☾ Warnings: time travel/time-slip, disorientation, fear/panic, 1919 Small Heath, sexism/misogyny, unwanted male attention, brief physical harassment toward Grace, intimidation, alcohol, smoking, swearing, Tommy being suspicious as always
☾ Tags: @spn-reader, @fiftyshadesofdepressedd
☾‧₊˚ ⋅ ───────────── ⋅ ˚₊‧☽
The first thing Vera Hart noticed was the cold.
It had settled into her bones before she was fully awake, pressing through the thin places in her coat and making her fingers ache where they were curled against wet stone. For a few seconds, she stayed still, too dazed to understand why the ground beneath her cheek was hard or why the air tasted of smoke.
There had been rain before this.
She remembered that much.
Rain running down the back of her neck. Rain darkening the pavement beneath her shoes. Rain turning the world around her into a blur of yellow streetlights and black windows. She remembered walking too quickly with her head down, one hand tucked into her coat pocket, trying to get out of the weather before it soaked her through completely.
Then there had been a sound behind her.
Not footsteps.
Something lower than that. A groan of old wood, maybe. A door moving where no door should have been.
Vera remembered turning her head.
After that, nothing made sense.
She opened her eyes to a strip of gray sky caught between two brick walls. Water dripped somewhere nearby, slow and steady, and the smell around her was so strong that it made her throat close. Coal smoke. Mud. Beer gone sour. Horse shit. Damp wool.
Vera pushed herself up on one elbow and nearly slipped.
“God,” she breathed, pressing one hand flat to the ground.
Her palm came away gritty and wet.
For a moment, she thought she must have fallen. Hit her head. Wandered somewhere she didn’t remember. The thought was almost comforting because it had edges. It gave her something ordinary to hold on to.
Then a horse snorted at the mouth of the alley.
Vera went still.
The animal passed by with a cart dragging behind it, wheels rattling over uneven stones. A man walked beside it in a cap and heavy coat, one hand on the reins, his boots dark with muck. He did not look like someone dressed for a joke. He looked cold, tired, and completely real.
Vera sat upright too quickly.
The alley tilted.
She caught herself against the brick wall and swallowed hard, waiting for the dizziness to pass. Her head hurt, but not enough for this. Not enough to explain the street beyond the alley, the cart, the smoke hanging low over the rooftops, the lamps, the clothes, the sound of men shouting somewhere nearby in voices that seemed to belong to another world.
A woman hurried past with a basket hooked over her arm, skirt hem dragging through the mud. Two boys ran after each other across the street, their caps nearly flying off their heads. Somewhere, a door slammed so hard that Vera flinched.
She stood slowly.
Her legs did not feel steady beneath her.
A man walking by glanced into the alley and slowed. His eyes moved over her coat, her trousers, her boots, then up to her face. The look he gave her was not confusion exactly. It was suspicion, the kind that made Vera aware of every wrong thing about herself at once.
“You drunk?” he asked.
Vera blinked at him. “No.”
“You look it.”
“I said no.”
Her voice came out sharper than she meant it to. Fear had always done that to her, turned itself into anger before anyone could notice what it really was.
The man gave a short laugh and lifted his cigarette back to his mouth. “Best get yourself home, then.”
Home.
Vera looked past him to the street again.
Nothing in it belonged to her.
“What year is it?” she asked.
The man’s expression changed.
It happened quickly, but Vera saw it. His amusement thinned. His eyes narrowed. In that second, she understood that she had said the wrong thing. Whatever this place was, confusion was not safe here. It made people look at you too long. It made them decide things about you.
“What?” he said.
Vera forced herself to breathe evenly. “The year.”
The man stared at her for another second, then laughed like she had confirmed something for him. “1919, love. Same as it were this morning.”
Vera’s hand tightened against the wall.
No.
The word moved through her silently, plain and useless.
No.
The man shook his head and walked on, muttering something she couldn’t hear. Vera watched him go until he disappeared around the corner. She remained where she was, one hand pressed to the brick, trying to make her mind do something other than reject what she had just heard.
1919.
It had to be a mistake. A dream. A breakdown. Something with a name. Something with a cause. Vera stood in the alley with rainwater soaking into the side of her coat and tried to force the world to change back through sheer refusal.
