An End and A Beginning
A/N: yoooo I very much have no time at all to commit to this, so sorry if updates come irregularly or not at all. expect some fluffy self indulgent dumbassery up ahead, i just love kanej so much and they warm my heart :)
He hadn't seen her in three days. Three days since her parents has stepped off of that ship and any hope at a future with her had melted away. How would her parents react to what she had spent the last few years doing? Kaz had turned her into a criminal. Why would she even want to be near him once her contract no longer required it? He had left swiftly, vanishing off the docks before Inej, in her excitement, would notice his absence. And it was for the best.
Though he tried to ignore news of her these last few days, throwing himself into work, he found himself walking past the Van Eck manor. Lights on in the guest wing and the slightly bigger deliveries of groceries over the past few days confirmed what he already suspected. She and her family were staying with Wylan, far from the unfavourable sights and smells of the Barrel. He wondered if she would even step foot inside the Crow Club again.
Slipping in through the back alley entrance to avoid the eager glances off his gang, Kaz began his slow climb up the stairs to his room. The gang was in shambles. The members Kaz had worked so hard to recruit, handpicking them from the streets, poaching them off of other gangs, had turned on him faster than he could have believed. Though Haskell had technically been the boss, he had hoped, besides his own sensible expectations, for some measure of loyalty from the people he had worked both beside and for. His quick and bloody return to the club had ensured their loyalty, through fear, if nothing else. Those who had participated half-heartedly in Haskell's command had been noted, marked away in a little file in Kaz's mind titled 'Dubiously Loyal' while those who had more eagerly turned their back on him had either been let go or demoted to the point of insignificance, if they had even mustered the courage to face him again after the hell he had unleashed on them.
He was so lost in thought that it was only when he reached the top landing that he realized someone was in his room. He could see the light wind off the harbour pushing into the door, straining against the locked bolt. The window had been closed when he left. There was only one person who could be inside.
"Inej," Kaz said as he swung open the door. He nodded at her, nestled into the lumpy airchair by the window as he crossed to his desk, trying, and probably failing, to keep the excitement from his voice and a blush from his cheeks.
"Thank you," she said, sliding gracefully to her feet. "Thank you, Kaz. You've - Everything you've done, I couldn't possibly repay you."
"You don't have to," Kaz said, setting his hat down on the desk and shucking off his coat. "You don't owe me anything."
"Kaz," was all she said, crossing the room to him, but still keeping a bit of distance between them. The only thing he could hear was the steady beat of rain against the roof and her near-silent footfalls against the old wooden floor.
He looked at her. The air of guilt, of pain that had followed her since he had first set eyes on her seemed to have diminished. She looked happy, aside from the tears, half-formed and pooling in her eyes from the sincerity of her words.
"You don't owe me anything," was all he could say. He pulled off his gloves, purposely avoiding her eyes as he set them beside his hat on the desk. When he glanced at her face, she was staring at the gloves on the wood of the desk. Anyone else would have stared at his hands, desperate to see which of the rumours were true. Inej stared at the gloves.
"Do you want to help me?" he asked, rounding his desk and settling into the leather chair behind it. He felt safer behind the table, his breathing a little easier, even as he longed to reach out to her.
"Of course," she said, returning to the window. "What needs to be done?"
"New job," Kaz replied. "Not that I'm asking you to be on it," he said hastily as her head jerked up. "I know you're -"
"Preoccupied," Inej supplied, smiling slightly.
"Right," he said, trying to focus on the words coming out of his mouth rather than her face. "I need a secure way into the Stadwatch messhall."
"What about the side door? Or a disguise?"
"For this job, a disguise won't work on the way in. And the alley off the side door is a touch too open for what we'll be hauling out." He spread a map across the table, a carefully recreated sketch of Ketterdam, labeled with Inej's rooftop passageways, safehouses and shortcuts.
She settled against the frame of the window, pushing the pane of glass open to look out at the falling rain. They fell into the comfortable rhythm of planning, a pattern that they'd fallen into over the years, Kaz talking through his latest scheme while Inej listened, supplying suggestions every once in a while.
Darkness had fallen by the time Kaz had wrapped up his fourth plan of the day. He stood and crossed the room to her, leaving his gloves on the desk. Inej had grown more and more quiet as the hours had passed. She shifted her legs off the frame of the window, turning to face him. From her perch, she was almost at eye level with him.
"I'll try," he said. "If you want to, I'll try. You can have me without my armour."
"I'm leaving," Inej whispered. "I'm leaving tomorrow at dawn. I need to do something good, something that fixes things."
Kaz's heart fell in his chest. Ketterdam without Inej had driven him mad and he didn't want to face it again.
"I still want to. If you'll wait for me," Inej said, her eyes meeting his.
"There's no one else," Kaz said, as he mustered the will to lift his hand and grab hers, their fingers winding around each others'.
For a heartbeat, it was fine. Skin against skin. Then the cold, damp breeze from the open window blew in and Kaz was back in the harbour, clutching at Jordie instead of Inej.
"Kaz. Kaz!" Inej was saying.
He forced himself to latch onto her voice, to pull himself back to reality. A hazy outline of the room began to return to his vision. He blinked away the past as Inej came back into view, her hand still in his. It was better at least. He hadn't pulled away completely. Just as a second wave of panic began to overtake him, Inej gently slid her hand from his.
"We can try," she said, sliding further back onto the window frame. "Whatever that looks like, whatever that means for us, I want to try."
Kaz looked at her, silhouetted against the darkness of the night outside. "So do I," he said.
