Clay pulled Branch into a side hug as they listened, his tail wrapping around his baby brother to intertwine with his own tail.
“And that’s not even touching on everything else John Dory was doing. Cleaning the pod, laundry, the side jobs he did while we were at school and who knows what else…” Bruce looked away, not wanting to see what face Branch was making. “Rosiepuff may have loved us in her own way… but once Clay hatched, maybe even when I hatched, she had taught John Dory how to do the child-rearing and left him to take care of all of us. I never… I didn’t realize what John Dory had really been doing back then after so many years until I had my first child. And then I became angry.”
His three younger brothers all looked at him in shock.
“I became angry at the fact that our grandma, who should have been bending over backwards to take care of us and made sure we all had happy childhoods, essentially turned John Dory into a child parent. He didn’t get to have a childhood because his was spent looking after the three of us. And after a few years he got into the hang of it, things were great.” Bruce grimaced. “And then one morning I walked into the living room to find John Dory sitting on the couch with a blue spotted egg in his hands and had to watch him do it all over again.”
Clay had a look of shock/horror as his mouth hung open, trying to form words but failing. Floyd’s eyes were wide as he took in the knowledge and looked back on his memories of their childhood to find that Bruce was right. John Dory had been their parent. Their father. They just never put it together because he had always referred to himself as their brother and nothing more.
And Branch?
Branch had a look of devastation on his face. The grandma he knew was sweet and kind, and had saved him from being eaten by the Bergen Chef. Had she only taken care of him because there were no older brothers to foster him off onto? Would she have done the same thing if one of his brothers had been there that day? Branch didn’t know what to feel.
~
It had been very stressful the rest of that day, Branch had locked himself in his room and only came out to cook dinner, never speaking a word of their conversation. Luckily John Dory slept for the rest of the day and didn’t notice. When it was Floyd’s turn out of the bunker, he asked his brother for directions to the building to go speak with Zola himself. He wanted to see if she knew any trolls in her line of work that dealt with family groups. Luckily for him, she said one of her coworkers was good in that field so she introduced them.
The troll’s name is Fendrak and he was a much older troll, seemingly at least a few years older than Zola. He was polite and friendly and took a few minutes to speak with Floyd in private as he explained the bare minimum of his family’s dilemma. He made sure to explain that his older brother was going to be seeing Zola for individual sessions, but his family clearly needed help as well.
Fendrak told him he’s willing to arrange a session for his family, but Floyd had to talk with them first to make sure at least most of them are open to the idea. It would be a bad move to spring this on them without consulting them, to which he reminds Floyd to make sure they tell their brother about his sessions with Zola as well.
Floyd felt like he was stepping on his family’s toes with this, but he knew that this is something his whole family needed. From Branch’s abandonment issues, Clay’s self insecurities, Bruce’s need to fill in while John Dory is down, even Floyd has issues from his recent kidnapping to deal with. Their family likes to pretend they have it all together, but with everything that’s happened, it’s becoming very clear that they don’t. However, when he told his brothers, excluding John Dory, about it they all agreed that as much as they’d like to deny it, they needed professional help. They all agreed not to say anything to John Dory until they met the troll Queen Barb was bringing.
