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red-riding-wood · 10 months ago

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OC: Charlotte Griffin

Fandom: Peaky Blinders

Summary: Charlotte Griffin, on a quest to emerge from her family's dark shadow, becomes a spy in a gang war that puts her loyalties and desires into question as she grows closer to the man who is meant to be her enemy.

WARNINGS for whole story: eventual explicit sexual content and references, explicit violence and gore, mentions of physical abuse, language, ethnic slurs

The steel of the revolver was cold as my fingers brushed its trigger guard, Thomas pressing its handle to the palm of my hand. My fingers curled around it tentatively, though I hoped that he did not notice this. The last time I had held a gun, it had been my twin brother by my side.

“This is a revolver,” he said. “Six shot. Always hold your finger above the trigger until you’re ready to fire.”

Though it could hardly be called a smile, my lip quirked at that. Alexander’s choice of weapon had been a revolver, and the weight felt familiar in my hand, as did the sight of the chamber. But I did not want to talk about such things.

Thomas pulled a small box of ammunition from his pocket, and withdrew a brass bullet.

I cocked a brow at him as words began to form on his lips, and I said, “The next thing I know, you’re going to tell me this is a bullet.”

Thomas hesitated, the brass between his fingertips glinting in the light of the afternoon sun. His eyes seemed to glitter, and the quirk of his lip mirrored mine as he examined me.

“Those are .455 rounds,” he said, and handed one to me. The bullet was even colder against my fingertips, and though they itched to slot it into place, I awaited Thomas’ instruction patiently.

“Now…” he said. “… you see this on the side? You pull that, break it open, and load your bullets.”

Alexander’s revolver had been a Colt .45. An American model, a single action that required each round to be chambered individually. I’d never used a break-action, though I’d known it to be my father’s weapon of choice. Something sinister seemed to crawl its way to the bright of my soul as I did as Thomas asked, smothering the light. I hoped he did not notice the way my fingers trembled as I loaded the sixth bullet.

“All right, close it like that, now – yes, just like that. Now, you’re live.”

“I don’t need to cock the hammer?” I asked, my thumb hovering over the mechanism.

Like Luca, Thomas always seemed to take his time before answering, even if he knew his response. He was currently lighting a cigarette, dragging it along his bottom lip in the way I’d learned to be a habit of his. Only when a puff was blown and his lighter was placed back in his pocket did he say,

“No.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes – I was perhaps becoming too comfortable around him, letting my guard down in a way a spy should not, especially not a spy who dared dance with the enemy – and I situated myself so that the targets were in sight, the winds cordially still today so not a leaf rustled in the apple trees alongside the gongs.

Thomas came to stand beside me as I aimed, a cloud of smoke encircling him, his eyes shadowed by the cap he wore and still squinting against the sun, his thoughts hidden past his inscrutable countenance.

The Webley kicked hard, though it wasn’t the kick that startled me, but rather, the memory it attempted to drag me into, of Alexander’s body pressed against my spine and his hands hovering over mine to steady my aim, of his chiming laugh when I started crying and shaking, of the warmth of his loving hands as he took the cold gun from me and brought me into his arms.

“It’s not going to hurt you,” he’d told me. “Only those you point it at.”

Thomas side-eyed me, his lip curling into a tiny smirk that seemed to both humiliate and infuriate me. Unlike Alexander, his amusement was more smug than it was playful, though I was not a child anymore. And I was determined that he didn’t see me as such, that he didn’t see me as the little posh girl from London who was too frightened to shoot a gun.

“I’m all right,” I said, a little too defensively, and I attempted to steady my shaking hand as I eyed the gong; the bullet had hit the outer edge. “Let me try again.”

I sucked in a breath, and I banished the memories of Alexander, letting his warmth and his lovely laugh fade away, letting the cold bite of the winter air seize my marrow past my coat and flesh and bone, letting my boots sink into the soil of the pasture, letting the sounds of birds whelm the silence. And on my exhale, I squeezed the trigger.

I recovered better this time from the recoil, and my eyes remained focused on my target, on the bullet that had crept just an inch or two closer to the bullseye.

