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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 4 hours

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Daughter of the Rain and Snow

Concept: Around ten years after the events of Crooked Kingdom, 25-year-old Captain Inej Ghafa frees Maya Olsen from a pleasure house in Ketterdam. Maya is looking for revenge against the man who put her in her position, a man who she knows nothing about except his name: Kaz Brekker.

Tags: @wraith--2 @lunarthecorvus @just2bubbly @real-fragments7 @cartoon-clifford @origami-butterfly @lady-a-stuff @thelibraryofalexandriastillburns @inej-ghafa-deserves-the-world @thatdelusionalnerd

If anyone wants to be added let me know :)

Content Warnings: in more general terms I want to remind people to be aware of the nature of Kaz and Inej's experiences and relationship since even if I'm not directly addressing these things they tend to be implicit in any writing about them, but specifically to this chapter there's ptsd references, abuse references, child abuse references, and grief

AO3 link: Daughter of the Rain and Snow - Chapter 137 - She_posts_nerdy_stuff - Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo [Archive of Our Own]

Chapter 136 - Wylan

“Wylan?” Jesper called from downstairs, “Wylan?”

Wylan glanced over his shoulder, then shot Clemmie an apologetic smile and stood to stick his head around the doorframe.

“What?”

Wylan had been sitting upstairs with Clementine for about twenty minutes, most of the time not even talking. She hadn’t been downstairs yesterday or so far this morning, and Wylan didn’t want her to stay alone doing nothing. When he went up and knocked on the door it was almost eleven bells; he’d heard her suddenly running around inside, and a minute later she opened the door with a dressing gown tied tightly over her nightclothes. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and he wasn’t sure if she’d actually slept.

“Hiya - Mr Hendriks, I’m sorry, I -”

“No, sorry Clementine, I can come back in a few minutes, I just wanted to make sure you were alright,”

She smiled, perhaps a little shakily.

“Thank you,”

Wylan didn’t really have anything else to do so he wandered around the corridor for a minute. When the others had left he and Jesper suggested Clementine move her things into one of the guest rooms so she’d have more space, but she’d stayed on the fourth floor. He paced along the landing towards Esme’s closed door, thinking he would just check the covering had held up alright through the storm because up until now he’d been avoiding doing so, but almost as soon as his fingers found the handle Clementine’s door opened behind him. He tensed as he pulled back and turned back to her. She’d changed into the dress she’d been wearing the day she arrived at the house, her hair pulled into a noticeably messier updo than the one she’d worn that day, and somehow seeing her in it without her hat or gloves or bags made her look even less like herself. She’d smiled, the dark shadows beneath her eyes crinkling.

“Your Ma wrote!” Jesper shouted up the stairs, now.

Wylan bit his lip. Jesper had finally sent Marya a letter somewhat summarising the last few weeks just yesterday, and as much as Wylan didn’t want to know what she’d said he also desperately wanted to hear from her. He excused himself and slipped downstairs, then sat swinging his legs under the kitchen table whilst he waited for Jesper. Jesper had dropped the envelope onto the table so he could get a coffee, then realised that the pot was empty so started making a new one. Wylan managed about one minute of sitting staring at the letter before he got up, thrust the envelope into Jesper’s hands, and started making the coffee himself.

“Open it,”

“Wy, it’s gonna be fine, she’s not-”

“Just read it. Please,”

Jesper nodded, but before he opened the letter he caught hold of Wylan’s hand and pulled him closer.

“Breathe,”

“I’m fine, Jesper-”

“Just breathe,”

Wylan squeezed Jesper’s fingers as he obliged. It was almost annoying that he could feel the way his shoulders relaxed when he did so.

The letter didn’t say a lot - Wylan didn’t think the letter they’d sent had given his mother a lot of information, but even after trying to script it with Nina he’d just given up and asked Jesper to handle it himself so he didn’t really know. Marya was concerned about Clemmie, asked several questions about Aimee and Kiada, and seemingly every other line based on how much Jesper repeated the sentiment just wanted to check that Wylan and Jesper were okay. She asked about Inej as well but didn’t say much specifically about Esme, Wylan supposed it was a difficult thing to write down. He wondered what Jesper had said. He shouldn’t have made him do it on his own.

