The sharp burn of the swaying candlelight illuminated his flesh, as if the light that cast along the curvature of his jawline, separated and accentuated the line between the devils and angels battling within his soul.

For the shadows seeped across his scars, dipping within the crevices lining his skin beyond his rightful years, heightening the sight of his sins gone by that were to forever stain his flesh. But in the light, no matter how dim the flame swayed, it was as if the hue was gentle and tender as it flooded over his marred and tired skin. Like perhaps, with time, the exhaustion, the inner turmoil, the scars of his past, could surely fade.

Perhaps, you'd known that he stood behind you long before your eyes met his gaze in the mirror. For Thomas Shelby's presence was unequivocal, it demanded to be felt even if it was yet to be seen. It was commanding and domineering and damn well overwhelming, just as he himself was. He was a sheer force of a man and yet, he could be as deadly silent like that of a ghost, a spirit simply inhabiting the living flesh of a shelled-out war hero.

For you could feel his sudden company in the small space, as if he'd gone and crawled his way beneath your very flesh. Igniting goosebumps along the exposed patches of your skin, sensitizing you to his touch, without the pads of his fingertips ever having to descend upon you. For it felt as if you could feel him invading the very breath that you inhaled, intertwining himself along the current of your oxygen, tainting it, poisoning it until it slipped into the cavities of your lungs without a shred of purity left behind for your breath to cling to.

For even as you were bathed in the ethereal fabric of ivory lace and intricate silk, staring at your reflection in the floor length mirror, it was the strong cast of cerulean that pierced through the room with the strongest hue. As if the flames that flickered from the candles were suddenly futile, their efforts to bathe the room in a warm and saturated hue, abruptly extinguished by the cold current of ice that flooded over the hardwood.

You had yet to lift your gaze, frozen in place along the stunning material that cascaded down your frame, but it felt as if you hadn't needed your eyes to raise and see his gaze, for it was as if the blue bleeding down from the scrutiny of his never-ending gaze, enveloped the room in a tangible light. As if the sharp beams of citrine were simply replaced with the piercing glow of an iced over blue, one that punctured your flesh from behind as the cold of his gaze settled beneath the surface of your flesh and eased its way over the delicate fabric adorning your body, until all you could feel was a tingling sensation. A meld of both burning heat from his inextinguishable gaze and a staggering chill from the blue that captivated his irises like a collection of priceless sapphires.

It wasn't possible and yet, you could've sworn that around the outline of your reflection in the mirror, a glow emanated from the strong cast of azure burning from his gaze, that consumed your spine.

His eyes were his weapon. All these years, he'd held tightly to his revolver and crowned his cap with razor blades like an infamous king, but it had been the orbs of chiseled out cerulean that held distinct and unattainable power.

For the cast of his gaze, it felt as if it could melt into your flesh, as if you hadn't a single layer of protection to obscure yourself from Thomas's formidable stare. Seeping underneath your skin until he could see straight into your foundation, the beating organ of your heart, the mere breath of your soul. Seeking your secrets, your deeply hidden regrets, your darkest desires and all of the things you kept locked away that even you hadn't the key for anymore. But within that powerful burn of blinding blue, as if it might just leave its mark upon your flesh like the bright beams of the sun, he'd discovered the key without fail or perhaps, he'd simply been able to open the lock with the mere force and conviction he traveled with. Unraveling you from the inside out, until you and every secret within your precious soul, was spilled out and exposed before him.

That was the real weapon, the ability to disarm with a simple look, never having to spare a word or mere semblance of a breath.

"Lucky man."

It was only as Tommy's voice ventured to puncture through the all-consuming silence, that had gone and enveloped the entirety of the small space, that your gaze lifted. Discovering the sharp burn of cerulean with complete ease, in the reflection of the mirror you stood in front of, allowing your own gaze to slowly but ultimately collide with his formidable scrutiny that awaited you.

He stood against the door, back pressed along the worn lines of the soft oak wood, sealing the only entrance and exit in the room from your view and from your possession. As your eyes found his stare upon your being, meeting his eye when they lingered on the expression hidden along the citrine illuminated lines of your face, you loathed the way your breath hitched at the sight of him.

