[fic] [Tales of Arcadia] Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet 144/?
Your Future Hasn’t Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
released 23rd June, 2023
"So," Jim said, unslinging the deer corpse from over his shoulder and dropping it by the fire, "anyone want some dinner?"
Many sets of big eyes looked at him, not glowing like a changeling's, but rather reflecting the light like a cat's. Jim was sure there was a word for that. Toby and Douxie would probably know it, but he didn't.
Bagdwella opened her mouth, eyes fast on the fresh meat. "What would we owe you for it?"
Jim paused. Looked at her. Mentally said a good number of bad words. "Nothing."
"Nothing?" Her voice rose in a familiar pitch. "But you're a human!"
"Yeah, and not all of us are bad." Jim contemplated the size of the deer versus the size of his glaives. They were good for cut work, but maybe Excalibur would be better to chunk it up first...?
How angry, he wondered, would Nimue be if he used her sacred blade for something like carving up a deer?
It was a tool. And given he used it regularly to kill, he decided she wasn't allowed to be too upset about him using it to sustain life.
Mind made up, Jim drew Excalibur and started breaking down the deer. "So," he said conversationally, "I'm called Trollhunter. I know who Kanjigar is. What are the rest of your names?"
He got Bagdwella's name, and, once he gave them each a rib with a good chunk of meat attached, Rokum and Glandir's. He wasn't expecting to, for the first time, take a good look at the next face and realize he recognized it too, all six eyes and shock of wild hair. "Dictatious?" Jim asked, even as the youngling said his own name.
He earned a scowl and the meat being snatched from his hand. "How do you know my name?"
Jim swallowed, and looked at the even littler gray troll hiding behind Dictatious. "So that must be your brother Blinkous. I... thought he'd be blue."
"Blinky's a pebble," Bagdwella informed him imperiously. "He's too little to have colors."
Jim blinked. "Huh. I did not know that about troll babies. Pebbles, I guess." He looked at the rib he held in his hand. "Is it okay for him to eat this, if he's just a baby? Or does he need something softer?"
"Eating bones grows strong stones," Dictatious informed him with more than a hint of his future intellectual superiority.
"Okay," Jim said, accepting this, and handed the rib to Blinky, who came just enough out of his brother's shadow to accept it before scurrying back into hiding.
As the night wore on, he kept cutting off parts for the hungry troll children, and the munching and crunching and snapping of bones became a background noise. Though all of them stared, horrified, when Jim put a piece of the venison over the fire to roast for himself.
"You're ruining it!" Bagdwella declared, pint-sized, shrill, and almost adorable.
Jim pointed at her with a finger. Not a blade. "Humans don't eat raw food. It can make us sick." Douxie's long lecture about what trichinosis did, and why though it was effectively eradicated in modern domesticated meat supplies, it was most decidedly not in early medieval wild game, had been enlightening. And memorable. Jim was never going to be able to look at raw meat the same again.
"Humans are weird," Bagdwella declared, rumping down onto the ground, her arms crossed.
Jim chuckled. "Can't argue with that."
The newly named Merlin was as inept in the kitchen as Douxie had expected. But a mug of weak cider later, and a slice of bread with a round of cheese, and Douxie's headache eased enough to let him take over. Not that he himself was anywhere near Jim's equal so far as cookery... but he was a damn sight better than the man who would someday be his master and who was currently his student.
Merlin at least looked abashed at his ineptitude and his inability to provide for the man who had made his staff.
Douxie just sighed and seasoned the stew. Then, while that was heating over a rekindled fire, he tended to Merlin's animals. Which involved bringing in eggs, which he was able to turn into a decent frittata with various odds and ends he found in the kitchen and garden. "You'll need to mend your fences with your neighbors and servants," he advised Merlin eventually, sliding a plate of good food in front of the man.
Merlin looked up, surprise across his face. "You're not staying, Master?"
Douxie shook his head. "I've done what I came to do. And... destiny has another path in store for me," he said, thinking of the original Taliesin, and how he'd met his end at Herne's hands.
And how Merlin would one day seal away Herne. There was a certain symmetry of action there. Cause and effect, almost.
Oh, Douxie realized, taking his own seat. His hand touched one of the hidden pockets in his robes. That's what's yet to be done....
