Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jordie doesn't remember dying. Maybe that's for the better.

(The last few days of his life had been a feverish blur, after all -- memories of his skull throbbing on the hard, cobbled pebblestones, Kaz’s tiny hand squeezing his tightly.)

What he does remember, however, is being born again.

It's all madness and chaos, his body too small and hot and frail. 

And he doesn't even know what he is, but he knows immediately that it's wrong.

A ripple of panic seizes him -- where on earth is he? -- 

just before his vision goes dark once more.

All good things take time, he’d once been told. 

In time, Jordie figures out both what and where he is.

The Kerch religion spoke of practical matters, in life -- of working hard and honoring Ghezen. 

He doesn't think Ghezen planned this, however. 

After death, he'd assumed that there was a Heaven. At the very least, some sort of reward for years of diligent labor.

Instead, he finds himself adorned with black feathers and shaky wings that remain grounded, still unable to fly.

It’s clear to him, then, in that strange way that grown-up ideas hit you when you’re still a child: 

Somehow, somewhere, he did something terribly wrong. Has fallen down the rungs of the ladder of creation, as punishment.

How else can one describe being re-born as a crow? 

He builds his strength slowly. There’s no point in rushing, after all.

His mother -- for she is his mother, in this lifetime at least -- takes good care of him. Brings him food, teaches him how to tentatively make use of his wings.

Jordie realizes finally that he has still so much to learn.

He has his whole life -- this life -- in front of him.

His little brother will have to wait a bit longer.

But not for too long.

Once he's able to, Jordie flies off. Scanning the skies, searching for him.

The cool Ketterdam air is familiar, at least. Jordie doesn’t have the faintest idea where Kaz might be, but it’s only been a few weeks.

A dark thought strikes him -- what indeed might have happened to a little boy, left alone on the streets?

He pushes the thought aside.

In the limited time he's had in this new body, he's struggled with near-constant waves of guilt.

Of what he did wrong. Of what he should’ve done better.

But in the end, guilt won’t help him find his brother.

Kaz might be long gone -- but it’s still worth trying.

Crows are not meant to be solitary creatures.

And as it turns out, he’s not the only one looking for someone.

Jordie learns it in bits, and then all at once -- this is not punishment, after all. At least, not in the way he first thought.

Today, he’s sharing scraps with an older, wiser crow. His weathered beak speaks to a whole life lived, and well, isn’t that a thought? To live out life as a crow.

“We’re here to complete what was left unfinished,” his companion tells him simply. “Only you know what that is.”

“Well, I haven’t even found him yet,” Jordie complains.

(He’s scoured this cold, wet city, to no avail. No dark-haired little boy is wandering these streets alone.)

“Perhaps,” his companion replies simply, “the person you are looking for has changed.”

His companion was right, in the end.

Kaz is, of course, not as he left him.

In fact, Jordie hardly recognizes him at all. 

The little boy he knew is gone. In his place is a young man who looks completely different. 

He's taller and older, walking with a limp and a cane. No smiles or laughs to be seen, just a scowl.

And his clothes -- it’s such a silly thing to focus on, really, but Jordie can’t help it. Gone are the cheery prints of their childhood. He wears an austere suit, all straight lines and sharp edges. Dark, black gloves, to boot.

He looks like... well, he looks like an adult. Or passable imitation of one.

Older, not necessarily wiser, just... more tired.

(Another thought, like a knife to the throat -- in the shadows, with the light hitting his face just so , he looks like their father.)

Maybe this is punishment after all, he thinks.

But somehow, his little brother is the one who has paid the price.

Jordie keeps his distance for a while. Watches Kaz through windows and doors.

He’s in a gang -- that much, Jordie is able to discern -- and often comes back covered in blood. Sometimes it’s from others, sometimes it’s his own.

It feels like he’s watching a stranger sometimes, but he has to remind himself that this is his brother.

Powerful and cruel and very, very alone.

Kaz’s influence grows. He grows with it. 

There are too many people he interacts with in general, but Jordie sees him most frequently with two associates now. First one, then the other. Sometimes both, at once.

The body language speaks to some familiarity, but again, it's hard to tell. Kaz keeps them both at a distance, perhaps rightfully so.

It hurts all the same. To see the boy who once lived without a care in the world, pretending not to care at all.

