Bruce was having a good day. The sea breeze felt nice against his skin and he'd caught a pretty good wave when he went out for his dusk surf. Brandy had almost perfected a new recipe to add to the menu, and she was over the moon about it. Her happiness made Bruce happy, so that was nice. There hadn't even been a big fight between the kids all week. So, yes, it had been a very good day and Bruce felt like nothing could ruin it.
As he made his way back to the restaurant he passed his kids' favorite pool. He paused in his steps when he saw two familiar looking trolls in the water. Branch's friends were back, and Bruce thought it was a safe assumption to think that his brother had come with them.
He was always happy to see Branch, but Bruce couldn't help but think that something was wrong. Why had they come back so soon? And without writing to him about it first. Not that he minded, but it made him worried. What had happened?
"Hey, Poppy." He called out as he approached the pool. Poppy and Bud had just been talking quietly to each other, but they jumped when they heard him. Bud dove into the water and then pointedly didn't surface. Bruce frowned, his concern spiking. "Is something wrong?"
"Fl-Bud!" Poppy got to her feet. She looked frantic as she just stared at her friend as he swam to the other side of the pool, but still stayed under the water. "You can't just…agh!" She groaned in frustration and leaned her head back. She looked stressed. She took a few calming breaths before turning towards Bruce. "I…hi. Yes. There is kinda a lot wrong, I guess. I don't know what I'm doing. Branch is…and Bud…" She sighed and buried her face in her hands. Bruce didn't hesitate to step forward and pulled her into a hug. He didn't know Poppy well, but she was hurting, and he knew from Branch that she loved hugs.
Poppy leaned into his touch and stayed there for a long time. He held her as long as she needed. He heard a splash and a frantic gasping for air. He looked to the pool just in time to see Bud dive back under the water. He had just come up for air, and now he was back to hiding.
Poppy took in a shuddered breath and finally pulled away from him. She wiped her eyes and brushed her hair behind her ear. "Thanks. Sorry. It's been a hard past couple of days."
"I bet." Bruce said. "Is there something I can do?"
"I mean, that's what we're here for." Poppy gave a nervous little laugh. She rocked on her feet a little bit. "Branch needs to talk to you. He's at the restaurant."
"Will you be okay?" Bruce asked.
"We're fine." Poppy said, though she looked very sad and discouraged. "Please talk to Branch. He really needs help right now. We'll be right here when you're done."
Bruce didn't have a good feeling about this at all. He squeezed Poppy's hands and quickly made his way towards the restaurant while she turned her attention to trying to coax her friend out of the water.
It wasn't hard to find Branch at the restaurant. He was sitting at the only smaller table in the place. The one that Bruce and the kids used. It was still too big for a troll, but it was better than the massive furniture the Vacaytioners used.
Branch looked absolutely devastated and exhausted. Maybe it was just the poor lighting, but his hair looked darker and duller than before. Bruce knew he had gone Gray, and that kind of thing never truly went away, but it still broke his heart to see his brother like this.
"Hey, Bro." Bruce said. Branch looked at him. His eyes looked like they couldn't decide whether to be dull or full of pain. Bruce figured that was just par for the course when it came to going Gray. "Obviously the circumstances aren't great, but it's good to see you again."
Branch didn't say anything. He just pushed himself away from the table and took a few staggering steps towards Bruce, leaning against him. It wasn't a hug like Poppy's, but it was clear he needed the contact. Bruce patted his back.
"Do you know…?" Branch trailed off.
"Poppy just said we needed to talk." Bruce said. He really didn't know what was going on. He was almost afraid to find out. "Why don't we go to the back? I'll get us some drinks, and we can talk there."
Branch nodded. Bruce led him to the back of the restaurant, nodding at Brandy as they passed her. She looked concerned and curious, but she knew that he would catch her up later.
Instead of going to the sitting room they went to the back kitchen where they kept snacks for the kids, their own personal food, and sometimes special orders that they didn't want to accidentally sell. The kitchen wasn't as comfortable as the family room, but it had its perks.
"Do you want something strong, something sweet, or something else?" Bruce asked. He didn't know about Branch, but for himself he knew that when he needed a pick-me-up he usually liked to indulge in things he usually tried to stay away from. He tried really hard to not rely on either alcohol or heavy amounts of sugar, but there was nothing wrong with an occasional treat.
