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sakon76But Everything Hurts
by K. Stonham
first released 24th January, 2022
When all was said and done, it was a mess.
Arcadia Oaks was wrecked. Though, mercifully, with minimal loss of civilian life; the town had known about the weird for long enough that its guardians' "get out of town" warnings had been heeded. Other areas of the globe... weren't so lucky.
And amid all the panic and confusion of what had been a global disaster, though thankfully not a catastrophe... the world's governments now knew about magic. And aliens.
And hoo boy, when the dust settled, wasn't that going to be fun to deal with.
For now, though, the Guardians of Arcadia had their own losses to mourn. Jim... wasn't going to have a stepfather. Sarcastic, biting Nomura wasn't going to adapt to troll society. Archie and Charlemagne were trapped inside the Hong Kong Trollmarket, unreachable until (if) the bridge was rebuilt. Nari was gone, murdered by her own sibling. And Toby....
Fallen heroes, all.
Jim wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and glared at the Kronisphere. At its siren promise of if and maybe.
Toby had died to save the world. He wasn't going to throw that away.
Jim scooped up the sphere in his arms and thrust it at Douxie. "Take this away," he said, angry at the magical object that had brought nothing but pain, suffering, and loss. "Put it somewhere where I never have to see it again."
"Jim," Douxie said, a soft protest, but then accurately read the expression on Jim's face. He nodded. "As you wish."
Jim looked around the crushed, burning city. His gaze glossed over the taco truck where his best friend lay dead. "This never," he said, "gets to happen again."
And everyone around him nodded in agreement.
In the end, it was Aja who left first, which was to be expected. She stayed long enough for Akiridion-5 to enter into a non-aggression treaty with the U.N., then returned home with her spouse-thing (Steve, and Claire was going to be fascinated to find out what kind of official title and duties he ended up with), their seven children, her personal guard (Varvatos), her personal guard's new wife (Nana Domzalski; with her grandson dead, there was no longer anything tying her to Earth but painful memories), and the newly appointed official Earth Ambassador (Eli).
Krel stayed, as an officially reciprocal Akiridion-5 Ambassador. He also got to keep Aja's personal space shuttle, as he had no intention of leaving Arcadia, and the commute to New York or Washington D.C. was going to be arduous otherwise.
Blinky and Aaarrrgghh left next. They had New Trollmarket to guide, and with Claire's abilities, it wasn't like they weren't just a shadow portal away.
Jim stayed. With Strickler gone, he was needed more than ever to help his mother raise his toddler siblings. By the end of it, all the former changeling babies had been adopted across Arcadia Oaks except three - and the fact that two of those were named Walter and Zelda Lake certainly didn't hurt his big-brother feelings.
Claire stayed. Her mom, now officially Mayor Nuñez, needed all the help she could get with the city's reconstruction, and Claire was good with both organization, and magical might. Plus, she had a guaranteed full scholarship to the university as soon as it reopened. (So did Jim, who was eyeing the culinary arts program.)
Stuart stayed. And even though more than a few people now knew he was from another planet, no one blinked an eye as he helped out at the communal mess hall. His taco truck had been crushed; he was planning to buy a new one, once the town was on its feet again, and name it in honor of Toby, who had, after all, been his best customer.
And Douxie stayed... until he didn't.
The fires had been put out, the FEMA tents set up, and the heartstone painstakingly returned to its grave under the city. Everything beyond that was within the scope of human reconstruction efforts. And Douxie just looked... so tired, Claire thought. Like he hadn't slept in nine centuries.
"Where will you go?" she asked as the two of them sat side-by-side at the overlook. The sunset was before them; the lights below too few, but still blazing defiant against the night.
"Camelot," he replied. "Someone's got to keep an eye on that old heap. And I still have a promise to keep to Jim."
"Promise?" she asked, then realized what he meant. "Oh. The Kronisphere."
Douxie nodded. "Jim's right. It needs to be put somewhere safe. I don't know where that is, yet, but I'm sure there's something in Merlin's books that will help me find a good place."
