Chapter Text
Jim doesn’t know what to expect when he places the time stone into the amulet. If anything, he expects a kind of continuance—that he’ll close his eyes and open them again, and the time travel will simply have happened. Maybe he expects something like nausea, like journeying on a gyre—his stomach thrown about, last night’s meal trying to crawl its way back up his throat. At worst, he expects it to be something like his unbecoming.
In the end, it feels like little more than waking from a dream.
He wakes to the familiar grating noise of his alarm—chosen specifically for just how loud it could be after one too many nights in middle school where he slept right through it—and pulls a motor and pedal magazine off of his face. For what feels like an eternity, he just lays in his bed, letting the blaring metronome of his clock fade into the background.
His breath hitches and, with a start, Jim realizes he’s crying. He reaches up to wipe at his eyes, but the tears just keep coming. A sob builds in his throat, and it’s only by those two years of shoving all his pain down that Jim manages to choke back the wail that wants to escape him. He turns and buries his face into his pillow, trying to stifle the sound of his hiccuping cries. His mother has always been a deep sleeper, but Jim refuses to risk it.
He had… god, he had minutes. A mere handful of minutes to process his victory against Bellroc, against the Arcane Order, against the Titans, and then another few to grieve his best friend, his dearest partner, his Tobes. And then time was unwound and nothing mattered. It doesn’t matter, it hasn’t happened yet.
But it hurts. By god, it hurts.
Jim’s hand clutches at the fabric over his heart. Mere minutes ago and two years into the future, there had been an amulet of metal and magic resting there. Mere minutes ago and two years into the future, there had been an expanse of scar tissue exploding out from his heart. Now, on a quiet September morning, moments later, two years in the past, there’s nothing but smooth skin and soft fabric.
He can’t quite silence a soft keening noise that crawls up his throat, and curls further in on himself. Toby isn’t dead, Jim tries to remember. Toby isn’t dead, and neither is Nari or Strickler or Nomura or Merlin or Vendel or Draal. Neither, Jim is reminded, are Gunmar, Morgana, or even Bular. Jim doesn’t know what he’s going to do about them as surely as he doesn’t know what he’s going to do about himself.
This is the third time he’s lived today, after all, and his unbecoming will always hang like a shadow over his head. Does Jim have it in him to live through it all again, though? Does he have the arrogance to think that by his power and his power alone, he can save everyone he lost last go around? He wasn’t even there for everything that happened with Aja and Krel, and yet he’s supposed to make sure their parents don’t end up dead?
Maybe it’s more like waking up from a nightmare, Jim thinks. A little confused, a little confounded. Frightened of everything and nothing alike, a trained response that Jim has no need for now that he’s little more than a scrawny human. An old instinct from a body that isn’t his anymore. For though Claire undid Merlin’s spell, turned him human again, there’s still a beast lurking in the back of Jim’s mind that tells him to bear his teeth, to sink his fangs in, to growl and snarl and claw his way through the world.
“Peace, Mercutio, peace,” Jim mumbles to himself as he finally gathers the strength to pick himself off of his bed. “Thou talk’st of nothing.” Romeo and Juliet, act one, scene four.
Jim doesn’t even want to think about having to do the play again.
When he looks up at his alarm clock, still beeping angrily, he sees the time is now 6:13. He’s wasted thirteen minutes on this stupid breakdown. It still leaves him with nearly two hours before he really has to worry about making it to school. Re-doing his sophomore year of high school is another thing he’s not really looking forward to. He can’t even coast through with knowledge from the future since he notoriously missed over forty-three days.
At the very least, he doesn’t have to print out a recipe for meatloaf. He’s long since memorized his own with alterations included, so there’s no reason to bother.
There are some books laying about, a smear of something on the coffee table, and Jim remembers that the lightbulb in the dining room lamp is busted, but he’s already out of sorts just making lunch for him, his mother, and Toby. He’s going to have to get back into the rhythm of things, but he’d gotten used to the routine of living in Camelot. He can try for normalcy, though. Pretend that this truly is just another September day.
It takes around an hour and a half for the entire cooking of the meatloaf, but in those last thirty minutes, Jim whips up a breakfast for his mom. He pushes open the door to her room and is hit with another wave of exhaustion. All he wants to do is wake her and ask her to hold him for a bit, to hug him like she used to do when he was little and hadn’t yet outgrown the need for his mother’s protection. With shaking hands, he pulls her glasses off of her face, flinching slightly when she rolls over right after.