Jordie’s frustration grows, despite himself.

He doesn't know what he can do in this form anyway. If all he’s meant to do is watch. 

Things change, again.

He visits Kaz whenever he can, but he’s resigned himself to what little he can do. Figures it’s probably not good to draw attention to himself, anyway.

He’s been sitting on this ledge for at least an hour when a waft of something delicious comes his way, warm and spiced.

And he doesn't mean it, really, but he's so hungry. 

The clicking noises are out of his throat before he even recognizes it’s coming from him.

What he doesn’t expect is for someone to approach the ledge.

He knows her. She’s one of the associates he’s seen Kaz with. He tracks her from time to time, but she’s a hard one to follow.

She's like him, in a way: disappearing in and out of the shadows. 

But she’s here now. And she’s not in the shadows.

He takes in the sight of her: warm skin, dark hair, kohl-rimmed around her eyes.

Jordie thinks she looks like a princess. The Suli don’t have princesses, granted, but if they did, maybe they’d look like her.

“Hello, darling,” she says, and her voice is soothing, quiet. “Are you hungry?”

She pulls a tiny bag from somewhere -- no, seriously, where did that come from -- and puts a little bit of warm rice out on the window sill.

And his stomach might be practically aching with hunger, but Jordie wonders if he’s walking into a trap. 

It wouldn’t be his first time, but could very well be his last. 

Still. It’s as if she understands, somehow.

She puts the food down, then turns away. Gives him a chance to take it all on his own.

And when he finally does, she doesn’t reach out and grab at him. 

She just sits in silence -- and most importantly, she lets him stay.

So Jordie comes back, after that. For totally not-selfish purposes.

He warms to her, and he likes to think that she warms to him, too.

He even brings other crows with him, because one crow would be rather strange, and when it comes to food, he thinks he should try and share.

It’s all fine, until one day.

Kaz is seated at his desk, while she’s feeding the whole lot of them out on the ledge.

There's a short, quick exchange -- and that's when Jordie notices, at last, the way Kaz's eyes linger on her just a little longer. 

He's seen that look before. When his little brother saw a magic trick, the joy and rapture and wonder of it all.

And in a heartbeat -- Jordie knows.

Maybe he can’t take care of his brother anymore. He certainly failed the first time around.

But this -- this, he could try to do. If nothing else.

The questions, now, are:

How can he keep bringing her back here? How can he make her stay ?

The answer, it turns out, is trinkets.

He brings her whatever he can, whenever he's around and able.

Little red beads that shine like pomegranate seeds.

Sparkling green sea glass, polished by the waves in the harbor. 

A vintage silver pocket watch -- nabbed from a rude old merch, no less -- that fully makes her laugh, drawing Kaz over.

“Is the crow bribing me, you think?” she murmurs, but her eyes are shining with mirth. One hand reaches out to ruffle his dark feathers, and he chirps before curling into her touch, moving his head beneath her delicate fingers.

(Yes, he had warmed to her, after all.)

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kaz replies, but the words, Jordie notes triumphantly, are missing their usual edge. “He just wants to be fed.”

Chapter Text

Not every visit is as idyllic as that one, though.

Jordie sees them arguing, sometimes, voices pitched low and fierce as they frantically discuss who knows what.

And it’s silly, really, because it’s such an obvious deflection. To him, anyways.

But he was foolish to think bringing her around more often would be enough. His brother is different now, but one thing is still true -- 

He won’t do anything until he’s ready to. 

Jordie considers another possibility, one he should have entertained far earlier:

It’s just as likely that this girl -- Inej, yes , that’s her name -- does not feel the same way.

She’s hard to read, too.

That reluctance stems from something she shares with his brother, Jordie can tell, and also something entirely different.

And it’s silly to be so protective over a girl he does not know -- a girl who is older now than he ever got to be -- but the instinct remains.

He knows how Kaz got here, after all -- but how did she?

The thought that someone might have hurt her puts him in a foul mood one evening, as he’s on the prowl for trinkets. He’ll do it still, because every little bit helps, but he wonders if it’s not all for naught.

He wants her for his brother -- but only if she wants him, too.

He doesn’t have to wait too long to get confirmation that she does, in fact, feel as Kaz does. Albeit in a slightly... cruder way.

