CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

              SHE SOON FOUND HERSELF to be ten years old again.

The summer of 1907 was the roughest summer up until then that Woods & Company had ever experienced, and although Felicity was barely aware of the inner workings of her father and brothers' business, she knew enough to understand just how much trouble they found themselves to be in that year. With the factory bursting with more riots than they had ever, ever imagined it could and her father coming home with a ferocious scowl and anger rumbling up from his chest, the blonde angel that just so happened to be his daughter knew well enough that staying out of the rest of her family's way would be the best option. 

As it so often was, in all fairness. The moment that she would catch sight of her father's shiny leather shoes slapping against the concrete and nearing their home on Watery Lane, the young Felicity would scurry away from the window and escape down the staircase, past her brothers and out the back door, so that she might fly down the back alleyways and rush over to her best friend's home, just barely five yards away. 

Yet she couldn't hide away from the house forever ― eventually, she would have to return, and would do so with a heavy sigh as she trudged back home. On the occasion that the family establishment wasn't filled with outraged roars or angered yells, and instead they were going about their own business ― whatever that may be, she didn't know ―, it was more often than not that one of her brothers would catch her as she attempted to sneak back inside the house without so much as being noticed. And so she'd receive a half―hearted clip on the back of her head and a sharp scolding for being out when the moon was climbing its way into the inky black sky. . . that was the closest she came to forming relationships with her siblings. 

Some nights, the shouts would rain through the night. They'd overpower everything else, even when a storm raged and screeched outside, and all the young girl could do was roll over, face the wall and press one ear to the pillow and one hand upon her ear, so that she might not have to listen. 

She wished she could say that was when she first started to plot and ploy on how to escape from the home to good, but it wasn't. Because for six and a half long years, she clung on to the hope that one day, it might all change ― one day, she might be taken notice of, and that the family might just be what it claimed to be after all. 

Ten years old.

Sixteen years old.

Both ages, she was just as naïve: hopelessly, desperately naïve but not quite willing to give all of that up should her father's cutthroat characteristics take over. . . or even her mother's, as that would pain her just the same. Because for some reason, she reasoned with herself that by holding onto a hope in such a futile manner as she often did, it was better than giving up hope completely. It was the better out of the two options ― either she turn of her emotions in the same way that all of her relatives seemed to have done ever since her mother fled from the house, or she continue living how she always had, with her humanity running rife through her veins. 

Because even though the second option sometimes came with so much more pain than the second, she would rather go through all of that than end up mirroring her father's steel complexion. 

⎯

              With her arm slipped through Tommy's, the blonde Woods girl ensured that her heart stayed as happy as she could keep it whilst the pair walked through the dust of Small Heath. It simply would not do for her to get all sad and mopey all because they just so happened to be on their way to meet with the one man she despised almost as much as the devil himself. . . and if you are wondering just why she loathed the man seated on hell's throne more than her own despicable father, it was because Felicity refused to give him the satisfaction of having yet another boast―worthy title in life. She knew that if she caved in one day and admitted that she hated him more than she could ever imagine she could hate a human being, then the disappointment would rage through her at the same velocity as that of the gloating that soared through him. 

Tommy Shelby knew that something had been keeping the girl preoccupied for the last couple of days, but he could not for the life of him place his finger on what. He knew of her anxieties over meeting with her father ― he would have thought her a damned, foolish idiot if she didn't have any at all ― but reckoned that it wasn't that that kept her thoughts overwhelming her as they did. 

Emotions were not his strong suit, though. They never had been. So although he was troubled by not knowing just what was haunting the girl recently, he could not find the words in himself that could possibly express the rising levels of his concern. 

So, like a fool, he left it. 

And boy, was Felicity glad, because she hadn't the heart to shut down any attempts that he made as an effort to console her. War with her father had been raging for twenty five long years, and did not seem to be ending any time soon, no matter the stalemate that they appeared to be in as of now. She simply did not see the point in alerting Tommy of such an unchanging occurrence. 

"Tom?" She said now, turning her head up towards him after she had quickly dodged a puddle of murky, dust―ridden water. The sinking sun had been thrown up and off from the muddy water, splaying its winter―cold beams upon her lily―white skin, so that even though it may have appeared to be that of a spring day, it was still winter. It being the final few days of said season seemed to have no effect on the temperature and its bitter mind, as to Felicity, it seemed to still be as cold as it had been in two months prior.

He met her gaze immediately. "Yeah?"

"I can't quite believe we're doing this, in all fairness," she admitted after a short beat. "That we're still going ahead with it all."

Soft laughter rumbled. "What are you getting at?"

"I don't know!" Her shoulders bobbed up and down in a shrug that was met with her own giggles. "It's just surreal, don't you see? Because it's just so completely and utterly bonkers that the pair of us have wound up in all of this."

A tug on her arm sent her spinning into his own and as their lips fell upon each other in a brief blur of lovers' passion, it was not hard for the girl to sense the elation and simple adoration that spilled from his being. "What's so wrong with being tangled up in all of this, eh?" 

She kissed him back fervently before breaking away and pulling him down the road, so that they might arrive at her father's home without either of them appearing more dishevelled than they wished to be. "Later," she told him with a smile that was filled with half of bemusement, and then half of a disappointment that rivalled his own.

