Work Text:
Inej jolted awake, heart pounding and limbs flailing. The blankets pulled at her, greedy, like hands grasping at her skin. She couldn’t breathe. Fingers dug into her neck, a palm against her windpipe.
With a gasp, she threw the covers from the bed. She scrambled back, knocking her skull against the headboard, and pulled her knees to her chest.
Slowly, the dark room came into focus around her - the writing desk with her parents’ letters scattered across it, the armoire with its door ajar and the sleeve of her coat peeking through, the plush armchair beside the bed.
The chair was empty tonight. She wished it weren’t, but Kaz could not spend every night drowsing in it. With a sigh she ran a hand through her hair, breathing deeply as she worked her fingers through the knots her tumultuous sleep had woven. By the time she had finished her heart had slowed, but the tension still sat heavy in her muscles. She sighed again and swung her legs to the floor.
She knew by now that there would be no return to sleep for a while.
On her ship, she would trek across the deck, let the wind blow through her hair and the spray of the sea kiss her skin. She would look at the stars and think of all the stories her father had told her about them. She supposed she could climb up to the roof and take in the stars tonight, but it wouldn’t be the same with the perpetual smog of the industrial parts of Ketterdam rising up on the horizon.
Instead, she stepped silently through the hallway and down the stairs, her aim a hot cup of the spiced tea Jesper bought for her in Little Ravka. However, when she reached the ground floor landing, she found herself standing in a faint light emanating from the parlor. It had to be two or three bells in the morning. Who else was awake at this hour?
She stepped into the doorway and saw Wylan curled up in a chair. He was turned away from her, staring into the fire that burned in the grate, a forgotten glass of water on the coffee table in front of him. Inej knocked gently on the doorframe.
He whipped his head around, curls flying and freezing at odd angles as he startled.
“You can’t sleep?” she asked.
Wylan shook his head, shoulders dropping as he turned back to the fire. Inej padded across the room to the chair opposite his and folded herself into it, leaning ever so slightly toward the heat of the flames. They were silent for a bit, and then Wylan murmured,
“I didn’t want to wake up Jesper again.”
“Why not?”
“He doesn’t deserve it.”
Wylan sank down in his chair with a sigh.
“I wake him up too much already. I thought it would get better, but . . . I don’t know.”
Inej knew the frustration in his voice all too well.
“I wake Kaz a lot too,” she said, “When he’s around. Sometimes I try not to, but he’s far too light a sleeper.”
“I still don’t believe that he actually sleeps.”
Inej chuckled and leaned back, resting her hands over her crossed ankles.
“Jesper doesn’t mind.”
“I mind,” Wylan muttered, dropping his head to the arm of the chair.
“I know,” Inej murmured.
They let silence fall again, until Wylan brought his eyes to hers and asked,
“What was your dream about?”
“The Menagerie. You?”
“My father.”
Wylan let out a huff.
“The least our minds could do is give us some variety,” he said.
“I don’t know if that would be any better,” Inej admitted.
She had new fears that had started to worm their way into her dreams. Visions of ships burning and people screaming, her friends’ voices among them. She shivered and slid from the chair, scooting across the carpet until she was right beside the fire.
“No . . . Probably not.”
Wylan ran a hand through his hair and scowled, for a moment his gaze far away.
“I just . . . We won,” he said, “I won. This is my house now. It’s my money, my power, but I still . . . He still . . .”
“He haunts you.”
Wylan nodded.
“Like a wraith,” she said with a smile.
Wylan let out a startled laugh and shook his head.
“You’re a much better haunting,” Wylan said, turning to look at her again, “All you do is drink our tea and eat our cakes. You don’t talk about how you should’ve drowned me as a child.”
A pang cut through Inej’s chest.
“It hurts me to know your hurt,” she said, a Suli phrase spoken from her heart.
“Me too,” he said, picking at a loose thread on the seat cushion, “Knowing your hurt, I mean.”
Inej nodded and turned her gaze to the fire again.
“They haunt me too,” she murmured, “The men who came to me . . . I can smell it still, the cologne some of them wore . . .”
Wylan heaved out a heavy sigh.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, “I’m complaining, but you’ve had it so much worse.”
Inej whipped her head around and shook it vigorously, stray locks of hair falling into her face.
“My pain doesn’t make yours easier to bear.”
“It’s true though. What you went through . . . Jesper too, with his mother-“
“You lost your mother too.”
“Yeah, but she turned out to be alive.”
“Her being here now doesn’t erase the fact that you lost her. Just like the fact that I want to kiss Kaz can’t erase the feeling of a grown man forcing his lips onto mine.”
