Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
released 30th December, 2022

The minute Gunmar exploded into a shower of shrapnel and rubble, the fight was over. Mopping up the remaining Gumm-Gumms was a matter of minutes. Claire took the liberty of dumping a few of them in the ocean via shadow portal. Right where, once upon a time, NotEnrique had been trapped in a sinking shipping container together with the stones of Killahead Bridge.

And then it was all done except for the cleanup.

"Glorious!" Varvatos bellowed, looking around the ruined town square. He beelined for the bank. "Nancy! Your prowess with weaponry has Varvatos' core pulsing!"

Aja laughed, tucking her weapon back into her serrator, and that back into her pocket. "It is good that some things never change."

"Yeah." Claire smiled, looking at the cafe, where cautious (extremely cautious) citizens were slowly spilling out, escorted by Steve. Where her mother stood, Jim's messenger bag over one shoulder, and Enrique strapped to her front.

Jim.

Claire turned, beaming, to the bridge.

To find Toby holding Eclipse up before Merlin, looking absolutely furious, and like he was half an inch from skewering the old wizard.

And Jim….

Jim was nowhere to be seen.


They hit the ground hard, and bounced and rolled down a grassy, rocky, muddy incline. Douxie could only tell it was grassy and rocky and muddy because of the sensations, because he certainly couldn't see any of that through the near absolute pitch blackness.

Finally, he slid to a stop.

He coughed, and spat mud. The wind was howling and pelting stinging icy rain. Perfect. "Jim?" he yelled.

"Here!" Jim replied, not too far away. Douxie could barely hear him over the near-torrential downpour.

Struggling to his knees, Douxie turned around. Most of the ambient glow of Jim's magitech armor was muted, smeared by mud. Douxie wordlessly summoned witchlight to his hand.

Jim was thoroughly plastered with earth. That and the rain were matting his hair to his trollish skull. "Been through a mud bath?" Douxie asked.

"Like you look any better." Jim pushed to his feet and came over, offering a hand up. Douxie took it. "Where are we? What happened?"

"Ahh." Douxie cast around, looking for an answer. His gaze caught on the dancing reflection of witchlight, not too far away. Flowing water. Turning, he looked up the steep slope of the embankment they'd just tumbled down.

Back at the water. Which was already looking suspiciously brown and churning as the storm fed the stream. River.

"Fuzzbuckets," he said. "Come on, back up the hill!" He started trying to go up. Diamond-soled though his armored boot covers were, they slipped on the grass and mud. He went down on all fours, clawing his fingers into the ground.

"What? Douxie?"

He whipped his head around to look at Jim. "You've never been caught in a flash flood and it shows," he snapped. Whatever expression was on his face, it was enough to convince Jim he was serious.

Jim, in his half troll form was, unsurprisingly, better at clambering his way up the slippery slope, and at a few points even reached a hand back, giving Douxie a hoist forward.

"So," Jim reiterated when they reached the meager safety of the bushes at the top of the ridge, "I repeat: where the hell are we? And what happened?"

"Ugh." Douxie wiped mud and cold rain off his face with the hand that didn't hold the light. "Short version: the energy from Merlin's blast, and Eclipse killing Gunmar, had to go somewhere. And Excalibur, being made of mystic metal, is a fantastic conductor."

Jim looked like he was waiting for the other half of the explanation.

"It went right into your amulet," Douxie explained. "And what's in there?"

It was hard to tell in the blue light of Douxie's magic, but he thought Jim paled. "The Time Stone."

"Exactly."

"Fuck," Jim said with feeling.

"Exactly," Douxie couldn't help repeating.

Jim glared at him, then slugged him on the shoulder. As he was currently half-troll, it hurt more than usual.

"Ow," Douxie whined only once. Right before lightning flashed down on the opposite bank, blinding and deafening them.

"Shelter," he said a moment later, when he could sort of see and hear again. It felt like static electricity was writhing all over his body, courtesy of being within ten yards of the lightning strike. He stared at the burning, glowing husk of a tree on the other side of the stream. It looked like it was immolating itself from within. Even the heavy rainfall was not getting very far at putting out the flames on its branches.

It was surprisingly beautiful.

"Yeah, shelter," Jim agreed, wide-eyed. The ringing of his ears was so bad, Douxie could barely hear him, even though they were right next to one another.

But the burning tree gave off enough illumination that Douxie could see they were on the cusp of a forest. And where there were trees….

