#kaz rietfeld x you | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

system-to-the-madness · 3 years

Text

By your Side - Chapter Two- Kaz Brekker x Reader

Pairing: Kaz Brekker x fem!Reader

AU: JordieLives!AU

Series Genre: hurt/comfort & angst to fluff

Summary: As time passes, you get used to working for Kaz Brekker, and soon find a friend in the newest member of the Dregs, Inej. But things take an unfortunate turn at Kaz’s decision on who to take along to the next heist. Series based on this post by @ilovemarvelanne1

Warning: mentions of the Queen’s Lady Plague (-> death) and prostitution, injuries, illness, misunderstandings (not yet resolved) -> angst

Chapter Word Count: 6 204

Chapter One, Series Masterlist

The sun was shining brightly even though it was still quite cold. You had been with the Captain and the Wolfszahn for almost three months already, and after having made a trip to Ravka, and then Novyi Zem, you were back in Kerch. Well, technically an island outside of the capital city Ketterdam. The small island named Newfoort was where the Wolfszahn had docked. It was scarcely populated, and had no real harbour so that you had been forced to take small rowing boats to get to shore. You had asked why you had not stirred into the harbour, as you usually did, and the Captain had explained to you, that there was a deadly illness in Ketterdam, so he would not risk his crew catching it. Instead he had decided on this small island.

You wondered why you had to go to shore at all, but the other crew members seemed desperate for solid ground underneath their feet. You could not relate. You liked the swaying of the ship below your feet.

Now you wandered down a sandy beach, which was completely deserted. In the distance a big piece of wood or something akin seemed to have been washed ashore, seagulls gathering around it. You skipped along the edge of the waves, pulling your woollen jacket a little tighter to keep out the cold. Again and again your eyes skipped over sea and to the city of Ketterdam which you could see in the distance.

Somehow, the thought of being so close to the city tormented by death sparked a strange feeling in your chest, as if Ketterdam would one day play an important role in your life.

Skipping and humming you continued your way along the beach, until the strange log you had spotted in the distance had gotten quite close. Except it was no log, no wood, no torn out tree. You stopped your skipping, and stared at the thing for a while. It looked like a boy. Slowly, carefully, you made you way closer. Seagulls were stepping around on the back of the poor kid, picking occasionally, waves leapt at the feet. The clothes were ripped and torn in places; seaweed had tangled in his dark hair. Was he dead? Had he drowned?

Your heart beat hard in your chest, and you quickly picked up a twig that had been washed ashore before stepping within reach of the boy, causing the seagulls to fly away. He lay on his side, facing away from you. Carefully you poked him. No reaction. You poked him harder. Again no reaction. Maybe he had been victim to the terrible illness that had taken hold of Ketterdam, fallen into the sea, drowned and been washed up here?

Careful, still not quite sure if he was alive, you stepped around him so you could get a glance of his face. His hair was was almost black, green algae sticking to it. He seemed several years older than you. Maybe twelve or thirteen. It was hard to tell. But he had a beautiful face, even though it seemed like it was swollen and covered in wounds caused by firepox. As if a thousand bees had stung him. And the seagulls had picked a few additional wounds into the bloated flesh. You felt your chest constrict at the thought that he was probably dead. Slowly you lifted your boot, and pushed against his shoulder, causing him to roll to his back.

Suddenly he coughed. You jumped away from him. He coughed again, clearly too weak to even lift a hand, and the desire to help him washed over you. No longer considering that he might be sick, you fell to your knees next to him.

“You’re alive,” you told him, as if it was confirmation for both you and him. “Can you sit?”

The boy just groaned, not even opening his eyes.

“Okay, I… What’s your name?”

The boy took a moment to answer, but then he opened his mouth.

“Jo-” another cough interrupted him, but he tried again. “Jo-”

This time his voice gave out, and his head, which he had lifted in the attempt to speak, fell back into the sand.

“Jojo?”

The boy groaned weakly.

“Okay, listen Jojo. I really don’t know how to help you, but I know someone who can. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Don’t move.”