"Are you going to be okay?" she asked.
"Are any of us?" He shrugged. "I'll be just a portal away, you know that. And I've got the airship, and Krel's got his space gyre. This isn't a goodbye."
"Just a 'see you later'," she murmured.
He looked out across the valley. "Hong Kong's starting to rebuild the bridge," he murmured. "It should be done in a couple years."
"I'm sure they're fine," Claire told him. "I mean, a few years in a Trollmarket's nothing, right?"
"Right." He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes.
He left in the morning, the master wizard slipping away quietly, without fanfare.
The thing was, it was all too easy to let friendships fade into background noise. Claire was busy, all the time, running errands for her mom, using shadowmancy to shift things for reconstruction work, stealing a few minutes here and there to play with her brother, or cuddle up with Jim as they read the college catalog cover to cover, or to play with his brothers and sister....
It was all too easy to fall into bed at the end of the day, realize she hadn't gotten a chance to check her messages even once, and think tomorrow.
And it was all too easy for days to turn into weeks.
Until she realized that the text chains had fallen silent. That the group chat hadn't been touched by any of them in over a month.
Krel kept up with his sister, she knew. And Claire bumped into him often enough at the worksites that she knew secondhand how things were going on Akiridion-5. And he sometimes dropped by and gave Jim a hand (or four) with toddler-wrangling, so she knew they kept in touch....
But none of them, she realized one Saturday, knew what was going on in New Trollmarket. Or up in Camelot. Toby had been the social glue that held them all together.
So she put her foot down and kidnapped her boyfriend and Krel and all four of the toddlers (Walter, Zelda, their sibling Roger, and her brother Enrique) to go visit Blinky and Aaarrrgghh for a day. She shot a text to Douxie, asking if he wanted to meet them there, but didn't get an answer before they left. She shrugged; maybe Camelot was on the other side of the planet, or someplace that didn't have reception.
Between the three of them, and NotEnrique, and Blinky and Aaarrrgghh all riding herd on the mini-mob, it was a wonderful day. And for the first time in a long time, Claire actually heard Jim laugh a real laugh.
Maybe, she thought, they should move to New Jersey after college, if this was what made him happy.
Douxie's message didn't come in until that evening, when they were all back in Arcadia, and Claire was tucked into bed: /Sorry, overslept and didn't get your message in time. Maybe next time./
Finally, finally Claire put her foot down and gave herself one day a week completely off. No questions, no interruptions, no ifs-ands-or-buts of "Claire, can you just do this one little thing for me, please?" from her mother.
She picked Tuesdays, because nothing important ever happened on Tuesdays.
And this Tuesday... well, Krel was in New York meeting with the U.N. And Jim was dealing with three fussy post-shots toddlers while his mother worked at the clinic. And much as she liked the triplets, Claire needed a break. Maybe she could steal him away for a few hours in the afternoon, after his mom got off work.
For now, she decided, she was going to be completely unavailable to anyone but herself, and go catch up with Douxie, who she hadn't seen in far too long.
She dropped Enrique off with his sitter, and promptly portaled herself to Camelot. She appeared in the great hall, where Douxie's airship rested when it wasn't being used. "Hello?" Claire called, but got only echoes and the soft, musical hum of the Akiridion technology that held the repaired castle together. "Hmph," she decided, and started walking. Douxie was probably going to be in Merlin's workroom, she thought. Maybe tinkering with something, or slouched in one of the chairs, working his way through one of the books that he was quite possibly the only person on the planet able to read. So the tower it was, with its fifty million steps.
Or, more simply, the hoverboard escalator option Krel had invented and installed. She just stepped on at the bottom and it zoomed up and up and up around the spiral until she hopped off at the door to Merlin's suite.
Except, she found as she opened the door, Douxie wasn't there either.
"Huh." Claire said aloud, turning around and around, trying to figure out where he would be. He was definitely on the premises - his airship was docked in the hanger. Was he in the kitchens, maybe? The gardens? Camelot was a pretty big place to have to quarter and search to find one person.
