Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 2nd May 2022
Barbara made her way down the stairs and into her seat at the dining room table, not at all surprised to find a plate of hot food waiting for her. Waffles this morning, she noted, with a strawberry compote. Jim was seated at his own place, clearly having already eaten. His dishes were pushed aside and he was alternating between glancing at his phone and scribbling in a notebook.
Barbara took a bite and hummed in pleasure. Not for the first time, nor for the last, she silently blessed Nancy Domzalski for teaching Jim how to cook. Because, god knew, Jim had gotten exactly zero of his culinary abilities from her. "Douxie and Archie already gone for the day?"
"Yep." Jim looked up at her. "They left about half an hour ago."
"Well, you can't say he isn't diligent about his projects."
Jim cracked a smile. "He thinks they'll be done today."
"Today?" Barbara blinked. "I thought they weren't going to finish his armor until next week."
"They weren't. Then Hiccup decided to speed things up and work on it a couple of the days Douxie couldn't go out to the ranch."
"Well, that's handy," Barbara said. "Is this speeding up your timeline for the big battle?" As an on-call E.R. doctor, she felt it was vital she kept on top of that information.
But Jim shook his head. "No. Strickler's given Gunmar a date. And Mrs. Nuñez has been getting permits and an advertising budget together, so... no. Not changing the date. T-minus thirteen days."
Barbara raised an eyebrow. "An advertising budget?" she asked. "No... no, I do not want to know," she decided. "Mrs. Nuñez does understand that this will be dangerous, and the goal is the death of a bunch of Gumm-Gumms, right?"
"Yeah." Jim sighed. "Or, at least I think she does? Claire's the one handling her mom."
"And you're the one handling yours?" Barbara asked dryly. She took another bite and eyed Jim's notebook. It seemed, unsurprisingly, to be cooking notes and half-scribbled recipes. "Is that for Douxie's birthday?"
"Mm-hmm." Jim nodded. "I remembered how he loved it that one time I made roast leg of lamb. I also kind of remember Claire teasing him about eyeball pies or something? Apparently they were a dish back in Camelot days," he explained. "So I'm trying to reconstruct medieval Welsh pie recipes. Which is not as easy as it might sound."
Barbara hummed. "Have you tried asking the local SCA if they have any resources? Or maybe Zelda, given she's a historian?"
"Strickler teaches history too," Jim said speculatively.
"Yeah, but I'd less certain that the qualifications to teach world history go hand-in-hand with pie-making research. On the other hand," she admitted, "the man has definitely surprised me before."
Jim snorted and laughed at the same time, ending up hunched over the table, beating at his chest as the two reactions mingled and left him coughing. "Ow, ow," he complained. "Don't do that to me, Mom!"
She grinned, unrepentant.
"Anyhow," Jim deferred with one last thump on his chest, "Douxie has a shitty relationship with food, so I want to make him things he loves, to help deal with his whole eating like a soldier and treating food like fuel thing." He glowered. "Food is so much more than that, and I'm going to get that through his head one way or another. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to figure out a solid meat pie recipe by his birthday. But I'm definitely thinking lamb something, and a less sweet apple pie."
"Not cake?"
"Ehh." Jim waggled his hand. "If I do a more savory apple pie... I've found a recipe for a parsnip cake."
"Parsnip. Cake." Barbara turned that over in her mind.
Jim grinned. "Yeah. It'll be like a carrot cake, except I think I can make it a white cake, which'll be neat."
"You do what you do, kiddo."
"Aaaaand... birthday presents?" Jim prompted.
Barbara sighed. "I tried to make a reservation at Yosemite, but no dice. They're all booked out for the year. So I'm back to the drawing board, unless you've got any ideas?"
Jim hummed and tipped his chair back on two legs as he thought. Barbara suppressed a smile, and wondered if he knew he'd picked up the chair-tipping habit from Douxie. Because she'd certainly never seen Jim do it before he'd brought home a wizard to be his brother. "Have you asked Mister Strickler?" he asked finally. "He's head of the Janus Order now. He probably has loads of shady connections I don't want to know about."
"You think he'd do that for me?"
"Well, I mean." Jim thumped his chair back down onto all four legs. "I was assuming you were going to invite him to come with us."
"Ahh..." Barbara flushed.
Jim grinned at her. "I promise not to freak out much if you two share a tent."
Her son was joking with her about her sex life. Barbara felt the sudden urge to check the weather forecast for signs of flying pigs. "Jim...?" she asked cautiously.
"What?"
"Are you... okay?" Worry suddenly struck. "You didn't try one of Douxie's anxiety pills, did you? You know those are only-"
"Mom." He cut her off. "I know better than to try other people's medication, thanks!" She sighed in relief. Jim shrugged. "I don't know. It just feels like... like everything's coming together the way it's supposed to, you know? I've got my team together, Douxie's going to finish his armor today, you and Strickler are doing good..."
