The new breath of morning spilled out across the pasture, bathing the land that had slowly begun to shed its shadows from the winter season, in a marigold glow that saturated the lifeless grass in a kind light. One that nearly made it appear as though life had been whispered back into it's softly swaying blades. The Warwickshire sky still clung to it's indigo haze, as the morning slowly seeped the sun in, as though to ease away the remnants of the long night. But the ashen hue, deepened by a blue that rivaled the shimmer of a sea deep sapphire, echoed with the gentle chirp of the blackbirds. Their calls resounding through the morning fog that coated the land in a soft exhale, replacing the empty void of the evening's darkness, with the welcome chirp of a morning song sung especially for Arrow House it felt like. For they were there with each new rising morning, a melody trickling through the windowpanes and blowing out in the open breeze that trailed through the ever flowing pasture, even when the sun was no where in sight, their songs appeared like clockwork.

The ground was damp beneath the soft steps of your heavy boots, the dew of the impending Spring season softening the soil hardened by the vicious Winter cold. Even as the grass lay brittle and limp, crunching beneath your weight like the fallen leaves in the midst of Autumn, there were glimpses of the warmer season rolling in. For the atmosphere still stung with a chill as it blew it's gentle breeze across the exposed skin of your neck and bare fingers, feeling as the morning cold soaked straight through the thin cotton fabric of your flowing white nightgown.

But you saw the sights of Spring in the way the birds sounded happier in their joyous melodies, the way the sun rose across the horizon and you could feel it's warmth promise that more was to come one of these days, with the faintest ghost of blooming buds along the bare branches of the surrounding trees. Winter had not yet abandoned the land and the air that swirled softly around your strolling frame, but Spring was close on it's heels, so much so that you knew one of these days, you would simply awaken and the breath of a warmer and brighter morning would be upon your shoulders. 

The scent of the soil surrounded you, the richness only saturated dirt and the heady breath of the outdoors could bring forth in the soft twirl of the morning breeze, and it encompassed you in a warming embrace. For there was something you had always found incredibly tranquil about the countryside, the nature so vast it nearly seemed to roll on for an eternity into the ever fading distance. Perhaps, it was in your love for the open air and the rich chartreuse and jade blended land, that your husband had chosen this place. Planted roots in a house far too large for your own liking, but upon an estate of land that you couldn't help but fall in love with at the very first sight.

Perhaps, Thomas Shelby had taken one look at this house, out here in a little oasis away from the smoke and the smog of London and Small Heath and the little house you shared for years on Watery Lane, and thought instantly of you. Seen your happiness before you'd taken one step upon the land, known your reaction before he'd even opened the car door, planned that this would be the place to raise the children you would bare, before your youngest had even spoken his first word.

Sometimes, it felt as if Thomas Shelby had slipped into the crevices of your dreams and pulled out their unbelievable details with his bare hands and turned them into a blinding reality. But that was your husband for you, a man who when he wanted something, he'd get it. Somehow, no matter how, he always made the impossible... possible. 

Tucking a fallen tendril behind your ear, as the gentle breeze rustled through your curls messed from deep slumber, you gazed up ahead. The fog drifting as the sight of the stables came into view, the wooden structure seeming bolder as it stood with the faintest peak of the sunrise expanding across the splintered oak. But it was as the heavy boots keeping your bare toes warm and dry, drew you closer to the stables, that the silhouette coming into focus made your steps slow.

The scent of sweetness emanated from the haybales and the distinct scent of the horses engulfed the air as you stepped closer into the threshold, as the familiar smell of smoke penetrated them all and entwined it's scent with the others in the open air. A cigarette hung from his full lips, a sight hardly unseen as the moments smoke didn't trail from his exhales were those of a rarity. But apart from his smokes, everything else about his appearance differed then the usual these days. 

For his peaky cap was left indoors, his raven hair left open to the breeze that rusted softly through the strands, the chill brushing against the shaven nature of the sides. Apart from the evenings he abandoned his jacket when in the confines of his study, or stripped to entangle himself with you in the comfort of your shared bed, there were few days that you didn't witness Tommy in his sleek and expertly tailored three-piece suits. But here he stood, in black trousers slipped quickly from the hamper from merely the night before, along with his ivory long sleeve he slept in on nights with a chill in the air. Straps of black leather suspenders pressed firmly along the rigid blades of his shoulders, as the buttons on his shirt were unevenly done up. For the top two remained open, allowing for a peak into the bare flesh of his chiseled chest and the swirl of ink beating against the skin a few inches above the placement of his heart.

