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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 2 months

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Don’t Go Blindly Into The Dark

Summary:

To hide that he can't read, Jan Van Eck has been forcing his son to pretend he's blind since he was eight years old. Wylan is now attending Ketterdam University, and meeting Jesper Fahey may very well be about to change his life. But is he safe to tell Jesper the truth? And what will Jesper say if he does?

Jesper is struggling to weigh up his life in the Barrel and his life at the University of Ketterdam, and there's a good chance that his growing debt is about to make the decision for him. He hasn't attended class consecutively for months, but maybe that will change when his newest project includes partnering up with Wylan Van Eck. But can he really leave the Barrel behind him? And how long can he keep up the pretence of who he thinks Wylan wants him to be?

Meanwhile there is a darkness growing in Ketterdam, and it seems a killer may be stalking the streets of West Stave. An unknown evil is closing its jaws over the city, and it’s starting to feel like nowhere is safe.

Tags: @justalunaticfangirl @lunarthecorvus @i-need-help-this-is-my-obsession

If anyone else would like to be tagged please let me know :)

Content warnings for this chapter: imprisonment references, trafficking references, ptsd, implied past sa references, blood, violence, fear of violence, discussions of death and murder, child death references, still born references, loss of children, loss of sibling/s, separation from family, implied neglect references

AO3 link

Chapter 50 - Inej

Inej was so tired that she barely trusted herself to make the climb across the rooftops and up the Stave as she left her perch staking out the Black Tips. This was what she’d wanted though, wasn’t it? She didn’t want enough time for her mind to wander, to try to carry her cruelly home and torture her with the oceans that parted them - not just the True Sea, but the waters that flowed inside her mind as well.

Her legs felt heavy, her entire body did, but the pain in her leg had been dulled massively by Nina’s work earlier today. Inej wasn’t sure if it would last long or if it was just a temporary effect, like the way she dulled emotions for her clients and created a haze of joy that lasted only a few hours, but either way she was grateful for it. Even if it only got her through tonight, it had got her through this job and she could figure something else out for the next one.

She was probably being overdramatic, anyway. The pain had been lessening in its own time over the past few weeks, and it wasn’t inhibiting her anymore. Maybe she should have given it a week longer before she started working again, but Inej didn’t have the time to waste. As day had given way to evening and then night, all of it looked the same beneath this thick layer of cloud that was refusing to lift even now the rain had faded to a thin, persistent mist, she had spent her brief free moments trying and failing to relax. As soon as she’d spoken to Kaz she’d travelled straight up to the Black Tip’s favoured haunt and craned her neck to catch brief glimpses of Riesen at his desk, at the motley crew he shared snippets of time with throughout the evening.

“We easily have the edge on them now,” he’d told Geels, his first lieutenant, “but without Liesbeth in the field we’ll have to find a more creative method to find out Brekker’s plan,”

“Haskell-”

“Won’t lift a single finger,” Riesen finished, shaking his head, “Brekker’s the problem. Get rid of him - what’s that look for? Don’t tell me you can’t manage it, he’s barely even grown,”

“No-one can get a-”

“Everyone round here ends up with a bullet in their gut eventually, Geels. Just give his sandtimer a little shake, speed things up a touch,” he smiled, and Inej could see his rotten teeth, “You couldn’t bring a fifteen year old girl to my doorstep, don’t tell me you can’t kill a seventeen year old either or we might not continue to get along so well,”

Inej pressed her back against the wall as her blood ran cold, breathing hard. Of course they’d be expecting her. They wanted to get hold of her, to make her turn on Kaz and the Dregs. And surely Riesen knew that it was she who’d killed his prized spider? She thought of Liesbeth’s blood on her hands, beneath her fingernails, her body laid across her lap, the apologies before she tried to bring her knife down into Inej’s chest. For a tiny moment she wanted to say to hell with Kaz’s plans, to hell with all of it, all she wanted as to kick this window in and slice Riesen’s throat open. To cut the heart right out his chest. To make him suffer.

They were ugly thoughts, ripped from something dark and ragged deep inside her, and she closed her eyes and laid her hands against her knives as she whispered apologies to her Saints for thinking them. But she had thought them. And she wasn’t not still thinking them. She listened to Riesen talk to Geels for a while longer, and then waited as he turned to his papers or others walked in and out to speak with him to see if the topic would return to the parley, but after a while had passed and it seemed nothing was going to chance Inej stood to take her leave.

“- you think she stuck Liesbeth?”

Inej paused, halfway off her perch, and clawed herself back in slow motion to listen.

“Who the hell else would it have been? She’s crossed a line with that one, they all have, and I won’t fucking forget it,”

“He’ll bring her to the parley, won’t he? You can-”

“I ain’t offering that bitch terms anymore,” Riesen snarled, “Anyone finds her they bring her straight to me. Clear?”

“Clear,”

Inej’s heart was in her throat — no, higher than that, it was inside her mouth and pounding so hard she might begin to spit up blood, as she dove from the side of the building and slipped away into the shadows.

She could have gone straight back to the Slat, could have delayed her report for Kaz until the morning and instead let herself collapse against her pillow, eyes closed, and waited for sleep - or at least rest, if not sleep - to overtake her. But there was one more thing that Inej had to do tonight.

