Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 6th August 2021
Jim dodged, rolling out of the way of the ball of living stone fury that was Draal thwarted.
"Hold still, fleshbag!" the troll snarled.
"You wouldn't make much of a Trollhunter if you can't even catch one skinny human," Jim called. He still wasn't entirely sure Douxie's suggestion had been the best idea, but it was all he had to work with.
Blinky stood well to the side, keeping out of the way of this match while Aaarrrgghh distracted Toby, showing him more of Trollmarket.
Jim, meantime, was using all his agility to keep out of Draal's way. He was almost as fast as the troll, even when he did his speedball attack, but Draal was using that fact to try and wear Jim down.
Two years ago, it would have worked.
Jim vaulted over Draal, one hand barely touching his one-time friend's head. Jim's other hand pulled the amulet from his pocket. "ForthegoodofallDaylightisminetocommand!"
By the time his feet touched the ground, the armor had surrounded him and Excalibur was in his hand.
"What? That is impossible!" Draal had rounded and stood staring at him. "This is some kind of trick!"
"No trick, Draal," Jim told him, ready in case Draal became even more enraged and attacked again. "Are you going to listen, or just be a rockhead?"
Dinner was quiet for a few minutes, as Jim worked up the nerve to broach the subject with his mom.
Barbara surprised him as she set down her fork and looked at him. "What's wrong, honey?"
Jim let out a sigh. "I'm... kind of worried about a friend of mine."
"Toby?"
"No, not Tobes." Well, yes Tobes, but in a completely different way, and there was nothing his mother could do to help him with that. "A different friend. Douxie. You've met him - he works at the cafe? Tall, skinny, blue streaks in his hair?"
"Oh, him. I didn't know you were friends."
"Yeah, well, we got to talking and found out we had a lot in common." Understatement of the year.
"I'm glad you're making friends, Jim."
"Me too." His smile wasn't quite forced.
His mother picked up her fork again. "So what's worrying you about him?"
"Mom, he lives in the back room behind his second job. He's nineteen, working two minimum wage jobs, and has no safety net."
Barbara paused. Blinked. "What about his parents?"
"They died years ago."
"Wait, he was in the system and aged out?" Anger edged her voice.
"Um?"
His mother visibly reined herself in. "Jim." She looked down at her plate for a long minute, then back at him. "I've never told you this, because I didn't want you to worry. But years ago Nancy and I had a talk, and we each ended up filing some amendments to our wills. If anything ever happened to me, or anything ever happened to her, we agreed that either of us would take both you boys in. Because we're both single women raising young men, and we never, ever wanted either you or Toby to end up in the foster care system."
Jim blinked. "I... didn't know that."
"Like I said, I didn't want you to worry about it." Barbara took a bite of her sole. "So. Knowing you, you know what you want to do to help your friend. Let's hear it."
"I want to ask him to stay in our spare room." She looked at him and he flushed. "Mom, he doesn't even have a shower where he lives now! And he's doing all his cooking on a hot plate."
"You can do a lot of cooking on a hot plate, kiddo," Barbara told him. "Just wait until you get to college."
"That's not my point," Jim said, waving it off. "Mom, he's really helped me. He's a good coach for Spanish, and he's helping me get down the nuances for the play." All of which was true, if not remotely the main reason he wanted to help the wizard and his familiar. "I want to help him out. Aren't you always telling me to pay things forward?"
Barbara breathed out through her nose and poked at her green beans. Jim let her process, knowing better than to rush his mother. "You've already invited him to dinner, haven't you?"
"Friday," Jim confirmed.
"All right. Tell you what." Barbara put her fork down. "We'll have dinner with him. We'll see how it goes. I'll let you know after that."
"That's all I can ask for, Mom. Thanks."
"You ready for this?" Hisirdoux tugged reflexively at the cuffs of his sleeves. He'd had to scour both of Arcadia's thrift stores, but he'd at last found a long-sleeved button-up so he looked somewhat respectable. Normally he didn't care, but...
"Relax, Douxie," said his familiar. "You look fine. Besides, you said you've met her before."
"Yeah, as a waiter. Or in a future she doesn't remember." It was important that he make a good impression on Doctor Barbara Lake, so that when she inevitably learned about trolls and magic this time around, he would be seen as an ally, rather than a betrayer.
