The world felt different. An inexplicable shift, as though the ground you walked across was entirely different than the foundation of the Earth you'd known all your life. Perhaps, it felt like you were merely floating through the atmosphere, a lost particle of dust no longer having a rightful place amongst the sky. Like your feet, that timidly thundered against the pavement, left behind not a single step, not a single sliver of evidence that your presence had ever graced this Earth. The world felt different, in the way that the one you once knew, no longer existed.

The cold air soared through your lungs with a staggering sensation, one that nearly threatened to force you down to your knees, with the sheer strength in which it penetrated your chest. For the breath of winter was formidable, as it descended upon your shoulders, weighing you down towards the pavement that all but whispered your name. Your lungs, the mere core of your chest cavity, burned with a fire that once ignited, you feared could never be extinguished.

But the second your flesh touched upon the outside, inhaling your first breath of crisp and untainted air for the first time in nearly six months, it felt as if a current rippled its way through you. Seeping over the crackling embers, overwhelming the dancing flames and snubbing out the agonizing fire, with a simple coat of its icy presence.

For the cold was stronger than you had remembered it to be or perhaps, this cold was new and entirely formed for you. Perhaps, the frigid temperatures of the lingering winter season, that met you the moment those prison gates opened and set you free, were there to breathe life back into your very soul. A reminder, that the body that walked across the pavement in slow and rather disoriented steps, was alive and thrown back into the clutches of a reality that appeared more daunting than the very prospect of death itself.

The ice that extinguished the flames inside of yourself, punctured your flesh and burned along the trail of your inhales in a way that contrasted the heat of the once roaring fire.

For the cold that clung to you as if an anchor coiled around your extremities, without so much as a single hope that it might just fall back into the churning waves, took your breath away. It consumed you, taking over your will to think, as if it shredded through your flesh like the blades of a thousand knives. The wind that howled through the bare and brittle branches, whipped the vicious cold against your face as you passed through a set of doors you'd only passed through in the clutches of your dreams.

You always believed that if you were to see freedom, that the world left lingering would be a welcome sight. But you discovered, as your feet nearly stumbled against the pavement and your flesh was assaulted by the sheer velocity in which the cold found you, that the world was wholly unwelcoming.

As if the world you'd imagined in your memories all of that time, had simply succumbed to an extinction that wiped any semblance of its warmth, of its openness, of its peaceful place in your recollections. Leaving behind a world that you didn't recognize, one bathed in a cold that even the Devil himself wouldn't dare endure and a grey that had drained the very color of the Earth from view.

But perhaps, it was the way the world in which you'd returned to was supposed to appear. For you had glimpsed into a palace of pure peace, an eternity that was ready to welcome you with open arms and glistening golden gates, but you'd been snatched from the grasps of heaven and forced back down into a reality that could never compare. How was one to return just as contently to the cold cobblestone and harsh notions of the world, when they'd witnessed a place where death was peace and life was painless?

Perhaps, it was not that the world around you changed, but you yourself. For the noose around your neck, had been the very thing to open your eyes and see the world as it always had been.

Your breath froze as it met the open air, exhaling softly just to watch it fade into a cloud before your very eyes, as if it was smoke funneling from between your parted lips. It hung there, stalling in the brittle atmosphere like it hadn't a notion of what to do with itself after all this time. But just as your eyes, that had yet to blink through the cold, began to feel the pierce of windblown tears, it faded. Dissipating into the winter dusk as if your breath was merely another exhale of the season's presence, not one of a human being who still had a place in this world, but an insignificant sigh disappearing into the atmosphere never to be seen again.

The air that soared through your chest and settled its vicious presence upon your flesh, was crisp and sharp and yet, it felt like the breath before a rainstorm. For as your head tilted back, lashes fluttering closed and shutting tightly over your eyes that adjusted to the fresh stream of natural light, the sky above you was bleak.

For the sun never made an appearance that day, hidden behind a coverage of clouds so dense, not even the piercing rays of the burning sun could break through its thick display. Even as it sank across the horizon, taking with it the very semblance of day, all that remained in its place was a destitute stretch of sky. Not so much as a single streak of powder blue or setting marigold touched upon the blanket spread vast above the pavement. Only in the distance, where the trace of the day began to fade, did indigo begin to seep within the melancholy stretch of grey.

