CHAPTER NINE.

               THE SHOCK CAME FIRST. Then the pain that flared up her left leg, and finally the hot, angry, overwhelmed tears that prickled at her eyes and threatened to stream down her cheeks at the slightest provocation.

At the first contact, a hard gasp had escaped from her lips and she found her mind spinning, wondering what on earth had happened. It was only when her hand found the wound and her eyes trailed downwards to meet the bloody injury, before wandering over to where the shell was discarded that she realised what had happened. The bullet had hardly made contact with her, Felicity discovered, because she soon realised that there appeared to be a distinct lack of blood coming from the wound. Bright crimson droplets trickled from the graze, staining the dusty concrete with a small stream of ruby red dewdrops.

The wound wasn't deep. For a moment, Felicity scoffed at the man's apparent inability to fire accurately, thinking to herself how she would have been able to shoot straighter than he had. That was when realisation sunk in - any man was more competent at firing a handgun than Felicity Woods was, and the four years that they no-doubt spent in those wretched trenches would have confirmed that fact. A man would have come out of those tunnels with more than just the night terrors and inescapable hall of horrified memories. No matter what the war did to you, there wasn't a doubt that they left France with the ability to defend themselves from anything that came their way, so that they should never set foot in a war-torn landscape ever again.

And so Felicity's heart sank with doomed realisation.

It wasn't meant to hit her.

It was meant to warn her.

Or at the very least, warn somebody.

Before she could register any of her swirling thoughts, the girl dropped to her feet and fell against the concrete with a force so much harder than she could have ever thought it to be. The tears re-emerged without a single warning.

A crash beside her alerted Felicity to the man that had just hurriedly slammed the door open. Arthur emerged with a scattered look present in his eyes as he scanned the streets before his gaze landed on the girl.

"Felicity?" He said, confusion lining his words.

She raised her hand weakly. "The one and only."

"What. . . what the fuck are you doing down there?"

Felicity smirked, although she sensed that it could just as quickly merge into a wince, and so she softened her expression in the hopes of stopping that from occurring. "Some bastard shot me," she explained, nodding to her leg with disinterest.

Arthur only groaned before crouching down and enveloping the girl's hands in his own. "Let's get you inside, eh?"

The girl sighed before nodding. The pain that had flared up her leg was numbing - whether it in a good way, she wasn't sure, as her ligament no longer felt as though a red hot flame was surging up it, and now it was just a more constant, underwhelming feeling of hurt.

One inside, Arthur helped her towards the armchair that sat in the corner of the room. "Stay here," he instructed, "I'll go get Polly, or someone helpful, at least."

Felicity nodded, and so she was left alone to take in the surroundings that she had been in only minutes before, when her anger was pushing through her body at an overwhelming rate and all she could think about was her hatred for the obnoxious Shelby patriarch.

"What the hell happened?" Thomas demanded as he surged through the doors, closely followed by his elder brother and aunt.

"Got shot," Felicity informed him shortly, her sneer tight as she nodded to the graze on her leg.

He chose to ignore the flippancy and instead turned to his brother. "Did you see who it was?"

"Nah, Tom." Arthur ran a hand over his mess of auburn hair, voice calm, but with his eyes betraying how troubled he really was. "I got there too late, and they didn't stick around."

Felicity coughed. "If it helps," she declared, "he came from the Woods house."

Both men whipped their heads towards the girl.

Arthur's eyes widened ever so slightly. "What?"

"He was there earlier, when I came over. I don't know who it was, though, but he came from there and surely that must be helpful in some way."

That last part was a lie. Felicity Woods knew exactly who the man was, and as the pain in her leg returned from its numbness, it flared up more so than before.

She figured that was only because it hurt more to lose blood by the action of your own father.

⎯

              "What else happened?" Thomas demanded softly as he balanced on the balls of his feet in front of the girl, concern resonating through his being as he scanned her figure to ensure no other part had been in harm's way.

Felicity wrinkled her nose as she looked up at him. "I told you: someone fired the gun, I fell over because of my questionable balancing skills. The usual, Thomas, you know that."

He gritted his teeth together. "When did you start being so difficult?"

"At the same time as when you declared that we were getting married," she retaliated.

The man sighed. "And you're sure you're going to be okay?" He asked, deciding to push away from the possibility of another argument.

"Tommy, I've been shot in the leg, not the heart," Felicity insisted feebly as she wriggled into a more comfortable position. "I can look after myself - I've done so plenty of times."

Thomas let out an exasperated sigh at her stubbornness. "You getting shot anywhere is always going to be a problem," he bit back. "Stop acting like a petulant child and let me look after you. . . it's the least I can fucking do."

He didn't say why, but anyone could read into the unspoken words. Thomas Shelby felt much more than the smallest ounce of regret for pulling her into his business, and although he wasn't about to expand on his remorse, he caught the lightening-fast thought that zoomed through his mind that was telling him how he probably should. Thomas shook his head ever so slightly: reminding her of the day's earlier ordeals would not result in any sort of good for anyone.

