Chapter Text
It happens in three parts.
Part one: Kaz asks Jesper to wait outside. They’re already his least favourite words, wait outside. They have boredom laced through every syllable, and they make a mockery of his specialist skill set. But when it involves Wylan, trusting Kaz to cover his back but not wanting him to leave his sight… no. He doesn’t just hate it. He can’t do it.
He argues. He protests. He asks Inej to back him up But Kaz doesn’t change his mind, and Wylan swears he’ll be okay. So… he stays outside.
Part two: the plan goes wrong. It’s what plans do and so he shouldn’t be surprised. Perhaps he’s not. What he is is freaking terrified. The light switches on in the upstairs room, the same one Kaz and Wylan just broke into. Jesper curses, and behind him Inej does the same. They’re positioned outside what they thought was the only entrance. They were meant to be the diversion. Did he not pay attention? Did he miss something or someone past him?
It doesn’t matter. They’re caught, and they have about ten seconds to think of their next move.
Part three: Wylan falls. Jesper doesn’t see what’s happening at first. He’s too busy whipping his guns out of their holsters and debating if they should just run up and start shooting. He doesn’t even look up until he hears Inej gasp and her hand grabs his shoulder.
At first, all he sees is a shadow, plummeting down the side of the building. If luck were on their side tonight, it would have been Kaz sailing down on a rope, Wylan coming after him. They would have been silent, sure, and running back with their prizes tucked in their coats.
Instead, the figure reaches up, desperately grabbing at nothing. Instead of silence, a rough, terrified scream pierces the air, and it stops Jesper’s heart. Then he screams again, and it sends Jesper running.
Wylan hits the ground just seconds before Jesper reaches him, and then he’s silent.
“Wylan?” he falls to his knees, his hands shaking as he cups Wylan’s face. Scarlet cuts mar his skin. Some are shimmering, and Jesper realises with a start that there are small pieces of glass buried in them. Blood runs down his cheeks in thin rivers, trickling into the collar of his shirt. Jesper slides his hand beneath Wylan’s neck and his fingers brush against a series of large knots. Wylan’s breath hitches, and the muscles in his face jerk. He almost makes a noise, almost like a murmur. But then he goes slack.
“Wylan, I’m here,” he tells him. He brushes his rough fingers against his cheek. It’s so white, so still. Like the marble in their parlour. His fingers trace Wylan’s cheek and keep going. They find the little spot behind Wylan’s ear where he’s especially ticklish. Normally, he shrieks with laughter when Jesper touches him there. Now he just lays there, oblivious to everything. He’s not even this still when he’s asleep. Something is very, very wrong.
Faintly, about seven stories up, he can hear someone getting the shit beaten out of them. It feels like it’s a world away.
“Wylan, wake up,” he says again. He’s begging, he realises. He didn’t think he begged. He does, now because Wylan just fell out of a building and he doesn’t look like he’s breathing and-
He’s screaming. He’s sobbing. He’s begging.
“Wylan wake up!”
That was twelve hours ago. At some point, they brought Wylan back to the Slat. At some point, Jesper carried Wylan up three flights of stairs (he wouldn’t let anyone else hold him). They laid him out on the bed and called a medik and did what everyone does when someone is hurt or injured or dying; they made coffee.
His father used to say that there was nothing a nice brew couldn’t fix.
It’s been twelve hours now, and five rounds of coffee. Forgive him if he doubts his Da’s Kaelish wisdom.
The medik made their assessment about an hour after they brought him back. They paid them double to keep their silence. If word got out that Kaz Brekker’s demo man was hurt, every gang in the Barrel would have their sights set on the Slat.
Jesper had stood in the corner as the medik gave their diagnosis. They rattled it off on their fingers. Four broken ribs. Dislocated shoulder. Shattered hip. Glass lodged in his neck. Lost a lot of blood. Significant damage to his head. At the very least a concussion, more likely something worse.
She had spoken in hushed tones that were a little too familiar to him. Tones from another time, a time of farmhouses and cherry blossom trees. As Nina and Matthias and Inej all listened intently, Jesper pressed himself into the corner. As if he could will it hard enough, he could disappear altogether, come back when Wylan wakes and go on as if nothing had happened.
What a childish thing to think.
Jesper flexes his fingers and shifts in the chair beside the bed. Wylan is completely white, the only colour being the purple shadows beneath his eyes and cuts on his cheeks. It’s been thirty hours since the medik left, he hasn’t moved from this spot. Neither has Wylan though. Nina tucked a blanket over him when it turned cold, and Jesper arranged his hands carefully over his chest. It doesn’t look right, Wylan doesn’t sleep like that. Normally he sleeps with one arm around Jesper, his cheek pressed into his shoulder and his knees pulled up to his chest.
But he had to do something. And Nina hadn’t objected.
