abraxaslogs | {The silhouette against the wall

Entry tags:

{The silhouette against the wall

Who: Inej + Various
When: Month of August
Where: Cadens + the Horizon
What: Various closed threads
Warnings: Things that might come up in Inej's narration are: stealing; murder; descriptions of touch aversion, anxiety, depression, PTSD; heavy trust issues, paranoia; mentions of past instances of prostitution, slavery, sexual assault. Everything will be clearly marked if-when it comes up.

Shifting through the dark

Lit up by the white moon

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  Inej is a pretty solid fixture behind the bar most evenings at The Sarstina Inn. She has an almost natural talent for it, learning people's favorite drinks is no different than collecting information to share with the right people— the only difference is, it’s not the sort of thing she has any reason to report to anyone, and she simply stores it in the back of her mind for personal use when necessary.

Maybe you're a regular who finds your favorite drink perched in a glass in front of you as soon as she sees you approach the bar. She might give a soft smile and a, “Your usual?”

Or maybe you're newly Summoned and know a bar and a bartender are both good places and good people to get information from. New faces get an easy, "What can I get you?" Voice light, accented.

Some habits die hard, and with him here, it’s almost impossible for Inej to keep herself from sitting in the window of Kaz’s room before he gets back from whatever exploration he’s decided to do for the day.

She could use the door like a reasonable person, but the most natural thing in the world is to perch in his window and feed the birds scraps of bread as she waits. One leg is draped over the outside edge of the window while the other is tucked up toward her chest. There's an inherent comfort in the familiarity of it that she can't deny.

Jesper completely wiped out his stash of things to sell during the Art Walk, which means they are all flushed with money, and also that he had to spend time afterward remaking new trinkets to sell. He plops down in front of Inej after coming in from a decent day of business, setting his makeshift table next to him with the remaining goodies.

"I'm really starting to wonder if taking that week long trip to Aquila would be worth it, it seems selling to a new city turns out well for me." Not that he's doing poorly, but there definitely was something about the tourist aspect that really worked for him. Their coffers are in no way running dry though, it seems that now that Jesper can make money without having to spend it, he's not a bad cash cow.

"Though I'm not sure Kaz would want to go in a wagon that long." And Jesper isn't going anywhere without him, so. He has been a little clingy.

If there's one thing that Kaz had forgotten in the last decade or so it was how much there is to learn about a new city. He'd been a fixture of the Barrel for so long, it's something he hasn't thought about.

So each day is spent getting to know the natives, the other Summoned, and considering how he might start working on their future here. Because despite Inej's comment about his not needing to Dirtyhands, he knows he needs to face that he needs something to do, something to focus on for the future.

But they're long days and Inej was not behind the bar when he came through. Pausing at the door to set his cane into a notch in the wall by the door as he closes the door behind him. He stands there for a moment, quiet and unmoving before his lips curl, barely, in the tiniest of looks that is, for him, a smile.

"You know you needn't wait there for me, Wraith. You could even come inside," he teases.

She grins when Jesper takes up one of the seats at the bar, his an always welcome presence. She hums a noncommital, curious noise, "Maybe, you know how tourism is– Ketterdam thrived on people from other countries buying kitchy stuff from shops. You'd probably make more than enough to make up for what it takes to get there."

Inej huffs a soft laugh. "Not likely," she says with an amused lilt in her tone at the thought.

A smile threatens to spill across her face when she hears him on the other side of his door– the familiar fall of steps followed by the slightly louder thud of his cane. She wipes it from her face before he's inside, though, busying herself with the birds again.

"I know," she admits with a glance inside at him, "but it feels natural." Even if the location and circumstances are different, and the hum of the tavern below is not nearly the same as the rumble of The Slat.

Truth is, she missed this. She'd even done it with Sam– a poor imitation of the real thing. Nothing against Sam, just... he's not Kaz and it isn't the same. Something settles in her chest at the familiarity of the moment.

"What did you investigate today?" she asks curiously, tossing the last bit of bread to the birds. He'll surely have a flock perching at his window before long because of her.

It feels familiar, almost comfortable even though nothing in the Barrel is ever truly comfortable. No more than here either. Nothing here is comfortable, or normal. Everything here is a strange, a start that is off center and brings with it talk of war and magic acts that Kaz isn't sure what to think about.

But this, right here, with Inej, it's familiar and more comfortable than anything he's experienced the entire time he's been in this place.

