POLLY GRAY HAD GONE INTO HIDING FOR TOO LONG; ON THAT, DELILAH AND THOMAS COULD AGREE. For the rest of her whole plan, though, Thomas had expressed his reservations, and his redheaded lover had heard him — she had just decided not to take them into account. That was the reason why she was standing outside of Polly's mansion, her fist knocking at her front door relentlessly. The older woman could ignore her all that she wanted, she would quickly be reminded just how stubborn Delilah could be.

The brunette woman cursed after ten minutes of the redhead unceasingly knocking at her door, not a word being uttered from outside. She had first decided to ignore her but, after what had seemed like hours, Polly couldn't take it anymore and so she groaned, standing up from the leather couch she had been sitting on and she rushed to the door. She hurriedly opened it, her frowning face coming into view while the redhead's lips displayed a wide grin Polly herself had trouble not reciprocating.

"What do you want, for Christ's sake?" the brunette snapped, her hand tapping her hip angrily. "You've been knocking for hours!"

"Actually, no," Delilah assured, crossing her arms over her chest — her Burgundy dress was one of the prettiest Polly had seen her wear. "It's been ten minutes, but it gets annoying really fast. Can I come in? There are some things we need to discuss in private."

"There aren't and you know it," Polly sighed, opening the door a little wider nonetheless. "Did Tommy set you up to this? 'Cause if he did, you can just walk out right now. I don't want to answer any of his questions."

Delilah snickered as she threw herself on a plush couch, raising an eyebrow at the older woman. "Actually, no. Would you believe it if I told you that I came here out of genuine concern, Polly?"

The brunette shook her head amusingly — she was the kind not to resist the younger. Even if she wanted to, there was just something about Delilah that made Polly unable to ignore her, unlike her nephew who she would appreciatively avoid until the end of time.

The woman grabbed a glass which she filled with whiskey before she settled on the loveseat on the other side of the coffee table, raising an eyebrow when Delilah frowned at her. Leaning back, Polly brought her glass to her thin lips, the fingers of her left hand working through her pack of cigarettes so she could grab one for herself.

"What?" Polly asked when she found the redhead still confusingly staring at her.

"Well, what about me?" Delilah asked, motioning towards Polly's glass now put down on the table. "Don't I also deserve one?"

"I am not serving any kind of alcohol to you," the brunette laughed, sobering up when Delilah's brows furrowed even deeper.

"Why not?"

The question floated around the atmosphere for a moment, the two women staring at each other in a heavy silence. The agonizing seconds seemed to stretch into hours until Polly opened her mouth, only to close it afterwards. She couldn't tell whether Delilah was joking or if she was actually serious. The redhead, with her now fuller and rosy cheeks, her bubbly eyes and rounder face, could she still be clueless of the obvious?

"Oh my— you don't know," Polly smiled, tapping the ash of her cigarette for it to land on the floorboards. "I could see it from a mile away but you haven't. Oh, my dear Delilah."

"What are you talking about, Polly?" Delilah demanded, pleaded, joining her hands on her knees. "Polly, please, tell me!"

"Well, you're pregnant, Della," the brunette announced, moving to sit beside the redhead on the couch. "Oh, don't look at me like that, you must have noticed a change. Starting with periods and everything. Also, your breasts were impressive before, but they definitely are something else now."

Delilah giggled, placing her right hand right against her stomach. "I knew it! Ada once told me how you were capable of saying when she was pregnant with Freddie's child, so I decided to visit when I noticed the first signs. I wanted to check if you were all right, of course, and Thomas also wanted to know about you, but I just— I wanted to know if you'd notice anything too."

As Polly wrapped her arms around Delilah, carefully holding her close, the redhead outstretched her hand towards her pack of cigarettes behind the older woman. With a hiss, Polly spun around and took the cigarettes away from her reach, soon facing the redhead with a scowl.

"I strongly advise you not to do that anymore either," Polly groaned, raising a dark eyebrow when Delilah scoffed.

"Ada scoffed all through her pregnancy and she did great," she affirmed, her fingers curling around the fabric of her dress.

"Yeah, and looked what happened with Karl," Polly moaned, a playful glint shining in the woman's eyes.

"Oh my God, that's such a mean thing to say," Delilah snorted, rubbing her tummy with her hand adoringly — she could already tell she would love this baby. "The only thing worrying me is telling Tommy. How am I supposed to do that?"