It did not.
The street stayed gray and loud and alive.
A cart rolled past. Men shouted. A child cried somewhere behind a door. Smoke moved through the air like a living thing, settling over everything, getting into Vera’s hair, her throat, her lungs.
She stepped out of the alley because standing still made her feel like prey.
That was the first rule she learned.
Do not stand there looking lost.
The second followed almost immediately.
Do not ask questions you cannot explain.
Vera walked without knowing where she was going. Every street seemed to fold into another, narrow and wet, lined with brick and soot-black windows. People stared at her, not openly enough for her to accuse them of it, but enough that she felt each glance catch on her clothes and drag. Her coat hid most of what was wrong, but not all. Her boots were too clean in shape if not in condition. Her trousers drew looks. Her hair, her voice, the way she moved through the street without lowering her eyes quickly enough, all of it marked her as something out of place.
A group of men stood outside a doorway, smoking and talking. Their conversation dipped as she passed.
“Lost, are you?” one called.
Vera kept walking.
“Oi. I’m talking to you.”
“And I’m walking away,” she said before she could stop herself.
Laughter followed her, rough and low.
Her stomach tightened, but she did not turn around.
Stupid, she thought.
So stupid.
This was not the world she knew. A sharp mouth would not protect her here the way it sometimes had before. It might get her hurt. It might get her followed. It might make a man decide she needed teaching.
Vera pressed her lips together and kept moving.
She had no money that would make sense here. No address. No family. No story that would survive more than two questions. The thought of it built slowly in her chest until it became hard to breathe. She could not go to the police. She could not ask for help. She could not explain the truth without sounding mad, and she suspected madness was a dangerous thing to look like in a place like this.
By the time she reached the pub, the sky had begun to darken.
She did not know what pulled her toward it.
That was what unsettled her most.
The building stood on the corner with its windows glowing against the wet street, noise spilling out each time the door opened. Men went in with their collars turned up and came out laughing or shouting, carrying warmth on their clothes before the cold took it from them. Above the door, the sign creaked faintly in the wind.
The Garrison.
Vera stopped across the street and stared at the name.
It meant nothing.
It should have meant nothing.
Still, something in her chest moved strangely at the sight of it, as if some part of her had been waiting for the place to appear. Not recognition. Not exactly. It was deeper than that and harder to trust. A pull. A memory without a picture attached to it.
Vera frowned.
“Don’t be stupid,” she whispered.
A man brushed past her shoulder and cursed when she didn’t move quickly enough.
That decided it.
Whatever strange feeling the pub gave her, it had walls. It had light. It had people, which was both better and worse than being alone in the street. Vera crossed quickly before she could lose her nerve and pushed the door open.
Heat struck her first.
Then noise.
The inside of the Garrison was thick with smoke and voices. Men crowded around tables, leaned over drinks, shouted over one another like being heard was a matter of pride. The floor stuck faintly beneath Vera’s boots. The lamps gave everything a yellowish glow, softening nothing. It smelled of whisky, sweat, damp wool, and fire.
Several men looked at her when she entered.
Vera lifted her chin before she could think better of it.
Behind the bar, a blonde woman was pouring a drink with practiced hands. She looked up at Vera, and for a second her expression remained politely blank. Then her eyes moved over Vera’s coat, lingering just long enough to make it clear she had noticed more than she was saying.
“What can I get you?” the woman asked.
Her voice was gentle, but not weak.
Vera opened her mouth and realized she had no answer.
She had come in because the street was cold and the pub was warm. That was the full extent of her plan. Now she stood there with mud on her coat and nothing acceptable in her pockets, being watched by a woman who looked too observant for comfort.
“I just need a minute,” Vera said.
The woman’s gaze softened a little. “Are you unwell?”
“No.”
It came too quickly.
The woman noticed that too.
Before she could say anything else, a man came from the side of the bar wiping his hands on a cloth. He looked from Vera to the woman, then back again.
The word sat bitterly in her mouth. Vera felt the room pressing in behind her, all those voices and bodies and eyes. Outside was worse. Outside was cold and dark and filled with streets she did not understand. In here, at least, there was a fire. There was light. There was a woman behind the bar whose name was Grace and a man in front of her who looked impatient but not yet cruel.
