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Chip’s gaze was far away and cloudy, as he gripped the railing of their ship staring off at the horizon. His hands were trembling slightly and he seemed to sway with the rocking of the ship. The wind blew his hair all over the place but he didn’t even move to sweep it away or grumble with annoyance like he often did. Jay watched him from the helm, worry ebbing at her chest.
A minute passed, then a few more. And Chip gave no reaction to the world around him. Worried, Jay left the helm and approached him cautiously, her boots scuffing against the wooden floorboards.
“Chip,” she said, hoping for at least some sort of answer, a hum, or even a tilt of his head. Jay put a hand on his shoulder, turning him slightly. Heavy bags hung from under his eyes and his irises were slightly foggy.
She shook his shoulder, jostling him out of the stupor that he had fallen into. He blinked, the foggy look seeming to dissipate after a few seconds.
“Huh?” He asked, his eyes darting to Jay’s face. His skin was pale like everything had been drained from him in the past few days that they had been sailing.
“You okay?” Jay furrowed her eyebrows, keeping one hand on his shoulder, “you were kind of uhm… spacing out for a while…”
“Oh… oh… no—no yeah, I’m fine,” he stumbled, shaking his head slightly and bringing a hand up to scrub at his face, “I’m—yeah… I’m okay…”
Jay could see the exhaustion dripping from his form, the way that he almost seemed to space out again but blinked back after a second or two. His hair was disheveled and frizzy, matted with dirt and sweat. The claw marks exposed on his chest still hadn’t closed or healed at all. The violent red marks hiss with irritation, coloring the skin around them an ugly pinkish color.
“We’ll get those healed,” Jay insisted, looking down at his chest. She finally dropped her hand from his shoulder.
Chip nodded, his entire body trembled and he reached over to grab the railing to steady himself, “yeah… yeah… we’ll figure it out.” He looked down at his chest and grimaced. Sweat ran down his face, Jay noted how awful he looked right now.
He seemed to shake harder as he glanced at something just behind Jay, his gaze lingered there for a few seconds before turning back to her. “Yeah,” he adds.
Jay looked over her shoulder, eyebrows furrowed. No one else was on the deck beside the two of them currently. Jay turned back to Chip with a worried expression, but he wasn’t looking at her anymore. He blinked, continuing to glance at something else in the distance, long enough that Jay almost thought that he had spaced out again.
“I’m… gonna—I’m gonna go… do things,” he said, eyes rolling over to look at Jay with a slightly out-of-it stare. He reached up and put a hand on Jay’s shoulder. “Chip things… yep… I’m gonna go do Chip things.”
“Okay…?” Jay hesitated. She knew he didn’t sleep last night, maybe not even the night before, but he definitely seemed to be struggling. However, Jay also knew how stubborn Chip could be. Telling him to get some rest wouldn’t have done anything even if she tried.
Chip was the type of person to go until he passed out, and no amount of verbal convincing would change that. Especially with the nightmares he had been having, if the way he woke up screaming was anything to go off of.
When he had woken up like that a few nights ago, Jay had never seen Chip look so panicked as he had sobbed and grasped on to whoever was closest to him (Jay). He had been burning with fever and babbling unintelligibly. Nothing that Jay could have said to comfort him would have served condolences. His screaming had alerted almost the whole ship, causing a small flurry of even more panic.
Sure, her night terrors were bad, but Jay felt that Chip’s were way worse. She had gotten about as used to as one could to the nightmares (so not really, but she had learned to deal with it). But Chip had even been putting off sleep because of it. A part of her was worried about him.
Chip stood there for a few moments longer, his hand still squeezing Jay’s shoulder. He rubbed his eyes with his other hand, blinking tiredly (tired didn’t even begin to cover how he looked, Chip looked dead on his feet). Then, as if remembering what he was supposed to be doing, he stepped away from Jay, gave her a messy salute, and walked off.
