Arthur leapt out of the passenger's side of the van, black coat billowing, already shouting before Tommy was entirely in earshot.

"Tommy! We couldn't find her, Tom, we searched everywhere, brother, had all the coppers sweep the streets, even some houses, we don't know where she- bloody hell," he halted, once Tommy was in close enough proximity for Arthur to take in his appearance. "Tough night, eh? You alright?"

Tommy waved off his questions with a dismissive motion of his hand. "I'm fine. Ada's okay, Arthur, she's here, I found her. She's right there." He pointed to the hill, a quarter of a mile in the distance.

"Thank fucking Christ," Arthur said, his stiff shoulders relaxing, blowing out a deep breath, drawing a hand down his face.

"You have the men?"

"Yeah, yeah, they're all here, told them you said to come here at first light if we hadn't heard from you by then."

Tommy moved forward and clapped his brother on the shoulder, and pain shot through his arm, but he gripped on, his knees feeling like the joints had just disappeared and he almost buckled, his eyes burning. "It's good to see you, Arthur," he said, and Arthur pulled him into a gruff embrace that cracked against Tommy's broken ribs.

"You too, Tom. You gonna tell me about what the fuck happened here?"

Tommy wanted a cigarette. "No," he said.

"You get your girl?"

Tommy didn't correct him. "She's with Ada, and her father. You'll need to take him to the hospital, he's been shot. Send the boys into the forest. There's some hunting they need to do."

"How many?" Arthur asked, his mustache twitching agitatedly.

"I don't fucking know," Tommy said. "Just tell 'em to light up the trees."

"Yes, sir, Sergeant Major," Arthur said, giving him a brief salute, then walking towards the back of the black flatbed truck and pound pound pounding on the wooden ramp that served as the back door. "Alright, wake up, men, there's Germans need shot."

Gunshots cracked through the trees like falling branches, and Tommy sat on the low stone wall, cold underneath him, legs crossed, smoking. Arthur had taken Tessa and her father to the hospital, but Tommy had stayed, to make sure the job got done, to make sure he didn't have to look at her. His injuries would heal on their own, he could have Polly stitch up his arm later. For now, he sat, watching the sun make it's slow, lazy ascent over the tops of the trees, as his Blinders slowly emerged in the distance, dragging or carrying bodies back to the black van. The Jews never did show, but he had hardly expected them to. What he hadn't counted on was Ada's abduction, or the coincidental timing, or that they would bring her to the same location that they were keeping Reilly. It's not what he would have done, had he been the one stowing away hostages. He would keep them as separate and distant as possible, to lessen the chances of escape, to prevent any sense of comradery or hope for resistance. Like what had happened with Tessa and Ada. But he was grateful that he had checked, covered all his options, all the bases, grateful for the German's mistake. He thought about watching Tessa's red waves swing as she slit a man's throat for her father, thought of her breaking her own bones to escape her bonds to try to save Ada from the German officer's advances, thought of her lying for him and fighting for him, a stranger, in the hospital where they met. Because she was good, at her core, her willingness to suffer for others due not to how little she cared for herself, but instead how much she cared for them. Your medals, she had said. You deserved them. He laughed, harshly, to himself, and flicked his cigarette away. He was going to owe Johnny Dogs a whole new pack. He was going to owe him a lifetime supply, after last night. His head was clear and quiet and he hated it, but he was certain. Within less than two months of knowing him, Tessa had been shot at more times than he could count on both hands, and when he closed his eyes he saw the ring of bruises around her neck in the shape of hands, the blood dripping down her lip, the unnatural angle of her thumb, the fire in her eyes when she told him to get away from her. Tommy had taken whatever he wanted, after the war, because he had lost all reason not to, because life had never given him anything he hadn't had to grab with both hands. She was the only thing that meant more to him than his own selfishness, for the first time in longer than he could remember, and it terrified him, the thought of losing her, and the fact that it scared him scared him, the feedback loop screaming in his mind, a forigen, unfamiliar crescendo, until he put his head in his hands, and cried, alone on a broken wall of stone, the smoke from her burning car still trailing off gently into the air, smelling like melted metal and nitroglycerin and home.

