Chapter Content Warning: canon-typical content

Handled

1919

Clara bent at the waist, her head and arms and the loose plait set over her shoulder all falling towards her feet, her fingertips stretching towards the toes of her boots while her brother retrieved the cigarette case from his pocket. They'd each set their own mid-ride habits now, Tommy and his cigarette, and Clara stretching out her body when they took their breaks, always looking to her brother with a dizzied smile after righting herself, what with all that blood rushing to her head.

She was adjusting to the deep ache her body had never known, a daily soreness in muscles she wasn't even aware she had. She was adjusting to the inevitable exhaustion at the end of her days, too. Her mornings now started earlier and she almost always fell asleep at the supper table or shortly thereafter, unable to keep her eyes open long enough for much past sundown. Clara figured it should have been her brother who had aching muscles after their long rides, but Tommy didn't feel the aches, or if he did, the soreness didn't bother him as it bothered her. Tommy didn't live a life of academic luxury as she did, at least that's what Tommy told her when she complained.

Clara had argued that he was old though and old people were aching just for waking up in the morning. Uncle Charlie was old and he was always complaining about some ache or pain even if Clara and Curly had done all the difficult work. Tommy had posed the perfunctory argument that his twenty-nine years didn't make him old, but he recognized that 'old' was relative, especially when you were only eleven.

Tommy had taken to waking his sister every morning, yard day or not, her once-reliable internal clock shaken by her want for more sleep regardless of what time she went to bed the night before. Despite being tired and despite their recurrent tiffs, Clara preferred the mornings when Tommy's hand would find her shoulder while the sky and house were still dark, when he wasn't coming to her donning a freshly pressed suit, his hair left untamed and the boots on his feet timeworn and scuffed. It was on those mornings that he stayed with her at Charlie's.

Tommy never provided his sister with any decent measure of notice of whether he'd be joining her and the horses or just dropping her off. Clara knew whether or not they'd be riding only when she opened her eyes on the very day. It seemed to her that Tommy made the decision sometime around four in the morning, weighing things like scheduled meetings and how strongly the fresh air outside of Birmingham was calling to him.

Tommy still claimed the purpose of his sister going to the yard was to teach her more about caring for the horses. He never said it aloud, but he believed there was some greater lesson to be learned from the work. His sister didn't know what type of life the Shelby family had narrowly avoided, had little understanding of how that differed from the life he was making for them now. The kids had never been truly hungry, had no true recollection of sadistic fathers or mentally burdened mothers, and while he was glad for that, he contemplated what the absence of those struggles might translate to.

Though Tommy thought those things, thought that the horse work was as important of a lesson as whatever Grace was teaching her, more often than not, Tommy and Clara found themselves out riding the horses instead, his ambitions set aside for a few mornings each week as they simply enjoyed being away from all of the things that brought them to this point.

Nothing had changed so much that they truly had any right to enjoy one another's company as much as they did on those mornings, but it was like some sort of unspoken agreement, a mutual reprieve despite their continued differences.

Tommy still wanted Ada and Freddie out of Birmingham. He still hadn't entirely tied up the issue of Clara's schooling. The patchwork of Grace Burgess and Charlie's yard was a temporary fix, but he knew it wasn't a long-term solution. He'd need to get her into the new school.

And Clara still missed her sister and brother-in-law. She still longed for a proper classroom, longed for a proper teacher and proper classmates. She still wrestled with the idea that her brothers were the type of men who did bad things, the type of men who drank too much in order to forget things.

But Tommy and Clara didn't talk about those things when they were outside the city limits, with just the horses and the trees and themselves for company.

"I like it out here," Clara offered into the quiet.

They had traveled out further than normal, leaving from Charlie's yard even before the sun had come up. When Tommy woke her, Clara felt certain she had just fallen back to sleep after waking in the early morning hours due to some tossing and turning in the room beside her own, though a few hours had actually passed. It was with as much patience Tommy could muster that he let his sister sleep as late as he did after the shovels beat the sun.

