[For Kaz Brekker]

[plaguedrat]

It should have been a quick stop. All Rat had wanted was to pick up a new tag for Polyphemus' collar with his new address because like hell would he let Grey's cat be at risk of straying again. Polyphemus had started life as a stray and lost an eye and Grey had loved the damn thing and Rat, begrudgingly, had loved him too. 

If he'd been anything like his old self, Rat's sentimentality would have ended there. 

Waiting for the tag to print, he'd been drawn to a tank with a small colony of female mice. First one, then two, then five had crawled out of a hiding spot and pressed their little paws against the glass window. Rat had been ready to turn away until he heard a clerk mention that one of the snakes needed feeding. 

And then he'd been an idiot. 

The result of the evening has Rat walking home from the pet store carrying a plastic travel tank containing five mice as he rehearses an explanation to Marius in his head. Mostly what crosses through his head is "so much for the heartless Demon of the West District." When did he become like this? He wants to blame the city but he knows it started long ago when an escaping criminal befriended another boy in Cronos. 

Letting the ideas roll through his head, Rat keeps walking. 

Comments

[everymonstrousthing]

Kaz walks. He walks when he shouldn't, when he's already pushed his knee further than he should have, when he aches in buckled bone. He walks because the partment isn't somewhere where he feels comfortable, where he feels able to be still. He misses his room in Per Haskell's house.

When he sees a familiar face, he slows. He doesn't speak, not at first. But there is a touch of a smile, just barely, when he sees what Rat's carrying in his hands.

[plaguedrat]

There's a nasty part of him–the one that's used to looking for weaknesses to exploit–that notes Kaz's cane and the stiffness of his gait. It's an eye that's been trained into him by long years of self-defense in the West District and its criminals.

He also notes Kaz's smile and Rat flashes one of his own, equally restrained. "My lover thinks I need more likeminded friends."

[everymonstrousthing]

He notices Rat notice his cane, notice his limp. He's used to a look like that. It's a look he's exploited in the past...because who would deprive a cripple of his cane?

He tilts his head, studying the box for a moment.

"Plenty of those for free in the Barrel."

[plaguedrat]

"West District too, but we seem to be missing our shortcuts home," Rat says, his tone almost amiable. Of course rats and mice run wild in the real places; he could probably even find some here too if he'd wanted. No, he has no excuse other than pure sentimentality.

"These ones seem to like me."

[everymonstrousthing]

"We do indeed." He studies the box again with an impassive look on his face. Mice. Rats. They all make his skin crawl. There had been vermin on the barge, crawling through the spaces left between the bodies. He's never going to forget the feeling of little feet crossing lips and cheeks and the lids of closed eyes. His stomach trips with a wave of revulsion. Thanks to years of practice, it doesn't show on his face.

"I'm sure they do."

[plaguedrat]

Rat smiles and lowers the case and the sharpness has returned, though now it's directed inward. "They recognize their fellow vermin," he supposes. It's not a label he's ashamed of but one he bears proudly, alongside accusations of being a demon, and heartless.

[everymonstrousthing]

Kaz has never been shy about owning the negative things about himself; he's had to, in order to get the rough work done. He takes in what Rat says dispassionately, the nods.

"That's the thing about vermin," he rasps. "It tends to thrive."

[plaguedrat]

"It's why I like sharing a name with them so much," Rat says, shrugging. "Everyone hates vermin, tries to get rid of them, but they can eat anything, get into any space, and survive poisons meant to kill them." And there are a lot of people who've tried to kill him and Rat's the one who's standing here while they're all husks.

[everymonstrousthing]

"Hm."

Kaz knows the value of a nickname; knows how, eventually, a person will become the thing that they're most often called. He knows all of the nicknames that he has in Ketterdam. He knows that they count for shit here. He took the name Brekker from a machine, didn't he. Hasn't it been like he had a heart made out of iron since then?

"I can understand that," he says. It's a rare concession.

[plaguedrat]

Rat nods, unsurprised but smart enough not to ask questions. Kaz must have his share of stories or else Rat would have no interest in him but the West District taught him that information isn't given freely. Asking outright is a good way to get stabbed, so he just holds the mice close to him.

"You seem the kind of person who acquires a name for himself."

[everymonstrousthing]

"A whole handful of them," says Kaz, glancing down the street. "In Ketterdam, they used to call me Dirtyhands, bastard of the Barrel." He flashes a smile. "The deadliest boy in Ketterdam." He shrugs. "Means less than nothing here. I'm just Kaz Brekker here."