Inej scooted closer to Wylan’s chair and leaned her head against the side of it, speaking again before he could respond,
“Jesper’s mother loved him. His father loves him too. And my parents - not a day goes by that they aren’t still heartbroken they couldn’t protect me. At the Menagerie I would think of them. The memories of them comforted me.”
She looked up at Wylan.
“I cannot imagine what it’s like to grow up with a parent but without their love.”
Wylan swallowed and tore his eyes away from hers, but she caught the glint of tears in the corners, cast orange by the firelight.
“I’m just . . .” He sucked in a deep breath, “I’m tired of being afraid. I thought, after everything we did, after everything I did, I wouldn’t be afraid anymore, but I . . .”
Inej nodded.
“But no matter how strong you are now, you cannot change what happened to you,” she said, pulling her knees to her chest and resting her chin on them, fingers brushing over the chipped paint on her toes.
Two days ago, Jesper had insisted she test out the polish he had colored with his fabrikation. In truth she liked the color, but, as she’d warned him, it would not survive long the way she ran around on rooftops. As her thumb passed over a nail, another chip of polish pulled free.
“I used to paint my nails at the Menagerie,” she murmured as Wylan wiped his eyes, “Purple, like the silks.”
“Why did you let Jesper put that on you then?”
“Because I’m tired of being afraid too.”
“. . . Afraid of kissing?”
Inej froze as Wylan shook ever so slightly in the chair beside her.
“I would . . .” He began, unable to keep his composure and dissolving into giggles, “I would be afraid to kiss Kaz too!”
Faster than he could see, Inej had grabbed a pillow from another chair and smacked him across the shoulder with it.
“Hush!” She commanded, raising the pillow again as he fell to the side and laughed in earnest.
Wylan stuck out a leg just as Inej brought the pillow down, catching the cushion with his foot. They grappled like that for a moment before Inej sprung onto the arm of the chair like a cat and threw the pillow down at his face with all her might.
Muffled chuckles filtered through the fabric as Wylan relaxed down into the chair, letting the cushion sit on his face until the strongest of his chuckles subsided. Inej remained perched on the arm, her feet resting on the seat and arms crossed at her breast, glaring at him. When he finally removed the pillow, he met her gaze and dissolved into another fit of giggles, tossing the plush weapon to the floor with an amused sigh.
“You’re the worst,” Inej declared, raising her bare foot toward his face.
“Am not,” Wylan said, pressing his palm against her heel to keep her at bay, “I could get a lot worse though, if you wanted.”
She rolled her eyes and threw her hands up.
“Is this any way to treat a house guest?!”
Wylan snorted and released her now wiggling foot.
“You’re not a guest. You live here.”
“Well maybe I’ll move out.”
“To where? Back to the Slat? There are no giant bathtubs at the Slat.”
“Ugh. I hate when you have a point.”
Wylan laughed again.
“You sound like Jesper when you say that!”
“Alright!” Inej exclaimed, swinging herself free of the chair, “I’ve had enough fun made of me tonight! I’m going back to my bed and my giant bathtub!”
She raised her chin and stomped to the doorway, her steps still quieter than average but comically loud for the Wraith. Wylan rose, a final stray chuckle escaping, and doused the fire, plunging the room into darkness, the only light from the moon filtering between the curtains. Inej waited for him to carefully cross the room, hands out at his sides to keep from banging into furniture, and then together they climbed the steps.
“Thank you,” Wylan said when they reached the third floor, “I’m not as scared as I was when I woke up.”
Inej smiled.
“Neither am I,” she said.
“Maybe that’s the best we can hope for,” Wylan mused, “Less afraid than we were before.”
“Fear means something is about to happen,” Inej intoned, the mantra she had repeated to herself again and again, her father’s voice echoing in her mind.
“I don’t really understand why you find that comforting. Aren’t you afraid because of what is about to happen?”
Inej considered this for a moment.
“Yes, but it’s not so much about the scary thing that is going to happen as remembering that I get to choose how I react to it. And that this may be a time I learn something about myself.”
Wylan nodded, tilting his head ever so slightly to the side as he mulled over her words.
“I’d like to meet your family some day,” he said, “The rest of them I mean, in Ravka. It sounds like they give good advice, and I could use a lot.”
“Just don’t listen to my cousin then. One time he was bitten by a snake because he thought it would be a good idea to wear it as part of his costume that evening.”
Wylan snorted and shook his head, turning toward his and Jesper’s bedroom.
“Goodnight, Inej. And thanks.”
“Goodnight, Wylan.”
She returned to her own room, carefully pulling the sheets back into place and sliding beneath the covers.
“Less afraid than I was before,” she whispered into the quiet of the night, and then she closed her eyes and drifted to sleep.