"Let's get this over with."

Gwen had thought of herself as quite funny when she'd slipped away quietly when her brothers back was turned, disappearing out of the window with the wind around her a mere caress against her bruised flesh that ached as if it had been wounded anew. Thought she was very funny indeed actually because the thought of him talking to an empty room before finally turning and realizing he was alone was definitely something she thought he deserved for the absolute shambled mess he'd left her life in because of his whole, 'not dead' thing that had been teetering her ever closer the the edge of damnation.

And so, when she'd landed upon the ground, almost slipping because of the damp cobblestones that she didn't dare spare a glance down to see just why they were wet, there was a small smile curling over her lips, a barely there thing that felt foreign on her face, mainly because for once, it hadn't been Jesper that had put it there. But then the moment that name, that damned name that brought forth a storm inside of her mind, inside of her still breathing corpse, that moment of happiness was dropped quicker than she would of liked as she took a breath and closed her eyes.

She knew she wouldn't of been forgiven, knew she would of been despised for her treachery, truly, she did and she had accepted that as a fact...but that didn't mean looking at him, seeing those lips that had pressed against hers so gently and made her heart sing in blissful praise, seeing his grey eyes that haunted her like a welcome ghost that had maimed all else for her, simply seeing him, his unutterable name, an ache in her throat, an agony in her chest...it didn't mean that it didn't hurt when she could feel that spite dancing over his battleworn skin like a disease that only she could catch, only she could taste because it was theirs.

The sky rumbled above her, feeling her grief and only acting in kind as she risked a quiet breath, trying her hardest to keep that pathetic mourning at ease, at least until she was back home where no one would find evidence of her ruin. And when she could finally see without the weight if her unurshed tears blurring her vision, she began to walk slowly out of the alleyway that had concealed her in darkness, each footstep louder than a bomb inside of her mind, painful and loud and Oh so very deserving for the monster she'd made of herself.

However, Gwen found herself abruptly stopping in her tracks, freezing up with her every muscle tense with unease as she noticed someone rather familar standing at the doors of the Slat, their gaze firmly trained upon her with something mischievous upon her frustratingly pretty face as she saddled up beside her with a large smirk curling over her plump lips...and the Rietveld girl really didn't know what do so when the corpse witch smiled at her like that. "So, do you have any embarrassing stories of your brother that I can use as blackmail against him?"

Of course, there was many things that she expected Nina Zenik to say, many things indeed...perhaps about her grisha abilities that she, herself was still finding out more about with every day that passed, perhaps about the title of the Stranger, perhaps asking her about what it felt like to be the monster that made the whole of Ketterdam shiver with unease at the monster waiting for them in the winds. There was many things she expected her to say, but that hadn't been one of them as Gwen almost missed her footing, looking up sharply at the girl beside her and wondering if she was having some kind of stroke.

"Should I be concerned?" She eventually asked slowly, carefully, blue eyes of wicked sin holding a certain caution as she continued her stroll along the crooked cobblestones below her, bruised hands still crossed behind her back but willing to bend to her will just like they always were, the call of destruction a stronger presence than pain ever had been or ever would be.

But then the girl walking beside her simply laughed, a pretty thing that reminded her of a birds lullaby, head through back and dark hair that shone almost red in the gloomy light blinding her as Nina shook her head with a grin, obviously not taking offense to the fact that Gwen had mistaken her for someone attempting to harm her brother, as if she dared break Inej's heart like that...well, maybe she would if he called her an investment again. "Oh, absolutely not. However, Kaz has a very annoying habit of finding or catching you at your most shameful moments, and I'd love a chance to get him back."

And just like that, hidden memories began to swarm, pulling at her mind, seeping past the mourning, the grief, the pained nightmare that had been his gaunt face, dead before his time and rotting...and made her remember tales from the past that she'd thought she'd forgotten in her trauma, that she hadn't deserved to remember when it was her fault that they were gone because she hadn't been able to do anything but wipe bile from their mouths with trembling fingers that were too young to know the truth of loss and how it never went away like a still haunting ghost.

"He was always like that, even as a kid actually. Once caught me picking my nose and told all of the neighbouring children that I ate it too, bastard." She whispered fondly, a pained smile curling at her lips at what was once lost being found once more. Saints, how old had they even been then? She couldn't even try and pinpoint, all she could remember was chasing him through the fields, his laughter in the air as she screamed every curse word that she had in her small vocabulary at him that she'd promised her father that she'd never repeat, threatening to beat him and drown him and sick Jordie on him for being such an awful brother.