Polly rubbed her back soothingly, leaning forward to kiss her temple gently. "You should probably wait until after Darby day, sweetheart. Thomas probably isn't in his right mind at the moment, but then again, when is he ever?"

"Oh, stop that," the redhead asked, pushing the woman's shoulder with her own. "You know better than anyone that he's trying to do the right thing, he loves you all that much. He just doesn't know how, I'm trying to guide him through this. Your nephew is just one hell of a stubborn man, Pol."

"You think I don't know that already? It's genetics," the brunette assured, rolling her eyes when the redhead only chuckled. "Would you like to know if it's a boy or a girl?"

Delilah thought about it for a second, and though the idea of knowing whether she would raise a boy or a girl in this world, she would rather wait to find out. Obviously, she was so excited to know, but she also adored surprises — and she imagined that expecting a child was the most beautiful of them all. So, she shook her head, much to Polly's dismay.

"No, I'd rather keep it a surprise," Delilah affirmed, pushing a strand of red hair behind her ear. "I already feel bad hiding being pregnant to Thomas, I would feel even more awful hiding whether we're having a boy or a girl. I can't wait for him to find out."

"You have some shit to figure out during the period of time he'll remain clueless, though," Polly said, crushing the butt of her cigarette in the ashtray. "Maybe you should start about opening up a little bit more about each other, for starters. You two are damn secretive, it's a miracle you still managed to know each other enough to start a love story."

"Please, don't say love story ever again," Delilah started with a disgusted expression, "and secondly, that's not such a bad idea. I know just about exactly what we could talk about."

ஜ۩۞۩ஜ 

Delilah De Luca was haunted by countless memories of the war, which she had great difficulty forgetting about. It was a common occurrence for her to wake up in the middle of the night, whether in her bed or wrapped within Thomas's sheets, screaming the name of a soldier she had memorized the face of. It would inevitably worry the people staying with her — more often than not, Milo or Thomas themselves. And she would be asked questions she could never find the answer to, as it was too painful to imagine their smiles and faces — let alone remember the day of their encounter in the military hospital.

It was the reason why she had decided to take some time with Thomas and share their heart-shattering memories in the comfort of her house, thanks to Polly's advice. Delilah figured that talking about these soldiers she had seen dying could help her heal from the traumatizing memories and escape their deathly grip. She was also curious as to what Thomas might have gone through himself and if the bite of the harsh wind in the trenches still froze his hands and broke his heart sometimes. She wondered if, like Angelo, Tommy had locked himself in the silence for days on end before he would snap out of it and take his family in charge. Despite the short stories she had sometimes heard from John and Arthur, Delilah had never heard Thomas talk about the war, even just briefly, and she was desperate for them to find a way to break the wall between their traumatizing experience and build a safe and open space to communicate instead. If Delilah was a lot of things, she certainly wasn't a coward and if she had to open up about the war for her relationship to improve — and for their upcoming baby to have mentally healthy parents —, then she would be damned if she found herself shying away and hiding from her deepest feelings.

"I've never waited so long for a meeting to begin," Thomas said, holding a glass of whiskey between his calloused hands.

Outside, night had fallen on Birmingham, clouding the horizons and letting the moon illuminate the sky instead of the sun. With a sigh, Delilah pushed a strand of red hair behind her ear, not bothering to tangle it in her high ponytail. She truly had no idea where to start, and the fact that her lover had been waiting on her to begin for almost fifteen minutes did nothing to soothe her.

"I actually don't know how to start this conversation," the woman stated, running her hand down her face, "and for the record, this is not a business meeting."

"Then what's the discussion about, exactly?" Thomas asked, frowning.

"Well, I figured we should take some time and talk about the war, considering the effect it had on us," the redhead explained with a defeated groan. "Also, it's been holding us back on a lot of things, I believe, but now I feel like an idiot because I can't seem to find the right words and —"

Thomas softly placed his hand over hers, squeezing it comfortingly. "Take your time, love. I am listening to you."

"I know that you are," Delilah affirmed, bringing her hand to his cheek fondly. "And I want you to be able to talk to me as well, after. Tell me some stories, tell me what happened, your war secrets, what I need to know. I know so little about Tommy Shelby, the boy who left for the war and what happened to him in France; I want to know every Thomas, including the one you lost in these dark times."

