CHAPTER 11

ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROSE

❝ Now you're up against the ghosts in my head  ❞

Thomas could still feel the gun pressed to his head. He could still hear Nicolas' words in his brain, taste his threats in his mouth, see the façade behind his eyelids, and yet it was Rose's soft curls that he felt in his fingertips and the floral fragrance of her perfume that tugged at his senses, lingering in his conscience for far longer than the smoke or the whiskey ever could.

For so long it was just him and the ghosts in his head, but now Rose was there too and he didn't know how to make her leave. His mind had always followed a precise path, working like a chess game, always calculated moves and careful checkmates, but just like all roads lead to Rome, lately all of his led to Rose, as if she was the one piece in the chessboard he couldn't move.

With the dim afternoon light hitting his back and spilling over the pages on his mahogany desk, Thomas tapped the ashes from his burnt cigarette and reached for the bottle. The Victorian house he was staying in had more dust and cobwebs than his Warwickshire manor but far less ghosts, and the silence for once was welcomed. Most of the times his thoughts were deafening enough, but he had grown used to them; it was the quiet inside his mind that he couldn't stand.

He heard voices, sometimes, and they were rarely his own.

Thomas pinched the bridge of his nose, the small letters in the worn papers escaping his eyes. His vision was failing him more often, in documents and in people. Like that French Kisser leader, who acted as a shadow in the theater of his mind and let Nicolas take a central place on the stage. Something about it didn't add up. Thomas had his suspicions, but they were so far-fetched he was tempted not to believe them.

He sighed, and the grandfather clock by the wall struck five. His stare, the shade of the ocean when it meets the horizon, wandered around the room, and stopped on the painting above the fireplace, a blur of violet petals carried by the wind. Thomas shook his head and took another cigarette. He always had so much on his mind he rarely thought back to people, but somehow, he always thought back to Rose. To how when Nicolas had said her name, he had heard himself saying Grace's – it was the same type of love, and Thomas knew how that ended.

The clock kept ticking, as loud as the silence in his head. He had a pen in one hand and a glass of Irish whiskey in another when Johnny Dogs burst into the room, hair ruffled from the raging wind and cheeks tinted by the unmistakable flavor of mellow wine.

"Tommy! Tommy!"

Thomas didn't look up, still narrowing his eyes at the tiny letters in the contract. The most important ones. "What is it, Johnny boy?"

"A woman."

Thomas threw the pen on the desk, giving up on the words who slipped through his mind like sly, elusive sand. "It always is."

"No, Tommy, it's—"

Like the howling gales outside crashing against the window, Finn Shelby stormed into the room, flat cap out of his head as his fingers fiddled with it.

"Tommy, it's Rose! Bleedin' to fuckin' death outside!"

The chair clashed against the floor when he got up. He glanced towards the window but didn't see her, and the clock kept ticking, only this time his thoughts ticked louder. And something in his chest too – something uncomfortable, and dangerously familiar. Something he could see even less well than the tiny letters of a contract.

"What happened?" Thomas grabbed the gun in his drawer and hid it in his trousers, not waiting for Finn's answer as he scurried to the door. He didn't remember stepping outside or running down the street; his memory only returned to him when he saw her, hand tugging at her shoulder as blood leaked through her fingers and tainted her brown coat. She was clinging to Isaiah for support, who seemed as lost as a kid in the market.

"Tommy, she's dying on me, she's lost a lot of blood!" Isaiah shouted. He wasn't one to pray, but his mouth moved silently in one of his father's prayers.

"Johnny, Finn, gather the men and see what's going on." Thomas ran to them, and a pang took up the entirety of his chest when she dropped her head and whimpered. He held onto the other side of her, granting Isaiah a short moment of relief.

"Rose, Rose! Look at me." His fingers grasped her chin, trying to keep her awake as her eyes fought to close. This was not the woman who populated his mind. Her face was as pale as snow in the middle of winter, and her clothes were a mosaic of tears, giving Thomas a glimpse of bruised skin and fresh knife wounds. The sting came back harder, this time as sharp as a scorpion's tail. "Look at me. Don't close your eyes, ya 'ear me? We got to get you to a hospital."

"No... no hospital," Rose mumbled, eyelids fluttering like the torn wings of a butterfly. She took a wrong step and slipped; Thomas adjusted his grip on her, and his heart raced faster than his mind for the first time in a long while.