After all these years and the pain inflicted upon your heart from the man who now shared the very oxygen you inhaled, you hated the way he looked so immaculate. As if the life he'd chosen, the life he'd been burdened with all these years, if all of the demons and decisions and trauma from war, had remarkably and impossibly left him unscathed.

For Tommy Shelby stood a pilar of perfection, as if he were chiseled from that of the most expensive marble, by the most delicate and renowned hand. Gone was the peaky cap lining his shaven scalp with the reflective glint of razor blades and soft charcoal tweed, leaving the luscious locks of his raven hair on full display. He'd grown it out since the last time you'd spoken, the haircut from his time in the war and from returning home vanished and in its place, a brush of soft and dark strands like they'd been dipped into that of pure ebony, sweeping over the warmed flesh of his forehead. Not long enough to dip into the lashes that fluttered their ends ever so faintly against the curve of his brows, but not short enough that his scalp was left visible and cold.

You couldn't say if the locks that swept along his forehead were styled, or if they were simply run through by his calloused hand and left tousled in a way that made him look damn near roguish and alluring in a sophisticated and somehow respectable fashion.

Black adorned his frame, a sleek obsidian tuxedo that made him a sight to behold in a sea of delicate lace trains and glinting silken bodices. It was the sharpest you'd ever seen him, you had no choice but to admit, for he looked like a picture out of a dream. A man tailored to the utmost perfection, as if the clothing he wore had been stitched and created right there upon his very flesh, like the material that bounded his body and dressed him in an immaculate sea of deep onyx had always been his.

His stance was lax, just enough so that it made him appear as if he knew this room and the very building itself like the palm of his hand, when in fact he'd never stepped foot inside of its premises until today. But still, Tommy carried himself as he stood by the far wall behind you, with the same intensity and unnerving calm that he always had.

"Tommy."

Your voice fell upon the breath of a whisper, an exhale floating through the air as if it were a mere particle making its way through the atmosphere, hidden to the eye. But as the soft sound of your voice coiled itself around the letters of his name, it did not descend upon deaf ears, but rather that of waiting ones whose eyes had yet to abandon your back that faced him.

It was not a tone of surprise, for you knew he'd been standing there, watching you. And yet, you could not refute the way your tone was evidently breathless, for as you stared at Thomas in the reflection of the mirror, you hadn't ever believed the name would fall from your lips again in this lifetime. But even so, as his name settled in the air with an intangible sensation that you could feel resounding in the core of your chest, it was not foreign along your tongue or as if it overflowed from your lips.

You hadn't spoken his name in years, you hadn't addressed him, referenced him, acknowledged him, even when you spoke from time to time with Polly Gray or his sweet sister Ada. But here you were, letting the name fall from your lips as if it were merely second nature and had been lingering in the base of your throat all this time, aching for the moment in which it could be set free.

Tommy broke his scrutiny first, as his eyes blinked and looked down as his right hand dug within the pocket of his jacket, withdrawing a sleek silver case and a lighter to match. It was wholly unnerving; the way Thomas Shelby could simply enter a room and instantly allow it to feel like he owned every inch of it. For he stood there, back against the wall as he slid a cigarette from the case, brushing it along the fullness of his bottom lip, with an exuding demeanor that told you he had a purpose and a reason for being here today and yet, a calmness to his actions that made him appear as if he hadn't a single care in the world.

Swallowing a breath, feeling as the lump beginning to collect in the base of your throat lurched down into the pit of your stomach, you prompted the inquiry as to why he had so graciously gifted you with his abrupt presence here, today of all days.

"Are you here to try and break up my wedding, Thomas?"

You wondered if he'd seen it, the diamond balancing gracefully on the band twisted tight around your finger. For it captured the light of the swaying candle's flames, glinting in the mirror as your hand hung at your side, brushing along the smooth trail of silk that concealed your bare flesh beneath. But as you watched Tommy in the mirror's reflection, as he brought the ignited flame to the end of his cigarette, watching the end burn and turn a sharp orange hue, you weren't nervous in his proximity.

