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Once Doppel-Gillion had turned into Husk-Gillion and shoulders collectively untensed onboard the Albatross, Chip finally felt secure enough to really take in the state of Real-Gillion. And it certainly wasn’t good.
The triton’s skin was caked in dried, blue blood and layers of skin were torn off across his entire body. Some patches didn’t have too much damage, whereas others were bad enough that Chip could nearly see the tissue in his arm. His arms themselves were cut up and bloody, but his hands were in by far the worst condition.
It had taken an upsettingly long time for Chip to notice Gillion’s palms. This could have been due to the fact that his friend’s fast-paced fighting style hadn’t significantly faltered as they were escaping the Promise Bastion (although his magic had been a bit more finicky) or the fact that Gillion had kept his hands dutifully clenched at his sides since they’d gotten back on the ship, which must have been extraordinary painful.
There were holes going straight through his palms. If Chip were to hold one up to his eye and gaze into it, he would have been able to see straight to the other side of the deck.
When Chip noticed this, and how Gillion winced in pain as the triton tried to grab the hilt of his sword, there wasn’t a single thought in his brain that wasn’t saying help him.
So he gently grabbed Gillion’s arm in a spot he’d made sure hadn’t lost any skin, locked eyes with Jay and nodded towards the door to the Captain’s quarters, and led Gillion below deck despite the other’s protests.
“Chip, Chibo, my friend, I’m fine,” Gillion nearly pleaded as Chip nudged an old trunk towards the middle of the room and gestured for the triton to take a seat.
Chip didn’t say anything, just tilted his head and gave Gillion a tired look until he finally relented and sat down.
If this wasn’t the scenario it was, Chip would have found the face he was making comical. He was pouting, like a stubborn child.
Gillion, Gillion. When will you learn to accept the help you deserve?
He was staring. Chip coughed and turned to where Jay was standing near the edge of the room. She’d just set down a few things on the dresser next to one of their beds: a bowl of water, a needle and thread, a rag, and a bottle of antiseptic.
“Jay, can you, uh, use your healing stuff on his hands?” Chip asked. “They’re…fuck, they’re jacked up.”
Jay nodded and Chip stepped aside so she could crouch down and take Gillion’s hands in her own.
“Gods, Gil,” she murmured, freezing up for a moment. She gave Gillion a sad look and gently squeezed his fingers.
Gillion squeezed back and gave her an equally sad smile. She looked back down to his hands, took a deep breath, and whispered something in a language Chip couldn’t have understood even if it was loud enough for him to hear clearly. A cool light washed over Gillion’s hands from her own. It was familiar magic, the kind he’d seen her perform dozens of times, and Gillion seemed to relax a bit more when he saw it.
Once Jay let go of his hands, Chip could see the skin around the holes start glowing, and he knew that it was beginning to stitch itself back together on a level so small that none of them could see.
“Thank you, Jay. Feels better already,” Gillion told her, with a clearly exaggerated (yet appreciative) grin.
“Any time, Gil. It won’t heal immediately, obviously, but hopefully it’ll make the healing process faster. And dull the pain.”
Jay stood, brushing invisible dust from her legs. She gave Gillion a once-over and turned to Chip.
“Do you want me to go grab some gauze?”
He nodded and made eye contact with Jay. From the way her eyebrows furrowed and her chin tilted down, he knew what she was trying to get across.
This is fucked. Make sure he doesn’t run off to try healing someone else before I get back. Self-sacrificing ass.
Or something like that.
And just as Jay had predicted, Gillion pushed himself up and off of the trunk the mere moment after she left the room. Chip jolted forward as his stance wavered, but he watched as the triton’s posture went rigid and his expression was quickly schooled in true Gillion Tidestrider fashion.
Despite the quick concealment of any pain whatsoever, Gillion’s nose scrunched up as a part of his forearm brushed his side when he stood.
Chip put his hands out. “Hey,” he hummed, dragging out the ‘y’. “You should sit back down, buddy, Jay’s going to be back with the stuff to patch you up soon.”
Gillion just waved him off and gave him a winning smile—or his best attempt at one. “There’s really no need for that, Chip, I’m alright.”