“She’s due to come home in three weeks…” Jesper looked up, “We knew that, right?”

“Yeah,” Wylan played with his sleeve, “The date’s on the calendar,”

“Right, well she says maybe she should come home early… but would that make it easier or harder for you? Or should she stay at the lakehouse whilst the girls are still here to make sure nothing’s disrupting them?”

“You didn’t-?”

“Oh, no - I wasn’t sure that I should,”

Wylan nodded. He quite terribly wanted his mother to just walk through the door this very second.

“We could ask them how they’d feel about her coming back,” he said eventually, “As long as it works for you,”

“Of course it does. Okay, so we can talk to Aimee and Kiada and see how they’re feeling and then - actually, have you spoken to Aimee today? I saw Kiada earlier but I don’t think I’ve seen Aimee,”

Wylan smiled.

“She’s in the dining room with that broken clock all out on the table,”

“Damn,” he laughed, “she’s gonna fix it before I can,”

“It’s been broken for eight months, Jes, I think it’s fair game,”

Jesper smiled.

“Did she seem alright this morning?”

“No different to usual, really,” Wylan shrugged, “Came downstairs, had some toast, we chatted for a bit. She knitted a scarf for her doll yesterday, so she was showing me that,”

Aimee had started putting strawberry jam on her toast the past couple of mornings, and Wylan was taking that as a win, but she had also fallen quieter since she’d finished knitting her jumper and spent a good while crouched behind an armchair in her room, holding it and crying, before anyone found her. Jesper had gone upstairs looking for her and ended up sitting in there with her for a long time, but he still wasn’t entirely sure why it had evoked such a response. But things could just be strange like that sometimes, Wylan and Jesper both knew that.

Jesper nodded.

“Alright, I might go see her for a bit. Kiada’s in the conservatory, by the way, painting,”

Wylan smiled. Kiada had spent a lot of time painting recently and he was glad of it, because before that she seemed to spend a lot of time just sitting very still and looking very tense - unless she was at the piano, but she didn’t tend to go it uninvited, no matter how many times Wylan had said she was more than welcome to it whenever she wanted to.

It was well into the afternoon when Wylan wandered into the lounge and saw Aimee crouched in an armchair, sniffing slightly, her head drooping towards her shoulders like she was almost half asleep. She didn’t seem to notice that he’d come in until he spoke, but as soon as he did she leapt like a rabbit caught in a trap.

“Are you alright, Aimee?”

“Yes,” she almost cried out, flinching and moving to sit straighter on the chair as she smoothed her hands down the front of her trousers. She tried to smile at him, “Sorry. I’m okay,”

Wylan frowned, watching her for a moment as she shuffled. There were dark circles growing beneath her eyes, her nose was slightly red, and she looked just generally exhausted.

“Are you getting a cold, lovely? I could-”

“No,” she shook her head almost violently, and Wylan’s chest ached, “No, no. I’m okay. I’m okay,”

“Aimee, you’re allowed to feel ill,” he said slowly, trying to be delicate but not really sure what he should say, “Everyone feels ill sometimes,”

He knelt down in front of her and offered his hand, and a moment later her fingers had wrapped around his and she’d burst into tears.

“I’m sorry,”

“Don’t be sorry,” he whispered, “Being sorry for being ill is being sorry for being a person. Never be sorry for just being a person,”

She shivered, smiling shakily at him through her tears. She sniffed again and Wylan passed her his handkerchief.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do: we’re going to go find some blankets and you can pick which ones you want to use, and then you can get snuggled up on the sofa and get nice and cosy, and I’m going to make you a hot drink. Do you have a headache?”

She nodded.

