The Red King and the Witch

Whiskey and Concussions

Realizing you're not dead can be startling the first time around. Waking in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by people you don't recognize, touching you, trying to fix you.

I threw my body into shock when I woke up in Iraq. It all seemed so unreal at first, the fight felt like it had killed me. It took over an hour for the doctors and nurses on base to convince me that I wasn't dead.

It took less than an hour to convince me this time.

I was warm, stifling to be precise but my clothes were still soaked and smelled from the river, but that wasn't my primary concern.

It was the sharp whispers that set me on edge.

"Tommy, what the hell happened, who is this!" a woman's voice, hushed but furious, the man seemed to push past the angry women and then place me on a hard surface.

"For Christ's sake Thomas! It's almost three o'clock in the morning and she's half dressed and soaking wet, and you're no better. What the fuck is going on!?" she whispered angrily.

Tommy or Thomas didn't say anything. His hands just glided across me, deftly pulling at my clothes. One hand cupped my neck, I felt him lift me off the hard surface and pull me to his chest. The other skimmed down the inside of my coat, gliding it down my arms, the tips of his fingers making my skin tingle.

"Not now Pol, just help me get her out of this, she fell in the cut and she's bleeding." he said lowly after he set me back on what I guess could be a table of some sort.

"Thomas, who is she?" the women questioned again, this time another set of hands joined in on removing my clothes. They were warm as well, but they pulled and tugged at my soaked boots and that's what set me off.

My eyes flew open and swung at the first person that I could, which landed right on the man's jaw. He let me go and gave off a stream of curses as I scrambled back off the table, kicking my legs out to throw the women off.

A knife was sat on a table near what looked to be an old cooking stove, and I rushed to it while I heard the woman yelling and the man shouting for her to calm down.

Standing that quickly had given me another head rush but as I looked around at my new surroundings I could sense something else was off.

"Hey!" the man's voice called out in the dark room, commanding my attention. He had his arms spread out palms up.

"You're alright, you've got to put that down now before anyone gets hurt" he warned, one hand pointing at the knife.

With a shake of my head, which only made the room spin again, I took a breath and pressed for information.

"Who are you?" I growled out.

I kept a tight grip on the knife, my body had begun to shake again and the pain in my skull was turning the edges of my vision black again with each breath I took.

I couldn't focus on that though, because in the back of my mind I had warning bells going off, something was wrong.

"My name is Thomas Shelby" he answered with a slight nod, his eyes darting back and forth from my eyes and the knife in my hand.

He was calm, even with a crazy woman in his house, soaking wet and holding him up with a kitchen knife, he wasn't even breaking a sweat. He held this strange sense of peace, like he was used to people threatening him with knives.

"Do you remember what happened?" Thomas asked, his breath slowing and his eyes now just staring right back at mine.

I tried to think back but a sharp pain was pulsing through my skull. I couldn't think of anything. How I got to this house or in the water the only thing I could remember was the noise and then waking up to his eyes staring back at mine.