Y'all are often more perceptive than I give you credit for. I'm dyslexic, so please forgive any misspellings. I'll find them eventually.

Stanley emerged from the elevator holding an empty super glue bottle.

"Ford, do you know where I hid the glue, woah!" Stan ducked as a green energy beam shot over his head, melting a hole in the door.

Danny's eyes and hands were glowing green; he was breathing deeply, staring wide eyed at the intruder.

"Danny!" Ford yelled, harsher than him ment. The boy flinched away from him, and vanished before the twins eyes.

"Where'd he go?" Stan exclaimed, slowly standing up.

"He's still there," Ford said, gesturing to the blanket that was clearly still on the invisible boy's lap.

"Sorry kid, I didn't mean to scare you," Stan said, rubbing the back of his neck. "If I knew you were awake I wouldn't have come down here."

"It's okay Stan, I should have locked the door," Ford rubbed the bridge of his nose, his glasses sliding up on his face.

"Are you going to come out kid?" Stan asked. Instead of a response, the room dropped several degrees as ice began to form on the wall behind where the ghost child was sitting. The blanket moved, as though Danny had curled into a ball, and was rocking himself.

"Danny?" Ford asked, gently placing a hand on where the child's shoulder would be, and immediately pulling away, his fingers covered in frost.

"What's happening?" Stan asked, fear creeping into his voice.

"If I had to guess, I'd say he's having a flashback," Ford said sadly.

"Well then we've got to stop it right?" Stan practically yelled. The invisible form winced.

"Keep it down Stanley. I don't think there is anything we can do. He doesn't trust us yet, any contact could only send him deeper into his mind. We will just have to wait."

After several tense minutes, the temperature slowly rose, the ice melted, and Danny became visible again. He was rubbing tears from his face, and avoiding eye contact with the twins. Ford knelt down in front of him.

"Danny, are you okay?" He asked softly. Danny reached for the board, which had moved just out of reach. Ford passed it to him. Without making eye contact, Danny answered, yeah.

"What happened?" Stan asked.

Don't want to talk about it.

"That's fine, you can when you are ready okay?" Danny nodded. Ford took a slow, deep breath. "I'm going to go upstairs to talk with my brother for a second, alright?" Danny nodded again, his fingers fidgeting in his lap. Ford grabbed something off the top of a filing cabinet, and offered it to the child.

Danny gingerly took the offered rubik's cube, the faces totally scrambled.

"I'll be right back," Ford assured him, but he was already focused on the cube, glad for the distraction.

Ford lead his brother to the elevator, which thankfully still worked after getting shot with ectoplasm. Once the doors were safely closed, Ford slumped against the wall.

"You okay poindexter?" Stan asked gently. Ford took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

"I'll be alright, but this is going to be even harder than I thought."

"I am really sorry about barging down there. I wouldn't have…"

"It's not your fault," Ford interrupted. "It's just going to take Danny a while to warm up to us."

"So his name's Danny huh?"

"Yeah."

"How old is he?"

"15. He claims to not have a last name. I'm not sure what to think about that yet."

"Could mean he never had one."

"Or he doesn't want to associate with his family," Ford mused.

"What else did you learn?"

"Not much actually. Communicating via written word isn't the fastest, or the most accurate. Hey, will you do me a favor?"

"Anything Sixer."

"I want you to get some books from the library on sign language. I know a little, but it's been a long time since I needed it. It'd be best if the rest of the family learned some too. It's pretty intuitive. It'd be better if we could talk to him in a more natural way."

"Sure thing," Stan slung his arm around his brother. They'd arrived at the top a while ago, but remained in the elevator talking. Ford looked at his watch.

"The library is closed now, so you'll have to go tomorrow. Take the kids with you, I'll get Danny's sizes tonight so you can pick up some clothes for him, that should help make him feel more comfortable."

"You've really taken to this kid haven't you." Stan stated simply. Ford looked at the floor and smiled.

"Why are we at the mall Grunkle Stan?" Dipper asked as they pulled into the parking lot.

"WE'RE GOING SHOPPING?!" Mabel screeched, causing Dipper to cover his ears.

"What are we getting?" Dipper asked. Stan waved his hand in the air.

"Some books on sign language, and some clothes for the kid." He stepped out of the car and patted his pockets.

"Now where did I put that, oh. Here," he held a piece of paper. Stan went to hand it to Mabel, but then clearly thought better of it and gave it to Dipper.

"That's a list of the kids clothes sizes. Don't get anything your sister would get."

