𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐘-𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑 — a snapping thread

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 𝐊𝐀𝐙 𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐊𝐊𝐄𝐑 𝐖𝐀𝐒𝐍'𝐓 a man who often felt fear. He'd never quite let it crawl through the cracks of the cover called Dirthands long enough for his heart to seize. But when Aleksa had fallen completely silent and utterly still... Kaz Brekker had panicked. He couldn't see her chest rising and falling, he couldn't see those pink lips that always beckoned him forth spilling her familiar coy words.

 All he could see was red. It was spreading and spreading until one might have thought the white parts of her frilled shirt were the miscoloured parts — the parts that were out of place.

 He pushed through the terrible cracks of pain ricocheting through his leg; it hadn't felt this bad in a very long time... since the day he'd fallen off a roof near the Gaaldstraat, the day he'd first broken it. Still, Kaz Brekker ran and he ran, not risking a glance down to the girl in his arms even when the boat was just a few paces away... Because he knew that when he did look, he'd see a different face.

 He could feel her coldness, the lack of a heartbeat... he'd see Jordie. He knew it.

 Everything seemed to pass in a bit of a blur; all Kaz could recall was the hoarseness of his throat, the way he'd yelled for the schooner to set sail, the threat of cracking skulls if they didn't set off immediately.

 He could remember when Jesper had approached. His hands had tossed his pistols aside without a care in the world; something Kaz had never seen from the boy before. Jesper had begged to help, his eyes growing red... Kaz had yelled at him, too. He was sure Aleksa would have a choice few words to say about that.

 If she would awake. When she would awake...

 Nina had been working on Inej when he'd burst into the little surgeon's quarters. The room was tiny, with two small beds side by side tucked in the corner while a table creaked beneath the dull and swaying lamplight.

 Inej, like Oomen had said, had been injured herself. The Wraith had a knife strike just below her ribs, something that would incapacitate her, but it wasn't fatal. Inej would wake in a few days with a bandage around her middle while she wobbled on her toes... she'd be beside herself. Inej would forget the wound on her body the moment she caught sight of Aleksa; that was how they were. Aleksa and Inej cared more for each other than they did themselves.

 When Kaz burst from the dark passageway, Nina had looked up with utter frustration in her eyes... her hands stilled above Inej, and Wylan, tucked away in the corner waiting his turn for the bump on his head to be healed, blanched.

 "Saint's —" Nina swore as she eyed the body within Kaz's arms. She could spy skin so pale it looked as though it wasn't Aleksa at all... but it was the oil-black veins that drew her attention away from the pools of blood seeping from her skin, "What happened?"

 Kaz swallowed, "Two bullet wounds," His eyes fell to the knife still poking from her stomach, "and..."

 Nina had approached with the utmost caution. She could see how blood dribbled between Kaz's gloved fingers, trickling to the ground. It pooled on one of his shoes. Again, however, it was the darkness rippling beneath Aleksa's skin that held Nina's attention, "Her veins..."

 "She said her wounds were healing."

 Nina furrowed her brows. For the most part, Inej was stable, breathing, and healing on her own... So Nina, with careful fingers, pried Aleksa's shirt away from her bloodied skin. One of the bullet wounds was encased in obsidian. A great spot of black right below her ribs... blood was no longer flowing.

 "She —" Nina, jutted her head towards the table. There wasn't much room, but with Aleksa and Inej being as small as they were, Nina would make them fit, "She really is healing her own injuries, Kaz."

 Kaz remained silent. He'd never seen her do it before, he'd never even known she could. Inej was always the one to scurry forth with a needle and thread, she'd clean Aleksa's wounds with a smidgen of alcohol, blaming Aleksa for the burn it caused...

 He looked to Nina, the only other Grisha on the boat with enough information to make a deduction, "How?"

 But Nina shook her head, she'd never seen anything like it. Aleksa was a Shadow Summoner, just like the man she'd been trained by... and Nina couldn't recall a time when the Darkling had healed himself of a wound... at least, he had never done so in her presence"I don't — I don't know."