Thomas nodded, closing his eyes for a moment and savouring the warmth of her skin against his. How would he be able to tell her, he had no idea yet. But within his cold chest, he found the warmth and the light of her optimism and willingness to open the gate of her secrets and let him in to win over his wariness and dread to revive the memories and decided that he could, too, share what had happened to him in the past. But first, it was her turn to go through the pages of her life she had so fiercely wished to burn, the one she hadn't had the strength to turn yet.

"All right," the dark-haired male agreed, nodding and wrapping her tiny fingers in his.

Delilah sucked in a deep breath, closing her eyes for an instant as she gathered her thoughts. "I went for the war at the beginning of it," she started, her lips trembling slightly as the words would pass through them. "Well, not the real beginning, but when our men started leaving for France. When Angelo departed, I decided that I couldn't take it anymore and I left our house in London to enrol in a military hospital in Verdun, as a military nurse. I had followed a few nursing training sessions when I was younger, around eighteen years old I believe, and so I thought that I could be useful there."

Thomas was listening so intently, imagining a younger version of her with wilder hair and rounder cheeks stubbornly packing her bags despite her mother's pleas, despite her little sister's cries and had gone through the street during nighttime, alone and courageous, holding only a bag with a few clothes in it but her eyes burning with determination. He could picture her so easily.

"I shipped on a train and that was it. We arrived in Paris and, right after, we had to take another train that led her to Verdun," Delilah carried on, her eyes seeming so far away from her living room but in a desolated landscape instead. "It was so far from what I had imagined and, instantly, I knew I would have to be courageous and strong enough to face what I feared so deeply at the time. I knew that I was right when I first stepped into the hospital. It smelled so much like death, oh Tommy, you could smell death even before you would see it. It was unbelievable."

"They wanted us to be unafraid and to be better than them, but even the doctors were terrified of what was happening before them," the redhead continued, wiping away a lonely tear on her cheek. "I wouldn't be able to properly describe it even if I wanted to since it was so damn hard to believe it even with it happened in front of our own eyes. Men were dying on the floor, cadavers were piled in the corner of the room, waiting to be identified and hopefully brought home to be properly buried. Nobody could escape the horrors of the war as they would haunt them forever, but at that precise moment, we couldn't even realize these atrocities since we couldn't even believe they were happening in the first place."

Once again, Thomas could picture it; her features seemed confused even almost ten years after the fateful day she had arrived in Verdun, and he could see it in her eyes how utterly terrified and petrified she had been in that second; how terrified she might have been when she had witnessed the dozens of dead people lingering around the military hospital and the twenty-odd still living soldiers, whimpering and yammering desperately to be put out of their misery.

"There was not much we could do for them, and the hospital was situated in an old convent," Delilah described with a sigh. "The sisters were working with us and it was difficult for them to understand what was happening and how their beloved God could allow it to happen. It was so difficult to stitch people up in the hallways when they were praying out loud for the soldiers' souls, scaring them and making us nervous that they would kill themselves worrying instead of trying to get better. The sisters were so hard to work with that we ended up fighting with them on a daily basis."

"They probably didn't want the soldiers to die, right?" Thomas offered, his voice gentle and soft like silk so as to not disturb her.

"Of course not, nobody wanted them to," the redhead nodded. "But we had to choose who we could save and who we couldn't so we could at least spare some lives. We didn't have enough resources to help everyone, otherwise, we would have. Each one of the nurses there wanted to help these poor men fallen in the mud, but we couldn't help everyone. It shattered us every time we had to let someone die, and each one of their names we remember to this day; after three months though, it felt like we couldn't take it anymore. My fellow nurses and I couldn't stay silent facing this anymore. And so, rage took over. We had once been sad but at that moment, we became outraged."

Delilah sighed, running her hand through her hair as she lowered her eyes. In those dark times, the moments during which life had started to turn into a blind rage were the darkest, the ones she hated the most but sometimes still thought about dearly; these moments had shaped her into who she was now. The unforgiving, unafraid, bloodthirsty gangster who had conquered London, Birmingham and, proudly, Thomas Shelby's heart.

"I argued with sisters more times than I can count, insulting their God and trying to explain to them why they couldn't believe in this religion anymore," Delilah said with a chuckle. "In the end, they still believed in Him and looked up to Him, and so I let go of the matter. Until a fateful day, the one that turned me into the woman that I am now. The day I met Henry, and the day I lost him."