When she left the flat earlier Jeluna had fallen quiet, curled on her little dining chair with her feet tucked under her, unable to speak a further word that what had already spilt so frantically, so frightenedly, from her mouth, but as she crept to the darkened window ledge now it was not the same scene that greeted her. Jeluna was still sitting in the little chair, she seemed to almost always be occupying it and would never touch either of the others at the table, but now her bare feet were planted on the wooden floor and her hands were laid against the table next to a mostly full plate of food. Opposite her sat Elodie, so much younger than Jeluna than any of them had realised, her chin perched in her hand where her elbow rested on the table. She looked unusually at rest; her fingers did not stay to pull on her sleeve or to count themselves in and out of her palm in the little ritual that Inej supposed was designed to calm herself, but she smiled gently, pertussis sympathetically, at Jeluna as she watched her from across the table, nodding slowly in response to the older girl’s softly moving lips.

Inej was invisible from her bird-like choice of perch, watching through the window to the darkened scene, but she could not hear the conversation. Just as she considered moving to change her vantage point, Elodie stood and Inej was forced to back away and press her back against the wall as the girl approached the window. For a moment she touched her pale fingers to the glass and though Inej could see nothing more of her than those fingertips against the glass, pinked by the pressure and the colour that had returned to her since Nina undid her Tailoring, she felt certain that Elodie was peering into the impenetrable Ketterdam night like she thought that someone unseen really was clinging to the edge of the Juliet balcony. Inej felt strangely seen, even though she hadn’t been, and her breath caught in her throat - but then the moment was over, and only as the curtains were being drawn closed was Inej struck by how brief the entire thing had actually been. Elodie had not seen her, no-one had. She was just tired, and shaken by the stress of her day.

Yes, that was it. She was just tired. That didn’t stop her from slipping inside and finding a crawl space and a vent.

Inej managed to position herself quite perfectly above the two girls, now both returned to their seats at the little table, with a slim grate providing her with both a reasonable view and the perfect opportunity to listen. Maybe it was unnecessary to do this, she could admit to herself that she felt at least a little bad for spying in this way, but she was sure that Jeluna would act quite differently alone than she would in company, or indeed with Elodie instead of Inej or any of the others, and she thought that maybe, just maybe, something more helpful in Inej’s quest to help her would reveal itself more easily this way. That was what she told herself, and her Saints, as she lay on her belly like a snake and listened unseen to the girls below.

“Albert is the eldest,” Elodie was saying, her bony elbow returning to the table and, in turn, her chin to the slight arc of her hand, “He is eighteen, now. And then Josef, Henrik, Daan, Sebastian,”

“So many,” Jeluna whispered, counting them on her fingers as Elodie spoke.

“I’m not done yet,” the girl laughed very softly, then suddenly registered some alarm in her companion’s face and added hurriedly: “You aren’t interrupting, I don’t mind. I only mean that that’s already lots, and there are even more,”

Jeluna regarded her for a moment, her nose raised and her eyes drifting down it to study her, then nodded slowly.

“There are more?”

“Well, I am next so that’s six,” Elodie nodded, watching the older girl lift her second hand to raise another finger, “And then Carlotta, then baby Beatrice, and - and there was also Eliza, before that, but…” her voice faded, then picked up again with a slight rise in tone as she added with a very obvious effort to sound like she didn’t care: “Mama was pregnant when I left; I don’t know that one’s name,”

Jeluna stared at the raised fingers on both of her hands, then back up at Elodie. After a long moment she managed to whisper:

“Your mother did it ten times?”

“Eleven,” Elodie shivered, “There was a boy… after Carlotta. They didn’t name him, or if they did they didn’t tell me what it was. I don’t… well, there wasn’t really time to name him,”

“Eleven,” Jeluna stared at her fingers for a moment, as though in awe of a number so large that she could not count it on her hands, “That is…”

There was a pause and Inej could see the colour rising in Jeluna’s cheeks. Elodie reached out a hand and lay one finger flat next to Jeluna’s.

“Eleven,”

“Eleven,” Jeluna smiled, then dropped it again as she and Elodie both drew away from each other, “Sorry, I don’t… I could do all the way up to 50, maybe higher, in… before. But I was,” she paused, looking down at her hands for a moment before she raised five fingers on one, four on the other, “I was nine, when I came here. No-one taught me numbers in Kerch,”

“I could teach you,” came the immediate, kind reply.

Jeluna looked momentarily wary, leaning back from the table just a touch, but then she gave a slow nod.

“Eleven,” she repeated, tasting each syllable in turn, “Then…?”

“Twelve,” Elodie motioned for Jeluna to hold her hands up again, then added two of her own fingers to the collection, “Then thirteen, then-”

“Fourteen,”

Elodie nodded.

“Eleven children? Eleven… births? For your mother?”

“That’s right,”

“All that… the pain… eleven times? She is so strong,”

“Yes,” if Elodies voice had been right before then now it barely existed, “Yes, she is,”

From her hiding place Inej could only see the girls in profile, sometimes rendering their expressions a harder riddle to solve, but she was quite sure that if she’d been facing Elodie head on she would see that strange mist overtaking her the way she’d seen it in so many others, and she was saw they had seen in her, as she sank into a memory like a blanket being wrapped around her shoulders. She hoped that it wasn’t too tight; that it would not suffocate her.

“How old are they?” asked Jeluna, after a pause and as though she had gathered strength to say it.

Elodie turned, briefly, and Inej got a full view of the little smile that grew between her cheeks as her thoughts turned from her mother onto her siblings.

“Albert is eighteen,” she said, “it was his birthday last week; they will have had a beautiful celebration, I think. I hope. He will be upset that I wasn’t there though, he used to tell me that when he was eighteen, when he was a real adult, that’s when he would - I mean - no, sorry. Forget that.