"I can understand that. A need for what's familiar," he adds, there with his cane and his gloves and all that he needs here to feel himself. "Though isn't this at odds with not being who we were?"

He's curious more than accusatory, especially since learning that Jesper had told her much the same thing that she had told Kaz.

Need. That's a very specific word-choice for someone like Kaz, and she can't help the way her ears hone in on it. It catches her breath in her throat, but she wills nothing to pass across her face for it all.

"It doesn't have to be, I don't think," she muses softly. "This may be an opportunity to start over, without the expectations of The Barrel at our backs, but... it doesn't change us as people..." her voice drops low and quiet, "Doesn't change...what we are to each other." Not that she exactly has words for what that is. They haven't had that conversation so explicitly.

"Maybe we can convince Jaskier and Alucard to do a second one, this one with Aquila as the end point." Hey, why not? Aquila might want to get in on the Libertas success and do their own version. Jesper wouldn't mind taking the trip there, although it's a full week, it would be an interesting option. "There are beaches there, it's apparently very relaxing." It sounds divine.

A wagon for an entire week would be pretty rough, although Kaz might consider it if there was a very good reason. More money and shiny beaches aren't terrible reasons but not the right ones. "He told me you said you didn't have to be your titles here." Jesper grins at her. "That sounds like very good and wise advice." Aka something he said to her.

“That would be amazing,” she admits with a little grin. “Mmm, beach does sound nice. Sand is different when it’s from a beach instead of a desert.” she laughs softly.

Money is arguably always a reason for Kaz Brekker. It just depends on the amount vs the task at hand. At the proper mention of him, and more importantly the point made, there is a distinct look of realization on her face. Oh. without the word needing to pass her lips. “Well,” she leans a little further forward against the bar. “Someone rather wise told me so once, it only seemed right I pass the message along.” She’s all light-hearted smirks and bright eyes as she says it.

He's had time to think since he arrived. About this place. About what the future truly was for him back in Ketterdam and what his future might hold for him here instead. He imagines it might well have been an entirely different thing had he arrived here without finding Jesper or the woman perched on his window sill.

He approaches not with caution but consideration as he leaves his jacket across the back of a chair, careful so there's no wrinkles and then, after pausing a moment, he begins to peel off his gloves.

It's a consideration, a show that he is thinking about her words on more than a superficial level. Perhaps he will never be comfortable with contact from others but with her, he could offer this if nothing else as he lays the gloves against the coat.

"What if those changes do change what we are? To one another?"

It's something he's thought about since their first talk in this place. When she, and then Jesper, had told him he could leave Dirtyhands behind. What if he did and the person he is without that is not the person they've known or cared for?

She watches him, eyes ever-sharp, taking in every motion, every shift toward and away, any favoring of his good leg because his less-good one is causing him problems. Reading him, as though he were a page of The Istorii Sankt'ya. She does it all the time, even if she doesn’t need to, even when she doesn’t realize she’s doing it. Some habits die harder than others.

The coat first. Then the gloves. It’s a simple thing for anyone else, but a tremendous act of trust, and an intimacy few people are afforded in the presence of Kaz Brekker.

How one boy can so effortlessly make her want to punch him is beyond her, but he’s excellent at it, frequently.

“Kaz,” she shifts in her seat at his window so both her legs swing to hang over the ledge on the inside of the room. Fingers curled around the edge either in uncertainty or in a Saints’ worth of restraint not to smack him where he stands. Maybe both. “It won’t. I’m not—” she pauses and breathes a soft huff. ‘With you’ are words too full of other meaning for her to feel comfortable to throw them at him like that. Instead, she settles on, “I’m not going anywhere, Kaz.”

She understands it, the hesitancy, the uncertainty, the reluctance to let go of that part of himself. It’s terrifying. She’d been through it just the same, not so long ago. Is still going through it every day she’s here. And she isn’t sure she could say she’s given up or let go of The Wraith. Not really. She still slinks through shadows, scales buildings and runs rooftops, is still ever-vigilant in keeping an ear to the ground in case she catches an interesting nugget of something whether from locals or fellow Summoned, either one.

“I think you’re missing the point,” she says rather bluntly. “You’re not going to stop being you. You can’t. It’s built into you— the harbor, the barrel, your wins and your losses, The Dregs and The Crows— all of it has shaped you. You won’t lose that if you leave Dirtyhands in Ketterdam. You’ll just be building on top of the foundation you’ve already started with.”

A beat.

A smirk.

“Brick by brick.”

