#LITTLE SALLYANNE WITH A FLAT-CAP FULL OF RAZORS AND A MOUTH FULL OF BLOOD | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

setaripendragon · 2 years

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Little Sallyanne

Hi, I'm back! Sorry for the long absence, but RL sucks, and I haven't been writing much of anything I'd be willing to share lately. Except it's now Camp NaNo, and I wrote this in a frenzy instead of working on my NaNo project, of fucking course XD It's a Peaky Blinders fanfic, because that seems to be my go-to comfort-fandom at the moment for some reason??? What if Tommy went looking for Polly's children sometime during the first season, and he found Sally-Anna-Sallyanne-whatever-her-name-is-does-anyone-know before she died? WARNING: It doesn't come up overly explicitly in the fic, but it is Very Important for you to know that Sally was a child when she was deported, and this little ficlet was, in large part, inspired by a couple of articles I read about the truly horrific circumstances deported children ended up in around that time. This Sally is a deeply traumatised thirteen-year-old survivor of both sexual and physical abuse. (And Tommy knows this, knows it was done to her by the people she was given to because the government deemed his Aunt 'not fit' to care for children, and he is half a world and a month of travel away from being able to exact revenge.) If that might upset you, this may not be the fic for you. Please proceed with caution, if you decide to proceed at all. (Also, jsyk, when writing Sally in this fic, I was picturing the actress who played Lyra in the His Dark Materials series, because I swear, she looks a bit like Ada (and also Polly was the voice of her dad's daemon).)

The train rattles and clacks its way along the tracks, and Sally resists the urge to hold her breath. She hadn’t believed it when the guy in the flat-cap loitering by the Home’s fence said he was there to take her home, and she still hadn’t believed it even when she was fleeing into the night on his heels with a fire blooming out of her bedroom window behind her, and she still hadn’t believed it when instead of turning out just like every other adult there he put her on a ferry back to England under a fake name. Now, here she is on a train back to Birmingham, after ten years of trying to get here, and she’s still not quite sure she believes it.

She turns her passport over in her fingers, and looks at the name above her picture again. Miss Salima Elizabeth Shelby, it says. That’s her mother’s maiden name, she knows. She remembers. Everything from before being fostered is fuzzy, but she’s clung to what she does remember fiercely, because mostly what she remembers is being loved. She remembers her mother, her dark hair and warm voice, and she remembers her brother, mostly how funny it was to put mud down the back of his shirt and make him yell, and she remembers her aunt, with her piercing eyes and her secretive smiles.

She’s desperately glad that whoever that guy was, he thought to use her mother’s maiden name for this, because she knows she can’t be Anna Gray anymore. Even though no one’s called her Anna Gray for ten years, it’s who she’s been in her heart. Anna Sarah Gray, her mother’s little Sallyanne, no matter how many other names she’s been given. None of them were her, were hers.

But Anna Sarah Gray was deported, and she’ll be deported again if anyone finds out she’s in England again. And she’ll die before she goes back there. She’ll kill anyone who tries to fucking send her back there. So, she needs a new name, and it was a kindness, a bewildering, unexpected kindness, for that name to be one that has pieces of her already in it. Sally Shelby is a name she can fit herself into, can make her own.

The train screeches a warning as it starts to break, and Sally looks up sharply. Outside the window, she can see the sign that reads ‘Birmingham’ outside, and she stares at it until the train drifts to a stop, and then she pinches herself. It hurts, so she’s not dreaming.

She’s not dreaming. This is real.

She hasn’t cried since she was five years old, but now she feels her eyes sting. Furious with herself, she knuckles at her eye and jerks to her feet, snatching up her case and bolting for the door, not caring who she elbows or kicks on her way. She’s been fighting for this moment for ten years, she’s not going to waste another fucking second dithering about having feelings when she could be getting one step closer to her real family.

“Oi!” someone shouts after her as she swings her suitcase into his knee to get them to move out of the train car’s door. “You little-!” they holler, but Sally’s already hopping down onto the platform, and looking around, getting her bearings and trying to remember where she needs to go.

