It was a real blizzard out there. That was the first thing Stan noticed as he made his way up from the basement, sweaty and exhausted and no closer to starting back up the portal. He stared out into the billowing grey, and then looked back at the house.
"Kid?" He called, and his voice echoed through the darkened rooms. "What's his name… Danny? You still here?"
Only silence answered him. Silence, and when Stan looked outside again, there was an awful feeling curling around his stomach. Shit. He didn't think about the snow when he was down in the basement. Surely the kid wouldn't have been stupid enough to…?
No. No, he was fine. Probably. Besides, he was… some sort of ghost, wasn't he? Ghosts didn't get frozen. Yeah, he was totally fine!
Still, Stan couldn't quite tear his eyes away from the snow piling up on his car. Would it have been so hard to drive him into town?
Finally he frowned, and turned his back. "You don't have a time machine, Stan," He muttered, "Nothing to do about it now."
He had more important things to do, like finding some food in this damn house before he fell over. He'd found a room earlier he thought might be the kitchen; squeezing past a table stacked with fleshy things in jars, he reached a grimy-looking chest freezer, hesitated, and opened the lid to reveal some kind of congealed squid creature laying in a vat of ice cubes.
"Eugh." The smell hit Stan, and he quickly shut the lid. "Alright, let's call that plan Z."
He kept looking.
Danny woke to the gentle rumbling of the bus. He frowned a little, yawned and stretched out, and when he sank back down, slowly he opened his eyes.
They set on the moonlit shapes of pine trees whipping past his window, and the stars up above. Any other day he'd marvel at how many he could see - far more than had ever been visible from Amity Park - but in this moment, the sight of it only reminded him of just how far away from home he really was. He wasn't going to wake up from this, was he?
He sighed, looked away, and tried to close his eyes again - but that moment had passed. There was too much going on to fall asleep now; the seat was too hard, the jumpsuit rubbed weirdly against his jeans… and he was starting to get hungry.
His stomach growled, and Danny grimaced - that'd have to wait until Eugene… however long that'd take. For now, he was just stuck here, no games to play, no friends to pass the time with, nothing but him, and his own thoughts, and the stars outside his window.
Danny looked up at them again. He remembered his mom taking him out camping for his birthday one year; they must've driven for hours, and she just smiled every time he asked where they were going. Finally, they came to a spot in the middle of the desert, and set up camp as the sun went down.
And there, sitting together by the embers of a campfire, Danny saw the Milky Way for the very first time. It stretched out across the whole sky above him, and there were so many more stars than he could ever have imagined from his bedroom in the city. His Mom brought a telescope she'd been hiding in the back of the RV, and the two of them spent almost the entire night exploring the sky together.
Together. Danny looked up at the sky now, and even through the smudged window of the bus, he could make out the Milky Way rising out of the passing trees. It was the same galaxy he'd watched together with his mother all that time ago.
The same galaxy, but looking up at it now, he felt like he could be the only person left on the planet.
The first time they pulled into a bus stop, the driver gave Danny an odd look when he asked if this was Eugene.
"No, son." He'd said. "Does this look like the second biggest city in Oregon to you?"
Danny took a look around at the two buildings surrounded by thick forest and decided he didn't know enough about Oregon to answer that question. The bus started on its way again, and he sank back into his chair, glaring up at the stars.
"Guess I'm in for the long haul," he muttered, twiddling his thumbs. "Nothing to do but wait, and… huh?'
His fingers seemed to slide into each other; he looked down, and blinked as he realised that was exactly what they did. They still shimmered as he pulled them apart, and when he glanced around at the nearby seats… he realised he was alone.
A moment of hesitation, and Danny found himself starting to grin. "Alright…" he said to himself, passing a finger through the centre of his other palm. "Huh. Weird - I wonder what else I can do?"
And so the night dragged on, the stars slowly turning up above, the trees passing by. And there never stopped being trees; sometimes Danny wondered if they were going anywhere at all, but eventually he started seeing the land becoming more mountainous, and in the first grey lights of dawn, he watched as they pulled into a city.
Danny saw all the old-timey cars parked on the streets, E.T. headlining a passing movie theatre, and grimaced. The fact he was stuck in the past hadn't seemed so obvious in a tiny town like Gravity Falls, but now everywhere he looked it was staring him in the face.
"'Buy our sleek and modern electronic typewriters'?" Danny read off a store window, and groaned to himself. "You've gotta be kidding me."
The bus came to a stop, and Danny hopped out; once again he found himself alone in an utterly unfamiliar place. Panic simmered in him as he looked up and down the darkened streets, but he stuffed it down. He had a plan, okay?
"Alright." He said, and took a breath. "Gotta find a library."
His stomach rumbled again, and his eyes fell on a gas station at the corner.
"But first, I gotta find something to eat."
He made his way over, in and out of the glow of the streetlights and across a busy intersection. As he reached the door he hesitated a little… but he walked inside, and if the cashier thought a kid wandering in at this hour was odd, he didn't comment on it. Danny breathed a sigh of relief, and headed over to the fridges.
Gas station sandwiches. Danny didn't realise how hungry he was until he found himself almost drooling at the sight of them. He looked around, then grabbed one - no, two - and started towards the exit. Something caught his eye before he got to the door: a little tourist stand with Eugene keychains, and a booklet titled 'TOP 100 PLACES TO VISIT IN EUGENE'. He picked it up, and grinned as the first page unfolded into a map. Oh, score!
