chapter eight / season one episode three.
TW: scenes of a violent nature, discretion advised if you are easily triggered by scenes of such natures.
OLIVIA NEVER REALLY KNEW THE TRUE EXTENT OF WHAT BEING A SHELBY MEANT.
When she was younger, five or maybe even six, before the war had started, being a Shelby was just like being any other family in Small Heath. The Shelby family didn't have excessive wealth, they didn't have much money to spare on anything other than necessities, they had lots of children (with the new addition of Finn), an absent Da and a struggling Ma.
They were just like any other family in Small Heath.
The eldest sons jumped straight into work and piled their earnings on the table weekly to discuss with their Aunt Pol what their hard earned coinage would be spent on for the week. It was late at night when those talks would commence, but there would always be a small, chubby hand that reached up onto the table - week in, and week out - to hold onto one of the grubby coins that looked like it had lived a thousand lifetimes.
The boys would laugh.
Polly would gasp and curse Olivia Shelby's name under the sun, wondering what on earth the little girl was doing up past her bedtime.
That was probably the first few examples of why Olivia Shelby had her name cursed under the sun.
It had been nothing bad, it had been something funny. Something her brothers had laughed at. Something that made her giggle too.
If anything, Olivia would class it as the most positive cursing of her name to date.
She'd been innocent then, the Shelby family had been innocent too at that time. And then sometime during the war that innocence vanished.
The Shelbys weren't just Shelbys anymore. They were a business. They ran a gang. They had targets on their backs. They were devils in peaked caps.
They weren't just a family who spent week nights counting their coinage on the kitchen table, and there was no small, chubby hand reaching up into the coin pile. It was serious now when they sorted through their recent earnings. And it no longer included the eldest boys and their aunt, it was just Tommy and Polly.
Tommy was turning this family into the business he'd always dreamed of, the better life he'd always talked about. The automobiles, house, nice necklaces and as many teddies as he'd promised Olivia.
Did he neglect to tell Olivia all bad that came with their earned good?
Well. Not really. Thomas Shelby was always on Olivia's back, telling her off for this, and for that. He was always going on about these days about her behavior getting out of line incase of the Inspector, and it he wanted to book her for a minor misdemeanor.
She'd been trying as of late to keep out of anything sketchy, (for her sake, not Tommy's).
But, it shouldn't have been the Inspector she was worried about.
He didn't need to terrorize her. He had the ability to terrorize the Shelbys anyway, he didn't need Olivia in his plans.
Olivia should've been more concerned with the general population of Small Heath. The ones who hated her, and despised that last name of hers. She kind of forgot about all those people who cursed her name (other than her aunt) and prayed for her downfall, because they'd been scared of her.
And she thought that fear from the people of Small Heath had been a good thing. All the people who stepped out of her way on the footpath, as if the Shelby name had some horrid disease that they didn't want to catch. All the people who didn't dare go near her because she was the Shelby Girl.
Olivia thought it was protection.
And she should've known that protection never would've lasted in the dead of night. When the moon, the stars, and the night chill come out to play, along with the men who have a vendetta against the Shelbys and find revenge in the form of the Shelby Girl, who has nothing.
She had no-one around to potentially save her. She had no brothers around to act as bodyguards.
She had nothing.
In this moment, Olivia felt like just a Shelby, where the name meant nothing, and she was just going to fall victim to a man who had had a bad day, or a bad month.
Olivia had noticed the heavy footsteps at first, and then glanced back to see a shadow following after hers. One of a much larger frame, a man. An adult man.
She gulped. She hadn't seen anyone around at night except for Jack on this particular evening.
But, this wasn't Jack. Jack didn't exhale deeply with every step like he was running out of breath (according to Eleanora, who had watched him running laps last week: he was quite fit and healthy), and Jack hadn't been holding any alcohol in his hands when he'd bumped into the Shelby girl.
In the silent night of Small Heath, Olivia could hear the liquid in the unopened bottles splashing about.
So, the man wasn't drunk yet. Perhaps that could be a positive with all things considered. Olivia was trying to have some of Charlotte Junia's beautiful optimism and believe that maybe this man was on his way to get totally and utterly shit-faced at a mate's house.
He wasn't about to teach Olivia Shelby the consequences of her namesake.
Suddenly, the bottles clanked on the floor. As if the man was putting them down.
Olivia didn't look back to see what he was up to. All she knew, was that she'd taken off in a sprint. She thinks. She's not too sure. Olivia had consumed a lot of rum tonight, and she'd totally forgotten about her slowed reaction times and that total garbage.
