Chapter Text
"Arthur?"
There spoke a ghost, long dead, mourned already and set alight in the imaginations of those who loved him and remained living.
Even Ada, whom for all her begging, cajoling and outright demanding didn't know the true scope of things, even Lizzie; who quietly settled the ashes of her estranged husband, this man she so hated and loved, still, with desperate depth, next to those of their daughter and moved on; even Charlie with that voice that had begun, for all his absences, to mirror his dad's inflections when he came and asked the uncle dumb enough to imply he knew where Tommy was to say... anything, really. But he didn't, did he? For all that Arthur Shelby may sit in the minds of men as no more than his brother's mad guard dog, at the least he was a loyal one.
Never spoke a word, and yet they all grieved anyway, because the heart knew its losses. Except...
"Tommy!?" Deep breaths on both sides, and for a while, neither spoke, neither spoke, and Arthur almost began to believe he'd dreamt the voice on the other end.
"You fucking speak to me, Tommy, We thought you were dead."
"I am." tremulous and muted, the words came. A truth in them that froze the marrow in Arthur's bones. Nothin' like Thomas Shelby, really. “I am dead, Arthur.”
"Jesus, Tommy. What's going on here, eh? What do you need?"
Dangerously close to hyperventilation now, and not a word of sense to pass his lips yet. Arthur wanted to believe it wasn't him. Some sort of bad joke. And Arthur could lie to himself more successfully than he could anyone else, decades of experience at work, there.... But this was his brother : Tommy, the half of him by which he could always find sense and emerge from aimless dark into light. His fucking little brother... John dead, Finn shunned and raging at them all for the injustice, and Arthur sat in a chair that wasn't his, in that office filled with reminders that he wasn't supposed to be the only one left; there were supposed to be others. And Tommy was... fucked, by the sound of things. Tuberculoma stealing parts of him away when Arthur couldn't see. But he was alive, still, by some value. And to have a brother , Arthur would take anything, any last dredge.
"Alright, Tommy. Alright, yeah? You tell me what the trouble is, and I'll get it all fixed up for ya. Gotta say something first though, right?" It took a while, but Arthur just sat and waited.
"Light the flame." came the words at length. "I've stayed too late, brother. Light the flame and come see me off, yeah?" It was all new, terrifying and fascinating, to hear Tommy try like this. He was straining, like no mask would stay perched on his face. And Arthur fucking noticed, too. Arthur didn't notice shit, especially not things Tom didn't want him to.
Arthur had to brace himself against the rickety phone table to keep from just giving in to the pretense that things hadn’t changed, that this was just some missive passed down the line for Arthur to obey and never question. He wanted to, it was comforting, it was easier, but now that he could still be a brother, he had to act on it. And if Tommy was fucked, almost irretrievably, lost down in that massive fucking brain of his, then he had to step in. Couldn’t just let it be easy.
"No, Tom." and there was enough of a silence for him to press on, so he did.
"Here's what's gonna happen, yeah? You wait for me. You don't spend that bullet 'til I get there, and... and if it's gone too far, all the shit, then I ain't fighting you. But we'll go together. Told ya I'd come too, if you went, and I will. Never much use for me on me own, you know. You and me, brother. I'll share your wagon if you'll let me. Same person anyway, right? One wagon, one flame. Makes more sense 'n anything else right now. All you gotta do right now is wait, yeah? You wait for me. 'S five months you've been gone now, so you're giving me at least a chance to find you. Just you and me, yeah? And we'll do what needs doing, I promise. Tell me where, Tom."
"Together?" hopeful, in a way it shouldn't be.
“Yeah, if you’ve gotta go, we go together.”
“Okay.” A deep breath, something settled. “Okay, Arthur.”
“I’ll see you, yeah?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll wait. I’ll…”
At length, he told Arthur where to go, where to find him. And he didn’t hang up, not for a long while, and Arthur daren’t either.
Never talked, did they. Never just fucking sat down without either inebriation or business to guide proceedings.
But they sat together. Close, and silent, shoulder to shoulder, and that was enough. Until Arthur calmed and Tommy’s shakes stopped. Until Arthur unballed his fists and the sound of those fucking shovels slipped from Tommy’s cognizance.
