He's Probably Fine - Jacksepticeye Egos Fanfic

Chapter 18 - In Between

He looked down. His hands felt soft and sluggish, like they'd been stuffed full of cotton.

His days were short and narrow-minded, but they bled together like the pages of a wet book.  Which day had he edited those Stories Untold videos? Which day had he watched the sunrise? Which day had Henrik visited him?

Jack's mind wasn't working well enough to process the shock he should've felt when he saw Chase managing the channel. The bits of life he could process seemed distant, disconnected.

Stories Untold was a cool game, though. Editing those videos felt normal again.

It was odd; he hadn't seen Chase in such a long time. Part of him had forgotten who he was. But suddenly Chase's files appeared on Jack's computer. And Chase's texts were appearing on his phone.

Jackieboy was worried, it seemed. He had called Chase half a dozen times since the Stories Untold video went up, but when Chase tried to call him back, Jackie didn't answer. Both egos had texted each other and received nothing in return. It was all so strange...

And then there was that message Chase had sent him.

"Jack! It's Chase. You need to wake up."

Wake up... Jack found himself looking at his hands again. Could he really be dreaming?

Wake up...

He was lying in his bed. Tossing. Turning. Chase's urgency was rattling around in his head. Wake up...?

Jack sat himself up forcefully in his bed. Reality had crashed into him. The fog, the distance, the dullness of it all - he'd been dreaming, all of it! He was asleep. Anti had tried to kill him, and Henrik had saved him. This was the aftermath. This was Anti's doing.

The words spilled breathlessly out of Jack's mouth before he had even thought of them. But they were true.

"I remember what he did to me."

Time passed. Jack couldn't tell how much. But his grasp on reality seemed to be improving...

Chase's videos were saved onto the computer at seemingly random intervals. Jack usually took the liberty of adding them to the upload queue. It seemed that Chase, at least, knew that Jack was still there, still doing what he could. He didn't dare make his presence known too overtly, though. Jack had nothing but respect for Chase's showmanship and commentary, and he didn't want to throw the channel into chaos. But still he helped, where he could.

After a few days, or as close as Jack could approximate, Chase saved a video to the computer with the title, "Not this one. Please delete"

Jack opened the footage and began to watch.

Chase was playing a game about depression.

The raw footage was nearly an hour long; Chase monologued to the characters in the game, talked intimately with the camera, and eventually dragged the camera out of his office to get footage of him drinking.

Jack couldn't bring himself to touch the video for a while. Then he played and replayed the bit where Chase, looking somberly to a spot somewhere off-camera, said in a broken voice, "I want to go back to when I was happy... when I had people in my life."

Jack looked again at the text messages between Chase and Jackieboyman. They'd been trying to communicate for a week now with no success. Even Henrik had joined in.

Jack looked back at the computer with a heavy sigh. Chase needed help. And there was one way left that he knew he could get Jackie and Henrik to notice. Jack only prayed Chase would forgive him.

He edited and uploaded TIE - A Game About Depression.