Chapter Text
Going Grey- an essay on grey trolls by Doctor C. Emerald.
Trolls are a species primarily identified by their bright hues. These serve not only as an elite form of camouflage for the forests they primarily habitat, but as a signifier of their biological cheery disposition. Though not a guaranteed ‘mood ring’, if you will permit me to use such a colloquial phrase, one can nevertheless comfortably gauge a troll’s emotions by first looking at their fur and skin. The brighter the fur, the happier the troll. Trolls cannot typically change the colour of their fur from the one they are born with, but it can increase and decrease in saturation. It is hair that can change- primarily for extreme camouflage- but that is a study for another essay.
However, there is an exception to this particular species limitation. It has been noted throughout history from the beginning of recorded documentation of our lives, that trolls can become grey. This is an extreme colour deviation from a species once thought limited by what type of fur they were born with. A long debated and studied topic, this essay will take you through an exploration of what going grey is, its inclusion in the Troll Biography of Illnesses, the causes for this affect, and treatment plans.
To begin with, we must remember this simple statement as we partake in this study.
Going grey is a sign that a troll has something deeply wrong with it.
For a very long time, Clay’s entire body has been grey.
He wasn’t born like this. No troll ever is. It’s a biological impossibility. When his dotted egg cracked, he greeted his two older siblings and his grandma (but not his parents) with a shock of lime green hair that was unique to him, soft blue fur that wasn’t, and two perfect ears that pointed skywards. His tail was short, but strong. When he opened his eyes, they were just a few shades brighter than his blue fur, and full of wonder as they gazed at the world they’d been born into. He was, by all accounts, a very normal example of what a troll was supposed to look like. His (biased) grandma would tell you he was the most beautiful baby in the world.
Fast forward some thirty years and that has all changed. Clay is completely and obviously Grey. His once bright hair- always brushed to perfection- is now a huge, tangled mess of darkness that would have a hard time standing out against the night sky, if he was ever allowed to see it. His soft fur has drained itself of even the palest shade of blue, replaced by a depressing desaturation that seems to grow gloomier every day. His ears point down towards the ground now, as if signifying he no longer has an upwards future to look forward to. His eyes have lost all brightness and sense of life. They too have been drained of anything that made Clay who he was, and all there is left to see is dull, dreary Grey.
It's not something Clay likes. But being grey is never something a troll has much control over. It’s not a choice you can make, like clothes or hair accessories. It’s classified as an illness to their species- something you can’t help but fall victim to, and something that is hard to heal from. Give enough time and love though, a troll usually can.
But Clay is different from most trolls. Not because of any sort of birth anomaly or weird chosen one destiny, but because of his situation. For over twenty years, Clay has been trapped below the earth. The warmth of the sun and the cool touch of fresh air has been stolen from him. His ability to walk where he wants to and say what he likes has been snatched from his reach. He has no say over his own body, no control over the path he is supposed to be on. He has no possessions of his own, no personality that has not been shaped by something else. For over twenty years, Clay has been a prisoner of someone he can only call, the Professor.
It happened that fateful night all those years ago when Clay walked out on the family. He’d been tried of John-Dory bossing him around, frustrated by this fun persona he felt forced into, embarrassed that he tried so hard to be perfect and still failed. He wanted to find people to take him seriously- or maybe trolls who wouldn’t care that he wasn’t some flawless superstar. Or at least, he wanted a few days to cool off before he came running back. But when he’d left, he’d only gotten a few steps away from the pod before something sharp had pricked the back of his neck. He’d passed out so quickly he hadn’t even had time to wonder what was happening. It didn’t matter in the end. When he woke up, the Professor was all too happy to explain everything.
To the Professor, Clay is a subject. A specimen. Someone with no voice and no rights because he is simply something to be used by her. The Professor was apparently once a fan of Clay, and who he’d used to be- in a past life where being in a famous band felt like the only thing that mattered. She liked the persona Clay had been given to make him marketable- the fun one. To him, the label was a suffocating constriction. To her, that label was a challenge. And when she’d has the idea of how to challenge it, he’d ceased to be a troll to her. Now he is just her toy. A silent, broken toy who lost its voice box, because good toys don’t speak back. Most people would throw a damaged toy out, but even broken, he entertains her. One look at him is proof that all her theories are correct.
You can induce greyness in a troll. And what’s more, you can induce it, and then you can maintain it.
She’s very proud of her science. Boasts about it like it’s the holy troll grail. There’s a little part of Clay that he keeps tucked away just for himself, and this part of him is really not impressed with the Professor’s hypothesis. There’s nothing groundbreaking to it. Every troll knows that the number one cause of going grey- really the only cause of going grey- is extreme sadness.
