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Kaz Brekker tethers between vulnerability and insanity, always, when it comes to her. And every time, he wonders if he's positively gone mad.
He wonders if she's gone mad over him too.
The musings of a slightly (an understatement really) unhinged teenager who never knew how to deal with romance; and how all it takes to deal with it is learning to walk towards her, one day at a time.
Even the devil is a man in the presence of Inej Ghafa, captain of the seas and treasure of his heart. He meant it when he teased her into buying him that new hat, but she'd bought more than he'd bargained for, his heart bleeding carelessly across the floor.
If she asked, he'd paint his slow, ardent affection with his blood on the coffins of their enemies, then he'd offer her the world, ready for her slim, quiet hands to take.
Then she'd smile at him — or perhaps not. But in his most vulnerable delusions, he swore she'd smile like the sun, and he'd wake up blind, so sure, so terrified, and thankful for it — if the world was kind, yet insistent on taking the Bastard of the Barrel's sight, she'd be the last thing he'd ever see again.
He'd print her bronze shining skin in his mind, shining like the most valuable of gold. He'd burn the image of her dark eyes rivaling the feathers of a crow, like night ready to reel him in.
And he'd jump towards that great void, because Kaz Brekker never feared the night, only feared the light when it shone on Inej's twinkling smile, because a part of him he'd buried so long ago struggles to keep itself dead, and for once Kaz Rietveld is alive.
Kaz Brekker puts a knife in his back just as quickly as he lived, but the guilt is getting harder to push away. Inej wrings something out of him, and he wishes her Saints would interfere, the way fate often does.
However, the gods do not answer his call, not when he intertwines his hand with hers, pulls it away, pushes it back, testing the waters. He tightens his grip on hers, and he'd hear the shake in her breath, relieved.
They do not answer when she kisses him softly, gently, like she is afraid he might break, and he gasps for the first time, his head dizzy with a feeling he no longer wants to push away.
The gods do not linger when she kisses him a second time, and then the third time. He does not pull away, only shakily returns it. She smiles through the kiss, and Kaz almost falls to the floor.
Fate does not write itself for Kaz Brekker, nor Inej Ghafa, but they restore the wires, and chips at their armor, one touch at a time. Fate does not hold it against them when Kaz Rietveld holds Inej Ghafa silently in his arms like she is the anchor to his heart in the dead of the night.
He'd lain down his cane, and her, she'd lain down her knives. Then they'd slowly take off everything else and laid themselves bare in the dark.
He swears she'd see everything anyway, and he'd always find her in the darkest and most silent of nights. Inej demanded to be seen, or it was he that demanded himself to never part from her presence.
He is Kaz Brekker, the mastermind behind the Ice Court heist. He is Kaz Rietveld, brother of Jordie Rietveld, the boy who died in a lonely sea of corpses. He is Dirtyhands, and he gets the job done. He is seventeen and enthralled with the idea of getting drunk on her laugh every single night.
'Too many names,' she'd teased, but she kissed him like she loved every inch and crevice of all that he is and all of the cracks in the longest scheme he's been pulling for years. But in his faults and empty spaces, she clicks perfectly in its place, like a rusty lock left long enough without its key. They'd figured out how to break the code without the right answer, cheated their way out, risks be damned.
Kaz Brekker. Kaz Rietveld. Dirtyhands. Bastard of the Barrel. He'd somehow fooled the whole country, but Inej had always managed to see through him, past his facade, like a camel passing through the eye of a needle. What a talented acrobat she is.
'Kaz,' his name rolling off her tongue like honey. She takes off his mask, without a single noise, not out of paralyzing fear, but of reverent, unforgiving love. Kaz was enough.
His heart beats, an echo in the damp, dirty streets of Ketterdam. Her heart follows — brick by brick, chip by chip, one day at a time.
Ten years in, and no longer does the water lap at his ankles, the ghosts of what used to be threatening to pull him down like shackles — but when they persistently do, she takes him tightrope walking, teaches him to fly over and beyond the sea.
She teaches him to hold onto the sweet, airy feeling of hope, so when he drowns, there is nothing that stops him from swimming back up. And from there, she'll take his hand, every time, and smile at him like home.
He's home.