Still, Clara was sluggish and heavy-lidded as they rode out of the city, trusting her horse to follow behind her brother's with little intervention on her behalf. The quiet left Tommy with room to think about his plans, for his siblings, and the Lee's, and Kimber, and the inspector. It wasn't until the sun peaked over the horizon that she finally perked up and Tommy had little room for quiet contemplation after that.

"Like the big houses, do you?" Tommy turned to watch her, blowing out a puff of smoke into the air above them.

He could have continued riding. He had little need for a midmorning rest or stretches or snacks, but Clara insisted on it becoming part of their routine and had started packing a bag specifically for the occasion. She had already planted herself on the blanket, digging through her pack, setting things out as Tommy watched. She pushed a great warm breath through her lips, a fleeting mist visible in the cold air as she imitated her brother's puff of smoke.

"And all the space," she said, holding half of a sandwich out to her brother.

Tommy had quickly given up on denying an appetite. It was custom now, Tommy permitting this bit of his sister's nurturing instinct. Regardless of any distinct lack of hunger or tiredness, Tommy now rested on the blanket, took half of whatever Clara packed them, and he didn't argue the point.

Tommy took a bite as he settled beside her.

"And all the green," she added, glancing around them.

It was another point Tommy didn't argue though there was little green to be found at the moment. The sky above them was a dense blanket of gray and the ground and plants were mostly shifting to dull shades of brown this time of year.

"And we could ride for hours and hours before we'd see another person." Clara picked off a piece of bread with her finger, chewing and swallowing quickly. "And I bet they even have stars out here."

Tommy considered it, leaning back on the blanket and looking to the morning sky. He had no reason to think of stars for quite some time. You couldn't see them in Small Heath, not with all the smoke and the light and the haze.

"We could spend the whole day riding and sleep out."

Tommy glanced to where Clara was sitting with her legs crossed on the other side of the blanket. He had stretched out, his body more comfortable there on the hard ground than it was on any bed. The notion bothered him in a way, the idea that he'd slept better on the hard ground in the middle of war than he had since being back in his own bed in Small Heath.

"Aunt Polly wouldn't let us sleep outside last time I asked," Clara continued. "Uncle Charlie said we could sleep on one of the boats in the yard, but she said it wouldn't soothe my heart's want for wandering anyhow, so I shouldn't bother."

Tommy released a chuckle at his sister's mocking tone, her eyes rolling as she spoke.

"When was this?" he asked.

"When you were away. Finn, Siah, and I were gonna do it."

Tommy nodded. The last time he slept under stars had been in France but he had spent much of his childhood sleeping out in the open air, out in the pasture, or on the deck of his uncle's boats. "Maybe when it's warmer."

Clara continued to pick at her bread. "Well, we could do it now and have a fire."

"You'd still be cold," Tommy answered.

"We can bring blankets."

"And I'd still spend the night listening to you complain about being cold," Tommy answered. "Remind me in the summer."

"Summer's ages away though, Tommy."

"You wouldn't even like sleeping out here now. We'd wake up to find you've gone knocking on doors of the big houses to find yourself a warm bed."

Tommy and Clara both had their eyes trained across the field towards what Clara imagined to be a castle, the grand estate several magnitudes larger than the space they occupied on Watery Lane.

Clara smiled to herself. "Who do you think lives there?"

Tommy hummed. "I don't know. Probably a man of great ambition or the great-grandson of one. Certainly not someone who'd let an unexpected guest stay the night."

"What does he do with so many rooms?" Clara asked before taking another bite.

"Fills them, I suppose."

She finished chewing, swallowing earlier than she should have in order to keep talking.

"I think our castle will have a big library and stables for the horses and a big office for you and a bathtub and fireplaces and we can have a dog."

"A big office for me, eh?" Tommy asked.

