I do not own the show GRAVITY FALLS or any of the characters; both are the property of the Walt Disney Company and of Alex Hirsch. I make no money from these stories but write just for fun and in the hope that other fans enjoy reading them. I will ask, please, do not copy my stories elsewhere on the Internet. I work hard on these, and they mean a lot to me. Thank you.

NOTE: This is one of my first GF fanfics, written before I'd developed my rather complex AU arc. I've rewritten it as of October 2019 to bring it more in line with the rest of the story arc.

Father and Daughter Talk

(July 3, 2016)

Wendy Corduroy suspected that her dad let her win the log-rolling contest.

They had spun the log wildly as it floated on Lake Gravity Falls, each trying to make the other topple into the water—and at last, with a quick forward-reverse-forward feint, Wendy toppled her dad. Manly Dan roared as he plunged into the drink, raising a mini-tsunami—but it was a roar of laughter. When he clambered out of the water and stuck out his huge hand to haul Wendy in to shore, he said, "Proud of you, girl!"

"Thanks, Dad. You cold?"

"Nah, I been worse. You OK?"

"Dad, I'm over my cold," she said. "I'm more worried about you—you're soaking wet."

"Soon dry out in the sun. Let's go sit up there on the bank." He stopped briefly to heft a cooler they'd brought, and then they began to climb the hill.

Her dad sloshed his way up the grassy slope, then set the cooler down, flopped down beside it, and tugged off his water-filled logging boots. The afternoon sun, hot on the first Sunday in July, streamed down on them and sparkled on a lake lively with small boats and over at the distant beach, with waders and swimmers. Father and daughter sat side by side, gazing down at the summer scene. "Nice day, man," Wendy said as she leaned back on her elbows, crossing her lanky legs. She tugged her trapper's hat lower on her forehead to shade her eyes.

Manly Dan cleared his throat. "Yeah. Baby Girl, I'm sorry you and me ain't had more of these nice days."

"Hey, you're pretty busy, finishing up Ford's house and all, and I've been run off my feet at the Shack. Big, big crowds this year."

"Still." Manly Dan sat quiet for a few moments, then cleared his throat. "Wendy, I wanna have a little talk. since your mom died I've tried to be like a dad and a mother both to you. A seven-foot tall, three-hundred-and-twenty-pound mom. I know I ain't done it well and I ain't done all I should. Sorry for that."

"Hey, hey," she said playfully, rolling on her side to gaze at him with affection. "Don't go killing the mood, man. You did all right."

"Yeah, but you deserve better." Another long pause and then: "So . . . you want to move out on your own, girl?"

She gave her father a quick surprised glance. "Who said anything about that?"

"Nobody. I don't think your brothers even suspect. However, I ain't as dense as people think. I know you're getting' antsy. I know a gal already out of high school wants her own life, her own privacy. I can't blame you for that. You're nineteen, high time you stopped bein' your daddy's live-in cook and maid and started to make your own way. You doin' okay on your salary?"

"Oh, yeah." She laughed as she lay back again, arms folded, hands pillowing her head. "Soos pays way more than Stan ever did. And he and Melody have already offered to rent me a room if I want—Stanford's old bedroom. Dollar a month was as high as they'd go. Can't beat the rates. So . . . so if I took them up on that, I wouldn't be far away if you need me or want to see me and junk. But would you and the boys be all right?"

"Oh, yeah, I can afford to hire somebody to cook and clean, no worry about that. But, well . . .. You really want to stay on at the Mystery Shack? You could do a lot better. Go to college this fall, get a degree."

She shrugged. "Still saving my money for tuition. I'm planning to go next fall, Dad. Down in California, you know."

Manly Dan grunted.

Tentatively, a little afraid of what she might hear, Wendy asked, "So . . . you sure you're like okay with me moving out, Dad?"

"It's time," he said, his voice suddenly hoarse. "I know you been waitin' to ask ever since you graduated last month. Last May, now."

"Thanks, man." Wendy sat up, leaned over, and kissed her father on the cheek, just above the beard line. Then, settling back, she asked quietly, "Dad? Long as we're just, you know, talking—tell me what Mom was like? People all say they liked her a lot, but you never talk about her."

"Ah, baby," he said. "You remember her at all?"

"Kinda," Wendy said. "She had long red hair like me. She had a nice laugh."

