Chapter Text
You remember trying to run after Kaz as he had been loaded to the carriage to be taken away. The authorities tried to tell you that your friend is dead, taken away by the Plague, they were holding you in place to protect you from getting infected. But you just knew he wasn’t dead. They hadn’t looked at him hard enough. You screamed at them like a banshee, making everyone know about your rage and agony, and only after the carriage was too far away for you to see, you sunk on your knees, wailing on the ground, cursing the cruel world. Kaz and his brother were taken away from your life, making you walk alone. Jordie dying was bad already, but you could have had Kaz by your side, you would have been children but you would have stayed together, survived together.
You couldn’t stay in Ketterdam after all what had happened, and found work from an elderly couple at the other side of Kerch, at a small, remote farm. You worked for them as a maid, helping with their food, crops and animals and played with their grandchildren. They were good for you, kind, caring, like your grandparents you never knew. They knew about your past, about your encounter with Pekka Rollins and how it ultimately had led to you losing the only family you ever knew, two brothers who you just had happened to run into all those years ago and immediately bonded with Kaz. How you had felt like you had a real family for the first time ever. How you had experienced your first crush with Kaz. The first boy you ever held hands with and have your heart racing, the first boy you had given a kiss on his cheek as a promise to always be with him. And how you couldn't keep that promise. They had reassured you, made you stop blaming yourself for what happened. The Plague mercilessly struck everyone it encountered, and that Kaz would be glad that you survived. It took many sleepless nights and you sleeping next to them because of nightmares, but ultimately nightmares eased out, almost stopped, and you could finally be at peace.
But after the couple had passed away after you had worked for them for over fifteen years, you left the farm. Their children tried to offer their home to you as a token of gratitude of taking so good care of them in their last years, saying that you were just as important to them as their biological grandchildren were, but you couldn’t take it. You had to face your demons from your childhood, return to Ketterdam, finally say your goodbyes and let go of Kaz and Jordie before leaving Kerch, settling to somewhere else, starting an entirely new life.
But little had you known that you’d stumble to a sign of a crow above a building - a crow that you recognized had been made from your little sketches you scribbled of crows as you and Kaz had sat at the alleyway feeding them, or at least it very much looked like that. Had someone found your sketches? So of course, you were intrigued to see what was up.
“We’re closed!” you heard a man yell as you stepped in, and you flinched in surprise.
“I’m sorry… I just wanted to ask you if-” your sentence was cut short as you saw a man with a cane approaching you, a Zemeni boy and Suli girl close behind. And the moment you saw his eyes, it struck right through you.
Kaz?
He was older, had a different posture and if you had seen him from afar, you wouldn't have recognized him, maybe been a bit intimidated. But you'd recognize those eyes anywhere. You had gotten lost in them in your childhood dream cotton candy castles so many times that you'd never forget the shape or the exact color of them. There was no mistaking it.
“Kaz?” you gasped, looking at him like you had just seen a ghost. And for a moment, you were seeing just that. He was dead. He couldn’t be there in front of you. But as much as your brains tried to scream at you that it’s just a doppelganger, that you're seeing wrong, that you had held up a hope of him surviving after all these years and you’re seeing something nonexistent, your heart punched your brain and screamed back that you’d recognize your best friend even if you were blindfolded and would have to feel his face. You had spent way too much time with him so you’d be mistaken.
“Who are you? What are you doing here at the Crow Club?” he asked, his voice had barely any emotion.
His face was stone cold as he looked at you, the warmth and friendliness long gone. The lighting was poor at the club and you could see he didn’t recognize you, or at least didn't show it if he did, so you tried to smile at him, even when your smile came out to be shaky and awkward. “Kaz, it’s me. Your best friend.”
His eyes widened slightly as it struck on him too, and you couldn’t contain your smile spreading a little wider at that confirmation. It was really him.