There’s a smudge on one lens, and it’s on pure instinct that he pulls out the small cloth he used to always keep in his back pocket to wipe the smudge away. At some point, he’d fallen out of the habit, and it very nearly makes him start crying again. This version of his mother has never had to deal with a son lying to her, pushing her away, moving away before he even turned seventeen.
Jim sets his mom’s glasses on the breakfast tray, pulls the covers a little higher over her, and presses a kiss to her forehead.
“I love you, mom,” he whispers, an echo of a past timeline. “I’m sorry I never told you that enough.”
He’s going to push her away again. He’s going to hide things from her again. Because better that than risk her getting involved and all the horrors that might come about because of it.
When the garage door rolls open and the sun shines down on Jim’s face, he’s greeted with the sight of his overturned trash can. Not raccoons, he remembers saying in a different past, a different future. Toby isn’t here yet, and Jim tries to tell himself that it’s just because he’s a little early, not because he’s dead in the rubble of a destroyed Arcadia.
And, right after he’s finished dropping the last bit of strewn trash into its proper place, he hears the clicking of bike chains grinding to a halt. When he turns around, Toby’s dropping his bike against the curb to properly buckle his helmet.
“I feel like the raccoons have been getting bolder, y’know what I mean?” Toby muses, looking up at Jim with a lop-sided smile. His voice is clear and light, a little higher than Jim is used to, but it has been two years since Toby was this young. Altogether, it’s nothing at all like the weak rasp of Toby’s final words. Even so, Jim feels heat behind his eyelids again and squeezes them shut to try and stave off another round of tears.
There’s a long moment of silence before Toby breaks it with the question, “You alright, Jimbo?”
I held you in my arms while you died, Jim thinks.
You smelled like ash and earth and your hand went slack in mine, Jim thinks.
And I held you while bleeding out of my gut and I wished that it had been me instead of you, Jim thinks.
“I made you lunch,” he says, handing over the paper bag. Peace, Mercutio, he thinks again, another little reminder to himself.
Toby gives him a curious once-over, a look of concern in his eyes, but takes the bag without a word. Jim listens passively, buckling his own helmet, as Toby lists the ingredients in the meatloaf. This version is a little different than the one he’d printed out two years ago, perfected to both his and Toby’s tastes, and he knows that Tobes is gonna love it come lunchtime.
“You’re on top of it today, Jim!” Toby says as he tucks the paper bag into his backpack. “Get up super early or something?”
“Believe it or not, I actually woke up late,” Jim says, climbing onto his bike and pushing off the curb. Toby makes a noise that tells Jim he probably doesn’t believe those words, and Jim laughs.
Even though it looks like they’re not going to be late, Jim still insists they take the canal. Toby doesn’t like it, but he follows Jim down the bumpy dirt road that cuts through the woods with only mild complaints. Jim rolls to a stop at the bottom and looks out beneath the shadow of the bridge. An unassuming pile of rubble lays at the bottom of the canal.
Jim instinctively takes in a sharp breath through his mouth, but is reminded that for all he still has the instincts of a hunter, this body’s senses are dull and muted. He can’t taste the air for the smell of chalk and ash that clings to the dusty remains of sun-burnt troll corpses. There’s the faintest smell of smoke in the canal, but it could just as easily be exhaust pouring off from the bridge above.
Strangely, no voice calls out, even as Jim lays down his bike to step closer. In fact, it’s not until Toby rolls into the canal—initially overshooting it before skidding to a clumsy halt that sends him falling face first into the pavement—that any sound escapes Kanjigar’s corpse.
“Tobias… Domzalski…” an ethereal, layered voice calls out, and Jim’s blood runs cold.
No, he thinks. No, no, no, no.
“Did you hear that, Jim?” Toby calls out as he picks himself up. “Sounded like someone said my name.”