She'd been sure Ada was lying when she'd talked all that science shite.
Except, Ada hadn't been lying. And Olivia hadn't taken off as fast as she'd imagined herself. She was slow. Almost like a snail. She didn't sprint.
And the larger man had caught up to her.
And they were in the alleyway. The rickety, cobbled, old alleyway in Small Heath. Olivia, suddenly, had many regrets. The rum, for starters. Not remembering whether she'd packed her razor blade away in her sock... or her boots.
Which she currently wasn't wearing because Ada had made her wear dress shoes today, dress shoes which she had regrettably not changed out of.
Without a razor, how else would she cut the hands off of the man who dared to grasp her chin.
"You're a Shelby, ain't you?" His voice was like venom, and spit flew from his mouth with every word he spoke, and it sounded a little too familiar for Olivia's liking.
If she hadn't had so much rum she'd probably be able to tell you who it was.
But, she did know for sure, that this man was completely and utterly sober.
Olivia found that to be much worse.
"No." She lied. She was supposed to be smart, she was supposed to know everything.
Olivia was supposed to know what to say when a man, sober and angry, trapped you in an alleyway with a tight grip on your chin, with the escape routes much further away than you'd like to admit.
But, Olivia didn't know.
She didn't know how to pay the consequences of her last name, and she certainly didn't know how to talk her way out of them.
His grip tightened, he looked her up and down, "You are. You've got that stupid look on your face, the same one your brothers have, 'cause you think you own this place."
"You must've got me confused, there's another girl—"
"Quiet." He snarled. "You don't lie to me, Miss Shelby. 'Cause it ain't gonna work. I know exactly what you are."
Olivia rolled her eyes, "Oh, please, enlighten me."
See! Olivia didn't know what to say in situations like this. She wasn't made for this. She didn't know what to say or do. She didn't know what would agitate this man, or what would please him.
She felt sick at the thought of pleasing this man.
"Don't!" He exclaimed, his grip loosening from her chin and his hand now traveling down to her neck, "don't lie to me, Shelby."
Her eyes widened, as one hand came to wrap around the base of her neck. "Okay. You caught me. What'd you want? Money? A bet?"
Money.
A bet.
He laughed at her offers.
And Olivia felt small, even with the amount of rum coursing through her veins.
"Money?" He laughed, nearly hysterical, "You think I want money from you? You. A Shelby? I wouldn't take money from your lot even if I was dying."
She was confused.
Usually money was the only thing people wanted from her.
"Then... then what's it you want?" Her voice echoed off the walls of the alleyway, it sounded stronger that way. It made her sound less childish, less scared and more like she actually knew what she was doing.
But, the man saw right through her. This was a teenage girl, who had the whole world at her feet, and didn't know one thing about what he wanted, couldn't even recognize his face. And all he wanted, was to see that world fall, right to pieces, at her feet.
He wanted the Shelbys to get what he'd been served.
Injustice. Cruelty. His life ripped from him, a home with his niece and his nephew and their mother.
The Shelbys had taken that from him. All because he was a communist.
They deserved to have this same cruelty, injustice, and life ripped from them.
The man had initially thought he'd go after Finn, the youngest of them, but he'd come across Olivia first in his first day back in Small Heath, and she'd just have to do.
His hands now met at the base of her neck, and he squeezed lightly as if to test the waters. As if to test if this was the way he wanted end Olivia Shelby's life.
She hadn't been too panicked before. She thought money, a winning horse bet could win this man over. And she'd blame the alcohol for the slow realization. The slow realization that this man wanted to take her life, because of her name. The target, red, he'd painted on her back because of her family's actions.
Because the Shelbys were scum to this man.
And Olivia had failed to realize people could view her that way.
She nervously gulped, "Whatever it is you want, I can get it for you. I can—"
He applied more pressure around her throat, "You can't do anything, Shelby Girl. You can't get me my place in this city back, my home, my family. It's all gone, because of you."
"Do you know what that feels like?" It was rhetorical, and Olivia was learning when to respond and when not to. "No, I didn't think you had. You'll never know what this feels like. You Shelbys have everything! And I lost, I lost everything!"
His voice echoed off the walls of the alley. And his sounded a lot stronger than hers. It was passion, a passion that burned so strongly against the Shelbys. It was angry, anger that was fueled by the Shelbys and actions that hadn't even been theirs!
Olivia's hand reached out to his, holding on tightly to it, "You're a communist, right?" Glad to see her brain was still working. "I can help. I can get you an out. I can help—"
"How will you help me?" He squeezed tighter, and Olivia knew if he didn't stop soon—
Well. She didn't want to imagine the fight she'd have to put up.
