open/closed ][ I should not be left to my own devices

[bealufull]

Who: Kaz Brekker & open
When: March
Where: Cadens & Horizon
What: catch all for post event stress, open posts in comments
Warnings: violence, bar fights, the damage of such fights, gambling, likely excessive drinking, talk of body horror, vicious mockery including taunting others about weight and looks





𝐈'𝐦 𝐚 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐥

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When my depression works the graveyard shift - Open

[bealufull]

They’d come out alive, but things weren’t okay. Kaz was not ready for the constant reminders of his youth, of the times when he’d lost the only family he’d had left. The dead rising before. Now the disease that had literally grown out of his skin, a reminder of the Queen’s Lady plague that had claimed so many. Kaz is alive and back in what is now his home. He is far from okay.

He’s done well trying to put on the proper face for Inej and Jesper, to not shy away from them as he might have one day done. It’s the greatest internal battle he’s fought since he came here, having found opening up easier than he had thought. Now it was taking everything in him.

The bar he chose that night was far from Mags place. Not bringing the fight to his home, nor causing trouble for his people - both literally his people and the other Summoned. It was dark and many eyed him suspiciously as he let his limp lead him and not the cane he held loosely against his gloved palm.

He’s had several moments to realize his words have, at some point, become more than words, and tonight he’s testing that out. So he bumps someone, nothing in it all that casual as he makes a place for himself at the bar.

“Perhaps,” he drawls, a twisting of his accent into something like the sort of arrogance that came with from the merch, playing his games in a bid to get what he wants. “If you did more than eat and drink a man could get a place at the bar.”

The man blustered as he turned on Kaz, another man backing him up. It’s exactly what he wanted. More words, mocking and sneering and he can feel the energy in them, how the words change and leave the man panting for a breath, face turning red from pain and anger. The man swings and Kaz ducks easily, letting the punch sail over him even as he brings his cane around in a hard arc.


(ooc: open for joining the fighting or stopping him before he gets too far)

[earthborn]

Were she to be asked, Shepard would say, out of a face full of scars and too-thin wrists, bruises healing slow and still too-easily tiring, that she was fine. She would insist upon it, really, force it to be true for all purposes, practical or otherwise.

She is fine. She is fine. She is fine.

It takes more than this to wear her down, more than the hollow-cheeked reminder of a childhood that revolved around the pain in her gut, circling the gutter by ever more violent means until someone finally yanked her up out of it. But not too far; never too far to slide back down, if she willed it.

Case in point: Shepard's days used to be so full that she could kill herself with working hours, and never run out of things to do. Now, she has time to reflect, and wander, and to pick at all the scabs of memory until she is raw and bleeding and— Maybe it's fate that Kaz has chosen this particular dive, this bar, this night. It's a likely-looking spot for if you want to hit something and don't care to be told not to.

There's an order to these things, of course. Drink first. Then a fight. When Kaz comes in and gets right to business, so clearly spoiling for the ass-kicking that it's rolling off him like radiation. Shepard does nothing. She orders another couple of shots, and tosses them back to the sound of rising voices and tipped-back chairs that squeal on the poorly-cleaned floor. Plenty are watching it happen, and nobody is doing much to indicate they care. It's not that kind of place.

She lets it go on for a while. Fights, real fights, are fast; there's a simple frugality involved, that the longer you let it go on, the higher the cost of engagement. Shepard's not like Kaz, she doesn't want to be hurt, what she wants... is to hurt people— Alright, fine, she wants to kill them, but restraint is the difference between adults and children. So she lets it go on for a little while, until it's not one, or even two, but three big shots aiming to try and wipe the sneer off Kaz's skinny face, and then she tips back the last shot, stands up, and taps the biggest of his assailants on the shoulder.

He turns, full of fire, and she hits him with all her shoulder behind it, a blow that'd felled Krogan and cracked armor, in the past. He goes down as if he had been shot, tipping back over a table with his face a crunched-in mask of blood. The table goes all to splinters, as someone else whoops and throws a bottle so that it shatters against the wall— someone is taking bets, quietly, and the room is full of spreading tension.

It's a decent enough distraction, Shepard thinks, and she spreads her hands in an open invitation. While they're looking at her, assessing all of her five feet and three inches for a threat, they aren't looking at what Kaz Brekker is about to do.

[bealufull]

Kaz grew up on the streets of the Barrel. He isn't a so called king, no mercher blood, and nothing to him but anger, spite, and violence. And brilliance. It's something he's been facing here as the others assure him he doesn't have to be the Bastard of the Barrel and his hands don't have to remain dirty.

