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Poppy had better days. Aside from the long and tiring, not to mention particularly stressful adventure, Branch and his brothers barely lasted two hours before the two eldest got into a disagreement. Causing one of them to end up in her extra guest room and the other in JD’s unmistakeable Armadillo Bus, Rhonda.
It was an equally difficult night. Today was the first of the week, meaning she had to address Pop Village, give them their weekly updates and answer any questions. A way to make sure everything was going smoothly and there weren’t any misunderstandings. Any other day, Poppy wouldn’t have minded, even been excited. It was one of her many duties as a queen and one of the duties she often looked forward to. She was quite proud to be a Pop troll, even more so being their queen.
However now, she wanted to call it quits and run back inside to the safety of her pod ( maybe if she made a dash for it-). Nothing had been going the way she planned. Poppy had announced her reasons for her lack of presence in the village, a very watered down version of Floyd and the others’ capturing, sparking fear throughout its residents as if it was a new Trollstice. Multiple trolls choose to cover their young children's ears while others argue with each other over the potential safety of the village. Poppy is sure she heard one or two trolls arguing about if it was her fault.
“How can you be sure they won’t come back for them?” One troll says, very clearly referencing the possible dangers of letting BroZone stay in the village.
“My children are scared now!” A mother shouts, her two children sobbing into the hems of her dress.
“Are we going to have to relocate again?”
The questions keep coming and she can’t possibly listen to every one of them, but she has to. Good queens don’t ignore their citizens when they’re in a panicked frenzy–
“Why don’t we just get rid of him?” A purple troll speaks up, and Poppy knows exactly who he’s pointing to because the arguing dies down as everyone stares curiously at the troll he’s pointing at. Branch, of course, it’s him.
Branch is already trying to defend himself, like he has done for years past, his brothers not expecting him of all Trolls to be blamed. Especially the one who helped save Pop VIllage twice before. Poppy goes to retort the idea, to shut it down but someone else speaks up faster, earning nothing but more agreements in reply by fellow Pop Trolls.
“He and his brothers brought the village so much grief!”
“It’s not like he provides anything useful to the village anyway.”
What.
Murmurs of agreement fill the air and Poppy can’t think. Do they even know what they're saying? Hadn’t they been listening to her? Had they forgotten who helped her bring music back after she so selfishly tore it apart? The one who brings her back to Earth and is not afraid to tell her when to tone it down?
They didn’t know anything , how could they say that about him.
Voices start to rise again and this time her father steps in, attempting to calm the village down to no avail. Pushing and shoving amongst each other and nothing is going right. She’s failing at her job, her one fucking job that she can’t do right, she should’ve never been queen why did-
“Can you all be quiet! ” She barks, and immediately, all of Pop Village goes silent. She smiles awkwardly, it was more for her than the comfort of her village, “I’m trying the as best as I can, as a queen, to listen but I can’t fucking help anyone when you’re-…” Her mouth snaps shut, eyes widening in fear of what she just said.
Oh god.
The words came out faster than her brain could give permission. She lashed out in front of her dad, Viva, Branch, his brothers, her friends and the entirety of the Pop Village. It’s too late. She can’t take back what she said out of anger and now every troll is staring at her, eagerly waiting for what she’ll say next.
She’s searching inside her scrambled brain for a response. I’m sorry, please don’t hate me, it was an accident. Instead, an apology is stuck in her throat and she remains silent and for the first time, Queen Poppy runs .
She runs as fast as her legs take her, paws and chest aching. Where is she running to? She doesn't know. Pods fly by in her peripheral vision and she vaguely hears someone calling for her name above the wind that's whooshing by. She slows down, eventually, to catch her breath. Her ears are ringing and her eyes are stinging with salty tears that she didn’t even notice had fallen. Wiping her eyes, she can only recognize the few trees around her and the sun shimmering through the leaves. A clearing just North out of Pop Village. Part of Poppy hoped that, for once, everyone would just forget about her.
