#🔪「 ANSWERED. 」𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘯 𝘣𝘺 𝘴𝘢𝘭𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘣𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘺.

[taitropa]

❛ the hardest part is who we are. ❜

The lehenga is the color of bubbling champagne adorned with gems that catch even the smallest light and cast fractals onto the nearest surface. Right now that would be the ceiling of the hotel room and the sparkling orbs thrown across the walls twist and glitter when Inej turns even only a little. The fabric is soft when she runs her hands across the full skirt, a far cry from the cheap imitation material she once wore to entice men who wanted her for only her skin, but she doesn’t feel any safer. Her choli bares more flesh than she is used to. The soft expanse of her midriff is on display from the wings of her ribcage all the way to the band at her hips and she fights not to curl into herself.

Kaz stands beside her with her dupatta in his hands. It perfectly matches the lehenga and she wonders how he managed to steal the whole set but then she probably shouldn’t wonder. This is Kaz after all. Inej fixes her gaze past the dupatta and on the skin of his bare fingers. If she looks at his face, she’s almost positive that she will tumble into the well of emotions that sits simmering within her. She agreed to this job without any fuss and she doesn’t even know why anymore.

“We’re playing a part,” she reminds him because she is also reminding herself. Mostly she is reminding herself. And it’s his plan anyway just like it always is. Inej runs her hands more firmly back down the front of her skirt to reassure herself that her knives are tucked beneath...and also to avoid taking the dupatta yet. It feels even more like taking that plunge than meeting his penetrating gaze and she doesn’t think she can take that leap. For all her courage in past times of fear, she is embarrassed now to be so anxious. “This isn’t who I am.”

🔪 UNREAL UNEARTH.

[taitropa]

you build something worth having, someone's gonna try to take it.

There are six locks on the door and one on every window. It isn’t unlike the Slat where he locks himself in and everyone out, every entrance point safeguarded from threat. In the Barrel, and even amongst your own gang, that threat could come from anywhere. But here, in the Geldin district with the wealthy where they don’t really belong (all the better for hiding, actually), it should be different. That doesn’t stop Kaz from flipping every last switch and bolt into place, his own sort of ritual whenever he comes and goes. She shouldn’t find it so endearing.

“Are you really that worried about it? You don’t keep anything of true value here, do you?” From the outside, the townhouse looks the same as the rest on the street with its curved eaves and metal detailed windows large enough to allow more than one thief through at a time. On this side of the city, the palette is not so dreary, some attempt at color splashed in just the right spots. The brick outside is whitewashed and cleaned weekly by university students. The door is a cheerful red.

Inside, it’s more or less still empty. This is the first time she’s been here and the only furniture is a low table surrounded by mismatched, highbacked chairs in what should be a sitting room. The heavy drapes on all the windows appear to have come with the house and still remain, but Inej doesn’t mind. If it's Dregs business he's brought her here for, the curtains will stay closed and it's too late to let any light in anyway.

It’s raining tonight and Inej shakes the wet from her long braid. The dark blue tile in the entryway does not soak up the water they tread inside. Her coat drips. When she turns to face him, she is smiling just wide enough that light bursts in her eyes warmly. “Or,” on her toes, she can reach his hat and remove it for him, “is it that you’re trying to keep me in?”

🔪 YELLOWSTONE PROMPTS.

[taitropa]

i'm just meaner than you. LMAO

With the fog as thick as it is, none could perceive even the prow of the Wraith through its dense draping let alone the two lone figures standing atop the cathead. At Berth 22 in the dark of an early morning, or a very late night depending upon how you kept to the bells striking the hour, it is a ghost ship which drydocks in Fifth Harbor. Its crew had been dismissed long before and its captain too but that she returns now with a guest is no unusual thing. At least not to the gulls, their only witnesses to their dalliances. Whoever minds the port has been paid a handsome sum to no longer mind it for a time.

Inej has a broadsword leveraged at Dirtyhands’ throat. This close she can see the strain of his tendons and the thick bob of his skin above the stiffstarched collar protecting the artery when he swallows. The movement nicks the blade into his flesh and draws a beading strand of blood and all he does is smile for it. Why should he smile? The gulls might think she’s won this dance, but they can’t see the shucking knife that Kaz has pressed to her navel. Inej can feel it when she next inhales.

