Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 12th November 2021
The call to Strickler did not go well. The... discussion (Jim was pretty sure he could actually call it an argument) went on far longer than he'd like, and he was left half wondering if he was going to pay for it in history class tomorrow.
But at least he refrained from pulling on Excalibur's power, which he was fairly sure both Douxie and Archie had noticed.
(And explaining that... was not a conversation he was looking forward to having with his mom.)
But he ended the call reasonably confident he'd explained himself, and their reasoning, and hadn't had to resort to "my mom says." Which would have both made him sound like a bratty six-year-old and messed with his mom's relationship with Strickler.
And not five minutes later, his mom was on the phone, calling in a pizza order because Jim just could not deal with cooking tonight. He muttered a troll expletive degrading himself, because he was angry at himself. One prisoner, who hadn't actually done anything yet this time around, and he was already jumping to the possibility of imprisonment or messing with the guy's mind.
Arthur's condemning voice echoed loud in his memory.
Jim swallowed down bile.
Archie was watching him with concern, as was his wizard. "You should talk about it," the dragon advised. "Airing poison dissipates it."
"I feel like I'm going to be as bad as Arthur," Jim said, looking at his hands, clasped on his lap. "The first test out of the gate, and-"
"-and you listened to the counsel of others," Douxie put in. His hand came down on top of Jim's. Jim looked up into hazel eyes. "You remember what I told you, when you were asking us to move in here?"
"That you're Merlin and I'm Arthur?"
"After that," Douxie told him. "About the Round Table, and what they were supposed to be. Friends, advisors... and equal voices in the king's ear." He nodded toward Jim's mom, still on the phone. "I wasn't going to stop you just now, was I? Lucky for us, your mom's a more moral voice than mine. It's not just the ninth configuration that makes up your advisors."
"But if I'm supposed to be a king, I need to know how to lead right, all by myself," Jim murmured, looking down again.
"And if I'm a master wizard, I'm supposed to know everything there is about magic, all by myself," Douxie rebutted. "That's not how it works, Jim." Jim looked back up. Douxie gave him a smile. "Part of it's knowing what you need to do, yeah," the wizard said, "but part of it's also knowing how to find out what you don't know. In my case, that's digging through books and researching to supplement my knowledge. In your case, it's listening to different opinions to help inform your own position."
Jim blinked. He'd never thought about there being some kind of weird parallel like that between Douxie's job and his own.
"So I suppose this means you're admitting you're a divine king?" asked Archie.
Jim suddenly couldn't meet Douxie's gaze anymore. Couldn't stand to see hope, whether crushed or flickering, there. "I am... considering it," was all he managed.
Silence.
Then, "Jim," Douxie said very softly, "don't do that for me."
Surprised, Jim looked back up.
"That's a very large decision," said the wizard, "and a one-way path. There's no getting out of kingship once you take it up. Not shy of losing your life," he added.
"There's democracy taking over," Jim felt obliged to point out.
"The type of crown modern monarchs wear isn't the type we're talking about," replied Douxie. "The kind we're talking about is a sacred charge, and a burning weight in here." He tapped at Jim's breastbone. Jim's mom had finished the call and was now sitting, listening to the two of them. "If you take it up, you don't get to be like the Queen of England and never express an opinion on anything. You will matter. You will shift the world. Protecting it, and its peoples... and a few extraterrestrials," he added with a smile, "will be your burden and your purpose. And you don't ever get to take it back and lay that down. So," he said, "don't do it just because your friend might be a little sad. If you make that choice, take that last step, you will become Atlas, like Strickler calls you."
Jim swallowed. "What possible better reason could there be," he asked, surprised to hear his voice coming out hoarse, "than because my friend needs me to do so?"
Hazel eyes narrowed. "Do we need to revisit that discussion about needs versus wants?"
"No," said Jim honestly. "I just think you're classifying some of your own needs as wants."
That took Douxie aback. "Maybe," the wizard admitted. "But regardless, you cannot frame your own life based upon another person's needs. If you do this, it has to be for yourself, and because it's something you genuinely need and want to do."
"I'm sorry," Barbara broke in, "but what are you two talking about?"
"Jim is flirting with divine kingship," Archie told her.