"Say that, and disaster's bound to strike," she said dryly.
"I know!" Jim knocked his knuckles against the wood of the table. "But it feels right. If Strickler's going to be my stepdad someday, well. I guess I need to get used to the idea of you and him doing. Things." He made an expression of distaste.
Barbara laughed. "Someday," she promised, "when you're grown up and have kids of your own, I am going to hold this conversation over your head, kiddo."
With a whirr and a clunk, the daxial array finally finished the last of its integration cycles. Krel, feeling like he had dark circles under his eyes even though such a thing was impossible in his Akiridion form, looked up. "Is everything ready, Mother?" he asked, setting down his datapad and standing.
"Yes, Prince Krel," the Mothership reported.
"Well, then. Let us get to it, I guess," Krel said, feeling like he ought to be making some more ceremony out of this or something. But he brushed that impulse aside; this was one project, and while it was certainly of no little importance, it was by far not the greatest thing he ever had or would do.
In fact, he had the vague feeling that, reliant as rebuilding the daxial array had been on theft and the endeavors of some of Earth's wizards, he should have some microscopic feeling of shame about it. He booted that feeling right out of his mental space; his parents were more important than some stupid sense of I should have been able to make this all myself.
(He made a mental note; he and Aja would be needing to have several talks with their parents about how much they loved them but also about the importance of protecting others and allowing Varvatos justified vengeance and why the klebbing blazes did you ever trust Val Morando? But those conversations could come later, after they were recovered.)
"Initiating." Mother powered on the interstitial conduits.
Krel held his breath (even though he really did not need to breathe) as the power started to flow. He kept cautious, wary eyes on the data, on the growing power levels, which rose and rose and then steadied.
"The power levels are well within parameters, my royal," Mother said.
Krel let go of his held breath. "And the fluctuations?"
"Minimal. In fact..." The AI sounded almost surprised. "The plutonium fuel cell seems almost completely stable. Far more so than any made on a more advanced world."
"Yes, well. Earth's wizards do good work," Krel said. He would need to pass the ship's compliment on to Douxie and Hiccup and Zoe. But in the meantime, as relief spilled slow and thick through him, so too did some unknown sludge of exhaustion. He yawned. "You will keep an eye on things and alert me if anything starts malfunctioning?"
"Of course, my royal," the Mothership promised. "Get some rest. It is well deserved."
"Thank you, Mother."
"Sleep well, Prince Krel."
Vendel did not know, precisely, what Draal thought he might make of the alien's tail. But he supposed, as it was no longer attached to the alien in question, he might as well begin as he would with any other alchemical ingredient.
The trollhunter came in his door just as he finished skinning the tail.
"Hey, Vendel, quick Q for you- oh, gross!"
"Did you need something?" he demanded acerbically, not pausing in his work. If the boy wanted to interrupt, let him suffer the consequences of his own impetuosity.
Hmm. The skin, as he handled it, free of its clinging flesh, was both supple and scaled. He scratched at it and was rewarded with an unusual scent. It reminded him slightly of pine.
"Um. Uh." Tobias seemed to have lost his train of thought as he stared.
Vendel set aside the skin to be properly dried later. "I do not have all day, Trollhunter," he said, which was of course a lie. He did have all day. He'd just rather hoped to devote the bulk of it to this project. Picking up a blade, he began to carve carefully along the muscles, seeking... ah, there. Bone.
"What is that thing?" Tobias stepped closer.
"It is the tail of one of the Akiridions' enemies," Vendel informed him. "Why Draal thought to bring it to me, I do not know, but I am proceeding with it as I might with any such find."
"An autopsy?"
Vendel blinked and turned to the boy. "What is an 'aw-top-see'?"
"It's, um." He licked his lips nervously. "After someone dies, the coroner cuts open their body to determine what killed them? Because sometimes it's heart failure but sometimes they figure out it was really poison..."
"How barbaric," Vendel said. "You humans carve each other into pieces after you're dead? Any troll would recoil at such desecration of a corpse."
"It's not like that!" Tobias defended his natal culture. "If there's like a disease going around, that might be the best way to figure out how. Or to find out if there's congenital conditions that kids might have inherited. Anyway, the bodies get sewn back up after, in time for the funeral."
"Barbaric," Vendel repeated, turning back to his work. He needed to extract each of the bones, to treat separately from the flesh. And given the structure of the tail, there were likely to be many bones indeed. The intriguing spines and their follicles also needed to be isolated.
What was he doing, dissecting the severed body part of a species he had never even seen, and pretending he knew the slightest bit about what alchemical properties it might have?
