Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 15th April 2022
Jim was waiting in the kitchen when Douxie stumbled downstairs the morning of his appointment. Which he guessed he more or less might have expected, if he'd bothered processing the smells of breakfast cooking.
Stepping into the dining room, he eyed the veritable feast laid out on the table: bacon and sausage, pancakes, a bowl of fluffy scrambled eggs just being set down, iced cinnamon rolls, glasses of juice and milk...
"Despite indications, you do know that the volume of my stomach is finite, right?" he asked, amused.
"Says the guy who had four servings of lasagna the other night," Jim retorted, sitting down.
"I was hungry!" Douxie defended himself.
"You were starving," Archie corrected, leaping up onto his own chair.
Jim pointed a fork at the dragon. "If I see you dumping hot sauce onto the pancakes, you're cut off," he warned. "I'll accept your spice tolerance, but I've got to draw a line somewhere, Archie."
Feline eyes narrowed. "Bring out some real maple syrup and you have a bargain."
Jim held out his hand. Archie shook it. "Deal." Jim promptly got up, went to the cupboard, and pulled a glass bottle out of the far back, bringing it to the table.
Aghast, Douxie stared. "Wait, you've been hoarding the real maple syrup this whole time-"
"Do you know what that costs?!" Jim demanded. "That's not just the real stuff, it's the real good stuff! It's a special ingredient."
"Which you are willing to sacrifice for the sake of your sanity," Archie said smugly, pouring it on top of his stack of pancakes.
"Arch, hand that over," Douxie demanded, and followed suit with his own pancakes, never breaking eye contact with Jim.
"I hate you," Jim said, snatching back his precious ingredient after Douxie was done, cradling it to his body like it was his firstborn.
"Thank you for breakfast," Douxie said. "You really didn't have to overdo things, though."
"Yeah, well, Mom will be up in five, and it's not like any of this is going to waste," Jim said, pouring cheap fake syrup onto his own pancakes and cutting into them. He hesitated before eating, though. Set his fork down. "Did I ever tell you Blinky's three rules of Trollhunting?"
Douxie blinked, considered, and shook his head.
"Rule one: always be afraid. Rule two: always finish the fight. Rule three: when in doubt, always kick them in the gronk-nuts."
Douxie snorted. He couldn't help it. "Have to use that last rule often?"
Jim shrugged. "A few times."
"Wonder if you could use it on Bellroc."
Now Jim glowered. "I would happily," he said, "kick Bellroc in the gronk-nuts."
"Oh, yes, kicking a demi-god in the jewels," Archie muttered. "I'm sure that would go well."
"Anyway," Jim said. "The point I wanted to make was, I never had a problem with rule one." He met Douxie's eyes. "And I know being scared all the time isn't the same thing as anxiety, but it's kind of... related, maybe?"
Douxie sighed. "Having anxiety, at least for me, it's like... well, you know the part of a roller coaster where you're being slowly towed up to the top of that first really big drop?" Jim nodded. "And all you can think about is what's coming, how terrifying it is, how you can't get out of your seat, can't run, can't change anything. Anxiety just /stays/ like that, swirling around in your head without stopping, messing you up until you can't think, can't breathe, really can't do anything."
"And then?"
Douxie shrugged. "Sometimes, you hit the drop and the adrenaline kicks in and you can move again. But sometimes the drop never comes, and you're locked into your seat forever."
"That sucks," said Jim, feelingly.
"Tell me about it." Douxie tilted his head to the side and regarded his little-brother-slash-king. "And that being afraid?"
"Still there," Jim reported. "But at least now I know what to do with it when the adrenaline kicks in."
"Good." Douxie knew his smile was a slash. "Woe betide your enemies."
"Good morning, boys," Barbara said, coming into the dining room. "Wow, this is a feast."
"Yeah, well, someone is burning up all his body fat making magic armor," Jim said, pointing not at all subtly at Douxie. "So we're on a calories-intensive diet plan until he's done."
"Thank you so much," Douxie groused about the callout, but his heart wasn't in it.
"I'll trust that you know best about it, and moderate my intake," Barbara said, taking her seat. "Though I will make an exception for one of these cinnamon rolls." So saying, she helped herself.