They’re arguing again, or maybe just discussing things civilly (it can shift from one to the other in the blink of an eye, so he doesn’t always keep check too closely) when it happens.

One moment Jordie swears they’re having a normal conversation (though the window is shut, so he’s not privy to the exact details), and the next --

well, the next, Kaz has his shirt off for Ghezen-knows-what reason, and Inej is... blushing?

Oh, my.

It takes all his effort not to squawk in secondhand embarrassment. Because if he did, and one of them heard him, then he’d be forced to take the next ship to start a new life in the Wandering Isles. Or Novyi Zem. Maybe the Southern Colonies.

That’s beside the point.

It’s not like the concept of showing off is foreign to him.

He remembers the first girl he was sweet on -- a red-haired farmgirl who grew up near them. It had been a few years before Ketterdam -- he'd do all sorts of tricks to impress her, spinning cartwheels and plucking daisies from the open fields.

Jordie doesn’t remember her name now, but just as well.

She'd moved away with no warning one day. That's what Da had told him, anyway. 

In any case. Thirteen is a child on the cusp of adulthood. 

He knew the fuzzy outlines of desire, or something like it. What silly things it might prompt you to do.

This is... well, this is just embarrassing.

And not that he’s had the time or interest, but crow rituals are better, he’s sure. This feels too obvious .

(Flowers would work just fine.)

But all that feather-wringing to say: he thinks Kaz should keep his shirt on in front of the girl.

The girl who is blushing and definitely still looking at him. Hmmm .

If he was a human still, his little brother would never hear the end of this. It feels, in some ways, like the universe is laughing at him.

But okay. There is something there. And that is enough.

Maybe there is hope yet.

He may have spoken too soon.

They’re gone for a long while, and Jordie is left guarding a home that isn’t his.

While they’re out of town, he finds his way back to his peers. His Crows, his friends.

Some of them have quietly left. Their tasks, their missions already done.

Jordie tries not to let it sting.

His friends are not always just crows, either.

Elsje is a magpie, smaller and prettier than he is in every definition of the word. The downy white and glossy blue-black feathers of her coat are a sight to behold.

She can go wherever he goes, but she’s almost always better received than he is. Is rarely ever shooed away.

He should probably take it personally, but finds he can’t.

Not when she, too, has a sibling she’s shadowing on the streets. 

Jordie most often runs into her in the hidden enclaves of the West Stave. What happened to her little sister, she never has to say.

“What’s on your mind, Jordie?” she asks him one evening, when he’s cranky and tired and so very clearly not himself. 

She has infinite patience for him, a gift he does not deserve.

There’s a thought that’s been sitting in the back of his mind for far too long. His brother’s absence only seems to have made it greater.

But saying it out loud is not so easy. He finds the words, or tries to. 

“I don’t recognize him, when I see him,” Jordie says simply. A clunky start, but it’s something.

She tilts her head, curious.

“Because he’s not as you left him?”

“Because he’s not as I remember him,” he corrects her. “Not how I expected him to be.”

He thinks of his brother - the gloves, the limp, the pained scowls. 

What fuels him, every dawn? Greed? Ambition? Cruelty? 

Who has he become, what is he going after, and why?

All questions Jordie still cannot answer definitively. A disappointment of its own.

“And then I feel like I’ve abandoned him all over again, somehow,” he finishes, the admission bitter in his chest.

Elsje takes his shame in a stride. 

“Well, for what it’s worth, I don’t recognize her either.

But I still go. And so do you.”

Elsje turns away from him, then. Scanning the orange-pink skies, the setting sun.

“When he comes back, Jordie -- and he will come back -- don’t think. Just be .”

She shifts her gaze back to him, and he hears the emotion when she says it:

“Do you know what’s on the other side of love? It’s memory.”

Memory feels like a knife in his heart, sometimes. More burden than blessing.

But Jordie clings on to it, anyways. 

Counts the days until his brother’s return.

Something is wrong. 

Kaz is back, but she isn’t.

Not only that, but this is his brother as he’s never seen him -- angrier, sharper, crueler. He sleeps even less than before, if that’s even possible, scheming at all hours.

Where is she?

She’s not dead, of that much Jordie is certain. Kaz would be very different if she was. 

How, he’s not sure. But he knew the boy beneath the man, once. 