Thomas’ smirk remained.

I took another shot. And another.

And his smirk waned. And while my flesh crawled and while I knew, from the screaming light in my soul, that I should not have been pleased, my own lip tugged into the slightest of smiles, the hot rush of adrenaline spiking my veins.

Only when the sixth shot was fired and I lowered the Webley did my chest heave a tremulous breath, and I swallowed against a knotted throat, as if forcing back the doubt and the pressure, and, most important of all, the memories.

Thomas stepped forward, making his way to the front of the range, and I followed as he mumbled past his cigarette,

“So, when did you learn to shoot, eh?”

As we came further to the gong, my eyes raked across the impressions the bullets had made, all offset from the bullseye by perhaps a few centimetres. Not perfect, but far from awful.

“You don’t reckon it’s beginner’s luck?” I said, coming to stand by the gongs.

“Not with that grouping.” Thomas pointed with his cigarette to the impressions left by the bullets.

I swallowed again, and studied my grouping so I did not have to meet his eye as I said, “My brother taught me.”

The slightest whisper of breezes stirred the wisps of hair from my eyes, and I shivered beneath my thick overcoat.

“I hear you have a lot of brothers.”

The unease in my hesitation was palpable, so much so that I knew Thomas could sense it. Anyone could. I had been trying so hard not to think of Alexander and his mischievous blue eyes and his warm embrace.

“My twin brother. Alexander,” I said past the ever-growing knot in my throat. “He used to say I needed to learn, to protect myself from bad men.”

“Bad men.” He mulled over the word, before quirking his lip. I met his eyes to find a glitter in their aquamarine depths. “Like me?”

“Yes,” I said, having found the irony in my business here but only tasting it on my tongue now. “Like you.”

“Your brother was wise.” Thomas handed me six more bullets.

“He was.” I swung my head away from his gaze as I reloaded the Webley. “Reckless, but, clever. He caught on faster than anyone in that family. Including me.” I slotted the last bullet into place with lead in my gut, eager to change the subject from my brother if only to someone who hadn’t left a fracture in my soul. “Except for maybe my cousin. The only one who seemed to get away. Granted, she went to live with the Gypsies – that’s what my brother said. She likely went mad.”

“But you stayed.”

The Webley snapped shut, and another silence fell between us. I found myself looking him in the eye again only to find an unexpected intrigue in bright blues.

“I stayed.”

“And why did you stay?”

“For my brothers, mostly,” I answered in earnest, my tone taking on a grave note as I said my next words, “My father was a bad man, Mr. Shelby. They needed me.”

“And yet, here you are.”

My lip quirked. And I spared myself one moment and one moment alone to feel an amount of guilt for having left. Who was there now to take care of Ivan when he drank too much? Who was there to keep the others safe?

No one, and yet… there wouldn’t have been even if I’d stayed. My father would’ve found a suitor for me eventually, would’ve married me off to form some allegiance with the Solomons or the Sabinis.

“I started to listen to my ambitions rather than my heart,” I told Thomas, knowing full well that the threat of an unhappy marriage wasn’t the only thing that drove me away. Something had pulled me here; for whatever reason, Small Heath, with all of its bad men and its relentless bloodshed, had whispered thoughts of a throne to me.

Though, I didn’t necessarily want to tell Thomas these thoughts, either. The last thing I needed was to have him suspicious of me desiring more than what he was offering. So, I changed the subject,

“And who taught you to shoot, Mr. Shelby?”

A puff of smoke spiced the winter air, and he rolled the cigarette between his fingers, gaze fixating somewhere on the distance as if I had ceased to exist. He didn’t look me in the eye when he finally said,

“Let’s head back, shall we? See if we can group all your shots.” Cigarette wedged back in his teeth, he turned, black coat swishing at his heels, but I kept my feet planted in the sodden earth.

“Was it your father?” I called to him, raising my voice over the faint bluster of the wind as he walked away. “Most men learn from their fathers.”

