Inej has felt a little... lost since arriving in this world. She'd made her way well enough in Solvunn, when she didn't know any of her people were here. Even once she learned of Matthias' presence, she had some sort of purpose toward finding a way to be together again. But the move when Jesper arrived in Cadens, simply as it happened, has brought some strange, conflicting feelings to her attention.
Jesper is a social creature, always prone to making connections wherever he goes, so it is unsurprising that he's already made so many in his short time here. He has projects he's running, both things he's picked up along the way from other people and on his own, with his powers which she wishes she could help more with, but she will always be a cheerleader in his corner about. She wants him to find the faith in himself that she has in him, and if she can find a way to help him get there, she will.
But it doesn't stop there being a sort of... reflection of it against her own sense of purposelessness in this place. She's made her mental maps of the city of Cadens since the end of the summit. She doesn't know it like she knew the streets of Ketterdam, but that sort of automatic knowledge would only come with the passage of time. She knows it well enough, and it leaves her with little else to focus on, suddenly.
Sam has been a beacon in the city since she arrived. He holds the kind of hope and light in himself that Inej tries desperately to keep alive in herself. Sometimes, it's harder than she'd like to admit. She knows that Jesper sees her in a certain way, that all of their friends back home do, because of her religion, because of the way she has fought tooth and nail, blood and bone, to not allow the horrors of the last few years of her life to taint the goodness in her. But it's hard and she's tired, and she's had so many winding months of quiet, of a sort of solace she never could have met in The Barrel, that maybe it's all sort of caught up to her now.
She's perched in the windowsill of Sam's room. Perhaps not the best way to greet someone who doesn't expect to find you there, but she's perfectly still, perfectly harmless. Well. Harmless is a stretch. There is a dagger hidden away, but it isn't as though she plans to use it. She just feels anxious without it. Feels not herself if she does not have at least one blade strapped to her person– a fact that makes her stomach twist. She has lost so much of the girl she used to be.
Perhaps, at least, he will not be too caught off-guard when he comes into his room to find her perched in the window, the way she always did when she came to report to Kaz.
(All Saints, she misses him so much it aches).
One leg is draped over the outside edge of the window while the other is tucked up toward her chest. She tears off bits of bread in an attempt to feed the straggler birds not yet stowed away for the night. Some habits, she supposes, aren't so bad to keep.
It's not a new feeling - if he's being honest, Sam doesn't know if he's really, ever, not be tired since they pulled him through that well. It has its ebbs and flows, moments of almost-quiet and then periods of so much action, it takes all of Sam just to keep moving, but he would define his current state as somewhere in the middle. After the Summit, and after the Eclipse, things got busy. Busier than Sam knew what to do with. But now that the old routine has (as much as it can) settled back into place, Sam feels a bit like he needs to already be preparing for the next.
And that has nothing to do with the actual workload he's built up here in the city. There are people around here - locals, on top of some Summoned - who have come to depend on him. Something that, while incredible and what Sam had been working up to do, it does find its way to add to his plate. Never mind the fact he still hasn't gotten to setting up the town hall meeting he and Stephen had spoken about. How he hasn't looked in on Goro's happenings, at what's being said around the city, hasn't even looked in on Marlo anytime recently. He can feel these things getting away from him, can tell when he's avoiding doing other things by thinking about these, but then doesn't act on anything at all.
Then there's the rest of it - the new people he hasn't touched base with, how he knows there are people in this city he hasn't met. No one is expecting him to do it, he knows that, but he knows it needs to be done.
These are the thoughts that fill his mind as he makes it to his door, as he - distractedly - goes about unlocking it and stepping inside. It's not until the door is closed behind him and Red, who had been fine just hanging onto his shoulder, takes off towards his nest, that Sam feels it - someone else there, someone in his apartment.
The reflexes are there - a hand going to his hip and the knife he keeps there - before he sees the figure in the window frame and all of that tension rushes out of him just as quickly. "Shit, Inej." A beat, before Sam is suddenly tense again for seemingly a completely different reason. "Is everything okay?"
Her head lifts as she hears the door and she freezes– of course, she knew he would be here eventually, she was expecting him to wander in the door at any second, but she is fully aware this is the least conventional way of greeting someone. Every muscle in her body is coiled and tensed, just in case, ready to slide into action if she needs to avoid something thrown at her.
Luckily, Sam seems to be just as in control of his actions as Inej, and the second he relaxes and swears her name in a breath, she does, too. "Sorry," she has the good mind to give him a sheepish look. "I should have– knocked." You know. Like a normal person. But. Well.
She goes back to feeding the birds outside the window as she talks, letting her own lack of tension seep into the room, and hopefully to him, "I'm fine," she says simply, tossing a piece of bread onto the ledge outside. "just... I don't know." she sighs softly, tilting her head back against the sill. "Do you ever feel lost here? Like... complacency might drive you mad?"
