Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

7 YEARS AGO

Plague spreads quickly in the Barrell — too quickly to be contained properly. Contracting firepox was inevitable when the nights became so cold that the three children had to huddle up together in a dinghy, dirty alleyway.  Contracting firepox was inevitable when Jordie began to slur his words and sleep listlessly with fever after a few days working at the docks — the same docks where the Queen’s Lady had delivered its infected cargo.

Yara was the last of the three to be infected. 

The fever came first for her, wracking her body with chills. If she were feeling up to jesting, she would have remarked that firepox was aptly named; her body felt as if liquid inferno was surging through her veins.

The pustules were the next to develop. The started small, only about a centimeter wide, before they grew into cracking, oozing monstrosities. They burned when she touched them and itched wildly when she did not, and soon her entire body was covered with them. Boils snaked down her arms and legs, up her neck, and carved themselves a home into her face: on her left cheek, below her lower lip, on the right side of her forehead. The skin became engorged, inflamed, and hot to the touch. 

At 8 years old, Yara was expected to die quickly. But it was Jordie, the oldest, who died first. He stopped breathing sometime during the night, when the fever finally became too strong and overtook him, and no one was around to hear his last words.

Kaz and Yara kept his body with him for two days after his passing, as if they could will their brother to come back if they loved him strong enough. They weren’t ready to let him go. In truth, they would never be ready to let him go. 

Yara did not see her brothers get taken away. Kaz had instructed her to sleep in an abandoned cellar in the alleyway after Jordie’s passing, and when the bodymen had taken away her brothers, Yara had been concealed underground, shivering with sickness. 

The boils on her body wept bloodied pus, soiling the floor of the cellar until the whole place smelled of rotting, decaying flesh. Yara scratched at the pustules until they burst and spewed beneath her fingers, and kept clawing away until chunks of flesh began falling out. 

She scratched the disease out from every expanse of skin on her body, until nothing was leaking from her except for blood. 

She survived the fever. 

She survived the pustules. 

She survived the infection.

Now, she had to survive without her brothers. 

2 YEARS AFTER THE OUTBREAK

The firepox left her skin covered in nasty, blackened, raised spots that refuse to fade. It was not an uncommon condition for those who survived the plague, but it immediately identified her as one of the formerly ill. 

To the citizens of Ketterdam, it branded her as diseased. 

While surviving the plague granted her immunity to firepox and meant she was no longer contagious, the blackened scars reminded everyone of the horrors of the disease, causing them to avoid her entirely for fear of infection. With the remnants of the plague embedded into her skin, no one was willing to hire Yara for even the simplest of jobs.

If she had been a daughter of a wealthy nobleman, Yara could have had her skin tailored to be normal again. ( If I was a daughter of a wealthy nobleman, Yara thought bitterly. My brothers and I never would have gotten firepox at all. ) 

But the services of tailors were incredibly expensive, and concealing her scars would force Yara to pay for their services at least twice a week. Not to mention, the owners of indentured grisha were unlikely to sell their tailor’s services to a measly gutter rat. 

Instead, Yara stole makeup. In a crowded marketplace, a small container of Ravkan makeup easily goes missing. It also helps that the makeup is incredibly low quality; no respective gentlewoman would wear it if not for necessity. But no respective gentlewoman would be shopping for luxury items inside a Ketterdam market. 

The pigmented cream does little to cover up the cracks and blisters, but it corrects the discoloration of the black spots. With a made up face, Yara struggled less to get employment.

She shoveled shit. She mended dresses. She stoked fires. She cleaned inns. She stayed clear of gangs. She earned money little by little until she had enough to keep rent at an inn, and grew into enough of a young woman to be trusted to sell wares at the market. 

She tried to forget about her brothers’ deaths and the plague. She tried to forget about Jacob Hertzoon. She tried to forget about the scars that lurk underneath her carefully made up face, the ones internal and external.

She tried to forget Yara Rietveld. 

On the other side of Ketterdam, Kaz tried to do the same.

Chapter Text

PRESENT 

The charming Zemeni man visits her stall in Ketterdam’s marketplace every week, flashing her a pearly white smile and fiddling with the two revolvers around his waist as he browses the various selections of freshly baked treats and pastries. 

Despite the ever present threat of force, Yara never feels threatened by the man. Well, man is a subjective term; the teen is likely two years her senior, around 17 if her intuition is correct. Despite the tattoo on his forearm which indicates him to be one of the Dregs, he never fails to pay her in full for an order of sugar sweet stroopwafels, sometimes slipping her extra kruge with a wink. She’s never asked him where it comes from but, heist money or not, Yara treasures the extra money nonetheless. . 

After a few months of him visiting her every Sunday for a fresh stroopwafel with extra syrup, the Zemeni reveals that his name is Jesper. He tells it to her through a mouthful of waffle, shoving the confection into his mouth so hastily it makes her smile. He winks at her again in that ever charming way, and puts his pointer finger over his lips as if this is a huge secret. 

He’s a Dreg, so she’s not sure if it should be one or not. Names are as valuable as kruge, and she tucks Jesper into a small corner of her heart and swears to keep his name safe. Jesper doesn’t ask for her name in return, a sentiment she appreciates, but she tells him anyway. He tells her it’s a nice name for a nice girl, and in his own words, “very Kerch.”

She’s too scared to say that they’re becoming friends. A friend isn’t a luxury she’s been able to afford for a long time — not since her brothers’ passing. But Jesper seems less hesitant to the prospect despite being a known member of a gang, and begins bringing friends to accompany him to the stroopwafel stall. 

Yara is introduced to a reserved Suli girl named Inej, and a curly haired brunette named Nina. Occasionally, Jesper brings his partner Wylan with him, but they’re usually too busy gazing lovingly to entertain proper conversation. They’re all Dregs, but you can’t get far in Ketterdam without befriending a few gang members. Yara never asks them about their criminal activity, and they never ask why a 15 year old girl works at a food stall with a man that must be bordering on centuries old. They never ask about the concealed scars on her face, neck, and hands buried beneath layers of cheap makeup, and she pretends to not hear about the whispers on the street of the people they have ‘taken care of.’ 

It’s Sunday again, so Yara waits at the stroopwafel stall, eyes eagerly scanning the crowds for the people she has begun to call friends. She catches sight of Jesper’s face and smiles at his obnoxiously royal purple trench coat poorly concealing the twin guns beneath. She raises a hand to wave, but falters. 

There is another man accompanying Jesper. Thin, almost skeletal. A severe jawline and raging black eyes. He wears a simple, severe black suit and a matching black hat. In his hand is a sleek black cane topped with a golden crow; a reaper’s scythe. Everything in his face spells displeasure as he looks with disgust and moves stiffly through the bustling marketplace. 

She hopes Jesper hasn’t brought someone to kill her. 

The mystery man and her friend soon arrive at the stroopwafel stall, a loud, proud smile on Jesper’s face.

“I got the boss to come with me this time, darling,” Jesper informs her, smirking impishly. Yara’s gaze uneasily shifts to the other man, before quickly redirecting to Jesper’s beaming face. 

“Would ‘the boss’ like a stroopwafel too?” she asks in her typical sales voice, still not facing the other man.

Jesper beams at her, “Darling, that is a brilliant idea, yes —”

“No.” 

Yara tenses at the frigidly sharp tone of the man, and gives a polite smile to Jesper as she fetches his snack. 

Setting the stroopwafel down on the lip of the stall, Yara bites back a laugh as Jesper pours an unsaintly amount of syrup onto the already drenched confection. 

The man raises one finely arched eyebrow as he watches the antics of his companion, and then rolls his eyes. Reaching into the inner pocket of his suit, he fetches out a couple of kruge and drops them unceremoniously onto the stall’s edge. Yara hurries to pick them up before they slip into the flood of syrup that Jesper has left in his wake.

“Are you quite done yet?” he asks Jesper sharply. 

Jesper merely pauses munching on his stroopwafel and shrugs noncommittally. 

“I have —” the man glances shiftily around the bustling marketplace, before landing on Yara waiting expectantly for his response. His eyes bore into her, challenging. “— things to attend to.”

Sensing that the meeting is about to end, Yara leans over the stall and quickly hugs Jesper. Despite the awkward angle, the Zemeni enthusiastically returns her hug. 

The other man looks away as if in disgust at the display of affection, and taps his cane impatiently on the ground. 

“We’re going,” he announces with an air of finality. 

Jesper scoffs at this, reluctantly releasing Yara. He shoots a wry smile to the other man, “Would it kill you to be friendly, Kaz?”

Yara’s hand stops midway through reaching to take back the kruge. 

Kaz. 

Kaz. 

Memories of a childhood long forgotten surge up, unbidden, in her mind. The skin beneath her makeup tingles with phantom itchiness. She thinks of two brothers and a sister huddled up in the slums of Ketterdam, wasting away without anyone to care for them. 

She sees pestilence and death and the ghost of her dead brother standing right before her. 

Her eyes scan him, searching frantically for any indication that this cold, coarse man was once of her blood. Is of her blood.

But once the connection is made, it’s like her brain kicks into overdrive. All she can see is Kaz in front of her. Kaz, who underneath his all-black armour, looks painfully like Jordie. It validates a suspicion she had long forgotten; I always thought he would look like Jordie , she thinks. 

Then reality comes crashing down upon her. Black gloves.  A crow-adorned cane. Weapons undoubtedly hidden beneath his sharply tailored coat. A sinister look in his eyes.

Kaz is her brother — that much is true. But he is now the Bastard of the Barrell, the leader of the notorious Dregs. 

Yara may want her brother back, but there is no assurance that he will want her. Hell, with the years that have passed and the last remnants of their past that she has concealed on her body, he’s unlikely to even recognize her — much less believe her for who she says she is.

Shaking her head as if to dispel an unpleasant buzzing insect, Yara fixes Jesper and her brother a sugary sweet smile. 

“Thank you for coming, Jesper.” Her eyes flicker over to the looming presence of her brother out of the corner of her eye. “And Kaz,” she says quietly. 

Jesper nods enthusiastically, seeming to not have heard her the second part of her goodbye. “Best damn pastries in the city, you bet I’m coming. Take care, darling!”

Kaz does not acknowledge her presence, simply turning around to leave, and Yara pretends that it does not hurt. 

Goodbye, brother. 

Chapter Text

Subtly has never been Yara’s strong suit. The knowledge of her brother’s survival clings onto her mind as she sells her wares, and she finds herself searching for a man with a crow-crested cane in the crowds.

She wants to ask him how he survived. She wants to ask him why he uses that cane. She wants to know about the gloves he wears and how he came to be the leader of the Dregs. A sinister part of her wonders if he was ever able to get revenge on the man that wronged them.

Most of all, she wants to ask if he ever wondered if she was alive. If he ever looked for her. If he ever wanted her to be alive. 

Kaz managed to carve out a piece of the world for himself, no matter how brutal, bloody, and dangerous it was. Yara had nothing to offer him but the reminders of the dead. And if he does love her and want her back in his life? She offers nothing but weakness. 

So she steers clear from the Crow Club, but she remains perpetually on the look-out for her brother. She also perpetually harasses Jesper for clues as to what those answers could be. 

It’s another Sunday, so Yara watches Jesper enthusiastically stuff a stroopwafel down his mouth. It’s selfish, but she can’t help but take advantage of the situation; according to Wylan, Jesper is the most forthcoming with information when he is either a) drinking or b) eating. 

She leans forward with faux casualty. “How have things been?”

“Pretty good,” Jesper says through a mouthful of stroopwafel. He swallows. “Can’t complain: I’m alive.” He smiles cheekily at her, but his eyes hold a certain sadness to it that Yara recognizes in herself. 

Yara pretends not to notice. “How are things going with the Crows?” she asks, keeping her voice low in the bustling marketplace. Jesper working for the Dregs is one of the worst kept secrets in Ketterdam, but talking about gang activities in public is always risky. 

Jesper smirks at her, “That’s classified, darling. And since when are you interested in that stuff?”

Yara brushes aside the question. “I just want to know how my friends are doing. How business is going for you and such.”