Tommy appeared relaxed in his attire, as if he were a regular man with a regular life, as he stood in front of his newest mare. Stroking the smooth velvet of her soft ash grey coat, his eyes gazing upon the animal that always held a soft spot in the hardened core of his heart. As his cigarette dangled from his lips, murmuring soft nothings under his breath, as he tended to the horse who simply enjoyed the man's kind and attentive touch.

Tommy appeared utterly at peace in the stables, as if you had caught a mere glimpse of the man he was before France rattled his mind and hardened his heart, a man unscathed by the affects of the war. But painfully, you knew better to believe such a thing. For Tommy stood amongst the rolling morning fog, the first beam of the rising sun glinting across the horizon, as he woke before the dawn to the terrors that kept his dreams right back down in those tunnels. Even after all these years later. 

Taking a step closer to Tommy and his newest mare, your boots crunching over the strewn hay and dormant grass, you felt as the thin beam of the morning's breaking sun danced upon your back. The warmth of it's light seeping through the thin material of your cotton nightgown, the hem swaying gently in the surrounding breeze. "Careful there Tom, I might just start to think you love her more than me, the way you're looking at her there."

The sound of your voice, breaking through the void of silence that rolled through the pasture like the thin breath of morning fog, captured Tommy's attention instantly. For his head turned to the side, watching you approach him in short steps on his left, until you stood inches away from his own laced up boots beside him. Your hand reaching out to stoke the soft coat of the beautiful mare in front of you, feeling the sturdy breaths of the animal beneath the palm of your chilled hand, as the smoke of Tommy's cigarette swirled along the trail of your soft exhale. 

Tommy's eyes, the orbs made of a blue as cold as ice still appearing as the brightest shade in the morning atmosphere, nearly putting the beam of marigold in the sky to shame, raked over your frame. Falling from your face that watched him turn towards you and trailed down your body clothed in the lightest cotton, until his eyes fell upon the sight of the rather clunky and clearly oversized boots keeping your feet dry. And you felt warmth spread through your chest, as you watched the edges of his lips twitch into the making of a smirk that shadowed lightly against the shape of his pouted lips. For amusement seeped into the crevices of his expression, as Tommy's eyes returned their gaze back up upon your own eyes, mirth shimmering in his orbs like moonlight beaming against an ocean's wave, as he took in the sight of you wearing your nightgown and a pair of his terribly bulky boots upon your dainty set of feet.

"What are the two of you doing out here ey?"

Instinctually, as if Tommy's words triggered an ingrained reaction within your body, you felt your fingers spread across the growing bump of your expanding belly. Wrapping your arms around the evidence of another little Shelby in the making, as you smiled softly at the sound of his voice. For even as you had heard it just a few hours earlier, in the lasting hours of the evening, you found there was something about your husband's voice that you simply missed. Maybe it was the way it completely engulfed you, even when he spoke with minimal words and lacked appropriate emotion, there was something about his voice that enveloped you whenever he spoke. And perhaps, it was that unusual source of comfort that you found you missed in the hours slumber stole you away from him.

"The bed was rather cold," You confess to your husband with a soft shrug of your shoulders. Remembering your eyes fluttering open to the decent of morning, your hands spreading out towards his side of the bed, only to find the mattress void of his presence with the sheets smoothed and empty as though he'd erased the very evidence that he'd ever been beside you to begin with. The sheets held an undeniable chill in their vacancy, as not even his pillow rested with the soft imprint of his cradled head. If it were not for the memory of his arms coiled around your waist and the expansion of your belly, when he'd slipped in at nearly an hour to midnight, you might've questioned if he'd even come home that night. "and this one doesn't let me sleep much later in the mornings." 

