#the garrison

Somewhere behind the bar, Harry was setting glasses on a shelf with enough force to prove he had already been awake for some time and resented everyone who had not. The room smelled different in the morning. Less of bodies and drink, more of stale beer, cold ash, damp wood, and whatever men left behind after they had shouted themselves empty and gone home.

Vera sat up slowly.

Every part of her protested.

The chair near the fire had not been comfortable, but it had been inside. That mattered more than comfort. She had learned that quickly. One night in this place, and already her standards had shrunk to heat, walls, and no hands on her while she slept.

Harry glanced over from the bar. “Thought you’d died in that chair.”

“Disappointing you this early would feel rude.”

He gave her a look over his shoulder. “Still got that mouth, then.”

“Unfortunately.”

Vera pushed herself upright and tried not to wince. Her coat had been folded over her lap sometime during the night. She did not remember doing it. For one strange moment, she wondered if someone else had.

Then she dismissed the thought.

Small Heath did not feel like a place where kindness happened quietly. If kindness happened at all, Vera imagined it came with a debt attached.

Harry jerked his chin toward the back room. “Water’s in the jug. Wash your face. You look like you slept in a pub.”

“I did sleep in a pub.”

“And now you look it.”

Vera stood, gathering her coat in one hand. “Your charm explains why the place is so full.”

“It’s the whisky, not the charm.”

“That makes more sense.”

Harry muttered under his breath, but he did not tell her to leave.

That alone made Vera pause.

She looked toward him, waiting for the part where he reminded her that last night had been an exception. A chair by the fire, a few coins, and then out into the street once morning came. She had prepared herself for it sometime before dawn, during one of the many times she had woken with her heart racing, certain she had heard footsteps coming for her.

Harry did not say it.

He only went back to stacking glasses.

Vera walked to the back room with the careful steps of someone trying not to show how badly she needed the floor to stay beneath her.

The water in the jug was cold enough to bite. She splashed it over her face and gripped the edge of the basin afterward, breathing through the shock. The little room was empty except for crates, hooks, the apron she had worn the night before, and a narrow mirror fixed crookedly to the wall.

Vera avoided looking into it for as long as she could.

When she finally did, the sight of herself unsettled her.

Not because she looked different, exactly. She looked tired. Dirty at the edges. Her hair had come loose from how she had arranged it the day before, and there was a faint mark along her cheek from where she had slept against her sleeve. But those things were ordinary enough.

It was the room behind her that made her stomach turn.

The wood. The dim light. The apron on its hook.

For half a second, Vera had the impossible sensation of standing there before.

Not yesterday.

Not last night.

Before.

Her hand tightened on the basin.

The feeling passed before she could catch hold of it. It left nothing useful behind, only the same sick confusion that had followed her since the alley.

“Stop it,” she whispered.

Her reflection stared back, unconvinced.

By the time she returned to the main room, Grace had arrived.

She was behind the bar, tying her apron with neat, practiced hands. Vera noticed that about her first. Grace always seemed arranged. Even when the work was hard, even when a drunk man grabbed her wrist, even when her eyes moved too carefully over a room, there was something composed about her that Vera did not trust.

Grace looked up as Vera approached.

“Good morning.”

Vera gave a short nod. “Morning.”

“You stayed?”

It sounded like a simple question.

It did not feel like one.

“Harry offered the chair.”

Grace glanced toward Harry, who was making himself busy with a crate of bottles and pretending he could not hear them. “That was kind of him.”

Harry snorted. “Don’t make a habit of saying that.”

Vera reached for the apron. “I won’t.”

Grace watched her tie it. “Have you eaten?”

The question was gentle enough that Vera nearly answered honestly.

No.

Not since before the rain, before the alley, before she woke in the wrong century with mud under her hands and smoke in her throat. Her stomach had cramped sometime in the night, then gone quiet in that dull way hunger sometimes did when it realized it would not be obeyed.

“I’m fine,” Vera said.

Grace’s eyes narrowed slightly, not in suspicion this time, but concern. Somehow that was worse.

Harry set a heel of bread and a small piece of cheese down on the counter without looking at either of them. “Eat before you fall into the glasses.”

Vera stared at it.

For a moment, her throat did something strange.

She recovered quickly and picked up the bread before anyone could read too much into her silence. “If this is part of the wages, I’ll be negotiating.”

