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Trollhunters: The Safest Place

Trigger warning: depiction of blood, violence, and ptsd

The tiny attic room was too cramped, but AAARRRGGHH had become accustomed to small spaces over the centuries. Trollmarket had never quite big enough for him; the ceilings were high enough, but the walls were too close, the halls too narrow and the market just a bit too crowded. And AAARRRGGHH was BIG. Bigger than most trolls at home, bigger than Bular, bigger than his own clansmen. AAARRRGGHH was a very, very large troll, and he was used to…

…Well, being able to reach everything, if he was optimistic about it. Blinky, who could never reach the high shelves, certainly appreciated having a friend with the advantage of unparalleled height and reach.

Toby’s room, in his little house on the surface world, was just a bit…smaller than what he was used to. Getting in and out was a pain, and even turning around without knocking anything over took a lot of care. AAARRRGGHH was sure that the boys’ pet gnome already hated him, due to how many times he’d knocked over the dollhouse.

And he did truly did not like staying above ground. The threat of daylight was always in the back of his mind, even at night. The open air reminded him – if he let it - of his earliest years as general, when they had left the Darklands to ravage the surface, attacking village after village at night and hiding away in caves or underground upon sunrise. The air smelled different, above ground, it felt different. The sounds were more open; stone and crystal tended to both soften and echo noise, so that no matter where in Trollmarket he went there was always a quiet, comforting hum.

Not to even mention the warm, bone-deep thrum of the Heartstone that reverberated in his breast, a steady heartbeat alongside his own. Here, so far away, he couldn’t feel it, and it left him feeling empty and alone.

AAARRRGGHH tried to settle down, the blinking pink-blue light from Toby’s video game pulsing silently through his eyelids as he attempted to get some sleep. Trolls kept wildly different time schedules than humans, and although the small boy had fallen asleep almost as soon as he’d kicked off his shoes and flopped onto the bed, AAARRRGGHH was having significantly more trouble. He was tired, yes, but sleeping during the nighttime was against the norm for trolls. Usually he could just catnap, meditating between short bursts of sleep until daybreak, but for once sleep well and truly eluded him.

He shifted until he was lying on his stomach, head resting on one arm and eyes blearily watching the pause screen of Go Go Sushi. The sushi rolls and little fishes, bouncing tirelessly across the screen, made his eyes itch but when he closed them he felt more annoyingly awake than ever.

Only feet away, tucked into a warm blanket, he heard Toby shift in his sleep.

Sheets rustled;

A gentle waft of human fabric soap layered atop the scent of old socks and sweat;

The sound of a soft, unintelligible murmur.

AAARRRGGHH was glad at least one of them was getting some sleep. He readjusted his arms, peeking briefly at the shrouded form on the bed.

Toby was a puzzle, to be sure, but one that AAARRRGGHH liked trying to solve. The kid had been a little annoying at first, a little too loud and brash in places and always yelling confusing things, but after closer acquaintance AAARRRGGHH found that he was also surprisingly sensitive and emotionally intelligent. He knew when AAARRRGGHH was having a good or bad day, and if something happened to upset him then Toby was always willing offer a distraction or a listening ear, even though AAARRRGGHH didn’t often want to talk. Only Blinky had really treated him like that, with such depth of welcome and openness. AAARRRGGHH always took Toby up on playing the sushi game, because it was bright and colorful and happier than anything the darker corners of his mind stung him with, but there were many…

Very many…

… things that he did not want to share with Toby. The kid had fed him cassettes, opened his home and his heart to him, and the horrors that lived in the corners ofAAARRRGGHH’s memories were not for the boy to hear.

Toby twisted again in his sleep, making AAARRRGGHH’s ears twitch at the sound. He vaguely wondered what the kid was dreaming about. Sometimes Toby told him the wildest things, of birds wearing coats, of ice cream in the sun, of his tongue turning to stone. AAARRRGGHH’s dreams were so mundane, when they weren’t terrifying. Half the time they were about Go Go Sushi, now that he played it nearly every day.

