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mmgwritings · 6 months

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living, loving and dying for these words. this compliment is so beautiful, thank you, it means a lot to me. 🫂✨️

I'M GONNA TAKE MINE OF YOU WITH ME

Character: Kaz Brekker / Wife! Reader

Prompts: There is a word for children who lose their parents, but there is none for parents who lose a child.

Warnings: Canon divergence; Angst; Character death; Grief; Kaz suffering; i'm sorry :(

Never trust the Saints; they give and take away.

Initially, a curfew was imposed. Without prior warning, patrol officers closed all clubs, brothels and merchant mansions, causing a commotion among the population that was soon violently suppressed. Later, when the disease spread from the interior of Kesh to the suburbs of Ketterdam, the healers' homes became crowded, and before long even the healers needed the assistance of the Grisha in the merchants' hospital.

Thus, Ketterdam remembered how to act. They had faced an epidemic before and would face this one with the same practicality. The funeral bells echoed incessantly throughout the day, while the bay south of the city was used to transport the bodies, piled on fishing vessels confiscated by the Council of the Tides. The former party town, Ketterdam, has transformed into a highly efficient funeral operation.

Burials were strictly prohibited. Thus, when the boats failed to remove bodies from the city quickly enough, in less favored neighborhoods, residents were forced to dispose of their loved ones on improvised pyres in the middle of the street.

This was the first scene we saw upon arriving in Ketterdam through the northwest gate, when the carriage had to make an abrupt stop in front of a pile of twisted ashes, which at first glance appeared to be the remains of slaughtered animals. However, horror soon hit us when the coachman, in a state of shock, vomited and exclaimed: “They are people, Saints, they are people!”

From the windows of the houses along the street, I could briefly see thin faces peering through the cracks in the windows. They were, without a doubt, the relatives of those poor burned creatures. Their looks were blank, as if they had already resigned themselves to the idea that the remains of their loved ones would end up on the street. I hastily closed the windows to hide the cruelty, but it remained etched in my eyes even when I closed them.

The trip was quick and extremely stressful, from Lij to the capital it was just two days of march that lasted the longest a lifetime. The exhausted horses showed visible signs of fatigue when the coachman left us at the hospital doors. However, as quick as it was, it apparently wasn't enough. The little girl was remarkably pale, her lips were dyed purple and her eyes were trembling under the weight of nightmares caused by the fever. My dear girl, a gift bestowed by the saints, the reward for any act of benevolence I have done in this world.

My mother used to say that the saints' mercy was unfair to mortals, because, as divine beings, they no longer understood the pain of any sacrifice, they no longer understood what it was like to lose someone. They were above everything and everyone. But I was a stupid young woman, I ignored my poor mother's advice because I thought it was the condescending words of a woman with pagan customs.

“Mommy,” she whispered, her voice hoarse with exhaustion, her eyes barely opening.

"I'm here my love. It’s going to be okay,” I whispered as I took her small, feverish body into my arms. At the beginning of the year, I could barely hold her on my lap for long, she was growing fast and turning into a beautiful, healthy five year old. Now, feeling how light her body was in my arms, my heart squeezed with pain.

Despite it being the early hours of the morning, a small crowd was sitting on the steps. They were probably sick people, but not sick enough to get a bed inside the hospital. I was trying to carefully pass between them, when, at the door, Nina appeared.

She was dressed in the black clothes of the doctors, with the distinctive blue apron of the merchants' wing, stained with small drops of blood.

“Y/N, come this way, sweetheart. I’ve already prepared everything for her,” said Nina, her kind face and caring voice leading me down a corridor to the east of the main hall. She was different since the last time I saw her, during the holidays. She looked sterner than ever.

“Any news from him? Did Kaz send any letters? Do you think he will arrive today?” I asked as I followed Nina through a corridor packed with doctors, heartrenders, healers and all sorts of people. I must admit that, little by little, the composure I had managed to maintain during the last two days of the journey from Lij to Ketterdam was starting to crumble. Felt like I was on the edge of an abyss, spiraling into darkness.

