Chapter Text
Jay’s hands were still shaking.
She didn’t know how long it’d been since they left the BLOCK, but the sun had set, and that dreaded prison faded past the horizon. She hasn’t kept track of where they’ve been headed too, trusting Alphonze to guide them. Most likely, they weren’t heading in any specific direction, just away from there.
Because you are my daughter, I will give you a headstart.
Fucking hell.
She wrung out the washcloth in her hands rather violently, watching the water spray onto her clothes.
This entire day was awful. Just a repeat of her failures and screw-ups and weakness. Probably one of the worst ways a “Meet the Parents'' day could have gone. She sighed, watching the water drip, drip from the rag to the deck floor.
Really, it was more of a “Meet the Relatives” day. She was ashamed to admit she hadn’t spoken to Drey much since they set sail. Whatever torment he had gone through in his years and years trapped in captivity was… awful. He was still below deck, probably being taken care of by Chip and Ollie. He and Chip had a lot to catch up on.
Jay didn’t know what she’d say to him. She hadn’t seen him in how many years? She didn’t even know how long.
She’d barely said a word to Chip, too. They haven’t said a word about what happened there with her father and with Gill. What was she supposed to say? How could she explain any of her actions? She’d been lying to them for months and working with their enemies and she was stupid enough to grow attached and— and—
Gillion’s hand landed on her shoulder, gentle, but she still jumped, looking up at him with wide eyes.
“Are you alright, Jay?” Gill asked, softly.
His brow was furrowed, lips downturned with concern. It was concern she didn’t deserve, didn’t need. Although the small healing he received at the BLOCK helped, his face was still littered with cuts and bruises. His chest had been bandaged by now — it was one the first things they did when they got away — but the new blood seeping into his clothes meant he needed a change.
Jay did that. Jay just— just shot him like it was nothing. Like she had no control over herself. She did that to him, she hurt him. She could have killed him.
Discipline.
“Jay?”
Another heavy, calloused hand lands on hers, the wet rag, healing. Healing, that’s what she was doing.
She shook her head and wrung the rag again, harder.
“I’m alright, Gill,”
Gill frowned, clearly not believing her at all, but let her be. It almost made Jay start crying again, just how considerate and selfless he was. The selflessness may be a bit too over the top, but he just cared. He cared so much more than Jay deserved.
Gill leaned back, propping himself up with one hand. He was sitting on a crate that had been lying about, probably full of some fruit Earl demanded they buy. The bandages wrapped around his chest were a dark teal, wet from the new blood seeping through.
She sighed, steeling herself, and set about redoing Gill’s dressings.
It was rough. For her. Gill seemed relatively fine throughout the process, except for the occasional wince or hiss at the stingy antiseptic.
For Jay, each flinch and grimace from Gill sent her into a spiral of guilt. Before her brain could fully catch up to the stimuli, all she heard from his pain was that she was hurting him. It’s her fault. She was surprised she hadn’t collapsed into herself by the end of it. Maybe it was her need to do something right today; one small thing to counter the awful things she did over the course of their months together. A small act that could stare at the beast of her thoughts and yell, “I’m not always a monster!”
After tying the last bandage down, Gill stretched. There was still strain on his face. His eyes tightened and jaw clenched when his arms pulled up. She could tell the stretch strained on his wound. It pulled on the raw, swollen skin.
Despite all her efforts, all her attempts at an apology, of reconciling, Gill was still hurting.
Discipline.
Her fault.
Jay slammed the rag down and still flinched at the sound even though she knew it was coming.
Weak.
She sat up quickly, moved in front of the crate Gill was sitting on, and leaned on the ship’s rails that separated her from the seas. Her skin felt alight — like there were ants and bugs galore underneath her skin. She felt every nibble and bite and sting. She leaned forward, letting the ship hold her weight, and ran her hands through her wrecked ponytail mess. Her hands still shook. Her breath did, too, or maybe that was just her entire body shaking. The ponytail must have slowly come undone at some point during the chase back to her ship. She had been too busy to notice. The ribbon was dangling near the bottom of her hair, tugging on her scalp, so she just pulled it free. She played with it in her hands, watching the ocean.
Gill’s hand rested on her lower back. Comforting, present, supporting. It was comfort she didn’t deserve. Gill should have thrown her off of his ship into the ocean below by now. Or maybe he didn’t want her dwelling in his home. Maybe they were set off to find Featherbrooke and dump her in her mother’s tavern, telling the whole town how she was a screwup of a soldier and a pirate. She'd failed her family name and crew in one fell swoop.
“Breathe, Jay,” Gill stressed, rubbing circles in her back with kind hands. “Breathe.”
She tried. She really was trying.
Her tears, which had just barely finished fucking drying, increased tenfold, leaving her face salty. It reminded her of Gillion.