"Strong." Branch said almost desperately. Bruce grabbed the strongest drink they had, and then grabbed a drink that was more on the sweeter side, but would still pack a punch. He had the feeling that he would need a little boost to get him through this conversation.
"So, what's going on?" Bruce asked. He sat at the table next to Branch and handed him his drink. Branch started chugging it down, and Bruce's concern reached an all-time high. Something was incredibly wrong here. He felt sick to his stomach, and he didn't even know what was going on. "Branch?"
He didn't answer right away, still focusing on drinking. Finally Branch lowered the bottle. Tears were in his eyes, and Bruce didn't think it was just because of the alcohol burning his throat as it went down.
"This sucks." Branch muttered. He tilted the bottle back and forth, watching his drink as it sloshed around. "I suck."
"What's wrong?" Bruce said insistently. He hadn't touched his drink himself. He was no longer sure if he could stomach it.
"So, uh, Bud is…" Branch trailed off. "You remember Bud, right?"
"Sure I do." Bruce said. "I just saw him outside with Poppy. I, uh, I think he was hiding from me."
Branch snorted bitterly as he glared at his drink. "Of course he was." He muttered. A second later his eyes flashed with guilt. "Why do I keep saying stuff like that?"
"Branch, talk to me." Bruce was almost frantic by now. He wanted to help, but he didn't know what to do. "Please."
Branch let go of his bottle, which Bruce was grateful for, even if his brother then wrapped his arms tightly around himself instead. "You remember that he had brothers that we were going to look for? I thought it was a crazy plan. How were we supposed to find four trolls that we didn't know?"
Bruce nodded. Branch had ranted about his concerns and frustrations with the plan. Bruce had heard it all. Except for the detail of Bud having specifically four brothers. That detail made his stomach churn painfully.
"So, uh, good news." Branch plastered on an extremely forced and very pained smile. "We know who his brothers are." His voice cracked painfully and his tears started to fall.
Bruce felt something inside of him break. His very first suspicion and fear came back to him, and he couldn't push it away. Not this time. Not until he knew for sure.
Bruce opened his drink and finally had some. He thought he knew why Branch had gone so hard on his own drink. It took everything in him to refrain from doing the same thing. Bruce just took a few sips before he put his drink down and finally voiced his deepest fears.
"John Dory, Clay, or Floyd?" Bruce asked lowly. Branch didn't answer at first, and Bruce felt a very slight hope that his brother would ask him what he was talking about. That he would dismiss these anxieties and say that, no, Bud's brothers were actually their childhood neighbors. Trolls he knew, but wouldn't have ever been close to.
The longer Branch's silence went on, the more that Bruce's fear returned, killing the hope. He looked at his brother, and Branch just stared back at him with the most heart-broken expression.
"Floyd." Branch said quietly. "How did you-?"
Bruce took another drink. "Because it was the biggest thing I was afraid of as soon as I heard what that poor troll had been through." The drink was making him feel sicker, but he didn't want to put it down. Not yet. "By the muses, it's really Floyd?"
"Yep." Branch rubbed his eyes and then took another drink. Thankfully he took it a bit easier than he had before. He only drank for a moment before he choked on a sob, and a little on his drink. He was full-on crying now. "W-what am I doing?"
Bruce stood up. He put his drink down, took Branch's from his hands, and went to get them some water. Alcohol could be good for rough conversations, but not for tears. He gave Branch some water, and his brother just stared at it blankly.
"I need your help." Branch muttered. "I-I'm just making everything worse. It's killing me, and completely destroying him, and I just…I can't do this."
Bruce frowned. "Do you want help, or do you want someone else to take care of Floyd for you?" He thought that either option would be understandable, and he would help where he could, but he didn't think that Branch should be making rash decisions just because he was emotional. He was just going to end up hurting himself and Floyd.
Branch flinched and there was guilt in his eyes. "I-I don't want to abandon him. I mean, maybe a very small part of me does, but I won't. I can't. I swear I don't want it." He sounded like he was starting to spiral pretty badly. But what else am I supposed to do? I can't even talk to him, and it's not like my silence is doing him any favors either. He deserves better than that."
Bruce was trying very hard to wrap his head around everything that Branch was saying. "You…wait, you're not talking to him?"
"I can't." Branch said desperately. "What am I supposed to say? 'Hey, bro, sucks that you were almost killed by the rock trolls, but hey, at least you've finally kept the promise that you made to me twenty years ago when you abandoned me.'." Branch's eyes widened. He slapped his hands over his mouth and whimpered painfully, shaking his head. He looked wrecked with guilt about what he said. Bruce could understand it, but he definitely didn't blame Branch the way he was clearly blaming himself.