"Yeah, so you don't have to go to the shop every day?" Clara offered. "And we'd all have a wing apiece, room enough for everyone but we can still have dinners together."

"You want to live with John and his little devils? Food fights every evening? Shouting matches and scuffles by five in the morning?"

"Maybe not." Clara shrugged. "What if yours turn out to be devils?"

"Already met my quota," Tommy answered, finishing his bit of sandwich. "Raised at least one devil already, eh?"

Clara pushed at his shoulder. "That's my dear brother Finn you're bad-mouthing, Thomas Shelby."

Tommy smirked at her, shaking his head as he pointed at her. "See, there's a bit of your Shelby devilment, right there."

"Aunt Polly says—" she began.

"Do you have a record of every little thing each of us has ever told you?"

Clara shrugged. "Just the important things."

Tommy smiled, shaking his head. "Alright, go on. What does Aunt Polly say?"

"That you have our mother's common sense, but our father's devilment," Clara answered.

"She's told me. Not sure why she'd be telling you though."

"Because she says if I'm not careful I'll turn out just like you. We're too clever for our own good." Clara sought his eye contact though he was focused on his cigarette and the ash at the end. "What'd she mean?" she asked.

"Did you ask her?"

"She told me 'never you mind'," Clara answered, her tone a poor imitation of some quality of their aunt's characteristic tone.

"Yes, well, never you mind, Clara Shelby," Tommy echoed in just the right manner. "Go read your book and get out from under my feet."

His impersonation brought a brief smile to Clara's face as she held his gaze. She was getting quite good at it, gaining a certain comfortability with the moments of silence passing between them, communicating more in the quiet than he was used to.

"I think you already know what she meant," he answered.

Tommy watched her shoulders shrug as she moved her fingers to examine the braid that fell over her shoulder, one of her brothers' old flat caps settled on her head, at least a size too big.

"Do you ever miss them?" she asked.

"Them?"

"Our mother…" she mumbled. "And our dad?"

"No."

Tommy revealed nothing in the look he gave her, not a single sentiment demonstrated in his tone or the hurried response.

Clara chewed on her lip. "No?"

"No, Clara," he confirmed with the shake of his head.

Tommy didn't think of his mother so often these days, usually only stumbling upon a brief bit of reminiscence when sparked by his siblings, or by something that had been just for the two of them. He had been intentional about her when the kids were young, making sure they knew of their mother, but there hadn't been many conversations about their mother since coming home from France. When a memory of his mother did happen upon him, he had to let it run its course. It wasn't something he could just push aside when it happened, but it wasn't common for Tommy to reminiscence, rare for him to actively invoke her memory.

Rare as it was for Tommy to think of his mother, he spent far less time on thoughts of his father, almost never conjuring up thoughts of the man. Accounts of the man's character were not something he chose to share with the twins on those nights when they'd asked about their parents, not that they often asked after a father, somehow knowing better without it ever being explicitly said. But even if they had, Tommy wouldn't have indulged them because those memories were locked up somewhere so deep and so secure that they didn't often surface for Tommy, not even in moments of frustration. Whatever Finn and Clara knew of their father, they hadn't learned it from him.

Tommy still couldn't understand how his mother and father found one another or even why she had stayed. She wasn't a weak woman, nor was she unintelligent. Tommy remembered her as wild and almost fluid in a way, with a supple mind predisposed to following through on the slightest of whims. But despite the rowdiness of her heart and the vigor with which the water and the fresh air called to her, the family's bills were paid, the children were fed and clothed to the best of her ability, and while she wasn't above the notion of breaking the law, their mother lived by a certain set of rules, though those guidelines went a bit blurry at the end.

With the exception of Arthur Shelby, Sr., their mother had always shown very little patience for nonsense, little patience for devilment for the sake of devilment. Tommy agreed with Polly that it was a good word for describing the man, almost too good for him in a way. It wasn't a well-intentioned recklessness or a wildness of spirit guiding their father, but perverse selfishness that couldn't even be quelled by the love of a woman or the hoard of blameless children carrying his name.