You'd inevitably stopped in the lavatory before venturing into the early hours of the new morning to search for Tommy, remembering as you passed by the open door to your little boy's bedroom, how that one had woken you early in the break of dawn as well. But as your nausea slowly eased, peering into the room still shrouded in the shadows of the lingering night, you smiled softly at the sight of the little toddler wrapped in his sheets. Slumbering deeply, dreaming dreams only the innocent and the little had the pleasure and freedom to dare to dream, and closing the door a little further, you ventured down the winding stairs hoping each step would not disturb the little one still sleeping soundly.

Tommy released the softest huff at your response, a sensation not yet matured into a bout of laughter, but rather a simple exhale of amusement fallen from his breath like the soft whinnies of his mare. For Tommy knew how miserable your morning sickness was, this time and the last, even as this time around you had a much nicer house to stay curled up in if need be. But it was one of the things that he wasn't sure quite how to handle, you observed time and time again. For he was attentive when he could be, with a hand to rub your back soothingly and a soft cloth saturated in cool water to press along the clammy flesh of your forehead. But when it came to your pregnancies, apart from the utmost protection and care he could provide you, Tommy struggled with what to say to make the discomfort and the pain fade. But he tried and to you, that was more than enough.

You watched as Tommy's attention returned to the horse in front of him, smoke billowing in thin streams from his faintly parted lips and his calloused and faintly scarred hands stroked the velvet coat with a tenderness saved only for the horses, yourself, or your little boy tucked inside. The streak of sunlight, expanding over the cusp of the horizon, fell upon the side of his frame and nearly illuminated him in it's citrine marigold glow. And for the briefest moment, you couldn't help but remember how he was before France.

For you'd grown up with the Shelby family, your own house only a block or two away from where the brothers ran the streets ragged at a young age and Ada was just as sharp even as she was wrapped in a delicate sweetness. Polly Gray had been there for you when your mother had passed before her rightful time, a painful existence until the good Lord put her out of her misery. She'd healed that hole and with the woman's open arms, you were engulfed into the Shelby family and fell in love with the second boy named Thomas immediately.

For he was unlike any boy, any man, you had ever met. And you found it was impossible to keep yourself from loving the man who loved horses and laughed as though everyday was a bloody gift. You loved him as you grew up on the cobblestone streets of Small Heath and you continued to love him even as he went off and volunteered to fight for his country. You loved him, even as he came back a different man, for you didn't know how not to at that point.

Perhaps, it was in that simple, easy and profound kind of notion, that Tommy found he loved you more when he returned home, because of how you remained steady, while the rest of his life came crumbling down around him. His mind and his memories left a scattered minefield, yet there you were, stable and welcoming and just as he remembered you to be. Finding a comfort in the one thing that hadn't truly changed inside of him, his love for you and the knowledge of the one thing he could be sure of in this life, your love for him.

But even as much as your heart beat for the man you watched now, in the comfortable silence settling in like the morning fog, it wasn't always easy to watch what the war had done to Tommy. What the choices he'd made in the past, the death he'd witnessed all around him, the blood he still saw on his hands even as they were as skin toned as they could become. His mind had been damaged. It was not broken beyond repair you believed however, it was simply hurting and needed to be healed, just as a broken bone needed to be set. Somedays, Thomas rather believed it was as simple as putting a lame horse out of it's misery, but you knew that there were things worth saving inside of his mind. Inside of his heart. The world needed Thomas Shelby, your boy and the little babe on the way needed him, you needed him.

"You know," Taking a tentative step forward, you swallowed nervously at the words teetering on the tip of your tongue. For the topic tugging furiously in the core of your thoughts, was one in which you'd attempted to broach for months. But each time the words were softly spoken, every time the topic presented itself, Tommy shut you down immediately. Whether it be in a bout of aggression, a stern voice that froze you where you stood as you knew not to press further, or times when he'd simply aim to disarm your intentions and distract you with the intoxicating taste of his lips and burning sensation of his fingertips grazing across your flesh. It was a topic Tommy refused to broach with you and yet, here you were, trying again, just as stubbornly as him. "My brother came back shell shocked, he could hardly tell the difference between our neighbors and the Germans."

"He's seeing someone in London now, Thomas. I've met her and she's sweet, she really is. She helps him, clears a bit of the haze and the decay, so that he can finally start to see the new world around him."

