Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 10th November 2021
Dinner was served, grew cold, and the leftovers got put away in Tupperware in the fridge before Douxie came home.
Jim was sitting on the sofa, reading what the Wizard version of A Brief Recapitulation had to say about the amulet, when the front door opened. He was on his feet in a flash as the wizard and his familiar came in, looking... actually somewhat calmer than he'd been expecting. And more tired on Douxie's part, that was for sure.
Douxie saw him, looked over. "Jim. Hey."
"Are you okay?"
Douxie considered that for a moment, then shook his head. "I have no idea." He held up one hand, displaying the backside. "I could use a bandage, though?"
Jim's eyes widened. Douxie's knuckles were shredded and bleeding. "Holy crap!" And his mom was working an overnight shift, so he couldn't ask for her professional help.
Douxie gave a weak grin. "You should see the other fellow?" he offered.
"The wall won," reported Archie.
"You were hitting a wall?" Jim demanded, horrified. He grabbed Douxie by the forearm and dragged him over to the kitchen sink.
"Well, hitting a pillow's not really going to get the feelings out much, is it?" the wizard asked. "For some things you just need the pain."
"No you don't," Jim argued. "Stay here. Let me get the hydrogen peroxide and some Neosporin." He rattled up the stairs and grabbed those as well as a roll of gauze and some tape, and rattled back downstairs in record time. Then he turned on the sink tap and guided holy shit BOTH of Douxie's hands under it, to flush any debris out. Douxie flinched. "Aren't you a guitarist? Don't you need your hands?"
"I needed a clear head more," Douxie answered, looking at his hands as the water ran pink.
"You're an idiot," Jim told the 900-plus-years-old wizard.
"That's never been in doubt," Douxie replied. He hissed as Jim turned off the water and replaced its stream with hydrogen peroxide, the liquid foaming white over the blood.
"I always used to pretend it was eating up the germs," Jim said, waiting a minute then starting to pat Douxie's hands dry with a clean towel.
"Scraped your knees a lot?"
"Why do you think I wear a bike helmet?" Next came smearing thin layers of Neosporin on the damage, and then wrapping each finger and across the hand with the bandage.
"Thought it was because your mom's a doctor. She managed to guilt me into getting skateboard safety gear, and first, she wasn't even there, and second, she's not even my mother."
Jim had to grin as he worked. "Yeah, she's pretty awesome, isn't she?"
"She is," Douxie agreed as Jim finished. He wasn't happy with the job, was pretty sure his mom would have done it a whole lot neater, but it was at least serviceable. Douxie flexed his hands a couple times, and nodded. "Thank you." He looked up, met Jim's eyes. "Jim..."
"If you're going to say you're sorry, don't," Jim told him. "You had no idea. The only one who needs to apologize is Merlin. And we both know he never will."
Douxie took that, accepted it, nodded. "Fair enough," he said. "I can still be sorry it's happened at all, though."
Jim sighed and leaned back against the counter. For something to do, he picked up the peroxide bottle and fiddled with its cap, twisting and untwisting it. "After you left, Blinky told us Merlin said Tobes and I probably won't 'settle' for another few years. The amulets should let us keep aging to physical maturity, whatever that point is." The words tasted bitter in his mouth.
"At least you won't have to worry about truancy officers." Douxie's voice was soft.
"An eternity of high school," Jim tried to joke, but it felt lame. "That really would be hell."
"Jim..." And then arms were around him. He rested his forehead against Douxie's shoulder, waiting for the need to cry to well up and take over. Surprisingly, it didn't.
"What were you going to do," he whispered, "if this hadn't happened?"
Douxie sighed, his breath warm against Jim's neck. "Ideally, love you all for eightyish years, and mourn deeply when you were gone," the wizard said softly. "And then probably spend centuries repressing it, until everything faded enough that I could deal with how much I missed you."
"You're good at repressing things."
Douxie laughed just a little. "Practically an expert."
"Guess you don't have to miss us now."
Douxie put his hands on Jim's shoulders, drew back until they were looking at one another again. "Much as there's no one I'd rather suffer immortality with, I'd give anything so that you three didn't have to."
"You have a semi-open revolt on your hands," a familiar voice purred down the line.
Waltolomew paused. "It's always a pleasure to hear from you, Nomura. I take it the wayward Krax has found his way to you?"
Her pause let him know he'd hit the mark. "I'd ask how you know about that, but I suppose those brats of yours are keeping you updated."
"Indeed."
"Don't worry about Krax," she said. "He's going to be tied up for a while." From her tone, he assumed literally. "But what he's said has been very interesting."
"Oh?"
