sakon76

Second Chances
by K. Stonham
first released 27th February 2022

Nothing gets settled right away. For all that Jim has plans buzzing around in his head, and a need to protect a child, he also knows he can't force anything on anyone. Certainly not his help. That's a lesson he's learned too many times.

So there's dinner, and Douxie discovering that he does, in fact, like ratatouille. And finally, when dishes are cleared away and leftovers are put in the fridge, the three of them sit down to talk. Claire, bless her, starts things. "So obviously you need a teacher," she says, violet light sparking at her fingertips. "I can volunteer, or, if you don't want that, I know a few other people in town who might be looking for students."

"There's more than just you and me?" Douxie blurts out.

Claire smiles. "Arcadia Oaks is... special," she says. "Half the town's been touched by magic or aliens. There's a reason Jim and I never moved away after college."

Douxie's breathing is erratic and Jim wonders if tears are going to appear again. But the boy inhales and masters himself. "All right," he says.

"So," says Jim, and tries to order the things in his head. "All right, first thing is, if you're going to be living here, I want to do things right, so that the state doesn't have a reason to fire me and take you away, all right?"

A flash of heterochromic eyes. "I can take care of myself," the boy spits.

"Yeah," says Jim, not rising to the bait, "but it's a lot easier to study magic if you don't have to take care of yourself."

The boy subsides, barely.

"Jim?" asks Claire.

"We," he tells her, gesturing between the two of them, "get licensed to be foster parents. Douxie tells me his birth name, and I get him entered into the system and start tracking down his birth parents, AND," he says, overriding the boy as he shoves his chair back from the dining table and prepares to bolt, "see if termination of parental rights will be possible or even necessary." The boy stops half out of his chair.

But there's still mistrust written all over his face.

"I would do this," Jim says carefully, "even if you didn't remind me of my friend."

Claire reaches forward, puts her hand on the table in front of Douxie. "People took care of us and taught us what we needed to know, when we got our initial,"

"Bad," Jim puts in.

"Introductions to magic," Claire finishes, with only a half-hearted glare at him. She returns her attention to the boy. "Magic folk have to take care of one another," she says quietly, "because the world likes to punish what it doesn't understand."

Slowly, Douxie sits back down.

"So that's my plan," Jim says. And he waits.

It's a long moment, Claire's fingers twitching, before Douxie mutters, "Richard Prichett."

Jim breathes easier. It's something to go on. "Do you know your birthday? And your parents' names?"

"May day," the boy answers sullenly. "An' Mary and Richard."

"Wait," says Claire. "You're Richard Prichett, Junior?" At the glare she receives, she laughs and points at Jim. "James Lake, Junior."

Douxie's eyes widen as he looks at Jim. And then, unexpectedly, he snerks and grins. It's the first smile Jim has seen on him, and it lights the boy up.

It lightens something inside Jim, too. This might work, he thinks.

There's a fine line to be walked between first-time parenting, and smothering. Jim's not sure which side of the line he's falling on, but he hopes it's the right one. He doesn't want Douxie, whether he's their Douxie or not, to try to run again.

He promised a lock for the door. He can't do that right now, the hardware store's already closed for the night, but tomorrow, maybe? Or this weekend? They could make a project of it. If Douxie helps to install it, he'll know it works, he'll trust it more, trust them more....

They get him settled into bed, then go to their own room, right next to his. And after teeth are brushed and they're snuggled up together under the covers, Claire clenches Jim tight and shakes. She's breathing rough into his shoulder, and her tears are hot, and he just holds her. "Fuck," she whispers, "fuck." Jim nods against her hair in the darkness and presses a kiss to the top of her head. "It's either him or his clone," she whispers. "His magic's exactly the same."

It feels like a knot in the center of his chest, having Claire confirm what Jim had also thought. He's not crazy, this really is their friend come back.

But much as he hates to pop the bubble, Jim also has to be the realist in this bed. "Maybe," he murmurs, "but he's also a thirteen-year-old runaway." Claire lifts her head. "It's not fair to who he is for us to look at him on the basis of who he was. Claire," he says, "what if he never remembers? What then?"

She levers herself up, and he can just barely see her expression. "Jim--" she says.

He shakes his head. "What if he never remembers?" he repeats. "Claire, you and I both want him to be our Douxie, but the fact stands that he's not, so we can't treat him like he is."

