Fantasy The Queensway Gang

[Hard Boiled]

He stepped into the pub with a fluid motion, still half-expecting to be tackled to the ground. But only thing that greeted him was the familiar scent of spilled beer and the low rumble of whispered confessions between sinners too ashamed to see a priest.

"Thank God."
Helena audibly leaned back in her seat, releasing a shred of tension upon seeing a familiar face - and a sane one, at that. She would've rather nobody else arrive first but Conor. Though she'd never admit it sober, Helena found Conor to be undoubtedly reliable, to the point where she wouldn't even interrogate him too harshly on how he spent his vacation. So long as he hadn't left his loot somewhere obvious like Benjamin had, which she was certain he hadn't, all would be well.

Her eyes didn't linger once she'd acquired him, only returning eye contact once he fully approached them.

"Boss," he said, nodding to Helena before looking to Mary.

"Mm." She grunted in response, scooting over in the booth to make room should he choose to sit.

Though, before she could respond to him, a rather large dog barreled into the pub. Naturally, chaos ensued. Miles shouted a swear, numerous patrons, startles by the beast, accidentally knocked over tables, chairs, and their glasses

“Sir, get your dog out of here!”

"Where?!" Helena's feet zipped onto the bench as if the floor had turned to lava, once again sitting up straight to search for the source of the commotion. Her eyes darting from table to table, she found the culprit sitting not ten feet from them. Whatever she was previously focused on was now irrelevant. They locked eyes for a brief moment, seemingly in complete silence, before Helena's trance was broken by their second and third arrivals.

Helena glared at Benny as he dragged the animal away, tail still wagging. She tapped her fingers against the table to distract herself, her nub wiggling after the ring finger hit the wood.
"That's the biggest dog I've ever seen." She told her sister quietly. It wasn't, but it certainly felt like it.

The two of them taking Conor's spot only wound her up more, and every scoot she moved away from Benny invading her personal space was followed by him promptly inching closer until they were four tightly packed peas in a pod. Having had enough, Helena ducked under the table and crawled around Mary, letting her be in the middle for the greetings.

"If you don't mind me responding with an inquiry of my own, Bennet," Mary started, narrowing her eyes on the red headed boy. She shot her eyes to the entrance where he placed the dog and then back to him before continuing, "What do we have there?"

Once Mary had sufficiently answered them, she leaned over the table and pointed a finger in Benny's face before he could inevitably respond to her rhetorical question.
"Keep that fucking thing out of here." Helena stared him in the eyes for a second for dramatic effect before sitting back down, arms crossed.
"Miles says no dogs, so no dogs..." She muttered. "...Evening, Ella."

 

[Vudukudu]

May 28, 1879

"You seen the news today, Mr. Levin? Our boys finished up that awful business in the Cape after they showed that barbarian a bit of your American ingenuity." Mr. Tudge says, noisily flapping his paper about and rustling the pages. "Marchin' on to wrap it all up in... Ulundi, if I'm sayin' it right."

"You say that like I'm supposed to know how to say it." Benjamin replies, rolling up his sleeves in preparation for a long day at the docks. The gang had been quiet lately, and quiet meant he wasn't getting paid. He'd made up for it by joining the longshoremen, and it was good work. Honest, could drink on the job, and every so often he got to clobber some prat for running his mouth. Couldn't ask for much more.

"Well they are your folk, are they not? Seem to recall you going on about all of us bein' made in the Lord's image and such, that the colored man everywhere was just as much your brother as I. Figured you had a thought on the Empire's goings-on."

"War's war, Henry. Only thought I've got on it is that I could go with never hearing a cannon or gatling again."

"Why's that, Mr. Levin? Thought you rather enjoyed your tour de force."

"Because ye can't do anything about a cannon or gatling gun raining hellfire on you, Henry. Sooner charge a hundred rifles by my lonesome than face grapeshot with a hundred men around me."

"Speaking of things you'd rather never hear again, Mr. Levin, one of those women came by and said you should be at the usual place at the usual time."

Benjamin arches an eyebrow and then looks towards the door before sighing deeply. "Piss."

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Benjamin is never one to show up late, and his timeliness persists despite his sour attitude about the whole affair. No doubt they had another half-witted scheme planned out and their resident disaster would cause another problem, and maybe he wouldn't be so lucky this time. Wearing a scowl more vicious than the dagger at his hip, Benjamin shoulders his way through the front door only to see chaos unfolding as a large mutt startles the patrons.

"Big fucking dog. Like collies more, myself." Benjamin says plainly, arms folded across his chest. He makes eye contact with those present, tossing in a curt nod, then finishes up the introductions by giving the dog a tap on the snout.

 

[Pipsqueak]

Benny couldn't deny the relief he felt at Mary's insistence that she was alright, despite it being a complete lie. This little fact went completely over his head of course, her winces of pain unnoticed as he continued to shift over with Helena until all of them were squished in between one another. Their injured leader was determined to keep him on track, however, and at the call of his name his dark eyes flashed back towards the entrance. Alfie's snout was visible around the corner, obviously once again deep in some investigation of his own.

"What? I don't-" Helena was quick to jump in before his reply, pointing an accusatory finger in his face. Benny scrunched his nose and crossed his eyes to focus on her filed nail, holding his hands up as if to wipe all previous chaos off of his conscious.

"Why's it hafta be me? Helena, do ya really think so little of me? C'mon! Alfie could be anyone's dog, really!" Technically it was true. He had no idea who had lived at Alfie's house.

"Hey look who it is!" Movement suddenly caught Benny's eye near the door, recognizing Benjamin's face almost instantly.

"Well if it isn't our favorite Frenchman! Perfect timing, mate. Read any good books as of late? I know I did! Ella says I'll be the best reader in London, right Ella?" His enthusiastic greeting towards the gang member was a not so subtle attempt at changing the subject, but he was determined to not get in trouble so early in the meeting.

"Speakin' of, me and her got some gifts!" Benny paused to fish out the silver jewelry from his pocket and slid it silently over to the twins.

"Neat, huh? I'd wager they go for at least a bazillion shillings!" A proud look drew over his face as if that would clear up any blame that had so suddenly fallen on his shoulders before his attention once again shifted, this time to the newspaper that still sat in the middle of the table. As the others were focused on greetings, Benny slowly sounded out each word under his breath before letting out a bark of laughter.

"Hm. Twenty?" The redhead held up a hand to count each gang member on his fingers, then shook his head in disagreement.

"I wouldn't get along with twenty people, that's for sure."

As they waited for the others to show, Benny had finally settled into a quiet game of word association with himself, occasionally breaking his train of thought to listen in on conversations. All in all, this meeting was not going as planned...

 

[guac]

A few days before the gang’s current meeting…



As Dr. Blackburn sunk her shovel into the dark fertile dirt and hoisted it out of the grave she stood in, she found herself, not for the first time, wishing to be elsewhere. The whoosh of the shovel scooping up soil and thump of the contents landing in the pile above her formed a monotonous rhythm that was beginning to drive Shelley mad. Whoosh, thump, whoosh, thump, with nothing but mind-numbing silence between

Against her best efforts, she felt her mind begin to wander, images swirling behind her eyes. Whoosh, her hands guiding a needle through flesh, blood staining her fingers, thump, the tickle of sweat at her temple, whoosh, a strong hand on her shoulder, thump, a cold barrel pressing into her skin - thud.

Once, Shelley’s heart would have rejoiced at the sound of her shovel hitting suddenly on hollow wood, but that was a long time ago. Her focus back in the present moment, Shelley brushed the remaining soil away to get a better look at the coffin. The lid was a dark mahogany, much more ornate than she was used to seeing, carved with lilies and roses.

Normally, Shelley would only be caught dead in a cemetery like this. The cadavers at rest here were shrouded in wealth, and with wealth came landscapers, headstone cleaners, and most concerningly, private security. For the upper classes of London, there were few held in as much contempt as the graverobber (or resurrectionist, as some preferred to euphemise, though the term was a tad too mystical for Shelley’s liking). With the steady stream of missing corpses from pauper’s graves ramping up in recent years, their paranoid precautions were increasing. Even earlier that evening, Shelley had spotted multiple fresh looking graves topped with mortsafes. She had no doubt there was a night watch on patrol nearby, though she had yet to run into one – and she intended to keep it that way.

After brushing more of the soil away, Shelley finally spotted a nail at the edge of the lid. It was nestled deeply into a carved rose, presumably to keep prying fingers like hers at bay. It seemed this was a job for her ax. She briefly climbed out of the grave to retrieve it, then got to work, swinging the heavy wooden handle over her head and letting it fall with a crash into the lid of the coffin. Just a few hits was enough for the doctor to pry the splintered wood away to access the body inside.

Shelley tossed the lid aside and sighed. She realized she had been secretly hoping for some sort of surprise – maybe a disfigured face or a treasured heirloom clutched in cold hands – but there was nothing remarkable here. The body was only a few days old at most, and by the looks of it, had died from nothing more than advanced age. Sighing once again, Shelley knelt down and slung the cadaver over her shoulder. She kicked her boots into the footholds she had carved in the side of the grave and climbed back up to the surface.

Now, it was time to work fast. With the threat of a patrol showing up any minute, Shelley wasn’t taking any chances. Naturally, she had come with a plan. First, she carefully arranged the cadaver in a fetal position in the bottom on her wheelbarrow, gingerly resting her tools on top. With that done, she covered it all in a tarp and the final touch, the daffodils she had dug up from some poor sap’s garden, as well as a big scoop of loose soil. Nervously, she pulled her flat cap down tighter over her hair, ensuring none was sticking out. She hoped her disguise would sell the whole thing. She had even donned men’s trousers for the occasion, something she was eager to never do again.

Checking one more time that no one was around, Shelley pushed her wheelbarrow quickly and confidently towards the main gate. She rehearsed her excuses in her head as she tried her best to resist the urge to run. Well sir, ain’t you know that night time’s the best time for gardenin’? You’ve got to strike while the plants are asleep, see…

She cringed at herself. She had hoped she could channel the inexplicable slipperiness of that urchin, Benny, but she feared her imitation wasn’t quite up to par. Hopefully talking wouldn’t prove to be necessary.

As she neared her coach, hitched just outside the entrance, Shelley still hadn’t spotted a soul. She opened the door and pulled out the ramp she had specially designed for this occasion, then as quickly as she could, rolled the whole wheelbarrow inside. With that taken care of, she took her place in the driver’s seat and nudged the horses on, careful again not to take on a suspicious speed.

Could it really have been that easy? Shelley felt a pang of disappointment. She had hoped for a night of adrenaline, or at the very least a little taste of excitement, really anything remotely notable to replace the constant temptation to return to that pub on Queen’s Way.

She had visited only a few days after her confrontation with Benny, with the sole purpose of replacing Mary’s temporary splint with a sturdier leather brace. If the subject of her stolen cash happened to come up, she had supposed, they might discuss reimbursement – but truly Shelley had been more eager for the chance to observe the identical twins more closely. When she arrived, however, she was met with a curt and disinterested Mary and a somewhat jumpy Helena. They hardly let her finish lacing up the brace before Helena forced that silly bracelet into her hands and ushered her on her way.

Shelley shook the memory away and steered towards her office. The night was not over yet. She still had her unusually eager client to meet, and there was a bit of preparation to get done before the sale.

Shelley had only just gotten through the back door when she heard a knock at the front. Three quick raps, a pause, then two more, just as they had agreed in their correspondence. Shelley glanced at the clock. He’s early. How incredibly rude.

Pushing down her annoyance, Shelley opened the door.

“Quickly,” She barked, ushering the man in and slamming the door behind him. Wordlessly, she gestured towards the back office. As she followed behind him, she removed her cap and shook out her hair, attempting to look somewhat presentable in the state she was in.

He stood by her desk, seemingly unsure of himself, as she strode behind it.

“Sit.”

As he did as he was told, Shelley assessed her client. He was generally what she would expect from a medical student in London: well dressed, clean. He had a nervous air about him, but Shelley sensed something off about it. She watched as he scanned the shelves of her office, his eyes not darting around as she might expect, but deliberate – and was that the hint of a smirk she saw? Shelley decided to remain standing.

“You’re early.” She began. “Care to explain?”

“Well truth be told, I could hardly contain my excitement.” A smirk now plastered clearly across his face, Mr. Walton (as he had asked to be called) turned his observational eyes on Dr. Blackburn, taking in her unconventional attire. “I must say, I was a bit surprised when a little lad answered the door.”

Shelley elected to ignore his comments. A pretentious one, then. She would try to make their exchange as short as possible.

“Have you brought the amount we discussed?”

“You know,” Mr. Walton brushed her question aside, “you’ve become something of a folk legend among my peers. I just had to see for myself if Miss Frankenstein is really as crazy as they say.”

Shelley sighed. Clearly this was not going to be easy. “That’s Dr. Frankenstein, to you. I’ll ask again, have you brought the amount we discussed?”

“We’ll get to that. First I’d like you to know that you’ve lost me a bet, miss – sorry, doctor.”

“Is that so?” Shelley deadpanned, feeling she had no choice but to entertain this dimwit for the time being.

“Unfortunately so. See, I had been sure that you would be American. Why else would you be snatching bodies from the dirt when the medical schools in London have been well stocked with government-supplied paupers for the past thirty years?”

Shelley was stunned into silence. She searched his face for some sign of deception, some motive to confuse her, but found only the same ugly smirk. Her mind began to race – the infrequency of clients, the backlog of bodies in storage – could she be such a fool?

“Is this some sort of pathetic attempt to lower my price?” Even she could hear the doubt creeping into her voice.

“Believe me or don’t, frankly I don’t care. But I’ve one more bet to settle, if you would indulge me.” Mr. Walton reached into his breast pocket and produced the page of a newspaper, sliding it across the desk. “Is this you?”

Shelley began to read. THE ST. GILES GHOUL STRIKES AGAIN! The strange string of body-snatchings in London’s slums continues! Police say… motive unknown… the fiend… the ghoul… the families…

Shelley crumpled the paper in her hand. She thought of the Derringer tucked into her boot, how it might feel to pull the trigger and watch that smirk disappear.

“Get out.”

“Is that a yes?”

Shelley looked up at him, no longer disguising the rage in her eyes.

“No. It’s a threat. Get out.”

When she finally heard the front door slam behind him, Shelley let out a sigh. How dreadfully annoying.

Her eyes drifted across her cluttered desk, falling on the silver bracelet Helena had given her in lieu of payment. Without knowing why, Shelley reached for it, considering it for a moment before clasping it around her wrist. It fit just right.

 

[spottednewt]

Purposeful footfalls on cobblestone echoed off of the walls of the alleyway as Astrid O’Malley made her way deeper into the heart of the city. The chorus had quickly grown into a ringing in her ears that stunned her thoughts into a begrudging silence. The farther she made her way from the estate of one Mr. Langley, the more grey the world seemed: not only in the drably lead hues of stone and iron beneath dreary, clouded skies, but also in the neurotic mix of melancholy and anger that weighed heavily on her chest. In a word, Astrid felt grey. Even as the clattering of the soles of her shoes neared a fever pitch with the help of breaks in the alley labyrinth that afforded her small glimpses of loud, bustling city streets - she couldn’t bring herself to tune in. O’Malley couldn’t afford a single thought for the sounds that were causing her overstimulation; not over the smell.

It was Poppy tea scent seemed into her clothes like an invisible stain - her most highly requested import and the only order placed at the soiree two weeks prior that she would actually come to fulfill. She hadn’t gotten word from the two other women she had done business with that night, but fulfilling the Langley order with a bum arm was challenge enough without concerning herself with the fates of strangers. Even if she had more than an inkling of what had happened to them. Still, even someone as detestable as Mr. Langley had grown cold towards her between the tardiness of her delivery and his own theories on the events of that night. Winning back his favor - and subsequently his money - was a marathon that lasted her through a long and dreadful night. It was a task that she may’ve rather eaten glass than weathered sober, but it had been just over a week since she’d had anything to smooth her jagged edges - and Langley, of all people, wouldn’t be the one to ruin it.

Astrid had always had a hard aversion to her own use of medicines, and she’d remain completely dry until her shoulder had healed. –So much so that the cup of coffee she consumed to fuel her walk of shame that morning made her skin hum with a buzzing sensation.

Enveloped in her thoughts - or lack there of - Astrid had merely been following muscle memory, a sort of haze that carried her right through the doorway of the pub before she came to realize where she was. Even in the dimness of the backstreets, it took the young woman a moment to adjust her eyes to the new environment. She’d been successful in cleaning herself up - trousers and suspenders just so, her buttoned shirt tucked in neatly with a faint smattering of wrinkles as the only clue of the previous night’s reprehensible activities. The grip her left hand kept on her right suspender to keep her shoulder still tightened painfully in apprehension. An easy grin played on the woman’s lips, and the way that she sauntered directly to the bar to order herself another cup of coffee disclosed a sense of boring normalcy, but seeing past the exchange of a pint for a mug, a change was noticeable to the bartender immediately. The man balked for a moment, pausing to take in the way her eyes looked both into his soul and straight through him, as well as a new thinness to her face and stature, before he went back about his work without a word.

