#apaclypse

    JACK RUBY’S infamous nightclub. It was the most happening thing here since, well---ever. In terms of gathering all the big pins in one place. And boy were they easy to knock down. Suckers, all of them. A strike every night. She wasn’t a veteran at this, but not quite green either. Twenty-three years old and yet to be caught from robbing the pockets of every patron in the joint. Every night she worked serving drinks in this stupid sparkly scantily clad outfit. 

     One that had started coming in here lately had caught her attention. It was a straight up KID. Dressed in a private school uniform and no one bothered him. Which meant he probably had money, too. But who was he? Clearly belonging to no one here. But someone special--definitely. Not even a child was safe. He’d live, though. Just go home and cry to daddy about it.  Whatever.

      A fake laugh was given in passing while she walked away from a table, stopping a few feet short of a booth to observe the school boy from behind.  Inhaling deeply, feet moved forward and heels quietly tapped on the carpet, appearing in front of his booth.

wylan:

☾      ↺    ﹙   @apaclypse​   ﹚      ﹒   ❛ i’m not drunk enough to talk about this. ❜      ,      accepting

AAAAA ok it manifests in a variety of ways. in the moment, she doesn't usually hesitate, especially not if she doesn't know the person she's killing. there are moments where she doesn’t want to strike that final blow but it has to be done for some higher purpose and her choices are relatively limited. i don’t know if fear is the right word because it doesn’t scare her, per say, but it definitely haunts her. 

and that comes into play in regards to her ptsd. as much as she loathes to admit that she has it, she most definitely does. it’s not just the killing that haunts her but the thought of all the lives she’s impacted either from hurting a family member, collateral damage, blowing up buildings, etc. her nightmares do tend to be more personal (ie. focusing on being abandoned, loved ones dying, wobani) but the weight of her past actions weighs heavily on her. 

@apaclypse​  ❤’d.

EMOJI HEADCANONS.

🤔 - What’s something they’ll never understand?

total / blind allegiance? is a pretty big one. it comes in many forms. he doesn’t get why nina and matthias are so protective of their home country when, historically, both ravka and fjerda have committed some pretty terrible crimes against other countries. he doesn’t understand how they can dedicate their whole lives for movements that will, inevitably, kill them and then move on. he thinks it’s reckless behaviour. he thinks kerch dedication to ghezen is fucked up. he thinks the barrel’s idea of loyalty is also skewed. it is possible he has authority issues but also, can you really say he’s wrong to be cautious about his autonomy around people who put total faith in things that control more than they offer help?

💝 - What gestures do they really appreciate? How do you get on their good side?

i think. people who can carry on with his sense of humour and banter with him, particularly in stressful moments, are people he really appreciates. jesper takes things seriously, but he hates to panic and wallow in bad feelings, too. he appreciates people / gestures that show no assumption of authority over him. he really appreciates people who can be practical when shit hits the fan. most of all tho. the 1 gesture that will ALWAYS win him over: introduce him to ur pets. 

🎁 - How do they feel about their birthday/birthdays in general?

Bad. as a kid he loved birthdays but confronting the horror that is Aging As A Grisha has made him kind of.......inwardly apprehensive about birthdays. he loves to celebrate and party but like, the second he’s alone its just existential dread. same with everyone else’s birthdays, but he makes a tremendous effort to be extremely cheerful for them bcus it’s THEIR day!!!!!!!!

🌙 - What’s their sleep schedule like?

that depends on if kaz is gonna show up at his door: a) with a job b) for dinner c) bloody and close to death

META + [ nat’s brain rattling ]

this is rly sweet :( i think jesper honours her in a lot of ways — even when he was suppressing his biggest connection to her, his powers, he was conscious of her absence in his life and made an effort to fill the loneliness with something whenever it hit him.

when she died, he took up a lot of her responsibilities around the house — he honoured her by keeping the house and colm going. he couldn’t always do it the way she did, but the schedule he followed was hers, the songs he hummed while he worked were hers, and when something needed fixing or making, the method was hers.

when he moved to kerch for university, his main way of staying connected to his zemeni culture was his fashion — he fell on materials and patterns and colours she favoured; and because his mother was the most beautiful woman in the whole world in jesper’s eyes, why wouldn’t he want to look like her? when his hair gets long between cuts and styles, he takes care of it the way she did her own hair, when he shops for jewellery, he picks gold, because it was what his mother wore the most often. he wears her wedding ring on a chain around his neck (not always out on jobs, though, even if he loathes leaving it behind), and fiddles with it when he gets nervous.

when he settled down in ketterdam permanently with wylan, making trips to her gravesite (the cherry tree on the fahey farm) gets a little more complicated. he asks wylan to plant a cherry tree in their back garden, and though it’s not the same as the one his mother is actually buried under, he treats it as if were because cherry blossoms were her favourites.

META + [ nat’s brain rattling ]

oh i have THOUGHTS about this. most of them are: jesper stepped foot into university at a very young age on a science-related scholarship, quickly realised the stress (of multiple things, not just university) was becoming way too much to handle. 

he made friends fast! he wowed ppl with his proficiency, because he was so young and already studying at university level! he kept up with his assignments, wrote to his dad regularly — enjoyed the odd party with friends on a school night. and then that became more frequent, because he’d gotten a taste for life outside of a (loving, but) restrictive home and all the freedom that comes with it. he’s still very popular among his peers, still gets invited out — eventually gets invited to that gambling hall that sets his life into turbulent motion.

most ppl he knew in uni were probably quite shocked that he kind of just fell off the face of the earth one day, but if anyone had seen what jesper was like behind the scenes during his brief stint at university then there would probably be a general consensus of: oh, right, that was just bound to happen eventually.

towards the end of his uni days, he was dealing with: mounting exam anxiety, deadline stress from small projects that felt like huge, fate-deciding assignments, guilt over the money he was wasting that his father had spent years earning, anxiety about paying accommodation fees, culture shock, fear of being exposed as a grisha somehow (he’d only ever learned to hide it in a place where grisha are accepted, and under his father’s watchful eye), and all that nonsense that comes with having rampant adhd (in a deeply academic and competitive environment), and missing his mother terribly along with the guilt-bitterness-fear spiral of disappointing her.