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kindness-ricochets · 3 years

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I’ve been seeing a lot of thoughts and hc of autistic wylan lately and you seem to also be a fan of the concept. May I ask why? Exactly? I could definitely kinda see it but wanna hear you thoughts you’re always so eloquent

Hey there anon! Sorry for the delay—I’m guessing you already found an answer to this elsewhere while I was off Tumblr for a bit, but just in case, here are my thoughts. This will be heavily personal, but… well, you can’t very well ask an autistic person about autism and expect neutrality!

Autism is different for everyone and can be difficult to pin down, so while Wylan is arguably autistic, he misses several beats that for me would have made him definitively and undeniably autistic. For example, when the bells start to ring, triggering black protocol—I work in a place with a lot of bells and am frequently caught too close to one and normally press my hands over my ears until it’s over because that sound is like shrapnel raking across my insides. All of them. Not just the ear and brain parts. Wylan doesn’t have that sort of visceral reaction, but that may just mean he doesn’t have the same sensitivities that I do, or to the same level. He also never, that I recall, eats meat—as weird as that might sound, eating meat is incredibly complicated with heightened sensitivities to taste and texture. I’m not sure how old I was when I realized it was strange to get up from the table to spit out my food because it viscerally repulsed me. So it might be that Wylan is autistic and has different experiences than I do. Those are things I would include in a story as major indicators of a character being autistic. This might also mean that his father’s way of raising him taught him to hide unusual reactions and stimming behaviors. It’s not that much of a reach to assume a man who tried to abuse the dyslexia out of his son would take the same approach to autism. (More on autism and abuse later.)

So while I’m going to lay out why I read Wylan as autistic, that’s why I think it’s valid to read him as not being autistic as well. Both are valid.

A final caveat, I am well overdue for a reread of the books, so I likely left something out or could have found better examples. Take this as a few of my reasons for a personal headcanon. Anyone who feels differently, that's fine! We can each read things our own way :)

1 - Hyperfixation: The way Wylan loves music

Most of the Crows’ backgrounds color how they see the world: Kaz’s shrewdness, Matthias’s tactical thinking and superstition, Inej’s faith and Suli wisdom, etc. That’s a sign of good character writing. But very little of Wylan’s upbringing seems to have influenced how he sees the world. It comes closest when he thinks about how his father would scorn his new friends, but we never see that scorn from Wylan.

The way a hyperfixation feels, it’s like you’ve always lived in a close parallel world, never fully been a part of the other one where it seems like everyone else lives, but suddenly there’s this bright shining piece of your soul laced through the other world. It lets you connect, it lets you exist in their realm, and you can’t help but filter everything new through that lens because it’s the brightest, most wonderful thing. (I had been between hyperfixations for a while when I started a new job; six months into that work, I read Crooked Kingdom. One of my coworkers thought I had fallen in love, it was that marked a difference.)

So, combining these: Wylan never really acts like he was part of his father’s world, and indeed is in some ways separate from the other Crows, but he parses everything through music, his hyperfixation. He sets words to music to remember them, like he does with the contract. Even his own anxiety is made sense of through music, when in his first narrated chapter, he sets it to music: what am I doing here what am I doing here…. When he’s overwhelmed, his thoughts are “a jangle of misplayed chords”. The Crows have backgrounds that influence how they react to the world, but Wylan’s hyperfixation is his means of experiencing and understanding the world.

2 - Literal thinking: Wylan responds to exact words

In this post, I went into detail on the line where Wylan suggested waking up men to kill them. Wylan is generally unsupportive of killing people—Oomen, Smeet’s clerk, his father… he advocates not-murder in each of these situations. Accepting his aversion to murder, his suggestion to wake men up and kill them seems like a genuine reaction to Jesper saying he doesn’t want to kill unconscious men. Wylan takes things literally.

This happens the most with Jesper, probably because Jesper talks to Wylan the most. Nina and Matthias don’t really register him past how he might be useful, Inej is usually quite direct, and Kaz is very deliberate when he speaks with Wylan. This really interests me because Kaz tends to vary his speech more than the others do, he adapts more to being around other people. He jokes a little with Jesper, spars with Nina, speaks more openly and more sharply with Inej, and he’s precise with Wylan. Kaz may not know what autism is, but he recognizes what’s effective with Wylan.

Another example is when Wylan is sketching the Ice Court plans and Jesper says it looks like a cake. There are plenty of valid responses here: pointing out that concentric circles look like lots of things, that it’s just a sketch, telling Jesper to stop looking over his shoulder. Instead, Wylan says that the Ice Court is sort of like a cake. That… doesn’t sound like something Wylan would normally say. He’s not addressing the whole situation, he’s addressing the specific words Jesper said.

One of the most heartbreaking examples of this (to me, anyway) is with Marya. Wylan does the same thing with his mother, when she asks if he’s there for her money and says she hasn’t got any, and his response is, “I don’t either.” We understand as readers that what Marya is communicating here is that she is so accustomed to being utterly ignored unless she is being used, and if she told Wylan that no one visited but to take advantage and she assumed he was here for the same reason, he would say it wasn’t the case. But he just responds to the immediate statement.

There are a lot of examples of this.

3 — 0% perception, 100% creativity

Wylan can identify things that don’t make sense or that he doesn’t understand, but at the beginning of the series he can’t make leaps, only ask questions. On the Ferolind, he wonders about the source of water at the Ice Court; though Kaz doesn’t say as much, he was clearly wondering, too, because he eventually figured out the underground river. There’s an interesting parallel here where, in the beginning of Crooked Kingdom, Wylan asks a question about how they’ll break into Smeet’s and Kaz tells him to use his eyes instead of running his mouth—at which point Wylan is able to figure it out. I don’t think this is because he never tried before, though, but because no one ever bothered to teach him. Kaz can be harsh but he gives harsh corrections rather than harsh rejections and Wylan learns from him.

It’s hard to understand the world for people with autism. The world is designed and run by and for people whose minds are fundamentally different from ours, whose thoughts and experiences are unlike ours. Imagine trying to learn English or Spanish or Mandarin or any other spoken language if your first language was olfactory. That’s sort of what it’s like for someone with autism to just get dropped into the world and expected to figure this out.

This can be attributed to Wylan’s upbringing, but I disagree with that because none of the others were brought up in the Barrel, either, and Wylan doesn’t understand trade or politics with any special skill. Kaz wasn’t born in the Barrel, but he managed to go from “stealing is wrong” to “wrong isn’t my concern” real quick; Colm Fahey didn’t raise his son on gambling and firefights; the Ghafas never expected their daughter to be away from the family. Only Nina has relevant training—and even that’s precious little, she left school way too early. The others figured it out; Wylan needed a bit more help. He also seems surprised by the way his father conducts business. Wylan takes things on face value—like the time he’s surprised someone would do something, simply because it’s unlawful. This is something he expresses to a group of gangsters. He’s never been taught the way of any world and these things are not intuitive to him.

But Wylan isn’t stupid.