Vera looked toward the end of the bar just as one of the men slammed an empty glass down.
“Harry,” he barked. “Are we drinking tonight or waiting for Christmas?”
The man beside him laughed.
Harry muttered something under his breath and reached for a bottle.
Vera heard herself speak before she had fully decided to.
“I can work.”
Harry paused. “What?”
“I can work,” she repeated, because taking it back now would be worse. “If you need help.”
He stared at her. “You ever worked behind a bar?”
Vera had not. Not properly. Not anywhere like this. But she had learned very quickly that honesty had to be rationed here.
“Yes.”
Harry’s eyes narrowed. “Where?”
Vera held his stare for one second, then two. Her mind searched for a lie and found only scraps.
“Places that asked fewer questions.”
Grace lowered her eyes toward the glass in her hand, but Vera saw the corner of her mouth move.
Harry did not look amused. “That mouth will get you thrown out.”
“It usually waits until after I’ve been paid.”
A few men close enough to hear laughed.
Harry sighed, the way a man did when the day had already asked too much of him. “I’ve got one girl missing and half the street in here before dark. I don’t need trouble.”
“Then don’t hire trouble,” Vera said. “Hire hands.”
He considered her for a moment.
Vera forced herself not to shift under the weight of it. She needed this to work. She needed something to do, somewhere to stand, some reason for not being pushed back outside. She did not have room for pride, but pride was all she seemed able to use.
Then a man at the bar reached out and caught Grace’s wrist as she set his drink down.
“Come on, Grace,” he said, smiling in a way that made Vera’s shoulders tighten. “Don’t rush off.”
Grace’s expression did not change, but her hand stilled.
Harry turned. “Charlie.”
Charlie did not let go.
Vera moved before she could measure the risk.
“Take your hand off her.”
Charlie’s head turned slowly.
The noise closest to them dipped. Not much. Just enough.
Vera knew she had done something foolish. She knew it from the way Harry went still and the way Grace’s eyes flicked toward her. She knew it from Charlie’s smile, which widened as if she had offered him entertainment.
“What did you say?” he asked.
Vera’s heart was beating hard enough to make her feel lightheaded.
Still, she did not look away.
“I said take your hand off her. I can say it slower if that helps.”
Someone laughed under his breath.
Charlie released Grace, but only so he could turn fully toward Vera. He was bigger than she expected once his attention was on her. Broad through the chest, thick hands, drink on his breath. Vera became painfully aware of the bar between them and how little it would do if he decided to reach across it.
“Sharp little thing, aren’t you?”
“Only around dull men.”
Harry stepped in before Charlie could move closer. “Enough. Drink or get out.”
Charlie looked at Harry, then at Vera. For a second, she thought he might push it anyway. Then he picked up his glass with a humorless smile.
“New girl’s got nerve.”
“New girl’s got a name,” Vera said.
Grace glanced at her.
Harry looked like he was trying to decide whether to laugh or throw her out himself. After a moment, he pointed toward the back.
“Apron’s through there. You work tonight. You get a bit of coin and a chair by the fire until closing. You cause trouble, and I don’t care where you sleep.”
Vera nodded once. “Understood.”
“And don’t talk to every man like that.”
“I’ll make a list of exceptions.”
“Go.”
She went.
The back room was small, dim, and smelled faintly of old beer and soap. Vera found the apron hanging from a hook and tied it around her waist with hands that would not quite stop shaking. Away from the noise of the pub, the force of what had happened pressed down on her all at once.
She had work.
For tonight.
That was not safety, not really, but it was something shaped like it. Enough to keep her indoors. Enough to give people a reason to stop asking why she was standing there with nowhere to go. Enough to keep her from having to sit in the street and wait for whatever came next.
Vera braced both hands on the edge of a table and lowered her head.
She had not cried yet.
She was afraid that if she did, she would not be able to make herself stop.
“Not now,” she whispered.
Her voice sounded strange in the little room, thin and too close to breaking.
Vera breathed in slowly, then out. Once. Twice. She straightened, tightened the apron, and went back into the noise.