"Rose, stay with me, eh? Stay with me."

But then her eyes closed, and her knees faltered. She stumbled forward, the blood in her mouth mingling with the tears. Her fingers reached for an anchor, and a cold hand wrapped around hers.

Then a single voice in the silence.

Rose.

***

"Rose, I need ya awake, eh?" Someone was tapping her cheek lightly, and her eyes opened abruptly just to be pulled into the chasms of his. Thomas was leaned over her, pressing a cloth against her left arm to stop the bleeding while his other hand brushed sweaty strands from her forehead. "I need to take the bullet out."

Rose grunted, her back protesting against the hard surface of a wooden table as strange voices echoed in the air around her. She tried to raise her head but it was as if all her brain cells were being ironed, so she gave up and looked down. The sleeve of her blouse was cut to shreds; there was a hole in her arm where smooth skin had once been, lines of liquid rubies rolling down. Her neurons seemed to have been replaced by cotton, her tongue by steel; her body felt too heavy and her mind not heavy enough. "Do you even know... how to do that?"

"I've been to war, Rose," Thomas said, sleeves rolled up as he drenched a pair of tweezers in alcohol. Isaiah was peaking behind his shoulder, but no one else was inside the room to witness her misery. Then Finn barged in, nose scrunched up at the scent of blood, at the sight of violence. His hazel eyes were printed in a color that had never seen war and Rose only wished she could have kept it that way.

"Tommy, the opium." He dropped the powdered drug into a glass of whiskey before handing it to Thomas, who put his hand behind Rose's head so she could take a sip from it.

"Drink this."

She allowed the liquid into her mouth, gulping it down entirely, her throat not once complaining about the burn. Then Thomas' fingers were on her face again, thumb soothing above her skin as his eyes pressed against hers, and the cascade of groans that was about to fall from her lips stayed in them.

"I need ya to stay still, alright?" He took the bloodstained cloth from her wound, and her fists clenched when a jolt ran down her veins. "Finn, Isaiah, hold her."

Like tin soldiers in the hands of a child, both men did as they were told.

"Even with the opium, this is going to hu—"

"I was a fucking nurse in the war!" Rose looked at Thomas, and it was like her finger was back on the trigger, spewing bullets that came back to her. When she spoke, a hint of her old vehemence fell from her tone. "I know it's going to hurt! Just... get it done with."

Thomas never needed to be told anything twice, and Rose's jaw tensed when he stretched the skin around her wound to inspect it. Her eyes shifted to Finn, who had put his hand next to hers.

"Here, grab me hand."

"Putain!" Her teeth gritted when Thomas poured whiskey into her wound, and her hand grasped Finn's. Now that the adrenaline had washed away, it hurt. Every part of her hurt, especially her future. Her hand flew to Thomas, grabbing his arm with more force than her blood loss allowed. "Make sure I'll play again."

"You will." Thomas gave her a curt nod and grabbed the tweezers. When he dug them into her flesh to search for the bullet, Rose let out a curse, then another, but she didn't close her eyes. She kept them on Thomas, counted the freckles on his skin, until her stare was sliding down his sharp cheekbones, the scar on his cheek, and she was pulled back into another time, a time when she was in his place and every soldier was in hers. "There."

"Putain de merde," she muttered, tears prickling her eyes when Thomas found the bullet and took it out. Her mind was getting fogged, her grasp on reality thinner. The shapes in front of her became shadows, and then shadows of shadows.

"Which one of us is she cussin' at?" Isaiah asked, struggling to keep Rose still as she squirmed.

"Probably me," Thomas said. When he spilled more alcohol into her injury, her eyes rolled back and incoherent words left her mouth. She felt each edge of her body on flames, as if someone had lit a fire inside her and made her cells turn to ashes.

"Jésus-Christ!" She shouted, blurred lines dancing in her sight until Thomas became clear in front of her. Watching him was like watching a statue live among humans; while Isaiah and Finn had their brows furrowed, Thomas didn't stop at her discomfort, just like she wouldn't have if she were in his place. Because before something could heal, it needed to hurt. So he applied the iodine and ignored her grunts and his focus never faltered, because he had told her she would play again, and if there was one thing Thomas was loyal to, it was his word.

"Is she going to be alright?" Finn's cheeks were flushed, his hand patting the back of hers without caring how strongly she was clutching his.