He should have known something like this would happen. But he'd just been a kid twenty years ago. He didn't understand how trauma worked. It was only through a lot of hard work and reflection did have a better understanding of what he had really gone through, how he had coped with it, and how he could recover from both the trauma itself, and how he had responded to the trauma.
He had read a lot of books about it, both for his own sake and to help him prepare to have kids. He didn't want to ruin them the way he felt he'd been broken beyond repair.
Bruce took Branch's hand, giving it a tight squeeze. "I know how it feels to be doing your best, and feeling like it's not good enough." That was how Bruce had felt all during his childhood.
"Please don't tell me that it is good enough, and I just have to do my best and everything will work out fine." Branch growled. "I've heard it all from Poppy."
"I wasn't going to say that." Bruce said. "The truth is, sometimes your best isn't good enough." Branch looked at him as though he'd been slapped. "That's when you need to accept help. You try your best, you let others carry some of the weight, and you keep going."
Branch wiped his eyes with his free hand. "I don't know how to stop being so mad."
Bruce wished he had a proper solution for his bro. The closest thing he had to an answer was one he knew wasn't very satisfying. "You're allowed to be mad." Bruce said. "At the rock trolls. At me. At Floyd. The thing is, you were hurt. Floyd was hurt. Neither cancels out the other, and I think you're just hurting yourself by pretending that they should."
Branch gave him a sad look that he knew all too well. That was how his kids looked at him when they felt like they had the weight of the world on their shoulders and they wanted him to fix it for them. He wished he could. He really did. But he couldn't.
"What am I supposed to do?" Branch asked.
"Well, you can start by talking to Floyd." Bruce said. Branch groaned. "I'm serious. You both need this."
"What if I say something wrong?" Branch asked.
"You say you're sorry." Bruce said. "And you try to do better next time. Floyd will understand."
"That's part of the problem." Branch said. "If he doesn't call me out for acting like a jerk, I'm just going to keep doing it."
"So I'll call you out." Bruce said. He understood why Branch was feeling the way he was, but he wasn't going to let him intentionally hurt their brother.
Branch actually looked relieved at his words. Bruce breathed a sigh of relief. Branch wasn't just trying to pawn Floyd off because he didn't want him to be his problem anymore, he was just overwhelmed and needed help. Bruce was more than happy to give it. He may not have been a present big brother for a long time, but he still loved his little bros.
"I don't know why this is so hard." Branch said. "I was doing fine with him before when I thought he was just Bud. It's not like he's changed now that I know who he is, but it just feels so much different."
"Well, maybe he hasn't changed, but how you look at him definitely has." Bruce said. "I mean, it's a lot easier to be a big bro for someone who is younger than you than for someone who is older than you."
"Yeah, maybe that's it." Branch shook his head. "Man, I can't believe how young I thought Bud was. I was half convinced he was just a teenager."
Alarm bells were going off in Bruce's head. He did some quick math in his head. Floyd was about thirty, give or take. He'd been held captive for twelve years, since he was about eighteen years old. He had spent his entire adult life locked up and isolated from the world. Had he grown up at all during that time?
And Bruce was sure that Floyd's trauma hadn't started with the rock trolls. He had always been a very sensitive kid. Had his frequent crying been a trauma response from the start that they had all just brushed off?
Bruce had read a lot about trauma. He was pretty sure that all of them had grown-up faster than they should have had to as a result of how they had been raised. That was a trauma response, but so was getting mentally stuck at the age when the trauma happened.
Bruce wouldn't be surprised if Floyd was, at the very least, still mentally just a young adult, because he had no life experience from that point on. But what if he was mentally even younger than that? Did Floyd even realize what was going on, or did he think this was all just completely normal?
He needed to talk to his little brother. He needed to see for himself that he was okay.
He stood up. "Do you think Floyd would be open to talking to me?"
"I think so." Branch said. He was looking sorry for himself again. "I think he'll be glad that any of his brothers are even wanting to talk to him."
"You'll figure it out." Bruce said. "I'm here to help out, but please don't run from this just because it's hard. Floyd deserves better than that, and so do you."
"I know." Branch sighed. He finally sipped at the water that Bruce had brought him. He waved his hand. "Go to Floyd. I know you're dying to see him. I'll be fine on my own."
