abraxaslogs | You don't have to make a sound 'cause they got what you need

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You don't have to make a sound 'cause they got what you need

WHO: Jesper Fahey and you!
WHAT: Catch-all for the rest of March!
WHERE: Cadens and Horizon!
WHEN: Throughout March

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message at waftingcurtains if you have ideas or just wildcard it up!

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The Horizon for him has only made him homesick, and reminded him that he may never see Kaz and Wylan again, but he only feels bittersweet about it when he leaves. While he's in here, it is soothing, helpful. He gets his gambling out in the Crow Club and his shooting done in here, and it makes his waking hours still hungry but less so. And he's been using his abilities out there more too, which has brought down his anxiety and energy just enough to make him think Inej might have been right about that. But it wasn't just about using his powers to make him less sick in the ways that he is, it was about trying to see them as something other than the worst part about himself.

And Jesper's never really thought that they were, not exactly. His father made him fear them, the world made him fear them, but they were useful to Kaz, and they helped him secure an impossible shot to 'kill' Kuwei at the moment they needed. The telekinesis feels easier to him, more active, the bullets and the zipping objects around. It is the material part that requires more effort and time.

He does hear her, or maybe he feels her, it's difficult to say in here. Jesper does know how extraordinary Grisha powers can be, he never felt like he was a part of them. He heard that Durasts in Ravka loved working together, that they were collaborators and came up with inventions together. Jesper is starting from a place of imagination, he's still never had any training.

Jesper glances up and shows her wood, several pieces of it in fact. "Mag has some rotten wood, I think I figured out how to get it out and replace it, but I don't want to make it worse."

She's the owner of the inn he lives in and he likes to please her, like any good momma's boy. This is a specific skill he will no doubt be able to use to fix other things too. It's simplistic, maybe even a little boring, but it's a start. Wood is fairly easy to work with.

Inej has already been homesick for years, so even though it is a yawning ache inside her, it, too, is almost comforting in its familiarity. Some part of her is still utterly shellshocked that Kaz had somehow found her family, and doesn't like to unknot all the things it makes her feel.

She smiles a little, a tiny thing, a knowing thing. To think that Jesper both, goes out of his way to help whenever he can, and has such a low opinion of himself because of precise failings he can never let himself forget, is almost a sad thing. She will just have to remind him of that first truth more often. "That's amazing, Jesper. You get it down just right, you could help people with renovations of all sorts." And that, she can't help but think, would bring some very decent coin into his pockets.

"Are you pulling the rot out, or...changing the broken parts into health ones again?" She knows even less about Grisha abilities and how they work than Jesper, and she thinks if he's going out of his way here to learn more about his powers, to use them especially to help other people, she should encourage it. Engage in it with him, even if she can only watch.

Inej knows him well, the loyalty and helpfulness inherent in him something he's almost blind to in exchange for seeing his flaws more clearly. Mag mentioned in passing a problem and he immediately jumped to a solution, not even telling the woman he planned on fixing it until he knew for certain he could. And he won't tell her how or ask anything for it, she's giving them rooms and all, and he'll downplay it, shrug it off like it's nothing. Anyone would do that!

He feels that rush of pleasure at her compliment, now that is something that may actually get him to blush someday. "I suppose I could do that. It won't be difficult once I figure out the best way. That could be good coin." His mind goes there immediately too, obviously. They both know that surviving means needing the essentials. Some day he wants to get them a better place, and yes, he considers them a unit. She moved to Cadens for him, he wants her to be happy that she did.

"I'm afraid fixing the rot is a little over my head at this point. I think I know how to do it, but it would be difficult." Jesper has never actually discussed this with her or anyone else this closely before. It still feels strange to do, but he's tried to come out of his shell more. And it's Inej, he can tell her anything. At least with her it doesn't feel like he's going to get sick, the way strangers can.

"I'd have to change every part of the rot that way. I'm pulling the rotten wood out of it." Jesper concentrates and shows her, the wood seeming to soften and change to something loose in front of her eyes, pulling it but not like someone would snap wood off. It's some telekinesis, gripping the pieces he's identified and removing them. It feels difficult, he would be sweating in the real world, but it's easier here somehow. He tosses the rot aside to the ground, leaving behind the part of the plank that is still good, a little jagged in some places so he seems to smooth it over with a brush of his fingers.

"Theoretically the idea is that I take healthy wood and replace it, and then ... blend them all together into a strong piece?" Jesper takes a breather, letting himself relax, wiggling his fingers out of it. "But I'm guessing."

