For all the talking she did, Tessa moved quietly through the dark hallways of the hospital. Her breathing was so erratic he could see it through the movement of her slight shoulders, but she was controlling it so that it made no sound. This was a surprise, but one that he was exceptionally grateful for. He was almost completely reliant on her and her decisions for the moment, a position he was horrendously unfamiliar and uncomfortable with, but one that was marginally better than being on the receiving end of more German bullets. None of the Germans had made it out of their last encounter alive, so there was no way for reports of Tommy's injuries to make it back to their leadership. That was, there had been no way until Arthur went on his fucking revenge spiral and essentially told them that Tommy was nearly incapacitated and ripe for the picking. Off. The picking off. And now they were coming to finish what they had started on Cannon Street. Fucking Arthur and his fucking conceptions of loyalty. A soldier should be better at controlling his emotions. Better at critical thinking, at strategy, at knowing what information your enemy could use against you. They could have gone back and taken the whole German organization out together after Tommy had been released if he had really needed some brotherly bonding, but instead, here he was, tiptoeing through a hospital, with no shoes and no fucking gun, with only a girl who came up to his chin and probably an entire armed German milita at his heels. All because Arthur couldn't do as he was damn well told. Tessa's voice brought him back to the present moment, and he pressed his good hand to his side and it came away red. He felt dizzy, out of touch, like he was watching what was happening from behind a plane of glass and pain.

"I have a plan, but you're not going to like it," Tessa was saying, quietly, close to him. If he had a pence for every time he had heard that one.

"What?"

"Take this. Follow me."

She held out a little bottle, in long, slender fingers, retrieved from her dress or pocket or out of thin air. He knew those bottles. He took it.

"How much?"

"All of it," She called, from over her shoulder. She was fiddling with something on the wall. Tommy opened the bottle, shook the powder onto the back of his hand, used his other hand to close his left nostril, and sniffed hard. Closed his eyes and shook his head. The snow was fucking pure.

"Is that-," He asked, but while forming the rest of the sentence the drugs hit, and he couldn't hear his own voice over the rushing of blood in his ears. He couldn't hear hers either, but he could see her gesturing wildly and her mouth moving. Her red hair was whipping around her like flames. Sounds came back in, slowly like waves, and the first one he heard was the clicking of approaching boots on the tile.

"Shelby! Now's the time! Get the fuck in the chute!" She hissed, shoving him with all her weight.

The chute was, of course, what she had been fiddling with in the wall. A supply chute for making the transport of goods easier between levels, something you wouldn't notice unless you worked at the hospital. Or unless your father had been the one that built it.

A nearly vertical chute with two bullet wounds. If anything was impeding it right now, he would likely get stuck and be fucked. If he fell over twenty or thirty feet directly down, he could land on his wounds and be fucked. The footsteps were becoming muffled voices. Tessa was shaking, eyes wide, trying to physically push him into the cramped hole.

"Don't," he said, pointing a finger at her, "fucking call me Shelby."

And he in he jumped.

The men rounded the corner just as the top of Tommy's dark head disappeared down into the blackness. To cover up the noise his body made sliding down a shaft meant for medicine and laundry, Tessa did something very stupid. She called out to them.

"Evening, gentlemen. Out for a nice midnight stroll through the hospital?"

The man in front, the tallest, was very blonde. He looked at her the way men did, and smiled slowly. He said something in German to the shorter man on his left, who chuckled. There were three of them. Three guns. Three sets of hands. Three large bodies. Moonlight was trickling down from the outside sky through a nearby window in the corridor, giving the whole scene an odd, flat kind of dimension.

"We are looking for someone. Perhaps you could point us to the room." He said, forming his words like he was rolling hard candy over in his mouth. She hated him within an instant.

"We are here to offer our condolences," said the shorter. His hair was brown. His jacket bulged out under his arm where his pistol hung. "For his condition."

"I'm sorry, I don't know any of the patients. I'm only here looking for my father," Tessa said, as innocently as she could, while a drop of sweat rolled down her back. She could feel it tickling her like a shiver.

"Ah, well. That is unfortunate." Another long, slow, sweeping look. Up and down. "Perhaps there are other things you might assist me with," the large blonde said, taking a step forward. His companion on the right, the last of the three, halted him with a hand on his upper arm.

Called him "Romanoff", said something in German, probably about orders. She distinctly heard "Shelby". So these were the men that were after him. A German gang. Of course. She was suddenly less concerned for their sake and much, much more worried for Tommy's. I need a gun, he had said. They had three. She felt faint. Romanoff shook off his companion brusquely, with a look of contempt.

"Thomas Shelby is a sitting duck. Where can he go? I like to enjoy my missions." He took several more long strides towards her, until he could reach out and take her chin in his hand. He turned it from side to side, his hand so large it covered nearly her whole face. Tessa was staring at his holster. She could get to it before he did if he moved his arm up. And if his companions shot her for it, so be it. She would rather die than what was likely to come next anyway. She knew it with a cold, apathetic certainty. She could hear her own heartbeat in her ears.

"What's your name, my dear?" His fingers were squishing her cheeks.

"Missy," She said.

"Mmm. You are quite lovely, Missy. Much too lovely to waste." His left hand was moving to her thigh.

"Wait. Romanoff." The brown one was looking at her intensely, but for a different reason. "What is your family name? Answer me."

"I-," She couldn't think fast enough. The brown haired one swore.

"That could be Leonard Reilly's daughter, you fucking idiot, we need to-"

Romanoff moved his hand suddenly from her face to her neck, lifting her so hard her heels left the ground. She was reaching with her hands, her airway was closed, she couldn't reach his gun, she couldn't breathe-

"I don't care about leverage over some old fucker-," Romanoff's spittle hit her cheek as he spat his words but there was a loud, loud BANG from several stories below.

Romanoff dropped her. "What the fuck was that?" The other men shook their heads, trading glances. "Fuck. Shelby." He said something else Tessa couldn't understand. Gestured with his right hand. His arm moved up. "The fuck are you waiting for? Fucking go!"

The men ran. Romanoff slapped Tessa with the back of his raised hand, so hard her head ricocheted off the stone wall. A ring on his finger sliced open a cut on her cheek, but she could only tell because she could feel the blood run. The side of her face burned like it had been a fire that had hit her, instead of a hand.

"Stupid whore," Romanoff mumbled, before chasing after the other men. Tessa took one gasping, shuddering breath, waited until she was sure they had turned the corner, and threw herself blindly down into the darkness of the chute.