"You put me here, Olivia."
Her name had never made her shiver before. It had never been said like this. So cold. So brutally. Almost as if it wasn't hers.
But it was. Olivia. Olivia Shelby. It's who she was. It was who she had to be. So, where the fuck was she?
About six paces behind with her delayed reaction times.
"I didn't." It sounded like a promise. Why did she sound like she was promising something to this man, who would never ever believe her. "The Inspector, he did this. He rounded you all up and blamed us!"
Olivia exclaimed her final words. And she didn't know why, because she needed all the air she could get with the way this man tightened his grip with every word that flew from her tongue.
Every promise he thought was a lie.
Olivia now had both her hands reaching out, clawing at his arms. But her nails weren't the longest, and they weren't sharp enough to draw blood straight away. She kept clawing, and clawing.
And this man got angrier and angrier. "The Inspector?" His laughter boomed off the walls, "You expect me to believe you?"
Olivia began panting. It was so unusual. She'd rarely ever felt out of breath. She'd never imagined it could be taken from her so quickly.
She nodded her head, weakly but at the same time vigorously. She'd use whatever strength she had to convince this man, "It's—"
He leant down to her ear, "I don't care what it is. I know what you did. I know you ruined me. And I know that I'll kill you for it."
"I'll send a message." She could feel his smirk against her skin.
And she felt dirtied by this man. His hands remained on her throat, squeezing in all the wrong places and taking every breath from her. And Olivia knew his hands would not only leave purple marks, but also dirty marks. And she wondered if she'd make it out of this alive, to scrub them off.
Olivia had never wondered this before.
She wasn't even sure if the seriousness of the situation had settled within her yet. This man wanted to kill you. He was going to send a message, Olivia.
And it was you.
Your body, in this alleyway, discovered by the workmen tomorrow morning, cold and blue.
Olivia clawed harder at his hands, she felt a liquid spread to the tips of her fingers and she didn't know whether it came from his hands or perhaps her own.
He seemed to tighten his hold again, and not feel a tinge of pain.
Olivia shook her head, weakly. She squeezed her eyes shut as she felt her vision get blurred, and seeing black spots.
"Please..." It was a beg. Shelbys never beg. But, it was hoarse, and it was meek, and it was pathetic.
He laughed, "Is that your last words? The last words of Olivia Shelby, 'please.' What a world."
She didn't know when they'd started, but at some point, tears had started running down her cheeks. They were the only warm thing in this alleyway, on a cold winters night.
The hands wrapped round her throat, and she was soon to be stone cold.
Fitting?
Olivia leant her head back against the cobble, continuously clawing at the man's hands. She was weak. She was so weak. Not only was there rum in her system, but combine that with this man's hands wrapped around her throat for many minutes...
She'd never imagined this was it.
She didn't want this to be it.
Maybe that gave her a moment of strength: that she refused to die in this cold alleyway, with a man who blamed her for things she had no part in.
Her hands moved away from his, her eyes shut but she knew they moved, and she reached out for his neck...
But something happened.
Something so quick, she hadn't quite processed it until she felt the shooting pain up her arm and the scuff on her knee that she knew was bleeding and ruining her frock.
He'd thrown her to the floor.
Right when she was fighting back.
Right when he'd grown bored and decided Olivia Shelby could not just die by choking.
It had to be glory. It had to be bloody the murder of Olivia Shelby.
It had to be a message.
It had to be painful.
Olivia's final feeling had to be the same level of pain that this man felt.
She coughed, she breathed deeply, she exhaled loudly, struggled to catch her breath again, and for a spilt moment Olivia felt like she should pray. Would G-d listen to her?
She hoped so.
Her hands formed fists as she muttered under her breath a Hail Mary.
The man laughed, evilly, "You think prayer is gonna get you out of this one?" His knees cracked as he knelt down beside her, "You Shelbys lost G-d a long time ago, he ain't listening to you sinners no more."
Olivia would rather hear the rejection from G-d himself. She imagined she could ask him soon.
But, then she doubted she'd ever make it to heaven.
Olivia squeezed her eyes shut, her voice coming out as a meek whisper. It didn't even sound like her anymore. It was croaky. Pathetic. "Pl— please."
He grabbed a fistful of her hair, she yelped and he laughed before speaking, "I never imagine I'd hear a Shelby beg. Are you sure you're one of them?"
It was rhetorical.
But, it hurt all the same.