He slid the Time Map out of his pocket as Merlin munched. Regarding it now, with Taliesin's opal beneath his clothes, touching his skin, Douxie understood for the first time the characters scribed around the exterior, not mere decoration as he'd always thought, but instead instructions for its use.
Merlin would have no such advantage.
But then, wasn't that as it was supposed to be?
"You have a knack for time magic," Douxie said softly, laying the ivory box on the table. "I give this to you, to help you develop it. Make good use of the last of Atlantis, Merlin." He slid it across the table, to the new master wizard.
Merlin's eyes were huge. "Me? But...?"
"There is greatness within you," Douxie said. "I've seen it. With world enough, and time... you can help return this world to a paradise for magic." Because he could see now, what Merlin had tried to create in Camelot. A second golden age. And wasn't Douxie himself trying to create a third in Arcadia?
But Arthur had broken at the loss of his love. Where Jim, at the loss of his best friend, had found a way to do it over....
"A paradise," Merlin murmured. Douxie could see the dream setting in, hooking into Merlin's own desire to matter.
All wizards, himself included, had ego.
He dared to reach across the table, to cup his hand against the side of Merlin's face. Was he a son looking at his father? Or a teacher looking at his pupil?
Time swirled around Douxie, dizzy with overlapping possibilities.
"I am so proud of you," he managed. "Of you, and of all you accomplish."
And I will always love you, Father, even when you no longer love me.
Access to the mail center's roof was easily provided with the presence of a police officer. Leaving behind curious employees, Zelda mounted the steps and pushed open the roof access door. "Gravel," she observed.
Behind her, Detective Scott made a humming noise. "Well, there goes any footprints."
She ignored him and stalked in a dainty semi-circle around to where the would-be assassin had probably stood. Knelt. Zelda crouched down, lined up an imaginary shot. "He stood two feet left of here," she announced. "Don't!" she snapped when Scott moved to stand where the assassin had.
He paused. Looked at her. "Why not?"
She huffed a sigh through her teeth. "Humans have terrible senses of smell," she told him. Glanced up at the sun. "I'll come back, with some others, after sunset. If the trace isn't muddied, we should be able to get a whiff of him. Follow a trail."
His lips narrowed, but the detective slowly nodded. "All right. Could be a her," he offered.
Amusement sparked unexpectedly. "It could be," Zelda agreed. "Very forward thinking of you."
"Yeah, well." Scott huffed and looked away, toward the downtown park. Where the battle against Gunmar had taken place. "I was watching that night, you know." He glanced back at her. "Were you the purple one?"
She tilted her head to the side, acknowledgment. "You're not as stupid as I tend to believe most humans are."
"Thanks." His tone was dry. "Thing is, my daughter's hip-deep in this. So I'm running to play catch up with my little girl. Which is a blow to my ego like you would not believe."
His daughter...? Oh. Had to be the Black girl the Trollhunter was dating. "So you're Darci's dad."
Detective Scott nodded. "I'm taking it on faith, and what I've seen, that you're on the side of the angels, so I'm willing to meet you halfway. But I'm also asking you to work with the police, and not cut us out entirely, okay?"
Zelda's tongue worried at the back of her teeth as she thought. "My kind don't have much trust in humans, or authorities," she finally managed. "And we have a long, very ugly history behind us. But we're trying to change. Well," she said, glancing again at where the assassin had stood, "some of us are trying to change. Others remain stuck in an... outmoded mindset."
A sudden smirk from the policeman. "Don't you mean 'extinct'?" he quipped.
Zelda stared. "...You did not just quote Jurassic Park at me."
Still smiling, Detective Scott shrugged. "Just trying to break the tension."
Despite herself, Zelda snorted. "Come by the museum this weekend," she invited, starting to saunter back toward the roof access. "I think you'll like our new entrance display."
"Aaand, he's back," Toby observed, as another asteroid slowly drifted toward theirs, with a hissing, spitting mad Voltarian clinging to it. Looking rather like one of Nana's cats when they got wet, actually.
Maybe Mr. Meow-Meow P.I. was actually an alien. He'd have to get Krel to check out that possibility.