Grace showed her what to do without making a show of it. Where the clean glasses were kept. Which bottles were which. Which men paid before they drank and which would pretend to forget if no one reminded them. She spoke quietly, close enough that Vera could hear without the whole pub listening.
“You learn quickly,” Grace said after Vera managed to pour two drinks without spilling more than a few drops.
“I’m very motivated.”
“By the work?”
“By not freezing outside.”
Grace looked at her then, really looked. “Have you nowhere to go?”
Vera wiped the counter with unnecessary focus. “Not tonight.”
“And tomorrow?”
“I’ll hate tomorrow when it gets here.”
That earned her a small smile.
Grace was not what Vera expected, though Vera could not have said what she had expected. The woman was kind enough. Helpful enough. But there was something held back in her, something Vera recognized without knowing why. Grace listened more than she spoke. Her eyes moved over the room even when her hands were busy. She smiled at men who underestimated her, and she let them.
Vera did not trust it.
That was unfair, maybe. Vera had no reason not to trust her. No clear reason. But every time Grace asked a question, Vera felt the shape of another question beneath it.
“Where are you from?” Grace asked when the rush eased for half a minute.
Vera picked up a glass and rubbed at a mark that was not there. “Nowhere interesting.”
Grace gave a soft laugh. “Most people from nowhere interesting still name the place.”
“Most people are too trusting.”
Grace’s smile lingered. “And you aren’t?”
Vera looked at her. “Are you?”
The question settled between them.
Grace looked away first, though not quickly enough for it to feel like surrender.
Before Vera could decide whether she had made another mistake, the pub changed.
It was subtle at first. A tightening in the room. Men did not go silent, but their voices shifted lower. Shoulders straightened. A man at one of the tables moved his glass closer to himself without looking toward the door. Harry glanced up once, then down again, suddenly very interested in the towel in his hands.
Vera noticed because she had been watching for danger since the moment she woke up.
The door opened.
Three men came in, bringing a gust of cold air and street damp with them.
The first was loud before he was fully through the door, broad and restless, already speaking over his shoulder. The second followed with a grin that seemed made for trouble. The third came in behind them quietly.
The room belonged to him before Vera knew his name.
She hated that she noticed.
He was not the largest of the three. He did not need to be. He took off his cap and looked once across the pub, and the glance was enough to make the space around him feel measured. Men looked away without seeming to. Conversations resumed carefully. He moved like someone who expected doors to open, men to listen, and trouble to reveal itself before he had to ask.
Something tightened low in Vera’s chest.
Not recognition.
She told herself that immediately.
It was not recognition because she did not know him. She had never seen him before. She did not know the sharp line of his face or the pale blue focus of his eyes or the way he held still while everyone else adjusted around him.
Still, her body reacted like it had been warned.
Grace stepped closer to the bar. “Shelbys,” she murmured.
Vera heard the name and felt it move through her in a way she did not understand.
Shelby.
It meant nothing.
It did not feel like nothing.
The grinning one reached the bar first. “Evening, Grace.”
“John,” Grace replied.
John. Vera stored the name without meaning to.
The louder one leaned beside him. “Harry, get us a drink before John starts talking again.”
“Arthur,” John said, offended. “I’m the charm of this family.”
Arthur laughed and shoved him with one shoulder.
The quiet one came to the bar last.
Grace looked at him differently. Vera noticed that too. It was not obvious. Nothing in this place seemed obvious unless someone wanted it to be. But Grace’s voice softened when she said, “Thomas.”
Thomas.
The name settled in Vera’s mind with a strange, almost painful weight.
Thomas Shelby looked at Grace first, then Harry, then Vera.
His gaze did not linger at first. It passed over her the way it passed over everything else, collecting details. Then it came back.
Vera kept wiping the same stretch of bar because stopping would make her hands too noticeable.
“New girl?” John asked, leaning one elbow on the counter.
He took a cigarette from his case and set it between his lips, still watching her with a quietness that felt more dangerous than Arthur’s noise or John’s grin. Vera found herself standing straighter without meaning to, irritated by the instinct. She did not know this man. She did not owe him nerves.
Harry set drinks down for Arthur and John. Grace poured for Thomas, her movements smooth and practiced.