"The past is the past."

"Nuh-uh," she mumbled, taking another bite.

"Is that so?"

"We can run from it but it still catches up with us, sometimes in our dreams or when we rest, or when we're too distracted working on something else that we forget we're supposed to be moving."

Tommy took a deep breath. "And who the hell's told you that?"

Clara shrugged.

They weren't his sister's words, weren't his sister's thoughts. She was too young for those types of theories, too far away from the concept of what their family history may or may not mean. These words were Polly's proclamations.

"Best not to listen too intently to our aunt when she's been on the whiskey, eh?"

"But she's right, though. The war—"

"You're speaking of things you know nothing about."

"But you—" Clara stopped herself short, making a quick pivot in her conversation. "Well, Arthur's got Flanders Blues and that's why he drinks so much…because he's trying to forget."

It wasn't the only bit of evidence she'd collected, but she figured it was the most palatable place to begin. Her brothers were all changed in their own ways, all searching for their own version of something more and failing to put a bit of mental distance between themselves and the war that they had been out of for well over a year.

Through the thin walls, she caught Tommy's late nights of tossing and turning, the catatonic whimpers, every staggered breath. She had settled into the habit of just listening for her brother to calm, or knocking the heel of her foot on their shared wall in hopes it would stir him from whatever had caught him up, but Clara now refrained from traveling to his room to soothe either herself or him.

"You haven't got to worry about Arthur," Tommy said.

"Maybe we ought to look in on him anyway. Make sure he's alright?"

Clara hadn't seen much of her oldest brother since his incident and when she had, Arthur hadn't been himself, not since that night. He was no longer covered in blood, the wound on his head stitched up neat and tidy by Jeremiah, but Arthur still seemed tired, seemed strained by an exhaustion that allowed him to rise each day from his bed but didn't allow him to laugh or smile with his eyes.

Tommy shook his head. "Not today. Grace'll be expecting us. She's got something important planned."

"I don't care," Clara answered. "I wanna see Arthur."

"You don't care?"

Clara looked down before Tommy's eyes had a chance to latch onto hers.

"Had yourself a fit about being taken out of school and now you want the day off to look in on our senseless brother?" he said. "No, you're going today."

Tommy had already cleared his own schedule until mid-afternoon. He'd finally come around to Polly's thinking that it might help things along for Clara to know she had the prospect of a new school to look forward to, had finally accepted that maybe his sister did deserve some type of incentive.

"But Arthur—"

"I've got him handled."

Clara finally looked at him. "You have?"

"I have." Tommy nodded, watching his sister's face, the furrowed brows, the conspicuous biting at the inside of her right cheek. "And even if I didn't, you've got your own responsibilities. Your lessons, helping Uncle Charlie with the horses… and I don't want to hear any more about Arthur."

Clara pulled at the pieces of grass poking up at the edge of the blanket, picking through them as Tommy's words fell away, the rustling of the leaves in the breeze the only sound meeting their ears.

"I just have one question," Clara said.

Tommy was growing tired of the questions, growing tired of his sister talking of things she had no business knowing, things their aunt had no business in sharing with the girl.

He sighed, glancing at her. "What is it, Clara?"

"What is Flanders Blues?"

Part of Tommy was relieved she didn't really know. He had been surprised to hear the expression roll off her tongue so naturally just before.

"Just something some of the men picked up in France. Nothing for you to worry about."

"But what is it? John said Arthur's sick with it."

Tommy added John to the list of mental curses, just below their Aunt Polly.

"Sometimes you see bad things and they just stay with you, Clara," he said. "That's all."

"So, the past doesn't always stay in the past then?" she asked.

Tommy stayed quiet, the distinct feeling that his sister had successfully trapped him causing the hairs to rise on the back of his neck. He cursed himself for not seeing it coming, for allowing an eleven-year-old to best him.

