Chapter 54) Mercy
.-.-.
As it turned out, Zilpha had some inefficient, high-risk demands up her sleeves. The Gypsy queen might have granted a new female into her bloody pack but that did not mean Maria could simply claim the Lee's loyalty back.
Since holding grudges ran in their family, Zilpha still refused to do any business with Tommy and therefore he was forced to stay in front of her caravan, receiving cold hard stares and hushed mockery for the good part of an hour.
When Maria strutted out of the caravan, the air around her had changed. Bangles danced around her wrist and she was draped in a vibrant copper laced dress. The last bits of her roots lay scattered in the mud and with bare feet she strode forward like a one woman army.
"Zilpha's claimed your automobile, the Lee's need it to pull their stranded caravans out of the soil," Maria announced non-negotiable, "we've been granted a horse but we'll need to make a brief stop at Buxton."
Tommy arched a brow and shrugged his shoulders implying he'd like to know where she was going with that last statement.
Maria managed to form a deadpan expression and revealed Zilpha's last ordeal: "I've gotten a fortune of diamonds and topazes sewed into my dress. The Lee's can't get rid of it by themselves; something to do with the way they've 'collected' the jewelry. In Buxton, we need to visit The Dryad Inn and speak to One-Eye Leo who knows a man who knows a man. That last man will rid us from these polished relics of corruption and send a telegram to the Lee's. Once that's settled, you'll have enough manpower to hook up the entire East-Coast with Snow."
Tommy found himself sheepishly nodding to her words, feeling like his bones were worn and stiff, unfit for yet another quest. As his lips pursed around the blunt of another cigarette, Tommy made a mental note to give Maria a raise, God knew she deserved one.
As if the Third Eye had converted her into a fucking oracle, Maria made another demand.
"Once we're home, I want new shoes," she dictated, curling her bare toes into the mud, "someone nicked mine and I don't suppose I will get them back, even if I ask nicely."
.-.-.
Being used like a marionette still didn't go over well with Maria. Zilpha's invisible bonds that tied her in another web of criminality and possible dangers did ice up the atmosphere between the both of them.
But it was hard to maintain such an amount of hostility as their lower bodies were locked together to fit the saddle. Maria did manage to keep her chin stiffly up in the air and kept her gaze sternly at the tips of their horse's ears. She did allow him to maintain the reins, so Tommy called that a small victory. And as the horse stepped up its pace, she allowed him to circle his arm around her waist.
Connected to the earth by hoof, Tommy was able to recover a small fraction of his old self.
Before the war, before his kindness was overshadowed by criminal acts and violence, he'd wanted to work with horses.
Long before the war, Tommy had silently fought the domestic hostility between four thin walls. Some occasions forced him to become a border between his mother's lashing tongue and his father's angry fists.
Other, more sporadic moments caused him to flee the house and hide inside his uncle's stables. Sometimes it was simply too much for his young shoulders to carry and since crying equaled weakness, Tommy needed other, more practical ways, to escape his day to day ordeals.
So he helped out with the horses. For a little fee, he'd fill up the empty hay nets, scrape dirty hooves and shovel up his weight in horse shit. Never did he complain about Uncle Charlie's orders and worked for hours straight. Until his back was soaked in sweat, his blisters popped open and hands were bleeding. Before dawn or late at night.
Uncle Charlie must have known, about his parents, about the abuse. But the man never spoke a word and to this day Tommy was grateful for that; because if one word had slipped from the chapped lips of his uncle, Tommy would have stayed away. Because you don't betray your kin, you don't rat out on your own flesh and blood. Not even if they are the ones that make it impossible to show up to school, because it takes days for certain bruises to fade away. Sometimes even weeks.
Uncle Charlie was a good man, the closest thing he'd had to a decent father figure. And maybe, if things hadn't gone as rotten as they did, Tommy might have been able to grow into a decent member of society. Unlike his brother who chose to roam the streets, Tommy found his safe haven elsewhere.
Like the safety of Miss Changretta's classroom, the stables calmed the storm that raged on inside his head.
