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i.
The day he brings Inej to the Slat for the first time, the other Crows naturally have a lot to say about it.
In hindsight, he probably should have stopped along the way for clothes for her that weren’t the conspicuous Menagerie silks, but he’d been somewhat preoccupied by the desire to get as far away from that place and from Heleen as possible.
Heleen doesn’t scare him in the slightest, but the way the girl at his side looked at the woman before they left has him convinced that she’s something particularly wretched, in a different sort of way than he’s wretched. He’d dragged her out of there quickly, without a second glance back.
The girl is small and a bit jumpy, and he thinks to himself that she’s going to need to toughen up real damn quickly if she’s actually going to make it in this city. He knows she’s capable of it - he wouldn’t have put so much effort into convincing Per Haskell to buy out her indenture if he didn’t see something in her eyes that told him she has what it takes to survive on the streets of Ketterdam - but that doesn’t mean she’s capable of it now.
The main floor of the Slat is bustling with people, random members of the Dregs filtering in and out as they all prepare for whatever they’re all planning on getting up to tonight. Rotty nods at him as he walks out the front door, following Kaz’s orders to scope out some potential conflict brewing over at the edge of Razorgulls turf tonight.
The presence of the new girl in their midst turns heads. Kaz doesn’t say a word to any of them, just heads towards the stairs with Inej in tow.
Bastian passes them on the first flight of stairs, grinning wickedly at the girl behind him.
“Never thought I’d see the day, Brekker’s bought himself a whore.”
Bastian looks like he fancies himself a jokester, so he’s unprepared for what comes next. Kaz’s cane whips out before the other man has a chance to even flinch, much less dodge the hit, and Bastian finds himself with his hand pinned to the wall behind him, letting loose an involuntary cry of pain.
“You call her a whore again,” Kaz threatens, “and I’ll break your wrist. Or worse.”
Bastian looks like he wants to argue, but thinks better of it. Which is smart of him, because Kaz would be all too happy to follow through on that threat right here and right now if given the opportunity. Hell, he’d even have an audience for it, what with the few Dregs members still milling about at the bottom of the stairs.
After one last glare, Kaz lets his cane fall to his side, continuing his path up the stairs and expecting that Inej will follow.
He stops at a room the floor below his; it’s a small one, but she’s small too, so he figures it’ll do the trick.
“You didn’t have to do that for me,” Inej says softly. “Down there.”
Yes, I did.
“I didn’t do it for you,” he replies, his curt tone no less unyielding now than it was with Bastian a few minutes ago. “If you’re going to be a proper asset to the Dregs, I don’t need them getting any wrong ideas about what you’re here for.”
He unlocks the door, then hands her the key.
“This is the only key to this room. Don’t lose it.”
She looks at it reverently, and it strikes him that a private room with a lock, no matter how small, is probably an enormous thing for someone who was once subject to Heleen’s whims and those of her clientele. Draped in silks on velvet couches, privacy was one luxury she’d never been afforded.
For some reason, he has a sense of satisfaction in being able to give it to her. He can’t offer her much in the Barrel, he’s made that much very clear to her, but he can provide this.
ii.
It takes about two weeks after Inej starts climbing the buildings of Ketterdam to start appearing at the window above her own every so often, sitting on the slanted rooftop, and when Kaz leaves the window open in the early evenings while he works, she’ll sit on the windowsill.
Normally, he hates being watched while he works, would rather calculate and strategize in complete isolation, but for some reason… the usual rules don’t apply when it comes to Inej.
Maybe it’s the silence - she’s dangerously quiet when she moves, and even more so when she’s still, so there are none of the typical annoyances of sharing a space with another person.
He catches himself glancing over at her sometimes - he tells himself that he’s just checking that she’s still there, because when she sneaks away she does so soundlessly, and he doesn’t need his window open if she’s gone for the day. But sometimes, when he looks over, she’s just sitting there with her eyes closed, her chin upturned as she soaks in whatever faint sunlight Ketterdam has to offer, and there’s just something about it.
He’s not sure he’s ever seen someone in Ketterdam just enjoy the sunlight before. They’re all tucked away in pubs or gambling dens or brothels, or bustling about on the streets, and it’s…
He doesn’t allow himself to think anything else about it.
