Forbidden Afflictions // Alfie Solomons Peaky Blinders

(15) Snow and Sympathies pt. 2

Hi! The pacing might be ATROCIOUS but I have been procrastinating this chapter and waited until the last minute to finish it. I apologize. I will go through this again and edit it later. I hope you enjoy. I love y'all!

-V

"So, where the fook 'ave you been?" Polly asked in a low, slurred voice. Her eyes were rolling to the back of her head with every blink she gave and her head wouldn't move much off the cushion of the sofa behind her. She seemed weak and yet she managed a cigarette from the coffee table and shakily placed it between her lips before striking it alight. 

Freya's entire body went cold. 

She wasn't angry like she thought she would be. Every time she found Arthur coked out on the floor of his living room or shitfaced drunk at the Garrison, she would be so angry with him. When John was so careless with his guns and tobacco when Finn was but a child, she would be so angry at him. But now that it was Polly... it was different.

An immense amount of sorrow soared through her body in an instant. From the slow sound of her aunt's voice to the state she found her in, Freya was left at a loss for words. 

She opened her mouth as if to speak but nothing came out. She didn't know what she thought she was going to say. She didn't know what to say to Polly. Not a single thought possessed her tongue and there were far too many thoughts on her mind to make any coherence from it. 

"Last I saw of you, we were both corpses," Polly drew out, keeping her voice very slow and insinuating. 

Something metallic filled Freya's mouth in an instant. She had only her own blurry memories to recall. She hadn't had anyone to share those with except Polly. Never had she had to face the events from someone else's mouth. Never did she have someone she didn't need to explain herself to. The only person who would know was Polly.

"Wish I could say the same for you," Freya heard herself say, speaking unsteadily and with a reddened nose as she held back tears. "Seems you never quite made it back."

Polly seemed inquisitive that Freya managed her words. She knew when the woman was upset, she needed a fire in her belly to make the words come out. But when she was left only with sadness—no anger, no disgust, no malice—she never had the strength to get them past her tongue. Perhaps Polly read her wrong when she walked in. 

"Seems neither of us did, darling," Polly informed her, exhaling a large cloud of translucent smoke into the air and turning her head down as if it were too heavy to keep upright on her own. 

"No," Freya agreed solemnly, unaware of what she should say about the state of the house or the drugs Polly failed to clean from the countertop. 

"So?" Polly repeated, scratching something gravelly in her throat as she took another drag and rolled her eyes to blink. 

Freya simply stared in bewilderment. Polly was shameless. She didn't even try to hide the snow or the fact she hadn't been washed in days. The circles under her eyes were a sickly purple and the veins in her shaking hands protruded past the smooth surface of her skin. Splotches of brown speckled her knuckles and wrists and the wrinkles forming on her face appeared dry and unkempt. Her clothes were all disbelieved and stained slightly with what Freya hoped to be whiskey. She was nothing but a mess.

"I didn't realize the date..." Freya said curiously, sounding lost almost at her realization. Her eyes fluttered away from her aunts as she stared at the floor in thought. "I didn't realize the date until it became almost too late..." 

She finally found Polly's gaze again and furrowed her brows in question. 

Polly snickered and tapped her ash into an ashtray beside her cocaine, lifting her back from the couch and using her neck to stabilize her head for the first time since Freya arrived. "You always were such a poet; even at the most inappropriate times.