“Okay, I’ll find something for your headache…” Wylan faltered slightly, remembering the pieces Inej had told him of the night they left the Tulip Mill. Maybe teas and tablets weren’t the answer here, “I think we’ve got some hot chocolate left, and then I have some medicines that are good for headaches but you don’t have to take those if you don’t want to, we can find another remedy - oh, peppermint leaves are supposed to be good. I think we might have some in the pantry, I can check, and you can choose what you feel most comfortable with, okay? I mean,” he added quickly, “you don’t have to have anything if you don’t want to, but it’s just to hopefully stop it from hurting,”

Aimee nodded slowly, a marginally more convincing smile now crossing her face. Wylan stood up and she continued to hold tightly onto his hand as she followed him to her feet, and then took him almost completely by surprise by throwing both of her arms around him. He held her lightly for a moment, trying to make sure she wouldn’t feel trapped, before she gently pulled away.

“We used peppermint leaves at home,” she said very quietly, as they walked to the kitchen together, “I didn’t like how they felt when I ate them,”

Neither did Wylan.

“Maybe we could put them in a drink?” he offered, “We can make it together, just hot water and dried peppermint leaves,”

She looked at him for a moment, with an expression he’d seen from her before. One that said I know what you’re doing, and I need you to know that even though I’m going to let you do it. She nodded.

“That would be okay,”

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 8 hours

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fucking love when I'm on a call with someone and they start to do a little errand or go somewhere else and they say "and you're coming with me" like. absolutely I am let's go on an adventure I've been spirited away

#yesss #idk how to tag this #its cute #queued

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 8 hours

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I’m officially invested in this storyline

i made all the crows in the sims and one time when talking to inej it gave me the option for kaz either to a) FLIRT or b)CALL HIMSELF A CRIMINAL MASTERMIND ........oddly in character

#six of crows #soc #kaz brekker #inej ghafa #Nina Zenik

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 11 hours

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Daughter of the Rain and Snow

Tags: @wraith--2 @lunarthecorvus @just2bubbly @real-fragments7 @cartoon-clifford @origami-butterfly @lady-a-stuff @thelibraryofalexandriastillburns @inej-ghafa-deserves-the-world @thatdelusionalnerd

If anyone wants to be added let me know :)

AO3 link: Daughter of the Rain and Snow - Chapter 136 - She_posts_nerdy_stuff - Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo [Archive of Our Own]

Chapter 135 - Inej

Inej had almost fallen back to sleep when Kaz returned, two mugs of tea in his hands. She hadn’t really been intending to, but it was as though the exhaustion she’d been ignoring all week had suddenly caught up with her and was now refusing to relinquish its hold. A yawn carried through her so deeply she could feel it in her bones as she sat up and took the tea gratefully from Kaz. He watched her for a moment as she blew steam away from the surface of the drink, and she peered over the brim to study him in return. He was having nightmares again.

“How did you sleep?” he asked, as though they didn’t both know that it was him who’d struggled.

“Not terrible,” she smiled, “Could’ve been better,”

The questions she might have wanted to ask died on her lips and she shuffled, adjusting to sit cross-legged on top of the unmade duvet and wrapping her hands around the mug to warm her palms. Kaz had opened the curtains and the very earliest signs of spring smiled in at them through the glass, but despite the distant sun the air still felt cold. Inej tried to pull a blanket over shoulders with one hand, but eventually had to give up and set her tea onto the nightstand. Kaz sat down in one of the armchairs, watching her like he was afraid she might disappear.

“I saw Nina, downstairs,” he said, as Inej recollected her mug.

Inej was pretty sure Nina was avoiding her. She wanted to talk to her, to make sure she was okay, but she was worried about pressuring her and if she was avoiding Inej then it was probably because she feared her doing exactly that. So Inej would stay back, and let Nina talk when she needed to. She hoped that was the right decision.

“How is she?”

Kaz shrugged.

“Seems well enough, glad to be home I think. She hasn’t said anything about it, but she seems far more comfortable. Lonely though,”

Inej shuffled. She didn’t know how he did that; looked at someone and read them so quickly, like he knew how to separate the pages they were keeping closed.

“Did you know?” she asked, “Guess, at least?”

Kaz paused for a moment.

