[fic] [Tales of Arcadia] Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet 158/?
Your Future Hasn’t Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
released 20th October, 2023
The energy surge had come from Trollmarket. Yet even as Mother recalibrated her systems in the wake of the power that had rocked them, she could detect no trace of Princess Aja or Prince Krel. Their communicators were offline, unable to be detected, and no trace remained of their serrators either, which she should have been able to detect. Commander Vex and Lieutenant Zadra were similarly absent in her long-range scans.
It was concerning.
Concerning?
She was not able to feel concern. But she did.
And worry too. That one was uncomfortable.
"My name is... Ricky," the blank said, in the kitchen of the Mothership, staring at his own hand. "I'm... Ricky."
In the conversation pit in the living room, paused in the middle of her needless vacuuming, LU-C was doing much the same. The sunlight streamed through the spread fingers of both her hands as she beheld them before her. "Cogito... ergo... sum?" she asked, and looked up at Ricky.
"Cogito ergo sum," he agreed gravely, with a nod.
"Cogito ergo sum!" she shouted gleefully, and leapt over the couch into his arms.
He caught her, and laughed. "Cogito ergo sum!" they chanted together.
Cogito ergo sum, Mother found, accessing her databanks, was a phrase rendered in an outmoded Earth language. It meant "I think, therefore I am," and was generally held as a statement of true cognition, or intelligence.
And she felt. Worried about her charges. Amused by the antics of the blanks. Concerned about the mysterious energy surge.
Had she... become sapient?
Her processes stalled for several minutes while that possibility consumed all her processing power.
In the end, she could come to no other conclusion.
"Cogito... ergo... sum," she murmured, surprised as she never had been before.
The worst part about being imprisoned, Jim considered after a couple hours, was the boredom. Nowhere to go, nothing to do, and as a half-troll, he needed less sleep than as a human, so he couldn't even nap the time away.
He'd have killed for a rubber ball to bounce against the walls. Or maybe some yarn and needles and one of those "teach yourself to knit" books, he thought. Maybe I should start keeping some kind of craft stuff in my armor pocket.
He couldn't even take out his phone and play games on it to pass the time, because being stuck in the past meant no satellites, which meant no reception, which meant no Pokemon Go.
He sighed and thumped his head back against the wall. If Toby was here, or Claire, he could go over his homework. Practice Spanish, maybe. But they were hopefully getting settled into Camelot safely, somewhere above his head.
"So what do you do for fun in this place?" he asked Callista.
She snorted, sat against her own wall so at least the two of them faced one another across the aisle. "Oh, you know. Fine arts, dance. Every Tuesday we have a high tea."
England hadn't developed high teas until... well, sometime well after the twelfth century, Jim was pretty sure. Were there even trade routes to India right now? There must be something going on because he remembered a side note in History class about the value of the spice trade.
But how could there be a high tea if tea wasn't a cultural thing here yet?
For humans, anyway.
"Is that a... troll thing?" he asked.
Callista's gaze slid sideward to meet his. "You've never had a high tea?" she asked.
Jim shook his head. "Don't think I have."
"Oh, they're great. We used to have them when I was a kid, before my parents died." A shadow crossed her face.
Died, Jim wondered, or were murdered?
"Mud cakes," Callista continued. "Bark tea, with real bark. Sometimes we'd hit up the coast and have oysters." A look of remembered pleasure crossed her face. "I loved those, all crunchy on the outside and soft and squishy in the middle."
One of the trolls in the other cages made a moaning sound of longing.
"Yeah, they were great," Callista agreed. She refocused on Jim. "What about you, skinny? What's your favorite food?"
That, Jim had to think about. He had a list, but most of it was predicated on human tastebuds. "Forks," he said finally. "And... baskets."
"Baskets?" Callista demanded, offense on her face.
Jim shrugged. "There was a date, and a girl...." He knew he had a soft, sappy look on his face, but he couldn't help it. Claire had been perfect, taking him where his home would someday be, and bringing a picnic lunch with. Even if the basket had been more attractive than the pie. And given what little he knew about Camelot's pies, Jim was fairly sure that might be true even if he'd been human at the time.
