Work Text:
I don’t wanna wake it up
I don’t wanna wake it up
I don’t wanna wake it up
The devil in me
– devil in me, halsey
—
He’s awake.
He’s been awake, restless energy that had started in his head spiraling outwards into his veins, simmering down to the marrow. There’s no place for it to go, so he’s been staring at the ceiling, at the subtle inset parquet pattern. A solution, of course, would be to get up and go fabrikate the color out of the backs of some playing cards or infuse that horrid rug in the den with a palette other than beige. Truly an example of Jan Van Eck drowning in money and zero taste.
Could play a couple hands at the clubs, an oily voice whispers in his mind. It would be easy, to fall into the up-down thrill of gambling, to fill his ears with the clicking whirl of Makker’s Wheel. The rush would wash out the way his joints seem to vibrate with unspent motion, would mute the cluttered trip of his thoughts as easily as a bullet to the brain.
Tipping his chin just so, he catches the bare moonlight glinting off of Wylan’s curls, tinting the red-gold of them a frosty blue-white. All at once, the sight fills him with a crushing guilt for even considering a card game that he cringes.
Probably not even allowed in the Crow Club, he thinks, with a swooping measure of despair.
Nothing stopping him from taking a stroll, though.
With a subtlety that he thinks even Inej would be proud of, Jesper slips from his and Wylan’s bed (and isn’t that a thought?), changing from bedclothes into familiar Barrel flash and slinging his holsters around his hips. He’s extra quiet as he crosses the room and pauses by the door, taking one last look over his shoulder to see the merchling’s freckled, boyish face still slack with sleep.
Mere moments later, he’s out the front door and onto the darkened streets, listening to the distant midnight chime of the clock tower and the low roll of thunder that punctuates it after. If it rained, it would be just his luck to be stuck in it. Too bad he’s already made his decision and a little downpour wouldn’t see him turning around to grab a coat. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he lets his feet take him where they will, long legs covering the distance between the Geldin district and his unknown endpoint with rapid surety.
It should not, he thinks, surprise him that he ends up at the Slat, the black-painted ramshackle of a structure still leaning as precariously as ever. But, he is surprised all the same, just faintly, when the building stands before him, looming as it has for the entirety of his time in Ketterdam. Keeg greets him at the door, dressed head to toe in conflicting plaid patterns that Jesper grins at as he’s waved in. His first inhale in the scuffed entryway is full of hazy jurda smoke, day-old ale, and some kind of chemically citrus cleaning fluid. Familiar. Sweet (appalling). Welcoming. Worn into his senses like a particularly comfortable pair of shoes. Something loosens in his chest as he wanders through the familiar rooms and halls on the less cramped ground floor, eventually landing him on the creaking stairs he’d taken up to his third floor bedroom.
He’s mostly cleaned it out, so he drums his fingers on the banister, trying to decide if it was worth nosing around in.
“Three Man Bramble is played better with steady nerves,” Kaz’s stone-sharp rasp interrupts, sending his heart galloping into his throat.
“All the Saints and their Aunt Eva!” He swears, turning bodily sidelong to find Kaz standing almost directly behind him, narrow face drawn into an expression of pinched annoyance. So, just another Tuesday. “Yeah, well,” Jesper snorts, immune to this particular mood, “we’re in short supply of those around here lately.”
“Some of us.” His smug tone, at this moment, makes Jesper want to strangle him a little.
“Shouldn’t our prodigious mastermind be getting his beauty rest about now?”
Kaz fixes him with a look that clearly says You should know better. In a surprising concession, he does grace him with a verbal answer, “The storm won’t knock off. Going to keep the pigeons in.”
Ah, and that would explain why he’s here at the Slat instead of the club. Or why he isn’t out doing any number of terrible and morally harrowing crimes elsewhere in the city. Seemingly right on cue, the sky opens up and sends pounding rain against the old wood and windows, echoing all down the staircase. In another life, Kaz would’ve made an excellent weatherman.
It’s sobering, to think of the what ifs.