Primary studies performed by ancient troll scholars dating back to 10 AFH (After First Hatching) showed an early understanding that grey fur was indicative of a depressed personality.
Of course you can induce greyness in a troll. You just have to make it extremely sad. And kidnapping a troll from its family, keeping it prisoner for twenty years, reducing it to a broken shell of what it once was and denying it even the tiniest bit of comfort, is going to make it pretty fucking sad. Case in point- Clay. He’s that troll. He’s not really proving anything that wasn’t already known, and he doesn’t understand how she can’t see that. Blinded by science and all that, he supposes.
This disagreeable part of Clay is small though, and fragile, and he keeps it hidden because the Professor has already taken so much of him that he needs just a little bit of who he once was to keep himself sane. She can take his freedom, and his connections, and his colours, but he never wants her to take his anger. Once that’s gone, he won’t be able to hate her and everything she’s done to him. He needs to hate her, because what she’s doing is truly hateful. If he loses that fury, he’s as good as dead. Then he’ll truly be a toy.
He guesses he can agree the sustained greyness might be considered impressive. If only for the fact that she’s so dedicated to it. So fucking dedicated that she’s tearing him apart. From what he can remember learning as a kid, greyness can be reversed quite swiftly if you tackle it head on.
The same primary studies mentioned in section one also thoroughly explored the reversal of greyness. This came about from operating off the basis of a simple cause and effect. If extreme sadness causes greyness, then extreme happiness can cure greyness.
Clay still remembers the thriving community he grew up in- living under the thumb of an oppressive and hungry species- but nonetheless maintaining their colours. Pop Trolls- for that’s what they were- had an almost insatiable need to be happy and to make others happy. Maybe because of their awful situation, maybe not. Regardless, Clay can’t remember a single grey troll from his childhood, and they’d literally been losing loved ones to the stomachs of Bergens for as long as they could recall. Greyness wasn’t necessarily seen as something bad- just something to be fixed.
The Professor doesn’t want to fix Clay, though. To her, he is perfect. Perfect because he is broken. Perfect because he has been broken for so long.
Perfect, because she broke him.
Clay lives (if you can call it that) underground in a prison that is two and a half steps long, and one step wide. Clay is on the taller side for a troll, so this is not very much space at all. He can’t even stand up to his full height- he can manage a back aching stoop, and that’s it. The cage roof press ever oppressively down. Because that’s what Clay’s home is. A cage. Thick metal bars that he can’t hope to squeeze through. A heavy, cold metal floor and ceiling. A tiny door secured with three heavy locks- each different from the others so that he can never hope to make sense of them. The Professor is taking no chances with Clay escaping, and because of this, he has never tried. He simply woke up there and had to accept the fact that this was it. Short of sudden out of character forgetfulness, or a literal Deus ex Machina (see, John-Dory, he reads fancy books) Clay is stuck here. It’s a factor that contributes quite heavily to his prolonged greyness.
He gets to leave the cage sometimes. Not for anything nice, like day trips to the surface or fancy meals at an actual table. He just gets to come out when the Professor wants to perform experiments on him; her lab takes up the rest of the space where Clay’s cage is. Once he’s out, she cuts his hair and takes blood samples, shaves his fur and pulls his claws out, pulls at his tail and prods at his eyes. She sticks him with sharp objects to see if that makes his skin grow darker from the pain. Or she zaps him with electricity because she’s bored, and cuts bits of him off because deep down, she’s apparently still the possessive fan she had been in the past and she can’t resist having little parts of him that aren’t just things that naturally fall out. Who’d settle for a strand of hair when you can have a piece of his leg?
Clay would much rather just stay in the cage.
It’s not entirely awful. It’s not like he can’t move at all, so there’s that. He gets a small mattress to curl up on- though sometimes the Professor takes it away as a punishment for some transgression she’s made up. Clay is pretty much the perfect prisoner, all things considered. He doesn’t talk back (or talk at all, really) or try to get free. She tore the fight out of him a year into his capture, and now he just moves when she tells him to, jumps when she says jump and all that. She likes to torture him though- mentally and physically- so sometimes she pretends he’s done something awful enough that warrants her taking the thin mattress, or denying him his meagre food supply, or breaking a finger or two. Clay doesn’t understand why she needs to make up reasons when she has full control over him, but maybe she has a tiny bit of humanity left- not much but just enough to feel like she should be justified in her actions.