"So I was thinking," Toby said as they headed en masse toward homeroom. "Krel, you remember that trap Eli set up in the sewers that caught Zadra?"
"Wait, I set up a trap?" asked Eli. "And who's Zadra?"
"Zadra is a friend," Krel told him. "And, yes, I remember. Why?"
"Do you think something like that might work for your Zeron Brotherhood guys?"
"Eh, maybe."
"I do not think so," Aja put in. "They are clever. Ruthless. Not to be underestimated."
Toby sighed, deflating. "Well, there goes my idea."
"Though that gives me an idea of my own," Krel said slowly, his eyes narrowed. "Aja, do you remember the mind reader glasses?"
"Yes?" she asked, clearly not following his train of thought.
"When you turned up the signal range to maximum, they enabled us to find Stuart the first time around."
Aja blinked. "Wait, are you thinking we could use them to find the Zerons?"
"Exactly!"
"Wait a minute," Steve broke in as their group funneled through the classroom door. "You have glasses that read people's minds?"
"Yes, Krel made them," said Aja.
Jim blinked. "I can't decide if that's creepy or cool."
"Go with cool," Krel advised. "In the case of my inventions, when in doubt, always go with cool."
Jim laughed. "Gotcha." As they spread out, finding their seats, he turned to Toby. "You okay, Tobes?"
"Yeah." Toby rummaged around in his bag, not looking Jim in the eye. He knew Jim was concerned about him, which meant Douxie totally hadn't babbled anything, but at the same time he didn't really want to pile his worries onto his best friend. Jim had had all his stuff to deal with when he'd become half-troll, and Toby finding out that his great-great-grandfather hadn't exactly been of the human persuasion didn't really seem like it was worth even a mention compared to what Jimbo had been through. He wasn't even becoming something different! Just finding out what he'd been all along.
It was kind of like puberty that way, he thought. He decided to run with that idea. "Just, you know." He waggled his hands. "Puberty and stuff."
"Puberty making you stay home?" asked Claire, her expression dubious.
"Hey, it's guy puberty!" Toby defended. "Do I ask about your girl puberty stuff? No, I do not!"
Mary snorted. "Guys can't handle the blood," she told Claire.
Steve startled. "Wait, blood?" he asked, sounding panicky. "What blood?"
"Wait, blood?" Aja echoed her boyfriend. She grabbed Mary's arm and turned it over, scanning up and down for signs of injury, her eyes wide. "Puberty makes human girls bleed? I did not know this!"
Darci in turn was also wide-eyed. "Wait, girls on your planet don't?"
"Ahem." In the front of the room, Strickler was clearing his throat. "If you could all settle down and take your seats, it is time for class to begin." His gaze was firmly on their group.
"We'll tell you at lunch," Darci stage-whispered to Aja.
"And ask questions," Mary promised.
Douxie looked helplessly at the paperwork attached to the clipboard. He'd been able to fill in some of it (name, address and phone, fake date of birth) but most of it left him at a loss.
"This was all much easier when all you had to do was go to a doctor and they'd take a look at you and give you some herbs and maybe a bloodletting," Archie muttered from his shoulder. The receptionist had given him a narrow look when they'd checked in, but Douxie's "therapy cat" had apparently been mentioned when Barbara made the appointment, because she'd made no fuss. It probably didn't hurt that Archie was an excellent actor and had perfected his adorable look centuries before.
"Here, let me." Barbara took the clipboard from Douxie's hands and began to efficiently fill in the rest. He watched her hands almost fly across the paper as she wrote. Front and back, both sheets of paper, took less than five minutes. "There you go."
He took the clipboard back from her. "How do you know all this?"
She smiled. "Years of medical practice, kiddo. You get to know the forms pretty well from the other side." Her smile leveled out into something more considering. "Do you want me to come in with you?"
"Please," Douxie begged. "I don't know what to expect in there. It's been years."
"The doctor will come get you and take you back to their office. You'll sit down and talk for a while. They'll probably ask what you've been going through, what your symptoms are, and how you've been feeling. They might want to talk with you alone for a while, if you're all right with that. Depending on what you tell them and what they think, you'll probably walk out with a prescription, which we'll go fill at the pharmacy downstairs."
