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“Have you seen Gillion today?” Jay asked, knocking her foot against the chessboard. The pieces rattled slightly but because of the magic enchanting the board, the pieces remained in their respective squares. Chip, who sat across from her, momentarily looked up from his pieces to glance at Jay. He raised an eyebrow, the wind blowing his bangs in front of his face.
“Yeah,” Chip responded, “he’s awake if that’s what you’re asking. I had breakfast with him earlier.”
It was pretty rare for the crew to eat breakfast all at the same time with all three of them waking up at different times or how someone was already awake for the morning watch. Events like that were common, so it was understandable that Chip had eaten breakfast with Gillion. But that still didn’t quell the concern that weighed in the pit of Jay’s stomach.
“Oh,” she pressed her lips into a thin line, “that’s strange, I haven’t seen him all day. Usually, he’s a lot more active around the ship at this time.”
“I mean it’s been a while since this morning,” Chip leaned back some and waved his hand dismissively with a shrug, “if you’re getting worried, but who knows it could also be the sun.”
Chip tilted his head back, squinting at the cloudless sky and in the vague direction of where the sun was. It was a little past noon at this point so the sun was at its brightest as it beat down on the deck of the ship. Gillion was not a big fan of the sun, despite how he liked to lay out on the deck sometimes to warm up. At least until he got too hot and would pant until he found someplace cool.
“Whatever, yeah, we can finish this game first and I’ll go find him,” Jay shook her head, tucking her bangs away from her eyes. Chip sighed, knowing that meant he actually had to take his turn, something he had been stalling for a while. He curled his upper lip, hitting his foot against the board in a pitiful attempt to knock the pieces over.
When it didn’t work, he sighed and moved his knight to a place that Jay would probably immediately capture.
Their game finished. Jay, unfortunately, won, as per usual. Chip stood first, ashamed at his grievous loss, and wanted to focus on something else. Jay stood up after him, her eyes darting over to the door that led to the belowdecks. Time to go check up on Gillion to find out what he had been doing these past few hours.
The search to find Gillion, surprisingly, was a lot harder than it originally seemed to be. The two of them first checked the sleeping quarters but found that the air was stiflingly hot as it often got on sunny days. There was little airflow on the lower layers of the ship and the sun that streamed in through the porthole windows baked it like an oven. So by the temperature, Jay just automatically assumed he wouldn’t be in there since the Triton wasn’t a big fan of the heat.
But the rest of the ship came up with no Gillion. They had checked the very small common area where they had a small table and some chairs (along with barrels and crates for storage). They checked the storage room and the corner that the three of them often sought to hide in on a rough day if they wanted to be alone. The kitchen was a bust, the only person in there was Ollie who sat at the counter coloring in his sketchbook. The half-elven boy hadn’t seen Gillion either.
So Jay returned to the sleeping quarters, Chip in tow. Maybe in their search, he had returned to their sleeping quarters and they had just missed him. That seemed like a pretty feasible option.
It was still hot in the room, like an old musty attic. None of the lanterns were lit which meant that the room was plunged into darkness, only broken up by the streams of light from the portholes.
Something that Jay hadn’t noticed before, was a lump underneath the covers in one of the cots in the corners of the room. Gillion’s cot.
Jay glanced back at Chip with a worried expression, furrowing her eyebrows nervously. Chip shrugged and shook his head. He had a small hint of worry in his expression, but as usual, tried to hide it as best as he could.
Approaching the blob, alarm bells going off in her mind, Jay could hear panting breaths as the lump shuddered. Gillion never went under the covers, he always would overheat if he did or it would irritate his fins. But as Jay reached the cot, she could see a mop of green hair poking out from underneath the top of the blanket. A crown of coral just barely protruded from the soft mess of pillow and curls that was enough to tell who it could possibly be.
Jay curled her fingers around the edge of the sheet, tugging it down enough that she could see Gillion’s face.
His ears were pinned back and his eyes closed tightly. There was a dark blue tint to his cheeks and he almost looked pained with how his face was scrunched up. His mouth hung open slightly as he panted, rattled breaths that shook his entire form as he seemed to tremble. Each breath he took sounded like it physically hurt him.
He was asleep, not pleasantly, but he was asleep.
Chip stood next to Jay, looking at Gillion with just as much concern in his expression as Jay felt. He chewed on the inside of his mouth, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
Jay put her hand on Gillion’s cheek, another red flag lighting up as she felt the dryness and the warmth of his skin. He felt… strangely human. His skin didn’t have the normal moisture that always clung to him, nor did he have the coldness that always would always radiate from his form. He felt like Chip, whose body temperature always ran a bit warmer than normal.
