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Fjord hears voices, sometimes.
(Sometimes, it’s more than voices. Sometimes it’s water stains at the bottom of his pants that only he notices, the sensation of soggy socks and the scent of sea-water following him around the city. Sometimes it’s dreams about drowning and sometimes it’s things looking at him that shouldn’t have eyes -)
But. Yeah. He hears voices, sometimes.
Doesn’t everyone? College is stressful, he tells himself. There’s a lot of stress! He’s stressed. It’s fine.
He ties his voice a little tighter around him, like the blanket he used to sleep in, in the bunk under Sabien’s, on the boat. The boat, that had been so calm, so peaceful, that old sailboat that had creaked with songs, with the sound of waves lapping against the boards out in the dark, the boat that Vandren had taken them on again, and again, and again in those blissful four years he had spent with a family. The voice is familiar, the lilt of the sound soft in his mouth, like Vandren placing a hand on his shoulder and saying he’s done a good job, like Sabien smiling at him, like the smell of the canvas cover against his bed.
Jester knows that this isn’t his real voice, but she doesn’t say anything. She has her own intricacies, ones that he doesn’t question. It’s a little late to question anything, with them.
Sometimes, when he’s alone, he lets his real voice slip out, when he talks to himself in the mirror. Sometimes, that’s all that happens.
(Sometimes, he could sweat that he sees his reflection blink when he isn’t blinking. That his eyes are yellower than they were before. That his voice sounds like it’s hissing on the edges.)
He doesn’t tell anyone, because of course he doesn’t. Beau is noticing that somethings wrong, because she’s woken up to him slinking back into bed from a nightmare one too many times, but he isn’t -
He feels… guilty, about trying to get help, he guesses. It isn’t that big of a deal. He’s just stressed. It’s not like - it’s not as bad as the shit that he knows his friends go to the counseling center for, like Jester’s depression that keeps her scrawling ink on her thighs over long-healed scars when she forgets to take her meds, the panic attacks that had driven Beau to sleep with her mind half-awake for months when they first moved in together.
It’s just some nightmares. He’s fine.
(He is not fine. He knows that. He knows that. Fine doesn’t mean hearing voices. Fine doesn’t mean waking up and still feeling the pain of the tentacles that had wrapped around him and pulled him apart, joint by joint, in his dreams. Fine doesn’t mean looking in the mirror and seeing golden irises staring back.)
But, well, if he ignores it, it will probably go away. Yeah.
… Probably.
It’s not til it starts getting worse that he starts to reconsider telling - someone. Anyone. Caleb, maybe. He knows - he knows things, he could -
He’s not sure if he wants to know if he’s just - if he’s going insane, hallucinating, or if he’s - if this is some curse, some-THING
Oh.
Oh. It’s happening again.
He hunches over in the tiny bathroom stall of the coffee shop that he’s managed to drag himself into before he started freaking out in public, and watches, eyes wide and terrified, as his face morphs in the mirror, his tusks suddenly fangs, his eyes gold, unblinking. His hair drifting in some unfelt watery current -
No, scratch that, felt watery current as he takes a breath and chokes on water in his throat, spitting into the sink as the phantom feeling of water trickles down his hairline, mixing with his tears.
He coughs and sputters into the sink, red-tinged water dripping down into the drain, and avoids eye contact with the mirror, the eyes filling it staring at him wide and mercilessly. His hands grip the sink in a white-knuckled embrace.
Listening, the voice whispers, and he trembles under the weight of it. It slithers in and presses on his mind like a living thing, and he covers his ears, letting himself crouch till he’s curled up against the wall.
Watching, it continues, heedless of the hands over his ears, and he bites back a sob as the eyes start to open all around him, gold and black, blood-shot sclera, slitted pupils. Wide, many, and staring -
Punish.
His eyes flare wide as the pain starts, and he bits down on his hand to muffle a scream as he feels the pressure, the immense weight of an ocean sitting on his chest, his head, his joints as he is compressed with nowhere to go -
Reward.
The pain fades, and in its place is blessed silence.
The eyes are gone.
His hair is dry.
The only evidence left is the tear tracks down his cheeks and the already-bruising imprint of his teeth on his hand.
Right.
Right. Okay.