And yet, Vendel admitted with an internal sigh, there was no one better to do such work. And without his attempts, however bungling they might turn out to be, how would anyone ever learn what this creature might be good for?
"So, um. What are you doing with it?"
"Rendering it," Vendel told him without turning around, "into suitable parts for alchemical expectation."
There was a long moment of silence, and he honestly expected the boy to leave. But- "Can I... help?" Tobias Domzalski asked instead, surprising Vendel.
He blinked, and turned around to regard the boy, who stood there, looking nervous but resolute. "Very well," Vendel decided. "Come here, and learn."
A fine sheen of sweat coated Hisirdoux's face. A trickle of it ran down; he blinked it away, utterly focused. He could not afford to be distracted, not right now.
He stood on one side of the completed armor; Hiccup on the other. Their magics swirled and combined around it, trying to force the four pieces - hoodie, trousers, right booty and left booty - into the open pocket space attached to Douxie's vambrace.
The armor did not want to go into the pocket space.
"Waspinator does not want to die," Douxie muttered to himself, forcing the armor one inch closer to target. "Waspinator has plans."
"You're misquoting," Archie informed him.
"...And I did the deed that all men shun, I shot the Albatross..." Douxie shot back without missing a beat.
"The two of you ought to have a comedy show," Hiccup gritted out, his hands slowly twisting, wreathed in flame and sigil. "Can we please concentrate?"
"As if banter doesn't help you concentrate as well," Douxie replied, but took a step closer to the armor where it hovered in mid-air. His own runic circles, made of blue plasma, mirrored Hiccup's. He took it as a victory that the armor stayed in place and didn't retreat.
"Banter- only counts- if everyone gets to indulge." Growling, Hiccup stepped forward also, forcing the armor that much closer to Douxie's vambrace.
"Fine. Fasten then zip, or zip then fasten?"
Hiccup grinned, catching the reference. "Is it a right-handed/left-handed thing?"
"Oh, sweet Merlin's mercy," Archie muttered, covering his eyes with one paw. "You're both left-handed..."
"Wanna talk socks?" Douxie asked, grinning back.
"I didn't even know tails had glands," Toby said, feeling slightly green in the gills.
...Maybe "green in the gills" was a bad expression to use, given the subject of dissection at hand.
"Ordinarily, most would not," Vendel agreed calmly, separating the icky bits in question out with a delicate touch and a pair of tweezers, and putting them into a pair of glass vials, stoppering them with a cork that glowed a brief flash of gold. "However, it seems that Princess Aja cut this off its owner rather high up."
Toby thought about that for a second. He winced, resisting the urge to cross his legs.
Vendel's tweezers delved back into the mass of flesh before him.
"Yanno, after this, dissecting a fetal pig next year's gonna be easy," Toby said.
Vendel paused. "More barbarism?" he inquired, eyebrow raised.
Toby shrugged. "Part of the high school biology course," he said. "Junior year. Did it before, gonna have to do it again. Hopefully not in a FEMA tent this time."
Vendel opened his mouth to ask a question, then clearly decided he did not want to know, because he closed his mouth again and turned back to his task at hand.
Toby took a moment, and breathed. "How do you do it?" he asked quietly. Which was NOT the question he'd come here to ask Vendel. But it was the one that came out when he opened his mouth, so he pushed forward, following the instinct. "Be a leader, I mean. I mean, Jimbo just does stuff and we all follow him, and I don't even know why. We all did even /before/ he was a king, so..."
"Hmmm." Vendel's hands did not pause in their work, motion smooth and deliberate, nor did he look away. But Toby knew he had heard, and was turning over the question in his mind. "Leadership is not a matter of grand speeches," Vendel said eventually, "though there are times for those as well. It is simply a matter of being there for your people. Trollhunters," he said with a sideways glance before returning to his work, "have always been leaders among Trollkind. It is in the nature of the position; they guard and protect us; in return, our kind find their words worth listening to."
Toby mulled that over. "So, d'you think the amulet has that set in as one of its conditions? 'Bearer must be of sound mind and body, willing to die for Trollkind, oh, and some leadership capabilities would be good too'?"
Vendel snorted. "You would need to ask that of Merlin."
"Yeah. Not gonna happen." Toby's mood soured, thinking of Dick-lin, what he'd done to Jim the first time around, what he'd tried to do to Douxie this time around...
"Why are you asking about how to lead?" Vendel inquired, his tone mild.
Toby swallowed. "We have... a little under two weeks until we take out Gunmar and the Gumm-Gumms," he said, watching Vendel slice and dice alien flesh into neat green strips. "And we need at least some of Trollmarket to show up, to get the town to accept you guys. Problem is, only way I can think of to do that is to give a speech, and I'm not really a great speech guy."