Harry pointed a finger at her. “You’ll be sweeping if you keep on.”

Vera tore off a piece of bread. “I can sweep.”

Grace hid a smile by looking down at the glass in her hand.

The morning passed quietly compared to the night before. Quiet did not mean peaceful. Men came in early, shoulders hunched against the damp, boots tracking mud across the floor Vera had only just wiped. They drank like the day had already wronged them. Some looked at her because she was new. Some looked because they liked making women feel the weight of their attention. Others barely noticed her at all, which Vera began to prefer.

Grace showed her more of the work.

Which bottles disappeared quickest. Which regulars needed watching. Which men paid without being asked and which required a hand held out before the glass touched the bar. She was helpful. Too helpful, maybe. Or maybe Vera was too tired to know the difference between kindness and strategy.

“Harry said you worked well last night,” Grace said, setting clean glasses in a row.

“Did he?”

“In his way.”

“Was there grunting involved?”

“A little.”

“That sounds like praise from him.”

Grace smiled, then reached for another glass. “He doesn’t usually let strangers sleep here.”

“Lucky me.”

“You must have been desperate.”

Vera’s hand slowed on the cloth.

There it was again.

A question dressed as concern.

She wiped a ring from the counter that did not want to lift. “Most people are, in one way or another.”

Grace looked at her. “That sounds like something learned.”

“It sounds like something obvious.”

“Not everyone notices obvious things.”

Vera met her eyes. “You do.”

The smile Grace gave her was small and careful. “That depends on the thing.”

Vera should have left it there. She knew she should have. But exhaustion had worn down the part of her that knew when to stop.

“And what have you noticed about me?”

Grace did not answer immediately.

She set the glass down, aligned it with the others, and only then said, “You are alone. You don’t want anyone to know how alone. You are afraid, but you get angry quicker because you think it hides it better.”

Vera stared at her.

The words landed too close. Worse, Grace had not said them cruelly. She had said them the way someone might identify bad weather on the horizon.

Vera looked away first, angry with herself for giving even that much.

“You should save that for the men,” she said. “They’d pay good money to hear themselves described.”

Grace’s gaze lingered. “And you would?”

“I’d charge more.”

Grace almost laughed.

Almost.

The door opened before she could answer, and the air changed with it.

Vera hated that she felt it before she looked.

The pub did not fall silent this time. There were fewer men to perform for, fewer voices to dim. But something in Harry’s posture shifted. Grace’s hand stilled at the shelf. A man at a table near the window lowered his eyes to his glass with sudden dedication.

Vera turned.

Thomas Shelby stepped inside alone.

No Arthur filling the doorway with noise. No John grinning like trouble was a favorite coat. Just Thomas, rain darkening the shoulders of his overcoat, cap low enough to cast shade over his eyes until he removed it.

He looked even more dangerous in the quiet.

Last night, with his brothers around him and the Garrison full of men, Vera had been able to pretend he was simply part of the chaos. This morning, there was nothing to hide him in. He moved through the room like a decision already made.

Grace straightened. “Thomas.”

Vera heard it.

The softness.

It was not much. It was not enough for most people to notice. But Vera had been noticing everything because everything might matter.

Thomas glanced at Grace. “Grace.”

Then his eyes moved to Vera.

She forced herself not to look away.

“Still here,” he said.

It was not a question.

Vera reached for a clean glass because her hands wanted something to do. “So are you.”

Harry made a sound behind her that might have been warning or prayer.

Thomas’s expression did not change. “I own the place.”

“That would explain it, then.”

One of the men at the tables coughed into his drink, trying not to laugh.

He took off his gloves slowly. “You found somewhere to sleep.”

“A chair by the fire.”

“No London friends to take you in?”

There was no sharpness in his voice. That made it worse. Men like Arthur came at a person with force. John, probably with charm first and violence waiting behind it. Thomas did not need either in the beginning. He only placed words down and watched what they crushed.

Vera set the glass on the shelf. “London is far.”

“Not far enough to forget which part of it you came from.”

Grace’s gaze flickered toward her.

Vera felt heat rise in her chest, not embarrassment exactly, but something close to panic dressed up as irritation. She had slept badly. She was hungry despite the bread. Her head still hurt in a dull line behind her eyes. She did not have the energy to outmaneuver Thomas Shelby, and they both knew it.

