sakon76

Into the Dark
by K.Stonham
first posted 12th February 2022

Douxie sits tucked into the crenel, letting the wind whip around him. It's cold, but he doesn't mind. He only wishes it was colder.

Camelot sits tucked in between Arcadia Oaks and the mountains, its heroes using every daylight moment to help repair and rebuild the town.

Today was Toby's funeral, and Douxie watched as one of the true heroes of this disaster was laid in the ground. Toby died to save the world. Douxie wishes it could have been him.

He wishes he could have a cigarette, breathe in its poison. But what good would it do? It wouldn't affect him. So he doesn't move. Instead, he sits here, cold and wishing to be colder.

Nothing he did made any difference, in the end. The only result of his actions was Nari's death at Skrael's hands.

Her blood, if she had had blood, would be on Douxie's hands.

Some successor to Merlin he is.

He clenches his hands and wishes, desperately, for emptiness. For the true loss of self that some practices preach as the end-all be-all of existence.

Nirvana, where there is no attachment, no care, no pain.

Inside him, another thread gives way, burning like acid. Like lava. His head pounds. He swallows the scream, tears springing unbidden to his eyes.

It's freezing, and it's dark. In the firmament above, a thousand million stars glimmer. On the earth below, the lights of Arcadia Oaks are thin and paltry in response, large sections of the town still darkened in the wake of Bellroc's rampage.

The grate in the floor of the tower creaks open. "Douxie?" Claire asks, climbing up. She's wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, carrying one of Krel's lanterns.

"Here," he calls tonelessly from the dark.

Jim follows her, carefully closing the stairwell grate again, so no one stupidly stumbles in it by accident and breaks their neck. "We were wondering where you were. We missed you at dinner."

Douxie makes a noncommital sound and looks away again, into the night.

"Are you okay?" Jim asks, stepping closer.

How could he possibly be okay, Douxie wonders. In what possible world would any of this be okay?

Claire comes closer too and sets the lantern on top of the merlon before Douxie. Its clear white light seems almost blinding. He looks at it and thinks about moths and their fate. Claire tucks her hands into her sleeves, then hesitates. "Douxie, your eyes...."

He looks at her. Her eyes widen further. "They're changing color," she says, worried.

Douxie nods and looks away. "As to be expected."

"Because of... too much magic use?" Jim asks.

He obviously doesn't get it. Douxie doesn't think Claire does either. "They'll probably be green again soon enough," Douxie says. His eyes haven't been green in... nine hundred and fifteen years. Like the mark on Archie's chest, his eyes had always shown what he was, to those who knew what they were looking at. "What use dragon's gold, when I'm no longer a dragon's familiar?"

Claire goes white. "Archie's dead?"

"How would I know?" Douxie tosses out carelessly. "He broke our bond." He doesn't know anything related to Archie, not anymore. Another thread gives way, burning with pain. He winces, and watches it fall, helpless to do anything about it. Archie started this fire, and a bond of nine hundred and fifteen years isn't a thread, it's a fucking rope. It's going to take days, weeks, to finish burning through.

Jim's brows furrow. "He what?"

Douxie musters a glare, but it's half-hearted at best. "What did you think 'goodbye' meant?" he demands, his words throbbing with pain. He doesn't like the pain; in the words of Pink Floyd, he'd rather be comfortably numb.

"I thought it meant for now," Claire says. "Until we can go back and get him and Charlie out of that Trollmarket somehow."

Douxie breathes a low breath. His chest physically hurts. His head pulses with pain to the beat of his heart. All the more reason to wish for cold. "Goodbye. As in, God be with ye. As in, he needed to save his dad, and the only way to do that was to choose him over me. His family over his familiar." He takes a breath, and, oh goody, the tears are back. "At least he's not hurting, since he's the one who cut the bond." And he tries to be glad for that, really he does, but the centuries of love and devotion have been swamped by the tidal wave of betrayal and loss, loss, loss. He'll find out which way the wreckage settles once the waters recede.

At least Jim has a grave to mourn by. Douxie has nothing. Merlin's staff is gone, Nari left behind no corpse, and whatever's left with Archie can never have meaning again.

Jim's and Claire's faces are portraits of pure horror.

Douxie hitches himself down from the parapet, using his staff as a lever, a crutch. "If you'll excuse me," he says, "I'm still feeling a bit battered and bruised, so I think I'll go have a lie-down." And it's an excuse to get away from them, but it's true nonetheless. Beyond the aches and injuries from the final battle with Bellroc, there remains the pain, physical and spiritual, of having his consensual exchange spell broken, ripped to shreds by Bellroc and Skrael, and being forced screaming back into his own form. That kind of thing usually deals lasting damage, invisible though it might be, and Douxie hasn't had a breath of time to figure out what it is. Hasn't wanted to.

Certainly no one had seemed to care when it happened, he thinks, then immediately backtracks the uncharitable thought. They hadn't known, and even if they had, none of the other Guardians of Arcadia had had time to be concerned. Not when it was literally the end of the world about to happen.

He'd spent as much time as he could after that riding a wave of adrenaline and nerves, and when he'd finally started crashing off it afterwards, he'd crawled away to hide in a small dark space, never letting the others in.

If you're alone, it's your own doing, my lad. You've always had a remarkable talent for fucking yourself over.

He knows it's true, and that at least some measure of his pain is his own fault. But neither can Douxie turn aside from his course. Without Archie, he is rudderless, and will drift himself to his doom.

Part of him looks forward to it.

