WHERE WAS SHE? Kaz didn't know why he cared. He didn't, so much as he was curious. Every night she would slip into his office and they'd down the night in coffee, silent apart from when they'd interrogate each other. They never answered each other, never learnt anything. He didn't, anyway.
Asra Behandelar was an enigma. She was insufferable. A subtle kind of insufferable that had wormed under his skin and settled happily, sending him sly smiles when she thought he wasn't looking. She was odd. Too confident, too good, too cagey and, the moment it was required or even just when he looked at her hashly, too quick to shut her mouth and straighten her spine.
He'd done as much research as he could, sent Inej or some other spider down every lead he found. Dead ends, all of them. There were no records, no family members, no recollections. For all it seemed, Asra Behandelar had simply popped into existence the moment she set foot in his club.
It was a fake name, of course it was. But that opened more questions than answered. Why change it? Who had she been before Ketterdam, before the Crows? Who was after her? He couldn't get a straight answer. Kaz suspected he could wring her neck and she'd still dance around her answers with that smirk plastered across her face.
Which smirk? he wondered. He thought he was coming to understand Asra, at least be able to predict her. Then she'd pulled todays stunt.
He'd watched Asra melt away, leaving a stranger in her place. She wore the same face, same clothes, nothing had technically changed. But everything had. Her posture, usually so relaxed in the way of someone drowning in their own pride. She believed herself immortal, and held herself as such. Not this stranger. She stood tall, she moved in fluid, almost inhuman motions. Her smirk was usually knowing and amused, this stranger's was pure sadism. Kaz had watched her changed, and he'd been dumbfounded as this woman negotiated and threatened and smiled all the while.
And now where is she? He hadn't seen her since. He'd interrogated her, of course he had, and as always she'd told him nothing. Then she'd left him, and Kaz was yet to lay eyes on the woman who may have been Asra Behandelar.
He had to wonder. Who was the truth to her? Was Asra the mask? Or was the woman she'd become today? She became both so easily. It was impossible to tell.
Then there were her answers. Kaz knew he couldn't judge for secrecy. He was made of myths and stories and not-quite truths. But there was a sliver of honestly beneath it all. He was exactly what they said, exactly the monster they made him out to be. He was as much Dirtyhands as he was Kaz Brekker. Moreso, sometimes.
Then there was Asra. Two months she'd been in Ketterdam, two jobs he'd taken her on, and nothing had come of it. Kaz didn't know what to expect, but even among her fellow Dregs Asra was a stranger. A quiet haze of muted red slinking around the edges, unremarkable and uninvolved despite everyone's best attempts. Even Jesper could barely get a few words out of her.
Nothing that concerns you. Who was she kidding? In what mad world did that not concern him? What mad world was she from? A world where girls of sixteen couldn't remember the faces of those they'd killed, every one blended together by time. Kaz was the same, of course, but that was besides the point. Asra had enemies, she'd said as much, but he hadn't known they were so close.
I didn't remember him. He couldn't blame her. The man was unremarkable as anything, his only interest the money Kaz planned to take from him. Who else didn't she remember? Who else was waiting?
I'm sorry. Those were the words that rattled him. In the two months he'd known her, Kaz hadn't once heard Asra mutter an apology. She didn't say sorry. She broke wrists that got to bold, shoved clumy drunks into canals, laughed in the face of gunfire and grinned when someone pulled a knife. She didn't apologise. She was chaos incarnate. Chaos didn't get to be sorry.
Where was she? She should've been here. Her coffee was getting cold.
Then fire me. Had she meant it? She'd snarled the words at him, a beast trapped in a corner, snapping at her chains and every hand that came close. Was that what he was? A prison, a tyrant, a curse? Yes. He was the Bastard of the Barrel, a scourge on this earth. But not with his crew, not with her. Right?
He hated the effect she had on him. He'd spoken to her once, after she helped loosen a man's tongue. Kaz had asked how as he selected a new shirt not covered with blood.
Asra wasn't bothering. "People have this odd urge to tell me the truth." She'd shrugged.
"Why?" He'd asked.
"Because everyone's scared of me."
"I'm not." Kaz had said. But he doubted himself as he said it, that scared him more than anything. But still, fear was fear as she was the cause.
Asra had smiled. Kaz couldn't deny it, fear hovered around that girl like flies a corpse, rolled off her like waves a broken dam. It wasn't natural, someone so unnerving by simply existing. Yet somehow anything else would seem so wrong with Asra. Anything other than a wave of fear would feel simply morbid.
She was his doubt, his vex, his guilt and shame and mistakes. She was his demon, and he knew she'd hate him for it. Asra was nothing but sharpened edges, ready to cut and kill. She was nothing but strength, and he wouldn't taint her with his weakness.
He should fire her, Kaz decided. Some part of him he wished would die knew he wouldn't.
