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ven-brekker · 2 years

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The dead man, the skeleton, and the boy

"'Whatever they made you do, that - thing - they made you take, we can fix it. I promise.' ... Anya nodded. 'But first, I fix you.'"

So as we all know, side characters are my beloved, so the prospect of a Joost/Anya fic spoke to me spiritually. The art is incredible and I was so lucky to work with such amazing artists!

Materialki: @sunshinesartisticquirk (here)

Full fic posted under the cut

Joost was twenty two when he died, and mere moments older than that when he was reborn.

The funny thing about death is that it is, wholly, not at all like one would expect it to be. Many such ideas come to mind: that it is survivable, for instance, but what Joost has most of all found is that he anticipated death to be lonely. This has not been the case.

For much of his life, Joost feared death, largely because of this assumption. He was always a social boy, chatting with the other children on the streets as they would kick balls about the alleyways. Loneliness was far more terrifying than the prospect of finite nothingness itself. He now often thinks how much of a waste it was that he spent his life in the service of a man who cared not for him, alone, and how now in death he has found a connection that surpasses mortality.

For a long time, he believed death to be a visible part of nature. Ketterdam, especially, fuelled these beliefs, for it knows death well. Death is said to hang over the city like a thick fog, graying its blue skies and blackening its light air. The city produced it, and it rose above it alongside the factory smoke and soot. It was as large a trade as cloth or machinery or grisha.

Now, a mere month and a half after his legal death, Joost has escaped the dark fog entirely. The skies seem clearer and bluer without it; the sun shines brighter and the air feels crisper. He is happier.

It could be said that that foul stench of his own mortality, the same one that he found a constant for the past twenty odd years, was not death, but rather the depressing smell of his own unbecomings and of the vileness of the city itself. He is glad to be rid of it. That odor has been replaced with a pleasant scent: of wild grass, baked goods, Anya’s sweet perfume.

He can remember the day he became free - and “dead” - clearer than the Shu waters. He remembers every detail. That day, and the following month, have been seated into his brain, branded like an indentured grisha.

He remembers the moon that night, how it sparkled in the same shimmer as Anya’s eyes. He remembers watching her moonlight eyes become swollen with the deep ink black of space. He remembers being flung back a hundred feet.

He loves sinking back into the past, into his memories. Often, Joost will find himself sat on the soft armchair by the windowsill, as golden light spills into the room, giving a warm glow to the deep oak floors and the painted walls. Through the walls, a whistling tune carries. His fingers comb his mustache, and he wistfully wonders how the moon shall look in the sky tonight.

His memories, of course, are his alone. But he has found that death and rebirth are no places for loneliness, and so he intends to share all that he can. Thus, perhaps more interesting than his recollection of events, is how he shares his stories. Luckily for him, his son always requests a bedtime story, and he has perfected the words over many nights.

Therefore, imagine the night, the moon. Imagine the enveloping darkness cut through by a small singular lamp at your bedside. Imagine being warm and safe and free, ready for a story. This is how Joost designed his to be told.

His story, as this one, begins with his death.

Before being reborn, there was nothing. He has memories of the before, but they pale in comparison to the after. Rebirth changed him. After he awoke from the nothingness, he rose to the darkness. He could not move nor speak, even breathing seemed an immense foreign struggle. It was as though he were in the grave - only, graves had long since gone out of fashion.

Over the deafening noise of ever-falling debris, he could hear the unmistakable rushing of Ketterdam’s coastal tides. The city was known for its allyship with the sea. If a war ever broke out between the two, Ketterdam would surely sink, left to rot under feet of cold water. However, there is an unspoken peace. The vastness of the sea splits into rivers that run through the streets, forming canals and bays of cobble. The rivers branch into streams, which run beneath the city’s foundations as roots to a tree, feeding it life and youth and joy. In the silence, though there was never much in Ketterdam, you could hear the faint trickle of water through layers of brick and stone.