"Come on," he said, shoving to his feet and trying not to slip. Jim followed his lead.

Together, they went into the woods.


"What did you do?!" Toby shouted at Merlin. The old coot had come out of nowhere and fired off some magic spell and now Jim and Douxie were just– gone. "You killed them, didn't you? You wanted to seal Douxie away and Jim wouldn't let you so you just killed both of them!"

"You're babbling nonsense." Merlin calmly pulled out an ivory pillbox Toby recognized and opened it. A blue globe appeared, hovering over the box. Merlin sighed in relief.

"I'll show you nonsense, you–"

"Where's Jim?" Claire demanded, arriving.

"And Douxie?" asked Archie, hovering by her.

Merlin snorted. "How should I know?"

Toby's grip on Eclipse tightened. He was tired, and his best friend was gone. In about three more seconds, Merlin would be too, with a sword stuck through him. Toby would make it up to Douxie later for murdering his father figure.

Assuming Douxie wasn't already dead.

"The other Trollhunter and my wayward apprentice are, I assume, lost somewhere in time," Merlin said airily, rotating the globe with the tips of his fingers. "How and where, I cannot say."

"Ex-apprentice," Claire snapped.

Merlin raised his eyebrows. "Is that what he told you?"

Toby glared. "You tried to seal him away, then bounced once Jimbo wouldn't let you. So, yeah, ex-apprentice. You don't get to keep Douxie anymore."

"That is not your decision to make, nor his," Merlin said.

The urge to stab Merlin intensified. Again.

"What, exactly," Claire clipped out, "do you mean by 'lost in time'?"

"Precisely what I said." Satisfied with whatever he had found, Merlin closed the Time Map and tucked it away. "The timeline was in flux; an additional amount of magic was required to fuel their journey into the past and thereby stabilize our continuum."

"Where are they?" Toby demanded. "When are they?"

"I have no idea." Merlin turned to go.

"I… may have an idea." A lean green figure detached itself from the darkness, wings folding around himself like a cloak.

Merlin paused, looking at the changeling. "Oh?"

Strickler glanced at him, then away, at Toby and Claire. He looked lighter, like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders with the death of Gunmar. Like he could breathe freely, for the first time in centuries. "Mister Domzalski, do you happen to remember the Book of Ga-Huel?"

It took a minute of cudgeling his brain, but then Toby's eyes widened. "Oh…!"

"Indeed." Strickler glowered. "Unfortunately, that is the only clue we have."

"501," Claire breathed. "They're in 501CE."

Archie's eyes widened. "Oh, Douxie…."


"Douxie, what are we doing?" Jim would have thought the woods would be less wet. Or quieter. But they weren't, and they were full of bushes and brambles and who knew what else that he could barely see outside the illumination of Douxie's magic light. Not tripping and falling flat on his face was high on his list of priorities at the moment.

He was freezing, and wet, and had to keep his jaw clenched because otherwise his teeth would be chattering.

I hate the cold. I'm a California boy!

"Looking for a tree with a knot or a hole in it." Douxie answered, half-turning so that Jim actually heard him.

Jim turned that over in his mind. Finally, he asked, "Why?"

Douxie paused. Sighed, his shoulders slumped. "Because I'm running low on energy and magic, and making a shelter will be a good deal easier if I have something to work with."

Which made absolutely no sense to Jim, but he accepted it on faith and started looking for a tree with a knot or a hole in the trunk.

He found one, a few minutes later. "Douxie! Here."

The wizard came over to him. "Perfect." There was an undertone of thank god in his voice.

Douxie took a deep breath, blinking a few times, then the runes on his vambrace lit up. He selected one; a spell circle formed around his hand. He pressed it carefully to the knot.

Which grew larger, spilling down the tree like dark ink until finally it was the size of a (small) doorway. Douxie moved inside, his magic lighting up the darkness within. Jim followed.

Douxie glanced at him. "A little bigger, I think," he said and made a pushing gesture. Now that they were in out of the wind and rain, Jim could hear the wood creaking around them as the space continued to expand.

Finally, Douxie dropped his hand with a huff, the spell light dimming. "That'll do, I think." He turned, and with a gesture the door sealed itself up behind them, the wood growing back until all that was left was an opening the size of the original knothole.

The wind and rain noise cut down drastically. Jim felt like he could hear again. He sighed in relief. His breath still frosted the air. "So what now?" The original plan had been to hit up Stuart's truck for some post-battle food. But that clearly wasn't happening now.

