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Jesper couldn’t sleep.
He was itching all over. It felt like there were a million insects crawling all over his body. He kept tossing and turning, repositioning, though still careful not to wake Wylan next to him.
This wasn’t anything new to him, of course. He’d try to close his eyes and rest and then he’d have to scratch this itch and move and his mind would be whirling this way and that.
Tonight, though, it felt particularly bad.
He tried his usual routine. Slowly, softly, carefully, Jesper slipped out from beneath the covers of the bed he shared with Wylan. His feet dropped onto the carpet silently.
He circled the perimeter of the room, intending to take a little walk, coax some of the itching out of his body.
Jesper really didn’t know where he had meant to go, but he found himself standing in front of their things. Wylan’s satchel. His sketchbooks. His music. Jesper’s revolvers. He rested his hands on the gorgeous things, stroked their silky pearl handles. It soothed him, just a little.
Not enough.
There was a tin of jurda resting with Jesper’s stuff, next to his revolvers. Jesper barely even used it; he had no need to. But it gave him some twisted reminder of home.
He popped open the tin, the fragrance of the orange flowers immediately hitting his nose. He almost regretted opening it; even inhaling a little made him feel very slightly more awake. Or maybe it was just the shock of smelling it; he honestly didn’t know.
Jesper selected one of the flowers on top and ran his fingers along the petals, careful not to tear its delicate pieces apart.
I’ve spent my whole life hiding the things I can't do. Why run from the amazing things you can do?
Yes, why run? Why was he still running? Jesper felt like a coward, lately. Everything should have felt okay now. He was living in one of the finest houses he’d ever seen with an equally fine merchling, he’d made amends with Da, Kaz had… sort of forgiven him; he should have stopped dicking around like this. Wylan wanted him to love his powers, accept them for what they were.
Angry and frightened. He really was, wasn’t he?
With a surge of hot rage, Jesper closed his hands around the flower, focusing on it with all his might. There was energy crackling all around inside of him. He felt like he’d wasted it all of his life.
He could feel the cells and all the individual parts of the flower erupting against his fingers, suddenly bright and full of life. It was a thing. Everything was a thing.
Jesper remembered sitting alone with his mother in the middle of a field, watching her make the jurda blossoms dance and sway and bloom with just flicks of her hand, fingers barely brushing their vivid orange petals. He remembered her scooping up handfuls of dirt and hurling it at him, then brushing it off his shirt with a twirl of her fingers, as if it had never been there in the first place.
We’re a special kind of zowa, she’d told him. Anything we can touch is ours to change.
Anything? he’d asked.
Anything, my little rabbit, Aditi had reassured him.
But it hadn’t been anything. Weeks after she had passed, Jesper had tried fruitlessly to do everything his mother did. Anything solid should have been easy. Jesper had remembered one awful afternoon when he’d tried to coax the jurda bulbs to bloom, flicking his fingers over and over again, until finally he’d just ripped them open in frustration. He’d sobbed alone in the middle of the field, orange petals strewn on the ground by his feet.
But Aditi hadn’t even really limited herself to solids. Durast wasn’t the word for her, nor was Fabrikator, or even Grisha, for that matter. Her power was never given any label or restriction. The only thing she called it was zowa. That didn’t make up for the times she made water boil with a single glance, or made the flowers dance with a force that almost felt like a breeze, or even gave Jesper an extra freckle. He had never really given it much thought before, but when compared to the way Ravkans documented Grisha power, hers felt so much more vastly different and powerful than any other Fabrikator he’d seen before.
His fingers flexed around the flower. He could feel the pieces, feel them pulsing against his palm, but still he couldn’t make them move. It should have been easy. It should have been as easy as breathing.
Wylan had said the reason Jesper was such a good shot was because of his own powers, and maybe he was right, but the feeling of a simple flower in his hands wasn’t the same as the feeling of revolvers in his hands. Shooting and guiding a bullet felt natural. This, for some reason, didn’t feel right.
Shaking with anger, at himself, at the flower, at his mother, at the world, he shoved the blossom back into the tin, clattering the lid back on it forcefully.
He would never be good enough. Nowhere was there a place for someone like him—a broken sharpshooter who was too Grisha to be normal, too weak to be Grisha. Not in Ravka, not for someone overgrown for him; not in Novyi Zem, either, not for people whose fathers shut them out from everyone else like them, and certainly not in Kerch, not for people who would be sold to slavers the second they even breathed.