He stopped, head sinking just below his shoulders, as if the weight of the world was finally beginning to bury him. I yearned to witness his countenance, to learn what emotions he hid beneath those eyes of frozen tides. And he turned, slowly, his cigarette cast to the earth and stubbed out with the toe of his boot, as if the taste were suddenly foul.

The cap rose to reveal those aquamarine eyes, and when he looked at me, I thought I almost detected a rage burning in those icy depths. “My father was a bad man.”

“Worse than you?” I cocked a brow.

Thomas Shelby nodded, slowly, the flame of rage flickered out, as if silenced by the winds, silver fragments of his eyes a hollow vestige of what once had been, just like the tendrils of smoke that rose from beneath the toe of his boot.

“Worse than me.”

Though eager to pry, I allowed another silence to stretch between us. I found that there was more to learn about people from the spaces between which they spoke than their actual words, but his eyes were squinted tight against the glare of the setting sun, and the peak of his cap still shadowed them in a mysterious dark that was fitting of his cryptic nature.

“That reminds me,” I said, tone shifting as I walked forward, deciding to release his gaze so as not to make my curiosity overly known. “I wanted to ask your permission to take a day or so to visit London. I have business there. But I can be back as soon as I can.”

“What sort of business?” he asked as I fell into stride beside him, and a breath slowly hissed from my nose as I recalled Aberama’s threat, as the golden line of the horizon winked like that of the citrine amulet I would need to fetch.

“Business with bad men,” I said, and caught his gaze out of the corner of my eye. Something flickered through it that was too fleeting to catch, and it ate at the pit of my stomach. But I clarified, the word bitter on my tongue, “Family.”

“Very well, Charlotte. We can go over the details when we get inside.”

And across the sprawling acres, a maid in black and white waved a frantic hand in the air to catch our attention, the other clutching at her skirts as she rushed from Arrow House. Frances, as I recalled, her withered frame unmistakable even at this distance.

A look passed between Thomas and I, and I pressed the weight of the revolver back into his gloved hand. Whatever was going on, it was surely better off in red hands than white.

---

I tried not to betray the way my hand trembled around the phone as I set it down on the finely veneered cedar-wood desk of Thomas Shelby’s personal home office.

But Thomas did not pay such subtleties any mind. “What’s going on?” he demanded, his tone darkened by an urgency I had not yet witnessed from the collected gang leader. His fists were balled, shoulders hunching as he rested his weight on the desk.

“It’s Matteo. Luca’s requested a meeting… at one of the local churches. He says I need to be there in thirty minutes.” My tone, thankfully, did not share the same trepidation as my hands. I had learned to exert more control over my words than my body language.

“Why?” Thomas’ eyes darted across my features, impatient for an answer. It was almost unsettling how much haste brewed beneath his demeanor. “Did he say why?”

“He did not,” I said, my mind whirling, thinking back to my last interaction with Luca – the blood on his desk and gloves, the way he had dismissed me so bitterly. “I have a very bad feeling about this, Mr. Shelby. We may not have ended on the safest terms.”

“We’ll do as he says. But I’m ordering ten men on horseback, and three in cars, on the road. What church is it?”

Fear prickled my flesh. I shook my head. “Mr. Shelby, I think it’s much better that I go alone. I’ve come this far; I don’t want to lose his trust. Sending reinforcements could be more dangerous than sending me alone.”

For one moment in which I swore he could’ve heard the raucous beating of the heart that nearly chattered my teeth, those twin blues bore into my soul, piercing through the layers of carefully-constructed dignity and calm, striking the pitch black of my soul where both fear and something too dark to fully discern dwelled.

For the briefest of moments, I thought I might’ve glimpsed something like concern in the bright of his eyes.

“Fine,” he said, at last sparing me from the icy hooks of his gaze. “I’ll have a mare saddled for you in the stable. You know I don’t trust taxis, Charlotte. I trust horses. Your father was a regular at the races, always placed a hefty sum of coin on his bets. I imagine with your upbringing, you were taught to ride?”

Alexander had been the one to teach me to ride, not my father. Sometimes a horse could take you places an automobile couldn’t, places away from watchful eyes and cruel hands, from biting sneers and bitter disapproval. Away from misery and sin.