“She stopped wearing her ring, even as Mila, a few years back. At the time I actually thought that was about being herself when she was with us, she couldn’t change her appearance but she was still dropping the image. So it didn’t really occur to me to notice she wasn’t wearing any rings when she had that Tailoring undone. I did think that was strange, to have undone the Tailoring when she could’ve arranged travel and excuses more easily as Mila but I took her excuse at face value; no-one had seen her in ten years, if Alby had worked out who Mila was he was more likely to recognise her than he was Nina,” he shrugged, “I knew something wasn’t right. But it”s easier to hide things when we don’t see each other for such long stretches,”

Inej thought of Jesper, when they were younger; how easy it had been to hide his entire life from his father overseas.

“If you’d realised,” she murmured, because she was genuinely curious now she’d thought of its “would you have told me?”

“I’d probably have suggested you talk to her, without saying exactly why,”

Inej nodded, slowly.

“Did she talk to Genya?”

Kaz sighed.

“She tried, but I’m not sure how much good it did. Apparently Genya said she would come and talk to us some time today, before you start,”

Inej’s hand drifted subconsciously to where her knives should have been, met by the soft fabric of her nightclothes. Before she’d really acknowledged what she was doing her eyes were scanning the room for where they lay, waiting for her, on the desk. She nodded.

When someone knocked on the door almost an hour later - Inej still wasn’t dressed and had barely bothered to move anywhere except to pull the duvet closer or flop back into the pillows after sitting up - they both expected to see Genya.At some point Alyssa had been in to check Inej’s vitals and confirmed that everything was as expected, and since then Inej had tried and failed to get some more sleep. She lay in a veritable nest of pillows, the sunlight that had warmed as it came through the glass was soft against her skin, and Inej could not for the life of her get to sleep. Kaz was sitting across the room, Inej was pretty sure he was writing a letter to Jesper and Wylan, and Inej had been lying still and silent long enough that he thought she was asleep. When he answered the knock she decided to let him think that for a minute longer, because in the brief moment she dared to open her eyes and glance up she discovered that it was actually Nina Zenik who had appeared around the doorframe. They spoke quietly to each other for a moment, Inej strained to hear them but couldn’t make out the words, and then footsteps retreated from the room. After a beat, Inej reopened her eyes.

“You know you aren't very convincing at that,” said Nina, smiling down at her from the side of the bed, before nudging Inej on the shoulder, “Budge up,”

Inej sat up and shuffled along the bed so there was space for Nina to sit down, then pulled her legs in towards her chest.

“Where did Kaz go?”

“Genya’s just setting up; she wanted to talk to him,”

Inej nodded slowly, then rested her head against her shoulder.

“I’m tired,”

“You know I heard about a brand new, very fancy remedy for that,” Nina wrapped her arm around Inej’s shoulders, “It’s called sleep,”

Inej laughed softly.

“I slept all night,”

“You were supposed to spend most of this week sleeping,”

Inej shook her head.

“I couldn’t. I was busy,”

“I know,” Nina rested her head against Inej’s, “But you’re allowed to take a break. And you should really follow the advice - not even advice, explicit instructions - from a healthcare professional who told you to rest. Any chance maybe you were busier than you needed to be, because you didn’t want to rest?”

Inej sighed.

“I can’t do this, Nina,”

“You don’t have to do anything. You’re going to go to sleep, and when you wake up everything will be fixed. I’ll be there to annoy you and Kaz will be there to… I don’t know, do whatever he does that you find apparently charming,”

Inej laughed.

“Genya told me what happened last time,” said Nina softly, “Do you-?”

Inej suppressed a shudder and shook her head, and in response Nina gently squeezed her shoulder.

“Alright. But I promise you, it’s going to be okay,”

For a little while they just sat there, and as the minutes ticked by Inej could feel herself drifting again. She closed her eyes.

“Are you okay?” she asked quietly, fighting off a yawn.

She felt Nina nod, and then the world was a distant speck of a thing and Inej was asleep.