I should have knocked she says, and then confirms for him that things are okay, and Sam huffs out a kind of laugh as the last of the tension leaves him. "Ya think?" But it accomplishes what it needs to accomplish, and Sam continues into the main area of the room with ease - setting down his bags, pulling off the ring belt that has all his items attached. He's getting comfortable, almost as if Inej sitting in his window is a completely normal and often occurrence.
When she keeps talking, though, Sam does hear the hesitation in it. Or, rather, not the hesitation, but the weight of something on her mind.
He's at the kitchen, when she finally asks it - about feeling lost, about complacency. Sam picks up a piece of bread and moves over to the couch, snorting once in answer, at least at first. "Here? No. My to-do list in this place grows every day. But complacency- that I get." He settles, then looks over to her - his expression equal amounts curious, and somewhat concerned.
She shrugs. She didn't come to be known as Wraith and Spider for nothing. If he continues being someone she feels she can trust and confide in, it very well might become normal. She likes high places, and some habits die harder than others.
When she's run out of bread to feed the birds, Inej focuses her gaze on the man as he makes himself comfortable in his own flat. Bustling about the kitchen before wandering to sit on the couch. "You are an incredibly busy man," she agrees with a nod. She sees it in the obvious ways, like how he has seemed to make himself to front-man and starting point for the Summoned, or how people just seem to know him by name all around the city, locals and Summoned alike. But the smaller things are just as much of a tell, too. The tired edge at his eyes. The tension of his worries held in his shoulders. The too-thin way he's stretched himself across too many plates at once. But. Well. She's probably not supposed to notice those things, is she? She can't help it, though.
"That obvious?" she huffs a soft sound at it; of course, it wasn't. He could only put the pieces together because she'd said anything at all. Inej was good at seeming fine when she was anything else. Lessons from Heleen and the Menagerie. Absently, her fingers brush the scar at her wrist before dropping her hand away to wrap her fingers around the edge of the window she's perched in.
"Nobody needs a Wraith here, and I don't remember how to just be a person." A bold admission for someone who keeps so much so close to the vest, but she'd come to him for this. And because he has made himself clear as a safe place for such vulnerabilities in a way that she has a hard time trusting in most people.
Honestly, she probably could find a comfortable spot there. Sam's apartment is a kind of revolving door when it comes to the people he knows and the people that live here at Mag's. He would really mind.
Her comment about how busy he is has him snorting once as he continues to get settled. He might have no idea just how much of him is being read by her, but it's not as though it's really a secret, either. When it comes to the work he does, the job he finds himself wrapped up in, he's equal parts proud of how quickly he's able to help get other's feet settled under them and also aware that someone has to do it.
Sam gives her a small grin at the huff she gives him, and he wonders for a moment if she intentionally made it obvious how she, too, was feeling. Inej had struck him since their first meeting as someone who was quiet, both in speech and step, and he wondered if that was intentional or simply a matter of her circumstance. Where it was she needed to learn to survive.
It is when she actually answers that Sam really nods - because the thing is? He gets it. He's seen this very thing in so many of his friends, of his peers. What happens when your job, your place in life, is all you really knew. I don't remember how to just be a person. For a moment, he just sort of considers that, considers how much of it rings true to him - but also what it is she's looking for by admitting it. Because he's not going to tell her oh it's easy, you just find a hobby, because that's not the truth. It's not easy, because nothing ever is.
After a short moment of consideration, Sam nods more to himself than anything.
"Are you looking for a job, or a purpose?" A beat. A small smile. " 'cause one of those is a lot easier to track down than the other."
And while there might be some level of humor in his words, there is also a seriousness. A to do kind of attitude. She came to him with this on her mind because she either saw him as someone safe enough to mention it, or because she needed the help. Or maybe both. ( He hopes it's both. )
She feels... more naked in that admission than she ever did at The Menagerie. Clothes and bodies were just that: Clothes and bodies. Everyone had them, in varying states and shapes and sizes and styles. But to hand the truth to someone in a single sentence? That was to truly reveal herself, and it is something she does not do lightly. Jesper is the only other person that knows any of these things, but that part at least, wouldn't be a surprise given how thick as thieves the two of them were. Ironic phrasing, considering.
Silence is an old friend she greets easily every day and is not something that ever seems to bother Inej. She couldn't have worked as closely with Kaz as she did if she couldn't handle a little empty, silent space between them. But this particular silence gnaws at her as he considers her, her words, what they really mean.
And then he rips straight to the center of it all with the sort of ease of someone used to having to peek beyond the surface of people's words for their true meanings.
"Are you looking for a job, or a purpose?"
She feels the breath stolen from her lungs at his words, the panic of being so seen tightening in her chest. She should leave. This was a mistake. Her fingers tighten around the edge of the sill. Slipping out the window and into the night would be easy, so easy, but she didn't come to Sam for easy.
"My purpose was taken from me, when I was brought here. I'm not sure if I'm... made for any other." It was a very personal thing, that purpose, and has been her ultimate goal since Kaz convinced Haskell to buy out her indenture. Get enough kruge to get a ship. Get a crew. Hunt the slavers that sought to ruin the lives of children and take down every single one she could find, in whatever way she felt fit at the time.
