WARNING/DISCLAIMER: This is a (somewhat) slowburn Tommy x OC fanfiction. Yes it follows canon for the most part and Grace will be in it, though some parts of episodes will be moved around to better fit the story I want to tell. I am not replacing Grace, simply shifting her timeline a few episodes. All chapters including graphic sex are marked with MA. Otherwise rated M for violence and language and content. Please give it and my OC time to develop and reveal her growing character. Yes, I will focus mostly on Rose's main view but this story will also contain a fair amount of Thomas and other's perspectives. Enjoy!
I listened with all of my might,
but was scared by the look in his eyes.
Like he'd already lost the fight,
and there was no hope ever in sight.
No hope in the air, no hope in the water.
Not even for me, your last serving daughter.
Laura Marling : Hope In The Air
A Woman of No Importance
Episode 0
Part I: Prologue
There was nothing they could do for him.
These words kept repeating in her head, over and over and over again, until they pierced the inside of her skull, her head aching in pain. But her own discomfort was nothing compared to her patient and friend's.
Michael Walters was a soft-hearted young man in his early thirties, though you might not guess it from the bags under his eyes or the wrinkles of stress that had started on his forehead. Even with his aged appearance, he was a handsome and fit young man, who stood above his fellow soldiers at 6'5, with a burly build and chiseled jawline. An intimidating sight for any to behold when his narrowed gaze landed on them. Luckily for them, his purpose in this war wasn't to kill but rather to save.
Doctor Walters had been an exceptionally skilled surgeon his years before and during the war. Like many of his Englishmen, he been shipped off late in his youth, a man with the world ahead of him, stuck in the dreary and deadly trenches of Belgium. He hailed from a place called Small Heath in the city of Birmingham and often spoke of his dreams of opening his own clinic there once he returned. He'd even gone as far as to offer her a place on his staff, not as a nurse, but as a doctor once she completed her training. That is, if she hadn't had her fill of Englishmen yet. But a sudden and ruthless attack in a relatively stable trench field had put a stop to that dream. The results of the attack had been burns covering most of his chest and legs and the complete loss of his left arm. The arm had ended his life as a surgeon while the infection in his burns would end his life as a whole.
Now here he laid in the dilapidated hospital in which he had spent so much of his time, only sweet Rose Pryor to keep him company as she cleaned and applied new dressing to his badly burnt body. Her kind face was slightly pinched in focus as her normally braided blonde hair knotted in a messy bun at her neck. She looked as tired as he felt.
Unlike his fellow doctors, Michael was a modern thinker. He had no problem with women nurses stepping up to do the jobs of doctors when the need arose. From early on, he and the American nurse got along quite well and found a friendship in their love of books. On the rare evenings they found time to sleep they would read to each other in turns passages of whatever they could get their hands on. A favorite of his being Oscar Wilde's "The Canterville Ghost". The play currently sat beside him on his small nightstand, half open but forgotten when his pain became too much to focus.
There's nothing we can do…
The other doctor had said it with such ease, giving up hope so easily. He was right of course, Michael wouldn't be able to survive this time around. But he was her friend, her confidant, and the idea he'd just be left to suffer until succumbing to his wounds turned her stomach and sat heavy in her soul. So here she was, in the rare moments in which she was meant to be resting, once more with Michael.
"What's that line from the play?" He wheezed as he stared up at the ceiling cracks. "You know... about the garden?"
"You tell me. You've read it more times than I." She cast him a quick look, knowing what he spoke of but not willing to say it.
"Aye," He flashed a smile, "but your voice is so lovely." She shook her head despite a small smile. He always was a charmer. "Please, Rosie?"
Rose stilled in her work and looked at him. He was transfixed by something, his eyes not leaving their spot on the ceiling. Perhaps to help him cope with the pain he must be having.
"Death-" The word caught in her throat. "Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence." Rosie softly said, her words emphasized by the sound of faint gunfire outside. "To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow... To forget time, to forgive life…"
"To be at peace." Michael finished, a calm look in his eyes as he continued to stare. Stare, and stare, yet eyes seemingly unseeing.