As if he could, you thought, before pushing yourself to stand, and as quickly as you could, you ran all the way back to the pub, where the rest of your crew had gathered for a hot meal.

Of course the healer you had aboard was less than happy to be pulled away from the pie he had just ordered, and he was even less thrilled when he found out you had found a victim of the firepox at the beach. But much to all of your surprise he came to the conclusion that Jojo, while he had had the plague, seemed to be no danger anymore. He was still incredibly weak, much of it probably due to the time he had spent drifting around in the sea, but he was not infectious anymore. The healer suggested bringing Jojo to the pub, and leaving him there, but you pleaded with him, and later even the Captain, to take Jojo in. At first they were completely against it. Right now he was of no use to the crew, but eventually, after agreeing to be the one to look after him until he had recovered, and to be the one who had to teach him everything about the ship, they reluctantly agreed.

You had left Newfoort the next day, Jojo in a cabin right next to the tiny one you stayed in. For weeks you fed him soups and stews because he could barely swallow anything. He had trouble talking, too, but after lots of hot tea, and many weeks of rest, he was able to slowly hold short conversations again.

Over time you learnt that Jojo had had a younger brother, just a half a year older than yourself, who had probably died of the firepox. Jojo had no recollection of how he had ended up in the sea. He said one evening he had fallen asleep next to his sick brother, and the next he had woken up at the beach. He cried that evening, cried because of the misfortune he had brought upon his brother and himself, and cried because his brother, his baby brother, the only thing in the world he had had left, had died. All because of Jojo’s greed. He never shared the whole story with you, just that because he had been tricked, the two boys had lost everything they had had, which had ended in both of them being too poor to afford a medik when they had fallen ill.

You sat with Jojo for a long time that night, patting his back, and hugging him, hoping the comfort of your presence would ease the guilt and pain in his heart, but knowing that was probably impossible. Jojo eventually had fallen asleep, curled into your side, his tears wetting the fabric of your shirt.

After that, Jojo and you had been inseparable. You taught him all you knew about the ship and its workings. You showed him how to tie knots, how to climb ropes and masts, and soon the Captain thanked you for convincing him to bring Jojo into the crew. Jojo was just as agile as you, but stronger. He was still smaller than most of the members of the crew, allowing him to climb into almost all the tight spaces you crawled into too, and he was eager to prove his worth by helping with any task the others entrusted to him. After a while a new member, a Grisha squaller, joined the crew, and you gave up your little cabin for him, and moved into Jojo’s.

Whenever strangers boarded the ship you and Jojo immediately started asking them questions, learning snippets of foreign languages and sometimes even a few fighting techniques which you trained by yourselves every evening. Then the deck was dark except for a small lantern lighting up the dark. Most men were under deck by that time, so you had enough space to run around, and practice.

Jojo and you always shared a bed, sinc you were now sleeping in his cabin, and there was not enough space for two beds. So at night, when the cold settled in, Jojo wrapped you into a warm blanket, slipped into bed beside you, and made up stories of powerful Grisha saints, dragons and gigantic birds. Back when your family had still been alive, you had often wished for an older brother. Jojo was exactly how you had always wanted your brother to be. He made you laugh and eventually fall asleep, thinking life would always be this peaceful.

But it is not, you bitterly thought to yourself. You had left the Wolfszahn, following a tucking in your chest that had drawn you to Ketterdam. But as soon as these robbers had first started speaking to you, the tucking in your chest had stopped and never returned. You had no direction anymore, no path to follow. And without the guidance of that tucking in your chest, you had followed Kaz Brekker into the Crow Club.

The work he wanted you to do was easy enough. Climb up on roofs and window stills, and listen in on any and every conversation that he might profit from. Which merchant was planning to sell what? Who had just bought a pricy piece of jewellery that the Dregs could steal? Who was planning on betraying who?

