Archive of Our Own

Lizzie stared at the paper in front of her, watching the way that her handwriting seemed to stretch and warp with the shifting of the flickering lantern she had sitting on her heavy wooden desk.  Her hand ached as she held tighter to the pen she used to conscript letter after letter, plan after plan, journal entry after journal entry.  There was always so much work to do, so many things that she had to keep in order.  Plans to make, people to painstakingly contact, and items and places that she needed to organize.  So much to do.  So little time.

She paused for less than a second to set her pen down and massage the skin between her thumb and forefinger when the ache became too much for her to keep writing.  Lizzie let out a heavy sigh for the umpteenth time tonight and reached up to pinch the bridge of her nose, fighting back the urge to yawn.  Sure it was late, but she didn’t have time to sleep.

Reaching out with a shaking hand, she picked up her mug of coffee (since a significantly wiser past Lizzie had at least decided alcohol was a bad idea) and took a drink.  It had long since gone cold, and all the pleasure of the previously warm liquid had faded.  But she didn’t have the thought to care, Lizzie wasn’t really picky when it came to her drinks.

Going to warm it up again would be a waste of time, it would be better to just go to bed.  And yet here she was.  Lizzie slid her tongue over her lips and pressed it against the gap between her front teeth as she regretfully picked up her pen.   The ink had begun to drip on the paper she was writing on, causing a blot of black to stain into the desk.  Lizzie blotted at the wet ink with a cloth, knowing it was unsalvageable but not really wanting to lean her hand on a wet spot of ink.

She took another second to collect her thoughts and went back to writing, gripping the pen so hard that her nails dug into her palms, making red, irritated indents in her skin where she could feel her fingernails breaking the flesh.  She continued to write, ignoring the way that it felt like something was crawling up and down her back from sitting for so long with her back to the rest of the room.

Her captain’s quarter was small.  Larger than the rest of the rooms on their ship, but still small in comparison to larger ships.  It had room for her small but heavy wooden desk of which she did most of her business at.  Her hammock was tied up a few feet off the ground, comfortable enough that she didn’t have too many issues sleeping, but sometimes would end up tossing and turning too much and would end up falling out.

So tucked across the room was a significantly smaller cot that she would often sleep on (when she actually decided she should probably sleep) when she was faced with restless nights and too much stressful energy.  At the moment it was only decorated with a single pillow, her blanket was stuffed inside her hammock for the night since that’s where she had left it in the morning.

A large wooden chest as well as a small bolted bookshelf was tucked across the room from where Lizzie sat.  They contained her personal items as well as books that they had deemed helpful and informative on their months of travel.  Any item worth keeping would be kept inside her chest, it was mostly clothes and small trinkets.  Lizzie didn’t have many personal belongings.  Too easy to lose, and too close to her heart to bear losing.  So she traveled light. 

The bookshelf and chest had been perfectly slotted underneath the wide window that stretched across the back wall, displaying enough moonlight that she honestly probably wouldn’t need the lantern.  It allowed her to see out into the ocean and keep silent watch when it wasn’t her shift.

Some nights—when a mix of nightmares, guilt, and unpleasant memories would keep her awake, and keep her hands shaking too hard to allow her to be productive—she would drag her desk chair over to the window and stare at the horizon until the sun came up.  Then she would stand, pretend nothing was wrong, and get herself ready to have to face the day and the rest of her crew.

But tonight was not one of those nights, Lizzie had too much work to do and couldn’t let the anxiety of it all, or the slight tremors of her hands keep her from getting things done.  Even when her chest tightened enough that it made it hard for her to breathe, stress made her want to pull her hair out.  She just took another sip of her cold coffee and kept working, stopping periodically to massage her aching hand.

A sudden thud resounded behind her and Lizzie flinched, whipping her head back with her hand twitching toward where she normally kept her gun (which wasn’t currently there) only to see that it was just her lantern hitting the wall near her hammock.  The strings and metal buckles that attached it to the wall clattered and clanged together as the waves gently nudged her ship back and forth in the moon-soaked ocean.

