Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 8th August 2021
"Jim..."
"This is not charity," Jim said firmly. "I know you two can take care of yourselves. I know you've been doing it longer than I can wrap my mind around. That's not the point."
"Then what is?"
Jim looked out into the bushes and boulders in his yard. "We're part of a team, right? Team Trollhunters."
"Yeah."
"We help each other, right? We've got each other's backs."
"Yeah."
"So let me help you."
"It's not that simple."
"You told Nari 'No more running'," Jim said. There was a sick jolt in Douxie's stomach, remembering the little nature goddess, remembering that promise to her.
Remembering how she'd died, and he hadn't been able to do a thing to save her.
"Put your money where your mouth is, Douxie," Jim commanded, "and put down roots."
Douxie breathed a sad laugh. He thought Nari would have liked Jim's turn of phrase. Roots, indeed. For her, they would have been literal.
She was alive in the world somewhere right now. Maybe on Camelot, as inaccessible as the moon. And she wouldn't know him anyway.
"Jim, it's not that I don't appreciate the offer," Douxie started.
"I do," Archie butted in. He stood up on two feet and looked at Hisirdoux. "Douxie, I haven't seen you this determined, this adult since... well, since that time travel business in Camelot."
"Which happened in my past but your future."
"Regardless." Archie adjusted his glasses. "Don't think it's escaped my attention that in the last few days, you've been using magic more efficiently, but rather more intensively. Or that our stock of ramen is depleting faster than usual."
"It's hungry work!" Douxie retorted. "Don't worry, I'll stock up again after payday."
"Not my point," Archie said. "You're burning through your reserves faster, and as your familiar, it is my duty to tell you that you need to let other people take care of you sometimes."
"I'm on top of it!" Hisirdoux snapped. Then he realized the tone had been uncalled-for and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fingers laced through the hair at the back of his head. He breathed. "Sorry."
Archie fell back to all fours and rubbed his head against Douxie's arm. "Douxie, you know as well as I do that there's no eating pride, and no shame in letting someone help you. You let Merlin take us in, didn't you?"
"You know," Jim said thoughtfully, "sometimes I think the wrong one of you is a cat. Archie's not afraid to ask for help, but you'd rather do things yourself or run and hide than ever let anyone take care of you, Doux."
"What?" Hisirdoux demanded indignantly, straightening and staring at the Trollhunter.
Archie snickered. "I'm afraid he's quite got you there, Douxie."
Douxie huffed out a breath. "Incorrigible, the both of you." He leaned back and looked at the urban light haze for a long minute before asking "How would you explain it to Toby, Jim? He's never met me, and if the two of you have kept a secret from each other ever, I'll be a skrelfoot."
Jim thought about it for a moment. "He's been kind of busy the last few days. Who's to say what I've been up to while he's been training?"
"Making him think that I'm replacing him as your best friend doesn't seem like the smartest idea to me."
"Trust me," Jim said, smiling grimly, "I can spin it. I have it on excellent authority that I'm a pretty good actor."
Douxie looked at Jim for a long, silent moment, then said, "All right, I'll tell you what. You spin this to Toby, introduce us, and if I can charm him into liking me, then you have a deal."
"Deal." Jim held his hand out for a shake; Douxie took it and sealed the bargain. "Gotta warn you, though, he's not as easily charmed as a bunch of teenage high school girls."
Douxie groaned. "If I haven't before, I apologize a thousandfold for that. I lost a bet."
"A bet?" Archie asked.
"Zoe bet me that she could catch more knotsprites in one night than I could, and if I lost I had to behave like an anime bishounen for a whole day."
"Oh yes," said Archie, nodding. "That does sound like her. However did she best you?"
"She knocked me out while my back was turned and tied me up for three hours to get a head start," Douxie grumbled. "It's one of the reasons I stopped hunting with her. She cheats."
"I would have thought it was because you finally figured out she was flirting with you."
"Well, that too," Douxie said darkly.
Archie's eyes were wide behind his glasses. "Oh my."
Douxie sighed and ran his hand down his arm, releasing the illusion spell that hid his charm bracelet. He ran his fingers over it, spinning the glowing runes idly, not really seeking one out. "Jim, if we do this, before I move in, there are some other things you need to understand."
"Like what?" Jim asked.
How do I tell him this? "You wield Excalibur. And I'm a wizard. Arguably the most powerful one active on the planet right now, even if I don't have my staff back just yet."
"Okay. So...?"
Make it plainer. "You're Arthur. I'm Merlin."
Jim recoiled. "What? Arthur was a jerk!"
"Oh, I won't disagree with you there. Did I ever tell you," Hisirdoux wondered, "the first inkling any of his knights had that I had magic, they tried to kill me? I was maybe fourteen. Luckily, Merlin was in the market for a new apprentice at the time. But if you don't think I spent my entire time in Camelot trying very hard not to come to his notice or theirs again..."
"Yeah," Jim agreed.
"But the thing is," Douxie said quietly, "he was in fact a very good king. For mortals."
"What?"
Douxie let a little magic paint the air, blue light showing the long-ago king and a shifting map of his holdings. "When Uther died and Arthur took the throne, things were a mess. It was absolutely the worst parts of feudalism that you've ever heard of. Arthur put a stop to a lot of the abuses. He made sure taxes were paid, roads were kept up, and good harvests shared out and stored up to cushion the bad. No one starved anymore. Because he had Excalibur, he had the might to keep his lords and his neighbors in line with the new laws. And he took on the worst of the man-eating monsters."
