(no subject)

[everymonstrousthing]

Once they're home, once he's medicated, and he's put on comfortable, soft clothes, layers that pull down over his hands, once he's poured himself a large drink, he settles on the sofa, and he waits for her to join him. He doesn't know how much she'll tell him, how much she'll want him to know, but he does know that he's willing to listen to whatever she wants to get out of her, and he does know that he told Heleen the truth.

That none of this matters to him. That nothing will change.

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[everymonstrousthing]

He grazes the very tips of his fingers against her bare ankle before he folds his hand into his sleeve.

"Wherever feels sharpest?"

[tricktofalling]

"It all feels sharp," Inej says softly, focused on the brush of his fingers on her skin for that brief moment. It's the honest truth of it, as she puzzles over where to start. What feels the darkest, the worst, the most dangerous thing to hold in.

Heleen was a constant terror, but she was not the worst.

Slowly, she says, "I couldn't read, when they took me. The Suli don't have a fully written language, and I didn't speak Kerch at all."

[everymonstrousthing]

"Must have been lonely," he says, because he remembers how much safer everything had felt with Jordie there. He sees the way she reacts to the touch, and, this time, he leaves his fingertips resting against her skin.

[tricktofalling]

"I mean all of it was lonely, and humiliating, from the first moment," Inej says with a shrug that does nothing to dismiss it. "I wasn't just sold to Heleen, or bought into an unfair contract. She bought me off a slave ship."

[everymonstrousthing]

He'd known that much, at least. This time, he doesn't say anything. He leaves his fingers against her skin, his head tilted against the back of the sofa, just listening.

[tricktofalling]

She's quiet a moment. "And she was never the worst of it. She was always awful, but she was never the worst. The indenture was bad, cruel. Charged us room and board, our costumes. If we had to miss a day with clients because she beat us, or because a client was cruel..."

Inej drapes over her knees, eyes very far away. "I had to go away in my head. Learn to cry without crying. Let them do things..."

[everymonstrousthing]

His anger right then is a white-hot, coal bright thing then, but it'll do her no good, and he knows that. He shifts a little, reaching out with his free hand to brush her hair.

[tricktofalling]

She doesn't flinch, doesn't even really move, but she hasn't gone far away like she used to. She's aware of his movement, and of the brush of his fingers, and how he didn't give up the touch on her ankle. It's all small things.

It's more than they've touched in weeks, and it feels like everything.

"There were a lot of men that liked that I was very young," she says. "And that I looked younger than I was. One asked me how old I was--Heleen told me to say sixteen, even though I was fourteen still. He wanted me to say twelve, because I was so small. He saw me a few times."

He was hardly the worst of it. She could innumerate every single bastard that put their hands on her--but, honestly, after a while they all started to blend together.

"There was," she starts. Her voice catches, heart pounding in her chest suddenly. Even two weeks after the viewing, since the last time she saw any of those waking nightmares, it's still hard to talk about. "One time, a Ravkan soldier came to see me. He smelled like vanilla. He...had seen my family perform. He'd picked me out in the parlor because he remembered my act."

[everymonstrousthing]

None of that is surprising to him, but his stomach turns sickly at the thought of it, all the same. He nurses his anger like a coal. He keeps his hands on her, keeps up those light points of touch. He keeps his eyes on her face. "Vanilla. You saw him. Here."

[tricktofalling]

Inej nods. "A couple times. But the worst was--was that time. There had just been a lot of them, and Heleen, and he--he was always one of the worst. He wasn't even the most awful, but he knew my face, from before. He remembered my family."

He could have found them, she thought, and the thought of it makes her a little sick.

She blows out a huge breath. "I know I didn't have it as bad as some of the girls. At the Menagerie, or at any of the other brothels. I should be grateful it was only for a few years before you and Haskell bought my indenture."

[everymonstrousthing]

"You don't have to compare it," he says, his fingers stroking lightly through her hair. "What happened to them didn't happen to you. It's not the same." He lets out a sigh. "I hate it," he admits. "The thought of any of that happening to you."

[tricktofalling]

She breathes, slowly and shakily. Most days it isn't so bad. She can live with it. She is not the small things that she was sometimes reminded of in Ketterdam--a whore, a slave, a killer. Now, these days, things are easier than they ever were in Ketterdam. But it is still a cage. Maybe more than it was there, because she cannot leave.

She finds Kaz's hand on her ankle and wraps her fingers over his gently.

"Once we're married," she says softly, "I may ask Nina to make sure that I...I can have children. I know Heleen did things to some of the other girls. If she did that to me--I know Nina can't fix it, but so that I know."

[everymonstrousthing]

"So that we both do," he says quietly. He studies her face for a moment. "You know that it doesn't matter to me, right? That...nothing could make me love you less?"

[tricktofalling]

Inej knows that, but there is some part of her that thinks she would feel less than if she couldn't have children. She knows that there are other ways to build a family, but she would like to make a go at it, if she can.

[everymonstrousthing]

Kaz doesn't pull away from her, leaves his hands where they are. He just breathes with her for a moment.

"Do you think..." He says. "Do you think you could come here?"

[tricktofalling]

She considers it for a moment, and then, with a great and heavy weight in her chest, she shakes her head against her knees. This strange tangle they've managed--her toes tucked under his leg, his fingers on her ankle and her hair, and her hand on top of his--it's the most they've touched in weeks.

It burns in her a little. But she can still feel every other unpleasant hand on her skin.

"I'm trying," she says. "I don't want to think of anyone else touching me but you. And I can't yet."

[everymonstrousthing]

He isn't prepared for how much that stings. A few years ago, he never would have imagined it - this craving for touch. He nods, though, and he doesn't take his hands away from her, those little touches that she can permit.

"Whenever you're ready, love," he rasps.

[tricktofalling]

"I..." Her breath catches in her chest. "I'm going to talk to Nina, I think. See if she can help. Even a little. I don't like feeling so raw, like this. I want to be back to normal."

She breathes, and does not say that she wants to wear the ring. She wants to wear it soon, and she can't when she feels this raw and tainted. Nina will be able to help, she hopes. She trusts her to help.

[everymonstrousthing]

Kaz instinctively distrusts Grisha magic, even when it's Nina's, but he also knows that he'd be happy with anything if it made Inej happy, if it helped her to feel comfortable in her skin again. He nods.

"If you think it'll help," he says. "You know I'd do anything, Inej."

[tricktofalling]

Inej isn't sure if she's trustful of the powers themselves, especially since she's the one of them that has seen Nina's powers under the influences of parem. But she loves and trusts Nina, and everything she has ever done for her.

"I don't know what will help," Inej admits. "But I would like to try everything I can."

[everymonstrousthing]

Kaz knows that he isn't one to talk about how to deal with problems. He knows that he's spent most of his life not dealing with things the way that he should. He looks down at his bare hands, his eyes slippign to linge ron the girl that he loves, how beautiful she is, and how his inexperienced heart aches with loving her.

"We'll figure a way out of it," he says, quietly. "We always do, don't we? Should be dead a dozen times over by now. Both of us."

[tricktofalling]

"We'll push through," she agrees.

She hasn't told him the half of it, but she's gleaned over it, enough that he knows, he understands why the weeks in October were so achingly terrible and why it lingers with her now.

Still, understanding is not the same as being able to push through. She can see in his eyes, feel in their scant touch, that he wants her back. She has to push through.

She'll get there. She has before, and will again.