No, they can’t have, Jim thinks, because he went back in time to save Toby, not lose him all over again, and the mantle of Trollhunter is a heavy one, one that can only ever end in death. And this can’t be happening, because this didn’t happen last time, it didn’t even happen on the day of Jim’s unbecoming. What could’ve changed? Is Jim truly no longer worthy of the title of Trollhunter? how-
Jim thinks back to a year ago, to nine hundred years ago, when he feared that Merlin’s newly minted amulet might end up picking him. It hadn’t, in the end. Hadn’t even paused over Jim as it did for a few other trolls. And at the time, he’d simply figured that it meant Deya was simply more worthy to be Trollhunter, but he wonders now, if maybe it hadn’t picked him because it somehow already knew he had his own amulet, half-broken and corrupted as it was. That it somehow knew that he’d already been chosen.
The amulet was made by Merlin, but it did not embody his will. It chose whichever being was right for the task of being the Trollhunter. And it seemed that here and now, that was no longer Jim.
“Tobias Domzalski…” the voice repeats, a little louder this time, and Jim can just barely hear Kanjigar’s voice in it, Deya’s voice in it.
“Did that pile of K-spar just say my name?” Toby asks, tucking himself slightly behind Jim and staring wide-eyed at Kanjigar’s remains. “You don’t think someone’s pranking us, do you?”
Jim walks the two of them forward, a pit of dread in his gut. Honorable as it is to earn this mantle, he knows it’s a heavy one to bear. Gently, he nudges Toby forward, telling him, “Go on. It’s calling your name.”
Despite the dread and fear, he can’t help the spark of pride that comes with seeing Toby lift the amulet from the rubble.
“What do you think it is?” Toby asks, plucking at one of the metal clock hands. “Like, the fanciest pocket watch ever, or what?”
The Amulet of Daylight, marker of Merlin’s chosen Trollhunters. “I have no idea,” Jim lies.
Jim had always shared a fair few classes with Claire Nuñez. It was more notable to point out the classes he didn’t share with her—those being Algebra, where Claire is in Honors Geometry, and Spanish, where Claire has earned a free period due to already speaking the language. Arcadia Oaks High is a pretty small school, and Arcadia Oaks itself only has one middle school and one elementary school. Most of the kids in this building have known each other all their lives, even if only in passing.
Walking into class that day and seeing her—right there in the front row—had been… bizarre.
It had also been more than a little jarring, sitting down in Strickler’s class and seeing his human face teaching it. Jim wonders if Strickler would’ve ever gone back to teaching if-
… if things hadn’t ended the way they did.
As it is, he lectures on about Greek history as Jim’s attention wanes. He glances briefly in Claire’s direction and finds himself… almost unsettled by her appearance. Blue streak instead of white, hair not quite long enough to be pulled into a ponytail yet. She looks happier. Less stressed, less angry. She also looks… younger.
Whatever happens, don’t give up on me, Claire had told him before he left. Don’t stop trying until I love you.
Jim had given her a… non-answer of sorts, in that moment, because he hadn’t been sure. He still isn’t, gut twisting in knots that have less to do with heartache and more with trepidation. He feels unbalanced, looking at this younger version of his girlfriend. With a sigh, he tears his gaze away.
And then has to do a double take as he catches Toby typing ‘talking amulet’ into the search bar on his laptop. Jim reaches over and bumps his knuckles against Toby’s shoulder to grab his attention. “Hey, eyes up. if you really want to look it up, you can just do it later. Y’know, on a computer that the school can’t track.”
Toby rolls his eyes and opens his mouth to snark back before abruptly shutting it and averting his gaze entirely. A voice from behind Jim—triggering a response that makes Jim want to jump up and swing his fist towards the threat—says, “Jim, would you agree?”
Jim snaps his head towards Strickler maybe a bit too quickly, if the raising of his one-time-stepfather’s eyebrows are any indication.
“Um. S-sorry, what?” Jim asks, aiming for some attempt at informality. He can see the moment where Strickler waffles over whether to push him or to back off. In the end, the teacher’s urge to teach Jim a lesson of sorts wins out.
“With Herodotus’s opinion on his tactics of war, as I’ve described?” The question sounds a little softer than the last time Jim heard it. He’s a kind man, even now, even working under the command of Bular, of Gunmar, of the greater Janus Order. It’s just buried, only allowed to come to the surface now and again.
Yes, Jim had blurted out in another timeline. The winning ones, he’d elaborated.