Jesper narrows his eyes before barking out a laugh. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking about joining!”

His voice is far too loud even in the ever present background noise of the marketplace, so Yara shushes him quickly. 

“No, I’m not,” she assures him, and something like genuine relief flashes in his eyes. 

“Good to know,” Jesper states, and Yara can tell he means it. He cracks a wry smile at her, “How the hell would I get my stroopwafel if you called it quits here?” 

Yara lets out a genuine laugh. For a moment, she forgets that she is in Ketterdam. The stall smells like syrup, caramelised butter, and baking batter, and the sky is unusually sunny. Jesper becomes just another teenager standing in front of her, laughing while eating treats. The world fades to watercolours. 

Then she hears the cries of “thief!” from the stall over, and the illusion is shattered as quickly as it began. Jesper and Yara watch as a scraggly young child runs away with a handful of Fjerdan textiles, and they share a look of sympathy. They’ve both been that child before. 

Jesper redirects the conversation, drawing Yara’s attention away from the fleeing child. “Seriously, though, when were you so interested in the Crows?” He asks, raising an inquisitive eyebrow at her.  “You can always stop by the Club if you want.”

The offer is sweetly earnest, and Yara feels the warm glow of friendship wash over her. Looking into Jesper’s ears, it feels pointless to lie.

“It’s because of Kaz.” 

Jesper’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline before he lets out a comically loud groan. “That bloke is magnetic, I swear to the Saints.” He shoots her a look as if in disappointment. “Didn’t think you’d fall for the Brekker charm though, darling.” 

Brekker? Pushing that aside, Yara is quick to dispel any misconceptions. “No, of course not. We were…childhood friends.” Not technically a lie. “I just wanted to know how he was doing.”

Jesper looks at her through narrowed eyes, and she suddenly remembers that asking after the wellbeing of a notorious gang leader is suspicious. “Why didn’t he recognize you?” he asks her pointedly. 

“We haven’t seen each other for a long while.” Not a lie. 

Jesper hums. “Well the fucker is alright, if that’s what your asking.” 

She waits for him to say more, but he just continues staring her down in a slightly unnerving way. 

“Did you ever tell him my name?” Yara asks finally. 

Jesper shakes his head no. “Kaz doesn’t bother with the names of people he doesn’t make deals with. Should I have?” 

Yara is quick to shake her head.

A slight frown tugs at the corner of Jesper’s face. “Didn’t leave on the best of terms, did ya?”

“Not intentionally.” 

Jesper squints at her and cracks a wry smile. “You’re being unusually vague today.” He hands her a couple of kruge to pay for the stroopwafel, as well as some additional coins.

Yara snorts. “This conversation isn’t exactly suited for a marketplace.”

Jesper’s face lights up. “You come always come to the Crow Club —” 

“No.” 

Jesper’s face falls, and Yara immediately feels bad. “Sorry, the stall is a full time gig.”

Jesper still looks disappointed, but he doesn’t look utterly crestfallen like before, so Yara considers that an improvement. 

“Well,” Jesper says, reaching into his inner coat pocket and pulling out a small card. “If you ever need me — or any of us, for that matter — just drop by.” He extends the card out to her, a small piece of parchment with an ink drawing of a crow on it and the address of the Crow Club.

Yara carefully takes it from his outstretched hand, smiling. “Thanks, Jesper.” 

The Zemeni merely nods, a mirthful glimmer in his eyes. “Hey, it’s what friends do, right?” 

“Yes,” she repeats under her breath as she watches him walk away. “It’s what friends do.”

Yara turns around and retreats back into the stall to check on the next batch of stroopwafels. 

In the marketplace, with listening ears and watching eyes, a pride of lions lies in wait.

Chapter Text

Two weeks pass, and Yara is still yearning for answers. Hungry for the knowledge that she knows is being kept from her, she begins to target the other Crows that frequent her stalls — with or without Jesper there. However, she quickly realizes that her interrogation skills are severely lacking.

“How have the heists been going?” she asks Wylan on a sunny afternoon, and he chokes on his stroopwafel with such intensity that Yara has to give him a good thwack on the back.

“How are things going with Kaz?” Yara casually questions Inej on a frigid morning, and the usually cool and collected girl turns multiple shades of red in quick succession before disappearing into the crowd. 

When she asks Nina, “Does Kaz ever talk about his family?” the brunette nearly smacks her across the face. 

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Nina hisses at her, scanning the crowd with suspicious eyes. “What the fuck is going on with you, Yara?”

The brunette reaches out from across the side of the stall and grabs a hold of Yara’s sleeve as if she intends to shake some sense into the young teenager, and, in the process, her fingers ghosts over one of the many firepox sores on Yara’s arm. 

Yara quickly wrenches Nina’s fingers from her with a fervour she did not know she possessed. Panic strikes like lightning in her brain, and scenarios run through her head like a stampede of bisons. The sleeve coming up. The scars being revealed to the entire marketplace. Her, jobless, left on the streets just like she was 7 years ago. 

“Don’t touch me,” Yara hisses, pulling away from the other girl as if she was burned. “Don’t ever touch me there.”

Something akin to recognition passes over Nina’s eyes, and the brunette lifts up both hands complacently to show she means no harm. 

“Sorry,” Nina apologizes. 

Guilt and shame fills Yara for a moment — it is a rarity for Nina to apologize, and it feels wasted on something as simple as an overreaction to unwanted touch. 

“No, I’m sorry,” Yara says with a sigh. “It was a stupid question and I shouldn’t have asked.” Not stupid, she thinks to herself. Just desperate. 

“Yes,” the other girl agrees. “It was stupid.” She levels Yara with a razor sharp gaze. “You should know better than to ask questions like that in the Barrel of all places.”

The reprimand sinks into Yara with a dull throb of familiarity. 

“Did you get paid today, Jordie? Did ya?” 

“Yara, not now. Not here.”

“Then when?”

“Yara, we don’t talk about these things where there are listeners.”

“Where are the listeners, Jordie?”

“Everywhere.”

“I’m just…curious, is all,” Yara responds lamely. 

“That’s not a question you should be curious about,” Nina warns. “Kaz would have your head.”

Would he ? A voice in her head chimes sardonically.  Yara inhales heavily. “I know. Sorry. I’m a shit friend. Is there any way I can salvage this conversation?”

Nina looks deadly serious for a moment, stroking her chin thoughtfully. A hint of a smirk appears on the brunette’s face, and Yara groans in recognition for what is to come. 

“A stroopwafel,” Nina declares as if she is a judge delivering a final verdict. She leans forward on her heels. “On the house.”

Yara narrows her eyes. “Are you trying to get me sacked? Quarter price.”

“Half price,” Nina counters. 

“Quarter price.”

“Half price.”

Nina levels her with a stubborn look, and Yara sighs in defeat. “Half price it is.”

The other girl beams and fetches kruge from her pocket as Yara retreats into the stall to obtain Nina’s sugary prize.

Nina munches thoughtfully on the treat before swallowing. “You stay safe, Yara. Can’t have my stroopwafel supplier getting into trouble.”

Yara rolls her eyes but nods. “You too, Nina.”

A FEW HOURS LATER

The rain begins as a light drizzle in the late afternoon. The marketplace is still lively, with only a hint of wetness collecting on the customers as they stop at each stall like train cars at a station. The air becomes slightly chilly, and small puddles collect between the cobblestone bricks. 

It quickly escalates into pouring rain. 

Rain in Ketterdam is one of Yara’s least favourite things. Even standing under the slightly enclosed space of the stall, the rain finds a way to invade, entering diagonally into the stall from the main opening like another customer in search of sweets. Soon enough, a thin layer of water collects on the floor, and the ends of Yara’s dress grow soggy and lightly browned. With a snarl, she hoists up the ends of her dress and bundles them tightly in one hand. It would be okay if the brown indicated dirt — Yara has no qualms with dirt. But the Barrel’s lack of a real sewage system has made it so that shit flows through the streets whenever it rains: into the streets and then into the stall.

One of the primary reasons that Yara hates rain.

Another reason is that the cheap Ravkan makeup she wears is, unfortunately, not waterproof. As the last brave customers to weather the storm stop by, Yara has to prevent herself from subconsciously wiping the flour from her face with her wet sleeves. 

Soon enough, there are no customers willing to face the downpour and the marketplace empties until it is nothing but a hollow remnant of its former self. The rain is annoyingly loud as it pounds against the fabric of the stalls, and, if not for the posts hammered into each of the stalls, Yara would fear they would blow away. Most of the merchants left after the rain became moderately heavy, but the old man who owned the stroopwafel stall had insisted on remaining open. 

“What’s a little rain gonna do, ah?” He had jested in a thick Kerch accent. “We didn’t close during the plague times, dearie. Not going to do it now, not on my watch.”

Yara had been proud of her self restraint for not punching the elderly man at that comment.

Eventually, Yara’s boss comes to reason and orders her to close down the stall. By herself, of course, as he retreats home in the downpour. 

Rolling her eyes, Yara begins the routine of closing down the stall. Ovens off. Single, triple, double check that they’re off. Blinds down. Pray that the rain won’t soak through the fabric because mould would be an absolute bitch to get rid of. Spare rags around the walls — partially to prevent more water from coming in, but also to block any vermin from entering. Lock everything up and pocket the key. Go out and brave the storm.

Exiting the stall, Yara stops short at the group of men waiting outside. They look somewhat ridiculous: fancy tailored suits and gold jewellery, and soaked to the very bone. A mean part of her thinks they look like drenched rats. She plasters on a polite smile and yells over the rain, “We’re closed!”

The men do not respond, so Yara turns around and begins walking. As she splashes through the mixture of shit and water, she strains her ears for the sound of following footsteps. The streets are a cacophony of noise so that solves fuck all, and the thick fog has her squinting to see the usually bright glow of the electric street lamps. 

Yara cuts through a familiar alley on her way to the inn and rounds a corner when a phantom hand reaches out and grabs her by the hair, slamming her roughly against the wet brick wall. Scalp burning and head throbbing, she makes out the forms of the men that were standing outside the stall through blurry eyes. Her gaze shifts across the alleyway, noticing the two men stationed at each end. They’ve boxed her in like a mouse in a trap. 

The man who slammed her against the wall puts his thigh between her legs and his arms on either side, caging her in. She registers the cold press of metal against the side of her skull, and sees a man with a gun cocked at her out of the corner of her eye. 

She can’t speak, can’t even procure sounds from her vocal cords to scream for help. It would be pointless anyways — the rain is far too loud, and people in the Barrel are far too callous to lend help. The man holding her smirks, showing off a golden canine. 

She wants to rip it out of his fucking mouth. 

“Hello there, darling ,” the man croons in a voice sweet as syrup and cold as the rain. There are laughs from the other men, but it is too dark to see their mouths. To Yara, it sounds like the shadows are laughing at her misfortune. 

In that moment, Yara realises that she only likes it when Jesper calls her darling. Coming out of this man’s mouth, it feels venomous. Predatory. 

The man takes notice of her displeasure. The pistol to her right burrows into her head painfully. He gives her a wide, sinister grin and chuckles. “Not a fan of pet names? I thought for sure you would be…”

He trails off as if in thought, staring at Yara with beady eyes. He snarls, “Or is it just that we aren’t fuckin’ Dregs?”

Yara shudders as the man leans closer until his sour smelling breath tickles her ear. “I bet you only let that Zemeni bastard fuck you.”

Rage surges through her, and the man cackles as he withdraws. “My trade is information, sweetheart. You let me know what your little friends have been planning, and I let you live.”

A stupid, childish part of her wants to yell, My brother is the leader of the Dregs! You’ll pay for this. But a voice that sounds suspiciously like Nina warns her that this will only make the situation worse. 

“I don’t know anything,” Yara hisses. “I sell them stroopwafels, they give me kruge. That’s it.”

The golden toothed man shakes his head and makes a soft tsk - tsk at her. “Then why are you asking so many fucking questions, girl?” He whispers harshly. 

Fuck, she thinks. “I’m just curious,” she retorts defensively. 

A low voice chimes beside her, “And I’m curious about how this bitch’s brains will splatter when I shoot her fucking face off.”

