CHAPTER 16

WAR AND PEACE

❝ I'm sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine. ❞

"Don't drift off on me now, eh?" Rose said, struggling to close the door behind her and hold Thomas at the same time. He was wrestling against his eyelids, and they seemed to be winning. "We didn't just walk a fucking marathon for you to black out before you see my place."

Thomas didn't answer. He reached for the tufted sofa and staggered forward, droplets of the darkest blood pouring onto the carpet like a wounded wolf running through the snow. Rose caught him before he fell, muscles burning under his weight, and looked around for the lights.

Her apartment was silent and cold, like it always was. The curtains were dancing in the wind, this slow, dreamlike dance where the pallid gleam of the moon resembled the tatters of a person who'd run away and left his ghost behind. In a way, he had. She could move house, but not hearts.

She hated it there. The lonely nights, the tears on her pillow, his face all over her dreams. But Thomas straightened himself up and took a look around, oblivious to the history sketched on it.

The terraced Georgian apartment got easily lost amongst all the other houses that looked exactly the same, but inside all the furniture was exquisite and velvety, in shades of beige, gold and blue. There wasn't much of Rose in there, except for the family portrait on the fireplace mantel and the rose vines intertwined on the balcony.

"Disappointed?" She asked as his silvery eyes scanned the room. He cleared his throat, voice sounding as battered as the rest of his body.

"Surprised there isn't a French flag 'ere somewhere."

"Wait until you see the Marianne statue I have on my bedroom." Rose chuckled, a sound the house had long ago forgotten. She helped him sit on the couch, biting down on her tongue when her ankle hit a corner in the dark. "Wait here."

She went into the kitchen and returned with ice cubes wrapped in a cloth, but Thomas was no longer there. There was light coming from the bathroom, and she followed it, like a ship towards a dimly lit beacon. Somehow his darkness made her feel less in the dark.

Rose stopped by the threshold, a gasp tumbling from her like the first leaf in an autumnal dusk when she saw him plopped down on the bathtub's edge. She couldn't look at him for more than two seconds before she started feeling the wounds on her own skin. The contusions on his face were beginning to swell, and from the blood that came out of his nose she'd be surprised if it weren't broken. His lips were chapped, his eyes vacant. He looked like he had just gone through war again. Like one of those soldiers Rose hummed lullabies to when they couldn't sleep.

He looked like what he had been feeling all along.

"Would it kill you to do what you're told? Just once?" She huffed, walking to him. Thomas was trying to stop the bleeding with a handkerchief, failing as gloriously as Rose that one time her brothers convinced her she could rescue a cat from the tallest tree in their garden without falling down.

"That never got me anywhere."

She shook her head, grabbing a humid cloth and handing it to him.

"Sit upright, lean forward. Press this to your nose."

"A fookin' nurse indeed." He accepted the cloth, but his hands, those hands that had beaten, cut and killed, failed him, so she took it from him, gentle fingers tilting his chin up.

"Let me."

He winced subtly. She swallowed when his blood stained her hands. Other people could fear him like he was God, like he was the devil, but he was just a man. A man with both heaven and hell fighting inside him.

The nosebleed stopped, and Rose pressed the cloth with the ice cubes against his face next, almost expecting him to squirm away. But he stayed put and quiet, like he always did. Like being at death's door was his normal state.

"Sure you're a nurse, love?" He asked. "You're too gentle for that."

"Shut up or that might change." She brushed a few strands of hair away from his forehead. One side of his lips twisted up, like a boat about to tip over. "How are you feeling?"

He glanced at her like that was a question he had never been asked before. A question whose answer hadn't been invented yet. So she stepped away and shuffled through the cabinets to take out the medical equipment she knew like the back of her hand, even though his lack of answer was something that couldn't be fixed.

"I can treat me own wounds, ya know."

She turned to him, and the wind seemed to waltz inside her spine when she found him already staring at her.

"You could also dance Charleston stark naked in the middle of Piccadilly Circus and I'm not letting you do either."