The rocking of the Crescent Moon had gotten so familiar, that Lizzie could practically ignore the feeling of waves pushing against the side of her ship.  She had completely filtered it out of her mind at the moment, focusing so much on the task at hand that she had forgotten for a few moments where she was.  

She often would go periods of time where she didn’t even feel the way it would move until she heard something fall or knock against other things obnoxiously that brought her right back into reality.  Lizzie let out a heavy sigh and ran her free hand all the way down her face, scrubbing at her tired eyes. 

Once she noticed them, the waves were almost obnoxious tonight as they crashed and hissed against the wooden sides of their ship.  Not to mention the fact that they seemed significantly louder tonight now that they were traveling alongside the Albatross.  The space between the two ships caused a sort of echo chamber that made the sound of the waves so much louder than they normally were. 

Lizzie sighed and reached up to scrub at her face, pinching the bridge of her nose as she struggled to reorient her attention to what was important.  Her work was important.  Focusing on the sound of the waves and the way that her ship was rocking back and forth was not important.  Now was not the time for distractions.

Just as Lizzie was beginning to settle back into the previous rhythm of scratching words into her parchment paper, the sound of loud, clunky footsteps caught her attention.  Lizzie wrinkled her nose and listened, her hand stilling on the paper while she tried to decipher who was walking around.  Her mind supplied that it was probably Caspian who was currently on watch duty.  But his footsteps were much quieter than that.

So possibly John?  But why would he be up this late?  Once that man went to bed, he was out, it was such a pain in the rear to get him awake once he had fallen asleep that Lizzie had just settled with giving him the first shift at watch so they didn’t have to deal with waking him up in the night.  So there wasn’t much reason that he would be up at the time.  And Rudith mostly stayed below decks.

The sound of the louder-than-normal waves reminded Lizzie of the other ship sailing beside theirs.  Maybe it was Gillion stopping by to visit (distract) Caspian, that seemed like the most reasonable assumption.  The Triton always flocked to Caspian whenever the other man was around, enough so that Lizzie couldn’t help but be annoyed by it.

But when she saw the way Caspian’s face would light up upon seeing his companion, she always let the subject drop and would ignore Gillion’s presence on their ship.  She didn’t like the idea of both their lookouts being distracted, and Lizzie had still been meaning to question Chip about his shift routine so she could plan hers in accordance.  But that was on the back burner of her issues at the moment.

So Lizzie just assumed it was Gillion noticing that Caspian was on deck and coming over for a visit.  She ignored the footsteps after that, filing it away in the back of her mind with all the information that she had processed and acknowledged, but didn’t seem to be important enough to do anything about.  Besides, if it was any sort of threat, she trusted Caspian’s ability to spot and handle it.

However, as Lizzie tried to ignore the sound of footsteps on their top deck, they only seemed to get closer.  Then, when Lizzie figured she’d be able to peacefully go back to work, a loud crash and the sound of the door to her quarters being slammed open made Lizzie nearly jump out of her skin.  

She shot up out of her chair and reached for her gun (normally holstered at her side), only to remember that she had cleaned it earlier and it was still sitting on her shelf.  The next best weapon happened to be a small silver dagger hidden on her desk which she grappled for, her fist curling around the leather grip.

If not for the room being lit with enough lantern light for her to easily see her assailant, Lizzie would have stabbed him out of pure reflex.  But instead, she caught sight of familiar messy brown hair and tannish skin, wave tattoos curled up and around his shoulders and neck, rippling with every twitch of his muscles and movement of his arms.  She stared with wide eyes right into the earthy brown tone of familiar troubled eyes, not comforting enough to make her put her dagger down.

But at least she didn’t immediately stab Chip for startling her like that.

“What the hell do you want Chip?” Lizzie shouted, voice rising in volume and pitch as she stepped back and jammed the tip of her dagger into the wooden surface of her desk.  She kicked back and felt her heel connect with the leg of her chair, causing the object to scrape against the ground with a loud squeal.  “What is your deal coming onto my ship like an attacker?  Bursting into my room like that?”

As she heaved panicked breaths into her lungs, heart hammering wildly against her chest, she tried to calm herself down.  At least, calm herself down enough that she wouldn’t immediately try to throttle Chip the moment that he inevitably opened his mouth.  But not calm enough that she couldn’t easily fight back with whatever he wanted to discuss this time.  

