Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Blinky supposed that in retrospect, it could have gone worse.

The screaming, however, was getting to him.

Changelings in Arcadia was something that Blinky hoped beyond all else was a false assumption, but he could not deny what Jim and Tobias saw, or what they thought they saw. With Bular’s presence it made sense, as did a few odd moments and conversations that he recalled from Kanjigar’s Trollhunting days.

A Changeling in Arcadia was a monumental disaster. Changelings were master spies, patient and clever, able to take on new roles without a moment’s hesitation. Adept mimics, they excelled at blending in with whatever environment or crowd they had been assigned, and their collective ambition often put them in roles of power. Never absolute power, mind; that came with too much danger and suspicion. But an advisor here, a trusted companion there, and they had the ears of those who they could manipulate into their nefarious schemes. A Changeling among humans was a horrible misfortune.

 A Changeling in Trollmarket itself? Nothing else but a catastrophe.

The eye of Rot peered curiously at Jim and Toby when Blinky mentioned they were suspicious of Changelings, and it hit Blinky that he had never suspected either of the boys to be one. It simply was unfathomable. Changelings had not been seen or heard of for centuries, and even he – as mired in conspiracies as he was – had not considered that frightful option.

It seemed highly unlikely, given the boys’ ages, but Blinky supposed that they would find out for sure in a minute or two anyway.

RotGut’s emporium, thankfully, held the appropriate totem with which to unveil a Changeling, and Blinky was quite glad when the arguing trolls saw fit to give them their totem. The gaggletack rocketed out of the drawer in RotGut’s door and smacked Tobias in the forehead, felling the poor boy like a sack of rocks.

“It hurts!”
Jim bent to pick it up –

“It’s a…”

 - and the gaggletack flashed with blue, sparkling violently with a crack of magic.

Blinky would later recount that he handled the situation with calm and poise, despite the bruises on his back that he obtained from leaping backwards with a yelp and falling against RotGut’s door.

And the little blue troll in Jim’s place, still crouching to pick up the gaggletack, screamed.

Actually, everybody screamed, but the Jim-troll screamed loudest and longest. Blinky watched with utter shock as he scrambled with his arms and legs, feeling the horns upon his head and the teeth protruding from his lip, screaming all the while.

AAARRRGGHH picked up the whelp and pressed a hand against his face before the screams could even evolve into actual words, and he carried the struggling troll back out into the market, heading for his personal quarters.

Tobias and Blinky were left behind, both still on the ground in various states of shock.

“We must go after them,” Blinky muttered, rising to his feet and pulling Toby up with one arm.

“Ohmygosh, ohmygosh, ohmygosh,” the boy was mumbling, tripping after Blinky with a despairing moan.

“I did not know he could do that! Did you know he could do that? Does this mean Jim’s a Changeling? What happened to the real Jim?!”
“That is precisely what I mean to find out! Now hurry up!”
Blinky lead Toby down an empty corridor, past rooms meant for storage and utilities. AAARRRGGHH’s personal quarters were in an uninhabited sector, a choice he had made upon arriving in Heartstone Trollmarket. Even centuries later, when his temperament had evened and his fear of accidentally hurting someone in a rage had lessened, he still kept his solitary quarters, though they were rarely used.

They met no one on the way, and when they arrived the large boulder that AAARRRGGHH used as a door had been shifted aside. Panicked gasping could be heard from within the room.

Blinky and Tobias entered to find the Jim-troll pacing wildly around the room, his head in his hands. There were only four fingers, Blinky noticed.

“Ahem, er. Master Jim?”
“What the fuck?!” Jim yelled, throwing his arms in the air. “What, what did that thing do to me? Is it permanent? Is-is this going to stick, because I can’t go home to my mom like this, she’ll freak! Why did the horseshoe turn me into a troll?! I can’t be a troll, I can barely make it to class as it is! You can fix this, right? It’ll wear off, like the Furgulator thing, right?”

Blinky was at a loss. Tobias seemed perfectly content to pounce on Jim and poke at his every feature, but Blinky could not shake the enormous feeling of dread.

Jim was a Changeling.

Jim was a Changeling, and he was the Trollhunter.

The Trollhunter was a Changeling.

The Trollhunter, who was Jim, was a Changeling who, by his own admission, had had no idea of his true nature.

There was no conceivable way for Blinky to explain this.