He's just not sure that's him.

After all they've been through, he needs this. He needs to feel in control. And he is, more than many might know. He's taken more beatings than many having taken baths, and he gives as good as he gets between tenacity, years of fights, and a beautifully weighted Durast designed cane.

From the movement of others, he's aware he's not the only one in the fights, carefully watching those around him though before putting his focus on anyone else there around him. Through those shifting though, he catches sight of a familiar face, a brow quirking at that but not taking the time to focus on her yet. Not as one gloved fist connects solidly with another's jaw and he turns on one heel and clocks another upside the head with the gilded crow cane.

"Now now. Are you trying to steal my good time," he challenges, his words thick from the hits he's taken and yet there's a lightness to those words at the same time.

[earthborn]

"Plenty to go around, don't be selfish," She replies, cocksure and casual, fists up in a boxer's guardas she steps back from the wild flailing produced by the wet thock-impact of his cane. The man goes down and doesn't come back up again, the back of his head suspiciously shiny; scalp wounds always do bleed like a bitch. More relevantly, it produces an opening as the crowd, both observing and participating, pulls back from the impact, oddly dainty, "Besides—"

Necessity makes a hesitation, and she pauses to duck a thrown table-leg, stepping over sprawled limbs and splinters with a glance for the footing. It's winding down, if only for lack of continued participants— It's sad, really. But for everything bright and joyful there's always that unfortunate bite of after-climax. Alas, the real world always comes 'round eventually.

But not yet.

"...I'm not even trying," Shepard lunges towards the man with the club, driving the air out of him and throwing him bodily towards Kaz. You hungry for more, kid? Fine, have another, eat until you've had enough.

All of the people I've ghosted stand there in the room - Open

[bealufull]

Kaz doesn’t just give as good as he gets. He gives so much worse. The cane is perfectly weighted not just to help him walk but as a dangerous and deadly weapon. The crow’s head delivers bone breaking blows and allows him to move faster with its balance. It isn’t a blood bath, but by the time things are broken up, he’s walking after being thrown out.

His adversary isn’t and Kaz doesn’t care.

Shoving his hair back from his brow, Kaz spits up blood in the shadows of the building. He’s hurting and yet it feels good. The pain shooting through his face and his hands, the adrenaline coursing through his body, all of it brings a comfort he needs. That of the familiar, of violence and blood and control over himself and control over others through that violence.

He hears someone, lifting his head with a frown. His lip is busted and one eye starting to swell, but the cane is tightly held in his hand and at the ready.

“Come back for another round?”

[itookashot]

Kaz might have an Inej-sense, but he might not have a Jesper-sense as well as he thought he did, since Jesper followed him there that night. As if he would let either of them out of his sight anytime soon. The last time he let Kaz out of his sight, he found his cane and nothing else. He is not feeling safe enough to let them live their lives without him hovering nearby. Jesper is actually quite good at being quiet, he's just never bothered most of the time.

He can follow Kaz at a far distance since he can track the crow's head he made. A Durast detail. Some things he's made he can find. Jesper waits outside and he doesn't step inside. He is ready to step in if he has to, but if there is anyone who understands a need for violence when there's nothing you can do, it would be him. The bloodthirst has come down, but he misses fighting again. He'd almost forgotten how good it feels.

He is not there when Kaz is thrown out, instead he pops into the place after he goes to make sure everyone's alive. Otherwise they're going to have a much bigger problem. Jesper is well known in Cadens after over a year of activity, and he pays the bartender for whatever was broken of theirs. The person who was fought, well, they don't get anything. Can't start a fight when someone doesn't want one, after all.

When it looks certain no one is going to come after Kaz or report him, Jesper's out the door and finding his lover right away. He puts his hands up when Kaz seems at the ready for another fight, smiling mischievously at him.

"No fist fights for us, we both fight dirty, in very different ways." Jesper waggles his eyebrows and drops his hands, just wanting it to be less tense than it has to be. He steps closer to Kaz and looks at his swollen face. "Darling, did you have to let them punch your beautiful face?"

[bealufull]

Caught up in his anger and frustration, Kaz isn't aware of Jesper there, or what he did in the wake of Kaz's means of getting out how angry he is. He feels so out of control in this place, and it's the one thing that keeps him from settling in here. He's had that control for so long that being without it is harder than he could have imagined.