Then again, he doesn’t know what Kaz was like when he died. 

He never saw it, after all. Never witnessed what turned him into the creature that he is now.

But he cried, Jordie thinks. Surely , he must have cried.

(Jordie hates that he’s not entirely sure.)

Kaz doesn’t cry once for this girl.

It makes him incredibly worried.

In hindsight, he doesn’t know what possessed him to do it.

Some inane desire to see his brother, he supposes. A knowledge, no, conviction , that however much he’s changed, however little he knows of the truth, his brother won’t hurt him, not in this form.

So he taps his beak on his window one night. 

There are no other birds with him -- he’s completely alone. 

And maybe the lack of sleep has finally caught up to his brother, or something else influenced him. Jordie cannot be certain.

But Kaz does open the window. Looks past him for a second, before simply saying:

“She’s not here, you know.”

If he’s talking to a bird like he can understand him, his brother has indeed finally lost his mind.

But he can understand, so he lets out a low croak of acknowledgment, followed by the chirp he so often uses to ask for food.

“Yes, yes, here you go,” Kaz mutters, and Jordie is surprised to see the very same pouch he’s seen Inej use so many times. Had she kept it filled with birdseed in his room? He does not know.

Oh, and there’s one other thing too.

For the first time in a long time, his brother’s hands are bare. 

Jordie watches as his pale fingers disappear into the pouch, then pour the seeds into a small pile on the sill.

There are too many questions to ask, and none that can be answered, for the time being. Jordie decides, in the span of a heartbeat, that it doesn't matter.

He's here with his brother. The brother who will not touch him, scarcely looks at him, and doesn’t know who he is. 

But his brother, all the same.

Jordie doesn't want to think of anything else.

So he bends his small head and eats the seeds in silence.

The dark cover of night stretches beyond them, protection of its own.

“I'm trying my best, you know.” 

The comment comes out of nowhere, pointed to no one in particular. But Jordie can hear the undercurrent of worry beneath it all.

He sounds like the boy he once was. The boy he still is.

And it’s a thankless job, really, to be given a task without direction, a job without an end. Even if it’s for someone you love.

All you can do, Jordie thinks, is trust that it’ll eventually be alright.

Kaz remains out of sight for a while, after that.

Jordie searches Ketterdam for his brother's girl, to no avail. 

Can only hope his brother has fared somewhat better in the task.

Things change, again.

Jordie has picked up the gossip here and there, has seen the tension in the streets and the WANTED posters for himself. 

Knows, now, that whatever his brother has gotten himself into is far bigger than his usual odd jobs and scams.

Elsje is with him at what feels like the beginning of the end.

They’re back near the Slat, idly monitoring the comings and goings. 

Birds generally have the advantage of height, of a higher vantage point. However terrible this city might be, he’s never been in true danger, not really.

And yet, something is there . His feathers still. 

A tiny voice in his head speaks to him, soft and direct:

Move.

He moves, and just as well: misses a bullet that whizzes past his cheek.

He has just a second to register it: young men in ugly, bright clothes shooting at them.

And for a brief moment, his overactive imagination gets ahead of him: he sees Elsje’s white feathers splattered with blood, thinks he’s failed someone he loves yet again.

But she’s safe, after all. Manages to flutter away just as another bullet slices through the air.

There are tattoos that he recognizes, on the shooters.

His brother’s gang. Or at least, they were .

That can’t be... and why shoot at birds, anyways?

“Haskell’s prop has a fake crow head!” one sniggers drunkenly. “Let’s get him a real one, shall we?”

The words catch up as his brain puts it together, and his heart sinks at what he sees. That’s his brother’s cane they’ve got in their hands, or a crude mockery of it.

Were must be right. Where is he? 

In the cacophony, he sees movement behind a familiar window on the top floor. A dark coat being shrugged off and replaced with another one.

Relief, then horror, then too many sensations at once --

The knowledge that his brother is most definitely walking into a trap.

He flies over, to do Ghezen-knows-what -- 

just as his brother pulls the curtains shut.

The next time Jordie sees him, he’s lying bloodied and beaten on the floor of the Slat.

He’s going to die, and Jordie is panicking. 

He’s going to die, and they’ll meet again, but this was not the way it was supposed to be. Not with so little life lived.