You did not feel comfortable doing the job, but you did it anyway. At first because you had been scared of Brekker. But now, six months later, you felt like it was because you had found a place where you belonged. Perhaps not as perfectly as you had belonged into the crew on the Wolfszahn, but then again you were older now, and doubted an eight year old girl had ever really been part of that crew. You had probably been their distraction on sea. They had watched you climb around, and tell magic stories about talking shoes to whoever would listen. But you had not been part of the crew. Not really. Now you were part of the Dregs. It had taken you less than two months to make the final decision to tattoo the crow drinking from the cup onto your lower arm. You still vividly remembered the relief that had flooded through your system once the tattoo artist had finished. You finally belonged somewhere again.

Since you had started working for him, Kaz had made it his personal challenge to teach you how to fight. Even with his limp he was quick and incredibly strong, and the first few weeks you had had absolutely no chance at standing your ground against him. But you were a quick learner. Soon you had memorised important techniques, how to duck a blow without losing your balance, how to soundlessly sneak up on someone, how to disarm men twice your size.

When Kaz thought there was nothing more he could teach you in the department of hand to hand combat, he had you train with other members of the Dregs. All of them were a lot older than either Kaz or you; and much broader, too. Kaz was, even though he was not even sixteen yet, rather tall, but just as skinny as you had assumed at your first meeting. These man were packed with muscles, and still you sometimes felt as if they did either not put their full force into the exercises they did with you, or simply were not as strong as Kaz. Perhaps he was lanky and thin, but the young man was incredibly strong. Once he had harshly grabbed your wrist during training, and you had thought he would break it, but he had let go before he had really hurt you.

As you sat on top of a roof, looking out over a crowded street of West Stave in the middle of the night, you replayed the scene in your head. You had noticed pretty early on, that training with Kaz was entirely different from what training with Jojo had been. Not only did Kaz seem to know much better what he was doing, but Jojo and you had often stood in deadlock for minutes, his hand closed around your upper arm, ready to dislocate it, your hands hooked under his knee, ready to throw him off balance, trying to figure out how to free yourselves. Kaz hardly ever touched you. Even when he had grabbed your wrist, he had been wearing black leather gloves.

Over the months, you had heard many stories of why he wore these gloves. Some people said he had claws for fingers, others claimed his hands were black like coal, as a punishment for all the crimes he had committed, others again were convinced he bathed his hands in the blood of the people he had killed, and wore the gloves so the blood would not wash off. Honestly, you thought all these stories were stupid, and were convinced there was a far easier explanation to the gloves. And indeed, just a few nights ago, while you had been going over your assignments for the night with him, the topic of the gloves had come up.

“It’s getting colder now, we need to get you proper equipment,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “I’m thinking a fur felt coat, warm enough for even the coldest nights, a warmer pair of boots, and some Fabricator made gloves, so your fingers won’t freeze off.”

You nodded thoughtfully.

“Can we try to get them to make the boots thinner though,” you wondered, “I mean… the ones I currently got are okay, but I hardly feel anything through them.” You noticed the way Kaz had raised his eyebrow at you. “They’re good, they’re really good, I mean,” you quickly defended, hoping to not sound ungrateful. Kaz had given them to you as soon as your wrist had healed after that fall you had taken in the alleyway where he had saved you. It was just one more thing you had to pay off now. “It’s just… I need to feel the material I’m climbing up, need to feel the tiniest dents and bumps in the walls to keep my footing.”

Kaz nodded, as if he understood exactly what you were talking about. But you doubted he had ever scaled a thin rope of ivy the way you did every night.

“Then we’ll have both the shoes and the gloves be made by a Fabricator. Should be simple enough.”

He brushed his gloved thumb over the beak of the crow head atop of his cane.

“Are your gloves Fabricator made?” The question had slipped over your lips before you had contemplated his possible reactions.

But much to your surprise he did not lash out at you.

“No,” he answered indifferently. “They’re just regular leather gloves.” He was still studying the crow head. “Well, not regular, I’ve had some adjustments made for my purposes specifically.”

Lock picking, you thought.

