tom would be surprised to see ada sitting in his office chair, except he's not because its his office and its ada and its him and the pair of them always were too smart for their own good.

she asks him about colonel younger.

he tells her what he knows, which is unfamiliar to him, and she tells him she was strip-searched and that two soldiers watched, and what she doesn't say is how humiliated she was or how degraded she felt. no matter how much it is the truth, damn it, she does not want him to think her weak. she leaves.

tom sits in the grand desk chair, the throne, his sister vacated (lizzie picked this chair, he remembers, out of some high end print catalogue that she'd been annotating for days, tirelessly selecting different woods and cushions and table lamps) and lets himself stop and breathe, just for a moment. it comes with a regret he is all too familiar with.

he makes up his mind and makes a phone call. the line tells him two names and he hangs up.

ada stands at the window of a house in birmingham that tommy owns - or, that's redundant: tommy owns all of birmingham.

ada stands at the window in tom's house in tom's birmingham and smokes cigarettes she stole off of tom's desk and drapes tom's old coat around her figure.

(she does not let herself ask if tommy owns her, too)

sharp cold permeates throughout the house but she doesn't close the shutter - she likes it, and she thinks that's another similarity she has with her brother, other than the fact that they're both damned. why did she go to boston, again? why did she come to birmingham? why did she leave her son in the care of a specialized boarding school and the few friends she had made in the city and rush back to the same godforsaken shit street she grew up on?

(well, she thinks bitterly, why not?)

she falls asleep on a chaise lounge by the open window, whiskey glass drained on the floor beside her and unlit cigarette slipping from between her fingers.

ada wakes up to cold rain soaking her hair, collecting on her eyelashes, and quiet cursing. when she blinks away the water and shields her face she sees tom wrestling with the window shutters against the wind, his white shirt quickly becoming soaked. he finally succeeds and the room is enveloped in a sudden silence, the kind you only notice once it's been absent for so long.

tommy turns away from the window shaking off his hands, sees her looking at him as she sits up in the chair. her neck aches.

he looks at her, still. ada fights the urge to be the first to break the newly all-encompassing quiet.

(she loses, but what else is new?)

i didn't think you'd be back tonight, she says. i can - i'll go to pol's -

shut up, ada, tommy cuts her off tiredly. he's lighting another cigarette and bringing it to his lips while he speaks. ada finds her own mouth itching for one, for a cool inhale of smoke and dry sweetness to soothe whatever it is in her that's so unsettled even in front of her own brother (or is that especially in front of her brother?)

tom continues: just come up to a bedroom, alright? you can go wherever you'd like tomorrow.

and then, those words: i won't stop you.

she stares. scoffs but she doesn't mean it, and then nods.

just for fucking once, tom, she thinks, i wish you would.

she lets tom turn and lead her up the stairs. the house is much the same as she left it, but for the dust collecting on every surface. ada thinks maybe it's a metaphor, maybe its says something about him or her or them - but maybe that's the whiskey talking and she's not really a metaphorical kind of girl, anyway.

he sits her on the bed with some roughness that, after all these years, ada knows to read as fondness, and he watches as she wrestles with the clasp on her necklace, exhaustion and slight drunkenness making her clumsy. finally he stops her hands and reaches around her neck, fingers freezing from the outside chill, and undoes the clasp.

(he bought her this necklace, she remembers absently. showed up to her birthday a few years ago with the too-expensive delicate gold chain in a too-ornate velvet box and a why not, ada smirk on his face).

the necklace falls into ada's lap, but tommy's hands stay resting loosely on the back of her neck, thumb moving gently up and down. he's uncharacteristically gentle, and ada blinks up at him firmly until she can no longer bear the softness in his gaze.

ada reaches her own hands up to wrap around his wrists and spits, i'm not one of your horses, tommy. you can't fix me up and whisper to me and expect me to succumb like i'm nothing more than a bloody animal -

fucking christ, ada, he interrupts, harsh. you won't shut your mouth, will you?

the grip around her neck tightens and now it hurts but ada isn't afraid, not anymore -

(but is that because she knows he won't hurt her or because she wouldn't care if he did?)

tommy's eyes are dark and light. his mouth tightens and he murmurs two names.

ada, always on her feet ada, quick to remark ada, never misses a beat, ada stares, silent. stutters a confused inquiry about the names.

tommy drops his gaze from hers, and his hands follow and tuck back into his pockets. her neck feels hot and cold all at once. he says: the two soldiers.

it's a heavy silence between them, air resting like a weight on a scale, ready to tip the balance when one of them says something next. she wants to speak but her mouth refuses to cooperate. the rush of emotions within her quiets and all of a sudden the only thing ada can feel and identify and compartmentalize is an immeasurable, irreparable sadness and when she looks into her brother's eyes it's mirrored back, their expressions like a perfect, natural symmetry.

tommy, her older brother. her older brother, who - when arthur was too old and john was too young, played games with her and beat up her schoolyard bullies and got her fresh, clean shoes for her thirteenth birthday - took care of her.

she wants to cry and she thinks she might, but it's like her eyes have dried up and so has her mouth and she's forgotten every word of the english fucking language, apparently, but then a corner of tom's lips quirk slightly up at her. it seems fond in a way that should make her angry again, but it doesn't. he nods to himself and turns and leaves the room and the door shuts softly behind him.

it's hours later, as ada is placing the necklace in her old jewelry box and staring at the narrow panel of her face reflecting in the dusty, cracked mirror, that she begins to cry.