He nearly fell down the stairs as he swung the door open to the lower decks and Jay grimaced slightly. That seemed to be the end of that conversation then. Jay slowly shuffled back to the helm, keeping one eye towards the door as she passed. It was mostly quiet below decks and a part of Jay feared what Gillion had been getting up to. And what Chip would be doing with his classified “Chip things”.
She didn’t know if she feared or worried more about what he would do while on such little sleep.
Jay didn’t see anything of Chip for a while during the time she spent at the wheel of the ship. At one point Gillion came above deck to talk to her, sitting at the helm to keep her company. He sat with his back pressed against the railing of the ship and his legs spread out in front of him.
Conversations with Gillion were either very pleasant and relaxing (usually when Gillion did most of the talking), or hard to understand. Jay found that having Gillion at the helm with her was nice to have that company.
Jay just let the Triton talk, answering when he asked a question of giving a hum of approval whenever it seemed like he needed some input. But for the most part, she was content to sit and listen. Gillion’s voice was nice, and Jay liked the way he said things or his thick accent that lilted his tone. He had a slight lisp that was only noticeable once you already knew the way he said things. Or sometimes he would stumble over his words and forget how to say things in common. But none of that made his voice any less pleasant to listen to.
If she let him go without interrupting at all, Gillion could probably find something to talk about for at least an hour. So could Chip (on better days). That was one of the things she loved about both of them.
After a while, Alphonse took over for Jay so she and Gillion descended to the lower decks. Ollie was sitting in the common room, he kicked his feet back and forth, drawing in the notebook that they had bought him. He looked up and waved when they walked in, a small smile crossing his face.
“Hey Ollie,” Jay said, returning his smile, “you know where Chip is?”
Ollie’s grin faltered, a slight frown causing his lip to twitch, he fidgeted with the pencil in his hand, “I think in your quarters… but I don’t know…”
She nodded solemnly, Ollie looked a bit nervous as he wrung his hands.
“Perhaps he is sleeping,” Gillion suggested hopefully, spreading his hands. It was an empty hope and Jay knew he didn’t even believe what he had said. Jay just shrugged and sighed.
“Thanks, Ollie,” Jay held her hand up in a small wave, “We’re gonna go check on Chip.”
“Okay,” Ollie hunched his shoulders, going back to whatever he had been drawing. One of his ears flicked as the pencil scratched against the paper and he hummed quietly under his breath. Jay smiled fondly at the kid before remembering what their goal was supposed to be.
Jay started walking in the direction of their sleeping quarters, Gillion in tow. The door to their sleeping quarters was closed and Jay found herself knocking before shouldering it open. The hinges squeaked loudly and Jay grimaced, peeking her head into the room.
Sunlight was streaming in through the portholes casting small beams that slithered over the floorboards providing a less than favorable amount of light. Even though the sun provided pretty decent lighting, the crew usually still kept a few lanterns lit belowdecks since it usually got pretty dark in certain places depending on the time of day.
However, there were no lanterns lit in the sleeping quarters. Shadows fell heavily over the room where the sunlight didn’t reach (which was a lot of places).
Jay spotted Chip sitting on the floor with his back pressed against one of the cots. His knees were pulled up to his chest, chin resting on top of them. His entire body was shaking as he had his arms wrapped around his legs. His breathing was stuttered and he didn’t even look up when Jay and Gillion entered.
His nails were dug into his skin and Jay could see red marks across his legs from where he must have been scratching. There was that same faraway look in his eyes that Jay had seen earlier. If possible, he seemed to have gotten paler since Jay had last seen him.
“Hey, Chip,” Jay stepped further into the room. Gillion furrowed his eyebrows, following her as she sat down on the floor next to Chip. “You alright?”
Jay honestly didn’t expect to get an answer out of him, but she could see his eyes drift over to her, glancing at her face with a not-all-there expression. But Chip seemed to be aware of her sitting there, he heaved a sigh and curled in on himself tighter.
Gillion sat down on Chip’s other side and Chip watched him pass, his eyes following the Triton for a few seconds before he looked back over at Jay.