Claire's hand grabs at his arm, forcing him to turn to her. "Douxie--" she says. There's pain in her voice and her eyes glimmer with tears.

And he should be considerate of her pain, hers and Jim's, really he should. But Douxie feels like Prometheus on his rock, eagles tearing him eternally to pieces in search of his liver.

Pain always goes for the soft underbelly first.

"I can't--" he whispers. "I'm sorry, but I can't."

"Can't what?" Jim steps up, laying a hand on his shoulder.

"I can't be strong right now," Douxie says.

He turns to go, but Jim's grip tightens. "No," Jim says. "I'm not letting you do this, Doux."

He looks uncomprehendingly at the Trollhunter for a moment. Then, "Jim," he says, "you can't let me do shit."

Jim's mouth narrows to a line. "You're going to run off and hide and shut all of us out," he says flatly. "I'm not letting you do that, Douxie."

For an instant, Douxie wants to fight him, to make this physical, to try and inflict all the pain he's feeling on someone else--

But the urge dies as quickly as it arises. Because whatever James Lake, Junior, is, he doesn't deserve that pain.

No one does.

Not even Douxie.

Yet he's the one stuck with it.

He takes a shuddering breath, riding on the waves of hurt. "It would have been better," he says, and it manages to come out sounding mostly level, "if Toby had lived and I'd died."

Jim and Claire both look like they've been smacked across the face by that sentiment. Douxie waits to see the inevitable agreement. Only for anger to flash across Jim's face instead. "You don't get to decide that, Douxie," Jim says. "It's not some, some kind of equivalent exchange."

"If it was," Douxie tells him, "I'd make it in a heartbeat. Your best friend would be alive, and I wouldn't be hurting like this." He breathes, and thinks longingly of a world where he could make that sort of Faustian bargain. But if there ever was any such spell, it died along with Atlantis.

"Then who'd teach me magic?" asks Claire.

Douxie chuckles; it's a dark sound. "You don't need me for that anymore, Claire. And I was never meant to survive this."

"What?"

He leans against his staff, closing his eyes against the shocked looks on their faces. "In the space between living and death, Morgana said the age of wizardry was ending. I was sent back, to do this one specific thing. To protect Nari. And I failed even at that. So, no, I really don't think I was meant to survive."

"What did she say, Douxie?" Jim grates. "Exactly."

Douxie thinks back. "'Alas, I fear the age of wizardry ends with us,'" he recites. "And Merlin told me 'But you will carry on in the world of man. You must protect Nari, no matter what.'" He opens his eyes, and is so tired and heartsick he can barely stand. "So you see," he says, "I have failed in every possible way." And the pain, he thinks, is fit punishment.

But Jim's expression is resolute, a mix of anger and determination. "No," he says, and the world stops there. "They're dead. They don't get to tell you to live, or die, or what to live for. They don't get a vote anymore."

"Jim--"

"We do." Jim steps closer. "We're your friends, Douxie. And we're all just treading water. But we will not let you drown just because dead people think you're some kind of tool they can wield from the great beyond." He glowers. "We're done being Merlin's tools. If he wants something done, he can come back to life and do it himself."

Douxie stares at him, astounded and speechless.

"Come on, Teach." Claire steps up and slots her hand in his elbow, waving her other hand and summoning a shadow portal. "You're staying with us for now."

"People who are grieving and in pain are not in their right mind," Jim agrees, standing on Douxie's other side. "They do things like skip dinner and get their blood sugar out of whack and generally don't make good decisions."

And pride demands that Douxie resist, that he can go it alone. But his headache splits blinding white and it's all he can do to stand, and another thread of his severed bond frays away, making him tremble and gasp with the pain--

Pride dies, washed away by the tears that run down Douxie's cheeks. "All right," he says, and submits.

He's guided through the portal and tucked into a bed he can barely see, his shoes removed. He closes his eyes and lets the pounding pulse of the pain guide him down, down, down into darkness, until he sleeps.

He wakes to a dry mouth and a growling stomach. The tension across his shoulders hurts, and the emptiness inside him where Archie once was is a yawning chasm of ache. It's so dark it must be the middle of the night, but he's warm, and there's warmth on either side of him, talking over him in low voices, probably not meant to wake him.

"Oh, you're awake," Claire says in the darkness.

"No," Douxie tells her, mostly to be perverse.

Her laughter sounds like a peal of bells. "Come on, up," she says, hand on his back, urging him upright. "Jim made breakfast, and it's still hot. So, good timing."

He can smell buttered toast, and sausage and eggs and other things, and once he's sitting upright a tray is set on Douxie's lap, one of those stand ones with legs on either side, it feels like. But, really, they don't expect him to eat in the darkness, do they?

Realization is slow to set in, but when it does, Douxie takes a deep, shaking breath, his hands fisting.

"Douxie?" asks Jim.

He swallows, and tries not to be terrified. "I can't see."

"What?"

"I can't see," Douxie repeats. He raises a hand to his face, finds his cheek, testing. To no avail; he might as well be stuck in the middle of the deepest, darkest cave there ever was.

"What?" Now Jim's voice holds a note of panic. "Claire, go get my mom."

"On it." There's the rustling of sheets and shifting of the mattress, then the unmistakable arcane feel of a shadow portal nearby. It's gone almost as quickly as it forms.

"Okay. Okay. First things first," Jim says, and shifts closer. "Are you still hurting?"