She stares at him, then swallows. He head dips, hiding the shine of her eyes. "You're right," she whispers. She sniffs. "Maybe... if we think of him like... like he's Douxie's son or something."

"Or something." Jim draws her down again, until she lay on his chest, head over his heart. He breathes in and out. "If he remembers," he says quietly, "we'll deal with it then. Until then...."

"Until then," she says, "foster parents."

"Not what you wanted, I know."

Claire levers herself up and glares at him. "Jim Lake, Junior. If you think for a second that I am having any doubts about this--"

Jim laughs and stretches up to kiss her. "Doubts later. Sleep now."

"Hmph." Claire pouts at him, then settles down for the night.

Jim wakes from a dead sleep in the middle of the night, suddenly awake and aware, his gut instinct telling him there's someone in his house.

He barely breathes as he eases out of bed, his feet automatically finding the spots on the floorboards that take his weight without creaking.

The door opens silently, both the latch and hinges lubricated with graphite powder not that long ago.

He can see, flickering up the stairs from below, an eerie blue light.

One step after another, he goes silently down the steps, Excalibur ghosting to life in his hand. He doesn't make a sound, knowing silence may the only thing that lets him get a drop on the intruder. He has a wife and now a child living here to protect. Is it goblins, or a Gumm-Gumm, or--

In the darkened living room, the crystal of Douxie's staff is going crazy, doing a wild light show worthy of a disco ball.

Illuminated by the blue light, a black shadow eclipsing the staff, stands a thirteen-year-old doppelganger.

He turns to Jim.

"Jim," Douxie says, in a voice far older than the one he's spoken with all day, "where's Archie?"

And then he collapses to the floor, the staff going dark and silent.

Jim just stares for a moment before he breathes, "Well, fuck," vanishing Excalibur once again. He crosses the room to Douxie, automatically doing a check: temperature normal, breathing okay, pulse regular. "Okay," he says, as much to himself as to anyone. "Okay, you're definitely you, then. And it's the middle of the night, so we'll deal with this in the morning, all right?" Not waiting for an answer from the unconscious (sleeping?) boy, he hefts him up into his arms and carries him back upstairs, not bothering to give the squeaky steps a miss this time.

He tucks the boy back into bed and lingers just a second, his hand on the black hair, to give the boy a smile. "Welcome back," Jim says, and goes to seek his own bed.

The morning presents its own set of problems. Namely that Jim has to go back into the office today. Claire fortunately has a lighter schedule, and Douxie can stay with her in the morning, then, a quick call confirms, he can stay with Jim's mom in the afternoon until Jim gets off work and can come grab him.

Which feels like a lot of shuffling around for the first day in a new home, but it's the best they can do right now.

"So!" Claire says brightly, obviously trying to make the best of the subject, "I was thinking shopping this morning."

Jim knows better than to roll his eyes, and instead just flips the waffle-maker over.

"Shopping...?" Douxie asks warily.

"Well, much as I'm sure you love Jim's choice of clothing," Claire says, and laughs as Douxie makes a face. "So. Clothes, shoes. The basics. School supplies."

Now Douxie tenses up.

"Doux." Jim waits until the boy looks up at him. "You have to go to school. It's kind of not optional in this state. Not even for wizards."

The boy blinks. "Wizards...?"

Jim and Claire exchange a look. "That's what we're called, Douxie," Claire says, putting a hand on his. "People like us are wizards. Or hedgewitches, sometimes."

Douxie swallows. "So your friend Douxie was...?"

"Douxie was a master wizard," Claire says. "The best of the best. That's his staff," she says, nodding to its place over the living room mantel.

Douxie twists in his seat to look at it. Jim goes still, waiting to see if there's any fallout from whatever the hell it was that happened last night. "I... think I dreamed about it?" the boy says, like he's not sure. "It was glowing."

Jim sucks a breath in. Claire's gaze rivets on him. "You were downstairs last night," he tells Douxie, carrying the platter of waffles to the table. "And you're right, the crystal was glowing."

Douxie blinks. "What'd I do?" he asks. There's no disbelief in his voice.

Jim glances at Claire, then back at the boy. "You asked where Archie was."

Claire grimaces. "I... hadn't even thought of that."

