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sakon76Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 3rd January 2022
"Well," Jim reported, "the fire opal does nothing. The fire opal plus the tiger's eye does nothing. Let's hope you're right about stone from a living troll being the key."
"I am always right, except when I am extremely wrong," Douxie told him. "So you've got fifty-fifty odds."
Jim just stared at Douxie, blinking. "Sometimes I have no idea how to take you," he said, and turned instead to Claire, ignoring Douxie's grin.
"Not a great day in Trollmarket, then?" she asked.
He shrugged. "An... okay day in Trollmarket?" he guessed. "They're staring less at me, anyway. Familiarity breeds contempt, and all that."
She stifled a snorted laugh.
"And you guys?" Jim asked, looking at the empty spaces left behind on his cookie cooling racks. "Lots of magic?"
"Lots of cookies," Claire said, grinning. "Which are delicious, by the way."
"Agreed," Douxie said. "Mary's going to take a few weeks to get down the underpinnings of magic, which I'm better at, but I think after that I'll be handing her off to Zoe for offensive training."
Jim was... confused. "I thought you were mad at Zoe."
Douxie shrugged, the weight of his years crossing his face. "Sad and disappointed, mostly. But Zo's better at working with electricity than me, so she'll be able to teach Mary some aspects of the art I can't. And, speaking of offensive stuff... we need to get Claire some armor for whenever we deal with Gunmar, especially since she hasn't the Shadow Staff to boost her this time around."
Claire grimaced. "Merlin made my armor."
"In the garage. Out of my Vespa," Jim said, still indignant and pissed about that, even though it had been almost two years and a whole other timeline ago.
Douxie stared. "He what? Even I know how much you love that thing, and I didn't even know you then!"
"Yeah, well... Merlin."
The wizard blinked. Then huffed out a breath. "Right. Forging armor I can do, though I'll want a better setup than your garage to do a proper job of it. I'll get in touch with a friend of mine, see if he'll let me use his."
"And... not my Vespa?" Jim asked hopefully.
"And not your Vespa," Douxie promised. "That's what scrapyards are for."
"Hey, Doux." Claire sounded hesitant. "Why don't you have any armor?"
The wizard shrugged. "Merlin never forged any for me. Back in Camelot, I was too useless, and after he woke up in the modern era, you lot were his main concern."
"And... you never made any for yourself?" Jim asked. "I mean, Merlin wore armor all the time. I've never seen him out of it, come to think."
"And Morgana has armor too, so it's definitely not a wizards don't wear armor thing," Claire put in.
There was something on Douxie's face that Jim didn't know how to read. "It's just not for me," Douxie said finally, softly.
"But what if someone gets close enough to hit you with a sword or something?" Claire pressed. "Or, I don't know, Bellroc gets you with a fireball."
"If someone gets close enough to me that I get injured, I will deserve it," Douxie said. "I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm a spellcaster. Bar a bit of staff fighting, my main tactic and style keeps people at a distance."
"Douxie...."
"Besides," Douxie said, forcing levity into his voice that didn't quite reach his eyes, "I've got Archie. Who needs armor when you've got a dragon?"
"That argument would work better if Archie was bigger than a breadbox," Jim told him.
Hazel eyes met his. "Don't push me on this, Jim," Douxie warned quietly.
A few seconds passed before Jim yielded. "Fine," he said, not happy about the thought of Douxie's vulnerability, but not in the mood to push further than Douxie wanted him to go.
"Anyhow, I'm off then, both to wake a sleeping dragon, and make a few calls about forgery," Douxie said. "See you later, lovebirds." He tossed them a salute and wandered upstairs.
"Sometimes I worry about him," Jim said.
"Me too," said Claire. "But, well... 'he will do as he do do, and there's no doing anything about it'."
Jim looked at her quizzically.
"It's from Cats," Claire explained, which explained exactly nothing.
Jim sat down next to her, and took her hand. "Well, since Douxie won't tell me what's going on in his head, how about you tell me what you learned today?"