He moved forward briskly, face contorting with every step. In the dim light of their quarters, his face looked incredibly worn. Chip scrambled to stand in front of the door.
The triton pushed on, reaching out to gently move Chip to the side. “Jay probably needs some healing of her own, I mean, her leg certainly looks worse for wear-”
Finally, Chip reached out to grab Gillion’s arm in the spot he knew was unscathed.
“Gillion,” he begged, the tone making his friend’s eyes widen and resolve seemingly crumble. “Please. You’re hurt. Like, really hurt. And you- you’ve spent so long helping Jay and I. You always do. Just…let me help you, for once. Please.”
After a moment Gillion’s shoulders slumped. His eyes flicked up to Chip’s for a moment before locking on the floor of the cabin, but he nodded.
If breathing had still been something Chip normally did, he would have sighed in relief.
Gillion stubbornly sat back down on the trunk and Chip lowered himself onto the bed next to it. He pushed up the sleeves of his coat and clapped once.
“Other than, uh, all the skin that got torn off, is anything particularly fucked up?” He looked Gillion up and down, trying to detect any harsher damage he might have missed.
Gillion hummed and held out his left arm, revealing the fin on his forearm. There were several large gashes in the translucent skin and the sight made Chip draw a breath through his teeth.
“Oh shit, that looks bad. How badly does it hurt?” Way to state the obvious, dumbass.
The triton shook his head. “It has no nerves to be cut, so it’s not very painful. It’ll heal on its own. Perks of being a fish!”
Gillion gave him the most real, though tired, smile that he’d had that day. Chip found himself smiling back.
There was a sharp knock and, without waiting for an answer, Jay popped her head in the door frame.
“Found one roll, I’ll be back with more when I can fucking find the rest of ‘em. You doing okay, Gil?”
From where he sat on the crate, he gave her a stiff thumbs-up and that same smile.
“Good- '' Jay's eyes widened and she took a step into their quarters. “Oh shit- um, don’t take this the wrong way but you should really take your shirt off. That gash on your side looks nasty.”
Chip and Gillion looked down at the same time, and there was in fact a considerable cut going through the side of Gillion’s torso, bleeding through the tear in his shirt. It was almost camouflaged, thanks to the flexible fabric of Gillion’s shirt and the deep blue blood that had soaked into it. Even Chip had no idea how he (or Jay, for that matter) had missed it and he mentally kicked himself.
Gillion’s expression was pinched; maybe the adrenaline of battle and such severe injuries was finally wearing off. Chip immediately felt a touch more stressed and gave Jay a worried look.
She stared back at him with her lips pressed in a thin line and tossed a roll of gauze in Chip’s direction, which he fumbled to catch for an embarrassing moment. After giving him a proud nod, she blew a strand of hair out of her face and whirled back around, closing the door behind her.
“Thanks, Jay,” Chip called after her. He sighed and turned back to Gillion, giving him a tight grin and tossing the gauze up. “So! Should we start with your side?”
For the next twenty or so minutes, the two of them sat in near silence as Chip began cleaning and dressing some of Gillion’s wounds.
Gillion had taken his undershirt off and tossed it aside, fully revealing the cut on his torso. Chip cleaned it as quickly as he could while still being gentle and muttered a quick apology for his poor sewing skills before beginning to stitch it up.
Should Jay have been the one to do that? Probably. But the wound was bleeding heavily and panic set in before Chip could consider who was really better at performing surgical stitches.
At one point he heard a loud crash in the distance and the sound of Jay screaming.
“Where the fuck did all of our gauze go?!” Another crash.
The noise caused Chip to jolt up and drop the needle, leaving it hanging from Gillion’s arm. He swore under his breath but the two snickered to themselves as they listened to the commotion, then settled back into their calm silence.
There were a few other cuts on Gillion chest, but the brunt of the damaged skin seemed to be on his arms and legs.
There wasn’t a lot of first-aid expertise Chip had picked up in regards to being skinned, so he just had to wing it and try to treat each area to the best of his ability. The first thing he did was bandage Gillion’s palms, which were already looking better thanks to Jay’s magic, then he began focusing on some areas with the worst of the damage.