The damp smell of ammonia, the sound of rain hailing down onto the iron roof, the creaking of the hinges and that thin twine of hay tweezed between his lips, it was the closest thing he had to call home. Because his real home was nothing more than a rat infested pile of bricks their sorry lots called a house.
Who knew, if that so-called God had granted him a better deck of cards, Tommy might have chosen a simpler life; the life of a stable boy, scraping his all pennies together at the end of every month in order to keep a roof over his head.
He might have been happy, he might have loved that life; surrounded by kindred spirits. Horses, creatures that don't speak a special equine language, but can connect on a much deeper level.
Tommy loved to let the horses run wild, could spend hours sitting on top of the wooden fence of Charlie's ring and watch the animals. When they wanted to run, he'd let them run it out. Once tired, they'd grow curious about their human caretaker and come back for petting. Repeating this process day after day, the horses learned to trust him.
Tommy never cared for the traditional approach; to break a horse. Whips, fears, beatings, he knew well what kind of traumatic effects such behaviour had on empathic creatures. Fear tactics, why on earth would one use such an approach on horses?
Tommy dedicated his whole life to control and overrule men, but never had he put a horse through those same ordeals. And he never would.
Riding, listening to steady hooves, the gentle swishing tail and snorting of the air; it brought Tommy melancholy, anguish and subconsciously, he mourned over the death of a life he could have lived.
"Something wrong Tommy?" Maria asked during their lunch break. He'd distanced his hardship, tucked it safely behind the stoic hue in his eyes and he knew it made him unreachable.
His mulish ways of denying eye contact and constant glaring at his pocket watch made his companion sigh in defeat and throw her arms up in the air.
"Out with it, for goodness sake," Maria chanted and when she collided into Tommy's brick wall of indifference spat: "fine, shilly-shally our whole way back to Small Heath if it suits you."
It did suit him; thoughtlessly, Tommy allowed his cigarette to burn out between his tight lips, staring at the freckled pelt of the horse.
Maria must have managed to nick a cigarette at the camp, because when Tommy zoomed back in, she was smoking and smoldering due to his disinterest.
"I'm going for a wizz," she announced, "and search for better company," she muttered underneath her breath while dawdling along the side of the road.
He did not blame her. It did unnerve him however, how she managed to press her pretty little finger right onto the sore spot. Although, he'd found her pick of words ridiculous, shilly-shally was an accurate description of his condition.
Any situation or experience could do this to him. Alternating between excitement and despair, exhilaration towards happiness and crush it with wretchedness.
A spark from the past, a homebound war or the one across seas, could flare up a platoon of emotions which neither could be picked nor controlled.
And it ached to be aware of that, but Tommy lacked the tools to prevent those outbursts from happening. It was either an explosion of wrath and violence, or the power of cold blood and a poker face.
For the tenth time in less than a minute, Tommy took out his watch and pretended to care about the time.
And maybe if he hadn't been so busy masquerading his blue mood; he would have sensed those extra sets of footsteps heading back to him.
It hadn't been planned, or at least Tommy hoped it hadn't been. If so, the two schmucks facing him did not deserve the knives they carried. Taking in their ages and ragged clothes of the two muggers, Tommy sensed it was a spur of the moment decision. Low-lives without a solid place to call home, preying on folks who they thought they could outmatch. Their miserable excuse of a robbery was almost boring.
Unflinching, unblinking Tommy stared at the bloke that blocked the path between him and Maria. Tweedle-Dee's face was masked by a handkerchief and that honestly made Tommy smother a chuckle in the back of his throat.
"Wallet, jewelry, now!" Tweedle-Dee ordered skipping a tone. The knife toyed between his fingers glimmered in the sunlight, a poor attempt to strike fear. It made Tommy think of his own first robbery and it would not surprise him if the bloke was ready to piss himself.
Maria, still fresh from the experience of being threatened by bladed weapons, froze on the spot.
"Now!" Tweedle-Dee ordered again, raising his knife, "or I'll gut you like a fish!"