I could do nothing but nod, trying to swallow my heart since it had crept to my throat, and the heels of my boots clicked against the flooring as I made my departure, knowing Frances would await me on the other side of the door to escort me through the labyrinth of the manor.

As I reached for the doorknob, I paused, my eyes catching on a photograph on one of the tables. A blonde woman, her features fine yet striking, her eyes a pale grey and her flesh a milky white, her head held high despite the weight of the sapphire strung around her neck. Her hair was tied back but held unmistakable curls, and though she donned a brilliant wedding gown and she smiled, some kind of sadness brewed beneath those pale irises and seemed to reach for the empty of my soul, sending a cold shiver through my bones, as if her ghost was reaching for me as Alexander’s had.

She must’ve been Thomas’ former wife, I reasoned. I’d glimpsed portraits of her around the house, hadn’t paid much mind until now. My eyes wandered to the lock of champagne hair at the base of the frame, the one that coiled around the little red ribbon that had been placed alongside it. Grace Burgess, her name was in life; she had been killed on order of the Changrettas.

I looked back to Thomas now, where he sat in his chair, flipping through some documents rather tensely, a coil of smoke rising from the cigarette he clenched between two shaking fingers and his dark brow sewn by stress.

“Mr. Shelby…” I wasn’t quite sure why the words left my chest, but they were gentle, perhaps softer than I had anticipated them to be. As if they came from the dwindling light still shining past the black of my soul.

Pale eyes met mine again, brow raising. He took a puff of his cigarette. “Yes, Charlotte?”

I managed a small, sad smile, not unlike the woman in the photograph’s, and shook my head, unsure of what I had wanted to say.

“Nothing, Mr. Shelby,” I said, and bid him farewell, hoping that the heavy door that swung shut behind me would swallow whatever weakness, whatever strange kindness had consumed me in that brief shift of reality.

---

Dusty was the air aroused by the drum of hooves against the pavement, and it reeked of rubbish and soot in these narrow streets. I didn’t think I would ever become accustomed to the sour undertones of urine and the brawling men who threw themselves about as if they were wrestling children.

The air was shattered by the sharp crack of a bottle that smashed against the brick of a colonnade; the streets were beginning to widen, lighten with the faint trace of dying light through the smog-ridden air.

I eyed the coat that was swishing at my heels in time with my horse’s strides, the ink black of the thick fabric dimming gradually with each fleck of dust that it collected. The mare’s beautiful white coat was greying, sullied by such filth. I nearly scowled, but set my gaze ahead, to the dark swathing of ebony beneath the awning of the ivory church.

The evening’s light limned the church’s colourful, stained windows in a graceful sort of beauty, and shadowed the recesses that were hidden by the surrounding buildings in a sinister sort of dark. Of course Luca had chosen this place. It was fitting for someone who seemed to hide the wretched half of his soul.

Anxiety brewed beneath my flesh as I pulled gently back on the reins, the mare seeming to sense this as she nickered to announce our presence, cone-shaped ears swivelling back to me before settling on the building ahead. She pawed at the concrete, the jarring scrape of her hoof tensing my shoulders as I swung gracefully down from her saddle. She nickered again as I led her to the hitching post, still trying to drum something up from the barren earth, as if calling upon the souls of the damned. She began to thrash against her reins, dark eyes flaring wildly.

“Shhh,” I said softly, my leather-clad fingers ghosting her snout, letting her smell me, my other hand reaching round to her sturdy neck to lightly brush off some of the dust that had collected on a coat that had once been pure as the snow.

“I know you’re afraid,” I told her with the same gentleness in my tone that I had revealed to Thomas. I glanced down her line of sight to the church, a shudder tracing my flesh as I imagined Luca awaiting me. “But you cannot show them.” My eyes darted around to the onlookers who were beginning to take notice of the mare’s display.

She eased if only slightly under my touch and my words, and so I led her to the hitching post beside the nearest building for good measure. A hot breath whickered against my hair, stirring up fine strands of champagne locks. I couldn’t help but smile, and patted her affectionately as I tied her to the post.