Tommy sighed, but nodded and attempted to shake out his suit jacket as they walked. "Then we'd better get this all over and done with, hadn't we?"

So they did, yet as they walked the remainder of the way towards their destination, he did not try and hide the fact that his arm, snaked around her waist with the protectiveness clear, had pulled her closer to him than before. 

As though the pair were forever meant to be. 

And who knows? 

Perhaps they were.

⎯

              "May Twenty―Fourth." The man slammed his hand down upon the table with a shout that had first stemmed from exhaustion, but now emerged from the overwhelming sense of despair and loss that he was beginning to realise flowed through his being. 

John Woods despised being on the losing end of any deal or bet, and although this was the former of the two options, it was the worst of them. He had argued and insulted and yapped on for nearly half an hour now, yet the gangster before him had hardly budged from his initial proposal, and the blonde to his right had not been of any help either. 

In fact, other than her polite greeting and smile that was paired with it, she had barely noticed him at all. Instead, Felicity had sat opposite her father with a grim expression on her features: one that matched Tommy's. If John Woods had not been so utterly naïve and still believed that Tommy Shelby was agreeing to this proposal for the sake of his business rather than the girl, then he might have noticed how the pairing were more alike than either of them knew. Hard―headed, annoyingly stubborn and ridiculously, wickedly able to see through each and every one of the lies that came from John's mouth in his attempts to win back his upper hand.

"No sooner, no later."

He'd been adamant about this for the entire meeting, and had disregarded Tommy's initial proposition of May First immediately. Neither Felicity nor Tommy could work out why, but Felicity had known her father long enough to know that there must be some sort of ulterior motive for him to be so resolute on this date.

Tommy nodded, his calm demeanour never wavering. "We've already agreed to that," he decreed. "I'm just curious as to why you're so persistent about it. It's just a date, isn't it?" 

He turned to the woman beside him, who met his question with a shrug. "Doesn't mean a thing to me," Felicity confessed. 

She'd decided that, if the pair were to go along with all of the schemes and ploys that this whole thing had its foundations set on, then she would at least be able to act as though all of the years of hurt, all of the month of trying in vain to break away from the memories of the Woods and the stereotypes that ran alongside their name, didn't affect her in the slightest. She would put on the pretence that all was well, and that, for now, she believed that her father before her at least cared about his daughter just a fragment more than he was letting on.

Felicity did happen to realise how foolish that sounded. It was almost as though she were ten years old again.

After a beat, John Woods met his daughter's gaze, and a newfound flame burned brightly in them. "What?" He said curtly. "You mean to tell me that you cannot remember Isobel's birthday?"

The name resonated in her faster than she could have ever imagined it would. "You mean my mother?" Felicity immediately snapped back in question. "How in hell would I remember that May Twenty―Fourth just so happened to be her birthday? Y'know, what with you being the one who effectively ensured that she ran from Small Heath just to escape from your hell of a business?"

Not a single emotion flashed across his face as he replied. "She left on her own accord."

"Damn right she did! I wouldn't have stayed a day longer than she did if it were me in her position, believe me. Hell, I wouldn't have stayed another minute."

"As you so clearly proved soon afterwards."

"Sixteen years afterwards."

"You left without a word, so it's the time hardly matters. At least your mother left with a letter on the fireplace!"

"You're trying to tell me that I should've left a letter like she did?" Felicity's face consorted first with anger, then with raging confusion and shock. "So you could have. . . what, burned it like you did hers?" 

John scowled. "And here I was thinking that this meeting was one for the wedding," he said with a bite in his words. "Rather than one for my daughter to express every single raging emotion she's ever felt against me in the last twenty―or―so years of her life."

Felicity opened her mouth to snap back with another fury―filled remark before a hand came to rest on her lower thigh and made her startle. . . that is, before she met with the gaze that followed it, and the calming presence that fell through it as she did so. Tommy gently shook his head, as though he was reminding her that it simply was not worth it. Arguments with a man who was so set on defending his twisted set of morals was a waste of her time and breath.

Felicity remembered her pledge to herself then ― the one she had briefly lost sight of through her haze of red and blurring anger. To win against John Woods would mean she would have to push past the earlier fights so that they might succeed in the later ones: the ones that meant more in the grand scheme of victory.

So she bit back her fury. She bit back every wild, raging, hatred―filled emotion that rivalled those she felt for the devil himself and instead pushed back her chair and rose, so that she might look down upon the Woods patriarch. 

"May Twenty―Fourth it is, then," Felicity confirmed. "Which'll be nice, you know. It'll almost be like she's there."

Which was almost as good as her being there, she reckoned, as Tommy and her left the building.

Because it just might cause the cold―as―steel John Woods to feel something other than angry superiority towards everything and everyone in life.

AUTHOR'S NOTE
regular   updates?  who  is  this   girl?
let's  not  jinx  it  though ― i'm   way
too  easily  distracted </3  ily  ily  ily!

ALSO! i made a new gif and  it  made
me scream for 2 hours but it was def
worth it lmao , i'm in love (ego tingz)