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You had been left with no choice. It was either Inej and Jesper or that family, and you had lunged for your friends, having to watch how a whole family had gotten slaughtered. In any other case, you would have lunged for the family because Inej and Jesper would be more than capable to defend themselves, but not in this case. In this case, they had been injured. You would have had to sacrifice them, of course you chose them. But you couldn’t erase the echoes of the innocent kids screaming in pain from your mind.
But Inej and Jesper, they were part of your family. They had saved your life before, you couldn’t leave them.
Now you had sat in Kaz’s office for the last few hours, trying to find comfort from his presence and his scent from the pillow that you got from his bed as he sorted out some documents, mainly getting ridden of useless papers. Occasionally, he stopped to browse through a document and making notes to it, pushing it to one of the drawers and then returning to other documents.
“Am I a bad person?” you suddenly mumbled, and Kaz stopped with going through his pile of papers for a moment, but not lifting his gaze from the table. He thought about the right answer for a moment - Dirtyhands wanted to say that you all were bad people and you had to be, living in the Barrel, but Kaz also knew that if he answered with that, you would feel even worse.
“You did a bad thing for a good reason.” he finally said, lifting his gaze to you, but you didn’t meet his eyes.
“But is it worth it if they died because of me?” you choked out, taking in a shaky breath and hiccuped.
“If you had saved them, Inej and Jesper would be dead. You would likely be dead too,” Kaz told you, even though knowing you already knew that. “And there's no guarantee the family would have survived even if you chose to save them. You would have ran into the crossfire, it would have been a huge kick of luck had you succeeded. You had no choice.”
“But if-”
He lifted his hand, and you swallowed your words down, knowing that arguing with Kaz about it wouldn’t get you anywhere. You hugged the pillow a little tighter against your chest, and Kaz sighed, putting the papers down and limping up to you.
“Look at me,” he quietly said, trying his best to be gentle and loving. Even though you had been together for some time, he hadn’t really learned how to act like a boyfriend yet. It was foreign for him to take care of someone, to love someone like this, to show his love. Only thing that made you a couple were those looks you gave each other, and the way you talked to each other when no one else saw you.
You slowly lifted your gaze to him, trying to blink your tears away. Kaz sighed again, gently wiping your tears off with his gloved hands. He very rarely touched you, actually mostly only if he absolutely had to, like that time when he yanked you behind a cover when someone shot towards you, and that gesture alone meant a lot to you. He gave you his handkerchief for you to finish wiping your tears off and then pulled a chair to sit across from you. You sat in silence for a bit as you tried to calm down, Kaz just watching and trying to be there for you as much as he could. It was the first of the kind, and he didn’t really know what to do, but it seemed like his presence and you knowing that he tries to be there for you was enough.
And it was. It was more than enough.