Even as he made your spine run cold and the pace of your heart increase in the moments he lingered in complete silence, you found that perhaps you could converse with him in the same manner that you used to all those years ago. Freely, brazenly, honestly and without fear of judgement. For Tommy never denied you your right to opinions, to voicing concerns and inner thoughts, on occasions he'd surely fight your fire with his own and battle your words with a collection of his own, but perhaps, in a way, he simply liked having a match. Someone who could hold him accountable. Someone to ground him, see the world in contrast of his own sight, laying matters out in a way that he hadn't yet to stumble across.

Tommy's chin lifted as your words faded from the atmosphere, leaving behind the mere essence that your voice had floated along the current of candlelit warmth and penetrating smoke. His eyes discovering you without fail, even now as you had turned on your heels to face him for all that he was, not simply the reflection in a sheet of pure glass. His brows, deeply set and formed of the same dark raven hair that only seem to accentuate the boldness of his cerulean gaze, furrowed ever so faintly before arching with a soft shake of his head. Never once blinking nor breaking the contact your eyes shared, feeling drawn into his whirlpool of never-ending waves, while he simply relished in the power he still possessed in having the ability to do so.

Slowly, Thomas brought his right hand up to pluck the burning cigarette from between the safe and full capture of his lips, dropping his hand back down to his side, while a steady exhale of ashen smoke fell from his breath. Clouding the air in front of his face, hazing over his expression but not nearly strong enough to obscure the strong burn of azure that was perhaps, more potent than that of the nicotine searing its way into his very lungs. "No."

Tommy's tone was calm, effortlessly so, in a single breath fallen like he hadn't wanted to waste the oxygen in his lungs by expelling any harder than he had. He was ruthlessly suave, for even as Thomas was quiet and methodical in the way that he spoke, he exuded a certain confidence and imposing nature that you simply could not refute. For he stood against the wall, simply staring at you, absorbing the sheer image of you after all this time and if you hadn't known Tommy Shelby, you would have said he looked relaxed and without a single weight in the world burdened upon his shoulders. For the way he answered, so breathlessly, so flippantly and yet, so assured and strong in his conviction, amplified the kind of man that he was.

"Good," You remarked in a soft tone, a mere exhale as if it were a breath of relief from the tension building in the base of your chest. "I had no desire for any bloodshed or razor blades today."

Your eyes never left him, even as his exhale clouded the strong stench of smoke around his face, you saw his expression for what it was, no matter how nearly imperceptible it appeared. For as he withdrew the cigarette from between his lips, you saw the way the edges threatened to twitch. As if your sharp tongue and mirthful tone still had the effect on him as it did when you were simply two teenagers running amuck on the cobbles.

But he was reserved, and he concealed himself in an impenetrable shell, whether by his own choice or by inevitable result of a lifetime fighting wars on land and in his head. And so just as quickly as it presented itself to your watchful gaze, it disappeared. Like the mere ghost of Tommy's past self, going and fading from reality before your very eyes.

The bowtie, weaved around his neck in a sleek and secure knot of unscathed obsidian, glinted ever so faintly as the sway of the flickering flames danced along the fabric. For Tommy pushed himself off of the wall with a swift movement, beginning the short trek towards you and it felt in that moment, as his blue-eyed gaze steadied on you with an intensity that both frightened you and filled you with a familiar sense of exhilaration, that you were prey within the forest as he stalked you like a predator on the prowl.

But unlike those who hunted in the wild, Tommy's approach did not make you fear his arrival, for there was an ooze of calmness that radiated from his flesh as he made his way closer. Your heart beat faster as he grew near, but you found that in the very same fashion that you were pulled into the riptide of his ever-churning eyes, that you could do nothing but stand stock still in your dress of bridal ivory and wait for him.

"And if I said that I was?" Tommy's tone was taunting almost, challenging in the faintest hint of curiosity melded with amusement. For his brows furrowed softly as he approached you and his voice, dipping down to a low rumbling breath, spoke of the way he enticed a woman. "That I came here, after all these years when I heard you were fucking tying the knot, to see you for me-self, what would you say to that I wonder?"