Making them pay for their crimes properly would be fine. The public didn't take kindly to those that harmed children, they would be ruined. But a murder here and there wouldn't be amiss, either. Their lives were lived in secret, by the time anyone knew it would be too late, and Inej would just take penance for the rest of her life and hope her Saints understood.
But none of that is here. She has no ship, no crew. No resources. No knife-edged boy waiting at the docks for her return. And it's left her so, so empty-feeling.
"I'm useless here, Sam... in a way that scares me." In a way that feels so whole and complete that it threatens to swallow her, drag her into its depths and drown her. She wonders how much he can glean just from the look on her face. How much of her uncertainty and her disorientation. Perhaps, she hopes, he won't look too closely.
Sam has no real idea of the weight of that statement where it concerns Inej, specifically. Objectively, he knows it would be hard for anyone. Knows where the weight and tensions for most will build up. And sure, he's known Jesper and Inej for long enough to see the pieces and shapes of what their lives must have been like, what they're used to having to do day to day, but the full weight of it is just out of Sam's grasp.
He knew that by asking what he did, it wouldn't come with an easy answer. Or it shouldn't, and if it had, well. That would have told Sam plenty more, too. But Inej very obviously takes the time to think about it, and so Sam waits patiently for whatever answer it is that she decides to give him.
It is almost as if he can feel the echo of something in her. She says taken only in the way that someone who knows what that means, to have something truly taken from you, can feel. It clenches at something in his chest, a kind of protective need to reach out for her - but he doesn't. Rather - he does remain patient, waits for her to continue, and the look he's giving her if she looks back to him will say as much.
It's not until she says useless that Sam's face tightens into a small frown, his expression turning...not combative, necessarily, but unconvinced. And he does know that there are things under the surface of her words, of her expressions, that he could look deeper into. Shadows and outlines of truths he's not entirely sure he wants to see. So, for now, he does let there remain some distance between what he's looking for.
"You're not useless, Inej." And he says it with a kind of force, with a kind of adamance. He'd ask her to join him on the couch if he didn't think she needed the space to feel better, so instead Sam just sort of exhales. "Listen- when you're used to surviving, it's hard to remind yourself how to just live. I know the feeling- there's a reason I don't slow down." Their experiences most likely aren't the same, definitely aren't the Sam, but Sam does know the feeling.
Knows it probably too well.
He takes a breath, and then exhales, hating the fact he knows what he can offer her, and that it's the last thing he wants to. "You just need the right work. Something that can help get a routine back, at least for a little bit. It won't fix everything, but it does help."
He's so patient. So attentive. There is no room to doubt that his whole attention is focused on her in this moment. It's overwhelming in its own way. The kind of attention, and even affection, that she had taken so for granted from her parents.
His insistence is so fierce, not in an angry way, but he's so sure of it, but she shakes her head. "You don't understand, Sam... No one needs my skills here, and even if they did, I don't trust anyone enough to..." She scoffs because of the word that rests on her tongue, it's the only right one, but it's so tied up in one specific person. "report to. There's no Kaz to direct my energies. The future I was just beginning to build is gone, there is... no way to continue that here, and... and there's nothing else."
Her voice drops as quiet as a whisper. "There's nothing else left. I don't–" Something in her wavers, but it does not fall. She just sits very rigid in the window, unmoving besides the slow, calming breaths she takes for a moment. "I don't remember how to just be a girl, Sam. I can't... I can't go back."
He does understand, in his own way, but he also knows that putting his foot down here and arguing isn't what Inej is looking for. Isn't the reason she showed up on his windowsill. Sam's not entirely sure he can give her what she really wants out of all of this, but he can do something. Give her something.
"Listen- Inej. I don't know exactly what it is you used to do. You found your place back home, found uses for your skills, and you survived, and I get that. Everything here is different from anything we used to know - but you aren't useless. And you don't have to just be a girl if that's not what you want."
There's a last moment of hesitation here where Sam really considers this. Because it's not safe, not if things are going to escalate the way he thinks they are. And the last thing he wants to do is put anyone, specially Inej, in danger. But...
He lets out a breath and turns where he's sitting on his couch to face her - even with her being across the room. Faces her fully as he continues.
"Why don't you help me out, then?"
He waits for some kind of initial reaction, as if making sure she knows he isn't pitying her by asking this. "I don't mean the errands I run all day or whatever, no. I mean with the city. See-" he adjusts, a kind of fire lit up in him as worries he can never quite shake come up to the surface. "We're all guests here, new, different. The Cities- Marlo- they've been good to us so far, but we're also heading to a war. Things can change, and quickly. The public opinion can move, Marlo can make decisions - hell. Goro's out there right now trying to incite some sort of shit and I had no idea until he held a giant public forum of his followers and marched on City Hall."
There is a second here where Sam realizes how heated he's become over the last couple of moments, and takes a steadying breath to calm himself down.
