Echoes of your name

Prologue I - I am Kaz Brekker

Hello! I'm at it again.

This is a story idea that has been living in my head rent free for a while.

I split the Prologue into two, one for him, one for her (kind of). The whole thing is going to be from 3rd POV, but Kaz' perspective because there is way too little of that.

If anybody would like to beta for me that would be amazing!!

TW: Death, Dissociation I think (just people dealing with grief), Kaz' sad backstory

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~ So happy in misery ~
~ I think you're my savior ~

Messed Up - Once Monsters & Chloe Adams

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The first time Kaz Brekker had met Anya Soeng he had thought her a Saint.

Back then, when he was just a little boy, perched next to his brother on the steps of a charred, creaky house at the rim of the barrel, he had still believed in saints and Ghezen and the cultural mix the simple people followed.

He had believed in saints in the way that any young boy followed religion. They weren't really sure it made all too much sense, but their parents told them to believe in it and to pray and it would simply take too much time and energy to properly think on the subject.
Time that could be used for playing.
So instead, they just kept the saints and the God of Trade in their prayers and by force of habit eventually went on to become pious people that used religion as an easy explanation or whatever.
Of course, older Kaz would realize that even the prayers, free of deeper thought, took too much time and would simply stop, becoming deeply cynical in relation to any kind of religion.

But back then, hungry and thirsty and confused as to where their little wealth had gone and why everything was suddenly so unnice, she had seemed like a Saint to him.
A child-saint, like Sankt Nikolai the Ravkan Saint, dressed in a fine black velvet dress with a big red bow, hair a dark charcoal color and hidden underneath a big grey cloak.
When everyone had simply moved past two small, parentless boys sitting out in the streets, categorized them as just some other street rats to beware of, she had crouched down and smiled a small smile at them. "Hello there" she had said, as if they were spooked kittens sitting in a bush instead of boys her age (or older, in Jordie's case).

Her smile had reached her eyes, Kaz had noticed.
'Her eyes are really blue' He thought then 'Like the sky'.
And back then they had seemed like that. Blue like the sky above the farm had been, blue like the sky over Ketterdam never was.
When Kaz grew older he would instead think of them as sapphires.
The most precious and beautiful of sapphires and he'd think that he'd rather like to steal them. He wouldn't be quite sure how that would work but he would be sure that it involved having their attention fixed on him and only him.

No matter, because when they first met, Kaz didn't yet think of thievery and diamonds.
Instead, he thought that it was quite rude of Jordie to not answer her, even though he could understand his mistrust. Kaz didn't think that he could ever trust a stranger again after Jakob Hertzoon, even if he hadn't yet understood the whole magnitude of Hertzoon's scam.
Still, his parents had tried to raise him polite and so he said "Hello". Her smile grew and she asked "Are you hungry?".
And they were, they really were, which was probably the only reason they took the two butter rolls she handed them without question.
She then sat down next to them, asking "So how did you get here?". Jordie didn't answer and so Kaz didn't answer either and so they sat and watched the hustle bustle in silence.

It was a while before she stood up, brushed of her dress, turned around and said "I have to go. I'll be back tomorrow with more food if you want to."
And she had been. The next day. And the day after that. And after that.

It took a week before they told her of the farm and Jakob Hertzoon. She nodded solemnly and told them that that sadly happened very often. She told them how her parents had sent her to the University two years ago, when she and Kaz had been eight years of age, but upon arrival in the harbor she was robbed of all of her things except for the clothes on her body.
Jordie made a rude comment about rich people and aristocrats, the thoughts of a farmer's boy.
She had just smiled and said that nobody could choose where they were born.
Jordie had smirked and offered her their names, as if she had to pass some kind of test. She had grinned back and introduced herself as Anya Soeng.

Over the time after that she would visit every day. Kaz found out that her hair wasn't actually coal black but she rather liked to color it with an array of substances to hide her identity. Sometimes coal, sometimes ink or chalk, or red powder or jurda or the like. Kaz never found out her real hair color though.

Soon after, Jordie and him got sick. She got sick too and they kept her at the University.
When he saw her again they were dragging him and Jordie out to be burned at the Reaper's barge. He remembered her wide eyed stare meeting his feverish gaze, her running after their cart.
She was too late.

When he drifted into the bay, fever-free, hungry and a changed boy clinging to Jordie's bloated body, she was there, ready to pull him out of the water and wallop him in her big grey cloak before stripping her outer layers and jumping in to drag Jordie up on the docks.
When she saw him flinch away from her skin, from Jordie's skin, she took off the gloves she always wore and pulled them onto his hands.
Back then their hands were still roughly the same size and the gloves fit snug and warm.

She helped him heave the body onto a linen sheet she had stolen from a close by warehouse and drag Jordie to a vacated merchant's house in the garden district.

Had his brain been coherent enough he probably would have noticed that she used some kind of weird power to dig the hole but instead, he was numb.
Once Jordie had disappeared under large heaps of earth and he had said his final good-byes she placed a single stone on it, took his gloved hand with her bare one and lead him away.

She sat them down on the stone steps of some bridge a few blocks further.
They just sat there and he thought of Jordie and of his future and his past and of blasted Jakob Hertzoon and of the unfairness and who am I and what am I supposed to do-

"-az! Kaz!"

Suddenly she was in front of him, shaking him by the shoulders.

He looked up at her and frowned.

"You weren't breathing, Kaz!"

Breathing.

Right.

"I am not Kaz Rietveld anymore."

It wasn't a question or an exclamation.

It was a fact.

He knew Kaz Rietveld couldn't survive without Jordie Rietveld.

So he wasn't Kaz Rietveld anymore.

Because he was still alive.

Maybe not living.

But alive.

Anya let out a breath and nodded resolutely.

"Who are you?"

Who was he, indeed.

He liked Kaz, he thought.

He liked the way she said it.

And he liked her.

His memories strayed, to something he'd seen here and there, his eyes strayed too.

He stilled.

"Kaz Brekker."

"So then today is the day Kaz Brekker is born."

He nodded.

Straightened his shoulders.

Breathed out.

"Yes. Because I am Kaz Brekker."