Work Text:
Ketterdam had a strange way of digging up what should’ve stayed buried.
Kaz Brekker stood before a rusted door in the East Stave, where buildings leaned like drunks and the air reeked like fish and rot.
The address had come from a bouncer with too many bruises and a gambling habit — a favor traded for silence.
.
Kaz didn’t believe in ghosts.
But the name he’d heard — the one he hadn’t said out loud in years — had rooted itself in his mind like a dagger.
Jordie.
The door creaked when he knocked.
Once. Twice.
It opened halfway.
And there he was.
Older. Thinner. The boy Kaz remembered — bright-eyed, full of schemes and sugar-crusted promises — was gone.
But the man in front of him had his eyes.
Neither of them spoke.
Then the man, Jordie spoke up, “Kaz?”
The name cracked something open. Kaz swallowed it down.
“You’re supposed to be dead.”
“I was.”
Kaz’s fingers tightened around the crow’s head of his cane. “I watched you drown.”
“I watched you drift away.” Jordie leaned against the doorframe, like it took effort just to stay upright. “Then I woke up in a fisherman's shack halfway to Hellgate. Fevered, starved and yet, still alive.”
“Not once,” Kaz said, “not once did you come back.”
Jordie’s gaze dropped. “I didn’t know you survived until I heard your name spoken in the Barrel, it was uttered like a curse. Kaz Brekker. Dirtyhands. The bastard of the barrel. The boy who walked out of the harbor and never stopped crawling upward.”
Kaz laughed, sharp and cold. “You watched me build an empire out of rot and revenge. And you said nothing.”
“What would I have said?” Jordie asked, quiet. “You think I wanted to be the reason you became this?”
Kaz stepped inside without being asked. The door closed behind him.
The place was small. Sparse. It smelled like brine and old books. There were papers stacked on the desk, an untouched cup of tea cooling beside them.
“You think you made me?” Kaz asked, voice low. “You think one lie, one betrayal gave birth to dirtyhands, the bastard of the barrel?”
Jordie didn’t answer.
Kaz stalked closer. “I became what I had to. Because you left me with nothing. Because I buried you with my own hands. Because I stood in a harbor full of corpses and learned the taste of death before I learned to shave.”
Jordie’s voice cracked. “I didn’t know how to face you.”
“You were my brother.” Kaz’s voice was breaking too now, quiet and raw. “And you let me drown.”
A long silence.
Then Jordie said, “I was ashamed. Of what I did. Of who I couldn’t be”
“You could’ve come back.”
“I didn’t think you’d want me.”
Kaz let the words hang there. He stared at the man who had shaped his nightmares, his rage, his hunger. He tried to find the boy he’d once loved like sunlight.
He wasn’t there. But maybe — maybe a shadow of him was.
Jordie sat down. He looked like he might shatter.
“I don’t expect forgiveness,” he whispered.
“Good,” Kaz said. “I don’t know that i can give it.”
They sat in silence for a long while. Two men who used to be brothers, sifting through the wreckage of their past.
Then, finally, Kaz said, “Tell me what you’ve been doing. Start there.”