"Yes, Jim." Douxie tries not to be sarcastic, but it's a defensive go-to response sometimes. Especially when he's tired, wounded, or scared. Right now probably qualifies as all three.

"All right." Jim catches Douxie's hand, opens it, places something within. "Painkillers."

"Are they--"

"Tylenol," Jim confirms. "Yes, I remember NSAIDs don't work well on wizards."

"You're dating one, after all." Douxie feels oddly calm and slightly floaty. Which is probably a panic reaction.

"Take those," Jim instructs, and there's a glass being pressed into Douxie's other hand. "Orange juice."

Douxie obeys, and manages not to spill the juice, which is surely a small miracle right now. He's sipping at it to try to settle himself when Claire's portal reopens and two pairs of footsteps come through. One has to be Claire; the other, he catches a faint note of antiseptic. Barbara, then.

"Okay," the doctor says, sitting on the edge of the bed. "Catch me up."

She spends a little while going through what's been going on with him, and Jim and Claire betray Douxie's depression and pain in a remarkably brisk manner. He'd be more put out by it, but he's still feeling out of things, and he's distracted by Barbara's taking his pulse with cold fingers, and... well, he trusts that she's doing what she says when she tells him she's shining a light in his eyes. He really can't tell. He feels the warm wash of the hand scanner Krel built for her.

He only winces once, when another thread of his bond with Archie frays away.

"I'll take your word for it that the iris color change is magic-related," Barbara says. "The good news is, your pupils are reacting to light. And I'm not seeing any signs of clots or broken blood vessels inside your skull." She taps at her tricorder, then sighs. "I'll want to keep an eye on this, but for now I'm going to make a tentative diagnosis of conversion disorder."

"Which means what?" Claire asks.

Barbara sighs again. "Summing up, Douxie's body has reached its stress limit, and is converting everything into a signal he can't ignore."

"Is it permanent?" Douxie asks softly. If the answer is yes... well, he's not sure what he'll do. He suspects the unthinkable option will become significantly more tempting.

"No," Barbara tells him. He can hear both Jim and Claire's sighs of relief. "Once the stressors go away, your sight should return."

Douxie turns that over in his mind. "Lovely. Enforced R&R."

"We can do that." Jim's tone is speculative.

"And you." Barbara addresses her son. "I'm not happy with you giving him meds and juice before I got here. What if he'd needed to go to the ER or have emergency surgery? You know better than that, kiddo."

"He's in pain, and he hasn't eaten since... you skipped lunch yesterday, didn't you?" Jim's addressing Douxie now.

He shrugs. "I was working on the heartstone." And reburying that's going to be... well, perhaps Claire can manage it, if she's got enough juice. Douxie certainly can't, if he can't even see the thing.

"He hasn't eaten in twenty-four hours," Jim tells his mother. "He's lousy at taking care of himself, and he's worse now with Arch--" His voice cuts off.

Douxie smiles mirthlessly. "You can say his name. It won't make it hurt any worse."

"You see, that's why you worry me," Jim tells him. "Anyway, he's even worse at taking care of himself now that Archie's gone."

Barbara sighs. "Fine. I'll let it pass this time, Jim. But you really do know better."

"Yeah. Sorry, Mom."

Barbara's hand rests on Douxie's shoulder. He tries not to flinch. "The hospital's still swamped. I'd be happier if you were under proper medical supervision, but I'm not going to be able to get you to go in, am I?"

He shakes his head. "I'd much rather not. I trust your professional opinion," he says. Her diagnosis... feels right, in a way he's learned not to ignore.

She sighs. "I'll come by and check on you tomorrow. In the meantime, you let these two take care of you. Okay?"

Douxie nods. He really doesn't have a choice, does he? "All right," he murmurs.

And with one more shadow portal, the doctor is gone.

Douxie closes his eyes and breathes. This is doable. He can do this, right? All he has to do is let other people take care of him for a few days, and let the stress recede.

A tear tracks down his cheek, and he hastily scrubs it away.

Jim, sitting next to him, huffs, and the tray, which had been moved away during Barbara's examination, is put back on Douxie's lap. "Eat," Jim says firmly. "Your blood sugar's in the basement, and that's not helping."

"Your solution to any problem is to feed it," Douxie complains as Jim fumbles with something on the tray.

"And I'm right," Jim replies. A fork is pressed into Douxie's hand. "That's a sausage. Now, eat."

Douxie eats.

Claire returns almost right as Jim's clearing away the breakfast tray. Douxie hopes he hasn't made too much of a mess of things. He also has thoughts about Jim having inherited or learned his mother's bedside manner.

"Well," Claire says, "I took the liberty of stopping at the store."

"Oh?" Douxie is wary.

"Mm-hmm." Claire plops down on the bed and there's the rustling of a plastic bag. "Picked up some stronger painkillers, some hot-cold compresses, some lotion...."

"Lotion?" asks Jim from somewhere else in the room.

Hands suddenly alight on Douxie's shoulders and attempt to press them down. Douxie winces. "Thought so. You carry your tension across your shoulders, same as Jim. Let's see if we can fix that."

"Claire...."

"Douxie." Her hands are now on his. "Jim and I can't do anything about Archie breaking your bond. We can't bring Nari back, or Merlin. What we can do is help with the...." One hand leaves his; he thinks he can feel it fluttering about in the air as she seaches for words. "...the physical end of things," Claire concludes. "So let us help with that, okay?"

The bed dips as Jim sits back down on it again. "Come on, Douxie," Jim says. "All we've got is each other, right?"