“I didn’t realize you were waiting on my full address.”

“I wait on all lies eventually.”

The words landed quietly.

Vera looked at him then, really looked, and saw that he had not come in by chance. Maybe he had business with Harry. Maybe the Garrison always drew him in. But he had come early enough to find her before the noise of the evening, before his brothers, before she could hide behind work.

He had come to look at her again.

The thought should have frightened her.

It did.

But fear still chose anger when it rose in her.

“You’ll be bored, then,” she said.

Thomas took one step closer to the bar. “Will I?”

“I’m not interesting enough for this much attention.”

For the first time, something like amusement moved behind his eyes. It was gone too quickly to trust.

“No,” he said. “You’re not.”

Vera’s grip tightened on the glass she had picked up.

Thomas watched her hand, then her face.

It was a small movement, his attention shifting. Most men would not have noticed the way her fingers tensed around something breakable. He did. He noticed everything and made no apology for it.

Grace moved before the silence could deepen. “Your usual?”

Thomas did not look away from Vera immediately. Then he nodded once.

Grace poured his drink.

Vera busied herself with wiping the counter, listening to the muted clink of bottle against glass. Her heart had not settled. She hated that too. She hated the way her body reacted to him like it knew something she did not.

Grace set the whisky down.

Thomas took it but did not drink.

“Harry,” he said.

Harry came over with his towel thrown across one shoulder. “Tommy?”

“Private room.”

Harry nodded at once and reached beneath the bar for a key.

Vera should not have looked toward the door at the back.

She did anyway.

The private room sat half-hidden behind a narrow door near the end of the bar, the kind of room meant for men who did not want their business overheard but wanted everyone to know they had business worth hiding. Vera had not been inside it. Not knowingly.

Still, when Harry passed Thomas the key, Vera knew exactly which lock would stick.

The knowledge came so cleanly that she almost turned toward it before stopping herself.

Her pulse jumped.

He noticed.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

Vera picked up the cloth again. “No.”

“You looked at the door.”

“So did everyone else.”

“Not like that.”

Grace glanced between them.

Vera forced herself to keep her hands busy. “I didn’t realize there was a correct way.”

Harry shifted behind the bar, uneasy now.

Thomas held her gaze for a moment longer, then turned the key over in his fingers. “You’re very quick to answer questions I haven’t asked yet.”

He walked toward the private room.

Vera told herself not to watch him go.

She watched anyway.

Thomas placed the key into the lock and turned it. It caught halfway. Vera knew, with horrible certainty, that he would need to lift the handle before turning again.

Her own hand twitched against the counter.

He paused.

Then, very slowly, he lifted the handle.

The lock gave.

Thomas opened the door and looked back at her.

Not long.

Just enough.

Vera’s mouth went dry.

After he disappeared inside, the pub seemed to breathe again. Harry went back to pretending none of it was happening. Grace wiped the same glass twice.

Vera stared down at her hands.

She did not know that lock.

She had never opened that door.

She could not have known.

“You all right?” Grace asked quietly.

Vera hated the question because it was almost kind.

“I’m working.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

“It’s the answer I’m giving.”

Grace accepted that for exactly three seconds.

Then she said, “Tommy doesn’t like unanswered questions.”

“Then he must have a very difficult life.”

“That depends on who refuses to answer.”

Vera looked at her. “Are you warning me?”

Grace’s expression softened into something that looked practiced because it had to be. “I’m saying it’s easier here if you give people less reason to wonder.”

Vera leaned closer, lowering her voice. “You first.”

The words hit.

Grace did not flinch, but she did go still.

Vera wished she felt victorious. She didn’t. She felt as if she had stepped onto rotten wood and heard it crack beneath her.

Before Grace could answer, Thomas’s voice came from the private room.

“Grace.”

Grace looked away first. “Yes?”

“Bring the ledger.”

Harry, still at the end of the bar, reached automatically toward a shelf beneath the counter.

Vera moved at the same time.

Her hand went under the bar and found the ledger before she had thought about where it might be. Brown cover. Worn edge. Kept behind the second stack of old newspapers, tucked far enough back that spilling drink would not reach it.

She pulled it out.

Then froze.

Grace was looking at her.

Harry was looking at her.

From the open door of the private room, Thomas was looking too.

Vera’s hand remained on the ledger.