A sound halfway between a strangled seal and a broken piano left his mouth.

"Was that a laugh?" She teased, arching her eyebrows. "A real laugh?"

He placed the cloth down, tongue passing over his lips as if missing the cigarette between them. "Did you fix bones in the war hospitals, or just hearts?"

She smiled, rummaging through bandages and gauzes. "Just bones."

They stood in silence as she cleaned the blood and disinfected the wounds on his face. He never made a sound. Rose had treated countless men and they were rarely ever quiet. Never this quiet. It was almost scary, the way he rather feel violence than talk about it. The way she felt his pain as if she were tending to her own wounds.

"We have to stop meeting like this," she broke the silence between them, one finger outlining the defined curve of his jaw. All she could feel was the warmth from his skin, how it seemed to dissipate on its way to her.

"Like what?"

"Finding each other when the other needs saving."

He gazed at her through half-closed eyelids, his breathing heavy and irregular.

"Aye, we should." His tone was scratchy, like ice that's been stepped on for too long and is about to break. She would probably drown. But it would feel like finally breathing. "But that's what we are, eh? Just fookin' trouble."

"And where will that get us?"

"It got us 'ere," he said, gesturing around with his head. "To your home."

"It's not a home if you're not happy in it." She turned around, throwing the bloody gauzes away. "Take off your shirt."

Thomas just looked at her. She rolled her eyes.

"Fine, I'll take it."

"I'm usually the one who undresses the woman first, love."

"Not with me, you're not." She took a step forward; his fingers clasped the edges of the tub when hers touched the buttons of his shirt. His eyes were all over her, and her convictions shattered on the floor. She felt too warm, as if a star was being born in the space between them.

But then his shirt fell, and a gasp tumbled from her like it was already winter. Bruises were turning purple on his skin and the cuts were deeper than the ones on his face, to the point where it seemed like someone had used his razor blades against him.

And then there were the tattoos. She saw the sunrays, the rose intertwined with the horseshoe, a symbol she could have gotten herself. But her eyes got stuck on his inner bicep, where three simple initials carried his entire existence. TGC. Thomas, Grace, and Charlie. Her fingers hovered over it, like a wanderer standing in front of a waterfall but too afraid to pass it.

"Tattoos," she said, unable to stop herself. "Scars we choose."

Then her eyes drifted to the injuries again and she struggled with the words in her mouth. She wanted to open a hole inside the universe so it could know what it felt like.

"Thomas, what... who did this to you?"

"No one from 'round 'ere. A fookin' Glasgow gang, or something. They all had a S on their collarbones, like fookin' animals marked with branding irons."

All the air was sucked out of her. The bandages fell from her trembling fingers. Her heart stopped. It couldn't be. That S was in the past. She had made sure of it. It had no place in her future. It had no place in his.

She tried to hide it all from her face, but he saw it. He always saw it.

"I was on me way to your café when they attacked me, Rose. I have no fookin' clue what bloody Scots want with me this time. But I bet they're the ones who killed me bartender."

Rose stepped away, throat closing in and lungs tightening to the point of no return. Her hands clutched the edges of the sink like a castaway clinging to the last shred of life. She felt the world fall down on her at once, the walls of the house opening up to him again, and when she looked up at the mirror, she saw his face, too real to be a ghost.

The man who had made her feel everything and then left her feeling like she was nothing. The kind of person who would both hold your hand and a gun to your head.

His voice snapped her back to reality. Thomas was behind her, and his face in the mirror mingled with his. Kaya was right. She did have a type.

"What do you know, Rose?"

She turned around abruptly, back colliding with the washbasin.

"They're not some fucking Glasgow gang," she said, voice firm but lips quivering. "That's what I know."

She was about to turn her head away from him when he grasped her jaw, locking it in place. She dove into his eyes too quickly, not ready for the cold shock response her body felt under his stare.

"Are they here for you?"

