hanging rock. peaky blinders

iii. on her own

————— chapter three —————
ᴏɴ ʜᴇʀ ᴏᴡɴ

1922 —————

                    HER BLUE EYES were fixated on the dreary emptiness of the open field, tears would and could well in small pools of the corners of her eyes every few and far moments, but she was quick to blink them away. crescent stained marks of red against her pale hands as her quickly turning blue shaking lips exhaled into the early morning —— a breath of air so fresh and warm the girl is quick to wonder how it is released from her shivering form.

She wants to scream at the world. Let out a high pitched noise towards the man that is Thomas Shelby for even daring to take away the person she's declared her best friend. She wants to scream at Henry for leaving and most importantly herself —— for being the blubbering idiot that she is and not thinking her actions through, because of course he would run away from this disastrous village at the slightest opportunity, and Victoria had gone out of her way to retrieve that card off of that man with the flat cap who owned the rather expensive car, and she didn't even try to be a sticky beak and take a little look at the name or address on the card.

But now that Henry's run off to who knows where, the girl really wishes she had.

Besides, it's not like they were together or anything. But they were friends, at least the blonde beauty had thought so, up until this very moment in time that she could go to the boy with almost any one of her numerous problems —— but that doesn't really seem to be the case at the moment does it.

And it's not like Victoria to get caught up in boys, or rather just emotions in general. Sure she feels things —— she knows she does, she just doesn't know what those feeling are exactly.

she looks out at the field again, at all the animals that are beyond the white picket fence —— the ones that are free from the stereotype that the old society is forcing upon everyone and everything that enters upon and under its walls and Victoria thinks 'wouldn't it be great to be a cow' and she lets out a choked sob, one that releases all of the previous pent up pressures and tears that she has held inside her for the past day (or maybe it's what's been held inside her forever) and she cries.

she cries as she thinks of the life she could have over the white picket fence —— one with her brother, who's finally become accustomed to life beyond the Great War, but she can't ask that much so she dreams that he's just settled down with a pretty girl and they have a kid or two in a lovely house. and then she sees herself and Henry just sitting at a bar, but they look happy —— and all that happiness comes crashing down as her nails press deeper into her palms.

the pain she feels from her palms is nothing compared to the pressure she feels in her throat and on her chest, the way she takes deeper breaths and her she can't help but hold them in for longer periods of time, before exhaling and restarting the messy process all over again.

But she looks down at her hands —— the very ones coated in a crimson red. the ones that cause victoria to have tears well in her eyes once more as she stares at the red works of art that lay in crescent cut shapes on her inner palm.

and she thinks she knows why —— why she's so distraught of henry (michael's?) leaving, it's not because he left, Victoria can understand his desire to escape the dreadful white picket fence village.

no.

it's because he didn't offer her an escaping path as well, Victoria had only been talking about leaving their dull and boring town since the day she had gotten there, and her brother had made her promise that if an opportunity arose that she would discard of the village life and never look back.

Now look at where she is, crying her eyes out over some lousy boy and broken dreams of escape.

her brother thinks her behaviour to be justified —— because Victoria doesn't do friends, well not in the modern term anyway, she finds it completely useless and unnecessary to have people that only surround you for the things that you can provide, and her reasoning for this is that only your family should be able to be reliant upon you.

(maybe that's why the blonde deals day in and day out with her father's misogynistic attitudes towards each and everything she has done and probably ever will do, because she's been brought up to believe that family is everything).

so when young Victoria had declared she had found a friend in henry johnson it was honestly only a matter of time really —— but it still hurt the girl, because family was everything and the person she had dubbed her friend had become more or less, her family. He became the person she could turn to when her father had decided last minute to go off to war and her brother along with him.

the person she could confide in when her life was taking turns for the absolute worst, like they had been ever since she arrived in the village in sheffield, and Henry Johnson or Michael Gray or whatever the hell he wanted to call himself knew her life and knew what she wanted, so when he up and left (after Victoria had gone out of her way to retrieve the card containing the name of his 'other family' just to add) she couldn't help but feel betrayed.

so the girl, not wanting to be stuck in her own world of existential dread, draws in a deep breath before looking out onto the vast field that holds everything that ever could be for her life —— and she releases that breath, the one that's caused her lungs to cry for air and her chest to scream for release.

victoria wipes away the stray salty tears that have fallen from her eyes and she stands slowly, gaining her balance from having being plastered on the grassy ground for so long. she brushes away loose specks of dirt and leaves, before turning on her heels and walking away.

almost as if she had never been suffering in the first place.

AUTHORS NOTE ────── happy mother fucking birthday to me !!!!
yoinks that's a short filler 🤧🤧
almost as short as Tommy's
temper.

ehh I think it's important to have
filler chapters just to get across
what the characters feeling otherwise
it's either too much dialogue or
not enough ya know ?? anywhoooooo
i got shitttt planed for these guys
and y'all ain't gonna be happy bout it !