sakon76

Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 9th January 2022

Jim swallowed, approaching the table in Vendel's workshop. Beside which stood Vendel, Aaarrrgghh, and... Blinky.

"Ah, Master Jim!" his foster father said brightly, not seeming to notice his nerves. "Right on time!"

"A few minutes late," Vendel rebutted, looking at Jim none-too-charitably.

"Sorry, got hung up waiting for Draal," Jim apologized.

Aaarrrgghh raised his eyebrows. "Draal?"

Jim nodded. "And my apologies," he told Vendel, "for the invasion of human teenagers into Trollmarket."

The elder's face suddenly turned stormy. "What invasion?" he snapped.

"Mary and Darci, Steve and Eli," Jim listed.

"Young Mary is helping Tobias with his film," Blinky rushed to justify to Vendel, and "Darci is-- was-- will be Tobias' potential mate."

Vendel ground his teeth together. "Wonderful," he said. "And the other two?"

Jim shrugged. "Eli's a tech genius who's been putting together info on all the non-human stuff in Arcadia for years," he said. "And Steve... well. Steve's. Enthusiastic."

"Strong but dumb," Aaarrrgghh put in.

"Quite," Blinky agreed.

Sighing, Vendel ran a hand down his face. "Well, since they are already here, I suppose it is too late to bar them entrance," he said. "Draal is guiding them?"

"Draal and Claire," Jim confirmed.

Vendel sighed. "Let us all hope calmer heads will prevail. Now, shall we get to the task at hand?"

"Uhh, sure," Jim said, suddenly unsure. He'd been having second and third thoughts about this, and now they were coming fluttering back.

He was about to take a knife to someone he cared about, and carve out a literal piece of their flesh to put in his amulet.

The fact that he knew they needed the speed and strength of his half-troll form to take on Gunmar didn't ease the nausea bubbling up in his throat.

Vendel raised an eyebrow. "Problems, young Trollhunter?"

Jim swallowed. "You're sure this is okay?" he asked Blinky. "You're sure it won't hurt?"

"Oh, it will hurt a great deal," Blinky said cheerfully, putting a hand on Jim's shoulder. "Carvings always do! But I can think of no greater cause, nor any person to whom I should more cheerfully donate this."

"It hurts?" Jim asked, appalled.

"The ability to bear pain willingly is the mark of an adult," Vendel told him. "Parents sacrifice for their children; leaders, for their tribe. Trollhunters, for all." He looked curiously at Jim. "During your time as a troll, did you not receive carvings? You would be the first Trollhunter in our history who had not."

"Skin of stone, flesh of blood," Aaarrrgghh rumbled.

"I bled. Will bleed, hopefully," Jim said. "And humans just can't have flesh carved out of themselves without serious injury."

"Life-threatening, even," Blinky agreed.

"Hmm." Vendel seemed disapproving. "Then how do you humans mark your passage into adulthood?" he demanded. "How does the world know you are ready to step up and bear your responsibilities, if there is no mark?"

Jim shrugged. "We just kind of guess, I guess?" Douxie's invisible magic tattoos flashed through his mind, and how much the wizard had said they'd hurt. Had they been some kind of personal rite of passage, or just another cool thing Douxie had picked up through the centuries? "We can do tattoos, permanent ink drawings under the skin, but they're kind of frowned on in proper society."

"You guess." Vendel's tone was unimpressed. "I will never understand humans."

"Being fair," Jim said, "most of us humans don't understand ourselves either."

Vendel sighed, and turned away, gathering up tools from his workbench. He dropped them into Jim's arms: a hammer and chisel. Except....

"These aren't the ones we usually use," Jim said, surprised. They were heavier. And somehow colder. The silver sheen on the chisel's point was different, darker. And the hammer was almost black with age and use.

Vendel sniffed. "The equipment one uses on unliving stone is never that which is to be used for troll flesh."

"Because of... infection issues?" Jim wondered. Could trolls even get infections? Or get sick?

Vendel sniffed again. "We are not made of such weak materials as humans," he dismissed. "No. Blackstone simply cleaves more efficiently, more cleanly, through troll stone. But it is rare, and so reserved for sacred ceremonies. Such as adulthood rites. Or the joining of individuals in matrimony." He eyed Jim. "Or adoption."