Jim's face darkened. "Gunmar."
Douxie nodded. "And others. It wasn't just trolls causing humans and one another trouble."
"So what went wrong?" Jim asked. "Why couldn't he be a good king for everyone, instead of just his own people?"
"If I knew the answer to that, I'd know the secrets of the universe, Jim. I have no idea why it's so easy to sow hate and so hard to eradicate it." Douxie looked sideways at Jim. "I will tell you one thing, though. You've stepped outside your own species. You know being something else from the inside and out. The ability to see things from a different point of view is a gift that I hope you'll treasure your whole life. Not even Arch has that."
"Of course I don't," sniffed the familiar. "I'm a dragon, no matter what I look like."
Jim chuckled a little. "I will," he promised. "But why's that so important?"
Here it came. "Thomas Mallory got a lot of things wrong when he wrote down his version of what happened in Camelot," Douxie said, "but he got one thing dead right."
Jim just blinked.
"I believe the bit Douxie's referring to is 'Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king born'," Archie quoted.
"King?" Jim recoiled. "I can't be a king! I'm American."
"Mm, and Arthur Pendragon and William the Conqueror were bastards. Legally, as well as by temperament," Archie replied.
"You're not the king of a land," Douxie explained. "You're the king of a people. Peoples. Tell me this: who was there when you pulled out Excalibur?"
"You know that. You, Claire, Toby. Blinky and Aaarrrgghh. Aja and Krel and Varvatos."
"I don't suppose you noticed that when you pulled it free, we all knelt?"
"What? I don't remember that."
"We knelt, Jim. Instinctively. Reflexively. Even Aja, the reigning queen of a whole other planet. All of us."
Jim's face was a study in confusion. "But... why?"
"Excalibur is a king-maker," Archie explained softly. "It always has been."
"That's what Lady Nimue made it for," Douxie agreed, "to designate and aid the one who would be a protector. Except you're better than Arthur, because the people you'll protect aren't just humans, it's everyone. Humans. Mages. Trolls. Changelings. Even aliens. 'For the good of all'."
"I thought you and Krel put that on the amulet because you didn't want to be like Merlin."
Douxie recoiled. "Gods, no! Could you imagine me making you say 'For the glory of Hisirdoux' every time you wanted your armor? It's a mouthful, and I'm not that in love with myself."
"Merlin was a bit of an egotist," Archie agreed.
"A bit?" Douxie demanded. "I've had nine hundred years to think about it, and I've concluded he must have achieved his mastery at least fifty percent to satisfy his own ego! The great Merlin Ambrosius, most powerful wizard ever. Laying out his grand plans, and never mind who he hurt along the way." Douxie seethed for a minute, then breathed out. "Maybe that's why he got on with Arthur," he said quietly.
"I don't want to be a king!" Jim argued again. "I don't want subjects, I don't want anyone to kneel. I want... I want my /friends/."
Douxie and Archie exchanged a glance. "Jim," Archie said, putting a paw on the teenager's knee, "what do you think the Round Table was supposed to be?"
"Friends, advisors, equals," Douxie concurred, hand on Jim's shoulder. "But Arthur was still their leader. And you're ours."
"So why did they let him get away with all that? You wouldn't let me get away with that."
Hisirdoux shrugged. "They didn't know any better. You've got to remember, even as diverse and relatively well educated as the knights were, they were still from a narrow social class. They were the sons and daughters of lords and landholders - people who could afford to have a child do something as nonproductive as being a knight. There were no weavers or fishers or any kind of serfs at that table. Only the people who knew the value of power, and how to hold onto it."
Jim mulled that over, then came back with a question of his own. "So if Merlin wanted to make a name for himself, and Morgana wanted... power, I guess, what do you want from wizardry, Douxie?"
Hisirdoux was silent for a minute, trying to put things into words. "It's... not right to say that I didn't want power. But the power I wanted wasn't the same as the power Merlin or Morgana wanted." He chuckled a little, dryly. "Right before Killahead, I told Arthur that I was no one. That history wouldn't remember me, and stories wouldn't be told about me, but that it wouldn't stop me from fighting for what was right." A twist of his hand set ghostly blue butterflies dancing through the night. Douxie watched them flutter. "It wasn't glory or renown or strength that I was after. I wanted the magic itself. To know how it worked, to understand how the world worked. To know who I was, what this was inside me that I could do." He smiled and looked at Archie, at Jim. "I wanted to be able to protect those I loved."
"So we're kind of the same."
"Jim." Douxie smiled at him. "I think you and I are more alike than we're ever going to know."
Author's Note: In which I deal with Douxie's wildly out of character introduction in Trollhunters. Also with the fact that while he and Zoe were apparently planned out to be romantically involved, their interaction in Wizards led me very much to the belief that he realized she was interested in dating him, and he ran. And then in the latter half of this chapter, I worked through a lot of the implications that Jim pulling the sword out of the stone left hanging there in the air. Seriously, they were gathered around the Round Table plotting strategy in Camelot! It doesn't get much more blatant than that. But all that powerful imagery got dropped like a rock in favor of resetting the timeline.
And, unrelatedly, I started posting this story having written five chapters ahead. It's kept on coming like a freight train, so I'm currently eight chapters plus the epilogue, wherever that will land, ahead. And a file full of written-out scenes-yet-to-come and notes to myself on plot points and things I want to fit in. I love writing things that won't let me go! Posting to continue every other day for as long as I can.