Clutching the mug in her right hand, Astrid turned on her heel and made her way over to the booth. Their booth. A short walk that she had made hundreds of times before; but was only now noticing.

 

[queendilettante]

Mary nodded to the American as he sat down with the rest of them. It appeared as though Astrid, the only person Mary needed to arrive before Brucie, was going to be the last to do so. Mary took a deep breath to calm her nerves, which seem to have been out of order for the past few weeks. Even if Bruce arrived too early, waiting outside with the dog would be an apt solution.

"Hm. Twenty?" The redhead held up a hand to count each gang member on his fingers, then shook his head in disagreement. "I wouldn't get along with twenty people, that's for sure."

Mary couldn’t help but mask her overt annoyance with Bennet and his newly acquired beast with a disingenuous simper at the boy. Despite their years together, Mary had yet to determine the confused-Irishman’s proficiency with sarcasm that he wasn’t the one delivering. She patted him on the head. “Twenty is far too high, dear. Lord, we’d have to pass a thousand first before we even come close to twenty.” She shook her head with feigned disapproval. “We need to help you learn to count, love, or all of that, uh, brimming potential would go to waste.”

Benny huffed, immediately going to fix the red tangle of mess that sat atop his head as if Mary had done any real damage. He was overly aware of the brief pause she took while commenting on his “brimming potential”, as if she didn’t really believe what she was saying. Again, the thoughts that had plagued him the night of ridding the carriage came back, and he stayed silent, watching the gang’s leader with a careful gaze. He didn’t want to think that she thought so little of him. That couldn’t possibly be true! He was smart! He took money right under the doctor’s nose! And he could read better than Benjamin now, Ella said so! Maybe he did need to learn numbers… that would do the trick!

Between a bout of coughing that had suddenly taken hold, Benny finally nodded with a small smile. “Sure, yea! I do know a thousand is more than twenty, that covers the whole arithmetic basis, yea? We can’t get to a thousand before twenty… right?” His confident comment trailed off, unsure what she actually meant by that. He knew that Mary knew much more than he did, so her math was probably better. Probably. “Sounds ‘bout right.”

“Oh yes, forgive me love,” Mary scoffed, “I made a most foolish error. Thankfully, a mathematician is here to correct me.” Mary elbowed Bennet in the side mostly lovingly and noticed that Astrid had finally arrived, and with just a bit of time to spare before Bruce’s intended arrival time. Mary shot up from her seat and poorly disguised a wince of pain as she did so. “Ah!” she grunted, doing her best to un-contort her face, “Ah, dearie, where have you been holed up?” Mary smiled but continued before Astrid could respond to her joke. “No matter, love, glad to see you up and healthy. Please, take my seat.” Mary placed her hand on the woman’s good shoulder to gesture down to the seat, but put more weight than she anticipated on her in a clear effort to shift the pressure off of her leg.

Mary moved to her space standing at the edge of the table, heavily relying on her cane to stay upright. “Now loves, I have most splendid news for you all, but first, there is some important clarifying that must be done for all our sakes.” Her eyes looked over the group but narrowed in on their final arrival. “Astrid,” Mary began with a stark shift away from her usual bubbly and theatrical tone. “Bruce shot you unnecessarily, nearly ended your life, and senselessly slaughtered numerous party goers. His behavior is unacceptable.”

Mary turned around from the group briefly to compose herself. Whenever she found her mind wandering back to that night, she couldn’t seem to contain a nauseous wave from overtaking her as her chest tightened and twisted into a stabbing knot. She took one deep breath, then another, and then a few more; she let the silence hang longer than she cared to, though none in the gang dared break it. When she turned back around, all hints of her smile from minutes before were gone. She looked back to Astrid. “He nearly took your life. By all rights, you have the most important say in this discussion. Do you want him dead?”

“I’m not dead.” The words left Astrid’s mouth quickly - almost too quickly for Mary to finish her thought. Between the pun about the hole in her shoulder, her quickness to assume the position of human furniture at Mary’s need for a literal shoulder to lean on, and the feeling of several sets of soft-but-expectant eyes on her, O’Malley wanted to fold. She wanted to tell the others to put Bruce down like the rabid dog he acted like, and to let things go back to normal. –But if her father had taught her anything, it was that playing God only worked for so long, and for certain cons; a lesson he was yet to learn himself.

With downcast - almost sheepish - eyes she glanced around the other tables of the pub as her good hand snaked into her waistcoat and procured a wad of banknotes, and then another, and then another. It wasn’t everything, but a big chunk of the money she’d been sitting on since she began her shipping business.

“But he’s a liability,” It was the same voice she used while making a business deal, but ever softer. It pained her to lock eyes with Mary, and then Helena, but she swallowed and pushed further. “There’s no point in risking my personal safety to work with an associate who can’t finish the god-forsaken deal. I can’t stick around to watch him mow another one of yous down either, so it’s me, or it’s him.” Voice firm, but likely quieter than most of them had ever heard, she paused a moment before jerking her chin to the pile of cash on the table.

“This should be more than enough to cover my exit.”

Mary found herself somewhat stunned, though truthfully she shouldn’t have been, at Astrid’s ultimatum. It wasn’t an unreasonable request, all things considered. Astrid knew of the almost pet-like relationship that Mary and her sister had with Bruce; he was a mostly loyal beast that, when under control, was an invaluable asset to the group.

Though it seems the beast was a rabid one. One would naturally think to put such a creature down, but the barbarity of that was passé in this century. Electric lights have become commonplace in the world! Civilization advanced beyond such savagery. There’s no need to choose between a reliable ally and a reliable lapdog; the mutt just needs to be trained.

“I wholeheartedly agree, love,” Mary responded, “Brucie is a liability, and one that cannot be left unchecked in his current state.” Mary glared at Astrid, but forced a fake grin in a poor effort at softening her intensity. “Instead of covering your exit, it would be the highest honor if you helped cover all of us. Help us teach ol’ Brucie the innumerable and near unforgivable errors of his ways.” Mary stopped smiling. “What do you say?”

Astrid's eyebrows narrowed for a beat - a flicker of apprehension that betrayed her stony expression. In a quick, almost nervous, motion she took a swig of her hot coffee like it was pint. The black liquid burned all the way down and grounded her back to that moment.

"You fancy a way to... Have your cake and eat it too," she asked with another swallow to clear the heat from her throat. "And I imagine you want to call it tea?" This time she weighed her words very carefully, offering them up to be as neutral as possible as her eyes broke back and forth between the sisters. "You'd serve what I cook up?"

“Love, I am deeply fond of home cooking,” Mary retorted, winking at the seated woman. “After our little excursion tonight,” Mary continued, glancing over to the rest of the crew, “let us all join Brucie for his much needed meal.” With that out of the way, Mary resumed her normally assumed polite expression and smiled.

“Now that we’ve worked out what to do with dear Brucie, it would beget you all continued fruition in this world to not inform him of anything beyond what I do.” Despite the effort she was exerting to maintain a performative grin at that lot, she figured she couldn’t risk any confusion. “Let there be no misunderstandings. Unless you wish to join the ranks of lost souls joining Charon for a ride down the Styx,” she looked to Conor, “keep,” then from Ella to Benjamin, “your mouths,” and finally Bennet, “shut.” She smiled but her eyes were still a glare. “Are we clear?”

Conor flinched at Mary's pointed stare, the back of his skull knocking against the wall as he did. He'd grown somewhat accustomed to sharp words from Helena, but he'd always figured her sister was the gentler one. It was a dangerous assumption to make of someone with a piercing intellect and willingness to get her hands dirty. The plan she was insinuating was proof of that.

He glanced around the room casually, half-expecting one of the others to object. Ella'd be the first, he'd wager — the idea of punishing one of their own would probably be abhorrent to her. Benny might agree, but that was a harder guess. And Conor himself wasn't keen on brutalizing anyone, if that was the idea. But it was hard to look Astrid in the eye and not feel at least a bit rustled at what she'd had to go through because of Bruce's recklessness.

"Crystal clear, boss," Conor responded, his voice barely above a mumble. "The ledger's gotta be balanced, after all. It's only fair Astrid gets her pound of beef."

Eleanor dropped her gaze to her lap at Mary's words. She couldn't help but be reminded of her mother on the occasion she would get upset at her and Henry. Though Mary was the sweeter of the two, she'd be lying if she told anyone she wasn't as equally nervous around Mary at times as she was Helena.

The punishment made sense of course. Astrid could've died at the cost of Bruce's actions. She understood that as clear as anyone in the room. But still...

She looked up, briefly meeting eyes with Conor. Any other day she would've smiled at him. This time however, all she could manage was a frown. Even if Ella wanted too, she feared she wouldn't be allowed to hide her emotions for once. With that thought in mind she redirected her gaze back down.

"...yes ma'am." She reached out a hand, pinching her fingers on Benny's sleeve. It had been something Henry did often when they got in trouble. Ella wasn't sure when she adopted this habit, but now wasn't the time to dwell on such things.

"It's only fair..." She repeated Conor's words softly.

For the first time in a long, long time, Benny wasn’t sure what to say. He sat silently, along with Ella and Conor on their little bench, as Mary’s piercing gaze bounced off each of them before falling decidedly on the Irishman. Despite the droning voices of the patrons around them, time seemed to sit uncomfortably still. It wasn’t until he felt Ella’s nervous touch that his eyes broke from their suddenly bloodthirsty leader, falling curiously on the girl.

She, of course, had gone pale as a ghost. Her expression was bordered between fear and sadness. Benny glanced to his left to gauge Conor’s reaction, but his was decidedly much harder to read. Whatever they were really feeling, their concerns never surfaced. Finally, the young thief cleared his throat, not quite meeting Mary’s eye level.

“Well who am I to stand in the way?” He gave a shrug, plastering his signature smirk across his face as if the whole thing wasn’t nearly as disturbing as he actually thought. He didn’t- couldn’t- imagine Bruce of all people going through this. The man was tough, but Benny wasn’t ignorant to how sensitive he was when it came to the twins. He felt as if this whole scheme was a purposeful betrayal- What Bruce did was an accident, something done in Mary’s name. This was being planned behind his back. If Astrid had died it would’ve made more sense, but Benny didn’t share in the girl’s desperate vengeance. He was having a hard time really caring about it at all.

Still, if the others were going along with it he supposed he should too.

“So… is Alfie gettin’ part of the pay as well after this or shall I let ‘em down gently?”

Benjamin huffs at the end of Mary's spiel about keeping quiet, as if he of all people would blab about anything. Arms crossed over his chest, the fabric of his sleeves straining around his forearms, he nods and then tilts his gaze towards Conor.

"Its flesh, Conor. Pound of flesh." He says quietly.

“Good,” Mary responded, satisfied that the message had gotten across. She turned her smile to her sister, who, to that point, had sat and listened to the whole ordeal. “Before I get into the details, is there anything else you’d like to add, dear?”

Helena shook her head and stayed quiet, which Mary somewhat expected. They had blazed through so much and were already on a time crunch; the brute could arrive at any second.
“Glad that that’s all sorted,” Mary said, her leg already aching far more than she had anticipated. It was normal for things like these to get away from her, but tonight was of a different caliber. She had intended for all well-behaved members of the gang to share a drink and decompress after making their plans for the evening, but it appeared the oaf’s timely arrival was predestined to not give them a break. She turned in the direction of the pub’s doors as the Scott dragged himself in. “Hello Brucie, please take a seat. It appears it’s already time to move right into discussion of tonight’s goals.”

Once Bruce awkwardly joined the rest, Mary finally began her long awaited spiel. “Tonight, we’re selling the goods we graciously came into possession of a few weeks ago. Lena and I will lead the deal, of course.” Mary looked to Conor. “Love, you’ll stand next to me and give me a hand if needed, considering the sorry state of my leg.” Mary forced a laugh. “See that you also walk next to me on the way there. We can’t risk an accident with so much contraband on our persons!”

“Bruce and Benjamin,” she continued as her focus shifted to the taller men, “You two will stand behind the three of us up front and look threatening.” She gestured with her hands, as if to imply that she was more threatening, but it didn’t seem to land. “Benny, you’ll stand at the rear and Ella and Astrid will stand off to opposite sides of us up front.” Mary smiled at the women before adding, “Hands on holsters, ladies, but don’t show the guns unless something turns violent, deal?”

Mary moved to lead the gang out of the pub, but turned around one more time. “Oh, but Brucie, we all decided to come back here afterward. There’s a, erm, mandatory dinner party of sorts.”

 

[Solar Daddy]

Bruce didn't spend his time wisely. Since the heist, he maybe should've procured some means of sustaining himself until the heat died down. Find something discreet to keep himself alive. Bruce wasn't one to keep fortunes stashed away, though he did have a small sum tucked in his ever-secret shack. Enough for a few drinks, meals, ammunition; whatever he may need it for. Everything else, he usually spent at the time of receiving it. Lavish living for a few days, then back to scrounging for morsels until the next payoff. He hadn't received his payment for the botched heist yet, and he honestly doubted if it'd ever come into his hands in the future; he deserved to have his payment rescinded. In the meantime, Bruce survived by doing what he did best. Stalking the dark streets of London, like a lion in the grass. Waiting for some lone victim to find themselves exposed, in the open, with no help in sight. Reports rang out every few nights of men and women bedridden after a run-in with a vague brute, stealing whatever they possessed. He'd leave them in a sorry state of viscera, with all his victims missing at least a few teeth, compounded by broken noses or cracked skulls. Of course, Bruce wasn't out to become a boogeyman. He didn't set out with rage in his heart; he was simply stealing what he needed to survive until the big payout came. He made sure to spread his assaults across London as much as possible, to keep the Peelers from figuring out where he worked out of.

He got word of the meeting and prepared for it as he would any other outing. He'd wake up off the floor of the shack, stretch, admire the gleam of his sword for a few moments, then peruse London in the hopes of finding the perfect cash cow to strangle. Fortunately for the Londoners, Bruce didn't come across anyone worth the hassle of harassing. Instead he eventually gave up and admired the view of the Thames from his usual spot, enjoying the maze of ships as they avoided one another in the water. It wasn't until 7 that he removed himself from this theater and made his way towards the tavern. It was a crisp walk across town, but he had guessed his timing correctly; Bruce arrived practically on the dot, exactly 7:20 as instructed. He breathed in once before opening the doors and stepping in.

The air seemed to be sucked out of the room as he entered. Candles almost dimmed, tones got hushed. Bruce was accustomed to such entrances, as he often tried playing into them as part of his act, but this was different. His eyes landed on the party, their usual spot occupied, but no one gleamed back to him as usual. Not even the bright, cheerful Benny or the sweet, colorful Ella. Something was off, but Bruce didn't know what. Then his eyes drifted to Astrid. His heart panged, one of the Strange Emotions coming to the surface for but a moment. His gaze quickly lifted from her, unable to meet her eyes for very long. He let the doors shut behind him and slowly approached, not daring to say a word. It was clear the hostile air surrounding his recent events went unchecked still. There would be no friendly catch-ups like usual. Bruce sat down wherever space allowed, not chiming in a word till Mary spoke directly to him about a banquet they'd all join in on.

"Aye. Dinner sounds good. Could use a good meal after the last month of gruel." His tone was almost hopeful. Maybe things had lifted better than he expected? Would they actually forgive him for what he'd done? Bruce wouldn't dare let such kindness happen without putting in double his effort. He wanted to show he'd make good on their faith in him. A meal meant trust, and it was a trust he would not break again on his life.

 

[Hard Boiled]

Helena had completely zoned out following her outburst towards Benny, not the slightest care given towards his rebuttal. Something about the French, something about arithmetic, whatever that is. Mary accepted his gifts graciously, surprising absolutely nobody. Her apparent apathy extended to Benjamin, whom she didn't address at all.
Thirty-six bottles on the shelf. She counted behind the bar, intermittent conversation turning to white noise.

Not until her ears caught a familiar soft rasp amongst the otherwise oafish ambiance of the pub did Helena rouse again, tapping Mary on the thigh to gain her attention. Helena cracked her second smile of the week at the sight of her friend, albeit a near imperceptible one, though the uncharacteristically unkempt state of Astrid's appearance quickly hurried it away. She wouldn't ask so long as she wasn't prompted, such are the unspoken rules they'd never acknowledged.

Before she could even muster a greeting, Mary awkwardly pushed her way around Helena and out of the booth, insisting Astrid take her place. Helena scooted outward, refusing to sit next to Benny again.

“Now loves, I have most splendid news for you all, but first, there is some important clarifying that must be done for all our sakes.” Her eyes looked over the group but narrowed in on their final arrival.

Helena leaned back and let the good cop do the speaking, under the implication she was speaking for the both of them; everything had been rehearsed prior to the meeting. Though her tone had changed, Helena wished that just once, she'd talk like a normal person. Even when deciding the fate of an ally, she had to make a spectacle. Stop the theatre. Cut to the bloody chase.