He doesn’t know how to understand the world, but he does understand how things go together. Given a pointy diamond, a handle, and a screw, he cut through Grisha glass. He carries flashbangs and magic napalm, he recreates military hardware—Wylan understands how to make things interact for a specific result. But to me the most telling thing isn’t just that he puts together chemical pieces, it’s that he figured out Jesper controlled bullets. He saw the pieces and put them together.

Wylan can understand when things don’t make sense, but he can’t make sense of them—yet when he understands things at their basic level, he understands them without preconception, for what they are. This is a very autistic way of thinking about things, it goes back to the literalism. He can’t make the leaps of logic other people can, but he also doesn’t make the assumptions they do—“I’ve never heard of a bullet Grisha, so that’s not a thing” vs “Well Jesper’s an almost impossibly good shot and he controls metal and bullets are metal, so why not?”

4 - Broken brain/body connection

Wylan’s great at chemistry and drawing and playing flute or piano—but he’s something of a disaster other times. This is in particular contrast to the other characters, all of whom are physically adept. Meanwhile it’s a challenge for Wylan to climb a rope ladder and he spends a full paragraph trying to figure out what to do with his hands. It’s easy to say, well, he’s used to a sedentary lifestyle, but at this point he’s not. He’s worked in the tannery for months. He’s just physically awkward.

I have less to say on this point only because it’s about something I don’t fully understand myself. I don’t really understand what it would be like to have a body that just… does things? Like normal stuff? Without tics and stims. No idea. Only that Wylan’s discomfort in and seeming lack of mastery of his own body feels very relatable to me.

5 - Abuse

One of the most familiar things about Wylan is how he has been so thoroughly abused and broken down that he’s afraid to do or say much of anything. Again, this is a place his background can be an obscuring factor. Of course Wylan didn’t think to blow up the walls when the first met the parem-juiced jurda and got trapped, he’s a spoiled rich kid! Except, he also startled when Jesper said his name later. Wylan didn’t hesitate because he was spoiled, he hesitated because he had no confidence.

He also thinks Kaz would laugh at him for playing music at his mother’s grave. Now, personally, I can’t see Kaz laughing at Wylan—being indifferent, thinking it’s pointless sentimentality, shaking his head, maybe commenting sharply that they need to go if they don’t have the time. But not laughing. Kaz is a snarky, sharp-edged jerk sometimes, but he doesn’t go out of his way to criticize, he just lets people know when they inconvenience him.

Wylan has been trained to identify attention as negative by an overbearing abusive father who literally saw him as less favorable than a demon. Now, that may have been hyperbole, but Jan criticized everything he could about Wylan—art, music, emotion—and made clear that he was worthless and competent to nothing. (Jan Van Eck can suck a rotten donkey dick but that’s neither here nor there.)

A lot of people with autism experience levels of bullying that have similar impacts. Or as the kids these days are calling it: we go to school. We go to school where we are weird. Where we look weird and move weird and talk about weird things and there’s a whole little bevy of asswipes to makes sure we know it. I got teased more for playing Pokemon and sitting alone reading than the kid who pissed himself onstage at assembly. (This was before Pokemon was cool. I’m old.) And that is not unusual for autistic kids. It’s also not unusual for this to be compounded by relatives or even parents who may be trying to help but don’t understand and can make things even harder.

So we can’t read social cues and we’re taught at a vicious age that everything that comes naturally to us is wrong. Imagine trying to interact in society with that background. There is no guide and most advice from neurotypical people isn’t actually what they mean. It breaks you down.

Wylan’s anxiety isn’t definitive of autism, but isn’t something that was incredibly familiar as someone whose neurodivergent experiences created a strong level of anxiety.

6 — High Compassion, Low Social Competence

Wylan isn’t very good at making friends. In fact, none of the Crows likes him much in the beginning, and only some of them soften toward him by the end. (Matthias and Nina come to respect his skills as a chemist but neither seems to particularly like him.) But you can see throughout the books that Wylan wants to connect with them and be one of them, he just… isn’t. He’s off-beat. He’s weird. He asks questions and mimics behaviors (trying to be cool and tough like Jesper, saying “mission” like Matthias does, imitating Kaz’s scheming face) but he doesn’t quite get how to adapt.

But he still cares about people. Not just them. Everyone. He cares about the people they leave in the ditch outside the prison wagon, he cares about Hanna Smeet, he cares about Alys. He cares about the people who’ll take a hit from Kaz’s sugar caper.

Wylan’s awkward social skills have undeniable big autism energy. I posit his compassion does as well. This is simply who Wylan is, and that means being someone who cares about everyone. I have nothing to back up that this is related to autism. I can say that it’s like me. (Not to brag.) I can’t turn off the part of my brain that says everyone matters. Individuals can opt out of that compassion, but they have it by default. There’s a certain agony in feeling a pull toward and love for just about everyone and yet an inability to develop meaningful connections with them, and that keen loneliness… it just burns.

Again, it’s not definitive of autism, but it’s very similar to an autistic experience.

I said in the beginning that I didn’t think Wylan certainly had autism and I stand by that, but he is a powerfully honest reflection of many people who do. So he can be understood to have autism, and that’s part of the reason some people have that headcanon.

#six of crows #wylan van eck #autism #actually autistic

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rukiakwashere · 3 years

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Chasing Last Summer

An amazing experience while working with talented artist for the @grishaversebigbang

Corporalki:

@gimmedafood

Materialki:

@anubem (link to art),

@bookish-ginger (link to art),

@wellwatersurprise (link to art)

Summary:

As Jesper is trying to settle down, away from cards on the Van Eck estate with Wylan alongside him as a work partner, wondering what to do with his father’s empire, they both start thinking of what they want. The Summer they left behind them went great so maybe it was time to get something serious going on. While busy reordering their priorities, Wylan receives a letter (more like hides it) and it all goes downhill after that...

Jesper boards a ship... The Wraith makes a visit and convinces some cane-dude to tag along... Some Grisha appear... And Wylan may or may not fulfil one of Kaz’s lifelong dreams

tl;dr Post-Crooked Kingdom Wesper making their best to figure out themselves and each other.

Ao3 Link : https://archiveofourown.org/works/33678499/chapters/83698627

[Chapter one under cut]:

Jesper looked at the clock on the wall for what seemed like the twentieth time in the meeting. He fidgeted on his seat looking left and right spotting both familiar and unfamiliar faces. Men and women, mostly old, everyone much older than he was.

Wylan was on his left, completely still and focused on the woman speaking loudly, moving her hands animatedly to make her point. Jesper thought that her hands were too distracting, he really couldn’t make what the point was with so much waving around. Wylan on the other hand seemed to perfectly understand. He nodded a lot when anyone paused, he offered his opinion when asked and he conversed easily with all the businesspeople around him. It suited him, Jesper thought. Wylan Van Eck looked like a businessman in his own right. His young and calm presence made people trust him and his ironed black and white suit made them believe he was one of their own, refined elite.

Jesper, on the other hand, didn’t know what to make of himself. His long legs never remained in the same place for more than mere seconds and his awkward posture as he tried to fit on the chair always brought on curious and sometimes annoyed stares. People weren’t used to seeing someone like him sitting on their expensive and elegant chairs. They simply weren’t made for him.