He's already lifting the cane, thinking that someone thought they could finish things when he sees Jesper a moment before that intoxicating voice hits him. Slowly he lowers the cane to his side, shoulders slumping in relief.

"Not to mention you could easily destroy the weight of the cane with a singular touch," he points out, especially given this one unlike the other was Jesper's own abilities.

Leaning on the cane, he shifts his weight closer to the other man.

"How long have you been here?" Not that he thinks Jesper is bothered by that, but he is curious what all has been seen. "I promise they didn't hit it as much as they wanted," he points out as if that's a justifiable answer.

[itookashot]

"I would never destroy this beautiful cane I made. Or the beautiful man holding it." They did tussle the one time but it was due to heightened feelings and they were essentially having a stupid slap fight rather than actually fighting. Sometimes even their tempers went too high.

Jesper moves up to him and runs his fingers along Kaz's shirt, immediately getting in his space because these days he's allowed to. He still is careful when it comes to skin out of love and respect, and he can tell Kaz is still wound up tightly, so his touch is very gentle and appropriate. Simply reassuring, comforting.

"I followed you," he admits. "So the entire thing." Kaz has followed him before, sometimes they just do that. But Jesper had very good reasons. He looks down at Kaz and he does dare a skin touch, a very delicate brush of his fingertips on his wounds. "I thought it best to let you get it out of your system." It also meant Kaz had back up that entire time without knowing it. Jesper could have ended the fight instantly.

"But I'm a bit mad at you." He says it lightly, but gray eyes are rather serious. "Going out alone? After we already lost you once?" Jesper has some guilt about it, feeling like if he had been there, Kaz would have been safe.

[aquilus]

Altaïr is not a regular at bars, not in the sense that he seeks solace in drink, but in Cadens they are as good a place as any to get a beverage and a hot meal when one still doesn't have a permanent place to live. (He's considered it a few times, but so far, the dislike of having someone know where he sleeps lingers like a fierce itch.)

He hadn't stepped in to stop the fight or to aid Kaz. The man clearly had his reasons for pursuing it, and Altaïr is not anyone's keeper. Still, once it's done, he tosses some coin on the table he'd been sitting at, tucked away into the darkest corner possible, and follows Kaz with no great speed.

"Not tonight." He spreads his hands in mock-surrender. "Judging by your demeanor, you may be too fierce an opponent for me."

[bealufull]

He should have known that even going away from Mags that he would still be known but it definitely isn't surprising to find Altaïr there without him knowing. If only that he is a spider much like Inej, and wraiths can get anywhere, can't they?

He lowers the cane the tiny bit he'd lifted it, resting his weight down onto the gilded crows head once more.

"For some reasons I doubt that if it ever came to it," he points out. "But honestly, that was most of what I needed." That it's not the first night he's done this is something else entirely. "We all have our ways of getting out our frustrations."

He brushes back his hair with a gloved hand, giving the other man a look. "You're not out here for the same, are you?"

[aquilus]

It's an accurate point, so he doesn't patronize Kaz by contesting it, though privately Altaïr thinks that if temperament made all the difference, they would be much more evenly matched this night.

"Not really. Violence stopped being a useful outlet for me some time ago." The desire to engage in combat for its own sake had been locked away behind layers of discipline and focus. A good thing, to be sure, but other unhealthy outlets had risen in its place, something he'd been blind to at the time.

"Not that I don't have frustrations." No, he has many. Altaïr smiles a thin smile. "Don't ask me to say whether I'm better or worse at dealing with them now."

[philancer]

"What, I'm too late for the first one?"

Sylvain had missed the fight - he'd showed up just in time to see the aftermath. Kaz's exit, looking worse for wear, and his retreat into a nearby alley. Frowning, he'd followed, only to be confronted by an angry accusation and he recognizes the look in Kaz's eye all too well. He's pretty sure he's worn it more than a few times himself. Although right now, it just reminds him of Felix.

Which is why he lifts his hands in a gesture of innocence and cocks his head to the side to eye the other man.

"We really need to stop meeting like this." A pause, as his eyes scan the state Kaz is in, his frown growing. "I hope the other guy looks worse."

[bealufull]

He blinks at the voice, lifting his gaze then to take in Sylvain before he snorts. It might well have been a laugh coming from Kaz.

"You always are stepping in a minute too late, aren't you?"

He's still lucky Kaz hadn't broken his arm, and had he been wielding the cane he currently carries, it might have been another story.

