Like a Horse Made of Air

Summary

Wren Ashby, raised in the shadow of her rebellious older sister, is a good girl. She does as she's told and gives nobody any trouble, polite to a fault. She believes her father when he tells her that if she's good he'll find her a good man to love and take care of her. Then the day comes her sister tells her that their father has chosen a waste of a man for her husband. Wren finds herself no longer so keen to obey and, once she tastes freedom, she won't be stopped.

Cross Posted to:

AO3: EphemeralIsTheLight

Fanfiction: GodricIsMine13

Wattpad: Ephemeral_Is

Chapter One: Take your medicine (enjoy the bitterness)

Ella's laughter roars in Wren's ears even as she stumbles blindly away.

Flint Langley.

Wren remembers—Wren always remembers, her brain can't seem to let anything go—being six years old and listening to her mother and sister's screaming row the room over. Her father had leant over his lap to look down on her and said, "you don't be like that Ella-girl, Lil' Bird. Nothing good is going to come to a girl like that. But if you promise to be good, your Daddy will find you a good man to love and keep you. You promise to be good, Wren?"

It was the first time he'd put it to her that way, but she'd promised then. Then and every other time it came up over the years that followed.

When her parents taught her manners, she used them. When they told her to, "always be polite, Wren-bird" she obeyed. Even when he had demanded she stay away from the horses, an order that had broken ten-year-old Wren's heart, she had stayed away from the beautiful beasts. Nearly all of her twenty-three years spent straining to be the good girl her parents wanted her to be. No matter the edict. No matter how much the obedience hurt.

And her reward?

A filthy man old enough to be her father and already widowed twice. A waste of a man who spent his time working the docks or piss drunk. Her father's old drinking body.

Flint fucking Langley.

She felt outside of herself, almost. Her body oddly distant and cold, her face numb. She knows she's left her parent's house, can feel the impact of her feet on stone as she walks. Doesn't know where to go though, isn't sure she cares. Time stretches, distorts. She blinks and can't tell if seconds pass or days.

How could he do this to her?

They had made a deal, hadn't they?

She has upheld her end.

Now her father has broken his.

She blinks and she finds herself by the Cut, the stink of stagnant water fills her nose. Looking up, the sky is dark behind the ever-present haze of smog. She's spent the day wandering the streets in a blank daze. She should be hungry. She should be thirsty. Her feet should ache from the hard cobblestone.

Wren doesn't feel much of anything at all.

Like a ghost she drifts to sit under one of the nearby bridges. Out of her head, she thinks, and out of sight. She passes the night that way, sat in the mud and staring sightlessly forward. Her head aches, but she doesn't think she could sleep even if she wanted to. She doesn't think she wants to.

It's in the bright grey hour, when the air has cleared just enough to let something like light through, that a glint catches her eye. For a long moment she considers it, before she thinks it might be something metal. On impulse she struggles to her feet, body stiff from idleness and cold, and moves to pick it up.

It's only when it's in her hands that she realizes what she's holding: a gun.

Less than forty-eight hours ago, she would have dropped it and ran. Then again, less than forty-eight hours ago she would never have even considered being out at this time of day, never mind spent time lurking by the canal. Now she looks around with more focus.

In the growing light, she can see a stack of crates by the foundation of the bridge. Atop them sets a lone bottle amidst the glittering remains of others. Not far from where she's standing, she sees some cartons balanced on an old, battered chair. Closer inspection reveals the cartons contain bullets, though of the five boxes: two are completely empty and none of the rest are full. Consolidating all the rounds hardly fills one box halfway.

That someone has been practicing shooting here is obvious. Less obvious is why someone left a—checking the barrel of the revolver reveals 2 of the six slots already occupied—loaded gun. Looking around, she doesn't think there was a fight.

Had someone literally just dropped a gun in the mud and left it?

Her eye catches on the lone bottle again, while the weight of the gun in her hand calls to something inside her.

For as long as Wren can remember she has had…dreams. They aren't always very clear, and they come less now than they had when she was a child, but they've often left her with a certain…knowing. Like how she knew the World War was going to happen long before it did. Like the funny feeling she gets when someone mentions the Shelby family, or the Peaky Blinders. Like this moment, having never held a gun and yet knowing how.

Less than forty-eight hours ago she would have locked that feeling in a box in her mind and never looked back.

Now, she walks into line and levels the revolver at the lonely bit of glass. It feels natural, easy. She breathes in slowly and lets it out just as slowly. When her chest empties and everything is still, she pulls the trigger.

