[fic] [Tales of Arcadia] Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet 75/?

[sakon76]

Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 23rd January 2022

The car pulled up to the house. She shut off the engine and stepped out. "Henry!" Astrid called, before going to the back doors, where her two monkeys, already unbuckled, were clamoring to be let out. She smirked at them and opened the door. They didn't know that there was a child safety latch on the back doors, and she was not going to tell her kids it even existed. Nuffink was too smart for his own good, and Zephyr was a trickster god incarnate. If they could get the car doors open on their own, all her hope of control would go right out the window.

"Back forty!" came the call from beyond his workshop, and the kids were off like a shot. She followed at a more sedate pace, wondering if his customers were still present. There was no unknown vehicle in the driveway, so it was 50/50....

Apparently they were. Apparently they were a good deal younger than she'd come to expect. And, apparently, she saw as one of them turned around, they weren't all strangers either.

"Hello, Douxie," she said, eyes narrowed. Most of the time he came around, trouble was nibbling at his heels.

If he took offense at her tone, his face didn't show it. He swept a court-worthy bow at her. "Sir Astrid."

"It's been a few years."

"Indeed it has," he said, with a nod at the two children dogpiling their father. "Congratulations."

"Mmm." Her tone was studiously neutral. If he was a paying customer, she really shouldn't try to intimidate him. "Come to drop off any more demon horses?"

The wizard's eyes narrowed in return. "Still sore about losing that bout in '05?"

She saw red. "I didn't lose. You cheated!"

"You lost."

Her hand balled into a fist.

"Aaaand this is why he never comes around anymore," Henry cut in, coming physically between them, a triumphant seven-year-old atop his shoulders and the four-year-old clinging to his good leg. "Astrid, you know he had nothing to do with Tannlaus. Douxie, stop needling her."

"Oh, but watching it is such good sport," said the cat sitting on the fence.

"I feel like I need some popcorn," the ugly little green creature sitting next to him agreed.

Douxie watched Astrid for a moment longer, then said, "Well, I suppose we're done here for the day. Hiccup, I'll get the funds to you in the next few days--"

"Oh no you don't," Henry said, catching Douxie by his collar as the other wizard tried to leave. "The deal was for two sets of armor. You're staying while we work on that second set."

"Really, it's no trouble, I'll reimburse you for the effort--"

"Douxie." It was the cat that spoke again now, catching Hisirdoux Casperan's attention. "You promised."

The wizard wilted.

"Sodding fuzzbuckets," he muttered as Henry released him. His shoulders slumped. "Fine, Arch. You win. Armor it is."

"Douxie," said the cat, and it just wasn't natural to see so much heart in an animal's eyes.

"I said I'll do it," the wizard snapped to his familiar. "You don't have to keep pestering me."

And the eyes of the other three teenagers were wide, their faces surprised, as Douxie stalked off toward the workshop, never looking back at them.

---

The others did give him the basic courtesy of a few minutes to get himself calmed down. He didn't know if it was Henry holding them back, or Archie....

When someone finally did come in after him, though, he was surprised it wasn't his familiar.

It was Jim.

Douxie wasn't sure if that was better or worse.

"Sorry I snapped," he said quietly.

"It's fine," Jim said, equally quiet. He left space between them, like Douxie was some kind of strange animal he wasn't quite sure how to handle. "Archie said you're upset about this."

"You hardly need him to determine that," said Douxie. He didn't meet Jim's eyes. His reluctance about armor was something he knew Jim would never, ever understand.

"Can you tell me what's wrong?"

Douxie turned toward Henry's drafting table, set under a north-facing window so the sun would never shine in his eyes while he worked. It was littered with draft sketches, with more pinned to the wall around the window, notes scribbled in the margins of all of them. The sign of a determined, creative mind. He rolled an X-acto knife back and forth under his palm across the table's surface. "It's not something you'll understand."

"Try me." There was steel in Jim's voice.