“But they’re not Fabricator made. You’re wondering why I’m wearing them, right?”

You nodded quietly, watching Kaz closely. He leant a little closer to the crow head, and rubbed the leather of his glove over a spot on the back of the metal bird’s head as if to polish it.

“I don’t like feeling people’s skin. Freaks me out. But I’m expected to do handshaking and fighting, so I wear the gloves. It’s still awful enough this way.”

You stared at him, slightly shocked. He had never given away any indication for a weakness, and now he openly confessed to you that the touch of skin against skin freaked him out? You immediately remembered Jojo, and the way he had always lifted you into the air to twirl you around, or how he had hugged you before falling asleep each night. Somehow Kaz often reminded you of Jojo, even though they were so elementary different from each other.

“Are you going to use this knowledge against me now?”

You got torn out of your thoughts, and found Kaz had lifted his head to look at you.

“Why would I?”

He smiled. For the first time since you had met him almost six months ago, Kaz Brekker truly smiled at you.

You blinked as an unusual movement in the street below caught your attention, and you stiffened, readying yourself to start moving, until you recognized the person to be Jesper. Jesper had joined the Dregs just two weeks ago, after Kaz had saved him from a beating in the same dark alleyway in which he had found you. He seemed to have a talent for these things. You liked Jesper. The Zemini boy was kind, and loved joking around. In the beginning you had feared Kaz would be upset by Jesper’s seemingly never serious attitude, but soon enough you had recognised something that almost resembled amusement in Kaz’s gaze.

You watched Jesper walk down the street before he disappeared in a small alley. Your eyes wandered over the thinning crowd below. It was winter, so the sun would take its sweet time to rise today, but it was almost morning, even though it was still dark, so you decided it was time to go back to the Slat, and report back to Kaz, even though there was not much you had to tell.

As almost every time you entered Kaz’s office after knocking and being called in, he sat at his desk, brooding over maps and notes, his cane leaning against the edge of the table.

When he spotted you in the doorway, his shoulders relaxed visiably.

“Come in, close the door,” he invited you.

“There’s really not a lot to tell, and I’m cold and tired,” you confessed, hesitating to follow his order.

“I need a second pair of eyes on something,” he told you.

It was not the first time he asked for your help on finding escape routes and the kind. In your first week of working for him, he had taken you in front of the Crow Club, and asked you to find all four possible ways to climb up to the roof. You had found six. And ever since then he asked for your help when it came to planning his heists.

While you sighed quietly and closed the door behind you, he grabbed his cane, and used the beak of the crow head to pull a comfortable looking chair close next to his own.

“Sit down,” he offered, pointing at the chair.

Confused you followed his order. Usually you sat on the wooden chair on the other side of the desk, not next to Kaz. The chair beneath you was soft, softer than any chair you ever remembered having sat on, but instead of focusing on feeling the luxurious material beneath you, you eyed the blue print before you.

“What are we looking for,” you asked, trying to supress a yawn. Now that you had escaped the cold winter air, your eyes were burning, and you felt just how truly tired you were.

“We’re going in here,” Kaz pointed at a door on the map. “And I want us to leave through here-” he flipped another blue print over the one you were looking at, and showed you the window he was talking about. “But if we need to change the plan, we need more ways to get out.”

You bit your lip, and nodded. Kaz had never taken you along to one of his heists, but often enough trusted you helping to plan them. It made you nervous, knowing your friends’ freedom and even lives depended partly on how good of an escape route you were able to spot. You leant a little closer over the map, so you could make out the fine lines better, making sure to keep a safe distance from Kaz, knowing he preferred his personal space to not be invaded.

While you were studying the map, he stood up, and fetched a kettle of tea that had been keeping warm by the cracking fire in the fireplace behind you. He also grabbed two cups, and when he sat down, he poured a cup for each of you, but you hardly noticed, far too concentrated on the map you were analysing.

“I’ve thought we could go through here, and down there,” Kaz leant over to you, and painted an invisible line on the paper with his gloved finger, showing you the route he wanted to take. “But then we have the problem of ending up in this dead end.”