"Truly," she nods her agreement about the coin. Neither of them can help thinking of it. Not after the years with Kaz, and not with the newness and the uncertainty of being in an unfamiliar city. No connections, no jobs like they're used to. No planner in their ranks to make a dozen impossible decisions before breakfast.

(She misses him already, and it's an ache she doesn't want to admit to).

"Difficult has never stopped you before," she points out. A small nudge of saying-without-saying she isn't blind, nor stupid, and she knows his doubts are playing too loudly in his head. She thinks they know each other well enough that unspoken meanings aren't entirely missed, by now, though.

She smiles, that small, sad smile and she pushes to her feet, ever so briefly on her toes in some long-engraved habit from the circus, and she crosses over to where he stands. "You can do unfathomable things, beautiful things, wonderful, delightful things, Jesper." Her eyes are on him, emphatically, resting her hands on top of his own. "But I think you have to strengthen your belief in yourself first."

Belief, as it is, is something Inej has in spades. Despite everything that's happened to her. Perhaps in spite of it all. She would not let the slavers or Heleen, or the clients she was forced to take, win that way, to steal the most deeply personal part of her away from herself like that. Her beliefs, in every shape that they take, from her Saints in her religion, to her trust and loyalty in her friends, were hers and hers alone. Nothing and no one had been able to taint that.

"And until you can do it for yourself... I'll believe in you for you," her smile smooths at the edges, no sadness traced inside of it now, only brightness like the sun is inside her somehow.

They'll get there. Jesper's main problem with money is keeping it, and he's been doing well at that, plus he knows she'll step in if he needs someone to control the savings. He thinks about what Julie told him, how she thought his powers would be far more lucrative than hustling darts ever could be, and that he should think out of the box with them. She's very right, it's mostly about him reframing what he's capable of. Like she says moments later, the problem is he doesn't believe in himself. The limitations are all within his head.

"It wouldn't be this difficult for a real Durast," he says on a sigh. And therein lies the problem. He still doesn't see himself as one. They had years of training and group work, so comparing his struggling skills to theirs is flat out unfair, and yet. He's moved from being afraid of them to being frustrated that he was ever afraid of them in the first place.

Jesper is getting twitchy again and almost like magic Inej is there, grounding him, putting her hands on top of his. He remembers to breathe and if it was anyone else, he'd laugh and say of course he could do anything, he's amazing, but this is Inej and she sees right through him. Her words strike his heart like a blow, even when so kindly said. For an embarrassing moment he almost thinks he's going to tear up and it's ridiculous, so he swallows through it and smiles for her. "Ah, Inej. You are too good for any world."

That beautiful brightness of hers makes him turn his hands into hers and he gently pulls her toward him. He is always very careful when he asks for a hug, wanting her to know that she can pull away if it is not comfortable. Jesper never asks her experiences, but he is conscientious about her boundaries. If she lets him though, he will wrap her into a warm hug. "I love you, you know that, right?" Jesper is so open with his heart and with her he's never had to be reserved about it. She is the easiest person he knows to love.

"At times it feels like a natural extension of me and it feels good to do it, easy, comfortable, and then I get hit with this fear and hate it. And it's irrational." Someone is going to see him, something bad is going to happen, he shouldn't be doing it, he shouldn't forget it has to be hidden. If it was as easy as Jesper telling himself to stop it, he would have been able to by now, but he's replaced his addictive needs with this anxiety instead. "I guess it'll take more than a few months to get over years of it."

Jesper has issues with letting go. Considering his Horizon is made up of Kaz Brekker and Wylan Van Eck and very little of his own, that much is pretty clear.

Inej would ride a line between suggestion and outright stepping in. She wants him to learn to fight those urges on his own, because someone won't always be there to stop him, and he needs to be his own best tool. But should the temptation be too great, she will do what she needs until he can manage it entirely on his own. The girl who needs no net will be one for this boy she cares so much about, in any way he needs her to be.

"And you think you're not? A real Durast?" The word feels strange in her mouth, but she sounds confident anyway. "Jesper, all training is, is practice. They may have teachers, but you're more a hands on learner anyway. What better way to understand it than dive straight in?"