"Who's Archie?" There's no guile in Douxie's voice. But there is suspicion.

"He was our Douxie's best friend," Claire says. She hesitates, then adds, "His familiar."

Jim grimaces. They haven't seen Archie since Douxie died, though they've gotten sporadic communiques from him, letting them know that he and Nari continue safe. Apparently they've been hiding out in Charlemagne the Devourer's lair, wherever that is.

Apparently even the Arcane Order think twice about taking on a dragon named Charlemagne the Devourer.

"Oh." Douxie clams up in favor of waffles, but Jim would bet money that he's tucking the information away somewhere, to be mulled over later.

The morning is spent working on his case load and wondering intently how the shopping trip is going. He doesn't think Douxie will run; the boy had locked onto the possibility of magic lessons like metal filings to a magnet. But there's always the possibility. Around lunchtime, his phone pings with a picture, and Jim opens it to see Douxie dressed in new clothes, with a couple bracelets around one wrist and a skull pendant dangling around his neck. He's grinning, actually grinning as he holds up a bottle of nail polish. Jim is absolutely not surprised that it, and almost every stitch of his clothing, is black.

God bless Claire.

After lunch, Jim starts making not-very-subtle inquiries to a couple of his coworkers. He actually ends up laying the whole thing (bar the reincarnation-of-my-friend bit) to Kendra, who grills him on a couple of things, then gets a gleam in her eyes and whips out some forms, starting to fill in a psych eval of him, writing almost faster than he can follow. Then she does one for Claire as well, who she's met at least half a dozen times. And she stands and Jim follows her almost puppy-like over to Tim's desk, where....

Well, within half an hour, Jim finds himself a licensed foster care parent.

"Honestly," Tim tells him, "we kind of figured it was just a matter of time for you and Claire anyway."

Kendra points a sharp blood-red nail at him. "That said, you get to track down the kid's parents and deal with them. I've had too many bad parenting situations already this week."

"Ugh," he and Tim say as one, all three of them deflating. Social worker burnout is not a joke, and even though all three of them are relatively young and still optimistic, still believing they can make a difference....

...It's a job that breaks your heart over and over again.

"You find his family, I'll take the kid on as one of my cases," Tim bargains, glancing at Kendra. "Jim doing it himself is too much conflict of interest, you know that."

She huffs. "Yeah, because someone who's got the kid's best interests in mind is definitely the wrong person."

"State oversight," Jim says, and while he understands the reasons why, the phrase still leaves a bad taste in his mouth. Too many kids slip through the cracks formed by walls of policy, and they can't help them all. But this isn't like being the Trollhunter; despite Excalibur, there is no way for Jim to cut through walls of stupidity and placidity and callous disregard made by people who look at children as a line in a budget, and just don't care.

Jim's problem has always been that he cares too much, and the anger inside him burns against the injustice of the world. It's why he got into this job in the first place, and finding Douxie again--homeless, abused, unsupported--has only kindled his anger anew.

It's Jim against the world, and the world will move.

Tim sets up a case file, and Jim gives him what little information he has: age, birth date, parents' names, Welsh origin. That last one is possibly going to complicate things, but Jim doesn't care. He wants to keep Douxie safe with him and Claire, but if needs be... well, Douxie can "run away" again and disappear out of the system. Jim and Claire can act the part of distraught foster parents, while secretly taking the gyre to New Jersey and stashing Douxie with Blinky and Aaarrrgghh. Jim has no doubts that growing up as the only human in a Trollmarket would present its own set of difficulties, but most important is that Douxie gets a chance to grow up with people who understand his magic, and who actually care for him.

And Jim's borrowing trouble. Let Tim do his investigations and see what turns up.

"I gotta admit, Jim," Tim says while Jim's sending him the two photos he has of Douxie, for the file, "I was expecting you to go the usual channels for this, not latch onto a homeless kid and drag him home."

Jim hesitates, then decides to trust a man who's never given him a reason not to trust him. "Show you something?" he offers, and pages through his phone to his sole picture of Douxie1.0. Tim takes the phone and his eyes widen. "That's a friend of mine who died about fourteen years ago," Jim says, carefully not giving Douxie's name. "He saved me and some friends of ours in the doing. And this kid reminds me so much of him... I just can't not, you know?"