She didn't know what to say. What emotion to feel first. They had attacked Thomas to get to her, which meant they had been watching her and knew he meant something to her. They had attacked him, but let him live, so he could pass on the message.

We are coming. And if we can get to Thomas Shelby and break the unbreakable, we can get to you. And break what's been broken before. Again and again. Because that's all she had been made for. To be broken by those who had vowed to shield her.

She was going to say yes. She was going to say yes and she was going to open the door to her past and let him in.

But then she saw the scar on his abdomen, and a different door opened.

"Thomas, I... your middle name. It's Michael, right?"

His brows furrowed, and his eyes went back and forth between hers. He was always ahead. But this time he had to try to keep up.

"Yeah."

She felt a thud in her chest. She remembered a soldier, lying down on a bed with his eyes closed. A soldier, deadly wounded and yet so silent. Telling her he would only return to the front line because his brothers were on it. A soldier, teasing her about tea leaves. Michael S.

"In the bleak midwinter," she whispered, a whisper that came straight from the Somme and into her. "Frosty wind made moan; earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone. Snow had fallen, snow on snow, in the bleak midwinter... long ago."

He stared at her. He stared at her for what felt like forever. Eternities could have started and ended and none of them would have noticed. Nothing else existed when they did.

Then he spoke, a breath of Somme wind that hit her across the face. "The pretty nurse."

The corners of her lips swirled up, even if she had a black hole stuck in her throat. Fate had pushed them into each other and then pulled them away one too many times.

"We really have to stop meeting like this," she muttered. His eyes flickered to her lips for the slowest second, and then back to her. His hand was still holding her face. Or it could have been her heart. It was hard to tell. "Other people would call it fate."

"But we're not other people," he said, and Rose wondered how such a rough voice could speak so softly to her. "And we don't believe in fate."

"No. We don't." Her mouth was dry as his thumb drew circles on her skin. She couldn't stop her heart from racing, from wanting to get to him. "Maybe we should."

"So it was you, eh?" He let his hand fall and her heart sank. "Who convinced the doctors to do the surgery."

"Yes. Everyone saw you as a lost cause, but I—"

"But you saved me. Because you can't stay away from trouble, and trouble can't fookin' stay away from you."

She bit her lip. She wished she could go back to that day in the past and spend some more time with him. Before everything changed. Before she stopped being a helper in the war and became just another victim of it.

"I was going to ask you your name, Rose. I don't ask many people their name." His voice was like silk to her ears. Torn silk. "I flipped a coin as soon as you left. Heads for she's coming back, tails for she's not. Guess which one I got. Why didn't you come back, Rose?"

She swallowed. She had thought back to him many times, to how she wished she could have been there when he woke up, if he had woken up at all. Just to get a little bit more of that half smile that had made her feel whole.

"I received the news my father had died. I had to return home. I asked for you, nonetheless, when I could. Do you know what they told me? 'He went back to the Somme, that brave man'. But I don't think you were brave. It takes more bravery to walk away than straight ahead."

She moved her fingers to his chest, tracing all the wounds, the old and the new. She could feel the physical weight of his stare on her, but she didn't return it. She was reading a map on his skin. Wondering how different things would've been if she had gone back.

"After my father died, I moved to the front line in hopes I'd find my brothers there. Save them where I had failed my father. Of course I never found them. They both died at the hands of other nurses that never knew who they were."

Her voice cracked, tears dangling from the edges of her eyes. Thomas caught them with his thumb, wiping them away. He didn't let his hand fall this time.

"You died in the war, no?" She asked, but it wasn't a question she was expecting an answer to. "Well, I died too. When the best parts of me never came back. I don't even know where they're buried. I just know I'm there too."

"Rose..."

"Aiding soldiers in the front line was terrible." She cut him off. She didn't know how to deal with his softness. She'd rather have his rough edges and sharp tongue than this. She was so used to war she found no comfort in peace. "You could still see the war in them, feel the breath of death. And the howitzers explosions and the burst of machine guns, the sound of them in our heads instead of our own thoughts... you become more machine than human. A part of you dies. And there was nothing I could do. Nothing. I could clean the wounds on their bodies but never the ones beyond it. And fuck, I tried. I tried..."