"I can get you and your family..." She trailed off. Her thoughts felt disconnected from one another, every idea, ever beg that wanted to tumble from her lips, seemed broken and incoherent. She couldn't think straight. Olivia paused, to recollect herself and make sense of herself. "I can get them out of here."
Every word was followed by a deep exhale and a need to regulate her breathing.
And every-time she opened her lips she tasted the bitter, salty stream of tears.
This is what it tasted like to beg.
"Please." Her hand gripped onto his, which had not relented the grip on her hair. "Let me get you out of here. The coppers..."
She'd forgotten the words. All words had left her head in a haze. Every promise she could think of seemed to evaporate.
"They'll what?" It wasn't interest. This man didn't care what Olivia Shelby promised him, all that mattered to him was that her blood stained this cobbled alleyway by the end of their interaction. "Leave me alone? Not search for me until me head is hung? They'll take your word and keep me safe?"
"Will they now?"
She nodded her head, and squeezed her eyes shut. More tears seemed to fall.
He leaned in closer to her, his hot breath fanned across her cold cheeks, "I don't believe you, Shelby."
It was said with such distaste, such hatred. Olivia Shelby had been sheltered, she thought, because she'd never heard her name spoken like this before. As if she was the devil, who only spawned evil, and bred misery into the lives of others while she sat on a throne of gold, unaffected.
She had never known her name was a problem.
"I swear—"
"On what?" He asked, and in the darkness Olivia could not see the evil smirk that appeared on his ugly, vile, face.
"On your life?" He goaded.
And Olivia's heart sank.
She grabbed onto both of his arms, opened her eyes and pleaded with him. Pleaded with him like he was G-d. "Please, please. You don't have to do this. You don't have to kill me, you don't have to send a message."
"Please."
Please.
Please do not kill me.
"I have to kill you." He snarled.
"You don't." She responded instantly. "You don't have to kill me. It's unnecessary. It... it will just cause more harm to your family if I die."
His hand released her hair and instead gripped onto her two, small, hands. His strong grip was bound to leave bruises on her corpse. Purple, that would be their color. "Believe me, Olivia, this is very necessary to my cause."
Cause.
She'd been reduced to a cause.
Olivia shook her head again. Feeling so small, feeling so inferior to this man. Was he even a man? Or, was he a wretched, evil person who sought justice in the form of more violence.
Who would kill a child, because Olivia was still a child, in the name of something she played no part in.
He drops her arms, and pushes her down onto the cobbled pavement.
Olivia winces.
The man walks away with a smile.
Olivia rolls onto her back and tries to even her breathing, tries to find some fight in this body of hers. The body of a Shelby. A wretched, wretched Shelby. But, a Shelby always fights. No matter how bloodied or bruised.
There is the sound of glass shattering not too far away from her, but Olivia pays no mind to it.
Breathe.
It sounded so simple, but it was an action that had been so lost on Olivia in the passing minutes. Something that seemed so far out of reach, something so obscure to her now when she'd been breathing since she was a baby.
Footsteps got closer to her, and she was pulled up by the neck of her dress and forced against the wall, the man's leg essentially keeping Olivia upright, his one arm placed under her neck to stop her from slipping.
His other hand housed a broken bottle neck, with jagged ends, sharp enough to kill.
Perfect enough to kill Olivia Shelby.
This man was stronger than her, taller than her, wider than her, heavier than her. If there were any spectators around, Olivia would have zero bets on her, the man before her would have every single spectator with their bets on him.
Olivia had always preferred to support the underdog.
It shouldn't matter all the things he was and the things she wasn't. A fight isn't over until one of them is knocked out cold.
The fight isn't over until Olivia Shelby wins.
The sharpest point of the bottle neck was placed at the base of her neck, a menacing smile was all Olivia could focus on. The menacing smile that was highlighted by the moonlight that dared shine in Olivia Shelby's, supposed, resting place.
"Neck or wrists first?" She could see him now. She knew him. There were too many thoughts in her head trying to place his name, but she knew him. His gummy smile, and the shape of his nose that a friend of Olivia's wore so well.
She knew him.
And that didn't seem to matter to Olivia.
Because it never mattered who your opponent was, as long as she won.
"Neck." She answered.
His tongue clicked against the roof of his mouth, his arm pressed against her neck goes lax and holds onto one of her limp, bruised arms, "Wrong choice."
Olivia knew that. That's why she'd said it.
She'd found her fight.
But she couldn't give herself away, she couldn't let her opponent know she'd worked a way out of this.
He was too wrapped up in pressing the broken glass against her flesh to even notice.
