Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 11th January 2022
Claire got no warning at all. One minute she was on her feet, watching as Mary and Darci poked through the contents of Bagdwella's shop, the next she was in the air, being whirled around by strong arms.
"Claire, it worked!" Blue eyes that she knew better than her own sparked with light from a few inches away, set in a familiar blue stone face.
"Jim?" she asked, reaching a hand to touch his face. Her feet dangled in air.
Her boyfriend nodded, armor-clad and newly half-troll again.
Claire lit up and threw her arms around his neck, hugging him tight. He was happy, and that made her happy, and he had something back that he hadn't even wanted at first, but had missed so much when it was gone-
She could kiss him, and Douxie too for making it possible.
"Uh, Claire, you going to introduce us?" asked Darci, standing a few feet back, clearly giving the unknown troll (half-troll) space, but also not alarmed. Her hand was on her hip, her weight cocked to one side.
"Um." Claire exchanged a look with Jim. "This is Jim? You know him? He goes to our school and sits with us at lunch?"
"Hey, Darci." Jim wiggled fingers at her, still bearing up all of Claire's weight like it was nothing. Darci stared.
"No. Freaking. Way." From the back of the shop, Mary's voice raised. "Claire! Have you seen what she's got back here! Come look!"
Claire sighed. "I'd better go see what she wants." She dropped a peck on Jim's cheek. "Good to see you looking blue again, handsome."
Jim blushed as he set her down.
Jim was... tall. And blue. With fangs and horns and it was really hard to see her skinny, dorkish classmate in all that. But Darci tried as she and he stood awkwardly looking at one another as Claire disappeared into the back of the shop.
"So," she finally said. "Blue?"
Jim scrubbed a hand through the hair (longer, and not so neatly combed) at the back of his head. "Ah, yeah...?" he said. His voice, at least, was the same.
And the armor was the same, Darci guessed, along with his new tiara. "So how do you change species?" she asked.
"Um. Just kind of concentrating?" Jim said. He blinked, refocusing his gaze into mid-distance.
There was a flash of blue, and when it cleared, Jim was human again. Though still wearing armor.
"No!" Bagdwella shrieked. "No unauthorized magic in my shop, Trollhunter! You'll mess with the calibrations~!"
"Sorry!" Jim said, grabbing Darci's hand and scuttling out the door.
Once they were clear, and had found a good vantage point to sit on a rock and wait for Mary and Claire to be done, Jim crouched down next to Darci, scanning Trollmarket. Not like he was looking for trouble, but just doing "a trouble check," as Darci's dad put it. But the way he crouched felt kind of weird somehow. She didn't know why, but even though he was more human than five minutes before, his posture felt more animalistic than Darci was expecting.
"You okay?" she asked.
Jim smiled, bright and easy. "I'm great," he said. "I've got my half-troll form back, we're on track to take out Gunmar with no problems, and Douxie even finally caved on getting himself some armor. Life's pretty good."
"Well, I guess that's good," Darci said, and leaned back against the warm, glowing rock to continue keeping an eye on the exit to Bagdwella's store. She'd been shopping with Mary before; she knew this could take hours, and was prepared to wait.
A few minutes later, though, something occurred to her. "Wait. 'Back'?" she asked Jim.
Who froze, his face caught in a rictus of "oops."
Darci straightened up, her bullshit meter going wild. "Jimmy-Jam, you'd better 'fess up, if you know what's good for you."
Still crouching, he cringed. "It's not bad?" he promised, flailingly. "It's not really a secret, either? We just haven't gotten around to telling you guys about it yet?"
She scoffed.
His expression changed to one of exasperation. "Come on, Darci, like the whole magic thing, Lake Baikal, and this," he said, a gesture encompassing all of Trollmarket, "isn't enough of a life-altering discovery for one week? Not to mention the whole Gunmar trying to destroy the world thing."
Darci huffed a breath. "Fine, you're right," she granted. "But whatever it is, you're going to tell us, right?"
Jim sighed and went back to scanning. "We will, I promise. Just... not now, okay?"
Darci rolled her eyes. But as far as she knew, Jim wasn't in the habit of breaking promises, so she decided to give him a pass. "Fine."
"Hey," he said. "You want to go check out the Forge? We can make fun of Steve's crappy swordsmanship."
"Ooh!" Darci could feel her eyes lighting up. "Yes."
"Cool. Come on." He offered her a hand down from the rock and they walked back to Bagdwella's shop, where he called inside to Claire and Mary, letting them know where they were heading. After receiving an affirmative response, Jim led the way.
"So," Darci asked, following close behind him, "what's the Forge?"
