Work Text:
Gray
And I need you now tonight
And I need you more than ever!
And if you only hold me tight…
(Branch! Look out!)
“Branch!”
“Grandma!”
(She screamed.)
He tumbled down, the sound of the wind rushing past being the only thing covering up the sound of his grandmother’s final shrieks of terror. A few leaves kept his fall from being fatal. He picked himself up from where he landed before falling back down again. He was cold and empty, ears ringing with a haunting scream.
“…”
“!”
Branch held his hand over his throat. Not a single sound escaped. He looked down to see himself completely gray. The soil he had been sitting on suffered the same fate.
His grandmother would think he had rolled around in dust.
It wasn’t Trollstice yet. They’d give her back. Right? She couldn’t be gone. She had just been doing the laundry, after all. What would the laundry do without her? What would Branch do without her? He spotted the small sprout he’d been using as a microphone near him. He crawled to it and held it. Yeah. She’d be back. They were probably just telling her to tell him to mouth shut.
The sprout turned limp and gray in his hands.
“…”
Branch stood up and stumbled down again. He tried again. And again. He made it a few steps before his legs failed him. Pick himself back up. Walk. Tremble. Trip. Walk.
He wasn’t sure how he made it back to his house, yet there he was. The wet laundry was still in the bucket, now smelling of trapped moisture. The clothes on the line fluttered in the wind, almost dry. The sun dipped behind the horizon. He shambled back in, leaving the door unlocked. For when Grandma Rosiepuff was brought back.
He stayed home for what could have been years. Two quiet sunsets. No one came looking. Branch and Rosiepuff kept to themselves for the most part, anyway.
He waited.
Someone came in.
Grandma?
“C’mon kid, we have to go. We’re sneaking out. This is the last Trollstice.”
But I’m waiting for Grandma.
He was pulled along. He jerked his hand back, gave one last look to the pod, and stumbled along, running with everyone else through the tunnels.
“No Troll left behind!”
Then why didn’t we wait for Grandma?
The Trolls cheered and danced and held each other and hugged the princess and sang. Branch backed away.
(And I need you now tonight,
And I need you more than ever!)
His ears twitched as he tried to listen to the surrounding area. None of them were paying attention. That’s how Trolls get killed. That’s how… the soil underneath him dulled.
He’d never see her again. Neither would the laundry. He’d never hear her voice again or be wrapped up in her hugs.
He killed her.
Branch backed away from the crowd and skittishly followed from outside the boundaries. He wanted to wait, still. Maybe she wasn’t really gone. Maybe… maybe…
He shook his head. There was no one to wait for. She was gone. It was his fault, too.
They reached a settlement soon enough and celebrated by singing and dancing and hugging. Branch bristled at the thought and scurried away behind a tree. A pile of rocks caught his attention.
He needed to live by himself. No singing, no putting others in death’s way.
His ears twitched at the sound of the music. He whipped his head around, weary of every rustle of the leaves. It irritated him. His grandmother was dead for less than a week and people were celebrating. No Troll left behind? Then why forget her so quickly?
The bracelet that had been on Grandma Rosiepuff’s nightstand, the only thing he took, which had turned gray upon exposure to his skin, became bright red. The cold emptiness felt him. He felt heavy and full of heat. Fire behind his eyes, he stormed away. To make a base where he would stay safe. A place where Grandma Rosiepuff wouldn’t be forgotten in exchange for some singing and dancing.
Red
Only the red parts of anything he touched remained their original color. Everything else faded. His heart pumped hot and hard, making him feel like he was constantly ablaze. His bones were heavy as he gathered supplies and secured his base. It was simple and small, a smattering of rocks and mud and sticks under a mound of dirt to look inconspicuous. He drew on the dirt of his base with his fingers. Expansions of the place deeper into the ground, where sound wouldn’t reach. Where sound couldn’t leave. Where it would be guarded and heavy like his pounding heart.
He huffed out breaths in rhythm to the strong knots he tied. The ropes and vines left his skin hot and slightly red from the welts. He didn’t worry about it. Calluses would form with time.
He could still hear the singing when out on supply runs, leaving a trail of gray grass and red fallen flower petals.
He was the endless expanses of anger, the heat of rage fueling him as he dragged materials too heavy for his tired body. He stayed up at night with twitching ears waiting for the sound of a Bergen ready to take him away. The anger kept him warm where the dead gray leaves failed as a makeshift cot. The anger kept his blood flowing as he secured the walls and roof and eventually made a small floor out of twigs. The poked into his back but they helped keep the base warm.
Eventually, mud smoothed out the floor, making it less painful to be on.
“Young Branch! Hello!”
“…” His voice still failed him; anger too thick for him to speak. It both kept his body warm and made it difficult to breathe or make a sound. It was his lifeline and his downfall, slowly killing him.