"Yes. Luckily, the bullet missed the bone, so it's not fractured. It also missed the nerves. If it hadn't—"

"I'd probably never be able... to move my arm again." Summoning every last bit of life she had inside her, Rose leaned on her good elbow, blood rushing to her head when the door burst open and a wave of men flooded the room.

"Did you find anything?" Thomas asked, cutting a thread with his teeth as if there was not a bloodied woman lying on his table.

"Five men, Tommy." The man who spoke had a thick accent, his tailor made suit making Rose's miserable state even more blatant. They all passed their eyes over her, and Rose frowned. She had always hated to be pitied. Especially when she had no reason to be.

"Did they speak?"

"They might have if they weren't all dead as a doornail. Whoever did this, I wouldn't want to get on their bad side, Tommy. Poor lady was lucky to escape, who knows what they would have done to such a pretty face—"

"Leave," Thomas cut off, his gaze darting to Rose. "All of you. And get rid of the bodies."

"But Tommy—" Finn started, swallowing down his courage upon his brother's stare. When everyone in the room left and it was just Rose and Thomas and the ticking of the old clock, he sat on the chair beside her and grasped her arm more gently than she thought he could.

"I need to stitch you up, yeah?"

She nodded, and once again he didn't waste time. She flinched when the needle pierced her skin, and then even more when he spoke.

"You know, me boys all seem to believe you were with those men and miraculously escaped whoever killed them. But since I have a hard time believing in miracles, I suspect there's another explanation." He looked up from the sutures, his eyes infiltrating hers, trapping her in a truth she couldn't escape from. He saw her. That's why he was the only one who didn't look at her with pity. "So what happened, Rose? Who did this?"

He looked down at the stitches. Her skin was still tingling from the places his fingers had touched. She caught a whiff of his cologne, rosemary and jasmine and spices and too much power, and the tingling made home inside her spine.

"There was this group in an alley, they were attacking a woman. So I stepped in. One of them shot me. So I killed him."

"And the others?"

"Killed them too."

Thomas nodded slowly, his expression unchanged. He kept stitching her up, and Rose couldn't help but feel like he was tearing apart some other part of her. "Did you know who they were?"

"No."

"Looks like they didn't know who you were either." He finished sewing up her wound only to open another when his eyes collided with hers and she picked every bit of him in them. "But no one does, aye?"

She bit her lip and dug her nails in her palms to stop the head rush, to get some sense of control back to her, but to no use. Because Thomas was the needle, and no matter how much he hurt, her skin was still begging for it.

"It's easier to be who we are when people don't know who that is, isn't it?" Rose ended up saying, fingers gripping the side of the table when he pressed a cold cloth to her face. "Like you, for instance. I know most people look at you and see a man who kills. But right now I'm looking at you and can't help but see a man who saves."

Thomas threw the cloth onto the desk, hand rubbing his face. Rose was familiar with the dark circles under his eyes – it came from the things inside their heads that never went to sleep.

"Compliments are not going to stop me from finding out what you're hiding, Rose."

"Well, I had to try. But if you do find out, please tell me. I'd like to know too." She winced when she tried to get up and lost her balance. His hands were quick to catch her, much to her surprise, much to his, and then her breath hitched when the emeralds in her eyes touched the sapphires in his and her body itched where his hands were and even more where his hands weren't.

"Doesn't the nurse know she should try to rest?" When Rose thought he was going to remove his hands from her skin, one of them went to her face, fingers outlining her jaw delicately, the same way dandelion florets used to fall upon her skin when she blew them in the honeyed fields of France. The fields upon which late sunsets and warm summers lay, until war and death decided to do the same. "You did good, Rose."

"I killed five men, Thomas. Don't tell me I did good."

"It wasn't the first time, was it? That you took a man's life."

She averted her eyes from his, laid them on her arm. The fear that she might never pick up a violin again subsided when she saw the work he'd done.

"No. I doubt it will be the last. You know this life we both have and that people think we chose, we didn't. It chose us, and we can't escape it. Because there's a part of us we only meet when we touch blood. Ours – or others."

Thomas dropped his hand and something in Rose ache, something that didn't come from her arm but from a place far more dangerous. Somewhere inside the house she could hear the echoes of Brummie laughter.

"Rest, Rose. I'll fetch ya some of Ada's clothes and something to eat. Hope your French palate doesn't get too offended by English food, because that's all we got here."

Despite everything, Rose smiled. Because somewhere inside her, all she could hear was the echo of her heart beating against its cage.