Jim almost dropped the tools. "Adoption?"

Vendel raised an eyebrow. "A troll will give up his living flesh only to a few specific individuals, all of them considered as family. That Blinkous seeks to give his to you... speaks as loudly, perhaps more so, than any words that might come out of his garrulous mouth."

Jim blinked. And turned to look at his mentor. "Blinky...."

Blinky smiled at him, placing a hand on either of Jim's shoulders. "Jim. You and I have long considered one another as father and son. Why should I not wish to bear the mark of it? To show all and sundry that I am proud to be your father?"

Jim's throat tightened up. He swallowed. Then he flung his arms around Blinky, hugging, the special tools caught between them. "Thanks... Dad."

Blinky hugged back, and for a moment all was right in the world.

"I cannot believe you still have this thing," Douxie said, heaving another front quarter panel into Henry's trailer. His hands were protected by sturdy, but worn, borrowed work gloves as they scavenged among the scrapyard's derelict pieces.

"It's perfectly fine!" Henry defended.

"It's older than you are!"

"And it works!"

"I remember when your uncle first started hauling shop up to the Faire with it!" Douxie retorted. "And hauling you too, a few years later."

"I have two kids, a horse-dog-thing that wants to destroy everything not nailed down, and a huge ranch whose taxes go up every year thanks to people wanting to live in California," Henry said. In the truck bed, the dragon that at the moment looked like a cat, and the kelpie (demon horse) that at the moment looked like a kelpie (dog) exchanged glances. "I can't afford to replace everything that needs it. So I have to be economical where I can."

Hisirdoux paused and crossed his arms on the trailer's side, looking across it at Henry. "You know I'm going to be paying you for this job, right?"

"You're paying for the materials, yeah." Henry tossed another panel into the trailer where it bounced and vibrated before landing still.

"No, Hiccup, I'm paying you for the work as well."

Henry looked at him. "You don't have any money, Douxie. You've never had money, remember?"

"That's before I took up with a bunch of teenagers who have no qualms with performing a heist on a man-eating troll," Douxie told him. "We've got funds for the armor, as long as you don't mind being paid in gold."

Henry narrowed his eyes. "Do I need to worry about curses or the magical mafia?"

Douxie rolled his. "No."

"How much of a heist are we talking, here?"

"Given they didn't even blink an eye at dropping sixty grand on a time debt of mine, substantial," Douxie said. He looked at all the car parts they'd been putting in the trailer. "This has got to be enough, right?"

"After smelting and refining and enchanting it?" Henry heaved another hunk of scrap metal up and rested it on the trailer's lip. "No."

"Ugh." But despite his complaints, Douxie bent over and got back to work scavenging.

"Well, dear," the woman who was a changeling said as she sat on the stool next to the reclining dental chair Toby was in, "ready for a big change?"

He eyed her warily, remembering all too well how she'd tried to kill him in another timeline. "I am. How about you?" His amulet was in his pocket and his fingers itched toward it, but he didn't reach for it yet. Never pull a weapon unless you're going to use it, he remembered Jim Belaya saying in Mistrial and Error: New Orleans. And given the detective's 98% cases solved ratio, Toby felt pretty secure clinging to the advice of a fictional character.

"Oh, I don't know." She pursed her lips and tilted her beehive hairdo'd head to the side. "It's kind of hard to alter things that much, don't you think?"

There were knives under her words, Toby was pretty sure. But she hadn't numbed him with anything yet. If she'd wanted to be really threatening, she'd have done that before having this conversation. And he had his crystal necklace; if he broke it, his friends would be here in a shot. So even if he was drugged and helpless and unable to speak the amulet's incantation, he wasn't helpless. "It's not really much of an alteration, though, is it?" he asked. "I mean, it's just keeping things the way they are, and getting rid of some unnecessary extras, right?" He thought he was doing pretty good at this doublespeak thing.

"It might mean giving up some dreams." Her smile showed too many teeth.

"Yeah, but that's the thing about dreams," Toby felt the need to point out. "You can always find new ones."

"You think it's that simple?"

