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Coming back when she did was both a blessing and a curse.
The Wraith was meant to be out on the sea for another month at least, unless they came across a line of slaver ships that meant they were too full or had lost too much crew to the other vessels to continue on their journey. People seemed to be picking up on the fact that there were others out to get them and were getting sneakier and fewer out on the waters, though, so it was unlikely that would happen. They had gotten caught out in a storm that had damaged the hull bad enough that they had to overextend the Grisha in her crew just to make it back to the ports in Ketterdam that they could repair themselves in.
Inej hated the fact that she was back because it meant that the purpose she had worked so hard to be able to fulfill had to be put on hold for several weeks. She loved the fact that she was back because it meant that she got to spend time with the people that she held nearest and dearest to her heart.
Some time had passed since they finished with their big heists and taken Van Eck down. They had resituated themselves in the new dynamics that were popping up and the relationships that had formed. Kaz had established himself fully as a Barrel boss and was doing good work on getting the Dregs set up to live prosperous lives and draw in other people like them, people that had been hurt and could help the cause. Wylan and Jesper had found themselves both in a dynamic and a relationship, which was the same as Nina and Matthias. They lived in the city, though Wylan and Jesper apparently split their time evenly between the upper apartments in the Silver Six and the Van Eck mansion. Matthias and Nina traveled to Ravka for half of the year and spent the rest of it doing whatever Kaz needed them to do.
Inej had come back to the club that evening because the building had been locked down so that the Crows, or most of them, could spend some special time together. Mondays were the days that most people went to work and then went to church, so business was usually slow on those days anyway. She had been looking forward to that evening all day while she was working to get her ship and crew back into working order.
The upper apartments of the club were the only place that they could have those special appointments with each other. While it was well known that everyone had a classification regardless of where they had come from, even the Fjerdan druskelle , it was a good idea to keep what it was hidden so that it couldn’t be used against that person. Inej had known what hers was since she had participated in the Suli ritual when she was twelve as all the other girls traveling with her parents had. Three people in jackal masks had read her palms and given her a card reading before they had informed her that she was a caregiver. She had cherished that classification while dreaming of what would become of it when she got old enough for it to come to fruition, putting it to use only once in the Menagerie before she had gotten the rest of her Crows.
Nina was a flip that leaned heavily to the caregiver side with an official, albeit unregistered, dynamic with Matthias. Inej usually acted as her caregiver when she was in Ketterdam and Jesper acted in her stead when she wasn’t. Nina was given the same classification test as all of the new students in the Little Palace were, set before a panel of judges made up of three Corporalki with one from each school of training, and then diagnosed before she had begun her learning. Ravka even went as far as having hyper-classifications that determined just how much time out of their headspace that regressors could get away with before it began to take a toll on their health.
Matthias had been classified as a little by the Crows after everything was said and done. They were taking a couple of days to breathe and recuperate when she came down the hall in the Slat and saw him curled up into a tiny ball on the floor, crying his eyes out. She had taken him up in her arms and brought him to Nina, who had done as much of her classification test as she could remember to confirm what they already knew.
Wylan was a little, which was another reason that his father had been so upset with him back when he was still breathing. He had taken the Kerch classification test that everyone had to take when they turned sixteen. Inej assumed that Kaz had taken it as well, since that was what he had flippantly implied when she had tried to bring it up back before she had learned how to get around the blocks in his mind.
Jesper was a caregiver despite all of the reckless and somewhat childish tendencies he had. She knew that he had gotten his classification as part of his application to the University of Ketterdam because it was otherwise considered to be something that was revealed to the person when they were in their twenties and gave into the instincts that they may or may not have had in Zemini culture.
They made up a strange little family. She knew that she wasn’t the primary caregiver for any of the regressors and never would be because she traveled so much, but she enjoyed getting to spend time with them nonetheless. If she was in luck, then Nina would have to go down into headspace while she was in harbor so that she could at least have the illusion of being the primary instead of secondary for once. It was the most that she could ask for from them and she was content with it.
Inej paused when she got to the staircase that led up to Kaz’s personal office. Despite the fact that the Silver Six had a whole set of apartment rooms on the upper floor, he had still chosen to stick himself in the top level with a bedroom and office space like he had in the Slat. She knew that part of it was because it took people a long time to get up there, which deterred unwanted drunk visitors, but another part of it was that it was warm so it bothered his leg less to sleep there.
She missed him dearly.
Despite how desperately she wanted to get to the others so that she could enjoy their dynamic time together, she wanted to go see Kaz more. She had seen him a bit early that morning when he was just going to bed and she was getting up to help tend to her crew. It wasn’t enough that they both knew it, even if she would have the work of a Saint to try and pry that out of him.
