Chapter Text
Floyd sighed to himself as he walked out the door. The air blew against his skin and sent a small tremor of chills down his back. This was the biggest fight that his brothers had ever had. He wasn’t sure if this time those words of “goodbye forever” were just another empty threat that his oldest brother had said.
He looked out and saw the figures of his brothers walking to the outer boundaries of the village. Two were walking together while another was speeding and stopping due to a lack of proper coordination with a grappling gun.
“Floyd, Sweetie?” a voice behind him called. Floyd turned to see an elderly purple troll with faded bluish-green hair standing in the doorway. The tired but worried look burned into his eyes as she continued.
“Please, could you try to talk some sense into your brothers? It’s not safe out this late at night. They don’t need to come home tonight, but they need to come home eventually.”
“I’ll do my best Grandma, but somehow, I feel this time was different. I think they’re really going to follow through with what they said” Floyd sighed as he looked towards the retreating figures of his brothers.
“But I’ll give it a shot”
Floyd leaped from the pod and shot his hair out to a nearby ledge of another pod, swinging toward the direction of the lone figure with a bit more grace and coordination. Each swing that Floyd saw his elder brother do with that grappling hook was amusing, to say the least. He was about as graceful at maneuvering with it as a group of bergens trying to harmonize anything other than the flat notes they heard frequently around the tree.
In other words, Floyd could catch up to John Dory quite easily. But the question that plagued the second youngest of the brothers was: what would he say when he finally caught up to his oldest brother?
In all honesty, Bitty B’s first tour had been a disaster. It was going to be his debut concert as an official bro to the band and well, ironically what they were doing was leaving him hanging on his own with their grandmother. None of them knew how to really care for a baby, save for Grandma Rosiepuff and of course, John. Being the oldest of five meant he had the most experience on how to help out with baby stuff.
“OW!”
He definitely had more experience with raising us than using that stupid grappling hook chuckled Floyd as he got closer to his intended target.
“John! John Dory! Wait up!” called Floyd as he was zeroing in on the eldest Brozone member. John turned his head and looked at his younger brother swinging after him, guitar strapped to his back but missing the leafy hand-me-down that had made its way down to his possession.
“Floyd?” John really should have been paying attention to his surroundings as he crashed face-first into another pod and fell to the ground in a heap. John groaned as this crash in particular left him seeing stars and with a bit of a pounding headache.
“John! Are you okay?”
John Dory merely groaned in answer as his younger brother checked for any visible injuries. There didn’t seem to be any aside from some swelling on the side of John’s face that made contact with the pod, but apart from that he seemed fine. Helping John into a sitting position John Dory glared at Floyd and asked
“What are you doing following me loser?”
“Okay, you seem fine if that’s how you want to be JD” pouted Floyd crossing his arms.
“I said I was going solo to the Neverglades so why are you following me?”
“Because I was going to ask if you were being serious or if you were just going to blow off some steam, You know we shouldn’t be wandering around this late near the edge of the tree”
“What made you think I wasn’t being serious about climbing the Neverglades?”
“Because you always say you would but then you always come back in the morning screaming about how some bergen almost snatched you up or something else completely out there”
“That really happened!” cried John Dory standing up in a huff and starting again towards the bars of the cage.
Floyd jumped and zipped in front of his brother holding his hands up.
“Okay, so it did! But are you really going out there?”
“What part of Goodbye Forever do you not understand Floyd?” JD asked, getting increasingly frustrated as he looked at his younger brother’s attempt at blocking his way.
“Because shouldn’t we be there for branch?”
John shoved Floyd aside and stomped off once again towards his destination. His brother, on the other hand, sped up and tried to match his pace.
“John please, he’s just a baby, I don’t even know how to take care of a baby” Floyd pleaded, grabbing him by the arm. John growled, pulled his arm away, and continued stomping forward as his brother continued to plead with him.
“John, Grandma can’t do this on her own, and I’m just a kid”
“So am I!” screamed John. Floyd’s eyes widened as he flinched from his brother’s sudden volume change. John’s eyes were welling up with tears threatening to flow down his face as he breathed heavily. He closed his eyes and let the dam break, his entire body sagging as he dropped to his knees.
“So am I” he repeated. “I can’t take it anymore Floyd, We were supposed to make it work, we were supposed to be able to make the perfect family harmony! It could shatter diamonds, it could have shattered that level of fear we have of those bergens now, You know the rumors of what it could do! Maybe, just maybe we could have even brought them back!”
Floyd had indeed heard of the rumors that a perfect family harmony could have done, it was held as a miracle worker, trolls who had lost their colors could be restored and healed fully, they could fly, shatter diamonds, and bring happiness that no troll could resist feeling. But it also had some that seemed too far-fetched, like getting back lost loved ones.
“John, you can’t truly believe that part of the story, it’s just too good to be true, it’s been 2 years” sighed Floyd as he kneeled before the dejected troll.