With his usual arrogant impatience, Kaz makes to move past him on the stairs and he feels his jitteriness return, fraying him at the ends. A string of dire questions solidify on his tongue, ready to be loosed from the cage of his teeth.
“So, what? You’re just fine with it all then? Job’s done and everyone gone their separate ways?” His stomach twists, finally giving these thoughts a voice. After the auction, he thinks, they’ve been buzzing under his skin. When he blinks, he sees Nina’s pale hand waving them goodbye. Sees Matthias, ghostly white and motionless. There’s grief, bitter, sitting heavy and sharp at the back of his throat. Kaz has paused in his ascent up the staircase, two steps up from him, his stillness as unnerving as it is aggravating.
“I can predict people, not control them, Jesper,” he finally answers, completely devoid of anything. Calm. Unruffled. He wants to scream. Kaz knows people, deconstructs them with that too-clever brain of his, bends his terrible will towards maneuvering nearly every person he meets into the exact spot he wants them to be in. What is that, if not control?
“Oh, sure,” he replies, dripping sarcasm, “my mistake, I haven’t ever seen you pull the strings on someone before.” Rotten bastard.
“Because people are predictable.” There’s a faint note of irritation now and…maybe he’s spent too long in the Barrel, too long around liars and thieves and the crooked angles of this place, but it sparks a sick satisfaction inside him.
It disappears as quickly as it came, when Kaz continues abruptly, throwing a flat glance over his shoulder, “Is there a reason you’re hanging around here instead of a plush merch’s bed?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” he replies with an edge of annoyance. “Didn’t see any reason he shouldn’t.”
“Not enough rooms to wander in that place? I find that hard to believe.”
Fuck you, he thinks meanly. Kaz beats him to the punch, simultaneously winding him and setting his cocktail of grief and unease on fire.
“Why are you really here, Jes? The cards can’t soothe you.”
“What does it matter to you, Kaz? Or am I banned from the Slat, too, for having the audacity to associate with the merchling?”
Kaz turns then, just enough for him to get the full effect of his unreadable, shark-like gaze. The height of the stairs means he’s looking down at Jesper, coolly imperious when he says, “Go home. You’re not doing anyone any favors, least of all yourself, by being here.”
A dozen thoughts rush in like a deluge and there’s a faint ringing in his ears, his blood, that reminds him of their fight in the Geldrenner’s clock tower.
“I am home,” he whispers, quaking, his knuckles going pale where he’s gripped the stair railing. “Home isn't a place, it’s the people in it, and–“ Jesper sucks a breath in as he barrels on, blindingly furious in the wake of his anguish, “–my people have gone or are moving on or dead, and I just want to hold on to what I’ve got left.”
“Get it through your head, we weren’t going to have a happily ever after.” Kaz is looking at him with faint contempt, plowing onward before he has a chance to say anything. “This was never home for Nina, just a temporary inconvenience. And we both know Inej never should’ve been here in the first place.”
“For Saints’ sake, Kaz, I’m not that naive!”
“You’re the one that lost at the tables and kept coming back for more.”
“That isn’t–“
Kaz cuts him off sharply, “Wylan is building something and he wants you to be part of it.”
“And I’m going to be part of what he’s building, I know that, I know–“
“But somehow, you’re here instead of there, relying on the same place that nearly had your neck in a noose.”
“I fail to see why you think that means I have to walk away from you!”
“There’s nothing for you here.”
Jesper reels back as though slapped, so thoroughly reprimanded that he almost misses the flicker in Kaz’s coal black eyes. It’s so fast, there and gone, that he’s reminded of his magician hands, making cards disappear and reappear in a blink.
What do you think my forgiveness looks like, Jordie?
He stares dumbly, feeling distinctly brained as the realization bludgeons him over the head like a cudgel.
Who the hell is Jordie?
