![]() He shakes his head, struggling for the words. I was scared that was the only way I’d ever see you again. “When you were gone… Well, I kept seeing you in everything. “Because I was scared,” Chip says, and it’s the truth. “Why did you tell Jay you were going to leave after I got trapped?” “I ask you again, Chip,” Gillion says in the same tone as before. He gets the message all the same that Gillion would fall apart without him, too. It doesn’t make the emotion any less all-encompassing and heartaching to feel firsthand, even if it only lasts for a few moments. He knows the conversation he had with Gillion about this, which led directly to their second (albeit far more light-hearted) duel. It’s a deep pain and fear of rejection, so clearly aimed at Chip, permeated by a single phrase I’ve always been a liability.Ĭhip isn’t stupid enough not to differentiate that this is a memory of a feeling. He’s overwhelmed with emotion that isn’t his own, a deep feeling of not belonging. “If I was, I wouldn’t have fallen apart without you.” Hear me when I say you are a good one.”Ĭhip laughs bitterly. “Chip,” Gillion says, his voice dipping in that soft and sincere way he’s grown to recognise, “I’ve met a lot of people since coming to the Oversea, good and bad. “Didn’t I tell you to fucking stop that ? I’m not- You’re good. He sees himself, which would take him forever to wrap his head around if he didn’t instantly recognise the hard wooden deck he’s sprawled on, or the whalebone longsword aimed for his throat. I’m not even a good friend.”Īn image flashes in his mind unbidden. Genuinely, Gill, fuck you ,” Chip spits, giving up on the bracelet for the moment. “A human one,” Gillion offers, and it's so sincere Chip can’t stand it. Did you not hear what I said? I lost you and I didn’t know what to fucking do, and what kind of a captain does that make me?” “Stop that,” he hisses with a scowl, half-heartedly scrabbling at the bracelet on his own wrist with clumsy fingers that fail to find purchase. The flames die on his skin before they can even truly start. He can’t comprehend it, not with what little the bracelet allows him to see, and he’s not sure he wants to. Deep sincerity, interlaced with such care and dedication that Chip’s head seems to spin. ![]() ![]() Not his fault, says another, and then a surge of emotion crests up and over the top of it all. So harsh on himself, one part of Gillion’s mind says. ![]() Chip feels the magic of the bracelets, which he had quite frankly forgotten they both still wore, course up his forearm, curl through his bicep, blaze through his throat and slam into his mind like a tidal wave. “But you are a good captain.” His voice is uncharacteristically soft. “What if I didn’t get you back, huh? Or what I was meant to do if I lost you again and this time things didn’t work out? I couldn’t- I couldn’t keep pretending to be a good captain.” “What do you want me to say, Gill? That I failed ? That I realised I was a useless screwup of a man and that I lost you ?” Fire flares at Chip’s fingertips with the force of his rage. “Why did you tell-” Gillion starts, but Chip’s lip curls up in an animalistic snarl the second he realises what’s happening. “What?” he demands, flexing his fingers in the air just barely over the hilts of his swords. ![]() Words threaten to climb his throat before he swallows them back down, unsure why he felt so possessed to answer. It’s a simple question, really, but it has Chip falling into a defensive stance on the deck of the Albatross. ![]()
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