His ears twitched and his eyes darted around, waiting for something to come out from the bushes. When nothing did, he simply turned around and glared at the Troll that had spoken to him. They flinched back and shook their head.
“It’s nothing. There’s a celebration tomorrow night if you want to… go.”
Branch huffed out an irritated sigh and kept walking to pick up materials.
They were going to get themselves killed, all of them.
He wasn’t going to be brought down with them.
Green
One day, the grass stayed green where he stood. His leaf vest lost its gray, too. Maybe he was imagining it, but his skin had undertones now. He didn’t get his hopes up. No other colors appeared. Just green.
He attributed it to having gotten the resources to start his own small garden. That way he could have some extra time before having to run on the rations he’d been storing. Watering the seedlings and sprouts had curbed the anger and replaced it with something else. He still wasn’t sure what.
He could grunt and snap at the other Trolls now, short sentences here and there. Still, when he was alone with no one but himself to be angry at, there was no noise.
Definitely no song.
Trolls could find rhythm and melody in anything. It was an innate ability. All he could find were ways to hide in a secure mound (now with a basement) and storing rations. The desire or ability to hum a tune or hear chants in the breeze between the trees was nowhere to be found.
It was while looking for apples to pickle that he finally ran into the princess. Well, she rammed into him.
“Branch! I’ve heard about you! And I know I can turn that frown upside down!”
He startled back. His heart raced. She thrusted an overly decorated piece of paper into his arms and he glared at it. He placed it on the grass (because he didn’t want it, definitely not out of fear of making the pretty blues and pinks into emotionless gray) and gave her a discontented look.
“I don’t go to parties. It’s a death trap. Practically begging a Bergen to show up.”
“But we’re free!”
For how long?
He shook his head at her, took the invitation, and went to his bunker. He placed it on the ground and sighed at the faded blue. The invitation had pressed flowers all along the edges (stems perfectly fine and green while the flowers dulled away) and large, bubbly font about a party for something or other. He couldn’t bring himself to crumple it up and slid it under his rations instead.
As annoying as it was, this meant that the princess paid attention to him, and everyone paid attention to the princess, so maybe if he warned them all to keep safe they would listen to him. He had to try. He didn’t want another death on his hands.
“The Bergens are coming!”
“The Bergens!”
“You need to stop that or the Bergens will hear it. This is a death wish.”
No one listened and so he kept his ears twitching late at night as the parties got louder and flashier, waiting for Trollstice drums or sharpening knives or the screams of Grandma Rosiepuff.
Blue
No one listened. He found himself in bed (in cot?) for a week, ears twitching where his mind and body were too tired to keep going.
The blueberries regained their hue.
He couldn’t bring himself to care about it.
Invitations piled up in the deepest part of the bunker. Branch would open them from time to time whenever the soul-crushing emptiness and the exhaustion of hypervigilance got to him. He’d never hold them for long, afraid of how the pigment might fade with his presence. For just a few seconds, he could pretend that maybe the Bergens really were just part of the past and that there was no harm in relaxing. Then he’d remember his grandmother’s screams and put the invitations away and hold his breath as he listened and waited, waited, waited.
Nothing.
He found himself having a hard time speaking, too tired to say anything. Yet, for the first time in a long time, he could feel rhythm in the world again. His heart was a beat, the rain and the breeze where a soft tune, and his whines of fear when a loud noise made it to his ears from overhead was a lyric.
It hurt.
He wrote poetry in his head sometimes, when the blue was too heavy.
He’d sink into the blue, feeling the overwhelming combination of feelings. The red left him hot and ablaze and the blue left him heavy and empty. And cold. Sometimes he felt cold, even when his body was warm.
Princess Poppy never stopped bothering to invite him, and every time he’d lash out because that’s how you get grandmas killed.
The stash of invitations in the very bottom of his bunker grew.
Creek made it worse; the Troll constantly taunted him and made him of his skittishness and unwarranted anger, telling him to meditate and stop ruining everything. It just made Branch angrier and more anxious. Because what if he was just broken? Everyone else had moved on and yet Branch was a broken record of the days long gone.
Blue weighed him down.
He was particularly aggravated, red almost overpowering blue when Princess Poppy ran to his bunker and talked about the Bergens. He pulled her in immediately, careful not to stay too close. He still didn’t know if his presence would remove the color from other Trolls. Then she betrayed him by inviting everyone to his bunker, and he had to leave, and the world was too colorful next to him. He wanted to crawl out of his skin and live deep under the ground, but he had to keep going. He found her and helped her out, and his ears rung when she said they had to go to Bergen Town.
He wasn’t sure why the stupid Cloud was so determined to bother him.
At least they made it to the Troll tree in one piece.
