Work Text:
Jim was alive.
He was bruised, he was traumatized, and he wasn't sure whether or not he would ever be able to feel his right side again. But he was alive, and the world was as well, and that meant that everything had been worth it.
(A voice dragged itself through the mud of his mind.
Everything? It asked, slithering into his ear canals.
Was Nomura worth it?
Was Strickler worth it?
Was Nari?
Were you?)
Claire---also alive!---broke him out of his stupor. "It's him!" She began, and a chorus followed after her.
"Trollhunter!"
"Master Jim!"
"You made it, buttsnack!"
And then he was being embraced from all sides, and his stab wound felt like hellfire from the continued contact, but they were here and they were greeting him again and they were alive.
(It is important to note that, even after everyone had said his name, he did not hear the ones he had naively held out hope for.
Fleshbag, Young Atlas, and Little Gynt had all hung in the air, words waiting to be spoken by lips that had all held faith in him, once.)
"It was all Tobes," he said breathlessly, chest heaving. "He used the---"
And James Lake Jr. had gone by many names, but none quite as timeless as Jimbo.
...
Someone was missing.
"...Tobes?"
His blood turned to lead, and he forced himself to greet the rubble.
It did not greet him back, and neither did Toby.
+++
After that, everything was a blur.
Feet hammered against asphalt, and a single name was called out, formed desperately by the lips of the frightened little boy that had held faith in himself, once.
Hands---one scarred and blistered, the other scratched and bleeding---dug through debris, and still the name did not respond.
A smile. A single, broken smile, from a warrior that was anything but.
A goodbye, and a nickname said for the last time.
Tobias Domzalski was a gift. He was not fear, but instead the precursor to valor. He was what it meant to strive and triumph in the face of fear, and he was what it meant to be a hero.
Tobias Domzalski had become.
And he was buried beneath layers of rocks and dirt, a makeshift grave from the carcass of a makeshift god.
And it had not been worth it, but maybe nothing ever had.
And maybe, in the future, it would be the Trollhunter's job to change that.
But right now Jim was kneeling next to a friend, one firm hand grasped in a limp one, and when the cleanup crew would arrive tomorrow he would still be there.
He would still be there.
(And a new moniker floated up into the air to join the no longer used.)