AAARRRGGHH’s bright eyes glimmered in a corner. Stalking over to him, Blinky accepted the warm arm across his shoulders and watched as Jim proceeded to have a fit. Everything he noticed deepened his alarm; the grey-blue tint of his skin, the broader expansion of his chest, the curved horns on either side of his skull.

Toby was shoving his hands into Jim’s mouth, examining his enlarged teeth, when Blinky noticed the boy getting ready to have a panic attack. Honestly, Blinky rather felt like having one himself, but…

…even with the fangs and the skin and the horns…

…it was clear that the little troll was still Jim, and Jim was worth putting aside his feelings for.

Blinky walked away from the corner and pulled the boy into a hug, feeling with all four arms how hard the boy was tremoring. Whether Jim had known about this change or not, the poor child was terrified, and Blinky could no more ignore it than stab himself in the eye.

“We will figure this out, Master Jim,” he murmured, softly patting the boy on the back. “If you can change one way, you can change the other. We will get you back to your usual form.”
Jim buried his face in his shoulder; Blinky only realized then how much his height had changed. Poor Tobias, who was patting Jim’s arm, looked even more miniscule than normal.

“C’mon, Jimbo, it’s okay,” he said. “You know, even if you are a Changeling, we’re still besties! This doesn’t have to change anything, Jim!”
Blinky begged to differ – this changed everything – but Jim was sobbing into his shoulder now and bringing up the repercussions of being a Changeling among trolls would not be the most comforting idea.

The room rumbled slightly as AAARRRGGHH trudged over to them. He sniffed at Jim’s limp hand, nudged his face between him and Blinky, nearly lifting the teen off of the ground. His face turned into a frown as he deliberated.

“Mmm. Changeling,” he growled. That settled the matter. Blinky, through all his scholarly pursuits, had not nearly the experience with Changelings that AAARRRGGHH did, and if his companion recognized Jim’s scent as such then that was the end of the matter.

Blinky pressed on Jim’s shoulders until he sank down on AAARRRGGHH’s nest of blankets and skins, Tobias joining him at his side.

“Think of it this way, Jim-my-man,” he said, his voice tenuously light and cheerful. “Now you don’t have to complain about reaching the top shelves anymore.”

 To Blinky’s gratefulness Jim smiled and gave a watery laugh.

“Oh, god,” he whispered, staring into his hands. “What am I going to tell my mom?”

Chapter Text

Vendel took the long way around, through the very center of Heartstone Trollmarket, but the trolls in the surrounding crowds parted around him like leaves to a breeze, and his disgruntled face ensured that he was unbothered in his journey.

Screaming, even in as lively a place as Trollmarket, was cause for alarm when it was a certain type of scream. Shrieks of rage, or of surprise, were not uncommon, but utter terror was something relegated only to the most dramatic of trolls. Blinkous was included in that number and most of the time Vendel could safely ignore it when Blinky had something to shriek about, but when Rot and Gut were added to the mix, it was time for him to find out what his old friend was up to now.

As collectors and purveyors of both fine and dangerous goods, Rot and Gut had a notoriously high tolerance for shocking situations, since they handled explosives and volatile spells and hexes daily, not to even mention how often they were threatened with bodily harm in outrage at their prices. Anything that could make those two scream warranted concern.

The rumor about a Changeling in Trollmarket notwithstanding.

It had been more than a century and a half since Vendel had visited AAARRRGGHH in his actual quarters, instead of coming to find him in Blinkous’s room or library. AAARRRGGHH had established his need for privacy and isolation early in their days and Vendel tried to respect that as much as he could, and that included not bothering the troll when he went to his quarters. Nowadays AAARRRGGHH only used his own room when he was having a bad day or an off mood, and it was an unspoken point that nobody would bother him until he came out and allowed himself to be bothered.

The fact that Blinkous and AAARRRGGHH had seen fit to take their screaming and their humans to the lonely little quarters at the edge of the market was telling of how dire the situation really was. AAARRRGGHH never invited any other than Blinky to his rooms when he saw fit to use them, and Vendel knew there were things in the room that he wasn’t eager to others to see. But a Changeling situation was much more severe than punch-holes and gouges in the walls.

There was a flash of bright blue light just as Vendel turned into the corridor. He frowned as he walked through the entrance to the rooms.

