Forbidden Afflictions // Alfie Solomons Peaky Blinders

(4) The Ravens

"I'm sorry," she wailed, instinctually reaching for the hand he had lain limply over her knee. Her fingers curled around the thick skin of his knuckles and clutched onto the calloused side that led to his palm. "I'm sorry."

As the words spilled over her her tongue and dripped from her lips, she felt the urge to throw up. It was as if the words were ipecac and she needed to expel all her insides. She needed to rid her body of all its containments. She needed to get rid of the bile inside her—all the guilt—the shame. She needed it out.

"I'm sorry," she huffed out lowly, tightening her grip on his hand and moaning as she forced a breath of air in through her blubbering mouth. "I'm sorry."

It was the one time he seemed to not have been able to reply. Every time she apologized to him, he was always so quick to reassure her. He was always there to tell her to stop or that she had no reason to apologize. He told her that she had no reason to ever apologize to him—never to him. He usually said something to shut her up when she let her emotions get the better of her. He usually tried to comfort her or stop her... But not this time.

No... No, not this time...

"I don't know..." she croaked. She forced her swelling eyes to stay focused on his which seemed to have found more comfort in the ground than in her own company. "I'm sorry," she whispered in defeat. "I'm so sorry," she sobbed, feathering her breath over the top of Alfie's fingers. "I don't know... what hap-pend."

Alfie's eyes were instantly red and watered considerably at the thought of having a son—of having lost a son. He had thought up a thousand possible ways it could have happened, imagined how far along Freya made it before she miscarried, and thought of the pain they both must have felt in the aftermath.

He imagined it in nearly every way possible. He imagined how they lost that baby because it was all he had in the absence of the truth—and now that she had given him some sort of answer to his undying questions, it didn't seem real.

"I don't—" she confided. "I don't know what it it was..." she admitted in a babble. "Alfie, I didn't know..." she cried. "I didn't know an-d I ha- had so much blood..." she whined, feeling a phantom pain in her gut from where the contractions had started moving the corpse of her fetus all those months ago. "There was so much blood, I don't—" she cut herself off, sniffling and turning her face away when Alfie finally looked up with those shiny blue eyes of his. "I don't—" she repeated as she shook her head. "I'm sorry."

She turned when he hadn't moved away and their eyes were locked onto one another—both bleary and bloodshot. Alfie was blinking slowly and began breathing from his mouth as he faced her.

"You don't?" Alfie asked in a whisper, shaking his head with something between sorrow and disappointment.

Freya quivered and gave out the softest of pleas. Her head shook in small, apologetic motions that seemed to deflate Alfie's chest until there was nothing left but wretched muscle.

He had always imagined what had happened, but he never anticipated the confusion Freya must have felt. Not knowing for sure was almost better than having to sit with that indefinite truth—that pain.

He didn't have the answers and he despised Freya for keeping it all to herself. It was the love of his life that was imprisoned and his baby that died. He deserved to know what happened and she kept it all from him. She denied him any sort of answer once she was released and he despised her for it.

He loathed her for having the answers he begged for. He almost hated her. She had robbed him of the truth and hidden it in a place only she could have and hold it. She had what he had been praying for and kept it from him on purpose. That's what he truly believed, but he was wrong. She didn't have them. She didn't have the answers and he hated himself for ever having felt that way about her.