The man directly in front of her sighs as if in faux sympathy, “You’ll have to pardon my colleague. He’s a little—” The man licks his lips, his gold canine flashing. “—overambitious.”

“I don’t know anything, sir, really,” Yara pleads, attempting to reason with the man. “They never tell me anything, I swear!”

The pistol next to her head clicks and Yara holds her breath. The man in front of her taps on his chin contemplatively, before raising a hand up in a ‘stop’ motion. The pressure of the pistol lessens from her head, and the golden toothed man backs away from her and turns around. 

Relief soaks into her skin like the sun peeking through the crowds. Then, the man turns around quickly, and punches her square in the face. 

Yara falls to the ground from the force of the punch, collapsing into a puddle. The sound of sloshing footsteps approaches, and before she can rise from the ground, a volley of blows hit her ribs, back, and stomach. Yara moans in pain, desperately trying to scurry away, but the men grip her upper arms and force her to a halt. 

Her face is assaulted with more punches before a hand begins snaking up from the bottom of her dress. Only then does Yara begin screaming bloody murder. 

“Get off of me! Get the fuck off of me!” She yells, thrashing wildly. One hand becomes multiple, and prodding and pulling fingers yank off the pair of fleece leggings beneath her skirts. They hold her down by the ankles and force her legs apart, leering, almost feline eyes watching her in smug satisfaction. 

Yara has heard stories of this happening to young girls; gang rape was commonplace in the Barrel. Never one man, always multiple. Yara feels bile rise to her throat. They’re going to take turns and then leave her to die. They would force themselves inside of her and leave traces of themselves behind, and then they would beat her bloody until her blood ran with the shit and rain on the streets. 

Yara makes a split second decision. 

“Stop!” She screams, her voice cracking. “I have the pox!”

The hands on her nether regions immediately stop moving. The pair of hands holding onto her upper body drop her unceremoniously onto the ground with a large splash. Frantically, Yara uses her wet sleeves to wipe off the makeup on her face, exposing the blackened leftovers of the boils. A gasp of revulsion passes through the group of men.

Yara doesn’t stop there. She wipes away the makeup on her arms and neck and hikes up her dress to expose the blackened spots across her legs that the men had neglected to notice in their race to defile her. An uneasy murmur echoes through the alleyway as the men take notice of the cracked, inflamed scars on her face. The coloured pigment dripping down the sides of her face gives the illusion of weeping pus.

“You’re all gonna get fucking infected!” She snarls. The men stare at her, terror evident in their eyes. “Don’t want to fuck infected pussy, do you?” She opens her legs as if in an invitation, exposing the blackened scars on the inside of her thighs. 

Shaken out of their stupor, some of the men hastily exit the alleyway, their heavy footsteps shaking the ground with loud splashes. 

Only the golden toothed man and the one with the pistol remain, standing over her with pensive looks.

“What are we gonna do with her now, boss?” A low voice asks. Yara recognizes him as the man who held the gun up to her head. 

“Well, we don’t want another outbreak, do we mate?” The other man replies in a jeering voice.

The man with the pistol nods once, cocks his gun, and shoots her. 

An explosion of pain impacts the left side of her torso, and Yara cries out in pain. She looks down and sees a gaping rip on the side of her dress, blood fanning out from it like the petals of a cursed flower.

The golden toothed man crouches down next to her. “It’s a mercy, really, darling. Much more painful to die from the pox than a bullet.”

He stands up and kicks her right where the wound’s epicentre is, and Yara lets out a pitiful moan. 

“Pekka won’t be happy about this, boss.” The man with the low voice states, tucking his pistol back into its holster. 

“Pekka is never happy about anything.”

The two men walk out of the alley side by side, leaving Yara in a pool of her own blood. 

Drip. 

Drop. 

It’s impossible to distinguish between the sound of raindrops and the trickling of blood. Rain cruelly pelts her face, coating her eyelashes in droplets of water like flies caught in a spider’s web. Makeup runs down her face like clay-laden rivers cutting through a river bed. 

With a grunt, Yara sits up and bites her tongue to stop from screaming out in pain. Panting, her hands pat across her torso until she finds the wound. 

It’s vile looking — a fleshy, puckered mouth bleeding red on her side. The mixture of shit and rain water that she’s been lying in has undoubtedly entered her body through the opening, polluting her from the inside.

Her head pounds. She can consciously feel her blood pumping through her veins and then out of the bullet hole.  She wants to cry. She wants to lay down and die in this gutter like the vermin she is. 

No one will help her like this, Yara knows. Not bleeding out in the middle of a rain storm, and surely not with her pox scars exposed. 

She closes her eyes for a moment. Sleep seems so appealing. She’ll just rest for a bit, then she’ll get up. Yes, just a quick nap and she’ll be alright…

Something taps on her shoulder. 

Yara ignores it…she’s just so tired.

Something taps on her shoulder again, twice this time. 

Yara lets out a soft moan and tries to weakly push whatever it is that’s harassing her away. 

Something taps her again. Once. Twice. Thrice. 

Then, Yara is shoved harshly to the side and directly into a puddle. 

She gags as the filthy water fills her nose, and comes to gurgling and spitting curses. 

“What the fuck?” she gasps, her voice shrieky and foreign sounding. “What the fuck is wrong with you, can’t you see that I’m trying to die — ”

“You can’t die, Yara,” a familiar voice comes from above her. 

Yara’s eyes instantly fly open. “ Jordie ?” 

Her oldest brother crouches beside her, looking as if he’s walked straight out of her memories. He’s smiling brightly, no indication of illness whatsoever in his sparkling eyes. His cheeks are pink and glowing, but it is not from the heat of fever. Despite the pouring rain surrounding them, Jordie is completely dry; his long, light brown hair flows as if in an imaginary breeze and his red overcoat is unmarred by splotches of rain. 

She reaches out for him — eyes watering but not from the rain — feeling very much 8 years old again. 

“I’m here, zusje, ” Jordie tells her in a calm, comforting tone as if he takes her hand gently in his larger, calloused one. 

Forgetting her pain for a moment, Yara throws herself at him, sobbing. Her wound stings at her side, but her heart feels as if it is mending for the first time. 

Jordie hushes her within his arms, softly stroking her hair. “Yara, Yara,” he soothes. “You can’t stay here.”

She looks up at him with wide, confused eyes, but does not leave his embrace. “Jordie, I can’t go anywhere. No one would take me.”

Her brother thumbs a finger over the black sore on her forehead and Yara closes her eyes. A hand is on her chin, tilting it up, and Yara looks to see her brother’s furrowed brow. 

“But you do have somewhere to go, Yara,” he explains, and glances down at her dress. 

Yara follows his gaze to the small, sewn-in pocket on her waist. Tucked inside, half soiled by blood and water, is the card Jesper gave her. 

Jordie fetches it from her pocket and holds it up as if it’s solid kruge. The Crow Club, the card reads, its careful calligraphy slightly smudged from water damage. 

“You have to find Kaz, zusje ,” he tells her, placing the card into Yara’s hand. Jordie sits up as if to walk away but Yara quickly latches onto his sleeve. 

“Don’t leave me, Jordie. Please don’t leave me again , ” she pleads. Yara looks out past the dark alleyway to the ominous streets ahead. “I won’t make it without you.” 

Jordie’s expression hardens and he nods in acceptance. Her brother hauls her to her feet, draping her limp arm around his shoulder so that he can carry her weight.

Together, they begin their trek to the Crow’s Club. 

It is not a pretty procession, nor is it a quick one. Yara moans with each step taken, her insides feeling as if they are seconds away from spilling out of her. Jordie stops to let her vomit onto the cobblestone path, but never stops urging her onwards even when she pleads for him to stop. She trips over stray stones and cracks in the streets, falling to the ground only to be hoisted up by her older brother.

Time melds together as she walks. She’s 8 and then 15 in the blink of an eye. She alternates between dying of the plague and dying of a bullet wound. One second she looks at Jordie and he’s smiling, helping her along the way, and the next she’s the one dragging his dead corpse through the streets of the Barrel. She weeps in agony. She rips his hands from her and begs for him to let her die. She begs for him to take her to the afterlife with him. 

He is Jordie, smiling. He is Jordie, the corpse. 

His words become less coherent and farther away as she walks.

“You’re almost there,” Jordie tells her, and it sounds like a whisper from the wind. 

“You’re so strong, zusje, you can do it,” Jordie begs, but it sounds like she has cotton stuffed in her ears. 

“Find Kaz,” Jordie urges her, but his voice sounds like a distant shout that is nearly inaudible against the rushing roar of the rain. 

She stumbles through alleyway after alleyway until she at last catches sight of the hanging sign of a crow through the mist. Jordie squeezes her hand and Yara lets out a triumphant — albeit pained — yell. 

Yara limps towards the doorway, hands searching for a door knob. 

She rattles it. 

Once.

Twice. 

It does not open. 

She shoots a frantic look towards Jordie and begins pounding on the door with both fists. 

“Damn it, damn it!” she cries, and struggles with the door handle once more. 

“Jordie, help!” Yara wails, and looks towards her brother for guidance. 

All the air is sucked from her lungs. 

The streets are empty. 

There is nothing outside but her and the rain. Nothing but her, the rain, and her ghosts. 

Yara screams. It is the wail of a banshee, the wail of a storm’s anger trapped within the body of a girl. She sobs again, but mostly she screams. 

“Fuck you!” Yara rages at the sky. She kicks the door and pounds her fists against it to the tune of the aggressive pitter-patter of the rain. “Fucking damn it, open! Saints’ damn it, open! ”

The door opens. 

Yara stands there, bewildered, at the second ghost of the night standing in the doorframe. “Kaz,” she gasps. 

Then she promptly collapses onto his feet.

Chapter Text

Kaz immediately recoils, jolting back and wrenching his feet out from under her head. Unsupported by his shoes, the girl’s head thuds against the wooden floor of the entryway. 

The Bastard of the Barrel peers outside warily at the streets flooded with water and shit. Rain pours down with a vengeance, and Kaz sneers at the sight. 

He hates when it rains. He hates water by principle, but rain in the Barrel is never a pleasant sight. Sloshing through the flooded streets filled with run-off sewage on a job is always a hassle, and the wetness slicked onto his legs never fails to invoke images of dead, grasping bodies. 

Kaz pushes those thoughts into the recesses of his mind, and continues examining his surroundings.

Mixing with the rain is a trail of crimson seeping out from the doorway. Blood. Kaz quickly discerns the source.

With his cane, Kaz prods the girl until she flops front side up like a dead fish. He quickly locates the gaping bullet wound on her torso, and begins cataloguing the rest of her. He needs to discern who this is, and — by the looks of her injuries — quickly. 

The girl’s face is badly beaten, with a bulging black eye and streaks of dried blood. However, that is not the feature that gives him pause. Across her body are numerous black pustules which stand out jarringly against her pale skin. 

Plague. A phantom hand grips Kaz’s heart, and his breaths come out slightly ragged. But there is an itch in the back of his brain that demands attention, and Kaz kneels down closer to the girl. 

His eyes track over the various marks on her skin, and his brow furrows. There is a substance leaking off her body — a light tan colour of some sort — but it is not the pus from plague. No, Kaz remembers what that pus had looked like: yellowed and clumpy and dotted with blood. The substance on the girl is too liquidy and is the wrong colour. Kaz remembers what the pustules looked like: angry and red and swollen. The marks on this girl look like they have been cauterized, flaky and blackened like burnt meat. 

Scars, Kaz discerns. Right now the only thing killing this girl is the gaping bullet wound. 

Kaz carefully examines her features, trying to uncover the girl underneath the scars and bruises. 

Her hair —  a long braid down her back soaked with rain —  is a dark umber. But her eyebrows, underneath the grime and blood, are a light mousy brown, almost blonde. The girl’s face is thin and angular, with the contours of her face jutting out like nails hammered haphazardly into a plank of wood. Undernourished. Barrel-raised, Kaz figures. Her eyes are sunk into her skull slightly, even with the bulging of her black eye, and a prominent brow bone rests on top. She has a prominent nose bridge; the tip of her nose is upturned with a slight swell on either side. 