"So come on, us girls have to stick together, y'know?"

Nina's cheerful voice tore her away from the reminiscence haze she seemed to be finding herself getting lost in more and more often, forcing the Rietveld girl to glance back over towards her after firmly shaking her head to lose the thoughts of the past that were maiming her from the inside out until she felt like she was utterly bleeding out at every seam, thinking how strange it was that a few months ago she'd shunned such vulnerability, such weakness...and now it felt like it was constantly out in the open like her agonized sin. "Is that right, corpse witch?"

The wind continued to howl around her, around them, whistling like a mocking lullaby as it danced through their hair, blowing idle scraps of rubbish across the floor and out of their way...but then, there was a drop of pressure, something that had come forth from shadow, delving out from being unseen because they could as Gwen's hearing picked up the sound of a familar heartbeat, as strong as a pounding drum and just as loud as she slowly glanced over her shoulder...to find the wraith staring back at her, chin jutted high and her eyes of bronze searching and critical.

For a moment, the Stranger reared its ugly head at such a look that seen her, its teeth bared and claws sharp, greedy heart churning for violence as it clawed it's way out of her bloodied throat, an inhumane disease that was her own, the darkness that she'd acknowledged was hers, that she'd created for survival only to have it possess her, become her, take everything from her...but Gwen forced it down just as swiftly, refusing to fall back into that abyss of bloodthirsty vengeance, of hatred, of wanting so much power that the world had no choice but to bow to her feet because she wanted her brother so much more.

And then, as if reading her mind, the wraith smiled, a barely there curve of her dark lips, releasing that heavy burden that had settled upon her shoulders at the thought of being despised by the one creature that seemed to hold some humanity over Kaz, one who she wanted desperately to find more about, to know about, just to hear about all the things he had been doing in her absence, to give her the gore and the grisly details, to give her the life he had lived that she hadn't seen but wanted to. "If we're sharing stories, I might have a few."

There was a pressure on her arm quite abruptly that had her flinching in shock, well, no, that wasn't accurate, there was a pressure going through her arm as Nina suddenly linked her arm through hers like they had been friends for years, pulling her close with a grin so bright and cheerful it was almost blinding as she stretched across the space to do the same to Inej who only looked fond at the embrace, beginning to pull them down the street, all the while Gwen blinked at her because what. "Oh, we should make a day of it! Waffles on me, well, they're on Kaz really, but what he doesn't know won't hurt him-"

She had a bad feeling about this, a very bad feeling indeed...and yet that didn't stop her from being dragged around Ketterdam like a ragdoll, and that was because in the end, she knew she had to make a choice...to be a ghost, or to be human. And once more, she cursed Jesper Fahey for making her feel...because she knew the answer to that question without even having to think about it, she wanted to be human, she wanted to be Gwen Rietveld, but most of all, she still desperately wanted to be his.
_________________________________________________

She was starting to suspect that her brother really was a bastard when she finally found herself wandering back to the Slat to hear about the job he'd requested of her, the first of many if that greedy, almost dangerous look in their shared eyes was anything to by which really was a startling thing to see indeed. The adventures of Dirtyhands and the Stranger, a children's bed time horror story if she'd ever heard one, through she didn't dare joke when she heard the way he spoke about the plan, the way he stressed every little detail with such scrutiny it was almost scary.

And it appeared that considering Kaz had already wiped Nobles of everything he had, and she had slaughtered the rest of his pathetic empire and left nothing but ash and blood in her wake...he was looking at other merchants to ruin, and unfortunately for the poor bastard who just had bought a rather expensive painting, something so rare and lusted after that he'd disguised it by having some fabrications create fakes that not even the actual painter could figure out which one was real...but it seemed that the bastard of the Barrel has counted his riches as numbered.

However, the problem was that he didn't need all of the crows to get it, he just needed a grisha who could tell a fake from the real thing, and someone who could watch his back by making sure the masses didn't even get a chance to stop him.

Gwen had her suspicion about Jesper, of course she had because she was was good at her little observations, the way he wielded his pistols like a extension of his arm, the way she'd watched and felt bullets physically curve in the air to make the perfect shot...but it had never been important, no, she'd had her weapon of choice, her poison, and that was making him fall in love with her to tell her their every secret instead of blackmailing it out of him which wouldn't have the desired effect, nor was she willing to risk one of those...twisted bullets burying itself in her head if she made one wrong move, one mistake.