You swallowed your breath as Tommy drew another pace closer, but you didn't back down and you didn't sway, even when you knew full well that was his aim. "I'd question what it was you were hoping to find."

"If I said unfinished business?"

Thomas knew you, he always had. He'd known you since you were all but eight years old and he was eleven. He'd known all your struggles, from crying over the literature that appeared a jumbled blur of ink you couldn't quite read, to the day your grandmother passed and your household never quite felt the same.

He'd known what made you happy, horseback rides at dusk, fresh fallen rain that made the world appear softer than it truly was and sweets smuggled out of a shop down the way as you shared them with him on the bank of the cut. He'd known when you were angry, the way the flesh above your brows bunched tightly and your lips tinged a heated pink. He'd known when you were hurting, the tears burning your eyes that you refused to let him see, but ultimately revealing them in the way they stained your cheeks after they dried and making the bags below them puffy and red.

He'd known when you needed space, when you needed a friend, when you'd needed someone to hold you and when you needed to scream into the abyss of an open pasture. He'd known you in ways not another soul had all your life. From your childhood, where the second eldest Shelby brother was your dearest confidant, to your teenage years when it all started to change in the way you viewed one another. He'd known you inside and out, from every crevice of your mind to every inch of your body, that he'd learned when you'd finally acknowledged the love blossoming between the two of you.

Thomas Shelby knew you better than you knew yourself some days and it was never more evident in this very moment. For even after all of the years gone by, he still knew the words that might press upon your heart, upon your thoughts, upon the parts of yourself that would surely ignite and meet him where he stood calm and reassured.

"Then surely it would be because you left it in that condition."

Tommy didn't stop, he didn't even slow, even as your words bled into his ear and touched upon his mind, he continued his pattering pace towards you. He didn't begin to ease in his steps, until the inhale soaring through your lungs, was suddenly tainted with his intoxicating scent and the smoke that he exhaled. As if the breath you breathed, had been his all along.

For his cigarette smoke melded with the soft tones of your perfume, tobacco intertwining with amber, and it felt for a mere instant, like you were back in Small Heath. Back where you walked the canal with him, until the hidden moon appeared in place of the cast over sun. Back where you'd find him out in the pastures, at peace with the horses that were the best judge of his very soul. Back where you'd find yourself in the cramped little bedroom on Watery Lane, where the walls peeled and the outside cold threatened to overwhelm the tight space, but still nestled in warmth and safety by the strong embrace of his arms.

It was a visceral effect, igniting your senses like the strike of a match, illuminating all of the sensations and recollections inside of yourself you believed to be lost. But perhaps, you'd never truly forgotten what it felt like to love Tommy Shelby. Maybe, you'd simply been forced to move on before it destroyed what was left of your soul.

His shadow engulfed you, the strong aroma of his cologne that coated his flesh in a layer of tantalizing spice and deep coating cedarwood, enveloped your breath as his gaze loomed over you. For he stood a pace away now, the toes of his sleek and shiny black shoes nearly touching the tips of your own hidden beneath the sprawl of your gown. His shade, cooling and nearly extinguishing the heat that radiated from the flickering flames, bathed over you as if it were a current seen black under the cusp of a moonless twilight.

You could feel his eyes upon you, for it wasn't a burning in the way your hand touching upon the fire might feel, but the way ice pricks at your flesh like the tips of a thousand knives. For it eased over you, a sheet of pure ice, the cerulean formidable and all-consuming as it took you into its grasp. You tried with all of your might to fight the urge, but you'd never quite been strong enough to refuse and so, through the delicately fluttering sprawl of your lashes, you peered up at Tommy.

His scrutiny was upon you, tenfold, washing over you like a running tide, drawing in the sight of you like kelp wrapped up in a churning current. Tommy took in the sight of your gown, the way your body looked beneath the breathtaking material. For the fabric cascaded down your frame, as if the intricate lace that glinted in the low swaying flame of the surrounding candlelight, were diamonds weaved within the stitching of delicate silk. For they captured the fragile light, the citrine hue that enveloped the room and glittered in an ethereal fashion.

