( part two, CHAPTER ELEVEN )
The next time she saw him was half past midnight.
It was one of those particularly dreary nights, wherein the clouds, dreadful smudges against the blue-black ink that had long ago been spilled across the heavens, frowned down upon the town below with a heaviness, like an omen, foreshadowing the storm. The city had slipped into a tense silence, with not even the usually perpetual sounds of hammers on steal to distract from what seemed to be the quietest night since Birmingham's boom into an industrial epicenter.
It was unnerving.
For that very reason, Thalia found herself staring up at her ceiling, wide awake with an uncertain expectancy, as she counted the chimes, a haunting hum, ringing out from the church two blocks over. She hadn't yet bothered to step foot in that building, and she didn't fancy doing so any time soon. Why should she pray to a god that had abandoned her in her hour of need?
With the sixth chime, she sat bolt upright in her rickety old bed, and it's creaking joined the bell tower's ominous orchestra. She swore she'd just heard gunfire.
Her thoughts immediately snapped to Tommy. The Garrison was only a street or two over, perhaps she'd hear if something was going on. Or, perhaps she'd already heard something that was actively going on.
Whatever noise her ears had picked up upon did not repeat itself, and Thalia was left with a sinking feeling in her gut as the quiet seeped back into the night, with no more bell tower chimes to haunt the air which was alive with silent static. Now, she was even more unnerved than before.
A part of her waited for the sound of the door slamming open. They were coming, coming for her in the dead of night. They were back, and she would be ripped from her bed and dragged down the stairs and out on to the street. She waited for the fists to fly and the barrel of a gun to be slammed, repeatedly, into her temple. She waited for the terror. She waited, she waited, she waited.
She closed her eyes, desperately trying to filter out all the bad she assumed of the world. Perhaps it was firecrackers, set off by some unruly kids that Polly no doubt wanted to smack well and proper upside the head. Perhaps it was a car that misfired into the night, as those machines were still new and far from foolproof. Perhaps, and this was this most likely of the situation, she'd simply imagined the noise with her mind still stuck in the past, a clear memory of bombs and guns and planes that only became hazy when it began to bleed into the here and now, as if she was seeing two different moments in one.
She didn't realize how long she sat there in thought, waiting still, but a knock at the door jolted her from an almost sleep. Her head snapped up, fear coursing through her body over who would dare visit at this hour. They'd come, those faceless soldiers. They'd come for her again.
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Roaring /// Peaky Blinders
Fanfiction"even when she was lying, there was a certain truth she always told" A pretty girl, a deal gone wrong, an ultimatum, and a death... Another average week for the Peaky Blinders. [T. Shelby] [Under Editing]