Crown of a Prince (Finn Shelby)

95.

Finn fell asleep after a few minutes of lying beside Ailbhe. He always amazed her how easily he slept, how he could lie down, sit down, even just lean against a wall and he could doze off. Of course, she had a major role to play in it. He never slept as easily nor as soundly when she wasn't there. He slept on his stomach with his arm over her middle and his head nestled into her shoulder, the smell of her perfume and the way she ran the tips of her fingers up and down his arm sending him straight to sleep as always.
 
It was funny how they slept so differently all the time. Nights when Ailbhe felt unlike herself, when she felt vulnerable and fragile Finn would pull her in against his chest and keep her wrapped against him all night. Most mornings, however they woke facing each other, Finn's arm slung around her and her head down against his shoulder or with Ailbhe lying across him.

 But as Finn slept, Ailbhe couldn’t. She didn’t want to switch off, to stop thinking about it all and fall asleep where she was sure the dreams Polly warned her about would haunt her. And what if they didn’t? If she slept soundly, without any black cats or magpies, without any warnings that Tommy or Michael would die? What then? After the clock passed two hours of her just lying there and watching him, she slid out of Finn’s arms, knowing he wouldn’t wake since he was such a heavy sleeper.
 
She dressed silently, taking one last look back at him and thinking she wasn’t sure what she did to deserve him. She loved him so much, but she had to get out, breathe some real air and try and sort the mess inside her head. He didn't deserve her shit, not tonight.
 
She found herself at Charlie’s Yard, not sure if she was looking for Liam or if she was looking for somewhere quiet and safe. But it was Charlie she found, sitting in the yard warming his hands off a fire while his leg was stretched out in front of him.
 
Charlie jumped with a fright when he saw her. She was like a cat in the night sneaking up on people. Whatever it was about Ailbhe, it was like her footsteps made not a single sound and she was right behind you before you knew you weren’t alone.
 
“Jesus Christ! What are you doing?” Charlie asked, looking over his shoulder at her.
 
She looked tired and conflicted and yet there she stood, leaving her nice bed empty and choosing to wander Small Heath instead. People with clear heads didn’t do that so whatever was troubling her had led her here.
 
“I’m not a house cat, Uncle Charlie I’m allowed out at night” She replied, a hint of humour in her tone but it didn’t communicate as far as her face.
 
He pulled up a seat beside him, gesturing for her to take a seat and passing her a mug that he filled with tea from the pot Curly had left with him before he went to bed for the night.  She took the seat and the mug, glad of the warmth.
 
“I mean what the fuck are you doing out of Finn’s sight?” He muttered, knowing that where one was, the other surely followed and yet Ailbhe was there alone.
 
She took a sip, wrapping the mug in her hands and leaning down closer to the fire. She looked exhausted, her hair falling down from the ribbon that held it back, her make up faded and some black smudged beneath her eyes from the amount of tears that kept threatening to fall all day that she had refused to let fall.
 
“He’s sleeping… I couldn’t” She answered, knowing that Charlie wasn’t sleeping either these days on account of his leg.
 
“Why not?” he asked, his usual attitude waning since generally, he didn’t give a fuck about anyone but Ailbhe was sitting there, looking like breaking point could be on the horizon for the young woman.
 
“When I sleep, I dream and when I dream, I see that fucking magpie with a gold ring in its mouth…”
 
She told him bitterly, her eyes cold and staring at the flames. She looked almost unrecognisable, exactly like her mother with those same intense eyes that let you know she was far away. But then the flames flickered again, and she was back.
 
Her dreams were still plagued by black cats but now the magpie was still haunting her, as if mocking her that she should’ve known about Bonnie.
 
“My friend, an old IRA friend phoned me today… The woman who I helped escape... she’s leaving for New York with her husband and baby”
 
She told him, her mind constantly pedalling back to the way Maggie’s voice sounded on the phone. She seemed so happy, so carefree and content. Something Ailbhe didn’t think she’d ever be for long.
 
Charlie just watched the flames with his small, dark eyes and he listened.
 
“And you started to think ‘what if’” Charlie assumed, scoffing slightly.
 