Blinkous and AAARRRGGHH were crowded around the nest, their backs to Vendel but their eyes peering over their shoulders. The Trollhunter and his rotund companion were sitting on the pile of furs and quilts, the Trollhunter attempting to hide a gaggletack behind his back as Vendel peered at him.

Vendel may be half-blind, but he wasn’t stupid.

“Cease your ridiculous posturing,” he grumbled, smacking the two trolls out of the way with his staff. The Trollhunter had the gall to try and smile at him. He smelled of despair and fresh tears and iron magic.

“Do you really believe you could trick me, Trollhunter? I have been around for many more years than you will ever see. That gaggletack you hold only confirms the disturbing rumors the rest of the market has been panicking about.”
“Vendel, it is not really – “
“Spare me, Blinkous,” Vendel said, blocking the smaller troll with his back as he leaned down at the Trollhunter and his companion.

“A Changeling,” he murmured to himself, trying to see the webs of magic around the boy. He knew he wouldn’t; Changelings hid their nature utterly, and only the most experienced trolls could tell the difference between the smell and magical signature of a Changeling and a regular troll or human. Vendel was not so experienced that he could see the varying threads in the magic that wove around the boy, but he could smell the active magic coming off of the gaggletack, something that would never happen if it had not reacted to the whelp’s touch.

“I didn’t know,” the Trollhunter whispered. He sounded as if his throat was too closed to make a louder protest. Vendel couldn’t see the tear tracks, but he could smell them. There was a difference between the scent of anger and deceit and the scent of fear, and the Trollhunter was nothing more than terrified.

“Such a thing should be impossible,” Vendel said, straightening up. “Changelings undergo immense training and conditioning to become as dangerous as they are. An untrained, unknowing Changeling is highly unlikely.”

“Vendel, if I may,” Blinkous said from behind Vendel’s hairy shoulder. “Although the Master Jim’s troll form has developed in approximation to his human body, it is still quite obvious that the boy is no more than sixteen years old, in both forms.”
Vendel understood what Blinkous was trying to say. As one of twenty-three census takers and archivists around the world, Vendel – as well as Blinkous, who was another – had access and knowledge to every troll birth, death, marriage, and official movement across the globe. Given trollkind’s long lives, children were not uncommon but not terribly abundant either. Only two whelps had died within sixteen years, one from accidental exposure to sunlight and one from an unexplained accident. Vendel knew exactly who this Changeling was that had taken the place of original James Lake Jr, and so did Blinky.

And they both knew that one year in the Darklands, under the experimentation and conditioning required to create a Changeling, was not enough time to truly create one; it was barely enough time to complete the Change. The troll children who were taken and Changed stayed for decades or even centuries in the Darklands, growing into the cult that followed Gunmar and receiving brutal mental and physical training in preparation for the day that they were assigned to a human child.

The boy’s young age indicated that his body was the only thing Changed about him. He would never have had enough time to undergo conditioning, and with that assumption it could be inferred that he had been switched with a human child without any training whatsoever. An utterly pointless exercise, a useless waste of two childhoods, and completely nonsensical. Why would someone go to all the trouble of kidnapping a troll whelp and Changing him, only to stick him out into the human world when he wasn’t even trained, was even old enough to be trained, in gathering information? It made utterly no sense.

Vendel harrumphed and stepped back.

“Let us see it, then, Trollhunter,” he said. The boy looked up at him with shock.

“Wait wait, what? I don’t wanna change again, what if it – there’s no way– I can’t do this again – “
“You will not be stuck, Jim,” Blinky said gently, scooting past Vendel to kneel before the child and placing two hands on his arm. Vendel watched with both amusement and curiosity; his old friend had never been so doting to Kanjigar or his predecessors.

“Both forms are yours to do with what you will,” he said as the boy looked at him in askance. “I promise that you will not be trapped, and it will not have to be for long. If you please, Master Jim?”

The Trollhunter stared with wide, desperate eyes, blue to amber, and slowly drew the gaggletack from behind his back.

“Here, Tobes,” he murmured, and handed the thing to the other human boy. Vendel watched with interest; apparently he did not yet know how to change forms voluntarily. The other boy took the totem, examined it, and then handed it back to the Trollhunter with a dramatic flare that made the little Changeling give a watery smile.

Vendel was the only one who didn’t have to squint at the flash of blue light, and when the glare faded a little blue troll was sitting where the ‘human’ Trollhunter had once been.