Henry's forge, though well-lit and well-ventilated, had the same basic flaw of every other metalworking shop Douxie had ever encountered: it was hot.
But despite the fact that there were obviously half a dozen other projects in-progress, Henry had set them all aside, heaving and shoving them onto shelves and trolley carts, moving them out of the way to stoke the fire and start melting down and working their haul from the scrapyard.
Douxie would have apologized, if he had thought it would do any good. Instead, he just dove in to help in a borrowed leather apron.
The sooner he got Claire her armor, the happier he'd be. Currently she was the most vulnerable member of their core group.
"When do you have to head back?" Henry asked.
"I have opening shift at the bookshop tomorrow," Hisirdoux replied, working the bellows to heighten the flame, intensify the heat. Already his hair was sticking to his head and he was regretting his hoodie. But taking it off and stripping down to his tanktop meant risking burns to his arms.
(He knew already he would end up removing the garment. He was far more sensitive to heat than to cold, an irony considering he chose to live in Southern California. But given where he'd lived for most of his life, a useful adaptation. And it wasn't like he hadn't been burned before; tiny scars, most faded to near-invisibility, littered Douxie's hands and arms.)
"The last bus back to Arcadia leaves here at eight, or the first one in the morning at half-six," he continued, talking to the beat of the bellows.
"All right, I think that's about hot enough," Henry said, eyes on the color of the flame, and then on the metal he was working with tongs and hammer. He thrust it into the fire again for a moment while Douxie took a breathing break and watched.
Here, Henry was completely in his element, golden brown magic gathering unconsciously around himself and his work. It was an absolute pleasure to watch him manipulate both metal and magic with ease and skill. "Ooh, not seen that before," Douxie said as the hammer literally beat the magic into the metal, tempering it.
"You should come around more often," Henry grunted, eyes narrowed on his work before they glanced up and met Douxie's. His mouth quirked in a smile. "Keep your hand in."
"I just may do that," Douxie replied.
"Start heating that piece," Henry said with a nod at another sheet of metal. "The paint needs to be burned off; keep clear of the fumes."
"Shall do." Douxie levitated the scrap into the flames, a twist of his wrist and the keying of a spell on his bracer venting the toxic air outside.
"Tell you what," Henry said a few minutes later. "We'll break for dinner, and then keep working after. Say, until nine? I'll drive you back to Arcadia. I'll keep working on this the next few days. You bring your friends here on Sunday, and we'll keep working on it with them here."
Douxie tsk'ed. "Look at you, keeping old man hours," he teased.
Henry grinned. "When you have two little kids running you ragged and getting you up early, then you can complain about my schedule."
Jim was almost falling asleep on the sofa by the time Douxie and Archie got back. The wizard blinked at him, then stowed his backpack and skateboard away in the hall closet. "Shouldn't you be in bed?" he asked.
Jim yawned. "Probably," he admitted. "School night and all that. But I wanted to wait up for you."
Douxie rolled his eyes. "And if I'd come back even later?" he asked.
"I'd have probably packed it in in about another half an hour," Jim admitted.
"You'd have been asleep on the sofa, more like." Archie jumped up onto the sofa's armrest. "Early alarms wait for no one."
"Especially not master chefs who insist on making everyone lunches fresh every morning," Douxie commented, sitting down on the L of the sofa. "Which you don't have to do, you know."
"It's what I'm good at, and I like it," Jim defended himself.
Now Archie rolled his eyes. "Some love languages are more work than others," he informed his familiar. "That doesn't mean it's not worth making the effort."
"Besides," Jim said, pointing at the white rosebud resting in a delicate vase in the center of the coffee table, "you do the exact same thing. Even I can tell that's magic, and I can't see magic at all."
"We each have our own gifts," Douxie conceded, settling back. "So. How'd your day go?"
"Ugh." Jim flopped his head down onto the back of the sofa. "Steve in Trollmarket is... yeah. Not great. At least Draal's able to ride herd on him."
Douxie and Archie exchanged a glance. "And the others?"
"About as expected. Mary's... Mary. Darci's cooler about it. I think she's determined not to be too impressed, or something. And Eli... Draal's got him working with a mace."
"A step up from a baseball bat," Douxie observed.
"Mm-hmm."
"And your day?" Douxie asked, gentleness in his tone.
"Apparently I had a weird mental block about literally carving out the living flesh of my father figure?" Jim offered. Douxie and Archie looked at one another again. "But I got through it. Also, apparently, carving on someone is the same as signing adoption papers in troll society? So I am officially and legally Blinky's son now."
"Congratulations to the both of you," Archie said.