One day, though, he’s not content to let her just sit on the windowsill polishing the knives she’s recently started wielding as an extension of her own body.
If she’s going to be a good spider, she needs a few new skills.
Which is how he winds up on the rooftop as well, extending a lockpick to her. He’s not much of a teacher - he doesn’t have the patience for most people, but most people aren’t quick-witted former acrobats with a borderline-unnatural proclivity for picking up new skills.
He picks the lock on his window first, showing her how. It’d probably be a better demonstration if he did it without his gloves on, but he can’t do that. The last thing he needs is for their hands to accidentally brush and for her to witness, up close, how quickly human touch can break the unbreakable Dirtyhands.
She tries after him, squinting in concentration as she tries to mimic his previous movements.
“You’re not throwing a knife at it, brute force isn’t going to work,” he bites out, watching as she attempts to jab the lockpick in with far more pressure than he had.
“I’m not using brute force,” she argues. For someone who’d seemed so meek and small the first time she’d tapped him on the shoulder at the Menagerie, she’s stepped into a level of comfort in challenging him that no other new Dregs recruit has. No one else but her, and perhaps maybe Jesper, would ever even try to talk back to one of his commands.
“ Gentler .”
She glares at him, but heeds his instruction when she resumes working at the lock.
She fiddles with it for a few moments longer. “Why start with this lock in particular?” she asks, not looking up from her work as she speaks.
Because I like when you come up and visit.
“Because if you can get into this window, you can get into any window in Ketterdam.” It’s not technically a lie.
There’s a telltale click, and the window slides open. A look of pride crosses Inej’s features at her accomplishment. “Well, that’s good news for me then.”
iii.
The rooftops in the University District aren’t the best for recon, which has resulted in the uncomfortable situation of him and Inej lying on their stomachs, up against a corner where two buildings meet.
One of the economics professors at University of Ketterdam has been making frequent trips to the Emerald Palace. And just the other day, one of the other Dregs had spotted a group of Dime Lions headed towards the University District. Kaz is determined to figure out what’s brewing there, what strange alliance is being made between an academic and Pekka Rollins.
He would’ve sent Inej out on this one on her own, but this is about Pekka, and therefore, this is personal.
Kaz shifts from his awkward position, a shooting pain firing through his bad leg that he has to clench his jaw to weather.
“You said he’d be coming through here by now,” he points out. “I’ve seen nothing.”
“He’s been meeting here every week. And from what I gather, he’s not the most punctual of men - he’ll be here eventually.”
“I should hope so,” he grunts. “We’ve only been - ”
She tosses her braid over her shoulder, and the end of it smacks him in the arm as she does so. He turns to say something about it, but whatever cutting remark that was to come dies in his throat as he looks at her.
The golden evening light bounces off her warm skin and dark hair, and she’s positively glowing . It’s wholly disarming. There’s nothing about Ketterdam that is good and wonderful - it’s a dirty, heartless city that takes anything pure and lovely and crushes it beneath its sins, but somehow, amidst all of that, surviving it, is this . And Kaz may know little of good and wonderful - he’s the Bastard of the Barrel, after all, brought up in the worst that Ketterdam has to offer - but if he knows anything of it at all, he’s found it in the bits of sunlight reflected in her inky black hair.
“You were saying?” she asks, startling him out of his thoughts.
You’re beautiful.
He shakes his head. Now’s not the time to get distracted by silly, fruitless things. Inej may be lovely, but it’s not like he can exactly do anything with that, now can he?
Wasting his time thinking about it, about her, is a pointless pursuit.
“ There ,” he says, grateful for the sudden distraction in the form of a recognizable figure in his periphery. “There’s our mark.”
The professor has his head down, trying to avoid the eyes of anyone else in the street, but his greying hair and academic attire is still recognizable from the rooftop.
Inej’s eyes turn to where he’s looking, and she’s on her feet in an instant. “I’ll move closer. I cased the building earlier and there are a few windows I could probably break into if we figure out where exactly they’re meeting.”