She blinked. "That's not a thing. Is it?"
"It used to be," the dragon replied. "It is... very old. There hasn't been one in centuries."
Jim groaned. "Don't tell me Arthur was the last one."
"There've been a few since him," Douxie allowed. "He's just the best-known to the English-speaking world."
"So what does a divine king do?" she pressed. The name alone leaned her toward disliking it, but she was having to accept rather a lot of things she disliked, for the sake of her son.
"Oh, all the usual duties of a champion," Archie said, waving a paw negligently about in the air. "Fighting wars, settling disputes, blessing babies..."
"Much the same things the Trollhunter does," Douxie cut in, "just on a larger scale."
Jim's face wrinkled. "I don't remember any trolls asking me to kiss their babies."
"Bless babies," Archie corrected him. "A divine king is not a modern politician, no matter how grandiose and powerful most politicians fancy themselves."
Jim looked alarmed. "Blessing someone?" he choked.
Douxie sighed and leaned back into the sofa. "A divine king is someone chosen by a god or goddess to protect his-or-her people," he explained. "The deity's blessing can flow through the king, helping in various ways to protect the people. In your case, that's Excalibur. The problem for you is, you've claimed everyone."
"For the good of all," Jim said slowly.
Douxie nodded. "I inscribed that on your amulet. But you tell me, did I chose the wrong words?"
Barbara watched as her son turned that over in his mind, then shook his head. "How could I chose different?" he asked. "Who should I turn away and say 'No, not you. I'm not protecting you'?"
Barbara raised a hand to her mouth, heart swelling, because that was her boy, and he understood one of the strongest, underlying principles of her chosen profession. He'd internalized it better than she could have ever dreamed.
For the good of all indeed.
"The thing is, though," Jim said slowly, "I'm not sure I can be a king."
Douxie shifted on the sofa, made an inquisitive noise.
"Even with you guys behind me... I can't be Atlas," Jim said, looking up, and Barbara felt so immeasurably proud of him for not only knowing his limits, but being able to express them and ask for help. "I can't support that much weight. I don't know how anyone can. Look at Arthur - it made him cruel. And mad."
Comprehension washed across Douxie's face. "Arthur didn't know how to ask for help," the wizard said. "Or even that, I don't know, he could." Jim's expression showed confusion, so the wizard continued. "Council of equals, remember? We take some of the weight for you. But perhaps just as important, we're your friends." Douxie's gaze flicked to Barbara; he smiled. "Your family."
Jim still looked blank.
Douxie sighed and straightened, conjuring something illusory and flat with one hand. A mirror, Barbara realized when he tilted it to show Jim's reflection. Except it wasn't the sixteen-year-old Jim sitting on her sofa, no; it was an older-looking Jim, resolute and noble, with a circlet around his head. Probably gold, she thought, though it, like the rest of the illusion, was the blue of Douxie's magic. "King Jim," Douxie said. But then his hand touched the rim of the mirror and bent it down, forming another facet. A different reflection formed there - Jim laughing and wrestling with Toby. "Goofball Jim." He bent another facet down, showing Jim slow-dancing with Claire. "Romantic Jim." Another facet, one where Barbara and Jim were hugging. "Son Jim." And he went on and on, going around the mirror, naming and showing different aspects of her son. He flipped it over, making more facets still, until finally what had started as a mirror ended up clearly a gemstone, no longer a flat object but a three-dimensional one. All facets the same in size, equally important. And all Jim.
"How many facets do you think Arthur had?" Douxie asked quietly.
Jim shrugged, hands open.
"King. And warrior," said Douxie. "And as far as I know... that's it. Everything else withered for him. He had no friends, only vassals. No true family, only a half-sister he did not trust. He could never let the weight go, and you're right... it crushed him." Douxie set the gem, as big as his head, spinning in mid-air.
"I've never liked the phrase 'diamond in the rough'," remarked Archie, watching the gem rotate. "Diamonds aren't even that rare. And they may be sparkly when properly cut, but diamonds aren't particularly strong. A hammer can't scratch one, but it can certainly shatter it."
"It's a metaphor, Arch," the wizard complained.
"An inaccurate one," the dragon grumbled.