"She had beautiful hair," Dan said. "Minute I met her, I told her, 'You oughta marry me. Us redheads could have us some awesome children.' And when she laughed—I heard angels."

Wendy's throat tightened. She'd never heard her father's voice speaking in that tender tone. She didn't interrupt or ask questions. She just wanted to hear him talk.

He lay back, staring up at the blue July sky. "I married your mom the day she turned twenty-two and I was eighteen," he said. "Just a jobbin' logger workin' for her granddaddy, Henry Ward. Old Mr. B., hard as heart of pine. I'm surprised him and her daddy—her dad was paymaster for the company—let me marry Mandy at all. Hell, truth is, we had to elope, and then old Henry Ward, he cut us off cold. Can't blame him, I guess. I wasn't good for her."

"Dad," Wendy said, "I can tell you loved her."

Dan fished out a handkerchief and honked his nose. "I did, but she coulda done better'n me. I mean, I was rough in those days, Wendy. Did way too much drinkin' and gamblin' and runnin' around. Your mom tamed me down, made a real man out of me. 'Cause her grandpa wouldn't even let her daddy help her out, times was hard often enough, but she never once let me get discouraged. 'We'll make it, love,' she always told me. Mandy was a hell of a woman." He sniffled. "You remind me so much of her. She'd be proud of you, too, girl."

"What did she like to do?"

His voice grew even softer as he seemed to gaze back into the past: "Loved gardenin'. She could grow vegetables on bare granite." He smiled. "That first year, she went 'round to everybody in town that had a garden, flattered them out of seeds— 'You grow such pretty tomatoes, Miz Smith.' 'I wish I could grow corn like that, Mr. Welburne.' She cleared and hoed a patch pretty near an acre big in back of that first one-room log cabin I built for us. We were well found in vegetables that summer, and then she canned enough to see us through the winter. Some weeks we lived on vegetables and nothin' else, or vegetables and whatever meat I could hunt. Her dad might've helped us on the sly, but she wouldn't take off him. 'I'm a married woman, Daddy,' she'd say. 'I don't want Grandpa to be mad at you too. Don't you worry. Dan and I have to make it on our own.'"

He stretched. "And she sewed her own clothes for the longest time. Always found ways to stretch a penny and make ends meet, even after you kids started comin' along. First Dan, Jr., then you, and then the twins, right before—well."

"Yeah, I know. How did she die?"

Dan shook his head, and when he spoke again, he kept gulping deep breaths and his voice grew hoarse. "Wendy, when the doctor found the cancer, he sent her to specialists. They all said the same thing: Three months at the outside. She was carryin' the twins, and not that far along, and they said if she—if she got rid of them, she could go through chemo and all that, maybe stretch it out to a year. She said hell with that, I'm gonna have my babies."

He cracked the cooler and took out two Rimrock Beers, tossing one to Wendy. "Here ya go."

She caught it, and a few cold drops of ice water flicked onto her bare arm. She grinned uncertainly. "You sure you want to let me drink?"

He winked at her. "Girl, you gonna hide your beer drinkin', remember to look for empty cans under the front seat after you borrow your daddy's pickup." They popped the beers. "Where was I? Right, she was four months pregnant and they said she had three months left to live. She toughed it out and after five more months, the twins were born healthy. And she went on. Three months they all said, and when those months were up, for three more years and two damn months my Mandy wrassled the Angel of Death and helt him off in an armlock. Finally, though, she just plain got too tired weak and then she went into the hospital and . . . didn't come out again. You were between five an' six, I guess."

"I kind of remember her being tired a lot. But she read to us every night. Made us laugh. Sang to us and junk."

"She was a hell of a woman. Like you're gonna be, baby girl." He was weeping now, his voice choked and clogged. "You get your rangy build and your laziness and orneriness from my side of the family, but never forget your Mama was one hell of a tough woman. You got her blood, too. You're tough and stubborn and you don't give up 'cause of that." Then so softly and shakily that she wasn't sure she heard him right, he added, "Never forget, Wendy, your mama was a Blerble."

Wendy sat bolt upright. "Wait, what?"

But Manly Dan seemed lost in his own thoughts. He drained his beer, dug out two more for them, and then said too casually, "So which boy you got your eye on?"

