Chapter Text
John Dory was gone. Spruce was worried.
He had disappeared one night after a show. No argument. No fight. Nothing. He just faded away from existence, one moment he was there and the next he wasn't.
Spruce had asked grandma Rosie Puff about it, but she told him to not worry about it, that John Dory was resting.
It didn't confort him in the slightest.
Clay said he was glad John Dory was gone, and that he hoped he would never come back. Spruce knew he was lying.
Branch was open about his distress, he wanted John Dory back and he wanted him now. He would throw the worst tantrums, crying about his Jay Dee.
Floyd was silent, too busy taking care of baby Branch to express how he was feeling. But all the brothers had heard him crying at the nights while he tought they were asleep.
Spruce decided they were done suffering. He would find out what happened to his older brother himself.
First he tought John Dory had been eaten. But when he asked King Peppy he swore to him that John Dory hadn't been taken
Then he started asking around the tree's branchs if anyone had seen him. But he only got chased by crazy fans.
Then he went down the roots. There he found someone that that had a cousin, that had a girlfriend, that had a dad, that had a friend that worked in the hospital and saw John Dory there. The lead was... Bad to say at least, but he couldn't ignore it. He didn't have anything else.
He went to the hospital.
No, John Dory wasn't there...
But he had been.
His grandma took him there the night of the show because he had, what was described to him by the nurse who attended to John Dory, a crisis.
He stayed to ask around a little more and finally, finally, heard where John Dory was.
And he hated the answer immediately.
The Smily Day House.
It was a psychiatric hospital, the only one of it's kind in all the Troll Tree. His grandma had send his brother to a fucking psychiatric hospital.
Spruce began a imagine John Dory alone in a padded room, receiving electroshocks, wearing a straitjacket, surrounded by hundreds of grey trolls...
He had to rescue him. John Dory didn't belong there.
But he couldn't do it alone. He couldn't hide this to his brothers, they needed to know.
***
The four of them were hiding near by the Smily Day House, using their hair to camouflage with The Tree courtship. The hospital was a small wood cabin made splinters of the Troll Tree, the walls were painted white with a yellow roof and a garden of pink flowers. The friendly appearance hiding horror behind its doors. They were spying the place, hoping John Dory would suddenly come out the doors
They didn't saw him, but they heard him sing...
"I know you're somewhere out there, somewhere far away
I want you back, I want you back
My neighbors think I'm crazy, but they don't understand
You're all I had, you're all I had
At night, when the stars light up my room
I sit by myself
Talking to the moon
Tryna get to you
In hopes you're on the other side talking to me too
Or am I a fool who sits alone talking to the moon?"
It was sad and quiet but it was his voice.
They had found John Dory.