(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]

"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.

[bookmaker_boss]

"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."

[every_blossom_blooming]

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.

[bookmaker_boss]

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?"

[every_blossom_blooming]

"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.

[bookmaker_boss]

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?"

[every_blossom_blooming]

"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."

[bookmaker_boss]

"I can hold my own head," Thomas assures, though he doubts she'll listen. He shifts slowly, edging away from the head of the bed and toward the edge. He can, vaguely, figure out the location of the window based off the shift in the light on the floor and across his knees.

His boots touch the floor.

"I wouldn't mind your help getting out of all these clothes," he admits. "I've been wearing it all for almost a day."

[every_blossom_blooming]

"Here, lean on the wall for a moment. You're not quite as tall as my man was, but at least you'll have something clean."

It still hurt to talk about Geralt in the past tense. Nina left Thomas against the wall and went into the dresser to find something comfortable - a loose t-shirt and pajama bottoms would do for now. She returned to him and carefully worked on undressing him. At least she was familiar with all his layers. She let most of it all to the floor - it needed washing, at the very least, so she wasn't exactly concerned about wrinkles.

Her fingers brushed lightly over the tattoo on Thomas's chest, then she passed him the t-shirt.

"Don't get any ideas," she warned dryly, though a smile quirked her mouth as she worked his trousers open. Standing face to face, she was as tall as he was.

[bookmaker_boss]

The past tense isn't lost on him. "I'm sorry to hear about your man."

He lets her strip him--the familiarity with the layers doesn't surprise him because he's used to women who are used to the layers. He would have been more surprised if she had stumbled with the layers.

When she lingers on the sunburst on his chest, he looks down at her fingers. When she kneels in front of him, he shifts his feet to accommodate the shape of her body.

"I don't think I could get any ideas right now if I wanted to."

[every_blossom_blooming]

"He's not dead," she said quietly. "He's just-- gone home."

Nina works his trousers lower but leaves his shorts where they are. She pauses to get his boots off, then the trousers. "Probably for the best," she said as she worked the pajama bottoms onto one leg, then the other. "I'd hate to have to cut off blood flow to your cock or something when I'm trying to help you heal."

Before she got up, she dug through the pockets of his clothes until she found a cigarette case and a box of matches. Nina carefully got to her feet so she could help Thomas over to the chair. She left the cigarettes and matches in his lap as she opened the window.

[bookmaker_boss]

Tommy doesn't think it's very much of a distinction, and when it comes right down to it, death and gone are very similar when you can't get to a person you love.

He thinks, briefly, of standing in the field and being on the brink of everything. Of falling into the grave, alive, and climbing out and having to choose between May and Grace now that he had the real choice. Now, though, there's nothing. Now, he's sitting half naked in a strange woman's bed.

"You don't need to put me in his things," he says gently. "I'm a hardy thing. I grew up in drafty boats and draftier housing. I can smoke out an open window for a moment."

[every_blossom_blooming]

"Hardy as you might be, Birmingham-boy, you're my patient and I'll take care of you as I see fit. Besides... he won't be needing them and he was a practical man. He'd be pleased that they were doing someone some good."

Nina picked up her shawl from the edge of the bed and wrapped up in it as she sat down on the ottoman that went with the chair. She breathed in the chilly air, content to have it just then.

"And it's winter here, or just about."

[bookmaker_boss]

It's a token protest at any rate. Tommy has been able to afford his own wardrobe for years--and Peaky boys do not buy their own suits--but he's used to second hand and cast offs, and so there's no shame in wearing another man's things.

He adjusts his feet against the edge of the ottoman, closing his eyes for a moment as the cool air washes his face. The country has been good for him, being away from the coal and smoke, but he does miss the familiar noise and smell of Birmingham, the mire and gypsum he grew up in.

He lights his cigarette and blows the smoke out the window. "Inej is a friend?"

[every_blossom_blooming]

"My dearest friend, in fact. She's part of what made my life in Ketterdam at all bearable." Nina smiled at the mention of her. She'd have to talk to her soon or Inej might get worried. Besides, the Wraith would probably like to know that there was a strange man in Nina's bed. Again.

"We were both trapped far from home, trying to make up for... saints knows what anymore. Working off our contracts with Per Haskell and the Dregs."

[bookmaker_boss]

Tommy's quiet a moment, smoking, eyes closed as he takes on what she says. Contracts, a name that is no doubt her gang. It sounds like some of the service contracts, or the debtors prisons, but he doesn't speak it out loud.