She nearly choked on the beer. "Uh . . .wait, who said there was a boy?"

Dan popped his beer and said, "I know there's a boy, baby girl. I ain't mad. I got some suspicions, but tell me so I'll be sure: who is it?"

She swigged another deep gulp of cold beer. "It's Stanley and Stanford Pines's grand-nephew."

"Well, they're good men both. Saved the town's bacon that one time. Dipper, is it?"

"Yeah. He's sixteen years old, soon to be seventeen—"

"Mm-hmm. And when I married your mom I was just eighteen years old. So that's why you wanna hang around Gravity Falls a couple more years. That's a smart boy, that Pines kid. He'll be goin' to college before too long. That's when you plan to go with him."

"Aw, Dad, I don't know," she confessed. "We just see each other in the summers, and we've just been friends for a long time. He's grown a lot, you know. Used to be real short, but now he's nearly as tall as me. Dad, he's smart and funny and he and his sister are like the coolest people I know. I didn't mean to fall in love with him, but—"

"Yeah, it happens." Dan said. "You two using protection?"

She laughed out loud. "Oh, my God! We haven't got that far, Dad!"

"Well, when the time comes—"

"When it does, I'll remember your advice." She paused. "You know back when there was all the trouble, back when we came and busted you guys out of that crazy flying pyramid thing—just a day or so before that happened, Dipper found out his sister Mabel was trapped in this kind of insane bubble-like prison where High Bluff Bridge used to be. Dipper and I decided to hot-wire a car—we were in town and needed wheels to get there—to go rescue her. Well, first we had to get away from Gideon Gleeful and his mooks—"

Somehow he was handing her another beer. "That fat little poofy-haired little prissy sack of moose manure? How'd you do that?"

She shrugged. "I pulled his buddy Ghost Eyes' arm outa the socket and drop-kicked Gideon into the others' faces."

Dan chuckled. "Kicked that little fat piggy squirt?"

"Yep. Hauled off and planted my boot good. I told him I'd wear his ass on my foot like a rhinestone slipper, and I sure did."

"Huh! Get any distance?"

She nodded. "'Bout twenty yards, but the wind was against me."

"Twenty yards, damn! Good for you, gal. I believe you kicked some sense into his ass. He's settled down nowadays, I hear. Have another beer."

"Thanks, man." She took it. "How many is this now? May be a bad idea. I'm gettin' a real buzz. Okay, talk about guts, right? So I hot-wired a tricked-out cop cruiser, right? And I drove through all sorts of weirdness, and Gideon and his glee club were hot after us, so Dipper and me had to jump the gorge in our hijacked cop car, and we made it but the car smashed down hard and rolled over like a dozen times, and we drug ourselves out of the wreck. I was hurtin' in places I didn't know I had, couldn't hardly move my arm, and I guess I had a concussion, 'cause I was sort of in and out of consciousness, and Dipper, man, he couldn't even stand up."

She smiled and a single tear ran down her cheek. "Little dude couldn't even get up on his hands and knees, man, but he started to crawl in the dirt toward Mabel's prison bubble, still a quarter mile off, draggin' himself along with his elbows. Crawlin' on his knees and elbows with all that doomsday shit comin' down because he was hell-bent on rescuin' his sister. I think I started to fall in love right then." She raised her beer. "Talk about guts, man. Talk about tough."

"Sounds like you two might have a future together," Dan said, clinking the rim of his beer can against hers. "Tell him not to be too a-scared of me. If he wants to ask my blessin', it's okay by me."

"God, I love you, Dad."

"Same here, Baby Girl. Same here."

Later that evening, maybe not completely sober, Wendy climbed into her car—ten times used already before she got it, a faded forest-green 1973 Dodge Dart with a slant six engine that she had taken apart and reassembled twice, once to learn it, once to get it in peak condition. After years of work it looked and ran pretty much like new. It was hard work, too, because the odometer had surely already seen 999,999 at least once before and now stood at 203,618, and still the car refused to die.

What the hell, it was a flippin' Corduroy car.

She roared into town and up the hill to the McGucket Mansion—as people called it now—and drove through the permanently-open front gate. A shiny new Lincoln waited at the front steps, and she parked, badly, right behind it.

