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faeriekit · 17 days

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Frozen Out

Another phic phight fill, another day; this one's for @akela-nakamura. No one is allowed to say anything about my need for Far Frozen fics.

(Sister fics are Snow Day and Snowdrift Sanctuary)

Breakfast comes, and breakfast goes. Frostbite cooked last night, so it’s leftover soup.

There’s some kind of bird meat in it that Danny’s vaguely aware of, and a root vegetable that’s basically a hardy onion. The grain in it is a wild rice that’s virtually identical to the one in the human world, supposedly; Danny never had wild rice while he was eating at his parents’ house, though, so it’s new to him.

It’s interesting how it cracks and breaks apart on his tongue. The food’s different here, but the Far Frozen has food that mostly matches human cuisine in far climates. Sure, it’s made of ghost birds and ghost vegetables and ghost grains, but they’re at least recognizable as sea birds, vegetation, and grain. It’s not weird for him to eat food that looked like food.

If Danny had moved in with Princess Dorathea the way she’d offered, he’d be eating ghosts that looked like people.

Yeah. This is better.

Danny likes his soup. It’s reheated on the stovetop so that it’s warm.

His bowl goes beside the door— he’ll scrape the dishes in the snow later— and goes for his coat and boots. There’s gloves that Neuschnee, Tundra’s mom, knitted for him, on tiny needles that would have been hard for him to manipulate even without her huge clawed hands.

They’re very warm. They have little green and blue stripes and little blue snowflakes spun on yeti-fur yarn. He likes them a lot.

Danny leaves the warm interior of the cave, takes a big breath, and wanders out towards the center of the settlement.

There are lots of occupied caves in the Far Frozen. Some of them are constructed in ice, but many are formed from natural rock— or whatever passes as ‘natural’ in the Infinite Realms. Early history of yeti society is rocky; there’s apparently debate as to whether the yetis found the land while wandering the zone, whether the land spawned the people to occupy it as a deterrent against wanderers and interlopers, or whether they all came into being together.

“Aren’t you immortal? Or, you know…long-lived? Long-dead?” Danny had asked, confused. “Weren’t you here the whole time?”

“Yes,” Frostbite had agreed easily.

“So…shouldn’t you remember?”

“There are theories about that as well,” Frostbite had pointed out, amused with Danny’s frustration. “As it is, we do not.”

So. There’s that.

That being said, Danny knows there’s a lot of history; Arctic can recite cycles of songs for five hundred seasons back, and he’s not over a hundred years old.

Probably.

Danny stops beside a snow drift and scratches his head through his thick hood. Is Arctic a hundred years old?

…Anyway, Danny continues, trucking onwards, if he is, he has to adjust his worldview on teenage yetis. If he’s not, then that means that Danny’s right about part two of his plan, which includes the vague idea that a society of yetis with an advanced medical techniques and application probably has a library somewhere.

Or. You know. So he hopes. Man, if they pass down the entirety of their medical knowledge through oral tradition, Danny’s going to be screwed. Either way, he’s just in time to wander into Pritla’s glacial alcove before they’re finished with their own breakfast— a fish, apparently, devoured by sharp teeth and a huge maw.

“Morning,” Danny greets, because he’s polite that way. He knows Pritla knows he’s here. Everyone so far has made fun of how loudly he walks.

“Good morning, Phantom,” Pritla greets back, blue tongue licking bits of fish out from between huge fangs. Danny’s human right now, but for some reason, using his human name is culturally weird to them. It must be less intuitive, or something. It’s not like they can’t recognize him either way. “Is there something you’re missing?”

“No, thank you.” Last time he was here, it was because Jazz had sent over his workbooks and worksheets with pencils and no sharpener. Once the tips had snapped, it had all been over. “Is there a library?”

Pritla’s furry eyebrows rise up over their brow ridge. “Did you expect there not to be one?”

Danny’s nose squishes. “No. I assumed there is one. I just don’t know where it would be.”

The yeti’s eyes roll up to the ceiling; honestly, Danny knows that they do hard work for Frostbite, but they’re kind of annoying. “Have you tried downstairs?”