Rose swallowed despite her dry throat, her hands, always so gentle, resumed her work. After a moment of silence, as much as a nearby war zone would allow, Michael's attention finally moved. His eyes turned to her, a tiredness in them despite a spark of hope. "Rose?"
"Yes, Michael?"
"I'm ready for the grass."
Rose's hands stopped, her entire body tensing.
"Will you do it?" He asked through a cough. "Would you make the pain stop?" His eyes shining glassy in the lamp light.
"I'll get you more morphine." She stood up.
"No!" He shouted hoarsely. There would be little left to give him, that which she could would do nothing and anymore needed would get her in trouble.
Rose looked him over. His chest was covered in gauze, his left arm gone below the shoulder, and his right severely burned, most likely to join the fate of the left had he had a better chance. A heavy sweat drenched his fevered and pale skin. If not for the weak rising of his chest and the pain in his eyes, he'd easily be mistaken for dead.
"Nothing more we can do…" repeated in her head.
"I'm tired Rosie." He sounded meek, like a small child. It instantly broke her heart and what little resolve she had.
"I can't." She nearly mouthed.
"You can." He suffered a smile, the burns that inched up his face pulling tight. "If it's about God... he'll forgive you." His brown eyes darted to the gold cross she always wore around her neck. A devout Catholic girl, he'd often find her praying over the patients they couldn't save. "Don't you know you're one of his favorites, Rosie?" He tried to joke through tears. "Just look at you."
Rose could help but glance down at herself. Her dress was stained and rumpled, the once gray uniformed permanently a brownish color underneath the mud and blood currently staining it. But even after a year in a war so vile it sometimes made her question her faith, she remained unmarked. Only a few scratches having hurt her, and nothing that would leave any permanent mark. Even when the Spanish Flu waged its own war upon them, she had lived, her short period of pain and suffering mild compared to those who now lay dead or fighting for every gasp of breath.
"Nothing bad ever happens to you, Rosie. Should have remembered that before I went into the trench without you." His smile momentarily became a sneer, though his anger wasn't aimed at her. His eyes tried to look upon his failing body, but his head was too heavy to lift. Instead, he stared at her, seeking the ultimate act of compassion in a woman who always seemed to soft for the hell she'd chosen to enter.
"He'll forgive you." He repeated. "He'll forgive you for saving me."
"Michael…" She knew. She knew he'd be dead soon, maybe a night, maybe a week, but he'd suffer. The infection had set, no more of their dwindling morphine could be given to a man considered a lost cause. There was nothing they could do for him. Except, maybe...
"Please," He gasped. "Rosie." He said her name so softly, not from lack of air or pain, but hope. A prayer. "Please...make it stop." He begged, a tear falling from his eye as his voice cracked and crumbled. Everything ached, everything burned, as if he was still being pulled from the trench.
"Okay. Okay," She whispered. She backed out of the small room, her normally graceful feet stumbling as they seemed to drag. For ten minutes she stood outside the room, gaining the courage to make her feet move another step. It was a wheezing, hacking cough that shook her from her stupor. She grabbed a pillow from one of the beds that lined the empty hall before returning with it in shaking hands.
"Say it again? You make it sound so pretty."
"Death must be so beautiful." She trembled though her voice was low and calm. Michael closed his eyes. "To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence." She kneeled on the bed beside him the pillow poised above his face. "To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace."
Tears fell freely from her green eyes as she squeezed them shut, her body lunging forward to press the pillow over his face as she finished the scene. "And then the ghost remembered the poem and spoke 'You can help me'." She gasped. The little morphine he had been granted had dulled his senses but his natural instinct to fight back prevailed, his hand numbly trying to grab at her. It held her small wrist but made no attempt to move her. This is what he wanted. "You can open for me the portals of Death's house, for love is always with you-" He just squeezed as she gritted her teeth and kept the pillow there. "and love is stronger than death."
She put her weight behind it, eyes closed and teeth gritted as she finished the scene until his hand let loose it's grip. With baited breath she slowly opened her eyes, staring at the pillow spotted with her tears before hesitantly lifting it.