The glass shatters, broken pieces joining all the others scattered about.

She's glad her mother never insisted on heels, the soft soles of her flats whispering with nearly no noise as she walks. The laborers are getting up now: men as worn and grey as the streets they walk down. The fires of the factories are just being stoked again, the sputtering beginnings of the roar that will echo throughout the day. Their heads are already bent to the day of work before them, many still bleary with sleep or drink from the night before. Nobody pays her any mind, which suites Wren just fine.

She has no idea what she'd do if someone tried to speak to her right now.

It becomes something of a routine, with no idea of how many days pass nor an inclination to count them. She forces down water and bread from time to time, knowing she needs it even if she doesn't want it. Sleeping badly, if she sleeps at all, huddled in whatever hidden corner she finds. Then she finds the way onto the paths across the roofs.

If she thought about it, she figures she would have guessed that there was some way to move about up here. The chimney sweepers and repair men need access to the roofs of the world to do their work after all. To be fair to herself though, by what she can tell, not even the sweepers give the upper stories much mind once their work is done. It is no less dangerous walking what she dubs the Sky Roads than the streets below, just danger of a different sort. It still feels safer, though, and sitting by the chimneys provides warmth.

It's late at night, she's managed to get her hands on some soup and bread, and she's huddled by a chimney. She feels something like warm for the first time since that morning however long ago. She thinks she even got a few hours' sleep the night before and her head feels clearer. For all that though, she isn't prepared to see them.

The lingering taste sours on her tongue as she watches her father and Flint Langley stumble out the pub on their way home. Langley says something, then both men laugh. They wander down the lane below her. The lingering numbness and faint warmth give way to a bitter wave of icy rage.

She isn't prepared for the way her face feels frozen or how her body stills as her heart beats hard in her chest. She doesn't know if she could stop her hand from grasping the solid weight of the loaded gun in her pocket. She doesn't know if she could stop herself from following, footsteps silent on the roof tiles beneath the noise from below.

She stalks them, the men unaware of the storm brewing over their heads. She knows the path they take and it's easy as anything to find a place to wait. She stands hidden in a dark alcove on an L-shaped back alley with no windows. A small space just inside the bend where you can't see either end with a quick exit to the roof tops at her back.

That something from inside her laughs as grown men wander towards her, oblivious and unafraid. It's natural, then, to step out into the shadow they cast—these men who think so little of her—and level the gun in Flint fucking Langley's face. She watches as his eyes widen and he stutters to a stop, hands coming up palms open. His lips move, she thinks she can see her father's lips moving too out the corner of her eye, but she hears nothing over the beat of her own heart. It's easy as breathing to pull the trigger.

The sound of the gun cracks sharply, tearing apart the block in her ears. She can hear her father now as he cries out while his mate's blood spatters hot and sticky on her hands and her face. She can hear the oddly wet thud as the body hits the ground. She can see the whites of her father's eyes when she turns the gun on him.

He chokes on his surprise, reeling away from her and hitting the alley wall. "Wren," he gasps like he's drowning, his face ashen beneath the spatter that coats him too. It's then she realizes her mistake, because as her father recoils she sees the silent figure that had been walking lengths behind him. From the bottom of the well her fury had shoved her into, she hadn't considered that even as she knew this was the path her father took, she knew too he wasn't the only one.

Thomas Shelby has just watched her murder the man her father had chosen as her husband.

So much for being the good girl, she finds herself thinking as she meets blue eyes.

Then that little moment of clarity shatters like glass when Abel MacLeod opens his fucking mouth, "Wre-Wren, how could you? Why, what were you thinking?"

The fury roars back in like a storm at high tide as her eyes snap back to the man she'd trusted, her voice soft for all it feels like she's screaming, "How could I? How could I? How dare you. Years of love and trust and obedience. Be a good girl, you asked. Be good and I'll find you a good man. A man who will love and take care of you. Promise."

The noise that wrenches out of her might have been a laugh, or maybe not. She's never made a sound like it before.

"We made a deal, didn't we? Me obedience—me trust—paid forward that you would ensure I had a good future. And this," Here she flicks a disgusted glance at the corpse at her feet, "this is all you think I'm worth? A man your own age, weathered and wasted, with no future other than more of the same? Two wives already in the ground? Three children already grown?"

The urge to pull the trigger rises in her as the words fall from her lips. The truth of them a serrated knife between her ribs. She sees his lips part, but she isn't finished. And honestly, she doesn't want to hear it, so she gives him no space to interject.

