Someone thought dead isn't as dead as it may seem.

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Trigger Warnings: Death (Off-Page, Past), Implied Rape, Slavery

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Words: 2,169

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Her name is Clara Rietveld. She was married to Vidar Rietveld, a farmer who was tall as he was witty. She had two boys, Jordan and Kaz. It was a family. Clara, Vidar, Jordan and Kaz.

Vidar had told his boys that Clara, Mama, had just left one day. That wasn't the truth. Sweet Ghezen, Vidar knew it would hurt less than the truth. Because how do you tell your little boys, 4 and 7, that slavers roamed the country? That you hadn't been quick enough?

Maybe they noticed the other people who left. Little Kaz certainly did, pouting when the young baker who always came by to give him treats never came around again. Maybe Jordan, Jordie, noticed that the teacher's assistant was gone.

Clara, Elliot, and Miro were three of many. Three more country-side families to grieve their children, their partners, their parents.

Clara had survived though. She and Elliot had been enslaved under the same house on the frigid north-west coast of Ravka for ten years until the master of the house got mad and lovely Elliot was killed by the man's cruelty.

He'd left Clara alone for many years. She had grown used to bowing her head and whispering her little boys' names in the dead of night, and thinking of Vidar's coarse hands. But the man had turned his eye to her as the war grew direr and direr, as his home was threatened and he looked for quick release. He had no wife. He'd already killed one man.

For the five years after Elliot it bled on.

Until from that bastard came a daughter. It was high risk, but her master would not let her abort. So she suffered through the labour, but it all felt okay when she held a child again. With soft, rosy cheeks, and dark hair and eyes, she looked nothing like her half-Fjerdan father. She looked purely, Kerch. She looked like Jordan and Kaz had when they were newborn babes. She named her Aleid.

The master did not like that. So he threw the woman out, and her dark-haired babe and she were forced to survive the streets. She spent almost six years in boarding houses across the coast, working odd jobs.

One day, days before Aleid was to turn six, while she waited tables, a contingent of men, dressed in uniform marched in. The place she worked was staffed mainly by women like her, women running from their masters.

They froze, watching as the main captain stepped into the owner's office. The owner was an older woman named Zora, whose dark hair never seemed to grey, but with deep lines around her eyes and mouth.

They stayed in there for almost an hour and Clara winced at every raised voice that came through the wood. The other men surprised her though, as they sat quietly at the tables, asking only for water from their hosts.

The door opened as Clara's back was to it, and she wiped a glass down. Zora's deep voice calls her name, and she looks over her shoulder, hesitating at the way Zora suddenly looks like she's aged a decade.

"Clara, child," She repeats, "Come here."

Clara sets the glass down, not bothering to remind Zora that she is almost fifty. She steps lightly over to the office, stepping inside. The man sits at the chair in front of the desk, two fingers resting on the sides of his creased brow.

"If you would please sit, Miss Rietveld," She freezes, not knowing how he got that name. He smiles reassuringly at her, and she sits delicately, watching him with a spooked expression.

"Three months ago, Fammus Petrovich died." She freezes at the name of her former master, which the man seems to note. "We talked to his staff to discern if he had any heirs and also to investigate some rumours."

She looks at him in fear, thinking of little Aleid at the public school down the road. "Miss Rietveld, please do not worry." Zora squeezes her shoulder, signalling that she trusts this man. The man stands and paces, "Mister Petrovich was suspected of convoluting with Fjerda and being apart of the slave trade."

"I spoke to one of his servants and she spoke of you, Clara Rietveld. Said that Petrovich had a child with you, his only heir, and threw you out."

"What do you want from me?"

"Miss Rietveld, how did you end up in Ravka?" He asks with a sigh, sitting down and pulling his chair closer. She shakes in her chair, balling her fists in her apron.

"Miss Rietveld?" He repeats.

"Slavers came to my home, in the middle of the day. They took many people from my village and sold us all across the world. I was sold into Mas—Mister Petrovich's home. He killed my friend." Her voice shakes with every word, and she latches her eyes on the wall behind his head.

"Did you have a child with him?" He asks. Clara nods, and he sighs.

"Miss Rietveld, I need you to know that this child is the sole heir to his fortune. He has no other heirs, no extended family that by the law of Ravka, can claim it. Obviously, you would be in charge of the estate until your child comes of age, but..." He trails off.

Clara knows what this may mean. She will have money to go home, see her boys, who both must be all grown up now. She wonders if they're married, or even if Vidar has remarried. But she'll get to go home.

"Additionally," he says after a moment, "Law states we must give you enough money to return to your home. Where are you from, Miss?"

Home. Home. Home. "A village outside of Lij, in Kerch." He nods, giving her a warm smile.

"Where is your child now?"

"Aleid? Well, she's at the school, down the road."

"Miss, as Aleid is heir to a very large sum of money, and as you and she are now under the protection of the Ravkan government, I must request you bring her here, where we know she will be safe," She nods and stands. He follows suit.

"May I accompany you, Miss?" She nods, and they step into the main hall. He gives two of his men orders, and they nod. She pulls on her wool coat with shaking hands. One of the other waitresses catches her eye, pointing at her and then the man before giving a thumbs up.