You can already feel the tenseness exuding from his frame before his first deep sigh exhales into the open air, for you watch the rigidness in his shoulders tighten and the sight of his jaw clench at the sound of your cautious words. He wasn't yet angry or even, exasperated by your line of conversation, but it rather appeared as though he simply braced himself for what you had to say. Tommy didn't look at you however, keeping his focus entuned on the horse in front of him, where his hands stroked a little harsher as though he might be able to distract himself just enough, to avoid the fall of your words upon his ears but he knew better to believe he wouldn't hear you. For even when there were moments in the ten years you'd known him, that he hadn't given you the time of day out of petty anger or personal turmoil, Tommy always listened to you. As if it were simply an integrated part of his senses.

"Are you sure you won't find someone Thomas?" You inquire in the softest breath, your fingers anxiously entwining together over the soft fabric covering your growing belly. "Someone, anyone, who might just help you sort through all the horrors that keep you up at night? The doctors now, they're good at this Tom, they could really help you if you let them."

Thomas never liked to believe he was sick. It was simply his gypsy blood, keeping him in contact with the devil who never seemed to set him free, as he'd sold his soul more times than one ever should. He self medicated, with the drinks and the smokes and the rare nights of opium he didn't think you knew about. Thomas may not have been sick, but he was struggling, drowning in a sea of despair before your very eyes, and in order for you to save him, he needed to give you his hand.

Tommy remained silent as your words weighed upon his shoulders, but he made his way closer to you. Abandoned his gentle touch upon his beautiful mare and approached you, with steady steps until the tips of his boots nearly brushed against your own, and the heavy shadow of his towering frame engulfed you as though the sun had not yet risen that morning.

"Why would I need them, when I've got you ey?" 

Peering up through the soft sprawl of your lashes, you gaze at Thomas with a pointed look, tilting your head to the right ever so slightly as you regard him earnestly. "I'm not a doctor Tom."

Tommy releases another huff below his breath, as his eyebrows arch faintly and he withdraws the burning cigarette from between his lips. "Neither is Pol and she's damn well been in me head more times than I can count, at least you make some of the pain go away." 

Your heart ached at his words, for even as Thomas bared the pain, somedays barely feeling it's draining extent, you felt it. As if it were merely a continuation of your own pain, you felt it beat in the strings of your heart that pulled with each and every breath he took, and made your conscious heavy when you lingered on the thought that he'd surely drown himself before reaching out for the hand extended out for him to take. He was a strong man, stubborn and strong willed, but one of these days, you rather feared that it would be the thing that got him killed. 

"I worry for you." Your voice fell in a breathless voice, trailing amongst the morning breeze alongside the ashen funnel of Tommy's exhaled smoke. Peering up at the man beside you through your lashes, as he hovered above your frame and casted his intense shadow down upon your shoulders.

You watched as Tommy's eyes tore away from your own for the briefest of moments, as his head turn to the side and allowed you to catch the side profile of a laugh expanding across his nicotine laced lips. This time, an assured and strong clap of laughter, although short it hit the air like you were standing back with the man you knew before France. The edges of his bright cerulean eyes crinkled as the mirth of his expression spread through the icy brush of his gaze, and the softest imprint of a dimple puncturing the soft and faintly freckled nature of his cheeks, while he lips spread into the minimalist ghost of a smile. Tommy turned his attention back down towards your awaiting gaze, allowing you full access to the amused expression etched across his face. 

"And I worry about you standing out 'ere in your bloody nightgown, when you're carrying me child and it's fucking ten above freezing."

His words, stern and authoritative as they always seemed to come, but this time with the clearest hint of a teasing tone that softened the blow. The sight of his soft smile warming you from the inside out, feeling the heat ooze from the core of your chest until you felt it creep up your cotton coated flesh and ease away the trace of lingering goosebumps from the morning's cold presence. 

"I won't ever stop worrying about you Tom," You confessed in a light tone, looking down at his boots that consumed your feet and climbed their way up your ankles, before returning your gaze back up to his own with a deep inhaled breath crisped by the dawn. "I don't think I can. I didn't when you left for France and I haven't stopped since you came back. Nearly died me-self after all the hell with Kimber and Sabini and those goddamn Russians I'm still cursing you for."

