Annie could feel the muscles of her chin tremble like a small child, There's static in her head once more, the side effect of the constant fear, constant stress she lived with.
"Anna?" At the sound of her mother's trembling voice, It takes somethin...
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~•~ "Checkmate " ~•~
THE LIFE OF; Anna Gray
(I always think of Anna when I hear this song)
Tommy Shelby was a nuisance when he was grieving. He didn't eat, but he never did much of that anyways, he went out early and came back hours into the night, and he smoked his cigarettes like they were the air he was relying on. "Enough smoking, you fucking steam-train." Alison thought she had just about enough of it. Mason and Charlie were on the carpet playing with toy horses, she was stood beside Tommy who was sat in a loveseat, with red eyes and a glare on his face, a glare that would've scared off a lesser man. But, Alison was twice the man of half the ones working in his factories. She didn't falter one bit, and he admired her all the more for it. Women grew tough in Birmingham.
"It's not good for the kids." She said, in a softer tone. He turned away, chewing on the inside of his cheek, the only sign of emotion she could detect. "I smoke near Charlie all the time." He said, and inhaled some more. "I meant you. You're not good for the kids, not good for Charlie. Not like this." He paused at her words, and blew the smoke from his lips. He half wanted to lash out on her, but there wasn't anything particularly wrong with what she said. In fact, the more he thought of it, the more he realised that she was right. "I don't need you to tell me that." But he was stubborn and so he got up, and brushed past her, he had almost left the room when her voice halted him but he didn't turn around and instead stood still and listened.
"When I lost my sisters, and the father of my child, I knew it wouldn't do well to dwell over it. I had to put my child's needs before me, that's what a parent does. That's what a father should do." She hesitantly turned around to see that his back was still turned to her, but he hadn't walked away yet, like he was still mulling over her words. Over the past five days, she had wondered where the man ,that determined man she'd spent heaps of time with, piecing together what they both already knew of Anna, she'd wondered where that driven man had gone, and if he would ever return. She heard him huff, and he walked along and out the room. Alison pursued her lips and exhaled, brashly.
While Polly spent most days at Tommy's house, Anna and Michael were left some time in their home, getting to know one another. They each tried to keep the conversation from going in a specific direction, but it was only a matters time. "Are you a morning person or a night person?" Michael had asked, moving a piece. They were each sat on the carpet with a coffee table between the two, and a chessboard laid on it. Anna looked at him with lifeless eyes, a chilling trait he had seemed not to inherit, maybe it was that his were blue instead. "Michael. I am barely a person." She said, and he chuckled at her dry humour. "You're a night person, I bet. I always hear you wondering the house." Anna replied once more, and he nodded with a small smile. "How did you know you were in love?" That question threw her off completely, she lifted her intensive gaze from the chessboard, and settled her eyes on her older brother. She swallows, and looked down once more before looking back up and finding the words to answer him. "Before him... life dragged, and after ... life felt like a constant timeline jump." Her eyes hadn't glossed over like he expected, but he wouldn't know how dry her mouth had gotten, or how her stomach warmed at the thought of him. "I wish I knew to savour the years." She smiled, sadly. She let her hand drop from the board, and watched her brother, who was staring off, his thoughts whirled.
"Michael what do you know about a Duchess Tatiana Petrovna." The thought had been at the back her mind for a while, the woman had a sickly look in her brown eyes, that was both captivating and disturbing. She'd even saw Tommy conversing with her moments before Grace was killed. "A duchess? What?" Anna sighed, disappointedly. Was Michael so unaware of the other side of their business, or was he not as curious as Anna? "She's Russian. Tommy's in cahoots with Russians." She saw Michael's eyes squint with confusion, but he'd remembered their conversation on the porch. "Same way my dad was. He sold stolen jewels, sometimes forged paintings. The Russian aristocrats were high bidders, except my dad never sold it directly to them. He only held them for a while, used his home as a sort of safe house. He did it for a lengthy sum of money, but I always thought he was too much of a bitch to run off and sell it for himself."
"All this for jewels?" Michael asked. Anna shook her head. "Okay. so my understanding is this. The Soviets are undergoing a kind of civil war between the whites and the reds. Britain being the shitty capitalist country we are, wants to help out the whites to gain control but can't do it publicly so they enlist none other than our dear cousin-" She mouthed the word 'Tommy.' Before carrying on."-to act as a liaison to the Russians and supply them with weapons or tanks." Michael listens closely and moves another chess piece.
"How would they even get ahold of enough weapons-"
"By stealing them from a factory, moving it to a shipyard-no doubt Uncle Charlie's- and then it's transported." Anna moved another chess piece, and smiled, she was ahead of him.
"The jewels are how they pay us. The petrovna family i didn't know, but Romanov, I'd recognise that name. My dad ripped them off times and times again, their wealth skyrocketed in the 18th century, and hit rock bottom by the 20th." Anna chuckled lowly, her hatred for her father- the stationmaster- momentarily being clouded by a strange admiration that unsettled Michael. Anna's face slightly falls, she'd heard of the economic league, or better known as 'section D.' She'd learnt a lot from her father, and she'd sometimes felt like the knowledge had been a burden. To be self aware was to be paranoid all the minutes of the day. And the thought of Tommy presumably being in engagement with them, made her more paranoid than ever.
"Anyways, if the shipments make it and there are no interferences, it shouldn't go tits up." She looked down at the board and smiled. "Checkmate." She announced proudly, utterly unaware that Michael's mind was overrun with new thoughts. A clattering from behind her interrupted them both, and Anna turned to see that it was her mother's purse that had loudly landed on the sofa. Her mother's lips were slightly parted, and her eyes, well they seemed to be astonishingly staring right through Anna in a way that suggested she'd been privy to every word of what Anna had said.
A/n : what did you think of that edit about Anna's life, it's so sad omg! I love the way Anna just sprouts out her thoughts like they're normal ones to make, like regular people would be able to make that many connections ... And Polly caught her??? How much did she hear, will she express this concern with Tommy?? Anna sounds like she's leaning towards communism, maybe Ada was right when she said most of her family were communists but they just don't realise it. Alison and Tommy is an unexpected friendship, but Tommy needs a platonic girl friend and Alison is the loml - Anna tends to talk so freely around Michael, and he's just so overwhelmed with how much assumptions she's got in her head hahah! - I love the quote ' I've always liked quiet people. You never know if they're dancing in a daydream or if they're carrying the weight of the world.' I'm back!! Needed some time to get over that overwhelming feeling, but I'm back. It took me a while to accept that Polly isn't Helen and it's okay to write about Polly without feeling guilty or weird about it.