Douxie hummed. "Don't know about you, but I'm pretty knackered."

Jim glanced around the small room Douxie had made in the middle of a tree that definitely wasn't this big on the outside. The ground looked like packed dirt. Not the most comfortable bed, but better by miles than outside. "Well, I've roughed it before."

"I think we can do a bit better than that." With a shimmer of magic, Douxie banished his armor, which left him in clothing that was nearly identical to it. "Ugh, sodden." He plucked at his hoodie before prying it off. He held it out before himself, considering, then his eyes slid sideways to Jim. "I need your jacket," he said.

"What? Why?"

"Well, if you'd prefer the ground to a bed…."

"I definitely would not." Jim banished his armor, returning to human, and tucked the amulet into the pocket of his jeans before shrugging off his jacket and handing it over.

"Lovely," said Douxie, accepting it. He did something–Jim didn't see what–and suddenly steam was rising from both garments. Then he started pulling and stretching the fabric of his hoodie, his hands and his eyes glowing blue. After a minute the garment was clearly significantly larger than it had been. He tossed it onto the floor, where it as much as turned into a black air mattress. A few minutes more spent working Jim's hoodie produced a thick blue blanket that got lobbed on top of that. "Voila. One bed." Then he started stripping out of his clothes.

"What–" Jim stared.

"Strip, and into the bed if you don't want hypothermia," Douxie told him.

"Naked?" Jim's voice went high.

"If you don't want hypothermia," Douxie repeated, continuing to disrobe.

"I've never slept naked with anyone but Claire," Jim protested.

"Look," Douxie snapped, then obviously caught himself and made himself back down. He took a couple of deliberate breaths. "Look, I'm sorry if the concept offends your twenty-first century sensibilities or whatever, but I've been in survival situations more times than I care to number, and right now, Jim? Priority one is both of us getting warm. And that's not going to happen if either of us are still wearing wet clothes. So get naked, get in the bed, or get sick. Your choice." He turned away, and started hanging his clothing from some pegs Jim hadn't even realized had grown within the walls of their refuge.

Jim swallowed, and began to unlace his shoes.

Douxie carefully did not look at Jim as he undressed and hung up his own clothes to, hopefully, drip-dry over the night. But he counted it as a victory when the other side of the blanket lifted and Jim slid into the bed.

Over their head, at the peak of the low, domed ceiling of the sanctuary, his witchlight burned, casting paltry light over the walls and the floor. An LED it wasn't.

He swallowed. "Sorry," he murmured.

Jim shifted. "It's okay. You're probably right."

Douxie breathed a hoarse laugh, pressing his arm over his eyes. "Yeah." The memories of a hundred or more cold, hungry nights pressed at him. All of them shared with Archie, who wasn't here now.

Jim felt, for a moment, like a paltry substitute for Douxie's familiar.

He shoved that thought away with both mental hands. "Come over here," he said, shifting just a hair toward the middle of the hoodie-mattress. "Shared body heat's the best thing right now."

"If you say so." Jim moved toward him without further comment, until their clammy skins touched. Jim was shivering, Douxie realized, less cold-resistant than himself. He turned on his side; after a moment, Jim followed so that Douxie was spooning the younger teen, his body curled around Jim's. "So." Jim swallowed. "We're somewhere in the past?"

Douxie sighed. "At a guess? We're in the year 501."

He could practically feel the gears turning in Jim's head, trying to figure out how Douxie had arrived at that number. "Why– oh." The penny dropped for him. "Because of Strickler's book."

"The book of Ga-Huel, yeah. Unless there's more time travel adventures awaiting that we don't know about yet."

That got a full-body shudder. "Please, no."

"I agree."

"Do we know anything more about this one?" Jim murmured. The space between them was starting to feel warmer. Douxie could feel his body, and his brother's, starting to relax.

Douxie shook his head. "Sadly, no. There wasn't much in the book except that picture and a few lines about a hero who saved some trolls and vanished. Though," he said thoughtfully, "I suppose we do know one thing."

"Oh? What's that?"

Douxie smiled. "You were human when you did so. And wearing your armor."

That got him the breath of a laugh. "At least there's that."

"Lights out?" Douxie offered.

"No," Jim replied instantly. "Leave it on."

"All right." Douxie breathed. His eyes rested on the far wall. Where the opening remained to let air in and out so they didn't suffocate on their own respiration.