His threat managed to raise one of Tommy's brows while he debated on whether to break the fucker's nose or go for the first row of teeth.
When his partner's words did not set their victims into immediate action, Tweedle-Dum made the royal mistake of touching Maria.
Aware of his revolver burning in the holster and very ready to be used, Tommy casts a cold and deadly glare at the robber who manhandles Maria into a headlock, pressing a blade against the fair skin of her neck.
Two plans play out inside Tommy's brain and neither one of them included those two fucks to remain breathing. The thing was, the fucking thing was that it involved him murdering two men in cold-blood. He didn't care really; he was passed feeling remorse for such petty lives. But he was not close to passing that fine line of keeping or losing Maria's virtue.
"H-he carries all our worth in his front pocket," Maria lied through her teeth in order to save the fortune hidden in her dress.
"You let your woman talk for you huh?" Tweedle-dum taunted, while keeping his bicep firmly around Maria's neck. His partner extended his arm and waited anxiously for Tommy to retrieve the goods.
While reaching for his wallet Tommy's eyes were glued to the meaty fingers of Maria's assailant. They crept their way up to her bosom, squeezing roughly. In that instant, Maria's skin became much paler, mouth hanging with lips slightly parted and eyes as wide as they could go, filled with horror and disgust. But above all, shock, shock at how swiftly freewill could be taken away.
Tommy's wallet went from hand to hand and ended up in the back pocket of Maria's assaulter. The contents had visually pleased the man to a high extent.
"Maybe I should teach you a lesson, aye pet?" the bastard grunted near her ear and sniffed her hair. Maria's body was still, throat gulping against the sharp edge of the knife. Strength to fight seemed to have deserted her, shattered like shards of glass while meaty fingers roamed freely.
It was as if that bastard, that fucking bastard flipped a switch. Like watching one of Ada's favorite pictures shows, Tommy watched himself go from hand-to-hand combat, to knocking them to the ground. It was an out of body experience and he hardly recalled the blade of Tweedle-Dee graze through the fabric of his jacket. There was a tinge of pain coming from his bicep, but not enough to break from this maddening spell. He was seeing red, first figurative but once he yanked the handle from his attacker's fist, and redirected itself, it flooded the soil in the literal sense. The knife met soft and pudgy flesh and made a stomach turning squish as the blade sank deep within the poor man's abdomen.
The thing was, the stab was lethal, and once vital organs are punctured there was no going back. The poor bastard was a goner, but fuck it, he had it coming the moment his companion made a wrong move towards Maria.
Watching his partner receive such a merciless attack, Tweedle-Dee shoved Maria to the floor and took off running. By the time Tommy was back on his feet, the bloke managed to mount their horse and headed off into a full gallop.
Possessed by rage and adrenaline Tommy drew his gun and aimed, ready to shoot and destroy the man's occipital region with one calculated pull of the trigger.
But a body launched itself against Tommy and both dropped to the ground like a bag of potatoes. His face banged into a tree root, tasting blood. His breath hitched, limbs tensing. A sound escaped the back of his throat and it was unearthly, raw and deadly.
Knowing that using a gun in these types of close combat situations could result in a higher chance of him hurting himself, he tossed the weapon out of reach. For what he was about to do didn't need any weapons anyway. He was ready to mangle his knuckles and turn a human body into pulp.
Raising his fist high above his head the last bit of his sanity took over as his eyes locked with Maria's instead of the blood shot ones of Tweedle-Dee.
In slow-motion, he lowered his arm realising she'd been the one to take him down. Sporadic bursts of stars clouded his vision and his chest felt heavy and tight.
The only thing Tommy could hear was his heartbeat drumming and the ringing in his ears. With his mouth half opened, he stared down at her asking a silent question: why did you stop me?
But he was a fool and a liar if he failed to know the answer already.
She had seen him do unspeakable things and was aware of the murders he'd committed on home territory and in France. But there was a world of difference between knowing and witnessing the ultimate sin.
And the last time they'd been in a similar situation, she wasn't afraid to draw out her own blood, which evidently meant she'd rather harm herself than face the monster he could be.