Join, whispers the voice, and he blinks hard, hard enough that the room stops rocking around him, a ship that’s through the storm and gone back to calm seas.
The feeling of being watched fades, and the voice falls quiet again. If past experience tells him anything, it’s that it will be days before another - moment - happens, but then again the last one was only yesterday.
Maybe they’re happening more frequently, now. Maybe he’s really going insane.
He needs to tell someone.
It takes four more days before he does. He’s not sure what finally makes him - maybe it’s the nightmare he woke up crying from, alone in his bedroom, because Beau and Jester were asleep on Beau’s air mattress in the other room. Maybe it’s the way his nails are bitten down to the quick from trying to calm himself down when the world starts going wavey.
Maybe it’s because the hallucinations - because that’s what they are, regardless of what’s causing this - haven’t stopped in just the moments where the voice speaks to him, and he’s started to see them constantly, little shadows darting out of view. Eyes opening and staring at him, everywhere, always. Watching. Waiting.
… add paranoia to the list.
So. He-
He’s going to tell someone. Not… not Beau or Jester. Not yet. But. Someone.
It’s not a conscious decision to make his way to Caleb’s apartment, but it’s where he ends up anyways after a few minutes spent blinking in and out of awareness on the cold streets below. Time slips between his fingers and as he blinks, he is leaving his apartment, then halfway there, then staring at the building, then in front of the door, hand already half-raised to knock.
Might as well. He’s already there.
He knocks, short but hard, and then stops, trying to remember what time it is. He fishes his phone out of his pocket - there’s a crack on his screen protector that he doesn’t remember noticing before - and realizes, with dawning horror, that it’s almost three am.
Shit. Fuck. Shit fuck balls.
He waits another minute, maybe more, and wrestles with himself on whether he should leave or just sit there and wait till morning. He’s not even sure how he got here, and he doesn’t trust himself to go back and get there safely, but maybe he can just slide down the wall and sit and hope that no one finds him before one of the others wake up -
The door opens, and he looks up into Caduceus’s face, the firbolg’s eyes squinting at him before widening at what he sees, backing up and waving for him to come in. Fjord stumbles in, letting his hands sink deeper into his pockets, and toes off his shoes with the ease of long-ingrained habit.
When he stops, eyes flicking wildly, Caduceus takes one look at him and grabs his shoulder, and Fjord half-flinches and half-relaxes into the touch.
“… Let’s get you sitting down,” Cad murmurs, and Fjord feels himself nod as he blinks and the world goes fuzzy around the edges.
When the room stops spinning, he’s sitting on the couch, a soft blanket draped around his shoulders, and his hands are being held by Cad’s larger ones, soft fur against his skin, and he just stares for a moment as Cad’s voice washes over him, a litany of words and questions that he can’t make heads or tails of as he struggles to focus in on the real world.
Eventually, the worlds solidify into real sounds. “… that’s it, Fjord, just keep breathing, nice and slow. I’ll put some tea on once you get calmed down, and make up the couch for you, how’s that? It’ll be nice and cozy. You must be freezing, walking all the way here so late at night.”
Tentatively, he squeezes Caduceus’s hands, and is rewarded with a strong squeeze back. “That’s it, now,” Cad murmurs, eyes still locked on him. “There you are.”
Fjord swallows heavily, and opens his mouth to explain -
He spots an eye staring at him in the reflection of the television, and his jaw clicks as his mouth falls back closed.
Caduceus looks behind him, and then back at Fjord, something knowing in his face. “It’s okay, you don’t need to tell me what’s wrong. Just - let's sit in the kitchen, let me make some tea. Warm you up some. Alright?”
He thinks he nods, or at least he assumes he does, because time slips and slams back into him in a huff to find he’s already in one of the kitchen chairs, a half-drunk mug of dark tea clasped in his hands, the soft murmur of voices out in the hallway that he tries to focus in on as he raises his hands to take a sip.
“… he’s really out of it, yeah,” He hears Caduceus say, and is surprised to hear Caleb’s gravely voice answer him, rough with sleep.
“Was he injured? Do we need to -” Caleb starts, and then stops. “You know I do not like… hospitals, but if he’s this out of it, if he’s -”
The rest of Caleb’s sentence is drowned out by the building sound of rushing water in his ears, that starts soft and then becomes a roar as he lets the mug back down to rest on the table to cover his ears. It does nothing to dampen the sound, and he lets out a frankly embarrassing whine as the whispering starts, the voice he’s come to fear and hate loud and massive in his mind.