"Another lover of yours?" Thomas genuinely asked, raising a dark eyebrow at her.

Delilah giggled, shaking her head slightly. "No! Of course not. Henry Parkson was an English soldier, fallen in Verdun and was brought to us in such bad shape I couldn't believe he was still alive. He was talking to himself, muttering a name I couldn't really recognize, and he called me Madeline. When I told him where he was, he seemed confused and so exhausted I instantly pitied him. I hated seeing him so broken and I literally broke. My brain broke and I asked a doctor to save him, surgically, even if I knew he was a lost cause from the beginning. He had planned to go back to his fiancée and he had so many things to do with his life other than losing it in the war..."

Delilah scoffed, her hand creeping to her lips and she nervously picked at it for a second. This was the hardest part. She wasn't sure she could go through this again, after having to revive it right after it had happened.

"He died while the surgeon was operating him," she announced bluntly, unable to beat around the bush. "I remember the doctor coming to me and telling me I should have guessed it, and I did, but I couldn't just let him die without trying. I did try for several soldiers, telling them stories about England, fake ones about love and happiness. The youngest was a French soldier, Pierre, who was seventeen. I don't even know how he enrolled, but for God's sake, when he died, I felt like I had lost a part of me as well. I wondered how it was possible that life could mercilessly take the life of such a young man in a place he shouldn't even have been."

Silence lingered around them as Delilah brought her hands to her face, tears now sprinkling in her emerald eyes. She could barely remember their faces now, though she had no trouble seeing them in her dreams; consciously, she had trouble remembering the little things about them, or at least picturing them. She knew Pierre had multiple freckles on his face and arms, but she couldn't recall exactly where; she remembered Henry's deep eyes, but she sometimes couldn't picture their colour anymore. The sound of their voices was also slowly fading away from her memory, even if their words would forever remain vivid in her mind.

"I see them only at night now, when I'm supposed to be peaceful. Instead, I hear their complaints, their heartbreaking screams until the lights of the morning would show up," Delilah sighed, her voice trembling slightly. "And for seven more months, it was the same thing every day, the pain, the screams, the sadness, the illness. The constant smell of metallic blood lingered in the air too, staining the sheets and dripping on the floor. I wanted to save them all but I couldn't, and in a week, I lost two people I liked and hoped to see get better. Since then, nothing had been the same."

"How did you feel when they died? Truly felt? And after?" Thomas asked, now really into the story.

"At first, I was so angry," the redhead admitted with a nod. "And then, I started to cry every time a young soldier would enter the hospital. We couldn't save everyone, even if we wanted to, and they were sometimes the most banged-up. I hated seeing them coming in knowing they would most likely never come out. They were losing their names, their friends, their personalities and finally, they were dying during the night. It was so outraging. And when I was shipped back to England, I felt nothing. Seeing people going on like nothing ever happened made me so upset I couldn't see anyone anymore, only Angelo. Witnessing my little sister growing up within our family as it if had never affected any of us, my mother trying her best to make us open up and talk, our father sometimes blinding himself with whiskey so he wouldn't remember a thing... It was scary and also very saddening. We were tearing our family apart and there was nothing we could do about it."

Delilah shrugged, placing her hands on her knees and sighing slightly. Affectionately, Tommy placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, rubbing it gently and bringing her closer to him. She was shivering, he could feel it on her arms, and her eyes seemed darker than usual, as if the darkness she was recalling was still haunting her at that very moment — and maybe it was.

"Then, I seemed to wake up. It was like opening my eyes to the world again," she whispered. "I believed that if I could bring business back to life, I could make something good in the end. Eradicate evil to flourish the good, and everyone could be helped in a certain way. But for that, I had to start with manipulating the evil to make it do what I wanted. To make it fold. And I made it, I succeeded. And I believe that I started something greater than what I expected, and turned into someone better than I wanted, I did. I found you here, I brought Angelo with me and found a way to protect him. I'm doing better than I ever did, and even if they're still haunting me sometimes, even if I am not starting to move on, I am letting them live in my past instead of haunting my present. Because you are my present now."

Thomas's eyes had never shone so brightly, she thought, as he leaned forward and let his lips graze on the tender skin of her forehead. She had never been the kind to be affectionate but she couldn't help saying the words; her heart felt them and so did the life growing inside of her.