She slams her back into a nearby tree and crumbles to the floor, sobbing into the seams of her dress like a pathetic little trolling separated from their dad.
Branch doesn’t know how far or long he’s been searching, though it’s been long enough for sky to shift hues. He shouldn’t be out here, Poppy shouldn’t be out here.
Guilt tore at his brain, he should have said something, anything. He knew how stressed out she was about her announcements to the Village, having to explain her adventures with caution to make sure that they didn’t get stressed out and turn gray. (Which he would later learn is why Poppy took getting his true colors back so seriously). Trolls, especially Pop Trolls, fed off each other's emotions. If she was upset, her people would be upset and that was simply not allowed . It wasn’t fair. The mental images of her sobbing into his arms from the pure amount of stress she was under constantly did not help the situation.
Poppy snuck out the night before, showing up at his bunker unannounced. Branch had almost walked her home but how could he when she looked so exhausted. It had only been their second night home and returning to her royal duties was already taking a toll on the pink troll, eyebags on the usual excited-energy filled girl was enough to make him worry. Eventually, they settled on his couch, cuddled together with a pile of blankets and pillows. They talked and talked for hours about the good and the bad. She opened up about her anxieties for the day ahead of them, how sensitive she had to broach the topic of her disappearance and begging for him to stand up on the tiny grass platform with her.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Poppy grabs his paws, so delicate like they would break into two, “I would just like you to be there for emotional support.” She whispers, eyes full of hope despite the way her paws shook in his. He denied it, s aying that some Pop Trolls still weren’t too fond of him still and being up on stage would just make it worse.
She wanted to prove him wrong, he wanted to be proven wrong. To see the smug smile on her face as she tells him ‘I told you so’ but instead he’s having to search for her through the ginormous forest because she couldn’t be caught breaking down in front of everyone.
Despite everything that had been accused of him, all he could focus on was finding Poppy.
Twigs snap under the weight of his paws and he hears her before he sees her. Ears flicking forward when an all too familiar sniffle is heard. Branch spots the bright pink tufts and the edges of a blue-green dress.
She’s slumped up against a tree, curled up in on herself and Branch approaches cautiously, as if one loud step would scare her back into the forest. It’s not the first time he’s seen Poppy upset, however for her to run away was something completely unheard of for her. Always so positive that he doesn’t know how she does it. (Maybe he should’ve paid more attention to that as well.)
His mouth is dry and he can’t form any words and this is stupid because he’s supposed to be comforting her and here he is with no voice. Ultimately, he decides to sit next to her. Silence is thick when it’s him who has to do talking. He’s never been good with reassurance, always stuttering or fumbling over when he’s trying to make his point.
“You okay?” Wow, great comforting Branch. I’m sure your girlfriend is great!
No response yet. That’s okay, he’ll be patient for her. Always for her, if no one else .
“You don’t have to tell me what’s wrong, but I’m not going to leave you alone.”
Poppy finally looks at him, eyes focused like she’s searching to find the right words, “I’m not a good queen, Branch, I screwed up.” She decides to look back at the grass, it’s more interesting than holding this conversation. Branch silently agrees, what the hell does he say now?
“Poppy, you’re not a bad queen.” He takes a quick breath in, picking and choosing what he going to say next and silently praying that it won’t end in disaster, “You’ve been given expectations that you can’t always follow and that's okay–”
“No! You don’t get it!” She yells and her paws immediately clasp over her mouth again. Branch shuts up and doesn’t argue, he can’t argue because he’s done the exact same shit to her. Snapping at her when all she had tried to do was help. Her eyes widen again with tears, sobs coming out in strangled gasps. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you, I don’t usually act like this. Why are you still sitting here..--”
She’s spiraling and Branch knows it.
“Poppy.” He tries, and she’s still mumbling out apologies left and right.
“I promise I’m not mad, I'm just….”
“Poppy, it’s okay-”
“I have to keep the village happy. It’s my duty and if I’m not happy, they’re not happy.” She states, and he hates how formal it sounds, like the words were drilled into her brain as a young troll.