“...Downwhat,” says Danny.

So. It turns out. Far Frozen goes down.

Like, there’s a hole in the ice, and it goes down— down long steps carved straight out of the ice, into blue-glowing tunnels woven with streams of rock and salt.

“...Huh,” Danny observes. “Down.”

“Indeed,” Prita rumbles. The yeti turns, their bulk and form imposing as they head back up the stairs. “Everything is etched into the walls; feel free to make any copies of the writings you find. The farther down you go, the newer the writing becomes.”

“Thank you!” Danny hollers back, finally feeling some sense of burgeoning accomplishment. He’s almost there; all he has to do is take something impressive down, and get it copied onto something portable. He has old blank scrap paper stuck into his pockets. This should be easy. He feels very confident in reading into the yetis’ written cultural knowledge…

…And then notices that it’s written in an entirely different syllabary.

Right. Danny wants to bang his head on the ice wall. Universally spoken ghost language, entirely different societal interpretation. Shoot.

Interpreting this will take him ages.

Still, Danny settles in; there’s no rush. He wasn’t supposed to have lessons today, since Tundra caught a wheeze and now he’s being all whiny about it, so he has all the time until dinner to copy and to get some graphite rubbings off the wall.

Danny pulls up one of the carved stools, sits his butt down, and writes.

“Frostbite?”

Frostbite looks down. Danny smashes his face into the yeti’s fur; it’s hardly even a blow to his guardian, and it’s apparently instinctual for cubs to do something similar anyway. So. It’s a very affectionate gesture, even if it feels like playing rough to Danny.

And Danny gets petted by a giant yeti hand. There are many advantages to living in the Far Frozen.

Frostbite rumbles something, but Danny can’t actually hear him through the fur. He pokes his head out to get a listen.

“—Good day?”

“Mmhmm.” It had been productive, anyway. “I saw the library.”

“The hall of records?” Frostbites ask, his voice a gentle rumble. Danny leans into the sound. “Ambitious of you. Did you learn anything new?”

Danny had. So he talks about the loss of the rainy seasons for snowy ones and The Year That It Rained Upwards, and about drifting too far against the edge of the Infinite Realms until they smashed into another kingdom and were forced to fight. He talks about the process of washing starlight moss until it becomes food instead of vegetation, and he talks about what it says about birthing traditions, and what it means to be Never-borne in a people that had probably never once lived in the human world.

Or maybe they had? There were some theories downstairs that speculated that they were the ghosts of real Yetis. Danny hadn’t known what to think. He’d taken the notes down anyway, because…well…what if they are? What if they’re all that’s left of the human world’s yeti population: ectoplasmic imprints and non-living beings??

Frostbite knows everything Danny tells him about. Obviously. He was there for almost everything, too. But he lets Danny ramble on in a way that his parents never had, letting Danny explain his own history to him with new eyes and new words. It’s cathartic. Danny clings to Frostbite’s fur as the yeti walks around their living space, skinning and deboning Sky Whale meat to add to tonight’s meal. An adolescent human really weighs nothing to him. It’s so funny.

“I am glad to know that you are able to take advantage of the histories,” Frostbite rumbles. Danny preens. “What encouraged you to seek them out?”

Danny goes quiet.

Frostbite looks over his shoulder to look at Danny, but lets Danny resolve his silence on his own terms.

“...I wanted to see. If.” Danny licks his lips. Frostbite hums, showing that he’s listening. “If…if there’s records of a real ghost society, with its own language and culture and everything…they’ve gotta listen, right?”

The round knife in Frostbite’s hand stills.

“They always say that…that ghosts are just pretending, that there’s nothing to ghost consciousness, that there’s nothing to anyone’s existence in the afterlife. But there’s records.” Danny’s throat tightens. “There’s known history. There’s language and a syllabary and…and there’s political conflict and agriculture and advanced medical care and weather charts. That has to be enough proof. If I show it to them, then they should be able to see.”

The knife gets set down. Frostbite wipes his hands on a towel. Danny can’t see his face.