Dimly, Kaz recognizes her. It is the girl from the marketplace. 

It is late in the witching hours, and the Crow Club is completely devoid of other people. Kaz had only neglected to leave the gambling house in order to get an accurate tally of the night’s profits. There is no one there to help her; Nina retired to the Slat hours ago.

In that moment, Kaz resolves to let her die. The girl didn’t even fully enter the doorway before she collapsed in a heap — it’s easy enough to nudge her body out with a few well placed prods of his cane and a good kick. The flooded streets will wash her body away from the Crow Club, and she’ll likely be found in a dead end alley somewhere. 

His Crows may have befriended the girl, but it is commonplace for people to turn up dead in Ketterdam. The stroopwafel seller is not a vital part of the Barrel’s ecosystem, and the Dregs can afford to pay the owner for the hiring of another worker. 

Besides, Inej reported that the girl was becoming too… plucky. Harassing his Crows for information, prying into his operations. His Crows don’t need friends. The rain water can wash her corpse away. 

(Corpses in water. Hands, tugging, pulling, grasping.)

The girl is already borderline unrecognizable. A good soak in the water and she’ll start bloating soon enough. 

(Faces unrecognizable. Bodies floating in the water.) 

Kaz stiffens and exhales heavily. He raises his cane, preparing to bash her face in, when the girl’s eyes fly open. 

“Pekka Rollins,” she gasps out, her voice scratchy and choked, and Kaz freezes mid-air. The girl’s glossy brown eyes flick up to Kaz as he stands above her, poised like a Grim Reaper about to strike. A soft, delusional smile flickers onto her face; her teeth are stained crimson. Her arm raises up as if to grab the cane from him and Kaz growls. 

“Jordie.”

Kaz’s eyes widen. The girl’s eyes roll back into her head, and she collapses once again onto the floor. 

The Bastard of the Barrel does the gentlemanly thing and kicks her. The girl lets out a listless moan of pain and curls up into herself. 

“You are not allowed to die anymore,” Kaz hisses at her and bangs his cane twice on the ground. The girl groans loudly as if to protest the noise. 

“Answer me, girl. How do you know that name?” He seethes at her. If he were any other man, he would grab the dying girl by her arms and throttle her. But because he is Kaz, instead, he wacks her with his cane again. 

The girl whimpers and cracks the less swollen of her two eyes open. “Fuck you, Kaz,” she bites back weakly. Then, she promptly passes out. 

Kaz kicks her again for good measure, but the girl does not make any noise at all. 

“Fuck!” Kaz growls. 

His next few actions can only be described as ‘crazed.’

In the Crow Club’s supply cabinet exists a large wooden wheelbarrow used for transporting crates of alcohol. Kaz fetches said wheelbarrow. 

In rough, uncoordinated movements, Kaz wrestles the girl into the wheelbarrow. Then, Kaz prompts throws up. 

In a jerky, awkward gait, Kaz pushes the wheelbarrow — half supporting his own weight with it — out the door and into the streets. 

The second he enters the flooded streets, revulsion stirs in his gut. The wheelbarrow’s front wheel treads the water pathetically, and Kaz is forced to propel the wheelbarrow forward through the layer of water all while not trying to drown in his memories. 

He arrives with the girl in tow at the Slat, and promptly vomits yet again. Despite being out in the storm for only a few minutes, the rain clings to his coat and skin like phantom hands, pooling to the ground around him like shadows of water.

Kaz leaves the girl in the foyer of the first floor — still inside the wheelbarrow —  and walks up the crooked staircase, gloved hands tightly gripping onto the bannister.

Kaz reaches a door to one of the many cramped rooms and pounds on it roughly. 

“Nina!”

He pounds on it again: once, twice. 

“Nina!”

The door opens before he can land another strike, and the bleary-eyed brunette stands in the doorway looking incredibly pissed off. 

“What the fuck, Kaz?” Nina asks, her words sluggish but brimming with anger. Confusion clouds over her expression. “Why are you wet?”

“Your friend from the marketplace is here.”

Nina gapes at him. “What — ”

“She’s currently bleeding out from a bullet wound,” Kaz remarks coolly. 

“Why didn’t you lead with that?”

Nina rushes downstairs and gasps when she sees Yara. “Saints. Her face is — ”

“She’s not infectious,” Kaz explains stiffly. “Those are scars.”

Nina glances at Kaz from the corner of her eye, brow furrowed. “I saw her today, she didn’t — ”

“She must have concealed them from you while trying to get you to divulge our secrets,” Kaz bites sharply. 

Nina’s brow furrows before realization dawns. “Inej.” 

Kaz nods stiffly. “She has a bullet wound on her left side,” he continues. 

The Heartrender squints at him incredulously, “Why is she in a fucking wheelbarrow?” 

Kaz glares at Nina. “I need her alive,” he explains. 

“Why do I bother asking?” she sighs. Nina crouches down by the girl and raises out her fingers minutely. 

“Pulse is weak, but she’s still alive,” the Crow states confidently, although a flicker of fear shines through her eyes. An implication lies beneath her words; she’s still alive for now. 

“We have a spare room on the 2nd floor — 3 doors down,” replies Kaz. 

There’s no way they can get the girl up the stairs in the wheelbarrow. Nina meets his gaze and they come to a silent understanding. “I’ll carry her up,” she states.

Kaz nods. 

The girl is relatively light even with the added weight of the water, so Nina hoists her up from under the armpits and drags her up the stairs. Her feet hit each stair with a resounding thud, and Nina winces sympathetically each time. There is a trail of water and blood guiding up the stairs, and Kaz muses that it would make an excellent tripping hazard.

At last, they reach the 2nd floor, and Kaz quickly identifies the empty room. Nina manages to wrestle the injured girl into bed, and looks towards Kaz with an emotion that instantly makes him uncomfortable. 

“Thanks for bringing her here. It means a lot to us,” Nina offers. 

Kaz sneers slightly. Ah, gratitude. “I didn’t do it for you. She has information I need.”

Nina’s gaze hardens. “Oh. Well, in that case, piss off, Brekker.”

“Gladly.”

Kaz turns to leave when a stray hand grabs him by the sleeve. 

(Water. Corpses. Searching, grabbing hands.) 

A strangled gasp slips unbidden past his lips, and he wrenches himself from their grasp. Jolting back to face Nina with fury in his eyes, he finds himself momentarily perplexed by the brunette’s wide eyed fixation on the girl lying in the bed. 

Glossy, unfocused eyes peer at him, a rivet of blood streaking down a forehead covered in blackened scars. A single arm limply stretches towards him like the limbs of a marionette controlled by strings.

“Jordie,” the girl croaks out, and Kaz’s blood turns glacial within his veins. “I found him.”

Nina does not dare to stop him as Kaz storms out of the room.

Chapter Text

Yara wakes up in a field of wheat.

The sky above her is an open expanse of light azure, clouds speckled above like haphazard blots of white paint on a canvas. The air is tinged sweet with the smell of blossoms and fresh grass. In the distance, Yara can hear the familiar clucks of chicken and the loud murmur of feeding cows. 

She sits up. The stalks of wheat are taller than the top of her head and ripple like waves with the breeze. 

Welcome home, they whisper to her, caressing her with golden arms. 

Yara pushes up from the soft ground until she stands fully upright in the wheat field. The ears of the wheat now stretch to her mid torso — she feels distinctly short.  

Yara raises her hands in front of her. They are pudgy looking, still soft and rounded with baby fat. There are no calluses on them from hours of hard labor, nor burns from fetching stroopwafels from the oven. 

A loud whooping noise comes from behind her, and she is tackled back to the ground. She lets out a squeal as she falls, hands grasping onto the person who surprised her and dragging them down with her. 

They collapse into the field, accentuated with a puff of yellow from the fallen stalks. Her attacker falls off from her, laughing as he hits the ground. Yara breathes hard, feeling like the wind was knocked out of her. She swivels her head, glaring at her attacker, and freezes.

“Kazzie?” she asks, wonderfilled. The 10 year old shakes his head like a dog flicking water from its coat, and ears of wheat fall from his mousy brown hair. 

The boy grins impishly. “Yara,” Kaz says cheekily. Brilliant blue eyes shine at her filled with the glow of childhood. Nothing mars his expression: not fear nor guilt, nor anger or shame. 

“Why did you tackle me?” Yara asks him. 

“Why were you hiding in the wheat field?” Kaz retorts back with a sly smile on his face.

“I wasn’t hiding, ” she states defensively. “I just got here.”

Kaz looks at her quizzically. He rolls his eyes, reaches over, and ruffles her hair. Yara lets out a squeal as she struggles to escape his grasp. “You’re weird,” Kaz remarks as if it is a statement of fact. 

“Why are you teasing our dear zusje, little man?” A mirthful voice asks from above. 

Jordie pushes through the field of wheat, hands poised on his hips like a disappointed mother. Kaz sticks out his tongue at the older boy, “Teasing builds character. You did it to me . Now it’s my turn.” 

Jordie snorts and crouches down into the field of wheat to join them. “Did not.” He beckons Yara forward to sit on his lap, which she obliges eagerly. 

“Two summers ago you told me that Papa was gonna sell me for 10 kruge if I didn’t milk Piggy before sundown,” Kaz says pointedly. 

The older brother rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “For Saints’ sake, the cow’s name isn’t Piggy. ” 

“Yes it is,” protests Kaz. “I named her myself.”

“ Nooo, ” Jordie retorts, elongating the word so that it sounds like the ‘moo’ of a cow. “I named her Buttercup, and you decided to call her Piggy instead.”

Yara giggles, and Jordie shoots her a small smile. She taps her brothers’ shoulders. “I had a strange dream.” 

“Did pigs fly?” jests Jordie, poking her smooth, unblemished cheek. 

“No,” she says, brow furrowing. “You died.” 

“Huh,” Jordie says. 

Yara turns towards her other brother. “And Kaz was all…warped and crooked and — and cruel.” 

“Well that would never happen,” Kaz reassures her. “I would never be cruel to you, zusje. ”

“Of course,” Jordie agrees, nodding to himself. “That can’t happen.” 

Her eldest brother leans towards her conspiratorially, a sly grin on his face.

“Papa’s not dead yet,” Jordie whispers.

Yara opens her mouth, “What —”

The world unfurls around her. 

Yara’s eyes snap open. A girl with a bright red ribbon in her hair sits on the ground in front of her, holding a raggedy felt doll out expectantly. 

They’re in a small kitchen, surrounded by bubbling and overflowing pots. The whole place looks crooked; the building is slanted slightly to the right, fitting the kitchen into a narrow triangle, and the wooden boards on the floor are stained and off kilter. Yara can smell something burning and wrinkles her nose in distaste.

“I’m Saskia,” the girl says brightly. “We should play with my dolls while my —” The girl stutters. “While my papa talks with your brothers.” 

“I like your ribbon,” Yara says, ignoring the offer. Saskia reaches a hand to touch her hair self consciously. “You’re really pretty.” 

Saskia blushes but then squints at Yara suspiciously. “You’re just saying that because we look alike,” she accuses.

Yara cocks an eyebrow curiously. “We do?”

The other girl nods and stands up, the ragdoll clutched in her hands falling carelessly to the ground. Saskia walks around the kitchen, rummaging loudly through drawers until she finds the reflective lid of a metal pan. 

She holds it up to Yara and her own face. Despite the slight warping of their reflection in the cheap metal, their similarities are undeniable. 

Petite, angular faces. Honey brown hair. Brown eyes that are slightly too large for their faces. The only easily discernible difference is the shape of their noses.  

“We could be sisters,” the other girl remarks. 

“I like your nose better,” Yara declares. “It’s proud and mighty like a queen. Mine looks like a snub.”

Saskia snorts through her proud and mighty nose. “Rollins said my nose is ugly.”

“Who’s Rollins?”

The other girl’s expression drops. “My papa,” she states with faux confidence, but her voice wavers like a wheat stalk in the wind. Saskia picks up the felt doll and begins anxiously picking at the doll’s sewn button eyes. 