His hands dropped to her shoulders, then to her arms. She tried stepping away so she wouldn't hurt him, but he didn't let her. Instead he shoved fate out of the way and pulled her to him, arms wrapping around her quivering shoulders as she buried her face in his neck and stained his skin with her tears. Her heart was thumping in her chest. Or maybe it was his.

"... and I couldn't. When you asked me how many soldiers I'd saved, you were right. Most died at my hands." She looked up to him, like Icarus near the sun. And she knew she was going to fall. This close it was inevitable. "Sometimes it seems to me like you're the only man I ever saved. And looking at you now... I'm not even sure I did."

He grabbed her hands, brought them close to his chest. She felt his heartbeat under her palm. Like a bird inside a cage. "You did, Rose, aye? You saved me."

She traced the freckles on his face like they could lead her somewhere better.

"And you saved me." She let her hand fall. "But if we continue this, it'll all be for nothing. We're the same, Thomas. And two devils cannot find heaven, only hell."

She broke away from him, chills setting inside her spine as if someone had suddenly taken the blanket off her soul.

"Ya know what they called ya? The nuns?" He asked. His long eyelashes casted shadows over her fingers. She was so close she could pick out the different shades of blue in his eyes. "The reckless nurse with a thing for British soldiers. They didn't like you all that much, but they still wanted you back. The entire hospital felt like a fookin' funeral for weeks after you left. And then I went back to the Somme, but sometimes you creeped into my fookin' thoughts and stayed there. For hours on end. This angelic figure I was sure I'd imagined, but that somehow got me through. Just the idea that something as good as you could exist in a place as wicked as those fookin' trenches."

"Thomas..."

This time it was him who cut her off. Maybe he couldn't deal with her softness either. His fingers returned to her chin, more firmly.

"There was no light in the tunnels, just darkness. So that's where my mind stayed. I might be here now, but my mind never left those tunnels. Most of the times I'm still in them, and I can't get out. I'm still in those fookin' tunnels, Rose. And there's no light at the end for me. There's just you."

She gulped. She had touched the sun and was paying the price for it.

"And is that better or worse?"

His thumb trailed over her bottom lip. She read between the blanks of his words. One of his hands fell to her waist, like the very last leaf before the spring. His knuckles stroked her face delicately. He inched closer, grip tighter on her body. She didn't know if it was his desire or hers stamped in his eyes.

His breath fell on her lips, noses brushing against each other timidly, like young lovers who only have one moment left.

Then she put her hands on his chest and pushed him away.

"My lips are poison, Thomas. And I don't think yours have the antidote."

He pressed his lips against each other, a shadow of something dark and dangerous and incredibly alluring crossing his face.

"There's only one way to know."

"No, you don't... you don't know what I've done with them."

He shook his head. His gaze was a cliff she couldn't help but crash against. Or fall from. "I don't care, Rose. I don't care."

"But I do." And you would too if you knew. I killed my own heart with them.

His hands cupped her face like he was holding the Holy Grail and not her.

"Lie to yourself all you want, Rose, but don't lie to me. You tell me this doesn't feel right, eh? You tell me."

She took his hands away from her, in a foolish attempt to drive his feelings along. "These lips are only meant to kill, Thomas. I'm sorry if you thought you could change that."

He nodded, leaning back from her, going somewhere where only him could go, where Rose would not be able to follow him.

"You should have let me die in the war, Rose. Because you're killing me now."

"Tho—"

A loud honk rang from the street, startling them both. The dome they were in shattered and reality fell upon them like a deluge.

"Connard de Alfie," Rose cursed, clenching her fists and turning away. The horn seemed to be piercing her brain like a drill, and knowing the person behind it, that was the point.