There was a voice as Danny made his way towards the door: "Hey, hey! Are you gonna pay for that?"
"Pay for what?" He clasped his hands behind his back as he looked at the cashier. "I didn't buy anything!"
The man narrowed his eyes. "Oh, very funny. Let me see those hands, kid."
"Alright, alright," Danny let a pulse of invisibility ripple over an arm, and held them both up. The man stared at his missing hand, his frown deepening into a look of confusion. "Can I go now?"
"Uhh…"
"Taking that as a yes!" He said, and hurried out of there before he could come to his senses. Once he was a block or so away, his hand rematerialised… and so did the booklet and sandwiches. He grinned to himself - hey, that practice really came in handy! He was pretty much an expert at this now!
Then he tried reaching through the packaging, but turned it intangible instead; the sandwich flopped out and splatted on the street. Danny smacked his forehead.
"Dammit." He stopped, sat down on a bench, and took out the other sandwich. "Fine, I'll open it like a normal person."
After getting that open, Danny tore into the sandwich; with his other hand he started flipping through the booklet.
Now, where was that library?
The University of Wisconsin - Danny recognized the name as soon as the librarian said it. And he didn't even have to consult some encyclopaedia, though he certainly skimmed through too many vaguely related books before he had the bright idea to just pretend to be a kid interested in going there.
"Um, excuse me, I'm trying to apply for college in Wisconsin-"
"Oh, good luck, little guy! Are you going to the University of Wisconsin?"
It was that easy. Danny dragged himself out of there with a croissant he'd swiped from the cafe, and groaned as he noticed how high the sun had risen.
Well, if he'd been smart, that could've taken a fraction as long as it did. Anyway, the city of Madison - that's where he needed to go.
Danny stuck the croissant in his mouth, unfolded the map, and started looking for busses. A little while later, he'd gotten to the central station and found out his best chance of getting to Wisconsin was taking a greyhound from Portland; he'd have to wait until tomorrow morning to catch the Portland bus, though.
So… what to do until then? Danny kicked a rock along the street, hands in his pockets, filled to the brim with the urge to just get going already - in this whole awful experience so far, he'd expected to feel terrified, to feel exhausted, to feel lonely and overwhelmed and so profoundly lost… and he felt all those things, but right now, more than anything, he was bored.
God, he was so bored. No wonder his parents got into ghost hunting - what were you even supposed to do before the internet if you didn't have a crazy hobby? And with no money, too, it wasn't like he could sit at a restaurant, get out of the cold… maybe he should find a motel for tonight or something. They'd at least have a crappy TV to watch, right?
Just as Danny was resigning himself to the dullest night imaginable, he collided with someone on the street and nearly fell over.
"Oh!" Said a voice; it came from a teenager wearing a puffy coat and jeans that were entirely too bright. "Haha, sorry kid! You gotta look where you're going!"
"Wha- you ran into me, too!" Danny shot back, but he'd already run off; he watched the guy run up to some friends, and they all laughed together before going into some building. When the door opened, Danny could hear music coming from inside. He paused, frowned, and read the name above the entrance.
"Oh, it's one of those old-timey arcade places." Danny muttered, and then snorted to himself. "What are they doing in there, playing, heh, playing Pacman or something? Jeez, I feel sad for them. I bet their heads would explode if they tried to play a game with actual modern graphics - like something on the PS2."
He chuckled… but after a moment it died away, and he stood there for a moment, shivering, thinking.
"You know what," He rolled his eyes and started forwards. "It's a video game, I'll take it."
He wandered inside, and found himself in a darkened room absolutely packed with other kids. Rows of bulky arcade machines were laid out in front of him, and the front few were swarmed; the chatter and the sounds from the machines were enough to make Danny grimace and almost reconsider… but he didn't have anything better to do, did he?
Wandering over to a quieter corner, Danny picked something that looked interesting - some kind of space game he'd never heard of before. He needed a quarter to play, but Danny leaned in close, glanced over his shoulder, and then phased his hand through the machine. He dug around for a second before drawing out a fistful of quarters.
"Nice," Danny grinned, and inserted one back in. "Alright, let's see how you compare to Doomed."
He wasn't surprised to find it wasn't quite what he was looking for. The controls were all janky, so it took a couple quarters to even get the hang of it, and when he did, it was… well, pretty basic. Even so, he found himself playing on, playing until he ran out of quarters, then swiping some more from the machine. Then he moved onto a different game, and another one, and another one. He didn't really know if he could say he was having fun, or even that it was taking his mind off things; standing here, it was impossible to ignore the past he was stuck in, to look at passing kids and not try and calculate exactly how far into their thirties they'd be in his time. It was impossible to shake off that looming loneliness, to stop his mind wandering to Sam and Tucker and all the nights he'd stayed up gaming with them… to not miss them so desperately in this moment it felt almost like a physical pain.
Danny stared at a game over screen, sighed, and fished out another quarter.
But it was something to do, and that's why he kept doing it. He stayed until the sun went down, the crowds thinned out, until finally the arcade closed for the night, and he was out in the cold again.
Back to nothing, he thought, and turned away to find somewhere to sleep.
