Inej - From a Tender Age, I Was Cursed with Rage

~Cross-posting from Ao3. Content warnings: References to Past Sexual Assualt, Suicidal ideation, and discussions of morality.~

These days people called her The Wraith because if you met her on the sea, it meant you'd seen the end of your days.

Her life had been lived through a series of names, many long forgotten since she washed up on the shores of Ketterdam. The names fell into three categories. The ones she collected now. Wraith. Demon. Siren. Death. The ones she drowned at sea. Dollface. Girl. Gorgeous. Lynx.

And the ones she didn't dare remember.

Inej.

Nobody had called The Wraith by the name her parents had given her at birth since she was thirteen and still living in the comfort of her family's caravan. That name had been forced out of her hands and discarded at sea when she was taken to the docks of Ketterdam. Some days she barely remembered that old name and she whispered it to herself on the quieter days, forcing herself to remember the girl she used to be when she couldn't be bothered to hunt the souls that made her into this ghost of a girl.

She wagered nobody else remembered it, either. Who would remember the helpless girl who had been stolen from Ravka's western coast all those years ago?

No, people only cared about The Wraith and the havoc she wrecked off the Kerch coasts. She hunted slave ships for sport. And when she couldn't find any and grew hopelessly bored, she lured people right off the harbors of Ketterdam and into the murky waters. Those were the days she felt more like what she remembered a cat to be, instead of whatever she was now. Playing with her food for a bit of entertainment. At first she felt bad, but the longer she sat on the coasts and listened to the people in this wretched city, the less she cared. They deserved it. The citizens of Ketterdam were not good people.

Ketterdam citizens were the worst of the worst–especially those that lurked around the harbors–and people never missed a stray merchant or barrel rat when they disappeared. They would be replaced sooner rather than later, and life always moved on as if nothing happened in the first place.

That morning, she'd taken down a small boat with a handful of scared children in the hull. But the captain hadn't put up much of a fight when he saw her. Which left her now as the night fell, perched behind the rocks past the Fifth Harbor docks, waiting for someone, anyone really, to entertain her.

Finally, as if someone somewhere had finally taken pity on her boredom, a man approached the water.

A man no older than she would be–how old was she these days–dressed in the sharp tailored lines of a merchant's suit with harsher lines still, present in his prominent jaw and cheekbones. Scars littered his pale face, marking a rather beautiful face. The Wraith hated faces like his. Pretty faces hid ugly souls; she wanted nothing more than to see this man drown.

And The Wraith usually got what she wanted.

The stranger stopped at the edge of the dock nearest to her, and she prepared herself to dive beneath the surface, ready to eavesdrop on whatever secrets he wanted to tell to the sea. From there, she could lure him into the waters.

But she stopped short, the look on the man's face sending a rush of ice through her body.

That look… She recognized the dead look in his eyes as he looked over the horizon. It was the blank stare of someone hanging on, just barely, to the last threads of their life. The last time she saw that look was in her own face in her last days on land, before she ran away from the Menagerie one last time. Heleen insisted on hiding mirrors throughout the house for a number of reasons. The most common one being the application of makeup–to both appeal to the customers and to cover the bruises they left. But there were other uses for mirrors. Several clients of the so-called pleasure house liked to watch. Themselves. Others. Heleen liked to watch, too, though for different reasons.

The last time The Wraith looked into a real mirror, she took inventory of the bruises that bloomed across the brown skin of her body. Dark, ugly blossoms across her neck, wrists, and even a smattering of fingerprints across her hips. She looked herself in the eyes, trying to line her lids with khol for the night ahead, and no matter what she did–she looked dead.

Saints, she had felt dead.

So instead of letting herself collect more bruises, more ghosts, more silent tears to fill her chest that would eventually swallow her whole one day, Tante Heleen's prized Lynx took off and drowned herself.

Or, she tried to drown herself.

She came to hours–days? Weeks?–later, washed up on a shore somewhere far from Ketterdam. Except she was no longer the girl she had been when she jumped into the harbor. She didn't need a mirror to tell her that. No, she had the whole ocean to stare back at her, the waves winking with her new reflection.

Her once glowing skin had grayed out and become slick with sea water. Her hair, once treasured, hung over her skin in tangled clumps with plants. The biggest difference, though, was her legs. If you could call them that anymore. It was as if someone–something–had stretched a new layer of skin over her legs to bind them together in some mockery of a tail. She could still see the faint joints of her knees and her ankles still flared out into a pair of crooked teeth. A reminder of what she had been.

As she kicked, testing the strength of her new appendage, she wondered to herself if this was the Saints' punishment for trying to kill herself. Or if it was something else altogether. She had prayed it was something else.

She didn't ponder the change anymore. There were better things to do than mourn the loss of a pair of legs. She'd lost something much more important that day.

Now, swimming closer to the mysterious man at the end of the dock, The Wraith couldn't help but wonder what would happen if he dove into the water. Would he, too, become a monster? She hesitated, drawing closer to him still. Did she want him too?

The Wraith was so lost in her thoughts that she emerged before she meant to, in time to catch the wind as it changed direction. The water rippled, just barely, but loud enough to make a slight node. She froze for the second time that night. She never made mistakes like this. She haunted the waters without a sound. That's why they called her Wraith.