Tessa sat by her father's bed in Ignatius hospital, trying and failing and then trying and failing all over again not to remember meeting Thomas, to not think about Thomas, to not remember anything or think about anything at all. Missy came into the room, her bushy brown eyebrows knitted together in concern, hands clasped in front of her like a nun carrying a rosary.

"What did they say?" Tessa asked her after only sparing her a brief glance, going back to watching her father, the pain that flickered across his face, even in sleep.

"They says…," she paused and pursed her lips, and Tessa already knew to prepare herself, "they says 'ee'll be lucky ta ever walk again, miss," the nurse told her, and Tessa nodded, blankly, because there was really nothing else she could really do. He was alive. He would survive. That would have to be enough. "They says if they had gotten to him sooner, maybe…"

The room was bathed in bright white light that made the bruises on Tessa's pale arms stand out even more garishly. She looked like she had had an accident in a dye shop. Missy waited for a moment for Tessa to say something, but she didn't, so she bowed her head a bit, and left. In the back of her mind, Tessa knew she should appreciate Missy's cautious attempts at a bedside manner, but it had never been her forte, really, and Tessa couldn't muster up the will to care much either way. Her father breathed unevenly. Tessa breathed unevenly, her throat still tight. She took his hand, slack against the bleached bedclothes.

"I brought you flowers," she told him, just in case he could hear her, just in case she could make up for things, even the tiniest bit. "You always used to get mom flowers, when we were little. But I think they were more for you than anything," she said, rubbing her thumb on his worn skin. Her other hand was wrapped in stiff, itchy bandages. "Mom never liked flowers all that much, but I did. When I missed you in America, I used to pick bunches of flowers from the side of the road. Weeds, mostly. Some wildflowers. I pretended you had sent them to me." She smiled, remembering, but tears were slipping off her cheeks. "I'm sorry, papa," she said, her voice catching, sorry for everything, sorry this happened, sorry I didn't do enough, fast enough, well enough. Sorry sorry sorry. The yellow roses she had gotten him glinted in their crystal vase like drops of sunlight come to life. The man she had bought them from on the street asked what colors she had wanted, and all she had said was, "Not red".

Eight days later, Tessa stood on Watery Lane, where she had told her driver to drop her off, trying to figure out what to do with her hands. There were three handsome cars parked out front of the houses, which didn't surprise her much. Whatever else could be said about the Shelby family, they stuck together in times of trouble. She was glad that they were still here, by Ada's side, but she was not glad that one of the cars was Tommy's black Bugatti, next to a classy grey Aston she assumed was Polly's, and another, larger black vehicle she couldn't tell the make of, that was probably Arthur or John's. She had been hoping that Tommy, at least, had gone back to his house, wherever that really was, or that he would be so busy with whatever business he had been neglecting over the past several months that she would not have to see him. She was not ready to see him. Her blue-green dress tossed itself around her ankles a bit in the ashy wind. She had taken a leaf from Tommy's book and worn one that matched her eyes. Dirty children yelped and squalked around her like birds in flight, flitting to one side of the narrow street, and then to the other. Dirty men heaved loads of coal on their shoulders, slightly less dirty women hung up their washing to dry in the smoke-filled breeze. The three cars stood, imposing, like sentries in front of a castle. Tessa squared her shoulders, took a breath, and crossed the street.

"Polly! Going to the Garrison! Tell Arthur and the boys to meet me there!" Tommy called over his shoulder, up the stairs, his voice bouncing off the worn walls. He shrugged on his coat with one hand and reached for the door with the other, but someone knocked on it as he did so, the tap tap tap cut off as he swung it open, and then, suddenly, there she was, looking slightly surprised but not half as surprised as he felt, her hand still lifted.

"Tessa," he said, keeping his voice neutral.

"Thomas," she nodded, her waves cascading around her shoulders, her pink lips parted. She looked like a porcelain doll and her perfume smelled like apples and sunlight as it wafted over him and if he was a lesser man, he would have taken a step back, or maybe forward, but he was not and did not, kept watching her, appraising her, taking in the details. Her dress was the same color as her eyes. There had been a time when she would have become uncomfortable under his gaze, would have avoided his stare, averted her eyes, but this was not that time. She raised her eyebrows.