And in that time, Lizzie actually took a moment to step back and examine Chip a bit closer, her eyes darting back and forth wildly across his form.

He looked disheveled, not even wearing a shirt at the moment as he stood in Lizzie’s doorway looking like a dog with his tail between his legs.  His curly hair was frizzy and sticking up all over the place, bangs pushed back away from his forehead and sticky with sweat that had been mopped from his face frantically.  His eyes were wide, pupils contracted to near pinpricks as he stared at Lizzie as if he couldn’t believe that she was really there.  He was sweaty, gross, and panting like a dog sitting out in the sun for a bit too long.  His hand had a vice grip on the doorknob while he just sat silently and stared.

Lizzie waited for him to say something.  He didn’t.

And as she looked closer, she could notice the way that he seemed to be trembling.  It was hard to notice at first, but as she traced her eyes across the edges of his form, she could see the way that he vibrated in place where he stood.  His knees were wobbly and nearly knocking together as he tried to keep himself standing, swaying back and forth like a ragdoll with the rocking of their ship.  He seemed shocked, almost distressed at the way that she had shouted at him, not even having the energy to fight back.  That’s when Lizzie figured something was wrong.

“What are you doing here?” Lizzie asked, furrowing her eyebrows and staring Chip down.  Chip blinked as if he had just come out of a long stupor, eyes fixating on Lizzie’s face.

“Nightmare…” Chip practically breathed, voice sounding odd in his throat, much too raspy compared to how he normally spoke.  It was too high-pitched for Chip and the way he tried to lower his voice to make himself seem more masculine.

Lizzie had her fair share of nightmares that kept her awake for nights on end, she knew what it was like to wake up gasping and still feeling like she was drowning.  She had a small inkling she knew where this conversation was going.  Chip never came to her for these sorts of things unless it was about…

But still, Lizzie was angry at being startled, so she shot back, “Go to one of your co-captains.  They’re part of your crew.”

Chip just stared at her, eyes red-rimmed and sunken with exhaustion.  His lip twitched into a frown and he looked like he was about to be sick, face paling at her statement.  He suddenly looked even more like a dog with his tail between his legs. 

Chip looked like a mess.  And in his eyes, Lizzie recognized that expression as clear as day.  She recognized it enough to know it when she would wake up and look in the mirror after a long night of tossing and turning.  After a long night of thinking of the past that could never be changed.

She should have known before (she did, she just wanted to ignore the thoughts), but seeing Chip’s face forced the pieces to fall into place.

“Oh… Gods,” Lizzie practically whispered, words spilling out as almost a prayer of sorts to a god that neither of them believed in anymore.  She slumped her shoulders and felt all the previous anger drain from her body.

Lizzie took a step back, found her chair, and sat down.  Then she silently opened her arms as an invitation.  Chip blinked, mouth opening and closing like a fish above water as he took in her silent permission.

He stepped forward hesitantly, expression morphing into something almost mournful now that the previous shock had faded.  Chip’s knees trembled and he reached out to steady himself on Lizzie’s desk, knuckles going white with how hard he grasped onto the object.  

Then, he dropped into her arms like a sack of potatoes, crumbling into a heap on her lap.  Lizzie let out a breath of resignation and wrapped her arms around him, pulling him further against her chest and pressing her face against the side of his head.  Chip coiled his arms around her shoulders and held on for dear life as if he would let go and Lizzie would disappear.  Or worse…  She wouldn’t just disappear, but the ocean would swallow them both whole.  And maybe sometimes Lizzie wished it would at least swallow her.

Chip didn’t need to say anything.  Lizzie took one look at his face and knew immediately why he had come to her.  He would never come to her with any other problems besides the one thing that bonded them together for this long.  This was something much more personal than the stuff he felt comfortable sharing with his co-captains.

Lizzie sighed and leaned back in her chair, allowing Chip to soak up every ounce of her embrace, every ounce of her presence.  She hugged him tight and felt the way he grabbed at the back of her shirt and held on tight. He pulled in shaky breaths and let out just as spotty exhales, burying his face against her shoulder and relishing in her warmth.

