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The more people forget, the less of himself he becomes.
The years pass slowly, carefully, like the sand on an hourglass as it counts down what he remembers. There are legends told about him, rumors and myths, about Jim the Human, and how he defeated Gunmar the Black and his son. Even more glory was added to his name after Morgana’s great fall, and there are smaller victories that follow—small, yes, but significant all the same. He was the first human Trollhunter—the one to champion above them all.
There is awe and admiration in the looks of those who are younger, of those who have only ever been told that he was human once. Because the Jim that stands before them now, he has horns and stonelike skin, fangs and impenetrable armor. He couldn’t have been human, couldn’t have been just a boy when it all happened. Too young, too simple, too weak, to have been the mighty warrior they see today. And all the same, those with the faintest wisps of memory, even they start to forget that this boy was once known for his humanity.
Time moves on, and so do his friends. Those who knew him as the skinny child with a knack for cooking, they fade away and back into the dust they return. There is a girl, one who knew him well and loved him through it all, and when Death had swooped her under his care, there was not much left to say. His own mother is taken too, and only few remember his childhood. A best friend, one who knew him inside and out, he leaves traces all over but it isn’t enough to piece it all together. Even trolls—the six-eyed and the green one—they meet their fate and no one is left.
The Trollhunter is left alone to survive, to protect. He becomes the sole member of a team he crafted. He becomes less of the boy who lived with childlike wonder and carefree familiarity. He stopped being the boy who stopped and stared, changed into the man who worked hard to become what he was told to be. He never asked for any of this—of the pain and the agony and the glory—he only wanted a taste of adventure, and instead became the origin story of a whole legacy.
Destiny is a gift, and it was—but it’s also a double-edge sword that he carries around with him everywhere.
He stopped being Jim Lake, stopped dreaming of becoming a chef, stopped hoping that life would be more than it was, stopped trying so hard to change things that were static. He forgets and forgets and forgets until human is another story and Trollhunter is his name. He looks at the mirror and sees not a hero, but a wreckage of a childhood dream. He sees a troll—and he’s long since come to accept that this is who he is, but he’s become too fond of the bitter aftertaste. There is an afterlife that awaits him only after a defeat, but he yearns for the painless way it has taken others.
He looks and he finds his own eyes in his reflection, pale and sorry, the blue spark vanished. He is so, so tired of all of this. He wants to live in the way things used to, when his friends and family were still alive. He wants to feel infatuation and the recklessness of youth. He wants to know if it was worth all the exhaustion and freedom. If it was worth fighting for. He wants it all back.
But there is no more Jim.
He’s been dead for centuries.