"I don't want anything to happen, and I can stop some things, but I can't be everywhere at once. And I can't do anything if I don't know what's coming. I'm not asking you to take sides, or even really do much except listen. Keep tabs on what's being said, what the people around here think of us. Hell- you're already faster than I am through this city, I just need someone I can trust to keep an ear to the ground. Is that something you think you can help me with?"
But I do, some part of her screamed. I want so desperately to be just a girl again. But the parts of her that had been turned to steel and given sharpened edges were much, much bigger and louder than that one. She knows it isn't possible to turn back the clock in such a way that her innocence has not be stolen from her, and she thinks that would be the only way to find her way to simply being. Some things are not possible to change, and Inej has become increasingly more and more used to that over the last three years.
She listens and he's still just so Saintsforsaken genuine that it hurts. Ketterdam was not made of people like Sam, and in her time there, she'd perhaps nearly forgotten that they existed.
And then something in the air shifts. Even before he turns his attention– and his body– completely toward her. Before he speaks a second time. It's heavy, and it's electric and it snaps her attention fully to the man she'd felt safe enough to visit in such an unconventional way.
The tiniest of frowns skates across her features. She doesn't even have time to form the words to ask him how he means for her to help before he continues, words increasingly more impassioned.
Something inside of her screams this is it. What 'it' is exactly, she isn't sure, but she knows she has to greet it, this feeling so full of something light enough she might be able to fly in the weightlessness of it. She just has to step off the edge first.
"How soon do you think the war might be brought to us?" Because she doesn't doubt that prediction at all. She may be young, but her world was often strife with war and she's seen the effects of it all too easily. "Who is Goro...? Did that happen before I got to Cadens?" Saints, she hopes so, because she won't particularly know how to feel to think she'd missed something so huge while she was adjusting to the city.
It's in the moment that he takes to calm himself that Inej has already made her choice. Decision made. But as he continues, she feels that decision cementing in the center of her. So, when the question comes once more, she smiles. Not the smile that belongs to Inej, the girl, bright and full of sunshine. No. This is the smile that belongs to Inej, The Wraith, sharp-edged and certain. "Yes," she nods, as if to accent the word. "I can absolutely help you with that." It's the very thing she's the best at in life now.
Sam still isn't sure exactly how he feels about all of this - not because it's asking for help, exactly, though he knows there is some small part of him that doesn't exactly love the fact it's becoming big enough he needs help - but it's the fact it's Inej. Inej, who he barely know anything about, but doesn't need to know much to understand how hard her life has asked her to be. Inej, who is still a kid, who is on his window sill right now asking for help.
Again, Sam finds himself thinking about Natasha. Missing Natasha.
Sam barely gets the words out before Inej shifts, and he knows that they've officially crossed this line. That even if he said nevermind, I don't want to do this, that it's too late. So Sam sighs, runs a hand along the back of his neck.
"It's too hard to tell. For a while there, I thought it was right around the corner. Now things feel like they've slowed down. It could be next month, it could be in a year, but we're headed down that road."
She asks about Goro, asks about the rally, and Sam is about to tell her not to worry about it because it's fine, it's happened and it's passed them by and it can be dealt with later, and that is when Inej smiles. But it's also not Inej, but something else. Someone else. Someone a lot closer to Nat. Yes she says, and Sam feels himself still a little. Watch her. I can absolutely help you with that.
Worry curls around his chest and tightens. She's just a kid.
"I'm serious, you know. About just watching and listening." Because this is important for him, important for her to understand. "And not getting involved. I don't want anything happening to you."
She nods at that answer. These things get muddied and hard to parse as each side of the line tries to blur their plans. That was the way of war, until the first strike was waged.
"They won't know I'm listening, I promise." Which is not the same as promising not to get involved or not be reckless. Inej may often be one of the more level-headed of her core group of people back home, but she is still just as prone as anyone to jump into a fray if it's needed.
"But I will not make you promises I could break, Sam. I cannot promise I will never get involved. Circumstance can change everything." If someone were in trouble, if action was needed and there was anything she could do to help, she would. Perhaps, even if he cannot appreciate the idea of her acting rashly, he can at least appreciate her honesty about it.
"For some reason, that doesn't actually make me feel any better." Mostly because he knows it is not the same, it is not a promise in the way Sam was looking for one, but he gives a small smile all the same.
Inej continues, and Sam lets out a breath. "I know." Because it's true - he does know her well enough to know that if something happened, really happened, he wouldn't be able to stop her from getting involved. He doesn't need to know her all that well to know that's the case. "But I had to try."
She laughs softly, "I am afraid that is the best offer I can hand you." At least Sam can trust her to be honest and upfront. She would need a very good reason to keep something from this man that she has come to trust– no easy feat, so he should be glad it happened so quickly.
He is glad, because whether or not he knows Inej well enough to know exactly what trust means to Inej, especially when given this quickly, he has a feeling that this is something pretty important.
Which means he'll take what he can get, and her best offer is most likely going to be the best offer.