Which is so patently false that Douxie nearly chokes on it. Jim has his mother and adopted siblings, as well as Blinky and Aaarrrgghh; Claire has her whole blood family and NotEnrique besides. Even Krel has Aja and Steve and a brood of new niblings, halfway across the cosmos though they might be.

Douxie's the only one alone.

But he doesn't voice the thought because he isn't that rude. "Fine," he sighs, submitting again and closing his eyes, for all the good that does him.

Soon enough Claire has him stripped to the waist, sitting in front of her on the bed. If she has any comments about the scars or ink that litter his torso, she keeps them to herself, instead slathering cold lotion across his shoulders and upper back.

At her first touch, Douxie winces.

Claire mutters to herself in Spanish. Douxie doesn't catch all of it, but he definitely hears "sweet baby Jesus" and "worse than Jim" as well as "bridge cables."

"Wait, how am I worse than Jim?" he asks.

"He's learned to relax," Claire grits.

From in front of Douxie, Jim winces. "Yeah. Apologies in advance, but... this is going to hurt, Doux."

For a moment, Douxie doesn't understand what Jim means, but as soon as Claire digs in, he does, gasping at the flare of pain.

She's determined, and relentless, and doesn't give up. Claire's hands are like literal iron, working his shoulders over, and through the haze of torturous sensation, Douxie comes to the realization that she must have taught herself to do this while Jim was still made of stone, because he can't imagine any other circumstance that would warrant this approach.

It's worse than the headaches. Almost worse than the heartaches.

Except, a few minutes in, Claire's thumbs dig in on either side of his spine, and there's an almost automatic reaction as she holds them there. His shoulders lower, like inverted drawbridges, and the pain... eases.

"Better," Claire says with grim satisfaction, and her touch lightens.

Douxie is still gasping with it, fighting to breathe easily, but he has to admit Claire's efforts have had some effect. Things feel looser now, freer. Like the possibility of living without pain exists, even if he doesn't know how to find the way between here and there.

He chokes, and sobs, and finds himself crying again, as a wave of sudden deep unhappiness swamps him.

Merlin left him. After nine hundred years of waiting, he got four words, and then a hug after the man was already dead. And more burdens laid on his shoulders. Why couldn't Merlin have been a real father and guided him all along, instead of just giving some clues at the last minute? Douxie's not a good wizard, nor a clever one. A few years in Camelot, and then out of his own, struggling to survive, much less learn what he needed to, for a full dozen mortal lifetimes.

Why couldn't Merlin have cared, instead of leaving his apprentice to forge himself all alone?

He can't lay any such blame at Nari's feet, his almost-sister, who had taught him so much in their little time together. She'd been older than Douxie's entire species, and so, unknowable, even more alien to him than Douxie is to the modern teenagers who surround him. But she'd been kind, and seen worth in him, and now she's dead. Like with Merlin, Douxie knows it's his own fault, knows that if he'd been quicker, cleverer or more powerful, he could have tipped the scales somehow. If he'd been able to withstand Bellroc and Skrael's magic tearing him from her body. If he'd been able to make the switch permanent. If they'd killed him, not her.

And Archie. That wound is too raw to touch, and even as he thinks of it, another thread frays apart, searing a new scar into Douxie's soul. Even if they rescue Archie from that bloody Trollmarket, it can never be what it was. He and Archie can never form another familiar bond.

The place where Douxie could form a familiar bond is now destroyed. He can never have another familiar, ever again. Was Archie sleeping in a sunbeam the day Merlin had lectured about that? Did he forget? Or, in the moment, did he just not care?

Because now Douxie's going to be alone for eternity. From now until the day of his death, he'll never again have that level of connection with another being.

Distantly, he's aware of arms holding him. Of another pair of hands soothing on his back. He doesn't care. It doesn't matter. Nothing will ever matter again, and it would be best if the jangling haze of pain in his head just devoured him whole.

Alone, the pain follows him down into the dark.

He wakes again in darkness. He's warm and muzzy, and his back still echoes with the faint memories of pain and tension, not to mention the week-old bruises from slamming into a car's hood from a thousand-foot drop, but it doesn't feel that bad right now. Comparatively.

Douxie's bladder, however, disagrees with the rest of him. It doesn't want to stay in the nice warm bed. It wants to go places and relieve the pressure.

The problem is, Douxie genuinely has no idea where he is. He assumes Jim and Claire's room, but he's not sure he's ever been in their chambers before. And with all of Krel's modifications and modernizations of Camelot, the location of the nearest toilet is somewhat beyond him. He would have known his way around old Camelot blindfolded; new Camelot is a dice roll. Ironically, Douxie, the one who grew up here, is the least familiar of the Guardians with the rebuilt structure.

He needs help going to the bathroom. Being blind is, in addition to being terrifying, apparently also humiliating.

He should have expected that.

But he listens, and hears no one.

Alone, then. Which I should have anticipated, Douxie thinks. The Guardians have actual work to be doing, helping the city clean up and rebuild. Jim and Claire can't just spend all their time babysitting him.

I should be down there helping them, he thinks glumly, and is rewarded with a spike of pain in the back of his head.

Claire will kill him if he so rapidly undoes all the work she'd put in on his shoulders, so Douxie sighs, tries to master the throbbing pain, and searches for the edge of the bed, because the insistency of his internal organs is not going away.

Bloody hell, do they have a California King or something? Douxie thinks as it takes him forever to reach the edge of the mattress. Which... well, that makes sense, he guesses, since he's pretty sure they were sleeping on either side of him last night. It's obviously a big bed.