She huffed, and reached out with her magic, which led her down the corridor and around the curve of the outer wall, to a closed door.
She knocked softly, and opened it. "Douxie...?"
The door, she found, led to a small dark room, barely bigger than a closet, which had a few pegs driven into the wall, and opposite them, an old-fashioned mattress, probably stuffed with straw, on the floor. On top of it lay one master wizard on his side, asleep with a ratty blanket pulled over himself. His hand rested in a divot in the mattress before him.
Claire blinked. "Douxie?"
He shifted, his eyes opening then closing again. Then reopening and looking up at her. "Claire...?" he asked muzzily. He shook his head, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand. Then he looked at her again, still clearly half asleep. "What are you doing here? Did I forget something...?"
"I came to visit you," she said, and looked around. "Douxie, what is this place?"
"It's my room," he replied.
She looked at him. "No it's not. This is a closet."
"No, it's my room," he told her. He used the wall to push himself to his feet.
"Douxie, you have a whole castle," she told him. "You can sleep anywhere."
"Claire," he said, "this is my room. It's always been my room, ever since I came to Camelot."
"No it isn't," she argued. "I remember when we time-traveled, we all slept in that big room on the other side of the tower--"
"Merlin's storage room," he said. "Yes, I remember. You don't really think all of us would have fit in here, do you?" He cast a glance around the dark hole. "What day is it?"
"Tuesday," she told him.
"Tuesday the...?"
"Tuesday the 26th. Of July."
He sighed. "I really need to get a calendar, don't I? Come on, want some lunch?"
"...Sure." Feeling somewhat confused, Claire followed him back to the stairs. He stepped onto the Akiridion escalator and held it for her; she hopped on next to him and held his arm as Krel's device zoomed them back down the endless staircase.
The kitchens remained unchanged from the last time she'd been onboard the castle, though then they'd been strictly Jim's domain, beware to any who set foot within while he was creating one of his culinary masterpieces. Now they were big and silent, cold and slightly musty.
A roaring fire burst to life in the giant hearth as soon as she and Douxie set foot in the room.
"Sandwiches?" Douxie offered, and when she nodded, the pantry door opened, various items flying out to them, surrounded by the blue glow of Douxie's magic. Plates danced to the counter before them as a knife cut thick slices of sourdough; another handled cheese; a third, meat. A head of lettuce separated into leaves, and pots of various condiments and accompaniments presented themselves to her for inspection and approval. In less time than it would have taken to make them by hand, two hearty sandwiches sat on the plates, accompanied by pickled vegetables and a few pieces of fruit. Everything flew back into the pantry and the door shut itself firmly, its preservation spells, Claire knew, keeping everything within as fresh as the day it had been placed there.
Impressed despite herself, she clapped as Douxie bowed and offered her one of the plates. "Cider for the lady?" he asked, and at her positive response, a pair of cups appeared and filled themselves with that same beverage.
"Showoff," she accused as they took their seats on the benches on either side of the long kitchen table. Douxie sat closer to the fire.
"Guilty as charged," he told her, a sparkle in his eyes as he took his first bite. "Oh, that's good."
Claire bit into her own sandwich and had to agree. "It really is. I think it's the bread that makes it."
"Remind me to pay Jim to spend his life baking for us," Douxie told her. "Well, if I had any money I would, at least."
Claire had to laugh. "So, what have you been up to?"
Douxie hummed. "Found a place to bury the Kronisphere," he offered.
"Oh? Where?"
His brows raised. "Do you really want to know? Because if I don't tell you, you can be honest with Jim about not knowing."
Claire scoffed. "He's never going to ask. Spill, Doux."
"I put it in Merlin's Tomb."
Her eyes went wide. "Merlin's... Tomb...? That place is a wreck!"
Douxie shrugged. "Very slightly less of one now. And since no one knows where it is, no one will go looking there, will they? Plus it was good to go back and see Arch's prophetic drawings on the wall."