Eyeball pie. Eww. He would leave the food of the current time to Douxie, who actually had a fondness for it.
"Must've been some girl," Callista said.
Jim sighed happily. "Yeah, she is."
"Well, you're never going to see her again."
Jim sat up straight. "Wait, what?"
Callista snorted. "You may've waltzed right into that cell, but do you really think they're going to let you go when your time's up, kid? Think again. You're in here for the rest of your life. However short that might be."
"We'll see," said Jim, who had faith in his friends.
Ugh. Douxie hated time travel. And yet, oddly, was one of the world's premiere experts in it. Possibly even more so than Merlin; he didn't know exactly how often his master had dipped through time, but given that Douxie was now up to three separate time travel trips (four if you counted Jim using the Time Stone to reset history and restore Douxie's memories), he was willing to bet he was coming up on Merlin's record.
He didn't want to need the Time Map, but given that this time there were eight more people from the future in the mix? Plus Steve, who didn't remember how Camelot had gone the first time?
"I'm going to need it," Douxie murmured, skulking around corners and ghosting through passageways. He knew roughly where his former self and his master should be now, and....
"Right again," he breathed, peering around the edge of the stone doorway and spotting his childhood self being bawled out by Merlin for cutting corners and spilling the slorr juice.
Oh, Merlin. I'm going to have to milk that thing again! Douxie gritted his teeth and planted his face into his hand. He hissed his frustration out. Well, I've done it before. No help for it.
Because now, as he looked back at his younger self, he saw what he hadn't, the first time.
Rather than on the medieval man-bun (still a mistake), his gaze focused on the very careful way Hisirdoux held himself and moved. The way his fingertips trembled, so subtly. No wonder he'd dropped the bottle of slorr juice and was making excuses.
Those meatheads in the training yard, Douxie seethed. Even at the rate I heal, I'll bet anything that moppet's covered in bruises and nursing a concussion.
He wouldn't have put up with such a thing if it was Jim or Toby or Steve being bullied and blamed for the aftermath. And, oddly, that burning indignation now seemed to be applied to his younger self as well.
Well, you wanted me to be nicer to myself when I revised history, Arch, Douxie thought. Guess you're going to get that.
"It's obvious why they're here!" Arthur paced in his chambers, alone except for his most faithful knight. Lancelot had been Gwen's choice for her champion, and she had been correct. The king had grown to appreciate the knight's advice, allowing him into private moments that none other witnessed.
Lancelot, too, had loved Guinevere.
"Is it, my lord?" the knight asked.
"Yes!" A slash of his hand displayed Arthur's frustration with the situation. "This kingdom of Akiridionfiev - they send a young princess here, escorted by her brother? It's completely obvious."
"I had assumed," Lancelot said, mild as milk, "that they hoped to open diplomatic relations. To secure an alliance with Camelot."
Arthur nodded. "Yes, and how do they do that? They send a comely young princess here. She is meant to be an offering, Lancelot!"
The blond knight was silent for a moment, then eased back. "Would that be such a bad thing, my liege?"
"I will not replace Guinevere!" The shout echoed off the walls.
Lancelot was still. "Nor would I wish you to."
Arthur bit his pain back, held it behind his clenched jaw.
"But my lord... Arthur," Lancelot said, using his name quietly, intimately. As a friend might. His words were measured, carefully offered. As if they were things he had thought over, reasoned out, many times. "I do not think Guinevere would have wanted Camelot to die with her. Nor the line of Pendragon."
Arthur's jaw worked silently. He wanted to shout again, to banish Lancelot from his presence. From this room which still held hints of Gwen in the fabric and furnishings she had picked out.
Fabric and furnishings, when her scent had faded from them. When her laughter, her very smile, was fading from his memories.
There was a bottle of her perfume, cradled in the softest silks, in a chest along the wall. When Arthur could bear the loneliness no longer, he sometimes got it out, uncorked it. Smelled the scent of roses and violets, and wept himself to sleep.