"Any bloodletting?" asked Archie.
"Probably not," she reassured him. "But even if there was, that would be done down in the lab, not up here."
Douxie let go of a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "I don't mind needles," he said. "I've certainly had enough ink done."
"But?" Barbara prompted.
"But most bodily fluids are supposed to remain inside the body," he said firmly. "They're there for a reason."
She chuckled. "I can't argue with you about that." A beat. "So do you want me to ask about your tattoos, or do you want me to mind my own business?"
"Feel free to ask," Douxie said. "I've shown a couple of them to Jim."
Barbara blinked. "How many do you have?"
"They're not all discrete entities," Douxie hedged, "so it's kind of hard to count them..."
"They cover most of his body," Archie, the traitor, informed her.
Barbara blinked again. "I would not have known."
"You wouldn't even if I was standing bare before you," Douxie told her, quirking a smile. "They're wizard's tats - completely invisible to the mortal eye. Which has almost certainly made my employment options a bit wider."
"Invisible tattoos." She rolled the concept around in her mouth, before side-eyeing him. "Are you putting me on?"
"He's really not," Archie said as Douxie shook his head, still smiling. "They're spells, bonded to his flesh by blood, magic, needle, and pain. You won't see them unless he's using them."
"Huh." Barbara pursed her lips and leaned back in the waiting room chair. "The things you learn." She looked at Douxie again. "Why am I getting the feeling you've spent most of your life turning yourself into a magical weapon, kiddo?"
"Not most of it," Douxie protested. "Just... a lot of it." He crossed his arms and huffed. "It's not easy protecting the material plane when you're only an apprentice and your master's in a magic coma. I needed every advantage I could scrape up."
"Nine hundred years of scraping up advantages?" Barbara asked. He glanced at her; by her expression, she was clearly teasing.
"Very much so," Douxie replied.
The door to the doctor's office opened; a dark-skinned woman, tiny braids piled high on her head, stepped into the waiting room. "Douxie Casperan?" she asked.
"That's me." He stood, as did Barbara. Her hand rested on his Archie-free shoulder and squeezed reassuringly. He took a breath, trying to steady himself. All right. Let's do this.
Stepping forward, he walked into the doctor's den.
Completely avoiding the conversation at one end of the table where Claire and Mary and Darci were talking with Aja about the differences between human puberty and Akiridion puberty, Jim settled in between Krel (apparently paying at least some attention to the girls' conversation) and Toby, across from Steve and Eli.
Huh. A thought occurred to him. "Are you guys interested in knowing your team name from the original timeline?"
"We had a team name?" Eli gushed, eyes wide and bright.
"It better not be something lame, Lake," Steve warned.
Toby snorted. "If it is, it's your fault, because you guys came up with it before we ever knew you were out goblin-hunting."
"Come on, what is it?" begged Eli.
Jim looked at Toby; Toby looked at Jim. "Creepslayerz," they said as one.
"With a 'z' at the end," Krel added in.
"Creepslayerz, huh?" Steve asked, clearly turning the name over in his mind and his mouth. He nodded. "Okay, yeah, that's not too bad."
"Not too bad?" Eli demanded. "That's awesome!" He was grinning broadly.
"Yeah, and you had this secret handshake thing," Toby said, trying to demonstrate their interlocking C and S symbols.
Krel snorted. "If you can even call that a secret handshake."
"Hey, not all of us can have four hands to make really complex ones," Eli defended his and Steve's handshake, copying Toby and making the C/S with his own hands.
"True," Krel acknowledged.
"So how'd it go yesterday?" Jim asked. "Did you guys manage to make that communicator you were working on?"
"Yes, though I have left it at home with Varvatos. I do not think Zadra will be trying to communicate with us yet, but I also do not think it would be wise for me to carry it around and answer at school."
"Yeah, the roaming charges would be murder," Steve agreed, nodding sagely.
"Eli was a great help, though," Krel continued.
"I learned so much," Eli enthused. "Are you going to make the telepathy glasses tonight? Can I help with those too?"