But eventually he finds the side of it, and his toes find the stone floor. He's got no idea where his shoes are, so he breathes, and closes his eyes (like it does much), and holds one hand against the stone of the wall, summoning his staff to his other hand.

He follows the wall around the room, walking carefully, using his staff to check for obstacles in the way. He finds tapestries on the wall, and a fireplace. Windows whose glass panes are warm under his hand, indicating a southern exposure. The smooth, carved wood of a standing wardrobe. And, finally, a door. He has no idea how much of the room's perimeter he's covered.

The door opens under his hand, and he can tell immediately by the sound of his staff tapping the floor that it's a small room. Hopefully a restroom.

Exploring with hands and staff leads him to a large area, half blocked off, where there are tiles up the walls. A shower, he guesses. Then he finds a sink and takes the opportunity to splash some water on his face, cleaning off the dried tear tracks he can feel. He doesn't know where the towels are, and has no idea of the location of his shirt and hoodie either, so he wipes the water away as best he can and dries his hands on his jeans.

If he had Archie, this would all be so much easier.

He finds the toilet, and with it blessed relief from internal pressure.

The next pang from his destroyed bond comes after he's washed his hands and cupped them, drinking cold water from the sink like it's the best thing he's ever tasted, trying to cure his parched throat.

The pain catches him by surprise, and the water falls from his hands as he grabs desperately for the edge of the sink, trying to keep himself upright.

He thinks he might never forgive Archie for this.

His next thought is that of course he'll forgive Arch, his familiar didn't mean it--

Archie's not his familiar anymore

Shaking, Douxie splashes more water on his face, to wash away the burning tears.

Eventually, he reclaims his staff and finds his way out of the washroom, closing the door behind himself. He goes back to the windows and stands there a long time, his palms against the glass, trying to let the sunlit warmth sink into himself, trying not to think or feel at all.

He has no sense of time, but eventually the warmth dims. The sun must have set.

Douxie moves on, back to the fireplace hearth. He sits down in front of it, finds a rug on the floor behind him, and scoots back a little so he's not sitting on the stone. There's no fire lit, and he's never been able to cast a pyre spell. Archie could do it, he thinks. But Archie's not here.

The interior of the room is a gaping mystery. Douxie doesn't dare leave the walls, for fear he'll never find them again.

How small his world has become.

Douxie drifts, and he zones, and time ceases to have meaning.

At some point the door to the room opens and there's people making sound. They're very far away, though, and thus have little meaning to Douxie as he floats weightless in the safe harbor of meaningless time.

Time heals all wounds, he thinks. It's not strictly true, but he's always liked the implications. He checks dispassionately on the remains of his bond with Archie, and sees that it's almost half gone now. Rather more than he'd expected. He hadn't even felt the fraying. The pain that's been jangling at the back of his mind, too, is muted. He suspects that's the damage done by Bellroc and Skrael. At some point he's going to have to comb through it, find out what he lost. But right now it just doesn't seem very important.

No more world-ending crises await him. Not now, hopefully not ever again. All he has to do now is survive himself.

"Douxie?" A hand on his bare shoulder causes him to surface. He blinks automatically, fruitlessly. The world is still dark. "Sorry we left you alone. There was work that needed to get done, and we honestly thought you'd sleep the rest of the day."

"It's all right." Douxie feels washed-out. At peace. Like waves on a beach after a storm. "There's always going to be work to be done. Trust me, it never ends."

Jim sits down beside him. "We got burritos for dinner. And some Nougat Nummies."

Douxie hums tonelessly. "How's Stuart doing?"

Claire sits down on his other side. As before, there's the rustling of a sack, but this one sounds like it's paper. She hands Douxie a burrito, and it's warm and heavy in his hands. He takes a moment to appreciate it. "He's missing his truck, but otherwise it sounds like he's having a great time working in the shelter kitchens."

"He's an optimist," Douxie allows, and uses his fingertips to find the edge of the aluminum foil. Rather like finding the end on a roll of tape. He unwraps it slowly. Eats slowly. He feels sluggish, draggy.

The last time he'd been like this, it had been after being ripped out of Nari's body and forcibly soul-swapped with her. This is much better. He can take time to recover.

What has he got but time, anyway?

He takes another bite and winces as suddenly a bond thread flares up, burns to ash. It brings his headache back to his consciousness.

"What's wrong?" Jim asks immediately.

"Familiar bond fraying away," Douxie replies, pressing fingers to his forehead, even though it's the back of his head that's killing him. "I don't suppose I might have a few more painkillers?"

"Sorry, I should have thought about that sooner." Jim scrambles to his feet and goes somewhere else in the room.

"Douxie, relax." Claire's hands are on both his shoulders, bearing them down.

"Trying," he tells her. "It just hurts."

"I know," she says, though she doesn't. "I'm sorry." Her breath is warm against the back of his neck. Her forehead touches his hair. It's a light touch. Pain still throbs around the point of contact.

"Please don't touch my head," Douxie whispers.

She jerks away. "Shit! Sorry."

He swallows, and wants to reassure her, but can't. "I manage to forget about it, and then it comes back. Highly unfair," Douxie adds, aiming to get a laugh out of her instead of guilt.

It doesn't work. She doesn't laugh. It makes him feel worse. Maybe he should give up comedy altogether. Archie always said he didn't have the true gift for it--

The thought of Archie makes his stomach curdle. He lowers his burrito, leaning it carefully against his leg, a spot of warmth.

