#🔪「 HEBZUCHT. 」 009.

[taitropa]

Trading barbs with @hebzucht is always a fool’s errand because as much as you could try to wound him, his blade is always sharper. Inej can feel its cutting edge against her skin and he might as well have her pinned to the wall with all her insides exposed to him. They know exactly where to hurt her, vulnerable as she’s always been to them.

“You twist my words on purpose for your own agenda but does it truly make you feel better, Kaz?” She sounds as exasperated as she feels and she looks it too. Inej curls her fingers around the newspaper, effectively and swiftly crumbling it and obscuring the taunting headline. It doesn’t help her though because she can’t stop thinking about the corpse in the street and what his eyes looked like only the night before when they’d caught hers across the room.

The faces from her past blur together until she is faced with them all over again. All of the monster’s features are recrystallized in her memory. She doesn’t need to reach far to remember what it feels like to be grabbed or pinned or silenced or hurt because it’s right there on the surface. It feels like floating outside of her body. Shutting out of herself so she doesn’t have to feel it.

“But that’s not what you were doing. What you did last night was not for me. It was for you.” Inej shoves the wad of sensationalized gore in print across his desk and leans further into his view. Kaz is pulling on armor quicker than they can really hide behind it. The anger in his eyes is too bright to dull before he can tuck it away from her. “What will you do, Kaz? Go door to door in this city asking who fucked your Wraith so you can skin them for all to see? That isn’t what I want. I haven’t asked you for vengeance.” Inej rights herself and takes a step away from him. Then another and another until she has the desk between them. “Sometimes I will see ghosts from my past. But I do not need your protection from them. I cannot live my life depending on you for that.”

If  she  wanted  to  persuade  him  to  roll  over  for  her,    she  only  fuels  his  own  brand  of  self  protection.    There  is  not  a  hint  of  amusement  in  the  slow  slide  of  forced  indifference  like  a  shutter  over  the  black  of  his  eyes.    Kaz  sits  back  in  their  seat  with  the  look  of  someone  balancing  a  dare  on  their  tongue,    sharp  as  a  blade  that  would  wound  if  accepted.    They  offer  it  with  a  voice  gone  low,    quiet,    too  soft  to  be  anything  but  dangerous.    ❝    Is  that  what  you  want,    Inej?    To  leave?    I  would  certainly never  stop  you.    ❞

Maybe  she  doesn’t  realize  just  how  heavy  her  threat  hangs  around  his  neck,    but  he  suspects  that’s  precisely  why  she  wielded  it.    The  problem  is,    he  would  never  fight  with  her  about  that.    He  gave  up  everything  to  his  name  so  that  she  never  had  to  stay  tied  here  again;    it’s  insulting  that  she  thinks  to  rub  that  in  his  face  now,    but  worse  than  that  it  fucking  hurts.    He’d  rather  be  gutted  and  shoved  into  one  of  the  canals,    left  to  rot  in  the  piss  and  the  waste  and  the  drowned  dead  vermin, than break her spirit with restraint.

That  merch  gone  cold  in  the  middle  of  that  market  had  no  time  to  heed  a  message  or  be  warned  of  a  threat.    Kaz  was  brutal  and  clear  about  his  motive,    but  never  had  any  intention  for  lessons  learned.    One  look  across  a  crowded  room  was  enough  to  send  Inej  into  a  near  catatonic  state  and  that  had  been  enough  reason for  Kaz.    Inej  can  cut  out  the  damage  at  the  root  with  her  work  hunting  down  ships,    but  Kaz  will  dig  their  fingers  into  the  flesh  of  the  poisoned  fruit  harming  her  and  destroy  it.    He  did  destroy  it,    at  least  this  time.    There’s  no  accounting  for  the  wounds  already  inflicted  all  those  years  ago from men no longer here.

❝    You  wanted  me  to  dismantle  the  businesses  here,    ❞  Kaz  reminds  her.    His  voice  is  still  menacingly quiet  even  as  it  grinds.    They  haven’t  broken  eye  contact  yet  either,    though  there’s  no  telling  who  between  the  two  of  them  is  more  furious  with  the  other  now.    Kaz  curls  their  fingers  into  the  arms  of  their  chair  to  quell  their  rising  temper.    ❝    If  the  brothels  have  no  clients,    they  have  no  money.    If  they  have  no  money,    they  have  no  business.    Is  your  recall  slipping,    Captain?    I  could  have  sworn  you  might  have  picked  up  those  basics  during  your  time  in  this  city,    but  perhaps  pirating  weans  you  of  those  details.    Good,    then,    that  you  no  longer  retrieve  information  for  me.    ❞