The memory of Kaz’s fear, his jaw slack in confusion, his answering snarl of What do you want from me? My trust? echoes in his head, only interrupted by Kaz-in-the-present losing patience with his silence to turn on his heel and start back up the stairs. Intent on locking him out, as always. Using his cruelty as a wall between them, as always. This, he’s starting to understand now, is part of the complicated puzzle of Kaz Brekker. It doesn’t matter if, just two weeks before, Inej had told him that he was missed, around the Slat. Kaz is still armed and willing to leave wounds. His heart hammers in his chest as he jolts out of his daze, springing into action to take the steps two at a time.
“You don’t get to do that!” He shouts, attention trained on the clipped swing of Kaz’s shoulders ahead of him. Possessed of two working legs, he muses with a curl of dark humor, it’s no wonder he catches up to Kaz and bypasses him, stopping short of the attic door.
“You don’t just get to decide you’re not my friend. That you aren’t important to me.”
For precious, heart-stopping moments, he thinks he’s gone too far. Vicious blackness descends behind Kaz’s eyes, the glinting warning of Dirtyhands. Apologies swell in his chest. But–no, not this time. This time, Jesper, used to playing high stakes, tilts his chin, daring. Gambling and praying he’s played the right hand. Seconds pass in slow motion; one beat, two. Then, that promise of violence recedes, replaced by Kaz’s usual stoic mask as he strides right past him to open his door, taking great pains to ensure neither of them come into contact.
“Shut the door, Jesper.” He does. Saints help him. Can’t disobey Kaz fucking Brekker even when he’s steaming mad.
“All Saints, you’re such an asshole! Shut the door, Jesper. Shoot when I tell you, Jesper. Everything I’ve done for you, everything we’ve been through together–“ Another thought overtakes him, then, dousing his agitation in icy cold water. “Was it–was I just a means to an end, for you?”
Kaz goes completely still, where he’s crossed the room to stand near the window. His normally confident shoulders are hunched, his sharp edges made even more so by the dim light reflecting up from the streets through the warped glass. “No.” His stony rasp cracks on the first syllable and Jesper can’t help how his face drops open in shock, has barely recovered by the time he’s following it up with more. “No, I told your father I would dig you out of the hole you put yourself in.”
Despite all of it being settled, that stings, his well of failures bubbling up to climb out of his throat.
As if reading his guilt-ridden thoughts, Kaz finishes with, “And I helped you keep digging it.”
It’s such a startling admission that it freezes him to the spot, all twisting memories of disappointment discarded, a different sinking feeling scraping against his bones. That’s the whole trick of it, isn’t it? Kaz had known his weakness and used it to convince him to do things, an easy bargaining chip. He should be angry. Should be furious and ashamed. Instead, he feels vaguely ill; a part of him had known, had always known. He could have, at any point, told Kaz no. Could have walked away from those lines of credit and made Kaz work for his cooperation.
“Kaz–”
“You shouldn’t still want to be here.”
What do you think my forgiveness looks like, Jordie?
“Why?” In a flash, the puzzle from earlier on the stairs fits back into his mind. It rises over his shame like a high tide, eclipsing all else. Jesper can almost make out the whole of it and he thinks: gamble a little more. “Because you’re brutal? Harsh? An unrepentant little bastard willing to manipulate everyone around him? Some kind of cruel monster born in Ketterdam’s harbor?”
Stepping closer in the barely-there light of the attic, he pushes with renewed vigor, a mere arm’s length away. Kaz’s whole frame is tense, coiled like a spring, and he knows one wrong word will send the two of them tumbling into a bloody fight that won’t be interrupted by his Da. But, Jesper has always done the best under pressure, when his back was against a wall and adrenaline was soaring through his system.
“I don’t know who you’re trying to fool, Kaz, but a real monster would have left all of us to swing.”
“Jes–“
“No, shut up for once in your life and listen to me. You could have let us swing but instead, you pulled through; gave Inej, Kuwei, Nina, and all those Grisha freedom. Got Wylan his inheritance and his mother and his life back. Gave me a pile of cash and believed I wouldn’t make the same Saints’ damned mistakes I’ve been making since I got here.” If Colm hadn’t been in town, could he have made that same wise choice? Hard to say. Even so, every word drops from his mouth with true sincerity, because Kaz had given him a chance. A slice of forgiveness, when he hadn’t needed to.
