kaz brekker | grishaverse. (nomourners) wrote in dunhavenic, @ 2018-12-11 22:01:00 |
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Entry tags: | !narrative, * kit, c: cash wolfe |
WHO: Cash Wolfe
WHEN: Tuesday, December 11, 2018; Evening
WHERE: His dorm
SUMMARY: Cash remembers the barge and has a bit of a freakout.
WARNINGS: Mentions of death and grotesque description of corpses, spoilers for Six of Crows.
Cash had been busting his ass trying to cram for finals week. Now that he was without his athletic scholarship or the ability to let his physicality get him through his college years, his academics were all he had. They were going to be what got him into a decent fraternity, what opened up future opportunities for him, and they had to be his primary focus, so his finals in his first semester felt a lot like they set the tone for his future. Of course, he’d been working, too, whenever he could get himself on the schedule during peak hours at the bank and that, paired with his long, late night study sessions, had left Cash utterly depleted. It was no surprise, really, that he’d fallen asleep right at the desk in his dorm room that evening after the tenth time rereading the same paragraph in his American History textbook. At some point, though, Cash’s restless dreams transformed from bloody revolutionary battles into a different sort of horror. Kaz was just a child when he’d woken on the barge full of corpses claimed by the Queen’s Lady Plague that had been wreaking havoc through the streets of Ketterdam. It had wreaked havoc on Kaz himself, and it was no wonder he’d been discarded like some diseased animal despite his lackluster attempts to let someone know he was alive. He didn’t know how many times he’d woken up like this only to slip back into unconsciousness again, and he had no idea where the stink of his own sick ended and the smell of rotting flesh began. The odor was so putrid that it burned Kaz’s nose and lungs and it seemed as though it clung to and permeated his skin. He would never be able to wash it away from him, he though, if he ever had a chance to wash again. This smell would bury itself in his bones and he would carry it with him always. Eventually, Kaz came to long enough to realize that no one would be coming back for him, and that no one would care if he was laying here alive. After all, why would anyone come picking through a pile of corpses just in case? It took everything in him to pull himself up and even more than he had in him to devise the plan to let his brother protect him one last time. He tried desperately not to look at Jordie, or to notice how his skin seemed to pull away at the bones, or how the water filled his brother’s body and bloated him until his older brother was no longer recognizable. But Jordie kept him afloat and it was Jordie who got Kaz away from the barge, away from death, and back to dry land. Kaz had to remind himself that it was Jordie who floated back out into the water and not some horrifying sea creature that shouldn’t exist. Clinging to the streets of Ketterdam, Kaz shivered beneath his cold, wet clothes and no matter how many times he tried to shake off the barge and his brother’s ghost, he’d been right about all of it burrowing deep inside him. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see the dead body that had once been Jordie. Every time he took a breath, the rot filled his nostrils. It would never go away, it would never cease, he knew it. Jordie would never come back to life and Kaz knew he’d died out there with his brother. Kaz Rietveld was no more. This shell where Kaz Rietveld’s soul used to live was something different, a monster, birthed from the loins of a despicable city. There was only thing that could cut through the death and decay that plagued him, one thing that could pull him up off the cobblestones. A hot, white, burning rage--at Hertzoon for what he’d done to Jordie, at Jordie for leaving him just like their father had, at himself for surviving. He let that rage pour into him, filling the spaces he could reach before the memory of death could make its home there. There was nothing, nothing that would ever replace the rage and dying inside of him. Cash woke with a start. Spots filled his eyes where he’d laid them against his arm for too long and, in those pieces of darkness, the memory of Kaz’s fight off the barge filled in. He fell from his chair, the plastic and metal toppling over and crashing to the floor as Cash turned to a crouch and vomited. The sound of his own retching reminded him of Kaz, and of the barge of bodies, and the memory perpetuated the sick. It was like he had lived and died in the span of however long he’d been passed out. The sound of all of this happening must have caused alarm because, before Cash even had a chance to stand up, his door was banging open and his RA was standing over him, reaching out to awkwardly try to help however he could. Cash recoiled, pushing himself back against his bedpost. “Don’t- Don’t fucking touch me, dude,” he yelled, the ferocity and vehemence in his words startling even him. “Just get out. Now,” he continued, the panic rising in him as he finally looked around and noticed that Jordie--no, Jordan wasn’t in. He got to his feet, his knees shaking weekly as he pushed back at the RA who tried to reach out again. He had to find his brother. He needed to know Jordan was safe, and a simple call or text wouldn’t do. He could clean the room when he got back but, for now, he needed to find his twin as quickly as possible, preferably without anymore hands reaching out for him. He swiped his sleeve across his mouth and forced himself out of his room, out of the building, and toward the first place he knew to check. |