"I want you to know that whatever happened before, it's you I've chosen, Tom," the redhead murmured, lifting her eyes to meet his own. "It's you I want to spend my life with. And hopefully, you feel the same way about it that I do."

"I certainly don't have the perfect way to explain it, unlike you," Thomas started, his voice hoarse and low as if confiding the most significant secret about him — perhaps what he was about to tell her was. "But I believe that I was too young when I departed. Way too young, some would even say. It wasn't what we thought it would be, just like you, except that we couldn't hide from it. We were in the middle of the constant gunfires, with shells falling from above our heads and putting our lives on the line unceasingly, for a war that wasn't ours. Sure, we did save lives, nameless people who would've died without us, but it was not our place."

"Did you feel scared?" she asked despite him having to state the obvious — she believed if he opened up about his emotions, maybe it would be easier for him to talk about the war altogether.

Thomas seemed to think about it for a second, though. "I was, at the beginning at least. The thing is, you get used to it, you live with it. It is startling to know that your life can be ended as easily as a snap of the fingers, but you get used to it. Your life is not yours anymore, it's theirs, and you only hope that you'll live another day. But if you don't, then it's not on you, or on the enemy; it was fate. We believed that it was. We wouldn't see the daylight for days on end, shovelling underground for weeks sometimes. We barely ate, and couldn't really sleep as we were never safe. The first time I saw the light after the war began, I couldn't even keep my eyes open for more than two seconds. The daylight was blinding us when we came out."

"Did you think that you'll end up dying in a tunnel, sometimes? Were you scared of that thought?"

Again, Thomas took some time to respond. He couldn't tell if he had really been scared of the thought or if he had ever felt relief in the idea of dying underground, probably instantly and without a whole lot of pain. The only thing they were afraid of about the idea of being stuck underground was being hurt; if they were to be severely bleeding, they would die a slow, painful death they feared more than anything in the world. The military hospitals probably weren't the best place to be, but they were safe and they would die in a warm room, on a bed, with some of their comrades beside them and their stomachs full.

"I don't think we were scared of dying anymore," he admitted, his cerulean orbs turned liquid with memories. "I think we were just scared of what would come next. First, the enemy-initiated attacks, our efforts to contain them, how to dig and which direction to go so we wouldn't end up anywhere near the dangerous places we had been warned about. If the ground was to collapse above our heads, we would suffocate and that was worse than dying from a bullet in the head because it was slow and painful. Knowing my brothers were suffering from the same fate as I did was also absolutely unbearable to me. Little John, fighting for a country that wasn't his in such an unfair battle."

"I'm sorry you had to go through that," Delilah genuinely said, placing her delicate hand on his forearm.

"Don't be," Thomas assured, shrugging his shoulders as if nothing had happened during these sombre days. "There is nothing you can do now. I just wish things would have gone differently so that I wouldn't remember the noises, the screams and the bombs every night. Since I met you, I don't hear them that often anymore. Only when I am sleeping alone, and even then, it's quieter. Bearable, almost."

Delilah sadly smiled, once again bringing the palm of her hand to his cheek and caressing the skin softly. The freckles under the pad of her thumb resembled constellations in the sky, made only by the greatest painter while his face had been carved like one of a Greek God. The redhead believed she had never seen someone equally as beautiful as Thomas Shelby, with his deep, ocean-like eyes, his full lips, jet-black strands of hair and the freckles on his face; even the tender palms couldn't compare the roughness of his calloused hands, these big hands that were made to hold her just as hard as his strong arms wrapping around her slim waist.

If words only could express what Delilah was feeling towards the man she was now convinced represented what could be called the man of her life, she believed that she would never find in human vocabulary a strong enough term to explain how much she cared about him, so softly, so adoringly. She simply adored him, couldn't help the slight obsession she had developed around him, as a religious would around her God. Despite the fact that Thomas was nothing more than a man, a piece of dust in the immensity of the Universe, Delilah believed that he was bigger than the whole Earth, if not bigger than the Solar System; he was everything to her, from the oxygen she was breathing to the sun shining above her head and warming up her skin.

"We could have met in Verdun," he softly whispered a few hours later, tangled in Delilah's bedsheets while her head rested on his chest, intently listening to the regular beating of his heart.

"What do you mean?" she asked just as quietly, worried that the sound of her voice would disrupt the tranquillity of the moment if she dared to speak any louder.