“Albert is eighteen, and Josef is sixteen - he won’t be seventeen until next year - then Henrik is fifteen, and Daan and Sebastian are twins - they are thirteen. I’m twelve, recently enough, but then after me there’s a gap - I supposed because of Eliza… She was nine, when I was ten, and-” she cutoff abruptly, pulling a sleeve up to her face, before continuing matter-of-factly, “Carlotta is six, but Mama likes to say she has an old soul and you can see that in her, definitely, and Beatrice is not yet one but already an absolute little personality,”

Inej had never seen Elodie so willing to talk, so open. She’d been hoping for the other way around, but this was probably a good thing for the younger girl as well. When she’d headed on her way from the flat this afternoon, to head to the Willow Switch before, as had been her intention, to report back to Kaz and demand from him an explanation for his dreadful affront on poor Jeluna, she had gently pulled Elodie to one side.

“I want to make sure you’re okay,” she’d said, eyes skimming over her blonde curls, her pale blue irises, the freckles that had begun to spread over her nose even though it wasn’t sunny, “this was a lot to throw at you very suddenly, and if it feels stressful, or like it might be too much, you can always-”

“I don’t mind,” Elodie had smiled softly, her cracked lips tugging at the skin around her mouth, “It’s not unlike looking after my sisters,”

Inej had been caught off guard, just slightly, by that. Maybe it was naïve of her, or just a foolish assumption, but when Nina had said that Elodie’s parents willingly sold her Inej had assumed the girl must be their only child.

“You have sisters?”

“Three, I- Two,” Elodie’s cheeks had somehow managed to blanche and flush in near unison, her gaze dropping to Inej’s shoes as she smoothed the front of her skirt with shivering hands, “Two younger sisters. My mother wasn’t…” she gave a very light, very stiff little cough “It was always me who looked after them,”

Inej had frowned, but she hadn’t had chance nor time for follow up. As she watched them now she saw Jeluna fidget in her chair, saw Elodie reach across the table and take a bread roll off the plate, saw Jeluna staring at her as she ripped an edge off of it to eat. A silent promise to her companion that it was safe, Inej acknowledged, already wondering whether Elodie had eaten well earlier or if this was all she was giving herself through her distraction of caring for Jeluna. Inej would make sure she got her something proper if she could, if she needed it, as soon as she got the chance.

“You are twelve?” Jeluna murmured, gaze drifting back to her fingers, still splayed flat across the table.

Elodie nodded.

“All of those,” she said, before placing her own two fingers next to Jeluna’s, cautious to keep some distance between their skin, “plus these two,”

There was a long pause, perhaps too long, before Jeluna spoke again.

“Nineteen?” she whispered, “I was… I was fourteen,”

Elodie shook her head, perhaps having missed the first barely audible word, and laid out nine fingers to place across from Jeluna’s.

“Nineteen,”

“That’s… that’s one more than your brother. Albert,”

Even from here Inej could see the smile, the real smile, that cracked across Elodie’s face.

“Yeah, that’s right. Do you know how many more it is than me?”

Jeluna held up nine fingers, then folded two of them down before she said hesitantly:

“Seven?”

Elodie nodded eagerly. As Inej adjusted, forced to briefly shuffle because the weight on her elbows was starting to make them ache, the girls moved briefly out and back into view between the slats of the vent. She saw Elodie stand and pace to the kitchen, and a beat later felt victory spark in her chest as Jeluna reached out and ripped a crust off one of the remaining bread rolls on her plate. She ate it distractedly, her eyes roving to study Elodie in the kitchen, her free hand moving slowly through her hair until she found the heavy mat all along the underside. Her hair was so thick that it was practically invisible beneath the upper layers, but she could not stand for anyone else to be close enough to brush it out and had only taken a comb to the top tresses when Kaz demanded it of her, along with washing her face and hands and the blood off her knee, and for her to drink full glasses of water and swallow something to fill her stomach. Inej still wasn’t sure he should have done that, but she supposed if it had helped Jeluna, in a roundabout way, that it was close enough to… something. Care? Kindness? It certainly hadn’t looked like either of them when she’d helped him move Jeluna from the Crow Club to this little flat.

“Do you…?” Elodie hesitated, setting her glass back down on the table as she watched Jeluna’s fingers twisting around the enormous matting in her hair, “Do you want me to try and brush it out? You don’t have to, I don’t have to, but if you think-”

“I’m not going back, am I?” Jeluna’s voice was soft, quiet.

“No,”

“That’s real, isn’t it? This is real. Not…” she tapped the side of her head, and Inej frowned, “This is real,”

“This is real,” Elodie stepped a little closer, “You never have to go back, not once. No-one here wants to make you go back,”

The air in the flat seemed to shift sideways quite unexpectedly as Jeluna leaned forwards and grabbed Elodie’s wrist tightly, taking both Inej and the younger girl by surprise. Inej could see her entire face now; her eyes were wild and burning, fear and something else written across her face like the signature in the corner of a finished portrait.

