It rains the day after she is buried, like the sky too is mourning the loss of her. The Saints above crying out for those in pain down below.
But still he is waiting.
Jesper checks on him all throughout the day but Kaz does not move.
He is still and watchful, gaze set on the window of his room. Her window.
He waits.
There are purple bruises smudged under each eye. His stare is blank. Beyond tired. Beyond reason.
His fingers, pale and scarred, frozen around the handle of a cup. The tea, near freezing in the dark room's chill. He never even took a sip.
Jesper speaks, his voice broken, the pain in his heart likewise gripping at his throat. He asks and pleds, but Kaz does not respond.
He simply stares. Watching rivulets of water running their course down the pane of glass. Watching the sky grow even darker as night comes. Storm clouds swallowing the stars whole.
Wylan lights a single candle on the desk. The only one he could find in the room and asks Kaz where he can find more.
The missing response is painful. No snarky retort or glowering comment. Just unabashed silence the grows deafening with each passing moment.
The two of them take their turns sitting with him. Trying to coax anything from him but Kaz is of course ever stubborn.
It's nearly dawn when the words come, half lost in the thundering rain.
"Inej loves the rain. When she gets here we can watch it together."
He holds the bottle by its neck, dangerously between two fingers. He swings it, just enough for the force of its weight to teeter back and forth.
A game of whether or not he can keep the balance. Made harder by the fact that his head is full of whiskey, the second bottle on his desk, tilted to one side, probably destroying a week's worth of reports.
He blinks slow and cat-like at the realization that vital information could be soaking up brown alcohol like a napkin not ten feet beneath him. The situation won't be funny when his liquor induced daze fades, but for now he laughs.
Or attempts to.
It comes out a broken rasp, like a rusted hinge on an old shed door.
Kaz brings the bottle to eye level, trying to gauge the amount left by holding it to light from below.
There's a quarter left, maybe. That's three quarters he doesn't remember drinking. Then again, he could have easily spilled that much tripping up the steps.
The whiskey burns going down. He's never been a drinker, but things change.
He keeps drinking for the aftertaste. Bitter as it is, there's something familiar about it. Like it's linked to some memory that he's forgotten.
He thinks of setting it down and going to bed, it's late and exhaustion is heavy in his bones. It doesn't matter though, sleep remains elusive even when it feels like his blood has been replaced by the alcohol.
He thinks of heading back down, throwing the bottle across his room, watching it shatter into a million shards, just because it would probably be the smarter option, just because he wants to hear the crash. He could use a little chaos. A little recklessness. Something a little wild to pull his thoughts out from that shadowy space in the back of his mind.
Maybe he should make his way to the club, pick a fight with an unsuspecting customer who's too stupid to realize that he's looking for blood. His fingers twitch at the thought and he almost smiles.
Maybe the rumors are true and he really is mad, it would explain why the idea of violence is almost soothing.
He wonders if the alcohol is burning a path down his throat, he can almost picture it in his head, a bright, burnt red against the soft pink. A miniature canyon carving its way to his stomach.
Another peal of that half crazed laughter slips free. He must be really freaking wasted.
He reaches out, setting the bottle down, forgetting about the angle, and watches with absolute fascination as it tumbles its way over the slight slope of the roof and over the edge. Something like elation boils up in his chest, he strains for the smash, nearly hoping for an accompanying shout.
How funny would it be if someone was walking by a that exact moment?
The crush of glass comes as a relief, as slight as it is, maybe he should go get that extra bottle.
Kaz shifts his weight knowing immediately its a mistake, the gaslight blurs into cool yellow smears on the streets below. He leans back into the roof tiles.
He really should not be up here. He's no spider. He's not-
Those rumors about what Kaz Brekker is hiding beneath those ever-present gloves.
Because he's a criminal, so of course, whatever lies beneath the fabric must be sinful as well.
Some are tame.
His gloves hide the marks.
Kaz Brekker's skin, from his fingertips to his his shoulders, is covered in ink. Lines and tallys to account all the lives he's taken. All the lives he's destroyed.
Marks one after another in an endless sea. But he's running out of room for them all. Soon he'll have to start on his back or chest. Covering every last inch. Blacken the place above his heart, so he'll match both inside and out.
Some rumors are darker.
His gloves hide the blood.
Everyone knows Kaz Brekker kills with bare hands. Digging the knife in deep and letting the blood flow over him with a sick sort of glee.
The blood has left its stain on him. While his face is stark and pale, the skin of his hands is stained red. Like deep burns. Dark and rusty. A horror to behold.
And some, are downright insane.
But those are the ones Kaz loves most.
His gloves hide the shadows.
Because Kaz Brekker is a monster in the truest sense. One of the Darkling's own shadow creatures escaped across the sea. So enmeshed with human who's life it stole even the death of its master could not rip them apart.
His fingers, claws, clipped every day to hide beneath the dark fabric. The skin, once pale, now ink-black and ice to the touch disguised as human. The darkness of merzost leeching something like death into his veins, leaving stains hidden under layers of cloth.
Foolish and laughable rumors. Every single one.
====
Inej knows the rumors as well as anyone. And she could tell them all, not one is true. But no one could be bothered to listen.
And Kaz? Kaz doesn't seem to mind. Not as long as Inej is there to see the truth of it.
His gloves hide the scars.