Nina looked at me with sadness as she led me into a small, but well-lit room with a comfortable bed, where I rested my daughter. She was in a restless sleep and quietly muttering nonsense words, the fever must be getting worse.

“Kaz didn't send any letters, none of them. Y/N, they must be on the way,” Nina reassured me. “Now, I need you to stay calm for her, please. We will examine her immediately, but you also need to undergo tests. You could be as sick as she is.”

“No, you don’t need to. I'm not going to leave her alone here” I said, freeing myself from Nina's hands the moment when a tall, tired-looking man entered the room, he seemed to be middle-aged, even though he was visibly a Grisha.

Nina walked over to him and they started talking in whispers, probably discussing the situation. It was not uncommon for merchants and their families to seek privileges in cases of calamity, but being Kaz Brekker's family, these privileges often extended to any kind of perk. Obviously, by now, the entire hospital knows that the wife and daughter of Ketterdam's biggest criminal are looking for help.

I sat next to my daughter, holding her soft hand and massaging her temple with my fingertips. Just like she is my joy, she is Kaz’s world. The gravity, the humanity, the warmth that keeps him alive. She looks much more like him: her light eyes, her dark hair and even her pert nose. At times, they seemed to share the same thoughts, to the point where I felt like I was somehow invading their space. She was his world.

Kaz would be able to destroy cities to protect her from her enemies, but that would not be enough to protect her from death.

Death came. It invaded my life so abruptly that I didn't even have time to cry for mercy. One moment, my daughter was in a restless sleep, and the next, she was convulsing, with blood pouring from her eyes and nose... The harrowing sounds were the most terrifying, they seemed to echo endlessly in my mind; it was the sound of her choking as she tried to breathe through vomit.

When it was all over, as my daughter lay on the bed with her head at an awkward angle, a horrible sound filled the room, resembling a wounded animal. I couldn't take my eyes off her to find the source of that sound. Only then did I realize that I was the one issuing it.

Once, when I was a child and still enjoying my hunting adventures with my brothers, we witnessed a fox with its cub in a trap set by my father. The cub was trapped, one of its paws shattered between the iron teeth of the trap, it was still too small to understand human antics, and its mother, whether out of compassion or instinct, killed it before we could get closer.

In those minutes when I was afflicted with acute pain, I reflected on that fox mother facing the suffering of her cub. I thought about how I didn't have the same courage as her, about how I would rather rip my own legs off with my teeth and offer myself to the hunters in exchange for freeing my cub from his torment.

Later, when Nina released me from her embrace with a pale, tearful face, speaking words I could barely understand, I considered how naive both I and the hypothetical fox were being in placing our faith in the benevolence of a superior, divine being. Tearing out my legs, my heart, begging, crawling – would that make any difference? Probably not. Yet even so, I would be willing to sacrifice myself for centuries on end in exchange for my daughter's life.

When I got up from the ground, with shaky legs and still immersed in a painful lethargy, I walked over to my daughter. The heartrender had cleaned her face, but there were still bloodstains on the collar of her blue dress, the same one she had received as a birthday present from her father and which she loved because it made her feel like a fairy.

When I held her little face between my hands she was still warm, it seemed like at any moment she would wake up and smile and tell me it was just a trick. But it wasn't, I spent a long time holding her face waiting for this trick to end and it didn't happen.

When I placed a kiss on her forehead, my tears fell on her face. It was an eternal kiss, I didn't want it to end, I didn't want it to be the last. However, when I pulled away, Nina wrapped me in a comforting hug. Finally, she retreated to a corner of the room, leaving me alone to watch over my pain.

I held my daughter in my arms, I ran my fingers through her hair, her face, memorizing every little detail of her. Finally, when she was starting to feel cold and heavy, I moved closer to give her another kiss, and this time, it was Kaz's goodbye kiss.

It was outside the hospital that Kaz found me. Nina took me outside when a team of healers told us they needed the room. In Ketterdam, the city of death, they are very practical about sorting things out. I was sitting on one of the steps, trying to catch my breath and looking at nothing, when Kaz, Inej, Wylan and Jesper arrived in a grain truck.