Maybe she'd come back already. Maybe she was in her room, asleep, not. What did it matter? Kaz found himself standing, grabbing his cane, making the decent down the stairs of the Slat in search for her. He made his way to the bottom floor just in time for the door to jerk open.
She stood there, soaked from the rain, leant against the door, hand pressed to her stomach.
"Where have you been?" He asked.
Her voice was breathless and pained. "Out."
He frowned. Kaz watched as Asra stepped into the Slat, closing the door behind her. She leant against it, head back and breaths heavy.
Asra had chosen red as her preferred colour of Barrel gaud. Dull and muted, but red nonetheless. Her trousers, her coat, almost everything she owned was in some way red. But not her shirts. Those were white and grey and dignified. Were. This one had gone redder than her coat with blood.
Kaz was moving before he could think. Cane loud against the wooden floor, he walked over to her. At the sound of his approach, Asra pushed herself up.
"I'm fine." She said. Again Kaz heard it, that cornered and scared beast. He stopped about a foot away from her.
Asra heaved a breath and walked past him. Then she fell, knees buckling suddenly. Kaz reached out, almost instinctively, till the waves started lapping at his vision and suddenly she was just another corpse floating in the harbour. Kaz's hand froze, suspended midair uselessly while Asra collapsed.
But she didn't need it, it seemed. She caught herself a nearby table and leant her full weight against it. "Don't." She snapped. Kaz couldn't even tell if she saw him try, most of him hoped she didn't.
She grit her teeth, then forced a sigh. "Don't touch me." She muttered, then pushed off the table and over to the bar. She clambered onto a barstool and grabbed a cloth and drink. Kaz could only watch, slowly walking over, cane loud against the floor until there was about three feet between them.
Asra, silent beside the occasional hiss of pain or muttered curse, shrugged off her coat. Then she started to undo her once white shirt and Kaz turned away.
He heard Asra scoff a laugh. "Scared of a little blood, Dirtyhands?"
So he looked. He turned and saw. He saw Asra, shirt open and bleeding from her side, pressing a liquor soaked cloth to the cut. He saw that she was covered in blood. He saw blood, but moreso he saw scars. So many scars.
They coated her like another shirt, pinkish and everywhere. Some from bullets, some blades, some burns, some even looked like claw marks. Some neat, some ragged. Some looked old, some new, some so old they almost looked like she'd been born with them. Except birthmarks didn't look like exit wounds.
Kaz could only stare. "Who did this to you?" He asked. The bleeding hole in her side or the healed ones, Kaz didn't know.
"No one. He's dead now." Asra said, eyes locked on her side as she pressed the cloth harder into her side. She barely winced as she did. Shock, maybe, or adrenaline. Maybe she just didn't let herself.
"That's not what I asked."
Asra sighed, slumping against the bar. Her eyes landed on the open liquor bottle for a while, then the floor.
"That deal you made today, it's off." She said.
"You killed him?"
"He very nearly returned the favour." She guestured to her gut.
Kaz sighed slowly. "I see."
"Sorry." She muttered.
"Stop apologising."
She gave him a look. "Fine."
Then they were quiet. Kaz's mind drifted to his office, the two coffee cups, his half empty and diluted it with whiskey. The quiet pain her face took when others drank hadn't gone unnoticed by him. It was one mystery he could solve easily enough. His mind wnet to the papers he'd left scattered about his desk. Asra let out a quiet hiss as she pressed the cloth harder against her side.
"You need a medik." Kaz said.
"I need quiet."
"I'll send for Nina."
"You won't. I've got this."
"Asra -"
"No."
He raised a brow. "No?"
"Exactly."
"No what?"
"Just... no. No to you, to Nina, to everything. Leave me be, Kaz." She wouldn't look at him.
Kaz stepped closer. "You need a medik." He repeated.
"I don't trust mediks. I don't trust anyone. Leave me alone."
"Nina's healed you before." She'd healed everyone before. The Heartrender was new to Ketterdam and desperate for work. She had a man in Hellgate and the delusion Kaz could do something about it.
"That's not the point. Just go, Kaz."
He should've. "You're going to bleed to death down here."
"Put it on my tab."
You don't have a tab. He didn't say it. He turned and left, not letting himself spare a glance at her as he climbed the steps. He knocked on Inej's door as he passed. She was less than happy to see him at this hour.
"Send for Nina. And be quick." He said.
"What's happened?" She asked, reaching for those odd rubber slippers of hers.
"Asra's been stabbed. Be quick." He went back to his office and didn't leave till morning.
Nina came before then and gave him the verdict, wiping the blood off her hands. "She wasn't exactly cooperative, but I put her under and healed her. Give her a day or two to rest and she'll be fine."
Her coffee still sat on the corner of his desk, untouched and stone cold. He poured it away and didn't go to Asra's room. He got someone to cover her shift at the Crow Club and let her rest. She didn't come back to his office for a while, but when she did they didn't speak about what happened that night. They never spoke of it. They never spoke at all, really.
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Author's note:
Kaz pov is so fun lol