#yk... if they had a healer they could be alive rn ... :(

[littlelightfish]

Close ups under the cut!

[hufflesight]

after reading Monster (the Kaz fic), do you think you could write reader is alive but now reader is hellbent on revenge (lmao if you thought when i said alive, it was gonna be fluffy or somethin) lovers to enemies kinda vibe yk

if you're not taking requests rn, tis fine. have a great day regardless

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Description: A sequel to Monster, though could be read on its own ig? After escaping her captors, the reader (a healer) searches for revenge on Kaz Brekker, the man she used to love, the one who sold out her life for information on his enemy.

(ANON REQUEST LETS GOOO! And yes my requests are always open. i'm really sorry about how long this took to come out, I had some classic writer's block combined with an influx of other stuff to do. I hope you like it, though! )

Warnings: Blood, mentioned torture, scars, stab stab

Words: 1,345

As always if you like my writing feel free to give me a request! My inbox is always open, I might just take a couple days to post it, depending on my schedule!

No one would believe that Y/n survived. She didn't honestly believe it herself, even with the constant reminder of the blood coating her previously white shirt, and the thrum of pain throughout her entire body.

Hours and hours she'd sat in a chair, chained as they tried their best to get anything, even a word out of her. She didn't make a sound. Not to protect Kaz; the entire time she was constantly wishing him death. No, she stayed silent to protect the rest of the crows.

Wylan.

Jesper.

Matthias.

Nina.

And most of all, Inej.

So she wasn't upset when her broken body was found by the Wraith. Y/n had fought her way out of torture, prison, certain death, swing by bloody swing; she didn't have the energy to do anything but collapse on Inej when they saw one another in the middle of the cobble road.

"Y/n?" Inej had asked, voice unbelieving. It'd been weeks, after all. There shouldn't have been a way for Y/n to be alive.

And yet it was her who replied, "I got out."

And then both the broken girl and the Wraith were in tears, emotions buried for months dragged up by the surprise of a reunion they'd figured impossible.

Y/n couldn't survive the Barrel on her own. That was something she'd learned before she joined the Dregs; now she was forced to learn it again, now that everyone thought she was dead.

Thankfully, she had support in the form of Inej. The Wraith would give her food on days she couldn't find something, bandaged her wounds, hugged her tight as nightmares of knives and pain and Kaz.

Kaz, the man who filled every waking and sleeping thought Y/n had. The fury she felt at the idea of seeing his face cut like a knife, so intense she felt nothing but pure calm. She was secure in the fact that Kaz would pay.

Because she would be the one who made him pay.

As the days became colder, the nights Y/n spent in Inej's room in the Slat became more frequent. And therefore so did the nights she sat, back stiff, as the sound of Kaz crying filled the room, muffled by the wooden door he leaned against in the hallway. Everything in her wanted to slam the door open, finally get the revenge she wanted. Needed.

But she would stay still. Because she wouldn't act before she knew that action would cut as deep as the knife Kaz had stabbed her in the back with. She wouldn't act until she heard the three words.

And one day, finally, she did.

Though muffled, and even with the gravel in Kaz's voice accentuated by tears, she heard the quiet admission. The one he thought was making to Inej.

"I miss her."

And Y/n smiled.

---

The plan was foolproof, vengeful, and completely secretive. As much as Inej had helped her, Y/n wouldn't want to force the person she was closest to into a decision between Kaz or Y/n.

And though she tried not to think about of it, part of the reason she planned in secret was because she didn't want to know what Inej would choose.

Shoving the thought to the side, Y/n took a deep breath. The plan was quite simple, really. She'd left a single note in his room. A claim: Information on Pekka Rollins. A couple personal sentences about him to prove it. A threat. Even in pure fury, she couldn't resist a poetic ending, a mirror to the way they'd first ever met. And so, she'd had the note tell him to go to the exact spot she'd first made eye contact with him.

And there Kaz Brekker stood, half in shadows as she knelt behind the wall that his her. He wanted information on Rollins; the same thing he'd wanted when he'd decided her date of torture.

Now she stood, miraculously alive, a knife clutched in a iron grip. She had survived. If it was up to her, Kaz wouldn't.

And so she stood, revealing herself to the man who had believed her dead for a year. And he just stood there.

She wasn't surprised. One didn't get into a relationship with Kaz Brekker without realizing how he kept all of his feelings, his emotions, close to his chest. Even so, she had to admit, she'd wanted something more.

Kaz's tone was nearly even, surprise evident only in the accentuated gravel in his throat as he finally spoke. "You survived."

Y/n smirked. "No thanks to you."

"Y/n... that- that wasn't how it was supposed to go-"

She cut him off with a sharp laugh. "Don't even try. You sold me out in order to find your 'enemy', and I've got the scars to prove it."

"What did they do to you?"

"Nothing worse than what you would've done in their place." She answered, voice ice.

That, at least got a reaction from Kaz, even if his recoil was only a few inches.

"Turns out, hen you sit chained for hours, you gain a new... perspective on the man who left you to that fate."

"Did you... tell him any-"

"Oh I kept my silence all right. But not for you." She stepped forward, keeping her eyes on his cane as she hid the knife behind her back. "Never for you. I stayed silence to protect them, the ones who haven't been at the mercy of the monster you are. Or at least, not yet."

"Y/n," Kaz said, voice infuriatingly even, "I've always loved you."

"Oh, you claimed to, that's for sure. Was anything you ever told me true?"

"True enough that it hurts me to do this." With those words, pain bloomed in the arm holding her knife. She swore under her breath as her hand released the hilt. Another hit came, this time to her leg. Even as she collapsed, blood flowing freely, she couldn't help but notice the pattern.

Non-vital areas. Kaz wasn't trying to kill her.

But it wouldn't have mattered if he was. Because seconds later, her wounds were stitching themselves back up, the sharp pain reduced to an itchy soreness.

"You don't survive 3 weeks of torture without learning a few tricks," Y/n said, an answer to the unasked question on Kaz's face. She'd never been nearly powerful enough to heal that bad of a wound that quickly when she called the Slat her home.

As she gracefully picked her knife up from the ground, fear finally shone in Kaz's dark eyes. "Y/n. Don't do this."

"You see, I might have given you a chance to justify why I shouldn't," Y/n said, as she inspected the knife for any scratches or chips. Finding none, she turned the blade on Kaz. "But then again, you never gave me a chance to defend my own life, did you? And all I want is equal revenge."

"Y/n-" It was too late. The knife plunged deep into his shoulder, and a large grimace spread across his face as he grunted from the pain. She pulled the knife back out, and prepared for a killing blow. But as she looked at his face, sweating, in clear pain, she couldn't move her arm.

Just because Kaz was a monster didn't mean she had to be one too.

And so, she removed the blade from his neck, cleaning it quickly on her shirt before putting it on the ground in front of him. It was unmistakably hers; whoever found him first, whether it was Inej or someone else, would know who had stabbed him.

She left him like that, without so much as a goodbye, turning on her heel and running, all the way to the docks.

Just like that, she was back to being a scared, starving stowaway on a ship.

She had come to Ketterdam in hopes of a better place than her fire stricken home. Instead, she's stumbled into an inferno, full of love, pain, anger.

She would never forget her time there, though. No matter how badly she wanted to.