Douxie rolled his eyes. "My point is, should you take it up, kingship would be an important facet, yes... but certainly not your whole self, Jim." His eyes met her son's. "You wouldn't have to be King Jim all the time and sacrifice the rest of yourself. In fact, we'd probably smack you up the head in various ways if you even tried. Your friends and family like you just as you are. All of you."
The pizza arrived, and Jim was glad for the conversational break as they broke out plates and napkins and cups and drinks and divvied up the slices. His mom always ordered a vegetarian pizza, while Jim was of the pepperoni-and-sausage school of thought. Douxie and Archie split another between them, Douxie's part covered with everything while Archie's was an all-meat-marvel. And the pair of them both loved anchovies all over their pizza, which was like the strangest taste ever, little fish/salt bombs waiting to go off in each bite.
At least, Jim thought, all four of them were in agreement that pineapple was an abomination. Toby, sadly, for all his great best-friend characteristics, somehow inexplicably loved Hawaiian pizza.
For a while, there was nothing but the sound of eating, absorption of the emotional relief offered by fatty, salty goodness and enough carbs to last a week. And Archie and Douxie play-fighting as the dragon picked off the couple bits of bell pepper and mushroom that had somehow drifted over onto his slices and threw them at his familiar.
Finally, though, satiation was reached.
"That was almost enough pizza," Jim said happily.
"Is there such a thing, philosophically, as enough pizza?" Douxie asked him back.
Archie, meanwhile, just exchanged a look with Jim's mom. "Teenagers," he said. She shrugged.
"I bite my thumb at thee," Douxie snarked to his familiar. Jim, understanding the reference, snickered.
"Yes, well, now that everyone has full stomachs and your brains are flooded with endorphins and dopamine, did you want to talk about that little bomb Merlin left behind for Blinky to deliver?" asked the dragon.
Jim suddenly felt a lot less happy than he had twenty seconds ago.
Douxie straightened from his long-legged slouch. "Your call, Jim."
"Will you stop making me make the decisions?" Jim snapped, suddenly irritated.
Douxie flinched, his hands tightening. Then he swallowed, and said huskily, "That's fair, I do keep doing that, don't I?" He took a breath. "But this one's personal, isn't it? Do you really want someone else deciding who, and when, to tell about it?"
And Jim... really didn't. "It's fine," he said. "You're right. Sorry for snapping."
Douxie gave him a wan smile. Archie said nothing, but found his way onto Douxie's lap, where long fingers, partially swathed in white, found their way into his fur. Douxie's hands were trembling, Jim noticed, but he bit his lip on that. Something he'd talk about with Douxie later. Privately.
"Merlin said..." Jim started, but the words refused to come out of his throat. "He said," he tried again to the same effect. Taking a deep breath, he clenched his fists, then unclenched them, pulling his amulet out of his pocket and setting it on the middle of the dining table.
"He said," Douxie said softly, for him, "that Jim's immortal, like me. Because of the amulet."
Jim's mom drew herself up, gaze going first the the magical metal object, then to Jim's face. There was no humor on her own.
"Tobes too," said Jim. "And Claire eventually, when her magic gets strong enough."
"Claire still has an opt-out, though," said Archie. "Douxie will be able to warn her when she's getting close to that level of magery. If she can limit herself after that, she'll live a mortal life."
Jim's mom swallowed. "But there's no opt-out for you boys?"
Jim shook his head. "A couple years of getting older. To 'physical maturity'," he said, making air quotes with his fingers, "whenever that is, and then... staying like that forever."
Silence around the table. Even Douxie didn't try to fill it.
"What if." Jim's mom wet her lips, then continued. "What if the amulets were destroyed?"
Jim blinked.
"Can they be destroyed?" she asked.
Jim swallowed. Nodded, his mind reeling at the possibility. "I... did it once before, to find the map hidden inside. It took Toby's warhammer to smash it."
"And then the Order annihilated the amulet permanently, later," said Douxie softly. "So the amulets certainly can be destroyed. There's your solution, I guess, Jim. Just wait until we finish with the Arcane Order this time around, and then... you and Toby shouldn't lose much time, if any, to not aging."