But, as she'd previously mentioned, there was a rather large problem with Kaz's plan...and that was the fact she was pretty sure the sharpshooter would rather deep throat a cactus than be forced to work with the monster that had maimed the lives of the whispered and broken his heart as if it were nothing. She'd pretended she couldn't hear the argument when she'd sat in the room below them, telling Nina about how the myth came to be, how she used the air to choke her victims on their own mortality...but every so often, she flinched, and as the hour grew on, she shrunk in in herself until she looked like a hollow corpse.

Which brought Gwen to now, the mask of the Stranger suffocating, the black clothes alight with blue wrapping around her body until it felt like skin, like it was trying to sink into her, hook it's bloody claws inside of her to never let go, something that was so fucking consuming that she wanted to rip it off as she followed behind Jesper at a great distance, keeping her gaze trained upon him as he moved through the merchants rooms, looking down at the map in hand while his available fingers drummed against his hip where his revolvers lay barren.

All the while she was making sure that his journey was easy, watching as he stepped over the unconscious bodies she left in her wake as she moved with him, up upon the building over, an ominous shadow that walked as he walked, looked as he looked, breathed as he did with only the golden string of fate holding their hearts like a vice to ground them, telling them of the others presence as the sky thundered and rumbled and rained down upon her like the miserable grief that grew inside of her like turmoil.

Eventually, the sharpshooter reached the vault holding the precious cargo away from the prying eyes of the masses, and the moment Gwen saw him there, ready to go in, she leapt from her perch, dancing through the air as the howling wind carried her like a mocking saint, and then she landed with a roll upon the balcony above him, sliding down the banister of the side to slip into the window as quietly as she could, hoping she wouldn't alert him of her presence, hoped she wouldn't have to curse him with the reminiscent knowledge of who he was with...but she was many things, and as silent as the wraith definitely wasn't one of them.

"There's no need to hide, love. I know you're there, I'm not that stupid."

His voice was cold, colder than she'd prepared herself for as she almost flinched away, pausing for a moment as agony blossomed in her chest like a bullet wound, the word love spat out with such venom, that she could feel its poison lacing it's way into her veins and making her legs tremble, wishing for it to hurry up and reach her heart because the misery was too much for her to handle. You deserve this, she reminded herself quickly, pulling herself together before he could see how his words ruined her, you deserve all of this and more.

"I never implied you were." She said carefully, brows furrowing behind her mask, unable to tear her gaze away from him, tracing over his every feature because she could, especially while he avoided looking at her like she was the plague, focusing on opening the vault and at least trusting that she'd make sure he didn't get killed while his back was turned. He was many things, many wondrous, incredible, beautiful things that had opened her eyes painfully wide and left her wanting to escape from deaths cruel hand to feel his warm embrace instead...he was many things, she thought to herself, stupid had never made the cut.

But the Zemeni boy only scoffed, a choked sounding thing that was filled with hateful amusement, shaking his head as his precious curls brushed over his forehead, sticking there and leaving her fingers itching to brush it away so her vision wasn't obscured, the only thing she could take from him her sight without it feeling greedy...but he wasn't done in the slightest. "You didn't have to. I know why you chose me, everyone knows why you chose me to get to Kaz...the fuck-up gambling addict who is just one huge mistake away from blowing everything up in his own stupid face."

"Jesper-"

"Don't- just don't. Let just get this over with." He muttered as the vault finally open, sounding tired, so very tired, like life, like she had drained him of everything he'd had as he strolled inside of it, with her as his quiet shadow as they stepped upon a rather squeaky board, her breath trembling as she caught it between her lips, refusing to be weak, to allow herself to cry. Inside, there was the three large paintings awaiting them...tacky looking things that Gwen really couldn't understand why they were so sought after, before turning around so she was guarding the door with her hands dancing in tune with the howling winds outside.

The silence around them was thick, festering with a dark tension that was pulled too tight like a band waiting to snap as he focused on finding the real treasure and she focused on listening out for the sound of footsteps, to feel the air change and bristle with warning if someone decided to check on the merchants most prized possession, and then use that very air to cut their journey short.