A large hand grabs her arm, and something that’s kind of like panic, and kind of like rage lights her up inside until she can barely see straight, and she brings her suitcase around again but the guy is ready for it this time, and he blocks it with his arm. “Shit! You watch what you’re doing, girl, or-”

Sally bites him on the arm, since her suitcase isn’t working as a bludgeon anymore. The man yells in shock and pain, and a smack catches her in the side of her head, but she only digs her teeth in harder, until she can taste blood. He lets go of her arm, but his other hand grabs her hair, trying to shake her loose.

And then she’s being let go, because the guy that grabbed her has been slammed back into the train, his heels slipping on the edge of the platform, and there’s blood streaming down his face from a cut that goes right through one eye. The man that’s pinning him there raises a blood-stained cap in the hand that isn’t fisted in the other guy’s shirt, and slashes it across the other eye. Blood spills.

“You’re fucking lucky,” the guy with the murder cap in his hand snarls, “that I’m only taking your fucking eyes. If you ever touch her again, I’ll cut off your fucking cock and make you eat it before you bleed out. Am I making myself perfectly fucking clear?”

“Y-yessir,” the other guy whimpers.

Murder cap guy nods once, and releases him with a shove that sends the bleeding guy staggering down the platform and vanishing into the crowd within moments. Murder cap guy takes a breath, sets his fucking amazing cap back on his head, and only then turns to face Sally.

Oh. Those eyes are just like Aunt Marra’s. Sally remembers that piercing, unearthly blue. “Yeh alrigh’, Sally?” the man who has to be her cousin asks, as if there isn’t blood splattered all over his cap, and he didn’t just blind a man just for touching her.

“Can I have one?” Sally blurts out before she can think of anything smarter to say.

Her cousin, she’s not sure which one, the older ones all kind of just blurred together in her memory, looks taken-aback for a moment, before he smiles. It’s a crooked little thing, and more than a bit mean, but Sally doesn’t mind. “I think that can be arranged,” he agrees, tipping his bloody cap to her.

Sally grins, fierce and feral and eager.

“Do you remember me?” Her cousin asks as he tucks his hands into his pockets.

“You’re my cousin,” Sally says, because that much she does remember.

Her cousin tips his head in acknowledgement, but what he says is, “Half-brother,” with a nod towards her hand. She looks down, and sees her passport still clutched there, and remembers that she’s not Anna Gray anymore. She’s Sally Shelby.

“Right,” Sally agrees. “Half-brother. Mikey’s my cousin.”

“Tha’s right,” her new half-brother confirms, smiling that crooked smile again. “I’m Tommy.”

The name sparks a memory, and Sally brightens. “You used to play horses with me!” she exclaims, remembering being carted around on Tommy’s shoulders, and yanking on his hair to make him go whichever way she pleased.

Tommy’s crooked smile becomes a crooked grin. “That was me,” he confirms. He hesitates a moment, then holds out a hand to her. “Come on, the rest of the family’s waiting for us back at The Garrison.”

Sally thinks it would probably be safe to take his hand, but it doesn’t feel safe, so she doesn’t. She just hefts her suitcase and looks at Tommy expectantly, making it clear she’s ready to go without touching him. He nods to her, accepting her choice, and sticks his hand back in his pocket as he turns and heads for the exit. Sally hurries a little to catch up, then falls into step beside him.

“Aren’t you going to get in trouble or something?” Sally asks as the crowd parts to let them through.

“Not in this neighbourhood,” Tommy replies blithely. “Anyone ‘ere gives you any trouble, you just tell ‘em your name, you tell ‘em you’re a Shelby, and they’ll know better than to mess with you,” he promises. It’s a nice promise, and Sally almost believes it, after the way he said hello. She believes it more and more, as people keep giving them both a wide berth as they make for the street; him with his blood-stained cap, and her with blood on her teeth, side-by-side and ready to fight the world.

#peaky blinders #peaky blinders fanfic #tommy shelby #anna gray #sally gray #whatever her name is #get your shit together canon #TW: child abuse #TW: rape #Sally and Tommy are the same shade of feral #they will pick a fight just to have the fight win or lose #because they both know the enemies are lurking #and the world will only offer them pain either way #and they'd rather go down swinging #LITTLE SALLYANNE WITH A FLAT-CAP FULL OF RAZORS AND A MOUTH FULL OF BLOOD #I love this feral gremlin child #TV show: -gives this character an off-screen death and half a name-#Me: ...this character is now my favourite character in this whole damn show

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