“This is real?” Chip asked quietly, his voice barely a hoarse whisper past the echoing of the waves hitting against the side of their ship. Chip dug his nails deeper into his skin, he blinked tiredly.
“This is,” Jay confirmed, furrowing her eyebrows worriedly.
“You’re real?” Chip then asked, prying one of his hands away to touch Jay. He poked at her face and Jay just reached up and caught his wrist. She smoothed his hand against her cheek and held it there.
“I am. And so is Gillion.”
Chip gave a breathy, exhausted laugh, tilting his head back until it thumped against the mattress of his cot. His laughter devolved into shaky tears, sobs that tore themselves from his throat with barely restrained agony. His cheeks flushed a dark pink color as tears ran down his face, leaving tracks in the dust that had been stuck to his skin for days.
Jay’s eyes widened, surprised at the sudden change. And for a moment, she sat there, unsure of what to do. It was rare for Chip to cry so openly like this, and it only served to fuel Jay’s worry. She wanted to know what was going on inside his head, so she would know what the right thing to say was or what would be the right thing to do.
But she wouldn’t know, and a part of her felt like while she knew what it was like to have night terrors almost every time she went to sleep, she would never truly understand what he was going through.
“This is real.” Chip mumbled over and over again like he was trying to convince himself of that fact. Another watery laugh bubbled up between his sobs and Jay wrapped an arm around his shoulders. She pulled him against her side, causing him to unfold from himself a bit. He practically deflated against her, his head lolling against her shoulder and Jay could feel how fast his heart was beating from under her hand.
Gillion took Chip’s other hand, squeezing it gently and rubbing his thumb over his knuckles. Chip’s skin was warm, a slight fever once again raging his body. Jay found herself using what magic she could to help, knowing that healing had done next to nothing when it came to his current injuries. The only reprieve was for the fever.
Chip shook and trembled, the claw marks on his chest refusing to close, but at least the inflammation had gone down at least a little bit with the red mist that spread from Jay’s fingertips. He gave a small whimper, squeezing Gillion’s hand tightly, Chip’s chewed-up nails digging into the side of his hand.
“We’re going to get that taken care of soon,” Jay promised, “and your nightmares.”
Chip nodded weakly, his sobs had weakened into small sniffles with tears still trailing down his face, collecting underneath his chin before falling to his lap. He didn’t say anything, didn’t offer an excuse as to why he was crying (Jay could imagine how overwhelming it all felt). He just curled himself against Jay, with a shaky sigh.
His breath hitched and he whimpered. Another sob bubbled up from the back of his throat, it was weak and dying but still there. Jay let out a small exhale, squeezing his shoulder and tucking him closer to herself.
“It’s gonna be okay,” Jay found herself muttering, she curled her fingers around the hair on the back of his neck, running her fingers through the frizzy brown strands. Chip blinked, he looked so close to falling asleep on the spot but refused to let himself drift off.
He just sat there, slowly managing to calm himself down from his tears. He made a small noise in the back of his throat, barely reacting to hearing Gillion repeat the noise at a slightly lower pitch.
They all stayed there for a while, Chip wedged in between both Jay and Gillion, blinking off into nothing and trying his hardest to stay awake. Jay wished he would get some sleep, but at the same time, she didn’t know if she would be able to bear seeing Chip as panicked as he was the last time that he had woken up from nightmares.
This was the closest solution that Jay could think of and so she didn’t make any move to get out of the hold.
Time seemed to pass slowly that afternoon on the Albatross, the calm waves rocking the ship in a gentle rhythm. If things were better, it could have even been classified as a nice night.
But things weren’t great right now. Chip was on at least two days without sleep, Jay worried for him and she knew that Gillion was worried as well.
They were going to fix it. That’s what they always did, they got themselves into trouble and then got themselves out of that trouble. And that’s what they would do this time. They just had to find Grim and hope that he would be able to help.
For now, Jay sat there and held Chip’s trembling form as he forced himself awake.