The room seemed to narrow around it.

Harry spoke first. “How’d you know where that was?”

Vera could hear the blood in her ears.

The answer should have been easy. It wasn’t.

“I saw you reach for it.”

Harry’s brows drew together. “No, you didn’t.”

Vera’s grip shifted on the cover. “Then I guessed.”

“That’s a very lucky guess,” Grace said.

Vera looked at her. “I have many gifts.”

The joke fell flat.

Thomas stepped into the doorway. “Bring it here.”

For a second, Vera thought he meant Grace.

He didn’t.

His eyes were on Vera.

Harry looked as if he wanted to object, but he did not. Grace’s expression was difficult to read. Concern, suspicion, maybe both.

Vera picked up the ledger.

Each step toward the private room felt like walking deeper into a trap that everyone else understood better than she did. The air seemed colder near the doorway, though that was impossible. The room beyond was dimmer than the bar, lit by a lamp and a low fire. A table sat in the center with chairs arranged around it, ashtray already waiting, papers stacked in a careless-looking order that Vera suspected was not careless at all.

Thomas stepped aside to let her enter.

Vera did not want to turn her back to him.

She did anyway because refusing would show too much.

She crossed to the table and set the ledger down. Her eyes moved despite herself. The fireplace. The cabinet. The narrow pass-through window. The wall panel near the corner with a faint split in the grain.

Her gaze caught there.

Only for a second.

Thomas saw it.

“Have you been in this room before?”

“No.”

“You knew where the ledger was.”

“I told you I guessed.”

“You looked at that wall.”

Vera faced him. “Maybe I’m admiring your decor.”

Thomas closed the door behind him.

The sound was soft.

It still made her stomach drop.

Outside, Grace’s voice became muffled behind the wood. Harry called something to a customer. The ordinary life of the pub continued, separated from Vera by one closed door and Thomas Shelby standing between her and the only way out.

He did not move closer.

That restraint unsettled her more than if he had.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I told you.”

“Vera Hart.”

“Yes.”

“From London.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

The same soft answer as the night before.

Vera’s temper snapped through her fear. “Then why ask if you’ve decided already?”

“Because liars change when they get tired.”

She laughed once, without humor. “And what have I changed into?”

“Someone less careful.”

Vera looked toward the door and back again. “Is this how you welcome all your barmaids?”

“You’re not a barmaid.”

“I’m wearing the apron.”

“That doesn’t make you one.”

“No. It makes me employed.”

“For now.”

The words were not loud. They did not need to be.

Vera felt them settle where he meant them to. Under the ribs, near the fear she kept trying to pretend wasn’t there. He could have her sent out. Harry might feel sorry for her, but Harry answered to Tommy. Grace might help her, or she might not. Vera did not know enough about anyone to rely on mercy.

She swallowed.

Thomas saw that too.

Something in his expression shifted, not soft enough to be comfort, but less sharp than before. It irritated Vera that she noticed.

“You’ve no people here,” he said.

Vera held herself still.

“No money,” Thomas continued. “No bag. No proper story. You sleep in a chair and wake knowing where things are kept in a pub you entered yesterday.”

He paused.

Vera said nothing.

Thomas reached for his cigarette case. “That makes you either very unlucky or very dangerous.”

“I’d prefer unlucky.”

“You don’t get to choose how men see you.”

“No, men seem very committed to doing that themselves.”

This time, Thomas almost smiled.

Almost.

He lit his cigarette, and the brief flame turned the room gold at the edges. Vera watched his hands despite herself. Steady. Precise. Familiar in a way that made her feel sick if she let herself think about it too long.

Then she saw the watch chain.

It was tucked against his waistcoat, glinting faintly where the firelight caught it. Thomas followed her gaze.

His hand stilled.

Vera looked away too late.

“Time bothering you now?” he asked.

Her mouth felt dry. “Should it?”

Thomas pulled the watch free.

The chain slipped over his fingers with a faint metallic whisper. He opened it with his thumb, checked the face, then looked back at her as if the movement had been casual. It was not casual. Nothing he did was.

The click of the watch opening went through Vera like a struck match.

For one impossible second, the room shifted.

The fire seemed too bright. Smoke thickened in the air. A chair scraped hard against the floor. Someone was shouting nearby, but the sound came to her as if through water.