Ketterdam’s streams were not the only waters that ran that night, for over the nearby crash of waves on the shore, Joost could hear the sound of sobs. His pain had subsided into a dull ache, and despite the screams from every muscle in his body, he was able to raise himself up slightly. Above him, a small slit in the rock and dust, just large enough for him to see through. Indeed, he was at the water’s edge. The rocky shore was sprayed with seawater in a routine swish, the pale moonlight casting idle glittering tracks over the inky surface as it drew in and out. The same moonlight illuminated a figure in the same ghostly glow.

Its back was to him, keeled over by the tide, huddling over something. It heaved, back rising as it cast out sobs. It seemed skeletal: the edge of its face carved to bone, the fabric of its dress hanging loose off its bony limbs. It wore a white bonnet, its chest covered in a gray vest and shawl, its arms adorned in blood-red from the garment underneath. It wailed with the passion of the universe behind it.

And Joost felt the overwhelming desire to help it.

He moved out the rubble. The stones scattered around him as he tried to right himself - the dust had caught in his chest, and he could not cough it out for fear of frightening the figure away. He behaved as one does when encountering a lone deer: only his prey was far more timid, and far more mesmerizing.

As quietly as he could, he exited his stone imprisonment. Indeed, “as quietly as he could” turned out to be “not quietly at all”, for when he stammered and hobbled to a pathetic stand, the debris crashed against the bay’s rocks in a loud crash. The figure did not startle.

He approached it, and still it did not seem to notice him: it only continued to whimper. Lost, delirious and consumed by a dull pain which was most certainly being inhibited by his own shock, Joost decided his best plan of action would be to crouch down next to the strange, thin skeleton. He, in truth, did not know why, other than that he felt called to it. It could have been a mermaid of northern legend, or a siren of an old kerch tale. Joost did not know what it was, only that in its decrepit body, the figure glowed as if lit from within by the moon itself, freckles on its frail skin evidence of planets and such.

He remained crouched for a moment, trying to gauge the danger of his situation. The figure remained huddled in on itself, its wails quieter now. It was only when Joost resigned himself to a seat that he realized three things: the figure was holding a child, he himself was almost certain that his wrist was fractured, and that the figure was indeed the love of his life.

“Anya,” he whispered, and she had turned then to face him. Her eyes swam the same inky black as the waves, and spilled tears of mountain blue. Her face was gaunt and sick with pallor, her lips cracked and stained orange. She raised a thin finger to them, then gestured down at the child.

“He needs sleep,” she croaked, her voice hoarse and barely scraping above a whisper. The boy could have been no older than ten, his head resting on Anya’s gray skirt, marking it with a spiral pattern of his deep brown curls. His thumb was in his mouth, and his face was calm with a sleeping peace only children can discover.

“We need to get out of here.” Joost whispered. She nodded weakly, as though the weight of her own head would overtake her and snap her backwards.

“Take him.”

“I will, and I’ll take you too.”

She looked at him with her black eyes.

“I won’t make it far. They’re looking for me - what I did --” she gasped; talking seemed to take more air than crying did.

“That’s why we need to get away,” the sea crashed against the rocks. “Anya, they will kill you. We can leave and be safe. Whatever they made you do, that - thing - they made you take, we can fix it. I promise.”

And suddenly, the words he could not find for weeks upon weeks rose to his head. He could talk without stuttering, or blushing, or overthinking. Perhaps that was the fault of pure adrenalin, or perhaps he had killed the old him.

Anya nodded. “But first, I fix you.” His pain disappeared, and the dead man, the skeletal girl and the sleeping boy slunk into the shadows of the night.

Later, Anya would tell him that she has never been in so much pain. That she had carried herself and the boy to the shore’s edge because the waves were the only sound that drowned out the deafening beat of her own blood and heart. She would also say that she came very close to killing him that night, for the itching, grating noise of his body moving and working, the smell of his muscle and flesh and blood, made her irrevocably and irreparably furious. She will also say, when asked, that she is very glad she did not.