Claire broke into a wide smile, and suddenly the day somehow seemed so much brighter.
Douxie closed the bedroom door, waking his familiar, and slid down against it.
"Douxie...?" asked Archie.
"They asked why I don't have armor," Douxie said softly. "Why I've never had armor. Why Merlin never made me any, the way he did for them. Why I never made any for myself."
"Oh." Archie jumped down from the bed and crossed the room to rub his cheek against Douxie's. "They do have a point, you know."
"I'd sooner die," Douxie said.
"Doux." Archie waited until Douxie was looking at him. His gold eyes were serious. "Without armor... against who you will be going up against, you might."
Douxie looked away.
"The symbol is not the thing, you know this."
"The symbol is not the thing?" Douxie laughed incredulously and let a spell circle bubble up, hovering over his hand. "I'm a wizard, Arch. For me, the symbol most certainly is the thing."
"The knights weren't all that bad--"
"All? No? Most? Yes. They were bullies and petty tyrants, and I was an easy target - Arthur was happy enough for them to take out their aggression on yet another magic-user, and they knew I didn't dare complain to Merlin, or I'd risk losing my place. And since I didn't complain, the old man didn't know I needed protecting. If he even would have."
"That was nine hundred years ago," Archie said softly. "Isn't it time to let those old associations fade? Jim and Toby wear armor, and you don't so much as twitch around them."
"They're sweet lads," Douxie said. "They're what modern culture likes to dream Camelot actually was. They're nothing at all like Arthur's landed thugs."
"And you're nothing at all like Merlin."
"I," said Douxie, "am all too much like Merlin, and that keeps me up at night."
"He does have some good characteristics."
"I know." Douxie crossed his arms on his raised knees, rested his chin on them. "And I know I'm being stupid about this. But getting rid of early-life trauma isn't that easy, you know."
Archie rubbed up against him again. "I know, Doux. But you've got to try. For me. Please?"
Douxie was silent for a long minute, then sighed and dropped his head, forehead now resting on his arms. "All right," he told his lap and his familiar. "I'll try."
Eli wanted to know EVERYTHING.
He wanted to know all about magic, and meet more trolls, and apparently Douxie's cat was really a DRAGON, and this blew wide open everything he'd spent years trying to figure out. Arcadia Oaks really was as weird as Eli had always suspected, and now he not only had proof, he had answers!
He'd had to take down half his conspiracy board and rearrange it, and put question marks by the rest, because he was pretty sure they were real, but Mary's magic lesson had been about her, not him, so he didn't want to interrupt with too many questions.
But Douxie... hadn't blown him off. Not once. Hadn't laughed, or thought he was crazy, or touched in the head, or even just too weird to associate with, the way Mary still did, even though she was the one who was a witch. He'd just smiled, and heard out Eli's theories, and corrected them where he was wrong.
It was entirely possible, Eli admitted to himself, that he was developing a little bit of a crush on Douxie.
(And the fact that he'd laughingly mentioned aliens to Douxie, and the wizard had gotten a weird look on his face and just told him to put a pin in that one... well, Eli was intrigued.)
This, he decided happily as he pinned the last snapshot back to his board, arranged now to make sense, was going to be the best school year ever.
This was going to be the worst school project ever, Eli decided.
Steve came barreling into health class late, bearing excuses. Toby barely avoided Steve knocking his Sharpie into his and Darci's flour baby.
And then Eli got paired with Steve to raise their own flour baby. Couldn't it have been someone else? Anyone else?
Well, it wasn't like he wasn't used to doing all the work on group projects, Eli thought. Maybe he'd get lucky and the guy best known for making him do his homework, stealing his lunch money, and shoving him into lockers wouldn't be interested and would just leave him alone to raise their baby for the next twenty-four hours. Single parenthood was totally doable - just look at Jim's mom!
...Yeah, Eli wasn't that lucky.
