onlythebranch | (no subject)

He's limping when he catches sight of her.

Limping and wearing a grin, which he knows is the sort of thing most people think of as incongruous, but he's only just been in a fight and these days, like so many other things, the fight has gone well for him. Of course, even when he'd had the hell beaten out of him, he'd considered that going in his favour because there are few things in this world Mad Sweeney loves more than a good fight. Win or lose.

These days, though, he's winning. And that applies to more than just the fights he finds himself in. He's winning games and bets, the simple act of just being. Things are going his way after a long fucking time of them going the very opposite of his way and one of the people he has to thank for that is walking in his direction right this very moment.

"Never did send you a fruit basket," he says when he's close enough. He can't remember if he'd offered, joking or otherwise. That had been a strange fucking day, between drowning and his coin, so he thinks he can be forgiven for not remembering every last detail of their conversation.

Still, he should've sent something.

She's pregnant, he remembers that, he knows he ought not to smoke around her and so he doesn't immediately reach for his case. Instead a gold coin appears between his fingers and he begins to dance it across his knuckles, something to do with his hands so he doesn't keep going for his smokes.

"Forgive me?" he asks. "And let me make it up t'you."

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"Grisha," he echoes, trying to word out. It isn't the first time she's said it to him, she'd used it to describe herself before, but he hadn't pressed for details. Seems to be the thing that means she can heal him like she has, the thing that makes her kiss so exceptional, and that is enough of an explanation for him.

Or it had been. He's curious now.

"It's what you are," he says. "A grisha."

Nina smiles brightly. "I am. There's different grisha orders: I'm a Corporalki, if we're getting specific. And a Heartrender, if we're getting more specific than that. There are Squallers, who can control air, and Tidemakers who control water. Inferni, Alkemi, Durasts, Healers. Every type in every order has its own... specialty. There doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason behind why one person is a Healer and another is a Heartrender. Maybe it's something to do with personality, but..."

She shrugs, and she felt a bit of a blush on her cheeks. She realizes she just gave Sweeney a rush of information, but she so rarely talks about that part of herself. Not to people that don't already know, and that circle is relatively small in Darrow. She's used to protecting herself.

"Heartrender, but you healed me," he says. "So also a Healer."

None of it is in the realm of his knowledge and he's goddamn old, older than most, and he knows there are people who'd wear that age with a little more pride than he does. People who wouldn't like admitting they don't know something. Sweeney doesn't give a shit, though, because when he doesn't know something, it means it's a new thing. Something he's never encountered before. The sort of thing that's interesting to him because he hasn't seen it already.

"How does that work?" he asks. "Are you just so impressive you cross all the boundaries?" He's teasing her, but only a little. Mostly he's genuinely curious.

"Heartrenders and Healers are two sides of the same coin, but they're different talents. All Corporalki learn as much healing as they can, but inevitably they show an affinity for one side of the coin or the other. I can heal, and I've gotten better at it from practice: working healing gang members as needed, or friends."

Nina shrugged and a little smile curved her red lips. "Not as impressive as you'd think. Like I said, it's practice that's been forced on me, but it draws on my energy a little. Heartrending, though... You know that glorious feeling you have during a fight? When I'm doing what I'm meant to do, it's just like that all the time."

"That does sound pretty goddamn glorious," Sweeney agrees. There are few things in this world that get his heart up like a good, solid fight. In all his very long life, he's never found a single thing to match the joy of a war, the thrill of bloodshed, the purity of a blood sacrifice.

To feel that way all the time sounds like a goddamn gift. He wonders if that much pleasure could make a person go mad, but thinks it's the sort of madness he'd like to experience himself.

"Sounds like you could do just about anything with a talent like that," he comments.

"Not anything... but a lot," she admits. "Heartrenders are coveted soldiers and we make perfect assassins. When I kill someone, it's a heart attack or a stroke. It's strange but natural causes. In Ketterdam I worked for a gang. It was the safest place to be."

A lot is more than most people can do with the sort of shit she's talking about, but Sweeney lets it go by without comment, smiling down at her. He doesn't know Ketterdam any more than he knows the Wandering Isle, but if it was the sort of place that needed gangs, it's probably more like the world he knows than they might think.

"So which did you like better?" he asks, taking her hand and giving her another spin. "Bein' a soldier or bein' a criminal?"

They're often the same thing, criminals and soldiers, if they're looked at from the right or wrong side.

Nina smiles as she spins and it's easy to fall into step again. "At least as a soldier I thought I was doing something good - there's not really even an illusion of that when you're working in a brothel and helping to put bruisers back together after a brawl. I had nothing against the brothel, mind you. It's just that it wasn't my idea to be there. I don't like being backed into a corner."

Inej made a good argument when she came to recruit her: Kaz is a bastard but he's fair. It was a better offer than she'd ever get from the likes of Pekka Rollins.

"But I needed the protection. I had no way to get home and business to take care of."

Mad Sweeney can't pretend he's never been to a brothel before, but it's a bloody outdated business model, women and men owning other women and men, taking half their fucking pay when they do all the bloody work. He doesn't give a shit if that's how someone wants to put a roof over their head and food on their table, but he doesn't hold with the idea of someone else trying to monitor that.

"Long as they gave you the protection you needed," he says. "Can't imagine whoever owned the brothel did much of that."

He doesn't need to tell her what he's seen. She knows he's old, she knows he's been around for a long bloody time. He's seen plenty.

Nina shrugs one shoulder. She's lived in the Barrel for a year and she survived a civil war before that: she's seen the horrors that people are capable of. Especially respectable men. "The White Rose is better than some of the other brothels in the Barrel. They actually try to protect their people. And the fact that I was attached to the Dregs meant no one bothered me on the street once they knew."

With a deft flick, Nina flips up the sleeves of her dress to reveal her tattoos: a pair of white roses on the inside of one arm and a crow trying to drink out of a cup on the other.

"The Kerch like to catch grisha in indenture contracts. There were so many refugees from the civil war and the rich merchants snatched them up, offering a place to live in exchange for grisha services. Squallers that could protect their ships at sea and give them favorable winds, or Healers to work in their households, or Fabrikators to design and create beautiful things for them."

She shakes her head, disgusted.

"And the refugees, desperate and unable to read Kerch, sign away their lives. The Dregs let me have my freedom and found me a way to earn money, but they still owned my contract. Having a Heartrender was still a status symbol, and an excellent threat."

Edited 2018-11-16 18:07 (UTC)

"This is an improvement then," he says. "This place."

It is for a lot of people, even if they don't all admit it. Sweeney's never been sure if this place is better or worse, not until his coin arrived anyway. He's got that bit of gold in his pocket now and he has it without having had to kill Laura Moon all over again, so that much is an improvement. And for the first time in a long time, there are people he gives a shit about. People who give a shit about him. That's an improvement, too, even if he can't say it.

"No contracts, no one to say you owe them because of some bullshit indenture." He pauses, then says, "That's how I got from Ireland to America. Went with a girl sentenced to transportation who kept believing in me even when her luck was for shit."