[plaguedrat]

Rat flashes a smile right back. They're good names, the kind meant to impart fear and refine a reputation. Rat and Dirtyhands, he thinks, nodding. His own name has meaning here, if only because it belongs to him, but his reputation is long gone.

"They called me a demon sometimes, but I wasn't the only one of the West District." That whole place had been nothing but demons, refugees, and the helpless multitudes between. "And sometimes they called me Eve."

[everymonstrousthing]

They are, Kaz realises, just standing on a street-corner talking, passing the time of day. From the outside, the might even look ordinary. He knows that that's the last thing any of them are. Still, his palms itch.

"Sounds like there's a story there."

[plaguedrat]

"Not as impressive as the one behind why I'm called a demon, but it definitely did more to put food on my table." Rat tilts his head and relaxes his posture and melts into another persona, wearing the trappings of someone else in the space of a breath. "I made my money onstage. As an actress."

[everymonstrousthing]

It reminds him of no-one so much as Nina, the way she slips in and out of role, the way one minute she's playing the great and terrible Grisha and the next moment she's fishing crumbs out of her cleavage. A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.

"I can see it," he says, nodding his head. "Useful."

[plaguedrat]

It shouldn't, but catching a smile out of Kaz feels like a prize and Rat smiles briefly back. "Back then, it was out of necessity. No one expected me to be good at it." Even now, at nineteen and his voice all the way dropped, it's still easy to shift into a lighter timbre that's sweet and dreamy.

[everymonstrousthing]

If he notices Rat's smile, if it feels good to have that affect on a person, he doesn't acknowledge it.

"People don't expect much, I find," says Kaz. "Come on. I'll walk with you."

[plaguedrat]

He nods and shifts again to check on the mice in their plastic tank. All of them have scurried into one corner and put themselves into a pile. All the more reason to get home.

"Do you know Dimera Apartments?"

[everymonstrousthing]

He huffs a laugh, barely more than an exhale. He nods.

"I live in Dimera," he says. "Eighth Floor. Compared to what I'm used to, it's palatial. Not sure what to do with all that luxury."

On 11 February 2016 at 04:16, plaguedrat - DW Comment < dw_null@dreamwidth.org> wrote:

[plaguedrat]

"The solution is probably to get a lover and at least three cats." He holds up his new acquisitions, "Maybe a few pet mice. At least, that's what Marius did." He only jokes about being an acquisition, a title he can claim but that he'd kill another man for using about him.

[everymonstrousthing]

"I'll take that under advisement," he says, because, honestly, he can't imagine anything worse than either of those things. He'll stay how he is. "It's been a long time since I was on my own, but I don't mind it."

[plaguedrat]

"I'm sure you'll file it right by the shredder." Shrugging, Rat continues on walking. He's curious how Kaz got that limp but not stupid enough to ask. It would get the same response as if someone were to ask about the scars on his back.

"I used to prefer being alone. Easier to survive that way."

[everymonstrousthing]

Kaz hasn't been alone since he stumbled his way into the Dregs. He's kept to himself, but always in the knowledge that he had a whole gang at his back. That he was Per Haskell's lieutenant. That his Wraith was deadly.

"You can only get so far on your own," he says.

[plaguedrat]

"In the West District, I always learned the opposite," Rat says. "I was taught that survivors are the winners. The one with something to protect always loses."

How many times has he broken those rules? First Shion, then Grey, and now Marius. The cats, the pet mice.

[everymonstrousthing]

"So we come from different places." Kaz shrugs. He wouldn't have gotten far if he hadn't gotten himself into the Dregs; he knows that. Wouldn't have got him far at all unless he'd chosen a very different sort of life, one that would have left him worn out and used up far too young. A shudder goes through him at the thought of it; would he have got used to touch, he wonders, if that was the only choice he had?

[plaguedrat]

Rat nods. Maybe, for others, depending on those closest to them had gotten them through. His world had cost him all of those people in a fire and Rat doesn't think there's a day he'll ever forgive that.

"You understand that kind of world, though. No matter how exactly it's formed."

[everymonstrousthing]

"I understand that kind of world," he says. It'd a world that made him what he is, made Inej, made Nina, made Jesper. Everyone he knew was shaped by the world that they had moved through. "But this one's easier to bear, isn't it?"

[plaguedrat]

"Sometimes I don't know how to live with ease," Rat admits, thinking he can say such a thing and Kaz will understand. What does it mean to fight for survival every day until it's as natural as breathing and then live in a place like this?

Dimera looms into view against the sky and he looks thoughtfully out.