“He nearly took your life. By all rights, you have the most important say in this discussion. Do you want him dead?”

Unlike the other five, Helena's eyes wandered anywhere but Astrid's during her decision, her poker face rivaled by none. As if she hadn't a care in the world, like she wouldn't be participating in whatever choice Astrid made, she continued distracting herself.
Fifteen panes on each window.

With downcast - almost sheepish - eyes she glanced around the other tables of the pub as her good hand snaked into her waistcoat and procured a wad of banknotes, and then another, and then another.

Plap.
Zoning back in, Helena locked onto the sound of cash like a shark smelling blood. She immediately swept the folds of banknotes into her coat, looking around to make sure none of the bystanders just saw Astrid whip out more dough than they'd ever seen in their miserable lives.
"Are you mad?!" She scolded in a hush, shaking her head and allowing her to continue.

“There’s no point in risking my personal safety to work with an associate who can’t finish the god-forsaken deal. I can’t stick around to watch him mow another one of yous down either, so it’s me, or it’s him.”

Helena squinted at the beginning of Astrid's conclusion, her eyes then widening with a scoff. First of all, there's no way Astrid could possibly think they would choose Bruce over her given the circumstances. Second, what happened to tying him up into a knot and tossing him into the Thames? She preferred that over whatever the Hell this was.

On second thought, perhaps she didn't prefer it, but they sure as shit weren't doing a trade deal. It was time for some executive action.

"Mary." She sternly snapped her sister out of her trance, gesturing in a 'what the fuck' fashion towards Astrid.

“What do you say?”

The conversation between the twins prior to the meeting regarding Bruce's fate was a short one. Dead or alive, he does not leave unscathed - for his victims. Gross negligence must be met with swift discipline of the utmost order. Finally, that cocksure grin left Mary's face, nearly bringing a third smile to her own. If anything could get Mary to take something seriously, it was the concept of fratricide.

This time she weighed her words very carefully, offering them up to be as neutral as possible as her eyes broke back and forth between the sisters. "You'd serve what I cook up?"

“Love, I am deeply fond of home cooking,” Mary retorted, winking at the seated woman. “After our little excursion tonight,” Mary continued, glancing over to the rest of the crew, “let us all join Brucie for his much needed meal.” With that out of the way, Mary resumed her normally assumed polite expression and smiled.

The only thing worse than one person speaking in riddles was two.
"Aye, and after we eat, we'll fuckin' let 'im have it." Helena added, completely seriously.

She gauged each member's reaction for the next ten seconds, centering in on Benny as she often found herself doing recently.

“Well who am I to stand in the way?”

"You're not standing anywhere, you're helping." She told him in no uncertain terms. This wasn't the dunce table they were taking him to.

"And take your bloody money back." She shoved the bill folds back to Astrid unceremoniously.

“Good,” Mary responded, satisfied that the message had gotten across. She turned her smile to her sister, who, to that point, had sat and listened to the whole ordeal. “Before I get into the details, is there anything else you’d like to add, dear?”

Helena shook her head and stayed quiet, which Mary somewhat expected.

He breathed in once before opening the doors and stepping in.

The air seemed to be sucked out of the room as he entered.

Helena reflexively shifted in her seat at the sight of their guest of honor, crossing her arms. Should he decide to play rough, or kill seven birds with one stone, she sat equipped with her brand-spanking-new revolver courtesy of the London Metropolitan Police just beneath her coat.

"Aye. Dinner sounds good. Could use a good meal after the last month of gruel." His tone was almost hopeful.

"That's right." She nodded in approval, deciding to slice through the tension of Bruce's first words.

When Helena looked up at him, she saw the exact same face she'd seen calling her through the bars of Newgate prison. He carried the same strange sense of false accusation, as if he truly believed he'd made a little slip-up. That same remorseful tone that had persuaded them to bust him out. For a brief moment, Helena actually felt bad for him.

She slid him a hand-rolled cigarette across the table in a wave of pity, sighing out of her nose and continuing with the briefing.

"Our contact is an old friend. You don't need to know his name, you just need to know he's as reptilian as they come." She picked up where Mary left off.
"He'll probably have more men than us. If all goes well, we won't see them. No fucking fighting, hear? Two minute exchange, back in time for supper."

The most awkward silence Helena had ever participated in followed her last sentence. Only then did she understand the metaphor, blinking a few times before recovering.
"Questions?"

 

[spottednewt]

Astrid O’Malley sat sipping at her mug as she watched the events unfold around her - wishing that her coffee would retain the same heat so the liquid could melt away the anger in her chest; or distract her from it, at the very least. The young woman was still grappling with what the fuck was going on as Helena accepted her money, only to shove the pile of it back at her; followed by the change in her friend’s face as Astrid carried on with Mary in her flamboyant riddles. If the circumstance was different, she may have noted a bit of amusement in the venture to speak one twin’s language, and then slip into the other’s quite so effortlessly. If the circumstance had been different, she may not have been raking her eyes over Connor, Ella, and then Bennet in thinly masked contempt as they grew squeamish. The only difference between hurting people by stealing their precious family heirlooms along with their sense of security, and merely inflicting pain upon them outright was that one was more honest - especially when the victim deserved it.

This is what they did. They hurt people.

Astrid weighed the words on her tongue as her eyes settled on Benny - who at least had the decency to feign apathy towards the subject. She considered interjecting that not one of them was above what was yet to unfold, no matter how much they might like to think so; when the cold outside air from an open door hit her. O’Malley merely brought her eyes back down to the mug in her hand - grateful that she had something to fixate on as the man came to sit with them like any other day - more grateful that Mary merely continued on with words that swam in Astrid’s ears without meaning. Suddenly more aware of the burning of her scar and the tight lack of mobility in her left arm. Flinching when the rumble of Bruce’s voice hit her ears - an involuntary action that did nothing more than feed the fire behind her eyes - more words that she couldn’t quite decipher in the moment. In that moment, she felt like nothing more than a ghost, tethered to the Earth by her own seething rage.

Eyes drifting upwards just in time to witness the passing of a cigarette from Helena to Bruce, O’Malley tasted bile. It was a quiet, subtle little gesture that almost felt apologetic on Helena’s part - perhaps prompted by a pang of guilt at the clear and unadulterated ignorance in the man’s face - but it felt like betrayal.

“Questions?”

Something about the ice in her veins calmed her and Astrid stood with a strange look on her face. A small, tranquil smile juxtaposed by a crazed look in her eyes. She locked on Helena for a long and painfully-dragged-out moment as she slowly poured her coffee over the Scottish brute’s head with an extra, deliberately messy splash over the cigarette clutched gingerly in his fingers. When the cup was empty and she found herself satisfied with the damage, she carefully balanced the now empty mug upside-down on the top of the man’s head. As the final act in her show of rebellion, Astrid leaned forward from behind where Bruce sat to give him a soft, equally drawn-out kiss on the cheek before turning on her heel and heading towards the door.

“I’ll be outside when the lot of ya’ are ready to make moves.”

 

[Solar Daddy]

Bruce understood the assignment and would play his part faithfully. Now was his time to prove he understood the fact Bruce crossed a line; even if he wasn't able to say that out loud. Bruce stretched a bit before noticing Helena passing him one of her handmade cigarettes. Bruce's heart melted just a bit; he'd bummed smokes off her for as long as they'd known each other. He had no care nor patience for something so monotonous, and she had been willing to lend him an occasional 'rette. Seeing her do the gesture Helena had performed plenty of times before allowed him to untense his shoulders a bit more. He happily accepted the cigarette, preparing to put the item to his lips before abruptly feeling the hot liquid pouring over his head. Bruce's shoulders spiked up and his neck retracted into his torso a bit from his adversity to the sudden act. It only took a moment for him to come to the conclusion that Astrid had found some offense in something he or Helena had said, and was clearly going to put up with it however she felt was necessary. He contemplated standing and stopping her, but after a moment it felt pointless. She had earned this, after all. A small hinderance for what he'd done to her. He wished it wasn't the slightest bit too hot still, though. His poor cigarette wouldn't survive the assault unfortunately, the worst aspect of Astrid's attack.

Then she kissed his cheek, long and unwavering. The fuck? Was she insane? Am I insane? Bruce scowled and stared straight ahead at Helena, coffee still running down his face and dripping from the ends of his hair. Bruce's cheeks flushed red. The fuck was she thinking with that? Once she left, Bruce exhaled sharply and prayed the heat in his cheeks left quickly. "Well... She seems to be coping well."

 

[queendilettante]

As the final act in her show of rebellion, Astrid leaned forward from behind where Bruce sat to give him a soft, equally drawn-out kiss on the cheek before turning on her heel and heading towards the door.

“That wasn’t a question.” stated Helena.

Mary spun around to see Astrid dump coffee on Brucie mere moments after he had accepted a cigarette from Helena. Mary understood the frustration, but it wasn’t as if Astrid had no outlet to deal with her revulsion toward the man. They had literally just finished their discussion of her vengeance and she nearly blew it over a cigarette? Mary bit her lip to mask her quickly swelling anger, but couldn’t help herself from yelling at the lot. “I’m sorry,” she shouted, looking between the quickly leaving Astrid and the rest of the gang, “I wasn’t aware I had dismissed you all for free time! Are we working or are you going to fuck off to the playground with the other children?”

“Mary…” Helena pleaded, tilting her head slightly. Give her a break - if Helena was in her position, it’d be blood on his shoulders, not coffee. They met eyes, wordlessly coming to the same conclusion before continuing.

Mary cleared her throat and plastered one of the fakest smiles she’d ever attempted on her beet red face. “Shall we go? Conor love, come walk with me. I’ll help you gather your things. Benjamin, Ella, and Bennet, you grab the rest of what we’re selling and meet us out front no later than 10 PM. Brucie, go wipe yourself off and hold down the fort until then.” Mary paused and took a deep breath as Astrid walked out of the building. “Lena, dear, would you mind watching over Astrid until our next meeting time? It appears she needs a supervisor for the evening.”

“Aye.”

“Wonderful,” Mary smiled. “Conor love, hurry it up!” She hit her cane to the floor a few times in a dramatic display of her impatience. “We haven’t all evening now, dear.”

“Sorry, mate.” Helena addressed Bruce as she stood, patting his shoulder once as she passed by. “Only rolled one.”

Bruce gave a signature grunt, waving his hand dismissively.
“Lassie’s earned it.”

Helena took one last glance at her sister before hurrying to the door, peeking out to make sure that damn dog wasn’t waiting for her around the corner. Satisfied, she awkwardly speed walked to catch Astrid.

“Oi!” She called, closing the gap between them. “Trying to get us all shot this time, are you?”

 

[spottednewt]

“You.” Astrid spun around to face the woman; clearly not having cooled off in the time it took Helena to come after her. Instead, she had only seethed in Mary’s words and her lack of closure at firing off her own back at the other woman. Astrid had become close with the sisters, but not so close that she would forget her place while on the clock. Here, outside among the dirty streets and meandering strangers, felt more private than the inside of their local haunt could ever. With a quick glance over the other woman’s shoulder to see if anyone had followed, she tempered the volume of her anger into a hushed flurry.
“You wouldn’t have given him pause to garner the singular thought to make a move on any of us. I watched your traitorous little fingers, curled around your iron even as you handed him your little olive branch.” Astrid bit back another flare of rage at herself, identifying the unfounded sense of possessiveness that laced her words for the other woman - the only one of them to meet her anywhere near her childhood home, and the only business associate outside of Mary that she met with regularly.

“...You what?” Helena muttered during Astrid’s barrage, raising her hands innocently. She briefly wondered if this was how Bruce felt.

“Aye, you’re the boss and I will do as you and your noxious kin say,” Astrid paused as she jerked her chin back towards the door, and thus, towards Mary; a flicker of a cringe playing at her clenched jaws at the ease in which she insulted the other woman out of her earshot.

“But you will afford me the respect to not bar your contempt for that mangy dog until I get my say,” She added with a colder air, her clumsy left arm gripping tighter at the suspender it clung to. “And if you don’t like that we can just ‘ave it out right here in the street —because -because fuck you if you think I’m going to roll over and let you’s get on with it without me and fuck you if you think I’m dragging my sorry arse all the way back down to this rodent-infested dump to drink alone.”

Helena’s hands had lowered by the time Astrid finished speaking, clasping behind her back instead as she waited for her to run out of steam. She’d tried the friendly approach, now for the effective approach.
“Right, yeah. I’m gonna chalk it up to nerve damage and a shitty night that you think you can walk out of that pub like you own it, but you’re having a laugh if you think you’re talking about Mary like that.” She pointed an accusational finger in Astrid’s face.
The two stood in an endless five-second silence, both stiffening, poised to strike should the other make a move.

“...Apologize.” She ordered through gritted teeth, her tone almost imperceptibly conveying genuine offense through her stoic exterior.

A challenge crossed Astrid's face before she filed it away carefully, letting her own silence carry on a few extra moments as she weighed her next words on her tongue. It was an act that may have denoted self-control, if it wasn't for the wheels that were still turning behind her eyes.

“Is that what you want?” A new expression crossed Astrid’s face, something Helena may have only seen once or twice before in the wee hours of the morning, before Astrid slinked away to a more personal afterparty - either at an inn or the home of a stranger - anywhere but her family dwelling or the deafening silence of her own flat. “A little bit of groveling; to strike your fancy?” The woman pushed further, an easier air about her tone than moments prior. The young smuggler couldn’t explain her actions, even to herself, but she was fishing for a fight. –No matter how badly her arms itched to swing, she couldn’t bring herself to send them hurling at the other woman’s face. Maybe someone else, but not Helena. Not the Helena that she ran her errands with and killed entire days in the seediest establishments, talking nonsense and breaking bread with.

“I’d’a reckoned you prefer the other side of this; but I’m a lady of my word. You want me on my knees? –tell ya’ I’ve been a bad girl?” Her voice quickly slipped into something smaller; more indignant as the young woman made a spectacle of dropping to her knees, her bottom lip held tightly between her teeth. Though, halfway through the motion, she found herself instead on her behind. Helena had used the opportunity to knee her directly in the diaphragm on her way down, her jaw clenching tightly onto her lip in the process. The air violently vacuumed out of Astrid’s lungs, she could do nothing but choke on her words for a short moment.

“That’s it, careful, now.” Helena took Astrid’s shoulder, guiding her down onto the concrete to catch her breath with the most patronizing tone she could muster. Quite a sorry sight, she was: face red both from embarrassment and respiratory distress, blood cascading down her chin from two distinct tooth marks. Helena had been in the same position more times than either of them could count.
“Feel better yet?”

Astrid nodded, drawing in a deep breath rasped with flecks of her own blood, threatening to suffocate her from the inside. Dazed, and watching as the world around her swirled in front of her eyes. A cough erupted from the very bottom of her lungs and tore out through her throat, causing the woman to double away from Helena, spitting blood into the street between fits that made her muscles convulse and her chest scream with every little increment of movement. Blinking away the black spots that swam through her vision, she steadied herself for just a moment. After another breath and in a heave that sounded like a boat horn reverberating through the fog, Astrid leaned farther away, opposite of Helena to vomit black coffee and bile into the street. Calming to allow her body to purge itself, she lingered in the position for a moment longer, evening out shaky breaths.

“Oh, my-” Helena turned away, lazily shielding her eyes with one hand.
“Sorry.” She flinched at a particularly grotesque retch, peeking back once the sounds had ceased.

“Not yet,” Astrid croaked with a drawback of her right fist, ignoring the hot pain in her left shoulder as she anchored her other hand to the cobblestone sidewalk and threw her weight behind a right hook that connected with Helena’s jaw with a crack. Quickly, she used the pause that followed to stumble away from the other and right herself against a parked carriage nearby. The change in elevation made her head light and her stomach churn painfully. Waiting for her eyes to come back into focus, she feigned a more collected demeanor; unbuttoning and rolling up each of her dirt-and-blood-splattered sleeves in a messy fashion.

Were it not for the loving embrace of the brick wall next to her, the momentum of the sucker punch would’ve carried Helena right into the alley dirt. She caught her full body weight against the poorly laid rocks, earning another collection of bruises along her side, but still standing.
“Arh!” Helena verbalized through an open mouth, finding it quite difficult to close her jaw. Given the placement of the punch, she didn’t get knocked directly on her back, but that didn’t help the searing pain in the slightest. Her cheek had clearly been torn by her upper teeth, but another strange sensation filled her mouth - some foreign object rolling around. She propped herself up with both arms against the alley wall, allowing the small red lump to fall out with the rest of the blood, not paying it any mind in her adrenaline-fueled state.

“Hhuck!” She attempted to swear, unclipping her gunbelt and placing it atop a nearby crate, treating her weapon with the same respect she would any other moment. The two of them now even on cheap shots, they finally squared up for a proper fight.