"Apparently," she said, with far too much nonchalance to be real, "your prize student? The Trollhunter's best friend? Is also a Trollhunter." She dangled the information like it was bait and he was a fish.
"And a time traveler," Waltolomew responded. He wasn't a fish, he was a shark, and she'd do well to remember that.
Silence echoed down the phone line for a moment. "You knew," she said.
"Of course I knew," he replied. He was not going to tell her how long he'd known; the illusion of having considerably more cards in one's hand, he had found, was a valuable tool. "Why do you think I allied with them? In their future, we live, Nomura."
"And you trust them." In the background he could hear something rhythmic. Metallic. She was, he realized, sharpening her blades with a whetstone. He wondered how much longer Krax would live. Should he do something to preserve his fellow changeling's life?
Jim, he was sure, would say yes.
Jim wasn't here.
"I trust them significantly more than I trust Gunmar or his advisors," Waltolomew said mildly.
"Fair enough." She continued working her blades.
"Do leave him alive, Nomura," he advised. "You never know - he might be useful." He was arguing for clemency. Jim, he thought, must be getting to him.
She snorted. "I'm not keeping him. You have twenty-four hours to find someplace to put him, Stricklander."
"Understood."
The line went dead.
"So I have a list," Claire said at lunch, "of some things I think we need to start looking at."
Toby and Jim exchanged wary glances as Claire shoved a notebook over at them, then started examining her list together.
The top item was getting Enrique back.
"So I realized, thanks to what we found out yesterday, that if we don't get started on that, he's gonna suddenly be like three months younger the day he gets back than he was the day before," said Claire, "and how am I going to explain that to my parents?"
At her mention of their impending immortality, Toby lowered his sandwich.
"Let's talk about it later?" Jim suggested, shoving the notebook back to her. Claire shrugged and tucked it away in her bag even as Darci and Mary, each bearing a lunch tray, sat down on either side of her.
"Hey, you still meeting up with Douxie after school for your magic club thing?" Jim asked Toby, trying to distract him. To cheer him up.
"Um." Toby picked at his meal. "Probably? No, wait, it's Tuesday, we're doing that on Thursdays."
"Come on, I'm supposed to be your test audience," Jim pestered. "I need you to show me something cool you've learned."
"Ooh, show us something!" Darci asked, eyes bright.
Toby blinked, then his face took on a slightly less sullen cast at the thought of showing off in front of the girl he really, really liked. "Um. Okay." He cast about the table, looking for something. "Oh, I got it," he said, picking up the plain white paper napkin Jim had packed in his lunch bag today. "Watch this," he said. He took on an expression of concentration, and held the napkin up. Then he lowered his other hand before it, revealing a paper napkin rose, which he promptly handed to a wide-eyed Darci.
Jim's jaw dropped. "How the heck did you do that?"
Toby grinned. "Magician's secret."
"Holy- has Douxie been teaching you real magic?" Claire demanded.
"Nah." Toby waved it off. "It's all stagecraft."
Mary, though, had her gaze on the rose. She tucked her hair behind her ear. "Um," she said, in a tone that seemed so unlike her that it immediately caught Jim's attention. "So, like, is Douxie magic? I mean, like really magic?"
Jim blinked.
Darci laughed. "Are you still on about that crystal ball reading back on Halloween? Come on, that was all stage magic, just like Toby here."
Mary's arms wrapped around herself. "I know it's stupid," she said, looking down at her lunch, "but... I don't see how it could have been."
Jim exchanged a concerned glance with Claire. "Mary, what did Douxie do?" his girlfriend asked.
"Nothing!" she denied. "I mean, just... his hands were glowing, and he knew things that there was no way he could know!" the girl said. "And I know it's stupid, it's probably just stage magic and lucky guesses, right? But I'm still a little freaked out about it."
"Oh." Claire sat back a little. Jim, meanwhile, was processing that Douxie had shown Mary and Darci a hint of real magic. Why would he have done that?
"I think," he said, "we need to have some words with him."
"Yeah," said Toby, glowering.
"But I also think," Jim said, "that we need to tell the truth eventually?"
"What?" Claire's eyes were wide.
"Remember that plan of his?" Jim asked. "The crazy one." The one which involved defeating the Arcane Order somehow by revealing magic to the world at large. It had largely fallen by the wayside, but he wondered if the wizard showing Mary and Darci his magic might have been a kind of test run.
"Oh. Oh yeah." Toby's eyes were wide.
"The question is," Jim said, to Toby and Claire, "now or later?"
"What are you talking about?" Darci asked, overlapping with Mary's "You're keeping secrets? Don't you trust us, Claire?"