He didn’t cry.  Lizzie was sure that he had already run out of tears before he got here.  So she just held him in his arms and felt the aching throb in her chest for him.  She ached for his pain, knowing it was the same as hers.

Her skin tingled every place that Chip touched and she tried not to sink too deep into the embrace, knowing that it would be impossible to pull herself out of.  But Chip was warm, and in the way that he sniffled and choked and pulled himself closer, Lizzie found herself responding with a hug just as tight.  She squeezed him as hard as she felt she was allowed to do and he squeezed her back just as hard.

They hugged each other so tightly, they knew that when they let go there would still be an imprint of the other lingering to comfort them.  Lizzie could feel the burning temperature of his skin scalding her own (but not in a way that hurt) and she figured he could feel the way that her nails dug protectively into his back, squeezing his arms and shoulders and holding him in place on her lap.

Lizzie wasn’t good at comforting people, and Chip knew that.  But her presence alone was enough to comfort his racing heart as it pounded so hard against his chest that she could feel it in her rib cage.  Sometimes, just her being there was enough.  And for her, sometimes Chip’s presence was enough to quell the bits of paranoia that threatened to spill over.

The two of them sat like that for what could have been hours, holding each other tightly—tight enough that it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended—and feeling the other's heartbeat pounding against their chest.  

The waves pushed against the Crescent Moon and rocked Lizzie’s ship back and forth, back and forth.  It was a gentle rhythm.  As if this ocean, far away from where everything took place, was trying to apologize to them.  Lizzie didn’t accept it.  She couldn’t.  Not yet.

After who knows how long, Chip pulled his face away from Lizzie’s shoulder.  His eyes were puffy and watery, but no tears were shed.  Lizzie stared at him and waited, wanting to see if he would speak first.  Were they going to acknowledge the situation any more than they already had?

“It’s late,” Chip finally whispered, voice hoarse as he just let out a slow breath and leaned his forehead back on Lizzie’s shoulder, “You should be asleep.”

“Too much work to do,” Lizzie held him tightly and tilted her head up towards the ceiling, staring at the pattern of the wood and idly tracing it with her eyes.  “I don’t have time.”

“There’s all the time in the world,” Chip played with the string of one of her necklaces, curling it around his fingers and feeling the twine against his skin.  He fidgeted absently, breath spilling from his lips in heavy sighs, heartbeat slowly resting to match with Lizzie’s.

“Not for me,” Lizzie shook her head, “Maybe for you, but you should know that time runs out fast.”

“There’s time to rest,” Chip yawned and stretched his arms out before placing them back around Lizzie’s shoulders, adjusting so that he was sitting in a more comfortable position on her lap.

“That’s easy for you to say,” Lizzie swallowed thickly and slid her tongue over her lips, keeping her hands still on Chip’s back while Chip trailed his palms all the way up and down her shoulders.  Lizzie hated to admit the fact that it felt nice.  That his comfort was a welcome reprieve from the stress that she had been staring down for the past several hours.  She hated that he always knew just where to place his hands to get the tension in Lizzie’s shoulders to lessen.

Wasn’t she supposed to be the one comforting him?  It seemed like Chip was just doing all the work for both of them.

Chip yawned again, and this time it spread to Lizzie who couldn’t help but also yawn.  She could feel his faint grin on her shoulder.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to go back to sleep on my own,” Chip mumbled, half-joking in order to get Lizzie to go to bed, and half-serious with the remnants of his nightmare.  He pressed his face against Lizzie’s shoulder and sighed.

Lizzie didn’t know how to respond to that.  It was still too sensitive of a situation for her to try and tease Chip for it.  She could feel his vulnerability in the way that she could almost feel the sharp edges of glass press against her palms when she held him tightly.  But she didn’t want to relent too quickly.  She wasn’t lying about having work to do and no time to take a break.  There was a lot of stuff that Lizzie still needed to get done.

“Please,” Chip whispered, his hands twitching around the back of Lizzie’s shoulders, “You need a break.  I need someone to hug.”