"Oh trust me. I always leave the other party looking worse than I do. It's a skill I learned very young," he adds, wiping his mouth with the back of his gloved hand. "You know, some would say you should keep better company. Not that I think they'll be following me out here, but still."

[philancer]

"I'm pretty sure last time I stepped in right on time."

Yeah, his luck tends to work like that. He fishes in a pocket and withdraws a handkerchief to offer the other man, since that would probably work better than the back of his glove.

"And I think between the two of us, they'd be directing that line at you, not me. I'm usually the one accused of being a terrible influence on people. Which I'm probably proving by saying that's a very useful skill to have learned. Do you need a hand?" He offers one, just in case, because Kaz looks like the wall is mostly what's holding him up right now.

I wake up screaming from dreaming - open (Horizon)

[bealufull]

The time in the Horizon is taken not just because of a desire to master something that he’d had so much trouble with in their captivity but to continue to learn more about magic. As much as he can.

The days after he goes out looking for a fight seem easier than others. A relaxation coming over him that makes it easier to enter the other realm and find himself there at the Crow Club. Not even seeking out his office but rather staying on the floor. Having drinks he’ll never feel outside of this space and settling in at a table for a hand or two of cards. It’s a careful practice that he hadn’t kept up with in so long. Not that counting cards here, or slipping his own into his hand while discarding others was hard when it was all in your mind but it is still good practice.

There are times when he realizes another is there, raising his head and searching for that one who isn’t a mirage but rather reality born into a dream. Rising from the table, he picks up his glass and begins to move through the bar with an easy, familiar gait, seeking them out.

One day I'll watch as you're leaving - open @ Mags

[bealufull]

Kaz settles in at the bar at Mags most nights. Especially those nights when Inej is working. It’s not that he’s spying on her, or guarding over her, he’s just… spying on others and watching over her.

Some nights he has a few drinks, broody and silent as he watches others. Other nights though he has a coin in hand, transferring from one hand to the other without them ever touching. It’s not the kind of magic people here have, or that they even came here with. It’s sleight of hand, a mastery he gained as a child, and that he often practiced without thinking about it if only to keep himself sharp for when it was needed.

It feels good though, letting the coin dance over his fingers, keeping them easily moving with his touch as if the coin was alive and moving on its own. Not even seeming to pay attention, his gaze often behind the bar rather than on the coin, his focus razor sharp but not on the disk moving along his fingers. His sharp gaze moving from one person to another, how they move, the way they carry themselves, but if that elegant woman is behind the bar, his gaze comes back to her.

[shadowthief]

She’s in no place to go back to her job at Portam Hall yet, and they’re giving the Summoned time and space in the wake of the abductions and all its aftermath with their jobs held secure while they finish healing. Some nights, she wanders down to the bar just to have something to do.

Tonight is not one of those nights.

She does eventually wander downstairs when she realizes it’s been a few hours since she watched him slip out the door and listened to the soft steady rhythm of his cane on the stairs.

She knows about the brawl at the bar on the other side of town. She also knows it’s his own way of processing… everything. She hasn’t managed a lot of that herself just yet, either, but Jesper’s insistence that they all bunk up in one room for now has actually helped a lot for her, personally. When they all eventually retire the day, Jesper holds her while she listens to the soft breaths of Kaz so nearby and it keeps something in her level.

When Inej steps toward the bar, she spots him immediately. She’d know the slope of those shoulders and the sharp lines of that silhouette anywhere. She realizes it’s a coin he’s playing with, if it can be called that, and it brings the softest smile to her lips to watch the easy dance of the coin across his fingers.

She doesn’t say anything, only slips onto the stool next to him at the bar, folds her hands on the bar top to rest her chin on and watches as he switches to a new trick that makes her stare harder. Trying to see the moment he hides the coin when it seems to disappear. She knows the basic machinations of it, but it still tricks her eye with every new instance.

[bealufull]

Someone once asked how he always knew that Inej was there even when no one else knew she was there even if they were looking for her. He'd made some passing remark about intelligence, or magic, or whatever sounded mystical but the truth was, he could feel her.

Not like Grisha science where he could perhaps hear her heartbeat or know her scent. It was as if his entire body was honed to her and so, when she came close, he knew.

He feels her as she slips onto the barstool, his periphery vision knowing someone is there but in his heart knowing it was her. He shifts slightly, turning a bit more towards her as his gaze goes to her face. The coin doesn't falter, rolling over his fingers and then vanishing once more. He held out his hand towards her.

"If you wouldn't mind?" As if she had taken the coin from him.