“Here.” He jerks, instinctively cocking his pistol, but when he blinks he finds it’s just Matthias, standing over him with a stern expression and a bowl of something in his hand. Jesper stares at him for a minute, waiting for whatever is meant to happen next. Matthias sighs softly and places the bowl in front of him. “You need to eat something.”
Oh, right. Eating.
“Thanks.” He pushes the spoon with the tip of his finger. The heat from the bowl sinks into his palm. He hadn’t realised how cold he was until now.
Behind him, Matthias folds his arms and rests against the wall.
“How is he?” he asks, all gruffness gone.
“The same.” He lets the spoon fall against the side of the bowl. Jesper avoids looking at Matthias because the last thing they need is to see the amount of pity held in those ice-blue eyes. He doesn’t need a reminder of how fond he is of Wylan. A million memories flash through Jesper’s mind; Matthias bowing to Wylan in the tomb on Black Veil, the proud, awestruck smile whenever Wylan something new, the countless times he’s carried him away from a bar fight, Wylan shouting profanities from over Matthias’ shoulder. He remembers it all, and he keeps looking away.
He’s selfish, an asshole. But he doesn’t want a reminder of everyone else’s grief.
“I can take over from here,” Matthias says. “If you want to get some sleep or go outside or-”
“No.” The firmness surprises him, and it shuts Matthias up. “I’m not leaving him.”
And he means it. Although his hand has been tapping the same rat-a-tat-tat against the chair for the past two hours, and although he can now hear the sound of his heart bouncing around in his ribcage, he’s not leaving. They’re not leaving until Wylan is awake and talking. They’re not leaving this building unless it’s to take Wylan home.
“Okay,” is all Matthias says. Then he turns his gaze back to Wylan, and neither of them says anything.
It’s been thirty hours. The bowl of… whatever it was now sits on the bedside table, cold. Jesper took a few bites to appease Matthias. If someone asked, he wouldn’t be able to say what it tasted like. It tasted warm and mushy, and he swallowed it. That was enough.
Another coffee sits where the bowl had been. The sun has come up, bathing the room in a weak, silvery light. Jesper wishes it hadn’t; Wylan looks even paler now.
He tosses the coin in the air again. He doesn’t know when this buzzing started, this feeling like a swarm of hornets made a home beneath his skin, but it’s here, and this is one of the few things that ease it. Toss, catch, Fabrikate, repeat. So far he’s made a spring, a needle, a wire, and some other things they can’t remember. They don’t stick in their mind. What they do is calm the relentless fizzing through Jesper’s veins and keep at bay the whirl of thoughts and memories trying to edge into their mind. So they keep doing it.
Toss, catch, Fabrikate, repeat. Toss, catch, Fabrikate, repeat.
A small rush flows through him, the mental shifting beneath his hand, and-
“Oh… is it a coathook?”
“Oh, oh it’s a key.”
He stops. The key/coat hook/whatever it is falls through his fingers. It hits the ground and spins around. It sounds like Makker’s Wheel.
A shudder wrecks his body and he pulls his arms around himself. The memory attacks him on all fronts, compounded by the coin rolling on the floor. They were barely more than kids when he gave Wylan a key to this room. Wylan’s eyes had lit up, and his mouth had fallen open. His hair was sticking up like a bird’s nest. He’d been wearing Jesper’s shirt, and when he kissed him, it tasted like coffee and smoke. His hands had cupped Jesper’s face, and it had felt like home.
“Do you remember that?” His voice sounds like rusted iron. “D’you remember when I first gave you that key?”
Wylan doesn’t answer. The only reply he gets is the sound of the coin, spinning, spinning, spinning like Makker’s Wheel.
It’s been forty-five hours.
Forty-five hours and Wylan hasn’t so much as stirred. He doesn’t know what cup of coffee he’s on now. People just keep bringing them and he keeps drinking them. Not that he needs them. The buzzing in his veins has grown stronger, a low rumble of thunder that has since turned to lightning. His whole body crackles, keeping him on edge and keeping sleep at bay.
He’s reminded, dimly, of his time at the Ice Court. How many hours had that been? No matter, he’d spent all that time running on adrenaline and the promise of a fat pot of kruge waiting at the end.
When the door opens, he’s done three stretches of the room, wall to wall. He can’t find the coin and doesn’t like the idea of fishing around under the bed for it. So he’s paced, twirling his revolver around his finger, in the hope that the energy inside of him goes somewhere.
Kaz doesn’t look all that surprised. Jesper is though. He’s not seen Kaz in… well, more than thirty hours. He’s the only Crow that hasn’t been in to see Wylan and Jesper should be annoyed about that. But he isn’t, for two reasons. One is that he remembers the screams from the window, the night Wylan fell, mixed in with wet crunching and the sound of Kaz’s cane hitting the ground.
