Chapter 48) Just a Man
.-.-.
Maria blamed the blood loss, the adrenaline and the fact that she'd cut her own skin to save his for her next action.
She slapped Tommy across the face. It had been an open-handed smack and it left a red welt behind. Maria's palm burned, probably as much as Tommy's cheek.
"You deserved it," she stated so ceremoniously it was judge worthy.
Tommy faltered against one of the many cabinets in the midwife's crumbling living room. For a moment, Maria wondered if she'd surprised him with her uncharacteristic action, or if he needed the moment to restore his ego.
"Well, I'll leave ya two lovebirds for a chat," the elderly lady mumbled amusedly and tottered into the back room.
"You've got some devil inside of you Tommy Shelby," Maria hissed at him when she was sure the midwife was out of hearing range. The fear that had withered through her system had been replaced with anger the moment the midwife's needle started to pierce her skin.
"I've lied, stolen, gambled for you. I've taken beatings because of you, I've been held at gunpoint, for your foolish actions. And now I've even bled because I wouldn't let you murder two innocent men in cold blood. You should be ashamed of yourself!"
Something flashed beneath the surface of Tommy's hardened expression and Maria hurried to identify the sudden shift. But Tommy's tarnished mask returned in a blink of two piercing blue eyes.
Maria braced herself, aware that she was in no position to speak to her employer in such a manor.
What she got was maybe even worse; the silent treatment. Tommy straightened his shoulders, extended his arm and helped her off the table. The stretching of the five threads holding the cut together burned, but Maria didn't make a peep. Hopping awkwardly on one leg to minimize the pain in her other, she allowed Tommy to hook his arm underneath hers.
"Oh, in order for the midwife not to contact the police, we need to pay her handsomely. Very handsomely."
The muscles that tightened near Tommy's jawline told her that he was far from happy about that and given Maria's simmering anger it made her feel quite satisfied.
He helped her get inside the car and walked back to the midwife's house to pay her a decent amount of hush money.
It gave Maria a moment to inspect the professional work of the elderly lady. Sterilizing the wound had been a torture of its own, she'd nearly bit her lip in half during the procedure. Black dots had plagued her vision again and during the stitching she'd firmly kept her eyes shut in order to stay lucid.
The midwife had explained to her that the healing would be faster if she'd expose the wound to fresh air and to remove the stitches after nine days.
The row of five perfectly made stitches reminded her of her mother's needlework and she wondered if it would scar once it was healed.
Tommy jammed his car door open, visibly agitated by the amount he needed to pay to silence the elderly lady. Maria flinched. Their eyes met for a moment and Maria quickly covered her thighs by pulling her skirt down. Her thigh was tainted with dry blood and mud and Maria reckoned she probably looked like a hazard; bloody, red rimmed eyes and a botched up face from biting down on her lips and bruised from the fainting.
Once she was back in Small Heath, she'd hide inside the bathhouse for an entire week, let them all be damned, her family and his. Let him be damned too.
'If I ever get back,' Maria thought faintly.
The silent treatment continued and honestly she was fine with it, she'd had her say and she'd had enough trouble for one day. Darkness had set around them and soon Maria's head lulled back and she drifted into much needed slumber.
It was the cold that awakened her. Outstretching her stiff limbs, she immediately came back to her senses when pain flared from her thigh as her stitches pulled and ached.
Although she vividly remembered the dreadful event of the day, her eyes needed to readjust to the darkness around her. She was alone inside the car, with the only reminder of Tommy's existence being his thick coat wrapped around her shoulders.
An orange hue glistened from the side of the car, faintly lightening up against the night sky.
There was a small fire burning, Tommy sat close, face lighting up while he chewed on some mint leaves, his gaze down as he was completely focused on scribbling in his notebook. He wore an old muddy jacket and a tattered set of clothes. She'd seen him wear them before, during their time at the stables. Although he wore his trademark hat, he looked different now that he was stripped from his opulent costume. Less impenetrable.
The discomfort of the cold eventually won and made Maria get out of the car and hurry towards the warmth the fire provided. Tommy did little to acknowledge her presence, freezing his writing hand momentarily as the wounded young woman swooped down across from him.
There stood much more in between them than the simple fire, Maria was very aware of that. Picking a few leaves of mint, she started chewing, her stomach was empty but she was too stubborn to ask for food. Instead, she added more wood and poked the simmering logs with a long stick. The fire seemed to die a little, licking at the fresh wood, sending feeble sparks into the air.
Maria's eyes got lost in the flames that flickered; provocative and welcoming. The heat seemed to melt her bitterness and it left her hollow.