Your eyes flickered up to his face. He had lent in close, really close, the strands of his hair almost brushing your forehead. Why was your heart beating so hard all of a sudden? It made you feel lightheaded and dizzy. You did not like it. Or maybe you did?

“Not if you turn right here,” you disagreed, and focused back on the map.

“But then we’ll be -”

“-able to climb down into the canal that should be about…” you pulled up another map that you had spotted spread out over the desk, a map of the complicated subterranean canal system for Ketterdam. “...here. It’s not the most hygienic, but it will get you out of the mansion unseen and unheard. You’d just have to make sure not to get lost down there.”

Kaz pushed the warm cup of tea into your hands while he thought about your idea. Absentmindedly you took a few small sips. The tea was exactly the way you liked it most. Its warmth immediately spread through your system, but only made you sleepier. Still you flinched when suddenly Kaz’s knee bumped against yours. You looked up at him, waiting for any sign of discomfort on his face, but he seemed too wrapped up in his own thoughts. You slowly relaxed again, allowing his knee to press against yours as you took another sip of the tea, feeling how warmth sept through the fabric of your trousers where your legs touched.

Kaz and you kept discussing plans until the sun had risen over the horizon. Your eyelids were heavy; again and again they dropped closed. At some point Kaz had pulled one of the maps into his lap, studying it intensely, and you had tiredly rested your head on the wooden desk. The next thing you knew was that you woke up, midday sun streaming into Kaz’s office, a warm, black coat wrapped around your shoulders, and the room deserted.

This was just the first time you fell asleep in Kaz’s room. More and more frequently he called you to his office for help until at some point you just showed up, whether he had asked for you or not. Sometimes you helped him sketch out heists, other times you simply sat in an armchair by the window, and read a book or fed the crows on the roof outside. It was your nightly routine, the same way Jojo had told you stories every night and wrapped you in a blanket. Since you had left the Wolfszahn, you had missed the comfort this routine had brought you, but now with Kaz, you found something different, perhaps even better. You still missed Jojo’s hugs, the way he had pulled you against his chest like a big brother would, since only sometimes you got an excited half hug from Jesper when he had won a round of cards.

But being around Kaz was rewarding in a different way. You could not get used to the way your heart leapt into your throat every time he talked to you, looked at you or when you even just thought of him, and you had come to the conclusion that perhaps you had a crush on the young man. More and more often you found yourself wishing to be able to express these feelings, but fear held you back. Kaz was completely unemotional on his better days, you doubted he would be able to understand the way you felt about him, and there was no possibility that he reciprocated your ever growing feelings. Which lead you to come to a painful but simple conclusion: He would never learn how you felt about him. As long as he allowed you to stay around, as long as you got to read in his office while he was planning heists, as long as he pushed blueprints over to you to hear your opinion on them, you would be content.

Like this more than a whole year passed. Every other month you went down to the harbour and dropped off a message so if the Wolfszahn should come back to Ketterdam, Jojo would know where to find you.

Winter had turned into summer, into winter, and back into spring, when one evening Kaz came home with a new addition to the team. The Suli girl who had followed him into the Crow Club got introduced as Inej. She was stunningly beautiful, as you immediately noticed, and you quickly decided that you wanted to get to know her better. After all she was the only girl your age you had encountered in since you had been a little girl. She was incredibly kind, and told you that Per Haskell had bought her indenture from one of the brothels in West Stave. So she had suffered the fate Kaz had saved you from. You spent the whole night talking, and by morning you found you had made a new best friend.

The following evening, Kaz sent her to go collect information together with you. You started out your usual route, and soon realised just how skilled she was. Doubtlessly that was why Kaz had brought her into the Dregs.

With Inej at your side, it felt like life was just getting better and better. Together you climbed up walls and drains, skipped over roofs and canals, listened in on secret conversations and delivered messages. The two of you had turned into the shadows on the roof tops of Ketterdam. Every night, when you returned home, the two of you went to Kaz, and told him about your findings before Inej left, and you settled into either the armchair by the window or the chair by Kaz’s side to spend the rest of the night in his presence.