“You promise me, Elodie,” she snarled, twisting her hand and pulling Elodie closer to her, “You promise,”

“I do!” Elodie cried out in shock, tugging at her arm once before falling still beneath Jeluna’s grasp, “I do - Jeluna, I swear-”

Jeluna dropped her arm, tears suddenly pouring down her cheeks as she pulled away and shook her head.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t… I don’t…” she had to stop, quivering hand perched across her chest, and wait for her breathing to settle, “I’m sorry, I just… I don’t know how to believe you. I don’t know how to trust you. I can’t… it was… it’s so dark in here and I don’t…” her voice was shaking, sobs threatening to throw her tone up towards the skyline so it would rise and shatter into pieces upon its ragged return to the ground, “I trusted her. She made me… she made me think things, that I- I-”

She could not finish the thought but it seemed that Elodie, like Inej, had not been expecting her to. Elodie had backed away a pace once Jeluna had let go of her, and now she was playing her sleeve as she watched Jeluna with hesitant close study.

“I haven’t…” she paused and swallowed lightly, as though her mouth had begun speaking before her mind was ready to catch up and she needed a second more to gather her thoughts, “I have not been through the things you have,” she said, “and I can’t say that I know how you feel, because can barely imagine it and it would not be fair. But I can tell you that I can understand, some of it, a little,”

And then she lifted her sleeve, slowly at first and then just shoving it up above her elbow. From here Inej could not see the tattoo, the two roses overlapping across the skin of Elodie’s forearm, but she knew that it was there. She had seen Nina’s enough times to picture it perfectly. The skin on her arm prickled, where the Menagerie tattoo had once been.

Jeluna stared at it. She stared at Elodie.

“I was eleven,” the younger girl said, slowly, deliberately, holding her voice even and emotionless, “at the auction,”

“You…”

“I’m never going back there. So you can trust that you don’t ever have to go back either,”

A moment passed before Jeluna nodded, very slowly.

“I have a friend who’s going to get rid of it for me, when she gets a chance. She’s busy at the moment, but when she has time she’s going to look at it for me. I’m sure she could get rid of yours too, if you want,”

Jeluna’s blouse, one Inej had found and borrowed from a cupboard in the Slat on her behalf, had long enough sleeves to cover the Willow Switch tattoo on her arm but she looked down at it anyway, as though she could stare straight through the fabric to the ink and skin and flesh beneath.

“What does she want?”

Elodie frowned, confused, then ventured:

“She doesn’t want anything, she’s my friend - oh, you met her! Do you remember? Nina? She took you to the Crow Club, remember, to see Mister Brekker?”

Jeluna’s eyes remained fixed on her sleeve, the slither of her expression visible to Inej made of fear and thunder, as she gave an unhappy nod.

“You could watch when she gets rid of mine, maybe,” Elodie continued, either oblivious to Jeluna’s disagreement or just choosing to brush through it, “And see how you feel,”

Inej wasn’t sure that Jeluna was actually still listening; she was looking away, her hands had found their way back up into her hair. A moment passed and Elodie took her seat again, eyes focused on her companion, before Jeluna looked up.

“I never have to go back,”

Elodie shook her head.

“And- and she’ll never know? She’ll never… she won’t know,”

“Never,”

Jeluna clutched at her hair, leaning forwards across the table, her voice almost hoarse as she dared to whisper:

“Cut it off. Cut all of it off,”

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onlymexsarah · 3 years

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Promise pt. 5 || Kaz Brekker

Summary: When the life of Kaz is threated by her presence, she had to make a crucial decision that will bring misunderstanding among the two of them. Now that he has his Fire Girl, will he be able to keep her, or Dirtyhand will mess everything up?

Pairing: Kaz Brekker x grisha!Reader

Warning: angst, Kaz being Dirtyhands for ten minutes straigh, spoiler of Six of Crows, my english.

A/N: Thank all of you for the comments, the likes and the shares. I didn't expected that this little idea would have captured your attention, really you made my writing more enjoyable and easy. I'm so sorry if I'm late but I've been sick these days and I couldn't finish the chapter :( there are a lot of things that I want to tell you, see you at the end of the chapter ;)

PT. 1 - PT. 2 - PT. 3 - PT. 4

MAIN MASTERLIST

Few days passed with the girl lying on her bed recovering from the wound that the fight gave her.

When she opened her eyes after have fainted in Kaz's arms, fear had been the first to come to visit her. Fear of being already tied at some bed on a ship, sold at the Shu that would have been more than happy to make experiment on her. She was scared that the temptation must have been too much for Kaz Brekker to have such a value grisha in his hands, but then she noticed she was in her room at the Slat and a rush of tiredness hit her making her sleep again.

The other times she opened her eyes someone among Jesper, Inej and Wylan was always at her side, changing the bandage and bringing her food.

Inej told her that her father, Jan Van Eck, was now aware that she was part of the Dregs, and she was under Kaz Brekker's protection. Everyone was aware she was a grisha, but neither Jesper and Inej seemed to mind her lie, maybe because they had secrets too, she though.

A morning a letter came for Kaz, a letter from her father.

Mister Brekker

we never had the occasion to meet, and you'll agree with me when I say that I wish to keep things like this. Voice is spread that you have my beloved daughter with you. I hope you understand that she is a danger for this city. I've sent her away many years ago with the only interest of protecting Kerch from her, but I see that I could have done things in a better way.

It is as a father that I ask you to bring her to me so that I can repair my mistakes. She is a danger for all of us if not under control, Mister Brekker, and I am sure you saw it yourself last night. She has to face a trial for her crimes and be sent where she can't be a danger for anyone anymore. If she doesn't come back in seven days, I should consider you and your Dregs as her accomplices, planning to attack Ketterdam and all Kerch using her power.

Surely a smart men as yourself doesn't want those kind of problems.