He nodded firmly. "Yeah, I do. I mean, it's like," he let his hand paint the air, "you spend all your life waiting for Gun Robot 5 to come out, then you finally get to see it in theaters, except... that plot." Disdain dripped from his words. "I mean, they killed off all those longtime characters for no good reason, the characterization was totally whack, and no matter how pretty the CG was, I'm pretty sure the writers or director or someone took a perfectly good script and put it through a shredder then taped it back together all wrong. And don't get me started on the ending!" He huffed in consternation. "It's almost enough to make you give up on the whole franchise, right?"

"But then," Toby said, "you think about it for a while, and you start to realize that it's just one piece of the whole, right? I mean, there's movies one through four, and the comics, and the cartoon, and all the action figures. Plus all the good times you and your friends have had with the universe, right? You've played, and made things, and just enjoyed yourself, right? So maybe one bad director doesn't get to ruin all that for you." He looked hopefully at his dental assistant.

She looked confused.

"Stories are what you make of them," Toby said quietly. "And they can be retold in different ways, by different people. And if there's something good in the middle of something bad, you take that thing and run with it, and make it your own. So it's not wrong to love bits of something bad. But that doesn't mean you get to ignore all the badness of it either. It just means you get to work to make it something better, for yourself, and for others."

"I... see you really love Gun Robot," Gladysgro said.

Toby grinned. "Yeah, it's awesome. It's just one of the really awesome things about this world, you know?"

She sighed and softened, huffing a little laugh. "I guess so," she said. Her eyes flashed briefly yellow, then returned to blue. "Trollhunter." She smiled. "Now, let's get ready to get those braces of yours off. I've been told your teeth will never in their life feel as smooth as they will today."

"Whoo." Jim let his breath rush out. Took another breath in to replace the air that had left him. He could do this. He could totally do this. "Right," he said, totally not stalling at all. "How do I do this? Where do I... cut?"

His mom did surgery. This couldn't be that difficult, right? Just knock a bit of stone out of Blinky.

Out of a living, breathing person.

Out of his dad.

He absolutely could not do this.

"Blinkous?" asked Vendel, either not noticing or choosing to ignore how Jim's hands had begun to shake, the tools held in them shivering with his faltering nerves.

"I had thought perhaps a diamond here," Blinky said, looking to the elder as if for approval. He tapped his own chest, over what would be a sternum for a human.

"A good place, for such a permanent mark," Vendel approved. "Visible to all, denoting this human's familial claim upon you."

"A claim which is mutual," Blinky shot back.

"Hmph." But whatever Vendel doubtlessly thought about the preposterousness of such an interspecies family relationship, he kept it to himself. "Well, Trollhunter?" he said, turning to Jim. "Let us see you get to it."

Jim stepped forward, eyes on where Blinky's finger rested contentedly on his chest, denoting where Jim was to just chisel a piece of his stone flesh out. Like it was easy. Like it meant nothing, while at the same time meaning all too much.

Jim tried to raise the tools, but they didn't even get halfway before his arms fell back to his sides. "Blink, I can't," he whispered, looking up into six brown eyes. "I can't do this. I can't hurt you."

Surprise washed across Blinky's face, followed by understanding. "Jim, this is no bad thing," he said softly, two of his hands coming to rest gently on Jim's upper arms, holding him. "This is something I give willingly to you, to increase your chances of survival. To give you and Tobias a better chance to defeat our enemies."

"I can't hurt you," Jim repeated, looking up at his mentor, tears starting to prick at his eyes. "Blinky, I hurt so many people, even if some of them will never remember it. I can't hurt you too."

Blinky sighed and folded him close, all four arms coming around Jim in an embrace. "My boy, this is something I have never dared ask of you, but believe me, your marking me as your family is something I have long desired. In no world could I have a son I considered more highly, or loved more greatly, than yourself. To be marked as your father, to shout that relationship before all trollkind, would be a privilege beyond the worlds we have known."

Jim snuffled, wiped at his eyes. His throat was tight. He couldn't speak.

"Too, I will share with you this thought: I understand that the act of humans creating life, giving birth to their offspring, is most painful. Yet I do not think your mother for an instant has thought you unworthy of the agony of bringing you into the world. Do you?"

Jim shook his head. "No." If there was one thing he was rock-certain of, it was how much he and his mother loved one another.

