The Devil / Peaky Blinders [ON-HOLD]

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY ONE - REUNION

Somethings were never to be the same again, sometimes life fucks you over in the strangest of ways. One day, you think you have everything and the next, you realise you are alone and would be better off dead than live a useless lie.

Pax had realised that life had fucked her up. She didn't believe in God, she's wasn't Catholic, sure she prayed in her time of need and perhaps that was the issue. God was fucking her up big time.

She hadn't given much thought about how her life had been messed up from the beginning. She thought about her time in Scotland and then to her time in Birmingham and she didn't know how to put her feeling into words.

Fucked, she was truly fucked. She thought of herself as useless and shameful. A woman who could now longer bare children, a woman who had let a man who was not her husband touch her body, a woman who had a child who would be nearly Finn's age, she didn't know his name, she had never named him, she never got to hold him more than five seconds as her mother had ripped him from her arms as she was exhausted and overwhelmed, perhaps dissociating about giving birth knowing her son would be taken away from her.

She had let Tommy Shelby worship her body but that was no longer an option. Her bloodied face and her bruised thighs were evidence of her shameful night when he had forced himself upon her. Who was Patricia Shelby? Who really was the woman with the red hair? She was nobody.

She had came to the conclusion herself as she lay in her shared bed with her husband who did not occupy the usual side. She knew he was in the house, the loud bellows of anger unleashed within the scullery and then to the livingroom as she heard Arthur and John try to calm him down.

A mugging, she had called it. She had refused to tell Thomas or Polly anything else.

"Tell me Patricia, tell me." He had begged her, begged her on his knees as he shook with rage, not directed at her, to tell him who but she shrugged her shoulders. She couldn't tell him, this would affect everything. She couldn't tell him. Tommy always had a plan, he always had a plan and he needed to stick to whatever plan he had going on inside that head of his. She didn't want to ruin anything. She would keep her secrets and he would keep his. It was simple. She would make this, she overcame everything else life had thrown at her and this was no different.

They saw her ripped tights, the fingerprints on her arms as she had taken off her fur coat but she just muttered, "it's not what it looks like, he just wanted my money."

She had left him there in the kitchen as she weakly smiled to him and told him that she was going for a lie down and that Polly could tend to her cuts later, "I'm tired Tom, I'm so tired."

"How the fuck do I calm down Pol, eh. How can I do this when some filthy bastard has laid his hands on my wife. My wife, my fucking wife. Mugging - a fucking mugging. No, no. I know her."

"Thomas, Thomas calm down, you'll wake Finn." Polly tried to hush him, to not frighten Pax but in her head, Pax would never be afraid of the Devil, how could she be afraid of the man who had loved her soul. Without him, she was soulless. She was already nothing but with Tommy, she would embrace her Tommy forever. In this life and the next life, she would always find him.

The door opened ajar and Finn stood there, with a teddy in his hand. The teddy that Pax had bought him when War was taking over everything. She had bought this to cheer him up.

"Ma, I couldn't sleep." He tiredly whispered and she quickly pulled the covers back and awaited his embrace. She had changed into her nightgown when she first got into her room, she had tried to scrub her skin but it was no use so she opted to change into something he had not touched.

"Come here, my Finn. Tom is just angry but it will pass. I'll sing you a lullaby just how I did when you were young."

Finn found himself embraced in the arms of Pax, she hummed a sweet song as he slowly shut his eyes, falling into a deep sleep as she lay there listening to the wrath of the Devil.

She had no doubt he would turn into the Devil for her, she didn't want that but she knew it would happen. She knew his love for her grew deep.

"How can I kill the bastard if I don't know who. How the fuck can I do that. She was going to jump into The Cut. Fuck." She wanted to scream at him, she wanted to shout to him that it would pass. This was only a mugging after all, just a man who needed some cash and she shouldn't have been walking out during the dark with her purse in her hand. Just a mugging, she repeated.

"John, pour him a whiskey. Thomas, please sit down. Please for the sake of her." Pax had guessed that Polly had told Tommy what she had seen on her travels, that Pax was really giving a thought to ending it all.

All went quiet, she had assumed Polly had spoke to him in hush tones, afraid Pax would hear.