I didn't understand what emptiness was, nor how distressing it could be. I had no idea that it could be deafening, that the blood would rush through my veins and that everything around me would feel cold to the touch. Emptiness was the absence of all emotions, and at the same time, it contained them all. And the pain of emptiness made it extraordinarily difficult to notice anything around me other than the image of Kaz.

He was disheveled, his black coat was dirty with dust, and his hair was messy, as if he had spent the last few hours pulling out the strands. His usually restrained blue eyes were showing all of his emotions. A shadow hovered over them, something I had never seen before: fear. And I didn't know how to act other than getting up, walking a few steps, and finally succumbing at Kaz's feet in the hope that the ground would swallow me.

My breathing is heavy and shallow, sobs tear from my throat. There were no more tears, it seems that I was no longer able to produce them, however, a rain began to fall on us, as if it could cry what I was unable to. Above me, Kaz was standing still. He was like a wall that refused to fall under a storm, under the weight of reality. He refuses to vocalize whatever he's thinking, I think he's also feeling empty. It's as if any trace of humanity has been drained from him.

Would he become Dirtyhands, being all practical while he waits for the poor creature I've become at his feet to pull herself together? Or would he become the fox cub caught in the trap, hoping I could rip his throat out when he, for the first time in his life, didn't have a plan to get around the situation?

“Y/N, darling,” whispered Inej, as if calling my name could tie me to the ropes of the earth again. Besides, what else could she say?

Is this the moment when I would hear the lamentations, the pity, that would follow me for the rest of my life when they found out about the daughter I lost?

“She's gone,” I said, lifting my head and looking at Kaz. “We were waiting for you... but she got worse, so I came to Ketterdam. I really thought she would get better, but she's gone, Kaz” my voice broke completely.

I think whatever strength had kept Kaz up until that moment was gone. He turned his back on us, walking toward the side of the building, his steps swaying as if he were drunk, until finally he collapsed. A scream tore through his chest, a scream of rage, of frustration and sadness. But above all pain.

There is a definition for children who lose their parents, but there is none for parents who lose their children.

What are we now? A mother without a child? What would I do now? Just go home and put all her things together in a box like party decorations?

I got up and walked over to Kaz, hugging him from behind. We lay huddled in the rain, me holding Kaz's body as he thrashed about in a horrible cry. I offered whatever comfort I had: I kissed his head, whispered empty words, held him close to me. If I wasn't a mom, then Kaz wasn't a dad.

He would never hold her in his arms again, he wouldn't smile when she played with his gloves, which were too big, and he wouldn't stand by her bed on sleepless nights, watching her sleep.

“Kaz, she loves you more than anything” I said. Loved, whispered my treacherous brain. Then, fighting the lump in my throat, I said, “They've already put her with the dead people.”

Kaz shuddered, the crying became silent. The vision no parent, least of all Kaz, wants to imagine. Like any other death in Ketterdem, whether of the poor or the rich, our daughter's would be treated with little ceremony. No mourning, no funeral.

She, who was always warm, was now alone in the cold of the Harbor.

On the days when Kaz couldn't bear any touch, she was the one who defied him by clasping her little hands around his neck. Or on the worst days, when he came from the Barrel with someone's blood on his sleeve, she covered him with kisses and smiles. Kaz loved her the moment he saw her, covered in blood, wet, crying... and warm. When she was a baby he treated her like porcelain, if he could he wouldn't even let me touch her.

My hands met Kaz's, he was clutching his chest as if he wanted to rip out his own heart. I held him, afraid that he would somehow disappear under the weight of his own grief. If he leaves too...

“On the trip, when she was awake, I told her that you love her. That you love her so, so much,” I whispered in his ear. Then, the worst. “I gave her your kiss goodbye”

How can we survive this?

“No, Y/N,” Kaz said in a pleading tone, “I’m sorry, please. I'm so sorry"

When we lack words, guilt appears. It's our fault? Were we really that horrible?

The Saints. They give and they take.

#dumb smile on my face looking at your reaction.#six of crows #grishaverse #kaz brekker #kaz brekker imagine #kaz brekker x reader #shadow and bone

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