“Rollins took everything from me, so I returned the favor. I wasn’t about to let Van Eck run roughshod.” Kaz excuses, though there’s a startling waver in the deep burr of his voice. Jesper breathes in.
Anyone can shoot, but not everybody can aim.
“Kaz,” he begins softly, “I don’t think you understand. That meant everything– means everything, to me.”
The silence of the room is so profound, he thinks he could hear a pin drop. Kaz’s eerie stillness remains until it doesn’t, as he sighs out a shuddering exhale.
“You’re just like him.”
What do you think my forgiveness looks like, Jordie?
In the window, he can see the faint reflection of Kaz’s face in the distorted glass. He’s drawn himself in further, practically curled inwards while standing, his brows knit together, eyes downcast. He looks–young. Fragile. Jesper chokes back the knot in his throat, pushes his shock aside.
“Who?” His voice, he thinks with a measure of grim success, doesn’t tremble.
“Jordie.” It is, frankly, terrifying, to hear the shake in Kaz’s rock-salt rasp instead. “I told you–I told you he was someone I didn’t want to lose.”
Jesper says nothing, could not possibly have the right words to say in response. If he breaches the quiet, he feels the spell that holds the both of them in this moment will lift.
Who the hell is Jordie?
“He was my brother.”
All at once, it seems as though the floor has dropped out from under him. That somehow, despite having both feet firmly planted on the groaning floorboards of the Slat’s attic, he’s completely lost his balance. He feels dizzy, shock wheezing out of him as he grapples the explosive that Kaz has just launched into his hands. His brother. His family. And Kaz had, somehow, in the madness and exhaustion of the Ice Court job, called him by his deceased brother’s name. Not a single ounce of restless energy sparks in his body. Instead, he feels like he needs to sit down with the immensity of this news. It’s horrible. It’s wonderful. It’s putting so many things about Kaz Brekker into perspective.
“Kaz, I’m sorry–“ For what, exactly, he isn’t sure. Maybe for pushing this hard. Maybe for reminding Kaz of a brother who was no longer here. Maybe, most of all, that his brother is dead.
“Don’t.” His reply is hushed, almost defeated, the line of his shoulders drooping.
“No. I’m not…” Jesper searches for a moment, trying to formulate what he wants to get across. “I mean it. I was seven when my Ma died. I know how it feels, when you lose someone like that; the gaping hole they leave behind.”
Kaz doesn’t say anything, so he keeps going, throwing the dice and hoping it’s his roll. “Look, I fucked up a lot. With you, with the farm and Da, but that didn’t stop you from keeping your promise to him–against all odds. And if you think you just get to fix everything, hand me the most personal thing you’ve probably ever told anyone in your life, and then just walk away on some genius assumption that it’s better–safer–for me, you’re wrong.”
“Why won’t you just–“ Kaz whirls on him then, with a hysterical sounding snarl, a gloved hand curling into his waistcoat, the other half-cocked back, ready to throw a punch. There’s a fine tremor running through him, he can feel it shaking against his vest.
But the puzzle has already revealed itself, has shown that all of Kaz’s rage, his cruel words, the walls he’s built around himself: it’s grief.
“Because I’m your friend, Kaz, and I care about you, whether you want to accept it or not.”
Later, maybe it will be funny, the way Kaz’s eyes widen, fury wiped away as he stares at him uncomprehendingly. Right now, though, it doesn’t feel real. Not with how Kaz slowly releases him, the fight leaving him so thoroughly that he sways and sinks into his nearby office chair. For a long moment, neither of them say anything. Kaz just stares, unblinking, at some point past his holsters.
“I can’t do it again, Jes,” he finally says wearily, slumping forward, the leather of his gloves creaking as he holds his head in his hands.
“You won’t.”
“How can you know that?” Kaz looks up at him, pale face a picture of misery.