"Up we get," he murmured instead, his arm snaking around her back as he gently coaxed her to her feet.

Felicity refrained from letting out a snarky comment and instead allowed him to do so. She still had not forgiven him for the bombshell he might as well have dropped on her earlier that day and yet as she glanced up into his icy irises, the emotion that was surprisingly present in them was sorrow. For what, she did not know, but it was then that she decided to reduce the hatred towards him that she had threatened was already consuming her heart. Any man who wore as much pain as he did underneath his cold exterior did not deserve any other reason for that feeling to grow.

"I want to go home," Felicity said quietly. "I want to sleep."

Thomas cast a look towards the window before glancing back at her. "You can stay the night," he returned after a moment of silence.

"Tommy-"

He shot her an expression that read, once again, that he wouldn't be taking any arguments for an answer. "I don't want you alone tonight."

"I'll be fine on my own, though. . ." The girl trailed off, looking out at the window with confusion, wondering why he was being so insistent and whether it had anything to do with who or what he had seen outside at that very moment.

"Felicity, look at me." Thomas' voice hardened ever so slightly.

Her breath hitched in her throat. "Hmm?"

"If the man shot you and it turns out he is in contact with your father, he might as well have just declared an unofficial war in the hopes of protecting his crumbling business. We can't have that and I can't have you dying."

"I'm guessing me dying would halt your oh-so-great plan?" Felicity suggested with a smirk, still refusing to think about how the man most definitely was in contact with her father, considering that he was him.

"Felicity. . ."

"Who else would you marry?" She continued.  "I don't have any sisters, you know."

A short, exasperated sigh blew out from his lips. "You really won't give it up, will you?" He huffed.

His arm tightened around the girl's waist as he led her up the small, narrow stairs that looked as though they had been without any flickering hope of sunlight for longer than anyone could imagine.

She beamed at him, but the expression soon changed to a pained wince. Felicity hoped he had not caught on to it and she held her breath before re-plastering her smug beam upon her lips. "Surprisingly, no, I won't," she confirmed for him.

His mouth pressed into a hard line in the hopes of supressing his slight amusement and Felicity caught this glimmer of a smile, to which the warmth in her chest spread as she realised his usual monotone and business-like attitude had dispersed for more than a mere moment. She hoped with all of her heart that it might stay like that, just for a while longer.

⎯

              The next morning, the girl awoke to a glimmer of sunlight snaking through the thin curtains. . . and for a moment, the realisation that she was not in her own home wasn't present. The ordeals from the previous day weren't in her mind until she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and caught sight of the gash that stretched across her calf and the memories whizzed through her brain. Not all of them: just the two minute window where she caught sight of her father's face, half concealed by the shadows, as he pointed the gun and fired with the ease of a man who had been doing actions like that his entire life. It might as well have been a shot from one of the pictures that Felicity used to go and watch at the cinema. With the plot lines that seemed so outrageously unlikely to ever happen to her that she would simply laugh and enjoy the film like everyone else. If only she had known that life wasn't all it was made out to be.

Felicity dressed quickly after finding a dress - of whom she assumed to be Ada's - hanging sullenly on the back of the door. She combed a brush through her hair and pulled it up and out of her eyes, piled into a hasty bun that sat at the nape of her neck.

With a tentative heart, she took wary steps to test whether or not her leg would be able to hold. It did so, and so Felicity made her way out of the room and down the stairs, to greet whoever was below.

Thomas was stood in the parlour opposite his aunt and both were engaged in an argument that seemed far too dull to Felicity's new ears. Neither noticed her until she had stepped completely through the threshold of the room.

"Morning," she greeted them brightly once Polly had caught sight of the young girl's figure standing in the doorway.

The elder woman offered her an affectionate smile. "Good morning."

"What riveting conversation were you two having?" Felicity hummed with an amused smirk.

"Nothi-" Thomas began, but his aunt cut him off with a closed-off glare.

"Just about your father," she told the girl with a dismissive wave of her hand. "You shouldn't worry yourself about it."

Felicity took this to mean that they would not say anymore to her on the matter and for once, she didn't try and protest. Rather, she graciously took the mug that Polly held out to her and slipped into a seat at the table, glancing between the two who continued to stand.

"So," she asserted, sipping at her drink before burning her tongue and cursing under her breath. 

"So," Thomas agreed mockingly. 

Felicity shot him a withering glare before continuing. "What are we doing today?" She asked in interest, choosing to aim her question at the aunt rather than at the man. 

He decided to answer her anyway, much to her annoyance. "We're not doing anything," Thomas clarified. "You're going to rest whilst I get on with my day."

"Oh, that's right! It's Thomas Shelby ruling the world whilst the rest of us sit in the dark." Felicity clapped her hands together in mockery.

"God, I'm glad I'm marrying you."

AUTHOR'S NOTE

this book is just getting more and
more chaotic wtf. like i spent this
entire chapter googling how painful
it is to get shot so if you don't get any
more updates then it's because i'm
trying to delete my search history. i
also have no clue what a ligament is.
sorry. i'm not smart. i love you fyi <3