So, instead of continuing down the hallway so that she could get to the communal space that she knew the other Crows were currently cooped up in, she went up the stairs that led to the attic. If she hadn’t already been in the building, she would have scaled the drainage pipe that led to the roof and undid the finicky little latch that he used to keep the window closed on days when it was raining. She would have snuck down onto her cushion in the bay of the window and watched him until he found a peaceful place to pause his work so that he could pay attention to her as well. They would exchange quick words and then they would return to their own tasks, her likely sharpening and cleaning her knives while he filled out more paperwork and poured over more maps.
She was already inside and she wasn’t feeling up to scaling the side of a building right now. Her hands were raw from the old ropes that they had been meaning to replace that led up to the crows’ nest on the Wraith . She had also noticed that Kaz was acting a bit odd when he passed by her early that morning, so she doubted that he would be exactly as receptive to that kind of visit as she was hoping. No one could ever hope to pin down the infamous Dirtyhands, after all.
Inej let a small smile grace her face as she reached the door that led up to the attic. There was a small platform that was big enough for a person to stand without falling down the stairs and the door to open outwards, but not much else. She saw two nails sticking out of the wall in the perfect spacing for a picture to have been hung there once upon a time. She knew that Kaz and Nina had been fighting about whether or not they should decorate the Silver Six like a home or if they should leave it bare like the Slat.
Her hand reached down to the coppery doorknob when she heard something muffled behind the wood. She didn’t know if she had reverted because she was back in Ketterdam or if it was her fatal flaw, but curiosity overcame her. She dropped silently down to her knees and pressed her ear underneath the door frame so that she could listen in on what was happening. The way that her body was formed would also block out any change to the flickering light that might spill under the door form the oil lamps burning away along the stairwell.
It sounded like a soft whimpering at first, a small noise that someone could make in the back of their throat. Then came the creaking of leather and wood as Kaz no doubt shifted around in his chair. She heard a sniffle and then a wet bark that was nowhere near close enough to laughter for her to feel comfortable. There was a murmuring of words that she couldn’t decipher, too slurred and quiet for her to translate them in her mind.
The last thing that she managed to hear as she was pulling herself up, ready to leave Kaz be since he was clearly having a moment with someone he wouldn’t want her knowing about, was a high-pitched whimper that rocked her to her core. It was the same sound that had dragged her out of the room covered in fake purple silks and to the room bedecked in fake wood carvings to care for the Ravkan girl in the menagerie. It was the same sound that had made her step foot into Jesper and Wylan’s room, something she had long since sworn she was never going to do. It was the same sound that woke her in the night when it started storming or when Matthias was off on a job with Kaz.
Somewhere in the office of her closest friend and sometimes-lover was a little that was in undue amounts of distress.
She barely even thought about what she was doing or what Kaz might want to keep behind closed doors as she let herself fall entirely into her headspace. She felt bigger, stronger, softer, more capable in almost every way, as she opened the door and stepped silently over the threshold. She lifted it so that the hinges didn’t creak out of habit, knowing that Kaz prevented them from being oiled so that he would know who was coming through the door.
Inej opened her mouth to say something but then quickly shut it, for the first time not knowing what to say when she was faced with a regressor.
Kaz was sitting behind his desk as he always was when he was in his room, despite the rather plush bed she had tricked him into buying sitting in the corner. There were papers strewn out over his desk like there almost always were, but he wasn’t touching any of them. She could see the fountain pen that Jesper had given him for his most recent birthday sitting on top of them, discarded and uninterested. The boy in question had his legs tucked up into his chest and his arms messily wrapped around them. His face was splotchy with tears and the tips of his ears were a pretty pink blush, which meant that he was embarrassed. His expression was contorted into a look of pain that pulled at her heart more than she knew was possible for the Bastard of the Barrel.
She silently took a step forward, her feet light as if that was what she was born for. “Kaz?” she asked softly, trying to keep her tone even and compassionate so that she wouldn’t scare him more than the thoughts in his head were.
He snapped towards her and his entire demeanor changed. He had been bent in on himself slightly but now the lines of his shoulders and torso were so rigid that he looked as if he had been made out of wood. He unfolded so much that he basically filled up the entire room. The tension that had come with his sorrow snapped taught and released a righteous rage as he shouted, “Get out!”