Vera reached for a glass only because Harry nodded toward a man waiting at the far end of the bar. She turned to serve him, grateful for the excuse to look away.
The man at the end was already drunk and annoyed by waiting.
“About time,” he said.
Vera set the glass down and held her hand out for the coins. “Then pay before I change my mind.”
His eyes narrowed, but he dug into his pocket. One slipped from his fingers and rolled beneath the bar. Vera bent to catch it before it disappeared. When she straightened, Thomas Shelby was still watching her.
Not openly.
That almost made it worse.
Grace placed his whisky in front of him. “Tommy.”
Tommy.
So Thomas became Tommy when spoken of by people close enough to risk it.
Vera had no idea why that mattered to her.
Tommy picked up the glass but did not drink. “What’s your name?”
It took Vera a second to realize he was asking her.
She turned. “Vera.”
“Vera what?”
“Hart.”
John’s grin widened. “Vera Hart. Pretty.”
“Do you practice that tone,” Vera asked, “or does it come naturally?”
Arthur barked out a laugh. John looked as if Christmas had come early.
Tommy’s expression barely changed.
“Where’ve you come from, Vera Hart?”
There it was again.
The question everyone seemed to want answered.
Vera had been in this world for only a handful of hours, but she already understood that a woman without an origin was a problem. Men liked to know where a woman came from. It told them who owned her, who might come looking, who could be blamed if something happened. Vera had no answer that would satisfy that kind of thinking.
So she chose the lie she had been building all night.
“London,” she said.
Tommy took the cigarette from his mouth. “London.”
“Yes.”
“Which part?”
Vera held his stare. “The part people leave.”
John laughed under his breath.
Arthur reached for his drink, still amused. Grace went very still beside Vera, though her hands kept moving.
Tommy did not laugh.
He lit his cigarette, the brief flame throwing a hard glow across his face before he shook the match out. He took his time, and Vera hated that too. The silence was not empty. It was full of him deciding what he believed.
“And why would London send you here?” he asked.
“It didn’t send me. I left.”
“With no bag?”
Vera’s stomach tightened.
Tommy’s eyes moved once to her coat, her empty hands, the apron tied around her waist. She had not realized until that moment how carefully he had already counted the details.
“No money,” he continued. “No people. No story except the one you think of when asked.”
Vera’s fingers tightened around the cloth in her hand. “I said London.”
Tommy watched her for a moment, cigarette resting between his fingers.
“Aye,” he said. “You said it.”
The way he answered made her wish she had chosen anywhere else.
John’s smile faded a little, not gone, just sharpened by interest.
Grace looked down at the glass she was drying.
Vera swallowed back the first answer that came to her. It would have been too sharp, too quick, and she had already learned enough tonight to know when a room was waiting for her to make herself smaller or make herself a target.
She did neither.
She held his stare and said nothing.
Tommy watched her for one more second.
Then, at last, the corner of his mouth moved. It was not quite a smile, but it was close enough to unsettle her.
He picked up his whisky.
“London,” he said again.
Vera said nothing.
Tommy took a sip, then set the glass down. “No.”
The word was soft.
It cut through her anyway.
“No what?”
“You didn’t come from London.”
Vera felt Grace’s attention flick toward her.
Harry stopped pretending not to listen.
Tommy reached for his cigarette and straightened. “Try again when you’ve had more practice.”
He turned away before Vera could answer.
Arthur and John followed him toward the back room, still throwing comments at each other, but Tommy did not look back. He did not need to. Whatever he had meant to do, he had done it.
Vera stood behind the bar with the cloth twisted tight in her hand.
The room slowly returned to itself around her. Men resumed their conversations. Glasses clinked. Grace moved beside her, pouring another drink as if nothing had happened.
Vera stared at the wet ring Tommy’s glass had left on the bar.
She did not know him.
She did not know Grace.
She did not know this pub, this street, this hard gray world that had swallowed her whole and demanded she find a way to stand upright inside it.
But when Thomas Shelby had looked at her, something inside Vera had gone still in a way that felt too much like memory.
That was impossible.
All of this was impossible.
Vera picked up the cloth again and forced herself to keep working, because work meant she could stay near the fire when the night ended. Work meant a few coins in her palm. Work meant not being pushed back into the street.
