NO MOURNERS // NO FUNERALS

[Let’s just pretend I haven’t been MIA and hop right back into it, eh?

I don’t think Kaz really wants revenge, not for its own sake. He tries to use revenge to satisfy a couple of his real wants:

As regards the future, a reason he’s alive, to appease his survivor’s guilt. Blaming Pekka Rollins for directly killing Jordie is a stretch and Kaz knows it. At first it was a survival instinct, just to give him a reason to crawl out of the harbour and keep crawling. Now he understands human nature better, he’s aware that he’s casting Pekka as his personal pantomime villain to motivate himself, but he keeps doing it because he hasn’t found any better life goals yet. Tbh he does this with a lot of things. He arbitrarily sets himself goals to achieve (see: stealing supposedly unstealable paintings he doesn’t really want), because why else drag your fleshly husk out of bed today amirite lads? How Kaz’s motivations change could be its own post but the tl;dr would be, he’s inspired to have another go at tackling his phobia, this time with a support system so it works better.

As regards the past, a way to make sense of Jordie’s death, and to regain control over a situation in which he was powerless. Setting Pekka up as a paper tiger for him to knock down makes him feel like he’s doing something for Jordie. And this hangup is more difficult to deal with than #1, because he can’t change the past. He can’t make sense of something that was just senseless. And the weird... fevered... ambiguous mode of Jordie’s death prevents Kaz from leaving it behind him and moving forward. He got absolutely no closure at all, to the extent that he’s never sure Jordie really died and still half-expects him to show up at any moment. And because he never talks about it, it keeps just not feeling real. But then he confesses it to Inej. And just saying, conclusively, that his brother died and is dead (implicitly, that there’s nothing he can do about it anymore) is a small step in the right direction.

Mam had been complicated, both emotionally and intellectually. She was brilliant but flighty, distracted, impatient. She would begin by teaching Jordie his alphabet and somehow end up feverishly delivering a lecture on economics. Kaz’s education was a patchwork of books scavenged from neighbours and Mam’s secondhand knowledge from Jordie’s lips. Through the latter, Kaz could tell she saw the world like he did: a puzzle to be solved, a game to be won. There are people who say that when one door closes, another door opens. And then there are people who see a closed door and pick the damn lock.

By contrast, Da was a simple man. It was hard to tell if he was unintelligent or simply uninterested. He wasn’t particularly warm, but nor was he ever cruel. His usual expression of affection was to muss Kaz’s hair in passing as if he were a well-behaved dog.

Where Mam had been slight and slender, Da was burly and broad from long days working the fields. But he was far from invulnerable. He was constantly losing bits of himself. By the end of his life, he had seven fingers and eight toes in total. There was a chunk missing from his nose and mottled burnt skin along his left arm. One eye drifted. He moved slowly, carefully, all too aware of whatever curse of clumsiness or wretched luck plagued him. It never helped.

Kaz didn’t see what happened. He stepped out to call Da in for lunch. And instead he spent the afternoon watching the crows feast on his father’s guts.

Ahh, there it goes. He was wondering how long it would take him to make a dig at his privileged past. Only about four minutes, as it happens. He refrains from a roll of his eyes or a snapping retort, only because it would invite conflict and frankly, he’s not in the mood. 

Wylan stands, moving over to said pantry and checking the pathetic contents within. Food hasn’t exactly been their priority. Still, he finds some stale bread and a bag of half eaten chips. He takes both back to where they’d been sitting. Both items are placed in the center of the table, so that if Kaz wants, he can help himself to it. Wylan, for his part, takes some of the bread to eat. Without complaint. 

“Do we have another job lined up or are we laying low for a while?” 

Kaz runs a hand through his hair and then presses at the cords of his neck, perpetually solid tense.

“Always another job, Wylan.” It doesn’t answer the question, but nor does he part with information lightly. “There’s time enough for you to eat and sleep. If nothing else, I need the man handling the explosives to be well-rested and alert.”

Does he need to sleep as well? Probably. Will he stave off exhaustion with coffee instead? Very likely.

Peeling off a glove, he notes the open bag and opts for bread as well. Epithet notwithstanding, his are far from the dirtiest hands in the Dregs.

[Ladies and gentlemen, that is me. THAT IS ME. ON LEIGH’S INSTA. AAAAHHH

So there’s a story behind this encounter...]

[Okay hi I’m still here, I’ve been busy with some things, including:

I’m seeing Leigh Bardugo at a con this weekend and throwing together a Kaz cosplay for it so I will hopefully have some pictures to share next week