The second is the tightness in Kaz’s jaw, the slow, measured way he breathes. He may never know what goes on in Kaz’s head, but it looks like he’s putting a shit ton of effort into walking in. That counts for something.
Kaz walks in, silent save for the thump of his cane, and stops a little before the bed. Wylan doesn’t stir at his presence. Nina had slid another pillow beneath his head, and the medik returned to bandage his ribs again. Other than that, nothing has changed.
“How many ribs did the medik say he broke?” he asks.
“Four.” Jesper coughs into his elbow. Hours of disuse have made his voice rusty. “Why?”
“Just checking.” A pause. And then, “I gave the man who pushed him four.” He turns his cane on the floor. “Maybe I should go and double it.”
If Kaz wants Jesper to agree, he doesn’t. He doesn’t disagree either. Instead, he returns to his chair and grabs the back of it, flexing his back as he stretches. The hours return to his body, bringing aches to his legs and cracking to his knees and elbows.
“When’s the last time you slept?”
“I don’t need to sleep,” is his reply. The next time he sleeps will be in his own bed, with Wylan beside him. That’s what he told himself during hour two. It doesn’t sound as strong now. Still, Kaz doesn’t have to know that. “I don’t.”
Kaz makes some small noise that sounds like agreement. The silence is thick between them, and Jesper is okay with it. Kaz knows better than to ask if he’s okay, or to tell him to try to get some sleep. Kaz stands with him, not quite shoulder to shoulder, and doesn’t judge him when he twirls the gun around his finger.
They stay together as the sun moves across the sky. Jesper stretches, paces, twirls, bleaches the colour from the curtains. Kaz doesn’t react. He remains still, almost as still as Wylan, except for his eyes. Jesper swears he can see his mind moving behind them. Where it’s moving to he can’t say, but it’s moving.
Eventually, Kaz is called. Of course, Jesper thinks, more than a little deflated. Life goes on. It doesn’t care about them, or anyone’s problems. The world moves on outside, even when Wylan is stuck in bed and hasn’t moved or woken in nearly two days.
It’s not right, but who is he to argue?
“Anything in particular you’d like me to do to him?” Kaz asks just as he reaches the door. Jesper frowns, thinking at first he means Wylan, but then realisation dawns on him. He thinks about all he’s done in the past day; the pacing, the coffee, the unnatural stillness of Wylan through it all. He thinks of Wylan, falling, and his body snapping as it hit the ground.
He thinks about it all, and for a moment he is so, overwhelmingly, completely, angry.
“Give him hell,” is all he says.
He has a feeling Kaz will oblige.
It’s been fifty-nine hours. Jesper’s nails are now tiny slivers on his fingers, framed by hot, reddened skin. His breathing has gotten steadily more sporadic as the sun has disappeared, his chest feeling more like a small engine than anything else. In-out, in-out, in-out. In-out, in-out, in-out.
There’s a coppery taste on his tongue that he can’t place and he keeps shifting his jaw like that will dislodge it.
His ears are ringing, and pressing his shaking hands to them doesn’t help. It just traps the sound inside his skull, and with nowhere else to go it jabs his brain.
What had started as buzzing turned to crackling, and now it feels like explosions. Like someone replaced his blood with gunpowder and lit the fuse. His heart beats louder, faster, pumping more around his body, and it just keeps exploding, and he can feel the ash beneath his skin and-
And Wylan hasn’t moved in fifty-nine hours.
Jesper has tried. He tried to give him sips of water, tried to pour broth down his throat. It barely worked and in the case of the broth, it nearly choked him. Nina had to hold his head up and check his airways to make sure nothing was lodged there, while Inej had whispered to Jesper that he’d done nothing wrong.
Jesper couldn’t hear her, but he nodded anyway.
“Wake up,” he says. His voice is trembling. He’s crying. “For Saint’s sake, wake up! You can’t leave-you can’t do this to me. You can’t leave me here.” His shoulders shake and something is wrenched from inside him, something deep and guttural that burns his throat like cheap whiskey.
“Wake up Mama. Mama, wake up!”
“Wyaln, please,” he begs. He’s crossed over to the bed and sitting on the mattress, one hand on either side of him. The tears land on Wylan’s cool skin. He doesn’t even twitch. “Wylan you have to wake up, you have to because… Because I can’t do this without you, Wy. I can’t do any of it without-” His voice trails off, his words eaten up by heavy, wrecking sobs.
Trembling, he pushes Wylan’s hair away from his face. There’s a little more colour in him now, but his skin is still cold. The bags beneath his eyes are still heavy. “Just wake up. Just come back to me and whatever happens after, we’ll deal with it.”
“Come back, Mama, come back!”
“I love you, Wylan.” He whispers it like it’s a prayer. Because it kind of is. If he would pray to anyone, it’d be him. “Please, please just come back to me. Just wake up.”
He doesn’t.