It would be completely natural for Ailbhe to start wishing and dreaming. She was only twenty-one, she had a boy who loved her and a life that was dangerous and reckless in their hands. It was almost expected of Ailbhe to want to get away from it. It had happened to Ada after she had Karl. It had happened to Grace and Tommy when Charles was born. This sudden need to become a good or even just a safe person because you were responsible for another.
 
But Ailbhe turned back to him, her eyes wide and misty as she shook her head.
 
“No… I started to think, thank God that isn’t me” She whispered, as if it was her confession.
 
She looked across at Charlie, waiting for him to get confused or even scold her. But he just looked at her understandingly.
 
She wanted to be with Finn, forever. But the house in the country with a vegetable garden and dozens of hens and a few children running around. None of it appealed to her. She wanted to be with Finn, she wanted to be with him forever and maybe one day, they would want a family but now, all she wanted was him and their life together. She wanted that spark, that energy and buzz they got from their life, she wanted to feel that alive always. After everything they’d gone through, she didn’t want to pack it in and retire, not when they had so much left in them.
 
“Michael’s right, I’m fucked in the head.” she sighed, grabbing the box of cigarettes on the ground and lighting one.
 
Charlie rolled his eyes, watching her. Leaning forward so his elbows rested on his knees, he called her back to pay attention.
 
“Ailbhe, your father was shot in front of you by British Soldiers. Your mother came from a gypsy family, with a gift of second sight but she unravelled right before your very eyes. You’ve lost your parents, you’ve lost a brother to war, a brother to a vendetta. You’ve been locked up, almost hanged.”
 
He listed to her, everything she had been through all these years. She looked back at him, wondering what on Earth point he could make.
 
“You could never want that life, to pack it all in and retire. If you did, do you think you’d be stupid enough to fall in with the one lad who could never walk away from it?”
 
Charlie asked her, raising an eyebrow at her. He knew he was right. So did she. Ailbhe was an intelligent woman. Would she have come back to Finn, would she have stayed with him and fought for him if she wanted to head off to the countryside and live an ordinary life. Not a chance in hell.

"You're a lot of things, love. Stupid isn't one of them" He reminded her, having known her since she was just a girl.

People had called her a lot of things. They had called her a witch, a criminal, a terrorist, a freedom fighter, a crazy gypsy bitch and more. But even her worst enemy couldn't accuse her of being stupid.
 
She looked back at him, knowing Charlie wasn't lying to her. It wasn't her intuition telling her, it was that Charlie couldn't be bothered being creative enough to lie about things.

"You were born into fire… when you’re born by fire, you die by fire… that’s how it is, Alv”
 
He shrugged, throwing the end of his cigarette into the flames that Ailbhe’s eyes were drawn to.
 
Pulling herself away from the fire and leaving Charlie to his sulking knowing that he wouldn’t ever know how much his words helped her as always. Finn was still asleep when she got back home, creeping up the stairs and into the room silently. He was fast asleep still, a slight frown on his face now since even in his sleeping state it was like he knew something was missing.
 
 
Charlie was right. Ailbhe was born into the fires of war, from Ireland’s war against Britain, to wartime in Birmingham while her brothers fought, to the war against poverty they all had to wade through when the boys came home, to the war that they took on that meant it was the Shelby Kennedy family against the world it seemed. Ailbhe couldn’t walk away from a fight no more than her brothers could. But what had kept her awake was that she didn’t want to walk away from it.

She stripped quickly back down to her underwear and crawled back into the bed, back into his arms that instinctively tightened and drew her in. She could feel tears in her eyes but she wouldn’t even know how to explain them. She wasn’t sad, she wasn’t angry. She was utterly relieved to be back with him and feel like there was nowhere else she wanted to go.
 
She blinked them away, nestling down into Finn and kissing the bare skin of his neck closest to her. She whispered that she loved him into the dark, not caring if he couldn’t hear her but feeling the compulsion to say it again and again, to pull him close and not let go. His slow, steady breathing and how his hand found hers, fingers lacing through hers, was enough of a response. She wasn't sure what she had done to deserve a life with Finn Shelby but she was going to have one, once they'd killed that fucking fascist.