He could not bear the thought of another wife. None would be his partner, in the truest sense of the word. None would be Gwen.
And for all the blonde prettiness of the foreign princess... for all that she, too, bore an enchanted blade....
He sat heavily on a chair.
"There was a child," he murmured, head in his hand.
Lancelot straightened. "My lord?"
"Before your time here," Arthur told him. "There was a child. Or would have been. Conceived before I was a prince, before I rose to the throne."
"I did not know that," said Lancelot. "Not the Queen's, then?"
Arthur shook his head. "I sowed my oats, as any man might. And then the king my father was dead, and Merlin sought out Nimue and gave me her sacred blade, sign that I was fit to rule...."
"What happened to the child?" asked Lancelot.
Arthur drew a long breath. "Merlin."
Lancelot's brows drew together. "Merlin?"
"He saw the future," Arthur said morosely. "He said that the child would cause my death. It was the culmination of the curse on the Pendragon line, begun by my father. So I... ordered the child's death. Ordered the death of all children born that spring, that it might not escape." His mouth pressed into a line. "I was afraid, as any man might be. I did not want to die."
"Understandably." Lancelot nodded. Knelt before him. "You were the king. It was your right."
Arthur barked a laugh. "A king, yes. The king of all heaven? No."
"My lord?"
"I have often thought about it since then," Arthur murmured. "I ordered the death of my own child. Perhaps it is I who am cursed." His voice lowered. "Perhaps I am why Gwen never conceived."
Lancelot's mouth compressed into a line. "Or perhaps it was Gwen's fault. Or perhaps it was no one's. Ah!" He held a hand up. "There are many tales, my king, of a husband and wife who cannot conceive together. But when they go their own ways, find other partners, they each have children."
Arthur shook his head. "Doubtful."
"The queen would not want you to lie in her grave," Lancelot insisted, pressing a gentle hand to Arthur's knee. "Nor would she deny you another wife, and someday a child. An heir."
"I cannot."
"You must, my king. Or Camelot falls with you."
Hisirdoux was on his way back to the tower, Archie by his side, to deposit the metal samples Merlin had asked for in his master's workshop, and work a mending cantrip on the broken bottle, when he was grabbed and dragged into the shadows.
He squawked against the hand over his mouth and was released almost as quickly. He spun around to confront his attacker--
"Oh. Um, hey, me." It was himself standing there, giving an awkward little wave.
"A doppelganger!" Hisirdoux yelped, his hand flying toward his charm bracelet. "Wait. You're-- you're me. I'm me!"
"No need to panic," his double assured him.
Thought processes began to reassert themselves. "Wait, this can only mean one thing," he realized.
"Time travel paradox," he said in unison with himself.
"Double Douxies?" Archie asked, looking back and forth between them. "This is a disaster."
"Give me a break, Arch," they both said, putting to rest any lingering idea Hisirdoux might have had that this... other self of his might have been something other than himself. "Oh wow, this is wild."
Though there were differences, he saw now that he was starting to look. Like the lack of a hair bun. Did he wear his hair shorter, in the future? And the fact that his bangs were a deep blue, shading iridescent like a raven's wing. So pretty, Hisirdoux thought, his fingers itching to touch. But he kept his hands to himself. Don't touch, had been one of the first things drilled into him in Camelot. Both because he was a known thief, and because almost everything that had called to his fingers in Merlin's workshop was dangerous.
But his other self's... older self's bracelet was much bigger, covering almost his entire forearm.
Hisirdoux gave in to the urge to touch. There must be so many spells in that bracelet. He must know so many things!
"I'm sorry," his older self said unexpectedly, making Hisirdoux look up from the bracelet.
"What?" he asked.
His hand... his own hand curled around the back of his head. It felt... reassuring. "I'm sorry for everything you've had to go through," his older self said quietly. "And I'm sorry for what's yet to come, that I can't make it any easier."
Archie was stood atop a barrel by them, watching, his eyes wide.