But, wow, the fact that Coach Lawrence was apparently dating Steve's mom? Somehow that made sense, Eli thought.
Then Steve, of all people, was asking about monsters and making plans to come to his house after school.
The part of the exchange that was weirdest was the thought that Steve knew where he lived.
"So, think there'll be any gruesomes at the rock show this time?" Toby asked, pulling the wagon holding Petunia and Sir Isaac Gluten.
"Dunno," Claire said. "I mean, Gunmar and his troops aren't out, so there shouldn't be any extra arms laying around, should there?"
"Please tell me you didn't keep a trophy from Bular," Jim pleaded.
"Ugh, no, please." Toby held his hand up. "I only make mistakes once, Jimbo."
Jim laughed. "Guess so."
"Gotta say, it was extra nice of you giving Mary a heads-up on the whole 'no bathing the flour baby' thing, Claire," Toby said.
Claire laughed. "She's my friend, I'm not going to let her fail if I can help it."
"Friends are the best," Toby said happily. Then he noticed that Jim had stopped and fallen behind. "Hey, what's up, Jimbo?"
Jim was looking at both the flour babies, his mouth in a line. He blinked a few times, then looked back at Toby and Claire. "About the whole immortality thing...."
"I thought we decided about it?" Claire asked. "I mean, I'm not yet, and your mom figured out a way out for you guys."
"Yeah." Jim took a breath and let it out. "But... what if that's not the end? I mean, after Gunmar, we thought we were all done, right? World saved, go us, happy fade to black, right? But then came General Morando. And then the Arcane Order."
"Yeah, and we're going to kick all their butts this time," said Toby. "I mean, we're prepared, and we've got like over a year to prep for taking the Order down, right?"
"My point is," Jim said, "what if that's not the end? What if something else happens after them? That's been like three world-ending disasters in two years. What if there's another one after that? What if," he said, looking upset, "we've destroyed the amulets, and there's no one left who can fight it?"
Claire's eyes were wide. Toby's were too, because that was something he hadn't thought about.
"Jim, you can't hold up the world by yourself," Claire protested. "There'll be other people to fight the battles."
"Yeah. Douxie." Jim's tone was bitter. "And only Douxie."
"There's all the other wizards--"
"Given how they threw him over just for slipping up?" Jim shook his head. "And I don't know about you guys, but I sure as hell didn't see them fighting Gunmar or the Order."
There was a long moment's pause. Then, "So you're saying we have to be immortal," Toby said.
"No. I'm saying this is something we need to think about," Jim said. "And I just don't think I can leave Douxie all alone with that burden."
"So you're saying." Claire wet her lips. "You're saying you're going to live forever, Jim?"
"I'm saying, I think I have to." Jim kept his girlfriend's gaze. "You guys helped me pull Excalibur from the stone, but I'm the one who made myself into a divine king. I think I have to do this."
"Jim, you're jumping at shadows," Claire protested, "at maybes! There's no guarantee there will be more monsters and disasters later!"
"No," said Jim, "but there's no guarantee there won't be, either."
Eli couldn't believe his luck. Steve had somehow caught a creeper! And it was still alive, and, wow, he'd never seen one this close up before.
...They really didn't smell as bad when they were still alive.
He wished he'd asked what they were called, but he'd had so many questions for Jim and Douxie, and he didn't want to overwhelm them and wear out his welcome.
Well, calling it a creeper would do for now, until he could find out what the green creatures were actually called.
And the fact that Steve didn't know that monsters were real, while Eli did....
Having the upper hand for the first time felt really, really nice. And Eli was maybe enjoying it just a bit too much as he informed Steve that Arcadia Oaks was a hotbed for supernatural activity. Because, really, how could anyone not see that? They'd have to be willfully blind, or... or have their heads stuck in the sand or something.
Which most people did.
But then the creeper tried to convince the two of them that Jim was masterminding everything going on in Arcadia: all the pet disappearances, the trash cans being knocked over every morning, the weird missing kids listings on the local milk cartons....