"Then why do you hesitate and think that a father's connection should be worthy of less pain?"

That hit somewhere Jim wasn't expecting, and stopped him cold. Because... was that what this was?

It was, wasn't it?

Less icky than what he knew of childbirth, but... this was his way to become a troll again. To be part of Blinky's society the way he had never been before Merlin's potion.

Flesh of my flesh, stone of my stone.

A foot in both worlds. The way he was supposed to be.

Drawing a shaky breath, Jim raised his hands as Blinky released his embrace.

Jim's grip on the tools was as solid as stone.

"Here?" he asked, touching the chisel gently to Blinky's chest and looking up to meet his father's eyes.

Blinky smiled, gentle. "Yes," he said. "There, Jim."

"This place is AWESOME!" Steve shouted, eyes wide and shining as he hefted a claymore above his head. His voice echoed around the Forge. "Take this, creepers!" he yelled, chopping at imaginary foes.

"He is... very enthusiastic," Draal observed as Eli clung to his own chosen weapon, a mace that almost overpowered his weak arms.

Eli laughed, watching the other human. "Yeah, that's Steve. Enthusiastic for anything that hurts other people."

Draal raised an eyeridge, curious about the note of bitterness in the human's voice. "You sound as though you have experience of his attacks."

"You could say that." Eli pushed his glasses up. "Um, could you teach me how to use this?" he asked, looking up at Draal.

Draal thought about Toby, about how he'd been similarly nervous about weapons in the beginning, before he'd learned to wield Daylight. Before he'd learned he had the strength to defend himself, and others. "It would be my honor," he said. "First, your grip," he instructed the boy. "Slide your hands lower."

"Like this?"

"Yes," Draal said softly. That the boy needed gentleness was obvious. That, despite that, he had steel in him was made equally obvious by the fact the Trollhunters had thought him worthy to come to Trollmarket. Draal hadn't known Toby, Jim, and Claire long - but he'd known them long enough to realize the value of their judgment. "Now your stance," he instructed. "Find your center, your balance. Left foot farther back. Good."

And as he led the smaller human into simple strikes, the larger, spurred by jealousy, joined them and copied him.

Draal smiled. He enjoyed fighting, it was true; he would not deny it. But as much as he liked it, he also loved teaching others to discover their strength and master it. As humans untouched by magic, they would never be able to match him in brute strength... but that did not, he was discovering, make them useless.

Rather the opposite.

"Ugh." Hisirdoux flopped forward, draping himself on the truck's dash as the vehicle rumbled to life. "I grow weary of effort."

Henry patted him on the shoulder. "There's a reason I'm the smith-mage, not you."

"Yeah, it's that I don't have a specialty," Douxie moaned, feeling momentarily envious of those mages who had a simpler path to follow.

"Sucks to be you," Henry said, his tone giving lie to his words, and set the truck in gear, driving slowly, cautiously, out of the junkyard. Douxie straightened and leaned back against the seat. Behind them, in the truck bed, the dragon and kelpie hunkered down, watching as behind them the trailer full of scrap metal bobbled along. Douxie had never quite understood Archie's friendship with Tannlaus, but then he guessed he didn't have to understand it, just accept it. Accept that the kelpie had some way of communicating that wasn't strictly verbal. Because he knew that Tannlaus understood spoken language; he just never bothered responding to it.

"I can rough out your armor with maybe one fitting," Henry said. "The girl, though, I'll need to do a couple since I've never seen her before and have no idea of proportions. When can you bring her by?"

Douxie mentally ran through his own schedule and Claire's. "Probably Sunday, after she's done with church?" He pulled out his cellphone and shot Claire a quick message, trying to confirm with her. "I can come out Friday and Saturday, after I'm done with work and band practice."

"I can do the work myself, you know." Henry's tone was mild.

"I know. You're better than I am at smithing. But I need to keep my hand in, Hiccup, and I need some of the magic in both sets to be mine. And hers, for that matter."

"She's got magic?"

"Shadowmancy," Douxie confirmed. "I can't find her a proper master, so she and I are muddling along as best we can. But I can tell you, she's going to be powerful."

Henry's eyes were wide.