My smile faded as I approached the door to the church, brushing what I could of the dust off from my coat. A cold chill seemed to work its way beneath my flesh, and I took a sharp breath in as I attempted to force down my nervousness, my doubts.

Luca may have worn two faces, but so could I.

I knew that I courted death each time I met with the man, and I knew that last time, I had dared too close to the flames of his wrath. I knew that someday, perhaps, I would no longer prove useful to Luca, that the false information from Thomas would run dry or he would find someone else for his dirty work, but perhaps that someday had drawn closer than I had imagined.

But surely not even Luca would rid of me on holy ground?

The church was barren, quiet, the air stale, but not a complete assault on the senses. Rather, the scent of myrrh and the faintest trace of smoke glided across an oily odour that indicated a fresh paint; I slipped a leather riding glove from my hand and ran a finger across the benches. It came up wet.

I rubbed the oil paint between my fingers and turned my attention to the black-coated man who stood before the altar, a beaded rosary clasped between slender fingers and held to the Virgin Mary statue as if in offering. As I approached, my heels clicked against floorboards that groaned and wailed as if caging spirits of the underworld, as if kept at bay by the rusted nails and splintered alder.

The smell of the incense grew stronger, the myrrh almost innerving in comparison to the piss and grime of the streets. The man’s head was bowed, hat tipped to obscure his features. But I would’ve recognized his voice anywhere.

“So it seems you are not of Hell after all, Miss Griffin.”

His voice was serpentine, each syllable hissed more than spoken, though the undertones seemed to rumble low from his chest.

The rosary was tucked away into a pocket of his overcoat, and the silhouette of a face tilted towards me.

When was the last time he had called me by that wretched name? I tried not to dwell on it too much, tried not to remember the cold feel of the Webley in my hands and how it had reminded me of my father.

I smirked, once more forcing down the bitterness and the questions and the doubts, and said, “Out of the two of us, I wouldn’t think my soul would’ve been the one in question.” My voice, in contrast, seemed to pitch too high.

We were a few feet apart now, and the incense that burned on the altar masked the scent of his usual cologne. But pale green eyes fell upon mine beneath the shadow of his hat. From the last rays of the daylight, the windows bled upon pale features, softening a sharp cheekbone.

I took a step forward, heart thudding in my chest, and reached my hand out to remove his hat with a smirk still plastered on my painted lips. I was tempted to rub the oil of the paint across the felt, for I knew how much he prided himself in his appearance, but I switched hands and relieved it from a neat bed of jet-black hair. The back of my hand brushed along his jaw, the contact intentional.

“You know, it’s a great disrespect for a man to not remove his hat upon entering a house of God,” I told him.

“Then maybe you’re right,” he said.

“I’m right about a lot of things,” I said, and placed the hat beside the incense. “Just like I’m right in assuming that you didn’t forget to remove it. You just wanted an excuse to have me this close to you.” I paused, my eyes seeking his for any signs of emotion before adding, low yet soft, “Again.”

Pale greens narrowed, flitting across my own features. He was studying me. He seemed to do that a lot. And as two-faced as he was, not even he could hide the wick of burning sin that seemed to set them alight for just a mere moment.

And then he was turning his back, and fitting a toothpick between his teeth; an angular jaw moved against the grain of the wood. He was most likely in contemplation.

“If I wanted to be close to you, piccola spia, you’d be begging to never see me again.”

A tickle of a current darted along my ribs at his words, and I cocked my head at him. “Is that a threat, or a flirtation?”

The toothpick twirled slowly between his lips, and he turned to catch me in the side of his gaze. “While you know I enjoy our pleasantries, don’t make the mistake of thinking this is a social call. I summoned you here because I have a lead on Shelby’s whereabouts.”

“Of course,” I said with a tight smile. Using people was the way of the world. I hadn’t forgotten that I was still just a tiny pawn in his game.

“Tommy Shelby is entering a fighter into a boxing tournament come the end of winter.” Luca wound his way back to me, the boards groaning again beneath his weight, lost souls screeching. “High stakes. High bets.” His overcoat settled at his heels as he came to stand before me again, closer than we’d been before, as if to prove some sort of point. I tried in vain to disguise my rapid blink as a hot breath fanned across my cheeks and that damned toothpick shifted in his mouth.

