Chapter 26 of Crooked Kingdom is so well written,
Literally it is a chapter of conflict. And I love that So much. Everything conflicts.
The way Kaz describes things, distance distorting, feeling too far and not far enough.
The way Inej makes him feel, her gentleness making him want to not be gentle.
His thoughts, the conflicting wants.
Helping/destroying
The way she looks at the world in contrast to how he does.
The way Kaz relies on Violence to help heal her. Direct opposites. He’s been so used to being dirty hands that he doesn’t know how to be gentle without relying on the experience of violence to help him.
Also the line “I can best this” in contrast to “he could not do this”
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|”creating a gap, feeling both regret and release as he broke contact with her skin”|
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Feeling both regret and release when he stops touching her.
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| “He secured the knot. 𝘚𝘵𝘦𝘱 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬. He did not step back.” |
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Disregarding his own commands.
How the sickness is there, the need to run, but so is the need for something else (alluding to his longing to be close to her)
“Kaz thought he knew the language of pain intimately, but this ache was new.”
“After all she’d endured, he was the weak one.”
How it hurts for him to stand so close to her, but it also hurts to be so far away.
“ 𝘉𝘶𝘵 𝘐’𝘮 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘸 he thought wildly”
Despite the pain, he pushes himself close to her.
Him waiting for her to reject him, her accepting him.
His imagination running wild the moment he kisses her. Images of her, alive, well, images of love. Only to be replaced with images of loss, her dead body before him, eyes that were once filled with life replaced with coldness. He feels Disgust and longing twisting in him.
Kaz is always at battle with himself. His wants are constantly conflicting depending on what side of him is talking.
I think the reason the chapter conflicts with itself so much is because this is the first time we see inside Kaz’s head as he directly is confronted by his other self. Kaz Rietveld is the boy who wants to love. Who wants to beg Inej to stay. Who wants to kiss her. It was Rietveld who bent his head to her neck. It was Rietveld who wanted the net. It was Rietveld who took his gloves off. It’s Rietveld who keeps pulling on Brekker’s strings. Loosening him until he gives. Kaz cannot hold off his other self. He cannot hold off who he is deep down. The farm boy who was filled with wonder. Who is 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 filled with wonder every time he looks at Inej.
And what makes this stream of thought horrible- is that when you follow it, everything Rietveld does, everything he Wants, everything he tries- touching her- kissing her-
Every time Kaz tries- Rietveld dies again. In the harbor, with his brother’s body in his hands. Every time Kaz allows his softer side to take hold- he’s brutally murdered again. He drowns. And eventually what’s left standing is Brekker. Cruel and inhumane.
When Kaz kisses her neck, he gives into Rietveld. His mind is flooded with images of love, things he scarcely let himself imagine because he scarcely let himself Be Rietveld. Only when he hears her laugh, sees her smile, looks at her hair, her eyes, does his mind wander to the soft side- the tender side of himself. Only when he’s near Her does he wonder “what happens if I move closer?”.
He kisses her and desire corses through him, love corses through him. But then Rietveld dies at the harbor again. Her body turns into a corpse’s and all the lovely lively things about her die with all the same things in him.
He jumps back, and stops her when she tries to draw nearer. He becomes cruel again. Brekker. He snarls on about who he tortured, who he killed. He see’s her flinch and a pain goes through his heart because beneath the layers of Brekker he’s built atop his heart will Always be Rietveld trying to reach out.
He covers himself in a facade, a mask, layers of clothing, gloves, armor. Layers to protect the boy inside him, still raw and hurt and in need of warmth, in need of love. He has armor in more ways than just his gloves. He builds walls nearly impossible to scale. But Inej is The Wriath, and there is no wall she can’t scale, and no secret she can’t steal.
“Then you can steal my secrets too.”
The hard truth Kaz has to face is that no matter how hard he tries, he will Always Be Rietveld. Deep down he’s not a demon. He’s a human boy. He needs love, companionship, friends.
“Tell Jesper he’s missed… around the slat.”
He cannot face the world alone despite the reputation he builds around the lie that he can. He cannot keep from Loving Inej. No matter how hard he tries, no matter how scarcely he lets himself think about her- he always will eventually wind up thinking about her when he lets his guard down, let’s himself be human, even if it’s for but a moment when her hair is freed from its braid and the sunlight dances through the window behind her. When she laughs. There’s no way, no matter how inhuman he believes himself, he can keep himself from wanting human things to want. Everyone needs love. It doesn’t matter in what capacity you’re talking- everyone NEEDS it. Friendship, romance, companionship, a pet, a kind word from a stranger, opening the door for someone, any of those things- it’s human nature and there’s no avoiding it.
Kaz Brekker Thrives being called a demon. He thrives on the mystery, the myth, the cruelty. He breathes it in because he can’t survive without it. His reputation is quite literally all he has. And his friends are even a result of it. The violence Fuels him. And he’s gotten so reliant on it that he doesn’t know how to be anything else. He doesn’t know how to be anything for anyone unless it involves a scheme, a score, a bit of blood. He quite literally cannot help Inej with her bandages unless he thinks about it as if he were drawing a weapon on someone. Violence was easy.
But the truth is he cannot be Brekker solely.
And he cannot be solely Brekker happily or even contently because he knows Inej will not have him with his armor. So the only option he’s left with is to indulge in Rietveld. To let himself die again and again at that harbor, for her. To use her voice as a tether so that he may not die again. So that she may pull him out of the sea. So that Rietveld can live to give her the love he longs to. He NEEDS Rietveld because he IS Rietveld. And there is no reasoning behind it, no scheme he can concoct to keep his truest self away.
“Dirty hands would have cut his losses and moved on”
But still he says “I would come for you”
Still he reaches out, grabbing Inej’s hand, staying with her, desperately fighting back the waters.
Still, he catches her when she falls, holds her up with worry in his eyes.
Because he’s not JUST Brekker. He’s not JUST dirty hands. He cannot be. No matter how much his hurt self wants him to be. He has to fight to stay alive in the harbor every time he touches her, but he will. Over and over again. For her. For them. He has to.
I’m not suggesting Kaz has some sort of personality disorder or something-
I’m saying I think his past is who Inej sees behind the cruelty. She understands the language of pain intimately, and knows when someone is responding out of pain. I think she sees him for all he is, Brekker and Rietveld, and loves him. He isn’t two people- but one- a very hurt boy who behaves like one, who’s built his life on pain. He conflicts so much with himself because he KNOWS Rietveld was too weak to survive in the barrel. He knows he cannot let himself be too soft. His tell is his love for Inej, and when all that mattered was for him to keep his cool, he looked at her- and Van Eck took her from him. His life is the same story written again and again with a different victim of his love each time- and he’s afraid that should he love anyone, go soft for a second, he’ll lose them. But there’s no way to avoid loving people. There’s no possible way to keep from caring about his friends.
So his only option is to let them have him, have Rietveld.
His only option is to balance both sides of himself, Rietveld and Brekker.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
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