Chapter Text
Kaz
Kaz had a fever. The cold, a result of walking home from school in the rain when Jordie couldn’t pick him up, had been bothering him for three days now. It started with a stuffy nose, then a headache, a cough, and now it manifested itself in chills and cold sweat. Inej had been over already, and wouldn’t leave until Kaz had gotten down at least half the soup she had brought with her. Kaz had eaten it dutifully, and made sure to suppress the urge to vomit until she was gone.
Jordie hadn’t gotten home until after midnight that night, grease stains on his forehead from where he’d wiped the sweat from his brow. He was working double shifts at the diner, saving up for college- he hadn’t told Kaz yet, but he knew it anyway. It made sense. Jordie had deferred his scholarship when their parents died to take care of him. But Kaz had only just started the second semester of his Sophomore year, and soon enough he’d be graduating. After that, Jordie would be free to go wherever he wanted. Kaz knew he always wanted to get out of Ketterdam. He’d leave him to get his business degree, hiding his guilt in promises of a better life for the two of them. Kaz had been stupid enough to believe them.
Jordie had gotten him in the passenger seat, Kaz too weak to move, and started speeding to the hospital.
“Saints, Kaz,” Jordie had scolded, removing one hand from the wheel to feel at his brother’s clammy forehead. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“You were at work,” Kaz rasped. His throat was burning from the coughing; it was a miracle that he could talk at all. He’d have to thank Inej for the soup.
Jordie shot him an incredulous look and shook his head. “Next time, don’t wait until I get home. If you’re that worried about calling me at work, you go down the street and get Mr. or Mrs. Ghafa before it gets this bad. Okay?”
He looked genuinely angry, and shame pulled a string in Kaz’s heart. Jordie was under enough stress already, caring for a growing fifteen year old when he himself was still just a teenager. He didn’t need to be dealing with all this.
Kaz threw up instead of answering.
The next sequence of events is hazy, but there are three things that Kaz will never forget:
1. Jordie’s face as the car flipped, wide-eyed panic Kaz had never seen on his brother. His mouth was open as if to scream, but Kaz couldn’t hear anything over the rush of blood in his ears. He took an arm off the wheel to grab at the front of Kaz’s shirt.
2.The violent, searing pain below his right knee. He’d been thrown forward, his chest to Jordie’s chest, his brother’s back pressed up against the front windshield. His foot had gotten caught under the armrest of the passenger’s seat and twisted at a violent angle; when he looked down, he saw bone.
3. A flash of a custom license plate as the other car drove off: PEKKA
Kaz comes back to himself with a start. It’s been happening since winter break began, the violent flashbacks taking over his body and stealing his mind. It always ends with the license plate. He runs a hand through his hair, desperately trying to push the memories away. They come back all the same.
The car had been flipped upside down into a ditch at the side of the highway, the tires just barely visible over the grass. Jordie had died on impact, the back of his skull making a large spider web crack in the windshield. His hand on Kaz’s shirt had saved him, pulling him to his body to shield him. He wished at the time he hadn’t- the reality was much, much worse.
He was still weak, covered in blood and his own sick, unable to move himself off of his brother’s corpse. He still looked so alive, his eyes still open, staring unblinkingly up at Kaz. He had tried for hours to push himself off Jordie’s chest, but even if he had the strength, his leg made it so the slightest movement was unbearable.
He remembers thinking, though, that no matter how bad it was, he couldn’t die. He needed to make sure Jordie got a proper burial. He needed to thank Inej for the soup.
Kaz’s fever had broken by the time they were found. It wasn’t a busy part of the highway, and no one had even noticed the car in the ditch until morning. They took him first, careful of his leg. They said things to him that he doesn’t remember. The only thing he could focus on was Jordie’s eyes, still open. He’d passed out from the pain by the time they reached the ambulance.
He was in the hospital for a week before they took his leg. He still wasn’t exactly coherent, but he caught the important words- osteomyelitis and compound fracture and, most importantly, infection . The only treatment was amputation, they said. Kaz had agreed in his semi-conscious state, but he heard Inej arguing with the doctor, and he had wanted to smile.
The nurses had told him he was brave, but he wasn’t. The prosthetist told him he was a trooper, but he didn’t feel like one. Mr. Ghafa had ruffled his hair and said he was strong, but he didn’t feel it. He was just tired. He wanted to go home. He wanted to mourn his brother, and the subsequent loss of his own life, in private.
Inej and Jesper wouldn’t leave him alone, of course. They took turns coming to visit him once he was home, bringing frozen dinners from their parents and his homework he’d missed. His physical therapist came on the days they weren’t there, an insufferably happy older man that Kaz had wanted to smack with his own prosthetic.
