CHAPTER FOUR:
WASTELAND

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HELEN WAS BEGINNING TO believe that she was fresh out of luck. First it was her interaction — more like interrogation — with the new inspector snooping around Small Heath. And now, that same inspector had given the go-ahead for her house to be raided by the bloody coppers. Helen wasn't sure what God she'd pissed off, but she had a few choice words she wanted to give them.

At the very least, she wasn't the only one. When Helen marched out into Watery Lane in the early hours of the morning, unable to bear the infuriating sight of her home being searched — for what, she didn't know, but she had a very bad feeling nonetheless — she found a dozen other families in the exact same position as her; caught off guard in their bed clothes, clearly unprepared for the company of others, and utterly fuming. Most were fighting back. Helen spied a few children cowering in the alleys between houses. It didn't take a genius to see that only one home on the block remained untouched.

The Shelby's.

Of course it was the fucking Peaky Blinders.

And on the one day everyone knew the men were out of town. Even Helen, who had done her best to avoid Tommy — and, by extension, anyone even remotely related to him — since the night she confronted him. She supposed this was as good a time as any to face the music. Polly or Ada or even young Finn would surely be home so early in the day, and they would have to be enough.

"I'll be right back," she called (more like growled) into her living room, not that the copper flipping her couch seemed to notice — and if he did, he wasn't the least bit concerned. He didn't even spare her a glance, the rude prick. "Sure. Just make yourself at home. See if I care."

By the time she reached Number 6, she was ready to throttle someone.

But of course, when she knocked, no one answered to declare themselves her latest victim.

Helen Mavis could've knocked on Heaven's door itself and she had a feeling God would have ignored her. He'd really thrown her to the wolves. Sink or swim, she'd always be damned.

Huffing, she whirled around and marched back down the road, averting her eyes from a woman who was bashing her fists against a smug copper's chest. The officer from before was yet to move on from invading her living room. Helen went right past him and into the kitchen, only hesitating for a second before she picked through the mess of discarded drawers until she found what she was looking for.

"Alright, I've had it," she declared, and promptly aimed the gun at the officer's chest when he turned to spare her a condescending glance. Her finger hovered over the safety clip, toeing the fine line between life and death, and he looked amused. Amused! Funny that. "I want you out of my house, now."

Then he had the audacity to laugh at her — laugh! — and he smiled like he was addressing a mere child. Right, then. No safety, it was. Even then, he didn't seem phased. "Sweetheart, I'd put that away if I were you. Wouldn't want to hurt yourself now, would you?"

Don't get her wrong, Helen Mavis had never killed anyone before (in the sense that she wanted them to die, Helen was no angel either) and by no means was she ready to face the consequences of such a decision. The weight of the gun was heavy in her hand, but so was the weight of her heart in her chest. Still, she inched closer, and forced her hand higher until the barrel of the gun was pointed between the man's eyebrows. At long last, his expression faltered, his smile fading into an expression of wariness. Helen found no satisfaction in the fear she watched trickle in.

"Get out of my house," she repeated slowly. It was her turn to smile as he suddenly released the cushion he'd been holding. "Sweetheart."

The second he stepped past the threshold, Helen lurched forward and slammed the door in his face. Locking it for good measure, she quickly switched the safety back on and discarded the gun, withdrawing her hand like the metal was scalding to touch. Only then did she pause to truly take in the wreckage, letting out a groan of dread at what the rest of the day now entailed.

Just you wait, Thomas Shelby, she thought as she heaved her couch upright. The effort it took almost threw her back out, because of course it did. What was another injury while her face was still painted black and blue with bruises? Oh, just you wait.

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AS IT SO HAPPENED, it was Helen herself who waited. From dawn until dusk, when the last of the pink-dusted signs of the sun setting had seeped into a dark, inky purple, she spent the better part of her day returning her house to working order. Fortunately, her bedroom and bathroom had remained untouched — not yet reached by the copper who thought too much of himself. Nevertheless, her living room and kitchen weren't an easy task, and at the arrival of the evening, Helen was pretty much dead on her feet. She trudged her way into her bedroom, letting out a relieved sigh at the sight of her bed.

Sleep was calling, but it had no choice but to be delayed. Helen frowned at the sound of someone knocking on her door. The street outside was alive with commotion, but Helen had been ready to ignore it. Now, it seemed, the decision was no longer hers to make.

The sight of John Shelby standing on the other side of the door did nothing to improve her sour mood.

"Two bob for your picture of the King," he grunted in that abrupt way men always did. He was balancing a timber box containing picture frames with one hand as he threw a coin down at her feet with the other.

Helen raised a careful eyebrow at him, waiting for the other shoe to drop. "I beg your pardon?"