***

"Ouch," Rose mumbled under her breath. Trying to get dressed with a battered body and bandaged arm was proving to be a bigger challenge than she was capable of facing, and it didn't help that her head was still dizzy, desperate to drag her into the abysses of oblivion. She let out a heavy sigh and looked at herself in the grubby mirror. Droplets of water in her skin and fresh clothes didn't make her feel cleaner. She could still feel the blood sticking to parts of her she'd not be able to wash. "Fils de pute!"

There was a knock on the door, and then his voice filled the bathroom.

"Need help?"

"If you don't mind," she said, trying her best to fight through the haze in her brain. Thomas opened the door and walked over to her in silent steps, and the noises in the other rooms became more distant, as if on the other side of a tunnel. Rose just didn't know if she was walking into the light or going deeper and deeper into the darkness.

"The cuts on your back, did you clean them?"

"No, unfortunately being a contortionist is not among my many qualities."

Thomas snorted. "Well somebody's got to clean them if you don't want them to infect."

"Seems like you've learned a lot in the war, Sergeant."

"As much as I lost. Turn around."

She rolled her eyes and scoffed. Her nerves were spent and shot but like the universe at the hands of God, she did as he told. "What now, Sergeant?"

"Mind if I raise this?" His hands were on the hem of her blouse and her lips curved into a waning moon, her back burning from his stare.

"Oh please, I'm sure you're dying to."

"Glad to see you're feeling better." He rose his head, and their stares met through the mirror. She was the first to look away, because his eyes had questions for answers she couldn't give him.

"Not thanks to your English food, that's for sure." The edges of her mouth twitched up against her will. "Can't even feed ghosts with it."

"Well, there's plenty of those in 'ere."

"In this house? Or in your head?"

His stare caught hers in the glass. Then he lifted her shirt just enough to tend her wounds, and Rose kept quiet the entire time, even though the cuts stung, even though his fingers burned.

"I wish me men had half your pain tolerance, would've saved me a lot of headaches, aye?" His breath fell upon the nape of her neck like a feather; she didn't understand why her body decided to react to his through such violent shivers.

"Well since us women carry life, it is only fair we're better equipped for it," Rose replied. "But thank you... for all this."

He put her shirt down but didn't move. She could feel the heat emanating from his body, and in the mirror her eyes got lost inside his.

"It's nothing." His eyes travelled up her back, to the shoulder blade which was now exposed, and Rose felt a thud in her chest when his fingers hovered over it. She hadn't looked at it in so long she had almost forgotten it was there. But she couldn't, and never would, for it was a piece of her heart that was forever printed on her skin. The saddest piece.

"Surprised?"

"Can't say I had ever seen a tattoo in a woman."

"It's Arabic. Ya'aburnee," she said, and that whisper was the cruelest, most painful thing she had felt that day. She looked over her shoulder, to him. Wondering if there was a part of his body where a piece of his heart was inked too. "It means 'you bury me'."

"Your sister told me about a man."

She turned around and gulped when their bodies almost collided. His sleeves were still rolled up, the veins in his arms sculpted and strong.

"And yet again you're a man who kills," she whispered. Rose could handle it. She could handle if it was a bullet he was taking out of her, but not if it was her heart he was ripping out. "Why stitch my wounds if you're just going to open new ones?"

His touch left her skin, and she felt its absence as intensely as she had felt its presence. "I was just curious, that's all. As to who had buried who."

She looked down at her hands, at the stains between her knuckles.

"Thomas, you know, don't you? That there's never just one body, one soul, inside a grave."

He took a step back, and when he turned around and walked away, she wondered in which coffin he was stuck in. "Learned that long ago."

***

"Someone's looking better," Isaiah smiled when Rose entered the kitchen where the Peaky Blinders were gathered. Most of them were playing cards and drinking, a nice change from the ominous atmosphere she had been covered in that day. "How you feelin', love?"

"Like shit, but I've felt worse."

Finn raised his head to her, wrinkles in the corner of his eyes where smooth, untroubled skin should have been instead. "Is Andrea...?"

"She's alright, she had no part in this."

"Thank God," he sighed, and Isaiah put a comforting hand over his shoulder, at the same time the man with the tweed suit placed his glass down and walked to her.

"So this is the famous Rose, eh? The first woman our Tommy sees after his wife... ya know, now that I take a good look at ya, he clearly has a type."