Something could still get in through that hole. Not a large carnivore, but any of a hundred things that could shift to a smaller form. Or gnomes. Or even a natural spider or viper. Or something gaseous….

He should let it be.

He should.

He didn't have the magic to spare.

But something could come in. Attack him and Jim while they slept. Attack–

"Douxie," Jim said. "Stop thinking. Stop overthinking."

"I can't," Douxie whispered. "I can't, it won't stop–"

"Douxie." Jim turned over. "Stop." His thumbs found either side of Douxie's forehead. In the thin witchlight, he looked into Douxie's eyes. "Just stop. Trust me, Douxie. Trust me."

"I do," Douxie breathed. "I do. I just–" His throat closed up; words failed him.

"It's been a long day." Jim's voice was soothing. It took on a hypnotic tone. "You've used a lot of energy. You're cold and scared and exhausted–"

"'M not scared," Douxie protested.

"Mm-hmm." Jim clearly didn't believe him. Maybe rightly so.

"And you haven't got Archie. Which is hard for you. But he's there at home, waiting for you. He'll be there as soon as we finish this and get home." Jim's thumbs stroked gently. "So just hold on, okay? Hold on, and breathe."

Douxie closed his eyes, held on, and breathed.


Her phone rang. Barbara snatched it out of her pocket. "Walt?" she asked, having been waiting for a call from him. Or from anyone in the center of town. "Is it over? Is it done?"

"Barbara…."

Her heart sank into her feet. "What's wrong?" she asked numbly. It was Jim. It had to be Jim. Nothing else would make Walter have that tone in his voice that declared him the bearer of bad news.

"It's… it's Jim and Douxie," he said gently. "Gunmar's dead, but… Jim and Douxie,"

A punch in the stomach would have left her with more breath. She swallowed, forced her voice to work. "What… what happened?"

He hummed tonelessly. "There was an overload of magic," he said after a few seconds. "Apparently it activated Jim's time stone just as Douxie reached him. He must have realized what was happening."

She swallowed again. Licked her lips. "Walter. What happened to my boys?"

"They've been sent to the past."

"The past," she repeated numbly. The past wasn't the same as dead, right?

"We think they're in the year 501AD," Walt said gently.

"When… when will they be home?"

He paused, one of those silences she was learning to hate. "We've no idea," he said finally. "Barbara… there's every possibility it may be an 'if,' not a 'when'."

Her fingers clenched on the phone. The world seemed to tunnel in around her.

Barbara looked around the waiting room, where almost every single surface was coated with goblin slime. Eduardo was trying to clean the floor. Emily was furiously typing up an incident report.

Her sons were lost in time. She had no idea of how they were or where they were, and only a vague clue as to when.

There was nothing she could do.

Barbara firmed her jaw before tears could fall. "All right," she said, hating, just a little, how her voice didn't shake. "Walt, I've got to go. We had a goblin incursion here, I need to help clean things up."

"An incursion? But Douxie–"

"His sigil didn't work. Or worked backwards or something." She hated to think Douxie might have inadvertently caused the goblins to attack the hospital, but it was, unfortunately, a logical conclusion. One she was going to be careful about how she mentioned to him. When he returned.

Walter was silent for a moment, then said, "We'll be there shortly."

"You're coming here? But–" The phone went dead in her hand. Barbara gaped, then glowered. He'd hung up on her.

She huffed, then turned to business. She needed to do what she always did. What she'd done when her father died. And her mother. What she'd done when that bastard James had walked out on her and Jim.

"How can I help?" she asked Eduardo.


Douxie woke mostly warm and comfortable, with Jim's head on his shoulder.

That part was becoming familiar.

The nakedness, however, that was new.

As was the lack of Archie.

But memory came back quickly enough, prompted by the wood-grain walls and ceiling of their shelter. Not to mention his stomach's insistence that it had been knifed, it was dying, he needed to eat...

Douxie ignored his body's melodramatics and did his best to think.

He didn't know if he'd been intended to go into the past with Jim, but given that Jim didn't even know the dangers of a flash flood, Douxie rather thought he had been. To keep Jim alive, if nothing else.

All right. Take stock. They were stranded in the past with no way of communicating with home. They had Douxie's magic, Jim's martial skills, and two sets of armor.

And three knives, Douxie thought, remembering the blades that seldom left his magic pocket. He'd learned all too well over the centuries the sheer folly of going about unarmed.