"You're not alone." Bruce said to him sternly. He didn't want his little brothers to feel alone again. "I'm here whenever you need me."
"I know, I know." Branch said. "Go before Floyd starts to wonder if you don't want anything to do with him."
Bruce frowned. "That's not funny."
Branch gave him an odd look. "I wasn't joking."
Bruce shuddered. He didn't want to think about this. He gave Branch one more hug before leaving the room and hurrying back out of the restaurant and towards the pool. Poppy and Floyd were facing him. They saw him coming. Floyd jolted and curled into himself. He looked like he wanted to either run or hide in the water again, but Poppy took his hand and held him back. She whispered quietly to him as he shook.
Bruce wanted to run away himself. His little brother was afraid of him. He had never thought they would reach that point. He didn't want to push Floyd into talking to him if he didn't want to, but what if Floyd did want to talk? If Bruce walked away he would just be taking that chance away from him.
He had to say something.
Bruce swallowed thickly and went around to the other side of the pool to join them. Poppy turned to look at him. Floyd kept his eyes glued to the water.
"Can I join you?" Bruce asked. Poppy nodded immediately, but she wasn't the one who he was asking. He stared at Floyd, waiting for a response. His brother didn't move at all until Poppy gave him a small nudge. Floyd stiffened, but he nodded. It was an answer, but not the way he wanted it.
"I don't want to make you uncomfortable." Bruce said. "I can go, if you want."
Floyd hunched his shoulders. "...Please don't."
"Okay." Bruce sat down at the side of the pool, making sure there was a comfortable distance between him and Floyd. He really didn't want to crowd his brother.
"Do you guys want some space?" Poppy asked. Bruce didn't know what to say. He wanted to have one-on-one time with his brother, but he knew the situation was really fragile. Floyd might need her support.
Bruce was surprised and concerned when Floyd hesitantly let go of Poppy's hand, which he'd been clinging tightly to. "I-I don't want Branch to be alone. He needs you right now more than I do."
Bruce really didn't know about that. Floyd needed help. But of course he was more concerned about Branch. He had always been far more worried about what someone else wanted, rather than thinking about his own needs. Bruce could count on one hand the number of times he'd seen Floyd be truly selfish, and he thought his brother deserved more than that.
Poppy kissed his cheek and stood up. "Good luck." She said. She got up and left, leaving the two brothers alone. Bruce didn't like being afraid of his brothers. He wasn't really scared of Floyd, he was just worried about hurting him. What was he supposed to say?
Before Bruce could say anything Floyd suddenly shoved something into his chest. It was a piece of paper. Floyd still wasn't looking at him. Bruce slowly unfolded the paper and looked it over. It was a letter, but the weirdest one he'd ever seen.
Bruce saw the names Spruce and Bruce written out numerous times, and crossed out again and again. There were several lines of just that before he clearly just gave up and tried to write the rest of the letter, which was even more crossed out and unreadable than the names at the start were. The only legible words Bruce saw were 'I'm Sorry', circled and underlined so aggressively that they were very nearly crossed out as well.
Bruce's throat tightened painfully. He hated this letter with a passion. He wanted to drop it into the pool and let it disintegrate into nothing, but he couldn't do that to Floyd. Who knew what his brother would interpret from that reaction?
"I'm sorry." Floyd said. "I-I got that letter from you. I tried to write you back, but I couldn't figure out what to say. Everything seemed wrong. I-I didn't even know what I was supposed to call you."
Floyd's voice broke painfully. It hurt Bruce to hear his brother like this. He desperately wanted to hug Floyd, but he didn't know if he would want that. He didn't want to overstep, but at the same time he didn't want to just sit here and listen to Floyd bawling.
Feeling completely useless, Bruce opened his arms. It was a clear invitation for a hug, but Floyd didn't need to accept it if he didn't want to. He breathed a sigh of relief when Floyd dove into his arms with a wail. Bruce held him close, even stretching his hair out and wrapping it around Floyd for additional comfort.
It was instinct. He wondered if Floyd would think it was a step too far, because adults didn't normally receive comfort in this way. This was how parents comforted children. He didn't really know if this was instinct because it was what he did with his own kids, or if he thought Floyd would appreciate it because he might still, in a way, be a child.
The thought made Bruce feel sick. He started crying himself and tightened his grip on his brother. He didn't know what to say, so he didn't say anything. He just held Floyd close and let him cry. What else was he supposed to do?