"So," said Claire, sitting by Toby's side and finishing up the Nougat Nummy he'd given her, not wanting their resident wizard to, y'know, pass out and leave them trapped in the creepy asteroid dimension, "what do we do?"
Krel shrugged.
But Aja stood, a determined look on her face. "I think I know. Little brother," she addressed Krel, "do you trust me?"
"What? Of course I do." He looked surprised to even be asked such a thing.
"Then trust that I know what I am doing."
Krel looked up at his sister for a long minute, then nodded. "As you wish, Queen Aja."
That won a glimmer of a smile from Aja, before she launched herself from the asteroid, flinging herself across the space between them and Tronos Madu with an ease and grace Toby envied.
"I hope she knows what she's doing," Claire muttered.
"That makes two of us," Krel agreed, wrapping his arms around his bent knees, and settling in to watch.
Aja landed lightly on the asteroid. "Tronos Madu," she said to the angry Voltarian. He eyed her narrowly, tensed, waiting for her attack.
Aja knelt, empty-handed. And cast her serrator away, toward the other asteroid. Krel straightened up, surprise on his face, and caught it.
Tronos Madu looked surprised too. But then he reared back for a strike.
Aja did not close her eyes. Neither did she flinch.
His armored fingertips stopped a mere inkel from her face. "Why do you not fear me, Princess?" the bounty hunter demanded.
"Because I know your anger is justified," Aja replied softly, meeting his gaze. "When your people begged my parents for aid... they turned away from you. It is a shame of House Tarron. One of many."
"A shame?!" Tronos snarled. He caught her by the throat, lifted her into the air, electricity crackling over his armor. "My people are dead! My planet destroyed!"
Aja did not fight him. But she did struggle to breathe. To speak. "I do not know why my Mama and Papa did what they did. It was cruel. And wrong!"
He cast her aside, slamming her form into the dusty black surface of the asteroid.
"Aja!" Krel was on his feet, barely held back by Toby and Claire. Whose faces were, in turn, highly concerned.
Aja coughed, massaging her throat. Tronos whirled, golden eyes glaring balefully at her. "Nothing you do can make things right," he said. "I will have the blood of all Tarrons spilled, to avenge my people."
"Yes," said Aja. "And what then?"
He looked blankly at her.
"Once you have your vengeance," she said, pushing to her feet. "Once my parents and I, and my little brother, are all dead, what then?"
Tronos looked surprised. And even more blank. As if the possibility of existence beyond that moment had never occurred to him.
"All right," Jim said, as the sun slipped below the horizon, "ready, gang?"
His semi-feral group of troll children grumbled more or less, but as he was their only protector at the moment, he was also their best shot at getting back to their home and their families (what survived of them) unscathed.
It wasn't just Gumm-Gumms in the woods of medieval England, after all.
Jim led the way, stepping out of the shade of the woods and into the grasslands, breaking the path for the six smaller figures that followed him.
Of course, twenty or so steps in, he stopped, coming to a sudden epiphany. Groaning, Jim smacked a gauntlet to his forehead.
"What?" Kanjigar demanded.
"Nothing," Jim said. "Just realizing I'm an idiot." He couldn't exactly tell the future wearer of the Trollhunter armor that he'd just figured out he could have crossed the grassy expanse in half-troll form. Let alone call himself all the bad words in English and Trollish that he was thinking. Impressionable children, and all that.
I swear to god, I'm a moron, Jim thought, resuming the forward trudge, fuming. I've got the stupid sun stone in my amulet. I didn't need to switch to human form. He chewed on that for a while, trying to follow his own path (and the Gumm-Gumms') from the day before in reverse. It was harder in the darkness, with merely human eyes. But he couldn't exactly shift again now, not without freaking out the chain of kids he needed to get back to their home. And he was trying to get them used to the idea that not all humans were bad. Shifting forms would be counterproductive.
Eventually Jim sighed and tried to shed the irritation. He'd spent months in half-troll form building up a justifiable psychosis about sunlight; if he sometimes forgot he now had an immunity to it in that form... well, there were worse things to be ticked about.
Like burning dinner.
Not that that ever happened.
Partway through the night, which fortunately had a bright moon, he let the older kids take the lead, dropping back by Dictatious. Who was half carrying his little brother.