Branch needs to figure out something because she’s spiraling and holy shit she’s shaking. Her paws moved from holding herself to being run through her hair, a feeble attempt at grounding herself.
“Poppy,” He says finally, maybe a bit too harshly but it’s the only way he gets her attention when her ramblings are kicked into high gear. Her gaze finally snaps up at him, eyes swollen red from crying, biting down on her bottom lip to prevent more sobs from coming up, “it’s okay, I can handle being yelled at.”
She’s shaking her head as if that’s not what she’s upset about, muttering under her breath how she’s failed as a queen.
“You don’t need to be happy all the time, you know that right?” She stops muttering, almost at a loss of words like she’s never been told that before. Slowly, he reaches forward and removes her paws from her knotted hair while she’s staring at him, confused, like the words he just said were in an unknown language.
She doesn’t say anything in response so Branch takes it as a sign to continue, “No one’s going to be one hundred percent happy all the time, and it’s never your responsibility for their happiness. Not mine, not your dads, not Viva’s, and especially not an entire village.”
Poppy sniffs, tail curling around her lower leg, “But that's all everyone knows me as. Just happy-go-lucky, airheaded, positive Poppy.” She says each word like they’re laced with poison, throwing her paws up in exaggeration. It bends and snaps Branch’s heart into pieces to hear that she never viewed herself as anything but others' expectations of her.
He internally curses himself for adding onto that expectation, even if it wasn’t on purpose.
The two sit in silence, staring at the night sky. Poppy inches ever so slightly towards Branch, and if he freezes at the sudden contact, he’ll ignore it because goddamnit Poppy needs him. He shifts so he can pull her in closer, she’s still shaking like a leaf and he can tell she’s still biting her lip and holding back tears.
“It’s okay, Poppy, you can cry.”
“It’s okay, Poppy, you can cry.” Branch says it with such gentleness and her walls immediately crumble. Sobbing pathetically into his arms, a small part of her is grateful that they’re deep into the forest, unable to be heard by any troll more than a mile away.
She clings onto him as her sobs wrack through her body, no matter how hard she clings onto him though, he doesn’t back away or shove her off. Instead, he only holds her tighter, reassuring her that it’s okay, that he wouldn’t leave her alone. Maybe part of that was for him as well.
It had been so long since she cried like this.
She was seven years old when her father told her the importance of Pop Trolls and how she would eventually be queen one day, making sure she knew just how much they relied on her. She can so clearly recall the one time he yelled at her. It wasn’t that big of a deal, he just lost his cool, she repeated to herself over and over. Why didn’t that make herself feel better? She was crying over a nightmare and waddled over to her dads bedroom. At first, King Peppy had comforted her like a father, the next time, he comforted her like a King. Logically and distant.
“Poppy, you’re going to be queen one day,” he explained, putting his book on a nearby nightstand, “eventually you won't be comforted by me and you’ll have an entire kingdom to run. They feed off your emotions. If you get scared, just cry in your room.”
She stood there, tears in her eyes as he ushered her back to the dimly lit pink room. From that day forward, she repeated those same words each time she got upset.
‘You are a future queen, you don’t have time for that.’ She’d repeat over and over, as she tried her hardest to stop the tears from flowing out, scrubbing at her eyes with soap and water so the burn would distract her enough from the reason for her crying.
She doesn’t remember the day she stopped crying, or at least, the day she learned to control it.
“So,” Branch says, bringing her back from her thoughts, always the one to help keep her grounded, “do you want to talk about it?”
Poppy can’t help but giggle, it’s funny hearing that coming from him.
“Oh, come on, I’m trying here.” He rolls his eyes and scoffs, acting annoyed with her antics but it’s nothing more than playful banter and both of them know it.
They sit in silence, both tails slowly tying themselves together and Poppy’s heart swells at the affection. Of course it wasn't an uncommon interaction among trolls, hugs and hand-holding were a daily greeting! Though she knew how difficult it could be for him to initiate a hug of all things, so for him to willingly wrap his tail around hers meant more than he’ll ever know.