[shadowthief]

She laughs when he turns to her, as though expecting her to be able to hand over a coin she never touched. "What?" she tilts her head to one side, squinting curiously at him. It's all part of the trick, part of the misdirection, but she's still trying to spot the moment.

[theidlemaiden]

Returning to work at the Sarstina happens faster than a past Hilda would have thought it would. The first several weeks settling back into Cadens is out of the question of course; her days and nights are spent at the hospital by Sylvain and Claude's bedsides and Mags is nothing but understanding. What remaining local staff there is covers the numbers just fine. Once Sylvain and Claude are back though? Hilda offers to pitch in where she can.

It's not quite a selfless act. She needs money, and some of it has to do with keeping herself purposefully busy to ignore the thoughts that have plagued her over the course of the last several months. Not only that, but she gets to return to doing one of her favourite things: people watching. Hilda would never consider her people watching spying - but isn't that what it is at the end of the day, just dressed up in frillier words?

Whatever you want to call it, she's doing it and it's not hard to notice the brooding young man in the corner of the bar. A part of her is reminded of Hubert, which should technically be more than enough to drive her away but her curiosity has always won out at the end of the day. A consequence of spending as much time as she does with her friends if she thinks about it, but she won't. She glides over at the end of a shift with whatever he's been drinking the last several nights with a friendly smile. "Any chance you want to trade a drink for teaching me how to do that?"

[bealufull]

His gaze is distant, not looking away but definitely not focusing on any one thing. The motions are like second nature as if the coin and it's motions are all part of him. It's a reminder of him being in control, needing to feel that there's some part of him that isn't lost in this place. Not after all they'd been through.

His gaze slowly raises at the woman beside him, the coin come to rest on its edge on the back of his fingers and then he closes his other hand over it and it vanishes.

"It's not magic," he points out, learning that for some it's so common place they don't think otherwise. "So it might take more than a drink to learn but I'm willing to show the basics. If you're willing to learn and not give up if it gets difficult."

[theidlemaiden]

It's not not him telling her to get lost. That's a good thing right? Seeing it as a window of opportunity, she slides into the seat across from him. After gently nudging the drink towards him, she rests her chin on the top of her hands. At his Her nose wrinkles in jest at the part about things getting difficult. "Ugh, and here I thought there'd be a trick to it."

How did Kaz know that she had a penchant for hightailing it in the other direction when things get too difficult? Thankfully this seems less like actual work and more like a genuine interest in learning — along with a side of using it as a vehicle to talk to him.

Almost immediately Hilda perks up, eyes bright as she pulls out one of her own coins from the pouch slung around her waist. "But I'm confident that I'll have a good teacher to motivate me and cheer me on. I'm Hilda by the way. Sorry I never got a chance to say hi earlier. You know how work can be." It's a not so subtle way of saying that she had seen him in the bar for the last several nights.

[techmaturgy]

Viktor doesn't live at Mags', but he does spend some time there, simply by virtue of it being something of a watering hole for the Summoned. It's nice, to have a change of scenery, especially now that their most recent ordeal is over and Viktor worries less about his own health. He can work longer and isn't as bothered by socializing, because he has more bandwidth for it, so he's slowly spending more time around the other Summoned.

Tonight, he doesn't seem to be here for anything in particular beyond a table adjacent to the usual activities. He seems to be content to scrawl in a notebook, though every so often he'll look up, taking stock of his surroundings--perhaps an old habit dying hard. It's during one of those brief surveys that he catches Kaz's gaze, and Viktor's expression quickly becomes one of confusion.

What? he mouths, figuring that if it's just a case of misplaced attention, he'll know soon enough.

[bealufull]

Kaz blinks at that, at the way the man looks back at him. In truth he's been looking that way but he hasn't been focused. Instead caught up in other thoughts, of trying to straighten out things in his head to keep him on the path he knows he needs to be in here.

One gloved hand covers the other, the coin vanishing as he shakes his head. Not willing to risk losing control of the coin as he lets his attention wane and actually turn to the other man.

"Nothing? Why?"

Completely unaware that he's been staring intently at the other man, all but scowling in that way he has that is more resting face than it is the anger that seems to reflect there in his eyes.

[techmaturgy]

"You're staring."

Viktor cares little for various social norms. If he has something on his mind, he's going to say it, up to and including calling people out for aforementioned staring. If Kaz wants to come over and talk about something, he should simply do it, as far as he's concerned.

"Do you need something?"

Not hostile, or malicious. Just asking.