Did I ever mean anything to you? Jim wants to ask. Nearly everyone in the school—students and staff alike—knew Jim as Strickler’s favorite student. Many more knew Strickler as Jim’s favorite teacher. But did that matter? Had that ever been real? In his unbecoming, in the world that only Jim had ever known about, Strickler had been ready and willing to kill him upon being exposed.
But he didn’t, a tiny voice in the back of Jim’s head whispers. He helped you then, even when he had no real reason to believe you.
“Jim?” Strickler prompts again, and this time the concern on his face is more blatant.
Right, Herodotus. He… wrote something, right? Some book? … The Histories, from the Trojan War to the Persian invasion of Greece. What did that have to do with the Peloponnesian War…?
“He… predicted the war, didn’t he? Because he said that the war would bring internal conflicts between the Greek city-states?” Jim guesses. Strickler’s eyebrows raise again and he gives Jim a proud smile. For a moment, he thinks he’s actually gotten it right.
“Not the answer to the question I asked,” Strickler says, dashing that hope, “but it’s admirable that you’ve done your own research on Herodotus.”
The room erupts in giggles that are soon muffled by the ringing of the bell and the ensuing chaos that comes with the students all rushing to their next class. Strickler calls out the assigned reading and Toby pauses by his desk while Jim grabs his things. He waves his hand, ushering Toby away and then turns his focus back to his bag.
“Jim, may I have a word?” Strickler calls out. Jim half-turns while trying to put his history book into his bag. He misses and ends up knocking it over, but old reflexes have him lunging before the bag can spill out across the floor. He quickly turns back to Strickler, a smile plastered on his face that feels a bit too much like a grimace.
“Sure, yeah! Wh-what’s up, Mr. Strickler?”
“You’re distracted,” his teacher says, eyeing Jim’s tight grip on his bag. “I thought you were going to fall asleep between the invasion of Attica and the Peace of Nicias, and your attention was wandering for the rest of class.”
“Sorry, I didn’t-” Jim pauses and has to swallow around a lump in his throat. “I didn’t really sleep well last night.”
It’s not really a lie. He remembers this day a bit too vividly, remembers the exhaustion that had followed him the first time, the second time. It’s there now, as well, and the fact that he hadn’t been sleeping well going into the fight against the Arcane Order wasn’t helping at all.
Strickler’s face softens and he reaches out to put a hand on Jim’s shoulder. It’s almost fatherly. If he closed his eyes, he could probably pretend it was his Strickler.
“I know it’s just you and your mother and you want to help her, but it’s no good running yourself ragged.”
Jim shrugs. “She’s just… pretty tired. She’s been working double shifts at the clinic.”
Jim would like to say that he never blamed his mom for overworking herself. He’d like to say that he only ever worried that she would get burnt out. But that’s not entirely true. He’d mostly gotten over it by his sophomore year of high school, but during middle school, it had been a sore subject for him. On some level, he’d felt like she was abandoning him, leaving him behind just like…
“I believe I’m overdue for a conversation with her,” Strickler says.
He moves to grab for a sticky note, but Jim blurts out, “You could come over. F-for dinner, I mean,” he hastens to add at Strickler’s surprised expression. “I mean, her hours are kind of crazy, so it’d be a good enough time to have that conversation. I can cook!”
Does he sound desperate? God, he hopes he doesn’t sound desperate right now.
Strickler smiles at him, looking somewhere between amused and bemused, and writes his number down on a sticky note anyways.
“Have her call me, and we can hash out a proper time,” he says and gives Jim one last parting pat before pulling away. Jim shoulders his bag and leaves the classroom, wondering if he’s just made a terrible mistake.
P.E. is both easier and harder than it used to be. Jim knows how to move and climb and use his body to its fullest extent. The issue is that his body hasn’t really gotten the memo yet. He gets enough exercise biking to and from school, but at the end of the day, this body just isn’t used to doing all the things Jim is used to doing.
It’s not a new feeling.
He remembers in his different trek through the past, reliving months in an Arcadia that didn’t care about him, where he’d felt strangely weak and helpless the entire time, unable to even lift a Gumm-Gumm sword at the end. He remembers becoming human again and feeling scrawny and shaky and soft, like anything could break him with barely a brush.