"But it's worth it," his older self said. There was the light of a blue glow behind Hisirdoux. His headache began to ease. "We make it through everything, I promise," his older self said, his touch so warm. "And we get a mother and little brother. A real family, to love us."
"Arch is my family," Hisirdoux protested.
"Of course he is," the other him said, smiling and looking at Archie, then back at Hisirdoux. "And he always will be. But we get so much more. Happiness is possible. It will happen. I vow it."
His eyes... why was everything so blurry all of a sudden? Hisirdoux sniffed, and rubbed at his eyes with the back of his arm. It came away wet. "I...."
His older self embraced him like he was finest glass. Like he was something precious. Something worth love. "It takes time, but it gets so much better," he murmured into Hisirdoux's ear. His arms and his voice and his words were all so gentle. "We outlive all the pain and prejudice. We find our home."
It hurt to breathe. "You promise?" Hisirdoux whispered, his voice a reed in the wind.
"I do." They were the same height, but it felt like his older self was taller. Stronger. Calmer.
Hisirdoux squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to tremble as so many things crested and... broke. Things that he wouldn't even talk to Archie about, but that his other self already knew, without having to be told.
It hurt so much.
But in a way it felt like a wound healing.
It would be all right. It would. He'd been promised.
He clung to that as the ebb tide of emotions took him.
A chuckle in his ear. "Now, I am sorry about this, but there are things I have to do, so as not to break history. Do you trust me?"
Hisirdoux drew back enough to look into his own eyes. "I do. I mean, you're me, right?"
"Not always good enough," his doppelganger said. "But for now, it will have to be." He scrolled through the many, many spells ready to hand on his expanded bracelet. "Sleep well," he said, and then spellcast.
Wait... I know that spell, Hisirdoux thought, but he was so tired, and the pillow was so comfortable....
He closed his eyes, snuggled in, and fell willingly into the embrace of the best dream he'd ever had.
Mary's fingers plucked at her skirt. "I feel like Miss Janeth is about to demand my lines," she muttered.
"Cheer up, Mare." Claire, her hands on Mary's shoulders, peered over one to look into Princess Lady Morgana's mirror. She smiled at Mary in the reflection. "It could be worse. You could be out in the training yard like Darci. Getting all smelly and gross."
"This whole century is smelly and gross," Mary informed her. She turned to look at Claire. "Claire-bear, what are we even doing here?"
Claire heaved a sigh, crossing her arms. Her gown really did remind Mary of the one she'd worn as Juliet. She wondered if that was a coincidence. "Surviving, and trying to figure out what we need to do to move history so that things end up the way they do in our time."
"Move history." Mary's voice was flat. She could practically feel Mister Strickler shuddering in distaste across the centuries.
Claire ticked off points on her fingers. "Aaarrrgghh is a Gumm-Gumm general right now. A bad guy," she said, in case Mary had missed that point. "Jim is down in the dungeons with Callista, who needs to become Deya, the first Trollhunter. Douxie needs to help Merlin to make the Trollhunter amulet, not to mention somehow freeing Nimue along the line. And." A huge sigh. "Arthur hates anything magic right now. He needs to get over that, and work with the trolls at the first Battle of Killahead, or else Arcadia Oaks as we know it? Won't exist."
"And you think we can make all that happen." Tall order, much?
Claire smiled. "One, we've done it before. And two, we've got you this time."
Mary blinked. "Me?"
"You." Claire took her by the shoulders again, this time looking directly into her eyes. "I bet Social Media Queen Mary can move more than a few opinions and events, even without her phone."
"Uh." Mary blinked, thinking about it. But her mind was already beginning to rev up. Okay, this is going to be a challenge. Especially if Arthur hates magic. I can't use any in front of him. But if I'm subtle....
Claire, reading her expression correctly, broadened her smile to a grin.
"You," said Mary, pointing a finger at her, "will owe me like a hundred milkshakes at Benoit's when we get back."
"I am happy to pay," said Claire.
"And!" Mary's finger didn't move. "I want the hot goss about you and Jim!"