“What are we doing now then, if this isn’t a hug?” Lizzie tried to salvage some of this situation, hating the way that the more Chip traced his hands up and down her back, the more she felt herself sinking into his embrace as much as he sank into hers.  He hummed and let out a small sigh, shoulders slumping in her arms.

“I don’t know, talking?  Avoiding the most obvious topic because neither of us wants to bring it up?” Chip shifted and pulled his shoulders back into a small shrug, “dancing around the fact that neither of us are okay but we’re too much of our own to acknowledge it?”

Lizzie remained silent at that.  Chip continued.

“Avoiding talking about our feelings?” Chip added.

“It’s too late for this conversation,” Lizzie shook her head and dug her fingers into Chip’s back, holding her face against the side of his head.

“So you admit it’s late?”

“You should be going back to your ship.”

“Lizzie…”

“There’s still so much to be done,” Lizzie continued to try and protest, becoming a little more frantic in trying to get herself out of this situation.

“What if I don’t want to be alone?”

“You have your crew, go back with Gillion and Jay—”

“You know what I mean, Lizzie,” Chip cut her off before she could continue.  Lizzie shut her mouth with an audible click.

She knew.  She really did.

She understood the feeling of being alone with her thoughts, alone with her experiences, alone with the heaviest weight on her shoulders that she wouldn’t dare put on her own crew’s shoulders.  She knew what it was like to have to wake herself up from nightmares and force herself to calm down because she didn’t dare want to bother Caspian or John with those things.  It was too personal, too raw, and too hard to swallow even after ten years.

It was an entire story that would take years to fully explain every nuance of the dark part of Lizzie’s mind.  Sure, Caspian knew, and so did John.  But that didn’t make it easier for her to be vulnerable.

She wondered if Chip’s crew knew about it.  She was sure that he had told them about his experience, at least vague bits and pieces.  Lizzie was sure that he hadn’t told them the brunt of everything that had happened, or how it still affected him.  Lizzie didn’t even tell Caspian those things.

It was still lonely to be around people that didn’t know.  Alone with your thoughts with no one to confide in.  At least no one that would understand like the way Chip and Lizzie would understand each other.   At least their nightmares were familiar to the other, enough so that they really didn’t have to say anything to know what was wrong.

Lizzie let out a deep sigh, she squeezed Chip tighter and practically breathed a very tired and regretful, “Okay.”

Chip smiled against her shoulder and began to push himself up from her lap.  He kept his hands around her shoulders or her arms, keeping them linked together in a grasp that neither of them felt comfortable breaking.  Lizzie stood as well, silent and with shame and guilt all over her face.  There were still so many things she had to get done tonight if she wanted to keep on track with everything, but here she was going to bed “early” with Chip (it had to be nearing two or three in the morning).

She didn’t have time to dwell on that when Chip slipped his hand into her palm and squeezed gently, pulling her over to her hammock to retrieve her blanket and then dragging them both to the small cot in the corner of the room.  Lizzie sat down first, moving with a familiar rhythm that they had never actually grown out of.

Lizzie laid back with her head on the pillow, and Chip shuffled so that he was laying on top of her, the blanket draped over both of them.  He tucked his face against her shoulder and Lizzie wrapped her arms around him, tangling her hand in the back of his hair, a heavy sigh spilling from her lips.  It was just like when they were kids: Chip piled on top of her and provided enough warmth that they didn’t even need a blanket and Lizzie holding him tightly in her protective grasp.

They would protect each other, whatever happened, as long as they had each other, they would be okay.  That’s what siblings were for, after all.

Chip sighed and practically deflated, curling his arms around Lizzie and sinking into her embrace.  The rocking of the ship caused them both to sway, the creaking of the wooden beams making a steady eerie noise on the Crescent Moon. 

Lizzie idly twisted her fingers around the hair at the back of Chip’s neck and let her eyes slowly slip shut.  She told herself that she was just doing this for Chip and that he needed her more than the papers on her desk did.  He was her most pressing issue for the night.  She pointedly ignored the fact that her body itself felt heavy, hurting with the weight of all the stress she had put on it.

The chance to lie down was nice.  And the sleep was even more refreshing as the warmth that radiated from Chip along with the comfort of their embrace caused Lizzie to slowly drift off.