Hope to see my city safe again,

Jan Van Eck.

Inej had brough the letter at her in the afternoon, and in the evening the grisha girl was already planning her escaping from Ketterdam for the third time in her life.

She didn't want to leave Wylan, hell she had promised him they wouldn't split up ever again, but if her plan worked then he would have been able to follow her after few months. If the Van Eck siblings moved together they would have caught too much attention, and they had to do everything in secrets.

Wylan tried to convince her to stay. He was sure that Kaz would have helped her, Wylan was sure that Kaz Brekker would have sealed all Ketterdam to keep her save, and even if as her brother he didn't like her closeness with the Bastard of the Barrel, he couldn't deny that it was useful.

"I'm putting all of you in danger just staying here. If I go away father will have nothing to threat you with." she said putting her clothes in her bags. Seven days, she couldn't give her father the time to close all the harbours in Kerch. If she wanted to go she had to do it as soon as possible.

"Talk to Kaz! Let see what he says, please." begged Wylan grabbing her hands in his to stop her.

She looked in his beautiful blue eyes and saw hope. "You really think Kaz has the power to keep me here?"

Her brother smirked. "I think Kaz would tear apart this city to keep you save. Talk to him, keep your options open."

Dirtyhands would never fight a battle where he couldn't win money, but Y/n was willing to try. That night after dinner she decided she would speak with Kaz and see if he was willing to keep her.

"Let see what the great Kaz Brekker think about it." she sighed putting her arm around Wylan's shoulder and walking downstair where their dinner waited them.

Kaz Brekker sat in his office, in his gloved hands the red handkerchief and Jan Van Eck's letter. Before that morning the death of Van Eck had been one of the many he wanted to deal with for what he had done to his Fire Girl, but now his death had taken a shape, colours and many details that Kaz's was adding one by one.

Brick by brick, Kaz would take all his enemies down, and Y/n was more than welcome to take her revenger with him.

He went downstair at the second floor walking toward Y/n's room. He wanted to check how she was, and speak with her about how she wanted to deal with her father. He didn't know if she wanted his actual death, but he was just fine with torture.

When he reached the door and looked inside his blood froze. All her things were packed in three bags, all her clothes were gone from her wardrobe and none of her objects were around the room. Neither the little portrait of she and baby Wylan that she kept on her bedside table before falling asleep.

She is leaving you.

These words felt like a stab in his chest, like someone had taken the oxigen from his lungs. Would she, leave him? Yes. Y/n would find a better life everywhere out Kerch, it was reasonable that she was already packing. When she wanted to leave? Where she wanted to go?

He knew nothing about it and Kaz Brekker always knew everything. Especially of what happened in his Slat. But this time the girl was leaving him, again, and she hadn't had talked with him about it. She hadn't advised him. Did you really think she was going to live this life just for you? For a man who can't even hold her hands without hyperventilate? A man who can't give her the love she deserve?

The fear he saw in her eyes when she saved his life with her power wasn't because she was feared of his rejection; she feared that he would have send her out of the Dregs, without protection and away from her brother.

He stormed back in his office, anger filled his boody and what else? Disappointment? Sadness? He was angry with himself because he had been a fool again. He had let someone playing with him again, that's what Y/n had been doing. She had been toying with him. She had made sure to have a safe place where live, a job and her brother beside her. Every little nice things she did for him was just to keep him close, to keep Dirtyhands at bay.

Like a fury he threw everything that was on his desk on the floor with his arms. Documents, the handkerchief, the letters, were all on the floor but he couldn't care less. She wanted to leave? Fine. Dirtyhands didn't care.

A known shiver crossed his spine before he heard a knock at his door.

"What?" he didn't look up when the girl entered, too focus on something in the drawers of his desk.

"Wow, and I though to be the one who had a bad day." she joked looking the mess at his feet.

He didn't smile, or smirked. He kept his eyes on something she coudn't see. "What bussiness?"

What bussiness. Those words were the greeting in Ketterdam when two bussiness men met, but the grisha girl though that she and Kaz had passed that step. He must had really a bad day, and it could have been because of the letter...she though sadly.

Who knew what other problems her father had caused around Ketterdam to earn the attention of Kaz, to push him to hand her in his hands.

"My father...I don't want any of you to be in danger because of me." she said carefully walking closer to his desk. A glimp of red captured her eyes but the pain at her waist made her close her eyes for a second.

"I'd say it's too late for it, isn't it?" he asked coldly. She took a step behind, taken back by his coldness toward her. "You seemed to enoy keeping secrets, didn't you? Do you know how easier it would have been knowing about your being grisha months ago?"

That wasn't the boy who had brough her in his arms out from the gala. He wasn't the boy who fought beside her, spied beside her and saved her a couple of time.

"I am sorry, I truly am Kaz. But I know what is the price of being a grisha here...it wouldn't have been easy for me walking with a target on my back. I have done it my whole life."

He refused to look her in the eyes, and it was driving her crazy. Was he really that mad at her that he couldn't bare even the sight of her?

"You decided for yourself, a thing you tend to do often I see." she was sure he had never spoken to her like that, neither in his bad days, and Kaz Brekker had a lot of bad days. "You swore loyalty to the Dregs, to the Crows. If you can't trust us then you shouldn't stay here."

He had said the crucial words, and there was no going back. She wanted to leave, then he would make sure to let her believe that he didn't care. That he didn't care about not finding his hot coffee on his desk again, or that from that day on he wouldn't feel the shivers in his spine anymore. He pretended to not care about not seeing her anymore. She had left him once, he could survive it a second time.