Each cruel act of torture serves to keep him grey and lifeless. There is no chance of him ever even getting a single strand of hair back to its original colour as long as he’s with her. There is no good in his life, no single thing to be a comfort to cling to.
Well…except maybe one thing.
The Professor doesn’t know about it. If she did, she’d certainly try to beat it out of him. It’s not a physical thing that Clay can hide from her. He has no space of his own for anything like that. It’s a secret thing that he keeps deep inside him alongside his small burning fire of anger. It’s relief. That’s the comfort he can cling to. Pure, and overwhelming relief. Because…because she might have Clay, but it’s just Clay. Only Clay.
She doesn’t have his brothers.
He’s relieved that they’re not down here with him- hopeful that they escaped the Troll Tree like King Peppy had been planning. He’s just so, so glad that it’s only him living with this torture. Maybe if it was Floyd, or Spruce, or heaven forbid baby Branch, or even John-Dory, then Clay would actually have some fight in him. As it is, he’s the only one down here that needs saving. And Clay…? Well, Clay doesn’t think he’s quite worth it.
One wonders whether hopelessness at one’s greyness creates a cycle where the sadness of being grey feeds into the sustainment of staying grey- creating a loop a troll can struggle to break out of. Studies have shown (Professor P. Lilly, The Biology of Grey Trolls, 1020 AFH) that being grey can have an affect on an otherwise positive outlook. Says Lilly, “it becomes harder for a troll to feel happy the longer they stay grey, as the greyness enforces a belief that they can never possibly be happy again, thus affecting any attempts to build cheer” (P 67).
Clay only knows how many years have passed thanks to the Professor. She likes to celebrate the day she abducted Clay- as if it’s comparable to a hatching day party. She calls it Acquisition Day, and celebrates by giving herself the day off and leaving Clay alone in the darkness. A holiday for both of them, really. She goes off and gets madly excited about successfully kidnapping him and…eat a nice meal? Clay isn’t sure really what she does. All he knows is that she has some fun, and he gets at least twenty-four hours torture free. It’s the little things that keep you going.
Sometimes Clay wonders how he’s still going. Twenty plus years is a long time to stay trapped in the dark, subject to torture that keeps him grey. He thinks maybe there’s just a little bit of spite in him? Maybe? Not much, considering he doesn’t do much in the way of resisting the Professor’s cruel touch. But he’s heard her say she wants to see if a troll can die from being grey for too long, and he doesn’t want to give her the satisfaction of proving that hypothesis correct. Or…well, making her think the hypothesis is correct because let’s be real, it’s not going to be the greyness that will kill him. It’ll be her forgetting to feed him, or stabbing him too hard so he bleeds out, or zapping him for so long his heart stops.
He just doesn’t want the only memorable thing about his death to be that it gets noted down in a journal.
There has never been a recorded death by way of prolonged greyness. However, greyness can be linked to self-inflicted deaths.
Clay doesn’t get much food to eat. Certainly nowhere near enough to sustain a troll of his height. He can’t stockpile it because there’s nowhere to hide it, and he can’t ration it because he never knows when the next bite is coming. He’s considered a few times letting himself starve to death- in those really, really dark moments where he knows anything is better then this- even death. He never goes through with it though. The hunger wins out in the end. That strange, small will to live kicks in. And then he’s eating the mouldy fruit, or the dried bread. He’s drinking the stale water. He’s letting the Professor feed him like the pet he is.
This is his life now, and Clay just has to live it. Nobody knows where he is- nobody is coming to rescue him. He’d held out hope for as long as he could, but in the end it had died. It’s just him, and the Professor. All those years ago, when Clay had first been thrown in here and he hugged the bars of the cage and screamed at the troll who had taken him, he’d begged her to tell him why. Why had she taken him? He’ll never forget the sickly smile that spread across her face as she gave him her answer.
“You said you were the fun one, and the fun ones are always the most exciting to break.”
“You won’t break me!” he still remembers his defiance.
That’s long gone now. Game over. She wins.
He’s broken.
The question I have found myself most eager to answer through this essay is one that still remains unanswered, despite my endless research. It is a simple one, and yet no study can prove any semblance of outcome with any certainty. I find myself feeling a little empty as I finish writing this conclusion. The answer I had longed for, still out of my reach. However, curiosity is a researcher’s greatest gift, and I have no more lost my desire to keep looking any more than I have lost my desire to eat, or to drink. I will leave this question with you, readers, so that you may ponder as much as I do. Five short words. One sentence. Hopefully, one day, an answer.
Is going grey ever permanent?