sakon76

Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 18th November 2021

"Gimme just a sec," Douxie said as he and Jim came back in the front door. "Want to get my bracelet back on."

"I didn't even know that thing came off," Jim said.

Douxie rolled his eyes. "Of course it does. It's not welded to my skin. I just never remove it. When's the last time you voluntarily went around without an amulet in your pocket?"

"The tenth of Never," Jim replied, heading toward the kitchen as Hisirdoux skipped up the stairs and into his room.

"Arch?" he said, opening the door, then stopped.

Archie, in the shape of a cat, was sat up on the bed, his gaze fixed on one thing. The vambrace Douxie had left on the dresser.

"Archie?"

His familiar didn't look at him. Didn't reply. Didn't even seem to have noticed he'd come into the room. Just sat there, looking at the bracer.

"Archie!" Douxie rushed across the room, mind all apanick. He dropped to his knees before the bed, hands seeking out his familiar's warmth. "No no nonono--"

Archie was warm. And breathing. His double hearts beat in a steady rhythm. Douxie nearly sobbed with relief, pulling Archie into his arms. "Arch, it's me. I'm here." He touched their foreheads together, nuzzling. "Archie, come back. Please." Delicately, but also somewhat desperately, he ran fingers up and down Archie's spine, finally settling between his shoulderblades, scratching at where this form was missing Archie's wings.

Whether it was the forehead touch, or the skritches, or he didn't know what, it worked. Archie's vacant gaze slowly cleared. "Douxie...?"

"Archie!" Douxie broke off the scratches and just hugged his familiar to him. "Oh gods, I thought I'd lost you."

Archie sniffed and laid his head along Douxie's shoulder. "Hardly," he said, but then he paused, his gaze going back to the vambrace. "Douxie...?"

"I went to have a chat with Merlin," Douxie confessed in a whisper. "I thought... if I left you behind, left that behind... if I showed him I wouldn't fight him, he might decide I wasn't a threat."

Archie's voice was very quiet as he asked "Did it work?"

Douxie's voice was very quiet as he replied, "No."

"Douxie."

He sniffed a little as he drew back, wiping at his eyes as his heart slowly returned to normal. "You are officially looking at one ex-apprentice of Merlin Ambrosius."

"Oh, Douxie."

"Don't scare me like that, Arch," Douxie whispered. "I can't lose you."

"Don't you scare me like that," Archibald retorted, touching their foreheads together again. "I can't lose you either, you know."

"I won't, ever again," Douxie said. "You have my promise."

After breakfast, and learning that the secret to Douxie's pancakes was a bit of vinegar in the milk ("Poor man's buttermilk," Douxie explained. "Real buttermilk's even better, but this does in a pinch."), and some baking soda added into the mix, they went their separate ways for the day, Douxie and Archie off to the bookshop, Jim to school, and a plate of breakfast into the warming oven for when Jim's mom woke up.

Jim spent most of the morning paying as little attention to his teachers as he could get away with, and trying to make the whirling cloud of his thoughts into a neat, comprehensible list.

Mostly he failed.

But somehow it felt important that they get things in order again and set out a clear plan of attack. Because now that Merlin had flounced off to Camelot for good and they couldn't depend on him in the slightest, Team Trollhunters needed to handle things on their own.

"He WHAT?!" Toby demanded over lunch.

"Sit down," Jim hissed. "And keep your voice down."

Toby obeyed, but was still gaping.

"He seriously tried to seal Douxie away?" Claire asked, eyes wide.

"Yeah." Jim glowered at his gourmet mac'n'cheese-ala-Jimbo.

"But... why?" she asked, clearly dumbfounded.

"He said," Jim emphasized, "that Douxie's destined to bring back 'old magic,' whatever that is, and unleash tons of supernatural horrors on the planet."

"Douxie. The nicest wizard we know," Toby said.

"Yep." Jim defiantly stirred his mac and took a bite.

"Well, spending the rest of our lives as Ghostbusters wouldn't be the best thing, but it's not the worst either," said Toby. "I mean, heck, it's practically what we're already doing."

Claire was blinking. "Does that... fit in with bringing magic back to the planet?" she asked.

Jim froze mid-chew, then forced himself to swallow. "I hadn't thought of that." He considered it. "Maybe...?" he asked. "I mean, Doux hasn't talked about that plan in... weeks. Months. I thought it had kind of fallen by the wayside. Anyway, Merlin said it's because of Douxie's book," said Jim, frowning.

"You mean the one he can't read?" asked Claire. "The one Blinky and Archie can't make head or tails of either?"

"Yep, that's the one."

She was silent for a minute, then shrugged. "Well, I guess he's going to find out how to read it, then."

"So, like, how did you get him out of being sealed away?" asked Toby.

Jim grinned. "Held a sword to Merlin's throat."

"WHAT?!"

