A/N: Thank you to those of you who let me know the last chapter got messed up. It's been years since I've posted to this site, but hopefully that's fixed now!

Stan hadn't anticipated that being a ghost would be so boring.

Following Ford around when he couldn't interact with him at all could only entertain him for so long. At some point, he decided that if he wanted to make good on his promise to Ford, he'd have to figure out his new capabilities.

That being said, it was easier said than done. So far he knew he could phase through things, and he accidentally ruffled the blanket but that wouldn't exactly do him any good.

Curiously, he didn't phase through objects when he sat on them. He couldn't quite figure out why that was, but he wasn't going to question it. He wouldn't have been thrilled at the idea of having to stand for the rest of eternity.

Ford had eventually wandered off to another part of the house, leaving Stan in the front room by himself. He tried picking up a pen sitting a few feet away from it but his hand phased through it, as he had expected.

Maybe if he tried focusing more on his hand, he could touch it. He stared intently at his fingertips, concentrating on picking up the pen as he reached out again.

Yet again, his hand passed through.

He knew he had no need to breathe anymore, but the motion came out of habit as he let out a short exhale in frustration.

He didn't have time to burn. Technically, he supposed he technically was already out of time. But for some reason, he was still here, existing even if it was as a mere shadow of his living self.

Ford needed him. That much was obvious. He was counting on him to help him with whatever had him looking so ragged and worn down.

Being dead wasn't going to stop Stan from helping his twin if he needed him.

Channeling his thoughts back to the task at hand, he focused on his hand yet again. As his hand hovered above the pen, he concentrated on his fingers, imagining what it felt like to be solid and tangible, what it felt like to curl his fingers around the pen and move it.

His concentration didn't waver as he reached for the pen. To his shock, he felt the smooth surface of the pen under his finger tips, but in his excitement, his concentration broke and his hand passed through yet again.

However, his excitement couldn't be dampened. He had actually managed to touch it!

With a renewed vigor, he tried again. His concentration was more schooled this time, not wavering even as he touched the pen yet again.

Keeping his breath steady, he curled his finger around the pen and lifted it from the desk.

Though the pen should have weighed next to nothing, the action sapped him of his strength. With a gasp, the pen fell to the desk as it phased through his hand.

Similarly to breathing, he knew he didn't have a physical body anymore, let alone a heart or blood, but he could feel his heart pumping in his chest like a phantom memory.

Yeesh, he didn't even feel this tired at the end of a long day.

Yet his exhaustion didn't deter his excitement. At least now he knew what he had to do if he wanted to move an object. Unfortunately, he also knew that he was probably only limited to small objects at occasional intervals.

However, there were few things he knew about his new life (or maybe afterlife was more appropriate), that even knowing what his limitations were was a good thing.

At least now he could try to move things to let Ford know he was here.

Curiously, he wondered if he'd be able to move heavier objects or move objects more frequently if he practiced.

The idea seemed reasonable at least.

Satisfied with this new progression, Stan decided it was about time he checked up on Ford.

He wandered off in the direction he saw Ford go to when he left the front entry room. He passed through several rooms which showed no sign of his brother amongst all of the science-y clutter.

Scratching his head, he wondered if Ford had walked past him without him noticing. The rooms didn't lead to any other rooms, apart from what looked like storage closets or back outside.

Peeking through a window at the storm still raging outside, he hoped his brother hadn't left.

Then again, it wasn't like Ford was acting himself. His twin was the dumbest genius he knew, so it shouldn't surprise him too much if he went out in a snowstorm.

He reached for the doorknob, letting out a small grunt as his hand passed through. Until he got his strength back and practiced being able to manipulate his surroundings, he was going to have to remember to phase through things.

Old habits died hard, he supposed.

Passing through the door, he found himself standing on another small porch. Snow covered where he assumed steps would be, and to his satisfaction, he found that there were no footprints in the snow.

So at least Ford hadn't been dumb enough to go outside.

That still meant that he had no idea where Ford had gone off too.

Scratching his head in thought, he distantly realized that he couldn't feel the cold still. He really should have questioned why he hadn't felt the cold when he had been standing in the middle of the storm when he had been freezing in his car on the way here.

If it had been Ford in his position, he was sure his twin would have realized he was dead sooner. He was the smart twin for a reason, after all.

Shoving down his self deprecating thoughts, a new idea popped in his head.

If he could leave footprints in the snow, maybe he could spell out a message for Ford.

As he stepped off the porch, he heard no familiar crunching of snow beneath his feet. Glancing down, he found that his feet (huh, how hadn't he realized that he could see through his feet until now) stood in the snow, yet left no tracks.

Great. There goes another idea.

"God dammit!" Stan yelled, kicking and stomping his feet in the snow.

He glared up at the pale sky, "I bet this is real funny to you, huh?"

Sure, he might have been raised Jewish, but somewhere along the road in his travels, he had lost his faith.

Now he was stuck in limbo, yet he was convinced maybe this was his own personal hell. He was just as invisible to Ford as he had been in life. Even his afterlife was some cruel joke.

Glancing back to the house, he knew he should go back in and look for Ford. Yet the idea of going back into the house didn't appeal to him at all, not when even a cockroach could see or hear him let alone his brother.

With a sharp turn of his head, he stomped off through the snow. He didn't know what direction his car might be in, but in a town as small as Gravity Falls, he could eventually find it. Then maybe he'd at least get some sort of answers.

He hadn't even made it towards the edge of the clearing the house stood in when he started to feel something pulling him back, as if a tether was yanking him back towards the house.

Gritting his teeth, he pushed against it. In one moment, he was trudging his way through the snow covered yard, but in the next, he found himself standing back on the porch.

"What the—!"

With renewed determination, he leaped off the porch and took off running across the yard.

