She wiggled and tugged and pulled, biting through her lip to distract herself from the pain with new pain, and the ropes slipped off her wrist. Tessa laughed. Why she found it funny, she couldn't say. She looked at her unbound wrists for a moment, just a split second, realized she had never truly appreciated them before. Her fingers, the freedom they gave her. She reached into her dress with her good hand, closing around the cold steel of the scalpel, drawing it out. She could see her own reflection in it, briefly, blood dripping from her lip, an even brighter red than her hair. She hacked at the ropes at her ankles, and if she cut herself in the process, she didn't notice. She stood. She walked to the door, and with all of her anger and pain, she started to kick.

It shuddered in it's frame, the old lock creaking. She kicked again, and aimed badly, sending a jolt of pain up her leg like it was her shin and not her thumb that had broken. She kicked again. She kept seeing Ada's face. The wood cracked, she kicked, it splintered, she kicked, a hole big enough for her to climb through. She shoved past it, her dress catching on the rough edges, ran right to the abandoned bedroom with the broken bed, ran right into Arnholt's bare chest, as he emerged to investigate the noise.

He hit her in the side of his head, his nostril's flaring like a bull's. She could see the whites in his eyes, the flashing, repulsive male anger. How dare she interrupt him. How dare she prevent him from invading, from violating, from destroying. She realized she could kill this man, if she found a way to, without a second thought. She didn't get the chance, his hand slammed into her again, his voice screaming in her ears, ringing like her head was a bell, knocking the scalpel, her one, tiny weapon, out of her hands. His hand wrapped around her throat. Just like at the hospital. Would she do things differently, she wondered, knowing what she did now? Would she walk out on Thomas Shelby, let him get shot in his hospital bed, if she could go back? She thought of Arthur's gentle eyes, Ada curled up asleep by the fire, Polly sharing her gin, John playing with his youngest son. And most of all, she thought of Tommy's eyes, brilliant, dazzling. The German kept screaming, kept squeezing. And suddenly she didn't see Arnholt anymore, but it was Tommy instead, and they were in his bedroom on Watery Lane, and he was kissing her and she was safe and it was so nice she thought the rest of the world was fading, like she was fading, too, like she was floating away…

A blurry figure emerged from behind the man who was killing her, lifted something, and swung hard. Arnholt went down, and Tessa went with him, dropping to the floor, gasping, her airway crushed, her lungs desperately trying to inflate, her head and eyes unfocused. The shape was kicking, and kicking, and kicking. Ada put her one remaining shoe through Arnholt's eye socket, and then she did it again, and again, until the heel was painted in blood. The world before Tessa's eyes came slowly back into focus, and she saw a girl in an empty hallway, with tear tracks on her face, looking like she was wearing one red stocking. Tessa struggled to sit up. Ada was gasping. The moment felt drawn out, sticky and slow like toffee, like every second was stretched out into a hundred, a thousand. Her scalpel was glinting slightly on the worn wooden floor where it had fallen, and she snatched it, clung to it.

"We have… to go," Tessa said, and her throat felt like it had been ripped out by wolves. "The other Germans… will come."

"He sent them away. He said he wanted it to be just me and him." Ada said, like a shell-shocked soilder. Her eyes looked blank.

"Ada. We've got... to go," Tessa said, again. Ada nodded, mutely, and Tessa doubted she had heard a word. She was staring at Arnholt's decimated face. Or the place where his face had been. Tessa pulled herself to a crouch, then, slowly, to her feet. The hallway tilted. She placed a hand on the wall to steady herself, and took Ada's hand. She noticed Ada's dress was ripped now, completely, nearly falling off of her.

"Ada, come on. We have to go."

They stumbled together, down the hallway, down the stairs. Tessa was fighting the encroaching darkness on the edge of her vision. She stopped at the top of the staircase that led down, into the basement, her abrupt movement jerking Ada back by their clasped hands.

"My father," she said, blindly. "I have to get my father." Ada's eyes were wide, petrified. "Go," Tessa said. "Go. I'll catch up to you." It was a lie. They both knew it.

"Tessa, you won't make it out of here with him," Ada said, her voice returning, but the fear in her eyes the same.

"Then I won't make it out," she said. "And I won't let you sacrifice yourself for me."

Ada's lip trembled.

"Tommy could do worse than you," she said, and she grabbed Tessa in a hug. "I'll find help. I'm going to get you out of here. I promise."

Tessa buried her face in Ada's hair. Somehow, past the blood and sweat and tears, she still smelled like lavender. "Go. Get yourself safe." And Tessa let go and threw herself down the stairs, two at a time, not looking back, because she knew if she did, she would leave with her.

The basement was really more of a cellar, it's walls made of stone, musty and dank and almost completely dark. Small windows laid into the house's foundation, just above ground, let in small patches of dim blue light, the dark sky and approaching night making Tessa squint in the darkness. That, and her vision was still blurry, going in and out like a pictureshow. There was a door on the right side of the room, its outline hazy, and she stumbled to it, her thumb throbbing, her legs shaky. The basement was even colder than the rest of the house, and for the moments it took her to cross the room, she could see her breath floating in front of her, smoke from the lungs of a dragon. The hem of her dress flashed in front of her as she started to kick, again, and it was red from trailing through Arnholt's blood. She thanked the old house, and it's crumbling foundation, because the door gave way after only two kicks, as she wasn't sure she could have managed many more. Her head spun with the exertion, and she couldn't see into the room, couldn't tell if she had just plunged herself into a dark cellar for no reason other than to have chosen her own scene of execution. She moved past the door, hanging off it's rusted hinges.

"Dad?" She called out, her voice hoarse, her heart clenching.