The next five minutes felt like they dragged on for hours as the two women swung and dodged, kicked and missed - only a handful of nasty hooks hitting their target. They were an even match. So even that the frustration of it all made them pitch their fists even harder and tire themselves out even quicker. Near the end of it, they were more shuffling in circles around each other than anything else. The two locked arms in an attempt to throw the other to the ground, almost hugging in their grapple.
“Come on…” Helena taunted through syrupy gobs of blood. “You hit like a girl.”
They shared a breathless laugh, huffing over each other’s shoulders.

“We smell absolutely horrid,” The realization only made Astrid laugh harder, causing the pain in her chest to threaten to suck the air from her lungs once more.

Helena finally let her guard down, not caring if Astrid had done the same. She was done for today. If Astrid wanted to beat up her only friend some more, fine. She let go, sitting against the cobble wall with a groan from the bottom of her belly.
She dragged her palm through the stained dirt, finding her recently extracted tooth in the pool of various bodily fluids.
“Fuck me…” She held it up into the sun, able to form words now that her jaw muscles had stopped spasming.
“How bad is it?” She grinned wide, revealing the same old charming set of (currently red) teeth, sans one incisor. Her tenth tooth had been knocked clean out, but none of the others were visibly damaged as far as Astrid could tell.

Grinning, Astrid wicked the back of her hand across her face to catch a drip of blood streaming out of her nose as she stumbled back against a parked carriage.

“You look like Queen Victoria’s skeevy cousin –The one they don’t let out of the dog kennel, ‘cept for Halloween.” O’Malley’s chuckle at her own joke came out more as a rasped huff and she did her best to curb her amusement; a glint in her eye that died slowly as the gravity of the situation came back to her. The fact of the matter was that she needed that - she needed the bruises and blood like she needed air - after weeks of suffocating in her own anger. The only time her mind had been quiet since the hazy mix of shock and blood loss threatened her consciousness two weeks prior, was as she lobbed fists at one of the only people in her life to care whether she lived or died that night. –One of the only people to ever soften their voice as when hers grew harsher. The cigarette didn’t even matter by the time she threw her first punch - but the gesture only hurt because she loved Helena more than she did her own family; a fleeting thought that she would’ve shredded and lit on fire if she could capture it in her hands. It was sick, and the fact that Helena was willing to oblige made her stomach churn and her mouth go dry.

“I– I reckon we’ve still got work to do, hm?” The woman’s voice was a quiet interruption of their silence as she pawed at the blood from her nose once more before sniffing and spitting into the street. It wasn’t an apology, but who would expect Astrid to be that big?

“Mmh…” Helena groaned, pressing her hand against her leaking jaw and coming to the same silent conclusion as Astrid. “We’ll stop by Dr. Blackburn’s office first, just- *oof*.” She fell onto her butt upon her first attempt to stand. “Just give me a second.”
Indeed, Helena had partially thrown the first punch to relieve Astrid’s pent up rage, but it wasn’t entirely a selfless act. No, they both needed someone to project onto for the moment, and who better than your best friend? A tooth was a small price to pay for a clear mind, so long as she only needed to clear her mind thirty-one more times. Using the alley for leverage, she finally stood, brushing herself off.

As if they hadn’t broken stride for a second, the two continued up the street looking like they’d been through a trash compactor. Another ten minutes into their silent trek, they found themselves on a familiarly gloomy doorstep. Helena placed three knocks on the door, stepping back with crossed arms.

“The coffee thing was funny.” She noted whilst they waited. “Probably the first bath he’s had in months.”

“Heh,” Astrid offered a small nod in response, eyeing the door breathlessly as they awaited an answer. The post-brawl clarity tasted bitter; if she wasn’t physically spent, and had they not been standing at the door she barely recognized, to the building she almost died in, she may’ve felt another pang of anger in a blurred reaction to her guilt.

It was long past her customary closing time, and Dr. Blackburn had in fact already tidied and locked up for the night, but still she sat behind her desk, toying with her bracelet, waiting for God knows what. It was her third night in a row like this, and Shelley wasn’t even sure herself what she was expecting to happen.
At the sound of the knock at the door, she shot up in her seat. Suddenly embarrassed, she hesitated. Suppose it was not who she was hoping for on the other side of the door – how would she explain herself? Frantically, she shuffled through her drawers and scattered some papers on her desk – in the hopes of looking like she might have been busy – before rushing to answer the door.
The doctor’s heart leapt to find Astrid and Helena standing on her doorstep, looking worse for wear and splattered with blood. She swallowed to reset her face, hoping her excitement had not been too evident in her expression.
“My god, the two of you!” Shelley stepped aside to let them enter. “What’s happened this time?”

“Ah, you should see the other guy.” Helena dismissed, expectedly slipping past the doctor and into the office. Without a second thought, she tossed her tooth onto the paper-laden desk, boosting herself up onto the single examination table.
Shelley sighed at the sight of what could only be a dislodged tooth clattering onto her desk. I suppose I brought that on myself. She could only hope the documents she’d pulled out weren’t important.


"Nice ta' see ya' again, doc," Astrid offered with a bloody grin, eyeing the woman up and down as she made her way past Blackburn. Without invitation, the young woman busied herself with the contents of the closest bookshelf, picking up and casting away any cover to strike her interest.

“Is there something about my office that invites the total disregard of personal boundaries?”

Between Benny and now this one, Shelley had never had so many prying fingers where they did not belong. She went to snatch the books from Astrid’s hands, but quickly stopped herself. The helpless woman she had once lifted off the floor had clearly recovered in spades, and the doctor got the sense that she was not someone to be fooled with.


Whilst Astrid made her greetings, Helena turned her back to a nearby mirror and pulled up the back of her blouse, looking over her shoulder to examine the bloody bruises from the bricks. Eh, she’d been hit harder in worse places. Still, that pearly white would definitely be giving her some social trouble at least.
“Wonder if the grannies’ll still smile back on the street.” She joked, grinning wide for Dr. Blackburn to inspect her mouth.

Shelley stepped closer to get a better view of Helena’s empty socket. There was quite a lot of blood, but from what the doctor could tell, the tooth had come out relatively clean.

“I’m not sure I know anything about grannies, or dentistry for that matter,” Shelley went to retrieve some gauze, talking over her shoulder, “but it looks to me like you’ll be just fine.”

Shelley cut a small piece of gauze and handed it to Helena. “Here, press that into the wound to stop the bleeding.” She bit her tongue, resisting the strong urge to ask again about what happened. Her curiosity was welling up inside her, threatening to burst out at any moment.


In the brief silence that followed, Helena decided to point out the massive elephant that apparently only she could see.
“You really don’t remember me at all.” She stated without context.

Shelley sputtered, trying and failing to read the meaning in Helena’s cryptic expression. “Pardon? I remember the night you barged in and waved your gun around, if that’s what you mean. No need to worry about that dear, all has been forgiven.”

“No, mate.” Helena shook her head, dry blood chipping off of her lips with each word. She held her left palm directly in the doctor’s face, stub forward.
“Five years ago? You pinched off my bloody finger?” Surely she can’t amputate that many digits to not remember.
“Middle of June, broad daylight-”

Without thinking, Shelley took hold of Helena’s hand to examine her stub more closely. It had scarred something horrible, seemingly the result of timid work done with shaky hands.
“Five years ago, you say?” Shelley released her hand. “Could that really have been you? My, how different you seem now!”

The girl Shelley remembered had been pale and afraid, nothing like the stern and confident woman who had once threatened her life.

Helena rolled her eyes in response, lightly swinging her dangling feet off the side of the table. At that moment, she realized she hadn’t paid the doctor even then.
“The very same. I’d be green right now were it not for you.” She hopped down, avoiding eye contact for a moment in a wave of anxiety before regaining her confidence.
“Suppose it helps to have a forgettable face in my line of work.”

Shelley’s anticipation palpable, Helena finally got down to business. They weren’t actually there to get checked out, of course - they’d slept off a million bruises, they could handle a couple more.
“...Speaking of which, we’re, uh, going to need your services later this evening.” She led on. “Be ready for broken bones. And crushed nads.”

“--And get some more literature, will ya’?” Astrid’s request fell on deaf ears as she filed the medical textbooks back onto the woman’s shelf in one clump, eyebrows still drawn up in a high, challenging arch from Blackburn’s move to remove them from her. O’Malley had already heard the story of Helena’s missing finger; late one night over too many pints and a scar show-and-tell game that became more convoluted as they collected empty glasses. The borrowed memory never made her stomach churn until the next time they crossed paths with a dog.
“A Bronte, a Dickens…-anything but Shakespeare, the man’ll be forgotten in another month,” She added as an afterthought, making her way towards the door.

“This isn’t a library.” The doctor responded distractedly, her head whirling from the speed of information being thrown her way.

Need my services? Shelley felt like she could sing. She hadn’t considered that the twins might actually view her as useful. Clearing her throat and hopefully any hint of a smile from her face, Shelley dragged herself back to reality.

“Who’s crushed nads might you be referring to exactly?” She fussed with her skirts in an attempt to look nonchalant. “I understand you’re in a business that requires discretion, but I prefer to be in the know.”

Astrid offered nothing more to Blackburn’s question than a few small tuts and the sardonic shake of her head. In the next moment, she made for the door, holding it open ever so slightly in wait for Helena as she blew the doctor a good-bye kiss.
“I’m sure you do.” Helena put her coat back on to conceal her firearm, preparing to leave.
“Meet us at the pub on Queensway, 7 o’clock sharpish. Don’t be late.”

“Oh, and don’t eat, either. We’re having dinner.”
With that, the two swiftly exited the doctor’s office, leaving no room for further questioning. It was the same amount of information everyone else got, unofficially marking Shelley as an associate of the gang - not that she knew.

 

[guac]

The door slammed behind Helena and Astrid, leaving Shelley with questions in her throat and a festering nervousness in her heart. She bit at her nails – a habit she thought she had broken – as she stood with eyes fixed on the spot where the two had stood, mind racing. If she was ever going to escape the rut of monotony she now found herself in, this was her only chance. She wanted to be in the thick of the action, not stitching wounds on the sidelines, begging for pitiful drips of information. She had to do something to stand out, to win the twins over. Struck with a sudden idea, the doctor sprung into action.

She hurried out the back door to the ice house, reaching into her bodice for the key as she got closer. The interior of the stone structure was cold, damp, and smelled of decay. Shelley tended to avoid spending much time there, especially when the shelves were as full as they were now, but there were quite a few possessions that were better kept behind locked doors.

She walked past her cadavers, each resting on a bed of ice and wrapped in a canvas tarp, stacked in neat columns on the stone shelves built into the walls. She sometimes thought of them like lonely orphans, asleep in their bunk beds and dreaming of a new home. More often, though, she walked past them without much thought at all, as she did today. Her prize was all the way to the back of the ice house: a wooden chest where she stored her memorabilia.

Her collection started as a simple practicality. She found that many medical students preferred their cadavers to be anonymous, stripped of the clothing and jewelry that tied them to their past lives. Shelley preferred to burn the clothing, but the jewelry and other knick-knacks she encountered were a different matter. She determined that any attempt at disposing of the evidence would be too dangerous, so she simply kept it.

Over the years, her chest filled up with treasures, everything from bracelets and rings to cigarettes and flasks of spoiled wine. The living often left these little gifts for the dead to keep their spirits occupied. Shelley found the whole practice hilariously hypocritical – the widows who would dress in black and veil their faces for two years, lamenting how they missed their husbands so, would be the same ones to turn all the portraits in the house face-down and stuff the caskets full of goodies for fear of being haunted. The doctor never felt any guilt for taking these presents for herself. She figured that if spirits really did awaken in their graves after being laid to rest, it would take more than their favorite deck of playing cards to curb their boredom.

She reached again into her bodice for the key to the wooden chest. She sighed as she unlocked and opened the lid – it was times like these she wished she were more organized. The inside of the chest was something of a jumble of tangled necklaces and miscellaneous objects, but as she sifted through it all she eventually found what she was looking for.

The gold tooth was something she could not justify keeping as easily as she might a piece of jewelry or a box of cigars. Removing this object from its previous owner had been a bit more involved, Shelley would admit, but at the time she felt her client might not like to see something so identifying in a cadaver’s mouth. It’s possible, she supposed, that she had been somewhat partial to the way that the gold reflected the moonlight when the body was unearthed, and her desire to remember the experience may have influenced her decision somewhat, but that was neither her nor there.

With the tooth now in hand, Shelley locked up and headed back inside to prepare for broken bones and crushed nads, as Helena had instructed. Collecting the supplies she needed into her carpet bag, she attempted to mentally prepare herself as well, though she found it a difficult task. With nothing but Helena’s cryptic lines to inform her, there was nothing left for Dr. Blackburn to do but sit down at her desk and watch the clock, willing the hands to go faster, until it was time to leave.

 

[kaito9049]

Conor pushed himself off the wall, scrambling to catch up to Mary. Despite his earlier stoicism, he was still a bit stunned at the dark plans his boss and Astrid were plotting. But he forced their discomforting words out of his mind — he’d fix that fence when he got to it.

As Conor approached, he eyed the cane that Mary had clacked against the ground impatiently. Then he winced and grimaced to himself. He didn’t want to indicate that he even remembered Mary’s injury; Conor was certain she wouldn’t want to be pitied. Still, he walked close enough to her that she could take his arm for stability while trying to avoid seeming like he was assuming that she needed it. At least, Conor thought that was the right thing to do.

Mary appreciated Conor’s subtlety, but she had realized the moment that she struggled to stand and address the group within the pub that she was going to need to swallow her pride and use the boy’s arm; that is, if she was intending to complete the goal of this evening. Mary never liked sitting on money for this long as it was anyway, so she couldn’t afford to delay any further at the behest of her pain or the troublesome doctor. She had been informed of her bone’s slower-than-anticipated healing more than a week prior to now, but she couldn’t seem to shake her predisposition toward constantly moving forward in spite of it all. So it goes.

It was a few moments before the man realized he hadn’t specified where they were going. “The trainyard,” he blurted out, a bit too abruptly. “That’s where I stashed the, uh, well, you know.”

The next words came more softly. “I, ah, I didn’t grab a whole lot. You and the rest of the ‘guests’ had pretty much cleaned them out by the time we got there. A handful of watches and bracelets and whatnot. Just so you know.”

“Trainyard?” Mary asked, failing to disguise the surprise in her voice. She had never asked Conor the specifics of what he got up to off the clock and was now finding herself somewhat embarrassed by that fact. In truth, it made sense; almost none of the group, to Mary’s knowledge at least, were exactly inordinately wealthy at this point in time. It would only stand that they’d all have to scrounge for whatever lodging they could grasp. Brucie lived in the equivalent of a trash heap in some alley, after all. At least Conor was more refined than the brute in that respect. “Could this trainyard be why I so rarely see you skipping about the town after hours?”

Conor nodded, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. There was nothing wrong with living in a train carriage. Sure, it wasn’t fancy, but it was better than shilling out fistfuls of pounds for a flat or sharing a house floor with a half dozen other folks in the city.

It didn’t take long for the trainyard to loom into sight, even with Mary’s injury. Squinting in the evening light, Conor scanned for workers who might object to their approach. But the section seemed deserted; most of them were probably on the other side of the yard, preparing the cars for the morning routes.

“It’s good that we’re going around this time,” Conor said. “Most of the guys should be away by now, and there won’t be much any traffic at the part we’re goin’ at, so we won’t need to be sneaking about. An’ the lads that work the night shift, they’re alright. They don’t give me any trouble.”

He glanced at Mary, trying to gauge her thoughts. “Still, it might be a bit less cushy than what you’re used to. Not that I know what you’re used to. Maybe it’s not, I just —”

Conor fell silent again, feeling his cheeks burn. For some reason — maybe it was the confidence with which the Nevitts carried themselves, maybe it was Mary’s natural charisma — he’d assumed the sisters had grown up in some semblance of comfort. But he was realizing it was equally possible he was wrong. He’d known plenty of folks back home just as bright and cocky, as if they had royal blood in them and were just waiting for the Crown to pluck them out of their squalor.

“Oh?” Mary reeled back in surprise. What I’m used to? Images of the party flashed in her head; the ostentatious gold-lined pillars, the way the impoverished staff outnumbered the elites, the smoke-filled air making it near impossible to claim an unlabored breath, the angry crowd beating her against the gate, the stampede— “My, my, love,” she blurted out, already out of breath from the walk, but finding herself fighting for more air than she should have been. The very notion that someone, one of their own no less, viewed her and her sister as aristocratic class traitors, simply wallowing in the depths of London’s dilapidated trash heaps by choice was… overwhelming. “Conor, love, please, who exactly do you confuse me for?” She breathed quickly and heavily.

It wasn’t Conor’s fault that he was mistaken, though, and Mary knew that. Truth be told, she hadn’t spent nearly as much time with him over the past couple of years as she should have, but were the walls she built around herself genuinely that impregnable? Was Helena truly the only one among them to look through her taste for drama and see Mary for who she was? Had no one else recognized the fear in her voice that night? Was she too far removed from her own?