Thomas was in front of her, but not like this.

Closer.

His hand was around her wrist, not hurting her, holding her there with the force of someone who could not afford for her to run.

“Look at me,” he said.

Or had said.

Or would say.

Vera blinked.

The private room returned.

Thomas stood several feet away, watch open in his palm, cigarette burning between his fingers. His eyes had narrowed.

Vera realized she had reached back for the table to steady herself.

“Vera,” he said.

She hated the sound of her name in his mouth.

Not because it was cruel.

Because for a heartbeat, it had sounded familiar.

“I need to go back to work,” she said.

Thomas did not answer right away. He closed the watch with the same quiet click.

Vera’s stomach turned.

Then he stepped aside.

She moved quickly, but not so quickly that she looked like she was fleeing. At least, she hoped not. She opened the door with a hand that nearly slipped on the knob and stepped back into the main room.

Grace looked up at once.

Vera kept walking.

“I need air,” she said to no one in particular, and did not wait to see whether anyone allowed it.

Outside, the cold hit hard enough to make her gasp.

She stopped beside the wall of the pub, one hand pressed to the brick, and forced herself to breathe. The street was alive around her, carts and boots and voices, smoke flattening the sky into one long gray bruise. None of it made sense. None of it had made sense since she opened her eyes in the alley, but the private room had been worse.

Because for the first time, the wrongness had not felt like being lost.

It had felt like remembering.

Vera closed her eyes.

Look at me.

She heard it again, not with her ears, but somewhere deeper.

Thomas’s voice.

Urgent.

Not threatening.

That frightened her more than anything else had.

The door opened behind her.

Vera turned too quickly.

Grace stepped out, shawl pulled close around her shoulders. For a moment, they looked at each other in the narrow strip of space between the pub wall and the street.

Grace spoke first. “You shouldn’t run from him.”

“I didn’t run.”

“You left quickly.”

“I needed air.”

Grace looked toward the street. “He’ll only wonder more.”

“He was wondering plenty before I breathed wrong.”

Grace’s mouth softened, but not into a smile. “Tommy notices things.”

“So do you.”

That settled between them again, sharper now.

Grace lowered her voice. “You don’t want him thinking you’re hiding something dangerous.”

Vera stared at her, tired enough that the words came before caution could stop them. “And what are you hiding, Grace?”

For the first time, Grace truly looked caught.

It was small. A blink held a fraction too long. Her fingers tightening in the edge of the shawl. But Vera saw it, and Grace knew she saw it.

Then the mask returned.

“I’m not the one he brought into the private room.”

“No,” Vera said. “You’re the one listening outside it.”

Grace’s expression went still.

Vera’s heart knocked once, hard.

She had guessed. Mostly. She had seen Grace near the door when she came out, seen the way she straightened too quickly, the way her attention had been fixed somewhere it shouldn’t have been. But the accuracy of the accusation startled even Vera.

Grace drew herself up. “You should be careful.”

Vera laughed under her breath. “Everyone keeps saying that.”

“Maybe you should start listening.”

“And maybe you should start asking fewer questions.”

The pub door opened again before Grace could respond.

Thomas stood there.

Both women went quiet.

His eyes moved from Grace to Vera, then back again. If he had heard them, he gave no sign of how much.

“Inside,” he said.

Not loud. Not harsh.

It was still an order.

Grace went first.

Vera remained where she was for one stubborn second longer, because apparently terror had not cured her of being foolish. Thomas looked at her, waiting. He did not repeat himself.

Finally, Vera stepped past him into the Garrison.

The day worsened as it went on.

By evening, the pub filled until there was nowhere Vera could stand without brushing against someone’s shoulder or reaching across someone’s arm. Noise rose with the smoke. Men pressed close to the bar, impatient and laughing, some already drunk, some mean with the desire to become so. Vera worked because work was easier than thinking. Pour, take coins, wipe, move, refuse to flinch.

But her awareness had split.

One part of her stayed behind the bar, measuring whisky and dodging hands.

The other remained in the private room, hearing the click of Thomas Shelby’s watch.

She did not see it again. He had left sometime in the late afternoon, slipping out after speaking quietly to Harry and exchanging a few words with Grace that Vera could not hear. His absence should have made the room easier.

It did not.

A thing did not have to be present to cast a shadow.