He can regain his athleticism easily enough, and he will have to if he has any intention of keeping the people he loves safe and alive, but he will likely never get his stone skin back. His claws, his tusks, his horns, his tail—all left behind in a future that will never come to be. As a troll- or a half-troll or whatever, all he’d wanted and wished for was to be human again. Made human again, all he’d wished and wanted for was to be a troll once more.
So, he knows what his body is capable of and where it’s letting him down. What surprises him is Toby. Toby, in another timeline, had barely been able to get a foot or two off the ground—at best— when climbing the ropes, but here, he’s…
Well, he’s climbing the rope. Struggling, sure, panting and wheezing and bright red in the face from the effort, but. But he makes it a good halfway up the rope before he starts sliding back down. Coach Lawrence praises Toby’s sudden skill, and Jim allows himself a moment to boggle at it all.
Time unfolds differently, like a flower, Nari had said. Jim wonders, then, what else might be different.
Turning away, he catches sight of Claire with Shannon and Darci, giggling over something on her phone. He casts one last glance at where Coach is giving Toby a firm pat on the back, and then walks over to the trio of girls.
Once close enough, and aiming for a casual tone, Jim says, “So, uh, the school play! I hear they’re looking for people.”
Claire smiles at him, but in the way one might smile at a kind stranger, and Jim is once again reminded that he means absolutely nothing to this girl. He’s pretty sure she doesn’t even know his name right now. She pulls a flyer for Romeo and Juliet out of her notebook and hands it over.
“Have at it, Romeo,” she says and then stands and walks away.
Romeo. Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name. But Jim cannot deny who he is and what he has to do, even though he will evidently play a different part in this story. Is it fair to Claire, to Ms. Janeth, to his fellow castmates and schoolmates alike to try out for a play he may end up disappearing on?
He’s still mulling it over when school lets out.
“Good news, dude,” Toby says, “my orthodontist says I’m almost done with my braces! Just four more years!”
Toby had died still wearing braces.
… That was a dark thought that Jim tries to shove into the back of his mind as quickly as he can. As they walk past the lockers, Jim is startled out of his morbid train of thought by a metallic slamming sound.
It’s Steve, flanked on either side by Logan and Seamus, leaning an arm against the locker he’s just slammed shut. As he and his lackeys jeer at it, Jim catches Eli’s voice coming from the locker’s vents. He frowns at the sight.
Less than a day ago, the last time he’d seen Steve and Eli in his timeline, Steve had just named one of his kids after Pepperjack. And now here they are, the furthest thing from friends.
Toby seems to catch on to Jim’s focus, because he grabs Jim by the elbow, hissing out, “Hey, just leave it! If Psycho Steve’s terrorizing him, he’s not terrorizing us.”
Jim tries really hard to think about the last time he was well and truly afraid of steve. There was, of course, that moment of panic after realizing that Steve had seen him in his Trollhunter armor, but that was never a real fear of Steve.
He can barely remember what it felt like, can barely fathom it, because Steve hasn’t registered as much worse than kind of overzealous and annoying for well over a year at this point.
This Steve isn’t being overzealous and annoying, though. This Steve is being cruel. Cruel, because he has this idea in his head that he has to be the meanest kid around or else his whole world’s gonna fall apart. It’s something he picked up from his dad, Jim’s sure.
He doesn’t remember much about Mr. Palchuck. He remembers first and foremost that the guy’s name wasn’t actually even Palchuck—his ex-wife had kept her name and given it to Steve, and Jim heard rumors that it had always been a kind of sore spot between the Mister and the Missus.
Jim only really has one memory about the guy. All he can recall is a day in elementary school, seeing Steve’s father grab his son’s arm with enough force that it left a bruise the next day. It hadn’t been something Jim could understand at the time, and he’d very nearly forgotten about it in the ensuing years.
Now, it feels hard to forget. It shines context on something Jim had never bothered to notice before.
But it didn’t excuse anything, either.
“Hold my bike,” Jim says, pushing it towards Toby. His friend sputters out a protest and tries to grab at Jim again, but he’s already striding in Steve’s direction.
Logan and Seamus turn to him and Jim can see the warning building on Seamus’s tongue, but it dies before it ever escapes his mouth. Whatever expression Jim is wearing seems to cow both boys, who step away from Steve as Jim approaches.
He grabs the back of Steve’s shirt and hauls him away from the locker. Steve stumbles slightly, but is quick to regain his bearings and spin on his heel so he can glare down at Jim.
