bookmaker_boss | (no subject)

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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.

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"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.

Edited 2018-12-03 03:38 (UTC)

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."

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."

"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?"

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?"

"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."

"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?"

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?"

"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."

"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.

"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."

It's all a bit muddled and mush, if he gets right down to it, all a bit nonsense. But then, she is a witch. He doesn't know what she's been doing, but it's something a doctor couldn't do in a night, that's for sure. Something a soothsayer couldn't do in her caravan. So Tommy sips his tea and lets her speak her nonsense as if it will bring some clarity, half-blind eyes shut for the moment.

"We're not in Kansas anymore," he says, feeling a little nonsensical as well.

"Something like that," she said with a wry smile. She was grateful for those that wanted to give her an education in film - she'd at least seen The Wizard of Oz.

"It's probably a bit much for you to take in right now, but... I'll go down to the train station later to see if they'll give me your packet. Or I'll walk you there when you're able."

"Oh, I think I'm taking it in just fine," Tommy says mildly. He closes his eyes for a moment, breathing slowly to ward off some of the rising sickness. He sips his tea again. "But if any of this involves walking, I don't think I'm doing that anytime soon. Even if you did keep me from passing over last night."

He's fairly certain he would have survived the night last night, if only because he's survived so many nights before. Still, he appreciated the effort, whatever it was that she'd done.

"I'll see if they'll give me your things," she said with a sigh. "I can be very convincing, but that woman is a rock."

Nina tucked her hair back and sipped her tea slowly. "So, Thomas from Birmingham. Who hates you enough to do this? Because this is not a mugging, this is seething dislike."

"Tell them I'm practically dead and you're coming as my representative," Thomas says, and this time, he shrugs one shoulder. His shoulders, after all, aren't injured. He can move them all he wants. It still manages to hurt like a bastard.

He's quiet a moment and opens his eyes slowly.

"Men with terrible plans, who think they hold all the cards."

Nina lifted an eyebrow. "Most men have terrible plans," she said. "And most of them think they hold all the cards. Especially men that already have power."

Nina wrinkled her nose. "I'll get your packet later, or I'll send Inej. It'll have your new address, startup money, bank account information. Other things to help you get on your feet here."

"You should rest," Tommy says easily. He can only barely see her, but she does look exhausted, and he can definitely hear the exhaustion in her voice. If it were any other situation, he might make some insinuation or another about the indelicacy of a young woman with a man in her bed. But he is a half dead thing, a half blind thing, and he doesn't have the energy for it besides.

"How far along are you?"

"I could just be fat," Nina said as she stuck her tongue out at him. But then her hand drifts over her belly and she gets goosebumps when she feels the tell-tale flutter in her.

"Six months," she answers, quieter.

"I've a sister, a dead sister in law, two live ones, and a dead wife who've all had children. I know what a pregnant woman looks like, even when I'm half blind."

She goes quiet, and there's more there than that. He has a line of questions, impertinent ones, that he sets aside for the moment. There's a long road ahead of him. He'll have to hold some of them for a while.

"Now--" He clears his throat. "You ask me a question."

Nina was quiet for a moment after he mentioned a dead wife. A dead wife who had at least one child.

"I'm sorry to hear about your wife," she said with quiet sympathy. Geralt wasn't dead, but he was gone. "What did you do to get yourself crushed in an alley by a man in power? What did you do to anger him so?"

Thomas's injuries were a message, she was certain of that now. It was the sort of thing Kaz might do to make a point.

There's nothing to say to that, about his wife. What can he say? It's nothing; she went quickly; there's a curse on him, from bloody Russian sapphires.

"I went to kill a man," he says. "Yesterday. Or--the day before, I suppose. He knew I was coming."

He shouldn't have, but he did. Tommy should have thought that Hughes would be prepared for him; he should have shot him right in the park and left nothing more to chance.

"How long have you been here?"

"Almost a year and a half," she answered. "I was about to kill a lot of men... or do something else very terrible to them. I hadn't really decided yet," she admitted. "But then I appeared here. In a torn, teal chiffon dress that didn't fit in the first place."

Nina finished her tea and set the mug on the nightstand nearest her. She moved a little higher on the bed so that she could rest against the pillows.

She said she worked for a government and a gang, and she's some kind of a witch, able to pull him from the brink of death, so he doesn't question that she was about to kill men, or something else. But she moves up the bed, and Tommy's eyes slide over her. She's more curvaceous than most women he knows, even movie actresses he's seen. A well fed girl, but not just that. Tall, too. Lizzie's height or so, he'd reckon, with them sitting beside each other, but not willowy like her.

"I couldn't tell you what chiffon was if you put it in my hands," Tommy admits. But he does think of Lizzie, after the Field Marshall attacked her because he couldn't get to her fast enough. Her rage and hurt and her new dress all in disarray. Not torn, but the same sort of indignities involved.

"Can I smoke?" Then, more importantly, "Do I get to know your name?"

"It's a very light, sheer fabric. I had to borrow it from a girl a few sizes smaller than me. It did not well survive a trip through an underground river and was mostly embarrassing scraps by the time I arrived here. One hiccup and I'd be indecent," she said, as if the dress hadn't been indecent to start with.

She looked at the man as if she were considering whether or not to give her name. "I'm Nina. And yes, I suppose you can. But we have to get over to the window because Inej will have a fit if she smells smoke in here."

Nina got out of bed and moved around to the other side to help Thomas to his feet. "There's a chair by the window, you can sit there. I'm going to seize the muscles in your neck so your head doesn't bob too much so.. don't panic when you feel that."