"That's it? That's what you want?" she felt her voice dying in her throat. Was her mistake that big? You knew that once Kaz knew what you were he would have pushed you away like everyone else. 'No one will understand you as the other of your kind', Baghra once told her, but when she met Kaz she believed that her old teacher was wrong. Kaz Brekker had been her safe harbour when no one else would care about her, was she so easily replaceable for him?

"You would have leave anyway at some point, you said it yourself the first time we met at the Club. Today, tomorrow, in five years...I don't see the difference." he shrugged like he didn't care.

He doesn't, her mind reminded her.

"Alright then...I don't want to be of any trouble to you anymore..." she whispered with her hands behind her back. She hated how little she felt, but he was sendind her away. Kaz Brekker, the boy she'd die for. The boy who had let her felt hope again after years, the boy who made her laugh even when he surely didn't mean it. The boy in who she was willing to put the most important years of her long life, that boy was sending her away without looking back.

"Then go." he said fixing his eyes in hers. She could feel the sharpness of his eyes cutting her chest.

"Fine, then I'll just-" she stopped talking when her eyes landed on the red thing she had seen before. A red handkerchief. Her feet moved on their own will. Before she could register what was happening she had the red handkerchief in her hands, her eyes fixed on the three letters on it. W. V. E.

"Y/n don't-" Kaz stood up trying to stop her but it was too late.

"Why do you have my brother's hand-" she was confused, but then her eyes raised to the boy in front of her. His brown eyes, his dark hair and pale skin, and in a second her mind brough her a memory.

The little boy smiled standing before her. He was at the same height of her belly, but his eyes seemed older.

"I have still things to do, and people I need to find. " the last words said with rage.

"Take care of yourself, boy. Don't let the bad days winning your good ones, there is always light at the end of a tunnel; you only have to walk a little more."

And then another.

"What is you name little boy?"

"K-..." he stopped for a long moment thinking about it. He looked the girl beside him and even if he wanted to trust her he just couldn't after what happened. "Jordie..."

"J-Jordie?" she asked, her voice trembling. "I-...You are not him, aren't you?" he stayed silent, looking her like a statue. "You would have told me if you were him...Kaz you are not the little boy I met eight years ago, right?!"

Her voice raised squeezing the handkerchief in her right fit.

She saw him gulped before answering slowly. "Yes, I am."

She took two huge steps back breathing eavily. He had known me all along. "Why you've never said anything? That day when you approached me, you knew who I was and you offered me a...job..."

"Can you keep a secret?" she asked touching his shoulder with her own. The boy, whose name wasn't obviously Jordie, nodded looking her curiously. She smirked bringin her left hand on her right one and rotating them slowly. A flame came out from her right palm, little but still powerful; red and orange like the handkerchief she had given him before.

The boy's eyes shone marveled looking the flame on her palm. "You are a grisha!"

The truth hit her hard. She raised her eyes in his letting him see the betrayal. "You had always knew what I was. That's why you gave me the job...you didn't care that I was new, you didn't care that I was the girl you met when you was a child. You wanted an Inferni to work for you!"

Every words, every attention, every talk they shared were all lies. Nothing of what he said was true, Kaz Brekker didn't need a reason, he didn't need a reason to give a job to a girl new in town, but it was clear that Kaz Brekker always had a reason. She had been only too foolish to not understand everything before.

She thought she was good to keep a secret, but something like her power couldn't pass unnoticed to Kaz Brekker. She had been a fool to believe he didn't know about her power. It was the only reason he kept her in the Dregs since the beginning.

"An inferni would have been very useful, but you have proved to know how to do your job perfectly without your power. Now, if you want to go you are free to do so. Nothing bind you here." he said, his voice cold as death.

You bound me here, she wanted to shout. But it had been Kaz's plan all along. Making her believe she was different, making her believe he saw her.

"Nothing." she repeated before walking away from his office, leaving the boy alone with the loudly silent that filled the room, staring at the handkerchief that she let fall on the ground, the only thing that had always bound them.

***

The next morning Kaz woke up and knew immediately that something was wrong. He took his cane and walked downstairs to the kitchen where he heard people talking out loud.

"I swear Jesper, when I see him I-" Wylan stop talking in the exact moment Kaz stepped in the room. The red haired boy fixed his eyes on him and before he could understand what was happening Wylan was yelling at him with all the rage he felt. "How dare you coming here like nothing happened!?"

Jesper had to put his arms around Wylan's torso to keep him from throwing himself on Kaz. "Last time I checked this was my Slat."

"And you find amusing sending people away, don't you?" Wylan spoke spitting venom from his mouth. "She needed help and you turned your back at her!"

Now Kaz needed few minutes to make his brain, still sleepy, working to connect the dots. It was clear that Wylan was talking about his sister, who seemed to have played the victim with her own brother.

"If you want to know, merchling, she decided her will herself. She came to me to let me know she was leaving." Kaz shrugged walking toward coffee machine. He didn't have the strengh to face an angry boy if he wasn't properly awake.

"As hell she did. She came to ask you what to do and you sent her away." Kaz let his words running in his head for a while, studying them one by one.

He didn't..."When she came in my office she had already decided." he refused to tell them he had seen her bags ready in her room, he refused to let someone know he cared.

"No Kaz, she didn't." This time Inej spoke, he hadn't even noticed she was there. "She wanted to leave to protect you from her father, but Wylan convinced her to slow down and come to you to ask what to do."

