Chapter Text
Phoenix didn’t really celebrate Christmas, and neither did the Feys, but with the time they had spent together, he figured they should have a tradition of their own. Phoenix, however, did not have any time to prepare for their little Christmas since he and the girls had gotten caught up in the Max Galactica trial the few days preceding Christmas Eve.
In one of his nicer surprises, Larry covered for him. He brought gifts for Maya and Pearls, drinks, and an ungodly amount of takeout to Phoenix’s tiny apartment. It was a good night by Phoenix’s standards. Pearls met Larry for the first time, Maya got reacquainted, and Phoenix experienced the first good interaction with Larry in over a year.
After most of the takeout had been devoured (mainly by Maya), they ended the night with the girls opening their gifts. Larry left, suddenly, explaining that he forgot something in his car.
“Surprise! Saved the best for last,” Larry said as he handed a large gift bag to Phoenix at the door. He leaned closer, resting a hand on Phoenix’s shoulder, and whispered in his ear, “Don't worry about paying me back, dude. This one’s on me.”
And then he left.
Back on the couch, Phoenix handed the gift bag to the girls, wondering what Larry considered “the best”. Maya pulled out what looked like a brick wrapped in tissue paper and tape, handed it to Pearls, and then took out another for herself. Pearls unwrapped hers gently and found a nutcracker inside, looking like it had been made by Larry himself.
“It’s her favorite character from her favorite book,” Maya whispered to Phoenix after Pearls’ gasp took him by surprise. “My turn!”
Eager to see what was inside, Maya ripped hers open. Another handmade nutcracker by Larry, this time modeled after the Steel Samurai. She shrieked with pure joy, falling off the couch in the process.
(Ouch.)
Keeping her nutcracker in one hand, Maya pulled the gift bag out from under her, inspecting what she might’ve landed on.
“Looks like there’s another one.” She pulled out a third tissue paper-wrapped gift from the bag. “This one has your name on it, Nick. I might’ve broken it when I fell, though. Sorry,” she said as she handed it to Phoenix and returned to the couch to watch him open it.
“Hey, Nick…”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t you think it… kinda looks like…”
(Thin ice, Maya.)
It looked like Edgeworth. His homemade nutcracker, handcrafted by Larry, looked exactly like Edgeworth. Besides the standard nutcracker face, it had his wine (magenta) -colored suit, his vest, his cravat. Larry had even painted on little bangs under its hat. Phoenix wondered how Larry thought this was a good idea, or if he really didn’t know.
“These nutcrackers give me an idea,” Maya said, bringing Phoenix out of his Edgeworth-induced haze. “I’m gonna need your laptop, Nick. And an HDMI cable.”
After putting on the movie Maya begged him to (“It’s a classic Nick! How have you not seen it!”), Phoenix commented on how bad the animation was, and passed out almost immediately.
He didn't remember the movie ending, saying goodnight to Maya and Pearls, or falling asleep, but Phoenix woke up to a noise in the kitchen. With the stealth of a snake, god forbid he wake Maya, he tried to investigate.
While peering into the kitchen- which was honestly more of a kitchenette if you asked Phoenix, you barely have to leave the couch to see it- he fell over the back of the couch. On his way down, he realized three things at once but verbalized them as “Oh shit it’s a fucking rat”.
Firstly, there were three rats, two dressed in some sort of soldier’s uniforms and the third, larger rat in full regalia. Secondly, the noise didn’t come from the rats, it came from his nutcracker dueling the king rat. Thirdly, he had to have been hallucinating. Or dreaming. That would be the only logical reason for the king rat to somehow resemble the elder, more murderous von Karma.
In his tangle on the floor halfway to the kitchen, Phoenix also realized that falling over the couch and yelling “Oh shit it’s a fucking rat” had alerted the king rat and distracted the nutcracker long enough for the king rat scamper full speed towards him.
He heard a voice somewhere behind the rat shout “Get up!”. With his hands pretzeled beneath him and his feet still hooked on the back of the couch, Phoenix was helpless as he watched the rat point its cane ( scepter? ) at him. The now Phoenix-sized rat lifted Phoenix by the chin with one rat-hand and ripped his badge ( Wait I’m still wearing my suit? ) right off his lapel with its other rat-hand.
Phoenix, too confused to follow, let the king rat and his minions push past his nutcracker and escape through a previously unnoticed hole under his cabinets.
“Why didn’t you get up like I told you?”
His nutcracker was standing over him now, one hand out in an offer to help him up.
“I don’t know, I was in shock? Maybe?” Phoenix sputtered. “Why didn’t you fight better? Why are you and the rat huge? I feel like there are more important questions to ask right now than why I didn’t get up.”
“Firstly, your friend broke my dominant arm. It’s a miracle that I held him off for as long as I did. Secondly, he is the Mouse King, not “the rat”. And thirdly, if you look around, all evidence points towards you being small, rather than us being large.”