Gillion was burning up and shaking like a leaf at the same time. Not to mention the fact that he had burrowed underneath the covers, something that Jay had never seen him do in the time that she had known him.
Jay hated to wake him when he was sleeping, but her heart pounded with worry as she saw the state he was in. There was clearly something wrong. He looked sickly and she couldn’t even imagine how he felt.
“Gill,” she shook his shoulder gently, then moved her hand to smooth his hair away from his face. Gillion made a noise from the back of his throat, a cough spilling from his lips as he almost seemed to curl in on himself tighter.
“C’mon up you go,” she shook his shoulder again with a little more force this time. Gillion’s face scrunched up but after a few seconds, Jay saw his eyes cracking open. There was a dullness in his irises, completely unlike the usual glow that surrounded him. There was a pool of murky seawater deep in his eyes and he looked completely exhausted.
“Hey,” she said gently as Gillion’s eyes flicked up to look at her. His ear twitched minutely and he made another mournful noise. Jay could see his tail moving around from under the blanket as he shifted with a struggling pant. Gillion wheezed, bringing his hands to curl around the edge of the blanket, claws digging into the hem.
“What’s wrong, Gill?” Chip asked, moving a bit closer to the edge of the bed, “you look like you feel like crap.”
Gillion didn’t respond for a long time, squeezing his eyes shut and shivering, but after a few seconds of waking up a bit more and collecting himself, Gillion just barely managed to squeeze out, “cold.”
“You have a fever,” Jay said with certainty. She wasn’t entirely sure that he had a fever (if Triton’s even got fevers) but by how hot his skin was, she had a good enough estimate. She didn’t think that Gillion, of all people, would get chills from a fever, nor did she really know how he got sick. His biology was weird, and every different event like this caused worry to grip hold of Jay like a vice.
Gillion never would admit when he was sick or hurting. It was something with his sick moral code of not wanting to show weakness. Jay understood it, but that didn’t mean she liked it any more than she already did (not at all). Gillion often would mask his symptoms until his body was too worn out and he collapsed. There was no way he would admit if a condition was truly serious, it would just be another one of those things that Gillion tried to take care of on his own. And since neither Chip nor Jay knew much about Tritons outside of Gillion, they had no way of knowing the things that Gillion didn’t tell them.
“Mm,” Gillion blinked and grimaced, pulling his lips back to expose his teeth. He licked his lips and coughed once more, tremors wracking his small body. He curled up more, ducking his face and slightly burying it back into the blankets.
Jay, unfortunately, couldn’t risk him going back to sleep until she had a slightly better idea of what was going on. She pulled the sheet back once more and her heart broke at the whine that Gillion gave. His ears pinned back to his skull and he shivered.
“What else are you feeling besides the cold?” Jay asked with as much softness as she could muster with the way that her hands shook with nervousness.
“Hot,” Gillion hissed through his teeth, his voice sounded painfully hoarse and Jay momentarily felt bad for making him speak, “can’t breathe.”
“You’re probably overheating,” Jay placed her hand on his shoulder, rubbing her thumb over his skin, “you don’t usually sleep under the blankets.”
Gillion just groaned. His breath hitched and he coughed. Tears squeezed out from the corners of his eyes and ran down his cheeks. He coughed again, a gurgle bubbling up from the back of his throat.
“What do we do?” Chip whispered to Jay, putting his hand on her arm. Jay bit down on the inside of her mouth, smoothing Gillion’s hair away from his face and petting his head.
“I don’t know? He’s never gotten sick like this,” she looked over her shoulder at Chip, “usually he just gets a cough or a sore throat, nothing like this.”
Jay nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt a clawed hand wrap around her wrist. She turned back to Gillion, noticing that he had grabbed her hand, his eyes slipping closed once more. He squeezed lightly, claws unintentionally digging into her skin.
“M’ sorry,” he slurred, voice barely louder than a whisper.
“Don’t be sorry, Gill,” Jay reassured him, “it’s okay.”
Gillion cracked his eyes open, cloudiness filling his vision, “M’ sorry. I can’t train today… I really… I really can’t… m’ sorry. It hurts.”
He whimpered once more, squeezing Jay’s hand a bit tighter, repeating his apologies over and over again. Jay brought her other hand to smooth against his face, shushing him as gently as she could.
“You’re okay, Gill, it’s okay,” her heart ached and felt like it was going to burst, “you need to rest, take the time to rest.”
