Kimber's Daughter - Tommy Shelby x Reader Fan Fic

Chapter 52

He linked his fingers through my own. We held our hands between us, both unsure, both realising even such a simple gesture could not last. Both realising we were enemies. But blame the horses or the copious amounts of whiskey, blame the nostalgia for everything that could have been between us, blame the fact that we were two damaged people and incredibly fucking lonely now we were apart. We held hands.

And as he looked at me with those eyes like iridescent sheets of glass, I realised nobody else's gaze would ever compare. Nobody else would do. I'd rather have Tommy's gun pressed to my thigh than any other man's hand in the same spot.

It was like I was fucking high on this man. And by the way his lips parted, the way he didn't register the sound of the race beginning, I sensed the feeling was mutual.

Perhaps that's why I didn't feel pain when the knife stabbed me through the ribs.

At least not at first.

My mouth dropped, my nerve endings realising what was happening before my rational mind could catch up. A dull ache. A hollow pressure.

When the man pulled the knife out, a searing pain.

When he stabbed me again, a second time, it was ice cold into my abdomen.

"For Sabini," hissed into my ear.

Tommy's eyes widened with shock.

The knife left me once more, pulling all my strength with it, and all that remained of my attacker was his footsteps sprinting through the crowd.

My legs grew numb, spiked by pins and needles. Then they shook and refused to hold my weight. I sank to my knees wordlessly. Blood gushed from my abdomen, soaking my hands as I clutched them to my wounds. I felt it pouring down my back. Each time I breathed, a greater gush flowed. The world began to spin, the crowd and stands and horses rotating until they were upside down above me.

Tommy's face appeared in front of mine. He was shouting, frenzied, but I couldn't make out his words in my daze. He clutched me to him, lifted me into his arms and carried me. I've been stabbed, I thought, the words surprising me. I'm going to die.

It was like being underwater, trying to make out sounds, to see through a murky ocean. A car. Arthur and John. Every now and then, shouted words would break through the muffled fog wrapped around my head.

And then Michael was there, and it was enough to puzzle me, even with my vision circled in a ring of black.

"I'll take her, Tommy," he said, his words dampened in my mind.

"No. You stay here," Tommy replied. "It's not worth blowing your cover."

"Not a fucking chance I'm leaving her," Michael said.

"We don't have fucking time for this! Arthur, John, to the hospital. Now." Tommy wrapped his arms around me, leaned me upright against him in the car. "You stay with me, Kimber. You hear me?"

He said more. He murmured words into my ear, he pressed his lips to my forehead. But I couldn't hear them. I could hear only a ringing sound, like bells on Christmas morning. His palm encircled mine once more. I was at peace.

Like being lulled into a bed with thick cotton sheets, fire roaring in the hearth, and Tommy at my side. I was back in that room in the house in Small Heath. It's safe here. Tommy was asleep, my head resting on his chest that rose and fell with each breath. I knew I could close my eyes, everything was so dark already, only a pinprick of light in my vision. I could close my eyes and stay here forever. Never being hurt, never needing to worry.

Ow. Something stung at my cheek. Was it bees? Nettles? Ouch. Again. It was burning now. I focused on the sensation, more out of stubborn loyalty to remedying my own irritation than any curiosity.

Tommy slapped me again. "Don't you fucking dare close your eyes," he growled at me. "John, would you drive fucking faster?"

I'd never heard him so angry. Whatever I was doing must be really pissing him off, I realised, in some far-off corner of my mind. It was enough to break through my reverie, my safe place in that warm bedroom. Enough to make me stop and ponder. If something was getting to him, I needed to hang around long enough to see it.

"I love you, Kimber." His voice cracked as he said the words. His hands were holding me together, so much pressure on my abdomen I'd be bruised. "You stay with me, eh? Stay with me, and you can have all the fucking guns you want. Stay with me, and I'll show you everyday for the rest of your life how much I mean it. But don't you leave me."

A strange lurching sensation. The car had stopped.

"I'll get a doctor." Arthur's voice. A swooping sensation in my legs. "Fucking hell, Tom, she'll bleed out before you make it in there."

"My Kimber? Not a chance. She's tougher than that, Arthur."

More voices. I hadn't realised Tommy's arms were cradling me, carrying me pressed against him, until they were gone. No, I wanted to shout, wanted to scream. They were replaced by sterile bedsheets. A mask placed over my face. A pinch in my elbow and a strange metallic taste in my mouth.

"You take care of her," his voice said, becoming more and more distant. "Or there'll be six broken necks by the end of the night."

I searched for Tommy's voice again but found only blinding lights, sterile white, masked strangers rattling off numbers and the names of organs. I was still blind, and he was gone. I tried to return to that bedroom, to the place where I could find peace, but it had vanished, too.

I stumbled through the recesses of my own mind for what could have been years, searching for him, searching for anything but the blackness. Nothing came.

And as I huddled in a corner alone, half-dead and half-alive, only one thought reminded me of who I was, of what I needed to remember.

He said he loved me.

That was worth hanging onto.