He gives her a sharp nod, not looking at her again. He’s terrified of what she might find on his face if he does. “Go on.”
She takes off, silent as she hops from one rooftop to the next. Against his will, his gaze is drawn to her again, to the easy grace with which she moves across the city, the dark outline of her lithe form against the backdrop of a cloudy sunset.
He shakes his head. Fuck . No distractions.
Even beautiful ones.
iv.
Inej throws everything she’s got into preparing The Wraith for sea. Kaz has his own business to attend to, so they don’t see much of each other in the weeks before she leaves for her first journey.
The night before she leaves, he has dinner at the Van Eck mansion. The three of them - Wylan, Jesper, and Inej - have an easy camaraderie, and it’s hard for Kaz not to feel like he’s on the outside of all of that. He knows a not-insignificant part of that is his own doing - pushing people away is what he does , and he can’t exactly fault them for forming friendships with each other that are closer than the loosely bound acquaintanceships he’s been willing to offer - but recently, it’s started to bother him more.
Succeeding in his vengeance against Pekka Rollins has made him soft. In the hole left by his once-all-consuming desire for revenge, something is growing there now, something that demands more .
The evening is good though, in its own way, even if it leaves Kaz with this steady thrumming ache that he doesn’t quite know how to satisfy.
He leaves somewhat early, knowing that Inej sails at the crack of dawn tomorrow and should get a full night’s rest before going out. But as he’s leaving the mansion, something just doesn’t feel right. He’d said his farewells and wished her a safe journey, but… something still feels like it’s missing.
Without giving himself a chance to second guess it, he turns around.
He doesn’t go back to the front door that Jesper had closed behind him just a few minutes earlier - rather, he climbs to her window. It’s faintly lit, so he doesn’t know if she’s up there already, or if she’d simply left a lantern going when she went down for dinner.
The window lock is picked easily - he makes a note to tell Wylan to invest in better window locks, at least of the quality he’s installed on his own windows back at the Slat - and Kaz steps into the room. Inej is not there yet - though he can faintly hear her laughter downstairs, so he imagines she’ll be coming up soon.
He’s sitting in a chair facing the door, his crow cane set to the side and glinting in the pale lantern light, when she walks in.
If she’s surprised that he’s there, she doesn’t show it.
“You could have just come up the stairs.”
He raises an eyebrow. “I think, of all people, you are perhaps the most ill-suited to criticise sneaking in through a window.”
The corner of her mouth quirks upwards. “What are you doing here?”
“I realized,” he replies, “as I was walking out the front gate, that I hadn’t quite given you the farewell you deserve.”
She takes a step towards him. “And what farewell is that?”
He reaches out for her, and her hand meets his. She takes it slowly, cautiously, and Kaz takes a deep breath. This still isn’t easy for him, but it gets easier every time. Every new touch, pushing back against the waters and the corpses of his past just a little bit more.
Another step forward, and she’s standing between his legs.
He wants more, he wants to be able to give her more, but he doesn’t trust himself to. Not right now. Especially since this is her last night, and he won’t get any opportunities to make up for it if his demons come back to haunt him tonight.
He won’t have that same regret as he did in the Geldrunner bathroom this time. He’d fucked things up there by pushing his body farther than his mind was capable of going, and he’d almost had to contend with that horror being his final memory of her had he died in the Slat that night.
He’s not going to let that happen again. He wants his goodbye to be a good one, lest he never get another hello.
She’s promised him that she’s coming back, that Ketterdam still holds unfinished business for her, but he has, truthfully, not let himself believe in that promise fully. He knew, in giving her that ship, that he was giving her a chance to leave this place behind forever, if that ended up being the thing that made her the happiest.
And he wouldn’t blame her if it is.
“Thank you,” he tells her, the earnestness in his stony voice a surprise even to him.
She cocks her head. “For what?”
“Keeping me alive. In more ways than one.” It’s nowhere near the endless list of reasons he has to be grateful for her, but it’s as much as he can pull together right now. Hopefully she’ll know just how many individual things he’s thanking for in those few words.
“That’s just what we do,” she replies, a mix of gentleness and intensity. “We come for each other. We never stop fighting.”