Jesper falls from the bed. Somehow, he pulls his shaking limbs into a ball. His back rests against the bed, his face turned towards the open window. The room is warm, summer sunlight streaming through the glass, but he shakes like it’s the depth of winter. He shakes until his organs rattle inside him, until the copious amounts of coffee he’s consumed come back and end up spewed across the floor. Tears stream freely down his face, his empty stomach turning at the sour smell that permeates the room.
There are hands on his shoulders. For a moment, he thinks someone has come to take him away. But then a cloth is pressed to his cheek, a glass of water lifted to his lips, and his eyes meet Inej’s.
Behind her, Matthias and Nina check over Wylan. They reapply his bandages, check his pulse, monitor his breathing, check his ribs.
Through all the poking and prodding, Wylan doesn’t wake. His body is still as glass, silent as Reaper’s Barge.
It’s been sixty-three hours, and he can’t do this any more.
The hot air has seeped through his skin, pressing in the spaces between his muscles and his bones. His chest feels like an empty, gaping cavern where his lungs should be. The chair beside the bed has long since been empty. Instead, he is sprawled on the floor, his gangly limbs spread across the floorboards. Above him is the cracked, yellowing plaster of the ceiling. There’s a split near the middle, caused by the intersection of two cracks, and he can see through the blackness of the roof space creeping through. If he closes his eyes and listens hard, he swears he can hear the crack growing. It snakes through plaster, and they’ll have to fix it because one of these days it might break and it might crash on top of him while he’s in bed. The idea isn’t entirely unappealing right now.
He hears it- craaaaaaaaaack, craaaaaaaack - shifting around the ceiling. The room is silent enough for him to hear.
He needs to get out of here.
His mind is blank. He feels his body move. He sees his hands grab his coat from the chair and blindly checks the pocket. A small wad of kruge sits there. There’s some more in the inner pockets.
The Dregs part for him as he heads out of the room and down the stairs. If he were more alert, perhaps he’d notice their widened eyes or the way they whisper behind their hands. As if happens through, Jesper’s brain is little more than a smoking pile of embers. He can only be vaguely glad Kaz is not here, though he doesn’t remember why, and then all but run out the front door and into the bizarre hellscape that is the Barrel.
He doesn’t stop, not even to soak it in. He’s been cooped up inside for too long, and part of him wants to just stand and appreciate the cool night air against his flushed skin, to breathe in something other than stale coffee grounds and sweat. But he can’t. His mind is moving faster than his body can keep up with, forcing him to keep chasing whatever it is his mind is seeing. So he keeps going, footsteps uneven on the crooked cobblestones. He trips and sways and feels himself lurching into other people again and again, but it doesn’t matter. If they say something to him, to harass or apologise, he doesn’t hear. He just keeps going, shaky step by shaky step.
He is, at least, aware enough to avoid the Crow Club. Because if Kaz isn’t at the Slat he will be there, and the very idea of the Bastard just makes Jesper move faster. Right now, Kaz is linked with the one part of his brain telling him to stop and go back. So no, he won’t be going to the Crow Club.
He doesn’t know where he is when he stops. It’s the Barrel, he knows that much. It’s a whirlwind of reds and yellows and greens and blues, and it's sort of familiar. Perhaps he’s played here, once or twice. The important part is that it’s far enough from the Slat and Kaz and… everything else.
Inside, there’s a large table as soon as he goes in, crowded with patrons young and old, natives and tourists, shouting and jostling and clapping each other on the back. A large roar erupts from the table, enough to blow Jesper’s eardrums out. It reverberates around his bones and his skin and dulls his frayed nerves. For the first time, he feels warm, flushed. A Zemini summer’s day, bursting with cherry blossoms and honeysuckle and sweet-smelling sunflowers. The feeling courses through him, a powerful midday wind, and it beats away the unending hopelessness and replaces it with something else. Something that tricks him into thinking anything is possible. That luck exists and that it favours him.
“Got room for another?” he asks above the din. The men turn to look at him, sceptical, but then he waves his stack in the air and he’s clapped on the back like they’ve known him all his life.
“Deal this young man in!” one of them calls, and for a second, Jesper’s mind aligns itself. Questions sprout up one after the other, what are you doing here, why aren’t you with him, get out of here! They shock him like cold water against his skin, and for a second he rises, just a fraction off his chair.
He rises and almost turns. Almost. But then the wheel spins, the patrons cheer, and he’s done for. The buzzing in his mind turns to gold, and all that exists is this room. There’s no past, nothing is waiting for him outside. There’s no future, no bad news waiting for him when he steps outside. All there is is him and the cards and the exhilarating rise and plunge he feels every time the wheel is spun. When the cards are thrown his way, he can’t even feel his fingers pick them up.
Vaguely, he knows he’s doing himself far more harm than good.
But it’s been sixty-three hours and he can finally breathe.