Still, Wylan never commented on anything. Sometimes he caught Jesper’s stare in a meeting and all he did was nod- like he was on autopilot. Jesper didn’t know what to make of it. Was he just another face in Wylan’s business-related crowd? Sometimes he wasn’t that sure if Wylan was only keeping him around because of the promise they had made months ago. Was he just pitying him?

Jesper didn’t know if being Wylan’s secretary was the lowest or highest point of his life to date.

Occasionally, he wondered what life would be like if he had never made that deal, not being Wylan’s eyes. Nina’s offer echoed in his ears. Ravka… Would he dare to leave home and become a Grisha? Probably not.

He would have been back at the Barrel, sitting at a gambling table spending the money he had till it vanished. At least working with Wylan saved him from going broke again, he concluded. Still, was he happy with where his life was at now? Spending his days waiting for the next meeting, talking about things he had little interest in with people that didn’t interest him?

Wylan though… The ginger’s presence was steady and when they weren’t in a meeting, he was okay to be around. Jesper didn’t mind his presence, he rather enjoyed Wylan’s witty remarks and random facts.

The past few days though, the ginger seemed less and less enthusiastic about anything. Dark circles seemed to have formed permanently below his eyes and he seemed to be sighing a lot – and it didn’t seem to be because of Jesper’s breathtaking presence.

“Wy?” Jesper mouthed, poking the ginger’s shoulder lightly. Wylan didn’t seem surprised, turning discretely towards him with a tired smile.

“What happened?” Jesper read the ginger’s lips.

“You cool?”, he mouthed back.

~~~

Wylan had the audacity to snort, suppressing his laughter at Jesper’s question. He opted for a small hands-up and a smile that nearly reached his eyes. Sincerely, he felt tired and spent.

He didn’t know business. Kaz had taught him the basics, which felt more like the principles of manipulation, bribery and theft – which Wylan had decided pretty quickly, were better than nothing.

His father had given up on him early on, realizing Wylan’s bad relationship with letters would make him a bad businessman and would let people exploit him freely. His father never imagined, though, his son would have found Jesper, the only person Wylan could put his trust on fully - and did so every day.

Jesper was the one responsible for what came in and what went out, who might prove beneficial and who was to be avoided. He read stacks of papers daily, and even though his legs wouldn’t stop moving and tapping the floor, he read them all and reported every line he found even slightly useful back to Wylan. While all Wylan could do was sit and wait, pretending the numbers he could make out at the sheets in his hands were enough.

He didn’t understand why Jesper was still there. His awkward fidgeting at the meetings they attended together made it clear that he felt out of place. Wylan was sure Jesper was longing for action, his revolvers out, not hidden inside his jacket. Sure, they were sharing their profits but was Jesper missing the Slat? Did he want to go back to risking his life every day? To feel the thrill of chasing and being chased? Was Jesper still around him out of pity, trapped in a promise he had made while in action, when he wasn’t sure if he would make it out alive to see the next sunrise?

Maybe, it was the same as his awkward confession, a stupid phrase that kept replaying in Wylan’s mind even though he had hit stop months ago. Maybe I like your stupid face.

Wylan was annoyed with himself about how a six-word sentence that nearly insulted him made him feel so tingly and weird inside. He soon realized though, as the battle came to an end, as his dad backed off, as Kaz won whatever feud he had with Pekka Rollins, that some things that are best left unsaid can rise in the heat and uncertainty of a battle and what happened between him and Jesper had been one of them.

We were fugitives, bounties on our heads. Of course, some emotions would be misunderstood, Wylan repeated in his head.

What happened with Jesper was one of them. Wylan was passable and the time they had spent together just- was like that. It meant nothing more. Jesper might have kissed him twice, or once – damn Kuwei – but as things calmed down and they went back to their lives, old and new, he didn’t approach him again in that way - apart from the occasional flirting - and Wylan… Wylan felt really stupid to have expected something more.

Wylan poked the side of his cheek, annoyed with himself. This wasn’t time for his thoughts to be drifting. The meeting… He had to speak with Lady Kadrir and make sure their agreement held,even though the head of the Van Eck family had changed and he needed to speak with that white haired man and give his condolences to that Lady and so many things he had never pictured himself doing ever before.

He never expected to be here. When his father still tolerated him, Wylan dreamed of a music school and maybe joining a theater orchestra with his flute. Even when his father decided otherwise, he still hoped for a demo-related work at the Crows or maybe someone reaching out and joining a traveling band… never business. His father had made it clear early on that he was not suited for that and it was the only thing Wylan and his father had agreed upon. He wasn’t sure he would like it… and he had yet to decide.

Business was… weird. Wylan’s perspectives of it had been two; one when he was growing up, seeing his father busy with paperwork he was always signing… and then, there was business the way the Dregs did it. Meetings under the fold of darkness, sometimes gunshots sounding along, a gambling parlor expecting tourists and sailors from far away…

Yet, what he felt he was doing on his own, was different. Sure, Jesper seemed to be writing and reading tons of stuff but Wylan thought of business as constant meetings, a lot of useless information in his head and a relentless bell ringing in his head reminding him to be polite yet entitled. That was the way.

At first, he liked being good at it, memorizing estates, meeting people that didn’t look at him down their noses, because Wylan Van Eck possessed property the same way they did. He sat and talked and traded in the language they understood.

Still, that feeling had slowly drifted away, as the bell in his head rang louder and louder. He felt lost and disconnected, yet he wouldn’t stop. He was more determined than ever not to give up. Those meetings had come to be the only place where he felt like he proved his worth. The only thing he could be good at and be of use.

“Mister Van Eck.”

It was his turn to speak.

“As my father retired and passed me on new property, I’ve made the decision to establish a reliable network around the Van Eck brand.” Words scripted and exercised in front of a mirror, delivered to an audience just like in a theater.

It’s fine. I can work like this. At least that’s what he convinced himself as he went on with his speech.

~~~

#gvbb21 #gvbbfic21 #chasing last summer #grishaverse #wesper #wylan van eck #jesper fahey #fanfiction #post crooked kingdom #post-canon #grishaverse big bang

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overcupofcoco · 6 years

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kaz brekker as an adoptive father au though

• ok so yeah, the dregs might be the edgiest and mightiest but at some point jesper and wylan have kids, nina settles down and starts her own bakery and inej can’t live in ketterdam, she a different woman now

• kaz on the other hand, this bitch might be older but he’s just gettin started.

•yeah he’s stolen from the Ravkan kingdom now, yeah he’s in a little shit with the Shu, oops are the Zemeni after him? he almost forgot.

• anyway, he’s swaggering down in the barrel like usual one evening when he hears really loud screams from an alley

• usually he ignores because the bastard of the barrel ain't got time for pidgeon affairs, but for some reason this time he wants to take a look. he hasn’t had his Wraith in a while so he’s gotten used to being sneaky

•what he witnesses isn’t necessarily out of the usual; a woman at gunpoint holding a child. Pleads for mercy. Screams. An attempt to run away. A murder. Pillaging of the body.

• He took note of the killers (u never know when you need the intel) when he realizes that the child is still screaming.