"Like the nightmares?"

Tommy tensed, his jaw setting. The dreams rattled him more lately. He was able to occupy his mind just about until he reached the threshold of his bedroom at the end of the day. He had so many plans in progress, so many pieces in motion. Plans and pieces, that was all he thought he needed to keep himself moving, to keep himself running ahead of the memories and the shovels, but the terrors still waited for him each night, whenever he slowed down, whenever he caught his breath.

Tommy shifted, sitting up on the blanket. "Come here."

Clara's mouth opened and closed once, but she didn't make any effort towards meeting his request though she did meet his eye after a second.

"You know, Grace is still asking me to write about us, about Ada," she offered, the words a feeble distraction, a last-ditch effort at keeping herself on the other side of the blanket and backing herself out of the conversation she now regretted initiating.

Tommy's eyebrows raised a measure and he decided on humoring her. "So what did you write about then?"

"I didn't write about anything," Clara answered, focusing again on the pieces of grass she'd piled beside her on the blanket.

"You didn't write it?" Tommy asked.

Clara shrugged. "It's none of her business."

"So write about her shooting rats a frilly dress or the time she smoked us out of the bloody house making a cup of tea if you've got nothing else. Like I already told you, right?" he said, waiting for her nod. "Alright then, now, come here."

Tommy gestured to the spot beside him and then he waited, silent as Clara made slow work of scooting herself to the designated spot, focusing her gaze once she settled not on him, but on the big house off in the distance.

Tommy said her name, his mild tone almost like the guide of a finger beneath her chin as Clara turned her face towards his.

"Now, you don't have to be worried about your brothers and sisters, alright?" Tommy said. "You can leave that bit to me."

Clara's shoulders heaved with the sizable breath she took. "But what about you?"

"It's all handled," Tommy said as his sister's hands once again found themselves picking at the blades of grass as she contemplated his words. Her hair shielded her face as she looked down.

Tommy pushed the hair behind her ear. "I've even got something special worked out for you."

Clara glanced at him. "Something for me?"

Tommy nodded.

"Well, aren't you going to tell me?"

"Only if I don't have any more trouble from you."

"I, well…"

Tommy smiled, shaking his head. "Can't promise me that, can you?"

"I don't give you very much trouble."

"You've given me more trouble this year than you have in the whole decade before."

"Well, I think Aunt Polly could say the same of you," Clara answered.

Tommy nodded a few times. "Well then, I suppose you'll just have to wait to see what—"

"No, you have to tell me," Clara answered, sitting up on her knees as she grabbed his hand. "Please, Tommy? I didn't mean it about Aunt Polly."

Tommy chuckled. "Yeah, well, I think she might agree with you and she'd want me to tell you I've found a new scho—"

"School?" she asked, stopping Tommy before he could finish. "You found me a school?"

Clara watched him, clasping his hand, waiting for the affirmative word or nod that would confirm her suggestion, but all she got from her brother was the tiniest of grins before she dropped his hand to hug him around the neck, a steady soliloquy of appreciation spilling through her lips.

"It was Grace's idea, you know. Despite you being nothing but trouble, she's arranged the whole thing for you…pretty insistent you need something more than a snug and a barmaid. You can let her know you're grateful when we go see the school today."

"Today?" she asked. "We're going today?"

Tommy nodded. "We have an appointment at eleven."

Clara grabbed at his pocket watch, checking the time and handing it back to him before scurrying across the blanket to begin packing up.

"C'mon. Get up, Tommy. We've gotta go," she said, tugging on the blanket under him.

"It's barely seven."

Clara kept tugging. "But we have the horses and then I have to wash up and Aunt Polly'll have to do my hair and—"

"We've got plenty of time," he answered, though he got to his feet, helping her fold the blanket and ready the horses without another comment on the girl's newfound sense of urgency.