"By the big mouth, I take it as you're Johnny Dogs?"

"The one and only, love, at your service." He bowed, a cheeky grin on his face when he looked back up. "So is this something you normally do, coming to someone's house unannounced to bleed all over their fancy carpets?"

"No, Thomas is special," Rose smiled, and her smile spread quickly to the other men, like an infection for which they had no cure.

"Speak of the devil..." Johnny muttered, gesturing to the door. Rose turned around, breath lost somewhere between her and the threshold Thomas was leaning against, the early minutes of moonlight trickling from his eyes. He disappeared without a word, but the way he carried himself painted a vivid direction on his back, and she followed him, even if she didn't like to step where other people had. But she was in his house, so the wolf in her had to settle for a sheep's skin for now.

He closed the door to his office and sat on the armchair behind the desk, signaling for her to take the seat across from him.

"I thought I told you to rest," he started, flicking the case of cigarettes open and choosing one.

"I was never one for orders. You see, it's not people that break orders that commit the worst crimes. It's people that follow them – in war, in politics, you name it."

"Always with a fuckin' answer." Thomas shook his head, cigarette trapped between his fingers. "So you killed five men. I'm guessing they didn't go down without a fight. So where did you learn to fight like that?"

"I have friends who are boxers, they've taught me a thing or two."

"Ah, yes, Raphael. Pretty sure Finn shits his pants every time he hears his name."

"Pretty sure he's not the only one." Rose chuckled, but her next question put her serious. "Are you shocked, that I'm not shocked by violence?"

"No, like you said, you were a nurse in the war. I'm shocked you don't try to avoid it. After living with violence for four years, most people would."

"You didn't. Why should I be different?"

"Because you were there to save men, and I was there to kill them. So I wonder what changed."

"There's two things that can fuck up a person. War, and love. More often than not, they're the same thing."

"The man on your back." Thomas nodded, smoke slowly rising from the cigarette.

"And the ghosts in your head." Rose replied. "If you really must know, I grew up with my brothers constantly fighting. That's how they become men, isn't it? And my father... he was a farmer who ran some illegal business for some doubtful men. He said there wasn't many things he could teach us, but he could teach us how to defend ourselves. He wanted my brothers to fight like men. And they did, and I watched. And when I was old enough, I asked him to teach me how to fight like men too. And he did. He said he would always try to protect us, but if one day he couldn't, and he died, at least his teachings would. So my sisters and I, we trained and fought like men. Until we had trained and bled hard enough to fight like women."

"And those doubtful men? They were part of a gang?"

"Yes. Can't seem to escape those, can I? My brothers got dragged into it a few times – mostly running errands, dealing drugs, that sort of thing. But it was crime in small scale, and it vanished when the men went off to war. Nothing like what you do."

"Or what the French Kissers do."

One side of her lips curled up. She felt the urge to tell him that everything she had learned about crime in big scale had been with him.

"You'll never give up, will you?"

"Not until I get what I want." Thomas let out a swirl of smoke, back resting against the chair as his stare dissected her. "You're going to be caught in the crossfire, Rose."

"And why is that?"

"Because that man you carry on your shoulder, he's the love of your life. And the leader of the gang. That's why you're so keen on keeping his identity a secret, that's why you don't want to help me. And I know what happens to the women of gang leaders, Rose. They rarely have a happy ending."

Rose didn't know what was worse; that he could have discovered the truth, or that he had twisted it so much she felt thorns puncture her heart. So she dragged the chair back and rose up, and when she spoke, it had the same effect as if she had cyanide in her mouth.

"Thank you for the warning, Thomas. But if you don't mind, I'll be going now. I have a home to go back to – one where I will not be competing with the dead ghost of your wife."

He saw her walk away, heard her leave the house, and that night, the only ghost in his head was hers and hers alone. The nightmares and the dreams he had, they all led back to Rose. But for the first time in a long time, Thomas felt more alive awake than asleep.

And his heart finally ticked again.

author's note.

And here I was thinking they were making progress :') 

I'd like to dedicate this chapter to -apyre who's translating this story into French! It was really lovely of her to do so, so go check it out and drop her a follow <3

I used Ghosts by PVRIS as inspiration for this chapter, I recommend you give it a listen as it's a beautiful song and speaks volumes about Thomas and Rose's situation! As always, I hope you liked the chapter and let me know what you thought of it ;)