• he pauses

• what the fuck was he supposed do? Leave the kid baby? Give it to some woman to take care of? he knew the probability that she would sell the child out in slavery the moment it was old enough was basically 100%

• he remembered jordie and him, young and lost, orphaned in the streets. he remembered inej, basically enslaved by Tante Heleen

• before he knew it, he was walking towards the corpse, uncovering the baby that couldn’t older than three years, from under its dead mother’s long skirts.

• it was a girl. dark skinned, tufts of curly hair, large grey eyes staring up at him in concern.

• “god dammit” he muttered, wrapping the girl in his coat and bringing her to the slat. he would give the girl to Jesper and Wylan when they came back from their vacation in 3 weeks. in the meanwhile, he would somehow deal with her.

• The girl was a clever one, silent and observing as he made their way to the Crows Club. She didn’t cry for her mother, perhaps because Kaz’s glare was too frightening, or perhaps because she simply wasn’t afraid at all.

• He put her on the bed, looking at her with hard eyes. She stared back, tilting her head. “No talking.” he said promptly, “No moving.”

• The first hour, he almost ripped his hair out. Drug dealers, mafia, merchants, gang members, he could easily deal with. But a curious child?

• Somehow, she had managed to open a pen and scrawl all over his pillows.

• He didn’t bother to use any type of voice when he scolded. it was the same cold, flat voice he used during parleys. “No. Don’t do that. Don’t touch my pens,”

• she just frowned, tilting her head to the side. something dinged in Kaz’s heart and he didn’t like it.

•at some point, she figured out how to climb out of his bed and was now crawling around his room. he couldn’t focus-- so he resorted to observing, leaning back in his chair.

• she had started silently babbling herself, fidgeting with papers on the ground, chair legs, discarded coins.

• slowly he grew used to her static mumbling and managed to start paperwork again until--

• a weak tug on his pant leg. He flinches back, looking down sharply at the girl

• “my leg hurts”

• Kaz probably hadn’t been taken by surprise in years but those three words shocked him. she could talk?

• he looks at her silently, clenched her jaw. her eyes were a bright blue. Should he call a medik? Should he ignore her? he couldn’t have people knowing there was a child in his room or that he needed medik. It was a weakness.

• “Where?” same flat, uninterested voice.

• She struggled to lift her soiled pant leg to reveal a mildly bloodied gash across her calf. Kaz could tell it wasn’t deep.

• “It hurts a lot, mister, help?”

• now imagine Kaz Brekker, after a long pause, picking up the girl from under her arms and bringing her to the bed. He spends half an hour cleaning and mending her leg as she sits quietly.

• “is mama dead?”

• “yes. gone.”

• “are you going to kill me, mister?”

• pauses his work to look up at her. decidedly, she was full of surprises.

• “not planning to,” he squinted at the tiny girl, “how old are you?”

• the girl cracked a smile and held up three fingers-- proud of herself. “I’m four in one months, mister!”

• “When did you learn how to speak?”

• the girl looked bewildered... for the first time in the evening, fear was in her light eyes, “I don’t know, mister brekker”

• Kaz looked at her sharply. She recoiled in fear at his menacing glare. She must have known how to read, his name had been all over the papers she was fiddling with.

• “You call me Kaz. Only Kaz. You stay in this room until I can find you some parents.”

• That first night, the girl slept in the bed. Kaz slept in his chair-- only to be woken up by a clang of rustling early the next morning.

• reflexes kicked in and he grabbed his gun.

• “i just wanted water, mister Kaz.” a high pitched voice said weakly as the girl’s head popped up from behind the desk. Her leg was clearly better, as she was standing up.

• annoyed sigh from Kaz. He just picked up his cane and coat, having slept in his gloves, and just scowled at the girl. She looked at him, then proceeded to continue her attempts at reaching the tall glass of water on the desk-- failing miserably.

• Kaz handed it to her and she gulped it all down.

• Kaz left the entire day, running errands, checking on the crow club. He had left crackers and water for the girl, but in reality, he knew he was desperately trying to rid the child of his thoughts.

• he was kaz brekker, for saints’ sake, and there was a talking toddler in his office?

• he finally came back in his room late in the evening, expecting the child to be either somehow dead or asleep, but instead, he found her standing on his chair that she had pushed against the window ledge, looking outside and talking to herself.

•Panick ran through him. What if people saw her? What if people thought he was holding children hostage? Worse, what if people thought he had a child? What if... she could fall over the ledge...

• “Get off the chair,” “I thought I had told you to stay hidden”

• “Sorry mister Kaz, I thought you had told me to stay in the room”

• did she just accidentally sass him?

• the next day, she wasn’t perched over the window, but she was on his desk, grasping a pencil and struggling to manipulate the utensil in her tiny hand. her face was pure concentration.

• silently, Kaz walked up behind her, reading over her shoulder. Two days after having picked her up, he knew better than to just expect her to be scribbling gibberish.

• Z U R i zURi fat circle for the dots above the i, uneven letters, but still writing.

• “this is my name! do you like it, mister Kaz?” Zuri. Hope in Zemeni. He realized he had never asked her name. She hadn’t seem bothered. “You said no touching the pen... this has no black stuff, so I used it! Look, mister Kaz! I made you a pretty picture!”

• She beamed, shoving another piece of paper in his face. It was messy, but Kaz could see the outline of a child with dark skin, a bigger person colored in crudely with black-- and was that a bird?

• “That’s me--- that’s you, Mister Kaz! Those lines are your eyebrows because you are always mad! and that's the nice bird that comes to the window sometimes!”

• It became routine. Kaz spent his day out, leaving Zuri in his room. He provided food, water, paper, pens and after the fourth day and massive amounts of begging in the middle of the night, a box of colored pencils.

• ( “Mister Kaz” *groan from Kaz* *Gentle tug on his pant leg* “Can I get color?” “What?” “Color for my drawings!”......... “Please?”...... “Fine. Go to bed. Time to sleep.”)

• Gradually, Kaz spent less time thinking he was insane for taking in a child, and more time observing the girl. she was sharp, learning quickly. She knew immediately that touching Kaz was a big no-no, apart from the spare pant leg tug.

• Sometimes, she would ask Kaz for help. Give him her drawings. They were always of her and him and a crow, in different settings. In the beginning, he grudgingly agreed, only out of annoyance that she may start to cry.

• (she had never cried in front of him, but he heard her gentle sniffles in the middle of the name and her whispers for her mother) (he tried to ignore her)

•anyway, as the days passed, he started really paying attention to her letters on the papers, giving her advice and examples. She improved fast.

• Two weeks passed. It was raining outside. Kaz was working and Zuri was silently practicing her letters right under his desk.

• “Mister Kaz?” “Hmm?” “Why do you have the stick?” The cane.

• He paused. “My leg is hurt.” “Like me?” “No.” “Why?” “Because mine is hurt forever.” pause “Why?”

• Zuri might have been a quiet girl, but Kaz knew that she grasped at any opportunity to ask questions.

• “Enough questions.”

• Silence.

• “Mister Kaz?” she squeaked slowly. He exhaled. “What?”

• “Are you magical?” she peaked out from under the desk.

• “What?”

• “Sometimes you make things disappear from people. I see it.”