So they sat, miles apart, line silent but for measured breaths and stray utterances on Tommy’s end belying discomfort or pain or sadness or all of that at once. And Arthur didn’t hang up, and Tommy didn’t either, and they were together and not, alone and not, and it was enough.
And then Arthur did hang up.
Said “You’re alright, eh brother?” and took his leave.
He tore away from the downed phone and started packing like a man possessed, both hands gripping the security of knowing exactly what to do because Tommy said so.
Fucking dog he was as well, and if he must bay at anyone’s heels, they’d be his brother’s until they were set aflame. And he settled into exactly what he was with no shame, and by evening he slipped out, and by morning he’d be with Tom. And then.
And then...
Wagon was already gone when he got there, that was the first thing. No fucking horse either, nowhere near. Second thing, that. But it wasn’t abandoned. Gone to shit, fire out ‘n all, yeah. But some spectre remained, rigid upon a rock in the field.
Eyes of blue, if glazed, if sunken. Disheveled, ragged, pallid, thin. Gun was there, in the sorry thing’s lap. Dangling between the bloodless fingers. And Arthur wanted to run. He should. He belonged at the side of this thing, right? Had driven like a fucking mad man through night and dawn to get here. But those last metres would make it all real, would make the ghost his own fucking brother.
Legs of lead, because Arthur didn’t want it to be. Not this sick, not this broken.
The bullet read “Tommy”, and Arthur knew it’d have to strike true soon.Too late already, just like he’d said.
“Jesus, Tommy. Jesus.”
His knees hit the grass, his arms coiled around his brother, and he held on.
Stupefied, cold and quaking, Tommy dropped his gun. Didn’t say anything, but at length he burrowed into the man holding him, slow and uncoordinated.
“Arthur?”
“Yeah, yeah, shhh. You’re alright, Tommy-boy. You’re alright." Kept saying that, Arthur. He fucking wasn’t, but Arthur couldn’t stop saying it. Maybe if he didn’t, it’d become an invocation of some kind. A spell. He’d will truth out of it by force: it’d become true.
He was quiet, Tommy. Shivered like a man drowning, keened like a man on his last minute, quiet as the fucking grave. Death in all of it. Already.
“Why’d you let it get like this if you had the bloody gun, eh? That wasn’t the plan. You were gonna… You’re late, Tom. ‘S too late.” it was better when Arthur thought he’d just fucking died. And that was… yeah it was a strange sort of thought, he didn’t want him dead at all. But this meant that instead of being at some kind of rest, Tommy’d just been out here. Fucking suffering. Withering away. All alone.
“Just a bit longer now, yeah? You’re alright. You’re okay now, lad, I’m right here.” All sharp angles and poking bones in his grip, but Tommy nuzzled into him without meaning to, without knowing, and it set alight that part of his older brother that was just a beast, with no mind but for its pack. Its kin.
“Shhhhh… Got you now, don’t I? You’re fine.” with iron grip, he possessed his little brother, never to cede him to the world that’d done whatever the fuck happened here. Not anymore, not again. He didn’t notice when he’d started to cry, but Tom hadn’t either, and seeing as they were the only two people on the face of the earth in this wretched moment, it didn’t matter.
“...Arthur?”
After an age, unnoticed by both men, clarity dawned in Tommy’s eyes.
At last, at last.
“I didn’t want things to get like this. You know that, yeah? I was… I was taking myself away. But I wasn’t fucking there in the end, was I? And she asked me. She asked me to stay. So I did, and I fucking tried, I thought maybe if I stayed away, it could stop. I thought it was the life that did it. I thought I could get away.” Tom laughed, a viscous, raspy thing.
“There’s no sapphire, no cursed horses… the rot’s in me, isn’t it. Black spot buried deep, carried along whatever I do, wherever I go, and I won’t get away. I’ll never get away. I…” when Arthur leaned him back to look into his eyes, maybe decipher what the fuck he was talking about, he found something of panic, something of frenzy, but stale enough to leave him inert. Familiar.
“It’s not like that, Tom, that’s not what you are.”Arthur tried locking him in another embrace
“I tried to get away from it, live, like she said, but it catches up. It has to because it’s in me , nowhere else for it to go. But I… I can’t fucking run anymore, and I’m... I’m tired. I’m so fucking tired, Arthur. She’ll have to forgive me.”