“Fear,” it whispers to him. “Danger.” He looks down at the tea, and sees foam drifting over the top of it, pollution over the waves.
“Poison,” the voice whispers, and he shoves his hands harder against his ears. It’s lying. Caduceus is his friend. He trusts him. He trusts him. He wouldn’t do that.
But -
Maybe, that’s sweat starting to break out on his skin. Maybe his mouth tastes like blood. Maybe the rooms getting dark, he’s getting dizzy, he feels weak and faint and -
No, wait, that’s not a maybe.
He has enough warning to stumble over to the sink before he’s throwing up, saltwater flooding his mouth mixed with the taste of tea and blood, and he retches in ugly moans, coughing and sputtering at the burn in his lungs and throat. Someone pulls back his hair from his face, and he lets himself rest against the metal of the sink once everything’s come up, not wanting to look up, to face them.
At least the whispering stopped.
Eventually, he opens his eyes again, and steps away from the sink, collapsing in a heap at the kitchen table and resting his head in his hands. Caleb is still there, he realizes belatedly, and he glances at the other man.
He looks worried. Terribly worried.
Yeah. He’s worried too.
It takes a minute to unpeel his tongue from the roof of his mouth, and another to wrangle his brain into shape, but he manages. “Sorry… about, that. I - uh - I don’t… I don’t know why I’m here?”
He’s talking in the wrong accent, he thinks wildly, and shrugs it off. He can only concentrate on so much at once. “I was - I need help, I think, but I didn’t mean to come here and I didn’t know what time it was and I’m terribly sorry to bother you -”
Caduceus’s warm hand on his shoulder cuts off his rambling, and he looks back down at the table, trying not to see eyes and tentacles in the whorls of the wood.
“Can you tell us what’s wrong, friend?” Caleb sits down across from him, reaching a hand across and taking one of his own. “It’s alright if you can’t. I think I can make some guesses. But I would like your word for it, first.”
Fjord heaves in a breath, heavy and ocean-scented, and squeezes Caleb’s hand.
“Watching,” he says, in a voice that’s not his voice, and he flinches, his other hand pressing nails into his forearm until the push of a phantom voice against his lips lessens.
He swallows. Tries again.
“I’ve been hallucinating,” he says, and pinches his eyes shut, afraid to see their expressions. “It - it wasn’t this bad, when it started, I was just tired, and stressed, but it’s getting worse and I don’t know how to stop it and it hurts -”
His voice smalls silent, and he shakes under the weight of his mind, floor twisting beneath him like the roiling seas.
“Alright, Fjord.” Caleb’s hand peels his fingers away from digging a groove in his forearm, and clasps both of them in his hands. “You’re alright. We’re here, you’re safe.”
“…are you aware that you threw up salt-water?” He hears Caduceus ask, voice behind him as the firbolg is posed over the sink, and he twists around eyes wide to see Caduceus with salt mixed with blood on his fingertips, staring at them in confusion.
“I - I, I thought it was - it’s actually saltwater?” He stares at Caduceus in horror, his own voice wavering.
“Mm, yeah…” Caduceus surveys the sink, and frowns.
“If he’s throwing up blood, I think the hospital may be warranted, Caleb. Or at least the clinic.”
Fjord winces, arms leaving Caleb’s grip and wrapping around his midsection, the pain in the depths of him surging for a moment before settling back to a dull roar.
Caleb’s keen eyes don’t miss that motion, and he leans forward, eyes dark. “Are you in pain, Fjord? We need to know if you need urgent help, more urgent than in the morning.”
Fjord holds himself together. “I don’t - it hurts, but I don’t know if it’s real, or if any of this is real,” he whispers, and blinks away the eyes gathering at the corners of the room.
They blink back.
He tries not to let his flinch show, but he doesn’t think he actually manages, because Caleb is looking at him with wide eyes, with sad eyes -
He closes his own, and holds himself around his midsection and tries to block out the whispers that are getting louder in his ears, that say he needs to run, to leave, that they’ll hurt him, that they’ll hurt his friends, hurt him, hurt him hurt him hurt him hurt him hurt him hurt him -
When he opens his eyes again, Caleb is no longer next to him, and the air smells different. Twisting around, the sink is wiped clean, and there’s another mug of lukewarm tea in front of him, clean white ceramic and lavender scented.
