Kaz Brekker Imagines

Waiting on a Dream

soulmates au

Soulmates were not meant for a place like this. Honestly, sometimes it seems more like some sort of cosmic accident, that of all the places to experience a meant to be, a soul universally joined to you and you alone, Ketterdam should not be it. Fjerda, now, that makes sense for soulmates. They already cling to enough traditions that magical superstition just makes sense. Even Ravka, Ravka the war-torn legend, that works.

But your home? Yours is a city of broken boys and lonely girls, blood running in the streets and skin worn too thin from all the times people pretended it was too thick. Kerch is not a country that prides itself on anything but profit. The Barrel, then– scum of the earth, forgotten by the Saints, blind to anything but greed– this is not a place that love lasts. Yet everyone here has a soulmate, the same as everyone else on every corner of the world. Make that make sense to anyone with a working brain.

Sometimes you almost think that the soulmates trend should have skipped over your city. Maybe that would be some sort of divine penance for all the wrongdoing your fellow citizens commit with glee. It would take a sign that big to convince anyone to lay down their guns and knives and try to even think about peace.

It doesn't come, though, that divine intervention. Instead, you all have soulmates, and you all wager their lives like another round at Makker's Wheel. You will go through your life trying to find the one person who makes you whole, and regardless of whether you find them or not, it will never be enough. The Barrel always wants more, and if it's your city, then you do, too.

You don't have far to look, though. Truth be told, you already found your soulmate quite a long time ago. That's what you think, at least. In reality, your sainted aspirations are just that– dreams, hopes, an estimation that you made when you were young and have never dared to actually challenge or prove correct.

In your defense, it is almost impossible for you to tell for certain. Soulmates are identified one way and one way only: a name written across your wrist in the print of your soulmate. You've stared at your own wrist enough to commit the inked black to memory: Kaz Rietveld, scrawled in hurried print that still took the time to be solid and secure. There is no room for additional flourishes nor swooping script, just the name and nothing else.

That's just like Kaz, too. Ruthless, determined Kaz. He runs through this life just like his name wraps around your veins. He'll do what he pleases and take what he wants. If what he wants is for you to live the rest of your life in mystery, then, well, that's just fine by him.

Maybe Kaz doesn't know at all. The problem with the Kaz on your wrist versus the Kaz you know in real life is the issue of his last name. Kaz Brekker is the boy who runs the Barrel. Kaz Rietveld is the one who is damned to you forever. There is no guarantee that they are the same, but oh, how you wish they were.

You've known Kaz for half as long as you've known yourself. You met Kaz about a year or so after the flareup of the Queen's Lady Plague. By then, he'd already started the process of breaking down his fragile pieces and rebuilding them back up to become Dirtyhands, the killer of this city.

You were newly arrived in Ketterdam, having the misfortune to walk into one of the gilded traps of the many pleasure houses of the West Stave. You weren't indentured for your body, thank Ghezen, only for your hands. You're a Tailor, one of the rare Grisha with a knack for changing the appearances of others rather than conjuring up swarms of fire or water.

You have a room in the House of the Blue Iris, and customers are sent up to you on the regular. They want darker hair, then lighter; bigger eyes, then smaller; shrinking skeletons and blooming skin. All this you can do with some effort, but it's gotten easier over the years, your gift. It had to improve, of course. If it didn't, your employers would start wanting you for other purposes, and that you would avoid more than anything.