"Jim? But Jim's a king?" Eli protested.
Steve grabbed him by his shirtfront. "I'm Spring Fling King, Pepperjack! Me! Not Lake."
"Not Spring Fling King," Eli protested. "He's a divine king! That's different." Though even after seeing the scary lake monster give Jim a crown, he didn't understand just what it was, or what it meant, or how Jim, of all people, was one.
The creeper froze.
"Whatever." Steve dumped him on his butt, in his own room. "Come on, Pepperjack. We've got a world to save."
Suddenly the talk of monsters made a penny drop.
"Oh... crap," Toby said, eyes widening.
Claire and Jim looked at him. "What is it, Toby?"
"There's not a troll arm at the rock show this time," Toby realized. "But there's like a whole troll body on display at the museum."
Claire and Jim looked at each other, eyes wide. "Bular," Jim breathed.
"Crud," said Claire. She had her phone out already, dialing. "I'm calling Nomura--"
"Tobes, we got to book it home," Jim said.
"What? Why?"
"We need to get some flour," Jim said, with a glance at their flour babies. "And not fail the assignment this time!"
"Oh yeah," Toby said, looking at his and Darci's baby. "Nana can look after them for a while. If she's not busy with chess club."
"Go!" Claire said, gesturing at the two of them. "I'll meet you there. Hi, Miss Nomura--"
Toby and Jim ran.
Somehow, after Steve's grand theft auto, and his plans to take the creeper to the police and incriminate Jim in... things, the creeper, which Eli was calling Mustache, got out of the cat carrier and decided to take a turn at driving.
And he was horrible at it!
And then he got into the pepper spray, choking and blinding both Eli and Steve, as he made his escape, and Steve...
...and Steve...
"My mom's car!" Eli wailed, staring horrified at the wreck. "She's going to kill me!"
And Mustache was gone.
But Steve was still on about his lead, about getting to the source of things. About getting to Jim.
Eli retrieved their baby from the back seat of his mom's car and ran after him.
"I don't give a flip, Pepperjack!"
"Don't talk that way about our son!"
Jim answered the door and blinked. "Hey, Eli. Hi... Steve."
Steve pushed inside. "We know you're up to something, Lake."
"Uhh..." Jim blinked. "What's going on?" he asked Eli.
"Pay attention to me, Lake!" Steve got up in his face. "I don't know what you're up to, but we're gonna put a stop to it."
"Steve caught a creeper and it tried to tell us you're behind everything going on in Arcadia," Eli said nervously, shifting the flour baby in his arms.
A laugh came from the stairs. "Hardly everything," Douxie said, coming down the steps.
"Douxie!" Eli lit up. "Wait, what're you doing here?"
"I live here," Douxie replied. "So what's this 'creeper' I hear you caught?"
"It was green, about the size of a cat, with long legs and pointy ears," Steve said, frowning at Douxie. "And what do you mean you live here?"
"Exactly what he said," Jim butted in. "So you caught a goblin? Great. Good job, Steve. What did you do with it?"
"It crashed my mom's car and got away," Eli reported.
"They're called goblins?" Steve demanded. "I thought you said they were creepers!" he said, rounding on Eli.
"I didn't know what they were called!" Eli defended himself.
Another knock came on the door. Jim opened it again to find Toby waiting. "All ready to go, Jimbo!" he reported. "Nana's out so Chompsky and Sally are babysitting. Whoa. Hey, Eli, hey Steve."
"You're letting Chompsky babysit?" Jim demanded.
"Yeah, he and Sally are thinking of having kids, so they need the practice."
"They're thinking of--you know what, I don't want to know." Jim dragged his hand down his face and turned to face Douxie. "We think there's a gruesome headed for the museum, and I'm apparently just about out of flour because I baked all those cookies yesterday. Do you have any ideas?"