“Who, Tommy? Who’re you talking about?”
“ Ruby. My darling girl. Lizzie kissed her goodbye, because I wasn’t there. I was… I was off trying to fix it, I wanted to make things better. I didn’t know the curse was me, I didn’t want to see it, and I wasn’t fucking there . But she’s good, my girl, she’s kind. She came, when I had the gun to my temple. Almost went, but she was there and she asked me not to. Said I wasn’t sick. Maybe it wasn’t what I thought, but she’s wrong about that. It’s not a tumour, but it’s fucking terminal. She… I hope she can forgive me. I fucking tried, brother, but I… I…” his head hung low, Thomas breathed hard, in, out, in, out. His hands flexed open and closed and open and closed where they were still buried in the fabric at Arthur’s back. So much for sense, then.
“ Tom… Your girl, she’s not… she’s not alive. You know that, eh brother?”
“ Of course I fucking -” Tom tried to rip himself away, but his fingers didn’t detach. Squeezed his eyes shut and dug them in deeper instead, let his head hang in the gap.
“I know that, alright? Every second since I’ve known, I can’t fucking forget. I won’t. But she was here, and she was right. She was right, Arthur. My doctor is a fucking fascist and I never found out. Faked those fucking X-rays you pinched off me, had me convinced, figured I’d do the rest. And I almost did, but I saw Ruby, alright? Ain’t saying she’s alive, because she’s… she’s fucking not, I know that. But I saw her, and she helped me.”
Tom’s head hung so low that he could feel Arthur’s nose against the back of his neck. Really he should’ve lifted it, looked him in the eye, said something to diffuse the weird tension that sprawled when a man let slip he talked to dead children and put stock in what they said. Polly would’ve gotten it, but, well, between death and that bullet he put in her boy, she wasn’t much for small talk these days. Knew it’d gone too long when she stopped being angry and instead just gazed upon him with apathetic pity: a wretch worthy of nothing. Not even fit to weather a single day without seizing himself into soiling his trousers, getting hypothermia from wasting away in his own piss, too weak to even move, the fragrant cold somehow worse, somehow deeper, until he could barely breathe for it; until he didn’t want to.
It was a miracle he’d made it far enough to even need the fucking bullet. It sat there in his hand and burned a hole clean through, the only warmth to be found other than Arthur.
Oh. Arthur.
Talking, he was. Shaking him too. Hard to notice with the way the world was closing itself to him. Hard to even be present, really. Somewhere, Ruby was laughing. And she waved at him, and he saw it, but when he turned his head to look, she wasn’t there, and Arthur was getting loud. He was good at that, eh? John’s cackle sounded from somewhere too, but it occurred to Tommy that he better not look, that he’d make it even worse, make Arthur even rougher, and Arthur didn’t need the encouragement. But then he looked anyway, pointedly, because at the rotten core of him, that’s what he did, that’s who he was, and that’s what he’d never get away from: Thomas Shelby always made things worse.
The slap flung his head viciously to the side, so much so he figured it’d have broken something. Easy to do now, with what he was, right? But before Tommy could dive headlong into another spiral, Arthur grabbed his face and spoke directly into it, brothers nose to nose.
“For fuck’s sake, Tom, you fucking listen to me now, yeah! Back here, need you back here now brother, come on.”
Tommy’d managed to miss the deep agony in his lungs, but this reminded him, and when he took the first of many desperate breaths, the world snapped back into focus. The world and Arthur.
Shouldn’t have called him, shouldn’t have.
“Arthur…”
“Yeah, that’s it. There he fucking is. I come all this way and you fuck off when I’m right in front of you? ‘S fucking bad manners, Tommy. Deep breaths, yeah? Stay here.”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have called. I should’ve fucking handled it, but I… fuck... I… Fuck!” He was trying to stay, like Arthur said. He was. But the dead just got louder, the light ever brighter, until it all overwhelmed him and the french soil swallowed him and the mortar shells deafened him and there was no else. Because he couldn’t stop.
Incurable, him, tumour or no. Should’ve realised sooner.
“It’s so loud, brother, it’s so loud . I tried to quiet it but nothing fucking works.” Tommy looked up, at last, for as long as he could make it last.