But even the shadows of the impending night were far away from claiming the hold in which the current display held over the land. For the ashen hue that consumed the sky above your weary eyes, made it seem as if heaven no longer lingered just above the clouds.

Was this what they felt? Those who had always seen the world for what it truly was? For as your lashes began to peel open, feeling the chilling weight of frost collecting against the dampened surface of the thin and fluttering sprawl, you stared up to the heavens and a sensation of hopelessness descended down upon your shoulders.

Was this what he always felt, why he spoke the way he did, saw the world through cold eyes and a sheen of impenetrable ice? For you'd never had your hope stolen from your very grasp before, you'd never had it ripped from your beating heart and replaced with a void of something lost and bitterly empty in the core of your very soul, but you'd always known that he had. Was this what it felt like, to have your faith shaken to the point where the ground beneath your steps no longer remained steady enough to hold you? Was this what it was like, to feel gutted and missing a part of yourself that once resided in a sensation of hope?

Your orbs swam within a pool of your burning tears, nearly drowning alive before you tilted your head back down and with the motion, allowed the first tear to freely flow over the edge of your lash line and trail down your cheek. A path of salt and pain you'd never felt in this lifetime, lingering behind its agonizing glide, only for the winter's wind to discover its presence and engulf the burn with the touch of its paralyzing cold.

But suddenly, it was no longer the cold that stalled you. It was no longer the wind that tore through your flesh as if it were razor blades slicing through the air, or the disorienting turn of the world that appeared so different as you finally ventured outside of those prison walls, that stopped your next inhale of breath.

But rather the sight of a blue so formidable, so imposing, so damningly overwhelming, that you swore you could feel the rush of their ice-cold waves settling against the surface of your bones, stealing the air from your lungs and threatening to knock you where you stood firm against the pavement.

You hadn't expected to see him here, you hadn't expected to see again after he'd sent you away with the rest of his family and yet, here he was. Thomas Shelby in the flesh, standing feet away from you now, composed and just as striking as he was the day you were arrested. You hadn't thought you'd ever see those eyes again, the ones that tore into your very soul. But here they were, staring straight at you as if your flesh was pure crystal and he could see straight through you, straight through to your heart that clambered within your breathless chest.

For his orbs shattered the sheen of ice overlaid across your shivering flesh and they punctured the frozen surface without batting a single lash. Their cerulean hue controlling a strength in which not even a hundred men could ever hold, a power that defied the very basis of logic. For never in your lifetime, had you ever witnessed another man of so little words, possessing a set of eyes that spoke them all.

Thomas stood a stark contrast to the way you'd left him that day, for he'd been drained of everything that fateful day. Exhaustion weighing down upon his body like it might just drag him to the ground, his flesh cut up and healing from wounds inflicted from the tunnel he dug with his own two hands, evidently damaging more than just his aching bones from such an excursion.

For you knew that the moment Thomas slipped beneath the Earth, even if it had been the blatant fear for his son's life that forced him down into that darkness, that it would surely prey upon the scars left untreated and hidden away in his head. He'd appeared rightfully disheveled that afternoon, when he stood hunched over the large mahogany desk in his office that housed bundles of money upon its unscathed surface.

That was the way you'd seen him, for the very last time, before the police dragged you away with the rest of his family. That was the lasting image of him planted into your memory.

The sight of a man, haunted, as if the eyes of bold cerulean that stared at you as the police pressed you harshly against the wall, were empty caverns. Orbs of blue, that pierced your flesh like it might just tear through the very stitching of thread that adorned your trembling frame, suddenly void of everything you'd once witnessed residing within their powerful hold.

For Thomas stared at you, as the copper's rough and calloused hands pulled your own taunt and tight behind your back, with an emotion so faintly reflecting in the slight gleam of his sight, that you couldn't make it out. You felt it however, a tangible sensation rushing down your spine and into the breaking crevices of your thundering heart. It felt as if that single look, the unidentifiable expression that ran through his eyes like the ever-churning currents of strong blue waves, whispered all of the things that his lips never could.