"I'll take it, and hope your survival instinct will fill in the rest."
Sam offers a smile, after, if only because does trust her. He hopes that's clear enough, but it doesn't mean he won't worry.
Sam’s reaction + Inej yeets out the window again to end?
Sam is committing to a balancing act here, where he’s needing to be just far enough on the ‘adult’ aside of the line to have authority in the situation, and far enough away from it that it doesn’t land him with her hackles up, back against the wall, and ready to disappear or strike either one.
Somehow, he’s doing it. He’s hit that strangely perfect mix of older and protective with a genuine demeanor that can’t be ignored. Despite how little he knows her, he cares, and she see it etched across the concern in his eyes, the small smile he hands her in effort to prove his trustability.
It works.
That smile of his earns him one of her own and she swings her legs over the edge of the sill, pushing herself into the room and going to sit next to him. She makes sure she’s making eye contact with him before she says, “Thank you,” the words are reverent and ring through the room like a heavy token laid at his feet— there is a gravity to the idea of her saying so at all. “…I won’t forget the chance you took, are taking, on me.”
The moment that he catches the smile she gives him in return, there is definitely a feeling of relief. That she understands what it is he's trying to do, that she knows the place he's trying to inhabit. Because she is just a kid, whether or not she's had to grow up quickly, and she deserves to have some level of feeling like she's being looked after.
Thank you she says, once she's sat down next to him. Once she has his eyes. And Sam...nods, once, at it. Because for all that he might want to push back on that, how much he might want to say it's not that it's a chance, I do believe you, but instead of any of that Sam just. Smiles at her and nods, because a part of him does understand that reverence. How important it is.
( Not the first time, he pictures Natasha. The quiet reverence of her voice. )
"I believe it will." She nods a little. "Time will tell." If she's good at nothing else, Inej- and more so still The Wraith– is very good at patience.
This... feels like the right note to end their conversation on. She gets back to her feet, a hand sweeping across herself in what's obviously a religious sign. "Saints be with you, Sam Wilson."
Without giving him a chance to ask anything further, she gives him a slight nod. And she could go out the door. It would be the normal thing to do. But normal left Inej years ago. She slips out the way she came in– through the window, and up to the roof, where she feels the most natural anyway.
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Early April » Mag's Inn, Sam's room
Jesper is a social creature, always prone to making connections wherever he goes, so it is unsurprising that he's already made so many in his short time here. He has projects he's running, both things he's picked up along the way from other people and on his own, with his powers which she wishes she could help more with, but she will always be a cheerleader in his corner about. She wants him to find the faith in himself that she has in him, and if she can find a way to help him get there, she will.
But it doesn't stop there being a sort of... reflection of it against her own sense of purposelessness in this place. She's made her mental maps of the city of Cadens since the end of the summit. She doesn't know it like she knew the streets of Ketterdam, but that sort of automatic knowledge would only come with the passage of time. She knows it well enough, and it leaves her with little else to focus on, suddenly.
Sam has been a beacon in the city since she arrived. He holds the kind of hope and light in himself that Inej tries desperately to keep alive in herself. Sometimes, it's harder than she'd like to admit. She knows that Jesper sees her in a certain way, that all of their friends back home do, because of her religion, because of the way she has fought tooth and nail, blood and bone, to not allow the horrors of the last few years of her life to taint the goodness in her. But it's hard and she's tired, and she's had so many winding months of quiet, of a sort of solace she never could have met in The Barrel, that maybe it's all sort of caught up to her now.
She's perched in the windowsill of Sam's room. Perhaps not the best way to greet someone who doesn't expect to find you there, but she's perfectly still, perfectly harmless. Well. Harmless is a stretch. There is a dagger hidden away, but it isn't as though she plans to use it. She just feels anxious without it. Feels not herself if she does not have at least one blade strapped to her person– a fact that makes her stomach twist. She has lost so much of the girl she used to be.
Perhaps, at least, he will not be too caught off-guard when he comes into his room to find her perched in the window, the way she always did when she came to report to Kaz.
One leg is draped over the outside edge of the window while the other is tucked up toward her chest. She tears off bits of bread in an attempt to feed the straggler birds not yet stowed away for the night. Some habits, she supposes, aren't so bad to keep.
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It's not a new feeling - if he's being honest, Sam doesn't know if he's really, ever, not be tired since they pulled him through that well. It has its ebbs and flows, moments of almost-quiet and then periods of so much action, it takes all of Sam just to keep moving, but he would define his current state as somewhere in the middle. After the Summit, and after the Eclipse, things got busy. Busier than Sam knew what to do with. But now that the old routine has (as much as it can) settled back into place, Sam feels a bit like he needs to already be preparing for the next.
And that has nothing to do with the actual workload he's built up here in the city. There are people around here - locals, on top of some Summoned - who have come to depend on him. Something that, while incredible and what Sam had been working up to do, it does find its way to add to his plate. Never mind the fact he still hasn't gotten to setting up the town hall meeting he and Stephen had spoken about. How he hasn't looked in on Goro's happenings, at what's being said around the city, hasn't even looked in on Marlo anytime recently. He can feel these things getting away from him, can tell when he's avoiding doing other things by thinking about these, but then doesn't act on anything at all.