Jim looked at the wizard, but his eyes were fast on the amulet he'd built. If he was upset by the possibility of being left alone again in his immortality, though, there was no trace of it on his face or in his posture.
Jim took a breath. And another.
His mom was brilliant. She'd found the solution that had escaped the rest of them, mired as they all were in the world of magic.
But the funny thing was... it didn't feel like a release. Or a relief.
The thought of destroying his amulet felt like being squeezed in a vice grip.
Why?
A dozen iterations of Without the amulet, am I even the Trollhunter? ran through his mind. But he dismissed them. Easily, for once. There was something in there about knowing his own worth, he thought, and he did, now.
But more...
Once he'd defeated Gunmar, he'd thought that was it. He'd help lead the surviving trolls to the new heartstone in New Jersey, settle into some weird sort of hybrid life among them, and that would be it.
Except then there'd come the Green Knight, and the Arcane Order, out of the blue.
Who was to say that after the Arcane Order was dealt with this time, there wouldn't be something else, some other world-destroying problem, appearing out of nowhere again somewhere down the line?
And what if the only solution that time lay in the shattered remains of the amulet his friends had made for him, and he'd destroyed?
Jim swallowed.
You don't ever get to take that back and lay it down, Douxie had said earlier. He'd been talking about kingship, which Jim still was of two minds about... but didn't it apply to other sacred duties as well?
Jim swallowed. His hand fisted. "I can't," he said quietly.
Everyone else stared at him.
"I can't," he repeated, feeling his words out. "If I did that, I'd be leaving the world undefended against... whatever came next."
"Not undefended," Douxie rebutted. Plasma sparked and swirled around the wizard's raised fingertips.
Jim glared at him. "I will not abandon my duty."
Douxie did not glare back. In fact, his face was almost devoid of expression as he said, "Take it from someone who's fought in more wars than I care to number. Shirkers were often the ones who got out alive."
"I was never going to get out alive, from the day the amulet chose me," Jim argued. "And I can't, I won't, leave you to deal with that all by yourself."
"Hardly by myself," Douxie murmured, gaze dropping to the dragon sitting on his lap.
"I'm not going to let you be alone again!"
The words seemed to echo off the walls of the dining room. Shit, had he called on Excalibur's power-?
Douxie swallowed in the resounding silence. His eyes were wide, his expression shocked. Archie's eyes were wide too. "Jim, that's..." He took a deep breath. His gaze lowered again. "That's very kind of you," he said, and Jim could practically see the wizard shutting himself away. "But I would never ask that. Please don't make your life decisions based on me."
"You're not asking," said Jim. "I'm offering. There's a difference."
Douxie looked up again. "And it's very kind of you," he repeated, "but I'm going to have to decline your offer. Don't predicate your existence on mine."
"Douxie-"
The wizard drew a breath. And another. He seemed to be thinking. Jim's mom's gaze flitted back and forth between the two of them, but she waited to hear whatever the immortal had to say.
"I would love nothing more than to be selfish," Douxie said finally, "but more than that, I want you to be happy, Jim. Whether that's with an eighty-year lifespan, or an eight-hundred-year lifespan. The thing is, though, in the math of happiness, time is often a dividing factor, not a multiplying one. I would rather you lived a long, mortal life, and died surrounded by children and grandchildren who love you, than to watch you spend centuries with the light steadily dimming in your eyes because you decided that duty, and your concern for one person, were worth more than anything else. Because if you chose immortality," he said, "those children and grandchildren aren't going to happen."
"What?" asked Jim's mom, blinking.
Douxie shrugged.
"No one quite knows why," Archie said softly, "but for short-lived beings like humans... the tipping point of magic-induced immortality is also a point of near-sterility."
"I can think of less than a handful of confirmed exceptions," Douxie said. "And I know sixteen - or eighteen - is normally far too early for you to even be considering such things. But... there it is. So please add that into your calculations before you arrive at your answer, Jim."
"Also keep in mind," Archie said, "that you have nearly two years before you need to make any sort of decision. There's no need to rush this."
Archie... was right, Jim thought, an odd sense of relief trickling through him. He didn't have to decide tonight. None of them did. They could take time and do it right.
He had time to figure out why Douxie was hell-bent on keeping the rest of them from lightening his eternal loneliness.