He mumbled incoherently for a few more seconds before settling into silence. Jay would’ve assumed he was asleep if not for the fact that his eyes were very slightly cracked open still. She could see the blue of his irises visible behind heavy lids as he gazed up at her.
She had no idea what he was seeing. If he genuinely believed the things he was saying or if it was a fever hallucination from something in the past, Jay had no idea. Either way, it was heartbreaking.
“We don’t have medicine for this kind of stuff,” Chip shifted his weight from foot to foot restlessly, “even if we did, do you think it would have even worked for something like this? I mean we have no idea how he gets sick.”
“I don’t know, maybe it’s something you have to wait out?” Jay licked her lips, smoothing her fingers over Gillion’s forehead as a red mist spread from her fingertips.
Her magic did little to sate his fever since the warmth still radiated from his normally very cold skin. But she hoped that it might’ve helped with his breathing or whatever pain that he had mentioned before.
“A cold cloth might help as well,” she said after a few seconds of examining Gillion, “Chip, you wait here.”
However, as Jay made the move to turn away from Gillion and to try and find some supplies that might help his current condition, she was met with resistance from the hand that had wrapped around her wrist. Gillion tightened his grip ever so slightly, not nearly enough that Jay was trapped, but enough to cause her to hesitate.
The Triton made a pained noise, grimacing and scrunching up his face. It was a long few seconds before he finally managed to say something.
“Eden…?” he finally whimpered, barely able to be heard over the churning of the waves below their ship. He opened his eyes a little more, the skin around them tinged a darker blue as the flush of his face darkened. He looked around slightly confused like he was unable to see where he was. When his eyes locked onto Jay’s, there was recognition, but not the type that Jay was used to seeing.
Jay’s heart broke.
“You stay,” Chip moved away from the bed, his entire posture screaming that he needed to do something or that he needed to move. Jay bit down hard on her lower lip and nodded, smoothing her palm flush against Gillion’s cheek. Chip gave a short nod in response and hurried out of the room, his boots thumping against the wooden floor. The door just barely slammed shut behind him but the noise made Jay flinch, Gillion didn’t even seem to react.
Gillion’s grip loosened now that he noticed Jay wasn’t going to try to leave. He moved his hand down to press his palm against the back of Jay’s hand, relishing in the contact and keeping her there. His eyes slipped shut and he let out a small breath.
Jay sat down on the edge of the bed, making sure she didn’t accidentally sit on Gillion’s tail or something. The mattress sank underneath her weight, causing Gillion’s fingers to twitch against the back of her hand. He coughed sharply, ear twitching in her direction.
“When did this start?” she asked softly, just to fill the silence. She didn’t know if Gillion was aware enough to answer a question like that, especially with how high his fever was.
Gillion made a noise similar to a growl or a hum and there was a while where Jay figured he wasn’t going to answer. But he opened his mouth, teeth poking from behind his lips, “last night…”
Jay’s eyes widened, her heart skipping a beat, “Gill, why didn’t you say that you weren’t feeling well?”
But Gillion didn’t answer that question.
“I wanna go h’me,” he whimpered, squeezing his eyes shut tighter. For a moment, Jay thought that he looked incredibly young, much younger than he actually was. For a moment Jay could see a bit of the child he never got to be. In the flush of his cheeks and the tears that just barely swelled in the corners of his eyes, she could see his vulnerability shining through.
“You are home, Gill,” she rubbed her thumb over the patches of scales on his cheek, “you’re on the Albatross.”
His blue eyes (dulled from the fever) darted around the room with barely placed recognition. When he looked back up at Jay, tears slid down his face with little restraint and Jay had to squash down her initial panic at seeing him cry.
“Hey,” she wiped his tears as gently as she could, “what’s wrong?”
Gillion hiccuped, a cough tearing itself from his throat, he brought his arm up to his face to cover his eyes. Chest rattling with each stuttered breath he took.
“I miss m’ home…” he whimpered and Jay immediately figured he was talking about the undersea and whatever home he came from down there.
“Shh, it’s okay,” she reassured him, cupping his face in both her hands, “you’re okay.”
“It hurts…”
“I know, it’ll be okay,” Jay swiped her thumb underneath his eye, pushing his bangs away from his face.
“M’ sorry f’r being sick,” Gillion tilted his head back, squeezing his eyes shut as he hiccuped again, “I wanna go h’me.”