He’d made sure to get himself emancipated as soon as he could. He was left with enough money from his parents to get by until he was old enough to get a job, and the house was paid for in full. Between his two friends, he never had to pay for groceries. Jesper had just gotten his learner’s permit, and though it wasn’t strictly legal, he still offered to drive Kaz wherever he needed to go.
He’d gotten by because of himself, yes, by sheer will alone. But he wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for his friends.
He could really use them right now.
Alone, stands at Black Veil, hands in his coat pockets as he looks down at the stones. Three markers. Three names.
Anne Rietveld, 1980-2017
Pieter Rietveld, 1981-2018
Jordan Rietveld, 2000-2019
Three years. That’s how long it had taken Kaz to lose his family. Some day his name will be on a stone in this plot; he’s spent every day since Jordie died wondering when. If fate was kind- and it never was to Kaz Rietveld, let alone Kaz Brekker -the family curse would have taken him before the year was up. But if today is any indication, he’ll be left with the worst job, as always. The last one standing.
He stays long enough that the January wind turns his fingers numb and his nose red. He doesn’t say anything- he never does -but he looks until his eyes burn. Prayer has never worked for Kaz, but concrete has. Solid, tangible proof. Three headstones in the ground. A license plate. Inej’s smile in the sunlight. The feel of her hand in his. The beat of her pulse beneath his fingers.
He misses her. She’d gone to Ravka with her parents over the break to visit family, and is due back in Ketterdam any day now. She’d been angry with him, after their last DnD game, but Inej can never stay angry with Kaz for very long. Their friendship has been different since the homecoming dance, not in a bad way, but different all the same. The truth is, Kaz doesn’t really know where he stands with her.
After the game, she had dragged him back to the gym for one last dance. It was a slow one again, and Inej had wrapped her arms around his neck, and he had placed tentative hands at her waist. He told her she looked beautiful, but it was an understatement. She positively glowed. He couldn’t do anything- could barely look at her -and yet there she was, unbothered, smiling, swaying to the shitty band.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” she had asked him.
“What?”
“Having a group of friends. Jesper, Wylan, Nina, Matthias...they all love you. Even if you do piss them off sometimes.” Kaz snorted.
“They love you too, you know.”
She had looked at him with those big brown eyes, fingers tightening just a little in the fabric of his suit. Her thumbs brushed at Jordie’s tie.
“And you, Kaz?” she asked.
I love you, he had wanted to say. I’ve loved you since we were fourteen. I love you when you make fun of me, and I love you when you’re kind. I love you when you’re angry with me, and I love you when I deserve it. I love that you have to stand on your toes to dance with me right now. I love you because you are fierce, and you are a fighter. I love you because you are nothing like me.
He moved a hand from her waist, up the delicate planes of her shoulder, until it reached her cheek. His fingers stopped just behind her ear, his thumb tracing an invisible line at the corner of her mouth.
“I’m not good with words,” he said, almost at a whisper, barely discernible over the music. But Inej knew. She always knows.
Her hands had come down from his shoulders, one tangled up in his tie, the other fisted in his jacket, and she used her hold on him to bring him forward and down. She kissed him, and the room disappeared; she kissed him, and the world stopped.
He’d heard Jesper describe his first kiss with Wylan before- like a bullet hitting the target, he said. Like a forest fire. Like a firework. It doesn’t feel that way, for Kaz, with Inej. It felt like someone opening a window that’s been shuttered for years. It was erosion, slow and gradual, but nevertheless inevitable. It was a whispered sigh of finally. It was every cliche he’d ever heard. It was everything.
It was over too quickly; even as he pulled away, Kaz wanted to keep kissing her. Her cheeks were flushed a deep red, her lips parted, painted pink. She could have devoured him in that moment, and he wouldn’t have cared.
He wouldn’t mind being devoured now. Standing on the frosted grass, the wind finding its way through the confines of his jacket, he’d give anything to have her here with him.
A hand slips into his. He turns, his body prepared for a fight, and there she is. Inej, dressed in her winter coat, one of her gloved hands wrapped around his bare palm. She doesn’t say anything- doesn't have to -just holds his hand and looks down at the stones. Kaz blinks and follows her gaze back down.
“I didn’t know you were back,” he says eventually, hesitant to break the silence but desperate to know.
“Just got in this morning,” she answers simply.
He doesn’t question her. Doesn’t question this, Inej here, standing with him at Black Veil. It doesn’t feel quite real, and he’s afraid if he questions it, it will all go away.
“It’s been a year, hasn’t it?” Inej asks.
“Yes.”
“And you’re still standing.”
Kaz gives a little unamused chuckle, straightens his spine. “And I’m still standing.”
“Is that enough evidence that your curse isn’t real, then?”
“No.” He watches her mouth set into a hard line out of the corner of his eye. “I just don’t think I’m allowed to die until Pekka Rollins has paid.”