Claire's eyes were wide, her lips parted as she clearly worked things out in her head. Then she nodded. "Now."
Jim nodded. "Then, go ahead, I guess."
"Hey, why her?" asked Toby.
"She's the one who can do something subtle," answered Jim.
"Magic is real," Claire told her girlfriends quietly. "Douxie has it, and... so do I." Over her open palm in the middle of the table, a tiny purple-black rift bloomed.
Darci and Mary both stared, until Mary smacked her palm down on the table and cried "I knew it!"
None of them noticed Eli, at the next table over, staring.
"Well, this doesn't look good," Barbara said, pulling the gauze away. "Not that Jim didn't do a good job of this," she said, "but, Douxie... why?"
"The last thing we needed was my rage," the wizard said softly. "Better to get it out on stone walls than just about any other way."
"Do you make a habit of this?"
He shook his head. "Not really. Just... I was not expecting what we learned."
"Jim hasn't said what it is, but it's got him pretty upset too," Barbara said, smearing ointment on his knuckles.
"He has even more right to be upset than I do. But if you're fishing for information, I'm afraid I can't tell you," Douxie said, smile tight. "It's not mine to say."
"I wasn't expecting you to." She started rewrapping his hands, her own quick and efficient, but careful. "I think you should be all right to play, if you want."
"Thanks. But if I started playing, I'd probably get stuck on Queen right now, and nobody wants that." The strains of Who Wants To Live Forever echoed in his mind.
Barbara smiled. "I love Queen," she confessed. "And I'd love to hear you singing their songs sometime. You have a lovely voice, Douxie."
"Centuries of practice," he demurred. "I saw them in concert a couple times. You?"
"Oh yes." She practically glowed. "I still have my t-shirts buried in the back of the closet."
"I'd fistbump you," he said, "but..." He held up a damaged hand, wiggling his fingers to demonstrate why it would be a bad idea.
Barbara laughed.
"Jim, a moment, if you would," Waltolomew said at the end of class. Jim hung back, as did his two shadows, Toby and Claire, as the other students emptied the room. "I understand that an individual named Krax escaped your net yesterday."
Jim narrowed his eyes. "I thought he was on the other side from you."
Waltolomew nodded. "Yes, but apparently he thought Miss Nomura would still be sympathetic and share his loyalties."
That got him a round of winces. "How many pieces did she leave him in?" asked Toby.
"One so far," Waltolomew reported. "But she's made it quite clear to me that she cannot be expected to keep him contained forever. So I was wondering if you might have any suggestions."
Jim ran a hand down his face. "Douxie's already said he doesn't have enough power to put him in stasis," he reported. "I guess we could drag him down to Trollmarket and put him in a cage next to Usurna, but I really don't think we want him to go on trial for being a changeling. Not if we're going to try and get the trolls to accept you guys."
Claire half-raised her hand. "Question: what about if we brought his familiar back from the Darklands?"
Waltolomew blinked. "The spell connecting them would be broken. He would revert to being fully troll."
"Claire...?" asked Jim.
She patted her bookbag. "How good are you at drawing maps?" she asked him.
Jim grimaced. "I can try?"
"You could make a map to the nursery. We could send in NotEnrique to get Krax's familiar out. Then we let Krax go down in Trollmarket with a warning. He won't be a changeling anymore, he'll be a troll. So he'll either shape up or ship out."
Waltolomew nodded, appreciating her ruthless efficiency. "That might work," he allowed. Then, "Does that mean you've been in the Darklands?" he asked Jim.
The young man grimaced. "Yeah. I spent a hellish few weeks there, once upon a time. Not exactly a vacation destination."
"Hey, uh, guys," Toby brought up a point. "What would we do with the ex-familiar baby?"
Claire shrugged. "There's safe-surrender sites at the hospital and fire station. I'm pretty sure we could manage to do it incognito."
But Jim shook his head. "The Darklands aren't exactly safe," he pointed out. "What if NotEnrique gets caught? And even if he gets Krax's familiar? The goblins will track him down."
"Fff." Claire bit her lip between her teeth and blew her bangs up. "Why does this have to be so hard?" she complained.
"Tell you what," Jim said, glancing at the clock. "We have class. Let's all keep thinking on it, and meet up here after school?"
"Indeed," said Waltolomew. "I look forward to seeing you all... at chess club," he said, as his next group of students started drifting in. "Now, off with you."
Headache-ful and solution-free, Jim came home hours later to find his mom and Douxie sitting on opposite ends of the L-shaped sofa, Douxie playing his guitar, the two of them laughing and singing together. Well, Douxie was singing like he knew what he was doing. Jim's mom sang mostly with the radio in the car, which even he knew was an act composed of more enthusiasm than skill. But they were clearly having a great time revisiting the pop hits of the 1980s.