Tim breathes a whistle. "I get that, man." He hands Jim his phone back. "Look, I've got to do my due diligence, you know that, but... if I can't turn up his parents? I'm guessing you and Claire are about as good as he's gonna get. Just be careful how much of your friend's legacy you lay on his shoulders, okay?"

"As little as possible," Jim promises. He huffs a laugh. "Never been a parent before, and I'm starting with a teenager. Wish me luck?"

He gets a thumbs-up as he heads back to his cubicle. He has phone calls to make, appointments to set up for home visits for his cases... and some state education curriculum guidelines to download and print out and take home.

By the time Jim fights his way through traffic and gets to his mom's house, school is of course out and Zelda, Walt Jr., and Roger are all home. He finds them at the dining table doing homework, and Douxie huddled in the corner of the sofa in the living room, about as far away as he can get from the triplets.

Jim's reminded of what Toby has told him about introducing a new cat into an established clowder.

So after throwing a casual "Hey," his siblings' way, he goes and sits next to Douxie. Who is sullenly buried in his new hoodie, studying the shine of his nail polish. The boy doesn't look up at him.

Jim waits him out.

"I'm not stupid," he finally gets, and it hurts, because Douxie hurts, and Jim's already getting way too attached to his foster child.

"Of course you're not," he agrees, earning himself a glare. "They tell you that?" he asks, nodding toward the dining room.

"They didn't have to."

Jim sighs and settles back deeper into the gray sectional that's replaced the old orange one. "Their parents are a literal medical doctor and a high school history teacher," he says. "Schoolwork's always been a priority in this family. You, on the other hand, have missed at least five years of school. It doesn't mean you're stupid, it means you haven't been pushed the same way they have." He allows himself a small smile. "Bet you could show them a thing or two about con games, though."

It earns him a sideways glance. Douxie's now like a turtle just barely starting to poke its head out of its shell.

"Look, we'll get you a placement test, and then we'll work on bringing you up to speed on your academics, okay? It'll take time, but you're the absolute opposite of stupid," Jim tells the kid. "Stupid people have trouble surviving the way you have. Trust me on that."

Douxie looks away, but the slope of his shoulders recedes.

"You want to know something else?" Jim asks rhetorically. "All three of them have magic too. They can help you with that."

Douxie's eyes fly wide, and he looks back toward the dining room.

"Seriously...?" he breathes.

Jim nods. "Just about every kid in their grade year has it. And I think you're going to be a year behind them in school, age-wise... but you're certainly not going to be alone in this, Doux." It had been a bit of a shock when they'd figured out that all changeling familiars had been selected because they had magic... but in the end it was one more thing that bound Arcadia Oaks even more tightly to the magical world. There were magic classes taught at the rec center now, carefully worded in the brochures in case outsiders took a look, but there nonetheless.

There were reasons HexTech and GDT had never gone out of business.

Douxie swallows.

Jim very carefully drapes his arm over the boy's shoulders and pulls him into a sideways hug. "You're not alone," he says quietly. "And I won't make the stupid promise that it's going to be easy from here out, because it probably won't be. But I can promise that you're safe now."

And he can practically see it as the festering cocktail of hate, betrayal, loneliness, suspicion, and fear bubbles to the surface, breaking through Douxie's hardened shell like it was nothing more substantial than the caramelized surface of a crème brûlée.

Jim draws the boy to himself, letting him cry it out into his cheap suit jacket.

His mother peeks around the corner; Jim waves her off. He hears her corral the triplets, keeping them in the dining room and out of the living room while the unfairness of the world weighs down and submerges a thirteen-year-old.

If Douxie's going to be his and Claire's kid, then rightfully Jim's siblings and Enrique should be aunt and uncles. But given they're all just a year or so older than Douxie, Jim's pretty sure that's stupid. Cousins, he decides. If they like each other, or even if they don't, they can all be cousins.

And then Strickler gets home, and Douxie bolts upright at the new voice, hastily wiping his snotty, tearful face on his sleeves.

Oh, Jim realizes as his stepfather comes into the living room and Douxie's eyes get impossibly wide and his body goes impossibly still, we didn't tell him about the trolls yet.