Vendel’s clouded eyes obscured the details but left the general form, and it was clear even to him that the whelp was young – very young. If he had been a true troll he would still be unallowed to leave the home without an adult to supervise or carry him. As Blinkous had mentioned, his trollish body had matured parallel to his human one, and looked more like the body of a tween than a small child, as any true troll would be at the age of sixteen.

He could see the vague suggestion of horns and a thin, lithe body, and it matched with his suspicions about the boy’s true parentage.

“A shame that you couldn’t have bulked up,” Vendel said, poking the boy in the shoulder with his staff. The muscle certainly felt harder, the skin stonier, but he was still a skinny little bastard. “I fear this form will be nearly as useless as your fleshbag body.”
“You’re…you’re not…angry?”
Vendel sighed.

“There is no changing it now,” he said, “Nor any use in denying it. Our Trollhunter is a Changeling, and being angry about it will not serve any purpose. You and your unique history are no more a threat to Trollmarket than you were before, son of Bar-bu-rah.”

The boy’s smell flushed and he ducked his head. Vendel imagined that telling the boy’s fleshbag ‘mother’ about this would be a conversation that he would be glad to miss. He had more than enough drama to deal with.

“I will deal with Trollmarket’s initial panic, James Lake Junior,” Vendel said. The boy looked up in surprise, as did Blinkous, who Vendel then turned and pointed at.

“You will have the honor of containing the rest. Once they have assurances from me they will not try to kill him, but I cannot guarantee the boy’s safety, Trollhunter or not. Your duty, young one,” he said to Jim, “has just become much harder.”

Getting out of Trollmarket was a matter of tucking Jim under AAARRRGGHH’s arm and having him barrel through the crowd as gently but as quickly as possible. A troll AAARRRGGHH’s size had no competition whatsoever in terms of strength, and any who wanted to give the group a piece of their mind was firmly moved aside while Blinky headed off the rest with fast-talking and astonishingly personal insults.

Jim, cramped in the troll’s armpit, was gently having the skin on the side of his face abraded away, but through the pain and embarrassment he was grateful to get out so easily.

Returning, he knew, would be significantly more difficult to endure.

Blinky had decided that Trollmarket would be too dangerous for Jim in the coming days, until he and Vendel could calm everybody down. Apparently Changelings were liked even less than humans, and Blinky could not promise that Toby or Jim would not be attacked.

“Do. You. Mind!” Blinky yelped, shooing away a red troll who had been silently following them. Jim couldn’t see much but even though the troll had seemed calm, Jim was still incredibly nervous; any approaching troll, any angry face, was suddenly a threat that only Blinky’s distractions and AAARRRGGHH’s steady mass could protect him from. Jim had learned early that being the Trollhunter didn’t save him from violence or ridicule, and suddenly being revealed as a Changeling apparently invited even more. A human Trollhunter was a curiosity; a Changeling was an insult.

It was nearing one in the morning when they made it to the surface and to Jim’s house. His mom’s car was in the driveway and Jim knew that she would be passed out somewhere, probably still in her scrubs and glasses. The thought of something so normal calmed him immensely, until he remembered that he and Blinky were still arguing about the decision on whether or not to tell his mom about the new situation.

Blinky was very highly against it. There were enough humans in the know about trolls, he argued, and needlessly worrying Jim’s mother by telling her about trollkind and Trollhunters and her son being a Changeling would be a cruelty that served no purpose. Jim hid his Trollhunting from her; how was this revelation any different?

Jim had mixed feelings on the matter. On the one hand, he felt incredibly guilty, even though he knew deep down that he hadn’t actually done anything wrong. Nobody had asked him if he wanted to be a troll or a Changeling or whatever was going on. But he apparently had taken the place of the real James Lake Jr (and wasn’t that a strange and horrible realization), who was stuck in the Darklands with Gunmar, and somebody had to answer for that and Jim couldn’t help but feel like it should be him. Didn’t he owe his mom an explanation? Didn’t he owe it to her to tell her about her son –  both her sons? But on the other hand, his mom had enough to worry about, and Blinky was right that he already had a big secret that he was hiding from her. What was it to add another?

They compromised; wait a few weeks and see how things went, and then go on from there.

AAARRRGGHH lifted Jim and Toby up over Jim’s back fence, settling them on the ground before shoving Blinky over as well.

Blinky dusted some grass clippings off of his trousers and made to speak, but Jim really wasn’t interested in listening. He had had a really, really terrible night, and all he wanted to do was go to sleep and wake up in a world where today had not happened.