Douxie capped his dry-erase marker and looked over the newest iteration of his whiteboard army. He'd completely gotten rid of everything to do with Bular, one item ticked off their to-do list. And everything to do with Morgana had been parceled out onto its own set of whiteboards, labeled "After Time Travel To Camelot." Because Merlin certainly wasn't going to be unsealing her, and he himself wouldn't be able to either, not until after he'd gotten his staff from a younger version of his former master. So that was one rat's nest tangle punted down the line.

"Well, it looks a bit tidier," Archie remarked, sitting by his side and looking up at the neat rows of notations.

"Mm-hmm," Douxie agreed. "I think right now we need to be concentrating on getting ready to take on Gunmar. If we can do that before Krel, Aja, and Varvatos arrive, then we'll be clear to help them with their problems for a bit."

Archie surveyed the hovering blue-limned boards for a minute more, then said, "One thing troubles me, Douxie."

"Yeah?" he asked his familiar.

"You said that Gunmar awoke Morgana with Merlin's staff, correct?"

Douxie nodded.

"And that her causing an 'Eternal Night' in conjunction with his attack was what opened most of Arcadia's eyes to the supernatural world."

Douxie nodded again.

"What will the repercussions be, socially, of that not occurring?"

Douxie looked at the whiteboards, mind turning over Archie's words.

Then he groaned and dropped his head into his hands. "Fuzzbuckets."

For all that Jim's mind had been spinning wheels most of the day (lucky him, Claire's hadn't, and she was willing to share notes from their shared classes), he'd managed to get settled on one firm plan.

"Okay, gang," he said once they'd all assembled in the Forge, "I have a proposition. Let's get Douxie out of that time debt at the bookstore."

Glances were exchanged. "Uh, how do you propose we do that, Jimbo?"

Jim grinned. "We do have that huge heap of gold you stole from Gatto."

Claire's eyes lit up and she was on her phone in a flash. "The current price of gold is just under eighteen hundred dollars an ounce," she reported.

"Okay, so twenty thousand times three books, divided by eighteen hundred...." Toby started counting on his fingers.

"Thirty-three and a third," Aaarrrgghh rumbled.

Jim, Claire, and Toby all stared.

"Uh, that's some pretty quick mathematics there, Wingman."

Aaarrrgghh smiled, pleased. "Numbers easy."

"Sixteen ounces to a pound," said Jim, who maybe was not as quick at long division as Aaarrrgghh, but was a chef and thus knew his weights. "So we'd need two pounds and two ounces of gold. But since it's communal money... are we all in agreement on using it for this?"

"I'm in," Claire reported.

"Me too," said Toby.

The three trolls exchanged glances, then each nodded. "I can see little better use for it than buying his freedom," said Draal.

"Humans' fascination with a largely useless metal is indeed confounding," Blinky agreed.

"Gold pretty," argued Aaarrrgghh. "But soft."

"Do trolls use it for anything?" Toby asked.

"Decoration."

"Indeed! When courting, we tend to fill in our carvings," said Blinky, indicating his own, "with gems and reflective metals, to catch our beloveds' gaze."

Draal snorted. "Peacocking."

Aaarrrgghh patted him roughly on the shoulder. "Not worry. We make you pretty. Nomura will like."

Draal blushed furiously.

Watching the boys cut rocks was, sadly, less interesting than Claire had hoped. Even with Vendel's patient attempts to explain to her the properties of each gem and why it should be chiseled here but not there, she just didn't get it.

It burned, coming up against something she just couldn't easily grasp. And she knew about Gifted Kid Syndrome, had at her mother's instruction read several articles about it, in order to understand what she might be going up against as she got older and hit college and suddenly wasn't so special... but being smacked in the face by it like this kind of felt mean.

They were rocks. They were pretty, she guessed. And she just couldn't get how they worked magic.

It was funny, though, Claire admitted, that Toby clearly felt so much more confident about cleaving the Eye of Gunmar than Jim did about cutting his opal and tiger's eye.

"I'm going to the library," she announced. "Maybe Blinky has some books on gemology for idiots that'll help me wrap my head around this."

Vendel laughed softly. "While I would not underestimate the contents of Blinkous' library," he said, "the knowledge of rocks and stones is so ingrained in trollkind that he may not have what you seek."

Jim paused on lining up his chisel. "There's always the bookshop...?" he suggested.

"Mmm." Claire was noncommittal. "Maybe I'll see if there's anything in Wizarding Lore that will help me."

Walking back across Trollmarket, dodging gnomes underfoot and trolls literally twice her height, she sighed. She felt like, unlike Jim and Toby, she was getting nowhere fast. Building up her power with the Shadow Staff had gone a lot faster. Whereas now she was still making NotEnrique-sized portals. Baby shadowmancy. Magic with training wheels on.

