Work Text:
-1-
Kaz doesn’t feel like he’s drowning. He should - the water weighs him down, tries to pull him deeper and deeper, until the only thing Kaz can do is hang on tighter and keep on pushing, no matter the acid that builds in his throat and the tears that spring in the far back of his eyes.
No. Instead, Kaz Rietveld feels like he’s floating. Not on water, he thinks, but through space. He’s floating through space, holding onto the one thing that ties him down to the safety of the ground.
Kaz wants to ask himself where everything went wrong. Where he made all of these mistakes. At age eleven, Kaz is too young to know. Instead, all he knows is that the world around him is real, the water is heavy and the brush of skin on skin is starting make him sick. It’s all there. Gravity holds them all together, and Kaz wishes it would pull him in, too.
Because he doesn’t feel real anymore. He doesn’t belong here.
And Kaz thought they would die together.
So why is it, that even if Jordie’s the one that can float above the water - that Kaz is the one drifting away?
-2-
Kaz feels something when he sees the blood flowing from Inej’s side. He isn’t sure what. But it’s gone, just like that. Kaz is back to the same emptiness he always has been - at the very least, since Reaper’s Barge.
He reaches her, just in time. If nothing, he may give her a chance to live. He’ll get them across the docks, onto the Ferolind and on their way to the Ice Court, in what even Kaz knows is a suicide mission. He’ll try. They’ll all try.
Kaz learned long ago, that trying may not simply be enough.
But still, Kaz is the one who plans - meticulously, each and every day. He’s the one who dumps Oomen overboard, and the one who tells Inej about the incinerator shaft. He eliminates, each every room for error. He will get his crew in and out of there, and they will succeed.
But this all means nothing to him. Or rather, it does - it should. The glory of the thirty million kruge, the thought of revenge - it drives him forwards, his orbit in the otherwise empty vacuum of space. But still, he’s reaching - reaching and floating, with nothing to grab onto.
Nothing to hold him down.
And Kaz Brekker doesn’t remember the last time he really felt alive.
-3-
For the second time, Kaz knows he’s drowning - but he feels none of it. They’ll die in the Ice Court, he’ll lose himself to the waters just like he did the first time. But he can’t bring himself to care.
In his head, Kaz can see the stars. He can see the sun, the moon. The blackness, that stretches so far into the distance that there’s nothing else. Floating. Again. Always, farther and farther away, from the part of his soul that made him human. He’s an alien, a monster - and there’s nothing he can do to change himself back.
And then he’s thinking of Inej. The closest thing that pulls him down to Earth, now that Jordie is gone. What does that make her?
The moon has a gravitational pull - it pulls in the tides, doesn’t it? But that’s not it. Kaz is not the ocean, he’s not the crashing waves and he’s not the deep, blue-green that splashes alongside Ketterdam’s harbors. If he was, he wouldn’t be drowning now that the baleen has run out.
So maybe Inej is not the moon. Maybe she’s the sun, maybe she has their whole solar system caught in her gravity. Because Kaz knows that when he’s with her, he’s the most alive he’s ever been, no matter how broken and how scattered his pieces may be. She pulls him together, closer and closer - until the rest is Kaz’s job to do himself. A chance to be real again. A chance to breathe, and to escape the emptiness of the space.
And Kaz could drown here. He will drown here.
But perhaps he should fight, one more time. Perhaps he should try.
Kaz is floating, still floating - but Inej is real. She’s the sun.
He’ll swim, for a chance to see her light again.
-4-
Kaz should feel a little more something. He feels all sorts of things in his head, when it comes to Inej - it’s her. It’s always her. All he has left is her and his thirst for revenge, and one day, he’ll lose the latter.
He knows he can’t lose his Wraith.
He doesn’t simply need her skills - he needs her. He needs her laugh and her smile, the light in her eyes. Because Kaz was right, back when he was drowning at the Ice Court. Inej is the sun.
Inej is the sun, she’s a star and she’s light and she’s beautiful. She’s also a little bit broken, the same way he is.
But just because Inej is the sun doesn’t mean he feels any more grounded.
Kaz shakes, the closer his hands are to her skin. He’s given up, trying not to let it show. He’s shivering, because it’s cold in space - is he not?
That’s all there is to it.
Slowly, so slowly - he wraps the bandage once around her arm. He breathes.
Kaz supposes he should feel real, right about now. He should feel the waves, creeping up his ankles. He should feel his breath come short, and he should feel so, so heavy.
He feels none of that.
Instead, he feels the more loops he does, the closer they are - the farther he drifts away.
Because Kaz can’t hold her. He can’t take her hand.
He’ll keep going, farther and farther. Until the light of her sun becomes nothing but a star among the hundreds and the thousands.
So what can Kaz do, even - to never let her go?
-5-
This should be it. All Kaz needs is one word, one word from Pekka’s mouth - and he’ll feel real again. Right? Right?
Kaz doesn’t know. He’s starting to think he never will.
Every single threat he throws, every single thing he says - Pekka still can’t remember Jordie’s name. He simply can’t. And Kaz wants to scream, fight, shoot him in the head. He does none of those things. He thinks, he thinks because he’s this goddamn close to the ground but he can’t quite hold on.
Instead, Kaz stands a little taller, glares a little harder. Grips the crow head on his cane, tighter even still.
He makes Pekka kneel, instead. He tells him his son will be buried alive.
Oddly enough, the lie is the closest thing Kaz can equate his own existence to.
Because he should have died on Reaper’s Barge. He should be gone. But he was born again, a second time - but he wasn’t born on the ground. He can’t reach it, no matter how hard he tries. No matter how low he slips his walls. No matter how close to revenge he truly is.
Still, all he sees is the emptiness of outer space - and Kaz knows that he’s felt nothing but the same kind of empty, too.
Maybe he belongs here. Maybe he’ll never stop feeling weightless. Maybe he’ll never be real like he used to be.
He just wishes somebody could hold him down.
-0-
Kaz looks out over the water. He does not speak, he does not cast her a second glance. But he feels her knuckles brush against his, her skin on his and the sudden, sudden pull down-
Kaz goes still. For a moment, he expects himself to slip away. He’ll float up, up again, and she’ll leave just like he always knew she would have to. Because why would she want him when he’s this broken?
But nothing happens. Nothing happens, as they stand there in silence.
Kaz doesn’t know what this is. Kaz doesn’t know why he feels like he’s falling - or not falling, even. He feels like he’s flying. He’s flying through the clouds, and then he’s breathing-
There’s no air in space.
He gasps.
And slowly, slowly - he takes her hand.
For a moment, it’s blindingly bright. But then the colors come into view, and he feels the heat, the heat of the sun . Kaz does not move. He’s close, he’s so so close-
Kaz lets himself feel. He lets himself feel the water, rising up along his ankles. He lets himself feel the sickness, the bile in his throat - and then he takes it, and he forces it back down. He breathes. He breathes because he can. And he fights, and for the first time, it feels real.
One foot touches the ground.
And with his palm in hers, he feels their fingers intertwine. Perhaps Kaz didn’t need to entirely heal.
Perhaps, Kaz did not need to forget, and perhaps - revenge does not bring you home.
All Kaz knows is that he feels alive. His second foot lands on the ground.
And if he looks at Inej, he knows that he won’t be drifting on his own anymore.
Now, he has somewhere to go. A sun to fly towards.
And Kaz is ready to leave outer space behind.