Mary recoiled from the man and winced. She feigned a spasm of her leg, but she simply could no longer bear to meet Conor’s gaze. Was her act so precise, so immaculately crafted and performed day in and day out, that she was being conflated for those filth — the very same that Mary swore on her own life to make bow their heads? She coughed, her chest tight in the all too familiar way it had been since that night. She gasped for air and swallowed hard in an effort to control herself.

Mary looked up at the man, face red from coughing and from shame. She briefly looked him in the eyes, but averted her gaze and bit her lower lip. “What am I doing?” she mumbled to herself through her pants. “I need gasp to fucking gasp get it together.” She hit herself on her chest and shook out her arms, but it wasn’t helping. She couldn’t really be confused for the very same goblins at the party, could she? Those people who keep Mary and the rest of the gang in the slums? The very same people that looked to her with such vitriol, such contempt? The people that ran her down like the dog they viewed her as? The people that nearly killed her? The people who were butchered as livestock when Brucie lost his temper? The bodies littering the garden…

Mary fell back onto the ground, clutching at her chest as she failed to calm her fast, shallow breaths. She brought her trembling hands up to her mouth, tears welling up in her eyes. “I can’t- I can’t just… I can’t…” She slapped herself in the face and forced herself to take deep breaths. “I’m sorry love,” she mumbled, dropping her theatrical accent and intonation; the voice she worked so hard at distinguishing from her sisters’. “You’ve done nothing wrong Conor. I’m sorry you’ve seen me in such a—” she bit her lip harder, blood immediately dripping into her mouth, “—pitiful state.”

Conor’s embarrassment turned to panic as Mary nearly collapsed. What was going on? Crouching by her side, his eyes darted to Mary’s wounded leg — had the pain flared up?

It wasn’t until Conor heard the way Mary’s voice changed that he realized what she was experiencing wasn’t merely physical. He tossed aside what he realized, with a hint of shame, had been his first instinct — to sprint back to the pub and try to find someone who could help. No, as unlikely as he would have thought it moments before, it was more likely she needed a kind and listening ear.

It was unfortunate, Conor thought ruefully as he squatted on the road next to Mary, that she would have to settle for him.

They were out of the way enough that they needn’t worry about being trampled by a carriage, and Conor hoped that by loitering near his boss, the pair would look like a couple of lowlifes wasting the day away, as if they had simply decided to lounge in the street. They didn’t need to attract anyone’s attention — or worse, pity.

He didn’t say anything for a few seconds, letting Mary catch her breath. It didn’t sound like she was succeeding. Her theatrics were cracking, revealing a panicked spirit underneath. And that, for some reason, unnerved Conor more than gunfire.

“Sorry about that, ma’am,” Conor said as gently as knew how. “I didn’t mean nothing by it. I’m sure you had your own hardships, I mean, what with having Helena as your sister and all.”

Almighty, he was bad at this. Whenever his mom found him in a “broody mood,” as she often said, she’d usually tell him to go for a run, to “chase the devils back to hell.” Most of the time, it felt like he was the one running away from them, but regardless it probably wasn’t wise to offer that particular suggestion to Mary.

“It’s the feeling weak, ain’t it?” he murmured, tracing lines in the dirt, not meeting her eyes. Tears were a holy thing in his mind; no one else had the right to look into the eyes of the one shedding them. “The crushing pressure in your chest, the sense that your brain is trying to break out of your skull, an’ every little noise around you sounds like something’s screaming at you. But all of that ain’t nothing compared to the feeling that every gram of energy, of safety you’ve got has been poured into the ground.”

Conor stopped drawing on the ground, keeping his head down. “Or maybe it ain’t. I shouldn’t presume to know what you’re feeling, or what you’ve been through. Whether you’re an orphan or grew up the Queen’s daughter.”

It was only after speaking that Conor looked up, not at Mary — he’d wait until he was confident she’d dried her tears for that — but at the trainyard across the way, waiting for her to answer his unspoken question.

He wondered if it would change how he thought about Mary, about any of them, if they turned out to be loaded with gold and happy childhoods. The line of thinking made him uncomfortable, so he decided to discard it.

Mary’s ragged breathing remained, but gradually began to slow. She straightened herself off as best as she could while staying seated on the ground and wiped the tears from her now-puffy face. “How trite,” she snickered, “the crying lass comforted by her male companion.” She laughed almost genuinely, though she found herself disconcerted with her real voice. Looking up, she followed Conor’s gaze across the trainyard.

“I don’t blame you,” she blurted before she could stop herself, “I wouldn’t deign to look at me either.” She forced a chuckle and threw herself back to lie on the ground to face the late-evening sky. “’How low can she stoop?’ — Is that close to what’s going on up in that head of yours, dear?” She cleared her throat and placed a hand over her still racing heart. She shook her head. “It’s no matter.”

She paused for what felt like a few minutes, but could have only been a few seconds; she couldn’t rightly tell. Mary hadn’t the experience most did of learning to speak in an ‘acceptable’ sort of way. Mary would perform and her listeners would do just that.

“Lena and I were orphaned young,” she said to the stars, “it’s always been just us.” Memories of the two of them swindling butchers and bakers for cuts and loaves far above what they could afford rushed into Mary’s head. Mary would laugh until her sides hurt whenever Lena tripped while they were running from an angry shop owner. Hell, one time they were almost caught and handed to the police because Mary couldn’t stop laughing at the way Lena tumbled over a barrel and into a horse. She smiled. It’s always been us.

“Truth be told, it weren’t always a slog though. When it’s just you and someone that looks just like you, it’d be unnatural not to work at making the best of it.” She paused. “You know, love, we met ol’ Brucie almost a decade ago now.” She sat up and looked at the man. “He was actually the first member we recruited for this gang, if you believe it.” She grinned, excited to storytell again, though for the first time in her memory, she chose not to perform it. “The ol’ bastard was in jail, which shouldn’t shock even the deaf to hear. He yelled out to Lena from inside, and she promptly told the prick to sod off.” She leaned closer to Conor. “Little did the brute know, I was already inside scoping the place out under the guise of ‘lookin’ for me poor drunk da.’” She beamed, remembering how clever her and Lena had been even as children. “When he saw me, he thought Lena had up and teleported and was nigh on ready to worship me then and there.” She cackled, but her smile quickly turned into something wistful. “And now, tonight, we’re going to hurt him—” she swallowed uncomfortably, “—for trying to protect me… from- from those…” she felt a lump in her throat and stopped, lest she lose herself to hysterics a second time that night.

Conor winced. He’d known there’d been some connection between Bruce in the siblings, and that he seemed to believe he owed them some kind of debt, but hadn’t bothered to figure out the details. Mary’s explanation helped things fall into place — the man’s zeal for their safety, and their odd patience with his outbursts. It appeared a bullet-sized hole had worn in that patience.

Still, Conor thought he understood why Mary seemed to feel so divided about the trouble they were planning for Bruce. There was a certain kinship that only shared desperation — a type of hardship that forced people to watch each other’s backs against overwhelming circumstances — could forge. It was much of what kept Conor with the gang. To not only stab at that trust but use it to drive the knife deeper, it would hurt Mary and Helena — or else prove them colder than Conor thought possible.

But he kept his musings to himself. Part of him thought to drop the whole matter. She was the boss, after all, and everyone had their own baggage. He felt drained by the few terse sentences he’d shared with Mary, as if he’d just run a marathon. The fatigue surprised him, though he knew why it’d come. Even now, he wished he was locked away in his train carriage, or walking around the block. Being forced — even by his own sense of loyalty — to sit with guilt and regret, even someone else’s, was something he was completely unaccustomed to.

Still, as he finally turned his attention from the trainyard to red-eyed face of his employer — despite her earlier tone — turned upward toward the sky, he knew he couldn’t leave. Not now.

“Benny has a dog now, did you know that?” Conor said finally. Then, realizing he was probably confusing Mary, scrambled to explain. “I mean, that lad is gonna have a whole zoo by the time the year is out. And Ella, she’ll be wantin’ to feed the thing.”

He took a slow breath, trying to steady his trembling arms. Why was he so nervous? “Bruce could’ve killed either one of ‘em. He could’ve killed me. He nearly killed Astrid. He did kill some poor souls whose names we’ll never know. That has to mean something.”

“But,” Conor added slowly. “He was also the first of us. He really loves you, you know. You and your sister both. Maybe that has to mean something, too. I dunno if it means as much, but enough for it to hurt when, well, you know.”

The man looked away again, wishing he had better words to say.

“I didn’t know that you and Helena were orphaned,” he admitted finally. It wasn’t an apology; Conor still wasn’t sure he’d said anything wrong, despite the twinge of pain he still felt in his chest at Mary’s collapse. “That’s a mighty rough hand to be dealt.”

The next few sentences came more as a breath than speech, as if Conor wasn’t sure he should be saying them. “Still, that works out just fine for me. I prefer to work for folks who know how to win with losing cards. If you don’t mind my saying, boss.”

Mary’s face softened, but briefly. “I’m quite fond of cards dear,” she responded, putting her walls up — the mask she had all but fused with her very soul — yet again. Heavily leaning on her cane, she managed to slowly stand up without assistance. She brushed off the dirt from her butt and straightened out, doing her best not to check for wandering eyes that had been drawn to her momentary lapse of reason.

“That is far enough sentimentality for one evening, dear,” she declared, though unable to meet Conor’s gaze. “It would behoove you, of course, to keep the details of this little excursion tucked away into that Irish skull of yours.” She felt as though her attempt at returning to their usual dynamic felt forced, though the thought of keeping her doors wide open for even a second longer was unacceptable.

Mary wasn’t ashamed of herself, per se, but she feared that she’d shown too much weakness to be taken seriously again. She’d have to make a bigger effort than she wanted at the punishment that evening, lest Conor think her too craven to lead. Sorry Brucie.

“Shall we continue, love?” She asked, holding out her arm for the man; treating him as her escort saved her the shame of being seen needing a man to help her stand. “I’m simply dying to see this home of yours.”

 

[Pipsqueak]

Benjamin snorts loudly when Astrid pours her cup over Bruce’s head, followed by a throaty chuckle as she follows it up with a mocking kiss. While he’d be inclined to feign offense at the rudeness in polite company, he has little reason to hide his disdain for the man in this company. He wasn’t delusional enough to pretend he wasn’t a killer, bound for one of the deepest circles of perdition, but he still liked to think there was a difference between him and mad dogs. Benjamin fancied himself a proper John Brown, chosen of the Lord above, and anyone else as wicked as him was no doubt a servant of Satan. Only one could be righteous, and it was he.

Unlike Mr. Righteous, Benny had no qualms with Bruce. Still, it took a good amount of strength to hold in his own laughter. He moved a conspicuous hand across his mouth to hide his smile, glancing at Ella to stop himself from getting hit over the head from either Bruce or the twins. When he glanced at Benjamin, however, it couldn’t be helped. A small giggle slipped through, and soon Benny was nearly in tears. When Astrid took her leave and Mary’s harsh words brought him back to a more serious matter, the redhead was quick to calm down.

“Sounds tip top ta me Mary! I take up back ta stop any no-gooders from… no- goodin’. Me, Ella, and good ole’ Benjamin can handle all that beforehand! Ready you lot?” He asked his comrades, shooing Ella from her seat so he could get up. He swung an arm around the Frenchman good naturedly, taking up the leader role he had assigned himself immediately.

“I say we start with Mr. Brucie! Whadya think?”

Ella couldn’t help but wince at the coffee now dripping down Bruce’s face. She glanced in Astrid’s direction, debating briefly If she should follow her and check that everything was alright. Mary’s words brought her back to her senses. She nodded along, listening to Benny as he spoke.

“Yes Benny, I think we’re ready. Right Benjamin?” Eleanor looked to Benjamin as she exited her booth.

“Mhm, that’s perfect Benny.” Ella reached across the table to grab a spare rag before following the other two men over to Bruce.

“Ready as always.” He says with a quiet cough. He dabs at his lower lip with a handkerchief as he turns towards Bruce, making it abundantly clear he could help with the man’s predicament before he pockets the fine cloth.

“Pockets seem heavy, ‘ay? Let us lighten ‘em a bit.”

Benny gave Benjamin a glare and nudged him slightly out of the way, taking his stand in front.

“That’s my line mate! Anyways, we just wanted ta gather whatever you got from that party! I’m in charge so ya gotta tell me.” Looking at Bruce it was difficult to keep everything the gang was planning to himself. Astrid was alive and well, and that’s all anyone could ask for in his opinion. Everyone got hurt here, it was just the way it was. However, Mary’s steely glare and ominous words hung on the back of his mind- the only thing keeping him quiet now. All there was left to do was focus on the mission. Keep the mission the only priority and nothing would slip.

“Pardon me loves,” Ella gently pushed past the two men. She’d only been listening to the conversation partially, though she figured they wouldn’t need her to say much anyway. While Benjamin and Benny went on, Ella busied herself with cleaning up Bruce.

“I’m sorry that happened,” Ella dropped her voice to a whisper as to not interrupt the conversation. She gently wiped the coffee from his face before attempting to pat the stains away on his shirt.

“All done,” Ella reached up and patted Bruce’s cheek before disappearing behind Benny and Benjamin again.

Bruce could feel the heavy air around Benjamin from when Bruce entered the room. He half expected the American to burst into tears laughing at the coffee scenario; there was no denying from the stares and stances Benjamin had, there was no love between the two men. His theory was further proven when Benjamin went out of his way to show Bruce his lack of help. And that was fair. Bruce wasn’t the kind to be loved by all. He just hoped he was never alone with the Mercenary; who knows what kind of… disagreement they’d get into. Bruce knew they were the same deep down, anyway. They were both killers. Ben pretended he’d worked for good, when really all he wanted was an excuse to bring about the same pain Bruce did to the citizens of London. From what little Bruce knew of the American, he assumed he’d torched towns and killed innocents whenever possible. Because for him, he needed an excuse. Bruce held himself to no such creed. In Bruce’s eyes, the only difference between the men was who they allowed to control them.

His intense opinions of the man now just a few feet away were momentarily blocked by Benny, extravagant as always, popping into view and proceeding to ask about his stash. Bruce would’ve cracked a smile at his “I’m in charge” line, but he wasn’t feeling too into the idea of showing a positive emotion at the moment.

“Aye. Head south on Queensway until you get to a fork. Take the left road, shouldne be too hard to find. Think it’s called Chapel Street. Keep goin’ till you find a fence; once it was fancy and well kept, but no more. Lock should be busted, no one will care if you stroll through. After you get through the alleyway, you’ll be in a courtyard. From there,” Bruce paused as Ella came up to help wipe the coffee off his face and shirt. His eyes glanced down, unsure how to thank Ella for her help. She was too good to him, truly. He then continued as she worked. “From there, you’ll see a shack with a hole in the roof off to the left. In the floorboard of that shack, you’ll find the stash.”

“Thank you.” Bruce said in a whisper back to Ella as she finished helping him. She then receded back into the rear line of the collection group, behind Benjamin and Benny.

“Listen to me, though. All of you.” Bruce looked up at the party. “If you touch the fucking sword in there, I’ll tie a bag of bricks to your feet and send you to the bottom of the Thames.” Bruce took time to glare at both Benny and Benjamin, who he knew would be the culprits if there was one. Benny out of curiosity and intrigue, and Benjamin out of spite for Bruce. “You two’ll be the first I come for if that sword is messed with. But of course, I’m sure neither of you will.” Bruce waved his hand dismissively. “‘Appreciate you collecting the goods, Lads and Lassie. If you need more directions, I’ll be here.”

The young thief had all intentions of leading his own little gang from Bruce’s directions, but at the mention of the sword his mind didn’t catch much else.

“A sword you say? How exciting!” It was the first thing that left his mouth, but with the intention of keeping good relations between the two for as long as possible, Benny swore his obedience quickly.

“Just leave it to yer good pals Brucie! We’ll be back in no time! Follow me you lot!” He waved his hand at Benjamin and Ella, leading the way out of the pub. The chill was the first thing Benny noticed as they all stepped outside, reminding him that he had forced Alfie to sit and wait for him.

“Alfie! Alfie, come here!” A light run to do some errands would have probably helped, if not for the fact that the dog was noticeably missing from his spot.

“Aw hell! I think I made him mad…” Dark eyes swept the streets for the pup, but he was nowhere to be found. With a pout, Benny turned to the others.

“What am I ‘sposed ta do now? Me ‘n Alfie are like brothers! Partners in crime! Now he’s gone missin’. Anyone wanna be leader for just a minute while I find him?”

“Don’t worry Bruce, I won’t let Benny so much as look at the sword!” Ella waved bye to Bruce as Benny led the trio out onto the streets. She frowned as she stared down at the empty spot Alfie had been not too long ago.

“Suppose he went home Benny? A dog like Alfie must have someone waiting for him.” Ella hadn’t bothered with the details before, but Alfie did appear to be a well kept dog. She’d be more surprised if he didn’t have an owner worried about him. Still, she knew there would be no arguing the matter with Benny. If he wished to go look for Alfie, she would not be stopping him.