“Leave him alone, Steve,” Jim says. His voice is firm but not loud, and it makes Steve falter for just a moment before he goes back to sneering.
“You want some of what he’s having, then? Gonna try and be a hero?” Steve pitches his voice up on that last word, giving it a teasing lilt.
Some part of Jim wants to leave this to Toby, since Jim apparently isn’t the hero anymore. But much more than that, he wants Steve to stop… all this.
“I want you to leave Eli alone,” Jim reiterates, taking a step closer. “Don’t make me tell you again.”
Steve laughs, loud and proud and unafraid. “Or what’ll you do? cry me a lake? ” He leans in until he’s very nearly nose-to-nose with Jim. Jim doesn’t lean back, doesn’t flinch away. He meets Steve’s glare head on, giving his best back.
“I warned you,” Jim growls, and he grabs a fistful of Steve’s shirt before hooking a leg behind Steve’s. He’s not expecting it and, off-balanced as he is, Steve goes down. Jim eases the fall with his hold on Steve’s shirt, but it still results in Steve on the ground and Jim standing over him.
Before he can get back up, Jim says, “You’re not your father. I know you can be better than this. So be better.” He keeps his voice low, but by the mix of laughter and murmurs behind him, enough people heard. Steve scrambles to his feet and looks like he’s about to punch Jim’s lights out or maybe cry—or maybe both—when all of a sudden-
“Palchuck! What’s going on here!?”
Coach Lawrence’s voice could carry across a football field, and it shocks Steve into a sudden obedience. “Uh, n-nothing, sir.” Without the rage mixed in, Steve mostly just looks like he’s on the verge of tears.
“Why aren’t you at practice?” Coach demands.
“I was helping Eli, here,” Steve says, opening the locker he’d stuffed Eli into.
“Hey guys!” Eli says, waving at the gathered students.
“He was stuck.”
Eli only gets a few seconds of fresh air, before Steve slams the locker shut again and speed walks over to the coach. He doesn’t schedule any sort of butt-kicking with Jim as he goes by, and when he gets to the door, Jim sees a concerned Coach Lawrence taking him by the shoulder and murmuring something to him that has Steve flinching and shoving the coach away.
Jim turns back to the locker and opens it up, catching Eli before he can tumble into the pavement. Jim gets a quick thanks from him before Eli’s darting off. A moment later, Toby’s coming up beside him and aggressively patting him on the back.
“Dude! Dude! You just absolutely wrecked Steve!” Toby says, voice pitching even higher with his excitement. Jim can’t help but smile as he gives Toby a pat on the shoulder as well.
“I didn’t wreck him,” Jim says, and then before Toby can protest, he continues, “I schooled him.”
That gets a laugh out of Toby, who guides them both towards the school’s exit. Jim pauses at the steps, though, looking over his shoulder.
“Hey, why don’t you go ahead,” he says, “I’m gonna head over to the drama club.”
Toby’s eyebrows raise. “You were serious about the play? Do you even know anything about Shakespeare?”
Beyond starring in a production of Romeo and Juliet, yes, actually. In the year or so they’d spent living in the rebuilt Camelot, Jim’d had a lot of free time with nothing in particular to do. He’d spent a lot of that time looking at all sorts of theater. Watching performances on his laptop with Claire, reading through Douxie’s annotated copies of a few of Shakespeare’s works.
“We read A Midsummer Night’s Dream in middle school, didn’t we?” Jim points out instead.
“The only thing I remember about that play is the dude who gets turned into a donkey.”
“His head gets turned into a donkey.”
“Cool, so basically, I don’t remember anything about A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Jim laughs and Toby gives him a playful sort of glare.
They part ways, Toby mentioning that he’s going to actually try looking up stuff about the amulet. Jim knows that he’s going to get the scare of his life when Blinky and Aaarrrgghh inevitably break into his house. With any luck, Toby will take it better than Jim did. Toby had taken it pretty well last time around.
Jim runs into Eli again on his way to the gym, where Eli’s since donned a cardboard box embellished with drawings of abdominal muscles and the symbol of a hero that Jim is sure he knows, but cannot put a name to.