Olivia felt blood trickle down from her wrist, there was a sound she'd never forget as droplets began hitting against the cobbles. So much blood already spilt, from the tiniest of gashes.
The man smirked.
His arm that had been used to press against Olivia's neck, was completely relaxed, now closer to resting at his own side than Olivia's.
He hadn't seen it coming.
He hadn't seen her, small, hand wrap around his wrist.
And he hadn't expected her to twist his wrist.
Olivia didn't focus on how the bottle fell from his hand, or his exclaims. She only focused on how he stumbled backwards and she attempted to force his wrist behind his back.
But he resisted.
He forced his hand back into her, pushing her away.
He cradled his wrist.
Olivia didn't know whether to run, or finish the job.
With his free hand, the man pointed at her, "You! You think I won't finish the job, Shelby? I'll kill you if it's the last thing I do."
Olivia ignored the threats, ignored her own blood which dripped onto the floor, and tried to focus on the whereabouts of that broken bottle neck.
Whatever it takes, ey?
"C'here." He stormed towards her, Olivia let her arm be pulled into his grasp.
Her eyes settled on the green bottle neck that twinkled in the moonlight.
So close, yet so far.
He grasped her chin in his hands, "You think you can escape me, ey?"
She shook her chin free of his hold, pushing him backwards, "You thought you could kill me?" She asked, pushing and pushing, until his back backed into the wall opposite.
"Where'd your spark come from, you gonna fight me, Shelby? You done begging?"
Maybe it was a final string of energy.
Or maybe it was the belief Olivia could truly get out of this.
She needed to take a punch first though.
Olivia smiled, "You're quite an easy fight."
He scoffed, his fists clenching.
Olivia knew how to make a man angry. After all, there'd been an angry man in her house once upon a time. And Olivia had certainly known how to annoy her Pa.
If you just insult them, make them feel small, make them feel inferior, then it's a job done.
There was nothing quite as fragile as a man's ego.
"And then I'll tell everyone that I beat, a fat, weak man to death."
He snarled.
His fist made contact with Olivia's cheek once.
And then twice.
Olivia fell to the floor.
Her hand reaching out for her lifeline.
He hadn't noticed the green object she held close to her chest.
She was face down on the cobble, her chest concealed from his view.
He knelt down beside her, Olivia's hair gripped in his hand once again, "Ain't so tough now, are you?"
Her cheek throbbed. Her wrist stung with the mixture of dirt and whatever else getting into her cut. Her legs were all scuffed, cut and bruised. Not only was her wrist bleeding but it was no doubt covered in purple bruises.
She didn't look so tough.
Olivia Shelby looked like the losing dog.
She looked weak.
But, she was smart.
And this man wasn't.
He let go of her hair, and grabbed her by her shoulders rolling her over. He expected her to be crying, begging for her life again. And instead, all she wore was dried tear tracks and a smirk.
In one swift move, Olivia Shelby became just like her brothers. She reached out and forced the broken bottle neck into the man's jugular, blood spilling from the cut and onto Olivia's face, onto her hands and onto her dirtied frock. He gurgled.
And all she saw was red.
The man's limp body fell on top of hers, and with a cry she pushed him off and looked at him in disgust.
And before Olivia knew it, she was pulling the bottle neck out of the man's jugular and into his wrists.
Multiple times on each wrist.
And with each plunge of the bottle neck she sobbed, her body shook with each one as they fell freely onto the dead man's body, mixing with the blood that now tainted his clothes.
She forced the bottle into his already deep wounds.
Olivia wanted the man to feel the pain she'd felt this evening.
It hadn't even crossed her mind, yet, the life she had taken. What she'd done. The family she'd destroyed.
It hadn't settled with Olivia Shelby that she'd killed someone.
Another man added to the list of Shelby Casualties.
She stopped plunging the broken bottle neck into the man eventually. She wasn't too sure when. She'd gotten lost in her act of anger, in her act of revenge, in her act of...
In her act of murder.
She crawled away from her victim, taking shallow breaths as she stared at what she'd done.
What she'd done.
She used the walls of the alleyway as support to stand up.
Olivia Shelby had killed a man.
And here she stood, looking over his mauled, bloodied and nearly unrecognizable body. She fought the urge to be sick there and then.
She picked up the jagged bottle neck. Squeezing her eyes shut at the blood on every sharp spike.
Her stomach was in knots.
Bile rose to her throat, and she ran.
She ran out of that alleyway and spilled her guts right at the exit.
She left that man behind.
The man she'd killed.
The blood was on her hands.
And Olivia Shelby knew the true extent of what being a Shelby meant.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
yikes...! um