Wrapping Tommy's jacket firmly around her shoulders, she added another small twig to the flames, nursing it with care. It gave her a purpose, fueling their only source of warmth; it would have to last through the night. So she took up the role as fire guard, poking it with a tall stick while occasionally throwing daggers at him.
Her scornful glances did not go by unnoticed. Eventually, Tommy let out a deeply plagued sigh, ripped out a piece of his paper from his notebook and blandly reached it out to her.
Maria took the note reluctantly, expecting a new order or a scolding reminder to keep her temper in line. But the page she received left her speechless:
Holy Mary,
I'm not writing this letter as your employer, but as just a man, who wants to do you right.
I'm well aware that you've seen me. As a monster, inflicting incredible acts of violence upon men.
I've never felt remorseful for my actions, because at the end of the day, they've always been beneficial to either my kin or myself.
I've done you wrong today, as I've done yesterday and many days before. I want to sincerely apologize, for everything. There is no excuse for hurting you in the ways I have. I'm well aware that I might not be forgiven and that you may think that all of these are just empty words. Because that's all I seem to be these days, empty.
The war left me damaged, changed me into the person I am today. And I can't come to terms with what I've become. There is this soldier inside my head; one that can't let his guard down, that simply keeps marching on. He can't be at ease; he's relentless and enables everything inside of me.
At times it's like I'm stranded in the desert, crawling around with a broken compass and I simply cannot see right from wrong anymore.
I've told you before; I'm not a good man, far from it. I reckon I've never been a good man; the war only outlined my survivor qualities, while they diluted every bit of common sense and mercy.
I don't believe in a lot of things and I certainly don't believe in your God, but I need someone who hasn't fallen from grace, who doesn't see compassion and forgiveness as weakness.
I think this is about my sixth failed attempt at writing you a proper letter and weren't it not for the fact that you've woken up and have been glaring at me for a good few minutes, I'd have burned it in the fire, just as the five previous notes.
I know I'm in no position to ask for anything, but I wish that you could look at me the way you did in the Zoo, while we stood near the Elephants. Because for a moment, I was nothing more than just a man, not a monster, not a soldier, not a gangster, nor a Pikey. At times, you make me feel like just a man. A man that wants to be good.
A sound escaped from the back of Maria's throat; it was something between a sob and a choke. She didn't care really, she was too occupied with rereading the letter; half convinced her vision was betraying her. As she finished the letter for the second time, her eyes slowly focused on the writer. His icy blue's still mastering that deadpan gaze of someone who'd stared death in its face and walked right past it. As his eyes held the blue of the ocean, he'd been drenched in the depths of earth, blood and fire, as if he'd been touched by hell itself. At times those eyes could be pitch-black; pupils dilated and cleared of any spec of humanity. Tommy could shift into something vile, diabolical.
It would be so easy to condemn his crimes. It would be simple if he was nothing more than a lost soul heading straight to hell. It would be so easy if she'd stick to all the words they preached in her hometown church.
But her notion of right and wrong had transfigured so much since her brother and father died. Although she'd earned the ludicrous name of Holy Mary, she did not consider herself anything close to the saint. Not even a million Hail Mary's would cleanse her from the evil she'd done.
Her eyes fluttered back to the hastily scribbled down words; it was the second time Tommy made amends. For a moment, she felt less tainted, knowing she'd stopped him from committing the ultimate crime; taking the lives of the innocent.
If she couldn't walk the right path, then she'd pick the road less paved with bloody stones.
"I'll keep this letter close to heart," Maria finally spoke, folding the paper and tucking it in between her undershirt and her bra, "I hope you do too."
She tried to smile, but her lips trembled and her chin aches. Self-consciously, she wondered in what bad shape she must be in, battered and bloodstained.
Tommy was an unmoving statue; the flames gave him ghostly features. He seemed to be waiting and it made it even harder to breath. Now his confessions lay out in the open, she was lost in no-man's land; a new and indefinite place where guidelines and authority weren't clear.
As a war veteran, Tommy wasn't unfamiliar with the new territory and ready to claim the barren land.
His lips were there, gentle yet urgent. They pulled apart rather quickly; leaving Maria to take a shaky shallow breath. Tommy was so close, it made her leg feel like jelly and her stomach flipped in an oddly satisfying way. And she couldn't help herself, there was fire burning inside her chest when she reached forward to meet his lips. There was a part within her that desperately tried to make her pause, make her stop, but it was hushed and silenced by a sensation she can only call desire.