The three stayed together in the Ketterdam shadows for a month before they managed to get out. The boy, Piet, had a strong fighting spirit, and got through the most harrowing situations with the few single comforts of sucking on his thumb, cowering in Joost’s chest, and letting Anya squeeze his hand and pet his hair. He hardly panicked when the Shu men with wings attacked the city and they decided to leave that same evening, nor when Anya’s screams of greed for the substance they knew so little of were so loud that she had to bite her own bonnet to muffle them.

Anya, of course, had the strength of a million Stadwatch soldiers. Often, Joost would wake in the early hours of the morning and light a candle, the only source of illumination in the dingy basement of an abandoned factory that they had co opted as their own, to find her sprawled on her bed, auburn hair matted and tangled, cheeks wet from the tears of effort it took to keep her wails and pleads quiet. For that month, her face remained gaunt and her body thin. More than once, she would lead Joost to her under the guise of needing a cool towel to keep her fever down, and would grab him in an attempt to knock him to the floor so that she could escape and find her mystery drug. Her attempt left her entire arm bruised blue and yellow.

One night, one of the few calmer ones, she told him that the orange drug had spawned an irreversible love for Piet, but that the past few weeks had formed an irrevocable love for him. She had kissed him then, and Joost does not think he has ever flushed a brighter red in his life.

The morning after, they left for the rural side of Kerch. Hidden under the cloth covering of a wagon, they rode for days until they reached the farm. Joost has always been an honest man, but thinks it is amazing what a month or so of dishonest work can buy a man. This is often something he leaves out of his stories to Piet.

Their farmhouse sat in the western fields, secluded for miles all around. Piet and Anya had both decided on the area, for Piet grew up tending nearby lands before being forced to move to the more affordable Ketterdam streets, and Anya found the land similar to that of the Ravkan ones she, too, grew up on before her indenture.

Now, they live a pleasant secluded life. Joost has learnt to tend the fields, but mostly he spends his time baking and writing, so that he may never lose his words and that Anya may never lose her health again. She retains the glow of the sun now, rather than the pallor of the moon, and her dark eyes speak of coffee more than of night terror.

It is a simple life, though it is not as lonely as one may think. It is almost unbelievable how many names upon the coroners’ records have equally found themselves in Joost’s abode - how many indentures broken by death can become liberated living men. Many of Anya’s old Ketterdam friends and colleagues particularly like the peace.

In all, Joost finds himself dreaming, day and night, and writing. He sits by the window each dusk and each dawn, waiting for the soft waken footsteps of Mrs. Van Poel and the morning yawn of their son. Death has given him the most pleasant life a man could ask for. He is content as a dead man with his skeleton wife and his boy.

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 5 months

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Don't Go Blindly Into the Dark

Summary:

To hide that he can't read, Jan Van Eck has been forcing his son to pretend he's blind since he was eight years old. Wylan is now attending Ketterdam University, and meeting Jesper Fahey may very well be about to change his life. But is he safe to tell Jesper the truth? And what will Jesper say if he does?

Jesper is struggling to weigh up his life in the Barrel and his life at the University of Ketterdam, and there's a good chance that his growing debt is about to make the decision for him. He hasn't attended class consecutively for months, but maybe that will change when his newest project includes partnering up with Wylan Van Eck. But can he really leave the Barrel behind him? And how long can he keep up the pretence of who he thinks Wylan wants him to be?

Tags: @justalunaticfangirl @lunarthecorvus

If anyone else would like to be tagged let me know :)

Content warnings for this chapter: abuse, violence, child abuse, ptsd, reference to kerch indenture laws

AO3 link

Chapter 9 - Wylan

If he hadn’t been terrified someone would see him and start asking questions, Wylan would have run all the way home. As it was he walked as fast as he thought he feasibly should be able to, his heart in his throat, too distracted to pay proper attention to his cane - not that it mattered. No-one else on the Geldstraat used one like his, so no-one could accuse him of using it wrong. Probably. He wasn’t really sure. It didn’t make him any less nervous every time anybody saw him. Every time he saw anybody. Because that was the problem, wasn’t it?

