All That I've Overcome

John's Two Year.....Adventure

WARNING: Multiple mentions of sexual assault, water torture, forming phobias, suicidal ideation, actual suicide, and explicit child deaths. READ WITH CAUTION

This whole chapter is riddled with this stuff. This chapter is NOT a happy one, and in a lot of ways, worse than the last. Keep yourself safe and do not read if you're concerned this may be triggering for you.

There will be a short summary at the end for those who don't think they can stomach this chapter.

Good news, though: it's mostly up from here!! Next chapter we'll cover either John's escape and eventual arrival at the new pop village, OR I can switch POVs for a bit and cover Spruce, Clay, and Floyd's two years without John. Let me know which y'all would prefer. They'll happen one right after the other either way!! So if what you want to see next isn't in the next chapter, it'll be in chapter 5 for sure. After chapter five, it'll be all recovery all the time!! Enjoy the depths of my evils for now, though.

For those who do read, please enjoy John continuing to be an unreliable narrator when it comes to himself. Angst galore!

Much love.

~~~~~

John had new opinions on eggs. The worst? Way too big. That shit HURT. It felt like his butt had only just mostly recovered and now there was more blood. And he'd thrown up in his tiny jar. The smell was revolting, not that he hadn't gotten used to it.

In the first week of his pregnancy he'd thrown up multiple times. And Chef had cleaned him the same way she had on his first day under her.....care. His heartbeat picked up at the very idea of it happening again, but he banished it from his mind. It was going to happen whether he liked it or not. Why bother thinking about it when he had something better to think about?

It had felt so big coming out, but holding it now? The egg felt small. Fragile. He could feel the warmth from it, and just like with his brothers, looking at it, he knew this trolling would be a little girl. Light brown hair poked out of the top, with patterns of various cyan blues on the outside. She was beautiful, his little egg. He already loved her.

But that only made the fear of her fate once she hatched that much worse. For now, though, he could just hold his egg close. His family. His baby. The warmth radiating from the egg comforted him a bit, but he knew he couldn't leave his baby out for too long. She needed warmth. He carefully placed her in his hair, closing it around her shell and hardening it enough that she wouldn't fall out.

It was late evening, the sunset just gone; the light in the room gone with it. The Chef had left for the evening a few hours ago, shortly before the laying process began. She seemed disappointed that he hadn't laid his egg yet, but didn't bother pulling him out. Probably didn't want to accidentally crush the egg inside him. She'd been more gentle with him over the last week, and while that wasn't saying much, it was a relief. She mostly just dropped food in on him. Cheese or bread or berries. Enough to keep him and his egg alive.

He just wanted to go home. He missed his bunk bed. He missed his favorite blanket. He missed his grandma's confused but loving smiles. Gods, he missed his baby brothers so much. He missed waking up early every morning to clean and make breakfast for them. He missed hearing them hum and sing as they wandered through the pod. He missed the slow days when they were all too tired from practice to do anything but watch their grandma macrame another useless tablecloth or lamp cover. He missed the days when he dragged his brothers through the crowds of the market so they could carry things for him. He missed watching the little princess Viva follow Clay around like a duckling while he rambled about backstage safety. He missed listening to Spruce curse while he tried to cook one of Rosiepuff's extra complex recipes. And he missed Floyd's habit of wandering off to follow the local critters through the trees. Floyd had some kind of connection to them. He would talk to them every chance he got. It would sometimes get him odd looks from passing trolls, but it never seemed to bother his kid any.