Display darkens when connecting to monitor

Using Catalina on a 2020 MacBook Air, my laptop display colors change to a much darker profile when I connect to another display, so much so that it becomes difficult to see darker shades that are normally easy to see. This is not a brightness issue, but appears to be some change in color profile that I can't seem to identify or control. Nightshift is off, and the display profile is unchanged when this occurs. The issue presents itself whether connecting to a monitor via thunderport or using sidecar. Even after disconnecting from the monitor, the display stays in the darker state, but generally resolves itself after I close/open the screen.

A "solution" has been to turn true tones off (and I can turn it back on, the issue does not reoccur), though I do not believe it is true tones causing the problem in the first place, but rather this may be forcing the system to recalibrate the display settings. I can see the true tones begin to fade in or out gradually, but then there is a much more dramatic switch as the contrast/color profile changes back to normal. If I do this when connected to the monitor still, when I disconnect my laptops switches back to the darker scheme, until I close/open or toggle true tones again.

An idea how to prevent the display when switching to the darker settings, or how to control this?