“As you will come to learn, Luca…” I purred. “… I have many uses.” My brows raised a fraction, my eyes once again seeking his for that inkling of desire that sometimes graced their pestilent green. I received more than my wish; they swept down across the corset that hugged my stomach tight to the curve of my hips, and dragged leisurely up to the hint of cleavage that my gossamer scarf failed to hide.

“But brawling is not one of them,” I said, as his eyes met mine again. They were brighter, if only by a tinge.

“He will be there, in the audience, along with what’s left of his little gang,” Luca told me. “I need you to get my men and myself in.”

“You’re going to kill Thomas in the middle of a tournament? That’s bold, even for you Italians.”

His lip curved into the semblance of a smile around his toothpick, and he tilted his head at me this time, eyes narrowing again. “You doubt my ability, piccola spia?”

My eyes roved across him, at the toothpick that had stilled between thin lips, at the faint gleam of mischief in his eye, and I smiled back.

“That wasn’t what I said, Luca. I have no doubt in your abilities… but my answer is no.”

His smile fell slack, and the mischief was gone from his eyes. As he was rendered speechless, I turned to the alter, wafting a gout of the incense towards me and inhaling deeply, relishing in the aromatic scent of the myrrh.

I know you’re afraid, my own words echoed in my skull. But you cannot show them.

The fabric of an overcoat teased the line of my hip, and a rush of stale air stirred my skirt faintly from my ankles. A hot breath raked down the side of my neck, fluttering the threads of champagne locks that seemed to dance at the corners of my vision. The shiver that ran down the length of my spine was from the incense, and nothing more.

“No? Your answer to me is ‘no’? You’re fortunate, piccola spia, that you are not put down like the rest of those filthy dogs. But you’re not fortunate enough to answer me with ‘no’.” His toothpick rattled in his teeth with a bitter wrath.

I still had not become used to this side of him, this temper that flared beneath the surface of such poise and control. But unlike him I kept my calm despite the mad thrum of my heart against my ribs; my hand stilled where it wafted the incense, and I spoke evenly, “I still have a reputation to maintain among the ranks of those ‘dogs’, Luca. And I will not be caught letting you in to the event.”

My throat tightened, collapsed beneath the force he applied to his fingers, rings hard and cold against my sensitive flesh. I sputtered, and gasped, the scent of the incense tapering as did my oxygen.

Green eyes flashed, and a broken toothpick hung, suspended by one thread of wood, from his lip. His nostrils flared and his body pressed close to mine, backing me into the sharp edge of the altar, as he looked me in the eye.

“You knew about the event?” he half-growled, half-hissed.

I gulped beneath his grasp, and parted my lips to attempt a defense, but tuned my ears to the sound of a whinny and the click of a chambered bullet outside the glass of one of the majestic windows.

We both quieted; his grip loosened, and a glare was cast upon me before his attention turned to the window, and incense flooded my aching lungs.

As I sputtered, I glimpsed the silhouette of a horse and rider outside the stained glass.

“You brought the cavalry, I see,” Luca said, and clicked his tongue disapprovingly against the roof of his mouth. The toothpick fell to the floor and he swept a few stray wisps of black hair from his forehead.

Of course Thomas had disobeyed my request. But for what purpose, I wasn’t quite certain of. Images of the blonde woman with sad, grey eyes returned to me, haunting me.

“A man won’t even remove his hat in the presence of God... who knows what else he might do to me in here,” I said, my voice slightly raspy from the hold he’d had on my breath, but my tone dipped in a sultry tincture.

Chest still heaving with an ireful breath but clearly attempting to calm himself, Luca’s gaze flashed to me again in a strange yet satisfying mixture of virulence and curiosity.

“Be there. Have a Mr. Bennet on the guest list. And my men, too. Or this one…” The brass of the bullet gleamed in the soft bath of the emerald and magenta light of the window as he held it up to me. “… this one’s for you.”

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