Yet again, he only got so far before he found himself back on the porch.

"Aw, come on!" He yelled, kicking at one of the wooden support beams of the porch.

So he was stuck to the house it seemed. Or maybe it was Ford himself. Even in death, he was still chained to his brother.

"Fine. Okay. So you're stuck here." Stan mumbled to himself, pacing the short distance of the porch, "This ain't so bad. You can keep an eye on Ford; it's not like he's going to be leavin' anytime soon."

No matter how much he tried to tell himself that this was fine, that he was fine, he knew it wasn't true.

He felt like it truly hasn't sunk in that he's dead. It still feels like he's going to wake up in his car and this will have all been just a terrible dream.

But he somehow knew it wasn't a dream. He'd had plenty of dreams involving Ford. On the best days, he'd dream of old memories, or of the two of them making up and becoming brothers again.

His worst dreams, however, were the ones where Ford would look at him with a burning disappointment. His glasses hid his eyes behind a glare, similarly to the way his fathers had.

"You're pathetic," Ford would spit out at him, "You really thought I'd ever want you back in my life after you messed it up? Why would I want some dumb, useless twin who'd only ever pull me down? I'm better off without you."

Stan shivered at the thought.

At least in his dreams, Ford acknowledged him. Being ignored was its own kind of hell.

He supposed he should be used to it. People tended to want to forget that people like him existed. Hell, his own family probably pretended he didn't exist.

For the first time, he realized that there would be no one to mourn him now that he was dead. His body would probably be some nameless John Doe thrown in a potter's field to rot.

He wondered if he'd even be lucky to get a tombstone.

A deep sigh escaped his lips. His shoulders shrank in on himself as he turned and let himself pass through the door back into the shack.

He had half a mind to curl up on the couch he had seen earlier. He doubted he could sleep anymore, but maybe he could find some sort of comfort in laying down.

He started making his way to the doorway when one of the closet doors against the walls opened with a loud creak.

With a jump, Stan turned to watch a frenzied Ford exiting the door with a stash of messy papers and notebooks piled in his arms. Before the door was shut and locked behind him, Stan caught a glimpse of a staircase descending downstairs.

Huh, he hadn't thought this place would have a basement.

Ford hurried through the doorway and disappeared from his sight. He probably should follow after him, but something was tugging his attention back to the door, similar to the force that had kept him from leaving the shack.

Glancing in the direction Ford had just dashed off too, Stan slowly approached the door. It really didn't seem like anything special apart from having a keypad to enter a code into.

Luckily for him, locked doors meant even less in death then they had when he was alive.

Passing through the door, he found himself standing atop of a flight of stairs descending further into the house.

With some hesitation, he made his way down the stairs until he came to an elevator.

With a sigh, he pinched his nose, "Never could do things the normal way, can ya Sixer?"

Once again, he phased through the door until he was standing in the elevator. Another keypad was installed into the control panel, temporarily stalling Stan's descent. According to the controls, there were three floors.

"Yeesh, talk about overkill."

Well, if he could phase through doors, he didn't see why floors would be a problem.

It took more conscious thought than going through a door, it seemed. With a bit of concentration, Stan slowly started to sink through the floor into the elevator shaft.

Packed earth passed him in his descent until he finally reached the bottom. With some amusement, he realized he could float rather than need to walk.

So being dead at least had some perks.

Floating through the elevator door, he entered into a control room that looked like it was straight out of NASA.

Monitors lining the sides of the room blinked at him in the darkness, providing him with some minuscule amount of light (though it didn't help to make the place look any less creepy).

He gave a low whistle as he slowly floated through the room, feeling a bit unnerved that all of this belonged to Ford.

It looked more like a mad scientist's lair than any lab he had ever seen.

But who was he kidding? Apart from movies, he'd never seen an actual lab.

There was a strange feeling nagging at him, some force still drawing him forward through a door at the opposite end of the room.

What was Ford hiding so far beneath his house?

As he neared the door, he noticed that there was a large window above what looked to be a control panel, but the room on the other side was too dark for him to make out what was on the other side.

Part of him didn't want to find out. Whatever was on the other side of the wall gave him a bad feeling.

There was never a good reason to have three levels hidden in the basement. Not to mention locked behind at least two keypads. Whatever Ford had down here, he was probably hiding it for a good reason.

All the more reason that Stan needed to find out.

Something had Ford real messed up, desperate enough to call on his fuck up of a twin brother whom he hadn't talked to in a decade to ask for his help.

Stan had made a promise to Ford, and Stan might not always be a man of his word, but when it came to his brother, he'd make good on his promise.

Taking a deep breath to steel himself, he passed through the door into the other room.

Without all of the flashing lights from the monitors, the room was significantly darker than the previous one.

Even as a ghost, it seemed his eyes needed to adjust to the darkness.

Slowly, he began to make out the shapes of the walls, if they really could be called that. Bare rock surrounded him, stretching high into the ceiling. Wires and poles climbed up the rock face, leading to a large upside down triangular structure on the opposite end of the door.

Stan's jaw dropped at the sheer size of the structure. He'd traveled all around the world but he'd never seen anything like this before.

"There's nothing about this I understand."

Even though the machine appeared to be off, Stan could feel an intense amount of energy and power crackling from the dormant structure.

Despite knowing no one could see him, even if there was anyone else down in the basement, he could feel eyes burning into his back.

A prickling feeling traveled up the back of his neck and he forced himself to avert his eyes from the machine. Nothing about this was right. It was no wonder Ford was so worked up. Stan was unsettled just at the mere sight of the machine; he couldn't imagine how much worse that feeling would be if he knew what it's purpose was.

He knew without a doubt that there was no good reason for this thing to exist.

"Oh Ford," he groaned, "What did you get yourself into?"