Work Text:
I Save My Anger (For You)
Kaz does not get angry.
At least not in the sense that Inej knows. He does not get angry in the same way that Matthias or Jesper, or even Nina get. They all have their own tells, their own habits and hints as to their raging emotions and the whirlwind of their own hearts.
She has learned to read the opposites in Kaz.
Where Matthias or Jesper get louder when they are angry, Kaz is quiet. He draws in upon himself, his cane set before him and his hands clasped over the silver crow head. His thumbs caress the eyes of the crow skull. His lips press thin, highlighting the scar on his upper lip.
Nina huffs and sighs and shouts. Her cheeks color with rage and sometimes when she is particularly angry she will cry and leave. Her motions become a rush of movement, a hurriedness that lends itself to neither stealth nor grace. Inej has watched Nina knock over three coffee cups, two water bottles and an umbrella rack before in her rush to exit a room once.
Kaz slows down. He gets quieter and more conscious of his actions. There are times when he is so frustrated or so caught up in planning that Inej does not notice he has slipped into the room until his cane clicks behind her and he’s asking her to move.
It is rare that he surprises her like that, and even rarer that he becomes as such.
But that is the extent of Kaz’s anger.
Inej was previously under the impression that Kaz was simply one of those individuals that didn’t get angry. He got frustrated, a little disgruntled, and perhaps existed continually in a state of mild disgust or vexation.
She is proven wrong on a muggy Saturday morning.
It happens so fast that she almost misses it.
She was discussing her philosophy class and the differences in thought from each major era’s thinker to the next and what drove them when she felt it. A rush of adrenaline followed by a breath on the back of her neck, the scent of steel in the air.
Kaz’s eyes had been fixed on her.
Dark eyes so void of light they almost appear black in the gloom of the evening narrowed and focused in so quickly that Inej didn’t even have a chance to draw her own knife.
The cane serves dual purposes, as she finds out.
Blood sings through the air. The sound of cracked bones and a shout of surprise as the silver head of Dirtyhand’s cane thuds against flesh.
Inej whirls away, drawing two of the knives at her side- a switch blade that she bought at home, and a straight blade Kaz had given her when she moved into his flat. But Kaz already has handled the thug.
Handled and continues to handle, as the silver head of his cane rises and falls in such quick succession Inej is momentarily afraid.
There’s a sickening crack, and then Kaz relents, straightening up, breathing hard as he very slowly takes a step off the thug.
Inej isn’t quite sure the man is breathing.
She isn’t quite sure she has the strength to tear her gaze off Kaz at the moment to check.
He’s winded, taking in deep gasps of air and letting them whoosh out of his gangly frame. His grip is so tight on his cane that his gloves squeeze against the polish wood, and he’s so caught up in the moment that instead of lowering it to the ground to help stabilize him he places his free hand against the side of the building. His pale skin is flush with exertion, and he stares at the body that might become a corpse with such an expression that Inej wonders what history they could have had.
“Kaz.” His name is a whisper off her lips, but he jerks and turns back to her.
He stares at her for a moment. His jaw is set, his lips pulled back into a wordless snarl, his eyes alight with something dark and twisted.
Blood drips off the silver crow beak to the ground.
Kaz let's out a long slow breath before adjusting his gloves. He bends down, wiping the head of his cane on the barely breathing man’s shirt.
“We’ll call the police and let them know.” Kaz says, his voice shaky despite the forced fluidity of his movements. “Need them to pick up patrols if there are idiots trying to rob people so close to the university.”
Inej stares at him a moment longer, memorizing the aftermath of his expression, before she turns her back and stows her knives.
They walk a block away, the steady click-tap of Kaz’s cane the only sound shared between them.
“What were you saying about Nietzche?” Kaz asks after a moment, after his grip on his cane isn’t so tight and his jaw has unlocked.
Inej shrugs. “I don’t recall.”
As far as philosophers go, Nietzche wasn’t the best. He wasn’t the worst by any means and he had no doubt influenced the modern world, but there were thoughts and abstracts that Inej herself didn’t agree with and could find fault or assumptions made in Nietzche’s own thinking. An overarching one being that she believed in Saints whereas he believed that they were dead.
“Refresh my memory then.” Kaz replies in his rock-salt rasp, just as he pulls out his phone, thumb a careful click of buttons on the touchpad as he types. He clicks his tongue, a sound of annoyance before she sees his thumb jerk up to the back key.
It was rare for Kaz to mistype.
Perhaps he was simply flustered after the mugging.
After being so mad.
Inej filed the information away in the back of her mind.
She had seen Kaz Brekker, Dirtyhands of Ketterdam University mad. She had seen him feral and scared, with his teeth gritted and winded. She had seen his carefully crafted image of cool and collected shift and fall apart, if only for a moment.
“Are you okay?” Kaz asks, the topic change is unexpected but not unwelcome. “You usually aren’t so careless.”
She is not usually so careless, but perhaps she was today because she had been distracted. She had been caught up in the way Kaz’s expression had shifted. She had been thinking about the slight quirk of his lips and how his eyes didn’t seem quite so dark as he listened to her.
“Not normally.” She agrees after a beat. “But perhaps I was thinking.”
One of Kaz’s eyebrows arches up, lazy and calculated. She can see the gears turning behind his eyes, the soft crinkle of his eyes as he reconsiders her and the small flex of his lips. “Oh? Of what?”
Of plenty of things.
She thinks that she would not be so comfortable with any other man. Not after that night, not after Heleen and her schemes. Inej knows that with any other man she would not feel so safe, so comfortable in her space with him being so close to her.
“I heard rumors that Madame Heleen is running something under the table. Perhaps you should look into it.” Inej replies after a moment.
If Kaz was willing to nearly kill a man for mugging her, Inej can only imagine what he’ll do once he sinks his teeth into Heleen.
Kaz hums, his hands folding around his cane. “I’ll look into it then.”
That is all Inej has to give him, all she has to say or imply for Kaz to pick up the scent. He needs no more information, needs no more hints as to why Heleen is of interest to her.
He gives her a look, just a small one as they round the corner and stop to consider their options for dinner. It’s reminiscent of the look he had when the thug had grabbed her. For just a moment she sees him, anger boiling over, nostrils flared and eyes narrowed, and then it passes.
“Does she relate to…?” Kaz asks.
It is not necessary for the job for him to know.
“Yes.”
She sees the look again. A flash of malice across his face as his leather gloves squeak and groan against the crow head of his cane.
“I’ll take care of it.”
He says it slow and soft, voice barely above a whisper.
He will. She has no doubt.
Heleen will burn. Kaz will make sure of it.