Inej flinched and took a half step backwards. Her instinct was to turn and run like she had been told to because that was what she had always done when they got in fights. He hadn’t seen her running since it usually resulted in her finding her way up onto the roof or through to the next room using a windowsill. She fought against the movement as her caregiver headspace took over her body. She placed both of her hands on her hips and stood to her full height, which was still considerably shorter than the other. “Kaz Brekker, that is not how you speak to your friends and certainly not how you speak to me!” she reprimanded, her voice even and calm but explicitly laced with a tone that told him he was in trouble.
He reached over and grabbed his cane, grasping it so tightly in his hand she was worried that he was going to break something. He walked over to her faster than someone with his limp should have been able to move and then tugged the door shut behind her. He only gave her a second to move out of the way before the heavy wood swung back into its frame. “Inej,” he growled as he turned to face her again.
“Kaz,” she replied plainly. She had spent the last two years out at sea, fighting against the worst kind of monsters that human men could become. She wasn’t going to back down because her friend had been caught in something he obviously thought was a vulnerable position and was now threatening her about. The same thing had happened when she had first kissed him, after coming back from her first voyage where she had lost an indenture, when she needed his comfort. Now he needed hers in a much different way, and she wasn’t going to be cowed into not giving it to him.
“I don’t want you to tell anyone what you saw in here,” he instructed like he was still the boss of her. He wiped at his eyes with the edges of his cuffs until she let out an upset noise. Inej pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and then dapped the tears and snot that were trying to dry on his face away, despite the yanking that he was doing to try and get away from her offending hands.
She folded and carefully reinserted the item where it belonged as she pointed a finger at his chest. “I’m going to tell you what we’re not going to do, mister. We’re not going to shout, or scream, or pitch a fit. We’re not going to act like what I saw didn’t happen. And we’re certainly not going to say mean things because we’re embarrassed, alright?”
He opened his mouth, the fire that she recognized from so many missions burning in his eyes. Then he shut it and bowed his head. “Yes, Mama.”
She ignored the way that the parental name made her feel, how giddy and excited the nerves brewing in her gut were. That was something they could address later, something that would be good for the both of them. “Good, now come along,” she said, offering her hand out to him. She was giving him the opportunity to say no as she took a step towards where she wanted to go. It had been a long time since she had said that she wouldn’t have him without his gloves and clothes, she would have him without the armor and the illusion of the man he had built himself up to be. She knew the hurt of touch that was supposed to be pleasing but turned into a punishment and she wasn’t going to inflict that on him even if he had been improving for her. Most of what he had done and now did was for her, a thought that made her want to help him all the more.
Kaz looked at her eyes and then down at her hand before he slotted the hand that was not holding his cane into her hand. Inej took that and led him over to the windowsill. She sat him down on the comfortable cushion that lined the seat, allowing the chipper breeze to brush over them as she opened the top panel now that the rain had stopped. Kaz turned his head so that he could stare at the large, full moon that was competing with its silver light against the orange-gold of the oil street lamps.
She plopped herself down next to him so that their knees were just brushing against each other, enough to be grounding and kind without being overwhelming. She folded her hands prettily in her lap as she gave him a moment to finish collecting himself.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” she asked after a couple of minutes had rolled past. Thoughts of what she was missing down in the common room with the rest of their friends had been completely pushed from her mind, filled only with worry for her dearest friend.
“Do I have to?” he mumbled. He was acting unlike himself, stubborn as always and yet somehow shy and scared at the same time.
She sighed and leaned her forehead against the cool glass pain closest to her. She let her eyes roam over his form and resisted the urge to reach for his hand. She didn’t want to overwhelm him that early into the process. “I suppose that you don’t have to, but I have a suspicion that I already know,” she murmured.
“If you already know then I shouldn’t have to explain it.” His mouth pressed down into a thin white line and he continued to stare out towards the harbor, away from her and the issue at hand.
This time she did reach out to place her hand on the knee that was touching her own. He didn’t run from her but rather scooted a bit closer so that she could place her entire palm down on him. “I think that you and I both know that you don’t like people assuming things about your vulnerabilities. You were able to use it when you were becoming a Barrel Boss but it’s not going to help you now, sweetheart.”
He gave a minute nod and the tips of his ears turned crimson, a sign of embarrassment and a flush of love. She wanted to kiss the side of his head, but held back while he collected his thoughts. “I never got officially classified. I told Per Haskell that I would do it when I turned sixteen and I meant it, but then there were so many other things that I had to do. I already knew what I was because it had already started.”
“It?” she asked, ignoring the shock that she felt. She knew that it was dangerous to have official documents with that kind of telling information stored somewhere in the vaults, but she had assumed that he would have stolen the forms and the answer sheets that they checked them with to give himself a diagnosis. That likely would have required other parties be in the know about what he was doing or who he was, though.