He wished that he could have postponed that moment too. He did not fear death, nor torture, he'd been there done that. But it had haunted him to think that one day, she might see him the same way he saw himself; ruined.
Guttural chokes gurgled up from behind them as Tweedle-Dee was breathing out his final breathes. Convulsing, trembling hands tried to close the gaping hole inside his abdomen while thick blood flowed freely. Scarlet liquid squirted up from beneath his fingers and with eyes popping out of their sockets the poor young man's pleas for mercy became nothing more than gushes of air.
"Help him!" Maria begged him, "please, he's in pain."
Tommy briefly stared at the dying man. His attack had caused unimaginable damage beyond repair. The knife had gone deep enough to turn the man's guts into Swiss cheese. The amount of blood leaving his body gave him nothing more than minutes in the land of the living.
"We need to take him to a hospital," Maria pressed, not ready to face the fact that she was watching a dying man, "please Tommy, we need to help him!" She'd crawled closer, pressing her palms against the man's stomach and tried to will the blood back into his body.
The poor bastard grasped her bloody hands and drew her closer, mouth moving but lacking the strength to pronounce words.
There was a twinge inside Tommy's chest he refused to call compassion and stared into the same pair of eyes he'd watched hundreds of times before. Dying men that passed all the types of stages; the first being defiance. During that period of time where the pain was the most prevalent, they say adrenaline mutes out all, but nothing was further from the truth. During those seconds, minutes the human body is hyper alert. It'll try to flee the inevitable end and all nerve endings are on edge.
After failing to outrun death, fear crept up close and settled atop of the chest. Many men piss themselves and there was no shame in doing so. Dying does not separate the boys from the men, death takes everyone equally.
Once fear sinks through the rib cages, it'll lift a heavy weight. It'll cast out mortal emotions, in death there was no place for regret, for repent. Death eventually lifts all our burdens until there is nothing more than to surrender. Peace. Stillness.
Tweedle-Dee was a fighter, his body spasmed like a rabbit trapped in a loop and it wasn't a pretty sight to look at.
"He's in pain," Maria's voice filled itself with dejection, her bloody hands clasping around the one's of the dying young sod who happened to do something unbelievably stupid.
"Please Tommy, stop it!"
Tommy tilted his head up to look at her, because within her last pleads lay an order. He needed to know if he'd understood correctly.
His revolver lay a few feet away, the metal caked in the mud. Tommy picked it up while Maria turned into marble next to the whimpering body.
Maria seemed to shrink back from Tommy's approaching footsteps, stoking the young man's cheeks to rid them from tears: "He will wipe away every tear from your eyes and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." Although her back was facing him he knew she was crying too, her soft voice jittering and shoulders shaking.
Moving his feet shoulder-width apart, he took a little longer than necessary to steady himself.
"Oh Lord, forgive me," Maria clutched the hands of the bleeding man a moment longer and then withdrew, taking a stand alongside Tommy.
Her last straw of doubt withheld her from staring anywhere else but the eyes of the deadly wounded, bulging out of their sockets.
Blinking a couple of times, hands still clasped together so tight till her knuckles turned white. It took her a long while before she dared to face Tommy. And maybe he should have waited a little longer, granted the poor fuck on the floor would bleed out and die due to blood loss.
But he didn't. All he needed was that small nod of entrust and he blew the young man's brains out. It was a clear shot, between the brows, out of mercy.
Maria wailed and threw herself against him, burying her face deep into his jacket. Her fist beat against his chest, nails clawing into his skin. It wasn't anger driven, it was mourning for the dead. For her own sake and possibly his.
Her muffled scream halted and turned into sobbing. Tommy responded by stiffly sliding his arm over her shoulders and pulling her away from the body. He guided her behind an oak and seated her down.
Before squatting down, Tommy feverishly rubbed his eyes and watched how his right hand spasmed. Fuck, what were the fucking etiquettes for taking a man out cold in front of your bonny lass?