She considers it more for a moment, trying to think through how to phrase what she wants to say. "I... I don't know how it feels, but I imagine it does. Feel like something is there, all the time, right? This extra piece of you that you can reach for and grasp whenever you want it. You can clearly access it easily enough. Your bullets and aim, this," she gestures at the project he's currently working on. "so... it's just a matter of testing. Start small. Take a glass and change the shape of it. Work your way up to shifting materials into other things. I promise you, no Durast before you made Grisha Steel on their first attempt."

She lifts his hands in hers and squeezes gently. "You were taught to fear this beautiful part of who you are...by society, and more harmfully, by your own father. I know he meant well, but it did... it damaged your relationship with this part of yourself, and you won't get past that in a fortnight. It will take time, but you can do it. I'll help you, however I can, and... there are people here, in this world that have powers. I think you could find someone that could help, even if they aren't the same, there must be some similar thread through all of the abilities people have." She knows Grisha, as a rule, do not like considering what they can do as 'magic', so she's careful with her phrases, but there will always be something magical to what Jesper and Nina can do to her.

"You would think diving straight in is my strong suit." And typically it is, about anything other than this. It's a blind spot. Jesper loves risk and adrenaline and he's fearless in so many ways, and then there are these shadow places where he loses his confidence. "Julie said that I could make money with it, that it'd be more useful than a gun, and she isn't wrong." So he's trying to learn so he can do that, to get them their own apartment. And his gun because he wants it anyway.

Jesper has gotten to the point where he isn't going to argue about his dad. He used to make excuses and protect him, but the good part is that they've managed to talk about this and come to a better place together. So it isn't him defending a man he is angry at deep in his heart, but one he's started to forgive because they addressed part of it. His father is responsible for more of this than either of them would like and it also won't be healable in a few weeks.

"I think about her a lot, when I do it." The her being his mother, the pressure point of which everything else about him stems from. "She trained me without me even knowing, and it always felt good and natural." Jesper focuses on the wood and he slides his fingers over the top, the matter changing under them. He feels the difference from rot to health and presses into it, the dark pieces of wood coming out like a rain of splinters. And it's true. It feels good. Easy. Like breathing. He's never been trained on how to do it, but it makes sense to him, like he's stripping it with his fingers only using magic to do it.

He is pleased to see the pile and sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. The wood goes back to normal, with the rot now gone from it. "I know, I should talk to them, I feel unreasonably paranoid. Like Fjerdans or the Ravkan army will just appear the moment I say it out loud." Jesper's never openly talked about that sort of fear that dogged him. His father started it, sure, but he always worried that if he wasn't careful, he'd be snatched. Nina got snatched and she's far better at everything than he is.

Kaz took him off the streets of the Barrel before the wrong people tried to use him, but he's without Kaz here. It's the two of them, and they're both maybe a little more trusting than they should be. "I met this woman, Wanda. She has powerful magic. We connected. I think she'd help me."

“Jesper…” it’s soft. Quiet. Part admonishment. ‘Stop it’, it says. ‘Not everything has to be a joke’, it murmurs. All just in the way his name leaves her lips. She nods a little. “Perhaps… but it can’t only be for the coin that you learn, Jesper. This is more than that. This is a part of you. And you have every right to feel as comfortable in this as you do with a pistol.”

Her heart constricts at the rare mention of a mother lost. She wills any tears that threaten to swell to stay at bay, it would only make the moment hurt when it was not about the pain of the loss of her, but the rightness of him, of the gift he had been given from her. “It is good. And right. And natural. It is anything you make it. The power does not make a person inherently evil, the choice a person makes with it— that is where the difference in the shadow and the light.”

She watches him, and for this second, for this moment, it looks as easy as anything he’s done his entire life could look. The splinters of rot tumble to the ground and he’s left with only a healthy plank of wood. Inej smiles up at him. See? Wasn’t she right all along? Isn’t it a beautiful thing?

She shakes her head, “it is not unreasonable, given everything we left at home. The battle may be won, for now, but there are many more to face in the midst of revolution.” And that, she thinks, is what it feels like: That to break away from all the ill conceptions of them, Grisha will have to rise and ask for the chance to prove they are not monsters the elder generations deemed them to be.

“Then talk to her.” She says, finally dropping her hands away to her sides again, moving to sit on the stone bench once more. “Nothing says you have to shout it from the rooftops. Just talk to one person about it, and move forward from there.”

She hopes he would feel comfortable enough to talk to her— and this conversation does seem to imply as much— though, she feels useless to do anything to help him with this part.