“Why, Mr. Brekker,” Inej murmurs and she is delighted when he swallows heavily again and that smile fizzles around the edges. Their thighs are pressed flush together. Panic has blown Kaz’s eyes blacker than ever or maybe that’s what he wants her to think. You can never be sure what he wants you to think. “What would the city think of you if they knew you were so romantic? I kill you, you kill me. We go down together.” Now she is the one smiling. “You’ve tried this trick before.”

🔪 YELLOWSTONE PROMPTS.

[taitropa]

if you act like a thief, i'll treat you like one.

When she makes a sound, it is because she wants to be heard. Gotham is perfectly suited to her because its bowels treat her as a friend. If she slips through the streets, those shadows bend to her every step until they grow into her seams and edges. She attracts that darkness so easily. The Wraith, they call her, because she is nothing more than smoke. Inej slides through fingers just the same. A slip of a girl, a slip of a ghost. She is only as useful as the abilities of her body. At least in this way, she built this image for herself. No one forced it on her.

“Stupid games.” Inej’s voice barely rises over the noise of the Crow Club. It is a busy night. No one prays on Sundays in Gotham except to the god of greed. She knows Joker is not here to gamble, but Kaz is otherwise occupied upstairs in his office. She wonders if he knows he has a guest. Does he have a guest? The natural purpose for visiting the Club is not present. It would not match what she knows already about Joker’s comings and goings. This is not his usual haunt.

Inej extends her arm. In her fingers, Joker’s iPhone as offering. “Stupid prizes.” She nudges her chin. Over his shoulder, a waitress slips a wallet from a customer’s pocket as she passes his table. She can’t be older than thirteen, but the man is too drunk to notice anything but his losing hand. “I���m not sure how she got around your dog. For that feat alone, perhaps you will stay her punishment. We all do what we must to survive.”

🔪 YELLOWSTONE PROMPTS.

[taitropa]

i don't want you to stop it.

Lately her perch on the windowsill no longer marks a distance between them. Eventually one or the other swallows that space and keeps close until close is too much for either, for both. Sometimes it’s too close for both. He swallows too much water and she flies out of her body, leaving a vacancy behind her eyes, and ghosts fill the room where their bodies go abandoned. But sometimes it’s not close enough. Kaz has a new color to his eyes, not at all like coffee or tea or things in which you could drown. When she looks at him, his eyes are the Ravkan night sky, unpolluted, dark but where a light shines distantly. It burns.

Kaz closes the distance this time. She is faced away from him and knows his approach, but when he brushes his hand to her hip, it doesn’t matter that his touch is mist. Come here, little lynx, coos a monster in her ear, his greedy hands pinning her at the waist and holding her down from behind.

Inej feels the moment she stiffens, so attuned is she to her body that she knows when she leaves it behind. She floats away, featherlight and floating and farfarfaraway. Kaz is somewhere with the doll she’s left behind wearing her face. Inej is lights out.

🔪 YELLOWSTONE PROMPTS.

[taitropa]

do you think there's more out there?

Inej is crouched in such a position that one knee drives into the cracked sternum of the bogey pinned beneath her. He’s three times her size but she felled him with the swift delivery of the heel of her hand to his nose, splicing the cartilage straight through his brow. She would have left him thusly incapacitated, satisfied with the blood all over his face and one less opponent, but the moment he’d wrapped his hands around her waist and dragged her down with him she’d simply dispelled any option that didn’t include his timely end.

She can still feel his grip on her with his meaty fingers and his slick palms even through her multiple layers. Like he was warm enough to the touch to melt straight through her clothes and find her skin and bones. Inej is half dazed when she pulls Sankta Lizabeta from the soft tissue between his ribs where his heart no longer beats. There is a pallor to her skin that’s unnaturally ashen and gives the appearance of someone who’d stuck their head in a fire pit.

Sankta Lizabeta is etched with roses and now painted fittingly with blood. It trembles where Inej grips the hilt in her right hand as she finally stands and glints in the alley around them only because the murky streetlight at the end of the cavern flickers and isn’t wrapped in shadows like the rest of her. She can’t make out Nix’s face in the dark back here but she knows it well enough to picture those shiny canines matching her knife when she speaks. It’s enough to pull her from the fog so that she can tilt her head and listen. Gotham is noisy even when it isn’t.

“Do you want to stay and find out?” Inej avoids looking at the man dead at her feet. She avoids looking at whoever Nix took out too. “Are you hurt? There’s a–” Kaz is going to have her head on a pike. “–safehouse not far from here. Can you climb?”