Edited 2022-08-17 21:15 (UTC)

"I hate the desert," Jesper says on a long-suffering sigh. Yes, Free Cities was his choice, but that doesn't mean he has to like sand. Which he doesn't. He misses the smell of the sea. He even misses the smell of fish from the harbor! "They say Aquila has the largest public market." Therefore, the best place for Jesper to be, to sell his things.

Jesper smirks back and gives her a wink. "That someone sounds devilishly handsome too, very charming, it was good you listened." He can't help it, it's automatic. He drops the playfulness though since banter is all well and good, but they might as well discuss the man of the hour while they're there. "I'm glad you did though. I don't know if he'll end up having a Dirtyhands crisis, but it's good to get ahead of it."

Opening up to others has never been easy for Kaz. The relationship he has with Inej, and Jesper as well, is the closest he has ever been with others since he lost his brother. He knows they're aware of that which makes it harder some times than he would like to admit. Such as being open about his concerns, rather than just burying them and agreeing though he hasn't a clue how to act on them.

It isn't an insult even asking that, as easy as he is to cutting people with words as if they were a blade he wielded for defense. Yet his words often are his first weapon of defense, this is something worse in his mind. Vulnerability.

He hates it. Hates the way it feels, to be as open to others as if he were stripped down to nothing. Hates how it makes him feel emotions he would deny he was even capable of. He's lived so long as a barrel rat that even with two people beside him he knows have followed him literally into Hell and they brought one another back out. Being known by them shouldn't be a fear he has.

And yet there it is.

But he knows it is, in part, to the reality that their paths were never meant to cross and he embraced who he is while she did what she had to. At least in his mind.

"You believe that, and I believe you," he says, knowing she means every word she says. As things stand now. "And even if you use my words against me," he says, giving her a look with an arched brow. "They brought us here to fight a war despite the friends you've both made and all that is offered by those in this building and all. It will come whether we agree to fight for them or not. I don't think either of us will wholly get a chance to leave who we've been behind," he notes, giving voice to the thoughts that have plagued him since the day he arrived.

"I wish I could say I didn't think so, for both you and Jesper, but I sadly don't think it will be."

Of course, he's not thinking of ways he could be part of protecting them when that did happen and not be the bastard he's been. Extremes and all of that.

He steps in closer to her, his gaze intense and his step almost careful.

"That ruthlessness and skill that earned me that name might well be needed here. For all of our sake."

She chuckles lightly at his mild dramatics. That’s just Jesper for you, but the look on her face during his lamenting of the sand is amused and fond. “Sounds like a place worth a trip to, then.” Especially since Jesper is, technically, the one between them that brings the most income at this point. She’s got a few idea she could look into herself, just hasn’t yet.

“Both of these things are true,” she doesn’t stop the edge of a wild grin on her face, “especially the charm.” She winks at him, like they’re sharing an inside joke.

At the return to the serious part of the conversation she just nods. “I’d rather it be on his mind than a crashing realization that sort of thing might not exactly work here as it did in The Barrel.” Fully informed is fully armed and all that.

"You believe that…"

All she can feel in the center of her is the other shoe that’s about the drop.

"And I believe you…"

The But… that’s coming on the other side of it.

And she hates how much she feels it. The anticipation. The baited breath. The kick square to the chest when he reiterates the same thing she’s heard from others here already.

“Why does everyone seem to think I don’t know how war works?!” Though the words are sharp as her daggers, they aren’t exactly meant for him. It’s general anger libbed at the closest, easiest target, one she knows can take it, won’t take it personal, because he’ll know it isn’t him, just the situation. The arrow doesn’t land quite like it should. “My country has been at war in one way or another for my. entire life. I may not have been in Ravka for the last three years, but I haven’t forgotten the ill-effects of a war I never asked for!”

Somewhere in the midst of it, she’d jetted off the ledge and stalked straight up to him. He practically towers above her at just shy of a full foot taller, but that does not change her ferocity. All false. Not for him, for once.

“Maybe,” she bites her last words at him out one by one, like each one hurt her more to say than the last. “Mine could, too. But just because it could be useful doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

Edited 2022-08-24 00:19 (UTC)

Whatever he is expecting in that moment, it isn't that she becomes angry with him that he just states why he isn't certain about stripping away the dangerous man he's been. Even if he ignores his fear in doing so, for his own reasons, he certainly hadn't said that.

