Shadows: A Six of Crows Fan fic

Chapter Sixteen: Jesper

Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

His mind kept repeating the mantra again and again in Wylan's voice. When his anxieties and nervous energies had started getting the better of him after he'd 'quit' the dregs, Wylan had started to say that to him once he sensed that Jesper was getting too wound up. For the most part, it worked. As soon as Jesper heard his voice speaking to him, his nerves would begin to calm, the cacophony of thoughts in his head would mellow, and the patterned breathing would slow his heart.

But Wylan wasn't here to calm him at the moment.

He could imagine his voice all he wanted, and while it helped some, it wasn't the same as actually having him speak to him. Instead, Wylan was lying cold on the medical table looking lifeless in the belly of a ship that's being watched by assassins blackmailing my best friend.

Standing in the hall outside the medical bay where Kaz had left him, Jesper wanted to scream. If he didn't think it would scare away any sanity Anika and Pim had left in them, he would have. To take the edge off, Jesper spun around and kicked the wall instead. For a few moments on Yul-Neshyenyer's ship, Jesper had felt numb and at peace with what Kaz had done. He'd come to terms with who Kaz was and what he would always be like. But then Wylan had passed out in his arms from pain while they'd carried him back to The Wraith, then he'd seen Kaz limp into the door of the medical bay and look at Wylan's prone form with nothing but clod calculation in his eyes, then he learned that his best friend was crying in a dark room all alone. If he thought he could, he would kill Kaz. Some small part of him knew that it was a lie. That he could never purposefully hurt Kaz. But the other, very large part of him wanted it so, so bad.

And he wouldn't lie. Another part of him just wanted to see if he could do it.

He turned back to look at Wylan on the medical table. The doctor was still running cabinet to cabinet in the room, panic in every muscle of his body as he tried to keep Wylan alive and stable. Jesper couldn't move as he watched the scene unfold before him. Wylan was so still. There was so much blood.

Why wasn't Wylan moving?

Thoughts pinwheeled and ran laps in his mind. His heart fluttered with hope at every twitch Wylan gave, then plummeted into helpless pain when he caught a glimpse of the doctor's doubt.

If Wylan didn't pull through...

The walls started to close in on Jesper. The darkness around him narrowed and narrowed until all he could see was Wylan's solemn, unflinching face. Even with the bruises, cuts, and black eyes, he just looked so peaceful. He barely felt the light breeze of a person walking past, barely heard the mumbled 'excuse me's. There was an itch inside of him that wanted to move, to do something, to do anything, but how could he leave when Wylan was here in front of him on the brink of...

A full half-hour later— a time full of questions, thoughts, and ponderings that he never wished to revisit again— the doctor finally stopped his movement and slumped down into a wooden chair in the corner of the room. At the release of the doctor's sigh, Jesper snapped out of his desperate state and took a few steps forward.

"What are you doing?" Jesper cried, panicked eyes scouring Wylan's body to look for signs of life. Pim and Anika woke from their own hazes at his cry and stood, ready to help. "Get up! Why aren't you helping him?"

The doctor held up his hand. "I've done what I can. He's stable for now, but I'm not a healer. It may be sometime before he wakes up again."