A years in war together. The blood, the screams, the fire… and for the first time since she had met him, Michael looked peaceful. His eyes slightly opened, his mouth slightly parted. She choked a sob as she lowered his eyelids.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." She wept. Whether her apology was meant for him or God, she didn't know.
For a moment, just a heartbeat or two, she imagined him to be sleeping. And for that, she made herself silent as she could be, afraid to disturb his well-deserved slumber. She removed herself from the bed, slowly easing her grip on the pillow until it fell on the dirty floor.
Rose had seen many deaths in her time, enough to have her full of it, but never before had it been her hand to cause it. And they had. Trembling, she looked down to the blood and dirt-stained fingers, she'd not had the chance to wash them before coming to his bedside. And though her killing has been clean and merciful she suddenly felt vile and cruel.
She felt ill. So violently ill.
She stumbled from the room, her knees shaking until they gave out from under her with a lurch. As her hand hit the muddied ground vomit spewed from her mouth adding to the mess on the floors. Tears ran down her face, the red in her eyes making their green color glow.
What had she done? What had she done? Oh God...
Her hand blindly sought out her only true comfort, the gold cross that hung from her neck. Yet the familiar piece of jewelry suddenly felt cold, its edges sharp in her palm.
"Tsk, look what you've done, now!" A familiar scolding voice came from before her. A familiar scuffed black shoe stepped into her line of sight. "You'll need a new dress." Her superior tisked motheringly.
Rose's bowed head lifted, bile still on her chin, and tears streaming through her red eyes. Innocence in a storm of madness. "What?" She croaked as the world spun around her.
"I said, 'You'll need a new dress'." A gruffer baritone repeated.
Rose blinked once, then twice, only to turn and see the memory of two years past fade from sight and mind, replaced by a rather irate cab driver looking at her like she was dim in the head.
Her green eyes darted to her chest, one arm crossed in front of her while the other's hand gripped tightly to her necklace. She let go of it as if stung, her hands tightening and uncurling as she inspected them.
The only marks the lines from the cross' hard edges.
"Not from around 'ere, are you?" He asked her as he picked up her things from the carriage's back and placed the two bags on the ground beside her.
"No, Sir." Her American accent, clear and eloquent like the lady she was raised to be, responded quite simply.
"Knew it before you even opened y'er mouth." He looked her over for a brief moment. "Small Heath ain't no place for a lady to wear white." He grunted to himself. "Ain't no place for a lady at all." He mumbled.
Rose bit her lip to keep herself from correcting him. Her dress was actually a pale yellow, but judging by the way he kept rubbing his discolored eyes, she didn't have to examine them to guess his vision was going.
She pulled the silver coins from her coat pocket and handed them to him. He in turn counted the schillings to making sure they were all there before tipping his hat to her and taking his leave. At least until he had a change of heart.
"Are you sure, miss?" Normally he didn't bother with the lives of his fares, but this young woman was clearly out of place in her spotless pretty dress and wide green eyes.
"I'll be fine." She assured, a simple smile brightening her face for just a moment, thinking back to what she was once told. "I'm a favorite."
An hour later, Rose found herself at her true destination, the empty floor above the Garrison pub. Rose looked around the room, sheets with thick grey layers of dust covering the tables, windows, and lights. A single simple uncovered lamp lit the wide and open space. "It's…" It was filthy, neglected, and the floor a bit curved, she notes as a stray bottle was gently kicked and rolled far too easily. "-nice." She offered a closed mouth smile over her shoulder.
Harry Fenton, the owner of the building and pub downstairs scratched the back of his head. He was an older gentleman, whose entire appearance she could summarize as long and narrow. From his tall lanky frame to his soft oval face, he held no real sharp curves except for his protruding nose, long and narrow, like his face, except with a somewhat large plump end. His brown eyes were kind but filled with worry as he watched her.
Had he known it was a woman coming to look at the space, a proper one too, he would have tried to clean up things a bit more. He pulled a sheet from an overhead lap, giving the room a bit more light. A mistake, as a mouse was then seen scuttling by and back into the dark.
Harry cringed. This is why he had so much trouble finding a renter in the first place. Filth, rats, gangs, and drunks always rushin' through.