Blinky, adorably, looked like he was mostly asleep, placing one stumbling foot in front of the other. "Want me to carry him?" Jim offered.
Dictatious glared. "No!" He yanked his brother closer to himself.
Jim considered things. Among them Dictatious' own stubby legs. "How about if I carried both of you?" he offered. The pair of them were significantly smaller than the other troll whelps; Jim leaned into that now. "We might be able to make better speed."
Dictatious glared again and didn't deign to respond.
Jim shrugged and strolled along beside the children.
His chance came not too much longer, when Blinky tripped face first to the ground, and began wailing.
Jim sighed and, without breaking stride, picked up the tiny form of his father-to-be, swinging the pebble up against his shoulder. Before Dictatious could protest, he picked up the other Galadrigal with his free arm and situated him similarly.
"Finally!" Bagdwella crowed. "Now we can make some time!"
Dictatious spluttered; Jim tuned him out.
And if, after a bit, he realized Blinky was dozing and gnawing on the edge of Jim's pauldron while doing so....
Well, he only wished he had a third hand, so he could take a picture with his phone.
Missed you, Dad.
The moment Merlin put his hand on the Time Map, Douxie felt a string of fate thump into place with an almost physical reverberation. Reality vibrated like a plucked guitar string, stirring within him the awareness of time that he usually only glimpsed faintly through tea leaves or palm lines.
And with that reawakened sense of time came the sense that time was running out.
He'd done what he'd come to do, and was going to very soon be ejected from the era where he didn't belong, and sent back to his own.
Like a time sneeze, Douxie thought irreverently.
Then, Not without Jim.
He needed.... Fuzzbuckets, Douxie thought, and stood. Fortunately he and Jim had left the bulk of their gear in the kitchen. And Jim had taken everything he truly needed. It made it significantly easier for Douxie to gather up his own possessions. Bow, arrows, rope. The precious, precious case that held Taliesin's lute. A hasty grab of a waterskin, stuffed in atop some of the supplies from Charlie, because while Douxie's pounding headache was alleviated, that wasn't the same thing as gone, and right now further food and drink were likely the best thing for it.
"Master Taliesin?" Merlin was staring at him.
Douxie managed a smile. "I must get to Sir Steve," he said, barely remembering to use Jim's code name. "He needs me."
A lie, that, but one Merlin might buy.
Merlin stood. "Let me help."
"No." Douxie shook his head. "No, you're needed here. The future is born here, Merlin. With you."
"But--"
He put his hand on Merlin's shoulder. "I need you to trust me," he said, looking into blue eyes.
Slowly, Merlin nodded, mute.
Douxie smiled. "Someday," he said, "a poet shall write 'parting is such sweet sorrow.' And it is, young Merlin. If I could stay longer and teach you more, I would. But time has her hand on me, and will not be shaken off."
Merlin swallowed, and nodded again. "Until we meet again someday," he said. There was hoarseness in his voice.
Douxie nodded too. "Until we meet again," he promised. "In this world... or some other."
And then, in a whirl of black robes, he was out the door and gone. Running. With his past behind him, and his future before him, and the hope that he would not return to his own time before he could reach Jim.
We need to do this together...!
It was nearing evening before Waltolomew was directed to the room where Barbara, post-surgery, lay resting.
She looked exhausted.
Dark circles ringed her closed eyes. Her glasses lay on a bedside table. She was dressed in a hospital gown, not so much different in appearance than the scrubs she habitually wore. A white blanket draped over her lower half.
Her right arm was swathed in white, and bound in a sling.
He walked in quietly, not wanting to wake her if she was asleep. What he assumed was a medical chart was tucked into a clear plastic bin at the foot of her bed. He picked it up, scanned it. Not a word of it made sense to him.
Curse me for not going to medical school. Though up until this very moment he'd never wanted to. He had neither the particular altruism nor the particular sadism that had driven more than a few changelings down that path.
Replacing the chart, he sighed deeply and slumped down into the chair by her side. His fingers, for lack of anything better to do, worried at the ring around his finger.
Time passed without him truly noticing.
Eventually a shift on the bed caught his attention. Dark lashes fluttered, then blue eyes opened. "Ow," Barbara said. Her voice was barely a hoarse murmur.
