(no subject)

[bookmaker_boss]

What proof do you have that the priest is a spy, Tatiana asked him, three times, and three times Tommy answered, I give you my word. This was the way things were done. Tommy loaded the marked bullet into his revolver and spent the day looking for Hughes and felt no remorse when he tracked him down. He’d killed better men for worse reasons.

What proof do you have that the priest is a spy sang in his skull, as Hughes loomed over Tommy in the back of his car and told him to come with a formal apology. He had, but not before warning Arthur and John that the mission was bust, watched, sabotaged, cursed. Cursed, like he was. Cursed like that bloody sapphire necklace. Not before asking Ada a favor she could only give for the love in her heart for a dead man.

They were all dead men.

What proof do you have that the priest is a spy?

Hughes’s penance felt like poison in Tommy’s mouth when he spoke it, but he had. Tatiana watched in confusion, but her face was a blur, a mess of color and shape that Tommy knew only because he’d watched it so closely two nights ago. And when he left, it was with poison in his mouth, poison and bile—but the bile was real. He wretched three time in the street on the way from the dinner with Hughes and the Russians to Ada’s house.

Everything was a blur by then, everything heavy and throbbing and wrecked. Tatiana’s voice was no longer hers in his head. It was May’s. It was Grace’s. It was his mother’s

Halfway through telling the Special Adviser to the Soviet Consul the plan that Hughes and the Odd Fellows had concocted, Tommy lost his sight entirely. The world went all dim and black and awful. The last time it was so dim and black and awful was in the tunnel. But Ada was there. Ada was there for him to warn, to explain, to tell—

“Drive me to the hospital, Ada,” he told her, and remembered nothing else of what he said. He could feel the words, but he couldn’t recall them. Everything was a throbbing, messy blur in the dim and black and awful pain of it all. He could hear Grace, his mother, every friend he ever lost in the war. He could see his father, standing there, and the scars on his face. He could—

I told you, I give you my word.

Thomas Shelby was not conscious when he arrived in Darrow, but he was far from dead. This was a state of things that he was intimately familiar with, a war hero and gangster. He’d been beaten within an inch of his life more than once in the last three years he’d been running the Peaky Blinders. He’d been shot at and maimed. He’d been nearly crushed to death in mine collapses back in France, breathed in the gases on those killing fields and lived to see the next day. Father Hughes and his thugs from the Kings’ army in India would not be the end of him.

The mad gypsy bastard was too stubborn to know when to lay down and die. Even when the ghost of his father came to give him the advice for a moment.

Comments

[every_blossom_blooming]

"Saints," she gasped when she saw the man just lying in the stairwell. Nina didn't usually take the stairs, but here she was, listening hard to make sure the man was still breathing. Her first thought was: how was she going to get him to her apartment?

She hurried back down to the third floor and banged on Billy Russo's door until it opened. "I need you to help me move a body."

Given what Frank had told her, he seemed like the kind of man that could be trusted with this kind of thing without having a breakdown about it. The fact that he didn't really ask her any questions before following her into the stairwell was a mild relief.

Between the two of them, they managed to move the man to her apartment. Billy did most of the heavy lifting while Nina focused on keeping his head and neck from moving.

"I owe you," was all she said before she sent Billy out. The man was stretched out on a sheet in her bedroom - it was the easiest way to keep his back straight. Nina took stock of his injuries, closing her eyes as she tried to visualize the internal wounds.

"Saints help me," she whispered as she opened her eyes again. "I think you need a hospital."

[bookmaker_boss]

Tommy rouses slightly when he's moved, but in that blurry way that had swum around him when Hughes and his thugs had taken him to that dark warehouse or whatever it had been, when Patrick had leaned over him and they had discussed him like he wasn't even there.

There were two of them, he knows. He can tell. He can't see them, but he can hear them over his head. Her voice--she has a lilt to it, not so unlike Tatiana.

"Fuck," he breathes, trying to shove up onto his elbows. Even without being able to look around, his head swims. His stomach twists uncomfortable. "Fuck. No hospital."

[every_blossom_blooming]

"No no no no no," she gasped out, hands flying to make him stay still. "Don't move. You're badly hurt. I won't take you to a damn hospital if you stop moving."

Nina was trying hard not to impose her will on him entirely, but she was worried for his head. "Please. I'll do what I can if you just-- stop. What's your name?"

[bookmaker_boss]

Something happens, and he's not sure if it's his body giving up on him or what, but he lets it happen, this locking up of his limbs, this inevitable collapse. He lays still a moment, then turns to the side to heave.

It's dry and hurts his throat. But, for a brief moment, color flashes across his vision. That's something at least, he thinks. He's not sure what, but it's something.

"Thomas," he says, fingers wrapped into something soft--cotton; a sheet?--spread under him. "The fuck did Ada give me off to more Russians?"