The only shadow in these happy months was that Kaz would not let you join the team for his heists. You had offered your help a couple of times, even though just two years ago the idea of breaking into a house and stealing would have gone against your morals. Every time Kaz denied, saying you were more useful to him in the streets and on top of the roofs, doing your job as his spider. Nonetheless you could not help but feel a little hurt each time. Jesper was always part of the team who went on heists together with Kaz. Did he think you were not skilled enough, that you would ruin their carefully laid out plans?

The only person you ever told about these thoughts was Inej. She had been part of the Dregs for almost half a year, when one evening you felt especially down about Kaz’s rejection of your offer, and she asked what was wrong. So you told her that you wanted to help with the heists, but Kaz would not let you. You did not tell her about your feelings for him though, feelings which had grown from a stupid little crush to full on being in love with the dark haired man. You saw no reason to tell her, since you had sworn to yourself you would never act on these feelings anyway.

Inej tried to comfort you that evening, and together you had quietly skipped over the roofs that night, wondering if there was a way to convince Kaz to let you proof your worth to him.

When you returned to his office in the morning, you had agreed to keep quiet about the topic for a while. It was autumn by now, thick fog crept through the streets, and frost covered the roofs already so that you were cold and feeling more than just a little miserable and heartbroken over Kaz when you entered his warm office. You were looking forward to sitting in the comfortable armchair by the window, and watch the sun rise over Ketterdam. Perhaps you would even make some tea for Kaz and yourself, and cuddle into a warm blanket until it was time to go to sleep.

But your little daydream got ruined as soon as Inej and you had finished giving your report. She had turned to leave already, when Kaz called her name.

“Inej, there’s one more thing I want to discuss with you.” He lifted his gaze from the maps he had been studying, and looked at you. “Alone.”

The message was clear. He was asking you to leave. You nodded and wished the two of them a good night before leaving the room. Only when the door felt closed behind you, did you start feeling a strange sickness tuck in your stomach.

For almost two years you had spent the rest of every night, and the beginning of every morning, in Kaz’s office. It had been your safe place, which was almost laughable considering how scared you had been of him when you had first met him. But now he had sent you away, had broken your routine. What could be so important that he wanted to talk to Inej alone? Was he starting to loose trust in you that he would not allow you to listen to the many meetings he held to prepare heists, and did not want to ask for your help anymore? Or was it something different entirely?

Your knees grew weak in the middle of walking down the stairs to your room. What if this was not about you, but about Inej? He had brought her in one day, without letting anyone know beforehand, and you had seen the two of them talk very often. He always looked at her in a way he looked at nobody else. As if she knew a secret he had trusted her with, something that made him happy. What if… no, Kaz Brekker did not fall in love. But what if he had? What if Kaz was in love with Inej? What if he had decided that the time he had usually spent with you would be better spent with Inej?

You went to bed with a foul taste in your mouth that morning. Upstairs you knew Kaz and Inej were still spending time together. Was she sitting on the wooden chair opposite him? Or was she sitting in the chair you had always sat in, the comfortable one by Kaz’s side? Was he leaning over to her the way he had leant over to you, his hair almost brushing against her forehead the way it had brushed against yours?

Even though you had never experienced it before, you knew that the feeling in your chest was jealousy. You were jealous of Inej. And you hated yourself for it. She was your friend, you loved her, and you wanted her to be happy. Kaz was your friend too, although you were not sure if Kaz considered you to be his friend. He seemed like a person who did not like to make himself vulnerable by admitting to having people he cared about. So if she liked him and he liked her… should you not be happy for them? The rational part of you screamed Yes! Let them be happy! The Barrel is harsh enough, let them have some comfort! But your heart roared louder, crying in pain at the thought that you had to watch Kaz be happy with someone who was not you.

When you woke up in the afternoon, you had a terrible headache and your eyes burnt from having cried yourself to sleep.