Yara furrows her brow. “Jordie told me your papa’s name is Jakob Hertzoon.”

The girl looks stricken. She nervously glances around the kitchen and lowers her voice. It seems pointless with the loud, incessant bubblings of the pots and the shrieking of the tea kettle, but Yara obliges her. 

Saskia starts, “I need to tell you something —”

“Do we have ourselves a deal, boys?” a booming, confident voice exclaims as the kitchen doors swing open. Jakob Hertzoon struts through the kitchen like a king surveying his grand castle, not a low-level merchant showing off his ruddy house to two preteens. 

“Yes,” Jordie declares from behind him, voice strong and earnest. 

“Yes,” Kaz pipes up weakly, sounding distinctly less confident.

Hertzoon gives the two boys a handshake, his grip markedly more enthusiastic while theirs is more comparable to dead fish. 

Saskia grabs Yara’s shoulder and spins her away from her brothers. 

“Here,” she says, holding out a handful of fabric. It’s the crimson ribbon from before, curled into itself like a sleeping snake. “I know you liked it.”

Yara’s mouth gapes open. “Oh. Um — thank you.”

Saskia presses the ribbon into her hand and then throws herself around the other girl. Yara falls back slightly with the unexpected weight, but nonetheless wraps her arms around the girl in awkward, jolted movements. 

“ I’m sorry — I wish we could’ve been sisters, ” Saskia whispers into her ear quickly, and then she retreats back, smiling as if she had said nothing at all. 

Yara gives her a confusing smile, still fisting the red ribbon tightly in one hand. 

“ Zusje, it’s time to go,” Kaz calls from behind her, tugging on her sleeve impatiently. 

“I’m coming!” Yara replies indignantly, and gives Saskia one final soft smile. 

Yara walks out of the kitchen with her brothers. 

One step. 

Two steps.

Three steps. 

Yara freezes. 

Ripping herself out of her brother’s grip, Yara races back to the kitchen. Saskia is on the floor, playing with her dolls and humming in low tones to herself. Yara stands in the doorway and watches her.

“You never said that,” Yara states, her voice sharply cutting through the cacophony of kitchen noise. Her voice is years older than before, hollowed and tense without the air of childhood to fill it.

Saskia pauses and looks up. “What?”

“8 years ago. When we were playing in the kitchen, you never said that .”

The other girl glances around nervously. There is no one in the kitchen except for them. 

“You gave me the ribbon,” Yara continues. “I thanked you. But you didn’t hug me. You didn’t say, ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I wish we could’ve been sisters.’”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Saskia says resolutely, eyes glancing down at her doll. One of its button eyes is off-kilter, just like everything else in the house. 

“You would have told me if Pekka Rollins hadn’t come in with my brothers,” Yara says, her voice growing in fervor. “I realized that years later.”

She marches towards the other girl and rips the doll out of her hands. “But you were too fucking afraid to say anything with him there.” 

Saskia says nothing, only glancing up at Yara with big, troubled eyes.

Yara’s fingers find the seam which attaches the felt doll’s left arm. She rips it off. Slowly. Painfully. 

Saskia’s eyes fill with tears. 

“Jordie is dead because of Rollins,” Yara spits out, voice rumbling low with fury. Her fingers gouge out the doll’s twin button eyes. Pieces of thread, stuffing, and ripped felt litter the room. 

Saskia cries pitifully, but does not attempt to reclaim her doll. “I was a child!” she pleads.

“So was I!” Yara yells. 

A hand tugs at her sleeve again. “Yara, it’s time to go,” Kaz says behind her.

“No, Kaz,” Yara bites back, her eyes still focused on Saskia. “She doesn’t understand !”

“Yara, it’s time to go,” Kaz pleads, voice growing in urgency. 

“Not yet, Kaz,” She hisses, ripping herself free from his grasp. 

“Yara, it’s time to wake up.” 

“Stop!” 

“Yara — it’s time to wake up. ” 

Yara inhales shakily, mouth feeling distinctly like sandpaper. Her eyes feel crusted over and heavy, but she slowly peels them open. The sensation is akin to ripping a dead mouse from a glue trap.

She’s lying down in a bed. A bed. Her eyes trace over her own form, taking in the bandages wrapped around her torso like ivy climbing up a garden wall. The wrappings are a yellowed white — not red. She’s either stopped bleeding or they’ve been recently changed by someone. 

Yara’s fist is tightly closed. Curiously, she unravels her fingers. 

There, in her palm, is the coiled snake of the red ribbon. 

Her heart seizes within her chest, air suddenly becoming much more difficult to breathe in. Yara commands her body to throw the ribbon — to eject it across the fucking floor and hope it falls through the floorboards and never returns. But the ribbon remains in her hand, slithering in the slight draft of the room. 

“Hey, hey,” a familiar female voice coos from beside her, and a soft hand begins to caress her hair. “Look at me, Yara.”

Yara tilts her head to the side, and Nina’s face comes into view. The brunette smiles at her and Yara breathes in shakily, heart rate steadying. The two girls breathe in slowly together until the awful rattling in her lungs stops.

“Hi,” Yara croaks out. Saints, she sounds awful. Nina smiles back, “Hi.”

Against her better judgment, Yara’s eyes flick back to the ribbon. The brunette hums in recognition. 

“I found it in your front pocket,” the Ravkan girl explains. “I’m…not sure how stained it is.”

Yara gives her an uneasy smile. “It was already red. I — …thank you for saving it.”

Nina nods, and Yara quickly scans the room. “Where am I?”

“The Slat,” Nina responds. 

Yara cocks an eyebrow. “I thought I went to the Crow Club.”

Nina smirks, “Good to see you have your memories intact. You did — Kaz brought you here.”

“I would never be cruel to you, zusje.”

Yara waits for the other girl to elaborate, but Nina’s expression remains stubbornly impassive. “How long have I been here?” 

“Two days,” Nina remarks, sounding pleased. “You’re almost healed.” The brunette motions towards the bandages on Yara’’s torso. “Can I?” Nina asks. Yara nods. 

Carefully, the Crow unwraps the bandages, and Yara inhales sharply. What once was a gaping hole in her side is now merely a shallow indent.  The blood that spurts up from the wound without the pressure of the wrappings is miniscule — barely even a trickle. After allowing her eyes to sufficiently soak in the progress, Nina begins rebandaging the wound.

Yara looks curiously at the girl next to her. “Are you a Grisha?”

Nina visibly stiffens, stopping in her motions. “What difference does it make?” 

“Not much, I guess,” Yara admits. “If you were able to heal a bullet wound in 2 days that’d make you a phenomenal medic. And most Grisha in Kerch can barely heal a papercut, so that’d make you a brilliant Corporalki.”

Yara smiles and takes Nina’s hand. “Either way, you’re a damn good friend. Thank you for saving my life,” she says earnestly.

The other girl gives her a grateful smile and squeezes her hand. “Don’t thank me just yet. Kaz wants to meet with you. Alone.” 

Yara whirls her head around so fast that something in her neck audibly pops.

“He thinks you know things,” Nina explains. Her voice dips down lower, “About his past.”

“Does he know who I am?” Yara whispers, voice a combination of fear and joy. 

Nina looks curiously at her. “He won’t tell the rest of us, but I think he has a pretty good idea.” 

There’s little Yara can do to stop the smile that blooms on her face. “When does he want to meet?”

“Tomorrow night. His office,” the brunette replies, her voice betraying a mixture of confusion and amusement at the girl’s excitement. She scoffs, “Don’t look so excited to have a private meeting with the Bastard of the Barrel.”

Her voice lowers and a sly smile appears on her face, “Not unless you’re Inej, of course.” 

Yara laughs quietly, although the friendly fire at their common associate flies over her head. 

I’m not meeting with the Bastard of the Barrel, Yara thinks to her. I’m seeing my brother. 

Chapter Text

7 YEARS AGO

Jordie stops smelling like her brother after the second day. He just smells like flesh. Putrid, rotting flesh. 

He dies with his eyes closed, so it’s easy enough to pretend that he’s still alive — merely sleeping. But the smell brings the reminder of his death back with a vengeance. 

When Yara starts crying, Kaz puts her in their brother’s arms. The 10 year old wraps Jordie’s stiff, rigor-mortis laden arms around the young girl, and she stops crying. Momentarily. 

Yara cries whenever she remembers that her eldest brother is dead. 

The smell of rot serves as a constant reminder of this morbid truth. The young girl cries until she cannot afford to anymore. 

Jordie fills with gases. He moans and groans in the night, squeaking out air through stagnant lungs. He shits himself. He pisses himself. His mouth gapes open with the weight of his bloated, browned tongue. Saliva drips out from his gaping mouth, pooling into a puddle on the front of his jacket. His sewage seeps into the ground, attracting eager rats and flies. 

He smells like the Barrel, but impossibly worse.

At that point, Kaz bans Yara from lying near him. The remaining Rietveld siblings sit on the opposite side of the alley, listening to the horrible squelching and gasping and moaning and pretending that it is not their brother making those noises. 

Because it is not. It is their brother’s corpse. 

They stumble upon the abandoned cellar completely by accident. Kaz is crawling around, hands rummaging the ground for anything of use, when his hand stalls on a rattling, wooden board. It opens to reveal a cramped, dusty cellar. 

Kaz instructs Yara to sleep in the cellar. His younger sister obliges, but makes her remaining brother promise one thing: 

“Don’t let them take Jordie away.”

Many years later, Yara wished she had added one final stipulation: 

“Don’t let them take you away either.” 

PRESENT

Tomorrow night does not arrive quickly enough for Yara. Nina confines the younger girl to bed rest until her meeting with Kaz and sternly locks the door behind her, leaving Yara trapped within the small room. 

She plays with the red ribbon in the meantime. She braids it into her hair. She ties a bow around her wrist. She curls it tightly into her fist and throws it against the wall. She re-ties it, unravels it, and then re-ties it again. 

She thinks about Saskia’s perfect bow in her perfect hair and wonders if — all those years ago — it had been an apology in itself. She peers at the crimson red fabric and wonders if there’s some sort of secret message embedded within its threads that she’s been blind to all these years. If she could get scissors, Yara would snip it into small bits and try to put it back together like an ornate, overly complex puzzle. 

The ribbon remains, frustratingly, just a ribbon. It’s only real meaning seems to be as a hair accessory or a nifty piece of kindling if one’s in a hurry. 

Jesper is the one who retrieves her. He gives her a quick, gentle hug at first — mindful of her bullet wound — but when Yara informs him it’s basically healed the boy sweeps her up off the floor and squeezes her tightly.

Yara is painfully reminded of Jordie. 

“Are you ready to meet with the boss, darling?” The Zemeni asks her after he sets her back down.

Yara holds up one finger. “One second.”

The girl quickly retrieves the red ribbon from the bed and wraps it twice around her wrist. She shakes her wrist thoroughly to ensure that it doesn’t fall off. “All done,” she says with a smile, holding out her arm for the taking. 

Jesper happily obliges, linking his arm with hers, and together they walk up the stairs to the third floor. 

Kaz’s office is not what Yara expects and simultaneously everything that Yara expects. It seems appropriately grim and dusty considering that, as Jesper explains to her, it’s a converted attic, but it lacks the grandioseness she expected a prominent gang leader’s office to possess. 

A map of Ketterdam lies sandwiched between two surprisingly quaint bookshelves. There are 5 distinct sitting places positioned around the room — a hard, deep burgundy chair with cushions studded with diamonds; a disturbingly unbalanced wooden stool; a comfortable looking plush brown chair; an elegant emerald carpet with long golden tassels on all four sides. 

The desk is the strangest of them all: a long wooden board fixed atop two large wooden crates that have been painted black. In front of it lies a plain black chair. The leader of the Dregs stands behind the desk, standing ramrod straight like any slacking in his posture would mean instant death. 

“Hello,” Yara states. 

Kaz’s keen eyes flicker to the ribbon tied around her wrist. “Sit.” He gestures to the black chair. 

Yara walks over, and Kaz’s eyes follow her like a predator stalking its prey. 