“I’m trying, I am. I have been. It just doesn’t… Can we go now, brother? They burned the wagon down before you got here, took the horse. I tried stopping them, but I couldn’t move. I tried, yeah? But I couldn’t move. When I could, I went up the road, and I called you, and I shouldn't have, right, I should’ve, should’ve…” clarity was scarce now, so for every second due him, Tom tried to spill as much information as he could. Already breathless, almost always now, so it didn’t matter if he made it worse.
To him, at least.
“Okay, okay… ease up, yeah? You breathe. I know it’s bad, right? But if there’s no tumour and you’re not dying, we’re not doing this. Not yet. You been to a Doctor? A different one? For what this is? What you think this… are you sure, Tommy? About the tumour, that is. About…” Ruby, Arthur was kind enough not to say. Or maybe he was afraid to. Quite something to have to admit that the man you’d spent your life following had lost the plot, eh? Thomas could understand that much. Still, it was true.
“Left the fucker alive, trying to be something I never will be. This good I could become, I never found it, so maybe when you go and see him you can finish the job, eh? You ask him, and then you take his eyes for me. You’ll see, Arthur. I know you think I’m mad, right? Because I am, I know that. But not that much. Even if you don’t believe everything, believe that. ‘S not the tumour causing this sickness, it’s just me. Pol said it always starts when I stop. Always. I don’t know why I thought… maybe I had hope .” said it like it was the foulest swear he knew, then laughed like he’d never known joy. Hope, fucking Hell.
Arthur got mad at that one. Better at hiding it when he was clean, yeah, but still Arthur.
“He’s still alive!? Fuck’s sake, Tommy! ” Fists balled, nostrils flaring like a ticked off stallion. Tommy thought he might just run, go straight there, wash his hands of this whole thing in the bastard’s blood. But the moment was left to linger, and the flashpoint anger that made him left as soon as it came on.
They were still attached by the fingertips, looking not at but through each other. Nothing but them and the ash at the end of everything, nothing but them and that bloody bullet.
“Okay… okay. Here’s what we’re gonna do, you listening Tommy? I know you’re… you’re fucking tired, yeah? You’re not right, I fucking well see that. I know you want to… you want this thing, right?” before Tommy’s overtaxed mind could grab onto what was happening, Arthur had the bullet, held it high. His hand came up to cup the side of his little brother’s face, to still the eyes that followed his own name, etched into the metallic surface crude and thick.
The want almost a need, now. Almost.
“I’m getting you out of here, yeah? We get a doctor. A proper one. And if there’s nothing to be done, we put our heads together close, just so, and this thing ’ll do for the both of us. I promise. I promise. But if that isn’t what’s going on, I need you to dig up. You can do that, right brother? Once before and just one more. Up until there’s light.”
“I can’t. I… I’m not…”
“Bullshit, Tom. You keep saying you tried to change and it didn’t work. Fine then. Fucking don’t. Three days , brother. That’s who you are, then, yeah? Go on Sergeant Major, dig up then. That’s you , Tom. That’s the good you are, right fucking now. Fucking tunnel through, through anything, and you don’t fucking stop. You don’t need to stop. You don’t stop and you don’t lay down and quit. I don’t let you, do I? If you’re done you’re done and you’ll go whilst you can still string a fucking sentence together, but if you’re just trying to get out? Trying to fucking give up ? Nah. Don’t let you do that, me. Don’t care how many bullets I have to fucking take.” with that he took the thing and pocketed it. Tom had enough presence of mind to know he shouldn’t reach after it. But he did anyway, a mere twitch.
“I shouldn’t have called… I wanted… Charlie and Curly, the horse. They tried to move me on… took the fuckin’ horse. I couldn’t… I couldn’t move. I couldn’t aim. They took…”
“Yeah, yeah they did. I’ll get them over here, yeah? Good horse it was they took, and the lads know their own. They’ll sniff ‘em out, bring the horse back.”
Tom nodded. Kept doing it. Never any telling what would snag him, but he got stuck on things now. Up, down, up, down. The world was loud, still, but there was silence in the repetition. Somehow. Arthur wouldn’t get it. Arthur was looking. He should stop. He should. Didn’t.
The world fell away before he could feel the shame of it, and Tommy let it. He breathed, and slept.
Arthur didn’t let him fall.