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 13 hours

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i made all the crows in the sims and one time when talking to inej it gave me the option for kaz either to a) FLIRT or b)CALL HIMSELF A CRIMINAL MASTERMIND ........oddly in character

#I love this #my friend and I once spent an entire like 2 hours making the crows on sims #it was a serious business we had close up pictures of Freddy Carter’s jawline open on a second laptop to make sure we got it right #we were supposed to be doing coursework #but this took precedence #six of crows #kaz brekker #inej ghafa #kanej

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 13 hours

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For our next twitter party, we want to gush about Zoya and Nikolai, and the swoonworthy romance between them! Join us using hashtag #BlueRibbon! Come prepared with your best tweets, questions, comments, gifs, memes, and more. Let's make some noise! 🗣️

#SaveShadowAndBone and #SixOfCrowsSpinoff TWEETING PARTY 4/11 at 12PM! Come check it out here!

Remember to:

Only use three hashtags.

Enjoy and be engaging with your tweets! Keep sharing! Timezones under read more.

If you cannot attend, you can always schedule tweets ahead of time on desktop in order to help out still!

ALL TIMEZONES: Thursday, Apr 11: 9am PST 10am MST 11am CST 12pm EST 2pm -03 5pm GMT 6pm CET 8pm MSK 9pm +04 10:30pm IST

Friday, Apr 12: 1am CST 2am JST 4am AEST 6am NZST

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 14 hours

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I've been reading reading fanficition for one year (I started reading fanficiton in late April), so I thought I'd collect my word count and fic count by looking through my history, and here's my stats:

I've read: 525 fics

I've read: 12,739,506 words

in 1 year

Here's a fun fact about me: I've only read six of crows fanficiton about one couple, which is Kaz Brekker + Inej Ghafa and their friends, aka the rest of the crows, its just usually kanej centered.

So I've read over 12 MILLION words of the same two people falling in love again and again, for almost exactly 1 year and believe me I do not plan to stop

#this is actually very impressive #kanej #kanej fanfiction #ao3 #ao3 fanfic #archive of our own #fanfiction

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 16 hours

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Ok I promise that I'll shut the fuck up about the dog metaphor after this but: Kaz being Haskell's rabid dog and Jesper being Aditi's little rabbit is honestly diabolical..... what do dogs do but chase rabbits and what do rabbits do but flee dogs. Kaz is chasing an image of Jordie he's never going to be able to catch, and Jesper will never let himself be caught, because that would mean facing up to... A lot of things! and honestly he's probably worried about what the hell Kaz would do if he did catch him! so they keep running, and maintain the weird distance and impasse between them. and unless Kaz can learn to drop that persona, that's how it has to be. and honestly. what the fuck.

#did not need to cry today #this is amazing actually #six of crows

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 21 hours

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Thank you so much!!!! 🖤🖤🖤

Hello, I would like you to know that I binge-read Daughter of the Rain and Snow over the past six hours, and I am absolutely losing my mind. No love lost for Alby, but damn I want Maya and Kaz to get to know each other more eventually!

Hi, oh my gosh wow thank you so much!! It is quite a commitment to read through that beast in 6 hours I am honoured thank you very much. I honestly don’t know what to say I’m kinda giggling right now thank you so much, it means so so so so much to me when people express interest in my writing and I am so glad that you’re enjoying the fic, I hope you enjoy the recent and upcoming updates too!

#the love has been unbelievable I can’t get over it #thank you so much #dk rambles about random stuff #maya olsen oc

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 1 day

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So funny story, I did not in fact go to sleep. New chapter just posted. I am going to sleep now. Hope y'all enjoy 🖤🖤

#dk rambles about random stuff #maya olsen oc #ao3 #ao3 fic

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 1 day

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Daughter of the Rain and Snow

Tags: @wraith--2 @lunarthecorvus @just2bubbly @real-fragments7 @cartoon-clifford @origami-butterfly @lady-a-stuff @thelibraryofalexandriastillburns @inej-ghafa-deserves-the-world @thatdelusionalnerd

If anyone wants to be added let me know :)

Content Warnings: in more general terms I want to remind people to be aware of the nature of Kaz and Inej's experiences and relationship since even if I'm not directly addressing these things they tend to be implicit in any writing about them, but specifically to this chapter there's ptsd references, drowning, anxiety, anxiety specifically about medical procedures, fear of losing loved ones, loss of spouse, and grief.