[every_blossom_blooming]

Nina's hands hovered, but she didn't touch him just yet, instead focusing on keeping his head from moving too much even as he heaved. "Easy," she whispered. She swept one hand over his stomach, soothing the nausea as best she could. He needed-- so much.

"I'm not Russian," she said. "Now please stop moving and let me help you, or I'm going to knock you out and do it that way."

Nina knelt at his head and held her hands on either side of it without touching him. She focused on his brain, taking deep breaths as she made sure that all the vessels were healing to avoid any extra swelling. She prayed to every saint she could think of. She found the broken plate of his skull and whispered her thanks that the fracture was fairly linear.

"Try to stay awake a little longer,' she murmured. "Tell me what you feel."

[bookmaker_boss]

"Like shit," he says mildly. He clings to the feeble edges of his consciousness, the faint hints of light and color fleeting across his vision, or what exists of it. None of the dizziness and nausea really abates. He hates being worked over like this, crushed under a weight totally different than the mud of the tunnels in France.

He'd prefer to be in one of those tunnels, he thinks. One of the boats with the mad dogs.

"Not Russian," he whispers. "Fuck are you, huh?"

[every_blossom_blooming]

"I'm from a place called Ravka, which... I suppose might be similar to your Russia. But it isn't."

Sweat broke across her brow as she focused on doing what she could for his concussion. There was only so much she could speed it up, and for the first time in a long time she simply wanted to scream: I'm not a healer. Nina sniffled a bit but stayed focused as she stretched her awareness out. He had broken ribs, and he was bleeding somewhere inside. She focused on that - she had to stop the bleeding before he drowned in it.

[bookmaker_boss]

It means nothing to him, those words. He's fairly certain he's gone mad with it all.

Everything goes clear for a moment. Not quite good enough to make things out well, but enough that he can make out the color and shape of a girl--god christ, she's barely older than Michael, he's sure--and he reaches out for her.

"Stop," he says, finding her cheek. "It'll keep."

[every_blossom_blooming]

"You're bleeding and I'm going to stop it before I give up," she insisted as he touched her cheek. "Or you're not making it through the night."

If he did make it, he'd be in bad shape. "Go to sleep," she murmured as she slowly lowered his pulse as much as she dared. Just enough to put him out. Some silly part of her was sad to put him to sleep - he had gorgeous eyes. She took another deep breath and spent another few hours doing her best to patch up his insides. The broken ribs could wait. The concussion would heal itself.

When she finished, she got up and found a washcloth so that she could gently clean his face and his hands. She put a blanket over him and ended up passing out on the floor next to him.

[bookmaker_boss]

Time stopped.

Rather, when Tommy wakes next, he has no idea how to gauge the time. He doesn't know where he is, what's happening. He isn't in Ada's home, where he last remembers being, or the restaurant with Hughes and the Russians. He doesn't hear Charlie, or Mary, or his brothers anywhere in the distance.

His aches and pains have aches and pains. His vision is blurry, but he can at least see the light coming in through the window, the vague shapes and colors around the unfamiliar room.

[every_blossom_blooming]

"Oh good, you're awake. Don't move too much," Nina warned as she came into the room. She sank down next to Thomas. She had a glass of water and a straw.

"Try drinking this, it's just water," she said as she tucked the straw into his mouth. "Saints, I thought I was going to lose you in the night."

[bookmaker_boss]

"Do you have whiskey?"

He sits up, a little, moving as little as possible. There's a wall or a headboard behind him, enough to brace his back against. His head swims uncomfortably when he moves, but not as badly as when he was brought up the stairs--that must have happened, he thinks. He doesn't think he imagined it.

Still, this isn't Ada's house. She didn't have a lady boarder, last Tommy knew, and anyway, Ada would have been right there if he were in her home.

He takes the glass with a shaking hand, staring at it and the plastic sticking out of it.

[every_blossom_blooming]

Nina groaned when he sat up. "I swear by all that's holy if you don't stop moving I will put you in a coma for the next three days and you'll just have to ride it out in my bathtub," she huffed as he took the glass from her.

"It's a straw. I put it in there so you could drink it while lying down." She narrowed her eyes at him. She probably looked exhausted, but she hoped she also looked mildly threatening.

[bookmaker_boss]

"Are you going to hit me over the head again and undo all the witchcraft you've already worked on me?" Tommy asks with mild aplomb. "I know what a straw is, love. Just never seen one with a curve on it."

He sips the water. He'd prefer whiskey. Hell, at this rate, he'd prefer vodka and he's pretty sure satan himself made vodka.

"You're worried over nothing," he says, as if his vision weren't a cloud and his head weren't throbbing incessantly.

[every_blossom_blooming]

"No, I'll do extra witchcraft. And don't tell me it's nothing - a fractured skull, a concussion, a bruise at the back of your head. I nearly considered putting a hole in your skull to ease the swelling," she huffed as she sat back.