Tommy's fingers curled around her short hair, pulling her into a fiery and passionate kiss. She'd never been held and touched like this before, one of his hands trailed over her lower back while his other traced the cotton line of her skirt.
With the prospect of what was about to happen once those hands slid underneath the thin layer of fabric, Maria panicked. She used to have a best friend Betty, who'd been the same type of girl. A wallflower, yet a wallflower with very prominent bosoms and long, red curling hair.
Betty was a pretty girl that used to spend her summers at her aunt's in London.
And then one summer Betty came back different, as if all her childish naivety had left her, replaced with the worry of a woman. A mother-to-be.
Only Betty's baby never came, she made sure of that. Well, a doctor did, although Betty highly estimated him to be a butcher in his spare time.
No-one knew about the baby boy, except for Betty, the doctor, her mum and Maria, who solemnly had to swear never to mention it ever again.
Betty never smiled the way she used to and never dared to glance at another boy, because the doctor made sure her most desirable parts were mutilated and hideous.
During the winter, Betty left their village to become a nun, spreading words of how she wanted to vow her life to the Lord. They never spoke about it, but deep down Maria knew Betty would rather swear off sex forever than to show a man her private bits.
It wasn't the fear of being carved up down there, it was Betty's bitter warning: don't let them have you so easy, it's not them carrying the burden, it's never about them!
Although Betty's mutilation ran far deeper, the despair of her best friend had scared her too.
It was due to her heart and brain fighting each other and being so caught up with the contrasting emotions that her body mechanically retreated.
They pulled apart. Taking shaky, shallow breaths, Maria tried to vindicate her sudden halt. But she simply couldn't find the words of how she already missed his warmth and touch, yet feared the intimacy that followed. Sex wasn't just a taboo; sex meant losing a lot and gaining a possible curse. No man would ever look at her twice if she carried out a bastard and she honestly did not dare to dream of happy ever afters. Because Betty's first had promised her the moon, but when she told him, the truth hit her so hard all she saw were stars.
Tommy physically did not move, but he retreated. A familiar muscle tightened in his jawline and his blue eyes flickered cold in the light of the fire.
Is it because I can't speak? He signed resolutely, maintaining the cool glance.
Maria nearly laughed, because it was ridiculous of him to think that his inability to speak made him less desirable.
"No," she said softly, cautious as if she was telling him a secret, "it's… just a form of self-preservation," and just now, as the words left her lips, she realised she was letting him in on a secret. Because although she'd never been in love before, she knew exactly what she expected it to be, "because once we go there," she continued with a little jitter in her voice, "I'll be in love with you. So for my own sake, I need to know that you'll keep me. That you'll want to keep me, that you'll have me, for more than that one thing. Because you're able to walk away, while I will lose everything. Everything."
It was the truth, if he lost her he'd still be somebody. Granted with an infamous family name, it would keep Tommy away from the gutter and poorhouses. But if she lost him, in one way or another, she'd be destined to become a beggar, a whore, or be married off to some lowlife, because the only name she'd have would be spoiled with his.
"I can't afford to have nothing Tommy, I've heard what happens to little girls in the poorhouse," an icy shiver ran over her back when she thought of April and May, "I have to take care of my family," she spoke softly staring at the crackling twigs near her feet.
In that moment, when despair and doubt started to gather up on her shoulders to weigh her down, Tommy wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. In response, she let her head rest against his chest and all her hazardous thoughts seemed to pause, as if her heart took over from her head.
Claiming the small victory, she felt safe enough to wiggle her arms underneath his jacket and circle them around his back.
And she no longer wanted to think, or speak. For once, she wanted to shut out all the wrongness in her world, momentarily forget about the responsibilities that made it impossible to sleep. All she wanted to do was watch the firewood crackle within the flames, feel how his fingers gently brushed through her hair and listen to his heart beat steadily in his chest.
.-.-.
A/N *waves* Hi, yes I'm still alive! I'm going to skip the part where I roll down on the floor with a toddler tantrum whaling that I want to have more free time to write… It's not a pretty sight.
So in this chapter, I love the letter Tommy wrote. I found it hard to write the rest of the chapter. It sort of hit me that Maria is a virgin and how illogical it would be to just let them have forest sex. And how illogical it would be for her to just give 'it' up. So yeah, tough cookie to crack.
Oh and then there is still Tommy's shitlist to come, getting back on Zilpha's good side, not re-fucking it up with the Chinese, where the fuck is John, Polly's still in the hospital, and I think I'm just going to sit in the corner and drink Whiskey…
Cheers, have a wonderful holiday!
Xoxoxo Nukyster