Then there's the rest of it - the new people he hasn't touched base with, how he knows there are people in this city he hasn't met. No one is expecting him to do it, he knows that, but he knows it needs to be done.
These are the thoughts that fill his mind as he makes it to his door, as he - distractedly - goes about unlocking it and stepping inside. It's not until the door is closed behind him and Red, who had been fine just hanging onto his shoulder, takes off towards his nest, that Sam feels it - someone else there, someone in his apartment.
The reflexes are there - a hand going to his hip and the knife he keeps there - before he sees the figure in the window frame and all of that tension rushes out of him just as quickly. "Shit, Inej." A beat, before Sam is suddenly tense again for seemingly a completely different reason. "Is everything okay?"
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Luckily, Sam seems to be just as in control of his actions as Inej, and the second he relaxes and swears her name in a breath, she does, too. "Sorry," she has the good mind to give him a sheepish look. "I should have– knocked." You know. Like a normal person. But. Well.
She goes back to feeding the birds outside the window as she talks, letting her own lack of tension seep into the room, and hopefully to him, "I'm fine," she says simply, tossing a piece of bread onto the ledge outside. "just... I don't know." she sighs softly, tilting her head back against the sill. "Do you ever feel lost here? Like... complacency might drive you mad?"
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When she keeps talking, though, Sam does hear the hesitation in it. Or, rather, not the hesitation, but the weight of something on her mind.
He's at the kitchen, when she finally asks it - about feeling lost, about complacency. Sam picks up a piece of bread and moves over to the couch, snorting once in answer, at least at first. "Here? No. My to-do list in this place grows every day. But complacency- that I get." He settles, then looks over to her - his expression equal amounts curious, and somewhat concerned.
"Are you having trouble getting settled?"
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When she's run out of bread to feed the birds, Inej focuses her gaze on the man as he makes himself comfortable in his own flat. Bustling about the kitchen before wandering to sit on the couch. "You are an incredibly busy man," she agrees with a nod. She sees it in the obvious ways, like how he has seemed to make himself to front-man and starting point for the Summoned, or how people just seem to know him by name all around the city, locals and Summoned alike. But the smaller things are just as much of a tell, too. The tired edge at his eyes. The tension of his worries held in his shoulders. The too-thin way he's stretched himself across too many plates at once. But. Well. She's probably not supposed to notice those things, is she? She can't help it, though.
"That obvious?" she huffs a soft sound at it; of course, it wasn't. He could only put the pieces together because she'd said anything at all. Inej was good at seeming fine when she was anything else. Lessons from Heleen and the Menagerie. Absently, her fingers brush the scar at her wrist before dropping her hand away to wrap her fingers around the edge of the window she's perched in.
"Nobody needs a Wraith here, and I don't remember how to just be a person." A bold admission for someone who keeps so much so close to the vest, but she'd come to him for this. And because he has made himself clear as a safe place for such vulnerabilities in a way that she has a hard time trusting in most people.
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Her comment about how busy he is has him snorting once as he continues to get settled. He might have no idea just how much of him is being read by her, but it's not as though it's really a secret, either. When it comes to the work he does, the job he finds himself wrapped up in, he's equal parts proud of how quickly he's able to help get other's feet settled under them and also aware that someone has to do it.
Sam gives her a small grin at the huff she gives him, and he wonders for a moment if she intentionally made it obvious how she, too, was feeling. Inej had struck him since their first meeting as someone who was quiet, both in speech and step, and he wondered if that was intentional or simply a matter of her circumstance. Where it was she needed to learn to survive.
It is when she actually answers that Sam really nods - because the thing is? He gets it. He's seen this very thing in so many of his friends, of his peers. What happens when your job, your place in life, is all you really knew. I don't remember how to just be a person. For a moment, he just sort of considers that, considers how much of it rings true to him - but also what it is she's looking for by admitting it. Because he's not going to tell her oh it's easy, you just find a hobby, because that's not the truth. It's not easy, because nothing ever is.
After a short moment of consideration, Sam nods more to himself than anything.
"Are you looking for a job, or a purpose?" A beat. A small smile. " 'cause one of those is a lot easier to track down than the other."
And while there might be some level of humor in his words, there is also a seriousness. A to do kind of attitude. She came to him with this on her mind because she either saw him as someone safe enough to mention it, or because she needed the help. Or maybe both. ( He hopes it's both. )
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Silence is an old friend she greets easily every day and is not something that ever seems to bother Inej. She couldn't have worked as closely with Kaz as she did if she couldn't handle a little empty, silent space between them. But this particular silence gnaws at her as he considers her, her words, what they really mean.
And then he rips straight to the center of it all with the sort of ease of someone used to having to peek beyond the surface of people's words for their true meanings.
