Chapter Text
He was a survivor. That’s all he knew.
He was small, young, and sickly. But he knew he was a survivor. He knew he had a first name, as he swam in the ice cold harbors of the city that night. Kaz. But who did Kaz belong to? There would be no one here who would have him. No home that would open its doors and family that would open their arms with smiles and relief at the sight of him.
All he knew was how to survive. How to rough up kids his age for coin or sheer embarrassment. How to smile while he worked cleaning toilets in gambling halls and how to pickpocket with the best of them. Finally one day, one of the bouncers at the hall he was working at took notice of him leaving. Kaz had just scored a decent sum out of some poor sod’s loose pocket, so he wasn’t exactly keen on being spotted on his way to buy his first meal in days.
“What’s your name again, boy?” The bouncer looked down over his nose at Kaz, frowning his upper lip in a way Kaz tried to parrot. He folded his arms across his chest and Kaz did the same. The man didn’t seem to notice.
“Kaz.” He said simply, taking a crust of bread off some pigeon’s dirty plate as a waiter walked by, taking a bite before anyone would have protested if they’d wanted to.
“Kaz what?”
Kaz’s frown became genuine. Kaz what indeed. There was an old name that had once belonged there. But it sounded like wheatfields and apple orchards, it would only make Kaz a target, and that was something he was not going to be. He looked out onto the stave, to where the canal opened up to the harbors.
Apparently the doorman had become impatient, “What? Haven’t you got a name? Kaz
Arnold
or Kaz Olink or Werkman? Who’s your family?”
Kaz’s stern gaze was a light draft, swimming over the harbor until his eyes landed on a piece of machinery floating in the harbor. He liked the spikes of the letters in the name. It made him feel dangerous, like his teeth were as sharp as the monster he wanted to become. The
demon
he already was.
“Kaz Brekker.”
The bouncer nodded his acknowledgement and waved him outside with a “Night, Brekker.”
So it was settled. He was Kaz Brekker, the demon of Ketterdam.