" you're a lot /fluffier/ than i remember, trollhunter. " sailor guardian floats in front of her fellow, hero, before beaming as stardust - laced hands shoot out to bring his face towards hers for a forehead kiss. " whoa, and weren't you shorter? no fair! "
she reaches out as if to touch you and you draw away, feel her fingers slip out of your hair. her voice is soft, tender, and it aches to know you are no longer deserving of it. more than anything, you want to be ordinary, want to watch movies with tobes over popcorn, want to prepare meals and long conversations for your mother. but people gaze at you with different eyes, now, and you know : you are too different to be saved. you were the savior, and look where that got you.
you cannot shake the sensation the dark waters slipping up over your heavy head, beneath your metal mesh, soaking you all the way through. you keep your eyes open as the liquid surrounds you, and you watch as you slip down and down.
you say goodbye. you say goodbye. you release your amulet from the tight clutch of your palm and let it swaddle you in its magic, a little cold and so familiar. it feels like coming home, even with the black waters like an unimaginable ocean before you. it feels right. you remember standing before the tribunal and saying, i’m keeping my amulet. your choice. you lived months in a world that stole your autonomy from you, that left you weak and ruined and filled with the certainty that you would tear your heart from your ribs for the chance to end the stream of deaths over the telephone, over the radio. you begged unkar, merlin, anyone, on your knees, and you were given a choice : wait for death, hiding on your knees, or show the world the courage in your human heart.
when you woke, your body still ached from the death you suffered at gunmar’s hands. you faced two deaths in as many hours, and somehow you still climbed your way out of the deep, sinking your glaives deep into the bedrock beneath the heroes’ forge, your body trembling with every upward lurch.
you have no other options. gunmar awaits, and morgana, and merlin is right : you are not strong enough. you have never been strong enough. you remember nomura saying, so long ago, all that fancy armor, and you’re just a scared little boy. you are ready to admit that, now. you are terrified. you have always been terrified. you used to think, under blinky’s guidance, that it gave you strength, but that doesn’t negate the essential human weakness you carry within you. you bend over on the toilet lid and press your temples, your eyes stinging. although nobody is here to see you, you wipe your eyes, roughly, knuckles digging into the sockets.
how you want to be something that makes the whole universe tremble, but not like this.
sometimes you find your mother standing listless in the bathroom, staring down into the tub while the shower runs, the door open. you shut it gently for her; you do not trust yourself to touch her, not anymore, to kiss her cheek now that you are tall enough to do it without tiptoeing. once you were trollhunter, but now, in the wake of gunmar’s demise, you are some ruined thing caught between human and troll, between life and the lukewarm water filling up the tub.
“ fluffier, ” you say, now, and stoop so she can run her fingers through your shaggy hair more easily. “ hah. guess that’s an upside. i mean, if you like it. you do, i mean, you do like it ? ”
how do you say, without saying, i’m all wrong and i’m clawing apart my heart to find the light again ? how do you say, i don’t like it ? how do you say, i want it back ? you want it back / you want it back / you want it back !
the people of arcadia look at you with sharp pity, and grief. they bring casseroles and lasagnas to your mother, who eats alone. you live for weeks in the basement where draal used to live and cannot shake his presence, even with the clutter of your mother’s canvases. training loses its lustre in the absence of burning human muscles, in the absence of gunmar, your true nemesis. but you know : you will bear this obligation until you die, boy made bridge between worlds, chosen to keep balance,. the world will always need a peacemaker.
your mother, you know, is cutting her ties. all of arcadia is cutting its ties with the boy who once held the light in his hands and wasn’t burned. oh, but how you were burnt, how you fell into the flames as the waters closed in around you, cutting off the cloudy light that filtered through the frosted window. oh, little icarus, didn’t you know ? this was your fault. this was all your fault.
alone, you look at yourself in the mirror and you cannot find one shred of that boy, the one who took the light inside of him and never let it go.
because you let it go.
will you ever forgive yourself ?
slowly, a hand reaches up and closes around hers, four-fingered and too large to be yours, half as receptive as yours now that it’s made of stone instead of flesh and nerves. this body lacks something, is always lacking something. you, unfulfilled, even after you stood above the shattered stone that once formed gunmar, the triumph at the culmination of your toils stolen from you.
she presses a kiss to your forehead, a tenderness you never expected to receive again, and you bite your tongue to keep still.
you do not speak of the regret that gathers in the back of your throat, too heavy to swallow, like honey at the bottom of a mug. you do not say i want to go back i want to go back I WANT TO GO BACK. you do not say, a lot has happened since you last saw me. I’ve had to grow up, in ways i never imagined I’d have to. you say, with the smile your mother says grows from your anxiety, a smile that is your smile and is not your smile, “ bit of a growth spurt, yeah ? ”