• Kaz put down his pen and rose an eyebrow, peering at her from his chair. Had she been getting out of the room? Of course, in the Crow Club, he picked different pockets or simply impressed the guests with sleight of hand-- but no one was supposed to notice that.

• “Did you go out of the room?”

• Immediately, she realized her mistake. She tucked her chin in her neck and looked down shamefully. “Nevermind.” She picked up the orange pencil.

• He almost laughed. He thought he would be mad at her for jeopardizing both her and him, but her worried little face was too cute-- what was he thinking? he shook away the thoughts. Jesper and Wylan would be in Ketterdam soon enough and the girl would be out of his legs

• literally.

• There was thunder that night. Kaz had gradually collected dozens of blankets to make a bed for the girl. That night, there was no tug at his pant leg, but whimpers. Loud ones. Kaz couldn't ignore them

• “Zuri?” he grumbled.

• Silence.

• “Zuri.” he turned on the little lamp at on his bedside table. He waited. Slowing, Zuri got up. The shirt he had given her to sleep in reached her toes.

• “I’m sorry, Mister Kaz,” she whispered. Her face was full of tears, her blue eyes shining in the light, “The loud noise makes me scared.”

• As if to prove a point, thunder resonated and Zuri pressed her lips together, shaking and covering her ears. She didn’t cry though. Never when he could see.

• His heart twisted. His heart twisted for her. He made the decision.

• “Come here.” he lifted a corner of the covers, inviting her in. She hesitated.

• “Now or never.” he warned. she waddled to the bed, struggling to get over the side. Kaz silently slipped on his gloves as Zuri curled herself in a ball.

• Zuri had never asked him about the gloves and he was thankful.

•The bed wasn’t big, but she took up so little space that he could easily keep a healthy distance away.

•Thunder boomed as he turned off the light.“I’m scared, Mister Kaz”

• he froze.

• “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.” He could barely fathom the words he said.

• “With your magic?”

• “With my magic.”

• The three weeks went by, and Kaz gave Zuri to Wylan and Jesper who easily took her in. They didn’t ask any questions.

• As Kaz packed up Zuri’s possessions that she had collected throughout the three weeks, the girl looked at him sadly.

• “Why do I have to go Mister Kaz?”

• “It’s better for you.”

• “Why?”

• He sighed. “Because.”

• “I’m going to miss you, Mister Kaz.”

• He clenched his jaw, giving her the box of her belongings. It had seemed like forever ago that he had found her in her late mother’s embrace.

• “Me too, Zuri.” They had not hugged, but she had tugged on his pant leg one last time.

• The days went by. The office was back to what it had been before. Calm, orderly, silent.

• Kaz had dreaded the feeling, but he knew that he missed it. He missed her. Her mumbling, the soft sound of her feet padding the ground, her drawings, her letters, the Zemeni lullabies, her excited smile, her small pout when he told her he wouldn’t get her waffles, her frown when he told her to brush her teeth.

• He even missed her minuscule presence at night.

• It had been a week since she had gone away. He had ignored Wylan and Jesper. He didn’t want to know what they had done with the girl-- he trusted them enough. Then he found them--

• Of course he did. Of course he kept them. The drawings. The childish drawings. Her, him, the crow that she had named Will. Her notes. FOR MiSTER KAZ.

• He knew he should have burned them. Instead he shook his head--

• Next thing he knew, he was at the Van Eck manor.

• “Kaz?” It was Kali, Jesper and Wylan’s oldest daughter. She swung the door wide to reveal Jesper carrying Zuri.

• Her face light up the moment she saw him.

• “Mister Kaz!” she waved gingerly, but smiled wide. “I was telling Mister Jesper that I did a cartwheel!”

• Jesper grinned. He may have been in his late thirties, but the man still had the heart of a teenager. “It was very impressive,” he agreed, letting her to the ground. She rushed to Kaz, but stopped a safe distance away.

• “Are we going home, Mister Kaz?” she asked, eyes twinkling.

• Jesper interjected, “Zuri, darling, Mister Kaz can’t--”

• “Yes,” Kaz breathed, squatting down to level her, “We are going home. Will the Crow misses you.”

• Jesper’s jaw dropped. Zuri clapped her hands. “Crows are so nice!”

• Kaz cracked a genuine smile, offering a bare hand to the little girl that had somehow given him a new dimension in life.

• She grabbed it slowly.

• “Now... how about some waffles for the birthday girl?”

so yep yeah idk this just is something i want like a little girl to soften out Kaz’s edges you know what I mean? also i know shes really young but thats the point she like a genius u know idk

#this is really long #sorry #kaz brekker though #kaz brekker au #six of crows #kanej #soc #kaz brekker #cute kaz brekker #six of crows one shot #crooked kingdom #wylan van eck #jesper fahey #nina zenik #matthias helvar #inej ghafa #kaz x inej #daddy kaz

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emjenenla · 6 years

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If You’re Gone, Maybe It’s Time to Come Home Part Three [a SoC Fanfiction]

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four

Sorry for the outrageous amount of time this update took. College eats up all your time. Also, it turns out Kaz in this mental state is ridiculously hard to write in another character’s POV.

Part Three

(Inej)

(1)

The Van Eck mansion is full to the brim of members of the Dregs. The irony is thick because a year ago, such people would never have been allowed on the same street.

Inej threads her way through the drinking gang members. They’re laughing and sharing stories. They’ve all been told that the party is to celebrate the Dregs’ rise to prominence as the most powerful gang in Ketterdam; only the Crows and a few extremely trusted others know that the party is actually in honor of Inej’s successes hunting slavers.

Even though the building is full of people, it still feels empty to Inej. The only Crows there aside from her are Jesper and Wylan. Kaz hasn’t yet appeared, and Matthias’s death still weighs heavily on her, not to mention the fact that it has caused Nina to drop off the face of the world. Inej has no idea where her friend is and no one has heard from her in months.

Inej has tried everything to find Nina, even picking Kaz’s brain in their coded letters (if anyone knows where Nina is, it’s him). However, it’s been months since Kaz mentioned anything even semi-personal in his letters. They were always impersonal, but since her last visit to Ketterdam, he hasn’t bothered to do anything but send her lists of information. She’s starting to think he’s still sulking about the talking-to she gave him the last time they saw each other. That bothers her, because while Kaz is totally capable of holding a grudge for a couple months (after all, he managed to hold one on Pekka Rollins for years), he’s never stayed mad at her for this long before.

(2)

It’s at least ten bells when she finally admits that she’s worried. This isn’t like Kaz. She’d thought that he’d at least show his face, even if that was only because Jesper and Wylan or Anika and Keeg dragged him along.

She eventually seeks out Anika who is sitting at a table playing a good-natured card game with Pim, Keeg, Dirix and Roeder while Rotty and a couple other high-ranking Dregs look on. They all look up when Inej steps up.

“’Lo, Wraith,” Dirix says. “Welcome back. You staying for good this time?”

“Please don’t,” Roeder says with a good-natured smile to show he’s joking. “I like my job, and I don’t want you to steal it back.”