"Broken ribs, internal bleeding. I stayed up half the night trying to put the worst of it to right, but I'm--" She hiccuped and took a breath to calm herself down. "I'm not a Healer. And I need you to cooperate if you want to recover without lasting damage. And I can't even promise you that."

Nina rubbed her forehead. She was still exhausted and she was hungry. Her free hand rested over her swelling belly and she made a little face as the baby kicked. They were hungry too, apparently.

[bookmaker_boss]

She lists everything off the way he had to Ada, and Tommy watches the shape of her move. It's cleaner shapes now, more distinct, but nothing is particular clear yet.

"You missed the part where I'm a bit blind at the moment," he says.

Healer, witch, all of it reads like his mother or grandmother, the old world that the Lees still live in. It's only since he's felt this curse on his bones that he's felt close to all that sort of thing again, since his mother died.

"Sit," he says, in a rough approximation of Polly's concern. "Before you fall over."

[every_blossom_blooming]

Nina rolled her eyes and sat. "I could've guessed at your blindness given the bruise on the back of your head."

She sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. "Look, I need to keep you as still as I can. By all rights, you should be in the hospital, and if you make this difficult for me, I'll cart you off there. I already owe a dubious man a favor just for getting you up the stairs."

[bookmaker_boss]

"You've got me still," Tommy says. As still as he's likely to be without being put in traction. He knows how to lie quietly. But he refuses to be put on his back if he can help it.

He doesn't even move his head, though he wants to. Not that he'd be able to make out much more than blurry, dizzying shapes and the hint of color.

"Dubious man carrying a dead man upstairs for you," Tommy mumbles. "Dubious man in your bed. All sounds very fucking sordid, don't you think?"

[every_blossom_blooming]

Nina gave him a dubious look at his promise of stillness and wondered if the effort was lost on him. She had no way of gauging how good or bad his sight was without him telling her.

"I worked for a government and a gang, sordid is my second language," she said airily. "Are you hungry?"

[bookmaker_boss]

"Oh we ought to get right along then," Tommy says, somewhere between exhausted and morbidly relieved. He's not sure how he feels, actually, about a Russian-sounding woman that works for governments and gangs, baldly telling him that sort of thing. But then, it also seems exactly the sort of thing that a Russian would do, given what he's learned about them in the past few months.

They're all fucking crazy.

The thought of food turns his stomach. "Tea," he says gently. "And no fucking straws, please. I promise I'll only move a little."

[every_blossom_blooming]

"If you're nice to me, I'll spike it," she said of the tea as she eased off the bed.

Nina went into the kitchen to start tea brewing and to find breakfast for herself. Inej had been leaving her pastries, possibly out of fear that she'd stop eating. She devoured one, hoping it would stop the insistent flutter she felt in her belly. She ate a second one more slowly as she steeped Thomas's tea and some for herself. She added a small shot of whiskey to his, because she was feeling kind.

She came back to the bedroom and gently nudged the mug into his hands, then sat on the edge of the bed again.

"Where do you come from, Thomas?"

[bookmaker_boss]

He doesn't move, as he's promised. As he sits, he takes time to try and focus his vision. It doesn't do much. The distance is a huge mess of things, but so is everything much closer than his knees. So he can see his boots, still on, and he feels a bit of a slump for being in a lady's bed with his boots on.

She comes back and sits on the bed, and this time he can sort of make her out. Dark auburn hair, green eyes, fair skin. A very good witch, that's for sure. And well fed, certainly. None of that flat as a board look that's been quite so popular in the last twenty years.

"Birmingham," he says. Then, because she said some fanciful it's like your Russia horseshit earlier, he says, "England. Do you know England?"

[every_blossom_blooming]

"I do," she answered. "I have some friends from England, and I'm told in some ways the place I lived, Ketterdam, is similar to cities like London and Birmingham."

Nina smiled small, and her heart ached when she realized she'd have to break the news. "You aren't there anymore. Wherever you were before you woke up here... Saints, maybe I shouldn't be telling this to a man with a head injury."

[bookmaker_boss]

"It's not my first, if that's any consolation," Tommy says, but he can't imagine it would be a consolation. And, honestly, it's one of the worst. He feels like death only gently warmed over.

He moves his eyes, rather than his head, to look around the room he's in.

"Well, I'm certainly not in Birmingham, but I wasn't there anyway," Tommy says. "You didn't ask where I was, though. You asked where I'm from. Different question."

He sips the tea she brought.

[every_blossom_blooming]

"Honestly, it doesn't really matter where you were. You aren't in England anymore, not any part of it. And before you ask, you're not in Europe or America, either."

Nina used the names of countries and continents she thought he might be familiar with, though there was no telling. His style of dress reminded him, vaguely, of Guy's and Anthony's, and she thought maybe he was from a time not so far off. But she also knew there could be a dozen versions of England, ones she'd not even heard of. She was trying.

"You're in a place called Darrow. I don't know how we get here, or why. But that's where you are."