Phoenix realized that his nutcracker didn’t just look like Edgeworth, it sounded like him too. He never thought he’d miss their less-than-friendly conversations.
“This is some sort of freak coping mechanism, isn’t it?”
“Pardon?”
“Like, this,” Phoenix said, waving his hands around, gesturing to nothing and everything simultaneously, “is some hallucination, and I get one last chance to see you to help me get over the fact that you- that you're gone.”
“Have we met before?”
(Of course. Walks like a duck, talks like a duck, isn’t a duck.)
“No,” he sighed. “we haven’t. But,” Phoenix said as he clapped his hands together, “let’s fix up that arm.”
His coat, honestly useless to Phoenix since he couldn’t show off his badge, ended up as a pseudo-sling. He twisted the jacket into more of a rope shape, placed his arm over the middle, and tied the sleeves into a knot around the opposite shoulder.
“So,” Phoenix asked, “do you know how to make me normal again, or…?”
“Yes,” the Nutcracker confirmed. “I have an idea, at least. Follow me.”
Phoenix did as the Nutcracker requested, his heart rate picking up as he was led through the same hole the mouse king escaped through. It was as dark and empty as he expected the space between the walls of his apartment to be, but, at the same time, he knew they weren’t in the walls of the apartment. It felt like they were somewhere else entirely.
“What’s your name?”
The Nutcracker’s voice startled Phoenix out of his thoughts. A welcome change to the silence, however.
“Phoenix.”
“Well, Phoenix, I suppose I should thank you.”
“For what?”
“For treating my arm.”
“Oh, it’s no problem,” Phoenix insisted.
“I wasn’t finished.” The Nutcracker slowed his pace, not quite walking next to Phoenix, but coming closer than before. “If you hadn’t… distracted the mouse king when you did, I… you have my gratitude.”
Phoenix nodded, unsure if the Nutcracker, picking up his pace again, could even see him in the darkness. He followed the faint outline of the nutcracker’s silhouette in the darkness, or maybe just the sound of his wooden boots. Phoenix couldn’t tell if they’d been walking for minutes or hours.
“Where are we going?” he finally asked. (This is actual pitch black darkness that you’re leading me through.)
“It doesn’t matter. Just follow.”
“How do I know you’re not leading me somewhere to murder me?”
“Murder you? I-” the Nutcracker stopped and turned to Phoenix. “What makes you think I’d do that? I’m only a nutcracker.”
“Nutcrackers are soldiers,” Phoenix pointed out. “And you looked pretty handy with that sword.”
“I assure you, I’m no soldier,” he said, quieter than before. Although he couldn’t really see him, Phoenix could feel the nutcracker’s presence next to him, sounding like this time he’d slowed his pace to match Phoenix's.
“I apologize for not simply answering your question. We’re making our way to the Sea of Storms.”
“Wait, I thought we were going to fight the Rat King. Is this on the way or something? It sounds… dangerous.”
“It is. Both, actually. And we are going to fight the Mouse King ,” the Nutcracker explained. “We just need to see the Sugarplum Prince first.”
“The Sugarplum Prince?”
“He’s said to live on an island in the Sea of Storms. He’ll help us return to normal.”
“‘ Said to ’?” Phoenix was astonished. “So you don’t even know for sure- hold on, ‘ us ’? What’s your-”
“Phoenix, look!”
The Nutcracker pointed ahead, towards a light in the distance. The pull away from the conversation alerted Phoenix to a crunch under his shoe he hadn’t noticed before, a shift in the air and temperature. The snow at his feet glittered in the slight light.
Coming closer, the light was now clearly coming from an arch, a mouse hole to match the one they entered through. “We’re not in L.A.,” Phoenix commented.
“But you already knew that,” the Nutcracker added, offering a hand to lead Phoenix through the arch.
Thinking he was out of the woods, Phoenix found himself in a cavern instead. It was nice, he’d admit, with a lavender hue lighting the cave and reflecting off the snow. (It’d be nicer if it wasn’t so cold.)
“Here,” the Nutcracker said. He untied the makeshift sling and returned the coat to Phoenix. “My arm is fine now anyway. Thank you, again, for that.”
“You’re welcome.”
Phoenix would’ve been grateful for the minimal warmth it gave him, but the wind picked up as soon as he put his coat back on. Among the snowflakes taken up by the breeze, he noticed a few that shone brighter than the rest. His eyes followed one coming his way, and he clapped his hands together to catch it, like one would with a firefly.
When he opened his hands, he did not find a bright snowflake as he thought he would, but instead a small girl with wings like a bee’s. A tiny girl, almost familiar, with a tutu and bodice as lavender as the cave and her hair in a pretzel bun.
Almost as quickly as phoenix had caught her, she flew off again, only to return and try to tug Phoenix somewhere by the cuff of his coat. The little force she exerted was not enough to move him, but enough to crumple her wing when her grip loosened and she stumbled back into the nutcracker. Phoenix tried not to laugh as she yelled at the Nutcracker in her little bell’s-jingle voice.