She climbed out and went right in without ringing the bell. In the foyer she met two tall, bulky, nearly identical tousled-haired men, brown on top but with graying temples, heading out, arguing with each other. "Hi, Stan dudes," Wendy said.

They glanced at her, interrupting their quarrel. "Hiya, Wendy," said Stanley Pines. He squinted at her and grinned. "How's it hangin'?"

The other, his twin Stanford snapped, "Stanley! Manners! Good evening, Miss Corduroy."

"Hey, Wendy," Stanley said, "Poindexter here and I are off on a little Fourth of July trip to Vegas, be gone two-three days. You and Dipper and Mabel want to tag along and learn something about games of chance?"

"Thanks, but no, not me," Wendy said, smiling. "I suppose you have a system."

Stanford winked. "It's all in working the odds," he said.

"He figures 'em, I play 'em, and together we mop up," Stanley added. "We're already banned in Monte Carlo!"

"Your wives not goin' with you?" Wendy asked.

Stanford looked guilty. "Lorena is getting our new house ready for our official move-in date next Friday."

"And Sheila's helpin'," Stan said. "Meh, they're happier without their old men underfoot! Poindexter just said goodbye to the McGuckets, so we're about to take off. You here for Dipper?"

"Uh, yeah, I called him and he told me he was over here."

"He'll be in the library," Stanford said. "You can find him there."

Somewhere in the huge house, the wealthy and very nearly sane Fiddleford McGucket was puttering happily in his lab, busy inventing God only knew what. His wife Mayellen might be helping him or might be huddling with their son Tate, whose wedding she was helping to plan. As for the other Mystery Twin, Mabel was probably out with her steady boyfriend Teek, if they'd really made up, as Mabel said she was trying to do following their falling-out over Teek's decision to go off to the East Coast to college.

In the library, Wendy found Dipper, seated at a table and immersed in an oversized book, Ford's Journal 5. That was a recent volume, not one of the famous first three, destroyed by Bill Cipher, but then rescued by Blendin Blandin from some time in the past and flawlessly duplicated, invisible writing and all, by the advanced printing industry of Procyon 4 in the far future. Dipper's Journals 1, 2, and 3 were mint first-generation copies; the originals were back with Stanford. They were gifts from the Time Baby, who didn't die the second time around—you know what? Leave that for another story.* It's complicated.

"Hi, dude," Wendy said, hauling a library chair around and sitting on it backwards close beside Dipper. Her head was spinning a little and her smile felt as if it might look silly. "'Sup?"

"Wendy!" Dipper said as he emerged from his fog, his tone excited. "Listen, I think there's another mystery to be solved—Ford discovered a legend of a lost Spanish treasure guarded by supernatural monsters—mmph!"

"Cool, man," said Wendy, breaking the kiss. "But first you gotta say hi to your girlfriend."

Dipper stared at her and grinned. "You've had a beer or two."

"Got another one in the car with your name on it, dude. I mean boyfriend."

Dipper grinned shyly and shook his head, because he didn't even like beer. She loved the way he still blushed when she teased him. Then she got serious: "Dipper, what do you think? We've planned it and talked about it, but—straight up, dude, we really gonna, like, get married when you're ready for college?"

"Yes! I asked you already," he told her quietly. "All you have to do is say yes. I'll get you a real ring and everything."

She stared at the floor. In a small voice she asked, "I know we planned, but I dunno now. I love you, man, but maybe—Dude, would it matter to you if we couldn't have kids? Is that a deal-breaker?"

He sat up in obvious alarm. "What? Why? Are you sick or something? What's wrong?"

She raised her green eyes, the tears spilling. "I'm afraid to think what our kids might turn out to be," she wailed. "I dunno if it was some shapeshifting magic or some weird alien technology, or what, but—" she hiccupped and then said miserably, "Dude, my dad just told me today—my mom was a gerbil!"

Fortunately, they got it straight in time and Wendy learned how she'd gained her middle name—she never even knew what it was, because Dan had implied it was Barbara, but it wasn't, because she was the great-granddaughter of Henry Ward Blerble, and that had been her mother's maiden name. She would learn that her full name wasn't Wendy Barbara Corduroy, but Wendy Blerble Corduroy, and she had no gerbil in her ancestry.

Eventually she'd learn all that.

Just not that night.

The End

*OK, the story of how the Journals were saved is in "Baby, Baby." It's a time-travel thing.