Do you trust him? Clara nods and smiles at her concern. The man has pulled on his coat, and they leave the warm building together.

"I am afraid I didn't introduce myself, Miss," he says suddenly. "I am Captain Yakov Zaytsev."

"Pleasure to meet you, Captain," She says with a smile, which Yakov returns. "And call me Clara." He dips his head in acknowledgement.

They walk to the small school in silence, and a bell rings as she opens the front door. The receptionist looks up, "Ah Miss Rietveld! What can I do for you?"

"I need to check Aleid out if you please." The woman nods, writing something down before handing a pen and paper to her. Clara rights down her daughter's name, the time, and signs it, before handing it back to the other woman.

"I'll go get her," She says, standing up and heading through a door. A few minutes later, Clara hears her daughter's quick footfalls, and her daughter throws open the door and runs into Mama's waiting arms.

She picks the little girl up, resting her against her hip. An entire life on a farm, as a servant, and in the workforce have made her strong. She smiles at her girl, and she knows, deep down, that the world is going to be okay again.

♛♢♛

It takes nearly a year and a half for all the legalities around Aleid and the fortune to settle over, but the second it does, Clara and her book first passage to Kerch. Little Aleid is so excited to go to the place she's only heard of in midnight fairy tales, and Clara cannot wait to be home.

She sends a letter ahead, and that is the first sign something is wrong. She gets no reply. But she brushes it off, and keeps her chin up as she heads home, her daughter's hand in hers.

She comes home, and an old friend recognises her despite it all, shrieking her name, and holding her close. He dodges her questions, and brings her to what she knows to be her family home. There she reunites with her brother, and her ageing parents, and her other siblings come quickly.

She starts with where she was taken, and the stories from the past Twenty-Three years. Her father whispers a prayer as she speaks of her servitude, but his sorrow soon turns to happiness at the story of the fortune his daughter and granddaughter now possessed. Her whole family is overjoyed.

That is the last of her happiness, as she turns the conversation to the family yet to show. She stares in silence as her brother tells her of Vidar's fate. Of her boys who went north in search of fortune. Of someone buying the home that she got the day she and Vidar married, a week after they were both eighteen. Her world comes crumbling down.

"There is always—" Her mother tries to say, but her brother cuts her off, telling her not to worry her more. It fails, and Clara breaks down crying on the sofa, Aleid and her cousin's laughter carrying from the outside.

Her family leaves her be, but her mother Ilse stays, laying a hand on her daughters shoulder, rubbing shoulders. "Vidar," she moans, clutching at the necklace she bought a few months back, and the V, that hangs from it. Her wedding ring was taken by Petrovich, and Captain Zaytsev is yet to find it in his endless amount of jewelry, if it was not destroyed.

"What were you saying earlier, Ma? You were saying there was always something, what were you talking about?" She sniffles. Ilse sighs, and gently helps her daughter up.

"Come with me, my love." Clara wipes her tears with her sleeve again, and lets herself be led down the hall, towards, if she remembers correctly, is the study. She remembers sitting on top of her mothers desk, kissing Vidar, and another round of tears comes.

Ilse rubs her back, opening the door, and guiding her broken-hearted daughter to sit. She shuffles through her drawer, pulling out the manila file of the boy she's suspected to be their grandson for almost ten years.

"Clara..." her daughter looks up at her, glancing at the folder as she slides the newspaper clipping with the photo on it. "There is a man in Ketterdam, who is probably Kaz." She hands the clipping to her.

She watches her daughter's face carefully. Anguish, grief, and fear cross her face in a matter of moments as she sees the face of a boy who looks so much like his father, it is unreal. It all gives way to confusion and panic as she reads about the man, 'Kaz Brekker'.

"That's my boy," She whispers. "But it cannot—my boy." Her voice cracks.

Ilse knows exactly what that clipping says. It's from about a year ago, detailing his crimes, his murders, the empire he's built from the streets of Ketterdam. The details are heinous, but she recognises the little boy she knew in the actions. Sees his mother, his father, even herself in his choices, his calculations. In the very fibre of it all.

"And what of Jordan, what of Jordie?" She says, but Ilse shakes her head. There is no hint of him.

Clara weeps, pouring over the clippings, the photos, the legal documents. Trying to find her boy in a demon, and hating it every time she does. Kaz Brekker is Kaz Rietveld. There is no doubt in her mind.

"Who bought the farms?" She says softly.

Ilse smiles now, remembering the minute she learned the name of the man who bought the Rietveld farm. "A man named...Johannus Rietveld. It was probably Kaz."

Clara laughs, tears dripping down her face. She whispers something to herself, wipes away her tears, and stands. "I'm going to write him a letter. A letter with things only I, or we, could know," she proclaims.

Ilse won't deny she has thought of doing that before. Thought of reaching out to one of the only connections she had to her lost daughter for years, but fear always took her over. She has heard every story, every myth, every rumour.

But she sees the determination in the set of her jaw, and she sighs. "He may not reply, my daughter."

"I'm his mother. He better reply." Ilse laughs, and in the light of an oil lamp, they write a letter to a man they know but do not.

Will say it NOW. The later chapters and stories in this are violent. Trigger Warnings will always be included, of course, but please be careful. I said this to the folks over on Ao3 and y'all aren't not getting it too.