"Hey!" Mabel complained, insulted.

"He's 15, that's not that much older than you," Stan continued. He fished in his pocket for a second time, and came out with a wad of cash. He handed half to Dipper, and the other half to Mabel.

"Mabel, I want you to get some candy, or coloring books, or whatever you want to keep him busy."

"I won't let you down," Mabel slauted and scampered off toward the store.

"I doubt she is going to get anything he will like. If what Ford told me is accurate, Danny doesn't like pink frills and rainbow unicorn coloring books."

"I know," Stan stated as he started walking to the building. "That was just to keep her busy. I actually want you to get him some nerd books. Apparently he wants to be an astronaut, or something." Stan waved his hands around like it was all ridiculous, but Dipper knew the truth. Stan had taught himself advanced math and physics in order to reconstruct the portal to bring his brother back; he was now as much of a nerd as the rest of them.

"Okay, see you later then!" Dipper waved behind him as he hurried for the building.

Dipper looked at the list and found it was pretty straight forward. Jeans, t-shirts, socks, shoes, underwear, and a hoodie, along with their respective sizes. He chose a clothing store at random, grabbing a cart on his way in, and headed for the right section.

He decided to shop they way he usually did, throwing the first thing he saw in the cart, and getting out as painlessly as possible. Dipper went for the easy stuff first, a bag of socks, and underwear. He checked off the little boxes Ford had drawn on the paper with a pen he kept tuck in his vest.

Jeans where next. He grabbed three pairs of straight legs in slightly different shades of blue and tossed them in the cart. Check. Next he picked a couple of plain black and grey t-shirts and threw them in too. As he was heading for the jackets, he noticed a blue shirt with this on the front:

(Get real) (Be Rational)

\ /

π √-1

He threw it in the cart. A plain red hoodie soon followed suit. Shoe's were hard, but he eventually settled on some similar to the ones he was wearing, plain black tennis shoes. As he was checking out, Mabel barreled into the store, a bag from the candy store gripped tight in her hand.

"You won't believe what I found Dippin sauce!" She pulled out a handful of suckers that looked like the planets.

"Woah, that's really cool Mabel," Dipper said, genuinely impressed.

"I know right? I overheard you and Grunkle Ford talking, and heard something about Danny being a space geek, so tada!" Dipper smiled at his sister; she acted silly, but over the past year she had gotten much better at actually listening and considering other people's feelings. They walked together to the bookstore, Mabel digging through his shopping and beratting Dipper's fashion sense the whole way.

As Dipper split off to head for the astronomy section, he passed Stan in the language one, and doubled back.

"What are you getting Stan?" he asked, startling the conman as he flipped through a book.

"Oh, hey Dipper. Ford wanted me to get some sign language books from the library, but I hate libraries." He shuddered. "So I figured I'd just borrow, er, buy them from the store instead. How does this one look?" he tossed the one he was holding to Dipper, who caught it awkwardly. He opened it and flipped to a random page, examining the directions for performing the sign for Cake.

"Looks good to me." He passed the book back.

"Good. Hey, have you seen your sister running around? I don't want to have to extract her from a claw machine again." Dipper laughed.

"Yeah, she's in this store somewhere, probably finding the biggest coloring book she can get her hands on."

"Okay. I'm almost done here. I'll meet you kids back at the car." Dipper continued on his way to find his favorite book on the formation on stars, and black holes. Luckily, the weird Gravity Falls book store had it. They also had one of his favorite books on ciphers and codes, so he got that one too. He made it up to the counter the same time Mabel did, who, to no one's surprise, had a giant coloring book under her arm. She also had some weird novel called Behind the Sun that everyone at their school was obsessed with for some reason, Dipper hadn't read it. He thought he remember there was a movie made about it that everyone hated. Mabel already had the book, so he guessed it was for Danny.

"What'd you find nerd bro?" Mabel asked, looking at the books in his hands. He moved the books so she could see the covers.

"Boring, this is much better," she held out her pick.

"Sure Mabel," Dipper laughed, as he took his turn at the register.

As they neared the car, Dipper sensed that something was off. He could see Stan on his cellphone, which he hated using, with a grim look on his face. When he noticed the kids, he yelled, "Get in the car now! We have to get back to the Shack!"

"What happened?" Dipper asked, pulling open the door, and shoving his shopping inside.

"It's Ford." He gunned the car home.

I just can't help but end chapters on cliffhangers. I'm not sorry.