And Douxie was probably right when he tried to convince her that skipping steps and cutting corners was a bad idea in magic, but she just felt....

"Frustrated," Claire muttered.

It was probably easy for Douxie. He could do like a hundred different types of magic, and had had literal centuries to build up his magic musculature.

She'd always wanted to go faster. To be smarter. To be the best.

And now she just felt... stuck.

Disconnected from her magic in a way that Douxie wasn't with his.

I know I'm capable of more than this, Claire thought.

I just... don't know how to get there.

Archie was... not quite underfoot. But he was constantly moving around the cafe, careful not to be obtrusive but also definitely positioning himself where he had a direct line of sight to his familiar.

"You're hovering," Douxie murmured to him while inputting an order.

"I am observing," Archie, hidden under the counter and practically sitting on Douxie's feet, sniffed.

"Your turn to have separation anxiety, I guess."

The black cat looked offended. "Dragons don't get anxiety. Of any sort."

Douxie mis-entered table six's salad order and had to backtrack and correct it. "The evidence," he said, "argues differently."

"I simply don't trust you out of my sight right now," Archie told him.

"Poh-tay-to, poh-tah-to," Douxie said, and stepped away to the soda fountain, grabbing two large cups and half-filling them with ice before pressing the Dr. Pepper and Diet Coke levers. Wednesdays were not the busiest night at Benoit's (a tossup between Friday and Saturday), but they weren't the slowest either (definitely Monday). And the job might not pay particularly well, but after a couple centuries of experience working customer service jobs, Hisirdoux prided himself on being good at it. "Just don't trip me. Or anyone else."

Archie sniffed again. "As if I would ever do anything to get me banned from your place of employment."

"Done!" Toby held up the finished Eye of Gunmar.

"It's not a race, Tobes," Jim said from where he was still sweating over the opal. It cleaved weird compared to the other gems he'd cut, and he was really glad he had Vendel helping him with this. For all that he'd cut and polished all three of the Triumbric Stones in another lifetime, gem-cutting the troll way definitely wasn't as easy for him as it apparently was for Toby.

(That presidency of the school's geology club, he thought, had definitely been well deserved.)

"But if it was, I would have won," Toby said smugly but not meanly, pulling out his amulet. Jim let off his work, straightening and watching as the amulet's back opened like a flower, letting Toby place the last Triumbric Stone inside.

The clockwork gears spun and spun, the amulet's blue light shifting, redlining.

It glowed like a ruby. Like blood.

Toby breathed out a long breath. His finger traced the new words inscribed around the amulet's edge. His eyes raised to Jim.

Jim nodded. "Go ahead."

Toby breathed.

Then, "For the doom of Gunmar," he said, "Eclipse is mine to command."

Red light surrounded him, pulling the Trollhunter into the air. The individual pieces of his armor manifested, pewter-black, engraved with red. They fitted to Toby like the pieces of a puzzle, leaving him clad in shadow and nightmare. The armor's dark hue and dim red glow, Jim knew, had helped him in the Darklands, where Daylight's bright silver and blue would have made him visible to every creature for miles around.

That didn't make the color change any easier on the human psyche.

Toby fell to the ground, landing neatly on his feet. "Whoa," he said, holding his arms out in front of him, looking up and down the changes.

"Fascinating." Vendel stalked around Toby in a slow circle. "Summon your weapons."

Toby did, Eclipse appearing in his hand with just a thought. Then it vanished in a wisp of red light and his warhammer, glowing as deep a red as his armor, appeared in its place.

"And your shield," Vendel instructed.

The circular shield manifested in Toby's left hand.

"Hmm. Very good," Vendel praised. "And what, do you suppose, the Eye has unlocked for you?"

Toby met Jim's eyes again, then closed his own in concentration.

A pewter helmet materialized on his head. Mostly the same shape as his old copper one, it lacked the headlight on the front but was engraved with the same glowing red lines as the rest of the Eclipse armor. Pewter ram's horns curled in on themselves on either side.

Oh, thought Jim, suddenly realizing that his own horns had eventually been the exact same shape as the false ones on his Eclipse armor.

He had a feeling he now knew exactly what Toby's horns would look like if he ever became a half-troll.

"Hmm," Vendel said again, poking one finger at Toby's new helmet. "I presume this is to protect you from Gunmar's mind control."

"Forget his mind control," said Toby, "I want it to protect me from concussions."

Jim hissed. "Yeah," he confessed. "Those were not fun."

Toby stuck his tongue out at him. "Which one of us has a doctor for a mom, again?" he asked. "Which one of us should know this kind of thing?"

Jim rolled his eyes. "Fine, I'll start wearing a helmet in combat."

"Thankyouverymuch." Toby preened at having his sage advice taken.

"You should return to the Forge and spar with Draal, to discover whether the new stone has unlocked any other abilities," Vendel told him. He turned back to Jim. "You, however, need to remain here and finish cutting the first of your stones."