Because Strickler's former familiar is now his own fourteen-year-old son, and he gave up any semblance of looking human in order to save all of the changeling familiars from the Darklands. So it's a lanky green troll who comes back home every day from teaching at the high school, takes off his glamour mask, kisses his human wife, and raises their three hedgewizard kids. And, frankly, Jim has never seen his mother or his former history teacher happier, so he rolls with the weirdness that his definition of family life has become.

But Douxie's terrified.

"Hey, Strickler," Jim says with a wave. "This is my new foster son, Douxie. Douxie, this is my stepfather, Walter Strickler."

Strickler, fortunately, has good enough instincts to have stopped in the doorway. "A pleasure to meet you," he says, deliberately not traumatizing the boy further.

"What--" is all Douxie manages before his throat closes up.

"He's a troll," Jim tells him. "Also a history teacher at the high school, so you'll probably be in his class in the fall."

Which is when Toby comes barreling in the front door.

"Hey, Dr. L., Mister S., kiddos, saw Jimbo's car in the driveway, thought I'd drop in--" says Toby, who's never met a Lake or Strickler he didn't eventually count as family. He stops cold, though, when he sees Douxie, and his eyes go as wide as Jim's ever seen them. His mouth drops open in a gape. "Douxie?" he breathes.

And Douxie's eyes flicker between Toby and Strickler and Jim, and Jim can tell it's too much stimulation for the boy, on top of everything else, so he decides to cut and run, getting out while the getting's good. "Not now, Tobes," Jim warns, standing and pulling Douxie to his feet.

"But--"

Jim flashes his best friend a glare that stops Toby short. "Not now," he repeats himself. "I'll explain later, I promise, but not right now, okay?"

Strickler's face is questions, and Toby's is too, but they both let him get out the door, Douxie in tow, with nothing more than a called thanks to Jim's mom.

Jim gets them into the car, and gets the doors shut, and drives away, no particular destination in mind, until they end up at the town square. He sees Stuart's truck there, and parks. Claire's got late tech rehearsal running tonight; he and Douxie are on their own for dinner. "Do you like tacos or burritos?" he asks.

They end up sitting on one of the park benches opposite GDT Arcane Books, eating burritos for dinner. Jim feels like he needs to apologize for dragging this tough street kid into his loud, obnoxious, loving family, but he doesn't know where to begin. "Okay," he finally starts, "so this is kind of how the story goes: a long time ago, I got picked by a magic amulet to protect the good trolls from the bad trolls...."

Douxie is silent, eating, as Jim recounts an abbreviated version of the wildest two years of his life in between bites of his own burrito. He thinks he's covered most of the major events and major players, though he does end up wondering just how cockamamie it sounds to a kid from outside the magic world.

"So," Jim concludes eventually, "a lot of these people are going to look at you and see the Douxie we lost, same as I did. And they're going to want to hug you and be glad to have you back, when you don't know them at all and they're complete strangers. But none of them, I promise, none of them mean any of it in a bad way."

Douxie is silent for a minute, fingers crumpling the wrapper of his burrito. "I thought you thought I was him," he eventually says.

Jim shrugs. "Well, I mean, yeah. But you're also not him. Regardless of whether you're the same soul come back, you're also a completely different person, with completely different life experiences. And I didn't get to know Douxie well enough to say whether or not yours are worse than his, but all the same, Claire and I are going to try our best not to let his ghost distort how we see you."

Douxie's fingers clench on the paper, anger crawling across his face. "I am not," he spits, "anyone's ghost."

"I never said you were," Jim says, carefully mild. "But you are a magic kid, and we take care of our own." It doesn't help, he sees - Douxie's anger and tension don't abate in the least. "Would you rather," he asks, "stay here, with people who want to get to know you, where you can have a stable life and go to school and learn magic and maybe make friends, or," he offers, "would you like me to drive you back to the city, where you can keep living hand-to-mouth, pulling cons and getting five-fingered discounts?" And probably turning tricks to survive when the cash flow gets low, he deliberately doesn't add.

From the way Douxie flinches, Jim knows he's probably right about that last one. It curdles in him, and he'd like to take Excalibur to every last sick fuck who touches children like that--

But he masters his anger, which won't help anyone in this moment, and breathes.

"As someone who's been there," Jim says softly, "been abandoned and betrayed and hurt and angry... I'd just say, don't turn down a good thing just because of the bad things."

Gold and green eyes meet his, defiantly.

"I brought you home because of him," Jim says. "I want you to stay because of you."