Voices are coming from the living room, but not the same whispers still lurking in his ears. Normal voices.
“You called the clinic?”
Caduceus’s voice.
“Pike was on night duty with Grog, she offered to set up a room and get him checked out, see if we need to call - well, see what we need to do next.”
Caleb, then.
“I think that will be best. He’s - we don’t want to let something fester, if the hallucinations are a result of some internal trauma or illness. It could be an infection, and he just drank something salty earlier -”
“Or,” Caleb cuts him off, “Our friend is having a psychotic break, and in either case probably needed care days ago. I’ll wake up Eodwulf and tell him where we’re going; you start the car?”
He hears Caduceus hum, and his vision swims a bit before he’s staring back at the table again, his hand wrapped around the mug. It’s half-empty, but he doesn’t remember drinking any.
He startles at the feeling of a hand on his shoulder, twisting around awkwardly, but it’s only Caduceus, and the firbolg merely smiles at him, hands around his arms and pulling him upright.
“We’re going to take you to the clinic, alright, Fjord? It’s where Caleb has all of his medical work done, in Zadash, very trustworthy. Only a few blocks away, but we’re going to take the car, and I’ll drop you and Caleb off then find a parking spot. That sound alright?”
He thinks he nods, or at least he tries to, because Caduceus smiles like he responded, and the next thing he knows he’s in the backseat of Caduceus’s van, a blanket draped over his lap and hands and his seatbelt already buckled. Caleb comes in a few moments later, settling into the other side of the backseat, and Caduceus starts the car. Out the window, tentacles swarm, suckers pressed against the glass and leaving marks of blood and black ichor, but he closes his eyes and tries not to let them inside the car.
Caleb takes his hand, his warm palm against Fjord’s cooler one, and Fjord lets out a breath that turns into a half-hearted sob, a choke in the back of his throat.
The ride to the clinic is conducted in silence.
It’s empty, when Caduceus drops him and Caleb off. The lights are on, but there’s only a tall goliath manning the front desk, whiteish-gray skin and black tattoos that would be forbidding if not for the bright pink hoodie he’s wearing. He doesn’t pay them much mind, only turning and shouting “Pikey! They’re here,” and summoning in a gnomish woman, white hair piled up into two messy buns on top of her head.
She waves at them, smile bright and out of place in the relative silence of the room, and waves for them to follow her as she turns back towards the swinging doors into the clinic. “Hey Caduceus! And you must be Fjord. Don’t worry, we’ll get you all checked out, sweetheart. Caleb said on the phone that you’ve been hallucinating, and threw up some blood, is that right?”
He nods, following behind her, trying not to trip over the eyes blinking at him from in between the tiles on the floor.
The voices are screaming at him again, loud enough that he can barely hear Caleb saying something to Pike, and he sits on the exam table he’s led to with blank eyes, staring at a spot on the wall that stares back. He knows he should focus, he knows he should answer the questions Pike is asking, but his mind is full of screams, the phantom feeling of tentacles on his throat, the pressure of saltwater at the back of his mouth -
He barely makes it to the sink in the corner of the room before he’s choking on water and blood, fluid gushing out of him, more than it feels like should fit, long enough that he’s gasping for breath at the end of it, blackness gathering at the corners of his vision as Caduceus grabs him by the shoulders and lays him down against the exam table.
Dr. Pike examines the sink worriedly, eyes wide, and then glances back at Fjord. Back at the sink, and then back at him again.
“…Huh,” she murmurs, and she approaches him, one hand on the sun-like symbol around her neck. “I’m just going to cast a diagnostic, alright Mr. Fjord? You won’t feel a thing.”
He nods, weakly, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth, and she lays her hand on his leg, standing on a stool near the table. Her eyes go white, golden light spilling from under her hand, and he feels nothing more than a vague warmth before she’s finished.