He'd left the bracelets on his right arm alone, and cast the usual illusion on his bracer so it looked like a watch. There was nothing to be done about the blue in his hair, as she already knew about that. Normal, normal, normal, not too much like a punk, not too much like a centuries-old wizard...
"What do I know about parents, anyway?" he muttered to himself as he and Archie walked up to the front door. He rang the bell and waited, then smiled as Dr. Lake opened the door.
"Douxie, right?" she asked.
"I am. And these are for you," he said, presenting the small bouquet of mostly sunflowers that he'd bought. New shirt, flowers, he was really stretching the budget this week. But first impressions were important, and he knew enough that he'd brought his hostess a gift.
"Thank you," she said, smiling. "They're lovely. Oh, and who is this?"
Archie blinked up at her from where he was winding around Douxie's legs, doing his best innocent cat impression. "This is Archie," Douxie replied, picking his familiar up, cradling him. "I hope it's not a problem that he came with me. He's got some separation issues."
Archie's spine stiffened indignantly against Douxie's hand.
"Oh, definitely not a problem. I've never seen a cat with glasses before, though." Her hand stretched toward Archie's fur, but hesitated.
"He's got some vision problems they help with. You can pet him," Douxie said. "He's friendly. He likes scratches right between his shoulderblades." And Archie did, purring loudly and practically melting into Douxie's arms as Barbara obliged him. "Heh. I think he likes you."
"Well, the feeling's mutual." And cats, clearly, were a great ice-breaker, because the warmth on Doctor Lake's face was genuine now. "What am I doing, keeping you in the door like this? Please, come in."
"Thank you." Archie jumped out of Douxie's arms as they entered, wandering ahead to do his own reconnoiter. "You have a lovely house. Oh." He stopped in front of a picture on the wall. A man in military garb. By the black hair, maybe it could have been Jim's father, but the uniform was far too old-fashioned for that. "Your father?" Douxie guessed.
"Yes. He died when I was a teenager. Jim had his portrait colorized and framed for my birthday a few years ago."
"What a lovely gift," Douxie said softly. "It must have been hard, losing him so young."
"Yes, well." She bit her bottom lip and looked at the photograph for a moment. "It's never easy losing a parent. It was part of why I was so furious when Jim's dad left us." She looked at Douxie. "Jim tells me you lost your parents, too."
Hisirdoux nodded. "They died when I was young. I barely remember them." And what he did remember he occasionally revisited, trying to decide across the distance of centuries whether or not they'd been good parents before illness, exacerbated by chronic starvation, had wiped them out of his life.
His magic, he thought, hadn't helped, though he'd only really started manifesting it shortly before they fell sick. There hadn't been time to reject him.
And then he'd been on his own, turned out by the local lord when no one nearby had wanted to be saddled with the responsibility of a witch-boy. Douxie couldn't blame his uncles, really he couldn't. (Except when he was feeling more than thinking.) Half of everyone who knew about his magic had blamed Hisirdoux for somehow bringing the sickness to their village. Including his own kin.
Luckily he'd been old enough to survive on his own. Barely.
Thank the gods for Archie. Always that.
He inhaled, breaking the chain of thought. "I must say, it smells delicious."
"That's all Jim," Barbara said, leading him farther into the house. "Fortunately. If the cooking was left up to me, we'd be living on ramen and takeout."
"You're joking."
"She's really not," Jim commented, coming into view behind the kitchen counter. Archie was beside him, peering into a steaming pot on the stove. "She tried to make me pancakes for my birthday last year. We ended up at IHOP."
Dinner was apparently spaghetti and meatballs, with green salad and garlic bread. Archie got his own chair and plate and after a while Barbara stopped noticing when he ate far more politely than a pet cat ought to be capable of.
The conversation flowed from music ("Jim says you play the guitar?" "I'm a band called Ash Dispersal Pattern. We've won the city's Battle of the Bands the last three years running." "Oh, that's wonderful. I paint, and I'm so glad Jim's in the school play now. It's important to have artistic hobbies.") to the school play ("It's not a real Shakespeare play if it doesn't have dirty jokes throughout to entertain the groundlings" "Oh, I know!" "Yeah, but Miss Janeth won't let us emphasize them. She says she wants 'a clean play'." "How clean can it be when it's got murder, suicide, and thirteen-year-olds getting married and having sex?") to Douxie's accent ("Wales is quite hilly, with deep forests and sheep absolutely everywhere. Very green - it rains a lot." "Not much like California, then." "Who knows, maybe you can visit there someday, Jim." Barbara hadn't understood why that made both Jim and Douxie laugh.).
