his gloves and her knives: a collection of kanej one-shots

towers of gold

a/n: i never imagined that i would one day get so many reads! thank you for reading this far and i hope you enjoyed it. this is more of a character analysis than an actual fanfic, but it was written a few years ago and i thought well, why not ahaha... i've made some edits to the original, and i hope you enoy.

also go check out a cute romance i wrote called 'a door apart'! it's a sweet roommates to lovers story with a lot of angst on the way. i'd really appreciate some love <3

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i. find your calling

Kaz Brekker had a dream. More of a desire, really. He would build a tower of gold on the soil of his enemies, load his cannons and point them towards anything that came his way. He would burn down everything before him and remodel it, reshape it, recast it till it was no more.

He would make it his. Destruction, death, dirty cash, he would make it his.

His armor would shine in the moonlight, golden, but streaked with grime under the blinding lights. Filth and riches went together, didn't they? They went hand in hand with the terror which earned him respect.

And that was all he craved.

That is why when they screamed before him, he did not flinch. He let them scream, let their blood flow over the ground, stick to the soles of his shoes. He let them die because some people deserved it in this empire he was creating. Some people deserved to die, yet he, the one most deserving of all, just couldn't seem to end.

How curious.

ii. master it

It was painful, to feel nothing. Wasn't the empty ache more unbearable than the slice of even the sharpest of knives? A slow kill, a spreading ache.

Kaz Brekker had been nothing. Rags and dirt and filth had been his empire then, and still was, but now he had soldiers to serve his empty throne blindly as he watched silently from the sidelines. As his Crow Club bustled with hopeless wanderers, he starved for their cold, hard kruge and prayed for it to satiate his hunger.

He had a tomb for his emotions. Suppress it, hide it, destroy it, let it be the skeleton in his closet slowly coming back to life. It wouldn't do for him to waver when he wiped the blood off his hands. Weakness was something that all the kruge in the world could never buy him and it hurt, it hurt so much.

iii. find your weakness

When she was near him, his heart shrank with the effort of keeping him alive. Remorse. Remorse so crushing that every morsel of kill, maim, destroy would be obliterated if he wasn't careful. For his Wraith was everything he was not, she was pure and beautiful and wise and even when she killed with her deadly knives, her saints forgave her for she was devoted.

He was none of those things.

He could not pray to her saints so he prayed to her instead. Frantic prayers in the middle of the night when he was alone and hated himself for what he was. Hated himself for being what he had once been afraid to find lurking in the dark. How ironic it was, that a monster would find solace in a murderer with faith.

iv. crush it

Perhaps she would redeem him, wash away his filth. Then again, he didn't want to be redeemed. He steeped himself in the filth she abhorred so he wouldn't have to see the look on her face when she realised, when he accepted, that he was a monster.

She wouldn't have to look at him to run away.

He could not be what she wanted.

If you open a wound it will surely be lit on fire.

So he hid. Hid behind kruge and gold and filth and gloves and a barrier he put up between his mind and the rest of the world. If he couldn't be a prince, he would be a dragon instead.

v. burn the building down

And so Kaz Brekker thrived in the tomb of his mind, never leaving, never letting anyone in. But if you stay in one place too long, it starts to weigh you down.

And Dirtyhands kept going. The next heist, the next robbery, the next plot, the next endeavour, and when there was nothing left to do, he burned it all down and started again. He didn't step on his enemies, he reduced them to ash and once he was done he spread the ash on his flower beds of spite and used it to make his anger thrive.

Why build one tower and watch it dull if you can build a thousand, burn them down and light up your empire with the flames?

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a/n: thank you! i hope you enjoyed, i'll be writing more proper romance chapters soon. once again, go check out my story 'a door apart'! i spent a lot of time on it and i hope you'll enjoy reading it as much as i enjoyed writing it!

thank you and i hope u have a great day :D