#sorry if this doesnt make any sense im staying up after a tweleve hour night shift to write it

[bartonbones]

i want to say it louder than in the tags but the way the poison scene is like. yes inej's deepest desire is to be known and to be trusted and to know and to trust and to be disarmed and to disarm someone else and most of all for someone to ask permission and wait for her to grant it, and that she wants that person to be kaz, but she knows it's a dream because she knows kaz isn't ready to do that yet, and even if she's dreaming, even if it's in her own head, she refuses to force him...she'll wait for him, she'll wait for him for longer than she should but she's not going to force him, ever, even in her own dreams, because she knows what that feels like--so she wakes up, she fights it, i love that she's the only one who is able to do that, the only one who has mastered herself enough to recognize when a dream is a dream who has the agency and the strength and desire to live for herself and make her own choices and take her own power even when there is no one there to take it from...

and then for her to know that kaz is going to have to be touched against his will, and to know that she's the one who has to do it, and the fact that it's true, that she's the only one kaz would let pull him out of that--because at the end of the day all this self-mastery and agency and power that kaz brekker forces himself to believe that he has pales in comparison to the woman who has been through unimaginable violations and yet reclaims her own body and her own physicality, even though it has been every bit as hard for her as it had ever been for him, becuase at the end of the day inej is the only person he trusts understands that in himself, that weakness that sits just beneath the surface, and the only person who understands how to protect it, who might, even, one day, understand how to heal it...

the fact that for a few seconds, in-between the past and the present, in-between life and death, kaz brekker feels someone touching him and is relieved when he sees that it's her. for a few seconds that trust and that love and that understanding breaks through the panic and she holds him, just for a second, and for a just second kaz brekker remembers that touch can be a comfort, can be a respite, can be something that reminds you there is something outside of your fear rather than being the epicenter of it...

and then it's gone. it's gone and he panics and it's too much and he stands up and he doesn't look at her and he lies about what he saw, becuase it's always going to be two steps forward one step back with these two, but that moment was there, and it existed, and for maybe the first time he really can connect this idea, that there is a future for him and touch, just like there was a future for inej, and that there could be a future for them both, and does he want that? does he? he wants--he wants-- etc. etc. and so forth i'm going insane