“I love you.” She whispers, she means it truly but part of her wishes that the three words fluster him enough to change the topic. As expected, he turns away to hide the obvious blush, however he’s quick to recover and eyes her down. Clearly wanting to bring up what they’d been previously talking about.
“I love you too.” It’s not hard to miss the way he clearly wants to melt into her words, but she knows the way he looks when he’s searching for the right words to say, “Poppy, you do know that I love you regardless, right?” His voice is oh so sickly worried and the knot in Poppy’s stomach tightens. When did that get there?
“Yeah? What would make you think that I would think that?” She forces a laugh and tilts her head, “Branch, what is this really about?”
He takes a breath, composing himself, “I’m worried about you, and- and maybe I should’ve noticed it earlier but I didn’t and now we’re in the middle of the forest.”
“Branch this isn’t your fault-”
“I didn’t say it was, Poppy. Do you know it’s not your fault either?”
What is he saying? Of course she knew it was wasn’t her fault. What wasn’t her fault? Oh! Maybe the entire Rockpocalypse, her friends who were almost eaten because of her stupid naivety, the entirety of her and Creek, Branch being gray for an entire decade. Who couldn't forget about her little freakout today, why don’t we go through all of them while we’re at it!
“Yes it is, you said it yourself before, good queens listen. I wasn’t listening, I wasn't a good queen.” She knows better than to self deprecate in front of people. Shut up, shut up, shut up-
“I’ll never be a good queen.”
Her eyes are tearing up again and she’s scrambling to rub them to push it down. She just sobbed pathetically and here she is crying again. Her brain is frantically searching for excuse after excuse as to why she’s crying. Attempts at stopping the trail of tears were futile, feeling them run down her cheeks regardless. Poppy refused to look up at the troll sitting in front of her, she could feel the way his sad eyes bore into her brain.
It’s funny how quickly regresses back to seven year-old Poppy when she cries, expecting Branch to tell her to grow up or even better , just tell her to shut up and remind her of her utter failures as queen and as his girlfriend. God knows how much she messed up in that department. The countless times he’s tried to communicate with her and she blew him off selfishly.
Before she could react, blue-gray paws cradle her cheeks, forcing her to look up. He’s staring, of course he’s staring at her like she’s the most important thing in the world. “I know I’ve said some shiii —stuff and yes, you’ve made mistakes but you’ve learned. You don’t have to be perfect all the time, hell knows I’m not. You’re kind and trust-worthy, you give trolls a second chance even when they might not deserve it because you see good in them. You never gave up on me , even when I pushed you away. Poppy, you put yourself in danger multiple times for your village .”
“But-”
“I know you were raised thinking every troll’s emotions are your duty but it’s not. No one will treat you differently for having emotions, you’re not a bad queen for feeling things.”
“What if I can’t?” She doesn’t know how to be anything other than over-the-moon happy all the time. As exhausting as it was, the thought of confronting her repressed emotions did not sit well with her.
“That’s okay,” His paws gently wipe her tears away, ”you don’t have to unpack all of that right now, just take it slow. You can’t change how you think overnight.”
Maybe once she could break her constant character, maybe she could take the chance. Considering Branch has put up with her this far, what’s the worst that could happen? She curls back up into a ball and when Branch shuffles closer, she instantly melts and falls into his hold. It doesn’t take long for them to fall back into their usual cuddle position, despite being outdoors. Legs and tails entwined while he cards a paw through her hair. Silence that was once suffocating now felt serene, the sky lit up from the full moon above them.
‘Maybe,’ Poppy thinks, ‘it wouldn’t hurt to let someone else shoulder some of the weight she’d been carrying.’
The Pop Queen wasn’t perfect, and she was far from being okay with that. But with Branch by her side ready to lift her up like his life depended on it, Poppy decides that it’s as close to perfect as she’ll get.
And for the first time in forever, she’s not upset with that idea.