"I never insinuated that," he snaps back, and yet he doesn't move. Not in the least as she storms up to him. Not that he doesn't know how dangerous that fury from her is, but because he doesn't know how to back down. It isn't in him, no matter who he is seen as by others.

"No one is asking you to like it. No one is asking you to want to be at war. I didn't put you here though, or put you in that position and I won't be punished for it because I worry for you and Jesper in this place. Or that I will do whatever I have to, be whoever is required, to do so."

He speaks in a soft, steady voice, his gaze hard as steel as it meets her own.

"I don't want you to live it. Not any of it. I chose my path a long time ago, Inej. You were forced on yours. If this place lets you leave that path, then good."

Ignoring that he'd had little choice in it as well, but claiming that as he always had. The boy he had been died and was shoved on a barge of the dead. The man he is was born in the Barrel, from it's dirt and grime and greed and pain. He's not sure he could be someone else, whereas Inej and Jesper have always been others who adopted the shroud of the place. They were good at it, some of the best, but it wasn't their blood like it was his.

And he knows that, knows what separates him and why he isn't sure he can be who they want him to be. Worse, that they might need him to be someone he can't.

But he can't admit those fears, isn't sure how to open up like that and so when it becomes this, he isn't surprised.

He snaps back almost instantly. Good. She's gearing for an argument, and who better to have one with than The Bastard of the Barrel? She would never presume he would back down from her, though– lethal as her hand may be, he has no reason to fear her in that way. He could overtake her in a fight if she had no blade on her. Not that he would have to; she'd never go for him like that in the first place.

"I'm not punishing you," she bites back, not bothering to contain the roll of her eyes. "I just–" It's a tangled, frustrated sound that cuts her words short, not sure how to conceptualize it all into words. She's just tired. And it keeps not mattering, because no matter what, the world just keeps handing her more and more to hold.

His gaze is sharp and cold as steel, but his voice, his voice is so soft it disarms her almost instantly. Her eyes close as she listens to his words, and almost more than she knows how to handle, she just wants to crumble into him, make him hold her– not with whispers of lies of how everything will be okay, just this, harsh truths and genuine wishes, however far out of reach they feel.

She doesn't, of course. She barely wavers where she stands. But as close as he is? It would be nearly impossible to miss the sag in her shoulders, the way she tucks her head just slightly, curls in on herself in a nearly imperceptible way.

She expects nothing (life is so much easier when you stop having expectations). She just needs him to stay where he is. Near. So she can feel the presence of him, even as her eyes are closed and she can't actually see him.

"But you'll be there...?" she asks on wavering tones. "Even if... our paths don't perfectly align?" She doesn't think that will ever be true, not really. Whatever path the girl that had been pulled onto that ship all those years ago would have followed was yanked out from under her the moment she'd been stolen. But she wants to hear him say it anyway. That she doesn't have to be The Wraith for him to... need her? Want her?

She doesn't dare let herself so much as think the other word.

Jesper mostly just gets stir crazy so if there is a way to get out there and do something else, even if he'll whine after a few days that the trip is too long, it'll be good for him. The trip to Libertas spoiled him!

"Yeah, Julie and Nadine went there for a relaxing vacation trip not that long ago. Julie brought me back these." He's not sure he ever explained how he got the rather beautiful gun holsters at his hips currently, they just became part of his every day look. He makes Julie jewelry pretty much every other day or whenever she wants a trinket, but he didn't expect a gift back. He loves the holsters a lot. They have the Wheel of Fortune sign on them, the same arcana the two of them share.

"Kaz isn't stupid but he is stubborn. Not that I'm against us coming up with a new version of our gang here, it won't be the same as Ketterdam, but it can still be better than nothing." He hasn't really thought about how that could be envisioned here. He's not likely to piss off Cadens, but he's never been the idea guy. "He doesn't seem too shaken by all of it, but he's a hard read, even for me."

It shouldn't feel good to get these emotions out, the sides of him that he has had little place for since he was pulled from the water - where the very first of his anger in this place had begun. And yet this isn't his target, but had they ever been when these moments had happened?

But maybe this is what they both needed. After all they had been through back in their own lands, and all that this place represented and had taken. He is quite aware there are six months or more of her - and Jesper's - life where he wasn't part of it. Couldn't be. Was cut off from them and he blames this place for that. Even if they had been off living their own lives, he wasn't cut from theirs until here.

It isn't the way she shifts though that hurts him, that makes his heart hurt as it seemingly loses its rhythm. It's those words.