“I thought you were dead,” you let out a choked sob and without wasting another moment, you lunged in for a hug, barely seeing how Kaz’s two companions drew out a knife and a gun at your sudden movement as a reflex, and Kaz barely had time to halt them. You had missed him so much, thinking all these years that he was dead, telling your brains over and over again that you couldn’t have done anything more, that you have to go on without him and Jordie, that you’d survive, Kaz would have wanted you to continue with your life. But still a small voice was always telling you that you should have stayed in Ketterdam, that what if Kaz had survived and had to go on without you, what if he was starving to death, scared and alone, thinking you had abandoned him.
If you only had known.
Kaz stiffened up immediately after you threw yourself on him, not even hugging you back and wriggled away from your grasp almost immediately. He stumbled to lean against the wall and didn’t even look at you, avoiding your gaze and without another word, he quickly started making his way up the stairs. The Suli girl looked at you, then at Kaz’s retreating form and back at you, slowly lowering her knife.
“You know Kaz?” she asked after a moment and you slowly nodded, still staring after your former best friend who had just disappeared through the door.
“Yeah… we were best friends as children, inseparable.” you swallowed, holding back tears, as you muttered, “He’s mad at me for abandoning him.”
The Zemeni guy with revolvers sighed, flipping the gun back to its holster as you posed no threat. “I don’t think it’s that.”
“No, you don’t understand. I… I left Ketterdam when I thought he had died. I couldn’t stay here with all those memories. This is the first time in fifteen years I lay foot in Ketterdam and… the first thing I get to know is that he’s alive and that… I abandoned him, I didn’t even look for him.” you took in a shaky breath, as you whispered, “I should have looked for him.”
The Suli girl swallowed, clearly contemplating if she should say anything, but seeing the confusion and pain in your eyes made her talk. “Kaz has… difficulties with touch. He gets... episodes when someone touches him. But he doesn’t admit it and hasn’t told anyone what happened. It’s not because of you.”
“Yeah, he doesn’t like to be touched by anyone.” the Zemeni boy mused and moved to lean against the bar counter. “Not even people who are closest to him. If there is any.”
You were all silent for a bit, and you took in a deep sigh. The Zemeni boy gestured to the bar stool beside you. “Care to stay for a drink? You look like you need to talk to someone.”
You nodded, sitting down and laying your head to your hands as he took a bottle and poured you a shot, gently pushing it in front of you.
Kaz had been alive all this time. You could have been with him.
“I’m Jesper, by the way. And this lovely lady…” Jesper pointed at the Suli girl. “Is Inej.”
Jesper tried to enlighten the heavy mood, sensing how you were having a storm in your head right now, but you just downed the drink, squeezing your eyes shut as you coughed at the burning feeling. You hadn’t drank alcohol ever before, but this giant packet of information shoved onto you this sudden made you think you might need it, but it didn't make you feel any better so you didn't pour another.
Kaz has been alive, and I didn’t do anything.
Your head repeated it like a mantra.
Jesper and Inej looked at each other worriedly, glancing at the office door and then back at you.
Inej put her hand over your arm, and you looked at it. “He’ll recover. And he’ll talk to you when he’s ready.”
“I abandoned him, why he would want to talk to me?” you squeezed your eyes shut, a single tear escaped from your eye and rolled over your cheek but you immediately wiped it away as you realized it. I'm not going to cry, not in front of Kaz's friends.
Jesper shook his head. “He’s just shocked. He doesn’t open up about his past to anyone… so seeing someone who has known him before he became the infamous Dirtyhands-”
“Dirtyhands?” you questioned. Inej and Jesper looked at each other again.
“Yeah, he’s kinda… a big crime boss around here. He's known as Dirtyhands. Bastard of the Barrel. Everyone knows him.”
You snorted, thinking that Jesper was still trying to make you laugh to make you feel better. “Yeah, right.”
But as silence ensued and you looked at Jesper, he and Inej looked uncomfortable, not knowing how much Kaz had changed since childhood since you seemed to have a completely different picture of him, your eyebrows furrowed upon realizing they weren't messing around.
“You mean to say that he kills people?”
He slowly nodded. “That, and a lot more. And he uses rather gruesome ways. To the extent where most of us are terrified of him when he gets angry, only the fools and newbies aren't, but they learn quickly.”
You swallowed, turning your gaze back to your hands resting on the table, clutching around the shot glass - what on earth had happened to your best friend?