“Because–you were how old?” He queries gently, sensing the answer is here, buried under a mountain and locked in a vault. But, untrained as he is, Jesper is still zowa. Can still sift the particles of precious metals away from the dirt and dust.
“Nine.” And then, glancing away, “He was thirteen.”
Jesper feels his breath knocked clean out of him, digesting exactly how long Kaz has been carrying this. Calculating how many years he’s been here, in Ketterdam, clawing his way to the top. What was he doing at nine? Gamboling through his Ma’s jurda fields, his only care in the world being whether his Da was going to show him how to whittle or not. And Kaz had been here, losing everyone he ever cared about, scraping and surviving. Alone.
We’re zowa, you and I.
His answer floats to the top then, bits of gold amidst the silt, startled up by the careful motions of his searching. When he’d first joined the Dregs, Kaz had been even colder, the kind of howling chill that made a man want to lay down and die. And Jesper, heedless of warning signs or danger or anything shaped like a consequence, had stepped right into his space, had cajoled him, pissed him off, and eventually, rarely, got him to laugh with that horrid scoff of his. The thought bolsters him and he mentally clutches those pieces of priceless metals close.
“Right, so, you know Inej? Nina? Wylan? That gaggle of thugs and thieves downstairs? My enormously charming and handsome self?”
Kaz stares at him, a faint spark of irritation rising in the line of his mouth. Good.
“Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, because you’re an ungrateful skiv a lot of the time, but we’re all very competent people. I would hazard to call us dangerous, even–don’t give me that look, you rude bastard. How else did we survive here in the Barrel? At the Ice Court? Here, in Ketterdam, with those absolute Grisha-hunting freaks flapping about?”
“Jesper–”
“Nope, I don’t want to hear what probably passes as sound logic to you. Do you remember what you said on the stairs? That you can’t control people? You can’t control whether we live or die, Kaz. But, you can control what’s killing you, right now, and has been.” He meets Kaz’s hard, unyielding stare and doesn’t look away.
“Think you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?” Kaz croons, tilting his head, the darkness from earlier has slithering back in. Jesper forces himself to stay exactly where he is, swallows down the fear souring on his tongue. “That’s always been your problem, Fahey, you never know when to fold.”
The chair scrapes against the floorboards as Kaz hauls himself out of it, murderous and menacing; all signs of his shivering from before have evaporated. They’re fractions away from each other, close enough that he can make out every curved eyelash.
“Get out. Before I decide to break every single one of your fingers as payment.”
“You don’t have to go it alone anymore, Kaz.”
“I said, get out.”
“Do you think this is what Jordie would have wanted for his brother?”
Not everyone can aim. His words find their target; those scraps of raw materials he’s held in his palm formed into a bullet for a singular purpose, and he watches Kaz flinch back as if struck, his entire expression crumpling in on itself. A gloved hand curls on the top of his cane, gripping so tightly that for a brief, awful moment, he thinks Kaz is finally going to use it on him. That he’s going to follow through on his threat and crack the bones in his hands. He can feel a prickle of cold sweat at the back of his neck, the rabbit-fast beat of his heart thudding loud in his ears. But, then he blinks, paying closer attention. Kaz is breathing hard, a shivering, sickly inhale-exhale, and he realizes he’s holding onto his cane like a lifeline.
“Kaz?”
Those shark eyes snap up, filled with a kind of terror he doesn’t think he’s ever seen on the other boy’s face.
Fuck.
Jesper has screwed up so many things in his life. Has made enough mistakes that he considers himself a bit of a connoisseur of them. Sometimes, he even manages to fix what he messed up to begin with. He doesn’t have Kaz’s mind, though. The kind that can take one glance at a problem and devise a solution between one thump of his pulse and the next. It frightens him, to think that he might have pushed too hard and broken something essential in Kaz; that thing that makes the Bastard of the Barrel seem completely infallible. As much as Kaz's arrogance could be knocked down a few pegs, he doesn't think he could live with himself if this shattered it to pieces.
So, he does what he knows best: he chatters, pulling a story, any story, up from the depths of his memory.