She sits. He stares. 

“Kaz — ” Yara starts.

“Are you familiar with Pekka Rollins?” He asks, startling Yara with his directness. 

“The Dime Lions shot me, so yes,” Yara responds, a note of sarcasm in her voice. 

Her brother’s eye twitches. “Before that. And the man, not his gang,” Kaz remarks sharply. 

Yara inhales. “Yes.” 

He nods as if satisfied. “Rollins assumed an alias 7 years ago. Jakob Hertzoon.” Kaz stares at her with unwavering eyes. “Do you recall?”

“Of course,” Yara says. 

“Rollins needed a backstory to fit his character. He needed a fake life,” Kaz continues. His eyes flicker to her. “He hired a girl to play his fake daughter.”

Kaz continues to stare at her, as if mentally ripping back the layers of her mind. “She had a — ”

“Red ribbon,” Yara finishes. 

Kaz’s nostrils flare. He inhales sharply. “Yes, a red ribbon. Such as the one you have in your possession.” He motions down to her lap, where her hands lay folded over her knees. 

“She gave it to me,” Yara reveals, lifting her wrist up to expose the ribbon. “It was a…gift, of sorts.”

Kaz breathes in a heavy, shaky breath and leans over the table. “ Don’t lie, ” he hisses. 

“I’m not — ”

“I know who you are, Saskia, ” he spits through clenched teeth. 

“ Saskia? ” Yara echoes in abject shock.

“Yes, you were Pekka Rollins’ fake daughter. You’ve been scuttling around Ketterdam all this while, hiding from your crimes, hiding from me — ” 

“Kaz, what the hell are you talking about?” Yara interrupts frantically, standing up so abruptly that the wooden chair makes a sharp screech against the attic floor. 

“You scammed me, you scammed my family,” seethes Kaz. “And now you’re parading around with my sist — her name.”

“Kaz,” she says slowly, as if speaking to a rampaging horse. “I am Yara Rietveld. I am your si—”

Slap.

Yara gasps and lifts a shaky hand to clutch at her stinging cheek. The slap landed on one of the blackened, scarred areas of her face; her skin burns with phantom flames. Kaz’s gloved hand is raised, poised to strike again. 

She tries again, “I’m Yara — ”

A second slap. Harder this time. Kaz’s chest heaves with anger; he is visibly shaking. “You do not get to say her name.”

Yara gapes at him. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” She hisses. 

Kaz slaps her again. “ Fuck, ” she yells, and slaps him back. 

Her brother reels with the force of the unexpected hit. Hair falls in greasy, messy strands on his face, and his lips curl into an ugly snarl. The sound he makes in the back of his throat is borderline animalistic. 

Kaz wrenches open his suit jacket, and yanks out a pistol. He does not aim it at her, but sits it firmly down on his desk, one hand still grasping it tightly. It sits as a threat. It sits as a promise. 

“Convince me,” he snarls. His finger itches at the trigger. “You have 3 chances.” 

“We grew up on a farm together, Kaz,” Yara pleads. 

“ I don’t believe you . ”

A shot rings out. A bullet embeds into the wooden chair just inches away from her left shoulder. 

“You named a cow Piggy when you were 7,” Yara recites, eyes begging for her brother to believe her. She lets out a choked noise from the back of her throat. “Jordie always teased you for it.”

“That never happened,” Kaz retorts, and shoots the cigar tray next to her right arm. Shattered porcelain and dust scatter into the air.

“Our father died when I was 6,” she utters frantically, words blending together almost past recognition. “I was scared he would crawl out of his grave to haunt us, so you and Jordie would stand guard by my bed until I fell asleep —”

Kaz shuts his eyes tightly, grip loosening on the pistol. Yara holds her breath. The boy’s eyes flash open, narrowing onto the red ribbon. His grip on the pistol hardens. 

“My sister is dead!” He yells at her. His breathing is erratic, his gaze maddened, but his hands…his hands are so, so still. He points the gun at her heart with unwavering aim. 

The tears that have welled up in Yara’s eyes run loose, carving wet trails into her scarred face. “It’s okay,” she says, voice shaking. “It’s okay if you kill me. I’ve known you wanted to since Jordie died.”

Kaz stiffens. (Boils. Cold, glassy eyes. The stench .) 

Yara lets out a wet, choked laugh. “Yeah. You had me sleep in his arms for 2 days, like —” Her voice breaks. “— like his death would rub off on me and my life would rub off on him .” Her eyes lift from the barrel of the gun to Kaz’s stricken ones. “Like you could…. trade siblings. Then I’d be dead and you’d still have an older brother.” 

The hand holding the gun quivers. “You put me in the cellar because you couldn’t stand the sight of me,” Yara continues, voice soft and tired. “That I was alive and Jordie wasn’t.”

“ That’s not true, ” Kaz states, his voice a strained, ugly rasp. “I loved my sister. I wanted to protect her.”

“Then why didn’t you look for me?” Yara begs, voice laden with the bitterness of a rage that has never been acknowledged before. “I looked for you every day . Every single fucking day. I was — I was so sure you were dead, but I still looked for you. Even if you were dead, I still wanted you back with me. I wanted to take you home .” 

Kaz stares at her with haunted eyes. “I looked for her too,” he whispers. “I never found her.”

Yara lets out a shriek of rage. “There is no her, Kaz! I’m here, I’ve always been here!” She wants nothing more but to reach out and grab the gun from him, but clenches her fists by her sides instead.

“ You never were!” She shouts. “I needed you and you were off building a fucking empire!” 

A terse silence lies between them, only interrupted by Yara’s heaving pants and the frantic staccato of Kaz’s breathing. 

Her brother looks at her with uncharacteristically vulnerable eyes. Gently, he places the gun down. 

“You’re dead,” he tells her, disbelief coating his words. 

“No, I’m not,” she says gently. “Are you?”

Kaz’s expression hardens. “Kaz Rietveld is dead. Kaz Brekker is all that remains.” 

(Water. Corpses. Rebirth.) 

“I don’t believe that.” 

Kaz shoots her a disbelieving look and laughs scornfully. “Would you willingly live in denial?”

Yara shakes her head. “No. But I can see the boy you were, as well as the man you are now.”

“You see nothing,” Kaz hisses.

“You do not have to — to kill your past to live in the present,” Yara argues.

“The past is watery corpses and pestilence,” Kaz justifies, voice growing in fervor. “Does it not deserve to die?” 

“Then you kill me with it,” bites back Yara. “I am part of your past — just as you are part of mine.”

The Bastard of the Barrel scoffs. “You would call a madman your brother?”

“You would call a plague-marred girl your sister?” She counters. 

Kaz lets out a shaky laugh. “You are different than I remember.” His eyes flicker to the many reminders of the pox littering her face. “In…many ways.”

“7 years,” Yara exhales quietly. 

“Yes,” Kaz says solemnly. 

“I didn’t want you to die,” he suddenly confesses. He stops, startled, as if he had surprised himself with his words. “I just…”

Understanding dawns on Yara. “You just wanted Jordie alive too,” she finishes. 

Yara bites her lip and breathes in heavily. “I would have gladly died instead of him.” She pauses, mind stirring with the ‘what ifs’ of the past. “What would you have done?”

Kaz looks at her in quiet bewilderment. “What?”

“What would you have done,” she repeats. “If I had died and Jordie lived.”

His gaze turns cold. “I would have taken over the Dregs with Jordie as my right hand.”

“Why?” She wonders.

“To avenge you. To kill Pekka Rollins.”

Yara exhales slowly, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah, that’s alright with me.” 

Kaz laughs under his breath. “Yara —” He stops and stares at her again, really stares at her. “ Yara. ” 

She cocks an eyebrow. “Yes, Kaz?”

His hand reaches out as if to touch her, but stays short of meeting her skin. “ Yara, you’re alive.” 

She smiles. “Yes, Kaz.”

No one would believe it if she told them, but that was the first time Yara saw Kaz smile in 7 years.

Chapter Text

It’s two days after their fateful meeting when Yara bursts into her brother’s office, panting heavily, and declares: “I want to help you kill Pekka Rollins.”

The response comes immediately: “No.”

“Well why the fuck not?”

Kaz looks up from the sprawls of parchment on his desk with a deadpan expression. “You are not joining the Crows.”

Yara growls lowly. “I’m not asking to join your gang. I’m asking to kill the man who killed Jordie.”

“I’ve been planning Rollins’ downfall for years,” Kaz tells her sternly. The unspoken I’m not going to let you fuck it up rings loudly in her ears.

His sister scoffs. “You don’t want to share the glory, I get it.” She smiles sardonically. “Fine, you can murder him from the torso up and I’ll hack at his legs.”

Kaz levels her with a cool, dismissive gaze. “No.”

Yara glares at him sharply. “I have just as much of a right — ”

“I can’t have you endangering my Crows,” he cuts her off tersely. “You would be a liability. ”

Yara’s left eye twitches and her mouth screws into displeasure. “Why.” It is a statement, not a question. 

Kaz gives her a nasty side-eye. “You have no tact. No skill with weapons. With any luck Pekka Rollins thinks you’re dead, and you should do your best to keep it that way.”

“Well, I haven’t been the best at staying dead,” Yara bites back snidely. Her brother shoots her a dirty look. “And says who?”

“Inej. Jesper. Wylan. Nina. Myself.”

Yara lets out a huff of frustration. “I’m not the best at interrogation,” she admits, her voice steely. “But I’m a quick thinker. I’m good at getting out of sticky situations.” 

Kaz shakes her head as if she’s an annoying gnat flying around his ears. He shifts, refocusing onto his papers and grabbing a pen as if to erect a wall of ink against her. 

Yara wants to slap him again. “Those Dime Lions, they thought I had information about you, about the Crows. Cornered me in an alleyway and threatened to kill me.”

Kaz looks up at her. “You’re not providing the most convincing evidence,” he remarks dryly, and returns to his heist plans.

“They were going to rape me,” she confesses. Nearly imperceptible to the naked eye, Kaz’s grip on the pen tightens. 

“They pulled my skirts down and they — they held me down,” she stops and stares at her brother. “They were going to rape me in a cold, dark alley. So I told them I had the plague and they stopped.”

Kaz stiffens. His eyes flicker minutely to her scars. “And then they shot you,” he finishes.

Yara nods. Kaz leans forward in his chair and meets her eyes sternly. “And that is precisely why you will never join us,” he sneers. 

“It wasn’t my fault,” Yara hisses. “Would you rather they had raped me?”

Her brother stiffens. “No.” 

“I would have killed them, Kaz,” she confesses, something wild dancing in her gaze. “I would have slaughtered them like the pigs they were.”

Kaz looks at her with cold, detached eyes — like a father dismissing the silly notions of his hyperactive child. “Do not kid yourself, Yara. You are not capable of murder.”

Yara bristles at the accusation. “I have the right to revenge.”

“But are you willing to watch a man die?” Kaz retorts sharply. “To watch the life seep out of him until he is nothing but a hollow corpse?”

“I have great familiarity with corpses,” Yara sneers.

Kaz slams his fist down on the table harshly, sending papers scattering. “This is not a game!”

“No, it’s not,” she replies coolly. “I’ll kill a man for you, Kaz. I’ll kill a hundred men and bring their bodies to your doorstep. I’ll kill a thousand men and then I’ll kill Pekka Rollins.”

“Get out of my office,” Kaz seethes.

“With pleasure.” 

The door slams as she exits.

“Nina, I need a new face.”

The Heartrender startles behind the bar, nearly dropping the glass she’s cleaning. “Come again?”

“I need a new face,” Yara repeats, her voice unwavering in its stubbornness. 

Nina frowns. “Is this about uh —” She gestures awkwardly to an area on her forehead, indicating one of the most prominent locations of Yara’s scarring. 

Yara shakes her head, skin prickling uncomfortably. “No. And I’m going to pretend not to take offense to that,” she responds pointedly. 

The brunette had the decency to look slightly embarrassed. “It’s nice to be wanted, but why do you need me to tailor you?” Nina finally asks.

“Kaz is sending me undercover.”