“My mother used to say I’d be an awful leader because I made the servants tea instead of bossing them arou- oh.” Ella paused. It had been years since she openly spoke about her family and certainly never in front of the gang. Her frown lingered only a second longer before she was once again smiling. “Benjamin love, why don’t you be the leader while Benny is out hm?” She turned to Benjamin, speaking as if nothing had been said just moments before.

Benny had to agree that Alfie had most likely been with that rotten family for a while. When he had found the beast he had been sitting comfortably in his own little doghouse, which had seemed very worn with years of protection.

“‘Spose you’re right. I’ll go back ‘n look after we finish this job.” With a defeated sigh the redhead turned and began walking sluggishly down the street.

At that, Benjamin arches his brow and rakes his fingers through his hair to straighten it out. “Gonna be frank while the kid isn’t in earshot. I suspect I’m here to make sure he doesn’t get himself hurt doing something foolish on the job, and.. that sort of means I’ve been the leader the whole time, I reckon.”

Although it seemed logical, Benny was not one for the finer details. After about a minute of walking, he had declared once again that both Benjamin and Ella had to report to him if they saw even the smallest flash of gray fur around, because of course, he was the leader and he had declared it. With his mind at least somewhat at ease now, the last few words exchanged had slipped back into his conscious.

“Ella, what do ya mean your “servants”?” He glanced back at her, trying hard to spot the crack of a smile or listen for the giggle in her voice that it had simply been a joke, but her face remained quite serious.

“That’s rich people stuff.” He said the last bit with a scoff, rolling his eyes.

“Your mum find some poor lad to do your work for ya? What’s the deal?”

“Hm?” Ella maintained her composure even as Benny continued questioning her. If it was one thing she was good at it was pretending she wasn’t who she actually was, even if she did slip up sometimes. It was also times like these when Ella disliked how close she had become with the gang as it made the slip ups more frequent than she would like.

“I’m afraid you misheard me Benny, I just said Benjamin should be leader.” She looked between the two, being sure to keep eye contact. “Right Benjamin?”

Ella didn’t wait for a response before she began walking down the pavement. She’d tell them eventually. For now though, the topic could wait a little while longer.

“We better get a move on if we’re going to collect Bruce’s treasure before tonight, yes?”

Benny shot a quick, confused glance at Benjamin as Ella hurried past him.

“But- but I’m sure you said somethin’ about servants! Oh! Was your mother your servant? Bit odd, that, but I understand. If I had been a smart child- though ‘course children aren’t smart- I’d have made both my parents my servants!”

For the rest of the trio’s journey, Benny had gone from talking about servants to being a pirate, and where the shift had started none had a clue. By the time they arrived at Bruce’s shack (With much help from everyone present but Benny) the redhead had thrown himself into another coughing fit- apparently talking and walking had been a bit too much.

Still, it didn’t stop the boy from spotting a silver glint through watery eyes.

“Ella, Benjamin look! This must be the sword Brucie had told us about! Didn’t think the man was really tellin’ the truth. This’d be my sword when I become a pirate!”

Benjamin ignores the mention of servants, paying it no heed given that he’d grown up with some of his own. He didn’t particularly care to know more, and he answers Benny’s inquisitive looks with a shrug before examining his fingernails for dirt with utter disinterest. He only pipes up again when the boy makes a fuss over the sword.

“Too big for bein’ a pirate, Benny. Only good for sweeping over a gangway and that’s hardly a tenth o’ the fighting you see on a ship. Want something more practical, bigger’n a pig-sticker but not by much.” He rattles off with his characteristically flat tone. “And I’d still rather a shotgun. Somethin’ to make meat out of everyone below deck.”

He nodded seriously, letting Ben finish his thoughts politely.

“This is why the pirates won’t let you onboard mate.”

Eleanor let Benny go off on his own tangent about servants, which soon turned to pirates though she wasn’t quite sure when the switch happened. Either way, she was grateful for the topic change. When the talking turned to coughing, Ella was there to pat Benny’s back until they ceased.

Upon entering the building, she followed Benny’s gaze towards the sword. Ella frowned, not because she didn’t think there would be a sword, but because there was a sword and Bruce’s warning to the trio rang loud and clear.

“Oh Benny love, let’s respect Bruce’s wishes and not touch the sword, okay?” She moved away from the two until she found the floorboard in question.

“I think this is what Bruce was talking about. Benny, would you like to do the honors?”

He bit his thumb before turning to Ella.

“I know yer right Ella but it’s not my fault Brucie’s left it out for us ta see! I’d wager he’d be just as good a pirate as Ben here. So who should have the sword really?” Benny sighed as he knelt next to her, knowing his reasoning wouldn’t stick. The two were quite the mischievous pair, but unlike him Ella also possessed a need for sticking to arbitrary rules.

Moving his attention to the floorboards, he could see the small gap between each wooden strip where one had been uprooted.

“I’ve known the guy for a few years now, but I’m beginnin’ to realize he’s a deeply minstrustin’ person. Who hides stuff in the floor?”

The board groaned indignantly as he lifted it, revealing at first nothing but a void. Benny shifted his weight nervously onto his other foot before cautiously sticking a hand inside to feel for the stash. At first it seemed empty- nothing but dirt. About halfway up his forearm was when soft dirt became rough cloth. He grabbed it quickly and yanked it, causing a loud crack from splitting wooden strips to fill the silence.

Benny landed on his butt with a grunt, the stash cradled safely in his arms.

“I think I felt somethin’ crawlin’ on me! Are we right now? Can we go?”

“You’re fine Benny, no bugs,” Ella held out her hand towards the fallen redhead. She gave the shack one last once over before deciding that was all they had been sent over to collect.

”Looks like that’s everything, I’m ready to go if you guys are!”

Eleanor made sure Benny was steady before turning on her heels out of the shack. She led the gang carefully through the streets, pausing every now and again to confirm with the two other gang members they were going the right way. Ella also made sure to watch out for Alfie, as per the request of Benny. Though, she was still very certain either his owner tracked down his location, or the pup went home on his own. Either way, Ella had no doubt in her mind that Alfie would be with the gang once again by the end of the night.

“We’re here!” Ella announced cheerfully as the pub finally came into view. Before entering the darkened building, Ella turned to Benny.

“I can take the treasure inside if you would like to take a quick look up the street?”

The redhead was quick to give her a small, appreciative smile and nodded.

“Sure thing! I’ll be back ‘fore you can say ‘alakasham’! If Mary and the lot are back before me let ‘em know I’ll have my half of the stash when I get back! And uh, good work today gang! The twins’ll be so shocked they’ll hafta let me lead!” His monologuing continued as he made his way up the street, praising the work- Mostly his work that may or may not have been entirely made up- that had been accomplished before slipping around a corner and disappearing from view.

 

[Solar Daddy]

Bruce gave a signature sigh and muttering under his breath as the trio left, consisting of Benevolent Benny, Easy-Going Ella and... B'Ignorant Benjamin. He'd need to work on his rhyming later. Regardless, the three of them stood no chance to not fuck with his sword. He just had to deal with whatever chipping or misuse they would inevitably cast onto his heirloom. Bruce sat around with nothing to do for a few minutes before picking up the cup that'd fallen off his head. He was at a bar; might as well enjoy the provisions provided by their prosperous patron...er? Bruce was getting better already at rhyming. A natural with spoken words, truly.

Another sigh escaped Bruce's lips as he thought about his abode. No way he'd stand to let not just one, but three people know where he sleeps. He'd need to abandon the shack he'd called home for close to a year for another hiding spot. The last thing he needed was for some rueful gang member deciding they wanted his cut and find him in the night. He'd go scouring for new abandoned properties tomorrow.

Bruce approached the bar of the tavern, setting down the sticky mug with a sigh. "Miles." He nodded curtly as he sat down. "I'm sure you enjoyed the spectacle just 'cross the way. Think I could use a stiff drink, right 'bout now. I trust your expert opinion on what I need."

Miles had felt Bruce lumbering over before he saw him, pushing himself off of his propped-up palms with a huff to meet the man. Luckily, his loyal patrons had assisted him in cleaning up after the bull in his china shop, which had left him too preoccupied to notice whatever usual nonsense was occurring in the corner. The only context he was left with was Mary’s muffled shouting and - presumably - Astrid’s drink dripping from Bruce’s scalp.
“Enjoyed is a strong word.” He responded with his signature tone of veiled aggravation, complete with an iconic crooked smile that never quite seemed to fully fade. He turned, fetching Bruce a tumbler.

Should anyone ask Miles for a recommendation, he provided the same answer without fail. The great panacea of the British army: gin and tonic. Instilled as a staple since his first tour of duty, not a day went by that he didn’t fix himself one, if only to remind himself of his glory days.
Glory days, as if he didn’t dread every memory.
He filled the glass partway with gin before moving across the bar for the tonic water.

Bruce reached to pull a few pence but came up with nothing. Another sigh came from the brute. "We're gettin' paid reeaal soon, friend. Spot me this night and I'll return the favor come morrow."

The seasoned bartender immediately thought of a snarky remark that he may have shot back with some years ago, but held his tongue as he so often found himself doing recently. Bruce wasn’t the first to short him, and he wouldn’t be the last.
“You’ready owe me a tuppence, gov’...Tomorrow.” Warned Miles instead, continuing to pour. He stirred in the tonic water with a metal rod and finished it with his personal favorite part, a slice each of lemon and lime. Even such a simple drink was more complicated than most buffoons in his establishment would ask for, but to him, there was no substitute.

“No ice. Sorry.” He slid the finished product to the customer, as well as the bar rag from his waistband to clean the coffee out of his hair.

Bruce wouldn’t admit to the fact he wondered if Miles would actually serve him. Bruce’d been late on payments often before, but always managed to scrounge up something by a… reasonable date. Whether it was through loaning money from a fellow gang member or just getting a decent payout from a heist, Bruce could usually cover his tab with just a few prods for repayment from the bartender. When Bruce saw the man begin grabbing the materials for a gin and tonic, a smile crept onto his face. “You’re a right saint, Lass. Make sure to leave a good tip next time I’m ‘round.”

Bruce grabbed the rag first once it was given to him. As much as Bruce didn’t mind the rain, coffee was a bit more uncomfortable to try and shrug off for him. He gave a nod before patting down his face and head before giving back the rag. With his free hand, Bruce grabbed the drink and poured a good swig into his maw. He was brought back near instantly to the days of his heavy drinking, before he met the Twins and subsequently, his life of professional crime. Decent days, those were. When he couldn’t remember anything.

“Truly the best in the business, Miles.” Bruce complimented while wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist. “You’d not believe the shite they serve on Hatton Place. Practically boiled pork water compared to this.” Again, the enforcer downed another swig of his gin, savoring the memories that came with it. Long before London, Astrid, the Twins. Long before he cared about anything outside his cottage in his homeland. That life was off-limits now though, as Bruce was sure Miles knew. He didn’t drink heavily often anymore, but on the occasions he did, Miles would’ve been present and no doubt heard a few slips of Bruce’s tongue in the midst of him asking for more whisky.

“We used to have prisoners drink old horse water.” Miles recalled, stuffing the rag back into his belt. “They’d have to wait their turn, ‘acourse. Can’t have the cavalry thirsty!” He finished with an oafish laugh reminiscent of Santa Claus, leaning back with a hand on his hip.

Bruce smiled at the chiming of the bartender. Miles never spared the quirky remarks, and it made conversations fun for a change. Bruce never enjoyed much idle talk, but he found Miles to be one he could listen to for quite some time. “Go ahead, you o’ war horse, spin me a yarn about your days fighting for the crown.” Bruce had nothing but time ‘til the others returned with the goods, and Bruce wasn’t in the mood for riling up other patrons for a quick spat. Today, it seemed, would not turn out as bleak and sorrowful as he expected.

 

[queendilettante]

Mary hummed an incomprehensible tune to herself as she let herself be escorted by Conor toward the famed train car. Her efforts at covering her shame at their previous discussion were translucent at best, yet she had more than had her fill of Conor’s insight deep through her psyche for at least the year. As the two covered yet another patch of uneven gravel, she winced hard, teeth clamping down on her already bloodied lip. The pain in her leg had roared to life with a force unlike that which she had known since the injury following this undutifully long excursion, but the night, all things considered by the plans set forth at the pub, was yet infantile in its intended scope.

“Love, are we nearly there?” She asked, struggling for air through the pain. She had quickly become aware that she was in no position to be pushing her body to these exorbitant degrees in spite of her injury and she was beginning to lose herself to worry at the sinking reality of her situation. How would she get back to the pub, much less to and from the planned meeting? And what of Brucie’s dinner plans after it all? Were her meager limits truly overtaken so quickly? She shook her head; there was nothing to be gained from dwelling on future possibilities this early. “And, dear,” she continued, “it would please me greatly to have an ever brief moment of respite in your, erm, quarters.”

Conor nearly stopped short, his earlier discomfort returning with the mention of the carriage. They’d just passed car 209. They weren’t far now, though he had to help Mary weave awkwardly between some of the cars, scanning for any rusty nails that might be jutting out of the steel behemoths.

He could hardly be faulted for his wariness, Conor told himself as he kept a tally of the carriages in his head. With Mary knowing where he lived, it was just one more piece of information the sisters could leverage against him. The prickling feeling at his temples and the back of his neck was well-placed caution, nothing more.

Still, that thought rang hollow in his mind as they, at last, approached Carriage 217. “Here she is,” Conor said before he could stop himself.

217, Mary thought to herself, making a mental note of the path to Conor’s train car home. She had no reason to suspect the man of wrongdoing or anything of the like; truth be told, she found his attempts at calming her hysterics endearing in a puerile sort of way. Still, one was always better off with more information than less.

The man unlocked the door and pulled it open, the wicked screech of the movement making him wince. He’d meant to get that oiled. The candle remained unlit, but there was just enough light left to see the interior of the car. His mattress, little more than a bedroll and covered with a few quilted blankets, lay on the metal floor. Fortunately, Conor had tidied up just a couple of days ago, and aside from his journals he’d left on his desk —

Oh God he’d forgotten to hide the journals.

Mary looked into the car from the ground and noticed that the orange haired man had stopped in his tracks. Somewhat annoyed, she reached up into the carriage and carefully swung herself up with the power of her good leg. “Don’t mind me, dear,” she called up as she did so, “I’m only nearly crippled. A half meter hop is fresh cake, love.”

Mary grunted as she clambered into the car and awkwardly stood up with the assistance of her cane. Her dramatics were a touch bitter for her usual taste, but she hoped the point was driven home nonetheless. She turned to face her companion on this trek, eyes glued to some books. “Are these the items with which your attention has been so thoroughly engrossed, dear?”

Conor shot forward and scooped up the tomes, clutching them to his chest as if Mary could somehow peer into their contents just by glancing at the covers. His heartbeat pounded against the paper surfaces, rattling his chest like tracks shaking before the approach of a train.

“It’s nothing, boss,” Conor said quickly. He pivoted to the wooden chest in the corner of the carriage and opened it, placing the books inside — making sure to slip the most dangerous one into the box’s hidden compartment. “Some light writing, is all.”

Conor felt around for the sack of ill-gotten goods, which he’d placed in that same compartment, inside the left interior panel of the chest. He felt as if the police had caught him holding a sack of gold and the Queen’s head. Not that it would have been much different if a cop had found the journals. One was just a financial ledger, nothing too incriminating there. But the other, a set of unsent letters to him family about the gang’s operations — that could land them into trouble.

He needed to get rid of it, Conor thought with a twinge of sadness that gave him pause as his fingers brushed against the canvas sack. It wasn’t like he could actually send any of the letters, after all. But writing in the journal had let him practice his words.

And it’d been nice to pretend that someone might read them.

Realizing he should move before Mary could start tapping her cane at him again, Conor produced the bag and shook it slightly, letting its contents rattle. “We’re good to go,” he said with a practiced steeliness, offering his arm to her. He once again avoided meeting his leader’s gaze, worried that if he did she’d see something that’d prompt an uncomfortable question.

Mary waited uncharacteristically silently until Conor shot past her and offered to help her down. With a final glance back to the chest, she turned to the man, smiled, and accepted his arm to get down from the carriage. “You know, love,” she started as she descended, “that was about the most conspicuous way you could have handled whatever secrets you’re hiding.”

Upon reaching the ground, Mary stumbled forward a foot or two and unceremoniously caught herself by slamming her cane into the ground and digging a hole through the gravel and into the dirt. She coughed, out of breath from the ordeal. “See, dear?” she called, hoping to cover the embarrassment of tripping. “I am simply falling over myself in distress at the contents of those books you’re so eager to hide!” She strolled up to the man, relying heavily on her cane as she did so, and brought her face uncomfortably close to his.