She stormed towards the living room, opened the window and looked down, to the bearded man with a hat leaning against his car. He was alone on the street, but some people had already come to their windows to shake their heads and offer him colorful curses, Rose being the loudest.

"For fuck's sake, Alfie, will you stop it? It's nine in the fucking evening!"

Alfie Solomons turned around, pocket watch in hand as he looked up at her. He honked for a few more seconds before finally moving away from the lethal instrument.

"Yeah, it is, it is. Mind if I go up for a bit, love?"

Her neighbors at the window shot her horrified looks upon the suggestion that a single woman would receive a man so late, but Rose ignored them.

"Anything to get you away from that fucking horn!"

She heard him say something along the lines of 'French horns' as she closed the window and opened the front door. Thomas was already in the living room, shirtless and dumbfounded. The idea that his lips could have been on hers just moments before rattled her insides; it seemed so long ago already, like something one imagines in a dream but can't remember in the morning. Like something she would never have.

Alfie wiped his shoes about ten times before entering Rose's apartment, plaintive eyes stopping on Thomas as if he were just another piece of the furniture.

"Ah Thomas! Thomas!"

Thomas gave him a short nod. The tension stretched between them like a high-voltage wire. "Alfie."

"That's some nasty cuts you got there, aye?" Alfie said, looking around until he found a blanket and threw it at Thomas. "Put some bloody shirt on, alright, son?"

He made his way to the couch, ready to sit down before he noticed all the red on it. "Fucking hell, did you two slaughter a bloody pig on 'ere?"

"Alfie." Rose pinched the bridge of her nose. "Would you be so kind as to tell me what the fuck you're doing here?"

"I'm paying a debt, love, that's what I'm doing." He dropped down onto an armchair, hands wrapping around the handle of his walking cane. "Ya see, when me mother was chased through the snow by the Russians, French Jews rescued her. I am since then indebted to the French. So take this as an act of goodwill, if ya will, for what your ancestors did to mine, yeah?"

Rose frowned. Her eyes caught Thomas' across the room, and Alfie looked from her to him, from him to her, until he raised his eyebrows and cleared his throat.

"Yeah, don't mind me, I'll just wait here, right, until your eyes stop with the bloody shagging, alright?"

Thomas and Rose snapped their heads back to him, in a collective death stare that could have made a kingdom fall.

"Right, so I had this fucker in me bakery today, yeah?" Alfie said, freezing the blood inside Rose's veins. "He wanted me to join him in whatever hell he's about to unleash, right, upon you, love, and—"

"And you didn't shoot him in the fookin' head, because knives in the back are more your thing." Thomas cut, voice monotone and cold.

"Hold ya horses there, will ya, Tommy? He made a very persuasive point, right, with all the bloody explosives he brought with him. Not the first fucker to try it. Poor Ollie almost pissed his pants again. Remember that?"

Thomas pursed his mouth but nodded. Alfie turned to Rose.

"He wanted me to betray ya, love. But the French saved me mum, and thirty pieces of silver can't compete with that."

Thomas snorted, as loud as Alfie's horn. "That's new."

"No, it isn't. See, you're making a mistake there, Tommy, comparing yourself to Rose. Shelbys and Sabinis, right, they're just men. But Rose, ya see, she's different. When you ask me to betray her, you ask me to betray a moral, an ideal."

"I thought men like us didn't have morals."

"And I thought you were fucking respectful until I found you like this at my friend's apartment, but we aren't always right, are we, mate?" Alfie pointed with the cane towards Thomas' chest and got up. He sauntered to the door and grasped the knob, moving his prophetic stare back to Rose. "The dream's getting more recurring, love. I would do like Tommy there said, yeah, and shoot that fucking lunatic in the head as soon as I could. And do me a favor, alright? Tell him that if he goes after Kaya, he goes after me."

author's note.

soo Rose and Thomas finally realized they'd met before! I'm curious about your thoughts on it, so feel free to let me know and I'll see you next chapter :)