“Well -” she says, stepping down, and turning towards her computer, “Bad news is, I know exactly what’s happening, and it’s not great. Good news is that I know exactly what’s happening, and how to stop it! I don’t have the charm for it here, but my - ah, my partner, Percival, he suffers from a similar thing… let me just call Vex’ahlia, see if she can bring over one of his spares…”
He looks at her, confused, and she turns back towards him. “Sorry, sorry, I tend to ramble. Ah - boy, this is going to sound crazy, but… probably not crazier than what I assume you’re seeing, or feeling, right now, so - what’s happening, here, is induced psychosis by an outside cause. In this case, I couldn’t identify the exact cause - you’d probably need an extraplanar researcher for that, I’m just a cleric - but good news is that I don’t need a cause to shut off the connection! There’s charms, usually in a bracelet or ring, sometimes a necklace, I know someone who did his as a pair of socks, though that didn’t last very long - sorry, rambling again. Percy’s are bracelets, so until we can get ones enchanted for you, that will need to stay on. That will cut off the connection, and stop the psychosis.”
Fjord just - stares at her. Blinks. Stares some more.
“It’s… that easy?”
She jumps, a little. Laughs, awkwardly. “Well - you’ll need to keep the bracelets on, or some other form of the charm, at least for the next year, possibly for several years. There may be lasting effects - this can be very traumatic, and there could be internal trauma that I’m not seeing right now, and ideally we’d start you on some anti-psychotics just to cover any break-through symptoms for the next few months, but other than that… It’s a good thing you came here, rather than the main hospital. It’s lucky that I knew what was going on - it’s pretty rare, nowadays, you see, and some clerics wouldn’t recognize it.”
“I - okay. Okay.” He rubs at his eyes, a few relieved tears spilling out, the elation even overcoming the voices. “Thank you.”
Dr. Pike beams at him. “It’s my job! I’ll just call Vex - we live just a few minutes from here - and then I’d like for you to drink some water, take some deep breaths. I’d reccomend someone stay with you for the next few days… Do you live alone?”
He shakes his head, dizzy with relief. “No, I live with my girlfriend and - uh. And her girlfriend.”
Pike doesn’t blink at the relationship arrangement, merely continuing to smile. “Good, good. You might experience some hallucinations for the next few days, but once we get the charm activated, they should be much easier to deal with. I’ll make an appointment for you with our psychiatrist…” She starts to mumble, entering something into the computer. “I’m going to go ahead and make that for tomorrow, someone recently canceled so there’s an open spot, perfect. Right, let me just step out to call, and then I’ll be right back. Caleb, you know where the cups are, feel free to get him some water.”
She slips out the door with a wave, and Fjord lets out a massive sigh. His hands are still shaking, but less with terror and more with exhaustion. Even the voices have calmed down, screams turning more to whispers, like they know they’ve lost.
Caduceus tilts the bed so he’s sitting up - he’s not sure when he came in, knows that it was a while ago but can’t pinpoint when - and Caleb hands him a paper cup of cool water that he sips at slowly, his friends looking just as relieved as he feels. Before long, Pike comes back in, two thin silver bracelets clasped in her hands, and she grins at him.
“Hold out your wrists, please? These will size to fit you, so don’t worry about that.”
He does as directed, and she slides the bracelets over his hands, settling them around his wrists. She says something, a word that he doesn’t quite catch, and the bracelets shrink -
It’s startling, how much clearer the world becomes, in that instant. Colors are clearer. His thoughts are sharper. He can hear the whir of traffic outside, early commuters starting to rise, and it doesn’t sound like the ocean. There’s no more voices, no more whispers, no more screams. His abdomen no longer aches.
There’s still an eye staring at him, across the room, but it’s vague and indistinct, like he’s tuned to the wrong TV channel. It’s so much easier to ignore.
It takes him a moment, of just marveling at the peace of his mind, but he wrangles his voice back together, the correct accent back in place.
“This is… incredible. Holy shit,” he swears, and Pike laughs, some of the tension in the room dissipating.
She clasps his hands, tracing a sigil on the bands, and grins up at him. “Go with your friends, get some sleep. Ten tomorrow to see Dr. Shakaste, all right? You’ll be okay. It’s gonna be okay.”
He holds her hands, staring down at her, and feels his own smile, the first one that’s felt right in weeks, creep across his face.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he repeats, and all of him knows that it’s true.