Jim heaved a sigh. "Yes, Master Vendel."

"If it is any consolation," Vendel told him as Toby skipped out of the room, "opal is not an easy stone to cut, even for experienced trolls."

"That... actually does make it better," Jim confessed. "Thank you."

Feeling unexpectedly hesitant, Waltolomew nonetheless squared up his shoulders. "Right. Okay. Courage," he told himself, and knocked on the door.

There was a moment's wait, but he could hear noise from inside the house. Then the door was flung wide open by a panting Barbara. "Sorry, I had to run up from the basement--" she apologized.

He was taken slightly aback by her appearance. Her red hair was a little more disheveled than usual, but more importantly there were dabs of paint decorating her capris, her t-shirt, and her face and hands. "I--do you paint?" Waltolomew asked, surprised, all his pleasant words falling out of his head.

"Um. A little?" Barbara pushed a strand of hair back from her face. She suddenly looked shy. "Would you like to see?" she asked, her big blue eyes looking up at him.

Waltolomew Stricklander would have had to have been made of much sterner stuff than stone to refuse her invitation. "I would be delighted to see your work," he told her honestly, and showed her the bottle of pinot noir he had brought. "Perhaps with a glass of wine?"

She smiled, and it lit up her face. "I think we have some cheese and crackers to go with, if we want to be all fancy," she offered, stepping aside to let him in.

"Young Atlas is out tonight?" he asked, following her to the kitchen.

"Down in Trollmarket," Barbara reported. "Something about cleaving some stones for his amulet," she added, opening the refrigerator and poking her head in. "And Douxie's working at the cafe. Now where is that... ah, there."

A few minutes later they had assembled, between them, a respectable charcuterie platter, which Barbara carried down to the basement while Waltolomew followed, bearing wine glasses and the opened bottle.

Downstairs, it looked like Barbara had succeeded in transforming the basement into a proper artist's studio. Canvases were stacked against the walls, and an easel held her current work. She set the platter down on the table that held her paints and palette; Waltolomew followed suit with the wine glasses, pouring them each a drink and handing hers to Barbara. "This one's still a work in progress," she said, leading him around the easel. "What do you think?"

He was prepared to give something more honest than platitudes, determined that he would find some aspect of the painting to comment positively on.

He was not prepared to be mesmerized.

The background of the piece was a swirling mass of white, gold, and cream that somehow managed to project the idea of sky without being any of the colors one would usually associate with that celestial body. A sunlit cloud, perhaps? And in the center, a dark indistinct figure might have been a bird. Or perhaps an angel. Or Icarus, falling?

But the more he looked at it, the more disquieted Waltolomew grew.

The wings were... not feathered, he realized after a moment. And while the work was still in progress, unfinished....

"Why the green?" he asked her.

"Hmm? Oh," Barbara said. "I don't really know. It's just something... like from a dream, maybe?" She laughed just a touch. "I don't usually remember my dreams."

He reached out a hand to the canvas but stopped shy of the still-wet paint. "It's... me, isn't it?"

Her eyes widened. Mouth agape, she stared first at him, then at the painting. "I suppose it must be," she said after a moment. "I...." Her voice died; she seemed at a loss for words.

He shared the feeling.

For lack of anything, he sipped his wine.

"Jim," Waltolomew said after a moment, "told me that I died in that other future."

Her blue eyes were big behind her glasses. "Oh, Walt."

"And that he didn't want me to die in this one. Now I find myself wondering... how did I die?" Somehow the idea of himself falling from the sky seemed to resonate all too well. "And was it a worthy death? Did I atone for my wrongs?"

Barbara bit her bottom lip. "It's never too late for change," she said softly.

"A concept I find myself agreeing with more every passing day," he agreed. Lowering his glass, he looked at her. "Is it enough, though, for a man to change? Can his past sins truly be disregarded?"

She took a moment before answering, which he appreciated. "A year ago," she said, "I might have said no, not unless that man had paid whatever debt society deemed a suitable punishment for his past deeds. Now?" She shrugged. "Now I know that there's more than one sapient society out there... and that each has different standards."

"The society to which I belong will never hold that our pasts should weigh us down, nor that we should seek redemption," he told her.

"A society which you're trying to drag screaming into some semblance of morality more like humans' and trolls'," she pointed out. Barbara sighed. "I don't have all the answers, Walt. I just know that my son has killed. In a battle, yes. Those who would have killed him, yes. But I also know that he told you to let Krax go. And you did. Didn't you?" she asked, peering up at him.

"I last saw him when I dropped him off at LAX," Waltolomew told her. "So far as I know, he is getting settled in up in Washington state."

"We're all just trying to muddle through," Barbara told him. "As long as you keep trying to be better, Walt, I'm willing to give you a chance."

"A chance," he said, "is all I ask for."