He scrambled for the pink plastic cup on the table between them, poking the straw in her direction. She took a sip; the ice cubes inside the cup shifted. "That's cold," she said.
"My apologies." He put the cup back.
She sighed, her eyes shutting again. "So, how bad is it?"
"I'm afraid I haven't the faintest," Walt told her. "Medical terminology is really not my specialty."
Barbara's smile was faint but alluring, amused. "But if I asked you about the battle of Waterloo?"
"Then," he assured her, "I would have opinions."
Her smile widened. "I look forward to hearing them."
"Barbara--" He sighed. Slumped. "This is my fault," he confessed to his clasped hands.
A beat. "Walt...?"
"There's... someone after me," he told her. "This is the second assassination attempt. That I know of."
"That you know of?" Her tone raised slightly. As did the beeping pace of her pulse monitor.
"My car isn't in for service."
He could see her blinking, in his peripheral vision. "What happened to it?"
"It was blown up." Honesty compelled him to add, "With me inside of it."
"Walt!" He cringed at her tone. "You should have told me," Barbara scolded. Justifiably, as he had, however inadvertently, put her in harm's way.
"I know. I'm sorry," he apologized. Making his decision, he twisted the ring off his finger and offered it to her. "Barbara, I want you to have this."
She stared at the plain gold ring for a moment, then at his face. "Walt, are you asking me to...?"
He blinked, then realized what she was implying. "No! That is, not that I wouldn't want to, but this is for another purpose," he rushed to assure her.
"Oh. Okay. Good." She sounded... well, he actually wasn't sure what her tone implied. Disappointment, perhaps? "Then what is it for?"
"Protection." He folded her fingers around it. "So long as you wear this, no physical harm can befall you. And," he added, "I would hope that when-- if--" he tried to recover his fumble, "I should ask you such an important question as that, it would be in a more... genteel setting."
Her sardonic look let him know she hadn't missed his slip. "So not in a hospital room smelling of antiseptics, with me injured and on some interesting painkillers?"
"Most assuredly not." Sapphires, he thought. Sapphires to match her eyes.
She sighed and looked down. "Walt. If they're after you, why are you giving this to me?"
"Because I couldn't stand for anything to happen to you, Barbara." His hand closed around hers. "And... I have a plan."
"A plan." Her tone was dry.
"In the absence of Arcadia's most stalwart defender, I intend to seek the aid of another." And the less she knew of Jim's telling him not to seek out Angor Rot, the better. Because Waltolomew had done his own, more intensive research since then, and hoped the feared assassin might be bribable. Surely the return of his soul would be a good opening offer?
Barbara sighed again, closing her eyes and slumping back against her pillow. "And you think you won't need this," she said, meaning the ring of protection.
His mouth suddenly felt dry. His plan was risky, Walt knew - but if it paid off, it would pay off in spades.
He might die.
Or he might win them a powerful ally.
Perhaps both, he thought, amusement quirking up the corner of his mouth. "I would prefer to know that you are safe, my dear," he said softly. "And I would like to leave this ring with you as... a promise."
Her eyes opened again, sapphires looking into his heart. "A promise?"
"A promise of a better ring to come, when I return." He pressed a kiss to her knuckles. "When you are well, and in less pain."
"And in a more romantic setting, no doubt."
"You deserve nothing less," he assured her.
Her fingers uncurled. She regarded the ring for a moment. She sighed. Then she slipped the ring onto her finger. Waltolomew had worn it on his pinky; on Barbara's slimmer hand, it fit her ring finger perfectly. "A promise," she said, looking straight into his eyes, "that you're going to return."
He smiled and leaned forward, kissing her lips. "I would not dare disappoint you."
Author's Note: Thank you to everyone for being understanding about me missing a week of posting, and why. Two weeks on, I'm still not back to full health. But at least it wasn't Covid, so there's that.
Douxie makes two literary references in this chapter. The first, "world enough, and time," is from Andrew Marvell's poem To His Coy Mistress. The second, "parting is such sweet sorrow," is, of course, from William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
And I do realize the last scene is not quite in linear order. Things are not resolved between the Tarrons and Tronos Madu yet, for instance, and that comes chronologically first. But I just couldn't string y'all along about our favorite doctor's medical status for yet another week.