"Eh, not tonight." Krel looked around and lowered his voice. "I need to finish the calibrations on the plutonium fuel cell Hiccup made, and arrange to get it to Zoe."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, did you say plutonium?" Steve demanded loudly, catching attention from other tables.
"Lower your voice!" Krel demanded in a hiss. "Yes, I said plutonium. It is a vital component of the daxial array that the Mothership needs replaced so our parents' cores do not die!"
"Uh, okay. Plutonium, got it," said Steve weakly. Contrite.
"But," Krel said, turning his attention back to Eli, "I will be happy to have your help with making the mind reader glasses tomorrow after school."
"Yes!" Eli fist-pumped.
"Speaking of projects," Toby butted in, "how's your potato cannon going, Eli?"
"Eh, pretty good?" Eli pushed his glasses higher on his nose. "I'm running into some calibration issues, but I think I'll be able to fix them by go day."
"What is a potato cannon?" Krel asked, eyes alight with interest.
"It's made out of PVC pipe-" Eli started.
As he described his low-tech artillery to an enraptured Akiridion, Toby held out his fist, and Jim bumped it, smiling.
It seemed like very little time, but at the same time, it also felt like several hours had passed, talking with Doctor Marshallhouse. The end result was that Douxie walked out of her office with a prescription for medication, and a follow-up appointment several weeks hence, to see how well the medicine was working for him, and what adjustments might need to be made.
To her credit, the doctor had seemed phased neither by Archie's presence, nor by Barbara's.
"Let's go pick this up," his mother said. That's how she'd introduced herself to the doctor, as his mother. Not foster mother, not adoptive mother. Just mother. And despite the obvious discrepancies in their surnames and accents, let alone the fact that it was unlikely black-haired green-and-gold-heterochromic Douxie could ever have been the biological offspring of red-haired blue-eyed Barbara Lake, the psychiatrist hadn't even blinked.
There was something there, in that relationship being claimed and so easily accepted, that Douxie was going to have to think about and unpack at some point. But that point was not right now. "Sounds good," he replied, and followed her down the glass-walled stairs to the pharmacy's waiting room. It wasn't busy, was in fact almost empty, and a quick glance at the electronic waiting board showed two other prescriptions processing before CASPERAN would be ready, so they sat down again.
Douxie's fingers twitched. He wanted something to pick at, to fiddle with. He wanted his guitar, but it was at home.
Maybe I should start keeping a deck of cards or a worry stone in my pocket. Anything to distract from antsiness.
Barbara noticed. "Nerves?" she asked him.
Douxie gave a soft laugh. "Maybe. I guess."
"Hmm." She pursed her lips and looked around. "All right. What's your favorite flower?"
"My... favorite flower?" he asked, not sure he'd heard correctly.
She gestured at a large blue pot holding birds of paradise. "Your favorite flower," Barbara confirmed.
"Huh. Um." Douxie blinked, and thought about it for a moment. "Paperwhites," he finally said.
Barbara's face wrinkled, like she was trying to place a flower to the name.
"They're like tiny white daffodils," Archie, draped over Douxie's shoulder, informed her. "Quite smelly, and early blooming."
Illumination crossed her face. As did a tiny smirk. "Not regular daffodils?" she teased.
He couldn't stop his eyes from rolling. "Tell one person you identify as Welsh..." Douxie grumbled.
Barbara laughed. "But seriously, why paperwhites?"
Douxie shrugged. "I like the smell. And... they bloom so fast, it's almost like they're out of season." Which was a feeling he was familiar with. He, too, was out of season, set aside from the rest of the world because of his magic, his asexuality, his left-handedness... heck, even his anxiety.
Barbara must have caught some of that from his expression because she leaned over and draped her arm around his shoulders, pulling him into a sideways hug. "Want to know my favorite?"
"Sure."
She grinned. "Orange blossoms. They smell so nice, and then later there's fruit. The best of both worlds."
"They do smell nice," Douxie agreed. And before he knew what he was saying, "You should wear them in your hair the next time you get married."
Barbara's eyes flew wide. "Married?"