He hated to interrupt it.
But Douxie was already setting his guitar down, alerted by the look on Jim's face that something was wrong.
"We've got a problem," said Jim.
"More than one?" the wizard quipped.
Jim sighed, shrugging off his messenger bag. "Remember that changeling you were looking for, down in Trollmarket? Krax," he added for his mother's sake. Douxie nodded. "Well, apparently he decided Nomura's was a good place to hide out."
The wizard's smile was a sharp slash across his face. "Guess he didn't get the memo she switched sides."
"Which is good for us, because she's got him literally tied up," Jim said, sitting down between the two of them.
"Well, that's... good?" his mom hazarded.
"Good that we know where he is," said Jim. "Bad that now we have to figure out what to do with him before she takes the decision out of our hands."
"Ah," said his mom. "She's very... physical, in krav maga class." Impatient, she didn't say.
Angry, Jim didn't reply.
"We don't want to put him on trial with Usurna, because he hasn't actually done anything," Jim said, "and putting changelings on trial just for being changelings isn't a precedent we want to set. Claire suggested sending NotEnrique into the Darklands to steal his familiar out, but there's too much danger in that." He looked at Douxie. "And everything else we came up with was worse."
"Hmm." The wizard drummed his fingers on the sofa's arm. "I could drop him into limbo," he said, "but that's full of even nastier creatures than the Darklands."
"Doubt that," Jim muttered.
"Jim." He waited until Jim looked him in the eye. "I have fought a nyalagroth."
"What? When?"
Douxie waved a hand. "Not important. My point is, if the point of the exercise is to preserve his life, limbo's not an option."
"So if limbo's not an option, and you haven't the oomph for stasis or sealing spells," said Archie from the back of the sofa, "what can you do?"
Douxie brought a hand to his mouth, staring into space as he clearly turned the problem over in his mind. "Transmutation seems unlikely to be a workable solution - we'd still have the problem of keeping hold of him."
"You could turn him into a fish or a turtle and put him in a tank," said the dragon.
Douxie reached up to scratch behind his familiar's ears. "You are charmingly bloody-minded," he complimented. "Regardless, all the methods of transmutation that I know and am able to do involve getting him to drink a potion. Which seems unlikely. Something that might be practically easier but a lot less ethical is messing about with his head."
Jim exchanged a glance with his mother. "You mean like... forcing him to change his mind?" she asked.
Douxie shook his head. "Not in my wheelhouse," he said. His gaze met Jim's. "And not something I could actually do, in any case." Jim swallowed, thinking of Excalibur's power. Was Douxie implying that he could do that? "No, what I was thinking was memory loss."
Archie stiffened. "Repeated sleep spells?"
Douxie shrugged. "They're why I have that hole in my memory," he said, sounding almost reasonable. "It should work the same for him."
Jim's mom was grimacing. "That still seems horrible."
Jim sighed. "We kind of don't have any good options," he said. "We can't just kill him. We can't imprison him in Trollmarket. We can't imprison him in the human world." He spread his hands. "I'm open to any ideas you have, but we're kind of up against a deadline here."
She sighed. "How much memory would you take away?" she asked Douxie. "And do you really think it would do any good?"
He spread his hands. "It's as much art as science. As to what would be an ideal amount..." He shrugged.
"Walt told me," she said calmly, "that the changelings are stolen from their troll parents as infants, and abused in the Darklands for hundreds of years before being sent to the surface." She adjusted her glasses. "They're brutalized and brainwashed well before they ever set foot on Earth. Are you absolutely sure that taking away some of his memory will fix anything?"
Guilty silence was her answer.
"Boys, just because you can do a thing, it doesn't mean you should do that thing," she said, her voice gentle. "I know you're thinking that he's your enemy, but I'm pretty sure I also heard you say he hasn't actually done anything yet."
"You're suggesting they just let an enemy agent go?" asked Archie. His voice was studiously neutral, but his tail twitched back and forth, agitated.
Douxie took a deep breath. "If you cannot help, then at least do no harm," he murmured. His gaze stayed on Jim's mom. "I'd almost forgotten that. Thank you."
"I don't like it," Jim said.
"I know, Jim." She put her arm around him. "But ask yourself, is it the right thing to do?"
He closed his eyes, and thought about it. Really thought about it. He didn't like letting an enemy go; it felt like a knife at their backs. But...
He opened his eyes. "If we want to be better than our enemies," he said quietly, "we have to be better than our enemies." He met Douxie's gaze. "She's right. We have to let him go."