AO3 link: Daughter of the Rain and Snow - Chapter 135 - She_posts_nerdy_stuff - Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo [Archive of Our Own]

Chapter 134 - Kaz

As soon as Genya walked into the corridor, pulling her hair out of its updo and running her fingers along her scalp somewhere between content and relief, Kaz was waiting for her. She looked straight at him. She kept walking.

“No,”

“Genya-”

“No,”

Kaz hurried after her down the hall, doing his best to ignore the complaints from his leg, and asked Genya for about the thousandth time to let him stay with Inej when she went in for her procedure tomorrow.

“Kaz, please,” she sighed, “It’s late, I have been working for hours, and I have given you your answer a hundred times over. It will make no difference to Inej if you are in that room. It will make a difference to us and it will make a difference to you,”

“You’re not-”

“It is an unreasonable pressure on my team to have family in there and it will only make you uncomfortable,” she said, waving Nina over as they walked into the next room together, “It is not a good experience to see someone you care about like that,”

“I don’t care,” Kaz breathed, patience wearing thin, “Because it will make the difference to Inej,”

“She won’t even know you’re there,”

Nina smiled a little warily at them both as she approached, letting Genya briefly wrap an arm over her shoulders before she pulled away.

“How did it go?”

“Seems to have worked,” Genya pulled a small piece of paper from her pocket and beckoned to a servant standing near the doorway and, still in Kerch, continued: “Penelope? Can you give that to Zoya, please?”

“Of course Miss Safin,” the girl nodded, taking the note and making her leave.

Kaz recognised Penelope to be the girl who’d quietly translated the news of Zoya’s pregnancy into Ravkan for her friend, and was faintly amused to think of it. But he was mostly just impatient.

Nina frowned, eyes following Penelope as walked away.

“Hey, that’s not -!” she sighed, “She’s gone. Doesn’t that bother you?”

Genya blinked.

“What?”

“Miss Safin,” Nina repeated, shaking her head, “It would bother me,”

Genya lay her hand on Nina’s, shaking her head, and Kaz couldn’t help but find his eyes falling on her wedding ring.

“It’s been a long time, Nina,” she said softly, almost shrugging, “At some point, I just stopped correcting them,”

“But-”

Genya shushed her gently, then turned back to Kaz.

“Medical anxiety is perfectly normal,” she told him, “But-”

“Perfectly normal, or the product of your team screwing up and leaving Inej awake and in pain whilst it happened?” he hissed.

Nina raised her eyebrows.

“What?”

Genya pursed her lips, smoothing the front of her kefta almost ritualistically.

“That was an unfortunate error,” she breathed, “and I have apologised for it. The person responsible for that mistake will not be there when Inej goes back in, I promise you. Now, please, Kaz it is late and I am exhausted-”

“Then solve the problem quicker,”

“You cannot be there tomorrow. You can be with Inej now, so if you want to alleviate her anxiety go and help her now! And let me go to sleep, for Saints’ sakes, or I won’t be able to do anything of quality tomorrow,”

Kaz felt the strangely specific need to find something he could break in half and then break those pieces in half and so on over and over again. Genya walked away.

“I’m sorry,” Nina cringed, smiling awkwardly at Kaz, “I’ll talk to her. How’s Inej?”

“Tired,” Kaz sighed, “But she won’t admit it. She’s upstairs, if you want to talk,”

Nina swallowed.

“I’m not sure she wants to see me. Look, I’ll try to talk to Genya for you but she’s right that you should stay with Inej now, whether you’re in there tomorrow or not,”

Kaz nodded. Nina hesitated for a moment, as though she was considering asking him something, then bid him goodnight and turned to follow Genya from the room. Kaz walked upstairs slowly, as much as he wanted to get back to Inej the spike of pain in his leg wasn’t going away and he probably couldn’t have gone much faster if he tried, at least not without a healthy dose of adrenaline and after everything that happened over the last few weeks he was really trying to avoid that. He half-expected, and almost half-hoped because it would make everything easier for her, that Inej would have fallen asleep since he left, but when he knocked on the door she called him inside and he found her sitting cross-legged on top of the duvet. Her hands were poised on her knees like they were preparing for something and although her focus changed to him as he entered, Kaz was pretty sure she’d been staring quite vehemently at the far wall.