The Nutcracker’s response, telling her that she should watch where she’s going, led to a tiny pout. Phoenix opened his hand to her and attempted to straighten out her wing once she stepped back on. He could only assume he did an okay job when she flew away again without warning.
“Does that happen a lot here?” Phoenix asked after a moment.
“I don’t know,” the Nutcracker responded. “I’ve never been here before.”
Phoenix’s face fell. “Why am I even following you? How are we suppose to get out of here?”
The Nutcracker walked to the edge of the cavern and placed his hand on the wall before tracing it along the perimeter for a moment. “It’s ice, Phoenix, it won’t be that hard to break.”
Removing his sword from the scabbard, the Nutcracker thrust it into the ice, only for it to bounce back off the wall. Before Phoenix could comment, the wind picked up again, this time with more of the bright lights than before.
He watched as, one by one, the sparkles became small girls identical to the one from earlier. They twirled as they descended towards him, eventually forming a large ring around his feet and then circling up above his head in a spiral. Their dance was mesmerizing, he thought, more so than any firework or light show he’d ever seen.
But he had places to be. “Thank you,“ Phoenix started, “this is very nice but we have to-”
“Phoenix,” the Nutcracker said, sternly, “you have to let them finish. You wouldn’t want to upset the fae, would you?”
Before he could wrap his head around the fae, one grabbed him by the cuff (again?) and led him to an area unoccupied by the others. She floated a bit away from him, making sure to stay at his eye level, danced, and then motioned to him.
Phoenix waved his hands in front of him. “Oh, no, I...,” ( don’t upset the fae ), “alright.”
He wasn’t sure if he’d retained more from his theatre classes than he thought he did or if the fairy had used some magic on him, but he wasn’t as awful at dancing as he expected to be when he first tried to refuse. He wasn’t great, of course, but he followed what she showed him well enough.
After his brief interlude with the fairy, Phoenix found his way back to the Nutcracker and the rest of the fairies. They circled him again, this time around the Nutcracker as well. When Phoenix noticed that they were moving closer to the edge of the cavern, he laughed, thinking the fairies were almost herding him and the Nutcracker. The fairies flew through the ice, leaving an exit behind them.
“Thank you!” Phoenix shouted after them, doubtful they could even hear him with the speed at which they left the cave.
“Have you dealt with the fae before?” the Nutcracker asked as they made their way out of the cave.
“No,” Phoenix answered, “but you made them sound kinda scary, honestly, so I tried to be as polite as possible.”
“It’s obvious you haven’t, you’re not supposed to say thank you to them. Anyway, I suppose this is your official welcome to Parthenia.”
Phoenix, previously distracted by the Nutcracker’s comment (more of an insult) had failed to notice the view upon exiting the cavern. He’d never really used the phrase, “a breathtaking view”, since he never traveled very far, but he thought if it wasn’t used here, when would it be?
The scene seemed like a watercolor, with pastel yet vibrant pinks, purples, greens, and bluest sky possible. They stood on a cliff at the mouth of the cavern. A haphazard stone staircase lead down the mountain, covered in half-melted snow at the top and disappearing into a lush pine forest on the way down. He could see various floating islands around, something that must be normal here, he supposed. What was most interesting, however, was the hilltop castle in the distance.
“Do you like it?”
“It’s gorgeous,” Phoenix stated matter-of-factly, surprised by the Nutcracker’s question.
“It won’t be like this much longer if the mouse king is allowed to continue. We should move along.”
Phoenix followed the Nutcracker’s lead down the stone steps and through the pine forest. He wondered if this trek would be as long as the dark passage earlier..
“The pines smell like peppermint,” he said, hoping not to be cursed to travel in the same silence as he was most of the way earlier.
No such luck, apparently, given the Nutcracker’s lack of response. After a few more minutes of silence, Phoenix tried again to break it.
“You’re sure the Sugarplum Prince can help?”
The Nutcracker snapped back at him. “Of course. The Sugarplum Prince is our only hope for defeating the Mouse King.”
“Only hope? Earlier you said he’d help return us to normal, and now he’s our only hope for defeating the Mouse King? And, again, what do you mean return us- ”
“The Mouse King’s magic is too powerful for me to fight with only a sword,” the Nutcracker interrupted. “We’ll need the Sugarplum Prince’s magic. We’ll be returned to normal after defeating the Mouse King, both with the help of the Sugarplum Prince. It’s really quite simple if you’d think about it for more than a second.”
Phoenix was stunned by the Nutcracker’s exasperation.
“Please stop asking about me.”
He respected the Nutcracker’s wishes, and, despite his own wishes, the trek continued in silence.
After some time hiking down the mountain and through the woods, Phoenix and the Nutcracker passed a village previously hidden by the pines.
“It’s creepy,” Phoenix commented. “All abandoned, with the fog.”
“Let’s investigate,” the two declared at the same time.