His gaze, strong and unrelenting, gliding up the curvature of your frame hidden beneath the gown, until he settled upon the sight of your lips tinged with the faintest hue of a peony rose. Your flesh, that had once been pale in the dreary light of Small Heath's depressing streets, appeared warmer as the light of the burning candle spread its citrine hue over your cheekbones. Silken and smooth, with only the evidence of a powdering of finely dusted makeup concealing the imperfections, that Tommy remembered from your youth. But with one more sweep of his sight, they were upon your eyes and he stared into your orbs that glinted in the reflected light like you were merely a teenager again.

"You haven't changed," Tommy exhaled, the warmth of his breath spanning along the curve of your flesh, engulfing your senses in a scent of smoke and something perplexingly sharp like that of fresh cracked peppermint. "not a bit."

Tommy had expected you to be different now. He had expected for the tendrils that had blown wildly with a mind of their own, as you walked barefoot amongst the cobbles, to be tamed and styled with the standards of a demanding society. But they persisted in the cascading current of their rich and almost shimmering hue, tangled in places that were merely the density of your curls intertwining with another. Remembering the way, they used to smell of the wind and the sweetness of the pastures, when his nose buried within their strands, or they whipped so harshly they clashed along his flesh as you passed him by.

Tommy had expected by now, that the youthfulness, the almost innocent appearing expression of your delicate facial features, would have surely faded. But as he stared at you now, taking in every inch of your face as though it were a map he yearned to memorize, he found that you were just as beautiful as you were back then. Even as the faintest hint of makeup brushed along your supple flesh, he still saw the girl who still seemed to glow even with the smudges of coal on her cheeks.

You looked as if you hadn't aged a single day, all the while, Tommy feeling like he'd aged a hundred lifetimes.

Tommy had expected your voice to have grown, perhaps changing in the years he hadn't been there to hear it. But it remained that ever delicate flutter, that could snap and bite with an intensity that didn't quite seem to match. Popping embers, encased in a shell of softness and grace, intriguing, beguiling, alluring to Thomas in every way possible.

He'd expected you to have formed into the society here in London, no longer the girl who sloshed in the mud and cared not a damn if her hair became sodden by the relentless pour of cold rain, but Tommy found that you still remained the girl you were back in Birmingham. The girl who could keep up with the likes of the Shelby brothers, whose voice could coil a breath of angelic tenderness around the most explicit of words, who traveled barefoot through the cobbles on days after a fresh rain, when you could very well feel the Earth seeping into the bare flesh of your soles.

Tommy studied your beauty, adorning a wedding dress that wasn't meant for his eyes and discovered that the girl who'd taken his heart all those years ago, still stood before him now.

Tommy closed the pace between you, hovering so closely that his breath trailed along the very flesh of your lips, as you peered up at him through your lashes. You could almost taste him, he stood so very close, the sting of peppermint inhaled into your lungs with the extinguishing burn of cigarette smoke close on its trail. Tommy stared down at you, flickering his gaze from the core of your own watchful eye to the lips that parted every so faintly, leaving you breathless as you knew in that moment what he might just do.

"Tom-"

He'd expected you to be different, after all the time that had passed, but perhaps, Tommy had simply wished that when he saw you here today, for the first time since the fateful day he'd let you do, that you'd be different enough that he could finally walk away and let you go.

He was moving up in the world. From fancy cars and more money than his family had ever seen in this life, to expansions into London's high society. Thomas Shelby nearly had fucking everything. But he didn't have you. And Tommy realized that no amount of money in the world, no amount of recognition, respect, fucking fineries in the world, could ever fill the void letting you go left behind.

But perhaps, if he were to see you now, different than you were, content, happy even, Tommy could find it within himself to walk away and let you go. To slowly ease the vacant hole with the knowledge that what he'd done all those years back, protecting you from the type of man the war had made him to be, was right.

"Are you happy?" Tommy's words startled you, for as they fell from between the soft part of his lips in the lowest of whispers, you were met with an inquiry from him that you hadn't expected. "Does he make you happy? The way you were with me?"