"Indeed," Douxie agreed. "Have you told Barbara yet?"
"I don't want to do it over text," Jim replied. "So I'm waiting for tomorrow. Speaking of which, are you going to let Mom adopt you, or not?"
Douxie's face was hard to read. "I'm still thinking it over," he said. "And, did the stone work, or not?"
Jim felt a grin creep across his face as he straightened up and pulled his amulet from his pocket. "For the good of all, Excalibur is mine to command."
The undersuit and the armor formed around him as he sat on the sofa. Looking straight into Douxie's gold-and-green eyes, he concentrated, and with a flash of blue, Jim became something else, another body that he knew as well as the one he'd been born with.
"Nice," Douxie said, eyebrows appreciatively high. "And the other form?"
Jim faltered. "I... hadn't gotten to that yet."
"Jim." Douxie waited until he was looking at him again. "If I have to have armor, which I hate, then you have to work past your mental block on the form you hate. Because if you don't, sooner or later someone will use it against you."
Jim looked away.
"Besides," Archie added, "I rather suspect Aaarrrgghh would like to be able to train you without holding back."
Jim blinked.
"I know what it's like to hate part of yourself, Jim," Douxie said quietly. "But I think both of us need to grow past that."
"...What part of yourself do you hate?" Jim had to ask.
This time it was Douxie who looked away. "You weren't with the rest of us in Camelot, so you didn't see it, but... I wasn't very nice to my younger self."
"You certainly weren't," Archie chided. "And here I thought I'd raised you better than that."
"Sorry, Arch." A hand found its way between the dragon's ears and rubbed apologetically. "I'll try and be kinder this time around, since it's inevitable some things will change again. Hopefully for the better."
"Doux-"
"My point is," Douxie said, looking back at Jim, "your half-troll form may be enough to take out Gunmar. But we may need more, facing General Morando and all the firepower he'll bring to bear. Let alone Arthur, who will be backed by two-thirds of the Arcane Order. So I hate being like Merlin and making you do things you don't want, Jim, but I do honestly think you need to get used to your third skin as well."
"Compared to him, you're hardly forcing," Jim grumbled. He leaned back against the sofa cushions and huffed a breath out through his nose. "Fine," he admitted. "You're right. You win."
"It's not a fight," Douxie said gently. "I just..." He stopped, then looked away. "We can't lose you, Jim," he said quietly. He breathed a humorless laugh. "Your mam'd kill me. Claire would kill me. Toby would kill me." Softer, "I would kill me."
Jim straightened, looking warily at Douxie. The moment felt taut, charged. Like there was something important happening that he wouldn't even see until later. "Douxie...?"
His brother laced his fingers together in his lap. Studied them. "There's two parts to this," he said softly. "The first is, part of being a divine king is that you're a lynchpin, Jim. History will turn one way or another dependent on you. Like how Arthur fighting with the trolls at the Battle of Killahead changed things." He looked back up, met Jim's eyes again. "We have an advantage, for now, of knowing what's coming, when we'll need to fight. But if something goes wrong between here and there... if, say, a fifty-foot-tall alien despot steps on you and squishes you to jelly... well, I won't fancy our chances at beating the Order then."
"You could take the Time Stone, turn back time again," Jim started, but was cut off by Douxie shaking his head.
"The Time Stone is yours, Jim, as surely as Excalibur is. Maybe Merlin might be able to use it, time magic's one of his specialties... but would you really trust him with it?"
Mutely, Jim shook his head.
"There you go, then," said Douxie. "You need to survive everything the universe is about to throw at you. So you need to train as full-troll Jim, too. Because the second part is, even beyond your death throwing over the future... Jim, what do you think it would do to us?"
Jim thought about it. About what losing him would do to his family. To his mother. Blinky and Aaarrrgghh. Claire. Toby. Douxie. He didn't like what he came up with.
Jim could never wish that pain on any of the people he loved.
"I'll do it," he said softly. He let out a shuddering breath. "Even if I hate it."
"Familiarity may breed contempt," Archie said, "but it also breeds ease. It may not be as bad as you think."
"As bad as I think or not, I've still got to do it." Jim nodded firmly. Somehow, having made the decision made it feel less terrifying. A little bit.
It probably also helped that Douxie wasn't as much of a prick about the hard decisions as Merlin.
A thought suddenly sparked. "Hey," he said.
Douxie and Archie exchanged a wary look. "I know that look," the dragon said. "I've seen it too many times in your eyes, Douxie. I can spot a bad idea forming from a thousand yards out."
"Harsh, Arch," the wizard complained, "if accurate."