Slowly you pushed the covers aside, and got up. As every morning you got dressed in midnight blue trousers and a light blue blouse, but since the air in the room seemed chilly, you pulled on a sweater on top. It was too big, and instead of pushing the sleeves up, you pulled them over your fingers. The sweater made you feel warm, like a hug from Jojo. In fact you had bought the sweater only because it had the same pattern as a sweater Jojo had bought in Ravka many years ago. Oh, how you missed Jojo! You missed his silly stories, and your play fighting, his hugs, his laughter, his hair, the glimmer in his eyes, the evenings spent in the net underneath the bowsprit, and his compassion. He certainly would have known what to say or do to cheer you up now.

The bitter feeling of jealousy still lingered on your tongue, and even though you still felt somewhat sick, you decided to make tea, and have some porridge or whatever you could find in the kitchen of the Slat.

When you entered the room, you found Inej sitting at the table. She was still (or again?) dressed in her leather suit, which she wore at night during your mission to collect every and all pieces of information. In her hand she was holding a knife, balancing it on its tip against the table, trying to get it to stand still. Her head snapped up as she heard you enter, and a look of guilt flickered over her features.

“Good morning,” you greeted her, trying to smile convincingly while sounding cheerful. Why should anything be any different from yesterday? It was a normal afternoon, like all the other ones you had spent together.

“(Y/n)?”

You had turned towards the cupboard to see if there were some oats left, but at the sound of your name you faced her. The look of guilt on her face was unsettling.

“Something wrong,” you asked, honest concern taking over your heart.

“Kaz- Kaz asked me to join the crew for the next heist,” she confessed in a tiny voice.

You just stared at her, your heart sinking.

“I know you really wanted to help, but he asked, and I couldn‘t deny.” Inej hung her head.

You wanted to walk over to her, pat her back, and tell her that it was alright, that she was a brilliant spider, that she would do wonderfully, and should not worry about you. It was obvious she felt bad, maybe even as if she had betrayed you by taking Kaz’s offer, but that did not lessen the sharp pain in your chest.

“When Kaz makes a decision, it’s final,” you answered instead, hoping you did not sound too choked up. Both Inej and you knew that once Kaz had decided he wanted Inej on the crew, he would not allow any objections.

“I really tried to tell him that you should be the one-”

“It’s okay.” It’s not.

If you had been hungry before this short conversation, you now sure as hell were not anymore. No, you just felt even sicker than in the morning. Deciding that you would not be able to stomach any kind of food now, you turned to the door.

“See you later, as always,” you mumbled quietly, unable to hide your disappointment any longer.

“Actually-”

I don’t want to hear it. Please don’t tell me Kaz has tasked you with something else.

“Kaz asked me to spy out the mansion we’re going to break into, so you’ll be on your own tonight.”

You just nodded once, not meeting her eyes, trying to breathe evenly. It was impossible, felt like something was pressing all air out of your lungs.

“It’s really just for tonight, I promise.”

You left the kitchen without another word. Both of you knew it would not just be for tonight, and you also knew it was not within Inej’s power to make that decision.

As quickly as your feet would carry you, you ran up the stairs back to your room. Just when you had almost reached the top end of the staircase, Kaz appeared there. He was on his way down, and a smile tucked at his lips, as he saw that it was you, who was walking up.

“Good morning,” he greeted, sounding unusually cheerful. Of course he would, he was probably still thinking about this morning when Inej had kept him company. “Oh, the colour of your sweater-”

You ignored his words, not even noticing the unusual attempt at making conversation, nor that he tried to comment on your clothing. Instead you pushed past him, and disappeared into your room, not in the mood to stay in his probably head-over-hells-in-love-with-Inej-happy presence, and left him standing at the top of the stairs, confused and a little hurt.

Chapter Three

Series Taglist: @messers-moony-lupin

Picture Sources (edited by me): Canal, Freddy Carter, Ship in Fog, Ship in Harbour, Church in Fog

110 notes · View notes