Kaz groaned and leaned back in his chair. He had been up going over these plans all night, and his bed was calling to him. He was tempted to give up now, but he was so close to figuring this out...
There was a thud outside his window, and he jumped as a figure practically fell through into his room. He was on his feet with a knife in hand in one fluid movement, but the figure wasn't moving. From where he was standing he couldn't see who it was, hidden by shadow as they were.
Slowly, he crossed the room, tense and ready for action.
"Kaz?" The voice croaked.
His heart stopped when he realized he knew that voice. He hadn't seen her in six months, but it would take him multiple lifetimes to forget Inej's voice.
He dropped the knife and hurried the rest of the way over to her.
"Inej?" He crouched over her. From what he could see, she wasn't bleeding, which was a good sign. But the fact that she was here, and fell through his window in the early hours of the morning was not a good sign.
His gloves lay forgotten on his desk as he gently picked Inej up and set her on his bed. His stomach flipped at how light she was. Had she always been that thin? Kaz grit his teeth and checked her for injuries, but other than some bruising he couldn't see much.
Her clothes were damp, and Kaz knew he should get her out of them so she didn't catch a cold, but the very thought made him see spots. He took a set of deep breaths and settled for covering her with a thick quilt.
Kaz felt his stomach slowly start to unclench. He had no idea why Inej collapsed in his window and he was more worried about her than he could remember being about, well, anything. But he couldn't ignore the fact that he was happy to see her again, regardless of why.
Any trace of tiredness he felt earlier was gone, but he knew he would be no good to Inej if he was exhausted, and he had already been awake for the better part of two days. Sighing, he crossed the room to make sure the door was locked, bolted the window, and settled into the chair behind his desk. It wouldn't be the first time he slept there, and he was sure it wouldn't be the last.
He must have fallen asleep at some point, because he woke to Inej gasping. Kaz bolted upright at the sound and made his way over to the bed, ignoring his stiff muscles.
"Inej? Inej," he called, hesitant to touch her while she was still asleep. He didn't know what happened to her or how much she would remember, and the last thing he wanted to do was make anything worse.
Thankfully she startled awake, looking around wildly.
"Hey, Inej it's ok. You're back at the Slat, you're in one piece, I'm here." Kaz wasn't exactly sure how to be comforting but he tried his best.
"Kaz?" Her voice quivered and he could feel his heart cracking.
"Yeah Inej, I'm here. You're back now."
"The Saints are gone, they're all gone," she said in that same wavering voice.
Kaz shook his head in confusion. "What do you mean Inej?"
She just whimpered, unwilling or unable to answer.
"I'm sure your Saints are still with you Inej, they always are." He had no idea what happened, but he remembered Inej telling him before how the Saints were always watching.
He realized he must have said the wrong thing then when she started crying. Kaz had never seen Inej cry before, and he couldn't remember ever comforting a crying person either. She leaned forward then and buried herself in his shoulder.
Kaz stiffened momentarily, and then wrapped his arms around the shaking Suli girl. He breathed deeply through his nose but didn't let go. If this was what Inej needed, he was going to give it to her.
Finally she pulled back, and Kaz let go. He felt himself relax once they were no longer touching, but he also felt a sharp pang at the loss.
"Sorry," she whispered. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have-"
"It's ok, I'm ok. But are you?" He asked her. She was still shaking and was avoiding eye contact with him.
She shook her head. "No," she said.
"Do you… do you want to talk about it?" Talking about problems was a thing people usually did, right?
"It was horrible," she whispered before falling silent.
Kaz didn't say anything. It was clear that Inej was reliving something, and she would talk when she was ready. She always did.
He offered her a glass of water from the pitcher that he kept on his desk and she accepted it with a small nod.
The silence stretched between them, but it wasn't uncomfortable. That faraway look in Inej's eye was making him uncomfortable, but he didn't want to rush her.
Finally, she began to talk again. "Things were… things were going really well. We had just captured a ship, The Lesser Fjerda, and taken the slaves she had. We set fire to it and sailed away while it burned. It grew smaller and smaller on the horizon… Everything was going so well. We needed supplies, and Kerch wasn't the closest nation, Ravka would have been closest, but I wanted…" She trailed off.
Kaz knew he wasn't going to like where this story was going, but he nodded anyways.
Inej took a steadying breath and continued. "I set a course for Ketterdam. I figured we had enough supplies to get us here and it would just add an extra day to our travel and resupply plans. The people we freed," Inej choked out a sob, "I thought they would be able to find something here. Plenty of people come to Kerch from around the world, and I thought I could help keep them out of trouble."
Kaz snorted at that, and Inej gave him a watery smile.
"Yeah, maybe that was foolish of me," she agreed.
"Inej, you are many things, but foolish is not one of them," Kaz told her.
She sighed. "You haven't heard the rest of the story yet. I made the decision to come here, even though it wasn't the decision that made the most sense. And everything was still going really well. But… we were three or four days from Ketterdam when the winds started picking up. None of us thought anything of it. Storms aren't unusual on the True Sea, we run into them all the time. But this one… there was something different about this one."
She stopped again. Kaz could see that she was shaking again and he cautiously reached out and placed a hand on her arm. She smiled gratefully at him.
"The winds were up for the rest of the day, so we made sure everything was tied down. Everything was fine for a while. But then… the waves… I've never seen waves that high before. That amount of water… they were taller than The Wraith, we took on so much water… And the wind… Kaz I've been through storms before and I've heard the wind howling. But this was different than that. It sounded like it was screaming... Everything was coming undone on the deck, so my crew and I were scrambling to keep everything in order. It was hard to keep your footing, the deck was covered in water… It was closer to swimming than walking. I watched some of my crewmates, men and women that I hired, get swept overboard."
