For Letty

[bleak_midwinter]

Comments

[leavetreadmarks]

He begins making preparations. She watches him, her hands folded around her elbows.

"I haven't the first idea. What I do know is the way some people reacted when I said your name, and the fact that licensed businesses have signs outside of their buildings so they can be found."

Obviously, not something that unlicensed businesses would want.

[bleak_midwinter]

"So either we trust our customers to find us, or we are unlicensed," he posits, turning back to her. He looks a little harder, like he still expects her to walk right out the door.

"Or both."

[leavetreadmarks]

She doesn't look as though she's about to walk anywhere; indeed, she has always had a particularly solid way about her when she refuses to budge, despite her size. Much larger men than she have backed down from trying to go through her when she sets her jaw just so and pins them with her eyes.

This is the much milder version: still immobile, but nodding, agreeing. "Or both."

[bleak_midwinter]

"Have you ever seen a race, Letty? Ever make a bet?" Seeing how she won't budge, he relaxes slightly, and the faint smile comes back to his face.

"We've done this for three generations, now. We've been here a long time, keeping things in order."

[leavetreadmarks]

"Not like you mean," she allows, rolling her shoulders back a bit, dropping her arms. "Country races, boys in the field on their prize horses trying to prove them better than the other. Higher prices, not much more, and the bets are for chores or for a piece of jewelry, spending money."

Nothing like this. "It does well for your family, this business. Bookmaking."

[bleak_midwinter]

His eyes crinkle slightly at the corners when he smiles at that description-- he remembers those as well. He remembers participating in those, as a boy.

"It does. It has done, for a long time. It isn't easy, but it's good."

[leavetreadmarks]

She's quiet for a moment, considering all of it, the noise still at her back that she can hear if she listens.

Then she nods. "I'm glad, then. That you were able to come back to it, and your family, and that all of you seem to be doing well."

[bleak_midwinter]

"The two men I came in with, that day- they're both still here, too."

And that makes him proud, and happy- even if Freddie doesn't talk to him outside of cussing him out, even if Danny sees German soldiers in the streets of Birmingham.

[leavetreadmarks]

She remembers Danny and Freddie; she remembers pulling them out of the tent and handing them off to another nurse, but of course so many men died after that day anyway. She hadn't wanted to ask for the exact reason that she hadn't wanted to hear they were alright, and she hadn't wanted to hear that they were dead.

Her lips thin a little, but when she nods again, when she says, "That's good. I thought about the three of you, after we lost each other then. I spared a prayer for you. I'm glad someone was listening." she means it, too, even if it feels like swallowing sandpaper.

[bleak_midwinter]

That makes something in his eyes shift, interested but a little hollow. He tilts his head and looks at her, while the water starts boiling behind him.

"Do you still pray, Letty?"

[leavetreadmarks]

"Yes," she answers, her voice faintly, inexplicably sour-bitter right around the edges. "After I've done everything else I can do. A little breath seems a small price yo pay if it really does anything."

[bleak_midwinter]

"That you still have a glimmer of doubt about it doing anything says enough," he says, lips twisting wryly. He stopped long ago.

[leavetreadmarks]

"Does it?" she asks, half earnest, half arch. "All the same, it's my breath to waste as I see fit. I won't assign it credit - certainly not more than cover fire and a level head - but nonetheless, here the three of you are, home safe, which is more than others can say."

[bleak_midwinter]

In his opinion, it does. It doesn't say that she didn't see enough, or suffered enough: it says that she has a different kind of personality than he does. Less cynical, perhaps, though he does see enough of that in her.

"If not your prayers, then your care and strength during the attack helped us come home. I'm glad you were there for us, and the rest of them."

[leavetreadmarks]

This is something Letty has had plenty of time and cause to think about; she still hasn't managed to come up with a good answer, not in the way she likes to be certain of herself. She fingers at her split lip a moment, carefully, and then nods.

"I'm glad that I could be - and that we should get the chance to speak again," she offers back, letting the subject of prayers drop by the wayside.

[bleak_midwinter]

He smiles at her, brittle and soft, and then turns his back to her to make them both tea. There's a tremor in his hand sometimes, and he shakes it out before he can continue- it's nothing he pays any mind to.

When he turns back around he has two cups of tea, and he gestures for her to sit down at the table.

"You came a long way," he starts, looking at her inquisitively.

[leavetreadmarks]

She stands while he does so, looks around the room curiously this time, her hands firmly hooked around her arms. When she has looked as well as she can, she watches him.

She doesn't notice the tremor, but then, she's not watching his hands. He invites her to sit and she does, shrugging her coat off, folding it across her lap before complying.

"And have a long ways yet to go," she agrees, breathing in the warmth of the tea a moment before sipping at it. "I assure you, it was only minimal design brought me to your doorstep, so to speak. While considering my options, I realized I remembered the name of Birmingham from a conversation with a soldier that spoke a language not many do; turns out my luck held, and you are still here."

[bleak_midwinter]

"I will always be here," he says, eyes flicking from her hands on the teacup to her dark, dark eyes. "My mother didn't give us the need to wander like she gave us that language."

[leavetreadmarks]

For a moment she just nods, pressing her lips together thoughtfully.

"Territorial," she comments, neither approving nor disapproving, merely stating a fact, considering what she'll say next. "I can't say as I've ever felt particularly one way or the other on that matter. I stayed when they stayed, followed when they went. I've been trying to do just that for some time now, only the world is a lot larger now that it's safer."

[bleak_midwinter]

He won't dispute that. She must know, from the way people spoke about him on her journey here, that this is his territory.

"So are you trying to see where the world ends, or are you looking for danger?" Because he knows men who do the latter, who couldn't settle after the gunfire ceased.

[leavetreadmarks]

The answer seemed obvious to her but then - she reminds herself - she knows who she is. She's changed since she volunteered, of course, but not that much, not in that way.

So the corner of her mouth twists again in her dry, small smile, and she raises an eyebrow. "Which do you think?"

[bleak_midwinter]

"A woman who volunteered for what you did, and who turns up asking a wounded soldier for her gun back after a year..."

He trails off and he mirrors that smile. "Well. Who am I to think that I could predict a woman like that?"

[leavetreadmarks]

"Who indeed," she echoes, amused, but her eyes drop to her hands on the teacup - to where she puts it down, and picks idly at the ragged edge of one of her thumbnails as the smile fades.

"I'd thought that if you were still here, if you still had it, if it was still in good repair and still had ammunition - if you were still willing to return it, that I might yet sell it, or trade it." The stark tone of voice speaks to exactly how aware she is of how many ifs are in that train of thought, of how flimsy a chance she knew it was when she set out to take it. "There is, I suppose, a kind of fortune in the overall lack of strategy involved in ferrying the wounded from battlefield to hospital."

[bleak_midwinter]

He lets that settle between them, lets that thought hang right where it is until he smooths it over with a sigh, with a sip of tea.

"But now that all those ifs turned out to be true... will you sell it? Where will that money take you?"

[leavetreadmarks]

"Have they now," she comments, but doesn't pursue it, doesn't pick up her usual prickly demeanor just yet. Instead she looks up, just her eyes first, then straightening her back as she tucks loose hair back behind her ear, raises her chin.

"A quarter of the way to where home used to be, if I'm shrewd. I'd have to decide what to do then, work with wherever I found myself," she admits, not happily. "That's if I wasn't accused of stealing it outright, of course. I'm not stupid enough to dismiss that as a possibility. If I'm honest, Thomas Shelby, there aren't any good choices and haven't been since before the ifs showed their worth."