Douxie sighed. "She's as much a warrior as a mage. She's also the girlfriend of the divine king I mentioned, and I will be shocked if they don't get married in a few years. Once they're out of high school."

The truck swerved on the thankfully empty country road. "They're in school?" Henry demanded. "What the hell, Hisirdoux?"

Douxie closed his eyes. "Not my doing," he said regretfully. "The blame for almost all the child soldiers in Arcadia can be laid at the feet of Merlin. I didn't even meet any of them until it was already too late."

"There's more of them?" Henry demanded.

"Yeah." Douxie looked out the window so he wouldn't have to see the shock and outrage on the face of his friend. On the face of a mage who had chosen to remain mortal. Who had chosen to limit himself, for the sake of the girl he loved, who never could become immortal.

Henry had a wife and children. Had a mostly normal life. Douxie had always wanted the magic. Had spent centuries dancing with it, delighting in it, delving into its mysteries. But Henry, for all that he was powerful and skilled, had wanted something else more.

"Actually," Douxie said, "would you mind if I dragged a couple other people out on Sunday to meet you, too?"

Henry cast him a sidelong glance. "Oh...?"

"The aforementioned child soldiers." Douxie crossed his arms, stared moodily out the windshield. "I've got three of them flirting with immortality because all the mages they've met have been immortals, so they think they have to be that way also. I want them to see what you've got going. If they really want to choose forever, I can't and won't stand in their way, but I need them to be sure, and that means showing them other examples as well."

"Hmm." Henry concentrated on driving. "Sure, bring them along. I'll be interested to meet them."

"Oh my, I'd forgotten how that smarted," Blinky said, holding his hand to his chest, where a neat diamond had been excised from his stone, marking him for all to see.

A huge hand patted his shoulder. "Blinky very brave."

"Thank you, my dear friend," he said, patting Aaarrrgghh's hand in return.

"And now the stone must be cleaved," Vendel told Jim, not sparing Blinky (and his aching chest) a glance.

"I kind of figured." Jim shot Blinky a smile. "It's way too big to fit into the amulet like this."

"Haha, indeed!" Blinky laughed. "Distill it down to its essence, and let us see how well it works."

He stayed seated, hand rubbing the pain away, and watched as Jim took the blue rock over to the worktable. He had grown confident over the course of his stone-cleaving journey; he barely needed Vendel's directions and corrections, moving the hammer and chisel with ease. It was indeed reminiscent of his growth on the path to becoming a Trollhunter.

By the time the pain eased, Jim had cleaved away all the dross, crumbs of blue stone falling onto the table and being brushed aside. All that was left was for him to take the stone's heart to the grinding wheel and polish it into its final form. Which Blinky's son did, without hesitation.

Blinky stood, and approached, shadowed by Aaarrrgghh, as Jim finished his work and held the stone in his hand. His eyes met Blinky's, then he pulled the amulet out of his pocket. Its back irised open; two small stones rested in the divots that encircled the Time Stone. Jim put Blinky's living flesh in one of the remaining spots, equidistant from the others.

"A moment," Vendel said, forestalling the amulet sealing. The elder approached, a box in his hand. "If you are to become half a troll," he said, "and take on our weaknesses as well as our strengths, I find it wise to give this to you now." From the box he drew forth a stone, tiny between his fingers. It sparkled yellow in the light.

"What does it do?" Jim asked.

"It will allow you to walk in daylight," Vendel replied mildly.

Jim's eyes went wide; his mouth formed an "o". "Thank you," he said, after a moment. His heart was in his voice.

Vendel dropped the stone into Jim's hand; Jim set it into the amulet, between the tiger's eye and fire opal. The amulet irised shut and shone briefly blue.

"Try it, Master Jim," Blinky urged. Aaarrrgghh, behind him, nodded.

Jim drew a deep breath. "All right. Here goes nothing," he said. "For the good of all, Excalibur is mine to command!"

Blue light flared.

Author's Note: My Wonderful Husband/editor did not know that there was, in fact, a breed of dogs also called kelpies and thought I made it up. There totally is! The fact that Tannlaus understands that implies a certain level of intelligence, and perhaps a Charlemagne-like fondness for plays on words. :) Also, Toby's feelings about Gun Robot 5 maaaay or may not be me projecting a bit about Rise of the Titans.