I miss you (and I never got to tell you)
Warning: minor mention of alcoholism. Enjoy!
Here I am waking up
Still can't sleep on your side
There's your coffee cup
The lipstick stain fades with time
The whispers of the wind whistled in the top floor of the Slat, where Kaz Brekker was sitting at his desk doing paperwork in the late hours of night.
As usual, of course- being a Barrel boss consisted of endless paperwork.
Ever since Inej had left and he had let her go, he had kept the window open. It may have compromised his safety, but it was an irrational decision and Kaz could not gather the will to close it.
A slight, near-imperceivable shift in the wind caused Kaz to speak up for the first time since that morning.
"What business, Wraith?"
After a full minute of silence, he deigned to glance up from his paperwork and saw nothing but the bustling streets and the black, starless sky of Ketterdam.
If I can dream long enough
You'd tell me I'd be just fine
I'll be just fine
He dreamt of her that night. Of Inej's dark, boundless eyes and her piercing gaze that he imagined could see through all of his armour.
Talking to Inej felt like a weight had been lifted off his chest ever since he had received that accursed letter, and he knew everything was going to work out- for Inej was here once again.
During this dream, he did not feel the waters rising when he hesitantly reached out to graze her skin.
Her face lit up like the sun finally coming out from behind the clouds, and she pulled him into a crushing hug.
He tensed up, at first, but after a moment of deliberation- for when no water threatened to drown him- allowed himself to be pulled into her embrace.
Just as he was relaxing into what felt like home- for the first time since he and Jordie had left their farm- he woke up suddenly, alone in the topmost bedroom, with no light streaming in from the open window, signaling that it was still yet to be morning- and Inej was still gone.
He got no sleep the rest of that week.
So I drown it out like I always do
Dancing through our house
With the ghost of you
He had taken to drinking.
It was involuntary, really- he had rarely ever drunk and when he had it had been sparingly.
However, the absence of Inej's steady, calming presence had left him clamoring for something to drown out the emptiness in his heart.
He also wanted to stop seeing her ghost everywhere he went- it only reminded him of how she was gone.
Kaz only ever drank when alone, though. It wouldn't do for the Bastard of the Barrel to be seen in such an unseeming manner.
It never helped, though. He always awoke the next day with the same sinking feeling in his chest that signaled that she was gone.
But, during the time when he allowed himself to drown out his sorrow, he forgot about that feeling and stopped seeing the ghost of his Wraith- albeit momentarily.
And that was enough for him.
Cleaning up today
Found that old Zepplin shirt
You wore when you ran away
And no one could feel your hurt
It was an accident, really.
He had been coming home from a hard day at the Dreg's usual business in Ketterdam and had retreated to his bedroom to lay in solitude.
And then he heard the crows.
At first, he was annoyed by their crowing and how it interrupted his fleeting moment of peace- until he remembered how Inej had always made sure to feed the crows that had found a home perched on his windowsill.
In a moment of irrationality, or perhaps nostalgia, he went over to his desk and picked up a packet of seeds that- that Inej had left in a drawer, with a note.
Kaz, make sure to feed the crows for me whenever I'm not there to feed them!
-Inej
He proceeded to despondently hand out the seeds to the crows who devoured them with gusto, and laid down on his bed with a certain heaviness in his chest.
We're too young, too dumb
To know things like love
But I know better now
(Better now)
Kaz wished that he could've at least talked to Inej one last time.
He still remembered their last interaction.
"Hey, Kaz!"
Inej's wind strewn hair was blown astray across her face after her descent from her ship to Kaz, who had been waiting at the docks after he was given the news that she was returning.
He gave her a slight smile and took his hand- which was shaking- out of his pocket and reached for hers.
Her pupils widened minutely when she looked at his hand and realized it was gloveless. She looked back at him with a slightly stunned expression on her face before irresolutely taking his hand in hers.
The waters rose to his ankles before he forced himself to think of the warmth emanating from her hand that was nothing like the pale lifelessness of a corpse.
When she looked at him for his expression and found it to not be in agony as it had always been before now, she smiled brightly at him.
He felt as if he had finally found peace.
Kaz would never be afforded another chance to tell Inej of what he thought of her. He would never hold her hand again.
He shook his head imperceptibly as the memories faded and he reached for the alcohol resting on the table near him, intent on forgetting the regret he felt at never telling her how he truly felt.
And I chase it down
With a shot of truth
That my feet don't dance
Like they did with you
Kaz was not doing any better.
It had been half a year since the news of Inej's demise at sea, and if anything, he was doing worse.
After the twentieth time of resisting the urge to look at his window which Inej had previously climbed through thousands of times, he abandoned the paperwork on his desk and moved his chair over towards the window in question, something he had found himself doing often lately.
He found himself monotonously gazing out the window to the Ketterdam streets, wondering, not for the first time, whether this place had turned out to be a blessing or a curse.
On the one hand, it had brought him an empire⦠and Inej.
On the other, it had cost him his brother⦠and- well, he didn't even want to think about it.
He had been in denial for far too long, and had found himself searching for the ghost of Inej too often- for she was gone, forever.
He needed to come to terms with that, but it was hard. Inej was the only person who had scaled his walls and made it inside his heart of stone.
Forcing himself to realize that she was gone and never returning was worse than losing Jordie.
As he looked out of the window which had somehow become Inej's over the course of their years- from their first interaction at Tante Heleen's pleasure house to his learning of her death fighting slavers on the seas, he once again felt his heart constrict as melancholy, despair, and pain gripped his soul.
He remembered the promise he had made Inej- that the next time they saw each other, he would be fully without armour.
And, for the first time since his brother's death on the streets all those years ago, he found himself crying for his lost Wraith. In an ironic, twisted way of fate, he did shed his armour whilst in solitude- Inej deserved that much, at least. He never did deserve her, but perhaps she deserved his tears, if only to prove he cared.
It was the last time he ever did.
