AN: Thank you to my followers and those that have favorited this. I appreciate the support even though I must ask: why, as a fandom, have we not discussed or written about Danny's grandparents? Ever. I can't think of a fic with them in it. At all.
But anyway, to balance out the depression I thought I'd put something light hearted into this. And also explore what Danny's heritage might be. I honestly kind of want to write fic about Danny's grandparents, all four of whom I've got pictured in my head, wherein Danny time travels and meets them in their prime and gains perspective on how spoiled we are in this generation.
Anyway. Onto the fic!
Gideon Fenton was a lucky man.
He was someone who had always been poor, the kind of poor where his mother had scraped food off the plates at the diner she worked at into a bag and brought it home for her son. At age fourteen, she had given birth to Gideon Nicholas Fenton, who took his mother's surname when his father simply walked out on the family as if they were a radio program he didn't like and wanted to turn off. Gideon never learned the man's name, but he hated his father for doing this to his mother, for the one room shack they lived in and the days spent working from as far back as he could remember just to get by.
He grew up on work. He scrubbed floors, he raked leaves, he mowed lawns, he had a paper route, he took humiliating bets from other kids for a quarter. It was the 50's, a time of prosperity where kids like him were the lowest kind of person in the eyes of the booming middle class, and he threw himself into every job that came his way. He was never too proud to beg. He begged often and hard, held up every deal he made, knowing from the first day he accepted his first dare the value of a promise. Every coin was pulled together to keep the roof over their heads. There were no movies, no toys, no nice Sunday clothes, just an endless stream of work that stretched on and on until he was seventeen. His mother, unable to take the strain, simply passed on in her sleep – or so he thought until he found out she'd used some of the rent money for sleeping pills and followed it with vodka.
With no place to stay, he took up his mother's job and slept in the back of their broken 1923 Hudson, a car that kept him dry and little else, and held all his worldly possessions. Eventually he fixed it enough to get to Boston, where there were plenty of tasks to be done, and he began to amaze the people around him with his ability to fix things. He'd never considered it a talent, just one of the many things he did and services he offered, but he was good enough that he became a self made handy man and electrician. He worked from before sun up to well after sun up even when he had plenty of money for an apartment, chronic fear of being poor washing over him in waves. Sometimes he would be so scared that he couldn't breathe, threw up, had his knees give out under him, and he barely spent a penny on himself that wasn't absolutely necessary.
He was alive, but not really living, until a pair of teal eyes met his.
Her name was Jane Otsskonoapsspa, and she was Blackfoot. She was also the first human being in his entire life to show him any kindness. He had just been told that with the opening of a new technical school in Boston, real educated electricians were going to replace him, and his services weren't needed. He lost three customers in one day. He made it as far home as six blocks over before he crumbled, just sinking to his knees and shaking in fear and panic. Something else, he'd need to do something else but God he was tired of being humiliated, looked at as lower, inferior, always treated like he was nothing at all and he understood, he understood now why his mother had laid down and died and – and then someone was wrapping arms around him and pulling him to his feet.
She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, with rich teal eyes, black hair pulled back into a ponytail, real rich black unlike his, which had gray streaks in it despite him only being twenty one. Her skin was like mocha and her hands were gentle. She had the kindest voice he'd ever heard, so whisper soft he felt everything melt away. And just like that, he could breathe again.
They fell into conversation like they'd known each other their whole lives. She never judged him, never said he was stupid, uneducated, worthless, so he confessed he felt he was all those things and she refuted them one by one, layered on words until they pierced through to his heart, soothing wounds he didn't know he had. He loved her more than he knew he could. He had never really loved anyone before, not since his mother died, but Jane just disabled him with her calm and caring demeanor. She was as serious a person as he was, she just didn't let herself get mired down in depression, pushed onwards with all her heart.
Her hope was not despite the fact life was hard, it was because of it. She was not a wide eye idealist, she was just a fighter. Teal eyes flashed like waterfalls and her voice could soar like an eagle, and she did not take directions or commands, forming her own path instead of following another's. And though she saw him at his lowest, she felt nothing but respect for him. It was the basis of a love that was not passionate so much as it was an extension of himself, a deserved return for what she gave him. Her skin color barely registered in his mind.
They were married within the month, something so impulsive that had they had friends, it would have turned heads. Theirs was an unorthodox wedding, cheap and bizarre, with the bride all in teal and her husband in grays, letting her shine like the gem she was. He needed no reception or party to be happy. All he needed was the support of one person to raise him up out of the darkness and into the light. He had been working for so long it had overtaken his ability to function, turned him inhuman, an animal fighting to survive as if he were under attack. But like the cold water of a blue-green pond, he had abruptly found her, and learned how to swim through the currents of life again. Were a Jewish English American and a Catholic Blackfoot a good idea? No. They were going to make it not to spite that, but because of it. Because they were the same in so many ways, serious and devoted and hard working and human, humanly needy, in desperate want of affection and a presence to break the silence of loneliness – these were the reasons they would make it, together. On his own he would have died and she would have become like him. Together, they were counterbalances on the scale. As he leaned in to kiss his bride, he looked into her teal eyes and felt a peace in his soul there were not words for.
And he swore on that very day that no matter what their children wanted to do with their lives, no matter who they were, they would be loved, taken care of and encouraged, because without that life had not been truly alive.