“Da and I, we grew jurda. Or, I guess, he still does actually grow it. As you know, since he helped with the–anyway, as you know. And I’ve been here, having nothing to do with the stuff, aside from the whole…right, so, the thing is, it was a gift to my Ma, for their wedding. It’s never felt like Da’s, even if it was his first.” Neither of them have broken the habit of referring to it as Aditi’s. His fingers flutter-tap nervously on the old door Kaz considers his desk; Kaz’s breathing is less labored, his whole expression pinched in concentration. Is this working? Saints, he hopes it's working.
“Used to run like a wild animal through those fields, watch all the orange pollen go flying up in the blue sky like some kind of fucked up snow. Got bored out of my mind one afternoon and learned I could pull the pigment right out of the petals.” The (admittedly little) color in Kaz’s face has returned and his grip on his cane, he thinks, is less likely to make his hands cramp. He’s coming back to himself. It is working; Jesper keeps talking. “Spent a good couple hours bleaching the Zemeni word for shithead in the west field.” Even though the aftermath of this story isn’t pleasant, Jesper still finds something about it funny. Because in the direct moments he’d admired his handiwork, it had been hilarious. To his side, he hears a slow, hissing exhale.
“Great application of fabrikation, Jes,” Kaz finally says, the scrape of his voice strained. His tone, though, has absolutely no bite to it and is such a familiar refrain that instead of annoyance, he feels glorious, utter relief.
“Yeah well, you know me, relying on my gorgeous face to get me through this life.”
“See how effective that is against Geels next parley.”
“Next? Does that mean your parley from a few weeks ago wasn’t effective enough? Stop the presses; Dirtyhands admits to doing a half-assed job.”
“Shut up, Jesper.”
“Whatever you say, boss.”
There’s still some kind of underlying tension between them, but he doesn’t want to see that hollowed out look on Kaz’s face ever again. Especially not when Kaz seems to be getting steadier with each stupid barb, even if the circles under his eyes seem more pronounced. Instead, he diverts, blurting out, “Come have dinner. With me and Wylan.”
“Wylan and I.”
“Whatever, you pedantic skiv. I mean it. Come have dinner with Wylan and I.” Jesper draws the correction out in faux irritation and casts Kaz an unimpressed look. “And–”
“And? How many demands are you making?”
“Don’t be an ungrateful podge to my magnanimous hospitality.”
“You mean Wylan’s.”
“It’s one and the same now. And, as I was saying, before I was rudely interrupted: you should stay for dessert. Instead of absconding the second everyone puts their forks down.”
“I don’t–”
“You absolutely do. You’ve always done, even here in the Slat.” Of course, that was only when Kaz actually managed to eat something. Anything. Or when Inej was at the table, most often, and had worked her Wraith-magic to convince their sullen friend into sitting with them for a meal.
“Fine.” Kaz grits out, though it’s more of a grouchy sigh.
“See? How difficult was that?” Jesper grins, bright and toothy.
“Excruciating,” he replies with an irritated huff, dropping into his creaking office chair with almost no grace. Reaching over, he turns the knob on the nearby oil lamp, banishing the previous gloom and illuminating their bubble in a gold-orange glow. Testing the fragility of the air, Jesper dares to slouch into the seat across from Kaz, leaning it onto its two back legs.
“Liar.” Kaz glances at him from the diagram he’s pulled from between two sheets, simply cocking a dark brow at him. Extending a long arm, he leaches a spot of spilled ink off of the desk, hovering it between his open hands. Looking away from his fabrikating, he meets Kaz's gaze, an unspoken question hanging between them like the inkblot itself. After a beat, Kaz goes back to his schematics, making a note in his sharp scrawl.
“Naturally,” he replies smoothly, shoulder twitching in a motion akin to a shrug. It was basically full permission, in Kaz-speak. Jesper stifles his smile. He listens to the scratch of Kaz’s pen and his voice, well into the small hours, and doesn’t once feel the itch under his skin.
Mati en sheva yelu, he thinks. Maybe, in the end, this was the shape of forgiveness.