“The regressing,” he said it so quietly that she wasn’t sure that she had heard him properly.
“You’re a little,” she put it bluntly so that he wouldn’t be able to worm around it any longer. She wondered how many of their problems would have been solved if they had been able to do that, say their secrets out loud so that the Saints could bless them for their honesty.
He gave another small nod. “I don’t have to regress very often and it’s very often not a pretty sight to behold. I try to do it when everyone else is away or when I’m going to sleep. I only sleep well when I do it while in headspace,” he explained, guilt wracking his features.
She reached out towards him. Now that he had admitted what she had wanted him to, confirmed that she was the perfect person to help him, she was going to do it. He immediately leaned into her touch, releasing his cane so that it clattered loudly to the uneven boards on the floor. Inej lifted him with the ease of a sailor and settled him onto her lap despite their height disparity. His bad knee was bent very slightly and propped up by the window seat while his good leg hung down against the wainscotting. His side was pressed to her sternum in a way that allowed his hunched figure to place his head down onto her shoulder.
Her long fingers began to trail up and down his spine the same way that she did with her knives when she needed to be reminded of her claws. She pressed the kiss to his temple that she had wanted to earlier and felt as though her heart was going to burt from her chest. He was so small and defenseless in her arms at the moment, placing all of his trust literally into her hand and against her heart. She knew so many people that would rush at the chance to exploit that vulnerability without even pausing to think about it, but she never would.
“Thank you for telling me, Kaz,” she murmured. “I’m very proud of you for being so brave.”
She felt his breath hitch from where it had been blowing across his skin. It was normal breathing so it didn’t both her the same way that hot breath across the back of her neck or over her breasts did. He was simply taking in her scent to remind him of who he was next to and what she meant to him. “It was scary,” he whispered. His voice sounded softer, smaller. It still held the same rasp that it had before because even regression wouldn’t be able to undo the damage that firepox had done to his poor voicebox.
Her heart felt as though it was bursting now that Kaz was able to show her his truly little side without having to pretend that he was big.“How often do you go into your headspace, little one?” she asked. She was testing the waters with the nickname, she knew that.
It seemed to work in his favor as the tenseness in his muscles began to relax even more. “I gotta do it every month or I feel yucky,” he wrinkled his nose.
She nodded her head as she continued to press little kisses to his temple and the top of his head. It made sense that he only had to regress every couple of weeks to stave off any mental sickness that would become physical. She had heard that some Saints were able to go entire years without regressing, like the sun summoner saint, but that wasn’t possible for those that hadn’t been blessed with divinity.
“When was the last time that you regressed with someone around?” she asked. It wasn’t uncommon in places like Ketterdam for someone to have to regress by themselves because it was hopeless for them to afford the insane prices that the daycare centers charged people and they hadn’t found a dynamic yet. She didn’t like the idea of Kaz being alone for that long, but she had a sinking feeling that she knew it was the truth. He had never been classified officially, had never had a confirmation test, and certainly hadn’t wanted to expose his secret to someone that wasn’t as close to him as Inej was.
“Just now was the only time anyone ever saw me…” he trailed off.
Though she had known it to be the truth before the question had even finished making it passed her lips, it still made her heart ache in her chest to think about. “I’m sorry that you had to do all of this alone, little one. If you want, I can be here for you as often as I can. I come back home about every month so we can take my nights here to do something together that can help you feel better. Do you trust me to do that?”
Kaz shifted in her arms so that he was sitting up and they could look at each other properly. Inej was very familiar with the people that lived inside of the boy in her arms, she had seen some of them born and seen all of them in play. Kaz, the boy without his family, was often scared and overwhelmed with panic when he showed up. Dirtyhands was mischievous and wicked in a way that no one else could ever dream of being. The Bastard of the Barrel was ruthless and cruel. Her boy, her sweet boy, was scared but trusting and heartfelt. She saw that shining through in the darkness of his eyes as he searched her face for any ill intent.
“I want that, please,” he pleaded with her.
She had to resist the grin that was splitting across her face as she pressed another kiss to his cheek. “Nothing would make me happier than having the privilege to get to call you my little, puiul meu cioara ,” she said softly.
While he had gotten kinder about her Suli heritage, less jealous and scared of anything she could love more than him, she still expected a fit about the nickname. Instead he just wrinkled his nose and giggled, squirming as he no doubt filled with happy thoughts. He was well and truly down in his headspace and likely had been for quite a while, which made her wrap him up even tighter. She loved protecting people and she loved Kaz, so to get the chance to do that in a way that benefited them both felt like the most right thing to ever happen to her life.