JESPER
Jesper would have predicted he'd win the lottery before returning to Ketterdam.
As usual, the sky was overcast. The uneven cobblestone streets of the city smelled like piss and the cold instantly soaked him to the bone... but for some reason, Jesper couldn't stop smiling as he walked through its crooked roads.
Maybe what he found comfort in was the fact that the city hadn't changed a bit. Ketterdam would never change and deep down he knew that was what he needed, the knowledge that, in this world where someone could be alive one minute and gone the next, some things stood the test of time.
Saints knew, he had changed.
He hadn't grown harder like Kaz or more lithe like Inej. No, his wasn't a physical change. But whenever he passed by one of his old favorite gambling spots, Jesper couldn't even look at it. Having once been on the other side of the card table, he knew that the innocent games of chance were not so innocent and of no chance at all. The pigeons would always be duped and innocent folk, like his father had once been, would run themselves so far into the red that they wouldn't be able to escape it. The thought made his stomach whorl.
As did seeing Wylan van Eck for the first time in six years.
He looked completely the same and like a complete stranger all at once. Wylan had grown significantly, filled out his shirt a little more, had gotten lanky and long. His dark blond hair remained a tangled mess of waves and his face was pink with his ever telling blush, but now he wore a suit. Not the gaudy and eccentric patterns of Ketterdam's ilk, but fabric of silky sapphire that made his hair look like flashing gold. A respectable suit.
When Kaz had ousted them from his office, Jesper and Inej had stayed until the early morning to reunite with the Dregs. Wylan had left without a word.
Jesper took a deep breath in and treaded forward. He didn't know where he was going, really. His room at the Slat had been taken over by some skiv named Roscoe, and, even after paying off all of his debts with the kruge from the Dime Lion swindle, he didn't feel right going back to his previous squats. At least at Henrie Howler's he had a tent that was a semblance of a home. Now it was like he had just left Ketterdam all over again, pretending on the streets of Bhez Ju that he was more than some lost farm boy from the west.
Jesper's first few weeks in Shu Han were awful and even now he couldn't remember them with fondness. Six years ago, when he had boarded Land Bridge Ferry docked on the mainland shore, he suddenly realized that he'd been living in a bubble for the last decade of his life.
Ketterdam was the epicenter of the world. It drew the best and brightest minds and talents. In the city, they came together for the sake of knowledge and advancement. Jesper had spent his formative years in this bubble, dealing with people of all races and nationalities, all rallied behind Kerch flag, no matter how rotten the insides of that city were.
But one thing was always the same. It was dangerous to be a Grisha.
Jesper had taken on odd jobs at first. He waited tables where his silver tongue earned him copious tips, acted as a translator for fields that hired foreign workers because it was cheaper than hiring domestic laborers. He did all these things because he knew that if he used his menial skills as a Durast to make more money, someone would catch on sooner or later. And after all he'd lost, that was not a risk he was willing to make.
Somewhere along his walk, Jesper found himself turned towards the coast, like an invisible string was pulling him towards the water. He smelled it first. The ash of the city slowly gave way to scents of kelp and salt. Hollers of tourists were replaced by seagull calls and freighter horns. Jesper walked by the last restaurant and then the True sea was before him, it's dark blue expanse stretching beyond where his eye could see.
If he didn't know where he was going before, he definitely knew it now.
The brick house rose up out of the bluff, it's red stone like blood against the brightening night. It perched on the one open patch of healthy grass found in the whole of Ketterdam. It belonged to the only person rich enough to own grass in a city of stone.
Jesper had lived in this house. He called it home for six years after the Dregs had smuggled Kuwei Yul-bo out of the city. It was their house. His and Wylan's. Where he had helped Wylan through difficult nights of learning how to read. Where he taught Wylan to shoot. Even the pile of glass bottles was still there, glittering in shards around the fence posts.
You shoot like a granny, he had once said, his chuckle low on his breath.
You teach like a Druskelle, Wylan retorted, grinning.
It seemed like a lifetime ago.
What had brought him there? Jesper wondered. He had run it through his head a thousand times. What would do when he saw Wylan van Eck again? What would he say? Would he apologize for all the awful, nasty things he had screamed on that fateful day? Or would he gather the young mercher in his arms, pushing away the confusion, the doubt, and make love to him as if they had never parted?
His legs made their way up the paved walk way, stepping in time with his heart beat. Jesper wasn't sure what drew him here but he knew, for all the painful memories it would dredge up within him, he had to speak to Wylan. Once Jesper could see him, hear him, make sure he was alright, he could walk away again.
Before he could knock on the door, it opened. It was not Wylan who stood on the other side. Unless within the last few hours Wylan had gotten a tan, straightened and bleached his hair, and taken off his clothes, save for a small towel tucked around his waist.
"Um..." the stranger said in a husky voice. "Can I help you?"
Jesper would have answered him if another voice didn't speak. A voice he was intimately acquainted with.
"Ronnie, I told you to let Joshua get it. It's not safe at night here-"
Wylan van Eck stopped in his tracks, his long fingers on the blond's hip. He was in nothing but a pair of linen slacks, his hair skewed to the side and his bare chest flushed with a color that Jesper knew, intimately, too.
Wylan might have called after him, but Jesper didn't stay to hear it. In fact, Jesper couldn't hear anything but the blood rushing through his head like a hurricane, fierce and unforgiving, washing away everything inside him like the omnipresent Kerch rain.