"Here." Jim is back, pressing pills into his hand, following them with a bottle of something.

Douxie takes the pills, washes them down and pulls a face. "Gah. What is this?"

"Orange Gatorade." Jim takes the bottle from him.

"It's disgusting."

"It's got electrolytes," Jim shoots back.

Douxie rakes his tongue against his teeth. "That doesn't make up for the taste."

His head throbs. Douxie breathes and deliberately tries to follow Claire's instructions, lowering his shoulders. Immediately he can feel a lessening of tension, though it doesn't make a difference to his head. "When Bellroc and Skrael switched me and Nari back," he says quietly into the silence, wanting to get this out, so he's not the only one who knows, "they tore apart a quite intricate consensual exchange spell."

"They tortured you," Jim says. "We could hear you screaming. You and Nari."

"Yes, but." Douxie touches his head again and breathes. "Having the power and intent to break that kind of working... it's rather rare. Fortunately. Because it also deals damage."

Both of them go still beside him. "Damage?" Claire asks.

"Pretty sure that's what the headache is," Douxie says. "Eventually it'll settle down and I'll need to figure out what the scars are."

Her fingers find his back, trace a scar that, if Douxie remembers correctly, was made by an archaeologist/sorceror looting tombs in Egypt. His "findings" are now in the British Museum. And some of Douxie's blood is in the sands of Egypt. "You already have so many scars, Douxie."

"And now I've got another one," he agrees mercilessly. "In my head." Or in his magic. He's not sure which would be worse.

Jim sighs heavily and leans against him. Not with his full weight, but just so Douxie can feel it, arm to arm. "My mom says," he begins, "that the first thing any baby animal does is what helps it to survive. Horses get up and take a few steps. Fish start swimming. Turtles crawl to the safety of the sea. And babies, human babies... we cry for help."

Douxie is silent.

Jim sighs again. "You need to learn to ask for help, Douxie. You need to tell us things like this, not wait a whole week until they knock you on your ass. You don't need to carry everything all on your own."

"So says 'Young Atlas'," Douxie responds.

He can practically feel Jim's glare. "When, in all the time you've known me, have I ever tried to go it alone?" Jim demands. "You're human, Douxie, even though I know you like to forget it. Our strength is in our friends, remember?"

Douxie is silent for a minute, turning Jim's words over in his mind. Because Jim is right - he doesn't really count himself as human, even though, technically, he is one. But more than being a human, more than anything, Douxie defines himself as a wizard.

It's who he is. It's all he is, anymore.

"Wizards go it alone," he says softly, "because we will outlive everyone. How can we depend on people who will be gone and buried in a paltry sixty years?"

There's silence for a minute, then Claire speaks up. "So you're not going to tell your friends when you're hurt, just because they'll die in sixty years? That's stupid. You know what," she says, "I'm listening, but I'm pretty sure I'm not actually hearing Douxie talking. All I'm hearing is Merlin going 'blah, blah, blah'." He can imagine her making her hand talk in mid-air.

Douxie snorts. "It's impossible," he says, "for Merlin not to be present in me."

"Yeah, but there's present, and then there's parroting all the toxic medieval wizard bullshit he taught you," Claire points out. "It's been nine hundred years, Douxie."

"What am I supposed to do?" Douxie demands. "Pour my heart and soul out into people who will leave me, and leave me mourning them?" He shakes his head. "Everyone dies, that's the problem with immortality." He shuts his eyes against the tears. "Even the immortals leave. Merlin, Nari." He swallows. "Even Archie," he whispers.

"What about Zoe?" Jim asks.

Douxie snorts. "She and I get along best in limited five-year doses. And I don't know if you've noticed, but she's not exactly what you'd call sentimental."

He doesn't want to be alone. Nothing terrifies Douxie more than the thought of being alone forever. But now that Archie's left him, he will be, unless by one of Mordrax's miracles, he manages to find something to bridge that gap.

Claire sighs. "Douxie, has it percolated through your thick skull yet that I'm a wizard too?"

"It's rather hard to ignore your shadowmancy," he tells her.

"Ugh." Her fingernail pings him in the middle of his forehead. "I asked Zoe to double-check. I'm immortal, dummy. And I'm not going to just leave you alone. We're not all Merlin."

Douxie stares, gaping. Or he would be staring, if his eyes worked. "Claire...."

He hadn't thought-- hadn't even considered--

"But you and Jim," Douxie protests weakly.

Jim laughs. It's a surprisingly gentle sound. "Yeah, apparently I'm going to be around a while too. Zoe said it was magic over-exposure, because of the amulet. Like radiation poisoning, but in reverse."

"Oh gods." And Douxie and Krel had rebuilt the amulet for Jim....

Claire sighs and leans her head on his shoulder. "We didn't say anything on the group chat because we really didn't know how to tell Steve and... Toby." There's sorrow in his name.

Jim hooks his chin over Douxie's other shoulder. "I'd give up forever to have him back, but it doesn't work that way."

"We all would," Douxie says softly. "Better one lifetime together than immortality apart." He breathes in sorrow and breathes out pain, thinking of too many friends and allies lost too soon.

"We did have a lifetime together," Jim says. "It was just... shorter than it should have been." By about sixty years.

Douxie closes his eyes. "I'm an ass," he says, apologizing. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, you are," Jim agrees. "But you're in pain and we love you. Now eat." Douxie's burrito is shoved back in his hands.

"Are you going to spend eternity nagging me about meals?" Douxie wonders.

