"Not dead." She side eyed him before releasing a heavy sigh and mustering up the strength to push herself up to sit against the wall. She pulled her hood over her head and sat in defeat. 
"Here, I got just the thing for you, Champ." JJ dug into his pockets, shuffling around the contents before his hands finally wrapped around the item he'd been searching for. Presented to her was half a roll of Mentos gum, peppermint flavor. 
JJ waved it in front of her and Collins accepted the gift with chagrin, wiggling out a piece before popping it into her mouth. "Thanks." She mumbled through a mouthful of gum. 
"Trust me, I've had my share of mornings with my head in the toilet." JJ reassured her. "But for the record, you're the prettiest girl I've ever seen even after spilling your guts."
He'd said it so casually that Collins never questioned if he meant it. Usually you don't say something so quickly when you're telling a lie. Collins peered up at him and thought about what he'd just said. Did he really think that about her? Did this not totally gross him out like she would've expected it to? It seemed that JJ was making a habit out of proving her wrong. The more and more days she shared with him, the more he did that, and it was always in the best way possible. She smiled softly then glanced over at John B, Pope, and Kiara, who were still crowded over the drone searching through the rubble of the shipwreck. By the looks on their faces, no such luck. 
As she turned back to look up at JJ, who at the same time, redirected his gaze from their friends to turn back to her. "This is the third time I've circled around." He told her, since he'd been keeping track, and a fourth time wouldn't have been very likely to do them any good.
It was then that John B had decided to give up, shaking his hand as he looked at the same empty screen displaying nothing but debris. No sign of the gold, once again. "It's not there. Just pull the drone up."
"Look, we can do another pass. Recharge the battery, we can go back down." Pope insisted, trying to remain optimistic. 
"The gold could be buried, we don't know!" Kie exclaimed in added protest to help Pope maintain what little hope all of them had left.
"If it was there, it would've been found on the metal detector." John B reasoned. "Somebody beat us to it."
"Or it was never there." JJ chimed in with a deflated look, keeping his eyes trained in front of him.
Collins kept quiet, unsure of what more she could say that hadn't already been said. She didn't feel as confident in their odds of finding the gold, though she wasn't completely at a loss. They'd done what they'd sought out to do, they'd found the Royal Merchant. That was more than what they thought they'd actually find for a couple of teenagers following a single lead from a missing man. Only now, since they'd found the shipwreck and come up empty handed, they had found themselves back to where they started; no resources, no leads, no money.
Perhaps that was how it was always supposed to be. Who were they if not Pogues who were always set up to fail? They really should've been used to it by now.
•••
Collins hadn't felt like doing much later that day. When they'd docked Heyward's boat at the fishing docks in front of his shack, Collins could barely stomach the walk past the former days' haul of fish being iced by the door. Pope had spotted her some anti-nausea medication that they kept in stock, which she had taken hurriedly in hopes that it would help soothe her sooner.
She hoped that maybe the walk home would help, too. Her feet on the ground moving at her own speed and orientation might help her get over feeling like the world was spinning, which it sort of did for a while.