"Wait... Archie drew those?"
Douxie grinned at her. "I got the musical talent, he got the artistic talent. Yes, he drew those while I was setting up the logic puzzles."
Claire thought that over. "Wait, does that mean that half-eaten meal there was yours?"
His grin broadened. "Thought it would be a good clue."
Claire considered it. "You know what? Fair enough."
"And you, Fair Lady Claire? How goes Arcadia's reconstruction?"
"UGH." She rolled her eyes and let herself rant, the way she didn't even to Jim, knowing that absolutely nothing would distress Douxie, that he wasn't worn to a thread the way the rest of them were under their official and less official duties--
Except.
Except he hadn't taken another bite of his sandwich, just rested his arms on the table, listening to her.
Except he held himself still, rather than using his hands and his arms and his body to illustrate his thoughts.
Except he hadn't even touched anything to make them lunch, using his magic for all of it.
Except....
Claire trailed off, realizing something that should have been obvious. "Douxie. Where're your painkillers?"
He smiled. "But it's such a good day, with a visitor, even! I don't need them all the time, you know."
Except... he did. They were preventative, not palliative.
He was lying to her.
"Douxie. Where are your meds?"
He held onto his smile for a moment longer, then it fell away. And so did his gaze. "I'm out," he murmured.
"Out? But--" But he made it himself. He'd shown her all the steps of infusing the oil once, as an intellectual exercise, so she could understand and make sense of some potion recipes.
Douxie shrugged, a minute motion that set tightness flashing across his face. "I'm afraid I relied too much on Nari."
Claire's eyes widened. "She.... No," she said. "She planted some here, I saw them, they were growing in the gardens."
"They were," Douxie agreed softly. "Until the castle was flown into the Arctic Circle, and the grounds froze."
Claire sat still, her thoughts crumbling. She hadn't realized... she'd assumed.... "Oh, Douxie."
"Yeah. And Archie's the one with the black market connections, not me. So I'm afraid I haven't even the slightest idea where to get more seeds."
"So you're in--"
"Pain," he said gently. "Yes. I'm sleeping most of the time, though, it's really not that bad."
Guilt curdled Claire's stomach, making her lunch feel like a lump of lead. Douxie had been hurting and none of them had known it. They'd all assumed he was taking care of himself, but he genuinely couldn't--
"Is that why you left?" she asked.
But to her surprise, he shook his head. "Nah. Zoe was moving on to greener pastures. Not much use for a magical startup in a town that had lost its source of magic, according to her. And with her gone, I didn't have a couch to surf on any longer, so I headed here."
"You were couch-surfing? But what about your apartment?"
Douxie smiled gently. "Claire. What apartment?"
"The one over the... book...." She drew a shaky breath. "It's gone."
Douxie nodded. "Yeah." The bookshop, and its entire building, had been one of the many architectural casualties of Bellroc's titan.
Douxie had been homeless, and running out of the medicine that kept him from being in crippling pain and none of them had known.
"Claire." He laid a hand on hers. Claire looked up at him, blinking back tears at her horror of their utter betrayal of their friend. "You cannot blame yourself. I kept this from all of you, all right?"
"Why?"
He shrugged, a minute gesture, and did not remove his hand from hers. "Something I learned a long time ago, not from Merlin, I'll admit, is 'do no harm.' You're all stressed to the limit - rebuilding is always longer and harder than an actual battle. My omissions were for the best."
"For the best?" she demanded, incredulous. "Douxie, we could have helped you!"
"Could you have, though?" His expression was infinitely gentle. "Certainly none of you could have helped me with cannabis oil. And we're all as poor as church mice between us."
"You could have stayed with us," she insisted.
Douxie shook his head, and she could tell from his wince that the movement cost him. "Where? Jim doesn't even have a bed of his own to sleep in any more. And I highly doubt your parents would approve of me taking up space in your home."
"Krel. Krel has space." She stared into his eyes.