“Kaz,” she sighs. “We’ve been over this. Pekka Rollins has an alibi. You were in shock--”
“I know what I saw,” he snaps. He knows he saw that licence plate. It’s been imprinted on his brain for a year, the memory so clear he can hear the squeal of tires against pavement. And if it’s not true- if Kaz really didn’t see what he thought he saw that night -then he’s left with nothing. No evidence, not even the beginning of an idea of who is to blame. And he refuses to let that be a reality.
“Come on.” Inej tugs at his hand gently. “The others are waiting.”
“The others?”
She pulls him to the edge of the lot, dropping his hand when their friends come into view. Jesper and Wylan, zipped into the same over-large winter coat, Matthias with hands in his pockets and a yellow tulip tucked behind his ear, Nina holding a bundle of supermarket flowers. Kaz blinks.
“What are you all doing here?”
“Inej called us when she got off the plane,” Jesper explains.
“We thought you could use some extra support,” says Nina. “And don’t say you don’t need it, because you do.”
Matthias holds up a large paper bag. “We brought burgers.”
And that’s how Kaz finds himself, surrounded by his five friends, sitting in front of his family’s graves. It’s strange- for so long he tried his hardest to keep people away from this place. To never see his vulnerability, to keep the Kaz of a year ago and the Kaz of today separate entities. It’s not so bad, now that it’s actually happening.
Nina has placed her flowers down across the grass in front of Jordie’s grave, and Jesper steals her fries while her back is turned.
“I thought your last name was Brekker” Wylan says, peeking over Jesper to see the stones.
“It is,” Kaz replies easily, taking a fry right out of Inej’s fingers. “I had it changed after I was emancipated.”
There’s a brief silence, and then Nina is back in their circle, trying to come up with clubs for all of them to join.
“I was thinking prom committee this time. It’s a lot more building, but there’ll be plenty of painting for Wylan.”
“Right, and we’re joining another after-school activity because…? If we’re fighting again, I suggest me versus Inej this time. Brains versus beauty and all that.”
“Who’s the brains and who’s the beauty?”
“I’m both, darling.”
“ Because, ” Wylan says with a roll of his eyes. “I want to keep playing DnD, and I need to join an extracurricular so I have an excuse for staying after school. And it’ll look good on everyone’s college applications.”
Something unspoken passses between Wylan and Jesper, a tension only tangible due to Kaz’s keen observation skills, but he knows Inej senses it too. They’ll have to have a talk, later, just the three of them.
“Anyway,” Nina tries again, now trying to wrangle Matthias’ hair into some semblance of a braid. “Can we please talk about the ending of the last session?”
“Yeah, seriously, Kaz, what the fuck?”
Kaz can’t help the secretive smile that tugs at the corner of his mouth. They haven’t played since the homecoming dance, too caught up in midterms and then first semester finals almost immediately after, and Kaz knows it’s been driving the others crazy. To be entirely honest, it’s been a little anxiety-inducing for him as well- not that he’d ever let the others know that.
They had left off after the fight with Van Eck. Kaz, of course, had known it was coming all along, but that didn’t lessen the blow of their defeat. Without Nina, they didn’t stand a chance.
As he planned long ago, Van Eck had not kept his promise. He had acted alone, not with the help of the merchant council as the players had been told, and was planning to swindle them from the start. The only reason he didn’t leave with Kuwei Yul-Bo was Wylan’s quick thinking in disguising himself
Kaz had the next bit up his sleeve, just in case. He had hoped to have it as a backup plan and nothing more, but there was simply no way to get out of the fight with the money and the party intact. At the homecoming game, before they’d all gone home, he’d had everyone text him who their characters would be the most upset at losing. The answers were easy to guess, but the players all thought they were the only one being asked, with explicit instructions not to tell anyone else in the party. When the time came, he’d had everyone- including himself- roll. And Kaz was the one who lost.
He’d been more affected than he should have been when he told Inej that Van Eck’s sorcerers had taken her hostage. The look on Inej’s face was something he’d never like to see again, but there was nothing he could do. He was a DM, and though Kaz Brekker was a cheat, this was the exception.
“I didn’t have much of a choice,” he says simply, shrugging one shoulder. “You would have lost the fight against Van Eck. I needed a way to continue the campaign.”
“So you had his men kidnap me? Why?”
“You were the most logical choice,” he lies.
Inej clearly doesn’t buy it, her brows drawn down and towards each other, but this is one secret Kaz will not share. She’ll have to pry it out of his cold, dead hands.
“Whatever,” Nina huffs. “Let him keep his secrets. Who’s bringing the snacks on Monday?”
Kaz leans back on his hands and watches them bicker over Cheez-Its versus Goldfish for the next session, not missing the feel of Inej’s gaze on him, even with his own eyes closed.
“I’m not telling you, Inej,” he hums, tilting his face to the sun.
“You will eventually. I’ll find a way to break you.”
Kaz smirks. He’d like to see her try.