Whatever Blinky was going to say, he didn’t. A stone hand, hard but not too cool to the touch, rested on each of Jim’s shoulders.

“You’ve weathered your responsibility as Trollhunter admirably so far,” he said quietly, looking down in Jim’s face. “Through everything that has been thrown at you, every insult and difficulty, you have shown more strength of character and of spirit than Trollhunters who had centuries to perfect themselves. The soundness of your heart will never fail you, no matter if you are human or troll or anything in between. It is your heart that makes you who you are…”

Jim finally looked up, and the compassion in Blinky’s eyes almost made him cry again.

“…Not what you are. Adversity is the tool with which we build our strengths. I have no doubt in my mind that through this you will emerge stronger than any Trollhunter before you.”

With those words and a final kind smile, the trolls departed, leaving Jim and Toby alone in Jim’s backyard.

Now that they were alone, now that the bustle and background magic of Trollmarket was gone, Jim could feel the gaggletack in Toby’s back pocket, whining just on the edge of his senses, like a tickle in the back of his throat.

“Tobes…”
“Yeah, Jimbo?”
Jim focused on the boulder just to the side of his back door, trying to find words through his rapidly closing throat.

“You’re not…I don’t know – “
Two short arms pinned Jim’s own to his sides. Toby damn near squeezed the life out of him before relaxing, although he still didn’t let go.

“Dude, look at it this way,” he said, as completely nonchalant and unbothered as ever. “You’re like half old best friend, half new best friend! And always my best friend. No matter what.”

What did I do to deserve you.

All of the confusion and panic of the night welled up in Jim’s throat and he silently sank, crouching on his heels with his face buried in his arms. With a quiet whump Toby landed on the grass beside him.

“What am I gonna do, Tobes…”
“I don’t know,” his friend answered honestly. “Maybe your mom’ll be totally fine with it. But you can come live with me and Nana if she’s not, you know, Nana won’t mind. Especially if we don’t tell her.”

A watery laugh burbled in Jim’s throat; he shook his head against his arms.

“She’s not that blind, Tobes.”

There was a vague swish that Jim interpreted as a sweeping hand gesture. He raised his head and rested it on a forearm.

“What if she really does kick me out,” he whispered. “I can’t not tell her. This isn’t some secret job and a suit of armor; this is her own son we’re talking about.”
“Both sons,” Tobias corrected, nudging Jim’s thigh with his shoe. “Technically you’ve been Jim for a lot longer than the original version.”

“But that’s the thing!”

Jim stood in one swift movement, unable to hold still any longer.

“I’M not the original Jim! She thought she was raising HER kid this whole time, but what she got was some weird Changeling ripoff!”
“I thought you looked pretty cool,” Toby muttered.

“I’m a troll, Tobes! I can’t be – I can’t be – being the Trollhunter was bad enough, now I’m an actual troll now too? I didn’t think that it could get worse, but it actually got worse! How in the heck am I going to explain to my mom that I’m a goddamn troll?!”

Toby raised an eyebrow at the unusual profanity, but otherwise had no further reaction. Easy for him to do, he didn’t have to worry about what his mom would think about finding out that her ‘son’ wasn’t actually her son and that he was a troll who hunted trolls and oh god it was so messed up…

They sat in the grass together for a long time, Toby rubbing a warm hand across Jim’s back as he dried his face on the knees of his jeans.

“What am I gonna do, Tobes…” he murmured once more. The hand on his back traced a soothing line across his shoulders, and then Toby was pulling Jim to his feet.

“You’re gonna go inside, tell Dr L goodnight, and then go to sleep, because we’ve still got school tomorrow and I really wanna see if Crazy Steve is a Changeling. And you’re gonna do your day like you normally do. Think of it this way, dude – “
Jim, entranced by Toby’s confident demeanor and his own fatigue, nodded grimly.

“ – You’ve been a Changeling for the past fifteen years! You’ve totally got this! The only difference is, you know about it now.”
That sounded just like top-tier wisdom to Jim’s exhaustion.

He walked Toby to the street, and then went inside, checked on his mom (asleep in bed, glasses on but shoes off), and then went to sleep, because he had school tomorrow and he wasn’t sure that he was up to lying awake with only his thoughts. Toby would be at school, and as long as he was there, Jim knew he’d be able to handle this, whatever this turned out to be.