Jim chuckles. "Well, someone has to."

Which... is actually fairly reasonable, Douxie thinks as he takes another bite. His heart still hurts, his body's still sore, and it's going to be at least another week until the familiar bond finishes shredding away into a scar. Probably longer for the occult damage from Bellroc and Skrael to settle. But for the first time, it feels like maybe there's a glimmer of hope. That he might have a brother and a sister to journey with him and buoy him up out of the loneliness.

He thinks of Nari, and how lonely she must have been, separated from her siblings, turned against their destructive path. And maybe Douxie's presence was nothing more than a drop in the ocean against her loneliness, a year nothing more than a moment to her.

But he likes to think that it mattered, in the end.

And that maybe he and Jim and Claire can do better.

A knock sounds, somewhere across the room, and there's the sound of the door opening. "Hello?" Krel's voice calls.

"Hey, Krel," Jim replies.

"Oh good, you are here. Am I allowed to visit the invalid?" Krel asks, coming closer.

"Fuck off, Krel," Douxie says.

"Eat shit, Douxie," Krel replies good-naturedly, and Douxie has to smile. Krel picked up comparative linguistics and Earth insults so fast once someone (Douxie) had responded to his questions about them.

"Here, we got you some tacos," Claire says, and there's more rustling of the paper bag.

"Ah. Not necessary, but appreciated." Krel sits down and joins them.

"Food tastes best when it's shared," Jim opines.

"Yes, yes, your species counts consumption of energy as a social activity." Krel is dismissive. "Given you cannot eat and talk at the same time, this does not make sense."

Jim snickers. "Your expecting humans to make sense, does not make sense."

"Fair," Krel admits. "This is a wonderfully illogical planet and it is no wonder most of the known galactic civilizations avoid it."

"So," Claire says, nudging Douxie. "About that eternity thing...."

Douxie rolls his eyes. "Yes, I'm well aware that Krel is 243 Earth years old."

"You're-- what?" Jim asks. "How?"

"We talked about a lot of things while building your amulet," Douxie tells him.

"Including the comparative time units of our planets!" Krel agrees. "And when we realized that we actually had no idea whether a second and a sekton were the same thing... well, establishing base units became important very rapidly."

Douxie nods. "How could we be sure we were talking about the same thing, if even our understanding of the passage of time was different? And especially when you're dealing with magic and science at the level of reforging Merlin's ultimate work...."

"Magic and Akiridion technology are almost perfectly compatible," Krel agrees. "But there is a difference between 'almost' and 'absolutely.' And unlike Gaylen, I do not want to be blowing up any stars. Particularly not while I am still on a planet near them."

Claire laughs. "Remind me to go visit Aja the next time you two are working on anything master-level."

"Nope. Going to blow you up with us." Douxie takes a bite of his burrito. "So, am I allowed to sleep in my own bed tonight?"

"Hell no," Jim says. "I don't trust you on your own right now." Which, Douxie admits privately, is fair. "Talk to us about it again after your eyesight comes back."

"Can I at least get a shower and some of my own clean clothes?" Douxie whines.

"That we can do."

"Thank you, Claire."

"We already brought your duffel here," Jim says.

Douxie rolls his eyes. "Which I can tell how? I can't see, Jim, and I've never even been in your rooms before, so I don't know where your furniture is, or even how big this room is!"

"Uh...."

Douxie loves his friends, but sometimes they're idiots.

(Sometimes he's an idiot too. Maybe more than he likes to admit. He'd always depended on Archie to be the keeper of the brain cell and impulse control. He's going to have to figure those out on his own now. Well... maybe not on his own, after all.)

"Oh, are you having a sleepover?" Krel asks. "Can I join you?"

"Sure," Claire says, after a beat. Probably a glance at Jim. "I mean, the bed's definitely big enough."

"Why on Earth do you have a bed the size of a small state?" Douxie asks. "There's only two of you, and you're neither of you large people."

"For sleepovers, obviously," Krel answers, and he is so obviously wrong that it demands a friendly argument.

And somewhere in the layers of laughter, counter-accusations, and voices talking over one another... Douxie forgets, for a while, about the pain.

Later, Douxie gets his shower, Jim standing just outside the fall of lovely warm water and handing him things as needed. And then, later still, Douxie ends up in the middle of the enormous bed again, warm and clean and dosed up on another round of painkillers. Conversation ebbs low and voices die down to murmurs, then to the soft, even breathing of sleep. Even Krel, behind Douxie, has dropped off. And Krel's not from here and Douxie's not from now, but somehow Douxie thinks that this will work. That the four of them can hold each other together through eternity. His eyes blink, their lids heavy, as Douxie ponders the idea. That Jim and Claire are so very much in love with each other, but that he and Krel aren't excluded from that love, but rather embraced by it. That this is their home, their castle, and that they can look after one another, keep each other safe and sound, across the centuries yet to come.

That he can trust them to catch him, when he falls.

Eyes closing, Douxie follows the others down into sleep, and doesn't hurt at all.

****
CODA
****

It's been three years, and finally Hong Kong has rebuilt the bridge. Above them, somewhere, the dedication ceremony is going on. Douxie leans against the sun-warmed concrete of the support pillar, listening to the murmur of the crowd. Finally, after the politicians' speeches conclude, there is a moment of silence, then a rousing cheer. The ribbon has been cut.

The press and bystanders and various other people clear the way, and the first car drives across. Soon enough, there's a steady stream of them going.