(it doesn't feel like tears of joy nor tears of grief, really, and so ada surmises in the back of her mind that it must be something in between).

she stays with him at the birmingham house. she's gained an easy confidence being alone in boston for so long, but for some reason it fades away when she's back here, back at home, and it's like time has shifted back and she's nothing more than that same, stupid little girl who believed in communism and the cause and true fucking love.

nevertheless, she stays.

she stays when he disappears for nearly a whole day, away on business, and worries silently and begrudgingly for her brother. she stays when he finally walks through the door, dragging in rain and soot and cold, notes his surprise at seeing her still there, watches him carefully school his features back into indifference. there's some exhaustion there too, but that might be real.

ada's never been domestic but she stands at the stove and boils a kettle for tea. it's nearly three in the morning. tommy strides into the cramped kitchen, his footsteps heavy and slow and tired, and takes his cap off and holds it in his hands. he seems like he doesn't know what to do with himself, never mind its his own house, ada notes amusedly. she nods at the corner table and he sits, setting the cap down and emptying his pockets. she turns back to the stove.

there's bread and meat, still, she says. and i'm making tea. i don't think you should drink this late - or early, whichever it bloody is.

tommy makes a vague sound of acquiescence behind her. they rest in the silence, her puttering about as much as she could in the tiny corridor and him contemplating the print on the faded tablecloth in front of him. finally ada turns back to him with a meal and tea, sets it in front of him and watches him slowly begin to eat. she sits across from him.

well, who knew our ada was this much a chef, eh? d'you learn to cook like this for old freddie? tom asks. he's teasing but there's that hint of cruelty that he never can quite let go.

ada lets it go.

her lips quirk just slightly. she asks: tom - what were you doing today?

he pauses mid-sip, minutely, and she wouldn't have noticed if she wasn't paying attention, and then answers heavily: just business, ada.

ada looks at him. she's suddenly on edge.

no, she says. that's what i was doing. i was taking meetings and approving ledgers and visiting the betting shop. that's business. what were you doing?

tom stops eating entirely and turns his full attention on her in a way that's clearly meant to be intimidating but ada, for some reason, now only sees him as her brother. she stares back.

there are other things to take care of, ada, he says, raising his voice. things that are...my responsibility. as your broth - as the head of the family.

ada presses her lips together, careful not to smudge the red lipstick from the line of her mouth. all of a sudden she understands, because he's slipped up, gotten emotional or likely was feeling emotional before he even got here and now he's done it, now he's revealed something real and he seems to recognize it, too, with the way his eyes widen almost imperceptibly.

when she speaks, though, her voice quivers daintily and it reads like weakness and the hate ada feels is a tidal wave, but she's the one drowning. tommy, she says, brokenly. tom, why would you do that? they were nothing, tommy, why -

well why the fuck not, ada, eh? why the fuck not? tom stands jerkily and his teacup clatters sideways on the table surface, rolls sharply off the edge and falls. he continues, voice low: fuckin' hell, ada. they're not innocent. nobody ever fuckin' is.

she doesn't move from her seat - she likes being the one in control, for once. instead she smoothes her palms over fresh fabric of her stockings and takes a breath through her nose, slow. her emotions are swirling around in her head, so fast and complex she can practically see them, but if she's learned anything about tommy it's that as much as emotion drives him he hates to see it and he doesn't respect it. so she runs her palms over her knees again and contemplates the way the stitching is coming loose along the right seam, silently, until his breathing slows and he sits back down. then ada looks up and meets his eyes.

for once, it seems tom is uncertain with her. she's not sure he's ever been uncertain with anyone before (except maybe grace, but no one was uncertain with grace until they were, and grace wasn't ever really just grace, anyway). the fact brings ada a measure of satisfaction that's buried by the irritating breaking of her heart. she thinks of freddie.

you don't understand, ada. tom says. you won't be hurt.

a beat of silence, and then: except when you will it, i suppose, she responds. the words fly out before she can stop them, but they're surprisingly neither bitter nor angry, just tired. she hopes, briefly, that that hurts him more.

it's not surprising that tommy's answering expression is an upward quirk of his lips, a grin sharp and biting, and it isn't funny but ada finds herself grinning back, as if brandishing her weapon and firing.

she wants nothing more than to tell him it's alright, what he did, and she understands, because she does, because really she and him are too similar for their own good.

but ada closes her mouth and the lipstick smudges anyway and she bites the inside of her cheek until the skin goes numb. it's a fitting punishment, she thinks.