For you looked into those eyes, one last time as the police pushed you through the doors and you swore you were looking into the eyes of a broken man. A man in such pain, that there wasn't a prayer in the world that could surely eradicate it. With his skin sullen and the cut across the bridge of his nose inflamed, he looked at you one last time as if through the wash of his gaze, you might make out all of the things he wished to tell you.

But you couldn't.

For all you saw, as your eyes were ripped away from the sight of Thomas watching you being dragged off by the police, was the sight of a man utterly gone. A man who begged you to trust him, all the while, betraying you in the very same spared breath. A man you loved who was giving you away.

And here he stood today, a complete opposite of the man you'd seen that day.

For he was beautiful in the way that he'd always been, that unbearably unfair manner in which God had gifted him the looks of imperial perfection. All the while, knowing his heart and the worn and tethered makings of his very soul, were lined with imperfections that even the good Lord himself, could no longer heal back together again.

The brim of his sleek black peaky cap nearly obscured the sight of his eyes, for he'd always pulled it down over the bridge of his forehead, as if he wanted to hide the very sight of his face and the tightly concealed expressions that might etch themselves across the lines of his flesh, from the wandering eyes of the world around him. But despite his best efforts, you saw the furrow of his dark raven brows, shadowing over the casting light his cerulean scrutiny poured out over the pavement.

They were a gift he'd been cursed with, for his eyes were ones that demanded to be seen. For a soul had been blessed in this life, with eyes that could very well hold the secrets of the universe within their churning currents of never ceasing blue and it was that soul's responsibility to let the world view their beauty, their unmatchable power.

It was a burden really, but the world hadn't planned on gifting such orbs to a man like Thomas Shelby and in turn, he hadn't been ready to harness the overwhelming strength they possessed. He hadn't even acknowledged that he held such value in something as simple as a set of working eyes, but those who were touched by their icy and steely gaze, felt it just as they surely viewed the strength within the ebbing cerulean hue.

His coat draped down his frame, black wool cascading down his strong physique until it was as if the shadowy shade might just swallow him whole. But there was something about it, the way the black seemed to almost accentuate the chiseled structure of the bones in his face and made the gleam of dangerous blue in his scrutiny embolden as though it hadn't enough sheer will, that made it seem as if the sight had always belonged to him.

For it wasn't just that his suit of sleek ebony was tailored to perfection against his body, or that his coat hung heavily down upon his shoulders and carried with it an evident tone of authority. For the coat could've been a size too large, his pants an inch too short as they once were ever so long ago, his shoes could very well squeeze his toes blue, and his hat could be stitched with razor blades like the past had come back around, and the attire would still speak as though it had always been Thomas Shelby's.

There was an air that followed Thomas and you realized that it had very well oozed from his pores, until each and every thread of stitched material that adorned his imposing frame, absorbed it into its foundation. Until every stitch, every sew of thread, every button placed delicately for his fingers to undo, exuded the confidence and the overwhelming allure of Thomas's undeniable presence.

Your tongue felt uncharacteristically dry, as you stood before him now. Stunned into silence, staggering against the weight of the world closing in around you, only heightened by his sudden appearance. You couldn't say a word as you stood there stock still upon the pavement, staring at the man you hadn't thought you'd ever lay eyes on again, not in this life anyways.

But Thomas, who could endeavor to speak, who had such strength left running through his veins like the very blood pumping his body alive, stood there just as you did. Silent. The only sensation coming from the familiar click of his cigarette case and the matching flick of the lighter to go with it.

You weren't sure if it was because he always seemed to have you speak first or if he simply hadn't a word to say to you, but you found that even as your mouth felt void of the words, that they surely swirled rapidly in the core of mind. For as you stared at Thomas, smoking in silence as his blue eyes bored holes into your flesh, like you hadn't just stepped out of the prison he'd sent you to, you felt a confliction within yourself you'd never felt before.