They crinkled with regret. "Krel is a genius of the highest caliber, and I have nothing but esteem and affection for him. But if you think he and I could live under the same roof for more than three days without it completely breaking our friendship, you're mental."
"What? Why?"
Douxie sighed and drew his hand back. "My impression of Akiridions, admittedly from a grand sampling of three individuals, is that they're very driven people. How long do you think it would take for Krel to start trying to 'fix' me? And do you really want him to dive into bioengineering? He's two shakes away from being a mad scientist as it is." Douxie's gaze was flat. "The minute he started trying to tinker with me the way he does with his robots...." He shook his head. "No. I could never live in close quarters with Krel. And, fortunately, I have this entire castle all to myself!" His hands opened in a substitute for his usual expansive gestures. "About the only person who would have more right to it is Jim, and I doubt he'll begrudge me the use of the kitchen and my old room."
"Douxie...."
"Claire. You're worn to a frazzle, trying to rebuild the town. Jim's almost solo-parenting triplets, at the age of eighteen. Krel's jetting between Arcadia and the East Coast constantly, trying to keep Earth's governments from doing something colossally stupid." His expression held pain and regret. "I can't dump my problems on you. As a team, we're each other's support systems... and we've literally been decimated. I will not be responsible for making us break. Especially not when my problems have an end date."
Claire wet her lips. "An end date...?" She didn't like the sound of that, but Douxie's expression didn't hint at any of the phrase's darker meanings.
"In a couple years, Hong Kong will have rebuilt that bridge, and the magical matrix of the door to Trollmarket will be restored," Douxie said. He smiled. It was a small thing, but it was a real smile. "The day it's possible, I'm going to be opening that door and getting Arch back. And with him back... well, between us we'll find a solution to my little pain problem."
"'Little'," she scoffed.
"And until then, I'm planning to be sleeping much of the time."
A terrible thought occurred to her. "What if you slip into a wizard's sleep?" If he did, he might nap for years. Centuries.
He snorted in amusement. "Unlike Merlin, I can set my phone to wake me up every couple weeks."
It sounded like a good plan. A solid one, even.
The only problem was, it meant she and Jim and Krel wouldn't see Douxie for two years. He'd be unconscious in that tiny dark room, his hand on Archie's sleeping spot, waiting for a bridge to be built, while the three of them were... what? Going to college? Dealing with the politics Krel hated?
Were they just supposed to live without him until some magical cure came about?
He mistook her silence for something else, and wrapped his hands around hers. "Claire. I know this is going to be hard on Jim, and I'm sorry."
"On Jim?" she asked, bumped out of her thoughts.
Douxie's smile was sad now. "Because I still stand a chance of getting Archie back. But he's never going to get Toby back. Which is not fair."
"Doux, do you really think he'll care about that?"
The sadness deepened. "Yes. Because if our positions were reversed... it would hurt me greatly. And I wouldn't want to see them, probably for rather a long time. So it's possibly for the best anyway, my being out of sight and out of mind."
"You think we don't think about you, just because you're staying on Camelot?"
Douxie shook his head. "Claire. How often have you messaged me in the last couple months?"
And her silence was all the answer he needed.
Despite Douxie's soft words and gentle smile when she left, Claire felt rotten. And guilty. And like a bad friend, a bad teammate....
And she was all those things, she realized.
She hadn't known.
She hadn't bothered to look. To think. To see.
Rebuilding Arcadia was important, yes... but was it really more important than her friend?
She sat in her room, in the dark, for a long time, thinking and thinking and thinking.
Then she started to write a list.
It wasn't long.
And after a few minutes looking at it, trying to figure out if there was anything else she should be adding, she pulled out her phone and started doing some research.
Toby had been the heart of their group. The glue that bound them together. Now that he was dead, they were starting to drift apart, to go their separate ways.
But Claire would be damned if she lost another friend.
"Papá," she said the next morning over breakfast, "is Uncle Guillermo still in the marijuana business?"
Her parents both stared at her. "Well, not really in the business..." her father hedged.