She’s repeating his own words back to him. They sound glorious coming from her lips, and he can only hope, however vainly, that they’d had even a fraction of the effect on her when he spoke them in the first instance as they do on him now.
“That’s poetic,” he replies, the corner of his mouth turning upwards in a smirk.
“Shockingly so, considering how little their original source is inclined towards such expression,” she answers, matching his banter with some of her own.
The feeling that wells up in him is bittersweet. “Ketterdam won’t be the same without you,” he admits. He won’t be the same without her. He’s given her the freedom she so rightfully deserves, but he can admit to himself that she’ll take some part of him with her. The part that somehow only she has ever been able to break into.
“I’m not leaving for forever, Kaz.”
“You might be. You have the means to do it now.”
She sighs, and it’s almost exasperated. “I told you I wasn’t done with this city.”
He avoids her eyes. It’s enough of a challenge to keep his voice flat - if she looks into his eyes, she’ll no doubt see insecurity welling up in them. “You may get out on the sea and decide never to come back to Ketterdam. You’d be well within your right to never return to this wretched city.”
She squeezes his hand gently, and it sends a jolt up his arm. A good kind of jolt, burning hot and electric. His eyes snap up to hers automatically, drawn to them and unable to fight it.
“I have things worth coming back for. People worth coming back for.”
“Wylan and Jesper,” he provides.
She fixes him with a look, something like consternation but a bit softer. “And you. If you want.”
What I want is for you to never leave in the first place.
But he knows that’s impossibly selfish. Inej deserves all the freedom she could possibly ever desire, even if she chooses to find it away from him. That’s the reason he bought her the damn ship in the first place, after all. Because he realised he cared more about letting her fulfill her dream than fulfilling his own.
So he says the second most truthful thing. “I’d want nothing more.”
And, shaking, he brings her hand up to his mouth. Time turns glacial as he presses his lips to her knuckles, the waters lapping at his ankles menacingly, threatening to take this moment from him, until he lifts his eyes to look at hers. Those gorgeous eyes of hers, wide as they take in the sight of him, mirroring every desperate, hungry thought he’s ever had.
He moves two fingers higher up so that they touch her wrist, finding the heartbeat thrumming a rapid-fire pace underneath the skin there and reminding him that she’s warm and alive and gloriously here .
He knows, in that moment, that all he wants is to prove himself someone worth coming back for. Someone even half of what she deserves, because she deserves everything and he can’t be that, but he sure as hell will do whatever it takes to get close.
v.
Just as he once always knew when Inej was following him, he just knows when she comes back to Ketterdam the first time. Some gut instinct tells him to pass by the harbors, and sure enough, there’s The Wraith in berth twenty-two, the crew moving across the deck hurriedly, locking down all the ship’s supplies so that no enterprising Ketterdam thief can strip the boat of its possessions at night.
He walks up the dock, until he’s directly in the path of a crew member unloading cargo. She’s one of the younger girls Inej brought on - in building her crew, she’d gone for a balance of experienced sailors and green but enterprising young ones. From the few updates he’d gotten from her while she was out at sea, that decision seemed to work out for her well enough.
“Is the captain still on board?” he asks her.
The young girl looks at him, squinting as she sizes him up. “Perhaps. What business do you have with her?”
She doesn’t trust him. Good. Only a fool would let a random person from Ketterdam walk onto the boat in search of its captain.
“Pass along a message,” he rasps. “Tell her that her crows are waiting to be fed.”
He heads back to the Slat, taking up residence for the rest of the day in his old office instead of Per Haskell’s.
It takes a few hours, but he hears the subtle whoosh of his window opening, a sound he might have missed if he weren’t expecting it, and he can’t help the small grin that creeps up his face.
Inej is home.
“You’ve fed them.”
He turns in the direction of that familiar voice. She’s sitting on the windowsill, studying the crows on the slant of the roof. She looks exactly the same as she did when she left, except perhaps in the way she holds herself - her shoulders high, her skin glowing from months at sea, a clear new confidence blooming within her.