"You'll tell your husband it's not usually like this, please?" He tried to appeal to her merciful side.
"I'm not married." She commented as she walked about the room, gauging the size and equipment she could accommodate.
"Oh, well your father-"
"Mr. Fenton I think you're confused, I'm not married, and I'm not a secretary. I'll be renting the space myself, for myself." She spared him a firm look. "Would that be a problem?"
"Yes." Rose's brows raised. "I mean, No!" He quickly corrected. "It just that, Small Heath isn't the best place for a young, pretty, single-"
"You're the second man I've met today that's told me that." She flashed her pretty white teeth at him. "I'll handle my affairs just fine, Mr. Fenton, I assure you."
Harry's long face scrunch a bit in suspicion as he looked her over. He wasn't quite sure if he could rent to a prostitute or brothel owner. Even a ladylike one such as her. Drunk men and fast woman often made an explosive situation, and he didn't have much money in his pocket to clean up what mess might result from that fuse blowing. Then there were the Shelby boys... "What exactly do you plan on doin' with the space, Miss?"
"I'm opening a clinic. Which as you might have guessed, does take a bit of time. I saw you're also looking for a barmaid?" She quickly spun on her heels to face him. "Perhaps we could offer an agreement of sorts?"
Harry blinked, his face going a bit slack before tensing once more with a scoff. It was one thing to rent and work above, but to be inside the Garrison and in the line of less-pleasant men's sight... "Are you mad?" He implored. Rose didn't answer. "Do you know about this place?"
"I'm here, aren't I?"
"Job's been filled." Harry shook his head.
Rose cast him a withering glance. "It was in yesterday's paper, just like last month's paper, and the month's before that." She caught him in his lie. She suspected he didn't have a lot of options.
"Believe me, love, I'm doing you a favor."
"I'm not asking for favors, I'm looking for fair trade. Admittedly I don't drink often and I'm not much use behind a bar, but I'm a great cleaner. I'm simply suggesting that in exchange for help keeping the place clean and stocked, my wages are taken off my rent till my supplies come in and I can open for business."
It was appealing, it would indeed help. And for a moment he considered it until he caught sight of her once more. Harry's brown eyes narrowed, the wrinkles around his mouth setting firm as he clenched his jaw. "No, no, I don't think it's your line of work Miss Pryor."
"In what way?"
"Emptying the spit buckets, mopping the-"
"Belgium." She suddenly said. She watched as the bartender's posture straitened while his brow furrowed. "I served in Belgium. Did you fight Mr. Fenton?"
Harry nodded hesitantly. "A-Yes, until my arm got torn up." He rolled his shoulder hearing it click, glancing at the scars hidden under his shirt sleeve.
"I don't mean to pry-" She began gently with kind eyes."-but was it bloody? Was it burnt? Was it more horrifying than you could imagine?" Harry swallowed and nodded. "And I'm sure a nurse most likely treated it. Do you think I saw anything less in Belgium?"
"No." He sighed. "No, miss Pryor."
"Then I think we agree I can handle a few spit buckets and the occasional sickness mop up."
"You're too nice." Harry shook his head. "And too pretty." He looked her up and down, not lustfully, but observantly. "They'd have you up against a wall."
"I doubt they can be any worse than what I swatted away there, sir."
"Not these men." The bartender shook his head. "There's a gang, the Peaky Blinders. They're bad enough as it is, but the Shelby brothers... they're the worst of them. They come here often. If they decide that they want you, then there's nothing anybody could do about it."
"I would do something about it." She firmly retorted. "Noted, and thank you." But Rose seemed unconcerned with the warning. "Now back to that rent discussion-"
"Miss Pryor-"
A determined look crossed her face as she ripped the coverings from the window. "Please call me Rose, Mr. Fenton." Bright light immediately shining into the room, it revealed a cloud of dust swirling around them. "We should get familiar." Her eyes focused on the coal-black painted street below her. "I plan to be around for quite awhile."
Please Review :)
Huge thank you to Heaven and Cait for urging me to write this and Beta-ing for me. It wouldn't be here without you. :)
