REAPER ─ kaz brekker

four; the knife cuts both ways

004;              THE KNIFE CUTS BOTH WAYS

THE MEMORIES WERE COLD.

They were cold like the barest winter, seeping in through the weeping cracks in the walls, refusing to be ignored. It. was true, after all, that everything in Ketterdam leaked. 

They began warm. They began in a warm, gable roofed home in the Zelver District, where the windows gave way to a view of the wide berth of the canal. It was a modest home, one with flowers in the window boxes that her mother changed every season. Her father was a well off man. A well off Fabrikator that made and repaired weapons for the gangs that ran the Barrel, as well as the more astute members of the Merchant Council and their security.

It smelled of leather and cinnamon. It was warm.

But the memories that swam circles about in her mind were cold like the freezing, bitter winter. They were so many good memories. So many good things happened in that small, modest home. So why was it so difficult to remember them?

All Onyx could see was the all consuming grief. All she could smell was the blood and the smoke. All she could feel was the blood dripping down her neck, soaking into her nightgown, staining its neckline. The blood and the smoke and the flames burned and poured over the memories she swore to hold so tightly to, the memories that she left behind that night in the bitter winter. 

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Onyx woke with a start. Her body thrummed with pain all over, with such severity she swore she could even feel it in her teeth and at the roots of her hair. The ache in her side was far worse, however. It was something like a flame lapping up her side in an attempt to catch to something else so it could engulf her completely. And there was some piece of her, as the swaying, orange lamplight came into focus, that wished to go back to the cold, dark place she'd been in up until then.

Slowly, she rolled her head to the side and let her blurry gaze take its time focusing in on the two sitting just a few feet away. Nina was slumped over in sleep, her features relaxed in a way Onyx rarely saw.  Inej was perched carefully on a chair just next to her, watching Onyx with such intensity, it made her wonder just how long she'd been there. And seeing her, seeing her alive and breathing and sitting up, it tied a harsh, frayed rope around everything that had happened and yanked it up to the present.

The schooner that exploded at the docks, Inej being stabbed before her very eyes, Oomen catching her off guard and doing the same. There was so much blood. So much blood on her hands and her clothes, on her face. There was too much blood by the time they made it to the real Ferolind. Neither of them should have been there, eye to eye, watching each other in the dull lighting of the surgeons quarters. Death should have wrapped its cruel hands around them both. But, yet there they stood, alive and breathing and set to survive until the next catastrophe.

Inej nudged Nina a few moments later. She woke with a start. "I'm up! I'm up! What is it--" her eyes shot from Inej and roved over to Onyx. Her eyes lit up almost instantly. "Oh, Saints, you're awake! Finally!"

"Could've fooled me. I feel like I'm already dead," Onyx mumbled. Her fingers unconsciously threaded over the sorest portion of her abdomen, where a new shirt had been placed to replace the previous one. "How long was I out for?"

"A few days, I only woke up yesterday." Inej slid off of her chair and followed Nina over to the makeshift sickbed they'd been using. "How are you feeling?"