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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[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.

[bealufull]

"Not fair to take things," he says, his voice sly and teasing. He hasn't practiced either of these arts in a very long time. His sleight of hand shown this openly, or the sort of persona he put on while on the streets of Ketterdam to earn coin to invest in the path he took upward in the barrel.

He holds his hand up, just gloved fingers and nothing more, and then he waves his hand over hers and the coin is resting against the back of her hand.

"Here I am learning real magic here and I keep thinking about how different things might have been if I'd come by it naturally." He snorts as he says it. "I'd be in the Second Army," he says, shaking his head. Not sure if my family would have done what Jesper's did or not."

[shadowthief]

"I didn't," she says with a half-contained giggle. It's all a rouse, she knows it, and still, she can't help but be drawn in. She wonders if this is part of the boy behind the monster, the one she never got to meet, the one she longs to see more of if there's some piece of him still buried beneath everything else.

This time when she laughs, it's a proper one. Soft, but enthusiastic in her amusement, her nose scrunching a little in the process. "Where do you keep it?" she asks, squinting playfully suspiciously at him. She doesn't expect a real answer, and truth be told, she doesn't want to know. She likes having this kind of magic in her life, still, too.

"We weren't meant for it," Inej points out softly. She does not feel like she missed out, not being blessed as a Grisha. Her life has been hard enough, being both Suli and Grisha was a burden her Saints did not wish to bestow on her, and for that, she's rather grateful.

She plucks the coin off her hand and places it back in his gloved it with light fingers and rests her chin in her hand against the tabletop. "But why the what if's? That isn't very like you..." He's usually much more of a practical thinker than that.

[bealufull]

"What magic would it be if I told you?"

He scoffs at that but there's a softness to his features that very few ever see. Inej though sees it most of all.

"I can't imagine the man I would be. I can't imagine not being who I am."

To imagine that is imagining his brother still with him, to never know Inej and Jesper. His path has never been easy, but it took and gave him things he needed in equal parts.

"Because I want to learn more here," he admits. "I want to master what I've never truly had. What I don't want is to lose myself to it. I imagine many here have, we just haven't seen it."

[shadowthief]

She scrunches her nose at the answer, but there’s a smile hiding in it all, too. Exactly what she’d expected— and hoped— he would say. She does like knowing him so well.

“It’s hard to think in could-have’s and used-to-be’s,” she agrees with a slight nod. She gets it; she knows she will never be the girl she was before. It took time for her to make peace with that, and she still struggles with the thought at times, but mostly, she tries to focus on the person she was made to become, and ironing out her problems and becoming whoever she is meant to be.

Ah, there’s the practical angle. She knew it was there somewhere. “I haven’t learned much of the magics here,” she admits softly, “A few things here and there, but…” her eyes drop down to her fingers twisting between each other. Some part of it almost feels wrong to her, somehow. To have been blessed by some strange power instead of the Saints she holds so dear. Would it be a betrayal to Them to pursue it more? She’s never been able to decide on an answer, and has simply erred to the side of caution.

[bealufull]

"I never think that way," he admits, and they both know it. "Though if I'm honest, it's because they have never presented themselves as a truth as it does now."

Would his brother still be alive if he had been Grisha? Perhaps, but he never had that chance as a child. Would Inej be dead if she had been born Grisha? Also perhaps, but thankfully they only have magic here. She's right, because those thoughts did them no benefit and it was why he avoided such things.

He watches her closely. He always has. It's why he knows those movements, that turn of her head, and can read so many more words into what she is saying that Inej has said with words.

"Perhaps it's been given to you as a means of continuing as you have." To honor them though he doesn't say it. Of course, it benefits him if she learns more and he's learning how little it harms him to acknowledge her belief even if he'll never hold it.

"The way I see it is they've stripped me of my money, my holdings, and my reputation. Magic is the very least I can learn to balance all of that out."

[shadowthief]

“Things are… different here, but it isn’t all bad,” she says with a slight nod and a tiny smile. She rather likes the new parts of himself that Kaz has been discovering since coming here.

At those words, she glances back up at him, a curious glint in her eyes as she tries to untangle them, find some deeper meaning or reason for it. But she doesn’t find anything. It’s just… a sort of acceptance. And she smiles, that tiny twitch of lips that’s barely there but still so powerful all the same. “Maybe…” she’ll think on it, at least. Pray about it, perhaps.

“Now, that sounds like you,” she says with a soft smirk. “Kaz Brekker, ever the opportunist.”

[bealufull]

"I have yet to call it bad since those first days when I was kidnapped," he points out, because it's the truth. He's tried since he came there to find his place and he can't deny that there are bonuses here. If he had his fortune.

He'd worked damn hard for that, after all.

That he wants her to explore this magic is nothing he's hiding, but it can be as much for herself as it is fore them as a group. Who they've been together for so long.

He snorts, rolling his eyes though he's trying not to show he's amused by that. "I thought you all thought I could be someone other than myself.

[shadowthief]

She hums softly and nods. It's true. He has long-since stopped completely hating it here. "Can you believe it's almost been a year already?" She'll be quickly approaching two herself when The Dimming begins.

"I never said you shouldn't be yourself," she points out, tilting her head into her hand. "I said you could be something besides what the Barrel made you." she smiles, a tiny, soft thing, "Subtle but distinct difference."