🔪 MORE QUESTION PROMPTS.

[taitropa]

i need you to learn how to use them. give me kanej duking it out early days thanks

The bruises that bloom here are not as humiliating as the hurt she comes away from. She would rather the strike of Kaz Brekker’s cane against her spine her thigh her hands than the fingerprints that had only just recently faded from her throat. It’s a choice in this way. Her choice. He is harsh and critical and unrelenting in his expectations of her, and it reminds her of her father in the very ways that it doesn’t remind her at all. Baba had been patient and kind teaching her the high wire. Kaz is all teeth, snapping and biting and spitting at her when she fails. She fails a lot.

But he never lays a hand on her. She steps into position and lunges, but he is always ahead of her contact. Thwack! Her ankle. Thwack! Her ribcage from the back. Thwack! Her wrists. He can disarm her before she thinks to toss the knife. “You show your hand every time,” he scolds when she is knocked flat on her back again again again. “Fights are never fair. Not here. No one will honor whatever move you plan to lead with. Again. And do it better.”

The first time she bests him is the first time she cheats. He liked to swipe at her feet if she lunged to the side and this time, when that cane arcs toward the floor, Inej leaps vertically. Kaz stumbles. The momentum draws him closer and she yanks the staff hard enough to further his fall. He doesn't release his cane. As he tips, she slides her palm higher until she can close her fingers around his. They share breath when the tip of Sankt Petyr pops a button from his vest.

Kaz wrenches away from her so hard and so fast that Inej doesn’t have time to appreciate that his eyes aren’t black at all like she thought but the color of rich coffee grounds.

“Kaz–”

“We’re done today.” It registers that he is breathing hard. Kaz turns away from her before she can spy the wet of his eyes or the pant of his tongue or the wild wild flutter of his gloved hands. She only sees the back of his head, hears the uneven stride of his cane and gait, and watches as he leaves without further explanation. The triumph in beating Kaz Brekker is suddenly a bitter taste. Coffee grounds. Inej flings Petyr across the room where Kaz’s retreating back no longer haunts. It would have landed true.

🔪 YELLOWSTONE PROMPTS.

[taitropa]

i'm reasonable until i'm provoked. LMAO

He is dry grass and a vast desert just waiting for a spark. Water would do him no good once the embers catch. She remembers once when she was young how a brushfire had once scorched so far and wide that families were displaced. Her mother and father had taken in a gaggle of children while their parents set out to replace what was lost. It was always like that during childhood. The comings and goings of strangers made for a larger ring of family even as a result of tragedy. Kaz Brekker is capable of just as much destruction, if not far more and far worse.

“Reasonable? You knew that he was lying the entire time.” The he in question is left in waste on the steps of the Crow Club. Kaz wipes a handkerchief over the handle of his cane where blood had smattered upon impact after impact after impact. There is a red drop in the hollow of his cheek and Inej cannot look away from it. That she still finds him beautiful cast in his own transgressions brings her deep shame, Saints forgive her, but she has already accepted this sin of hers. It is as inevitable as his fire.

Inej pokes the toe of her boot against an arm made still. Stiffness will not set in for some time, he is still so freshly down, but she can picture him blue in the face with death. Kaz had been provoking him, but it wasn’t until the man took a step toward his Wraith that he snapped. She feels less bad for her admiration in light of that. “And your disposal plan? I know you have one.”

🔪 YELLOWSTONE PROMPTS.

[taitropa]

Inej,

I’ve rewritten this six times now. The previous missives have become one with the ash in the bottom of the furnace. Trust that they are unfit for your eyes. Any eyes really.

Truthfully, I don’t know what you want me to expand on in these letters. You don’t want to hear about work and you already trade correspondence with Jesper and Wylan so it would be redundant to give you my intel on their comings and goings. What else can I write?

Furthermore, I worry who might get their hands on these letters. What would they do to you if they made the connection between us? The sea is enough of a villain to me when it comes to your safety. This letter feels damning enough as it is.

You left this morning and I’ve rewritten this six times. Tell me what you want to hear, Inej. I’m a fucking idiot.

- K.B.

Dear Kaz,

Do you know why I chose you? Do you know why I continue to choose you? Because you gave me a choice. You had always given me a choice when no one else had in so long. Are you truly going to make me take that back because you think you know what is or is not fit for me? I want you without armor. That includes your unsavory letters, whatever they look like.