The bedframe creaked as Toby shifted again, and this time AAARRRGGHH could make out a few words.

“Nooooo, stop...”

AAARRRGGHH dragged himself just a little bit closer. The words were so muffled and drawled that he couldn’t tell what their tone was. Either Toby was moaning or he was whining, the way he did when Jim passed over the offer to get tacos after training.

“Nooo,” the boy murmured again. “AAARRRGGHH, no…”

AAARRRGGHH’s eyes snapped open as his world stopped on a pin-point. The open air, the weird smells, the cramped room – everything was forgotten. His entire body froze, muscles seizing with icy horror.

He hoped it would stop, that there would be no more, but Toby’s sleepy whines turned into a fearful sob.

“AAARRRGGHH…no, no…stop….”

Toby was having a nightmare about HIM.

AAARRRGGHH unfroze, scrambling backward as quickly as he could, scraping the floor as he tried to stay quiet in his attempt to get away. Every muscle, every nerve in his body felt sick, cold and grainy and wired. Horrified he realized that his distress was making tattoos start to glow; his vision was narrowing, darkening, and he knew he was about to have a panic attack.

He should have known better. He should have known better. Toby was a kid, a human child, unfamiliar to the darknesses that lay in the world around him. Nobody had accepted AAARRRGHH that quickly, nobody had ever just brushed off the ‘greatest general of the Darklands’ thing like it was nothing, and Toby had just…dismissed it. Like it didn’t matter. Like it didn’t change the way he saw his new friend, or interacted with him; like the fact that AAARRRGGHH had reveled in slaying larger people than Toby, that he had felt them break between his fists and his jaws, like the fact that he had devoured -- --

AAARRRGGHH didn’t notice hitting the wall, but he knew there was nowhere further to go, no place for him to retreat to, and there was so much red and the

Smell of copper

and -

the taste of salt and iron and the screams that his friend was now echoing

He should have known it wasn’t that easy.

The sound of his back scraping the wall woke Toby. AAARRRGGHH stared at him with half-black eyes, trying, trying to keep his despair under control. He didn’t want Toby seeing him like this again, with glowing tattoos and dark sclera, just when the poor boy had been having a nightmare about –

“AAARRRGGHH!” Toby threw the covers away from his legs, tripping over his shoes as he rushed toward the enormous, cowering troll. AAARRRGGHH expected to feel blows, weak little fists and useless fingernails raining against his hide, but instead Toby’s arms circled around his neck, his face pressing against the mane underneath AAARRRGGHH’s ear. The boy was trembling; AAARRRGGHH closed his eyes and breathed, breathed enough that he could smell the salt of tears and sweat, instead of the memory of blood.

Toby squeaked out his name again, and braced his socked feet against AAARRRGGHH’s leg, trying to squeeze his neck tighter with his weak little arms.

“I was so scared,” he murmured into AAARRRGGHH’s hair. AAARRRGGHH didn’t open his eyes. He knew. Everyone had been scared.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” sobbed the little human.

The words filtered into AAARRRGGHH’s cold panic like static across a television, slowly cutting through the mountain of guilt and echoed sorrow that his mind was drenched in.

He…?

“It was the worst dream ever, Wingman. I thought I’d wake up and you’d be dead and I was alone and you were gone and it sucked…”

Oh great Deya and all her soldiers…

Toby hadn’t been scared of him – he’d been scared for him. So terrified that he woke up crying.

Oh, bushigal, now AAARRRGGHH was shaking too, the relief hot and so heavy that he shuddered under the weight. He shifted until he wasn’t crouching and pulled his arms over Toby’s back. Opening his eyes, his vision cleared slowly, and the green light of his tattoos faded until it disappeared completely.

“Wingman scared,” he muttered. Toby sniffed and nodded. He let go of AAARRRGGHH’s neck and hopped back down to the floor, wiping his face on his sleep shirt.