"Claire." Her mother looked directly at her. "What do you want with marijuana?" The it had better not be for yourself was not only strongly implied, it was written in red ink, capital letters, and underlined twice.
"Thank you, Mamá," Claire retorted. "No. It's for a friend. He was using CBD oil to treat chronic pain, but his supplier was killed in the attack."
That softened her mother's expression. A little.
Her father hummed and stroked his beard. "Guillermo might be able to help you," he said finally. "But he's up in Washington."
Claire rolled her eyes. "Washington is not a problem, Dad."
"Claire," said her mother.
"I will be careful," she promised. "I've got a few other things to do this morning anyway."
"Yes, the work on the sanitation building--" her mother started.
"Mom." Claire met her mother with a flat gaze. "My friend, who helped save the world, is in pain and his life's going to caca. I'm going to be spending today trying to get together the resources to help him. You're the mayor; you can deal with the town's shit by yourself for one full day, okay?" And so saying, she pushed her chair back from the table and stood, leaving - the only way to get the last word with her mother.
She was on her phone the minute she was out the door. "Krel," she said. "I need your help. Tech project."
"Uh, okay?" She could hear the sound of scrabbling on the other end of the line. "I can fit you in--"
"You can fit me in today," she told him. "Tell whoever else has a claim on your time that they need to reschedule for once, because we are not leaving Douxie hanging in the wind any longer, all right?"
"Hanging in the...?" He was clearly trying to parse the idiom. "Wait, Douxie?"
"I'm heading over to Jim's," she told him. "Meet me there." And Claire hung up and kept walking.
Jim opened the door to find his girlfriend on the other side. "Uh, Claire?" he asked, as Roger (held in one arm) began pulling at his ear, and Zelda (behind him) started whacking his leg with a block. He didn't want to know what Walter was up to, which meant he should probably check.
"We need to talk," Claire said, which even Jim knew was never a good phrase. She pushed past him into the house, dialing on her cellphone already. "Hi, Shannon? Are you still looking to earn some spare cash?"
"Wait, Shannon?" Jim asked. "Like, embezzler Shannon?"
"Yeah, Jim needs someone to watch the triplets for the day. What's your hourly?" Claire asked, ignoring him completely. "Okay, great. We'll get together bags and drop them off at your place in, say, half an hour? Okay, excellent." She hung up.
Jim blinked. "Claire, did you just buy me a free day?"
"Yes. And your mom can pay for it, because 'big brother' is not the same as 'free babysitter'."
Jim scoffed. "Uh, it kind of is? Like with you and Enrique?"
"And I'm putting my foot down," Claire told him. "We saved the world, we can get a day off from it running us ragged every now and then. Besides, we've got a problem."
"O...kay?" Jim bit. "What's the problem?"
Claire's eyes met his. "Douxie."
Krel arrived at Jim's house only to find himself immediately turned around and handed a toddler and a bag. "We're dropping them at Shannon's house," Claire told him.
The human child, Walter, was extraordinarily squirmy and determined to get out of Krel's grasp. He momentarily considered the advantages of dropping his transduction so he had the proper number of arms again. Then, as the boy attempted to lunge free at a passing dog, he gave up thoughts of maybe and simply performed the action.
Apparently the additional arms were enough to distract the little krebnath sufficiently that Krel could devote part of his attention to his companions. "Not that I am not appreciating being used to haul your siblings from place to place," he told Jim, "but why am I here?"
Jim gave him a shrug and a bewildered look. "Don't ask me, this is all Claire."
"Oh, look, it's Shannon's house," that human said, determinedly dodging the question with master-level skill.
The three children were deposited with minimal fuss, and Shannon's gaze was steely enough when she said "Don't worry, I won't let anything happen to them. Or let them happen to anything," that Krel believed her.
(He'd had nannies less scary. Which he didn't like to think about much. He was fairly sure Aja had hired some of them to deal with her own offspring, making him ever more determined never to have any of his own.)
"Right. So, now that the miniature humans are taken care of...?" he asked Claire.