I do want to hear about work because I want to hear about you. That’s what I meant. That’s what I want. I want to hear every last boring detail about the paperwork that is never gone from your desk and I want to hear about who you scared that week. Maybe we should be concerned with my taste in topics of letter discussions.

What would they do, Kaz? And what would you do if they dared? I know what I would do. I have never known you to bow out of a challenge. I thought there was no lock Kaz Brekker could not pick.

I miss you. Is that too damning for a letter? What about this: sometimes, I pretend that you are here with me and the wind whips up your hair as we stand on the deck together and you are grinning at me because it doesn’t bother you to be so far away from your city. Perhaps I think that is a secret unfit for you. I give it up anyway. Without armor.

Yours, Inej

[taitropa]

❛ well, of course i was gonna come find you. ❜ ( from nina ! )

The harbors in Os Kervo smell differently than Ketterdam’s. Here it is less sour like sick or pollution and Inej is happy to breathe it in. When she steps off the Wraith, it is only after she has dismissed her crew and ensured that maintenance on her ship was squared away. She has been at sea for four months. It isn’t the longest away from land, but it was just as taxing. The cargo on each drowned ship she left in her wake seemed to grow younger and younger. It’s a hurt that sits heavier every time she sees them home.

Seeing Nina lightens the load. As she walks, the briskness of her step whips her braid behind her like its own blade. Once close enough, Inej reaches with both hands. “Oh! It’s so good to see you.” Time on her ship has shoved her unwittingly into close quarters, but it does nothing to build her stamina to embraces. But she catches Nina in a hug anyway.

When she pulls away, her smile is unbridled and unmatched. Fleetingly, caught in time, she is a young girl again simply causing trouble with a friend. Inej gestures for them to walk together and leads the first step in the direction of the market past the docks. “Tell me of your travels. We can have blini and wine while you regale me with your adventures. My treat, hm?”

🔪 WEREWOLF BY NIGHT SENTENCE STARTERS.

[taitropa]

No one has a right. You have to take a right, or stop it from being taken from you.

In those early days, she had not yet lost her faith. She would pray all day. In the morning when she washed her skin and couldn’t quite make it clean enough. In the evenings when she was painted pretty enough to entice. And during, always during, the night when she would pretend she was anywhere else. Saints forgive me, she would beg over and over and over again and again and again. Saints forgive them for they do not understand what they’ve broken. In those early days, she was good at hiding herself even then.

These days, people hide from her. But the problem with becoming a shadow is that the rest of the dark reveals itself to you and those wanting for cover make the mistake of thinking her apart. These days, people beg her for forgiveness. If only she had forgiveness to spare.

“Is that what you do?” It isn’t combative. Inej is simply curious. Do they share in this justice? Inej thinks about everything she has done to get here: the knives tucked into her pockets and her sleeves are clean for now, but they have not always been. “Where did you learn that?” She wants to ask if Nix will teach this lesson to her children, but then she thinks about where they are. Gotham will do that for them. Funny how a place gives such harsh lessons. “I think we have a right. Sometimes we just have to take it back with our own two fists.”

🔪 YELLOWSTONE PROMPTS.

[taitropa]

[taitropa]

wow mackie ur pinned post is so sexy haha

[taitropa]

“Go look another way”

Truthfully she hates this city. She hates it as much as she hated the last city, the crawling wet backstreets of these terrible places with their terrible people, all hungry for whatever sin appears more delicious than the last. There is no feeding such a beast, these living breathing entities that wear the face of both commerce and crime. Greed bows to no one and nothing, but welcomes and devours all who bow to it, no matter what Kaz says.

And yet as much as she hates it, she blends so seamlessly within. Gotham’s shadows are as welcoming to the Wraith as any other city thriving best in the dark. Whatever height the tallest building here thinks it claims, Inej Ghafa would strike it down and go far higher. There is none to contest her yet and none there ever shall be, if she has any say about it. And she does.

The figure opposite her opposes all light. The Batman regards her with such animosity, she might have believed herself the object of his nightscape had they not been tailing the same target. Who, much to both of their frustration, has escaped out of range for now. He clearly places the blame on her, but Inej knows better. After all, she isn’t the one with the telling profile. No one spies the Wraith and it’s only because he has ruined her job that she allows him to do so.