If you had been able to discover happiness, like the unbridled joy you'd been able to find even in the godforsaken streets of Small Heath all those years back, surely Tommy could walk away. Surely, he could move on, knowing you were alright and that the mistake that haunted him, no longer tormented you.

You peered up through your lashes, colliding with the sight of cerulean so strong you feared it might just damage the extent of your retinas, but still you stared into his gaze. For you knew it was within the waves of ever-churning blue, that his true expression resided. How were you to answer that question he posed as if it were merely a spoken remark about the weather of the day? For you'd never been as happy as you were with Tommy, refuting such knowledge would simply be lying to yourself. But you lost the man you loved long before he let you go while retreating with your heart still in his possession.

"Were you ever happy Tommy? After France?"

Your words stun him briefly, evident in the faint hitch of his breath, the tension of his chest, but he expels it as soon as it appears. For you gazed up at Tommy, shaken by his audacious question, but still refusing to back down to the man you'd never once succumbed to, never once given up in a quarrel with. His inquiry sparked something inside of you, an ember laid to rest suddenly fanned and igniting. For what did Thomas Shelby know about being happy? What did he even know of the bloody word and yet, here he was, on your wedding day of all days, prodding to see if you were?

Your sigh floats along the sharp curvature of his chiseled cheekbone, as you take a step back, suddenly able to inhale a breath that wasn't tainted with the overwhelming embrace of Tommy's presence. "I'm to be married in nearly an hour Thomas and you come here seeking some form of absolution or closure or some fucking primal male pride but--"

"The only thing I'm fucking looking for is the truth that that man waiting for you out there, with an ordinary job, an ordinary fucking life, can make you happy. That he can give you what I know you need, what you've desired from life. What you've always talked about."

Thomas had done research into the man who would soon take your hand and you'd take his name. He'd looked into the man himself, into his life, into what he could offer to insure you were safe and well off. But perhaps, Tommy simply wanted to see who would be getting the chance to live out the life he could've had if France had never happened.

An incredulous exhale drops sharply from your lips, as your brows furrow at Tommy's brazen words. For this moment didn't quite seem real. What right, what bloody nerve did Thomas have, to show up here and interrogate you about your life that he'd ultimately chosen all those years back, not to be a part of. "What the hell would you know about what I need Tommy, ey?"

"You tell me, how after I gave you my heart and I never got it back, except for a few measly shards that left me bloody and broken, are you of all people supposed to know what would make me happy?"

Silence followed your raised exclamation, maybe because Thomas hadn't a single response to your words or maybe, it was because he simply knew that you were right.

"You left me!" In all of your fantasies, in all of the imagining of the day you'd be saying I do, you never once saw yourself damn near screaming in your wedding gown, with the piercing sting of fresh tears in your eyes, before a man who'd gone and broken your heart years ago.

"You thought you were protecting me from yourself when you made it home, knowing you'd lost a part of yourself over there in France and couldn't bare to show me what was left in that empty hole. But the only person you were protecting was yourself."

They were the words you'd hidden from yourself, the heartbreak and anguish you'd banished away in order to cope with the loss of your love, resurfacing as if they were a sunken body beginning to float again. For you stared at Thomas, through the glazy sheen of tears and couldn't help but feel the bubbling of anger, of pure unbridled hurt, the hatred in yourself that after all this time, you still couldn't hate him as much as you wanted to.

"You were afraid that you wouldn't be enough and that I'd leave, so you left first to spare your own heart. But what about mine Thomas?" Your voice cracked as if the weight of your words, the heartbreaking sound of your candor and the emotions you'd held within yourself that he'd never gotten the chance to know you'd felt, was too much for your tone to bare.

"What about my fucking heart that I gave to you all those years ago, when I loved you for the sweet gypsy boy that you were and loved you through the years I waited for you while you were off fighting in France? What about my heart, that you shattered without even bothering to stick around to help me pick up the pieces?"

It was only as his blinding cast of cerulean was upon your frame and you stood locked within a space where every crevice whispered his very name, that you realized just how broken you still were from the pain he'd inflicted. For your heart beat furiously inside of your chest, as if the strings might just snap and the muscle itself would go crashing through your ribcage, but it was like you could feel the pain beating in the cracks left behind from the day he'd abandoned you, the day he left you thinking it was the best for you. You'd tried to piece yourself back together, but it was like water running through a shattered vase.