“You’ll get to go back there someday,” Jay promised, not knowing if she actually believed that or not. Gillion stuttered, skin completely dry as he moved his hand to grasp at Jay’s, squeezing hard enough it almost hurt. Jay didn’t even think to try and pull away, squeezing his hand back in an attempt to offer some solace to his woes.
She wished that her healing could do more, she wished that she could ease his pain. But her magic wasn’t good enough to do things like that, lowering a fever was one thing, but completely curing him of his ailments was difficult. She didn’t want to risk making him hurt worse if her magic made him even sicker as he had mentioned before.
Gillion’s ears twitched, and he shifted his head a little to the side, shifting from under the covers.
“I wish you would’ve told us that you weren’t feeling good sooner,” Jay ran her fingers through his hair, smoothing down his curls, “it’s okay to get sick and to need someone to take care of you.”
His hair was frizzy and when Jay moved her palm away from his head, the strands stuck up with slight static. She rubbed the skin around where his coral protruded from his scalp. It was weird to feel his skin so warm and it was a constant reminder to Jay of how sickly he was, but it seemed like Gillion was settling a bit more, so she didn’t stop.
Chip returned shortly after, nudging open the door with his shoulder and carrying a bucket of water in one hand with other supplies tucked in his other elbow. His hair was messed up and there was still heavy concern set in his expression.
“Took you long enough,” Jay muttered as he approached the cot, setting down the bucket of water. Some of the liquid sloshed over the sides of the bucket and dripped onto the floor.
Now that he was closer, Jay could see what he had brought. Tucked into the crook of his elbow were a few wash rags, a loaf of bread, a roll of bandages (?), and a glass of juice that was precariously wedged along with the other items. How he carried all of it was a mystery.
“It was harder than you think to fill a bucket with water to transport it,” he let out a long breath, setting the glass of juice down on the floor along with the bandages and most of the rags except one. The piece of bread he handed to Jay before dunking the cloth in the bucket.
“I don’t know if he’d be up for eating anything, it’s been a while since breakfast. But he didn’t eat a lot then either,” Chip wrung the excess water from the rag and moved to place it on Gillion’s forehead. The Triton flinched at the sudden contact, his eyes fluttering open from where he had been almost asleep.
Droplets ran down his cheeks and Gillion made another small gurgle from the back of his throat, it sounded almost strained from the effort.
“Hey, buddy,” Chip muttered, wiping Gillion’s face down, he seemed to appreciate the water, a sigh escaping his lips which delved into a sharp cough.
“Hot,” Gillion whispered.
“Yeah, you probably shouldn’t be under the covers,” Chip responded, tugging the sheets down a little bit. Gillion made a mournful sound but didn’t try to pull them back up again.
“Do you think you could eat something?”
Gillion’s ears drooped and he shook his head, swallowing thickly.
“In a little bit, okay?” Jay added, taking his hand and squeezing gently, “You need to eat something.”
Gillion gave no reaction to that besides a very faint nod. Chip ran the damp cloth down his neck, doing his best to be gentle over his gills which flexed and constricted.
That’s what it was like for a good while, Chip occasionally dunking the cloth back in the bucket of water to wipe Gillion’s face and neck. He had drunk a little bit of the juice when offered it but for the most part, refused to eat anything else. Jay slid her hand over his cheek, pressing the back of her hand against his forehead and being reassured at the fact that his temperature seemed to be going down.
He didn’t say much else, breaking into coughing fits or wheezing gasps that Chip or Jay could do little to soothe. But the fever was breaking. That was the reassuring part.
When his fever had gone down enough that his skin was starting to get the natural moisture back, Chip made an attempt to get up. It would be better to let him sleep it off for now and then hopefully he would be better in the morning. At least that’s what Jay was hoping.
However, when Chip stood up to leave, Gillion whined, his voice breaking and a pitiful look crossing his face so Chip was forced to sit back down on the edge of the bed. Jay kept her hand intertwined with his, squeezing reassuringly whenever he would cough or stutter.
Minutes passed and Gillion’s eyes had remained closed for a while. But it was hard to tell if he had fallen asleep since his ragged breathing hadn’t changed. Either way, Jay figured it would be best for at least one of them to stay down and watch him for a bit to make sure his illness didn’t get worse or he woke up with a higher fever.
Chip agreed to stay while Jay could get some things done around the ship and make sure that things were running smoothly. The benefits of all three of them being captains meant that they could split the work off like that.
With a small kiss on Gillion’s (and Chip’s, since he decided to be a baby about it) forehead, Jay crept out of the room as quietly as she could to make sure she didn’t disturb Gillion. He needed as much rest as possible.