“You are mistaken if you think you can deter me from my path.” Inej bends her knees until she is half squatting, pulling twin ring daggers from their sheaths flush against her belly. She has two fingers slid into the open handles, the blades tucked flat against her palms as she lifts her fists. It looks almost defensive except for the threat of those knives. “I’m certain that I saw him first.”

🔪 UNREAL UNEARTH PROMPTS.

[taitropa]

jesper’s at least decent about being forward with gifts — he doesn’t leave it in her room, for he doesn’t want to intrude on a space that’s hers, but instead slips it to her while passing by like it’s the most casual thing in the world. the box is a pretty little thing — dark purple, outlined in gold and definitely not something you can pick up in the barrel part of ketterdam. inside is a hairpin, capable of sliding through a tight braid to hold it in place. the hairpin itself is metal, likely fabrikator made — but the work doesn’t look like any sort of fabrikator in ketterdam, so it has to be from someone else. it furls out into the petals of a lily, complete with a crescent of a moon curling across its bottom, thin and gleaming with the shine of precious metal. the end’s sharp enough to be used as a weapon, if it’s really needed, but it’s mostly just a hair pin. after all, doesn't inej deserve something like that - something that's not tied to the blood on her hands.

The last time she celebrated a birthday, her birthday, she was beholden to no one and nothing save the highwire and the caravan. The last time she celebrated her birthday, she was content with wishes and plump with dreams and sweetened with love unconditional. The last time she celebrated her birthday, her mother had twisted a ribbon into her hair before bed and Baba had taught her a new song as she drifted to sleep. The last time she celebrated her birthday, she was fully alive. No ghost. Just a girl.

Since then, her birthdays have passed quietly. In terrified silence on her part or terrified silence on the part of those she brings to their knees. Either way, Inej isn’t so sure she deserves to celebrate. The whispers already carry her name across the True Sea in holy prayer and that, too, is undeserved. Blasphemous even. It makes her heartsick and ashamed.

Being back in Ketterdam feels much the same in some ways. Inej doesn’t know how the Zemeni sharpshooter first learned the date years ago, but she suspects it is a secret she could pilfer easily enough and finds she doesn't mind to leave this one out of reach. Besides, even with the ache in her chest, it’s hard to feel anything but warm and loved when Jesper is around. 

Inej unwraps her gift carefully, her brow pinched but her eyes bright with curiosity. She’s barely pulled the hairpin from its wrapping before she’s smiling wide enough to dull even her sharpest Saint somewhere tucked against her seachafed frame. “Jes!” It feels far too delicate to hold in her hands and Inej marvels at the way the light catches on its details. Already she can picture it tucked into the braid frizzing against her neck or holding some of the weight of the strands in a knot at the crown of her head. “Jes. It’s beautiful.” She clutches it to her collar and beams at her dear friend, all the light of the Ravkan sun shared between their two faces. “You should not have. But I will treasure it always. Thank you. Thank you.” Almost as much as she will treasure them.

🔪 BELATED INEJ BDAY GIFT.

[taitropa]

❛ we could die here. it’s an option. it’s not my choice, but it’s an option.❜

Death is no stranger to Inej Ghafa. They are old friends, the Wraith and the Reaper. I am inevitable, says Inej with her hands full of knives and her mouth full of blades, and so Death and I are one and the same. And so it is that she finds herself in the midst of that dear companion, only now they stand at odds with one another. There is blood staining her tunic near her ribs where they contract and expand with difficulty. Inej thinks it must have punctured a lung.

She is still standing in spite of the blur of her vision. Around them, a collection of bodies each with a Sainted knife protruding from a spot beneath which a vital organ no longer works. The last fallen had lodged his own blade into Inej before he’d toppled. It moves with each labored breath. Inej sways. “It’s not an option for me,” she pants. Somehow her footing is right as she tips onward, but the bloom of her wound grows at her side and she wheezes painfully. “I’m not done yet.”

Her knives will have to remain behind. She is mourning them already in the delirium that is setting in. Something sweet and wispy is curling around the foreground to make her forget, like the clouds before the sun retires, spun sugar'd and frothy as warm milk. Inej can almost taste it. Somewhere in her mind, she swears she can hear Kaz hissing at her to wake up. She has enough sense left to say out loud, “Something is wrong.”

🔪 WEREWOLF BY NIGHT SENTENCE STARTERS.