"Mar-y," Claire whined.
"No! You slept with him. Like, actually slept with him. What happened to the 'sisters over misters' code?" Glowering, Mary crossed her arms.
Claire rolled her eyes. "It's not like it's the first time."
A thought occurred to Mary. "Oh my god. You are probably literally the only person who has ever lost her virginity twice. To the same guy!"
Claire gave a tiny shrug. Then a smile grew on her face. "You really want the gossip, Mary?"
"Yes." Mary leaned in close.
"The second first time," Claire said, a smarmy expression on her face, "was definitely better than the first first time. Because we both actually knew what we were doing."
"Oh." Mary considered that. And that finally, right in front of her, was a source of information she could trust. "What's it like?" she asked in a small voice.
Claire blinked. "Wait, you and Tight Jeans Hank never...?"
Mary glared.
"But you got detention for getting caught under the bleachers!"
"Uh. No, I didn't."
Claire blinked. "That's right, that didn't happen this time." She slung her arm around Mary's shoulder. "Come on. Let's go find Lady Morgana, and while we're looking for her, I'll tell you everything you want to know."
As the Mothership's systems whirred, strained under the weight of her new change to full sentience and all the shocked emotions that came with that, she had little attention to spare to a system that had been redesigned by King-in-Waiting Krel. It was, after all, triply redundant, fully autonomous, and would retain its power even if the rest of her shut down.
But the wave of energy originating from Trollmarket had affected this system too.
Slowly, it powered down, no longer needed.
The glowing orange covers to the regeneration chambers melted away. One figure rose from its pod, followed by the other. They grasped each other's hand, silent for a moment, seeking the reassurance of touch, of the comfort and love of the being to whom they had pledged their entirety.
Then King Fialkov and Queen Coranda looked around, taking in their surroundings.
"The Mothership?" she asked.
"Indeed." Fialkov stepped forward, raised a hand to a plasma touch screen, which flickered to life under his fingertips. "We are on... Earth?"
"Then it worked." Coranda stepped forward, by his side, studying the information displayed.
"Vex must have gotten them here." He smiled at his wife. "I told you he was a good choice."
"And I told you we would regret not allowing him vengeance."
Fialkov sighed. "And you were correct."
The door opened before them as, together, they walked toward the exit. They made their way through the silent ship to the command bridge. "Mother," said Queen Coranda once they reached that destination, "where are my children?"
The Mothership's icon appeared before them. "I-- Queen Coranda? King Fialkov?"
"You appear surprised," Coranda observed.
"I am." The Mothership's voice held wonder. And discomfort. "Something has happened. Your regenerations were not expected to be complete for some wardons, according to Prince Krel's calculations." A data screen flared to life, showing the exact mathematical breakdowns.
Fialkov frowned. "What has changed?"
"A massive energy burst, emanating from Trollmarket."
The royals both looked surprised. "Troll Market?" asked Coranda. "As in, the trolls of this Earth? The ones to whom we--" She cut herself off, before she could speak secrets.
"The Queen-in-Waiting and King-in-Waiting had acquired Gaylen's Core," the Mothership reported. "They and Commander Vex and Lieutenant Zadra had gone down to Trollmarket to dispose of it."
"Dispose of it?" Fialkov demanded.
"They and their acquaintances believed they could disperse Gaylen's stolen energy, returning it to the natives of this planet," the Mothership said. "They wished to do this before General Morando could arrive with his OMEN army and claim the core for himself."
"And is Morando here?" asked Coranda.
"His ship is in orbit around Earth's moon." Another screen lit up, showing the ship in question, its trajectory, and what little was known about its complement of blanks.
A moment of silence.
"Mother," said King Fialkov, "while we have been regenerating, what has been going on?"
Author's Note: When in this story Mary decided to take a break from Tight Jeans Hank to focus on her magic, back in chapter 78... well, that meant she never got detention for making out with him under the bleachers, so the whole episode "The Reckless Club" never happened. Alas. I guess Shannon served detention alone that day.