"Ah-" Douxie looked pleadingly at Archie. His familiar smirked and slowly shook his head: /he/ was not going to help Douxie out with this one. "Well, you were engaged, the last time around."
Her blue eyes looked like china plates. "To Walt?"
Fuzzbuckets, we hadn't told her that, had we? Biting his bottom lip, Douxie wordlessly nodded.
"But he's..." Her voice trailed off.
Douxie rested his hand on top of her. "Barbara." She looked up at him. "Does that really matter to you?"
"No." She shook her head. "But I thought it mattered to him."
Oh. She'd gone into their relationship thinking it wouldn't go as far as marriage. And from the sound of it, she'd been happy with what she had. Accepting. Which was her all around, really. "I guess it doesn't?" Douxie tried. "Or didn't, anyway. I didn't know him terribly well, but I do know that he fell in love, and that having both his lady and her son know pretty much everything of who and what he really was... well, in his situation, I'd imagine that was intoxicating."
Barbara laughed, but the sound was wet, like there were tears pending. "You told me that just because things went one way the first time, it didn't mean they had to go the same way the second."
"Choice versus destiny," Douxie murmured, remembering.
"I went into this relationship with my eyes wide open," Barbara said. "I chose this. Maybe you should have warned Walt about that."
"Barbara," Archie said, but Douxie cut him off.
"You think we didn't?" He caught Barbara's hand between both of his, raised it up. "He knows, more or less, what happened in the last timeline. He knows he was going to be Jim's stepdad. I fully admit that things overlap and repeat sometimes, but if you think he's incapable of breaking up with you because of timeline echoes..." Douxie shook his head. "Barbara, that man chose to love you in two timelines. The same as Jim chose to set you two up in this one, because he knew the potential for what could happen. You and Strickler were so good for each other then, and you are now too. If you weren't, none of us would be encouraging this. We want you to get that happy ending. You deserve it."
She sniffed, her expression a complicated mix of feelings. "I..."
Douxie smiled. "You've worked so hard, and been so strong. And that's admirable, Barbara. But if I'm allowed to bare my weaknesses, so are you. No one will think less of you for it. You're allowed to want the fairy tale."
"I thought James was a fairy tale," she said, blue eyes flashing with anger. Misery. Guilt. "The man who walked out on me and my son."
"You were a young woman from an abusive home," Douxie said gently. "You saw him and you saw stability, someone who wouldn't hit you. For who you were then... that probably was a fairy tale, Barbara."
She sniffed, her glasses rising up over her hand as she scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her free hand. "Douxie-"
"Let me point out one thing," he said, "and I'll be done with it. You told me just the tiniest bit, mostly by implication, about what your family life was before you met and married Jim's dad. I would be surprised to find that no part of your marriage was an effort to get out of that home. But here's the thing: for all that he's had centuries in the daylight world, away from the direct source of his abuse... Strickler's also been under the thumb of the Janus Order, Bular, and by extension Gunmar, for the whole time. But now that he's been given a chance to break free?" Douxie chuckled. "I've seen more literal uses of the phrase 'burn it to the ground', but not many. Now that he's got support, Strickler's as determined as you to get out of a bad situation, and make something new of himself. Which is why I think the two of you will work well together, long-term. You're pointed in the same direction. Your goals are the same."
"Douxie..."
He raised her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to it. "You deserve all happiness," he told his mother. "And you deserve to wear orange blossoms at your wedding to the man you love."
Author's Note: When Douxie's psychiatrist walked into the waiting room and turned out to be a Black woman, I struggled for a surname. Having her be Darci's mom seemed entirely too much like implying the Scott family were the only Black people in Arcadia Oaks. In the end, "Marshallhouse" was taken from the book Corey, by Jane Claypool Miner, one of the Sunrise books I have fond memories of reading as a preteen. I probably still have my copy, in fact, but it's in a box because I need more bookcases.
And when, some twenty-two chapters ago, I wrote Barbara as having had an abusive stepfather... I did not realize then that I was setting her up as a parallel to Strickler. Not as a woman who would change him with the power of her love, or whatever, but as someone who is determined to break out of the patterns that abuse can wire into brains, and can help him learn how to do it too.