 But it didn't matter, not really. Kaz wouldn't have cared if she'd managed to bring back Morozova from the dead, he didn't care if she could raise hell... all that mattered was that he needed her to wake up.

 "Just —" And for the first time, Nina Zenik watched him stammer, "Just help her, Zenik. Now."

 "You're in my light."

 Kaz stepped back without a word, almost disappearing into the darkened passageway like an omen slinking through the night. Only a single lamp was swinging above the table now sodden with blood; two of his best were side by side with their own blood drenching their skin. Inej was stable, he had his Wraith... but it wasn't enough.

 He watched as Nina moved Aleksa's arms with great care, as she popped open the last of Aleksa's shirt buttons... Kaz dropped his eyes to the ground if only to offer any semblance of decency for the girl he —

 Kaz could feel it then. With nothing to busy his eyes, they soon fell to the stain on his shirt...  Aleksa's blood had dribbled through the material and he could feel it on his chest. He could still feel the coldness of her touch... and while it felt like ocean waves were rolling in the depths of his gut, Kaz hid the rippling cascade of nausea well enough, for now.

 He swallowed it, stuffed it back down his throat... and like so many times before, he let it manifest as anger instead. Anger at himself for letting Aleksa leave with Inej, for giving them that last-minute errand. Anger at the Black Tips... Anger at Oomen who was still on the ship's deck, awaiting his punishment.

 Nina stilled, breathing through the blood already soaking into her nailbeds. She watched Kaz just... lingering there like a ghost, the way his eyes flickered back to Aleksa with every shuffle Nina made. He was worried. Kaz Brekker was worried, and Nina almost couldn't believe it.

 Still, if he kept standing there, glowering at the droplets of blood plunging into the puddle by the table leg, she'd positively explode, "Unless you can be useful, go away." She said as she pulled away the pathetic excuse of a shirt that was left to cover Aleksa. It landed on the ground and Nina wrapped her scarlet fingers around the knife's hilt still embedded within flesh, "You're making me nervous."

 He hesitated; wanting nothing more than to pull out a chair and remain by his shadows side. He needed to see her chest rise. He needed to be the first to hear some silly little jibe from her lips... he just had to see her smile; the smile she'd gifted him the night prior in his office. The smile she sprouted as her head was tossed back, long curls tumbling down the length of her spine.

 Then he stomped away; his cane was still Saints knows where and his leg was throbbing. Kaz stilled in the middle of the hallway, a sticky gloved hand planted against the wall just for a moment of respite against the pain thundering through his bones. Then, after a beat, he turned into a cabin and plucked a clean shirt. He slipped the blood-soaked one from his flesh, hastily wiping away every inch of crimson he could find... There had been so much that it had even dribbled down the plain of his stomach, soaking the waistband of his trousers.

 He shouldn't have been as shaken as he was. It was just a dock brawl. A shootout... those were all things that'd happened before. It was Ketterdam, such things were as common as pigeons, especially between the opposing gangs. So why did something within him feel so raw and torn to pieces? Like the tread keeping him together had snapped entirely.

 He'd felt it before. When he was still just a boy with no gloves, no kruge, no crows. The days that had followed Jordie's death; that's when he'd felt hopeless, like every little thing would bring him to his knees.

 Kaz sighed, fingers caressing the pain shooting through his leg.

 You're unreasonably pretty Kaz Brekker.

 Of course they had been the last words she'd managed to speak. No sob for her life, no grunting and groaning. Of course Aleksa Corvina had seized the moment and made one last comment about him. It was the only thing that brought Kaz any comfort... that, and the fact that she was far too stubborn to die. 

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DATE: 03-09-2023

:･ﾟ★ this is a fair bit shorter than the other chapters, but i just wanted to take a moment to see things from Kaz's POV only. there's another flashback in the next one... just to wrap up Aleksa's involvement in Siege and Storm... so we all know what that means.

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