She feels the breath stolen from her lungs at his words, the panic of being so seen tightening in her chest. She should leave. This was a mistake. Her fingers tighten around the edge of the sill. Slipping out the window and into the night would be easy, so easy, but she didn't come to Sam for easy.
"My purpose was taken from me, when I was brought here. I'm not sure if I'm... made for any other." It was a very personal thing, that purpose, and has been her ultimate goal since Kaz convinced Haskell to buy out her indenture. Get enough kruge to get a ship. Get a crew. Hunt the slavers that sought to ruin the lives of children and take down every single one she could find, in whatever way she felt fit at the time.
Making them pay for their crimes properly would be fine. The public didn't take kindly to those that harmed children, they would be ruined. But a murder here and there wouldn't be amiss, either. Their lives were lived in secret, by the time anyone knew it would be too late, and Inej would just take penance for the rest of her life and hope her Saints understood.
But none of that is here. She has no ship, no crew. No resources. No knife-edged boy waiting at the docks for her return. And it's left her so, so empty-feeling.
"I'm useless here, Sam... in a way that scares me." In a way that feels so whole and complete that it threatens to swallow her, drag her into its depths and drown her. She wonders how much he can glean just from the look on her face. How much of her uncertainty and her disorientation. Perhaps, she hopes, he won't look too closely.
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He knew that by asking what he did, it wouldn't come with an easy answer. Or it shouldn't, and if it had, well. That would have told Sam plenty more, too. But Inej very obviously takes the time to think about it, and so Sam waits patiently for whatever answer it is that she decides to give him.
It is almost as if he can feel the echo of something in her. She says taken only in the way that someone who knows what that means, to have something truly taken from you, can feel. It clenches at something in his chest, a kind of protective need to reach out for her - but he doesn't. Rather - he does remain patient, waits for her to continue, and the look he's giving her if she looks back to him will say as much.
It's not until she says useless that Sam's face tightens into a small frown, his expression turning...not combative, necessarily, but unconvinced. And he does know that there are things under the surface of her words, of her expressions, that he could look deeper into. Shadows and outlines of truths he's not entirely sure he wants to see. So, for now, he does let there remain some distance between what he's looking for.
"You're not useless, Inej." And he says it with a kind of force, with a kind of adamance. He'd ask her to join him on the couch if he didn't think she needed the space to feel better, so instead Sam just sort of exhales. "Listen- when you're used to surviving, it's hard to remind yourself how to just live. I know the feeling- there's a reason I don't slow down." Their experiences most likely aren't the same, definitely aren't the Sam, but Sam does know the feeling.
Knows it probably too well.
He takes a breath, and then exhales, hating the fact he knows what he can offer her, and that it's the last thing he wants to. "You just need the right work. Something that can help get a routine back, at least for a little bit. It won't fix everything, but it does help."
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His insistence is so fierce, not in an angry way, but he's so sure of it, but she shakes her head. "You don't understand, Sam... No one needs my skills here, and even if they did, I don't trust anyone enough to..." She scoffs because of the word that rests on her tongue, it's the only right one, but it's so tied up in one specific person. "report to. There's no Kaz to direct my energies. The future I was just beginning to build is gone, there is... no way to continue that here, and... and there's nothing else."
Her voice drops as quiet as a whisper. "There's nothing else left. I don't–" Something in her wavers, but it does not fall. She just sits very rigid in the window, unmoving besides the slow, calming breaths she takes for a moment. "I don't remember how to just be a girl, Sam. I can't... I can't go back."
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"Listen- Inej. I don't know exactly what it is you used to do. You found your place back home, found uses for your skills, and you survived, and I get that. Everything here is different from anything we used to know - but you aren't useless. And you don't have to just be a girl if that's not what you want."
There's a last moment of hesitation here where Sam really considers this. Because it's not safe, not if things are going to escalate the way he thinks they are. And the last thing he wants to do is put anyone, specially Inej, in danger. But...
He lets out a breath and turns where he's sitting on his couch to face her - even with her being across the room. Faces her fully as he continues.
"Why don't you help me out, then?"
He waits for some kind of initial reaction, as if making sure she knows he isn't pitying her by asking this. "I don't mean the errands I run all day or whatever, no. I mean with the city. See-" he adjusts, a kind of fire lit up in him as worries he can never quite shake come up to the surface. "We're all guests here, new, different. The Cities- Marlo- they've been good to us so far, but we're also heading to a war. Things can change, and quickly. The public opinion can move, Marlo can make decisions - hell. Goro's out there right now trying to incite some sort of shit and I had no idea until he held a giant public forum of his followers and marched on City Hall."
There is a second here where Sam realizes how heated he's become over the last couple of moments, and takes a steadying breath to calm himself down.
"I don't want anything to happen, and I can stop some things, but I can't be everywhere at once. And I can't do anything if I don't know what's coming. I'm not asking you to take sides, or even really do much except listen. Keep tabs on what's being said, what the people around here think of us. Hell- you're already faster than I am through this city, I just need someone I can trust to keep an ear to the ground. Is that something you think you can help me with?"