If he didn’t already know that helping her go to sea, giving up on the idea of keeping her as his right hand forever, was the right thing to do, the state of her now is all the evidence he needs. She’s truly come into her own, blossomed into everything she was capable of being.
“What makes you think that?” he asks.
“They wouldn’t be waiting here so eagerly if they hadn’t been fed in months,” she replies, turning to him. “You’ve gone soft for your crows, Brekker.”
She smiles, and he swears his heart stutters in his chest.
“Had to make sure they’d still be here when you got back,” he says quietly.
“How has Ketterdam been since I left?”
“Business as usual. Never quiet. An endless list of problems and people to handle. Although I think Wylan and Jesper have gotten it in their heads that they need to babysit me while you’re gone. I’ve been dragged to dinner at the Van Eck mansion at least once a week.”
“Normal people would call that friendship, Kaz.”
He shrugs, though some part of it loves the sound of it. He has friends now. “How was your voyage?”
She starts off in her stories, some of it repeated from letters but a lot of it new information, and he’s wholly content just to listen, to watch her face and hear her voice as it wavers from pride to righteous anger to joy and back again. He abandons his gloves on the desk halfway through her tales, and his hands don’t even shake as he folds them back in his lap again.
He wants to reach out to her, wants something , but he can’t quite figure out how to get there. He’s brilliant at knowing exactly what he wants and exactly how to get it in any other situation, but in this? With Inej?
He’s merely a boy, hopelessly gone on the girl of his dreams.
But every smile, every meaningful glance, every gentle dip of her voice builds something in him. Until he has no choice to act on it.
He stands from the desk, taking three slow steps to her. She studies him all the while.
“I want to try something,” he says. “If you’re up for it.”
Her eyes flash back to his desk. He knows she’s looking at the gloves he left abandoned there on the wood.
“What do you want to try?”
“I want - ” he trails off, still piecing together how to say his thoughts aloud. His tongue still struggles with voicing his desires sometimes. But he’s fighting for it. For her. Without armor . “I want to hold you. To hug you.”
He’s thought about this one for a while. Surely, it can’t be that hard - there’s no skin-to-skin contact involved, their bodies separated by layers of clothing, but he just… he wants her close. He wants nothing more, and he has to start that journey somewhere.
This seems like the safest one.
He feels small under her gaze, his confident and beautiful privateer queen, as she measures his request. He hasn’t told her the full extent of his demons yet, the reason he fainted in the prison wagon and the reason he’d reeled so hard when he tried to kiss her neck that day in the Geldrenner bathroom, but she knows enough.
Part of him knows he’ll end up telling her the full story eventually. The mere thought of it threatens to send him into a panic, but she wants him without armor, and if she keeps coming back to him like this, he’s determined to give that to her, whatever it takes.
“I want that too,” she answers, gracefully sliding off the windowsill and taking two steps of her own towards him.
She steps into his space, filling the air around him with the scent of her and the warm glow that’s somehow always present in her. He moves his arms first, gingerly wrapping them around her body, focusing on steadying his breathing as hers do the same to him.
To any onlooker, he’s sure this would look like the world’s most awkward hug. Most of their new attempts at touch would probably look strange to an outsider though, because none of those outsiders have had to contend with vivid memories of dead flesh or greedy, grabbing hands every time they’ve tried to make contact with another human being.
But as slow as it goes, eventually they’re there, and Inej has her cheek pressed against her chest and her arms around his waist and she’s warm warm warm and it knocks the wind out of him for a moment.
He’d been so singularly focused on making sure his nightmares didn’t come to the surface that he’d forgotten to actually feel any of it.
It hits him with the force of a tidal wave now.
“Are you okay?” she asks softly, lifting her head from his chest to look up at him.
No.
“Yes.” It comes out wrong, choked and crackling.
Inej looks at him reproachfully, and starts to pull away. “Kaz, if we’re going to do this, you can’t lie to me. If this is too much right now, that’s okay , we don’t have to - ”
“No,” he grits out, “don’t - it’s not too much. It’s just - ”
He trails off, not because he doesn’t want to say anything but because he doesn’t even know what to say. There’s something inside of him, this roaring beast of overwhelming emotion and want and desperation and hell, when was the last time anyone had hugged him? Absent the harbour waters, he’s drowning in something entirely new. What is he meant to do with all of this? How does he put all of that into words?