Grace’s mood changed after that too. She was still polite, still helpful when the crush at the bar became too much, but there was a careful distance in her now. Vera felt it and understood that whatever fragile courtesy had existed between them had been damaged outside.

Good, Vera told herself.

Then, almost immediately, she wondered if good was another word for stupid.

A man near the end of the bar snapped his fingers at her.

Vera turned her head slowly.

He grinned, showing teeth stained by tobacco. “You deaf?”

“No.”

“Then bring us a drink.”

“Ask properly.”

His friends made a low sound of amusement.

The man leaned forward. “You forgot where you are, girl?”

Vera held his gaze. She could hear Grace shift beside her.

No sharp mouth, she reminded herself. Not every fight needed her name on it. Not here.

She reached for a bottle. “No. I remember.”

“Doesn’t sound like it.”

Vera poured the drink and set it down, keeping her hand around the glass when he reached for it. “Coin first.”

His smile thinned.

For a moment, she thought he might grab her. A day ago, before waking in the alley, she would have trusted a bar between them more. Now she knew better. Wood did not stop men who felt entitled to cross it.

A hand came down on the man’s shoulder.

John Shelby leaned beside him with that bright, dangerous grin Vera remembered from the night before.

“She said coin first.”

The man’s expression changed at once. “John.”

John did not remove his hand. “You know, I like this one. She’s mean.”

“I’m not mean,” Vera said.

John looked at her. “You are, a bit.”

“I’m efficient.”

“Mean efficiently, then.”

Despite herself, Vera almost smiled.

The man paid.

John watched until he did, then clapped him once on the shoulder hard enough to make the warning clear beneath the friendliness. “Good lad.”

Arthur appeared behind John with a cigarette in his mouth and impatience in his whole body. “John, stop flirting with the barmaid and drink.”

“I’m defending her honor.”

“I didn’t ask,” Vera said, taking the coins.

John’s grin widened. “See? Mean.”

Arthur barked a laugh and turned toward Grace for his drink.

The Shelby brothers changed the pub simply by existing inside it. Men made room without being told. Some became louder in the hope of seeming unafraid. Others quieted. Vera watched it happen and understood, in a way she had not fully the night before, that Tommy did not stand alone. His name had weight because it came with brothers, with men, with violence that had already taught this street where to bend.

John leaned his elbows on the bar. “Tommy been bothering you?”

Vera kept wiping a glass. “Does he consider it bothering?”

“Tommy considers it conversation.”

“That explains why no one looks happy during it.”

John laughed. “You’re learning.”

Arthur took his drink from Grace and looked Vera over with a squint. “You still claiming London?”

Vera paused.

John’s grin sharpened.

Grace looked down at the bar.

Vera placed the clean glass on the shelf. “Do you still ask every woman you meet where she’s from?”

Arthur laughed like she had pleased him. “Only the suspicious ones.”

“That must keep you busy.”

John pointed at her. “I’m telling Tommy you said that.”

“Will he be hurt?”

“No.”

“Then it won’t be worth your breath.”

Arthur laughed again and moved away, already calling to someone near the tables. John lingered half a second longer.

“You know,” he said, quieter now, “if you are running from something, there’s better places to hide than this.”

Vera looked at him.

There was still humor in his face, but less of it. John Shelby, she realized, was not careless. He only wore careless well.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said.

He nodded once, as if that was the best he expected, and followed Arthur into the room.

Vera watched him go.

Grace came to stand beside her. “They like you.”

“They don’t know me.”

“That doesn’t always matter to men.”

Vera turned. “Does Tommy like me?”

Grace’s expression shifted before she could stop it.

There it was.

Something Vera had touched without meaning to.

Grace reached for a bottle. “Tommy doesn’t like people easily.”

“That wasn’t an answer.”

“No,” Grace said. “It wasn’t.”

The rest of the evening dragged. Vera’s feet hurt. Her head hurt. The noise grated against her nerves until every shout felt personal. Still, she worked. She worked because stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant the private room, the lock, the ledger, the watch, Thomas’s voice telling her to look at him in a memory she could not possibly have.

By closing, Vera felt hollow.

Harry ushered the last men out with all the charm of a door slamming. Arthur and John had gone earlier. Grace stayed until the room was nearly empty, tying her shawl with slow fingers.

“You’ll sleep here again?” Grace asked.