Thomas shifted on his own feet as he absorbed your words, flicking his cigarette down upon the ground before snuffing it out with the heel of his shoe, all the while, keeping the extent of his blue eyed scrutiny heavy upon your body. Even as his gaze fell with a strength that nearly threatened to consume you beneath the blistering waves of cerulean blue, there would forever be a breath of remorse lingering in the base of Tommy's chest when you spoke of the years that had followed you both.

For he never meant to bring you into a life when you had to question whether or not each day would be your last, or if it would be your hands placing flowers at his grave, long after he'd returned from the front lines. He still blamed himself for the ache he put you through, the fears lingering in the depths of your mind after years of war with racetrack keepers, Italians and unstable Russians his hands never should have dipped into. But each and every time, he did everything in his power to keep you and your child safe.

"But I worry for you," You reiterated in a pained breath, stepping closer to Tommy until you could reach your fingertips out and brush along the flesh of his palm. "when you ain't slept a wink in a week, when you can't hardly sit and watch your boy stammer off his spellings without a drink in your hand. I worry when I look at you Thomas and I feel you're slipping away. Like you're a damn near thousand miles away from here, from me."

Thomas regarded you in a pause of pure silence, one not even the blackbirds could penetrate with their songful melodies. His eyes washing over your solemn expression like the rush of the incoming tide, feeling the coolness of his iced gaze settle against your skin but it wasn't along before a certain sense of warmth replaced the prick of cold.

For Thomas remained silent, but his right hand extended outward. Reaching out until his thumb made contact with the soft swell of your cheekbone, the pads of his fingers trailing across the edge of your jawbone as they disappeared into the base of your tendrils. Cradling your face in the tenderest embrace of his palm, brushing the soft pad of his thumb back and forth along your skin like a set of windshield wipers, erasing any sign of melancholy that might eventually blink down from your concerned gaze. 

"I'm right here."

You wanted to embrace Tommy's words wholeheartedly, to crawl into their comforting presence and allow them to ease the ache in your heart. But as you peered up at your husband who stared right back, you couldn't help but wonder if doing so would only exacerbate the pain he refused to acknowledge. So you swallowed a deep breath, before replying almost instantly to his attempt to reassure you. 

"Are you though?"

The sigh that fell from his lips, blowing across your face in a fan of heat, was one you knew. For it was in that exhale of exasperation that typically shut down your line of questioning, or moment of expressing your deeply rooted concern. You lifted your left hand in that moment however, before the heat of his exhale could fully disappear from the surface of your face, and placed your own palm atop his own. As though perhaps, with the touch of your own hand keeping his pressed along the shape of your cheek, you might get one more minute, one more second for him to listen to what you had to say. 

"I'll respect your choice Thomas, to not go and find a doctor that might clear some of that haze and pain out your head, I swear I will. But you'll have to talk to me instead, let me in and not obscure me from your heart and from your battlefield of a mind, please."

Perhaps, you felt incredibly weak in that moment, as your voice fell upon his ears in the meekest tone. But as you stared up into the eyes of the man you loved far too much for your own good, you felt as if this was your last fighting chance. You allowed yourself to reveal your utmost vulnerability to the man who hardly ever revealed his own and pleaded to him with everything you had left inside of you, for the chance, the mere chance, to help him... before he became too far out of reach of your helping hand.

Tommy stared at you, moments of silence trickling past like the passing of hours as you stood before him with bated breath, but as you felt his hand shift beneath the clasp of your own, Tommy brushed your cheekbone with the bone of his knuckle. He studied your eyes as if he were locking the sight of them into his memory and it was with the faintest twitch of his lips, that he finally spoke in a low voice.

"Fucking scared what you'll find." 

His words left you breathless, as though he'd stolen the oxygen straight out of your lungs and you'd been left without a sliver of air left to breathe. You weren't sure, as you stared intently into his blue eyed gaze that held you captive amongst the icy waves of his irises, if he murmured the words beneath his breath in the form of a question meant for you, or if they were a softly spoken statement of honest truth found in the base of his own heart. 