It was probably killing Archie not to slide into the discussion with his usual cutting wit, but Douxie hoped the quality of Jim's food (and this was Archie's first exposure to it, wasn't it? technically Douxie's first as well, excluding time travel shenanigans) made up for it. This was definitely better than they usually ate, even on the days Douxie got a free meal during his shift at Benoit's.
And then Jim brought out dessert.
Douxie stared at it for a minute before looking at Jim. "You did not make a strawberry trifle." Archie was already licking his chops in anticipation.
Jim just grinned. "I might also have looked up a recipe for some loaves of bara brith for you to take home." He pronounced it wrong, but...
Douxie had read lots of the literature, he knew that the modern diet was composed of far too much deconstructed soy and corn and how excessive fat and sugar was probably bad for people. But one of the problems with wizardry had always been how fast magic burned through calories. That was why, historically, wizards had often served kings, people who could ensure they got enough to eat. Magic use was like any other exercise: it took energy to move things. Less than doing things physically; the exertion for Douxie to push a boulder uphill was less than for Sisyphus to do so. Slightly less. But the greater the working, the greater the toll. And Douxie had been practicing magic at a fairly high level for a long time.
The end point of it all was that Douxie, like every single other wizard he had ever met, including Merlin, had a raging sweet tooth. Of which Jim was well aware.
"Whatever you're playing at, you're playing dirty," he told Jim.
Barbara cackled. "Bribery is a time-honored tradition in this household," she informed him.
"Well, then, who am I to break with tradition?" Douxie asked, grinning and ignoring Archie's cough disguised as a sneeze.
(Hisirdoux wondered if Jim, as Trollhunter, had ever attributed his increased appetite to the magic coursing through him, or just to the increased physical exertation. He made a mental pin, to have that conversation with Jim later.)
The meal ended after dessert, Barbara turning in so that she could make her morning shift at the hospital. "It's been lovely to meet you properly, Doctor Lake," Douxie told her.
"The same." She looked at him for a moment, then turned to Jim. "Jim. What we talked about before?"
"Yes, Mom?"
"You have my permission." And with that, she headed up the stairs.
Douxie blinked. "Should I ask?"
"Come on. Let's go talk outside." Jim led Douxie and Archie through the house, out to the back yard. The light was off; it was as dim there as it ever got in the suburbs of the Los Angeles basin. "Mom's bedroom is on the other side of the house," Jim said quietly, sitting down on the back step. Douxie sat beside him, wondering where this was going. "She shouldn't be able to hear us."
Douxie waited.
"Move out of the bookshop and move in here," Jim offered. "There's an extra bedroom that Mom says is for guests, but we never have any. And, Doux, Archie, you guys deserve something better than you've got."
Author's Note: I noticed, particularly in the episode Blinky's Day Out, the framed photograph of a black-haired man in military uniform on the wall of the Lake house. Maybe it's supposed to be Jim's dad, but the thought of Barbara and Jim continuing to display the picture of someone who abandoned them didn't sit right with me. Especially since Blinky ended up having that conversation about Jim missing his dad right in front of it yet no one so much as glanced at the portrait. So I've headcanoned that it's actually Barbara's dad.
Being fair to Douxie's description of Wales, I've only been to northern Wales. My friends have told me the topography of southern Wales is different, and I'm aware that's where Camelot would more likely have been located. (We were all planning to go there together, but then the pandemic happened. Maybe in a year or two, if travel restrictions ever lighten up and vaccines are approved for my sons' age group.) But since I've not actually visited there, I opted to describe the area I've actually been to. Bara brith is a bread, and is very nummy!
Also, while I appreciate that Tales of Arcadia had a variety of body shapes in its background characters, Toby is the only one of the main characters who isn't skinny. (You can also call out the main characters on race and gender representations; 3Below was arguably the best on that front, but the core team by RotT still ends up notably skewed toward white, skinny, and male. Things are getting better, but we're still not all the way there.) So I decided to explore that, and incorporated my husband's opinion that magic needs to have a cost, to end up with Douxie (and every single other mage we see in the series) burning calories like mad, which is why they're all so gaunt.