The two were nearly eye level, what with Conor being nary a few centimeters taller than her. She glared into his eyes, unblinking as she began talking again. “You wouldn’t happen to be writing things you perhaps shouldn’t be, are you, dear?” She smiled, but maintained her fierce gaze into the man.

Conor swallowed as Mary forced him to meet her eyes. This was his boss at her most fearsome — a kind expression plastered on her face, hiding a mind that dissected every word, every nervous glance. It was sometimes easy to forget how dangerous Mary could truly be. This was an unwelcome reminder.

A pang of anger, or perhaps desperation, forced the words out like the snap of burning tinder. “I’ll handle it,” he said roughly, not lowering his gaze. “It’s my business. Not everything’s yours.”

Part of him realized it was a horrible idea to stonewall Mary. This was not a battle he was going to win. But in that moment, Conor couldn’t see any other way he could let himself respond. He’d given Mary and the gang plenty, obeying orders without question. Hell, he’d even led her straight to the sole place in London he felt safe. She could live without this one piece of jurisdiction.

Mary continued to leer at Conor as she patted him on the cheek. “For now, love.”

 

[Pipsqueak]

"Give me my dog back ya little cretin!"

"Little? I'm nearly your height! Why don't you go find yourself some extra inches and come back!"

The shouting match had continued on for nearly over five minutes, onlookers giving nothing more than a sparing glance before deciding they did not want to get between two angry teenage boys. Benny would have confronted the other, who couldn't have been more than 14 by the looks of it, in some back alley so as not to draw too much attention. However, after spotting Alfie walking alongside this stranger after ten minutes of searching for the pup, he hadn't thought much about the details.

"Sure, give me Alfie now and I'll happily come back and pay ya a little visit when yer back home." The boy's eyes grew weary for just a moment.

"Was that supposed ta be a threat?"

"Why do everyone of ya always ask that? Ya think I'm just gunna show up and have some tea with ya? Huh? After takin' my dog ya think I'm just gunna have a nice chat later? Yer a moron!" Benny pulled up his pant leg, quickly showing the boy the glint of the knife he had tucked away before concealing it again. Couldn't get into too much trouble today. He glanced around the street once more, but it seemed the evening traffic had died for a little while.

"What is going on here?" A new voice, lighter but incredibly stern, seemed to materialize beside the two boys then, making them both jump. Alfie's tail wagged happily at the woman and bumped her hand lightly with his nose. The older gentleman, wrapped around the woman's arm, stood with a silent glare.

"Oh you found him! You found our Tippet!" She exclaimed happily, her attention pulled completely to the dog. The man didn't seem as happy.

"Your- Your? You lot wouldn't happen ta live a few blocks down from here, big brick house with the broken window?" Now he had everyone's attention.

"How do you know that boy? Henry, do you know this lad?" Henry, apparently the name of the kid he had been arguing with this whole time, shook his head.

"No! He's claiming Tippet is his dog! I found Tippet outside some pub not too far from here, and he's been threatening me!" Benny shot the kid a glare.

"Yer quite the nark aren't ye?" The name didn't earn him any favors. The man, presumably the father, reached to grab Benny, but the young thief quickly sidestepped.

"Yer the family then, down the road. No need ta say nothin', I can already tell." He took a long look at the fuming faces.

"I can see ya got yer mum's eyes, but are ye sure yer the father? Not much resemblance there. How's 'bout instead of bein' mad at me, ye have a talk with yer wife?" With a roar the man leapt at Benny, socking him squarely in the jaw.

"You keep my family out of your disease ridden mouth kid!" Bennet stumbled back in a daze, rubbing his face with a groan. With a few seconds of awkward silence, he raised his hands.

"Ye know what? Yer right. Go ahead and take yer dog, sorry for the trouble." The family took a few steps back, their expressions contorted in shock, before ushering each other across the street without another word. Benny watched them as they made their way down the sidewalk and out of view before rolling his eyes and giving chase. They talked a big game, but they certainly weren't the brightest.

"Tippet... a name for a rat, not a dog." The boy mumbled as he turned the corner. The "father's" figure was the last one to disappear out of sight before he pulled his knife. It wasn't his fault they weren't cooperating! With hastened steps Benny rounded another corner to find the family stopped. The mother was in tears, the man consoling them both. With buildings blocking everyone from the public view, Benny saw his chance. He had closed half the distance before Henry opened his big stupid mouth again.

"Stay AWAY FROM US!" The adults both glanced up in fright before the big man came charging at him again. With a quick motion the knife caught him cleanly across his side. It seemed just enough to shock the brute for a few moments, and Benny quickly moved past him towards Henry. His eyes were fearful now, but the woman had found her bravery just before the they could exchange a more dangerous match. Tears ran down her slender face, but she held Benny's gaze, determined. She had meant to reach for the boy's hair, but he shot the knife straight up and through her hand. A piercing shriek rang out through what was otherwise a very quiet evening, but that was not of Benny's concern. He made his way to Henry, ready to do whatever necessary to get the rest of his family back to the gang, but there was no fight in the lad now.

"Take him! Leave us alone!" He tearfully pushed the dog gently over to the gang member, who grabbed Alfie's scruff and gave Henry a genuine smile.

"Least I don't have ta visit ya, huh? Though if yer ever offerin' tea, I'd be more than happy ta join. They'll be tip top if yer worried, just a few minor injuries. Goodbye!" With his comforting words still in the air, the duo made their way around the sobbing mother and angry man, back onto the street.

"Wait till the gang hears I made a friend today Alfie! They'll be so impressed! Speakin' of impressed, me and Ella and Ben found somethin' real neat today! C'mon boy!" Of course, their next destination was none other than Bruce's little shack. It took Benny a few long, long minutes to find it again, but about an hour before the gang's planned meetup the two had found themselves in the run down building. With a pondering look, Benny slowly walked over to the sword so meticulously placed and put a finger on it. He waited, expecting Bruce to come storming in here by some unexplainable third eye sense, but when all stayed quiet, he went further to grab the hilt.

"Told ya it was neat! We could be pirates! Yer the pirate dog, and my right hand man! I'll be cap'n!" With a grunt he pulled the sword to wield it. Unfortunately, he had not been expecting the weight, and the sharp end of it fell with a crash onto the worn wooden floor, splintering it.

"Oops..." His eyes darted to find something to cover up the damage, but the shack was nearly empty aside from a small sleeping rag and various broken planks.

"No hard feelin's mate but if Brucie asks, you did it." The sheepdog stared up blankly at him, his tongue lolling to the side.

"You'd make an excellent right hand man! Sorry 'bout yer family. I could tell they aren't good people. You belong with the gang! Ella already really likes ya! Don't think the twins have come 'round yet but I'll give 'em a talk and everythin' will be ok!" The last bit didn't seem right. Benny frowned, suddenly becoming serious. His voice dropped to a desperately sad tone.

"We gotta give Brucie a good beatin' tonight. Ya know I'm not one ta complain about stuff like that. Hell I thought about it myself a few times! But this is all 'cause a Astrid. She was gonna leave the gang if we didn't agree. Think she's.... bein' a bit dramatic, but.... I suppose....that's just how she gets. I-" A croaking cough... another... and another. It wracked his body until he let the sword go with a clatter. He could feel the blood in his throat, taste it on his tongue, which only made him gag. He felt Alfie paw his side, but he couldn't do much else besides sit down for a moment. When a moment turned to two, then three, the attack finally subsided. Blood was splattered along his shirt sleeve, his hand, and on the floor of the shack.

"Do ya think... Do ya think Bruce'll know it's me?" The boy dabbed at the splotches, but red had stained subtly into the wood. His breathing was labored, making it hard to speak or even get his thoughts across properly.

"Well this has been... eventful. Suppose we.... should get back to... to the pub." That was the intention at least, but instead he curled himself up against the wall and placed his head on his knees.

"In a moment though. Let me... know when it's time... ta head back."

 

[Aeris]

The thought occurred to Ella only after she had entered the darkened pub. She had completely forgotten to swing by her own home and grab the treasures she had stashed away. Perhaps it was for the better she had remembered after the trio had parted ways. As much as Ella loved the gang, she wasn’t quite sure she was ready for them to be showing up at her doorstep just yet. Her green eyes scanned the pub before landing on Bruce at the bar with Miles.

“Bruce!” The redhead called out before moving to sit next to him. She smiled a greeting at Miles before turning back to Bruce. “Bruce love,” She continued, “I seem to have forgotten a few things while we were out. I’m just going to run home if anyone asks!” Ella placed the bag of treasures next to his feet. “Watch this while I am out, okay? I shouldn’t be too long!”

Bruce was listening in on Miles' heroic story of military virtue when a clarion call sounded his name, and a short mess of amber hair frazzled up next to him. "Damn near thought the devil was finally here to drag me down!" He jested, before giving a curt nod. "Aye, I'll be sure to keep it within reach." After a moment giving Ella a glance, he added, "Sure you don't need company? Will you be alright faring alone?"

“I’ll be alright! Walked that path plenty of times on my own. Thank you for the offer though Bruce!” Before Bruce had time to argue, Ella jumped up from her seat and exited the pub. She weaved her way through the crowded streets before finally stopping in front of the shop. In the time Ella had lived here, she had actually never been in that shop. The woman had told her it was a…a hat shop? Maybe she had said dress? The memory was fuzzy. But Ella made a point to try to visit one of these days.

She walked around the brick building until the stairs came into view. Ella took the rickety stairs two at a time before crashing into her door. She cursed at that last step for always causing her problems as she entered the flat.

“Where did I put them…” Ella muttered as she absentmindedly opened up cupboards and drawers. She had been so tired that night- with everything that happened, she hadn’t been paying attention to where she had placed anything from that night. Eleanor’s eyes softened as she pulled open one specific drawer. Inside was, not the items she had been looking for, but one item she tried many times to throw away.

The newspaper clippings edges had grown soft with age. Even the words had faded over the years. Ella didn’t need to see the words to know what the paper said;

Fire at the Bennetts proves fatal. No Survivors. ​

The article then went on to describe her family in great detail. Then how nothing in the house made it, and the bodies of the family being too burned to determine who was who. Had they paid attention, they would’ve counted three bodies, not four. Ella assumed it was easy to forget. Her and Henry had rarely left the property unless it was involving their fathers business. And on the days they had, no one paid them much mind.

Eleanor closed the drawer, shutting out the awful memories before they had time to settle. She turned her attention to the cupboard under that drawer, relieved when she found the bag sitting right where she had left it weeks ago. With the items in hand, Ella left her flat, quickly making her way back towards the pub. In the time she had been out, the streets had emptied out, much to her own relief. Upon entering the pub, Ella made brief eye contact with Bruce before beelining to the booth the gang normally occupied. She set the bag on her lap before resting her head on her arms. It wouldn't do anyone any harm if she took a small nap before tonight- as she doubted she would get much sleep afterwards. Should anyone need her, all they had to do was wake her. With that in mind, Eleanor allowed herself to drift off into her dreams.

 

[Hard Boiled]

Following their meeting with the ever-charming doctor, the pair travelled up towards the more affluent neighborhoods for Astrid to collect her belongings from her home whilst Helena, for both of their sakes, waited elsewhere to further lick her wounds. Helena had seen Astrid's mother once, maybe twice total in the past few years, and had no desire at all to make her acquaintance. The two rendezvoused on the streets a short while later, chuckling to themselves as they passed by the site of their scuffle. Helena took a quick peek to make sure she hadn't left anything besides some of her four humours in the alley, before continuing on.

As nine o'clock rolled around, the final two attendees slugged their way into the pub, strong-walling over to the booth in the corner looking only slightly more bedraggled than usual. They'd cleaned most of the blood off with fountain water, leaving Helena with only a fat bottom lip, busted tooth, and assorted blacks and blues. Lucky for Astrid, at least most of her damage was relegated to more concealable areas.

Nobody had dared wake Ella, who found herself to be the first one at the booth. Everyone else had effectively formed in around her as to not disturb her: Bruce remained at the bar, Conor and Mary sat to one side of Ella, Benny on the other. Benjamin, brooding as ever, opted to lean against the wall beside the booth.

"Oi." Helena quietly greeted her sister, playfully bumping Benjamin with her shoulder as she brushed by, seemingly a newfound spring in her step.

"Lena!" Mary gasped, standing from the booth and accidentally bumping Ella in the process.
"Christ alive, Lena, what happened to your face?" Mary grabbed at Helena's face and scanned it, twisting it in her hands to see all the bruises despite her sister's squirms.
"Hey- quit it!"
Before Helena could fully respond, though, Mary noticed Astrid behind her, looking similarly worse for wear. "And you too, O'Malley!" she called over. "Did you both get trampled by a carriage on the way in?"

"Matter a' fact, we did." Helena swatted the last prying finger away, stealing Mary's seat with a palm against her aching gum. She then stuck a thumb and index finger into her mouth, whistling obnoxiously across the pub with her second hand twirling above her head.

“Aye, a carriage with whiskey barrels for wheels and bulls for horses,” Astrid concurred with the twirl of her index finger. The tight pain in her chest thrummed in agreement, spiking into sharp stabs with every inhale. She found her resting place quickly, with an air of relief.

"Sounds like your cue, son." Miles gestured over Bruce's shoulder with his chin, sliding him a waiting mug of ale clearly meant for someone else.

Bruce wasn't paying much attention to anything but the few drops of gin at the bottom of his... second glass? Something like that. It wasn't until Miles gave Bruce the extra warning that he realized it was time for the Gang to meet back up again. Bruce gave a sigh, downed the last precious drops, and set the glass back down on the bar, sliding it slightly in Miles' direction before grabbing the mug.
"Praise the Queen," he said jokingly with a nod before standing and making his way to the Gang's table. Bruce set the drink down, not saying much else besides something mumbled under his breath. He remained standing silently and hoped he didn't wreak of coffee too bad.

To Astrid, the addition of Bruce to the table felt like the shrouding of a dark cloud. Heat rose in her ears and her chest coiled ever more; the air in her lungs thick with the feeling of being watched. Her peripheral vision confirmed his eyes fixed on Helena and Mary, but she felt no less like a rabbit in a wolves’ den. The woman used the achiness of her bones as leverage - leaning into the pain to distract her from the bitter hatred of feeling like prey.

Mary scoffed at her flippant sister. "Do we need to change tonight's plans, love?" Mary leaned down, putting all of the weight onto her left leg. "Is there someone whom our efforts of this night need be diverted for this?"

"What?" Helena looked at her with her broken smile like she was crazy. "Quit yer worrying, have a seat, would you? Cheers." She raised her pint to Bruce before trying to drink without any of the beer getting into her searing hot wound.
"Right, gather 'round." She pounded her fist against the table like a gavel, as if everyone wasn't already gathered 'round.

Mary cleared her throat and shot a beaming grin at all members gathered around, though unable to keep eye contact with Bruce for very long. She shook out her hands as she took her seat; she couldn’t let herself be distracted by what Bruce had coming to him that evening just yet.

“I trust you all remember our plans from earlier, but let us reiterate.” Mary crossed her bad leg over her good one and folded her arms across her chest. “We’re taking all of our honestly acquired goods to a man who is simply falling over himself to pay for them.” She smiled at her sister, giving her the floor to continue.

"He's a fuckin' fixer, and a slimy one at that." Helena sliced through Mary's theatrics, sinking her head into a huddle. "We've not the slightest who's actually buying this sparkly shite, point is, our contact is willing to assume the danger of these hot items in exchange for a cut. He makes other people's problems into his problems, for a living." She gave her usual briefing glances around the circle.
"We are hoping that given the size of this, uh, transaction, paired with the potential for future business dealings, it is in everyone's best interest to keep everything aboveground, yes?" She emphasized, her beaten lip idly throbbing. "...Nonetheless, we know better than to come unprepared. The goods will be stashed in a wagon for the deal, flanked by you lot on security. Short enough walk down to Millwall, we offload at the docks and go home."

Helena found the expectant stares waiting for elaboration in the silence that followed.
"...I... Used the last of our money to rent us a wagon for the night. It's cleaner than stealing one, again, and we'll be earning it back in spades anyway... It's down at the livery stable, Benjamin, you're with me to pick it up. Everyone else, get yourselves sorted, be ready to load it up when we return. We'll be back in ten. I assume you all left everything in the cellar? Good."

"We get paid, then we give the stuff. Don't ask him any questions. Questions?"

 

[Vudukudu]

Benjamin remains on his feet, leaning up against the wall with a half-empty mug of ale in one hand. When Helena bumps into him, he remains almost perfectly still, like a living wall despite the casual stance. "Pardon me, miss." He says, almost mechanically apologizing for it as if it were his fault for merely existing in that space. He radiates disinterestedness for the remainder of the conversation, peering down inquisitively into his ale like the reflection in it might have answers to some unspoken question. Helena and Astrid both arriving looking beat to hell isn't his problem - no one asked him to protect them from whatever person or misfortune they'd stumbled upon, and given their half-assed excuse it didn't seem much like they wanted or needed his concern anyway. The mention of a fence to sell their stolen goods earns a moment of recognition from him in the form of a cocked eyebrow, but it falls just as suddenly as it rose. Until they mention needing security, he was happy to hear that he'd have the night off. In his experience back home, the essence of criminality was reputation, and no one purchasing stolen goods would have the gall to swing for a second robbery on account of it being a surefire way to lose clients. Maybe the rules were different here.