Wylan Van Eck was not blind.

Actually, that’s not true. “Wylan Van Eck” was blind. He had been since the accident, when he was eight. But Wylan wasn’t. Wylan was an idiot and a liar and almost definitely a terrible person. And what was he supposed to do now?

It had been fine when he sat opposite Jesper in the library, complaining about economics. It had even been okay when he thought they might be flirting. It had been okay because they didn’t really know each other and Jesper didn’t really care who he was talking to; Wylan had seen him around the campus before flirting with anyone who looked his way. Wylan just wanted someone to talk to for once. He’d begged his father to let him go to university, and even when he finally relented all he’d said was:

“I thought you trusted me enough to believe me when I said this was a bad idea, Wylan. But if you need to discover it for yourself, I will let you go - just don’t expect sympathy from me when everything goes wrong. You are trying to force your way into a world in which you do not belong,”

And then, of course, there were strict rules to accompany the agreement. They couldn’t risk anyone finding out about Wylan’s deficiencies, could they? For every one of them Wylan found the tiniest, silliest defiances he could muster. He had to be home from class immediately, but he could get there as early as he liked and would sit alone in the library for hours every morning - not even doing anything for fear of being caught, just sitting alone anywhere that was not the house. He was supposed to avoid talking to anyone if he could, so he picked classes that would mean he had to do group projects. They were stupid things, inconsequential, but they meant something. Wylan didn’t know if his father hadn’t noticed he was doing these things on purpose or if he was just letting them slide, but either way he was going to cling to them for as long as he could.

“What happened to this being boring as hell?” Wylan had asked Jesper only yesterday, stupidly joyful to discover he was sitting next to him.

“Oh, I don’t doubt it will be. But you’re smart, and I’m sitting next to you,”

Oh. Right. And here Wylan was foolish enough to think he might have made a friend. His first friend, since Anya.

But anyway, if Jesper wanted to use Wylan because he thought he was smart then he was going to be sorely disappointed. Wylan was not smart. Wylan was useless.

Wylan didn’t remember an exact moment when his father realised that he could not read. He hid it for as long as he could but he must have been six or seven, he supposed, because there had been a long time of trying new methods to teach him even before he started claiming he was blind. Even before his mother died. Wylan had heard them arguing about him several times, but he couldn’t bring to mind what they’d said. And then his mother was ill, and then she was gone. It was all rather blurry. Rather sudden.

There was also the problem of the Heartrender. Wylan’s stomach dropped like a stone when she walked in - his vision was imperfect through the Tailoring but it was hardly worth real complaint over and he knew that it was her. Did she know? Had she come to accuse him of his lies? What if he’d done something wrong when she was at the house, and his father had punished her like he promised he would Anya? Maybe she was here for revenge.

But Nina - for that was how Jesper introduced her, now - didn’t even show a sign of recognition. She leaned over Jesper and batted back his flirting like they were old friends, even though they’d only met a few days ago, and chatted happily to Wylan about biology until he eventually convinced himself he should join in before they both questioned why he’d fallen quiet. She loved biology, and she was good at it - but she should be, he supposed, if she was a Corporalnik. And yet when Jesper had questions, he turned to Wylan. And Wylan had been stupid enough to convince himself that meant something. He had been so suddenly, unexpectedly, and naïvely enamoured by the idea of finding friends in Jesper, Nina, and Inej that he had not only stayed after class, but he had stayed until sunset. And as soon as he stepped through the door at home he was met by the consequences of it.

His father didn’t shout. He didn’t even look that angry - just tired. Weary.