That’s what killed your mother, you understand? What kind of person, what kind of father put such guilt on a child? Your power is dangerous. Your power will get you killed, the same power your mother had, the same power that got her killed.
And he had been right. For every boring day Jesper yearned to scratch that itch and just change something, one thing, it was a day where Aditi did not live, dead and buried under a sad cherry tree with melancholy pink blossoms because she just didn’t use her power correctly.
Now there were people out there who could smell him, detect that power on him that no words or evasions would ever be able to hide. The Kherguud had terrified Jesper, not just because of their power, but because he suddenly had no control over his identity. He couldn’t change their perception of him with lies or flirting or any of his usual charm. He was just Grisha. Zowa. And now he couldn’t even live up to that.
Pathetically, he found his eyes brimming with tears, and Jesper wanted to throw the tin across the room. His head was aching with the pressure to just cry, but he held it back. He didn’t want to be angry and frightened and sad too.
He felt a hand on his shoulder, and Jesper immediately wanted to slap it away. He already knew who it was. He didn’t want Wylan to see him like this, didn’t want him to see him cry. He’d never let him live it down.
“Jes.”
“Go back to bed,” he urged softly. Saints, his voice almost cracked.
“No.” Jesper’s back was to him, but he could just picture Wylan’s stubborn face. “Not until you tell me what’s wrong.”
Jesper couldn’t say anything. He was going to sob, he could feel it bubbling on his lips. He was a pot threatening to boil over, and one final nudge-
“It’s fine, ” he sputtered, and oh Saints, it was happening, and he hated it, hated it so much, hated that Wylan had to see this, it wasn’t him, it wasn’t him, he promised.
I’m not an angry type of guy.
Yes you are. Angry and frightened.
Wylan took the jurda tin from him, wrapped his arms around Jesper’s shaking, pathetic body. They didn’t say anything for a while, just listened to the sound of Jesper sob disgustingly into Wylan’s shoulder.
“I’m the worst fucking zowa in the world,” he hissed, words dripping with tears he couldn’t restrain. It hurt. His head still hurt.
“You’re not, Jes,” Wylan whispered, something he expected to hear, something he didn’t believe. He reached up and brushed the tears from Jesper’s cheeks, something he wished he’d never have to do.
“You’re brilliant. A brilliant… zowa, ” he reassured him, and Jesper gave the barest chuckle at Wylan’s rough pronunciation of the word.
“I’ve never seen a Fabrikator like you. Fabrikators don’t manipulate bullets like that, make them go exactly where they want to.”
“Then why can’t I even manipulate a jurda blossom? It’s a flower, Wy. A goddamn flower. ” As soon as he said it, he wanted to kick himself. It was bad enough that Wylan was seeing him cry, worse that he now thought Jesper was sobbing ugly tears over the fact that he couldn’t even change a flower.
“Because… you’re not used to it. You manipulate other things,” he replied like it was the most normal thing in the world. “I can’t read. But I…”
“Wy, did you just admit you can’t read but you’re blessedly talented at everything else?”
Wylan chuckled a little. Even at a time like this, he was blushing. Jesper felt a small bit of his rage cool very slightly. “Yeah. I guess.”
“Of course you’d only admit that when I’m at my lowest, sobbing into your shoulder like some kind of pathetic baby.”
“Yeah.”
That little moment helped just slightly, and finally, gradually, Jesper’s sobs subsided, but he was still doing that awful thing where you couldn’t stop sniffling even while you talked and it was still entirely very embarrassing. Wylan led him slowly back to bed, Jesper wobbly on his feet. He felt like he was five years old.
They held each other silently under the covers. Jesper tried to take deep breaths, tried to calm down for Wylan.
“I’m sorry you had to see that. I swear it’s not me. I swear I’m not this pathetic when I can’t use my powers to manipulate a stupid flower.”
“It’s okay to cry, Jes.”
It didn’t feel like it.
“It’s okay for me to see it. You saw me at Saint Hilde.”
“That’s because your father is the most monstrous man ever to walk this earth.”
“And your father didn’t let you use an important part of yourself, but I guess that’s okay now,” Wylan replied, and Jesper couldn’t even make a reply to that. He stroked Jesper’s cheek softly.
He supposed they were similar, just a little bit, though Colm would never ever rival Jan Van Eck in terrible fatherness. It was comforting to know that Wylan felt like that too, sometimes.
They really were just two boys who hated themselves but wanted to love themselves too, and loved each other because they wanted the best for one another, and as Jesper made that realization and wrapped himself in the arms of another boy who loved and hated himself at the same time, he finally drifted off to sleep.