Douxie sighed. Roll, roll, roll. "When we were back in Camelot," he said, "as little of him as you saw... did you see my younger self interacting at all with the knights?"

Jim thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. "No. But you're right I didn't see much of him. You and him side by side was really weird, by the way. I wouldn't have been able to tell you apart except for the blue hair. Even Archie at least has his glasses on when he's copying you."

Douxie laughed, softly. "Arch does that a good deal less than you'd think. Overall he really does like being a cat most of the time."

"Douxie."

"Yes, fine, off-topic. Tell me," he invited, "can you think of any reason Arthur's knights might not have liked Merlin taking on another apprentice? Especially one who wasn't even of royal blood, the way Lady Morgana was?"

Jim shrugged. "What could they do? I mean, magic or not, you were his apprentice, right? That should have protected you."

Douxie couldn't help the laugh that barked out of him. "Should have?" he asked, the blade momentarily forgotten. "'Should have' covers a lot of sins. They didn't like me, Jim. They especially didn't like that I was a street rat living in the castle. If Merlin had to take another magical apprentice, it should have been someone of proper breeding. Not some guttersnipe con artist magical peasant filth." He glared. "The knights, and their squires, and the pages... not to mention a decent percentage of the servants...." He let Jim draw his own conclusions.

His brother's voice was low. "What happened."

"What didn't happen?" Douxie shrugged. "Sand in my bread, if it wasn't burnt. Piss in the water, if I didn't haul it from the well myself. Getting tripped regularly in the halls, oh isn't it a pity Merlin's new apprentice is such a clumsy boy?" His voice had taken on a mocking tone. "Though that at least tapered off by year two, when most of the servants figured out I wasn't putting on any airs. But then," he said. "Then Merlin wanted me out of his hair for a few hours a day, and sent me off to learn to fight. With the squires. From the knights."

Jim's expression was unreadable. "Why did you stay?"

"Because it was my one shot, Jim! I got to learn magic, real magic, from the greatest wizard in the world. If Merlin had told me to walk barefoot over coals, I would've done it, for that chance. I would have done anything for Merlin. All the... all the crap the servants and pages pulled on me, I could've ignored for that. And I did." Douxie forced himself to simmer down. "I never said a word of it to Merlin. I barely left his side unless he told me to."

"Except when he told you to go train."

Douxie's smile was mirthless. "They couldn't kill me. They knew that, and after a while so did I. Anything else, though? Fair game."

"All of them?" Jim's face was appalled.

"Mob mentality," Douxie said. "There were a few who weren't so horrible. I liked Sir Bedivere, and Sir Gareth was as kind as he could be in the face of his fellows, but the rest of them?" He shook his head.

Jim's eyes narrowed. "Merlin never noticed? The cuts, the bruises?"

Douxie gave him a wan smile. "By then," he said, "it was well known, even and especially to Merlin, that I was a clumsy apprentice."

"And Archie never...?"

"We had enough food to eat, and a safe, dry place to sleep, both of which were unprecedented. I was learning real magic for the first time. Jim, I was ecstatic. Arch couldn't have hauled me out of Camelot if he'd tried. Everything else was worth the abuse."

"Archie never even told Merlin?" Jim was aghast.

Douxie shrugged. "I told him not to. What could Merlin have done?"

"Not made you train with them!"

Jim... really didn't understand medieval politics. Douxie tried to find a way to illustrate the problem. "It would have been me, the lowly, low-born apprentice, accusing all the noble knights and squires of Camelot of indignities unbecoming their rank. Merlin positively fawned on Arthur, treated him like a hen with one chick. And Arthur would never take the part of a base-born magic user over that of all his noble knights. Even I could see that the obvious solution to the problem would be to get rid of me. And once Merlin's protective hand was raised away? Once I was no longer his apprentice?" He shrugged again. "I would have been hunted down for sport and torn apart by the dogs." Let Jim think he was exaggerating; he wasn't.

Jim was staring. "You had shin guards...."

