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Inej has spent long enough in Ketterdam to know that the people there come from many different backgrounds, and while Tante Heleen is the go-to person in Ketterdam (partially because of the odd jobs people like the Crows pull for her here and there) for many things, including her brothel business, there are plenty of people in Ketterdam who have spent time working in that setting, then go on to other things.
Inej never participates in these conversations. She’s just a good listener, which means she’s not only good at overhearing other people but also knows what to listen for . That’s how she finds out that some brothels breed a sense of camaraderie, some community among the girls. Not every owner is like Tante Heleen (but a lot are). Sometimes these communities spring up in spite of people like her. Sometimes they spring up because the owner genuinely believes that’s good for the girls and therefore good for business.
This was not the hand that Inej was dealt – there was anything but a sense of community among Tante Heleen’s girls; they were workers, and she never missed a chance to remind them that she very much owned them, everything they did – but what Inej does remember is that one of the girls had had a moment of – kindness? Weakness? Inej had never gotten the chance to ask.
That girl hadn’t lasted long there.
“It’s a job,” she’d told Inej. “Get it in your mind every time before you have a client that this is something that you are doing , not something being done to you . It’s not the full truth, but if you figure out how to make the distinction in your mind, you’ll be fucked up way less as you go along in life.”
Go along in life . Back then, it wasn’t like Inej wanted to die or anything. She was determined to survive, because that’s what she’d always did. It just would have surprised her in those days if she’d gone to sleep and not woken up. Or if she’d just been out walking and ended up dead. Or if a client had killed her (it would have been very bad for business, so something would have been done about it, but the kinds of people who wanted to claim and fuck girls in cages who were dressed as animals – they didn’t tend to be very nice).
But nothing could have prepared Inej mentally for that first time. The roughness of it. The coldness of it. How everything felt so foreign. Her body was too hot and too cold with this other person. They never touched her, even when they touched her softly, in a way that she could tell was trying to be kind, it just came across as acting and fake. It was both too hard and too soft. Nothing felt right, and there was nothing she could do about it.
She knew if she gave any sign that she was struggling, that they would give a bad review that would get up to Tante Heleen. Or worse, maybe they liked when girls struggled and cried, and she would just be giving this person reason to want to come back and request her over and over and over again.
She didn’t want to die at that moment, but she looked upon the idea of her death with steady, sullen eyes, and for the first time, it didn’t seem like the worst possible option for her. It’s just that everything seemed to matter so much less . Her family, where she’d come from. Survival. Hope of anything and everything better at all.
When the client leaves her, it’s all Inej can do to find a place to be alone and concealed – the shafts above her room which didn’t lead anywhere (she’d checked) but offered a small space where she could touch everything and know that she wasn’t going to be touched. And she hadn’t cried, but she could feel those sullen, hopeless eyes within her. Her gaze remained like that for some time.
It takes some time for her to take that one girl’s advice – and it’s good advice. But every time she forgets, or something happens to where she can’t quite make her brain consider the experience in the way that she wants it to – when her mind screams “abuse” – she goes into the same state.
Sometimes it shows up in her dreams, and that’s the worst. One can escape a dream by waking, but dream experiences are self-inflicted. It means that the experience – that one in particular – sits deep within Inej, has woven itself into a part of her. And she’ll carry it forever.
She tries, as much as possible, to do away with thinking that she does not have some kind of control over her own fate, especially after she’s out of the Menagerie, because to think otherwise would certainly make her sloppier, take more risks, embrace death much more readily. And that’s not good for anyone – herself or her team. But she has these moments in the middle of the night where her body reminds her that that is very much a possibility, one that whispers to her in the dark when she’s alone, one that is inescapable.
“I’m not the kind of person to ask,” says Nina, after the team’s experience within the Menagerie, “so I’m not going to.”
Inej’s gaze flicks over to Nina in warning, but she doesn’t stop her. It’s not like she necessarily trusts Nina beyond being a coworker, though this experience has certainly done something like that between them. She trusts Nina’s insight. She just doesn’t trust that Nina can see from Inej’s perspective, because Nina sees from Nina’s perspective. That’s the whole point.
“What I’m just going to say,” Nina goes on, and when Inej looks back at Nina, she’s not looking at her, just looking straight ahead, “is that I hope you never for a second doubt that what happened there was wrong – whether it happened to you or not – and that if you do, and you ever need someone to tell you that they were wrong, you were right, and there’s nothing wrong with you, I volunteer.”
“I don’t want your pity.”
“Then I don’t offer pity,” says Nina. “I just offer facts. Everything else isn’t my business.”
Inej’s expression doesn’t change, and it strikes her that this is the kind of interaction that before would have made her need time alone, to wait for her shredded insides to scab over into something more manageable before interacting with people again – a quick process but still a necessary one. But she’s different now. She doesn’t need that kind of time because everything just feels kind of numb, like her body is floating, just a little.
Her hands are resting on the edge of her seat, beside her thighs. She grips the plank and grounds herself in this way.
“So why did you bring it up?”
“The language and mannerisms of captors – Drüskelle or Witch Hunter or Slaver or Whatever. It’s all the same. And it’s designed to make you feel worthless, because if you feel worthless, you are easier to manipulate. When you’re easy to manipulate, it’s easy to become an instrument for something else: coin or power or some fucked up religious belief. I don’t think I’m saying anything that you don’t know, but I’m saying that the reason why everyone uses similar tactics is because, even if you know what they are, they are effective . We’re not meant to get through those kinds of situations alone, which is why they also try to cut you off from community.”
Inej thinks of Kaz, with trust hard-won and such friction with the entire world, believing the blood on his hands to last forever. “So much of this life is lived alone.”
“But not all of it, hmm?” asks Nina, with that honey thing she does with her voice sometimes that Inej used to think was really laying it on thick but now is something Inej sees as something kind of sweet. “Just offering to be a reminder, if you need.”
Inej inclines her head in the smallest of nods, which she knows Nina can perceive.
Nina’s right, of course, it doesn’t make much difference, but it doesn’t hurt.
They don’t speak of this often after this conversation, but something changes between them as a result of it. It’s not like they become closer or softer or any of those things, but they’d had the kind of conversation that forms the foundation of understanding, of something very strong. The only thing left is to build on top of that. So they do.