When Helena tells him he's expected to tag along to retrieve the carriage, he shrugs. "Whatever you need, miss. Feel a bit less than dressed for the occasion, but one gun'll have to do." He replies. With far more grace than someone who looks like him ought to have, he parts ways with the wall before downing the rest of his mug and setting it on a nearby table before sliding his thumbs into his pockets and departing.

 

[kaito9049]

Conor would not ask a question.

He had many, of course. He always did. What had happened to Astrid and Helena? They looked like they'd gotten into a bataireacht brawl with a forest. Was Ella OK? She seemed more tired than usual, to the point that Conor had been thinking about fetching her a blanket when their last two members walked into the pub. And who was this fixer? Had the Sisters worked with them before? What was the backup plan if — when, if recent events were any indication — things went off the rails?

But Conor just nodded at Helena. He'd learned by now that her invitation for questions was mostly rhetorical, and anyways it was hard for Conor to tell whether his queries were important or simply the products of an overburdened mind.

His gaze flickered between the faces of his fellow gang members — he kept a careful watch on Benny, just in case the thief tried to make a play for Conor's firearm again — though he was careful to avoid Mary's eyes. He'd cooled off during their walk back to the pub. Embarrassment had replaced his earlier bravado. What had he been thinking, blowing off Mary like that? Now she knew where he slept, where he kept his most precious items. How could he have been so stupid? What if she planned to investigate his carriage later? Should he move?

Too many questions, none with answers — like a dance where each of the performers wants to lead.

It wasn't just his earlier conversation with Mary that had Conor on edge. Bruce's presence at the table was ... uncomfortable. Conor had to resist the urge to look over to Astrid and gauge her reaction, though he suspected that she was far from happy with having to be anywhere near the Scot. There was a pressure in the room — or was Conor just imagining it? — like a man had died at the bar and everyone was betting on who'd be the first to do something about it. Conor knew why he was nervous, why he couldn't look Bruce in the eye. This wasn't a church; forgiveness didn't come free here. In a few hours, the gang would make sure Bruce paid for his own sins. And until then, they'd lie to him with their silence.

Conor instead met Benjamin's casual, almost disinterested, expression before the other man pushed himself from the wall and set out to carry out Helena's orders. The Yank was a good sort, dependable, though Conor felt he carried a haunted gravity with him that made him feel far older than the others. He didn't seem to get involved much with the rest of the group outside of work, which was likely for the best. But it seemed a lonely life to bear, though perhaps that was hypocritical of Conor to think. Did Benjamin have any friends outside the gang? Did any of them?

More questions that would have to remain unasked and unanswered. Conor supposed that meant they weren't important.

 

[Pipsqueak]

Benny had been the third to last to arrive, having lost a bit of time feeling ill and swinging the sword around respectively. Then, of course, on their way back Alfie had insisted they stop at every street corner searching for god knew what while the thief begged him to hurry it up. The dog continued to take his dear sweet time anyways, putting the boy on edge. The longer they stayed out, it seemed the more passerby were gawking. He couldn't figure out why that was until he happened to glance down and noticed the extremely suspicious red stains splotching his white shirt. He had assured the onlookers from that point on that it was just tomato juice and they needed to mind their business, but he didn't think his facade was working too well. It wouldn't, he supposed, with the ugly black and blue hue to his face now.

Finally, after the longest journey to the pub in Benny's life, he finally found himself safely inside. Alfie was instructed to wait outside, this time with extra precautions.

"Miiiiles," The redhead slipped up to the bar good naturedly, getting a heavy sigh from the bartender in response, "I got my dog outside and I need ye to watch 'em!"

"Absolutely not."

"W- Miles please! He got stolen last time and I'm not privy to goin' on another dog hunt! I'll pay ye!" As the two conversed Benny made a point to not look at Bruce, who was purposely placed as far to the other side of the bar as Benny could get him. He was sure the brute would be able to see through his lies as to his whereabouts, earning another good collection of color to his features.

"If ye don't accept I'll just have ta bring 'em inside mate." Miles pursed his lips, probably trying to discern how much of his time he really wanted wasted today.

"I knew I could count on ye! Yer such a kidder, that's why I like ye!" Benny waved to the man appreciatively before going to sit with the rest of the congregated group. It was only a few minutes after his arrival did Helena and Astrid finally show, looking much worse than he did. He watched as Mary doted worriedly on them both, mumbling a "It's never how's Benny, what'd you get up ta today" before turning his attention to the peanut butter molasses candies he had stuffed in his pocket.

The meeting went on as usual, the candies disappearing slowly as he listened, and much like Conor he kept quiet. The assignment was fairly simple it seemed. All he could hope was that Helena let him drive the carriage again. Unsurprisingly Benjamin was the first to leave from the group after everything was said and done, but Benny had no desire to leave again. Instead he sat nursing his bruise, glancing around at the other gang members with disinterest. Ella was still sleeping peacefully, Astrid and Bruce giving off tension so thick it was suffocating, and the sisters skillfully ignoring the whole thing. Conor, on the other hand, caught him by surprise. Benny did not miss the occasional glances passed in his direction.

Taking one of the last candies from his pocket he tossed it at the man, hitting his arm with a thwap before it fell to the floor.

"Psst! Conor! Do ye think I got a diseased mouth?" Benny opened his mouth as wide as possible, letting the other take a look.

Conor, lost in his thoughts, just about jumped out of his seat when he felt the candy land against his arm. He turned his head sharply toward Benny, keeping his hand resting on his pistol to make sure it was still there. How did the lad have so much energy all the time? Conor was nowhere this annoying to his older siblings, surely.

“Benny, what makes you think I wanna see your chompers?” Conor hissed. It was fortunate for his younger colleague that Ella was sitting between them. It put Benny right out of whacking range. Still, because the two men were exactly the same height — Conor insisted to himself, despite what Benny had always claimed — looking Benny’s way meant Conor got an eyeful of his colleague’s gaping maw. There were a number of dark spots near the molars, and a few of the teeth didn’t seem to be in great shape, but then again that wasn’t a rarity.

“Everything that comes out of your mouth is diseased,” Conor said finally, pointedly looking away. He hesitated for a moment. “But maybe you should go see Doc Shelley. Just’n case.”

Benny recoiled at the suggestion, shaking his head.

"Nu uh, no way! That woman's already got it out for me! I'd be better off swimmin' with sharks. Why don't you piss someone off instead? One more person yells at me today I'm gonna be put 'n jail quicker than planned." Benny heaved a long sigh before remembering what he really wanted to tell Conor. He swept his chair up and dragged it beside the other gang member.

"I got a friend today! Name's Henry. He tried ta steal Alfie away but I told 'em he can't just go 'round stealin' from people and that seemed ta set his mind straight. Lad's got a lot ta learn but he's invited me ta tea with his family!" As he spoke he drew his dark gaze at Conor's hip, where the man had placed a protective hand around his gun. A cheeky smirk lined the corner of his lips before he met the redhead's gaze again. The poor man was clearly paranoid from the past hundred times Benny had taken his possessions, but Conor clearly didn't realize this paranoia only tempted him to come up with other ways to win the game.

"CONOR! CATCH!" The warning came so suddenly some of the patrons around their table glanced up in shock. A small silver coin flashed briefly between the two of them, but the younger thief's attention was already locked on the gun. In one fluid motion the firearm was suddenly jerked from its owner's side.

"I think you'n Henry would get along real swell! I'm ahead of both of ye in the game!" With another win under his belt, he finally settled into examining the weapon.

"You usin' this on the big man tonight?"

Conor gaped at Benny, looking between the silver in his hand and his firearm in Benny’s.

“What are you doing?” he snapped in a hoarse whisper, looking around the table to make sure no one — especially Bruce — had heard Benny’s comment. Hopefully he was too distracted by Astrid’s piercing glare to be paying attention.

“Are you tryin’ t’ cop us both on the cross, ya carrot?” Conor’s hand shot into his vest, producing a thin but well-sharpened knife. He pressed the blade into the wooden table, staring spears into Benny’s noggin. Had he not felt the glances from his colleagues around him, he might consider putting the blade somewhere else. He took a breath, trying to calm himself. Benny was just trying to get him riled up, and with the stress of both the past day and the approaching night weighing on him, it was working.

“You know what?” Conor said, removing the knife and placing it back into the holder inside his vest. “Keep it. All yours.” A smile, thin as a knife’s edge, appeared on his face. “I guess it’s true what Mary said about you.”

It took Benny a few moments to understand what exactly got Conor so angry. In retrospect, perhaps teasing the man right before a mission wasn't the best way to go about pushing his own feelings down. The blade seemed to taunt him from the table, begging him to make another move. Would Conor really do that to him? If given an opportunity, would they all?

"What...?" The only response that seemed correct. Benny's addled brain tried to catch up with whatever thoughts had gone through the other's mind, but it was his eyes that gave it away.

"N-no I didn't mean- I meant the man we're meetin' tonight. Why would I-?" The fact that Conor thought he would suggest such a thing made his stomach turn, but it was the last statement that felt like a punch to the gut.

"What do ye mean Mary was right?" He knew. He knew exactly what he meant. The words from the party floated up to his ears again, and it seemed the right thing to let those past words mix with Conor's, just to add the extra weight.

Conor just shrugged and turned away again, his smile disappearing. Truth be told, he was a bit thrown off by the realization he’d totally misunderstood Benny’s words earlier. Of course even Benny wouldn’t be dense enough to talk openly about their plans for Bruce right in front of the man. But with Conor’s mind being where it was, it was a natural move for this thoughts to make. He frowned, feeling shame creep up to his cheeks. Had he been too harsh on Benny, saying what he did?

“It’s nothing. Forget about it,” he mumbled, fumbling out the words like wooden blocks tumbling down a slope. “I—she didn’t mean ‘nothing by it, I’m sure.”

There wasn't anywhere else to go from here. Even Benny could admit the prior mood could not be salvaged, so instead he got up silently and headed back out the door, leaving the gun at the table.

"C'mon Alfie. C'mere." The sheepdog trotted alongside him wearily, as if he too knew something was wrong. More than that. How could he have been that thoughtless? He knew how Mary felt about him, but now it was becoming a plague throughout the gang. They were talking behind his back. It should have been obvious- the head of the masses fed the rest, didn't they? Of course, why would that have been obvious to him?

One word floated to the forefront of his mind just then, but it seemed a little late to use it. Still, to nobody in particular, it trickled out like a thoughtless stream.

"Sorry."

 

[queendilettante]

Mary felt the all-too-familiar anger welling up inside at the sight of the two bickering Irishmen in front of her. "Boys!" she snapped, louder than she intended. She glanced around the pub to make sure even more undue attention had not been drawn to their group. This evening had already been fraught with too many attention grabbing displays, even for Mary's liking.

But, as Bennet left the table to attend to his creature, Mary turned her admittedly somewhat unnecessary ire fully onto Conor. "I'm used to dealing with Bennet acting like a mischievous fucking poltergeist," she sighed deeply and shook her head. "But Conor, really? Are you that troubled by me noticing your secret books?" She added as much mocking emphasis as she could muster to the end, knowing that it would upset him.

Conor practically wilted beneath Mary’s harsh tone, looking down as she chided him like a mother disciplining a disobedient child. It was an apt enough comparison — he had to bite back a “He started it!”

There were other words he could speak, surely. Something that could give voice to the rage that made his fingernails dig into his palms, that could point a verbal finger at Mary for crumbling at the smallest indication that one could associate her with the wealthy fools she despised, that could for once prove he wasn’t someone to looked down on.

But there were no words — none that Conor knew how to speak, at least. So he glared holes into the floor as he replied through gritted teeth. “Sorry, boss. Won’t happen again.”

"Thrilled to hear it, dear," Mary smiled, sitting back in her chair. She knew it wasn't Conor's fault, but the man saw weakness in her that she dared not even show Helena. Mary would be a fool to cower before him now, even if he didn't quite deserve the reprimanding he received.

The others at the table looked about as uncomfortable as Mary expected. She briefly scanned Astrid, but the bruises and blood were too concerning for Mary to let herself dwell on before this mission. She turned to Bruce, without meeting his gaze. "Brucie, dear, would you mind fetching Bennet? The little lad seems to have thrown a tantrum and should be reminding of the severity of our goals this evening."

Bruce stood from his propped position against the beam, giving a quick nod. He turned quick on his heel and looked out the door, scanning for Benny. The lad didn't get far by the time Bruce peeked his head out. "Come back, Anderton. Just accept it and move on. All you can do. Oh, and leave the mutt for now. You can play with him all you like when we're back from the fence." Bruce honestly wasn't sure what even happened; he'd been lost in thought during the commotion.

"Thank you Brucie!" Mary called over to the man. "Now, keep an eye out for Lena and the Yank with the carriage, if you would!" Mary then turned to Eleanor, whom she realized was awoken by Mary bumping into her. "Apologies for the nudge, love," she said, smiling softly at the girl, "I hardly meant a thing by it."

Eleanor was the sort who seemed dreadfully out of her element within their group, but she never dared raise her hand - or voice - against Mary or her sister. She may have repeatedly demonstrated her discomfort with their work through her reactions and expressions, but the girl knew her place and seemed fiercely loyal to the gang. Truth be told, it was preferable to the derangement oft found in the rest of their numbers. "Is something the matter? You seem awfully tired for this point in the evening."

Eleanor wasn't sure for how long she had been asleep- though she hoped it hadn't been too terribly long- when Mary bumped her awake.

"It's alright Mary," Ella yawned, rubbing the last bit of sleep out of her eyes before focusing back to her leader. She made a note of a missing Benny, who she could've swore was next to her not that long ago but said nothing of her worries to Mary. "I'm sorry...I guess I've just had rather a lot on my brain these last few weeks." It wasn't a whole lie. Of course, it wasn't the truth either and Mary undoubtedly knew that.

"Is it time to go?"

"Yes, well," Mary responded, immediately noticing the wall that Eleanor put up between them, "take care not not to overwork yourself, love." She couldn't blame the girl for shutting her out; they'd hardly spoken recently and Mary had only just been a bit less than fair to Conor, which wasn't even to mention their plans for the blissfully ignorant Scot in nary a few hours. "Quite so," she added, in response to the girl's question.

It shouldn't have been long until the carriage's arrival, so Mary stood from the table with a wince and donned the mask that had slipped far too many times for the evening already. "Well loves," she declared with a theatrical and clearly forced tone shift, "it appears our hosts will be ready shortly! I'm sure, by now, they've opened their doors and are simply trembling with anticipation at our scheduled arrival." She smiled through her mask at the group and extended a hand to Conor in his chair as a weak attempt at an olive branch. "Shall we, dear?"

 

[Hard Boiled]

Feel a bit less than dressed for the occasion, but one gun'll have to do.

"'S'why we sent you home first, ya muttonhead." Helena bumped herself off of the booth with an awkward arch of her back, following closely behind Benjamin's Irish goodbye. She only caught a sliver of Benny and Conor's antics as she exited, internally breathing a sigh of relief.

The walk to the livery stables was a quiet one between the two stoics of the gang, not a single word exchanged as they crossed Spitalfields. Helena arguably felt safest around Benjamin, besides Mary. Sure, Astrid could probably weasel her way out of most any trouble, and nobody would want to stand in front of a charging Bruce, but Benjamin was a trained, experienced hunter of men. There was no question as to who she would want to stand next to should push come to shove.

That said, a whole platoon of the Union's best wouldn't last five minutes should the seamen at the port turn on them.

"Here." She pointed to a set of large wooden doors, knocking twice with her boot. A smaller, man-sized door opened a few feet to her right. "Oh."
Not sixty seconds later, they were riding a two-horse wagon back to the pub. Helena had never driven a cart before, thus Benjamin had the reins.
"Anything eating at you before we return?" She inquired, idly swinging her legs as they rode.

Benjamin gives the reins a flick to nudge the horses along, having spent a fair amount of time at the reins before, and remains quiet for the most part. When Helena asks if there’s anything eating at him, he shrugs. “Wonder sometimes if all them folks I’ve killed are waiting for me in Hell.” He says, though he sounds more curious than afraid of the notion. “But I wouldn’t say anything’s eating at me. Were it me I’d cut Bruce loose, but if Astrid’s willin’ to be Christ-like and forgive then I suppose I can too.”

Helena snorted at Benjamin's Western charm, until the weight of his response set in.
"Y'think he'd be any better out there? Prob'ly fancy himself a roller on Dorset Street...!" She tried and failed to phrase it as a joke. Earning no response, she tried to fill the silence again.
"W-We'll figure something to do with him, yeah?" Nothing. Not even a glance of approval to quell the storm in her gut. It appeared the ride home would be similarly quiet to the initial trip.