“It sucked,” he said again. His voice was muffled from the fabric and a tightened throat. AAARRRGGHH clenched and unclenched his fists, trying to find a way to express what he desperately needed to ask.

“Not scared…of AAARRRGGHH…?”

The boy stopped cold; he lifted his face out of his shirt collar, glass green eyes looking at AAARRRGGHH with so much surprise and heartbreak that he regretted ever asking. But the boy didn’t say anything.

He looked at the floor and sighed, finally sniffing one last time before squaring his shoulders and looking up at AAARRRGGHH’s face.

“I won’t lie,” he said quietly, “It’s weird that my wingman knows what I would taste like. But, y’know, I really don’t care. I meant what I said. It’s in the past now.”

He climbed onto AAARRRGGHH’s thigh and faceplanted against the troll’s chest, burrowing his head into AAARRRGGHH’s beard like a cat.

“I feel safer right here than anywhere else.”

Toby raised a hand and fist-bumped AAARRRGGHH’s shoulder.

“This is my safest place.”

AAARRRGGHH was not going to cry, because Toby was already crying and he needed to be the adult and comfort the kid instead of pushing back a panic attack and giving into the urge to just lay down on the floor and not get up for the next week, but if a few tears escaped he knew that Toby wouldn’t tell anyone anyway.

His hand covered the kid’s whole back, but it was the best embrace that he could give.

It took half an hour of quiet assurances and gentle shoulder-pats until Toby was ready to let go and go back to sleep. The blanket Toby had torn off the bed tickled AAARRRGGHH’s ear, and he had cocooned himself in it before stubbornly tucking himself between the troll’s shoulder and ear, legs supported on his bicep has AAARRRGGHH lay with his face pillowed on his arms. The dark of night welcomed him, finally, with the glow of the screen fading from his eyes, a solid patch of warmth laid against the side of his head. Barely, just barely, he could feel the tiny hum of Toby’s heart beating like the hum of the Heartstone.

When AAARRRGGHH closed his eyes he saw the almost-dawn before the daybreak, and dreamed of sushi…

…He still didn’t really know what that was, and…

His Wingman breathed slowly, completely trusting as he curled against his friend…

…he dreamed of sunlight.

A/N: Re-writing this to fix some of the clumsy writing from, golly. I wrote this six years ago.

Here’s a lovely platonic fic between besties because I’m tired of having to filter out the ship fics. Ya’ll forget that these kids are KIDS – as in, sixteen. There will be no shipping them with centuries-old adult trolls here. I’m a huge fan of platonic everything, and if it didn’t come off that way I’m going to be seriously upset.

I have all the feels for Toby and AAARRRGGHH. They’re the best buddies anywhere, and I love how supportive and empathetic Toby is to AAARRRGGHH. And Blinky is SO HAPPY that AAARRRGGHH found another friend, like, yes, let this big mossy cinnamon bun have all the friends.

I know that AAARRRGGHH’s actual vocabulary isn’t that great, but that doesn’t mean that he’s stupid. Growing up in the Darklands, being stolen as a kid, didn’t do him any favors in early language development, not to mention that English is probably a second language (he seems to speak Trollish decently). I didn’t want to ‘dumb down’ my prose here, even if it’s not in any way similar to what we’re used to hearing from AAARRRGGHH. The communication issues aside, he’s good at picking up visual cues, gauging emotions, empathizing with others, and reacting fast to sudden problems. I do think that a good chunk of his world is more of what he takes in from his environment, like the sounds and smells and tones of voices, so instead of ‘oh, goodness, it’s quite damp here!’ it would be the smell of the water and the mold, sounds of dripping water, the feel of the humidity in the air. Like a mental mood-board, if that makes sense.

The soundtrack for this fic was The Sound of Silence sung by Disturbed on repeat. It’s slow and sad and this guy has the best voice ever, check it out here.

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