Jesper sighs because he knows the way she is saying her name and what it means, but not joking is harder for him than finding a way to joke. For someone so sincere underneath all the bluster, he's still not very good at letting it dominate his personality. "Inej," he whines back, a little pleading to it, begging her to let him have his moments of lightness. He is just as bad as Kaz in some ways.

The loss of his mother ten years later is still a heavy influence over him, although ten years is really not that much in the grand scheme of things. All he can remember of her are the good times, the beauty, the love. He doesn't know if that's a good thing or a bad, that it's more realistic to have a kaleidoscope of memories about someone because then it's not just this dreamy perfect person he can never have back.

"If it wasn't for Kaz and you, who even knows what I'd be using my powers for. There was any number of people who could have pulled me off the streets." And Jesper was desperate at the time, he would have done anything, become anyone. He didn't realize Kaz was even aware of his powers until after he brought him back to the Crow Club and got him working. It's still someone using them for their benefit, but he doesn't mind so much, when it's Kaz, when it's the Crows.

Jesper is comfortable talking to her about it, moreso than strangers, but she's not pushed him on it before now because he's not wanted anyone to. And it's openly allowed, considering he's working out in the open. There is no one he trusts more than her. She's the one all of them can trust. "As always, you're right."

He 'flexes' his telekinesis powers by flipping up a few nails into the air, and levitating them on purpose.

"Enough about me, how are you?"

She can't help the smile the whining of her name brings to her lip. Why is it, she wonders, that she surrounds herself with ridiculous boys? Ridiculous people, honestly, Nina's hardly any better than the rest of her friends. But she loves them all dearly, despite the ways on the surface it might have seemed they wouldn't fit.

"Kaz Brekker is hardly altruistic," she scoffs a little at the comment. "but... yes. You could have become anyone, and I shudder to think what you would have looked like under someone like Pekka Rollins." Kaz had his failings, his monstrous capabilities, but he had a code of a kind. If he made a deal, he never went back on it. If you thought he was reneging a deal, you hadn't listened closely enough to the terms.

She laughs softly at the trick, pulling her legs up underneath her crisscross. She shrugs at the question. "I'm fine... I guess. It's just– I don't know what to do here." she admits softly, looping her arms around her legs and staring down at the ground.

"No, I'm pretty sure you were right that he always knew about me." Kaz makes certain someone is worth his time before he invests in them. Like the two of them. Their abilities make them incredibly useful, and Kaz collects people who make him look good. But they need a mastermind. Or at least Jesper feels the lack of one a lot. Maybe he would hate it here though. He'd have to start all over again. "I don't mind, I love the Dregs. It worked out the best way."

He's not sure Kaz has always been happy with his investment, but he remembers the way he looked when he explained who Jordie was. The look in his eyes when he wouldn't give Jesper the parem. Like it or not, their leader does have feelings, and that includes caring for the two of them. Maybe for the others, hard to say. Even Kaz isn't pure enough ice.

"I know that feeling. We have a specialized type of skills and they don't matter here." Jesper may be able to do more with his Grisha abilities now, but his sharpshooter abilities are essentially useless. Until there's a fight of some kind. "Have you thought about learning how to be a hunter, like Geralt or Ciri? It would mean traveling a lot but it's active."

There's no real jobs he knows of for a spy, but she's fast and lethal and skilled. It's a different set of abilities. "I thought about it, but I don't have your patience or focus."

"Perhaps." It does feel so incredibly like him, after all. But that was not all Jesper was to him, nor a Wraith all Inej was either. She knows that, but also refuses to allow him to escape accepting, and further still admitting those things upfront. She was more direct with him about that than she thinks Jesper had thought was possible to do and still keep him. Kaz seemed so much the type that would throw someone away at the drop of a pin. And perhaps in some ways that was, and always would be, true. But some people were irreplaceable, and beneath so very many layers of his outer shell, Kaz Brekker is a sentimental fool. That is perhaps why she felt so at ease with being that way with him. Brutal in her demands. "I love us. The Crows. I'm not sure how much love I lose to the Dregs, as a whole." she admits with a shrug.

She nods at his summation. That's sort of exactly it, and she isn't surprised he could pin it down in such concise words because he'd been feeling it too. Though in a way, she felt like he still had more going on than she did, more things to keep him occupied, people around him. But that was just Jesper, he was an inherently social creature in a way Inej was not sure she'd ever be. Perhaps in another lifetime, but not now, not after everything.

"How far would that take me away?" she hasn't considered it because she doesn't like the thought of leaving Jesper alone. Not because she thinks he couldn't handle himself, but... what if something happened, and she was in some far-off place, and never knew? What if he disappeared while she was away?