“It’s gotta be enough,” Danny tries again. His throat hurts. His eyes itch. But he thinks he could be right. “So if I show it to them, and they see it, and they see how far back the knowledge goes, and how careful everyone is to take care of each other and how nice everyone is and how good, and…and…”

Frostbite’s hug is soft, and warm. It’s amazing, and it’s not his Dad’s. Danny’s Dad is never going to hug him again.

Danny cries.

“Oh, little one,” Frostbite hums, and his face looks just as pained as Danny feels. “Little Phantom, it’s not safe for you to return to them, even to drop off records. If they had wanted to know more of the Infinite Realms, they would have tried to search them. I do not think that they are willing to listen, and I am too afraid to risk your health to see if they would change their minds when confronted with evidence.”

He sobs. “But, but,” Danny cries, his throat torn with emotion. The hug pins his arms so his sides, so he just ends up snotting into his guardian’s fur. “...But I need them.”

“I know, little one.”

“They loved me,” Danny cries, because he knows that it had been true— that, once upon a time, there had been a family made of Jazz, Danny, Mom, and Dad. “They… Frostbite, I miss them so bad!”

Frostbite’s arms tighten. He lowers himself to the ground, until Danny is in a nest of yeti fur and pain and devastation and little else.

“I know, little one,” Frostbite says, because there’s no other reassurance he can give.

“I won’t… They’ll never want to see me again!”

“...I am so sorry,” Frostbite murmurs, endlessly patient with him. His ears are pulled back, his eyes taut with stress.

He can’t help it. He breaks down.

Danny clings. He cries— long, and loud, because pretending that he had a home to go back to had only worked until it stopped. He wants to go home. He wants to pretend to be all-human again.

He’ll never go home. He’ll never pretend to be all-human again.

He’ll do his lessons and Jazz will ferry his schoolwork to and from Casper High but he’ll never live with her again— never do his homework on her bed, never watch Dr. Phil with her on the couch, never eat lazy breakfasts with her or spend nights wondering if she’d come home safe from her date.

Sam and Tucker can visit, but they’ll never be able to stay; every trip will be stolen, surreptitious, since they don’t have a reason to be in his house anymore. No more Tucker and Sam gaming nights. No more trips to catch dinner together at the Nasty Burger.

No more Ops Center. No more house.

No more of Danny’s bedroom.

Because otherwise, Mom and Dad would know. And they would get him.

Mom and Dad don’t love him anymore. And…that’s the end of it.

So Danny cries himself out. Wipes off his nose with his undershirt sleeve. Resolves to get over himself. It hurts, because everything hurts, but there’s still life to be lived, kind of. Probably.

Presumably.

He doesn’t let go of Frostbite, though, who doesn’t let go of him; so Danny ends up eating his rare Sky Whale stew on a furry throne made of guardian yeti, blearily shoving food in his mouth until his stomach stops cramping.

Frostbite puts him back into his coat, one arm at a time. Frostbite carries him out of their cave, even though it’s usually time for a bright night’s nap after dinner. Whatever. Danny doesn't have the energy to ask what’s happening to him.

In the end, though, Danny does recognize Tundra’s Mom’s glacial ice cavern, since no one else has such carefully carved walls.

Frostbite doesn’t ask, and Neuschnee doesn’t disrupt; she sits, calm, carving a soapstone block, as Danny gets laid down on their woven carpet.

Danny blinks.

Frostbite goes, and comes back— and Neuschnee smiles wryly as Tundra gets placed down beside Danny, fast asleep and dreaming of cars.

Danny’s never been in such a huge, furry cuddle pile before, but as Frostbite lays down, his huge shoulder pushing him into Tundra’s smaller form in a cascade of ghost dominoes…

It’s nice.

Danny will never have back what he had, but he has this.

…That can be enough. Right?

Danny doesn’t know the answer for sure, but he falls asleep still thinking about it, the scrape of knife on stone all that he can hear.

…Sure. This can be enough for now.

#everyone say BOOHOO!#phic phight 2024 #phic phight #danny phantom #far frozen #frostbite #shhhhh it's FINE I'm VERY NORMAL about this burgeoning au #faer fic #whoops almost forgot to sign my work #this is part of my “frostbite is a good Dad” agenda

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