No, no, it was not possible. "When she came in your office she hadn't decided yet. You gave her the answer, Kaz." Jesper spoke keeping his hands on Wylan's shoulders, who now was sat on a chair with his face in his hands.

I would have noticed if she was asking me what to do. She had her bags ready...she came to me to tell me...his thoughs were running wild inside his head.

"That's it? That's what you want?"

Kaz tried to put his thoughs together. He tried to find a logic of what had happened the night before.

"You had always knew what I was. That's why you gave me the job...you didn't care that I was new, you didn't care that I was the girl you met when you was a child. You wanted an Inferni to work for you!"

No, no, no. Everything was so wrong again. He though she was going to leave him and he had let her believe that he had used her all this time. He though she was leaving him...that was the only thing he had needed to loose his mind.

"You didn't know..." whispered Inej surprised.

Kaz couldn't trust his voice enough to not break in front of everyone so he just shoke his head slowly looking the Suli girl in the eyes.

"What have you done..."murmured Jesper rubbing his eyes with his hand. "Alright, if you hurry you should arrive before the schooner leaves."

"Fifth harbour?" Kaz asked with raspy voice.

"Yes! Go!" said the Zemeni boy excited. "I love a dramatic romance."

He didn't let him repeated twice, ready to run if he had to he walked toward the door when Wylan's voice stopped him.

"Brekker, bring her back." Please, was the word the boy let unspoken.

He nodded before running toward the harbour. He took just his cloat at the door, leaving his hat behind. He couldn't let her leave again. He had to arrive in time, and if he didn't he would have swim until he'd found himself on the schooner and ask sorry to her for his infinity dullness.

"Alright then...I don't want to be of any trouble to you anymore..."

She wasn't a trouble, he wanted to shout in the air. She had never been a trouble, he was the wrong one. He was the twisted, crooked, problematic who couldn't stop himself from hurt her everytime.

"My father...I don't want any of you to be in danger because of me."

Even when she was the one in danger, she would think about him first. He didn't see it last night, too focused on accusing her of betrayal. Betrayal of what? She hadn't broken any vows she made. She wasn't bind to him, she own him nothing and surely Ketterdam did nothing to earn her protection.

Since the first day she had stayed on her own will, she had stayed beside him even when he pushed everyone away. That's what got under his skin, her perseverence. She kept fighting for him, she kept seeing good in him and the only thing he had been capable of was making her feel used and unwanted.

He saw the harbour and he barely noticed that he hadn't used his cane. It would have just slowed me, he thought already searching his girl with the eyes.

He owed her an explanation, he owed her a lot of apologies, and then she would decide if she wanted to stay. Kaz swore to everyone who was listening that if Y/n chose to stay in Ketterdam with him, he would have made sure to be worth her choice. He would fight everyday to go trought his boundaries for her, with her. He would be the man she deserved.

"The schooner for Os Kervo." Kaz asked urgently to a man. He knew Y/n, she would find a safe home in Ravka at the Little Palace where the grisha were safe and strong.

"The first one left this morning at four bells, the next it's at the berth twenty-four, leaves in half bell." the man answered.

Kaz didn't think twice and ran toward the schooner with his heart in his throat. Please, saints if you exist make sure she hadn't already left.

He felt pathetic. Never in his life he had ever prayed, but he though that if it gave him a chance to see her again that it was worth a try.

He arrived at the schooner, but looking around he didn't see her. She must be already on board, he though and without difficulty he went on the ship.

There wasn't many people, but from what Kaz knew the grisha girl could have been already in her room and there was no way to find her before that schooner left.

He felt a shiver in his spine, telling him that she was close, but he didn't know where to look. Right, left, he looked everywhere. People around him looked him worried.

She can't be gone, he kept reapeting in his head like a mantra.

"Came here to bring me back to my father?" a voice said from above him. "How much did he offer to you? Must be a lot to affront a grisha alone."

His heart missed a beat and when he looked over his head he though he might start to believe in saints.

She was there, perched on one of the boom. Her hood was up hiding her face like she always did when she was out of their zone. She was a wanted grisha now, and he felt a grip on his heart at the though that she was used to that life of a runner.

You are not alone anymore, Fire Girl, he though vividly.

"I thought you had decided to leave..." he said. It didn't sound like an apologize at all...Damn Saints, there were a bilions things he wanted to say her, and yet his throat felt dry when he could talk.

"I did." her voice was sharped as a blade and cold as ice.

He gulped, I deserve this. "I know..." He had a flashback of their first conversation at the Crows Club, and cold shivers ran in his blood. I will not make the same mistake twice. "I should have told you who I was since the beginning."

"Maybe if I knew I didn't have to hide my power you could have had your personal inferni sooner." it was his fault. He had let her believe that he wanted her just for her power, but it wasn't true. Kaz Brekker kept her with the Dregs because he couldn't bare the though of her being hurt or threated.

"Could you get off from that boom? Please..." the last word burned in Kaz's throat like fire. It wasn't easy for him to say out loud his feelings, but he knew it would have been the only thing to make her stay. He owed her the truth.

She scoffed and jumped, landing in front of him with the lightness of a feather. Crossing her arms over her chest she studyed him from under her hood, waiting for him to speak first.

You want me sto stay, you have to say it, her posture told him.