She cast eyes about, then, on the walk back to Jim's house, filled them in.
Krel snorted when Claire told him what she wanted. "That is easy," he said. "Give me a horvath. Maybe two."
"And talking to the Chinese authorities?" asked Jim.
Krel snorted and waved that off. "If we take the space gyre and time it right, they will never know who or why. And if we do get caught, well, I have diplomatic immunity."
"You have diplomatic immunity," Jim pointed out.
Krel considered this. "You are right. You can stay and watch the gyre while I do the actual work."
Jim rolled his eyes, but did not protest before turning back to Claire. "So if Krel gets Hong Kong, and you're covering Douxie's medicine... what do you need me to do?"
"I need you to be glue," Claire said, which made absolutely no sense to Krel. Why would Jim be an adhesive?
Jim must have looked as confused as Krel felt, because Claire sighed. "Look, Toby was our glue. He's the one that held our team together, right? And since he died, we've all been talking to one another less and less. We're having to make an effort to keep in touch, instead of living in each other's back pockets. I mean, we were talking and texting with Douxie all day even when he was on the other side of the country, right? And vidding with Aja just as often, and she's in a whole different galaxy. But now? None of us even thought to ask Douxie if he needed help. And he's lost his dad, his sister, and his best friend in a year, so we really should have."
Krel blinked. "That is a good point."
"So you think we should... prioritize each other more?" Jim asked.
"I think we need to," Claire said. "I think we owe it to each other. And ourselves."
"And Toby," Jim said softly, looking down. His expression hardened slightly, and he looked back up. And suddenly he was Trollhunter Jim again. Warrior Jim. Not the beleaguered college-student-to-be drowning under the weight of providing daycare for three small children. "All right, team. Let's do this."
Watching Krel work was always interesting, though Jim had never had either Douxie's level of understanding, or Toby's fascination. But expertise was always worth the watch, and seeing Krel bang a drill together out of spare parts in less than an hour was neat. It definitely didn't look like anything from Home Depot, and Jim was pretty sure it had some features built in that weren't standard on any Earth model.
"All right, that is that." Krel hefted his new, hastily-built toy over one shoulder. "It should be in the middle of the night in Hong Kong. Let's go."
Claire arrived at her uncle's house in the middle of a downpour. "Ugh," she complained, pulling her purse over her head as she ran for the porch. She was pretty sure he was at home - she'd locked on to him rather than the house, so he was around here somewhere.
Not totally drenched, she rang the doorbell.
He blinked at her when he opened the door a moment later, then asked incredulously, "Clara?"
"Hola, Tío Guillermo!"
"You are sure this is the spot?" Krel asked, glowing faintly blue.
"Very sure." Jim rubbed at his hand in remembrance. The burn from the broken horngazel had mostly healed, but the new skin was still sensitive.
"Okay. Let us do this, then." Krel hefted the expanding drill. "Stand back!"
"Clara, that's a very expensive request," her uncle protested. "Buds and seeds? Of my best stock?"
She put a hand on her hip. "He helped save the world, and he's in pain. Come on."
The drill broke through into the Trollmarket cavern beyond in less than a minute. Jim blinked as Krel's tech neatly folded up and away, into something that looked the size of a dental pick - not the six-foot-diameter hole it had just carved through stone and concrete. "Color me impressed," he said.
Krel grinned. "It is good to be appreciated. Come on," he said, pocketing his tool and gesturing at the hole in the wall. "Let's go get Archie and his dad before we get caught."
"Race you," Jim quipped, and went inside.
Hisirdoux woke to find a black cat curled up next to him, warm under his hand. He smiled briefly and closed his eyes. What a nice dream.
Except then the cat stretched, kicking him in the chest in the process, and yawned wide before sitting up and turning around. "Good morning, Douxie," said Archie.
The sheer impossibility made Douxie stupid. He stared at his familiar for a minute, trying to put together mismatched puzzle pieces before giving up. "Archie? Has it been two years already?"