"I've done everything you've asked of me! Everything! And this is all the love I warrant? All the care I deserve? Ella—stubborn, rebellious Ella—gets Marcus Whittaker. While stupid, biddable Wren gets Flint fucking Langley. Well, if that's all that I'm worth to you? If this is how you," and here she can't stop the derisive turn of her voice, "value me love and obedience then I should have hated you from the day I was born. Why you ask me. Why? You fucking betrayed me is why!"

"She has a point," the low rasp of Tommy Shelby muses. He's drifted closer in her distraction, steps light and unobtrusive, as he witnesses her descent into madness. "Everyone knows Wren's the good girl. Hell, I remember the fuss when she wouldn't even let Wallace steal a kiss when we were kids. Said her Daddy said no kissing boys. Would 'a figured you'd have married her up and out o' Small Heath by now. Could hardly believe it meself when the gossips said you'd agreed to let old Langley at her."

He pauses to regard the corpse a moment, "guess the gossips were right."

"What business is it of yours who me daughter goes to," Abel cries.

Tommy replies with cold eyes, pinning Abel back against the wall with the look. "Well, I heard you agreed to let old Langley at her, because old Langley promised he could get you a car. I'm a betting man, and I'd put good money on that being true. So, he promise you a car Mr. MacLeod?"

Her father swallows heavily, gaze darting between the blue-eyed man and her steadily tightening grip on the gun. He says nothing.

"A car," Wren says as she struggles to wrap her head around what she's just heard.

"Aye," Tommy answers as if it were a question. "Apparently all a man needed to do to have a shot at you was promise your father a car."

She doesn't know if she wants to laugh or cry, she meets her father's eyes and says, "I should kill you."

"It'd be deserved if nothing else," Tommy says at her shoulder, so fucking quiet for a man with such presence. "But kin slaying? That's ugly business Ms. MacLeod. Killing a man, that changes you. Killing somebody you love? People don't come back from that."

"Don't call me that. I did everything he asked," She whispers, voice ragged and eyes wet. "And he betrayed me. I don't want his name; I won't answer to it. I'm of me grandfather's blood."

"Ms. Ashby," he murmurs to her, oddly gentle as he reaches his hand up underneath where hers hold the gun.

He means to take it from her, she figures, but she isn't done.

She steps sharply away as she hardens her eyes and her voice as she turns back to her father and demands, "I want Grandpa's house."

"What," Abel asks dumbly.

"I'm not living with you," she grits out, as Tommy stills, "not after this. And you aren't giving it to fucking Ella either. So, either you give me Grandpa's house, or we see if I can survive kin slaying."

"A-aye," he stutters out with a jerky nod.

"Toss me the key," she orders.

"Now wait—" the old man begins before being silenced by the sound of her cocking the gun.

"I'd do as she says," Tommy rejoins, "she looks like she means it."

"Toss. Me. The key," she growls. "I know you carry the key on you. And I know where the paperwork is. Just as I know Grandpa put the deed in me name before he passed. Now!"

"Yeah, alright. Alright," Abel grunts reaching cautiously for the keys in his pocket before separating off one and tossing it at her feet.

She lowers herself cautiously, keeping an eye on both men, before snatching up the key and rising back to standing. A quick check reveals that it's the right key, and something like relief slips through the tightness in her chest.

"Police!" A voice suddenly calls from down the alley and adrenaline lights up her veins. She hesitates just a moment as she meets blue eyes, before pivoting on foot and sprinting away lowering the hammer of the gun and stuffing it back in her pocket as she goes.

She carefully swings herself around the edge of the building looking for another way back to the roof. If she gets up, she can hear what they're saying and have a better idea of what she'll need to do. Success comes in a place she wasn't expecting, but then she's stepping out above the world. Careful steps bring her above where she just was, and the hard surface of the stone bounces the sound up to her ears.

"Now let me get this straight," a nasal voice drawls sarcastically. "There's a body here, shot dead. One of yous blokes is covered in blood. The other yous blokes has a gun. But neither of yous did it, and neither of yous seen who 'as did it."

"Was just walking home from the pub, Officer," Tommy's voice responds, "well behind Mr. MacLeod and his friend here. Take this alley quiet often, as they do…did in Mr. Langley's instance. Heard the gunshot fair enough, couldn't have missed it, but the man was dead before I rounded the corner. Nothing as could be done, was a clean shot."

"And you Mr. MacLeod," the Officer asks snidely. "Just happen to trip and role in your mate's blood, huh?"