“Why didn’t you come home, Wylan?”

Wylan looked at his shoes.

“I was studying,” he mumbled, “I lost track of time. I’m sorry,”

A brief moment passed.

“You are not to attend classes at the university anymore,” said his father, simply, like he was telling him to wash up before dinner, “Go upstairs and prepare for this evening, it’s lucky you haven’t arrived so late as to burst in upon the event and embarrass us both”

Wylan had forgotten about this evening. His father was hosting a dinner party for the rest of the Merchant Council; Wylan would have to spend the entire night sitting quietly but still acting engaged, answering awkward questions, and trying not to spontaneously combust. Perfect, that was just what he needed today.

“No, father please-”

“We had an agreement, Wylan, and you’ve gone against my wishes. Besides, with your concerning grade in your business class I think we both know what’s happening here don’t we? I tried to warn you,”

You are trying to force your way into a world in which you do not belong.

Wylan felt his cheeks heat.

“That’s one class!” he found himself crying out, which was probably the worst decision he could have made.

But why did Jan Van Eck only see the struggling business grade? Wylan wasn’t even failing business, he just wasn’t doing as well in it as the others. Why couldn’t his father see the soaring grades in the sciences that Wylan and thrown himself at and buried himself in, in some desperate attempt to make up for all his other failings? He could see now that it had always been a lost cause, that there was nothing he would ever be able to do to apologise for the hurt he had caused his father with his uselessness.

“Please, father, I promise you I’ll-”

“Don’t talk back to me, Wylan,” his father’s eyes flickered dangerously, but his voice remained level, “You are not to attend classes any more; I shall submit your withdrawal from the school tomorrow morning and if you are going to argue with me then you will stay in your room until such time that I’m convinced you won’t foolishly run off and leave yourself privy to any potential danger again. You are vulnerable, Wylan, and if you aren’t sensible enough to keep to the house yourself then I will be forced to do it for you,”

It was nothing he hadn't heard before. Nothing that hadn’t been done before. Wylan’s bedroom locked from the outside, and had done so for about as long as he could remember.

“Please-”

“One more word, Wylan, do you hear me?”

And Wylan didn’t know why he did it, didn’t know why he was stupid enough not to just fall silent and do as he was told. But he lifted his chin and said:

“I don’t care. I want to continue attending university,”

He registered the sting afterwards more than he did the slap itself. His cheek was burning and his neck hurt from moving so suddenly. The unwelcome bite of tears pressed into him and he tried desperately to quash it before his father noticed.

“What you want, Wylan,” his father hissed, as Wylan suddenly realised he was being dragged stumbling up the stairs, “Is entirely irrelevant to what any of us need. Now stay quiet, and I will speak to you tomorrow,”

And then the door was closed and Wylan heard the lock click shut. He gripped his cane so tightly that his knuckles turned white and he might have snapped the ridiculous thing in two, and then before he really knew why he had thrown it across the room and collapsed onto the carpet. He pulled his knees to his chest and let the waiting tears spill onto his face, bursting from his throat in sobs even as he held his nose to try and force them to be quieter.

Years ago, after a lousy reading lesson and a similar message of crushing disappointment from his father, Wylan had been sitting on the floor of his bedroom like this when Anya found him. She wasn’t supposed to come into the main house; she was a Grisha Healer, indentured to Wylan’s father after fleeing Ravka, and she was not officially allowed anywhere but her room and the Grisha workshop unless specifically summoned. But she risked it, to come and find him.

“Anya- what are you doing?” he’d whispered, panic rushing in his throat, “he’ll-”

“I could not leave you all alone, could I?” she smiled, moving slowly away from the door she had leant against when she hurriedly pushed it shut.

“But-”

“He won’t find out,” she whispered, “and if he does it is my fault, not yours. Promise,”

It wasn’t himself that Wylan was worried about, but he kept quiet and linked his index finger around Anya’s.