His familiar sniffed and rubbed his head against Douxie's. "Two days, more like. And may I ask, why have you been sleeping in this hole? You're a master wizard now, you could take over one of the decent bedchambers. No one would mind."
"Because you slept here with me," Douxie replied. If this was a delusion, at least it was a nice one.
"Oh, Douxie. I missed you, too." Archie touched foreheads with him again. "But now that we're both up, I think we should see about getting some breakfast on, don't you?"
"All right," Douxie said, and got up. The knives stabbing into his body argued against this being a dream. Those generally didn't have pain. But this couldn't possibly be real, either, so he breathed carefully and went with the flow until he could find out just why Archie was here when he was actually locked away in Hong Kong Trollmarket and certainly couldn't really be here.
Bless Krel and his works a thousand times, Douxie thought as he and Archie hopped on the Akiridion's escalator. If he'd had to walk all the tower's steps, he wouldn't have had enough spoons left over for anything, even on a good day. He would have just given up and curled into a ball where he'd fallen, possibly dying there. And no one would ever know....
He was broken from his morbid thoughts as they approached the kitchen.
"Oh my, that does smell good," Archie said, trotting eagerly ahead, tail held high.
Douxie sniffed the air, and Archie was right. He was too muzzy-headed to pick apart all the individual scents, but it did smell rather delicious. His stomach rumbled, reminding him that he hadn't fed it since... when? Oh, Claire had been by and they'd had sandwiches. However long ago that had been.
But when he pushed open the door to the kitchen, Douxie was dumbfounded. The fireplace was already lit, and the stoves were going. There was something simmering in a pot, and Jim taking fresh bread out of the oven, and the table was set....
"There you are," said Claire. Where had she come from?
"What's all this?" Douxie asked dumbly.
"Breakfast, of course," Krel replied, coming out of nowhere on Douxie's other side. "We spent yesterday breaking into a Trollmarket to rescue Archie and his dad, and it worked up an appetite!"
"Mm, yes, the bridge support on that side is rather ruined after Dad forced his way through," Archie agreed. He was already on the table, examining the dishes laid out there.
"The bridge support...?" Douxie asked, feeling even more behind the conversation.
"Also, got you a little present, Teach," Claire said, and pressed a glass bottle into his hand. Inside, golden oil shifted back and forth.
"Claire...?"
She smiled up at him, sunny. "I know a few people who owed me favors. You're going to have to tell me if I infused that right, though. I'm not sure if I did it too strong or not."
Douxie blinked. If this was a dream, it was clearly the best dream ever. But he was beginning to think maybe it wasn't one, because his dreams were never like this. "You did this... for me?" he felt the need to clarify.
"Well, yeah." Jim came up now, bearing a basket of rolls that were so fresh they were still steaming. "Remember we promised to lean on each other, Douxie? We don't get to break that promise just because you didn't want to bother us."
"But... you're all so busy," he protested. "You have lives. I just have problems."
Krel shrugged. "We all have problems. That doesn't mean you're not important to us."
"But...."
"Douxie," said Archie from the table. "Just accept your friends' help and come sit down to eat. Because I'm starving."
"I...." Douxie looked around, at the friends he was quite sure he didn't deserve, who had set aside their own problems to help him. "Thank you," he said quietly.
"Great!" Krel clapped him on the shoulder. "You have accepted help! Well done."
"Now let's eat," said Claire, smiling.
And Douxie let himself be drawn forward by his friends.
Author's Note: I found myself wondering what would happen to chronicpain!Douxie after RotT, since Nari was killed in that. Of course, Jim's immediate reset of the timeline nullified that question, but the question still begged: what if? So I wrote this continuation, based on the premise of Jim not using the Time Stone. Claire's uncle was briefly referenced in the first chapter; I fleshed him out a bit more here. He's named Guillermo because Guillermo Del Toro clearly appears in several of the Nuñez family photos in the background at Claire's house. So, cameo time! ^_^ I hope you enjoyed reading this story.