"You ought to know by now, ten years and two kids in, that there is hardly anything you or your world could do, to scare me off for good Thomas Shelby," You expressed in a soft breath that teetered on the edge of a voice that cracked beneath the weight of newfound tears, and floated with the lightest hint of a spout of knowing laughter. "you're stuck with me."

"And for what I'll find," You couldn't stare deeper into Tommy's eyes even if you tried, but something in the way you bored your gaze into his own, you willed him in that moment to hear your words and believe them for what they were. "I've seen the damage the war and this life has done to you. I only wish to help you heal from it. If only you'll let me."

Tommy's knuckles continued to brush themselves against the soft skin of your cheekbones, as if his touch were the strokes of a painters brush and the warmth of his tenderness was the ink of a watercolor bleeding across your bare flesh. His lips curved softly in the corners, as his eyes sparkled with the depth of the smile kept at bay upon his pouted lips, his tongue darting out ever so slowly to trail across his bottom lip before speak up in a low voice.

"How could anyone say I love this horse more than you, when I'ma let you into a bloody war zone ey?"

You smiled softly at his words, nearly melting into the cradle of his palm as you peered upwards at his glinting eyes of emboldened blue. Thomas wasn't ever good with his words, he got lucky every once and a while, but most of your days you learned to read between the lines of his words. For you found a thousand other letters lingering in the void, making up the words his lips may never form and in that moment, as he teased you lightly, you knew he was finally allowing you into the pain he'd tried all his life to conceal from you. This was Tommy saying he'd let you in, that he'd finally try and you nearly teared up at the words spoken in the loudest voice within the silence of a dialogue unspoken aloud.

"We do crazy things for the people we love," You mused with a soft shrug of your cotton clad shoulder. "I've done a few." 

His deeply furrowed brows arched in a peak of curiosity and hummed softly, "Yeah?"

"Mhm," Your own soft hum rumbled up through your chest and you smiled at the words teetering on the tip of your tongue. "for starters, I married you."

It were the words that finally cracked a full smile across Tommy's lips, one that brought you back to those lasting moments before he went off to France, when his beautiful smile never really made it back. For it illuminated his entire face with a simple expansion, reflecting brighter than the rising dawn across the horizon and you relished in the way it's glow seeped into your flesh as he casted his smile down upon your frame.

"Might have one of them doctors check you out about that, still think you went mad in the head."

Laughing at his response, the soft sound of your laughter floating up into the chilled morning atmosphere, nearly putting the melodies of the blackbird's tunes to shame, and felt his hand fall from your face only to coil its way around your waist. Enveloping you in his strong embrace, as Tommy pulled you closer to his chest, separated only by that of the growing baby bump pressed firm against his ivory clad abdomen. 

"You know I love you, don't you?" You inquired in a soft breath, peering up at your husband as he held you carefully in his sturdy arms. 

"I'd reckon you'd have to love me something fucking awful, to worry 'bout me the way you do."

You smiled at his words, resisting the urge to roll your eyes at his lighthearted tease, for you knew the words that lingered between the lines. The thoughts unspoken, sounding the loudest as they settled over upon your beating heart. Maybe he wouldn't always form the three words, but you'd learned that the feeling of them touched your heart just the same. For as he leaned forward and rested his chin down upon the windblown mess of curl atop your head, he pressed his lips to your tendrils and kissed you tenderly in the silence. And it felt like Thomas whispered the words over and over again, as the warmth of his touch seeped through your parted tresses and the soft glow of the new morning sun washed over your frame.

It was there, as day broke over the horizon, that you felt a part of your heart heal a little further, as Thomas finally embraced you in more ways than one. 

A/N: Ahh, I am just bursting with pride with this piece!!😍😭

This idea came to me pretty suddenly one day, after I found this GIF and the dialogue slowly began to funnel in for me. The entire scene and moment piecing together right along with it! I fell in love with the idea and knew I had to write for it as soon as possible, but I in no way, knew how beautiful it would turn out to be as a completed piece! Oh my goodness, this is one of those pieces that simply flowed from my fingertips and from my heart onto the page before me and completely stunned me with what I was able to create here! The scenery and imagery spilled from me in a way that made me feel like I was really there as I was writing it! I am so beyond proud of this piece, I can't even express it enough, and can only hope that you all enjoyed reading it as much as I loved writing it!!😍❤