She whispered to the ocean waves, to Gill, to herself, “Sorry, I’m— I’m so sorry, Gill, fuck. ”
She turned back towards him and slumped to the floor pathetically. It left Gill’s hands hovering mid-air, but he simply followed Jay and leaned forward on the crate, resting a hand on her knee.
His eyes shined with tears, as well. She’d say perhaps it was just his natural moistness, but she knew Gill better than that. His eyes were tear-filled, almost breaking over the brim. She couldn’t imagine why. Did he really care about her enough to worry over her pathetic tears? Really?
He cares, a small voice in the back of her head whispered, with so much conviction and hope for the world. He cares for you.
Jay could still feel the twinge of the bowstring on her fingertips when she fired the final shot that struck Gillion down. The dull thud of Gillion's heavy, lifeless body hitting the cold stone floor echoed in her mind. Gillion's breath stuttered. Jay crushed that ball of hope that still fluttered in the back of her mind like a moldy fruit. It was messy.
“I hurt you, Gill,” She said instead of voicing her racing thoughts. He should yell, scream, hit, perform some angry act that let Jay know she had fucked up. She couldn’t even look at him. She just aggressively rubbed at her eyes, trying to magically wipe away her emotions. “I fucking— I shot you!”
Gillion’s brow furrowed, watching her keenly with so much concern swirling in his eyes it made her want to vomit. “You weren’t in control of yourself. Those actions were your father’s doing, not yours. How could I blame you for that?”
She almost laughed, because she could have stabbed Gillion right in that exact moment and he would have apologized for upsetting her. Instead, the words just pulled out more memories of her father and his commands and his booming voice that used to vibrate the entire house.
Jay felt like a little girl again: alone in a sea of her thoughts, trembling behind a locked door, and terrified.
Even after months away, he still controlled her. He made her scared.
“That doesn’t matter. ” She managed to croak out between voice cracks. The warble in her throat made it hard to breathe properly. “I still hurt you and— and— and I’m a liability. My dad— the whole fucking NAVY is— is after me and I’m just—”
She cut herself off with a swear and buried her head into her arms. She felt small and weak and so fucking vulnerable. She hated it.
“This fucking sucks,” She muttered.
“Yeah,” Gill agreed halfheartedly. His voice felt far off. “It does.”
She sighed and even though her arms still shook and her lip trembled, she raised her head to look at Gill.
Surprisingly, Gill wasn’t looking at her. He was staring off somewhere above her, across the sky and the sea and the moon. The waves were calm tonight, gently brushing against their ship, guiding them away from the hellhole the NAVY prison was. Even the moon felt kinder than usual, if she dared to believe. The full moon shone bright, lighting up Gillion's face better than any torchlight ever could. Gill didn't tremble in the eyes of the moon, but sat tall and proud, eyes ablaze with determination. She distantly wondered what he saw. Home? Comfort?
His hand was still on her knee, a steady force against the wreckage in her brain. She raised her shaky hand and placed it on top of his, letting her calluses run across his fingers as she held on with no real force.
That peeled his gaze away from the pitch-black and star-speckled horizon. His eyes were as intense as always, but he was concerned. His eyes felt like the small waves on the beach that just barely went over her feet: an ever-steady presence that held more kindness for her than Jay could ever hold for herself. She felt herself falling for him all over again.
But where her love grew festered cold, dark fear overtook its place. Where would this love lead? Who would it hurt?
Jay was so, so stupid. She’d gotten attached to the first people who showed her unbridled love since Ayva’s death and was too selfish to abandon them. With her father and his whole army of soldiers following his orders, Jay would only lead her friends to destruction and death. Her thoughts lurched to a halt at that one word. Death. She could feel her throat go dry and she was suddenly desperate to say something, anything, as every voice in her mind panicked
“You should have let me leave with my father,” She whispered into the night, surprising herself with her words. She looked away, ashamed, but she continued. “You shouldn’t have convinced me to stay. I’ll only burden you, hurt you.”
Her throat tried to close up with each sentence and every breath. Why was the truth so hard to get out? All she said were stone-cold facts. They would be hunted more fiercely than ever before now that she abandoned the NAVY and opposed her father.
You are no longer my daughter?
What would her mother say when Jay was inevitably shipped back home? Would her mother even want her anymore? She was just a disgrace of a soldier, daughter, friend, and pirate.
She deserved nothing.
Gill’s fingers — bumpy with calluses and decorated in scars and knicks — came to her face, lifting her chin to look him in the eyes. His hold was soft and kind and his eyes reflected just the same. her breath stuttered.
“I will never abandon you, Jay,” He stated, so certain. He was so confident and sure in himself, invoking some determination from deep within himself that was so Gillion it made Jay love him even more. “If you truly wished to follow your father, that would be your choice to make. But for as long as you wish to stay a Riptide Pirate, I will always be by your side with a hand on your back.”