For a moment he regrets taking off his gloves. It would be easier for him to do this without the contact, with being able to wholly put her first rather than his own troubles. And yet, maybe this is what he needs to do so he can push past that.

One hand curves to her shoulder, offering the support he can physically. Even offering an opening for her to come closer. He's not sure how to even handle it, but he wants the offer there.

But then his bare hand cups her chin, ensuring her gaze is on him. Offering both touch and his pale gaze as he stares into her eyes. "No matter what our paths are in the world? You and I will always share a path, Inej. You knew that when you went off to hunt slave traders, didn't you?" He assumes she did. Even if he had worried before, if she's asking it here then she must have thought that back home. "Why then would anything be different here?"

"Oh, that's where those came from," she laughs softly. "I'd wondered... they're gorgeous." Truly. Very Jesper. Clearly, Julie gets him and his general fashion sense.

"As a bull," she rolls her eyes at the thought of the stubbornness she has to deal with from the other boy. "He's taking it in stride well enough, but... I think he's a lot more bothered than you think." Which is just the way a man like Kaz likes it. For people to only see what he wants them to. Too bad for him, Inej has almost always seen straight through him the same as if he were made of glass.

Little does Kaz know that he was never not a part of her life, even here, even before he turned up in the pools of Cadens. She didn't leave him behind in Ketterdam, she carried him with her, from the moment she turned up in Solvunn, to the second she followed Jesper back here to the Free Cities. There was never really a moment he wasn't somewhere in her thoughts.

Oh.

A soft gasp escapes her. The weight of his hand on her shoulder is barely there, but it is impossible to ignore the pressure of it. For a moment, she doesn't even dare to open her eyes for fear it might ruin the moment completely.

Not until she feels the press of his fingers against her face does she open her eyes. Too shocked by it to do anything else. She shakes her head almost imperceptibly, "I..." but she has no answer, and her voice disappears almost entirely and instead she just shakes her head, more vigorously than before. Through a breath as she draws it in sharply, she manages, "I thought- maybe- if I can't, or don't want to, be The Wraith, what use do you have of me?" she can't help it, can't stop herself, as she presses herself against him, her face buried in the material of his shirt.

She isn't used to this. Him. Like this. It's overwhelming in a way she can't quite process. Makes her so much more desperate to say everything she's held her tongue for, suddenly. "I just don't want to lose you," she mumbles against his chest.

"We have similar tastes." And by that he means bright, beautiful, maybe even a little tacky, the sort of colors that you have to be ultimately very comfortable to pull off. Jesper adores them though, they're probably his favorite gift he's gotten since his mother's revolvers, all those years ago. And also the monthly tokens he gets from Inej.

"I know it's not easy to start over. For us it was difficult, for him, infinitely more so, no doubt." Jesper had it the easiest, considering that's just who he is, but he does miss Ketterdam. He misses their real life. Both he and Inej had really good things waiting for them there, but they have found a life here for now. He doesn't think Kaz can just take over Cadens.

"He'd not tell me, as you know. So I'll keep bringing him money and information." What he's currently best at.

“Clearly,” she chuckles lightly. She doesn’t know Julie well, beyond that she’s close to Nadine and she’s a friend of Jesper’s, but that’s enough for her.

She nods slowly in her agreement, “Absolutely… he’s much more stubborn in his ways than either of us could dream to be,” she scoffs softly, shaking her head. Kaz is just as adaptable as anyone, in broadstrokes. It will be the smaller, daily things that he gets huffy about.

“Those are two of his favorite things,” she says on a laugh.

"I have told people about him over the months, but I don't think I really got a chance to warn them about it."

That is because Jesper genuinely thought he'd never see him again at this point. He's not really one of those people who thinks about going home. Julie told him awhile ago that she thought it would be dangerous with the Singularity, and beyond that, they don't even have proof it works. They could all be 'going back' to nothingness, to death. And he likes being alive. It's a complicated situation.

While he loves Kaz a great deal, warn is absolutely the right word. Inej and Jesper are generally very likable people, if he does say so himself. She is more reserved than Jesper is, although everyone is comparatively, but they are positive people who purposely make connections. Kaz is more difficult, but he can be charming. Maybe. Jesper hasn't seen much proof of that, but it must be true.

"In a way we do have a little gang here, the Summoned gang. But he can't really run it." Sam runs it. Probably.

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{The silhouette against the wall

{Hey bartender, pour 'em hot tonight » OTA

{A window seat with my name on it » Kaz

They should talk about The Boy

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yesss 🙌

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