"Hey." Jim pulls a horngazel out of his messenger bag. "You want the honors?"

Douxie considers it, then shakes his head. "Nah. You do it. Make up for the last time one of those tried to kill you here."

Jim rubs at the scar tissue on his hand, where a broken horngazel had burned him, and nods. "All right," he says, and draws an arch, pressing his palm to it. It's a mere heartbeat before the concrete fractures away, leaving an entrance.

"Shall we?" Krel gestures to the doorway.

Douxie nods and goes in first, followed by the other three. Behind them, the entrance seals itself.

The stairs spiral down, but it never becomes dark. Douxie wonders, has been wondering, what they'll find. The dim, broken ruins of a destroyed Trollmarket? Or the vibrant living lights of a healthy one? And will there be two dragons, or only their corpses?

The answers await, beneath Hong Kong.

The answer, they find out as they emerge, is that it's a living trollmarket, bright with crystals and neon, trolldragons going here and there about their business. It is, in fact, very reminiscent of New Trollmarket in New Jersey. Just, presumably, lacking a connection to the gyre system.

They're noticed soon enough; a party of four humanoids is not exactly part of the daily expectations of most trollmarkets. And though the trolldragon dialect is not one Douxie is precisely fluent in, body language and gestures makes it clear that someone will want to see them. The escort they're given has more of the feeling of honor guards than actual guards. Still, all four of them keep their hands free and clear, ready to wield weapons in an instant if this turns ugly.

They're led to a great cavern, and Douxie's heart skips a beat, because the floor is piled with gold, and the walls are lined with bookshelves. There are fireplaces big enough to roast a dozen oxen, and teacups the size of bathtubs.

And laying on the heaps of soft gold are two enormous dragons. One is white, with a pair of reading glasses perched atop his horned head as he sips calmly at his tea.

The other, as sable as a starless sky, is reading a book grasped oh so delicately between two great claws, a pair of gold-rimmed glasses perched on his snout.

Charlemagne looks up first. "I say!" he booms. "Archie, look what the cat's dragged in!"

Archie looks up from his book and goes absolutely still, staring at Douxie. Douxie, for his part, couldn't move a muscle if he had to.

"Douxie?" his ex-familiar asks, and puts the book aside, prowling forward. He really is enormous. Perhaps even bigger than his father.

Douxie swallows. "Hello, Archie," he says softly.

Archie stops in front of him, lowering his head so their eyes are on a level, deep green meeting dragon's gold. "You came back." Over to the side, Douxie can see Claire and Charlemagne ushering the others away. Giving him and Archie privacy for this talk.

"Of course I came back," Douxie says. "You didn't think I was going to leave you locked up in here, did you?"

"I...." Archie seems taken aback. "I thought the world was going to end," he confesses. "I thought we were going to die here, and I didn't want you feeling that."

"I would have died with you. Happily." Douxie can't keep the tears from his eyes. His hands shake as he reaches forward, touching either side of Archie's muzzle. Archie's fur is so soft, like he remembers. His throat hurts, and he remembers something he'd read, about grief being pent-up love with nowhere left to go. "How could you do that to me, Archie? To us?"

Archie shakes his head and closes his eyes, pressing his forehead against Douxie's like he once had. "I didn't want to drag you down with me, Doux. I wanted to give you a chance."

Douxie closes his eyes, crying so hard now that he's shaking with it. "You were a coward, and I hate you for it. I miss you, Archie."

"I miss you, too, Douxie." Archie's voice is soft, and regretful, because there's nothing either of them can do about it. They can't be familiars again. Douxie can never have a familiar again. "I'm sorry."

Douxie laughs through his tears. It aches. "You bloody well should be, you great dragon." He doesn't go into how much pain the severed bond had given him, nor the long, terrifying days spent blind from an overload of hurt. The having to find his feet truly alone for the first time in over nine centuries. How, even now, he'll find himself turning for advice to someone who's no longer there.

Because none of that actually matters now. Archie can't fix it.

All that matters now, is what they can build between them, going forward.

Archie raises a giant paw and so delicately touches it to Douxie's back. "It was a mistake," he says, "and one I've regretted every day since I made it. I'm so sorry, Douxie. I was wrong, and I hurt you. Which I never meant to do."

Douxie draws a shaky breath and lets it go. He looks at his former familiar, who was his best friend and partner in crime for more than nine centuries. Who hurt him more badly than anyone but Merlin and who, like his master, had done it because he thought it was for Douxie's sake. "I forgive you, Archie," he says, and means it.

The dragon's eyes go wide in surprise.

Douxie swallows, and strokes the soft fur. "Tell me about your Trollmarket," he invites, because it's clear that Charlie and Archie are kings here. "Tell me everything."

Author's Note: Inspired firstly by Douxie getting nerfed in RotT, secondly by the fact that he got tortured and is still obviously out of it when he returns to his body and no one cares, and thirdly by the fact that he loses his pseudo-sister and his 900+ years' companion within an hour or two, but that also goes unacknowledged not only by the rest of the cast but also by the writers/directors. RotT had a major problem in that it never let anyone's pain matter except Jim's. Douxie's eyes changing color is inspired by the fact that in closeup stills, they're heterochromic - pale gold with a dark green rim. At some point on Discord there was a discussion of the fact that Archie has an obvious familiar mark, but not Douxie. The scar under his vambrace was brought up as a possibility, as were his eyes. Obviously I went with the latter here. The quote Douxie thinks of is “Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” by Jamie Anderson.