They needed shelter, potable water, and food.

Yes, yes, he thought irritably at his stomach as it cried again at the thought of something to eat. I'll take care of you in a bit.

Right now, he had no idea of where they were, let alone what season it was. But he could probably manage to forage enough food to keep the both of them going, regardless. And somehow, inevitably, they'd stumble into whatever situation Jim needed to resolve to keep their timeline true.

Douxie breathed a huff and eyed the opening that, not a day before, had been a knothole. Thin, watery light shone in through it. But he couldn't hear any rain at the moment, so hopefully the storm of their arrival had blown itself out.

Never count on luck, my lad; that's a sure way to screw yourself over.

"Jim," he said, nudging his shoulder, "time to get up."

Jim made an incoherent mumble that translated rather clearly as "I don't wanna" and attempted to burrow deeper under the blanket that was his hoodie.

Douxie snorted and got out of the bed, making sure to billow the blanket and waft cool air underneath it.

Jim groaned and clenched the blanket closer around himself, curling up like a pillbug, eyes still stubbornly shut.

Rolling his eyes, Douxie checked their clothing. Which was mostly dry. "Descate," he murmured, brushing his hand over all the garments, making sure to kneel down and include their shoes.

Vapor rose like cold steam. A gesture of his hand guided it out the knothole. He ran his hand over the clothes again, humming in pleasure when they were no less cool, but at least no longer wet. Ruthlessly, he plucked Jim's clothing off the pegs and threw them at the bed. "Pull those under the blanket with you if you want them warmer," he ordered, and started pulling on his own.

Not fresh, and in a day or two he'd be ready to kill for a change of small linens, but… you survived what you had to. And he probably still had that cleaning charm on his bracer somewhere. He hadn't really needed it since the first world war.

"You're mean," Jim muttered.

"I'm practical," Douxie shot back. He was a bit chilly with just his tanktop on, but Jim was currently laying on top of his hoodie. He settled for stuffing his feet into socks, hopping one-footed while he did so, and then jamming his hightops on. The first one was too tight. "Wait, this one's yours." He pulled the shoe off and tossed it and its mate at the bed.

Jim snickered. "Bigfoot."

"It is half a size difference– Douxie began. His preferred Converses were black; Jim's, navy. It wasn't the first time since he'd moved in that they'd accidentally grabbed one another's.

Jim snickered, and Douxie heard rustling, so there was probably some getting dressed going on behind him. "So," he said, not turning around for the sake of Jim's precious modern modesty, "my thought is, we get the lay of the land and see what we can forage to make some sort of breakfast."

"Uh." Jim sounded stymied by the very concept of foraging. "Doux, I don't really know how to… uh…."

Douxie shot a grin over his shoulder. "Lucky for you, I am actually pretty good at foraging." And hunting. Which was a skill Jim would need to pick up. Douxie very much had the impression that, for all his other fine qualities, Jim believed that food came from the store. Preferably in neat little tins, boxes, or styrofoam packets.

Douxie, on the other hand, had been eating processed foods for less than a tenth of his life. And while they were admittedly convenient and made fueling his wizardry far, far easier than it ever had been before, he still prided himself on being able to survive in a wilderness in a way he doubted any of his acquaintances bar Zoe could.

Skills which were going to keep himself and Jim alive, now.

"Um. Oh!" Jim said suddenly. "I completely forgot this, in the rain and all, but… brownie?"

"Brownie?" Douxie turned, brow furrowed, only to see Jim pulling, out of his amulet subspace, a pan of brownies.

The image was so dissonant with Douxie's expectations that all he could do was stare.

"Post-battle brownies?" Jim prompted.

"But… all that baking you did ended up with the trolls," Douxie protested, dumbfounded. "It wasn't edible by humans. When did you have more time to bake?"

Jim shrugged. "I made time," he said. "I promised you, remember?"

Douxie breathed a laugh. "I'd hardly call that a promise, Jim."

"I would," his brother countered. "Come on. Brownie breakfast."

"All right." Douxie sat down on the hoodie-mattress next to Jim and accepted a brownie. "To us surviving the sixth century," he toasted with the baked sweet.

"To surviving the sixth century," Jim agreed. And together, they ate.


Author's Note: Douxie's line about "You've never been in a flash flood before, and it shows!" is borrowed from HoneyxMonkey, except her variant of the line had to do with having been used as a human sacrifice...