For a part of you wanted to run to him, bury your face into the crook of his neck, let his arms embrace you with a warmth they'd always seemed to have. But in the very same, you wanted to slap your hand across his cheek. Sear his skin with the same stinging pain that suffocated your heart. You wanted to scream at him, you wanted to push him away to a point that he'd never come back. But beneath it all, you still desperately wanted to tell him that you loved him.

For even as they'd strung the noose around your neck, his name whispering within the plaited strands of rope, it was the last dying wish that echoed in your mind as your eyes fluttered shut.

"What are you doing here, Thomas?"

Your voice no longer sounded like your own, for even as you felt your lips venture to move and the sensation of letters spilling out over the dry stretch of your bottom lip, they sounded foreign as they hit the cold air.

You didn't recognize the way they hit your ear, the voice that croaked like it hadn't been used in ages, sounding like a stranger to you. There was fragility that bled into the breath that froze in front of your face, it was evident as though the vulnerability and raw sense of beating and bleeding pain was tangible in the atmosphere, captured within the icy surroundings and frozen to linger in mid-air. There was a brokenness to the tone that engulfed the whispered words, as though the inquiry was an object, and you could see each and every crack that scathed its surface.

Thomas's face moved not a fraction, not a hint of emotion shadowed across his face like the moving of the sun, it remained as stoic as it appeared the second your eyes had landed upon him. He could've been a statue, crafted from perfectly chiseled stone, had it not been for the beating heart still lingering within the hidden cavity of his chest. His scrutiny simply remained upon your frozen frame, withdrawing the burning cigarette only as his lips began to form the response to your broken question.

"Where else would I be?"

You weren't sure if it was the cold that tore at your flesh, as the surrounding wind battered your body, or if it the ashen haze that dripped from his lips in a strong breath of nicotine, that forced his reply to stick in the air. But it was an assault upon your heart the way they clung to the bitter atmosphere, for as they fell from his lips and ripped at you with a fury, it was as if the air kept the words around just so that they might be the salt rubbed into your open wound.

You couldn't conceal the incredulous breath that escaped through your own lips, for you wanted to curse him right then and there, right where he stood, until the ground beneath him might just open up and steal him away from your aching sight.

Perhaps, you felt foolish in that moment, more so than the anger beginning to ignite within your veins. Perhaps, you had been foolish to believe that Thomas's approach to this very moment in time, would be anything more than what it was right now. Perhaps, you'd been a fool to think that maybe the ice around his heart might just thaw, that he might regard you with sympathetic eyes and beg for your forgiveness, that he'd have the audacity to tell you he was sorry and that he'd spend every day for the rest of his life making it up to you, should you let him do so.

But perhaps, above all else, you were foolish enough to believe that this man could have possibly loved you in the way that you loved him.

"I loved you Thomas," Never had the words ever been spoken or saturated in such angst, when falling from your lips. Never had they felt so incredibly heavy, as if they were a very burden upon the tip of your tongue to carry such weight. Never had they the capability to pain your heart to a point that you feared it might just stop beating all together, but they appeared in a frozen breath before your eyes, in a tone of heartache you'd never felt before, let alone heard fall from your lips.

"But you treat the world like everyone and everything in it is disposable to you. That they're simply there to serve a purpose, a manipulation to make the world a little bit better for yourself."

Thomas didn't speak, he didn't endeavor to move, he simply absorbed your words like daggers thrown into a block of wood. But his eyes, the weight of their unshifting gaze, nearly threatened to crush you where you stood.

"I loved you," The tears burned as they collected along the glean of your sight, for the cold captured their moisture and it felt like they might just freeze right where they pooled, before ever getting the chance to roll down your cheeks. But you couldn't restrain the tears, you hadn't the strength left inside of yourself. If anything, you'd been using up every last bit of strength you had left in trying to hold the tears at bay but finding an odd sensation of relief as they began to tremble over the edge of your burning lash line.

"With everything I had to give, and you threw it away, like it didn't mean a bloody thing to you."

