A/N: Another drabble-ish thing! I really should space these out. This one is from Strickler’s POV
Rating: K
Summary: Stricklander was a changeling through and through, but life and humanity, continued to surpise him. Can be set any time after Part 3.
Stricklander had lived a long time, had seen civilisations rise and fall. He had become different people, and all for one purpose.
Impure.
The whispers of Trollkind echoed constantly in his ears. Their disdained looks followed him everywhere. The trolls spat upon his kind like they were beneath them, or looked on in horror as they cried abominations! Impure! Unholy and everything that went against the law of nature.
There was no safe place for changelings back in the day. Not, unless you could find a yourself a familiar, and even then, things got dicey. But Strickler was tired of hiding. Tired of having to look over his shoulder, tired of having to be less. A new order would usher in a change in the hierarchy. Having a familiar was no longer just a means of hiding, but it would be a way to completely overturn the balance.
They would be able to walk in daylight and night, never having to worry about trolls. Soon a new era would be wrought. He would never be looked upon as less, as impure.
The problem with having a familiar however, was that it meant, becoming. Now, if the becoming wasn’t human, that would be no problem. But humans were tricky beings. They came with tricky emotions. They wanted, they loved, they hated, they desired, they yearned, they hoped, with all the ferocity one would never expect from their tiny lifespans. They were naught but a tiny flicker in the grand scheme of time. It was as if, to compensate their lack of time, lack of meaningful impact on the world, they crammed all those emotions in their fragile bodies. It was those emotions, those feelings, that Strickler found himself seeing much more of the world than what he meant to. He participated in wars that did not further his cause, and he climbed mountains just for the sheer reason that he could.
Eventually he arrived at Arcadia Oaks.
An unassuming town, if not for the fact that the battle of Killahead Bridge was held here. Unassuming people, if not for the fact that his own cover was unassuming, and people were much more than they appeared to be...Despite their otherwise, senseless, mundane drivel. Teenagers, were one such example, despite their seemingly insignificant concerns, they did sometimes manage to come up with something inspiring, and their young minds were a sponge, soaking up information (if they every decided to apply themselves).
In all his yeards, he’d honestly thought he’d seen it all. Until he found the trollhunter. A human trollhunter. A young man who was Merlin’s Champion. What was the decrepit fool thinking? He was a boy! Made up of flesh and who bled red! Still, he would do what had to be done. The plans had been put in place long before this trollhunter had even been born.
Yet, he was only a boy, who had to juggle high school nonetheless. A boy who had a mother who was worried sick about him, who worked hard to keep close her family consisting of two. Only, her normally open son was being closed, despite how she tried to reach him. Barbara was a surprise to him. How one woman could hold so much strength in her fine bones, he would never know. Humans, were, surprisingly resilient he thought. And she, she was where Young Atlas got his strength from. Everything good in Jim, was on account of Barbara.
And for the first time in centuries, Strickler found another way to just be. Of course, he found a way to muck things up. He supposed trying to kill her son and trying to bring back the scourge that was Gunmar would do that. But he came back, and Barbara had an unfathomable capacity for love and forgiveness.
Sometimes he still remembered the whispers. But that was of a past long ago. In the here and now, he was Walter Strickler, changeling and husband to Barbara, teacher at Arcadia Oaks High, and occasional grilling buddy of Javier Nuñez. The world was a much different place than it was years ago. He was a different person. Not too different. He was always up for a good fight, but there was certainly a little more...lightness in his being.
Nomura once said that it was feckless hope that was the humans’ downfall. But it was hope, they had come to realise, it was hope and the promise of a better day that allowed them to have courage, and be much stronger than they ever thought they could be.
