Alternate Prompt: Touch Starved
Jim felt like he'd been touch starved. He couldn't get enough of finally having the people he loved back around him. Toby with his bright smile and loud laugh as he described some of the summer's adventures, gesturing broadly and painting the air with his words and hands. Claire, who smelled like warm and safe and home, who snuggled willingly into Jim's now frankly ridiculous grasp. His mom, with her faint air of antiseptic soap, baby lotion, and something dustier that was clearly Strickler, but Jim wasn't touching that one with a ten-yard pole, nosiree. And Blinky and Aaarrrgghh, who each smelled like family in a way Jim couldn't quite parse, but that made something in the trollish part of his hindbrain purr in contentment.
He would have been entirely happy to never leave this room again.
Of course, then Merlin came in and ruined everything.
"So, Trollhunter," he said, strolling in, "I see you've survived your misadventure little the worse for wear."
Jim couldn't help baring his fangs and growling.
"Little the worse for wear?" Blinky demanded, scandalized.
Claire stood. "Jim has a shard of dark magic in his chest!"
"Yes, yes, so I see. Yet it does not seem to be actively causing him distress," Merlin said, bending over and examining it. He looked up, met Jim's eyes. "Most curious."
"Curious how?" Jim asked.
Merlin straightened. "I would expect such magic as that crystal contains to override your mind, your will. To wit, it should be rendering you into little more than a savage beast. Yet I see no signs of such ailment."
Blinking, Jim thought back to when the green knight's crystal had first pierced his chest. How it had hurt, and how all he'd been able to focus on was that blinding pain. How everything had hurt, and enraged him. How all he'd seen was red.
Everything after that was a blur, between that moment and him slowly calming down in Area 49-B's holding cell.
"I think it did," he said, surprised. "I don't remember what happened-"
"We got separated," Claire told him. "We couldn't find you."
"Area 49-B must have gotten me somehow," Jim told her. "I don't remember anything between New Jersey and that cell in their facility."
"We were afraid the green knight had taken you," Blinky told him, patting Jim's shoulder. "And when Claire could not reach you, we feared the worst."
"I think..." Jim looked up, met Merlin's blue eyes. "I think whatever barrier was around 49-B, it cut me off from whatever was sustaining the rage."
Something like illumination spilled across Merlin's face. "And now Camelot's defenses serve a similar purpose."
Toby stood. "Wait, do you mean Jimbo can't leave here?"
"Not," said Merlin, "until we deal with that shard in his chest."
Jim swallowed. "Douxie tried something with that magic-canceling bracelet they stuck on him."
Merlin's brows raised. "And did it work?"
"He just touched it to the shard." Jim pressed fingers against his chest, around the amulet but not touching it. Not touching the crystal. "Some flaked off. It... hurt." He didn't have the words to explain the white-hot breath-stealing blaze of absolute agony.
"Hmm." Merlin's brows inched higher. "So he implied, when he woke. I see his theories have some merit. I shall have to research further."
"Wait, he's awake?" Jim's mom stood, a doctor receiving word of her patient.
"Momentarily," Merlin told her. He frowned at her. "Do keep in mind, he's no longer human. Among whatever else he's done to himself in the last nine centuries. I should have kept that boy on a tighter leash. He may well have ruined himself."