Tom Hardy Character Imagines

Bondurant Birthday- Forrest Bondurant x OFC

Christie awoke and stretched her arms above her head. The weather outside was beautiful already and the birds singing outside her bedroom window were the perfect wake up call. She sat up and smiled, but the expression soon turned into one of sorrow when she realised the date. Her birthday.

This was the first time in her life that she had ever felt sad about her day of birth, but then again this was the first time she had ever spent it alone. Although the sound of Howard and Jack arguing downstairs reminded Christie that she wasn't really alone. It just wasn't quite the same though.

The Bondurants were her employers, and she supposed sort of friends, but aside from them she had nobody else. Her parents were both gone and her brother was who knew where; hopefully alive and thriving, although she couldn't be sure.

Christie got up and got dressed, looking at her face in the mirror and wondering if she looked any older than she had the day before? It was funny really because as a child she found herself desperate to grow up and excited at the prospect of being an adult. Now that her feet were firmly cemented into adulthood, she would have given anything to go back to the days of running around and playing cowboys with her brother, and trying to catch snakes in the long grass at the back of her home.

She swallowed as her heart clenched. Her home. That wooden haven built by her daddy's own hands and infused with her mother's love and warmth. Just like her parents were gone, so was the home they had created. Burnt to the ground with them inside of it, all because of some drunken idiot who had been paid to target another home, but in his addled state had mistaken it for hers. Somehow, through sheer luck (although perhaps she wouldn't call it that) she had been able to jump out of her bedroom window and run for help before the fire really took hold.

Her closest neighbours had been the Bondurants, and even then they were a fair distance away; at least fifteen minutes if she was running. But they had come barrelling down out of the station with their shotguns loaded and pointed, confused frowns etched upon their half asleep faces when they saw her standing there in her nightgown.

In truth, Christie remembered not much after that. The following weeks and months had been a blur. She couldn't even recall the words the preacher uttered over her parents' graves as he blessed their bodies and souls to be with God. With nowhere to go, the Bondurants had taken her in and given her a home and a job.

At first, Christie had wished they had left her to die and wither away with nothing and no one, but eventually the haze of grief subsided. No, subsided was the wrong word. The haze became less foggy and while it still hurt to be without her family she found herself beginning to feel just a little bit lighter with each passing day. She found herself smiling and even laughing at Howard's antics and Jack's impish grin without feeling guilt that she was desecrating her parents' memory by being happy.

Besides, the Bondurants had lost their parents and even though the brothers still had each other, they at least knew some of what Christie was going through. They had helped her in ways that neither she or they fully understood, but all she knew was that she was indebted to them for life.

"Wakey wakey, rise and shine," Howard banged unceremoniously on her door, startling her from her thoughts.

"Christ, Howard," Christie put a hand to her beating chest. "Were you trying to give me a heart attack?"

"Was just checkin' you was awake," Christie could hear the grin in his voice. "Forrest wants you downstairs sharpish. Says we've got some sort of meetin' before we open for the day."

"I'll be right down," she promised, frowning to herself as she tried to imagine what Forrest could possibly have to say to them all.

Forrest Bondurant was not, and in fact never had been, a man of many words. At least not ones he spoke out loud. No, Forrest much preferred to observe and analyse but Christie knew him well enough by now to notice the slight narrowing of his eyes when something displeased him, or the way his cheek ticked when he tried not to smile at something amusing. She noticed a lot of things about Forrest Bondurant; not least of all the way the sunlight caught his eyes when he removed his hat from the top of his head in the sweltering midday heat, and the feeling of safety that encompassed her whenever she was working and she looked up to see him watching her.