A/N: A HUGE and special thanks to my friend Violet for beta-reading, helping me brainstorm, keep track of things and giving me ideas for this heck of a wild ride for a story!
Disclaimer: We don't own any characters. They all belong to Guillermo del Toro and DreamWorks.
For the good of all.
That was what he did everything for. That was why he restarted the same three years whenever someone died in his arms. That was why he was determined—restless—to give everyone the happy ending they deserved, not the ending where their hearts were shredded in sorrow, or where some of their bodies were painfully stabbed, torn, crushed, or turned to stone.
Key word: Was.
That was also why he was sitting up in his bed staring down at the cyan glowing revised Amulet of Daylight in his hands that had a small part of the metal turned black, in yet a new restarted timeline.
His old wounded heart, soul and mind poured blood that was poisoned with emotions-emotions that had slowly been souring him inwards with each change. His face, although still young, and soft—showing the youth of a near-sixteen-year-old boy who deep inside was now as old as Merlin Ambrosius himself—was set in a bitter frown that had his eyebrows furrowed tightly. His lips were pursed together, and his blue eyes, which were once a merry and welcoming warm blue, now glared blankly ahead in a pale, dim color.
He did everything for everyone.
And what did he get in return?
Pain. Hurt. Betrayal.
By everyone. Claire, Blinky, Draal, his own mother, Toby.
His fingers and palm clasped around the amulet tightly—so hard it was shaking.
Something in his head—just an echo of his old self—said it was wrong. That this was his own fault. His own doing.
You did this to yourself. You did it by using the time stone so many times. Over and over again.
But as much as that echo rang dimly in his mind, he just couldn't listen. He could no longer strive for triumph as he used to. He was no longer the young and strong-willed boy who once defeated Bular the Butcher, Gunmar the Black, and Bellroc, Keeper of the Flame. He wasn't Jim Lake Jr. the Trollhunter anymore. He hadn't been for a very long time already.
He had given up on his fight against his own growing demons.
You're no better than Arthur ever was.
And he didn't care. He couldn't care. Not anymore. He was so hurt—so wounded, battered, tired. He couldn't feel anymore. He didn't want to. His didn't want to understand anymore. He didn't want to understand why he kept doing what he had been doing for the past hundred non-existent years.
If he couldn't understand what he himself was thinking, who could?
He wasn't Jim Lake Jr. That boy had died a long time ago.
He was just living in his soulless body, seeking one thing:
Destruction.
Not to physical kind—no. Destroying towns, homes and villages were not going to bring him the satisfaction that he wanted.
He wanted to bring the mental kind. The kind that would break one. The kind that would have one screaming, sobbing and wailing in agony just as he did.
And he knew who his main target was. He knew who the one he was going to lure all bad things towards was.
His target was just in the old dim-green two-story house across the cul-de-sac outside, getting up, fixing his bed and getting ready to go to school.
In a distinct time, Jim would've done everything in his might to save Toby Domzalski. He did do that. He restarted everything to have him alive again.
But… Toby took things away from him. He took Blinky, having the troll call him son with his dying breath. He took away Draal, the son of Kanjigar somehow forming a bond with the stout boy after Jim had changed the blue troll's opinion on Toby. Strickler, after many times changing sides because Jim managed to change his mind and open his eyes, even called Toby Young Atlas.
One of the things that hurt Jim deeply, though, was when Toby, being seen by Strickler at school with the armor on, went to the Romeo and Juliet play auditions, got the part of Romeo, and had Claire fall for him.
It hurt him the most because Toby, his best friend, had used the same words Jim originally said. And because Claire, after once telling Jim to never stop fighting for each other, started falling for Toby instead.
That wasn't the only time she fell for someone else, though. Claire went with Douxie multiple times as well. And that was why Jim had such strong hatred towards the wizard.
However, that wasn't the only thing that had hurt Jim—no, he even got hurt by his own mother.
It was karma.
Through the many timelines he restarted, Jim often found out that his mother had been keeping secrets away from him, such as finding out that she, as unbelievable as it may sound, had gotten together with Blinky, or other times Strickler. It was only fair that he got a taste of his own medicine from her of all people.
But that still didn't ease the stabbing betrayal in his heart.
He may have lied about his Trollhunting life to Barbara once—but that was it. It was only once. Even after all the restarts, Jim never hid anything from his mother. He told her about when Toby found the amulet, or whenever they had a mission to go, who they met along the way—everything.
And every time, she hid something away from him.
He didn't understand why his mother would choose to do that—to hide away the person she loved from him.
But he figured she must have thought the same about him when he was Trollhunter.
Jim used to love Barbara dearly. She was his mother. She took care of him—she had him. She never left him after his father did. She raised him. She kept him safe and healthy.
It hurt him that he no longer loved her, as confusing as it was.
Perhaps it was just that same old echo of himself still ringing somewhere in his soul that made him feel bad about no longer loving the people he used to love. It was slowly fading and dying off.
And birthing inside his rotten and empty soul was the darkness that slowly consumed him. The amulet in his hands told him so by the blackness that started to rust over some of the outlines.
He brushed a thumb over the darkened metal spot on the amulet, knowing fully what it meant.
The alarm on his desk suddenly started ringing. He turned his eyes to see that it was already six am.
Six am on the same day he's relived hundreds of times.
This was the last time—he was sure of it. He wouldn't restart anything ever again.
Because if he ever found the Khronisfere, he'd destroy the Time Stone inside to lock everyone in the hellhole he would create—he'd trap them in the misery he had been trapped in for nonexistent decades.
To make them all suffer.
For the doom of all.