For now, that was all survival had to be.
But Tommy Shelby knew she was lying.
And Vera had the terrible feeling that in Small Heath, that was the sort of mistake that could follow a girl all the way into the dark.
rest assured every fic prefaced "english is not my first language" will be the juiciest, most poetic, life altering piece of fanfiction you will ever read. you know who you are. and we thank you for your service.
Fair. That's why there's a queue. Use it so your posts are spaced out and you're not clogging anything. (And if you do clog someone's dash because your hourly posts are too many, then that's on that person for not following more people.)
2. "It's so weird, I don't want anyone to know I like it."
Hello, you are on the cringe website, we all like weird shit, that's why we're here? If others don't like it, they can scroll past it. (Also they probably like it and just aren't telling you.)
3. "None of my followers have followed me for this content."
Then use a tag and tell them to block the tag. It's your blog, not theirs, put up what you want. Again, cringe website; please see #2.
4. "I haven't read/watched (this fic/article/book/movie/TV show) yet. What if it's terrible?"
So? Say it looks interesting and you'll look at it later. And maybe it'll be terrible to you, fine. But it also might be someone else's favorite fic/article/book/movie/TV show ever that they discovered through you.
5. "They don't reblog my stuff!"
Yeah, probably they're saying the same about you. Vicious cycle. Maybe be the one to break it? (Or maybe they don't reblog yours because they didn't see it because no one else reblogged it either. Please see #4.)
6. "I only get three reblogs a day and after that I am not allowed to reblog anything else for a full 24 hours."
Okay, now you're just making shit up.
7. "My reblog queue is already full."
You know you can make that go as fast as you want, right? Also if you're reblogging that much, you don't need this post. Go watch one of those shows from #4.
8. "No one follows me, no one will care, everyone has seen it already."
Maybe no one follows you now, but that won't always be true. Part of the reason you reblog is so that people can find you, and use what you've reblogged before to decide if they want to follow you now. The OP will care if you reblog their stuff; you'll make their day by doing so, and maybe they'll follow you too.
Tumblr moves fast, and there's always newbies. There is always something someone hasn't seen. Be the one to show them, and turn them into today's Lucky 10,000.
9. "I don't want to spam reblog from just one person!"
Yeah, this isn't Insta or Twitter or whatever, doing this is a compliment, honestly. Use your queue if you're that worried, though (see #1).
9. "I guess I just didn't think it mattered."
It does. It really does.
Sometimes we all have quiet days. I can't claim I reblog absolutely everything I should, either.
But please try.
We say we want community; we say we want connection; we say we want to be part of something bigger.
This is the best, easiest way to do that.
If you like it, reblog it. If you think someone else might like it, reblog it. Participate. Build the community you want.
10. "I don't know if the OP wants me to reblog this!"
Yes, they do, or they would have turned off reblogs (which you can do. And if you didn't know that--now you do! Congrats, you're one of today's Lucky 10,000.)
11. "OP made a mistake and used the number 9 twice in their list (or some other mistake), do they really want that mistake immortalized?"
Not particularly but you know what, didn't hurt Spiders Georg any, so I'm cool wiht it.
So reblog it again! Especially if you haven't reblogged it in a while--there's always going to be someone who hasn't seen it before or is wanting to see it again. (See #8)
13. "I hit the daily post limit and I'm in Australia (or otherwise on the wrong side of the date line)."
Okay, yeah, fine, that's a problem, I agree. Kudos to you for hitting the daily post limit. Now, I don't know for sure that these will work, but maybe give 'em a shot: use your queue to store what you can't post (and pause the queue if you need to); use drafts to store what you can't post); create a sideblog so you can reblog MOAR STUFF, take a break from reblogging for a bit, you have done your service kind tumblrino and we thank you for it. 🫡 Also recognize that you are part of the SOLUTION and not the problem, give yourselves a pat on the back.
you know what else could we do. we could all change our icons to that one picture of mish— [i am being forcibly removed and taken out back. the crowd is told the shots they heard were unrelated]
I’m sorry I know this is normally just an art and rambling blog you didn’t honestly expect me to pass up reblogging The Spanish Inquisition did you?
Because nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
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