“No, I’m not staying,” Inej says. “Just stopping by for a visit. If you enjoy scrambling over every dirty, smelly crevasse of this city doing Kaz’s bidding, you’re more than welcome to it.” The instant the words come out of her mouth she feels guilty; she had never minded being Kaz’s spider, even when he was in a mood.

Still the Dregs laugh. They are all high enough in the ranks to have personally dealt with Kaz enough to know just how frustrating putting up with his opaque orders and unfathomable schemes could be.

When the laughter dies Inej moves on to the real reason she came over by them. “Where is Kaz by the way? I know he doesn’t like parties, but I haven’t seen him at all since I got back.”

The table goes silent. The Dregs look back and forth at each other like they’re trying to decide who should be the bearer of bad news. Inej’s stomach clenches with a familiar sense of apprehension, one that she’s been getting when she reads Kaz’s letters for months. It’s a subtle hint that something isn’t right, but she can’t for the life of her figure out what it is.

After a moment, Anika pushes back her chair and gives her cards to Rotty. “If you make me lose, I’ll end you,” she threatens, then stands up. “Come on, Ghafa,” she says in what Inej can only assume is her lieutenant’s voice. “Let’s have a chat.”

(3)

They step out into the hallway and Anika paces to the end to look out at the garden, arms crossed.

“Anika,” Inej ventures stepping up alongside her. “What’s wrong? Did something happen to Kaz?”

“I don’t know,” Anika says, slowly and precisely, like saying each word hurts.

“What do you mean?” Inej asks.

“He’s missing,” Anika says. “No one’s seen him in days.”

“What?” Inej can’t help it, she yells. “Why aren’t you looking for him?”

“We are!” Anika’s voice raises too. “But Ketterdam’s a big place and we don’t know where half his boltholes are. To be honest, he could still be holed up in his rooms in the Slat since no one actually saw him leave. No one answers when we knock, but the door’s locked, like, really locked.” She gives Inej a significant look.

Inej nods. Kaz has more locks on his door than any person should ever need, but he rarely uses all of them because several can only be locked and unlocked from the inside. He wouldn’t have gone through that much trouble if he was just going out. “Have you tried the windows?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Anika says. “We sent Mina up the morning after we lost track of him. The windows are all locked. To make matters worse, each one’s fitted with multiple Schuyler locks. Aside from Kaz there’s only a handful of people in the gang who can pick those, and none of them are capable of getting up on that roof without killing themselves.”

Inej bites her lip. She doesn’t know what to say. This doesn’t sound like Kaz at all. She tries to decide how likely it is that he just found an intriguing job and doesn’t like the odds. “Do you think he’s on a job?”

Anika growls low in the back of her throat, and Inej looks at her. “What?”

“You haven’t been around these past couple months, Ghafa,” Anika says. “Something’s not right with him. Hasn’t been in months, but it’s gotten worse since the last time you were here. I don’t know what kind of lover’s squabble the two of you had, but while you’ve been out there gallivanting around the ocean, we’ve been here dealing with him.”

Inej opens her mouth to protest that she’s doing a lot more than gallivanting, but stops herself because she’s not sure if Anika’s on the list of people who have been trusted with the true nature of her mission.

“Pim and I are basically running the Dregs,” Anika admits, calming down. “Brekker barely does anything anymore. I don’t think he’s realized we’ve noticed, though I’m not sure how that’s possible. He’s not very aware of anything. He spends a lot of time just staring blankly off into space. He’s not scheming, but I can’t figure out what he’s actually thinking about.”

Inej doesn’t know what to say. The idea of Kaz not pulling his own weight and leading the gang he bled for for so long is ludicrous. She can’t wrap her mind around it.

“So far, only the inner circle knows exactly how bad it is,” Anika says. She sounds exhausted. “That means me, Pim, Keeg, Dirix, Rotty, Roeder and Mina. We’re trying to keep it from going farther than that, but we’re running out of time. There are low-ranking members of the Dregs who are personally loyal to Kaz, but the majority of them are only loyal to the idea of him—of Dirtyhands, Bastard of the Barrel. When they figure out what’s going on…”

She doesn’t finish, but she doesn’t need to. Inej knows the Barrel well enough to know what Anika was going to say. If word gets out that Kaz is weak the very gang that has followed him so ravenously will turn on him just like they turned on Per Haskell. If that happens, Kaz will be lucky to escape with his life.

The thought is terrifying.

“What happened before he went missing?” Inej asks Anika, trying to push the conversation away from the horrible idea of Kaz’s possibly imminent fall.

Anika sighs. “You’d do best to ask Espen that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hard to say,” Anika says. “All I know is that the night we lost track of the boss, he was supposed to go out to do some scouting with the spiders. He didn’t show up for hours. Roeder and Mina were just going to go without him, but Espen got angry and stalked upstairs. After a couple minutes he came down and said that-” she cuts herself off. “You know, you probably should talk to Espen about that, I’m not even sure I understand what went on.”

(5)

It takes Inej the better part of an hour to located Espen in the swirling mass of humanity in the Van Eck house. She’s just starting to wonder if he left without telling anyone when she runs into Mina. The young spider is more than happy to point her in Espen’s direction.

“I saw him over by the food,” she says. “Sulking probably; he hates parties.”

Inej threads through the crowd to the location specified. Espen is seated on a couch, crushed between the arm and a couple older members of the Dregs. He is clutching a plate of hors d'oeuvres and looks murderous, but he’s still there. If Kaz had been in his position, he’d have broken someone’s jaw and fled upstairs where there are less people by now.

Espen doesn’t notice her approach him, and Inej makes a mental note to tell Kaz to teach his spiders to be more observant. She waltzes up to Espen and snaps her fingers in front of his face.

He glares at her, overgrown mop of straw-colored hair falling into his angry blue eyes. Sometimes Inej looks at him and thinks that this must have been what Kaz had been like at age eleven, but other times she thinks that Kaz and Espen are only superficially alike. There is something almost theatrical about Espen’s anger, like he’s playing a part or seeking attention. She can’t imagine careful, calculating, brilliant Kaz ever acting like that.

“Wha’ do you want?” Espen asks in a low, gruff voice that might be a poor attempt at mimicking Kaz’s rasp.

“Just a chat,” Inej says and beckons with a finger. “Let’s go someplace quieter.”

(5)

She leads him into an upstairs parlor and locks the door behind them. He stands in the middle of the room, his arms crossed. “I’m waiting,” he says.

Inej rolls her eyes. “Drop the act. You’re not a hotshot. You’re just a kid.”

“I’m one of Kaz Brekker’s trusted spiders,” Espen says puffing his chest out. “I am one of the most important members of the Dregs.”

“Yes, and I’m the Wraith,” Inej says. “Do we really want to start throwing titles and accomplishments around?”

Espen visibly deflates. He either didn’t recognize her (which doesn’t make sense because she’s given him and the other spiders some tips during her visits in Ketterdam) or he was hoping she wouldn’t call him out on his bravado (much more likely). “What do you want?” he asks.

“Anika said that you and Kaz got in a fight a couple days ago,” Inej says.

“Yeah,” Espen says. “Happens all the time. Why does it matter?” There’s now something cagey about his body language. He’d rather not be talking about this.