He can’t figure out how to make anything of the mess swirling around in his brain come out of his mouth. Doesn’t even know where to begin. All he manages is: “Don’t let go. Please.”
And she doesn’t.
vi.
The days when Inej is home in Ketterdam are some of his favourite days. Her presence feels like pure light, brightening up even his darkest corners.
His work suffers a little when she comes into town, mostly because he finds that he’d much rather spend his time with her than poring over the Crow Club books or planning the next mission - but fortunately, the Dregs are enough of a well-oiled machine at this point that he can comfortably afford to take a few hours off without the whole operation falling apart.
And he lets himself. Before the Ice Court, before the auction, he would’ve needed to be forcibly dragged away from his work, his mission, his vengeance. But now, with something new to live for that isn’t just Pekka Rollins grovelling at his feet, he’s finally learning that sometimes, it’s okay to just be .
The late afternoon sun is low in the sky, and he’s only left his bed once - to fetch waffles for the both of them a few hours ago - but there’s something utterly blissful in the laziness of doing nothing, drifting in and out of sleep together, gentle touches both over and underneath clothing that Kaz knows neither of them could have handled quite so easily just a year or so ago.
He’d never even allowed himself to dream that this sort of life could be possible for him.
He’s lying on his side now, head propped up by his elbow, dragging gloveless fingers up and down the dip of Inej’s waist.
His eyes drag up her body to her face, and he’s surprised to find a smirk adorning it, her eyes housing hidden depths, a web of thoughts unraveling itself in her mind.
“Scheming face?” he asks, because he’s seen that look before and he knows exactly what it means. What he doesn’t know, however, is the stratagem it’s hiding.
“I wasn’t aware I had one of those,” she answers. “Scheming face is a Kaz Brekker signature.”
“You’ve spent too much time with me, I suppose,” he drawls in response. “I’ve rubbed off on you.”
“On the contrary, I don’t think I’ve spent nearly enough time with you.” She turns onto her side, propping herself up on her elbow as well so that her face is just a few inches from his. “I’ve made arrangements for us to stay docked for at least three months this time around.”
Three months. Three months . He’s contented himself to short and infrequent visits, but… three months. Three whole months of this. It feels like an eternity stretching out in front of him. Endless possibilities, as vast as the True Sea.
“The crew deserves some time off and I’ve got some local business to take care of before we sail off again,” she continues in his stunned silence. “Not to mention, it’s been entirely too long since I’ve participated in a proper Kaz Brekker heist, and I think it’s about time I get my hands on some fine artwork for my captain’s quarters.”
Her eyes are alight with mischief, with the thrill of facing yet another challenge. He suppresses a grin.
I love you.
He realizes, as her soft lips form a perfect ‘o’ of surprise, that he’s said the words aloud.
He panics for a few moments, trying to figure out how to erase what he’s said and coming up utterly blank because he normally handles letting something slip that he shouldn’t have with throwing a punch and that is decidedly not an option in this situation.
No, there’s nothing he can do to distract from the weight of the words that just left his lips and the unbridled vulnerability of them. Nothing, but wait and see how Inej responds.
The silence that passes between them is almost painful; silence between them has never been like that, has always been some form of comfort and companionship, but right now it feels like it’s suffocating him, every second that she looks at him and says nothing stretching out endlessly.
“I always thought I’d be the one to say that first,” Inej says softly, breaking through the quiet. The hand not supporting her head is on his cheek now, her thumb tracing along his cheekbone.
It’s not any of the responses he might’ve expected from her, but it’s not the worst thing either. She hasn’t gone running.
But then her expression shifts, and every bit of unease left in him disintegrates immediately. She’s smiling at him, that brilliant, glowing grin of hers that reminds him just how desperately he wants to make her happy. The one he’d die for, again and again.
“I love you too,” she whispers back. The words sound reverent, devout, and Kaz doesn’t believe in religion or saints but this is the closest he’s ever felt to holiness.
Perhaps he should speak his mind more often, if this is the result.