"So if I only need an hour of sleep or so as a half-troll," Jim said, ignoring the two of them and sounding out his idea, "then I can stay up most of the night, making something really fantastic for breakfast and lunches tomorrow, catch an hour of shut-eye, then go to school as human-Jim, none the worse for wear!"
Douxie blinked a few times. "I feel that there's a flaw in that plan somewhere," he said in the face of Jim's grin, "but I cannot fault your logic."
"This is a disaster forming if I've ever seen one," Archie muttered.
"Hey, it's my body, you guys were just wanting me to try out my limits, how will I know I can't do this unless I try?" Jim asked. "I'm being scientific and testing a theory!"
"A disastrous one."
Jim ignored the pessimist. "What do you think, Doux?"
"I think," Douxie said, "that unlike you, I am heading for bed. And I will look forward to finding out the results of your scientific test."
Archie, on the other hand, gave Jim a narrow stare. "Do you have any exams tomorrow?" he asked.
Jim thought about his classes, and shook his head.
"Homework all done?"
"Yes," Jim answered instantly.
Archie sighed. "Then you may test your assumption at your leisure."
Jim grinned as Douxie got up. "And with that, I'm turning in. Goodnight, Jim," Douxie said, heading past.
"'Night, Doux." A thought occurred to Jim. "I'm taller than you now!" he called.
Laughter floated down the stairs. "Yes, but I'm still older."
And that was it for the night.
"Claire," said Darci at lunch, "you seriously have to read this stuff?"
"Hmm?" Claire looked over at the book Darci was skimming. She tilted her head, reading the cover as Darci lifted it to show to her. "Beginner's Guide to Monsterology? Where did you get that?"
"Blinky," Darci said.
"Oh. Let me see." Claire pulled the book over in between the two of them and flipped through a few pages. It was, in fact, written in English rather than Trollish. But honestly it felt kind of like a picture book or field guide. "The stuff Jim and Toby and I get assigned is a little more advanced, I think."
"Yeah, we've been at this a little bit longer," Toby agreed. Jim, facedown on the table and ignoring his lunch, only mumbled.
"Hey." Mary poked at Jim. "Hero boy. What's up."
"Didn't sleep. Was experimenting with half-troll form and sleep patterns," Jim mumbled into the molded plastic table top.
"Yeah, I'll say that experiment was a failure." Toby took a bite of his lunch. "The food's good, though, Jimbo."
"Thanks," Jim mumbled, and appeared to drift off again.
"Okay, so, you, me, Draal, and training after school, buttsnack," Steve said to Eli.
"But Steve, we can't get into Trollmarket without a horngazel," Eli whined.
"Pfft. Who needs Trollmarket? I got Draal's number," Steve said, whipping out his phone and gesturing with it. "We can go to that sweet training ground under Lake and Dumbzalski's houses."
"See if I let you in through my house," Toby muttered, but was ignored.
"So, do the rest of us have plans for today after school?" Mary asked.
"Sleep," Jim mumbled.
"Douxie's got work until late, so no lessons for you or me," Claire told Mary. "Just practice, and I guess we could do weapons training, if Draal's up for it."
"Eugh." Mary made a face. "I do not do weapons."
"Good way to not live long, the way this town goes," Toby opined.
Mary narrowed her eyes at him.
Toby threw his hands up in self-defense. "I mean," he said, "we get to see the parts of it that really need swords and stuff, so maybe I'm totally biased! But you're a witch, you're gonna be learning defensive and offensive spells, right? Douxie doesn't do that much up-close fighting either, when he can avoid it. So maybe you'll be fine?"
"Not really that reassuring, Toby," Darci told him. She sighed. "I guess I should learn to wield a weapon too, if I'm going to be part of this."
"Are you going to be?" Toby asked, leaning forward across the table toward Darci. "I mean, you can totally not be, that's fine too!"
Darci looked up, at her red-haired admirer. Slowly, a smile blossomed on her mouth. "I think I want to be," she said.
Claire held her breath.
"I could... I could show you how to wield a warhammer," Toby offered.
Darci's lips pursed. "Thanks, but I'm not sure I'm cut out for a warhammer," she said. Toby's face fell. "Maybe we could talk about it over some milkshakes?" she asked.
"Like a date?" Toby seemed as breathless as Claire.
Darci's smile was brilliant. "Like a date," she confirmed.
"Yes!" Toby fistpumped the air, and Claire remembered how to breathe again.
Jim, still prone on the table, gave his bestie a thumbs-up.
Author's Note: Archie's line of "You may test that assumption at your leisure" is from Captain Picard of Star Trek: The Next Generation.