“Why don’t you tell me about it,” Inej suggests, using the gentle, soothing voice she’s cultivated to put rescued slaves at ease.

She expects Espen to argue, but he grasps onto her offer to listen almost frantically. Whatever happened between him and Kaz has been weighing on his mind and he desperately wants to talk about it.

“I’m not a spider anymore,” he says.

That was not how she expected him to begin this conversation. “What do you mean?” she asks.

“I got fired,” Espen says, his voice is angry, but matter-of-fact in the way that only Barrel rats seem to be able to manage. As if bad things are something to be expected and taken when they come. “After the argument. Boss says he doesn’t want to see me ever again.”

That is odd. Inej has never known Kaz to tell someone he never wants to see them again. Loathe as she is to admit it, normally when he gets to that point he simply kills the person in question to ensure he doesn’t have to deal with them anymore. “What happened?” she asks slowly.

Espen shrugs, evasive anger back again. “I dunno. Brekker’s been really stupid lately.”

That sets off even more alarms in Inej’s head. She has never, ever heard the word “stupid” used in the same sentence as “Kaz Brekker.” “What do you mean?” she asks cautiously.

For a second Espen looks confused then nervous. “If Anika didn’t say anything, then maybe I shouldn’t-”

“Tell me,” Inej presses, shoving away the hurt at the idea that Anika might be keeping things from her. She and Anika aren’t exactly friends, but they’re not enemies either. Plus, Anika holds a position in the Dregs similar to the one that Kaz did when Haskell was general (albeit, with much less actual power). Of all the members of the Dregs, she’s the closest to Kaz and might be the only one who has a firm grasp on how serious Inej’s relationship with Kaz is. “Kaz is my friend,” she continues ignoring the voice that screams that she and Kaz are way past the “just friends” point. “If there’s something going on with him; I need to know about it.”

Espen sighs then relents and begins his story. Inej listens with growing shock as he relates his confrontation with Kaz. She recognizes the Kaz’s behavior because she has seen them in people she rescues from slavers. She has seen people who lash out at every perceived threat, who see such behavior as the only way to protect themselves from a world that has turned its back on them. She has just never applied them to Kaz.

“I don’t know what was wrong with him,” Espen finishes looking confused. “Is he sick?”

“He’ll be fine,” Inej says because she doesn’t feel like trying to explain trauma to a Barrel kid who has been raised in a community that refuses to acknowledge anything but strength. “Do you know where he went after your argument?”

Espen shrugs. “Dunno. I didn’t see him go anywhere.”

“Okay,” Inej says taking a deep breath in an effort to contain her thoughts. “Thank you.”

(6)

She approaches the Slat the way she always has; by the roofs. She isn’t sure that she truly believes Kaz will be there, but she isn’t sure where else to start so she decides to take her chances.

The window she always entered Kaz’s room through, the window she often sat in feeding the crows, is closed with a dark curtain pulled down behind it. It takes her upwards of twenty minutes to figure out how to pick the Schuyler locks, but when she finally does she pulls the window open, pushes aside the curtain and steps inside.

The room is dark and cluttered which is strange because for all his money Kaz owns very little and keeps what he does in impeccable order. Now there are clothes and weapons strewn across the floor. As Inej steps inside she accidently steps on a sheet of paper that is scrawled over on both sides in Kaz’s handwriting. A number of other sheets of paper are spread across the rest of the floor like someone threw them.

She’s just reaching the conclusion that someone must have broken into Kaz’s room and ransacked it when she realizes the room is not empty. There’s a teenage boy-sized lump in the bed and on closer investigation she realizes it’s Kaz.

She knows that Kaz sleeps on his side, curled into the fetal position with his back pressed up against the nearest wall, but she has never seen him take it quite this far. He’s curled up so tightly that he’s almost in a legitimate ball. She knows that’s bad for his leg; he’ll be lucky if he can stand let alone walk when he gets up. His coal gray blanket is pulled up so that only his hair is visible. He isn’t using a pillow and after a second she realizes that’s because he’s clutching it to his chest like it’s the only thing keeping him from drowning in a stormy ocean.

“Kaz?” she asks her voice nervous. “Kaz.” He doesn’t stir so she crosses the room trying to step around the papers incase they’re important. When she reaches his side, she kneels down next to him. “Kaz.” She says a little louder, reaching out and pulling the blanket away from his face, careful not to touch any skin. “Kaz, wake up.”

He shifts slightly, but doesn’t straighten or release his death grip on the pillow. One eye cracks open just slightly then closes again and he buries his face in the pillow.

“Kaz,” she repeats. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

He moves again, just slightly and mutters something, but the words are rendered incomprehensible by the pillow.

“Kaz!” her voice is rising panic now, she grasps his blanket-covered shoulder and shakes him. “Look at me!”

(7)

As always, the physical contact gets a response from him. He bats her hands away with a motion that is a little more haphazard than it usually would be. His eyes open and he looks at her like he can’t decide if she’s actually there. “Inej?” he asks after a moment. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you,” Inej says. “Why aren’t you at Jesper and Wylan’s party?”

Kaz looks away. “I’m not going,” he says.

“Yes, I’d kind of figured that out,” she says perhaps a bit sharper than she intended to. She takes a deep breath and changes her tone before she goes on. “Are you still angry at me for the last time I was here?” he doesn’t say anything so she pushes onward. “Anika said you’ve been missing for a couple days. Are you okay?”

No answer.

“Kaz,” she presses. “Are you okay?”

Still no answer. He won’t even look at her.

“Kaz!” she shouts. He jumps which might have actually been funny under different circumstances. “Enough of this. Are You Okay?” She isn’t even sure why she’s continuing on this line of questioning when he pretty obviously not okay and she knows that if she does convince him to talk he’ll just lie. Perhaps she just wants the reassurance of knowing that he’s at least okay enough to lie to her.

If that’s what she wants she doesn’t get it, because Kaz says nothing. He just keeps looking away, eyes vacant and dead.

Just like their argument on the roof. She’d thought how silent he’d been then was wrong. They’ve argued before, but Kaz has never been quiet and listened. When Kaz is in an argument he lays into the other person with every ounce of cruel intelligence he possesses. Before that night, Inej had never won an argument with him. She should have known right away that something was wrong, but she’d been too angry and too high on her own victory to notice.

“Kaz,” Her voice softens, almost pleading. “What’s wrong?”

Finally he looks back at her, his eyes are still dead in a way that looks nothing like the Bastard of the Barrel. “Nothing,” he says. “I’m fine.”

Even though she was expecting this she can’t help but sigh. “Tell me the truth, Kaz.”

“I was sleeping,” Kaz says in a tone of voice that’s a little too flat for his defensive words. “Nothing more.”

“It’s ten thirty,” she points out.

He raises an eyebrow. “All kinds of people go to bed before that.”

“Not you,” Inej points out. It’s true; going to bed at midnight constitutes as early for Kaz Brekker. “Come on, Kaz.”

“I’m fine,” he says. “Leave me alone and let me sleep.”

Then he curls up on the bed again with his back facing her.

(8)

She can’t get him to start talking to her again, no matter how much she pleads. When she tries shaking him again he just shoves her off and pulls the blanket over his head.