The ones he's earned. The ones he's suffered.
The rumors say that his gloves hide something hideous. Something sinister.
But Inej knows. She's seen the scars beneath they're protective covering. And she loves each and every one.
"There is a saying among the Suli," Inej's grandmother said in a soft voice.
Kaz watched the old woman's gaze linger on her granddaughter as Inej held tight to the struggling fawn.
"A blessing used in passing, from this world to that of our Saints."
The fawn's eyes were lazy, roving over one face to the next, fear and confusion battling the exhaustion that comes with dying.
"Words made for the comfort of the dying. Just as much made for those they're leaving behind."
Inej had tears in her eyes as she watched over the animal. Sadness, despair, and helplessness all tumbling and mixing into one another.
"Let it be easy."
Kaz watched Inej's careful fingers draw the knife, silent and steady across the suffering creatures throat. She didn't flinch when the blood hit her. Didn't blink watching the light leave the fawn's eyes.
Silence filled the small clearing where they had gathered. Inej swallowed heavily, letting the scene playout in her mind once more before catching Kaz's gaze with her own.
"Let it be easy," she said, "from one breath to the next."
~
The memory of that day overwhelmed him, filling his thoughts, tearing them away from the reality before him.
Let it be easy, he thought, pulling Inej's cooling body toward him. From one breath to the next.
I could swear my heart is bound to yours they way it pulls at me. Directing my every thought to you and your cage across the water. Tugging incessantly, restlessly, achingly... a constant struggle to beat with yours once again.
You'd think my mind would be home to logic. Swirling with plans and schemes to return you to me... but it too seems bound to yours. I dream of your pain. Your anger. The thoughts you must have of me. The way I betrayed you. The way you must feel...
I cannot for the life of me believe you could ever truly forgive me. Neither can I forgive myself...
I reach out to you. As darkness settles and I stare into the shadows of my room. I reach out to you. As though perhaps I might reach across the space between us to grab your hand and pull your heart to mine...
If only the Saints allowed such a thing I might find a way to bring you back to me so I might never let you go again...
Keeg stands in the back of the small group of Dregs nervously twitching back and forth from foot to foot. He's still new to this. Operating directly under the gang's leader rather than reporting to any number of middlemen.
He watches anxious, as the others sound off the numbers of patrons, intake of Kruge, and the number of various supplies to this establishment or any other they might own.
Roeder abnormally twitchy seems to cower under the gaze of the man behind the desk. He mumbles his record of how things are going in the warehouse district and is hasty trying to switch one word for another. One more likely to please.
Everyone flinches as Dirtyhands slams his can to the floor. A resounding boom of anger or annoyance.
"Out. All of you, except Keeg. Anika."
The leading members of the Dregs file out quickly, although not fast enough to hide the frightened sheen of sweat coating Roeder's forehead. And the look of pure relief gracing his features.
The Bastard of the Barrel has only grown more infamous in the past two years. There's a palpable tension that lingers in the air around him. Almost like he secretes fear.
He feels Anika's fingers latch onto his sleeve, empowered by the show of unity he takes a step forward.
Dirtyhands reaches out with a gloved hand to stroke the statue still crow perched on his arm rest.
The creature unnerves Keeg, with its pitch colored eyes and unnatural stillness. Despite the fact it's been at Brekker's side for over a year now, Keeg can't help the wave of rising panic as it stares at him.
"You have news? My Wraith?"
Keeg and Anika share a look, equal parts terror and pain. This question is laced with its own weight of dread. It mixes with the fear already settled in his gut and Keeg thinks he might throw up all over his newly polished shoes.
His eyes flick back to the man and crow before him, worried they might have noticed the exchange. But Brekker's pallid faced is entranced by the large black bird. In this at least, Keeg feels relief.
"No. No word sir. Not yet." Anika answers for both of them.
Keeg swallows around the tightness in his throat. No matter the number of times the answer remains the same. He braces himself for the reaction.
Brekker frowns slightly at first, mouth puckering like he's tasted something sour and unpleasant.
"No matter."
Dirtyhands turns to the two of them, his face almost childlike in its sudden brightness. A look that should be calming rather then disheartening, because while his lips are tilted in shy grin his eyes remain vacant and lifeless.
"We'll her from her soon, my Inej never keeps me waiting long."
The purity of his features collapses as if he’s realized the falsity of the statement.
"My Inej..." he murmurs. Lost. Broken.
He shakes his head. Like he's lost his train of thought.
When he raises it again, his normal stoic demeanor has slid back into place.
"If that's all, you're dismissed."
Dirtyhands returns to the avalanche of papers and ledgers spread across his desk.
A quick glance at Anika and Keeg hurries them out of the office before she can break.
The door clicks closed behind them and she practically sags into him.
"How much longer? When will he remember?"
Keeg grips her tightly, "I don't think the mind heals so easily."
Anika, normally strong and unbreakable, let's a single sob escape into the fabric on his shoulder. His heart tightens.
The pain was harsh for all of them, a gaping hole with no means to fill it, but Dirtyhands had suffered the most from it. His mind didn't, couldn't, wouldn't handle it. Pushing the reality of it away and embracing the fantasy instead.
But Keeg still feared, because the day Kaz Brekker excepted the death of Inej Ghafa was the day the world would burn to ash.
