The Slat story

Scars

Inej wasn't proud of her scars, they were marks of failure or cruelty. Times she was broken, when she couldn't, when she failed, when she was powerless. But she also refused to remove them, because the memories tied to them would haunt her anyway. She would always be scarred.

Of course, Inej knew she wasn't the only one who felt such a way, but she still berated herself for it. That they couldn't make her strong, even the gnarled, old scar on her arm where the menagerie feather had once laid disturbed her most nights. Where it once marked freedom, it was now an ugly reminder, a cruel stain, a vision of what she had become.

Kaz appeared in the mirror behind her, making her jump.
"Everything ok?" Kaz rasped, and Inej nodded, feeling small. Kaz was scarred too, she'd seen the risen, silver slices all over his chest, and the pockmark wounds from a plague. The spiderwebbing scars all along his bad leg.

"Nej," he spoke softly, limping closer and Inej realized she never answered his question.
"I'm ok," she replies, too quickly. He frowns, worried.
"What's going on?"
"Nothing. Don't worry about it." Inej pushed past him, heading toward his desk. "I think I'll be staying at Wylan's tonight. You could join me there," she offered, looking out the window.

"You're avoiding me." Kaz rasps in a voice just above accusing. An aggravated observation.
"I'm inviting you there, how is that avoiding?" Inej teases him, but her heart clenches at the look in his eyes.

"You're deflecting." He clarifies, his voice is low, all gravel and harshness. Barely above a whisper.
"I don't know what you're talking about," was evidently not the right answer.

Kaz's eyes shuttered, and his face slackened, the worry that creased his brows vanishing. What remained was an expression so guarded even she couldn't read it.
He slowly approached her, and Inej stared him down, but he didn't fidget. She stopped breathing as he stepped into her space, waiting. He plucked the pen she picked up off his desk from between her fingers.
"I have work to do. You can go on without me." Inej's lips thinned into a frown as Kaz sidestepped her and sat at his desk, rearranging a stack of papers and setting a page in front of himself to work on.

"I suppose that's fair," Inej relented, turning on the free corner of his desk, she began to swing her legs idly while Kaz worked. His elbow was just a few inches from her thigh.
"You're right, I am deflecting and hiding my thoughts from you. I know I'm not being fair since I've asked you not to do the same. I'm... it's silly."
"But you aren't, and it's obviously bothering you," Kaz says, voice still an eerie neutral.
Inej chewed on her lip.

"I just, my scars." She says, in a not-so-logical wording. She can't think of words for the feeling, Suli or Kerch. Kaz sets his pen down and turns his full attention to her. Some of the blatant guards had fallen from his face.
"What about them?" His voice is softer, and Inej swears she can hear a different accent, slipping between the clipped harsh words of the Kerch language. Inej swallows the lump in her throat.

"Tante used to make us tailor any marks on our bodies. Tattoos, injuries, stretch marks..." Inej quieted, watching as Kaz's hand clenched inside his glove, listening to the creaking of the leather. She reached a hand down, and he dropped his pen and offered his to her. Inej's fingers moved along the leather, feeling the faintest cuts that allowed him to do coin tricks, and the near electrical sensation of the feather-light phantom touch of his skin on hers. Her seeking fingers moved down, following his fingers to his palm, and down to his wrist where she unclasped the glove and pulled it back. Kaz's breath hitched but he didn't stop her.

Inej's hand trailed along his veins, the spectral lines of old cuts against his smooth skin, nearly silver in the darkened room. Inej smiled at how warm and soft his hand was in hers, how they twitched ever so slightly at her faint touch.