"I saw your bags in your room, I though you wanted to leave me, the Dregs. I would understand if it what you wish, but you have to know that I was angry. Angry because I though you didn't trust me. You had just packed all your things without talking to me first, I though...I though you..." said those words Kaz brekker, a voice said in his mind. "I though you used me as a protection, nothing else. And when you showed up in my office I though you were going to say me you were leaving. No question, no mouners."

She stayed silent for a bit, surely surprised by his words. He couldn't see her whole face from his height, and he needed to use all his self control to not take it and push it down.

"The only reason I decided to leave was because my father knew about you. I knew he would have used you against me if I stayed, and I couldn't put you in danger just because I wanted to be selfish." her voice had softened a bit, but it was still sharp as she was ready for any attack from him. "Wylan convinced me that you would have helped me, that you would have been willing to fight for me. But when I come to you, I find Dirtyhands planning my departure. And what I find out? That you kept me under your roof just because you knew I was a grisha."

"It's not true." he stopped her firmly. "I knew you were a grisha, but never in my head I though about using you for your power."

"Then what other reason to keep the truth about our first meeting from me?"

Now it's the moment. Don't let your shame eat you alive, put yourself together and take your Fire Girl back.

"Because I was ashamed of the man I became. Because if you knew who I was you would have seen that the little boy you met eight years ago doesn't exist anymore. You would have seen that I failed you..." saying finally those words after a year left him lighter.

She gasped softly. It's not true, I can still see that little boy right in front me... "No, I failed you. You were a child Kaz, you had no faults. I should've stayed with you."

She could see the surprise on Kaz's face when she spoke those words. She had time to think that morning, at the little boy she left alone in the streets of Ketterdam. The boy who had kept her secrets all those years and never blackmailed her.

"I don't think something would have changed. I chose my path." he said with his raspy voice. How many nights he had dreamt about that moment? When he would finally speak with her, when the little boy and the Fire Girl would meet again.

"Becasue no one was there for you. Beccause you were alone. But if someone would have taken care of you, if someone would have showed you another way, maybe everything would have been different." maybe you would have been different.

She wasn't disappointed in what Kaz had became, she knew that everything he did it was to survive at the Barrel. She was proud that he had found the strengh to fight and live; Y/n would change nothing of the man she had in front of her.

The captain of the schooner announced that they were ready to leave and Y/n took a deep breath. "You should go..."

"Come with me." his mind, his rational part stopped working. There were nothing to brake his tongue. "Eight years ago you asked me if I wanted you to stay with me, and I said no. Today I'm asking you to stay in Ketterdam, with me, with the Crows. We cant-...I can't loose you. Not again."

Her heart started to beat faster like a roller coaster. Was Kaz Brekker the one who was talking in front of her? The Bastard of the Barrel was asking her to stay with him. You are going to put him in danger, a voice in her mind reminded her.

She looked Ketterdam behind him, as she could see her father's house.

Kaz saw the shift in her face's direction, and immediately understood what was thinking that mind of her. He rose a gloved hand in front of him taking her by surprise.

"If you wish to go to Ravka I will not stop you, but if you give me a chance I'll try everyday to be the man worth to stay by your side. And I promise you..." he took a step forward making her gasp. "I promise you we will take down everyone who threat us and we'll make them know the real meaning of the word suffer."

That's the Dirtyhands I fell for, she though smiling brightly. She took his hand firmly feeling his fingers closing around hers. "Just one condition." He raised an eyebrow to say 'continue please'. "Jan Van Eck is mine, and he's not going to die until I say so."

She knew that Kaz wasn't the only one who had changed in those years, and there were no reasons to hide it. The grisha girl who lived in the shadows and the little boy who was scared would never meet again, both had died when the world had turned its back to them. Both had raised like phoenix and became stronger.

"The deal is the deal, Fire Girl." he smirked walking with her toward the berth. The schooner was already leaving and there was a little void between the berth and the schooner, so Kaz squeezed her hand and they both jumped. When their feet touched the berth he didn't notice he was laughing with her. Her hood was over her forehead and he couldn't hold it anymore, he stood in front of her with the steady hands of a magician and gently lowered it, feeling the hurge to see her smile again. "No secrets anymore."

"No secrets anymore." she replied keeping her eyes in his.

It was their promise to start from the beginning. Their past was a beautiful story to remember, but they would fight for their future side by side, and little did she know that for all the time she hadn't spoken with Kaz Brekker, Bastard of the Barrel. But the boy in front of her, with the light of hope in his dark eyes was the normal, simple Kaz Rietveld.

A/N:OH MY GOODNESS WE ARE HERE! This is the end of the story of our lovely, brave Fire Girl and our little, cute Kaz. I think I can cry... This is the chapter that most I love of the series and I think you can see why! Writing it was so emotional and still so easy, I knew from the first moment how I wanted their story to end and how I wanted to write it. I have many ideas for a future book with those two idiots, but in the mean time...would you like a bonus chapter where we are gonna see how they're managing they're "relationship"? Maybe where he tells her his real name...👀 but now tell me, what was the part that you most liked? Would have you made the same decisions as them? MY CHAT AND REQUESTS ARE OPEN SOO I'm gonna wait you there ;)

p.s. : who recognize the scene from an old tv series for young I took ispiration for the fight and the departure? 👀

#kaz brekker imagine #kaz brekker x reader #kaz brekker x grisha #kaz brekker #the crows #jesper fahey #inej ghafa #wylan van eck #matthias helvar #nina zenik #grishaverse #shadow and bone imagine #shadow and bone #six of crows imagine #six of crows #soc #crooked kingdom #imagine

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