"For milking the slorr, Jim." He spread his hands. "If you can't see why my reaction to being put in armor, the same as the people who hated me wore, is what it is...."

"Douxie." Jim took a step closer, concern and realization illuminating his face. "We wear armor...."

"So you do."

Another step. "Do we...?"

Douxie shook his head. "You're all...." He sought for words. "You're what the world likes to imagine the knights of Camelot were. You, and Toby, and Claire... you're all so good, Jim. I don't even notice you're wearing armor half the time, to be honest."

"Well, good to know we're not triggering those old associations, at least."

A breath of a laugh. "No," Douxie said. "You're good, don't worry about it."

"Fuck." Jim ran a hand across his face. "Merlin came here and made armor for Claire and Toby, when he never made or did anything to protect you...."

"He didn't know I needed protection."

"He should have!" Jim's shout echoed in the small building.

Douxie stared at him. Finally, he said, "And your dad shouldn't have left you."

Jim glared. "Do not try to turn this to the failures of my sperm donor, Douxie. This isn't about me, it's about you, and what we can do to convince the tangled-up mess in your head that you're worth protecting."

---

"So, do you think it's safe for us to go in yet?" Toby murmured, pressed up against the side of the building.

"Mmm, perhaps give them a few more minutes?" Archie suggested. "They don't seem to have come to any consensus or catharsis yet."

---

"Jim," said Douxie finally, "I've got centuries of mess in my head. You're not going to be able to fix it."

"We'll never know if we don't try," Jim said, determined but also feeling like he was operating under false bravado. He was no kind of psychologist, to figure out how to help Douxie. On the other hand, given that Douxie was correct, it was literally centuries worth of crap he'd been through, messing him up in ways no one should be messed up....

Well, Jim wasn't sure a licensed psychologist would be able to help Douxie either. They probably didn't get many immortals going in for therapy.

But how could he even start...? Confronted with issues like a Gordian knot, Jim was stymied.

Until he realized that one of the ends of the knot just might be visible after all.

One more step put him within arm's reach of Douxie. Jim put his hand in his pocket and pulled out his amulet, handing it to his brother. Douxie took it, gaze raising from the silver circle to meet Jim's own eyes.

"You made that for me," Jim said.

"Me and Krel."

Jim waved a hand, deflecting that. "Krel's a genius, but he wouldn't have had the first clue how to do it without you showing him. You made that for me. Why?"

"Because you needed it," Douxie said, sounding confused, like the answer was obvious. "You're a fantastic swordsman, Jim, but we were up against the Arcane Order, and you're human. You needed armor to even stand a chance."

Jim nodded. "We're up against the Arcane Order," he said, reflecting Douxie's words back to him. "You're just human too, to them. You need armor to stand a chance."

"I'm a wizard--"

"You died," Jim bit out. His hands curled into fists at the memory, little as he'd known Douxie then. "You can't do that again, Douxie. You said this will all fall apart if I die... but what happens if you do?"

Douxie looked at him helplessly and shrugged. "Merlin--" he said.

"We don't want Merlin," Jim cut him off. "After what he tried to do to you? None of us trust him," he said with the slash of his hand to emphasize his words. "I don't know about seeing the future, but his judgment is shit, Douxie."

Douxie said nothing either in defense of himself or of his former master. It felt like Jim was beating his head against a wall - nothing was getting through the armor aversion that had been built up by Douxie's trauma.

But Jim had hung around trolls, and been one, long enough that he knew there was more than one way to get past a wall. If I can't get over it, I'll dig under it.

"Claire's your student," he said softly. "How much do you think losing you will hurt her, Doux?" He could see that hit, a little, as Douxie's mouth opened. "Toby's your friend," Jim continued. "What do you think he'll feel?" Douxie's fingers twitched. "What about Mom?" Jim asked, not letting up. "What about me?" He drew a breath. "What do you think will happen to Archie if you get killed?" Jim asked, very softly, knowing what little he did about familiar bonds.