Vera stacked glasses without looking at her. “Apparently I look good in chairs.”

Grace did not smile. “You shouldn’t stay alone.”

“With Harry?”

“Harry leaves.”

Vera paused.

She had not known that.

Harry was counting coins near the bar and either did not hear or chose not to. The fire burned low. Outside, the street had quieted into that uneasy kind of dark that did not feel empty so much as waiting.

Vera put another glass on the shelf. “Where do you sleep?”

Grace’s eyes met hers.

The question was too pointed. Both of them knew it.

Grace reached for her gloves. “Good night, Vera.”

Vera watched her leave.

Harry locked the front door behind her a few minutes later and turned the bolt. The sound sank into Vera’s chest.

“You,” he said, pointing toward the private room, “clear the glasses in there. Then you can sit by the fire. I’ll be upstairs for a bit, then I’m out. Don’t open the door for anyone.”

“Does anyone try?”

Harry gave her a look. “It’s Small Heath.”

“That’s becoming a very flexible explanation.”

“It’s the only one you’ll need.”

He went into the back, leaving Vera alone in the main room.

The silence after a full night of noise felt unnatural. Vera could hear the building settling around her, the faint tap of rain against the windows, the scrape of Harry moving somewhere overhead. The Garrison without men in it seemed less like a pub and more like something holding its breath.

She stood still for a moment, listening.

Then she picked up a tray and went to the private room.

The door was unlocked now.

Vera hesitated before opening it.

She told herself that was reasonable. Thomas Shelby had spent the morning asking her questions inside that room with the door shut. Anyone would hesitate.

But when she stepped inside, the feeling that went through her was not fear of Thomas.

It was the awful certainty of entering a place that had been waiting.

The private room looked ordinary enough. Chairs slightly out of place. Two glasses on the table. Ash in the tray. Papers gone, though Vera could still see the cleaner rectangle where they had rested. The fire had nearly died, turning the room into amber shadow.

Vera set the tray down.

She collected the glasses first.

Then she wiped the table.

Then she moved a chair back where it belonged and stopped with her hand still on the wood.

The wall panel near the corner had shifted.

Or maybe it had always been that way.

A narrow line ran between two pieces of wood, almost invisible unless the firelight caught it. Vera stared at it until her eyes began to water. Her heart had started beating harder, though nothing had happened. No sound. No movement. No reason.

She should leave it alone.

She knew that as clearly as she had known the ledger’s hiding place.

Leave it.

Take the glasses.

Go back to the fire.

Instead, Vera stepped toward the wall.

The floorboard beneath her left boot gave the smallest creak.

She did not look down.

She had already avoided that board earlier without knowing why.

Her mouth went dry.

Vera lifted a hand, then lowered it again. She looked back at the door. Empty. No one there. Harry’s footsteps had faded upstairs. Rain ticked faintly against the window.

She faced the wall.

“This is how stupid women die in stories,” she muttered.

The sound of her own voice helped for half a second.

Then she pressed her fingers against the panel.

Nothing happened.

Vera almost laughed at herself. Relief came so quickly that it made her angry. She had been standing in a private room pressing walls because a century had gone wrong around her and she had begun to believe the building knew her.

She pulled her hand back.

The panel clicked.

Vera stopped breathing.

A thin section of wood loosened inward, not opening fully, just enough to reveal darkness behind it.

For several seconds, she did not move.

Then, slowly, she pulled the panel aside.

There was a hollow space inside the wall.

Dust lay thick along the bottom. The smell that came out was stale and old, trapped wood and metal and time. Vera’s fingers shook as she reached inside, already hating herself for doing it, already knowing she would not stop.

Her hand touched something cold.

Round.

Metal.

She drew it out.

A pocket watch rested in her palm.

It was not the same as Thomas’s. Vera knew that immediately, though she did not know enough about watches to say why. This one was older, heavier, its surface dulled by years hidden in the wall. The chain was wrapped around it tightly, as if someone had put it away in a hurry and meant to make sure it did not catch on anything.

Vera stared at it.

The room seemed to tilt.

She could hear ticking.

That was impossible. The watch could not still be ticking. Not after being hidden in a wall for God knew how long. Not after dust had settled over it like a burial sheet.

Still, Vera heard it.

Slow.

Steady.

Louder than her own breathing.

Her thumb found the catch.