John smiled; this time, his expression was sheepish. "What? You think you're too good for two bob, Nel?"

Helen scoffed and crossed her arms over her chest. She was still wearing her bed clothes, having seen no point in changing out of them for a day stuck inside, but felt no need to cover herself around John Shelby. Deny it as much as she wanted, he would always be like a brother to her. "What do you want, John?"

"I already told you," he grumbled with an evident air of impatience. "Your picture of the King."

"Yes, but why?"

"Good God, woman," he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. "Just bring your picture and you'll see."

"I have to go somewhere?" she queried. When he nodded, glaring at her, she shook her head at him. "No thanks. You can have your two bob."

Before the door could swing shut, though, John jammed his shoe in the way and grimaced as Helen all but wedged the door into his toes. "Don't be difficult, Helen," he hissed as he forced his way into the living room.

"Why not, John?" she retorted, mirroring his grudging tone with a pointed blink of her eyes. "You know, you're not the first person I've had force their way into my home today. Isn't that funny?"

But John was no longer listening. Beneath her dim living room lights, he had finally spotted the bruises on her face and frozen, a dark glower tugging at his brows. Helen's confusion faltered as he blurted, "Who the fuck did this, eh?"

"Oh, this," she waved a breezy hand at her face. "Why, just your new family friend, Inspector Campbell, of course."

"He ain't a friend of ours," John snapped, using his free hand to nudge her jaw up. He scowled when she smacked his fingers away, the bruise around her eye tinted a sickening yellow hue. "I'll kill 'im."

"Okay, John," she muttered, her exhaustion hitting her all at once. She didn't want to argue anymore, not when John's expression changed and the sudden silence only grew thick. She crossed the room to where her picture of the King hung, merely collecting dust behind the kitchen door. She snatched it down from its hook and turned back to him. "Well. What are you waiting for? Lead the way."

John coughed then, a hot crimson blush burning its way up his neck to the tips of his ears. Helen frowned. He looked... queasy. Or embarrassed, maybe, but definitely woozy. He was fine only a second ago, and now—

"Maybe you should grab a coat?" he muttered, doing his best to avoid looking at her, even going as far as to turn his back so he was facing the fireplace.

Helen glanced down at her nightgown and laughed.

Oh, John, you fool.

"Have you never seen a woman in her night clothes before?" she teased. "Surely you must have, with so many kids—"

"Helen."

"Alright, alright," she conceded. "I'll be back."

She didn't give him the opportunity to retort before discarding her picture of the King on the couch. Then, after darting into her bedroom, she returned a few seconds later with a large black coat wrapped around her frame to hide most of the nightgown underneath. Risqué, but presentable enough.

"This decent enough for you?" John forced his head to turn in her direction. He didn't answer, merely raising an eyebrow as she grabbed her picture frame and marched over to the door. "What? Cat got your tongue all of a sudden?"

John shook his head and smirked. "I'm just admiring your coat, love. Looks familiar."

"It's a coat," she mumbled, but made a point of not meeting his eyes as they stepped out into Watery Lane. In the distance, a fire released thick plumes of smoke into the night sky, joining the rest of the smog that blocked out the expanse of glittering stars Helen knew were out there somewhere in a galaxy far, far away. "Looks no different to the one you're wearing."

Which was exactly John's point.

And as much as he would never admit it, his sense of style, as limited as it was, was rather similar to that of his elder brothers.

And John swore Tommy used to have a coat just like the one Helen now wore.

One that, interestingly, had gone missing the day they returned home and Helen departed from their lives, seemingly for good.

A coincidence? Surely not.

John Shelby wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but he could be observant when he wanted to be.

Emphasis on wanted.

The whole of Small Heath had seemingly gathered in Watery Lane that night. With one act of defiance, the Peaky Blinders had quickly regained the majority's favour, and everyone was eager to witness the cataclysmic impact that burning pictures of the King — the King! — would surely have. United by their eagerness, everyone seemed in high spirits. Helen watched in amusement as John shoved his way to the front of the fire, Helen's donated picture frame in hand, which he made a show of chucking into the flickering frames. A thick plume of smoke rose up, and Helen grinned as the crowd started to cheer.

"Bravo, John," she commented, making a point not to stand beside Tommy; instead, she eyed Finn, who tried and failed to hide the beer bottle he was sipping from.

"Finn." Just his name sounded like a scolding when it came from Helen Mavis. "What have you got there, boy?"

Finn was quick to shove the bottle at John. "Nothin'," he insisted. "I was just... watching it for John."

"Oh, I'm sure you were," she chuckled, allowing a smile to curve the corners of her mouth as she wiped her thumb across Finn's upper lip, drawing back with the damnable alcoholic remnants on her fingertip.