However, it seemed that, like always, Jesper couldn't stay quiet for long as he spoke up once more, not tearing those glorious grey eyes of precious metal from the task at hand, not daring to disappoint the others again...but he had to know, it was killing him not knowing. "There is one thing I don't understand about all of this...why did you drag it on for so long? Are you really that sadistic? Was it just a massive joke between you and that Nobles prick? How pathetic it was that I fell for you so easily while you were just playing me like some cheap fiddle-"

Yet, at his words, she wanted to scream, saints, she wanted to cry because did he really think of her as that monstrous? As that cruel? But she knew the answer to that question and she couldn't blame him in the slightest, of course he did, why wouldn't he? If she could stain her hands with so much blood that they were constantly dripping with red sin, if she could take his fragile heart and crush it between her bruised fingers, why would she stop at making a mockery of him while she was at it?

But Gwen couldn't let him think that she was that heartless, for her own selfish need, for her own assurance that she hadn't fallen that far into the black abyss of her own misery, because the moment their hands had touched she had been so completely his that she lost all pretences of darkness, her greatest glory changing to the way she sparked his smiles, and she needed him to know that or else what was the point. "No, no that isn't what happened- saints Jesper. I- fucking hell...I liked you, I- I hated the fact I liked you but I did because you just...you made me feel."

"Feel what?"

"Just feel, Jesper. I thought the girl I was...the girl I had been was dead, that she'd died with her brothers, that she was left to rot while the Stranger could thrive but I was wrong...you made me feel human, you made me feel like that girl again, you just made me feel and I didn't want it to stop." Because whether you came as a lover or an executioner, I was ready to receive you, that whenever you looked at me I feel like I had been boiled like water to be make pure again, that the curve of your lips rewrote history for me...but I don't know how to love someone without swallowing them, without ruining them, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, forgive me dearest.

And then, the Zemeni boy, the sharpshooter, her hardest goodbye and sweetest dream finally turned around and looked at her, with his expression so spiteful, so twisted, so pained that it tore the breath from her lungs and almost brought her down to her knees. "Yeah, shame she was a lie though, right? Everything about us, everything about you was a lie because you lied to me, you manipulated me, you tricked me into betraying Kaz, again. Made me out to be one huge fucking disappointment because I fell in love with an assassin like an idiot-"

"That's not true! I never pretended to be someone I wasn't, were you not listening to a word I just said! There's wasn't a need to play a part, to lie about who I was because everyone who knew me before the Stranger was already dead!...you knew the real me Jesper, and you liked her!"

"And look where that got me!" And it was finally then that she was silenced, both of their gazes filled with pain and unurshed tears, their chests heaving and bodies trembling, but it was she who found herself looking away, unable to stand the vision of all of her sins, her mistakes as he stood there with his arms spread out and hateful, and she deserved it, she deserved it, she deserved it, she deserved it. Jesper scoffed, low in his throat as he rubbed the heel of his palm against his brow, before gesturing over towards the painting at the far right almost calmly.

"That one's the real one, the rest are decoys. I'll take it down then we can leave and not bother with each other again."

Gwen nodded tightly as he got to work behind her, thanking the saints for her mask so she couldn't be perceived, couldn't be looked at to see the devastation maiming her features that would probably only set him off again, deciding that in the end, it was better he hate her that feel the heartbreak that had practically ruined them both...but the problem was, that their argument, that their still cooling tempter had caught attention...and they were both far too buried in their agonised misery to see the vault door open once more as the guards slowly stalked in with their rifles raised and aimed.

However, they both heard the floorboard squeak, but it was Gwen who found her footing first, spinning around with the rumbling sky becoming alight with lightning as she shifted her body to face them, finding one of the rifles pointed straight for her...and another one pointed at Jesper...and she didn't even hesitate to ignore her doom as she focused on his assailant, focusing on the air inside of his lungs and expanding it swiftly until she heard it pop, his blood soaking the walls behind him like a mocking work of art as the rifle tumbled out of his lifeless hands.

Then she heard the gunshot just as his body dropped, and she braced herself for the pain, for deaths cold hand to finally embrace her and succumb to her fated demise with an apology on her lips, with a prayer for salvation, for peace...but there was nothing, and as her eyes peeled open once more, it was to find the other guard dead with a bullet in his forehead...and Jesper holding his still smoking pistol, his own gaze firmly trained on the guard that had attempted to kill him, before they slowly looked at each other in shock...knowing that they'd both risked their lives to protect the other like fools, without pause, without hesitation.

And yet it was she who broke that revelation first, swiftly muttering something about someone probably hearing that as he picked up the painting and began running, knowing now for sure that he had someone to watch his back as she chased after him, and making sure his path was clear as the wind bent to her devastating will once more, with only one thought in her mind, louder and more violent than the bullets around them. He saved your life, her saved your life, he saved your life.