“I thought you were resting,”

“I tried,” she murmured, gaze flicking back to the wall.

“Okay…” Kaz frowned, “Do you want to try again?”

Inej shrugged.

Kaz crossed the room and pulled the curtains shut. Night had fallen and darkness clung to the skyline and the outline of the city below them, pocked only by the occasional candle still flickering in a distant window. The stars above were barely visible as pinpricks, tiny swirls of white in amongst a flurry of blacks and blues and greys. Inej sighed quietly, leaning on the nightstand as she stood up.

“How are you feeling?”

“Not bad,” she rolled her shoulders, “Achey. I don’t know how long it will take for that to go away,”

“Only a short while, I expect,” Kaz offered her his arm but she shook her head, making her own slow pathway to collect her nightdress from where it sat folded on the chair.

“I hope so,” she seemed to drift for a moment, then shiver back to herself, “Did… did Genya say…?”

Kaz shook his head.

“Nina’s going to try to convince her,”

Inej swallowed and gave Kaz a shaky smile, nodding.

At first Kaz wasn’t sure that Inej was actually going to lie down, and he thought maybe he should suggest she at least take an armchair and close her eyes, but after a while she sat with her back pressed against the headboard and pulled the quilt over her knees. Kaz sat down next to her, bad leg stretched out in front of him, hand laid in the space between them so she could take it if she wanted to. He didn’t remember falling asleep, but when morning rolled around his back was stiff, his leg was furious at him, and Inej was asleep curled on her side with he head propped against his good knee. He stroked the hair back behind her ear, watching her breathe for a moment, as he tried not to shake the mattress whilst he reached to find his timepiece on the nightstand. Seven bells. He’d slept in. But Inej was still sleeping, the curtains were still drawn, and Kaz had no idea what time Genya intended to begin. It wouldn’t hurt to close his eyes again, to wait just a minute longer. He smiled at Inej, intertwining his fingers with hers as he drifted away once more.

Inej was drowning. Kaz was on the docks, scrambling to throw his jacket aside and dive into the waves. He swam madly through the dark but it was taking too long to find her, and even as their fingers finally met somewhere in the impenetrable, never-ending swirl of blue he could only feel her slipping further away. Kaz’s fingers slipped as he tried to catch hold and Inej’s hand remained limp in his. The need to move up for air was growing, pressing against his chest, as he silently pleaded with Inej. And suddenly her fingers closed over his. Relief burst through Kaz’s entire being; he kicked hard to try and pull her to the surface but before he knew it her grip had turned to iron and she was dragging him down, further and further until air became a distant longing. Kaz’s head clouded, dark spots crowded impatiently into his vision, the world began to scream and bleed. Both of them were drowning.

Kaz jolted awake, almost coughing as though trying to expel the water from his lungs. Inej shuddered - he’d accidentally thrown her off his knee - and Kaz cringed as she sat up blearily, head darting back and forth with wild eyes. She watched him for a moment as he tried to readjust.

“What was it?”

“Nothing,” he breathed, studying every detail of her face as though she could vanish at any moment and he needed to memorise her intimately, “I’m fine,”

She didn’t look convinced.

“What time is it?”

Kaz fumbled to check, struggling to adjust his bad leg comfortably.

“Nine bells, or just past,”

Two hours? He’s slept for two more hours? He could barely believe it.

Inej yawned softly, and nudged along to put space between them. He couldn’t tell if it was because she needed it or because she thought he did, so he left it empty. It was inches. It felt like miles. Inej drooped into her pillows, laying on her side to look at him.

“What time do you think they’ll want to start?”

“Early afternoon, I expect,” Kaz breathed, “Genya wasn’t best pleased to have finished so late last night,”

“Did it go well?”

“As far as I’ve heard. You should stay in bed,”

“I intend to,” she murmured, smiling, and he couldn’t help but return it.

“Good,” he leant slightly forwards and waited until she’d nodded, then pressed his lips softly to her forehead, “I’ll get you some tea,”

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