Douxie closed his eyes and drew a shaky breath in.

"If you won't take care of yourself for yourself," Jim said, "do it for us. Let your friend, who you've known longer than I've been alive, make you some armor, and wear it because you love us, okay?"

"Jim...."

Douxie was shaking, Jim's amulet still clenched in his fist. Jim took the last step, closing the space between them, and put his arms around his brother, resting his forehead on Douxie's shoulder. "You can't die again, Doux," he whispered. "I just barely got a big brother. I can't lose you. You deserve protection, even if nobody ever let you believe it."

A full-body twitch. A rough inhale. And then Jim could feel hot tears soaking into his shirt at the shoulder. "Fuzz them all," Douxie whispered harshly, his hands clenching at Jim's jacket. "I hope they're rolling in unhallowed graves."

"You're still here," Jim murmured, feeling tears of his own pricking at his eyes. The more he learned about Douxie, the more he realized how much he hid under smiles and snark and music and magic. "They're dead. They don't get to hurt you anymore."

"'S not how trauma works, Jim."

"Then I, I piss on their bones," Jim said, improvising an insult that he hoped would help. That would make sense to someone over nine hundred years old. "Henry's going to make you armor, and you're going to wear it, to tell all those dead jerks to shove it, you are worth protecting. And you're going to kick the Arcane Order's asses and win."

A stifled snort of laughter into his shoulder. "From your lips to the gods' ears," Douxie mumbled, "so mote it be. Fine. You're right. You win."

"It's not a fight," Jim said, remembering Douxie telling him the same thing. "You deal with armor, I deal with full-troll form. That's the bargain, remember?"

"Yeah." Douxie's voice was quiet, almost a ghost. "I remember."

---

It was quite some time before Jim emerged from the forge, looking grave, and headed to the playset where Zephyr was trying to convince her father that she really needed to be pushed so hard she swung over the top bar. (Nuffink, on the other hand, was studiously doing his best to push NotEnrique on the swings, to both of their entertainment.) Jim spoke with Henry for a few minutes; the conversation ended with Henry nodding. He stopped Astrid, whose face looked like a storm cloud, from going to the workshop, and instead headed there himself. Jim, meantime, walked over to join Archie, Toby, and Claire where they sat against the building's side. Toby was spinning a dry grass stalk between his hands; Claire was twisting her shadow ring around and around on her finger as Jim sat down.

"Finally realizing how deep his trauma goes?" Archie asked after a long minute of silence.

Jim looked up at him. "Archie, how do we fix this?"

Archie narrowed his eyes. "You don't fix someone, Jim, you help them. But yes, Douxie's issues do run deep, and beyond myself he's never truly had proper support before. Some things may take a very long time for him to truly accept. Long even for a nine hundred-year-old."

"Wait, what?" Toby asked.

Jim sighed. "Douxie... has no self-esteem," he said quietly, looking up to meet his friends' eyes. "Or, I guess I should say, no self-worth. Because he got thrown away as a kid, and only Archie ever bothered to try and make him think he was worth anything."

Claire looked stricken. "Is that why...?"

Jim nodded. "It's why his default setting seems to be 'throw myself away so my friends can live'."

"What?" whispered Toby.

"Taking on the Arcane Order, swapping places with Nari... and those are just the ones I know about, aren't they, Archie?"

Archie shook his head. "Having not witnessed those events, I cannot say. But he's always been one to value others more than himself, and he's bonded harder to you three than I think I've ever seen before." He looked at his paws. "When I first encountered him, it must have been two or three days after his village banished him. It was an absolute pouring downfall of rain, the kind that washes away roads... and there was this small child out in it, far from any dwelling. What was I to do, except guide the poor thing to share my shelter and fire? And I would have had to be heartless not to give him something to eat." He sighed, adjusting his glasses. "His eyes were as dead as I've ever seen on a living being. He didn't speak to me for... well, at least a week. I'd honestly begun to think he was a mute."

"What happened?" asked Jim.