Eventually she realizes that she’s unlikely to get any response from him. She’s going to be stuck waiting for the unlikely possibility that he’ll relent and tell her what’s wrong. She stands up. “I’m going to clean up this room a little,” she told him. “I’ll be right here if you decide you want to talk.”

Kaz doesn’t answer.

Inej sighs and sets to work on the mess Kaz has made. There’s an empty whiskey bottle lying on the floor and when she picks it up she realizes that it’s that super expensive whiskey she and Kaz stole once. Trust Kaz not to get drunk on something cheap.

She throws the bottle away, then turns to the papers spread out across the floor. After she picks up a couple she realizes they’re part of a letter. It takes her the better part of fifteen minutes to gather them all up and figure out what order they go in, but then her curiosity gets the better of her and she starts to read.

(9)

What she reads horrifies her.

If it wasn’t Kaz’s handwriting she would have thought someone else wrote it. The words don’t sound like Kaz Brekker. Kaz Brekker isn’t this open. He doesn’t talk like this. Kaz Brekker does not display this kind of abject self-hatred. Yet at the same time she knows that this horrible, untrue letter is Kaz and she knows that this is how he feels. This is what she abandoned him to without even realizing it.

She knew he had a lot armor, but she realizes now she may have given her understanding a bit too much credit. She had thought that she saw Kaz completely through the eyes of the almost eighteen year old woman she is now, but she realizes she was wrong. Somewhere inside of her a tiny portion of the fifteen year old girl she had been when Kaz rescued her from the Menagerie has been hanging on skewing her viewing of him. Back then she saw Kaz as something powerful and immortal, something strong enough to rise above the filth of Ketterdam, something that could make the monsters pay. That was what had drawn her to him in the beginning; the promise that perhaps, just perhaps he could make her something like that too.

Over the years that view of Kaz had started to die as she realized that Ketterdam took something from everyone, realized she did not need to be a monster. She’d also realized that Kaz was no demon, no immortal being, he was just a boy who had suffered trauma every bit as great as hers.

If Inej was honest with herself, Kaz had done more than just buy her indenture; he was why she wasn’t like some of the blank-eyed people she pulls out of slaver holds. From the instant she’d left the Mangerie, she’d never had the chance to sink into the blackness of her own despair because Kaz had always been there pushing her to move climb a little faster, hit a little harder, to be more than that girl who’d been sold in the brothels. He had saved her, even if he’d never intended to, even if he hadn’t even realized he was doing it. She had owed him the same, and she’d failed.

She sits on the floor and presses her forehead against her knees. She’d left Ketterdam thinking that she didn’t need Kaz anymore. That is at least kind of true; she no longer relies on him to determine her identity the she once did. She’s her own person with her own goals in her reach, but she’d forgotten to wonder whether Kaz needs her more than she needs him.

She turns to him. She doesn’t know what she’s going to say to him, but she knows that she needs to say something. “Kaz…” she whispers. He doesn’t respond, but his shoulders aren’t as tight as they were before so she thinks he’s fallen back to sleep.

She carefully pulls the blanket back around his shoulders so it’s no longer covering his face. Then she carefully steps towards the window. She isn’t sure what she needs to do to fix this and the only thing she can think of is that the only food Kaz keeps in his rooms is dry, gross stuff that doesn’t spoil. Food is like a bandage on a gaping wound, but it is something she can do right now.

Before she leaves she thinks about trying to find all Kaz’s knives and lock them up. She doesn’t know if Kaz will try to hurt himself, but she also knows that she’s unlikely to find all the knives he has hidden. She decides she’s better off just moving quickly and hoping to be back before he wakes up.

She takes one last look at his crumpled form and leaps out the window.

(10)

Her first stop is at the Van Eck mansion. She writes a note to Anika saying that she’s found Kaz, and one to Jesper and Wylan saying that something has come up and that she’ll make it up to them later. She doesn’t mention anything about the kind of shape Kaz is in. She’s not going to tell anyone about what’s going on without his blessing.

She gives the letters to one of the servants then sneaks into the kitchens. She makes off with some meat and vegetables because it will be easier than finding a shop to break into. She’ll pay Jesper and Wylan back later.

After leaving the mansion she stops by the Wraith to grab a few things. This only takes a few minutes and the crewmember on watch doesn’t even notice that she’s there. She makes a mental note to give her crew a talking to about how to be on guard duty, but right now she has bigger problems.

As she heads back to the Slat she passes by the small toy shop where she got the stuffed crow she gave to Alby Rollins before she left Ketterdam. She picks the simple lock on the backdoor and lets herself in. The shop is just as small and quaint as it was the last time she was here. She remembers belatedly that she’d promised the owner she’d convince Kaz to put this shop under Dregs protection in exchange for making the crow toy in a matter of hours. She’d forgotten in the whirlwind of preparations for her voyage. She renews that promise to herself as she looks at the wares spread out around the dark shop. She should not get in the habit of breaking her promises.

She wanders through the store looking at all the cute, fluffy stuffed toys. She isn’t exactly sure why she came here, but she feels like she needs to be here.

Eventually she stops before a rack of stuffed bears. She had a bear toy as a child. She remembers hugging it to her chest and feeling safe. She wonders briefly what happened to it when she got too old to want it anymore. Suddenly she hopes her parents didn’t get rid of it. She would like to see it again.

As she runs her fingers along the shelves of stuffed bears she wonders if Kaz ever had a toy like this. She has spent a lot of time recently trying to figure out exactly where Kaz came from. She knows that at some point in his life someone must have cared for him--he would have died as an infant if he’d been completely abandoned from the moment he was born--but she hasn’t been able to figure out who. She knows Kaz had a brother, but she doesn’t even know what his name was let alone how much older he was. Perhaps this older brother raised Kaz in the Barrel and then ran afoul of Pekka Rollins.

The only person who could answer her questions is Kaz and he’s so close-lipped about himself that it’s honestly a miracle he admitted he even had a brother. She wishes she could convince him to talk to her. She wants to help him, and talking always helps.

She shakes herself. She’s not helping Kaz by sitting in a toy shop and leaving him all alone. She starts to leave, then pauses and turns back to the rack of bears. She suddenly becomes aware of the idea that has been forming in her mind the entire time she’s been in this shop. She’s fully aware it might be a terrible idea and that he might refuse it at best and assume she’s mocking him at worst, but she feels like it’s something she needs to do.

She chooses to a medium-sized bear with a soft, cuddly body; silky, caramel-colored fur and a sweet, reassuring face that doesn’t have any uncomfortable wires in it. She sets the tag on the shop counter along with twice the kruge the owner is charging and slides the bear into a bag she took from Jesper and Wylan’s.

She leaves the shop, locking the door carefully behind her. Then she takes a deep breath, collects herself and takes to the rooftops for the journey back to the Slat.

That teddy bear is probably the one concession to fluff you’ll get out of me. I read a headcanon post on Tumblr once where Inej wins a stuffed animal in a throwing contest and gives it to Kaz, and ever since I’ve been sort of obsessed with the idea.

One more part left. Hopefully it will get out soon, but I’ll make no promises.

Thank you for reading!

Emjen

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