The moment she pressed it, the world tore sideways.

Smoke filled her lungs.

Vera was standing in the Garrison, but not the Garrison as it was now. The room was louder, hotter, full of panic. Someone shoved past her hard enough to make her stumble. Glass shattered nearby. A woman screamed from the direction of the bar, sharp and terrified.

Grace.

Vera knew it was Grace without seeing her.

Then Thomas was there.

Not the cold, controlled man from the morning.

This Thomas had blood at his collar and fury stripped bare across his face. His hand closed around Vera’s wrist, strong enough to hold her but not enough to hurt.

“Look at me,” he said.

Vera tried to pull away.

He stepped closer, blocking out the smoke behind him. “Vera, look at me.”

There was fear in him.

The sight of it stunned her.

Thomas Shelby, afraid.

Not for himself.

For her.

Something crashed against the door. Men shouted. Someone called Tommy’s name like a warning.

Vera looked down and saw the watch in her hand.

Her fingers were slick.

Blood.

She did not know if it was hers.

Thomas gripped her face then, making her look at him. His mouth moved, but the words came broken, swallowed by the roar around them.

Then she heard one sentence clearly.

“If I remember you, I lose you.”

Vera gasped.

The private room came back so violently that she nearly fell.

Her shoulder struck the wall. The loose panel clattered against the floor. She clutched the pocket watch to her chest with both hands, breathing too fast, trying to drag air into lungs that still believed they were full of smoke.

There was no shouting.

No broken glass.

No blood.

Only the dying fire and the rain and the watch in her hand.

Vera looked down.

The watch was open.

Inside, beneath the cracked glass of the face, something had been tucked into the casing. Not behind the hands, but into the other side, hidden beneath the lip of the cover. A small folded paper. No, not paper.

A photograph.

Vera’s fingers had gone numb, but she managed to ease it free.

The photograph was old. Worn at the corners. Creased down one side from being folded too tightly into the watch. For a moment, she could not make sense of it in the dim light.

Then the image settled.

Vera stopped breathing.

She was in the photograph.

Standing outside the Garrison beside Thomas Shelby.

Not smiling.

Not posed like lovers. Not sweet. Nothing that simple.

Thomas’s hand was around her arm, not dragging her, not quite holding her back, but gripping her with urgency. His head was turned slightly toward someone out of frame, eyes hard and alert. Vera’s own face was turned toward him, mouth parted as if she had been speaking when the photograph was taken. There was something in the angle of her body that looked like she had been caught between running and staying.

It was unmistakably her.

It was unmistakably him.

And at the bottom of the photograph, written in small, faded ink, was a date.

Vera made a sound she did not recognize.

The photo trembled in her hand.

No.

This could not be another strange feeling. It could not be a door she seemed to know or a lock she understood too quickly. This was proof. This was her face printed in a photograph from a year she had only arrived in yesterday.

Her knees weakened.

She sat down hard in the nearest chair, still staring at the image.

The room felt too small around her. Too hot, then too cold. Vera turned the photograph over because some desperate part of her thought the back might make it less impossible.

There was writing there.

Not much.

Only one line.

The handwriting was hers.

She knew it the way a person knew their own voice even when it came from another room. The slant of the letters. The pressure of the pen. The slight drag at the end of the words where she always grew impatient.

Vera read it once.

Then again.

Her chest tightened until breathing hurt.

Do not let him remember you.

The words blurred.

She blinked hard, but they remained.

Do not let him remember you.

A floorboard creaked outside the room.

Vera’s head snapped up.

For one dreadful second, everything went still.

Then Thomas Shelby’s voice came from the doorway.

“Vera.”

OOC / ABOUT THE BLOG

✧ In-character correspondence blog for Thomas Shelby (About Season 2) ✧ All asks are treated as letters, inquiries, or private notes sent to Tommy ✧ Responses may vary: brief, formal, personal, or… otherwise ✧ This blog is immersive / x readers, interactions are part of the narrative ✧ 18+ – please no minors engaging with this blog ✧ You may send: business inquiries, personal letters, confessions, or requests, or anything your heart desires (I reserve the right to ignore and delete requests I am uncomfortable with) ✧ follow my writing blog too! (my main blog really), I post a lot of Peaky Blinder related fan fiction on there too @daughter0fthewitch ✧ 21 / she/he/they tags: