Work Text:
Linda feels cursed.
Our Father, who art in heaven.
She isn’t, because she has the light in her, but even with prayer and hours upon hours in the Church, on her knees, hands clasped, there’s the stench of being around sinners not searching for their light and ignoring the guidance of God that she simply can’t remove.
It’s easier, when talking to him. Sometimes easier than talking to Him. Shared worldviews, shared experiences in both the material world so much as the spiritual. Always easier than talking to the ‘him’ that is her husband.
She’s tried to create a blank slate with Arthur. She learned there’s no such thing when the past has not only made its presence known in the body, but in the mind, too, occupying a large part and growing and growing every day, with every pull of every trigger.
These months, being around Arthur always shunts her into the defensive. You have to calm down. You can’t just do that. Think of Billy, Arthur. She’s been one step behind his impulses, two steps behind whatever Tommy’s cooking, and the scale of Arthur’s loyalties is tilting towards him.
Tommy’s cooking, this time, ended with the one man in her life that lacked violent tendencies being on the receiving end of them. The face is unrecognizable, they said. He’s alive, still, but at what cost. What sort of life is he going to lead from now on.
Linda prays for him, too, when she can.
Hallowed be thy Name.
Conclusion is, she’s cursed, on some level. Her wants were simple, but God’s wants for her also are. On some level, this is also payback—for the cocaine while carrying life inside of her, for the booze, for whatever it is she has with Lizzie Shelby.
Conclusion also is, she has to do something about it. There are broken vase pieces on the floor, some more by the window. Good porcelain, it shines almost as bright as the tears in her eyes while she picks up the gun from the closet, gets in the car, places it on the passenger’s seat next to her.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.
The shot was supposed to be from her hand.
She had the gun in her grasp, she had it pointed. Her vision blurry, but her heart, rapidly as it was beating, was steady. Three steps behind Tommy’s plans, five steps behind her own life’s plans, bound to a man intent on destroying any good in her life. No more.
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
All men have the light inside of them, such is the Word, but Arthur is no man. Arthur does not need forgiveness, and she can’t offer it, anymore. Linda would need it, once she was free. A life is a life.
The shot was supposed to be from her hand.
It’s from Polly’s.
No hesitation, the Shelby way.
Linda doesn’t register the pain, but she does register the hot blood in her hand, ruby red and staining her fingers, the sleeve of her dress, the rest of it. She registers the voices of Lizzie and Tommy, though not their words.
She doesn’t register Arthur. It is, in a way, a confirmation of the rupture between them. Gap too big to be mended by anything short of extreme measures.
Someone was going to die here, tonight. She wasn’t – isn’t – prepared for it to be her.
The world goes dark.
But deliver us from evil.
She wakes up… not on the ground. Not in a mattress. There are edges digging at her back, but they’re small and soft. Her lids, limbs, body are too heavy. There’s a neigh from her right.
She wakes up. There’s a horrid stench.
She wakes up. It’s the third time, and the one when she realizes she’s on a haystack and the stench is from a horse. It’s also the third time she wakes up that she realizes Lizzie is right next to her.
Her limbs are still heavy.
“Hey, soldier,” Lizzie says, softly, a hand on Linda’s face, “you’re tougher than you look. And heavier.”
“You carried me?” Linda asks- well. Croaks out.
“M-hm.” The hand moves from her cheek to her hair. “Only to the car. I’m not that strong. But you are, even the swelling has started to go down a bit. Now drink.”
Linda does, and she rests her eyes.
It’s several days, several changes of bandages mostly washed by the river due to lack of supplies and several prayers for lack of infection and poisoning later that Linda thinks to ask where they are, how they ended up there, how is she alive.
The latter she asks after a particularly rough round of nausea and a bit of vomit. It’s not pretty, but the horse
“My old profession introduced me to a lot of people.” Is the most she can get out of Lizzie. “I had help.”
Some older man visits, once a week, and checks on her. Linda assumes he’s trained in medical situations, at least. She’s still a lady of class, and she’ll admit that one of the happier pieces of news he brought her was telling her she’s allowed to bathe again.
The river water was cold, but Lizzie and she stayed in it for hours.
Another man visits, too, but only once. This one is younger and taller and far more anxious and secretive. He comes alone, and he holds their new fake identities and a ticket to the port of Calais.
“It’s my money, technically. With Tommy’s blessing, even,” Lizzie explains, taking a drag of her cigarette, smiling. “He thinks I’ll send you to America, then come back.”
“And you?” Linda asks.
“I think I’ve heard too much about New York to let you visit it alone.”
Linda doesn’t visit New York alone. She visits it as Renee Smith, turns into Louise Hawthorn two weeks in, quaker and missionary. Lizzie is with her, her good friend, her helper. She changes names more times than Linda can count, but it’s okay. They’re an ocean away, now, from that life.
They’re an ocean away forever.
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.