Jesper has loved Kaz pretty much since they met; he does love his lost causes, and Kaz is a kind of gamble when it comes to emotional dependence. It's not a kind of love that he ever wanted to go anywhere, not really. Sometimes it was nice that it just existed, that he was able to find people he cared about at all, outside of his father. For all of Jesper's friendly nature, there weren't a lot of people back home he knew, his father isolated him in many ways. He made friends at school but they couldn't last after he turned to the darker streets of Ketterdam. He found a place to put all of his love with Kaz, Inej, the Crow Club, and their little gang. He wouldn't want to change that.

"The Dregs aren't so bad as a whole, they're just from the bottom of the Barrel." He understands that the inner circle of the Crows was not the same as the whole of the Dregs. And Kaz did have to beat them all up to get them to fight for him again. But they are the group that he put together, so he knew how to get them all back. That's just how these things worked.

The question is an earnest one and has a very obvious answer. "Far," he confirms. "You could probably ask to go on the shorter trips, but you wouldn't get to see me every day." And Jesper flashes her a smile, reaching out with his hand toward the bullets he put aside for target practice, and brings them all over to him using his abilities. The abilities she and Wylan pointed out to him he had. "And who wouldn't miss my face?" It's a tease but he understands that it's not ideal for them, but if it would give her purpose? It's a balancing act. He doesn't want her to feel lost.

He sets the bullets down but sends one of them over to her, hovering in the air. "You could learn a trade."

She smirks a little at the comment, half-joke, full-truth. Kaz was in control now, not just in the puppetting of Haskell but for real now. The lowest of lows and ship-sinkers will be weeded out soon enough, and everyone already knows Dirthands doesn’t play fair. The thought of him wrangling his crew, settling into the official leadership position, presses a tiny smile at each corner of her mouth. It’s tangled with a soft-edged sadness, but only a little. This is practice for being away at sea. She won’t see him every day then, either. She has to get used to the way she feels the absence of him carve out a piece of her chest.

She wrinkles her nose at the response. Far. She doesn’t like it. The displeasure on her face breaks when he teases the point. “I would miss it far too much, I think.” She smiles brightly up at him.

She watches in a sort of awe as he works, and more still as one floats toward her, hovering as if on invisible string until she plucks it between two fingers from midair. “Maybe I should apprentice with the blacksmith, and learn to make my own knives.” Her own joke, with a smirk on her lips as she says it.

A part of Jesper wishes that he could have both Wylan and the Dregs, because he doesn't like the idea of Kaz being without both of them, but he knows Kaz will come calling when he truly needs him. Wylan never told him he had to quit or anything, but his priorities changed when the two of them became a team. His boyfriend needed his full attention considering the position they put him in, and Jesper promised to be his eyes and support system. A freelancer for Kaz is still one foot in, enough not to feel like a goodbye.

Jesper winks at her, pleased as punch that she agrees she'd miss his face. And he would miss hers, worrying about her all the time, although he'd pretend not to. He likes being in each other's pocket, but he would give up a lot of his own happiness to help her find her purpose here. "I guess you'll have to stay and keep it in your sightline then."

He shrugs at her. "I think you can do anything you want, Inej. You're brilliant, you have a lot of skills, you have a good heart and a cool head on your shoulders. You have endless potential." If she wanted to make her own knives, sure, if she wanted to become a badass hunter, she'd manage to do that. "If you want to trade in secrets, I'm sure there are plenty here. The Summoned could use a Wraith, if things start to go south."

She grins widely at that wink, because it's kind of exactly what she wanted to get out of him. "I suppose I will," she teases him lightly.

"Thank you," she says in a genuine tone. "For listening. And for believing in me, even when I feel so adrift." These things, so simple, mean the world to her right now. Would always, but it's more apparent in how important it is, and how much she needed to hear it, at this moment than it might have been at another time.

She pushes up to her feet and crosses back over to him again, pressing up on the tippiest of tip-toes to reach up and hug him. She lingers for a moment before pulling back again.

Jesper smiles and puts his arms around her, lifting her off her feet for a few seconds before setting her gently down. He never can resist doing that when they hug, she's the tiniest warrior he knows. "We believe in each other, it's what we do." And that's the Saint's honest truth. The Crows always back up each other, no matter what, even if they fight, even if they mess up.

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You don't have to make a sound 'cause they got what you need

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and wrap here!