She finally met Kaz's eyes and he could see the anguish there. He swallowed hard. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest, and could feel the water around him.
"And then… there was a loud crack, and it sounded like the world was shattering apart at the seams. The deck… the deck broke, and the sea was welling up through it. There were people down there Kaz! I thought I rescued them and they were down there! I put them there!" She rubbed a shaky hand through her hair, her breathing ragged.
"I couldn't hear anything but the wind screaming and everything was chaos… there was water everywhere, coming up from below, raining down from above… and then something hit me and I wasn't on The Wraith any more. I was in the water and I couldn't breathe and-"
Kaz gripped her arm tighter as her breathing began to speed up. "It's ok Inej, you're safe," he murmured.
She nodded and Kaz could see her struggling to control her breathing. "I don't… I came back up to the surface and… The Wraith was gone. I'm so sorry Kaz she was there and then she wasn't and I just-" She cut off again shuddering.
"Inej, you don't need to apologize to me," Kaz tried to keep the distress out of his voice. "Ships can be replaced, but you can't be." I've tried. "You're here and you're alive and that's what matters."
She shook her head. "You spent so much money and care picking out that ship and I loved it…"
Kaz took a deep breath. "Inej, it's ok. The money doesn't matter."
Inej gave him a weird look and then let out a semi-hysterical laugh. "Kaz Brekker, telling me that money doesn't matter?"
"I'm serious Inej. If you want another ship, we can easily get you another ship," he tried again.
Again, she shook her head. "It's not just the ship," she whispered. "My crew, all of those people we thought we saved… Kaz I was the only survivor. The captain is supposed to go down with the ship and I was the only one who lived. All because I wanted to come back here instead of making the logical choice to make port at Ravka. All of those people…" she let out a shaky breath. "It's all my fault."
"Inej, you can't blame yourself for bad weather," he tried to reason. But he knew Inej was beyond reason right now.
She put her head in her hands. "We would have missed the storm if I had sailed us to Ravka. My crew trusted me and I led them to their deaths. You told me that compassion gets people killed, and you were right."
Kaz didn't know what to say to that. It hurt to have his words realized in a way that he never intended them to be. Inej was never meant to have to deal with this kind of pain.
He cursed his inability to be better in emotional situations. Kaz could never manage to be quite what Inej needed, but that wasn't going to stop him from trying.
He hesitated and then pulled her into another hug, hoping action could say what he couldn't. He felt her deflate in his arms and he pulled her even closer. He steeled himself and then started rubbing small circles on her back. The motion actually made it easier, and he let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding.
"I didn't just lose The Wraith," she mumbled. "The Saints… they're all gone too."
Kaz racked his brain for all the times Inej had talked about her religion, hoping he could find something to reassure her.
"I've managed to lose everything you've given to me," she mumbled into his sleeve.
Kaz frowned. He hadn't given Inej her belief or her religion… and then it hit him. Her knives. Inej named all of her knives after her Saints, that must be what she was talking about.
"I'm so sorry," he told her. Kaz knew how much she had cherished her blades. She named them all and practically worshiped them as much as their namesakes. The time and care she put into them astounded even him, and he spent hours planning the tiniest details to his various exploits. "I'm still here though."
She pulled away for the second time that night and Kaz let her go. His thoughts were reeling, but the only clear thought he had was that Inej was alive. Inej is alive, Inej is safe. She's alive and she's safe and she's here.
"I don't even know how I got here. We were still two days away from Ketterdam when the storm hit. I grabbed onto a piece of the wreckage and… it's hazy after that. I just remember everything being cold, and everything hurt, and I was so tired… and then suddenly I recognized where I was. I washed up over at Second Harbor. I don't remember getting there, just waking up…"
Kaz felt a black wave of anger sweep over him. What if Inej had washed up closer to the Barrel, would he have found her? Or would someone else have found her first? The thought sent a spike of fear down his spine. He knew he couldn't have eyes everywhere at once, but he couldn't help but feel that he had let Inej down.
"And then everything was a blur but I knew if I got to the rooftops I would be safer, and then once I climbed my way up there, all I could think of was getting here. I don't really remember that either, but I guess I spent enough time on the roofs of this city that my body knew how to get here without my mind in charge… I was scared, and I knew I would be safe here."
"You will be safe here," Kaz promised her. He knew the Slat wasn't a safe place and this wasn't a promise he should be making. But he would be damned if he let anything else happen to Inej.
"Thank you," she mumbled quietly.
Kaz took her hand gently and rubbed his fingers over her knuckles. His fear of losing her was greater than his fear of corpses against his skin. "Inej, I promise that you will be safe here."
She nodded. "I think I need to sleep."
Kaz nodded and let go of her hand, but she quickly grabbed it again. "Wait… please don't go? I don't want to be alone."
"Of course," Kaz looked at their intertwined hands. "I'll stay as long as you want me to." Even if you shouldn't want me.
Inej slid over and Kaz sat down on the bed next to her. She settled down and let out a little sigh. He resumed rubbing his fingers over her knuckles, the motion calming his own nerves. This wasn't about him, this was about Inej. She's alive and she's here and that's all that matters.
Her breathing leveled out and Kaz was glad that she was going to be able to get some sleep. She definitely needed it.
"I'm never going to want you to leave," she mumbled.
Kaz's breathing hitched as he looked down on her slight form. Well, if that was what she wanted, then that's what he would give her.
AN: Thanks for reading! Idk this idea got stuck in my head so I decided to write it out. Please let me know what you think?