"Was rounding the corner," Abel growls reluctantly, "when the shot rang out and Flint dropped. Blind corner it is, didn't even know there was something to be on the lookout for 'til it was done. The something was gone by the time I got to looking."

"Convenient for you," the Officer snaps in disgust.

"Ain't convenient for no man to see his mate dead!" Abel snaps back.

Form there there's a bit of back and forth before the policeman waves them on. She follows them from the alley and a few streets down before Tommy stops.

"Mr. MacLeod," the gang leader states.

"Mr. Shelby," the factory worker grunts.

"I meant what I said Mr. MacLeod," Tommy warns coldly. "If the coppers get her name, I'll know who gave it up. While her shot would have been kin slaying, you are no kin of mine. And I've killed a lot of men, Mr. MacLeod, one more won't make a difference to me."

"Why do you care anyway," Abel seethes. "You never showed interest in me daughter a'for now, neither one of 'em. What difference does who has her name make to you, huh?"

"Keep your mouth shut," Tommy orders as he turns and walks away, leaving Abel behind him.

With the delay over, Wren abruptly realizes she has a limited window of time to get what she needs from her father's house and get out.

Shimmying down the roof access behind the row of houses, she easily hops the short fences that mark out the backyards of the lane until she's behind her father's house. A stop at the pump allows her to do a quick rinse of the blood clinging to her, and also brings to her attention how filthy she is from her time wandering.

There'll be no saving the dress, but that's fine, she hates the damn thing anyway. She doesn't really understand the shift toward baggy fabric and dropped waists that current fashions favor and she'll be glad to be away from her mother's well-meaning tyranny to wear what she wants.

Slipping into the house is easy from there, what with Ella having moved out to her husband's home. It's late enough Mum is in the front waiting for Dad, and yet early enough none of the doors have been locked. She slips up the stairs from the kitchen to the second than the third level, before tiptoeing down the hall to her room. She carefully lifts the door by the handle so when she opens it the hinges don't squeak and is just as careful closing it behind her.

Looking around the room she realizes there isn't much she wants to take with her. She learned years ago to leave anything truly precious hidden at her grandpa's house away from Ella's resentful grasp. In the end she strips off the ruined dress and exchanges it for something clean to wear, wrapping it in itself and carrying it with her to burn. Leaving it here feels too much like leaving evidence at the scene of a crime.

Never mind that she left living witnesses behind her when she fled.

A living witness in Thomas Shelby, who threatened her father into silence.

She doesn't know what to think about that, so she turns her attention back to packing. Clothes, a few odds and ends, and all of her savings fill her bag then she's sneaking back out. A stop at her parent's room on the second floor yields the paperwork for the house tucked away in his bedside drawer, then it's back out the way she came. A quick trip down the back of the row finds the roof access again and then she's up above and feels more like she can breathe. There she pauses.

A few heartbeats later she hears a door slammed closed from the direction of the house she just left. She releases a long sigh.

The trip to the old house is made new by the perspective of the rooftops, though even from this angle she'd know the way in her bones. In this bit of Small Heath, proper houses stand independent of each other, even if the narrow gaps are mostly taken up by the stone fencing marking off the boundary of the tiny yards. She has to be careful here, the gaps treacherous in the shadows, but she makes her way to the one she's aiming for. With a bit of paranoia, she's cautious not to be seen as she steps up to the front door and unlocks it. She meets a bit of resistance, hopefully from nothing worse than lack of use, but the door opens and closes behind her.

The room she enters isn't as she remembered, the furniture covered in drop cloths and every surface heavy with dust. The fireplace is long cold, while the air smells stale. She'll have to open up the windows, give the place a proper scrubbing and airing out. She wanders all four floors of the house, even goes up into the little attic. Leaves her footprints in the dust of all six rooms, and her fingerprints on the photo frames, the little horse figurines, and the old trunk by the door to the kitchen.

She goes out the back to the pump and draws buckets of water and brings them in. Then she stokes the fire in the oven—she'll have to get the sweepers in to look at the main chimney before she lights any of the fireplaces—feeding the destroyed dress in with the fuel and using the flames to light some lamps. She heats some of the water, tracks down some soap and gets to work.

It's only when she jerks awake that she realizes she fell asleep at all. Her Grandma had always taught her to clean from top to bottom, and by her awkward sprawl on the steps she'd made it through the upper floors but dropped off before she could finish cleaning the stairs from the ground floor. Then the sound that woke her up comes again: a knock at the door. She navigates carefully around the mounds of dirty linen, furniture, and odds and ends all the while hoping her visitor isn't looking to be invited in.