“Are you trying out for the play, too?” Eli asks. His voice is high and squeaky. It had still cracked in the future that never would be, but it had been deeper, stronger. Jim hadn’t gotten used to the sight of Eli at age 18, so the sight of him here and now wasn’t quite as jarring as-
Claire.
When the two of them step into the makeshift theater, her’s is the first face that Jim sees. She stands up on the stage, reciting Juliet’s lines with all the emotion and drama she can muster.
“Give me my Romeo. And when he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars. And he will make the face of heaven so fine, that all of the world will be in love with night.”
Once more, Jim is reminded of how young this version of Claire is. In body, sure, but also in soul. She’s bright and loud and there are no shadows in or under her eyes. No bone-deep weariness on her shoulders.
Her performance is one of someone who has never felt true loss. Pretty enough that her round of applause from Ms. Janeth and the gathered students isn’t just for the sake of being polite.
Jim sits through Eli’s audition for the part of… well, according to him, ‘everyone’. And while Eli doesn’t have the greatest stage presence, he has heart, a flair for the dramatic, and absolutely no shame about being on stage, and that’s really all one needs to have in Ms. Janeth’s eyes.
He sits through Shannon and Mary and Connie’s auditions, and by their murmurings, learns that Steve has already tried out for the part of Romeo. According to them, at least, he’s got the role in the bag.
Finally, Jim takes the stage.
Ms. Janeth looks him up and down. Imperiously, she asks, “Who are you?”
“James Lake Junior,” he introduces, less nervous than he was last time he stood on stage. Compared to a whole room filled with friends and family, students and teachers alike, Ms. Janeth and a handful of kids in the drama club are almost nothing.
“And who are you trying out for?”
In another time, in another world, he’d stuttered out the name Romeo. But as he chews on the thought of it, he finds himself… almost sickened by the idea. He thinks about winning the part of Romeo and letting this version of Claire kiss him and… despite his promise to the girl he loves… he can’t do it.
She’s gone. She’s dead. Someone who looks just like her is here, but this isn’t his Claire, and it feels unfair to her to try and treat her like that. This Claire doesn’t know about trolls or goblins or wizards. This Claire was never possessed, never won her body back through sheer force of will. This Claire never fought against Angor Rot or Gunmar or Morgana le Fey.
Jim thinks of the amulet calling out—Tobias Domzalski. Thinks of Steve—Gonna try and be a hero?
Jim has already walked the path of the hero. He’s come out the other side better for it, but this time around it seems like the universe itself is insistent on him taking a backseat to whatever comes next. And Jim isn’t exactly planning on taking that sitting down, but he acknowledges that whatever role he does play is going to be different.
So…
“Mercutio,” Jim blurts out. Claire’s eyebrows raise, but Ms. Janeth looks somewhat pleased. Jim wonders how many boys at school even know who Mercutio is, let alone how many tried out for his part. Eli stands from his seat and holds out his cardboard sword. He looks so young and small and already Jim is forgetting the face of the man he’d grown into. He takes the sword and steps back into center stage.
“Destiny… is a gift.”
A stab of pain in his gut, blood dark as ink spilling out onto his new armor as Bellroc pulls back their spear.
“Some go their entire lives living existences of quiet desperation,”
A bolt of adrenaline like lightning strikes him—something he has experienced before—that pushes Jim to lunge forward, to take the advantage while Bellroc still reels from their sudden lack of powers.
“Never learning the truth that what feels as though a burden pushing down upon our shoulders,”
Blood like magma splashes over his hands, scalding them worse than the horngazel. But he pushes through the pain and carries through with the attack, watching with a vicious sort of satisfaction as Bellroc falls down, down, down.
“Is actually a sense of purpose that lifts us to greater heights.”
A pulse of magic that Jim feels first over his heart, in his new amulet, in the scarred imprint of the old, one that rings with billions of years of living. The titan crumbles and Jim goes down with it, crashing into the rubble below.
“Never forget that fear is but the precursor to valor,”
Everything tastes like soot and ash and it feels like his body is on fire, looks as if the entire world is set aflame, but it’s done. It’s finally over and the relief is sweeter than any cake he could ever bake. And for a moment, even though the city burns around them, everything is perfect.
“That to strive and triumph in the face of fear is what it means to be a hero.”
And then Jim remembers. And then the panic sets in.
“Don’t think,”
Jim levels the sword at Ms. Janeth.
“Become.”