Jordie thinks his heart might literally burst in its chest. Wonders if he shouldn’t have let the Dregs outside finish the job.

Maybe this is what you were sent for , a dark voice in his mind tells him. A crow, after all, is always a bad omen. 

Perhaps he was meant to be his brother’s witness in death, just as his brother had been in life.

Jordie pushes the thought aside just as quickly as it came. No .

He will see this through. Kaz will, too.

Get up , is all he can think, like his scrambled thoughts can bestow the brute strength he cannot. Get up, idiot, and fight .

And his brother does get up, somehow. Lives to fight and win again.

Not everyone in his crew is so lucky.

Inej is safe -- and Jordie’s heart feels feather-light in his chest when he sees her -- but there are tears in her eyes. And then he sees why .

There’s a tall, blonde man -- a Fjerdan, by the look of him -- who didn’t make it to the end. 

Kaz does not cry now, either. But Jordie knows he must hurt all the same.

Will this man -- no, a boy, really, just the same as him -- come back as a crow?

No , a voice in his mind tells him. He won’t. 

But he will be happy, Jordie thinks with certainty. Safe. Home .

In his own distraction, he doesn’t notice when the brown-haired girl pulls away from the group and turns to him, looks at him with her tear-stained face.

“Do you promise?” she says, and it’s so soft, it’s less than a whisper.

He’s seen her with his brother, a few times before, but this is new.

How can she -- can she hear his thoughts? Can Grisha do that?

He must have been thinking too loudly, he thinks idly. He’ll keep that in mind, for next time.

For now, he gives a low croak in the affirmative, something to soothe her pain. He hates to see anyone cry.

The girl smiles, then, despite her tears. 

“Well. In that case. How good of us to meet.”

He thinks a lot of loud thoughts after that, actually. All over Ketterdam.

About this city’s cruelty and mercy, both. About the mindless way he nearly died. 

Mostly, though, it’s about the fact that Kaz is alive.

He flies into crevices and looks into windows constantly to make sure it’s still true, always worried that an Angry Dime Lion or disgruntled merch may take his last-minute revenge.

But for now, at least, his brother is alive.

Alive. Alive. Alive. With more money and power than he could’ve ever dreamed of.

Now what?

The one person who is noticeably absent from all of this is Inej.

She’s not gone, exactly, but she doesn’t linger or stay.

Leaves little scraps of intel on Kaz’s desk before she slips away.

He tails her one night to see where she’s staying. It’s a nice house, flush with the soft luxuries that are so rare in this city.

But it’s the sound of her laughter, like bells, that twists like a knife in his heart.

Jordie sees her happier than he’s ever seen her. Without his brother.

And maybe, he thinks sadly, that’s for the better.

He returns to his brother’s ledge. Sometimes alone, sometimes with friends.

His brother is busier than ever, it seems. Jordie sees new crew reporting to him, unfamiliar faces.

It would be so easy to shoo him off. And yet, he doesn’t.

He doesn’t bother with niceties all the time -- not that Jordie would expect him to -- but he feeds him just the same.

It is a small act of kindness. But it is enough.

The gloves have always bothered him, though he cannot figure out why.

It feels tethered to him in a way he cannot describe.

The summer drags on, and Jordie starts to despair.

Inej has gone off to who-knows-where.

He brings his brother an ornamental hairpin he picked off a ledge on a nostalgia-fueled whim, one day -- black with sparkling, ocean-blue gems.

And for a split-second, his brother’s face is a storm of emotion. Wild, unrestrained.

Jordie wonders, with some hope, how often Kaz thinks of her. 

But then it passes.

“I’ll keep it safe,” he says simply, dark gloves closing around it delicately. “For when she’s back.”

If , Jordie thinks. If.

She returns, months later, under the cover of darkness.

Fall in Ketterdam means rain, lots of it. The city washed of its sin and memories, both.

He’s not on his brother’s ledge tonight, but just across from it. Had to be, to save himself from the downpour.

Still. He makes out a small lamp burning, the hairpin glinting on the corner of the desk. Kaz is working late, but he works a lot, these days.

He puts his pen down for a moment, and Jordie sees his brother rub tiredly at his face, looking more fragile and human than he’s ever seen him.

It’s at that exact moment that Inej comes through his bedroom door.

