Work Text:
She was a peculiar kind of nurse, that was obvious from the very beginning. Of course, in his laudanum-induced state, Alfie could clearly think of very little, but the few coherent thoughts he could gather somehow still mysteriously circulated around the woman.
Edna, she said her name was; now why was he so convinced it wasn’t real? Perhaps as used to never trusting anything living and breathing as Alfie was, he had become overly suspicious. Or maybe it was that somewhere at that beach he had lost his touch—along with pints upon pints of blood. But regardless… He couldn’t quite figure her out. And Alfie didn’t like not being able to figure people out, he really didn’t. Especially while spending most of his days in bed, unable to focus long enough to even read, reduced to pass the time in the doubtfully joyful company of his own mind.
“Enough of that,” Edna had announced to him one day, just as he was about to take his daily dose of tranquilisers and fall into oblivion for the rest of the afternoon.
“Leave me be, woman,” Alfie barked at her then, in hopes that he could scare her off by his usual sunny disposition.
Edna, as it happened, couldn’t care less. She had taken the bottle from him as easily as one would from a baby, and to Alfie’s sheer and utter outrage she left him like that to be alone with his damn head.
As he lay there thinking, he came to the conclusion he was either going weak or the woman was exceptionally strong. Truthfully, either perspective didn’t leave Alfie particularly optimistic.
As soon as she had taken him off the medication, however, something within him switched; namely, said “it” awakened and told him to keep going. It was of course followed by a rather painful phase of withdrawal, during which the “it” twisted, screamed and turned, driving Alfie even more insane than Tommy Shelby had.
For the next couple of weeks, all he remembered was withdrawal pains—which in turn took his mind off of the other pain he was feeling all over his face. All in all he wondered if that might have been a perverted form of medical therapy the damn nurse had subjected him to. If he could speak, he would have surely asked her if that had been the plan all along. Insane if perfectly capable, the woman was—of that he was certain.
Alfie felt himself going insane many times, in fact, during which he had reached for the gun, but with every reach, he found his bedside table mysteriously empty. It was as if the blasted woman had reached inside his very soul and steered his thoughts with those steady hands that changed his bandages every evening.
It wasn’t as if Alfie had developed a particular liking towards said hands, mind you, it was just that they were constantly there.
And so, finally, after the opiate-induced nightmares, his regular nightmares returned, three hurrahs for the king. Even the memory of those times was thoroughly drenched in sweat, and nothing could really take his mind off of it without the laudanum.
Edna wasn’t moved by that in the slightest. She just washed his sheets.
From the perspective of several months, however, Alfie decided the nurse had been worth every penny. She put him back together with what he thought were three full sentences spoken between them in six months’ time, followed by steady touch he came to associate just with her. Nothing delicate or hesitant ever came from Edna, most certainly not towards his person, which Alfie appreciated very much. The last thing on Earth he could have wanted was unfounded affection.
When his mind cleared and his face healed, Alfie’s mind sharpened and so he started to pay more attention. Having one eye function and the other keeping it company out of sentiment helped with that immensely—a thought he had shared with Edna one day when she caught him downstairs, reading the newspaper.
“Will you be needing your glasses then, sir?” she asked him, the cheeky creature, which Alfie refused to dignify with an answer.
Edna stood there a while and took his silence like a seasoned soldier, before finally retreating to the kitchen to do whatever she deemed necessary to perform when her employer wasn’t watching.
Judging by the smells, it was either laundry or a poison brewing, either accepted by Alfie with his newfound attitude of absolute indifference.
Said indifference continued, and the silence between them too, which surprisingly enough brought Alfie more peace than any assurances ever could. He broke it first, that silence; the decorum so worlessly and efficiently agreed upon many months ago. Whatever consequence followed, though, was nothing compared to the sensation Alfie felt when he found his nurse, sitting by the kitchen table and smoking a pipe.
“Put that out,” he barked at her immediately, which caused the woman to do exactly nothing.
She was reading a book and instead of even acknowledging her employer with a glance, she checked her pocket watch.
“Did you hear me, woman, or are ya deaf?” Alfie chastised her again, or at least tried to, since apparently Edna had either developed a serious condition overnight, or he had died in his sleep and returned as a ghost.
Since Alfie found both options entirely fucking inconvenient in the current state of things, he resolved himself to the sole remaining solution.
He grabbed Edna’s wrist. Hard.
Two things happened then, in that exact order: she looked at him the way a cat might at a mouse that dared to come within the vicinity of its claws. She didn’t flinch, though, nor did she put the book down. She didn’t utter a word; instead, she blew out the smoke through her nostrils, completely disregarding whatever Alfie might have thought about her smoking in his kitchen, and replied:
“It’s my day off, Mr. Solomons.”
Taken aback by her steady tone and the glint in her eye, Alfie finally let go. Still steady as a rock, Edna returned to her book like nothing happened.
It wasn’t his own pipe she was smoking, Alfie realised some time later, but it was one of his books she was reading. Utterly outraged, he picked one himself and didn’t stop reading until it got too dark out to make his solitary charade worth the effort.