It was in that moment, that it felt as if you had just ripped the beating muscle from your chest and heaved it down upon the pavement. For you looked at Thomas's stoic expression, the way his hands only moved when he brought his cigarette to and from his pouted lips and found yourself wanting to rip yourself apart until not a single piece held Thomas's name or an indentation that his love was once there.

For his eyes watched you and you'd long ago captured their gaze, but you hated the way you were swept up into their current like it was the very first time. Shaking your head furiously, as though you might just have the power to clear the evidence of Thomas Shelby out of your mind and out of your memories, you cursed loudly in a sob that wracked your whole body.

"God!" You cried out, feeling like every part of yourself broke in that very moment. For you'd never felt such anger boiling like it might just curdle your blood, such blatant hate controlling your emotions with a fury it nearly burned like a wildfire, such pain that it ripped you apart limb by limb while you were still alive and coherent enough to feel it. You'd never felt like you wanted to crawl straight out of your flesh more than you did in that very moment, as you tore your sight away from Thomas's overwhelming scrutiny and squeezed your eyes shut.

"I was dead in that noose Thomas," Your words bobbed amongst the crashing waves of your cries, the letters saturated in the salt that tarnished the way they hit the air, with emotion so haunting and poignant it was left palpable to all that could hear it. "I nearly met my maker and all the while, I kept seeing your face behind my eyelids."

It was then, that your eyes reopened and returned your gaze to Thomas's. It hadn't shifted, you rather believed in all this time, he hadn't so much as blinked. But you stared at him, through the sheen of tears that blurred the clarity of your vision, knowing that even if your irises were clouded with the collection of tears, that he could without a doubt see the brokenness that reflected in their gaze.

"I wanted to reach out, I wanted to touch you and know that it would all be alright somehow. I wanted to tell you I loved you, to have your eyes be the very last sight of light before the darkness overtook me." Your head shook as you kept steady hold of Thomas's gaze, emphatically as if you couldn't quite believe the very words that spilled from your own two lips.

They were incomprehensible, or at least, they should have been. You shouldn't have been able to understand what you'd felt, the way you still did, what you'd wanted in that moment more than anything else as your past, your present and your future flashed before your eyes. But you were more than ashamed to admit, that you understood it completely.

"God should have saved my soul when he had the chance, because you've fucked me up Thomas Shelby," You cried out. "You've fucked me up so damn much, that even in the gallows that you sent me to, I still loved you!"

Thomas didn't move, he didn't dare part his lips with a clear breath to ring words out into the frozen void, he didn't even bring the cigarette burning away between his fingers to his lips. But you realized in that very moment, as your flooded gaze took in the sight of Thomas's still and sullen stance, that the emotion that reflected ever so faintly in the glint of his cerulean scrutiny, was the very same emotion he held the day you had been taken away.

It was subtle, for Thomas Shelby didn't know any other way to hold his emotions, other than at bay with only the faintest trace of a mark muddling the very edge of his sleeve. As if there were drips of deep crimson staining the white of his pristine attire, when his beating and bloody heart endeavored to scathe the surface.

He had an unnerving capability of smoothing the tired lines of his expression, hiding them behind the soft whisper of freckles sprinkled along the curve of his cheekbones and burying them even when his brows would arch and threaten to crease the flesh of his forehead. Thomas didn't let a single piece of evidence that there was a war that ensued inside of himself, ever see the light of day. He kept it all inside, until it began to unravel the very threads of his weary soul.

But perhaps, over time, all of the angst and all of the unimaginable pain had finally begun to pierce through the armor he'd put into place. For his eyes were a glimpse into the chaos, into the misery, into the destruction. For it was there amongst the churning waves of cerulean, that did all they could to obscure his deepest secrets from view, that you saw the emotions that Thomas Shelby hid from the world, hid from you, hid from himself. You gazed at him through your falling tears and saw the very thing that his eyes had been drowned in that day he watched you get dragged away.

Pain. The kind of unmistakable pain that you could feel on the very foundation of your bones, like it might just erode away the surface. Guilt. The kind of guilt that could eat away at a man, until he was left nothing but withered skin and bones. Remorse. The kind of remorse that could never be enough to amend the pain he'd inflicted throughout his lifetime.