She’s like a vision from a dream -- stray raindrops glittering on her hood. 

Jordie can see it all on his brother’s face -- the flicker of almost-disbelief as it turns into something more painful, more raw. 

He sees him swallow, hard, and then he’s rising to his feet. She strides across the room, meeting him halfway.

And for a moment it’s as if they’re just drinking in the sight of each other, after so long. 

His brother makes a quickly-aborted movement -- maybe he’d tried absently to reach for her, with his gloves still on -- but he sees her nod, then carefully thread her fingers into his. 

Words, pass between them, inaudible. Her face softens, opens.

He sees it, as if in slow motion: the way she brings lifts Kaz’s hand up between them. 

Slowly, gently, she kisses the tips of his gloved fingers, eyes fluttering shut as she does. 

Inej then guides his hand to his mouth and holds it there, the look on her face unspeakably tender. 

And his brother, well. There are no words for that. 

He looks wrecked by her, in every way that matters.

Jordie thinks, for a moment, that his brother might pull her close, then, kiss her properly. As he so clearly wants to.

But instead, he draws her in, so it’s her hood against his forehead. Touching but not touching.

His eyes slip shut, and hers do too. As if it’s just them and no one else.

In that moment, Jordie feels a sudden, profound wave of grief.

The grief of witnessing, but not being present, in any meaningful way.

He will never get to hear his brother tell him about her, as he once might’ve. Can be nothing in this moment except an outsider looking in.

It’s exceptionally cruel. It hurts him like nothing else has.

But there’s something hopeful there too, Jordie thinks. 

To know that one can change and be changed. Be loved, despite it.

The next morning, she’s still there. 

Her dark hair is out of its usual braid, and she’s wearing what looks like Kaz's shirt. The early-morning light hits her face as she opens the window, turns her skin golden against the cool dawn.

She is so lovely, and he missed her so.

His stomach rumbles, conveniently. It’s as good of an excuse as any to see her.

So he does.

Inej recognizes him when he lands on her sill -- Hello there, how have you been? -- and there are new seeds this time, something exotic from some faraway land he’s never been to.

“He brought you something, too, by the way,” Kaz mentions, off-handedly. His brother looks different this morning, sharp edges dulled by something gentler.

She turns to Kaz, then. “What was it?”

He produces the jeweled hairpin -- from his bare hands, almost like a magic trick -- and Jordie chirps in affirmative.

Her face lights up with a smile, radiant as she turns back to him. “Thank you!”

She takes the gift from Kaz, then, and Jordie sees their fingers brush briefly. She pulls her hair up, slides the pin into it. A stray strand comes loose, anyway. 

It's not a very good hairpin. He'll have to get her another.

“He’s a frequent visitor, you know,” Kaz says. “I fed him for months, in your stead.”

“I’m glad,” she replies, and she’s smiling almost shyly, now. “I’m fond of him, and the Suli revere crows, too.”

Jordie expects a biting remark, sarcasm. Instead, Kaz asks: “How so?”

He doesn’t miss the surprise in her voice, either: “ Kaz . Do you really want to know?”

He meets her gaze, and there’s a challenge and a tease there. “Indulge me.”

“Well.” She brings her legs into herself, seating herself more comfortably on the ledge. “The Suli have a belief that crows are our deceased ancestors coming home to visit us.”

Jordie’s fairly certain his heart has stopped in its chest, but she goes on:

“They eat what is offered, blessing us before they return to the world of the Dead.”

A pause, a natural lull in the conversation. She turns to him, eyes gleaming.

“Maybe he’s watching over you , you know.”

Looking at his brother feels like stepping on a rigged mine, but somehow he manages it. 

Jordie expects a biting retort, a swift rebuttal. That is who his brother has become.

Instead, he finds that Kaz is looking at him with something indescribable on his features.

There’s a long silence: just him, his brother, and his girl. The long expanse of the past, present, and future unfurls just beyond them.

For a fleeting moment, he can imagine that he’s human again, even as he’s sitting here, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

But it never does.

“Maybe he is,” Kaz says at last, a faint flickering behind his eyes. “Or something like that.”

Afterward, Jordie glides through the streets of Ketterdam, feeling lighter than air.

And for the first time in so long, he knows he doesn’t have to linger, worry, or wander.

He simply goes home.