❝ You taught me to be something better. ❞ / barrelreborn ( my side )
» prompts.
— @barrelreborn
Dark eyes look up at him, searching — what, exactly? Inej knows he does not lie; he never did, not to win her trust, not to seem comforting. Better terrible truths than kind lies. Her heart beats fast, not out of fear, though the feeling is similar enough as to be its twin, eager and anxious in equal measure. It feels like an old dance, by now. They skirt the edges, always close but never touching, well beyond physical contact.
Even as she studies his face, watches the expression, and lingers on his eyes, she knows his words to be incorrect. There is no saving someone who does not want to be saved. "I cannot take the credit for changing you. Only you can do that, Kaz, for better or worse."
It had been his form of defense, of surviving, the wall he placed between himself and the world (the armor she had demanded him to take off, filled with bravado and without laying down her own). Somewhere along the way, that had been the decision he made, nonetheless; and if he was better now, then it was just as much by his own merit.
"But if I was able to help," Inej remembers his lessons: he had taught her to fight, to pick a pocket, to wield a knife. She would not be here still, if not for him. If all he did was take her out of the Menagerie, it would have meant the world on its own; but Kaz taught her to survive, as well, and there were few gifts greater than the freedom that allowed. He had saved her. From the start she had wanted to believe him worth saving, too. "Then I am glad."