Nina squints at her. “You’re a miserable liar, Yara,” she says, an amused grin pulling at the corners of her lips.

The younger girl visibly deflates. “ Fine. I’m sending myself undercover.”

“Does Kaz know?” The Heartrender asks skeptically. 

Yara scoffs. “I reckon he has an idea. But that’s besides the point.” She glares down at the floor. “I’ve survived this long without him dictating my every move.”

“I don’t want you running into danger just to prove something,” Nina warns.

“It’s justified danger,” she retorts fiercely. She cracks a grin, “And I’m not going in empty handed.”

Nina cocks an eyebrow. “How so?”

“Kaz gave me a dagger after he threatened to kill me. Thought it would be a fair trade if I was given the opportunity to stab him after he shot at me.”

The brunette quirks an eyebrow as if to say ‘did you?’ . Yara huffs, “No, I did not stab my br —” 

She shuts her mouth quickly at Nina’s warning look. Right, Crows only secret. “I did not stab Kaz.”

Nina lets out a sigh of exasperation and sets down the now clean glass. “That boy has a warped sense of justice.”

Yara gives a stiff smile in return. “It runs in the family.” 

Nina wipes her hands on her apron. “Let’s get you a new face, shall we?” 

A tall, dark-haired woman walks out into the streets of the Barrel. She is delicately feminine — all smooth, sanded edges and robust curves. Her skin is lightly tanned and devoid of blemishes, and a high sloped nose perches on her face. Her eyebrows are dark and finely shaped, and her bright green eyes are framed by thick black lashes. Her cheeks are not shallow from hunger, but sit in high apples above her cheekbones, tinged with a healthy rouge. Her hands are smooth and free of calluses; her skirts are voluminous — full of ruffles and ribbons and vanity. She wears a large, gaudy purse on her arm as if she wishes to provoke pickpockets. 

She looks like the exact opposite of a typical Ketterdam woman. 

Holding up her skirts, the woman glances at her stray reflection in the mirror and sneers.  Her lips look disgustingly kissable: red, plump, and rouged like a fruit ripe for the picking. Nina did almost too good of a job at making her look the embodiment of male temptation.

Puppeting a stranger’s body, Yara treks to the marketplace. 

The marketplace, per usual, is a bustling and crowded hive of noise, sight, and smells. If you allow yourself, you can sink down into the ruckus and drown out everything else; like plugging your nose and swimming to the bottom of a lake until the world turns bleary and silent around you.

It is the closest Yara has had to a home since Jordie’s death, and there is something bittersweet in that nothing has changed. She left — nearly bleeding to death in a damp alleyway — but the marketplace moved on. There is a new girl at the stroopwafel stall, a bright young hire a little over 8 years old — just like she was. There is something disturbingly beautiful about the unceasing evolution of the place; merchants adapt to customers’ needs and new hires come in to replace the employees who die or go mysteriously missing in the night.  A cycle repeating over and over as sure as the grains of time slip through an hourglass. 

The Dime Lions are easy to spot now that Yara knows who she’s looking for. They stand obtusely in the center of the market, decked out in finely pressured luxury suits and gaudy jewelry, grooming their egos in the broad daylight. They preen themselves like exotic birds — fluffing their feathers and sifting money through their hands. 

She walks by the gang members, casting quick, shy glances at them with girlish intrigue. One of the men tips his hat at her, and Yara holds a hand to her face and lets out a faux, high-pitched giggle.

(Internally, she tries not to bite her own hand off.) 

The man grins, and there is a flash of gold in his smile. Yara flashes an equally dazzling smile back, and it is genuine. The golden toothed man is here, and Yara will make him wish he never dared to lay his grimy hands on any woman.

Yara walks over to a nearby stall, ponders at its wares, and then grossly overpays for a simple silver spoon with an engraving of a bird on its handle.  The merchant’s eyes nearly bulge out of his head as she pulls the 30 kruge from her oversized purse, but he accepts the money without objection. Her purse is now entirely empty; the only kruge she carries is now in the merchant’s profits and the ‘revenge dagger’ Kaz gave her is securely tucked away in the folds of her tights. A suitable name, Yara figures. 

But to the golden toothed man watching her like a hawk, it looks like Yara is bleeding money. 

She tucks the spoon into one of the many folds of the dress; she can trade it for something more useful later. Putting an artificial pep into her step, Yara hikes up her skirts and walks out of the marketplace, deliberately winding through main streets and alleyways until she reaches a familiar dead end. The man with the golden tooth follows her like a loyal dog.

In the center of the alleyway, there is a dried puddle of crusted maroon and the shell of a bullet casing. She sneers at the sight. The golden toothed man cuts off one side of the alleyway, but the other side is clear and open. 

Yara could run for it. She could run out the alleyway and back to the Crow Club and tell Nina thank you and that, no, she did not get into any trouble. She could run back to the Slat and tell her brother that he was right, and no, she won’t ever ask to join his merry band of murderers again. 

Instead, Yara turns around and lets out a fake gasp at the sight of the men. 

“Oh!” she exclaims, making her voice higher and more nasally. “Good sir, I seem to have lost my way.” She makes her face contort into a pout and mentally gags. “Do you think you could help me?”

While Yara may be a shit liar, there is nothing men love more than having their belief of female inferiority be validated.

The man creeps towards her, giving her a cat-like smile and flashing his golden canine. “Only if you can help me too, sweetheart.”

Yara tilts her head to the side as if in confusion. “What do you need help with?”

The golden toothed man walks up to her until they are almost nose-to-nose. He raises out a hand, and pushes her back into the brick wall. His touch is light enough to not be painful, but the sinister glimmer in his eye signifies a different intent. 

His eyes flicker down to the purse in her hand. “You have an awful lot of kruge, and I’m a man sorely in need,” he explains in a slimy tone. 

From the copious amount of gold jewelry strung like garlands around his neck, Yara sincerely doubts that. “I don’t have any more money,” she says honestly.

A nasty sneer breaks onto the man’s face and he shoves his knee between her legs forcefully. Her back slams against the wall and a choked gasp flies out of her mouth unprovoked. The position is hauntingly familiar. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

He wrenches the purse from her gasp, unclips the seam, and turns it over. A puff of dust escapes the accessory, but nothing else. 

“What?” the golden toothed man growls. 

“I told you I didn’t have any money,” Yara says, a note of smugness creeping into her voice. 

The man glares at her, reels back, and slaps her across the face. Her head whips to the other side, and a distinct ringing sound echoes in her brain. Getting slapped is becoming an old form of punishment for her now. 

The man presses himself against her and breathes into her face, hands grasping across her body as if checking for the ripeness of a fruit. “I know exactly how you can pay me, then,” he pants. His voice stinks of fish and garlic. 

Yara knows what he wants, but she asks anyway. “How?”

“Get on your knees, wrap your mouth around my cock, and suck .”

Yara’s mouth gapes open in horror. “Yes, just like that,” the man taunts.

Slowly, she lowers herself down to the ground and kneels. Yara looks up at the man with hatred, and he laughs in her face. Her eyes flicker to his crotch area, but she keeps her eyes on the true prize. 

She reaches out a hand as if preparing to unzip the man’s pants, but her hands snag on the pistol in his holster instead. Her hands are nimble from years of pickpocketing dumb, overconfident men, and Yara quickly extracts the gun and rises to unsteady feet. Her finger teases over the trigger as she aims the weapon at the disgusting pervert in front of her. 

The golden toothed Lion catches sight of the weapon in her hand and lets out a boisterous laugh.  “What are you going to do with that, girlie?” He taunts. “Ever shot a gun before?”

No, she hasn’t. But Yara knows where a human heart is located — she can easily aim in the general area, shoot, and hope it nicks a vital organ. 

“But are you willing to let a man die? To feel the life seep out of him until there is nothing but his corpse?”

“It’s a mercy, really, darling. Much more painful to die from the pox than a bullet.”

Yara’s gaze hardens. She wants to watch this man choke on his own blood, to plead for her to spare his life. She wants him to die slowly, painfully, and excruciatingly. She wants to see the life drain from him like water flowing through a sieve. 

The Lion is right. A bullet wound is a mercy. This man deserves to suffer infinitely more. 

She aims much lower on his body, and fires. The man howls in pain and collapses to his knees shrieking obscenities. Smoke drips out from the tip of the pistol like blood and crimson begins to seep into the fabric surrounding the man’s crotch. 

“What the fuck, you bitch!” The golden toothed man slurs at her, eyes filled with rage and tears of pain. “Are you trying to shoot off my fuckin’ balls?”

“That was the intention,” the girl replies with a voice like ice. “If you believe I failed in my objective then I can try again.” Yara levels the pistol at his crotch again.

“I only had one bullet left, you crazy bitch,” hisses the cornered Lion. 

Yara hums in acknowledgement, and tosses the gun callously down the alleyway. It falls to the ground with a distant clutter. She approaches the man, standing above him like a looming specter of death. 

She begins to understand why the man was so eager to have her on her knees. The feeling of authority is empowering as she stands above him, watching with unconcealed satisfaction as he delicately holds his manhood like a boy cradling a favored broken toy.

He snarls like the wounded animal he is at her approach. “Get away from me, you fucking whore — ”

“Do you call all women whores, or just the ones you try to rape?” 

The man hisses at her, “I’ve never raped anyone.”

“What do you call it then?” Yara retorts sharply. “Do you have another name for when you force a woman to unwillingly have sex with you?”

The man does not respond, merely stares at her with hate-filled eyes. 

“Answer me,” she snaps. “Or do you want me to kick you in the balls?” 

The man growls at that and responds, “Their bodies always want it. They crave it.”

“Even if their minds don’t?” Yara hisses. 

“Women never know what they want,” the golden toothed man spits out.

“But men do,” she replies. “You knew what you wanted from me even before you saw that I had no money. You would have fucked me against the wall regardless.”

The man licks his lips and sneers. His golden tooth looks dull and lackluster in the dim light of the alleyway. 

“How many women have you asked if they wanted to have sex with you?” Yara questions. 

The man does not reply. She lifts her foot up threateningly as if to deliver a blow to his crotch. 

The man draws in a breath in panic. “I didn’t need to,” the caged Lion croaks out. “I knew that they wanted it.”

Yara lowers her foot. “Okay then.”

The man gasps, looking at her with blatant confusion. “What?”

“Okay then,” she says, and lowers herself to the same height as him. His hands, which are still wrapped protectively around his butchered member, have begun to stain red. “Tell me one thing — how would you have done it?”

The man furrows a brow at her. “Done what?”

“How would you have fucked me?” Yara asks, her voice a harsh whisper. “Would you have shoved your fingers inside of me first?”

She leans closer to the man, so close she could stick her tongue out and lick a clean strip across his neck. “Would you have made sure my body wanted it, craved it? ” 

Yara pulls back. “Or would you have just skipped right to the penetration?”

The man sneers at her, her closeness instilling a false sense of confidence. “I would’ve stuck it in you until you were screaming for more,” he says sordidly.

Yara’s fingers pry under the layers of her skirts until she grasps onto the hilt of her dagger. “In that case, do you consent for me to penetrate you?”

“What?”

Yara’s blade plunges into his gut with a lewd, wet squelch. The man lets out a loud, pained shriek that rings like church bells in her ears.

“Oh, sorry, are you not liking it?” She asks bitterly, and abruptly yanks the blade from the man’s body. He lets out a choked moan and whimpers softly. “Let me try again.”

Her blade enters into his flesh once more, enlarging the already gaping wound in his stomach. If Yara squints hard enough, she can almost make out his intestines wriggling beneath her blade. The man gasps out in pain and Yara coos at him mockingly. “Your body is so responsive, you must be loving this.”

She does not wrench out the weapon again, but keeps the dagger plunged deep within him. Slowly but surely, Yara twists it deeper within him until the man is begging her to stop. 

“Did you ever stop when those women asked you to?” She questions, already knowing the answer.

“Yes,” the man gasps out. When his mouth opens, she can see the blood pooling in the back of his throat. It spills out past his lips just like the lie. “Every time.”

Yara cocks her head to the side. “You’re a worse liar than I am.”