Douxie blinked. "A gruesome? Sorry, no. I've always tended to leave scavengers alone. They do no harm, and are actually a pretty vital part of the ecosystem."
"You leave those things alone?"
Eli pushed up his glasses. "Um, what's a gruesome?"
"A goo monster," Toby told him. "They eat troll remains."
Douxie sighed. "Toby, I don't suppose there's any flour left at your house, is there?" he asked.
Toby shook his head. "Sorry, no. Nana went on a baking binge for the Rotary Club bake sale last week."
"Wonderful."
"Um, so what do you need flour for?"
"It's the best way to take out a gruesome," Jim explained.
"Yeah, that and a dwarkstone," Toby muttered.
"Which we don't have," Jim said, hands snarling in frustration, "and it didn't work that well last time either. Argh!"
"Might I suggest the old divide and conquer gambit?" a new voice suggested. Archie came down the stairs, tail held high.
Steve shrieked, cowering behind Eli. "The cat talked!"
"He's not a cat, he's my familiar," Douxie said, kneeling. "What's your plan, Arch?"
"You and I go procure flour from the store, and meet these four at the museum."
"Why... why does the talking cat have glasses?" Steve asked.
Archie spared him a glance as Douxie stood. "Much the same reason Eli does. Bad eyesight."
"Well, it's not a great plan," Jim said, "but it's the best we've got. Meet you there?"
"Meet you there," Douxie agreed with a fistbump, already fishing his backpack and skateboard gear out of the hall closet. "Come on, Arch."
"And let's just leave your little fellow with all the other babies," Toby said to Eli as Douxie headed out. "What's his name?"
"Flip," Eli supplied. "His other dad named him."
And then it was Jim and Steve alone. "Come on," Jim said, reaching up to the high shelf in the hall closet. "I've got a couple baseball bats you and Eli can use."
"So, why's the college guy living here?" Steve demanded. "Is he like your boyfriend, Lake?"
Jim shoved the bats into Steve's arms a little harder than was strictly necessary. "He's my brother, jackass."
Steve snorted. "Yeah, right. I happen to know for a fact you're an only child."
"It's called adoption, Steve. Look it up."
"You had better be right about this," Nomura said to Claire on the museum's front steps.
"We're not sure-sure," Claire said, "but there was a gruesome at the rock show the first time around. And while you don't have a Gumm-Gumm arm on display this time, you do have Bular."
Nomura sniffed. "I should have known that was a mistake."
"I don't know. I thought it was pretty funny," Claire offered.
Nomura cast her a sideways glance and smiled. "I like you."
"Thanks."
Then a Vespa and a pair of bikes pulled up. "Eli?" Claire asked, confused. "Steve?" She turned to her boyfriend, looking for an answer.
"They caught a goblin, it tried to implicate me, they showed up at my door, we decided to bring them along," Jim summed up.
"Great." Claire looked again. "No flour?"
"Jimbo and I are both out," Toby reported. "Douxie's hitting up the grocery store and will meet us here. We just need to keep it busy until then."
"If there's even a gruesome here," Nomura cut in. Her gaze flickered over all five of them. "Quarter the museum, search for it, report back to me. If you find one, I'll evacuate the building."
"Yes, ma'am!" Eli piped up, holding his baseball bat nervously.
She rolled her eyes. "Get to it!" Nomura commanded.
Author's Note: And we hit the episode "Just Add Water." Douxie is the only human fighting in the battles who doesn't have armor. And it's clearly not a wizard thing - Merlin, Morgana, and Claire all have armor. And Merlin made armor for Claire and Toby, but not for his own apprentice? I know it's a thematic comparison between Douxie and Merlin - one is gentle and soft, the other impervious and hard - but, really, that has never sat right with me. So just as Merlin makes up excuses for himself for his treatment of his (currently ex-)apprentice, so does Douxie makes up reasons for why he doesn't have/want/need armor, really. My eight-year-old suggested that he didn't need armor because he had a dragon, so I had to write that in as well.