"I want to hate you, with every fiber of my being." Your voice sounded strangled, as though the words coiled around themselves like a hand-woven noose. You weren't sure what noose was worse, the rope that had been strung around your neck not long ago, or this one crafted of your own agonizing pain and heartbreaking thoughts. But you rather reckoned, the one that found itself around your throat in this instant, hadn't a glimpse of peace waiting for you at the end.

You didn't want to feel his pain as if it were an extension of your very own, but you did. You didn't want to feel his melancholy as though it were a palpable addition to the atmosphere that surrounded you, but you did. You didn't want to feel a tinge of guilt at the thought that you might just add to the shattering nature of his character, but you did.

For you saw it, there in the core of his cerulean gaze that hadn't dared to abandon your shivering frame, the brokenness of a man. And you wished in that moment, more than anything, that your hands could be the ones to help piece him back together.

"But as I look at you, standing here, right now, I know I haven't got it in me to hate you."

Love was a cruel thing, making you love the very soul in which you wanted to hate with all of your being. It was impossible really, to hate Thomas Shelby more than you loved him. It only made you hate yourself in the end.

But it was possible, to love someone with every beating inch of your heart and have them shatter it in the palm of their hand. It was possible, to love someone even as you were left with jagged shards of a broken heart, that miraculously kept on beating. But it was also possible, that it not only beat to keep you alive, but that it continued to beat for him. For had your heart ever been your own? Or was it always destined to become Thomas Shelby's one way or another?

You looked away from Thomas's gaze, for you knew if you stood one last lingering second amongst the waves of strong azure, that you might just let them take you under. Succumb to the feelings that you shouldn't have felt for the man who betrayed you, all the while, knowing you hadn't much strength left to continue standing in his presence, without finding yourself crawling back into his embrace.

You hated the way you still loved him, after what he'd done, after what he'd let you go through. You hated the way you wanted him to take you home, to tell you it was all going to be alright now, that you'd get through this together. You hated the way he still had the ability to make you weak. But perhaps, even worse, you hated the way you knew you could never be with Thomas Shelby the way you once were. For you knew you had to walk away, that there was no way to salvage something that had been so carelessly shattered that it was impossible to piece back together.

He hadn't expected you to forgive him, hell, Thomas rather knew that you'd curse his name and spit on his grave when all was said and done. But nonetheless, he found himself aching to let you go.

Maybe, beneath the walls and the barriers of his heart, hope lingered in the smallest cavity that maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't lose you completely. That somehow, the two of you could come back from this. But as Thomas watched you walk right past him, with not so much as a single brush of your sleeve against his arm or a mere glance back at where he stood unmoving, Thomas could feel you slipping out of his fingers and out of his life.

But he didn't fight it, he didn't beg you to stay or grovel at your feet, for Thomas knew just as well as you did what he'd done could never be undone. And so, he added you to the long list of scars that plagued his heart, from the actions and decisions he made, that tore the lives of others apart.

A/N: This one is raw and emotional and I'm definitely feeling it!😭

I've actually been working on this piece for quite a while. It's a plot I've had for a long time, just sitting there in my notes waiting for the moment I finally decided to sit down and write it. I started this piece months back, but got stuck, so I stepped away from it and came back to it months later one random night, just for the rest of it to flow out of me!

The dialogue came to me first for this piece and I absolutely fell in love with it. I wanted this piece to feel cold, not just from the reunion and emotions, but also from the surroundings that I wanted to have really lend something to this plot. I wanted it to feel heavy and deep and such an intricate weave of angst. I love writing and exploring the notion of love and hate, because it's such a fragile line and can be so conflicting and confusing and utterly painful. I wanted this piece to be felt just as much as seen in your minds as you read, and I am so happy with what I've accomplished here!

I worked very hard on making this one shot the very best that it could be. I loved this plot and knew I could do something beautiful with it, but I didn't rush it because I wanted to be able to do it justice and really transfer the scene in my head onto the page. I'm very happy and proud of what I was able to craft and bring to life here, and I hope you all enjoyed it!❤