The thing was, he never remembered giving the woman any days off of any kind, but it seemed unwise to deny her this basic pleasure simply out of spite. That, however, Alfie came to revise the very next day when Edna brought him his tea in the parlour and said:
“You could do with a walk, Mr. Solomons. The weather is nice enough.”
Alfie glared at her in hope to let her know exactly what he thought of the prospect, until his mind connected with his vision and promptly short circuited in unison.
Edna was wearing trousers instead of her usual blouse and skirt; a vision Alfie was sure wasn’t meant for him, because why would it—for a woman such as herself—unless of course he counted in the fact she was right before him, in his house, in his employment.
And apparently waiting for his answer.
“Nah,” was all he said, but then looked her up and down just to make sure his only seeing eye wasn’t playing tricks on him. He wouldn’t put it past it.
“It stopped raining,” Edna replied smoothly. “It’ll do you good.”
Alfie stayed stubbornly silent, then watched her cross her arms over her chest and look him up and down herself.
“No,” he told her firmly, really hoping to be done with the conversation, preferably at her earliest bloody convenience.
It seemed like these days everything around him was closely connected to Edna’s approval or lack thereof, because instead of obeying him, she went to the hallway to put on her boots.
“Mr. Solomons, I mean it,” she announced to him as she walked back into the parlour, with her coat and umbrella tucked neatly under her arm. “Your muscles need exercise, it’s just a fact. Being cooped up in this house is not doing you any favours.”
Alfie put down his cup and looked at her with the most formidable scowl he could muster.
“Right. An’ such is your medical opinion, sweetie?” he sneered.
“Yes,” Edna replied without missing a beat. “It is. Please get up.”
Alfie never took his eyes off of her and was waiting for her to finally give up…
And she never did.
She was standing there, arms crossed, trousers still on and forming all sorts of notions within him that he couldn’t possibly dignify with any acknowledgment. Alfie then went through all his options, most of which were closely connected to the immediate employment of a more timid, obedient nurse, until finally he got up with a grunt and walked up to her slowly, his steps deliberately heavy.
“You goin’ out like that?” he asked, thoroughly enjoying his last bit of advantage that was towering over a woman barely over five feet tall.
Edna scoffed and put on her scarf, not even pretending to feel threatened.
“Like what, Mr. Solomons?” she sighed. “Do you propose I march through the sand and mud clutching my skirts?” She then shook her head to let him know how ridiculous she thought the idea, which left Alfie thoroughly absorbed, mulling the image over and over in silence.
“No,” he said finally, though more to himself than to her.
“Mr. Solomons, please.”
“I’m tired.”
“You’re tired because you don’t move,” she informed him firmly. “Please. Let me—”
“I ain’t goin’ nowhere with ya.”
She looked at him then the way she had after that unfortunate pipe incident and for a moment there Alfie really did think she was about to extend her claws and bite into his aorta.
But all she did was take off her coat, and her scarf, and the boots, and unfortunately nothing else, and then stomp into the kitchen to start dinner.
Now, was Alfie really opposed to the idea of a walk? He realised very quickly he wasn’t. It was her defiance he found thrilling, alongside her attire, which later on he developed a truly Pavlovian response to.
The next time Edna proposed they go for a walk, Alfie was almost willing to agree—but she wasn’t wearing the trousers, which was not at all what he wanted. They fought for a good couple of minutes, during which she presented him with sound medical advice and he in turn proposed she go to hell, until Edna relented as before and retreated to the kitchen. A few moments later, Alfie noticed a whiff of tobacco in the air, but decided to say nothing about it.
He let her win on the third attempt, which Alfie considered his own victory, really, and never for a moment bothered to suspect it had been Edna all along, connecting the dots and concocting her own agenda against him.
But they did go for a walk, with her marching briskly through the mud and the sand like she was born for nothing else, and Alfie following closely behind, his dark coat billowing in the wind and his expression thoroughly fooling the woman into thinking he was enjoying exactly none of it.
Which didn’t seem to bother Edna in the slightest, Alfie soon came to notice, since she smoothly started to incorporate their afternoon walks into their Sunday routine, until it somehow became their Friday and Sunday routine, only to be followed by them walking every single day.
Not a fan of walking, Alfie decided, and not a fan of sand in the least; an opinion which he thought couldn’t be influenced by any extenuating circumstances…
Until one day Edna tripped in the sand, but he caught her arm just in time to prevent the fall. He held her close for a good couple of seconds that really could have been hours if anyone asked him, and Edna… Instead of pulling away with disgust like he expected her to, she leaned in closer. Alfie held her firmly with one hand and with a curious smirk, Edna’s hand travelled up the sleeve of his coat to feel the muscle. She looked at him with something a lesser man might have confused with a keen interest. Alfie found the tension unbearable and finally let go of her first.
But then she of course had to have the last word—the witch—and as they continued their walk, she took his hand in hers. Ignoring the entire orchestra of spiralling contradictions it caused within him, Alfie let her.