❝ PICKET FENCE! ❞ → GRAY ✓

→ ii.xii

Act Two, Scene Twelve

→ ❝ he didn't have to! ❞

             "Carol," Tommy opened the door with wide, shocked eyes. Carol noticed that, despite an obviously fresh shirt, he had little bits of dirt on him, but didn't care much where they had come from. She just wanted a friendly face. She needed a friendly face.

             "Tommy," she sobbed as she stepped over the threshold, her shaking legs giving up on her and sending her falling into his chest. She wrapped her arms around him, unable to stop her crying. Tommy, just as she wanted her own father to, snaked his arms around her and rubbed her back comfortingly. "Tommy,"

             "Shh," he comforted her. Tommy got a sudden flashback to the first time he met Carol, in the betting den when she first began her quest to find Henry Johnson. The figure before him was a sad echo of that girl; her yellow dress was stained, her hair was limp, and her complexion was paling rapidly by the second, "It's okay, Carol, it's okay."

             He felt her shake her head, "It's not," she sniffed, feeling bad about getting snot on his suit but appreciating the embrace too much to let go, "It's not. Michael, he-"

             "I know. I know he did." Tommy stopped her, knowing how much the though hurt the girl. Not even six months ago she was still the innocent fiancée from Sheffield, and now she had been fully immersed into a gangster's world of violence and misery. He felt a pang of guilt in his own chest when she called him Michael. "But he had to, Carol. You'll understand soon that he had to."

             "He didn't," she argued as best as she could through her sobs. "He didn't have to ki- to kill Father Hughes. Tommy, he didn't! He didn't!"

             "He'll explain, Carol. Give him time and he will explain,"

             "I'm going to be sick," she announced suddenly, pulling forcefully out of Tommy's arms and emptying her stomach onto the floor beside the pair. Tommy thought she would never stop, and wondered how she could possibly have that much to bring up. He rubbed her back, comforting her as she retched violently.

             "Carol!" he gasped as, once she had finished throwing up, the girl collapsed. He jumped forwards to catch her before she could fall to the hard floor or into her own sick, calling for help. "Frances!" he shouted as loud as he could until he heard her heels clicking down the corridor, "Frances!" Cradling the girl in his arms, the – strangely – only thought in his mind for a split second was that she was much lighter than he had anticipated.

             "Sir?" Frances said with her eyebrows furrowed as she ran into the hall, "What's the matter?"

             "Get me blankets and some warm water and a cloth," Tommy instructed, his rapid breathing slowing down as the girl stirred in his arms, groaning, "And please clean this up, thank you."

              Tommy carried Carol into the closest room and lay her on the closest sofa to the fire that was roaring away. Being without her coat for so long (he had found it on a coat stand after she and Charlie had gone missing at the Institute), she desperately needed warming up.

             "She looks absolutely exhausted, poor thing," Frances pitied her as she handed Tommy the blanket to lay over the girl, and then a basin filled with water. Tommy jumped slightly as her soft voice broke the air, joining the crackling of wood, "She's lucky she came here, Mr Shelby."

             "I wouldn't call it lucky, Frances," Tommy replied, moving her hair from her shoulder and tucking the blanket around her small form, "And I'm sure she regrets coming here at all."