"He tripped on a stone, ended up with his arm in the fire," Archie replied simply. "He should have gotten burned... but his magic protected him. That was the first I knew he had it. He started crying, saying he was sorry. The first words he ever spoke to me, an apology for being magical...!" His tail lashed. "Of course, he's seldom shut up since."

"And then somewhere down the road, he got to Camelot, where almost everyone hated him, Merlin ignored him, and he got routinely brutalized by the knights and squires to the point where he has a kneejerk 'no' reaction to the thought of wearing armor," Jim summed up softly. "And he was happy to be there."

Claire stared. Toby's mouth was just hanging open until he shook himself and asked, "Merlin didn't care?"

"Merlin didn't know," Archie corrected him. "Other than the one or two broken bones that were obvious, all the injuries were confined to areas covered by clothing. His stiffness could be explained by training, and... well, I'm ashamed to say that Merlin's painkilling posset is one of the few potions Douxie is good at brewing."

"Douxie's clothing... covered almost all of him," Claire said slowly, clearly thinking it over. "Everything except his head and his forearms."

"Quite. To this day, he hesitates to wear less. He's very keen on concealing things. And he would never have done anything to endanger his position with Merlin, especially not tattle."

"And you didn't do anything." Toby's stare was flat; his voice, unimpressed.

Archie drew a long breath. "He needed the tutoring," he said finally.

Toby's expression turned into a storm cloud, flashing with anger. "The tutoring?" he demanded.

"Douxie was getting stronger," Archie snapped back. "You don't understand his sheer potential because you've never seen him unleashed. He may well end up being more powerful than Merlin. Once he hit puberty, what was clever little tricks turned into something genuinely dangerous - both for himself, and those around him. He needed to learn control, and I was unable to teach it to him."

The three exchanged glances. "Stronger than Merlin?" Jim finally asked. "But...."

"He's blinded by hero worship and all the inadequacies Merlin and Morgana beat into his head," Archie said flatly. "When you see what I see... well. Merlin has never been afraid for Douxie, only of him."

Silence.

Archie thought about it a moment, about how to explain what he saw to modern teenagers. "Douxie... is like Excalibur," he said finally.

The three exchanged glances. "Yeah, not following you there," Toby admitted.

"Jim's Excalibur," Archie specified. "A sword which has been shattered, and repaired."

"Kintsugi," Jim said, proving he had in fact been listening to Douxie once upon a time.

Archie nodded. "You can see where the breaks are. There will always be breaks - the damage cannot be undone. But it can be ameliorated. And... my metaphor breaks down here," he admitted, "because where I would say the sword has power, what I mean is that Douxie has so much love in him, that it makes it well worth the care involved in...."

"In being his friend," Claire said for him. "His family."

"Precisely. He loves others so deeply and so well," Archie said, "I think, in part because he finds it difficult to love himself. Everything he does - music, magic, forging armor - is an expression of that. He pours so much love out, into people, into art, into magic, because he unknowingly hopes a fraction of it will come back to him. I'm told most artists are like that."

Toby leaned back, expression considering. "So what you're saying," he said, "is that Douxie's got this huge blind spot."

"A crude, if accurate, way of putting it," Archie allowed.

"Well, we're a team, right?" Toby asked the others. They nodded. "And what teams do, is look out for one another's weaknesses. And now that we know what Douxie's is, we've got his back, right?"

"Right," said Claire. Jim nodded.

"Actually," Jim said, "do you know what ever happened to his home village, Archie?"

"Oh, do I." Archie nodded. "Do you remember that he said he saw his village's lord in Camelot once?"

"Yeah...?"

"The man was there to report Gumm-Gumm attacks on his people. I took a few days away to go scouting--this was before Merlin had Douxie start training with the squires, mind you--and extrapolated where he must have come from, from where I met him."

Claire's expression was grim. "His village?"

"Wiped from the face of the Earth by Gunmar's forces." Archie shook his head. "I never told him. I still don't know if I should have."