew she would one day become. She was scared of meeting the person who was responsible for making her into a monster. No doubt her mother was a monster herself, she had to be, to introduce Cary into the world and then immediately abandon her. It was better than Stan having to fight for custody of his daughter, of course. Cary was happy here in Gravity Falls. But one day she would have to face her mom and then… And then what? Who would she become? What would she lose? Would she come undone, would that encounter only hasten her transformation? Or could the future still be rewritten?

Cary often felt like less of a person and more of a mystery just waiting to be unraveled. And she was scared of what she would find when all of her loose ends were followed back to the source. And Cary wasn't the only one with worries.

The older his daughter got the less and less Stan began believing that her visions were just bad dreams. It seemed pretty clear that the unusual circumstances surrounding her birth guaranteed she'd have an unusual life. And if part of that meant one day she would turn into a wretched bird beast, well they'd roll with the punches.

So one night, when she woke up from a nightmare, he took her outside, offered her a Pitt Cola, and attempted to give her something his parents had never given him- unconditional love.

"You'll always be my daughter, Cary, no matter what. Even if that creature in your dreams is real- you'd still be my daughter. I love you so much and no weird curse or whatever is going to get in the way of that. So we're going to figure out what's going on together, okay? I don't want you running away because you're afraid of what you've become. Trust me, I know how that is."

"You do?"

"Oh yeah, your old man is a pro and running away. Did I ever tell you about your Uncle Stanford?"

"I thought your name was Stanford…"

"I guess I didn't. Well, we've got a lot to catch up on, then. You mind a bit of a longer bedtime story, tonight?" She was less than a month from turning fourteen and hadn't had a bedtime story since she was much younger, but she quickly and eagerly shook her head yes.

"My real name is Stanley Pines. And in between me being Stanley Pines and becoming Stanford Pines I had about as many aliases as you would expect from a drifting grifter."

"Cool," Cary said, eyes lit up at the idea of life on the road committing petty crimes.

"Sometimes. And sometimes it was really lonely. I missed my family a lot."

"So why'd you leave them?"

"I have to go back a bit, Cary… I have a twin brother. His name is- was, I don't know- his name is Stanford. He was born with six fingers on both hands, like you. He was a genius and we were best friends. When we grew up our parents expected him to go off and do great things and they expected me to live at home and scam people at the family pawnshop. I wanted to get out of New Jersey and go on adventures, and I thought Stanford wanted the same thing. But when he was offered a better life I got upset and, well… I think I sabotaged him. I didn't mean to, I never meant for him to get hurt, but he did. Our parents were so upset that I'd cost Stanford the opportunity of a lifetime that my dad kicked me out, with just my car and a duffel bag. I haven't been back to New Jersey since. I didn't even go back when mom and dad passed away…"

Cary sat in shock for a minute, stunned.

"Your brother didn't believe that you didn't do it on purpose?"

"No. He just watched me leave. I went off and tried to earn a fortune and make my parents proud but I just ended up getting banned from at least 28 states. But Stanford really did go on to do cool things. He got money from the government so that he could study paranormal stuff and he came here. I didn't hear from him for over ten years."

"So how'd you end up here? And how'd you end up with his name?"

"One day he contacted me and I thought that was it- I'd finally have my brother back. I was so excited, that I jumped at the opportunity to come and make amends. But Ford didn't want apologies or amends. He had dark secrets, things I don't fully understand. He made a deal with a demon and opened a portal to another dimension. He wanted to shut it down for good and make sure the demon couldn't escape and he wanted me to take his research, including one-third of the instructions to build his terrible machine, and hide it far away."

"He called you here just to immediately ask you to go far away? That seems kind of mean."

"I thought so too, and we had another fight… I was selfish and stupid, and I should have just done what he told me. He said it was the only worthwhile thing I'd ever do… I got angry and I made things so much worse. During the fight, I accidentally activated the portal, and Ford got sucked inside. I've been trying to get him back for almost thirty years now. In those thirty years, I started running the Mystery Shack in order to make some money. I staged the death of Stanley Pines so no one would ask questions and I became Stanford to anyone who asked. And I met your mother and you came into my life. Now I have something real, something worthwhile, now I have you. I hope one day I can bring Ford back so he can see that."

"I can't believe you never told me any of that…" Cary said, not knowing if she should be upset or just afraid. She shivered a little in the October air and Stan shed his jacket, an old leather biker jacket from his time on the road, to wrap around her.

"I'm so sorry, sweetie, I should have told you a long time ago. I didn't know how to bring it up and I didn't want to get you involved with something dangerous. But if your dreams are true that means that we're going to have danger on our hands either way. So I propose that we don't keep secrets from each other, okay? And that way maybe we'll be able to have each other's backs. Sound good?"

"Sounds good, dad. I'm going to help you get Uncle Ford back."

"And I'm going to help you figure out this bird thing. Team Pines doesn't run away or back down, right?"

"Right!" She'd woken up from her nightmare terrified that she was an anomaly and an outcast. But apparently, the whole world was weird and she didn't have to be an outcast alone.

"Alright, come on. Let's get you back to bed."