Stay, pray, don't look back, Tommy emerged back into his role of sergeant major and focused on the most important pragmatic actions. Hide the body.
And so he did, mechanically. As he'd done down in the tunnels, pile after pile. If you've done that long enough it doesn't affect you that much anymore. The trick was not to focus on their faces, just the arms and legs. The rest was just dead weight that needed to be disposed of.
This repeat of previous events was nothing compared to the hours and hours of shoving and pulling decomposing comrades.
Tweedle-Dee's final resting place was a ditch not far from the spot he'd taken his final breath. There was no time nor tools to dig a grave, so stones, branches and leaves would have to do.
"Can you close his eyes?"
Dumbstruck, Tommy jerked around to Maria who made her way up to him, stepping over trunks and tall grass.
Go back to the Oak Maria, Tommy ordered her. This wasn't her call, nor place to be.
"No," her defiance was resolute, their eyes met but she broke it off, "this is my fault, I should… be here," she halted as the tips of her shoes met the brim of Tweedle-Dee's rolled up trousers.
Tommy's sigh was soft, deflating; it was as if the tension had lifted yet left him with a dead weight of stones inside of his chest.
He carried out his work without another attempt to rid her from the crime scene. As he stacked the body with more branches, Maria pressed a small bouquet of wildflowers into his stiffening hands.
The small gesture was so out of place for Tommy's utilitarian of dealing with human carcasses that it made him halt and he clenched his jaw at the sight.
No, he extracted his hand and waved, motioning her to leave. Maria stopped dead in her tracks, this is no fucking funeral, this is not a ceremony, he cocked his head into the direction of the road, be on the lookout if you don't fancy the noose around your neck.
Maria drew in a sharp breath, her head snapping into the direction of the road, back to Tommy and back to the road again.
As she battled her way through tall grass and an uneven forest floor, Tommy had no doubt that it was because tears blurred her view. He watched her cross the barrier between homicide and where they'd been, just a few minutes ago.
How was she going to overcome her first arranged murder? Granted, he'd been the one pulling the trigger, but it had been her call. He'd wanted it to be her call, because in their line of work it hadn't been a matter if she'd have to make a choice between life and death, it was a matter of when.
You never forget your first; it's the one that impacts your life, consciousness and morality the most. Tommy's first murder had been messy and he'd been young. Fifteen, over a fucking stack of horseshoes of all things. He'd never intended to end a life over such a fuss. But the bastard tried to steal them off one of Uncle Charlie's boats and he simply couldn't let that happen. Their family was already pissed upon so he chased after the bastard, jumping from deck to deck. It wasn't hard to catch up with a bloke carrying a crate of horseshoes, but the bastard put up a hell of a fight trying to throw Tommy off the boat. Tommy received a fist in the face, followed by another in his stomach that made him heave forward and spew his breakfast at his feet.
But it weren't the fists that rained down upon him that made all air disappear from his lungs; it had been the name calling that made him bolt forwards like an arrow from a bow. Pikey, Tinker, the thief ended up between two boats and that day Uncle Charlie missed a crate of horseshoes, because they needed weight to weigh the body down the Cut.
Uncle Charlie labeled it an accident, but it hadn't been. That thief had been the embodiment of all wrongness that burdened his everyday life. The beating fists like his father, the mocking like the majority of Small Heath. It hadn't been a matter of if but when he'd see through a haze of red.
At least Maria's first lethal crime had been out of mercy, it might grant her a pardon once she meets her maker.
It was the best of the worst he could give her. Because however their story would evolve, he was never destined to have a happy ending. And since he refused to walk without her, she was doomed to follow his footsteps.
.-.-.
A/N: Ok, I'm not trying to defend MuteTommy (yes I am, I always will) but in his POV he's trying to do right by her. He's limited due to his upbringing, the war, being surrounded by violence. And by this mercy killing, it makes it 'right' in his mind to drag her down another level. Murder, which she instigated. In a very dark and twisted way, this is another way of bounding.
Aren't I a total romanticus, right…?
Hope you're all well, stay safe!
Xoxox Nukyster