Looking at his brother he saw how scared and angry he looked. He wasn’t the leader of Brozone oozing with confidence and pride who walked as if he knew exactly what he was doing. He was a young troll, scared, tired, and heartbroken beyond belief. He was only seventeen, and he was thrown into the role of parental figure before he was able to truly find himself as a full-grown troll.
“Dad promised, we’d travel and see the world, he’d take us to the mountains and see the seas, and we’d be able to sing and touch the hearts of everyone, He promised!” wept John as he punched the ground. Floyd said nothing as John continued to vent his frustrations. He’d never seen his brother cry and throw a fit. Not like this. He’d pout, he’d stomp his feet when he was scolded, he would scowl at them, and he’d even shove his brothers when he got in trouble because of something they did.
But he never saw John cry. His brother was always there, the one who gave Clay a book to read because the title sounded cool, who would try to hype Spruce up to be the perfect boyfriend of some girl’s dream, make him cocoa when he was feeling particularly down, and of course, there to help Grandma look after Bitty B when their parents were taken from them by the bergens.
Floyd cried that day when he saw his parents taken. The look of fear on their faces as they told them to run and hide with Grandma Rosiepuff. John had tried to reach out to their father, but instead of reaching out to grab hold of his eldest son, he pulled an egg from his hair and lobbed it as carefully as he could into John's hair. His parting words as he sorrowfully kept his hand out towards them still rang out clear as day.
“Take care of them, John Dory! Be good son!”
Floyd reached out and put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. John Dory looked up into his younger brother’s eyes with his own bloodshot teary eyes, tears still falling down his face as he sniffled trying to regain his composure.
“Was this really why you wanted to try and get the perfect harmony? To sing and try to get Mom and Dad back?”
John hung his head in shame as he whimpered “I can’t, I can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to be in charge of anyone anymore, I can’t take care of you all, I can barely take care of myself! I just want to be a kid again, I want them back!”
“Oh, John” Floyd wept as he pulled his brother in for a hug. John melted into it and cried into his younger brother’s shoulders blubbering apologies as Floyd rubbed his eldest brother’s back. He was starting to see that his brother had a burden that none of them knew about, but it helped him slowly piece together how John Dory had gotten overbearing, bossy, and sometimes just straight-up overly strict with them. And it was that burden that broke his brother, leaving him a mess like this in his arms, Floyd couldn’t imagine trying to force him back into this role, not right now.
“John Dory, maybe it is for the best you go out on your own for this trip” Floyd suggested as he pulled away from the hug. John looked at him with wide eyes, almost as if he’d been slapped in the face. He shook his head and placed his hands on Floyd’s shoulders.
“No, no no no, you’re right Floyd, you’re just a kid, I’m the only one who knows how to take care of a baby besides Grandma, I should be there for her and Branch, I’m the oldest, it’s my responsibility”
Floyd gently grabbed John Dory’s hands lifted them off of him and shook his head. “John, you’re entitled to having a life too, it doesn’t have to revolve around looking after us and Grandma, there’s five of us, you should take a break and go find yourself for a bit, let us younger brothers take a shot at being the responsible ones for a bit”
“But Floyd, It’s my responsibility, Dad said~” Floyd cut him off by putting his hand up.
“Dad said, Be good. You took care of us as best you could, it could have been better, but we’re also not all helpless babies like Branch is, besides I think it’s for the best anyway for some of us to get some space to breathe and live a little outside of the band, you especially bro”
“But how will I~?”
“Just promise to write so Grandma knows you’re okay, Branch has three more brothers and I’m almost certain three of us can look after one of him easily, so go John Dory, I promise we’ll look after him just as well as you’ve looked after us”
John looked at Floyd with worry as he tried to reason with himself mentally on his decision. Floyd returned with a look of confidence and nodding towards John before he returned the nod. He stepped towards his pink-haired little brother and gave him a tight hug.
“Thank you, brother, I promise I’ll write and I’ll come back to check on you guys, hopefully, King Peppy’s plan to tunnel the entire village will be ready by the time I’m back”
“You’re not going to wait for the tunnels to be completed?”
“Please, I don’t need no stinkin tunnels, I’ve been running around Bergen town since before the cage went up around the tree. No one catches slippery John Dory”
“Goodbye John Dory”
“Goodbye Floyd”
With that, John Dory used his grappling gun and made his final swings towards the bars of the cage and swung through towards the great unknown dangers of Bergen town. Floyd looked at the silhouette of his retreating brother and let out a sigh of relief and slight disappointment. He knew it wasn’t the greatest idea to let John Dory go, but if there was anyone who was crazy prepared to face any kind of situation it was John Dory, Floyd was now faced with the task of not only trying to convince his other elder brothers of not only staying to help watch branch, but also to break the news to his grandmother that John would not be coming home anytime soon. Floyd turned and started towards the direction he last saw Spruce and Clay walking off in.
I really hope I didn’t make a big mistake letting him go
Floyd thought to himself