Gillion sat stoic and still, for the most part, although he did let out the occasional hiss or flinch of pain. Chip was frankly impressed that he was displaying so little distress; if it was him who’d had his skin practically ripped to shreds he would have been whining like a little bitch.
This is Gillion Tidestrider, he reminded himself while wringing out the rag. He’d need to replace that water soon. Champion of the Undersea and shit. He’s built different.
Eventually Gillion shifted and cleared his throat. “What was it like fighting evil me?” He asked, disrupting the established, silent ambiance.
Chip looked up from the patch of marred skin he was disinfecting. Gillion glanced at him with a tired but genuine expression, and he took a moment to fix his posture and sigh, without any air being exhaled.
“Not very fun, uh, no offense. You’re…well, you’re obviously one hell of a fighter, so evil-you was too. And as someone who’s fought you before, it wasn’t awesome to do it again.”
He bit the inside of his cheek and set down the rag in his hand, swapping it out for a roll of gauze. As he wrapped it around Gillion’s bicep, he considered his next words.
“And to be completely honest, I was…scared. I thought I-,” He cut himself off and cleared his throat. “We lost you. I mean, we’d been sure that you were back- he was really convincing. He had your…your look and your armor and your mannerisms and…fuck. I’m sorry I didn’t realize sooner.”
Gillion just gave him a sad smile. “Don’t be. The whole point was that you didn’t notice until it was too late, wasn’t it?” He peered down at his marred, partially skinless arms, holding them out as a part of his argument.
“Yeah, I guess.” He looked at his friend for a moment, feeling dread and regret wind through his gut like a snake.
A wet laugh escaped his throat “God, Gil, I took a fireball for him.” He leaned back and tilted his head up to the dark ceiling for a moment. If he could cry, he imagined that tears would have been welling up.
When his head dropped, Gillion was looking up at him. There was something in his eyes that Chip couldn’t quite place. Confusion, shock, awe, a combination of all three?
“You…would do that? For me?” Gillion sounded like he was in disbelief.
Chip paused and suddenly felt an incredible interest in the gauze he was holding. Maybe it was a good thing he was dead, because he would have definitely been blushing. “Yeah. Always.”
A bandaged hand gently squeezed his own, and he looked back to Gillion.
”Well, I would take one for you…pookie.” Gillion flashed him a grin and Chip couldn’t help but snicker. After a split-second of consideration he leaned over to carefully rest his head on Gillion’s shoulder.
”That’s…that’s good to know,” he replied through a reluctant smile. Gillon smelled like seawater and blood. He closed his eyes.
When Doppel-Gillion had locked him in the leviathan room of the Promise Bastion, he’d said that he “had” Chip. In the moment he was a bit more focused on not dying than anything else, but once he, Jay and Gillion were safely on the ship he’d realized it was true.
Gillion, real Gillion, did have him. Completely and utterly. He’d had him for who knows how long. Maybe it was when he and Jay had rescued him from the Luxbris pearl, or when he’d given Chip that ring of protection (the one that still hung on a golden chain around his neck), or when he spared his life after their first duel. Hell, maybe it was when Chip first pulled him out of the ocean.
He didn’t think he was in love with Gillion, not entirely. It was more devotion than anything else. Gillion was his person, one of his people, and he’d follow him to the ends of the earth. In a way, he already had. Here they were, sitting beaten and bruised in the Black Sea. Chip was dead, Jay’s leg was seemingly unsalvageable, and Gillion had been skinned.
He’d taken a damn fireball for Gillion (or who he’d at least thought was Gillion), and he would do it a hundred times more if it meant that he was safe.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” he murmured.
Gillion released Chip’s hand and wrapped an arm around the other. “Thank you, Chip.”
Before he could reply, the door was slammed open as Jay walked in, victoriously holding another box of gauze. He could hear her stride into the room before coming to a quick halt.
”Ew. Chip, stop being clingy. I’m gonna fix up those cuts on Gil’s leg.” She took a few more steps and lightly kicked Chip’s leg.
He scoffed and leaned back, lifting his head from Gillion’s shoulder as the triton laughed and looked over to Jay. Chip’s nose wrinkled as he flipped her off, and in return she smacked the back of his head with the newest box of gauze and sat down next to him.
“Bitch.”
“Gay.”
“Jay, what the fuck?!”