She twists the blade further, and watches as the life drains from the golden toothed man.

At the same time, the layers of Nina’s magic peel off of Yara. Her face narrows and the blackened pox scars appear across her skin like a blight surging through a field of crops. Her hair lightens and her frame grows smaller. Her eyes turn from glistening emerald to polished umber, and finely manicured eyebrows are replaced with light hairs and a strong brow bone. 

The man writhes beneath her. “ You, ” he gasps. 

Yara grins a half smile. “I’m so happy that I’m the last face you see.”

The golden toothed man opens his mouth to reply, but gurgles on the tide of blood rushing up his throat. He falls to the ground with a slump like a wet sack of flour. 

Yara rises from the ground, the layers of her dress soaked in the man’s blood. The sleeves of the dress sag down on each shoulder, ill-fitting after Nina’s tailoring has worn off. 

She walks down the alleyway, turns to leave, and pauses. Her footsteps trek back down the alleyway, feet sloshing in the pools of the man’s blood. 

With her dagger, she claims a present from the man. Carefully, she tears strips of fabric from his shirt and wraps her gift with tender, blood covered hands.

She leaves the dead Lion there, pants pulled down to his knees, blood dried to his dead body, and stabs wounds littering his corpse. 

She takes his most favored appendage with her, however. 

When Yara arrives back at the Slat, there is so much blood caked onto her that it drips onto the floor as she walks. Nina immediately rushes towards her, examining the girl for possible injuries but Yara merely laughs. 

“It’s not mine,” she says proudly. In her right hand, she holds the bundled up remains of the golden toothed man’s phallus, which lie in wait to be delivered to Kaz’s desk. Yara looks at Nina with a proud, toothy smile. 

Everyone in the Slat recognizes that smile. 

It is not the soft smile of a Rietveld. 

It is the manic grin of a Brekker. 

Chapter Text

Yara did not think she would ever see her brother do a veritable double-take, but as she strolls into his office covered in her last kill, Kaz does exactly that.

“Why are you covered in blood?”

“I brought you a present,” she says, holding up the drenched piece of fabric and throwing it at his desk. 

“Why are you covered in blood?” Kaz repeats, voice growing in fervor. “Is it yours?”

Yara rolls her eyes, “No.” She points towards the bloodied package. “Open it.”

Her brother scowls at her, and begins to unwrap the hastily put together ‘present.’ “What is this?”

“The penis I cut off from a Dime Lion,” she says casually, and Kaz nearly drops the dead man’s bits on the ground. 

“The what ?”

“The penis I cut off of the Dime Lion I just killed,” Yara explains. She winces sympathetically as the man’s cut off appendage slumps off the desk and onto the floor. “Sorry for the mess, I shot him once in the twat before I stabbed him to death.”

Kaz looks at her with a deadpan expression.

“I cut off his penis post-mortem ,” she adds. 

Kaz glares at her. “You killed a man.”

It is not a question, but Yara answers it regardless. “Yes.”

Kaz lets out an exasperated sigh and runs a gloved hand through his dark hair. “I told you —”

“No,” Yara cuts in. “You told me I wasn’t capable of killing a man. That’s different from telling me not to kill a man.”

“ — I told you to lay low, ” Kaz hisses. “To stay dead.”

Yara throws her hands up in exasperation. “Well I don’t exactly have the best track record with staying dead. ”

Kaz slams the end of his cane harshly into the ground. The old wood creaks ominously below them.

“You endanger the Dregs with your carelessness,” Kaz snarls. “You endanger my operation.”

Yara scoffs. “I can’t endanger an operation I’m not fucking apart of !”

Her brother’s eye twitches. “Were you followed, Yara?”

“I don’t see how that’s — ”

“Were you fucking followed, Yara?”

“ No! ” She yells.

Kaz scoffs, unconvinced, and Yara levels him with a piercing glare. 

“I don’t know what you want from me, Kaz,” she seethes. “You want me dead one second and alive the next. You say I can’t join you and your Crows because I can’t kill someone, so I did. ” 

“You are a rare type of idiot,” Kaz hisses. “You cannot possibly understand the implications of your actions.”

Yara laughs mockingly. “Well then do enlighten me, brother!”

Kaz glares at her with vitriol. “By putting yourself in danger, you endanger the whole operation. You endanger my operation,” he hisses. “If you had been captured by the Dime Lions —”

“What would you have done then?” She cuts him off. “Would you have rescued me, brother?” 

His left eye twitches. “They would have tortured you. Brutally. Killed you, most likely.”

“But would you have rescued me?”

“No,” Kaz says sternly, but his voice wavers. “But my Crows would have wanted to retrieve you. They would be…” He pauses, as if searching for the word. “...distracted, if not for your immediate return.” He fixes her with a callous look. “I would have had to intervene for the sake of my operation. Which would cost me money. Ammunition. Resources.”

Yara scoffs. “You’re unbelievable.” 

Kaz’s gaze hardens. “I would gladly leave you to the lions if you find my generosity inadequate —”

“Shut up!” She yells. Surprisingly, he does, and Kaz fixes her with a look so disdainful her insides shrivel up.

Yara inhales deeply — shakily, angrily. “At least have the decency to acknowledge that you care about me, Kaz.”

Her brother recoils as if she burned him. “I do not care about you,” he hisses. “I do not care about anyone.”

Yara looks up at him angrily. “You forbid me from going with you. You — you berate me like a child for killing an associate of your — and my — greatest nemesis. You worry about my capture and torture. Either you have gone mad or you care about me.”

“It is madness to care about someone,” Kaz retorts sharply. “Therefore, I do not. Love is weakness.”

“You say that like it’s true,” she says bitterly. 

“It is,” her brother insists. “I cannot care for you, Yara. I cannot love you.”

Yara swallows down a cry of outrage. “Can not, or will not?” She seethes. 

Kaz makes an impressively sour face. “This conversation is over.”

He turns around as if to block her out, hands folded behind his back with his cane grasped in his right glove. Yara fumes behind his back. 

“You’re such a fucking child!” She shouts at him. 

Kaz remains a statue in front of her, impassive to her cries of indignation. Yara lets out a frustrated scream of anger and pants heavily. 

Slowly, Kaz turns back around. However, instead of meeting her eyes, he merely sits back down at his desk and begins to diligently work on his paperwork. 

“What, you’re just going to pretend that I’m not here?” 

Kaz does not respond. 

Yara chuckles darkly. “So I can just say whatever the fuck I want to then, Kazzie ?”

Her brother’s grip tightens minutely on his pen, but he continues writing. 

There is a long, terse beat of silence. 

“I do not like you,” Yara confesses into the stale air. “You are more cruel and wicked than I ever could have imagined.”

Kaz continues writing, head bowed as if this was a fact he had long accepted. 

“I don’t know if you know it but — “ Kaz’s pen drags down the parchment paper in harsh strokes. “You have Jordie’s eyes.” 

There is a sharp screech as Kaz’s hand comes to a halting stop. Her brother freezes in place as if she paused the passage of time itself.

“You have his eyes,” Yara continues. “And sometimes I forget which brother you are and I stop and —” She draws in a raggedy breath. “I stand there with his name waiting on my lips and — and the grief crashes over me again.”

Kaz shudders in a breath, and Yara’s hands clench into tight fists. “And I don’t think I will ever forgive you for not looking at me like — ” Her voice breaks. “Like I did for you.”

A quiet rasp echoes from his desk. “Then hate me.”

Yara startles. Her brother’s head is bowed down to the scribbles on his pages, and the pen trembles in his hand. 

“Look at me, Kaz.”

His head remains stubbornly bowed. 

“ Look at me,” Yara demands. Slowly, Kaz’s gaze lifts, his eyes as tumultuous as the sea. 

“I still love you,” she says with a voice as unyielding as the sky. “I love you because I am your sister and I will always love you.”

Kaz laughs bitterly. “You will grow to hate me.”

“No,” Yara denies. “I will always care for you, Kaz. No matter how much you frighten me, no matter if there is nothing in you but apathy or anger or sadness or hatred.”

A rueful laugh shakes Kaz’s body. “That is a mistake . ”

“It is one I am willing to make,” she snaps back. Yara breathes in heavily. “It hurts to love people. I know that now more than ever.” Soulful, teary brown eyes flicker to him. “It feels like a sacrifice , doesn’t it? Like a choice you get to make — to decide whether or not to allow yourself the pain.” 

A cold chill passes through Kaz, and Yara continues, “You think that you can choose whether or not to care, to love. But you can’t, Kaz.” 

Kaz’s head whips around as if the mere thought offends him. “Yes, I can,” he snarls. “I am Kaz Brekker, I am Dirtyhands; I control this city and I control my heart — ”

“You are a fool, Kaz Rietveld !” Yara shouts at him, voice nearly cracking. She hushes herself down to a low whisper. “I never had to think about loving you. I just did .” 

“Everyone chooses,” Kaz snarls. 

“No,” she whispers harshly. “Because if I was given the choice, I would have chosen not to care about you. I would have chosen to be happy that you were dead and I would have moved on with my life.”

A flicker of hurt flashes in Kaz’s eyes, like a silverfish swimming quickly through the dark currents of a river before disappearing back into the depths. 

“You still have that option,” her brother says gravely. “We can go back to being dead to each other. You can leave the Slat.”

Yara stares him down like a marble statue.

“Leave!” Kaz shouts at her, eyes blazing like an inferno. She meets his cry with an expression as cold as Fjerdan ice, and his anger quiets down to a soft, simmering flame. In a dull croak, he adds, “ Please .”

“No.”

“Yara — ”

“You and your Crows say, ‘no mourners, no funerals.’’ she interjects, her voice flickering like flames in a gust of wind. “But I never stopped mourning you. Not for seven fucking years. And if I leave — if you force me to leave — I don’t think I will ever stop.”

Her voice grows in intensity. “Kaz, I will mourn the family we were for every day of my life. Maybe years ago we could have gone back to the farm, but not now. Not when there is so much of ourselves we’ve lost to this bloody city.”

Yara takes in a shuddering breath. “But if I cannot be your sister, then at least allow me to be your ally.” Her voice is fierce with conviction. “Let me avenge Jordie with you.”

Kaz inhales sharply, his eyes shifting rapidly across her face as if searching for any weaknesses, any sign that she is not as serious as she appears. 

He wheezes out a laugh. “All I wanted — ” Kaz runs a shaky, gloved hand through his hair. “I’m trying to — ”

He cuts himself off, unable to get the words past the invisible barrier lodged in his throat. 

“You can’t protect me,” she finishes for him, her voice bitter. “It’s too late for that.”

Kaz looks up at her with something akin to betrayal. 

“How can I not?” Her brother croaks. “I — If I had known — ”

“But would you have?” Yara questions, her voice resigned rather than accusative. “If you had known I was alive, would you have looked for me, Kaz?”

Kaz opens his mouth and then promptly closes it. He shuts his eyes tightly. “I don’t know.”

Yara nods, a tightness pulling at the back of her throat. Her voice is tentative as she asks the next question. “And if Jordie had — ”

“Yes.” 

There is a beat of silence. 

“I suppose our priorities are the same then,” Yara exhales. “Even if you cannot love me, you can admit that you still love our brother.” 

His gaze flickers angrily to hers. “He is dead,” Kaz snaps. “You cannot love what is dead.”

“Mourning is a type of love.”

“I am not in mourning,” he hisses. 

“We mourn differently — you seek revenge for Jordie.”

“And what do you seek?” Kaz counters bitterly. 

“To avenge both of my brothers,” Yara states plainly.

“I do not need a savior,” he snarls. 

Yara glances at his glove-adorned hands pointedly. 

Kaz seethes with poorly contained rage. “Get out of my office. You’re dripping blood on the floor.”

“You never said no,” Yara says. 

“To what?”

“I said, ‘Let me avenge Jordie with you.’”

“And?”

“I’m waiting for your response.”

The room is silent enough to hear the individual drips of blood coming off of Yara’s dress. 

“Yes,” Kaz confirms. “Now get out.”

With a faint smile on her face, Yara does.