"May I come in?"

"By all means," he said, finally, stepping back into the house to let her pass, pulling a cigarette out of his jacket, noticing that she took care not to brush him as she entered.

"Is Ada here?" She asked, and he had missed her oddly musical voice. Her hand was bandaged, and the ring of bruises around her throat had developed yellow tinges that matched the bright ring around the center of her eyes, but Tommy said nothing about any of that, wishing he hadn't noticed in the first place, wanting to get as far away from her as quickly as he could and wanting to move closer to her all at once. He just nodded and lit his smoke.

"Upstairs," he said.

"Good," she said, glancing at him, and something flashed across her face, too quickly for him to catch it, her brow crinkling, before it was gone and her expression smoothed out like the ripples of a lake after a pebble had disturbed it. Her skin looked soft and smooth and he wanted to remember what she tasted like and he cleared his throat, loudly, to snap himself out of his own thoughts. He wondered if, when she looked at his hands, she still saw blood dripping off of them.

"I was just leaving," he said, and her face was carefully closed.

"Of course," her tone was gracious, respectful, completely distant. "I'll not keep you." She looked like she was holding herself back from saying something else, some ingenuine platitude, perhaps it was nice seeing you or talk to you soon or maybe I fucking hate you, Thomas Shelby, and they stood with their gazes locked for another moment, the world silent around them, dust in the air lit up by the light streaming in through the open door. Then Tommy put his cigarette in his mouth and left, intentionally moving into her space as he did so, brushing past her on his way out onto the street, to see if her breathing hitched. It didn't. He took a deep pull of smoke as he walked, and briefly closed his eyes against the grey sky.

Tessa found Polly in the living room, reading the paper and smoking a clove. Her smart eyes snapped up to Tessa's face when she entered, flickering over her neck, down to her hand, then back up to her face. She tsked.

"Look what they did to you," she said, but her tone was missing the simpering sympathy most people had been addressing Tessa with recently, and she was eternally grateful for it. Tessa sat down across from her with a sigh, waving her bandaged hand.

"I'm fine. It's better than a bullet to the head."

Polly dipped her cigarette in acquiescence. "How's your father?"

"Still in hospital, recovering. They're saying he'll be able to come home in a few weeks, but they're not sure how long exactly."

"Good," said Polly, and Tessa wondered if it was, if her father would rather have died than never walk again, and Polly said, "I don't have to tell you that this is what happens when you get involved with men like Thomas Shelby."

Tessa held back another sigh. "No, you don't have to tell me that. Although admittedly, this is more what happens when you get involved with a German mafia." And then she wished she could take it back, because it sounded like she was defending him, and Polly's dark, dark brown eyes were gazing at her.

"How is Ada?" Tessa asked, partially because she wanted to divert the conversation, but mostly because that was what she was there for in the first place.

It was Polly's turn to sigh, smoke blowing out from her lips held in the shape of an O, a swift and efficient stream. "She doesn't talk. Won't tell any of us what happened, but that tells us enough."

Tessa nodded, pressing her fingers against her temple. She had a headache coming on, and pulled a cigarette case out of her coat pocket. "One of the German officers took her when we were at the house."

Polly was silent for a moment, eyes blank, staring out of a dirty window, then asked, "Did he get his justice?" in a flat voice.

"Yes," Tessa said. "Ada gave it to him. Put her heel through his eye." She smiled a little bit, and wondered when she had become the kind of person who smiled at something like that. She lit her cigarette.

"Tommy said you took matters into your own hands, as well," Polly said, looking at her in that penetrating way. In another life, Tessa thought Polly would make a good school teacher, gifted with the ability to draw out confessions of ill behavior from unruly students.

"Tommy's been talking about me?" She asked, fighting to keep her voice ambivalent, but it didn't matter. She knew Polly knew anyway. She read people like she did tea leaves.

"Said you slit a man's throat."

Tessa hummed quietly around her smoke, looking at the faded pattern of the wallpaper, the pictures and various decorations that adorned the walls. Polly waited for her, propting elaboration through her silence, but all Tessa said was,

"Do you know where his keys are?"