Finn's eyes went wide. He glanced at his brothers nervously, but John and Arthur only smirked while Tommy, like Helen, kept his gaze firmly locked on the fire. Only Helen noticed how tense he seemed, the muscle in his jaw clenched tighter than usual.

"Are you going to tell Aunt Pol?"

Wiping her hands on her coat, Helen shrugged.

For a second, it seemed like Finn genuinely believed she would hunt down his aunt just to get him in trouble with the formidable woman. Helen wanted to laugh, and probably would have done had Arthur not wandered over to ruffle his younger brother's hair with a heavy hand.

"Nel wouldn't snitch on you, Finn-lad," Arthur met her eyes and winked. "Would you, sister?"

Helen pretended to think about it, though in truth, she needed a moment to breathe as Tommy glared at Arthur sharply. Arthur either didn't notice or chose to ignore him, but Helen couldn't. Every time. Every damn time she was around the Shelbys, they said or did something that made her heart ache. Helen Mavis should've been nothing more than a stranger to Arthur now. She was his brother's ex-partner, and brothers were supposed to support their brothers over girls who broke their hearts. And yet, there it was. Sister. Said without a second's hesitation; instinctive, like Arthur Shelby had never managed to change the way he viewed the Mavis woman.

"Nel?"

Helen forced herself to shake her head, to play along. Finn continued to stare up at her with wide eyes. "I suppose I can let it slide just this once."

"Oh, thank you, Nel!"

And just like that, a switch had been flicked. Finn all-but snatched John's beer back, swallowing down a giant gulp of it before John could snatch it back and clip him over the ears. Helen laughed as the small boy took off, the tiniest of smiles returning to her face for a second, but her heart continued to feel heavy in her chest.

In a cruel twist of fate, everything she could've had and more was staring her right in the face, lingering just out of her reach. She tried not to — really, she did — but Helen turned and looked at Tommy, waiting for him to comment, even to glare at her. He didn't. She would've deserved it, and both of them knew that. But in some ways, Helen was a glutton for punishment, and Tommy was tired of drawing her in only to push her away time and time again.

Behind them, a commotion erupted, with two Peaky Blinders shoving through the crowd with someone who looked to be a reporter between them. With a fine-looking suit and wire-rimmed glasses, he stood out like a sore thumb; a rose among thorns, so to speak. He clearly was not cut out for the streets of Birmingham, not the parts of it run by the likes of Thomas Shelby. He cowered at Tommy's side as the Peaky boys cleared the crowd around them. Helen shuffled over to the side instinctively, but couldn't help listening closely as Tommy entertained the reporter.

"You said I would be protected."

"You're protected."

"What's going on?"

Tommy tore his eyes away from the fire for only a second; a fleeting, dismissive kind of glance like he wouldn't have been wasting his time with the man was it not for something he was planning. His next move, his way of striking back against the Inspector.

"There are some things I want you to write down," he said, then made a point of waiting for the man to scuffle through his coat pockets for a notebook and a pen. "Now, first of all, it's not the people around here who are disloyal to the King. It's the opposite. You see, we don't want our beloved King looking down and seeing the things that are being done to us. So we are taking down his pictures—"

"But, why are you burning them?"

"We went through Hell for our King. Walked through the flames of war — write all this down!"

Helen had to fight back the strange urge to laugh. There was some truth to Tommy's words, though Helen highly doubted that the people of Small Health held their King in that high of a regard. It was the way that Tommy said it, like he wasn't the man pulling the strings, the man trying to play God and Devil at the same time, that truly amused Helen. She, who had seen both sides of him, and struggled to recognise the difference.

"And now we're being attacked in our own homes. These new coppers over from Belfast, breaking into our homes and interfering with our women. We don't think our King would want to see that happening. So we are lighting fires to raise the alarm."

The reporter paused his scribbling, regarding Tommy with a blatantly curious look. "May I ask, in what capacity do you speak?"

"No capacity," Tommy shrugged. "I'm an ordinary man, I won gallantry medals at the Somme, and I want you to write in your paper what's going on here."

The reporter said nothing, remaining frozen at his side.

Tommy Shelby was no ordinary man.

Not anymore.

"Go on. Go."

Suddenly, the reporter fled, like he had fire licking at his heels. Helen was certain he couldn't have run from Watery Lane fast enough. True to Tommy's word, no one tried to hassle him on his way out.

Tommy Shelby was left to stand on his own in front of the flames, a God dressed up as a mortal man, smoking a cigarette like the previous conversation had never happened. Helen Mavis lingered in his shadow, her feet wanting her to drive her forward — closer, but never close enough — a mortal woman trying to play a Goddess. She slipped from the crowd unnoticed, back to her home where her bed had been calling for her to rest the entire day.

On the contrary, she didn't sleep a wink that night.