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Valre is jolted awake as the ship rocks him into the back of the couch, and the rumbling of thunder hits his ears a few moments later. He grunts and runs his hand across his ears before he tugs the blanket over his shoulders and buries his face into the back.
It’s not as if he hasn’t slept a lot over the course of this week and a half, but he’d rather be asleep and think about nothing than be awake and have his brain assaulted by anxieties, memories, and worries about the future.
Nothing is set in stone anymore. Before, he could attempt to predict how things would go based off of what had come before, but now that he’s revealed his greatest secret to his bunkmate, and considering she’s barely conversed with him on the subject, he has no idea what to think or feel.
She’d said everything had changed when he’d done his half-assed confession, but everything has changed again, and for a worse reason than romantic feelings.
He hates having his body bound by a blood pact, his mind tied to another. If he’d known how miserable he’d be alive, he would have let himself die that day in Dalmasca.
‘Oh stop with the self deprecation. It’s exhausting.’
He presses his hands to his ears and attempts to drown out the voice, as if it would ever work, and his voidsent snorts at the thought.
‘If you’re up, you can eat. I’m hungry.’
‘You’re always hungry.’
‘And you’ve been barely eating anything. If you don’t, I will.’
He sighs, but the last thing that would make Fjore comfortable would be his voidsent wandering around as the primary host of his body, so he reluctantly pushes the blankets from off of his shoulders and attempts to rise.
The ship sways with the force of the storm, and he falls onto his knees, still weak from his lingering sickness.
The idea of eating still makes him nauseous, and it takes him a while to stagger over to the table after he yanks an apple from their storage. He decides to not use a knife with how much the ship is swaying, and instead takes a hesitant bite.
It’s not bitter or anything, but the texture of food in his mouth is foreign and he ends up gagging before he begins to dry heave.
‘Holy fucking shit. You’re so fucking pathetic.’
He can feel his voidsent begin to take over, and he doesn’t have the strength between the dry heaving and weakness in his body to resist.
Caturix shifts around a bit before he begins eating the apple in earnest, and Valre is left to wallow around as he usually does whenever he wants to take over.
“Can’t even eat an apple… Without me, you’d be dead.”
Valre doesn’t answer that, other than a grumble to keep his thoughts to himself; the last thing Fjore needs is to hear him talking to himself again.
“Oh calm down, pussy. She’s fast asleep.”
The ship rocks again, and both he and Caturix are caught off-guard, and his body ends up falling from the chair. Caturix holds fast to the apple, but his shoulder smarts from the impact, and Valre takes over, hissing as he presses a hand to it.
Shuffling comes from the bed, and he watches as Fjore pulls the curtain to the side. “…Are you alright? Why’re you up?”
“Ah…” He coughs and pushes himself to his feet, staggering into the wardrobe as the ship rocks again, and he sees her also disappear behind the curtain.
“Jezzum. Never mind.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t fall out of the bed,” he attempts to snark, but there’s a weakness behind his words, and he sighs, putting the half-eaten apple down. “Uh… he wanted something to eat, so…”
She doesn’t answer, and doesn’t pull back the curtain either, and he bites his tongue; he shouldn’t have said anything, not when it’s so fresh. He stumbles back over to the couch and sits rather harshly, but stares forward at the stove. Probably not a good idea to light it, but he doesn’t know if she’s cold either.
“He… doesn’t want aether, right?” Her voice is hesitant and quiet, and he almost misses it, and his heart drops as he processes the words.
“N-no. No. It’s… it’s not time yet. And I don’t… want him to…” No matter what he says, it all sounds awful, so he lets his voice awkwardly die off.
“Oh. Well…” She clears her throat and takes a long pause herself. “Should probably eat more’n an apple with how much… weight you lost.”
He grits his teeth and feels his wrist again. As he does every morning. “Yeah. But I almost threw up again. So I don’t really want to.”
A long pause before she quietly agrees with him.
He hates the tension. The fear. Especially since he’s the one who caused it by even making the gods-forsaken pact in the first place. He pulls at his ear and rubs his foot against the rug under the couch as the ship rocks again.
That doesn’t make him sick of course, but the texture of apple in his mouth makes him want to hurl. Makes sense.
He presses his fingernails into his wrist enough to hurt before Fjore speaks up again. “I can… maybe make you something better. If you need to eat. An apple isn’t enough.”
He feels like throwing up at the thought, but the thought of taking that much aether from her again makes him feel worse, so he quietly agrees.
“Alright. Maybe something colder then. Don’t wanna cook with fire in this weather.” She slides out of the bed, and his ears angle to hear her better, but he doesn’t look over his shoulder. “Bread doesn’t seem to work too well, so… maybe a salad or something?”
“Dunno… I don’t know what will work and what won’t.”
“Well, it’s worth a shot. Maybe something flavorless will help.”
He can hear her rustling around in the wardrobe. “Jerky. Salted meats. Fruits. Some dried fruits.”
“Doesn’t sound like you can make much out of it without cooking.”
“…Yeah. Guess not. Maybe a fruit salad, but that’s about it.”
He stands and wanders over to the pantry, and doesn’t miss how she flinches when he stands next to her. “Guess I’ll try the… salted meat. Maybe the salt will help.”
“Uh, maybe.” She passes it over, stepping back as soon as he grabs it, and that makes him feel sick already.
He’s barely even able to get a bite in before he’s gagging, and though she rushes to grab one of the buckets, he’s already throwing up onto the floor.
“Why would she think you’re the victim?” Gloria’s words play over and over in his mind, and the nights he’d spend dry heaving over the side of the bed come back to him fresh.
“Val…”
He attempts to say something, anything, but his stomach won’t stop seizing, and the sensation of Gloria’s hands across his body won’t fade away. He curls up into a ball, gagging, and shifts himself under the table away from Fjore.
“Gods… what can you even eat?” She sighs and stands up to fetch some rags, and though his coughing and heaving dies down by the time she’s halfway done cleaning up after him (again), he’s too weak to do anything but lay under the table.
“I’m sorry…”
“Just… be sorry for yourself.” She doesn’t look at him, and he grimaces and looks away, squinting his eyes shut.
He’s not a victim. This is just his own weakness brought to the flesh.
He manages to drag himself back to the couch, despite Fjore’s insistence to help, and buries himself fully under the covers.
He doesn’t deserve her pity or her kindness. Not after all he’s done.