“Promise,” he breathed.

Wylan didn’t know the details but he thought Anya must have left a while before the civil war broke out, because she just seemed to always have been there, and was only a similar age to him - surely she was too young to have been fleeing the fighting? He had never asked her. Maybe she just didn’t want to end up being part of the once-compulsory draft - no-one was less inclined to unnecessary violence than Anya was.

“And yet now I find myself wishing I was a Heartrender,” she’d said to him, stolen into his room to sit on the floor and hold his hand, “so I could make your father sorry for this,”

Wylan just shook his head.

“It’s not his fault,”

It was part of Anya’s job to Tailor Wylan’s scars, and his eyes too. She hadn’t been told the truth, of course - like when Nina came to work on them, she believed the cloudy layer it brought of Wylan’s eyes was an inescapable byproduct of the process and not the real reason she’d been hired. But Anya was kind and sweet and easy to talk to. Wylan ended up telling her all of it, and as soon as she knew what she was doing she was horrified.

“I can not be part of this,” she’d told him, at first, “I do not want to hurt you like this,”

But Anya had never hurt him. Wylan had hurt her; he didn’t know exactly what he’d done but he knew that she was his only friend in the world, that he had pushed his father too hard, and that one day Anya was gone.

“She’s no longer under my employment,” his father had said, the last time he ever mentioned her.

It was the only explanation Wylan had been given. It was the only one he dared to ask for.

Because whatever had happened to Anya - and he had no illusions of it, he knew his father had probably sold her like a bolt of cotton - was entirely Wylan’s fault.

Now he lay on his bed, listening to the dinner party downstairs, mulling over his father’s words. Did he even want to go back to university? He couldn’t tell Jesper the truth, but he couldn’t go on lying to him either. He was evil, and cruel, and Jesper had looked at him like that… Wylan thought of Jesper’s hand on his, his fingers in his hair, his lips moving closer to Wylan’s. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t lie to him - but there was no way of telling him the truth. What would Jesper say if he did? What would he think of him? Maybe this was for the best. Wylan couldn’t face Jesper, he couldn’t face Nina, and if Inej and Nina were here together then he was deluding himself about befriending her as well. The only class he properly looked forward to, except in the past week or so, was mathematics and he already knew almost everything they’d been learning. And his grade in the business and economics class was terrible. He didn’t know what he was doing. It was every proof Jan Van Eck had ever needed of his son’s failings. Wylan listened to the muffled conversations of the dinner party two floors below, the footsteps of staff passing by his door, the distant clattering sounds in the kitchen downstairs, and wondered if anyone had asked where he was. If they had even noticed that he wasn’t there. When the next morning came and his father came to speak to him, Wylan was still lying on his side in the previous day’s clothes, tears tracing down his cheeks. If he’d slept he didn’t remember it.

“You were right,” he whispered, “I never should have gone,”

Van Eck sighed, and Wylan turned slowly to see his father shaking his head. He sat up on the bed and pulled his feet in to perch cross-legged.

“I tried to warn you, Wylan,”

You are trying to force your way into a world in which you do not belong.

“I know,” he murmured, wishing his voice wasn’t shaking, “I’m sorry,”

And then the tears came again. His father sighed again.

“Don’t cry, Wylan. It’s unbecoming,”

Wylan wanted to sob that it didn’t matter, because everything he even did was unbecoming, there was no part of him that was not considered such. But he just lowered his gaze, and apologised again.

“I’ve submitted your withdrawal for you,” said his father, as though it were a great kindness to have done it instead of putting Wylan through the shame of doing it himself.

It probably was.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“Take a day. You need to think everything through, and I want you to properly understand that this was a mistake. Then maybe tomorrow we can discuss alternate options for your future,”

Alternate options? Wylan wasn’t sure what he meant by that. University has been his one chance; to find a pathway, to prove to his father that he was worth something. But he’d been wrong. What other options could possibly be left?

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