Being back made the gray take over his vision, and he saw the withered grass and walk tremble trip walk and the laundry is moldy now, probably flooded his mind and it’s only having to look after the naïve pink Troll that kept him from staying there forever, frozen still and wondering if the leaves in the wind would sound like her now that he felt rhythm in the world again.
He’d been more talkative, something in him hoping that if he talked, the ringing would leave his ears. They twitched nervously at every noise, and he just wanted to leave, but now they wanted to help the Bergen for some reason and he wasn’t singing and I need you now tonight and—
“—killed my grandma, okay?!”
The ringing in his ears became buzzing. He felt his lips move but couldn’t hear the words as he spoke and there was too much noise.
He felt anxious about making physical contact with the Bergen. Not that he was worried about her, just that he didn’t want them all to see the way everything he touched lost color. Still, there he was, wishing for nothing more than the safety of his trashed bunker.
And then, from within the cover of everyone’s hair, his guard lowered as he recited a poem he wrote a while ago while looking at the pile of invitations.
Yellow
His heart felt lighter. And the other Trolls seemed surprised, and Branch surprised himself when something kept the blue from overwhelming him. A lighter feeling. A lighter color.
Yellow didn’t fade when he had prolonged exposure to it. Unlike with blue, he was fascinated. He didn’t make a fuss out of it with all these people around, because then he’d have to explain that he became a void no color could escape and he wasn't sure he would be able to handle being treated as contagious, but he still smiled to himself and wondered if maybe he’d get all the colors back.
He felt… light. Hopeful.
Then Creek ruined it. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, and now everyone was stuck, and life isn’t all cupcakes and rainbows bit him back as Poppy lost color. Everyone lost color and sound and melody and life.
Everyone was gray.
Walk. Tremble. Trip. Walk.
Everyone was gray, and that’s miserable, and he can’t let them live like he did for all those years without anything in his chest. Or die like Grandma Rosiepuff. He had a chance now. He could help.
He took a deep breath and looked at Poppy and hoped he wouldn’t choke up as the sounds started to leave his mouth.
Pink
“…You with the sad eyes,
Don’t be discouraged, oh I realize…”
The notes left him like second nature. He made his way over to Poppy, unafraid to drain her colors out. He hoped that maybe he could transfer his colors to her, so she wouldn’t have all those years of pain. She kept her gaze locked on the floor. He sang a little louder, a little clearer, a little more heartfelt.
“It’s hard to take courage…”
Something bloomed in him, a desire to see her in all her pink glory, and he stepped closer. Let me help you.
Pink. Her bracelet. He opened his arms. Something told him the color wouldn’t die if he touched it. It was glowing on her, color still existing. All the other Trolls, too. She has some hope. C’mon, keep singing!
He took her hands, his heart hammering in his chest.
“Show me a smile…” She walked away. He carried his voice a little louder. If not for her, then for everyone else in the cauldron with them. She looked at him, then, and he steadied his voice.
So don’t be afraid to let them show
Your true colors.
It was magical. For once, he felt something overwhelming in a good way. The pink returned to her vibrantly, making her glow, and all her other colors too, but something about the pink was mesmerizing.
“That’s why I love you,” he sang. She turned to look at him in surprise. He surprised himself too, choking on air. Keep singing.
Unsurprisingly, Poppy beat him to it.
“So don’t be afraid…” She held out her hand to him, and there was no fear or anger or sadness on his mind. Just hope and… love. Acceptance.
He never thought he’d see those colors on himself again, as they sang together.
True colors…
Was he really that green before? That alive?
Their voices melted together perfectly, and it was like he had never stopped singing, never stopped feeling beat and harmony in the world around him. Everyone around them started glowing too, as they danced. And it was then he knew it.
He was going to be okay.
True Colors
The rest of the event was a blur to him. Life was just so… lively now, with all his colors back, and the world was so radiant, and there was music in everything around him and he was no longer just trying to make it through, he was thriving.
He knew, logically, he still needed time. That this was just one step in many. That he’d still miss Grandma Rosiepuff, and that it would choke him sometimes when he thought about her, and that the laundry she’d left behind was moldy, but that the grandson she left behind was full of song again.
He felt warm, like her hugs, and he couldn’t even think about anything other than the sheer happiness he felt. The sheer radiance coming off from Poppy. The fact they could live without fear, that his happiness wouldn’t hurt anyone.
“Can’t stop the feeling!” he sang joyously. Having his true colors again was like coming home for the first time in years. He sang for himself and the other Trolls and for his grandmother, even though she couldn’t hear. Because he knew she’d have missed his voice, if she knew, and singing again felt like telling her I’m okay, Grandma, I’m okay now. I love you.
And it felt like somewhere, somehow, Grandma Rosiepuff hummed along to his voice.