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She listens and he's still just so Saintsforsaken genuine that it hurts. Ketterdam was not made of people like Sam, and in her time there, she'd perhaps nearly forgotten that they existed.
And then something in the air shifts. Even before he turns his attention– and his body– completely toward her. Before he speaks a second time. It's heavy, and it's electric and it snaps her attention fully to the man she'd felt safe enough to visit in such an unconventional way.
The tiniest of frowns skates across her features. She doesn't even have time to form the words to ask him how he means for her to help before he continues, words increasingly more impassioned.
Something inside of her screams this is it. What 'it' is exactly, she isn't sure, but she knows she has to greet it, this feeling so full of something light enough she might be able to fly in the weightlessness of it. She just has to step off the edge first.
"How soon do you think the war might be brought to us?" Because she doesn't doubt that prediction at all. She may be young, but her world was often strife with war and she's seen the effects of it all too easily. "Who is Goro...? Did that happen before I got to Cadens?" Saints, she hopes so, because she won't particularly know how to feel to think she'd missed something so huge while she was adjusting to the city.
It's in the moment that he takes to calm himself that Inej has already made her choice. Decision made. But as he continues, she feels that decision cementing in the center of her. So, when the question comes once more, she smiles. Not the smile that belongs to Inej, the girl, bright and full of sunshine. No. This is the smile that belongs to Inej, The Wraith, sharp-edged and certain. "Yes," she nods, as if to accent the word. "I can absolutely help you with that." It's the very thing she's the best at in life now.
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Again, Sam finds himself thinking about Natasha. Missing Natasha.
Sam barely gets the words out before Inej shifts, and he knows that they've officially crossed this line. That even if he said nevermind, I don't want to do this, that it's too late. So Sam sighs, runs a hand along the back of his neck.
"It's too hard to tell. For a while there, I thought it was right around the corner. Now things feel like they've slowed down. It could be next month, it could be in a year, but we're headed down that road."
She asks about Goro, asks about the rally, and Sam is about to tell her not to worry about it because it's fine, it's happened and it's passed them by and it can be dealt with later, and that is when Inej smiles. But it's also not Inej, but something else. Someone else. Someone a lot closer to Nat. Yes she says, and Sam feels himself still a little. Watch her. I can absolutely help you with that.
Worry curls around his chest and tightens. She's just a kid.
"I'm serious, you know. About just watching and listening." Because this is important for him, important for her to understand. "And not getting involved. I don't want anything happening to you."
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"They won't know I'm listening, I promise." Which is not the same as promising not to get involved or not be reckless. Inej may often be one of the more level-headed of her core group of people back home, but she is still just as prone as anyone to jump into a fray if it's needed.
"But I will not make you promises I could break, Sam. I cannot promise I will never get involved. Circumstance can change everything." If someone were in trouble, if action was needed and there was anything she could do to help, she would. Perhaps, even if he cannot appreciate the idea of her acting rashly, he can at least appreciate her honesty about it.
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Inej continues, and Sam lets out a breath. "I know." Because it's true - he does know her well enough to know that if something happened, really happened, he wouldn't be able to stop her from getting involved. He doesn't need to know her all that well to know that's the case. "But I had to try."
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wrapping here or next tag or two, maybe?
Which means he'll take what he can get, and her best offer is most likely going to be the best offer.
"I'll take it, and hope your survival instinct will fill in the rest."
Sam offers a smile, after, if only because does trust her. He hopes that's clear enough, but it doesn't mean he won't worry.
Sam’s reaction + Inej yeets out the window again to end?
Somehow, he’s doing it. He’s hit that strangely perfect mix of older and protective with a genuine demeanor that can’t be ignored. Despite how little he knows her, he cares, and she see it etched across the concern in his eyes, the small smile he hands her in effort to prove his trustability.
It works.
That smile of his earns him one of her own and she swings her legs over the edge of the sill, pushing herself into the room and going to sit next to him. She makes sure she’s making eye contact with him before she says, “Thank you,” the words are reverent and ring through the room like a heavy token laid at his feet— there is a gravity to the idea of her saying so at all. “…I won’t forget the chance you took, are taking, on me.”
sounds good!
Thank you she says, once she's sat down next to him. Once she has his eyes. And Sam...nods, once, at it. Because for all that he might want to push back on that, how much he might want to say it's not that it's a chance, I do believe you, but instead of any of that Sam just. Smiles at her and nods, because a part of him does understand that reverence. How important it is.
( Not the first time, he pictures Natasha. The quiet reverence of her voice. )
"I hope it helps."
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This... feels like the right note to end their conversation on. She gets back to her feet, a hand sweeping across herself in what's obviously a religious sign. "Saints be with you, Sam Wilson."
Without giving him a chance to ask anything further, she gives him a slight nod. And she could go out the door. It would be the normal thing to do. But normal left Inej years ago. She slips out the way she came in– through the window, and up to the roof, where she feels the most natural anyway.