When she swings the door open, she isn't at all prepared to find Thomas Shelby on the other side.

She knows the surprise is visible on her face, and she becomes acutely aware of her unkempt state—even if she is technically cleaner than the last time he saw her—as he very obviously looks her over.

"The house is a mess," she finds herself saying. "And honestly, so am I."

"I'd be more surprised if it wasn't," he replies unbothered as he steps up into the house. Wren finds herself moving out of his way simply by the persuasion of his own movements. "It's been…eight years? Since your grandfather passed and no one to look after it since."

He pauses as he settles in an empty chair at the kitchen table, dropping his flat cap on a clear spot beside the old glass ashtray, before turning that blue-eyed gaze on her, "at least as many years since anyone's looked after you, I'd wager."

Feeling vulnerable under the intensity of his gaze, she wraps her arms around herself and chews her bottom lip. A question itches at her and refusing to allow herself to back down, she lifts her chin and asks plainly, "why did you cover for me? With the copper."

Silence hangs between them for a long moment, and just when she thinks he won't answer he speaks, "Flint Langley beat his first wife to death in a drunken rage before she could even carry their first child to term. His second? Was a friend of me mother's. Ada is named for her: Ada Young. She tried to get away from him. The first time someone informed on her and he dragged her back. Mum was furious. The second time she insured no one could drag her back and escaped by slitting her own throat. Her eldest son, Pauli, found her body. I remember her funeral. I remember that he wasn't allowed to show up."

He pauses and brings out a carton of cigarettes and offers her one.

"I've never smoked anything before," she admits even as she reaches to accept one. She figures it's worth a try.

His lips quirk faintly, as he lights her cigarette than his before flicking the spent match in the ashtray on the table. She eyes the lit tobacco doubtfully, before bringing it to her lips and pulling a drag. It burns her throat and makes her cough which makes her eyes water. She sits in the empty chair beside him, finds him watching her when she focuses on him again.

"It tastes like ash," she states.

He shrugs as he flicks his ashes in the tray and blows out a long stream of smoke towards the ceiling. She's seen plenty of people smoke before, men and women both. Somehow, with the way the white paper seems to draw attention to the fullness of his lips and with the way his jaw relaxes when he breaths out, he makes the otherwise common act almost obscene. Feeling a bit ridiculous, she takes another pull. It still tastes like ash, but it doesn't burn quiet so bad. She manages not to cough at least.

"I didn't know that" she says quietly, "about Langley's wives. I knew he had had two, and that he had kids, but nobody ever said how they died."

"Ugly truths are rarely talked about," Tommy tells her. "A man that killed two women he was supposed to take care of? Few things uglier than that. He wasn't a good man, Langley, nobody will miss him."

It's in that moment that she realizes, in his way, he's trying to comfort her. That his showing up at her door and sitting at her table is him checking up on her. The reason he's watching her so carefully, trying to read from her body what she might not say if he asked. Ever since Ella told her the news, it's felt like a vice has been crushing her chest. For the first time, she feels that vice ease up, if only a little.

"I should feel bad, for killing him," she tells him softly. "Whatever he was, people would tell me I ought to feel badly. But I didn't when I pulled the trigger and honestly? Even after having slept on it, I still don't. I should feel badly for threatening my father's life and for wanting to kill him. But I don't. Grandpa always said: there is no love, if there is no trust. I'll never trust him again. The things that hurt, the things I regret, have nothing to do with what I did last night."

He studies her face in the quiet that follows and she lets him. Then a thought crosses her mind, and she can't help but tell him, "You know? You were one of Dad's rules."

Tommy quirks a brow at her and she realizes, "Not going near you, I mean."

The other eyebrow joined the first and suddenly she finds a bit of humor, "It wasn't too much after me eleventh birthday. You went riding passed us on a chestnut stallion, not even a saddle, easy as you please. I turned on the spot, though I don't think you took any notice of me. I thought Dad was going to hurt himself he went red so fast. No boys was always the rule, but no Tommy fucking Shelby was damn near a law after that. And here you are, sitting at me kitchen table with nobody else around."

"Red Rising," Tommy says, something like laughter softening his face. Then he notices my quirked brow and clarifies, "the chestnut stallion. His name was Red Rising."

She allows the smile to show through, even as the quiet settles.

Then he strides out of her house, that used to be her grandfather's, without so much as a backwards glance.