"Anyone else from your old life?"

[every_blossom_blooming]

"Yes. Matthias, who loved me and tried to kill me at least twice, and Kaz, who is a businessman."

Nina absently stroked her fingers over the crow and cup. Sometimes she wondered why she still had it - she could remove it, easily, and yet there it remained. She'd kept the white roses, too.

"Who knows, maybe there'll be someone familiar to you here already."

[bookmaker_boss]

Thomas isn't sure if he wants any of his family or anyone he knows in this place. Looking out over the skyline, unfamiliar and strange, clear of smoke and industry, he thinks that his brothers and cousins would not be sure what to do in a place like this. Johnny Dogs and his gypsies, Esme, even Aunt Pol would be hemmed in in a place like this.

Tommy can feel the edges of it pressing around him. This is an unfamiliar place to him. For a man that spent nearly eighteen years in and around a single city, he can't imagine this sudden captivity.

He watches her touch her arm. He can make out the dark stain of ink, though the tracing is, itself, a little muddled. They're bolder, newer, than his own tattoos. "You haven't had them long," he points out, lifting his eyebrows in place of nodding at her arms.

[every_blossom_blooming]

"They're just about two years old, now. Maybe a little more. A crow and cup for the Dregs, then two white roses for the brothel I worked in. They were required after I signed my contract."

Nina wrinkled her nose, but shrugged. It was no different than wearing the livery of a mercher's house, she supposed. Especially for her: she could remove the tattoos whenever she wanted to.

"The Kerch like to mark what's theirs."

[bookmaker_boss]

Two years, still fresh enough to have good thick ink, but also in a place that might have gotten sun and stretch on a girl that worked a little more. He thinks of all his, and how they've worn down--but the oldest of his, if it were a boy, could drink and smoke and fight in a war; the youngest, Charlie's initials, is but two years old as well.

He hums vaguely, breathes out smoke in a wreathing thing between his nose and mouth. "You worked in a bawdy house? Is that the business this Kaz was in?"

[every_blossom_blooming]

"The White Rose is a house with ties to the Dregs," she said with a shrug. "Kaz also owned shares in half a dozen other ventures. And they needed to put me somewhere, I had to be of some use to the gang to make good on my contract and to pay it off."

Nina sipped her tea.

"The Dregs peddled in protection, gambling, thieving, and they took a cut from the White Rose because their hawkers encouraged patrons their way." She shrugged. "Like every other gang in Ketterdam."

[bookmaker_boss]

We're all whores, Grace.

The Dregs, of course, sound a bit like the Peaky Blinders. Protection, gambling, and a cut of it all. Like every other gang in Birmingham and London, like every official making attempts at the whole damn country.

"You owed him for something else," Tommy speculates. He shifts and breathes out in pain a bit. It's not hard to breathe through the pain, but the pain does linger. "And he got a witch."

[every_blossom_blooming]

"I needed protection. As powerful as we might be, grisha aren't safe in Ketterdam. Many of them are from other countries, trying to find a better life. It's easy to get swept up in an indenture contract that they don't understand. It's legal slavery. I had no money, no friends, no resources. And I couldn't just leave-- someone was wrongfully imprisoned because of me, and I had to get him out. So I signed the contract that Kaz offered me, because it was better than I'd get anywhere else."

Nina sighed and pushed her hair back as she looked out the window. "At least my association with the Dregs would keep me safe. I could earn money to buy my way out of my contract, and I could keep trying to get Matthias out of Hellgate. And Kaz Brekker got a Heartrender."

[bookmaker_boss]

Tommy thinks of all the people who work in service, whose families have worked in service--but that is very different than an indenture. Slavery has been illegal in the Isles for nearly sixty years before he was born, but just because a thing is illegal doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It just gets another name.

"Was he your blood?" he asks. "This boy you had to get out of jail? This boy you loved, and tried to kill you?"

[every_blossom_blooming]

"No," she said quietly. "And our countries are at war, in a way. But he didn't deserve to be in prison - the charges were false. Maybe we were never meant to be together, but I could at least try to get him his freedom."

Part of her wondered if she could have ever felt the sale about another Druskelle. Nina sighed and lolled her head to look at Thomas.

"You're absorbing an awful lot over there. Why don't you tell me more about yourself, Birmingham boy? One of those tattoos looked military - did you serve?"