"I fought there too," Thomas responded, "not too long though. Just long enough to witness what it was there, or maybe I stayed the whole time and just didn't see as time flew by. I can't really tell, but I know I have."

Delilah lifted her head to meet his eyes, her lips tenderly kissing his jawline. "I'm glad we didn't, though. It would have been horrifying circumstances to meet you, plus you wouldn't have remembered me. It would have meant that you were hurt, and I don't like this idea much anyway."

Thomas chuckled, his fingers running through her fiery strands of hair while she allowed her fingers to wander around his burning skin, once again tracing the outline of his Romani tattoo. Delilah could remember the precise draw by heart, even with her eyes closed. She believed she'd recognize Thomas with her eyes closed, too.

"You know, the other day you said something that really struck me," Thomas broke the silence first, the pad of his fingers grazing on the skin of her shoulder and watching as goosebumps arose.

"Is that so?" she asked, not really remembering what she could have said. "What was it?"

"I think you believed I wouldn't hear it when you said it," the dark-haired male carried on, the ghost of a smile blossoming on his lips. "I just want you to know that I do, too. And one day, when all of this is over, I will prove it to you."

Delilah giggled, rising up on her elbows to have a better look at him. "You're not helping me remember what I said here, Tom. How am I supposed to understand what you're saying if I don't know what you're referring to?"

"You don't need to know just yet," he assured as if it would erase every trace of mystery. "All you need to know is that I will prove it to you. One day, I will show you."

Knowing that it was probably now or never, Delilah nervously cleared her throat, remembering Polly's words from the same morning. With a sigh, she closed her eyes, listening to the little voice within her heart - she shouldn't be telling him now, knowing that he would then push her away from Darby Day, and she would never survive that. And so, she decided that, just like him, she would just give him enough to reflect upon while hiding the whole truth until another day.

"I will also have something very, very important to tell you after this business is over," Delilah confided, her emerald orbs shining with an excitation Thomas had never witnessed before. "Something that will probably change our lives forever, in the best way possible. But you will have to wait to discover it. You just have to know that this is probably the best thing that could have happened to us. For now, let's just hope everything goes according to plan."

"Do you doubt me?" Tommy grinned, raising a dark eyebrow.

"Never," the redhead truthfully answered, shaking her head slowly. "I would never, but there are some things around this business that we can't fully control. If something happens, we have to be ready to face it. We both know they probably are as smart as we are, and they will have no trouble finding a way to make it complicated for us. We just have to be ready to face anything."

"I will be," he reassured, squeezing her in between his arms. "The only thing I am not ready for is losing you. But that won't happen, right?"

With a lump in her throat, Delilah took a few seconds to think about it. They could find a way to separate them forever, and she was afraid they would prepare something, especially with Giuseppe's assassination; still, she wanted to reassure him more than she wanted to tell the truth. He needed her on Darby Day, and she wouldn't miss it for any reason; not even because of the fear or losing her life, not even for the little thing growing in her tummy. She had organized everything, and thanks to the machinery in her brain, the plan had come up to be perfect. She would never abandon it, never.

"Of course not," she decided to say, letting her head fall back on his shoulder while she turned on her back. "There is nothing they can do to separate me from you."

And, with all the conviction and honesty she put in these words, Thomas Shelby believed in them just for a night, a calm and peaceful night beside his lover before chaos would once again be brought upon them in the worst forms possible. Nothing would separate them, but what if something could, in the end? What if there was something stronger than their seemingly everlasting love existing, something powerful enough to drag them away from each other?

In London, lurking in the shadows and hiding in an office for a whole night, Darby Sabini hoped that he could find that something and mould it into the perfect plan to destroy the De Luca family and bring their empire down in flames. It was all that they deserved for killing his only son, the beautiful boy he had brought up and loved more than his life itself.

They were all monsters, in the end. And there was one part that would win over the other, regardless of the consequences.

"I love you," Thomas whispered when Delilah would be deeply asleep by his side, unbothered and unattentive to his voice. "And I will for the rest of my days if God allows me that much."

If only God had anything to do with love, maybe He could keep them together forever. Unfortunately, for those left unscarred by love, multiple lovers had to know the pain of loving, no matter how deep their love could be. There would be pain brought back upon them, one that would separate them forever or bring them so close, that they would be indestructible.