Her face felt hot, but she didn’t want to hide again. She didn’t want to avoid him or affection or love any longer. The simple thought of someone caring about her this much, enough to defend her against her own monsters and consequences, made her vision blurry with emotion. The idea that Gillion would stick by her side until the end, whether that meant her adventure’s end or their life’s end, made her insides flutter and spin in circles. This love was almost too much. Every feeling, every emotion in her chest was too strong, too emotional, too real, too true.
Jay’s lungs felt like they were going to implode. She tried to open her mouth, say something of similar worth to his promise, but she fell flat. There was nothing that came close, not by a mile. Jay was never eloquent with her words. She was no poet or author. She was trained to be a soldier, a general if she got lucky. She was destined for greatness, not love.
So instead, she said something she later found to be just as powerful.
With stuttered breath and an out-of-body feeling, she blurted out into the night air, “I think I love you.”
Silence. “Like, romantically.”
And then she froze. With Gill’s fingers stuck on the freckles on her chin and her hand on his, she couldn’t do anything but stare at his widened eyes. Her body felt too warm, too tall, too agonizing, too much. She was stuck in a purgatory of her own making, left hanging in mid-air, reaching for a hand she didn’t know would ever reach out. Her breath was gone, robbed from her lungs like precious jewels. Under his gaze — his shocked, frozen gace — she still felt like she was worth more than any gold they could achieve as Pirates.
Stupid.
She prepared to apologize for her confession — a stupid, idiotic, insensitive confession to make right after she fucking shot him — and cry herself to sleep in her cot. Her mouth opened and shut repeatedly, unsure what to say for herself. When she moved her free hand to Gillion’s hand on her chin, meaning to pull his touch away, Gill fought to stay.
She couldn’t decipher the look on his face and it was freaking her out. She knew Gillion, she knew he’d never want to embarrass or make her uncomfortable, but he was also bound to his morals of truthfulness.
He carefully slid to the floor in front of Jay, accommodating for the wound in his chest as he lowered himself. Mindlessly, barely realizing she was moving, Jay helped steady him with her free hand. He was sat criss-cross, still holding Jay’s hand with all the care in the world and now rubbing Jay’s cheek with his thumb. It felt so familiar and Jay was tempted to lean into the touch and simply fall asleep in his care.
He parted his lips and anxiously pressed them together, as if second-guessing himself. It made Jay’s heart fall with a horrible drop, but then, he finally spoke.
“I love you too,” He stated, so determined and sure of himself that for a moment, Jay stopped breathing and she felt like the sun. She took in the sight of his eyes reflecting the stars and patterns on the ocean. She wanted to commit the sight to memory she she could hold this moment in the palm of her hand forever.
He smiled humorously. “Romantically.”
“Really?” She asked breathlessly. She dared to let a smile pass on her lips. It felt like sunlight.
“Yes,” He promised, squeezing her hand with care. “I promise.”
And Jay smiled and Gill smiled. Something clicked in her chest, settling peacefully in her heart, and Jay felt alright and at peace for the first time in a long, long time.
“Oh,” Jay exhaled, and whatever pressure that was sitting on her chest earlier dissipated. She was alive. Loved, even. “So— so are we like…”
“Committed?”
A blush filled Jay’s cheeks. She looked down at her feet. “Yeah, like— together, I guess.”
Gill’s hand left her face and she found herself missing the contact immensely. Like an ache that she felt would stay there forever until his caring, loving hands returned.
“If you would like to be, I am so down to being committed to you.” Pure, unadulterated joy leaked into Gill’s words.
Jay giggled. When she peaked back at him, she found he was looking off to the side, pointedly away from her. A dark blue blush swelled in his cheeks. Jay smiled softly. Gods, he was so… so Gillion.
“Hell yeah,” She said instead of, please hold me and never let go. “I’d love to be— that. Yeah.”
Her blush grew. She never claimed to be a poet.
Gill’s blush grew as well and when he looked back at her, this time Jay was the one to smile reassuringly at him. Whatever Gillion saw in her, some speck of pure love or warmth or care, it made him relax.
A calm, peaceful silence washed over the two of them. With only the waves, the wind, and the occasional creak of the wood or Alphonze steering the ship along as background noise, Jay found herself in bone-deep tiredness. The events of today weighed so heavy on her shoulders, piling higher and higher, and honestly, she didn’t know how she was still awake. She leaned back, letting her head rest on the bars of the ship’s railing. She let her eyes slip shut, exhaling in the relief that came with the action.
“We should sleep,” She whispered into the night.
“Yeah,” Gill agreed.
Neither of them moved.
The next morning, Chip found them both asleep on the deck, not having moved an inch after their conversation. Their hands were still interlocked. He let the two of them sleep. He could handle a few extra morning duties. He smiled to himself and made a note to tease Jay about her crush later on.