"That is more of Blinkous' forte," Vendel agreed, nodding.
"If I'm gonna make a speech, I don't want it to be too early or too late, yanno?" Toby felt like he was rambling, but he couldn't stop now. "If I do it too soon, everyone will shrug it off. But if I do it too late, people won't have enough time to think it over and decide to show up-"
"Trollhunter."
Toby stopped. Looked up.
Vendel's finger poked him right where the amulet would be. Right over Toby's heart, which, huh, he hadn't thought of that connection before. Though the human heart that pumped blood was a purely physical organ, and the heart that qualified him and Jim for the amulet was a metaphysical organ, and therefore a product entirely of the human brain...
"You lead," said Vendel, "from here, Tobias."
Aja tugged the blanket up over Krel and let her fingers run through his softly glowing hair. "Rest well, little brother," she said, and dropped her forehead to rest against his, touching crest to crest for a moment. "You deserve it." She quietly snuck out of his room, turning off the light and shutting the door behind her. Luug stood by her ankle, watching.
"Well," she told him. "Krel is sleeping. Varvatos is playing chess in the park with the geezers. And we have nothing to do today. What shall we do, Luug?"
Luug barked as they walked down the hallway, and chased his own tail in a dizzying circle. The Mothership was fairly quiet for a change; Lucy and Ricky were outside, tending to the landscaping. Since it was all solid holograms, Aja wasn't quite sure why they did, but the blanks seemed to enjoy the activity, so maybe it was better that she not question it.
She could call Steve, or find out what Mary and Darci were doing. Or she could go to Trollmarket, or see if any of the other Trollhunters were interested in a spar and battle simulation...
Instead, Aja found that her feet were carrying her in another direction.
She climbed through the fireplace-door, followed by Luug, and walked down the long cool hallways to the regeneration chamber. She sat down there, between the two pods in which her parents were healing, their bodies slowly reconstructing, and reached up one hand to each, laying them on top of the pods.
She closed her eyes and, for an instant, felt like she was a small child again, innocent and carefree, one hand being held by each parent as she walked between them, babbling about nothing and everything.
Aja sniffed, her heart hurting, and opened her eyes as a tear plinked onto the chamber's floor.
"I know you will not see it when you wake," she said to her unconscious parents, "but Krel and I have grown up. And part of growing up is realizing that your parents are not always perfect, are not always right. I have grown up, Mama, Papa. I have learned to fight, to protect our people, just as you did. And so has Krel. He is so clever, so strong." She sniffed again. "I am so proud of my little brother, and how he has saved you time and again. I need you to see him. To see me."
She could not stop the tears running down her face. Luug sat by her knee and whined softly.
"This time," Aja promised herself and her parents, "we will make things right."
Waltolomew's phone vibrated in his pocket mid-conversation. He pulled it out and checked the caller name without breaking stride in his sentence. When he saw who it was, however, his eyebrows raised. "Please excuse me," he told his fellow changeling, "I must take this."
Stepping away, he walked into his own office in the Janus Order headquarters - a trifle smaller than his office at the school, but also configured to an entirely different intention. "Barbara?" he asked, answering the call.
"Walt. I'm not calling at a bad time, am I?"
"Not at all, my dear," he assured her. "Has something come up?" Did she need to cancel their date?
"Sort of?" She gave a nervous little laugh. "I hate to impose, but I might need a favor, if it's not too much to ask. If it's even within your capabilities."
He was capable of rather a lot. "Ask away."
"Um. So, you remember that Douxie's birthday is coming up in a few weeks?"
He hadn't, but that was not important. "Yes, and?"
"I... kind of thought maybe, for a birthday present, I'd see about getting a reservation to Yosemite, for a family camping trip. Archie said they'd never been. I was going to ask you to join us," she added, surprising him. "But the reservations are all full for this year, and I know this is stupid and a long shot, but is there anything you might be able to do?"
"Hmm." He jiggled his mouse, bringing the monitor of his computer to life, and shifted the phone to be held between his ear and shoulder. "Let me see if there are any strings I can pull. May I call you back in half an hour?"
"Of course. And even if you can't do anything..." Her voice was soft. "Walt, thank you for trying."
"It's my pleasure," he assured her, and found he was smiling.
Author's Notes: Chapter 100! How have I written one hundred chapters of this story? When I started, it was supposed to be five chapters and an epilogue! Ah well. To paraphrase Robert Burns, the best-laid plans of mice and men often go astray. Douxie misquotes from Transformers: Beast Wars. In response to Archie's telling him he's misquoting, he segues into Diane Duane's Deep Wizardry (wherein the character speaking that particular line is told they're misquoting). He and Hiccup then proceed to exchange banter lines from Babylon 5.