Beauty and The Beast- Arthur Shelby x OC || Peaky Blinders

I : I

John remembered her from when he used to pickpocket her neighbors when they were much younger. She used to watch him and laugh when he pressed his finger to his lips as if it were their little secret.

Sometimes she even had a sweet or two and when he walked past, she would slip it to him. They were never those cheaps either. They were citrus, those giant lemons from Italy or Pomgerante, and chocolate - not milk chocolate but the darker kind, the ones that explode on your tongue and you would get hints of hazelnut and bourbon almost. Sometimes they even tasted a bit like cherries. They were fancy chocolates and never just cheap coated peanuts that he and his brothers would get from the sweet shop not far from the Garrison.

They had a routine, he could recall, every Saturday night, John would come to her side of town and every Saturday night she would be sitting on her front steps swaying to whatever was ever in her head and watching as he slipped his fingers in those cur lined woolen coat pockets. He never knew why she didn't turn him in. Or why she gave him fresh sweets from the bakery that he could never afford.

But he remembered her.

She was younger than him, younger than even Ada. She was six years younger than him, only seven years old when they first met. Always been a sweet girl... But it's been years. Even longer since before the war. She was around twelve or so the last he saw of her.

John could have never forgotten Roisin Murphy even if he tried. She was the only posh girl who had ever been nice to him. She was the only rich girl he had ever been able to call a friend even if they only ever shared smiles, knowing glances, and little gifts. He was a poor boy from the wrong side of Birmingham and his little gifts had never been anything as grand as hers were but they were little tokens he was proud of.

Little pebbles he found by the cut with strange shapes and colors, a piece of wood with a carved-out rune or such - he wasn't very good at but he swore it brought good luck. He even gave her a horseshoe he knicked from Uncle Charlie's yard. Just little gypsy things he supposed but they always made her smile up at him as if they were the most precious things in the world.

Strange, he always thought when he would think back on it. They were such foolish little gifts and hers were always such rich and new. Sweets were just one of the things until she began giving him new woolen gloves, giving him a silk scarf once for his Ma', a new hat, and some dried meat and cheese - the kind they could never afford. She even gave them actual butter.

Tommy and Aunt Pol always groaned on and on about the lard they were forced to use for their toast and whenever he came home on a Saturday night with a very generous size block of fresh butter... They never asked how he got it. And John never told anyone about Roisin. At least not until he was in the trenches beside his brothers - he never knew why at that moment when they were waiting for the fucking calvery to show up his mind went to a little earthy eye girl with pretty blonde braids instead of his family.

He could say it was because he had always thought of her as his angel or something when they were younger before he and his brothers became Peaky Blinders before they could actually afford the Butter themselves. He just hadn't thought about her in years, perhaps that made him selfish, he didn't know but in those final moments... He thought of Roisin Murphy and he told his brothers and their friends about the six-year-old little Irish girl with the American mum who stole from her own family every Saturday so that she could feed theirs.

He never stole the butter, or the bread, or the sweets. He never stole that pretty coral-pink silk scarf for their mum. He never stole those pairs of gloves that he had given to all of them. He never stole that tenner from a "cheeky fellow." he never did a lot of his bounty from the toff side. It was all because of Sweet Rose.