Her curiosity curdled as she watched her stranger react to her mistake. She waited for him to flinch. Yelp. Maybe even faint. She waited for him to do any of the things a sane man would do when presented with a demon in the waters.

He did none of those things. The man's brows furrowed, barely, before his face melted into something more determined. Curious. He turned his attention to the water and The Wraith had to resist the urge to dive back into the water as his eyes landed on her. And he looked at her with a sort of fascinated awe that made her want to hide all over again.

This man looked at her like he could actually see… her. Not a creature that shouldn't exist. Not the Lynx. No, he looked at her as if he could see a hint of the girl that died many years ago.

"Kaz!"

The intrusion of a new voice broke their staring contest, and the stranger looked back into the city. The Wraith sank back into the water, swimming closer to watch the arrival of the voice's owner. He was taller than her stranger. Barely. Probably the same age. And he had dark brown skin, glittering brown eyes, and wore Barrel flash that reminded The Wraith for a moment how much she missed colors. The yearning, however, was quickly thrown aside when she noticed the twin pistols with pearl handles holstered at the man's hips.

Her insides tensed. Danger. Except she didn't know if she was in danger, or the man on the dock was. Neither were great options.

The stranger's heavy boots clunked on the old wood of the docks as he approached the man at the edge. "Kaz," he repeated breathlessly. "The Dime Lions have offered a pretty price for anybody who managed to put a bullet through your head tonight."

"Are you here to take them up on the offer, Jesper?" The man–Kaz, her brain supplied– asked, looking back at the water. "You better do it quick, before I jump into the harbor."

"Don't be a dumbass," the colorful man–Jesper–said. "I'm here to escort you to the safehouse. Anike and Pim are getting together a team to take out the idiot who ordered the hit."

"I don't need an escort."

Jesper scowled. "Obviously you do if you're considering jumping in the harbor."

Kaz didn't have anything to say about that. Instead, he turned his eyes down to the dock, his eyes landing on The Wraith. Or landing approximately where she was, she told herself. There was no way he could see her through the slats of wood. Not when she was still submerged. Impossible.

"Besides, you shouldn't be here. Don't you know The Wraith haunts the waters?"

An amused smirk curled across his lips and The Wraith's heart stuttered. "The Wraith sounds like a better way to die than a bullet ordered from Pekka fucking Rollins."

Sighing, Jesper neared the edge of the dock and looked out to the water. "You know," he said breezily, "your jokes about death are growing more and more concerning with each passing day."

"Worry about yourself, Jesper," Kaz rasped. "One of these days, there's going to be a hit on your head."

"Because I'm your best friend?"

"Because when I die, there will be nobody left to save you from your debts," Kaz said, tapping the back of Jesper's leg with his cane as he turned away from the water. "Now, let's go."

"There you go joking about your death again!" Jesper cried, following Kaz back to the streets. "Dirtyhands simply does not die! You're the demon of the Barrel, Kaz. You can't just kill a demon!"

When Kaz looked over his shoulder, like he could maybe catch one last glance at her before he disappeared back into the city, The Wraith dove deep into the water so he couldn't see her.

Because he couldn't see her. No, she wouldn't let him see her. Never again. Because there was no way that the man with haunted eyes and a will to die that she recognized in herself was the Bastard of the Barrel.

When did demons start feeling human emotions?

Dirtyhands.

She heard that name, in the Menagerie. In the time before she was the Wraith. The girls she lived with said he was the kind of man nobody was willing to cross. But they also wished he would cross them, with the way their faces softened when they spoke of him. He was their age and attractive. He frequented the menagerie, but never laid a hand on any of the girls. She learned that he bought information from the Peacock and the other pleasure house owners. Information and never bodies. She thought it was a bunch of bullshit because nobody walked into a pleasure house and didn't bother participating in the debauchery. One time, she thought that she could approach him and maybe she could figure out the truth about his messy façade. That maybe she could clock him for the demon he really was. That maybe he would be so kind as to kill her before someone else did.

But the day that she finally saw him, she was chained in the lobby after a client claimed that she hit him back. And he was right. She did hit him. But he fucking deserved it after he tried to beat her as some sort of foreplay.

The man in question entered the room with little pomp. Girls tried to immediately swarm him and make eyes, trying to pull him into their rooms. But he evaded their touch and stepped out of every embrace, without looking at anybody. His eyes remained dark and unimpressed as he pushed his way through to Tante Heleen, asking for information about a mercher. She had realized right then that this was something she could do—if she wasn't chained to the fucking wall. She knew that mercher more than Heleen did. He was in her room every other day and wreked havoc of her room. He wasn't the worst of her clients, but he wasn't winning any awards for the best, either.

She wanted to reach out to him and tell him that she could help him. If he was really uninterested in sex and pleasure—she could help. But Heleen saw the desperation in her eyes, and pivoted Dirtyhands' attention away from the front room and dragged him into her private office, while calling over her shoulder that the lynx's price was lowered for the night.

That night, someone used her body until her body felt like it no longer belonged to her. That was the day the last of the light in her eyes died out. She never was able to try to approach the demon of the barrel again. She ran straight into the harbor as soon as the locks were off.

Tonight, she watched him and his friend until they disappeared into the horizon of the city before disappearing back into the water. She couldn't get that look of his out of her head for the rest of the night.

She didn't know that demons didn't want to live, either.