"I never got my heart back from you Thomas," Your voice was all but a whisper, a heartbreaking breath that felt heavier than any void you'd ever known, as it crushed the windpipes of your throat. "you've always had it, but all I've gotten from you is heartache. So what gives you the right, the bloody nerve, to show up here, on my wedding day and say these things to me? To question me and my choices, when it's only because of you that I've made them?"

You didn't often allow yourself to think about it, not in the daylight, not in the waking hours, but in your dreams under the cloak of an overwhelming twilight, you often found yourself in an entirely different reality. For you knew, that if Tommy had never let you go, a few weeks after his return home from the war, that your life would be different.

You wouldn't be here in London, you wouldn't be standing here today in an ivory wedding gown meant for a union to another man. You'd be home, in Birmingham, with the Watery Lane gypsy boy who had survived the war and came home to you. You wouldn't be getting married in a church, but rather out where the sky spread high and wide with the bleeding of dusk over the horizon. You knew without a single doubt, that if Tommy hadn't let you go, that you'd still be with him.

Thomas said not a single word, for he knew the truth. He knew he hadn't a single right to be here. He knew it wasn't fair of him to be standing here, after all these years, on the day where your future was slated to begin, all the while, feeling trapped in the past where he never should have let you go.

Tommy looked down at his hand, lifting the fingers out in front of him, eyes falling on the burning end of the shrinking cigarette. Before bringing the stick of more ashen grey than that of pure rolled white to his lips, drawing in a smoky inhale that seeped through his chest and dipped down into his expanding lungs, before exhaling the cloud in front of his face. "If I said it was because I'd caught the error of my mistakes?"

You weren't completely certain if it were the tears, seeping over the waterline of your saturated lashes like a slow flowing current, that built up in the base of your throat like an impenetrable mound. Or if suddenly, it was his words that trapped the air climbing upwards, abruptly halting your semblance of a breath in the way he spoke. For his words, posed hypothetically but undeniably honest in a way that only Tommy could be, exhaled from the stream of smoke fell to your ears in a delicate whisper. A low rumbling inquiry, that pricked at the strings of your tired and worn out heart.

"Then I'd question whether it was true or not."

For you knew how Tommy Shelby was. He didn't often apologize for mistakes he'd made, he hardly recognized that he'd made any in the first place. Tommy strode through his life with a certain strength and unshakable confidence upon his shoulders, making it near impossible for him to experience the notion of regret or remorse. But here he stood, acknowledging the fact that perhaps, just maybe, these past few years he'd felt exactly that. That through his icy exterior and cold infused eyes, he'd discovered a mistake he had indeed made and it haunted him the way the war in his head did.

"If I said," Tommy began to move from his spot planted firmly upon the burgundy carpet, inching towards you again as you'd since taken steps backwards to separate you from Thomas. "that not a day went by, in the past two years, when I hadn't regretted letting you go?"

As his presence drew near, your breath became scarce. As if Tommy had the capability of forcing the oxygen climbing up and down the base of your throat to simply cease and fizzle away into nothing. "Then I'd surely say that not a day has gone by that I haven't resented you for letting me."

It felt somedays, as you stared out of your window at the London skyline at dawn, that Tommy had gone and stolen your life out from under you. For he took all that you knew, all that had been home and safety and contentment, everything you'd envisioned for your future and shattered it. You couldn't stay in Birmingham when Tommy was the rightful ruler of those Small Heath streets, you couldn't stay when you saw those blue eyes across the room of The Garrison, and you couldn't stay when the idea of a life with him, that had gotten you through the war, was ripped from your reality.

You not only mourned the man you loved, but you mourned for the life you could've had.

You didn't realize your mind had fallen into a daze of broken words and shattered shards of a heart, until you felt the burning touch of warmth graze across your cheek. For Tommy's shade engulfed you once again, hovering above you as his hand was now reached out and he gently wiped away the tears trailing down your flesh with the soft brush of his thumb. The pad warm and firm, but ever so tender as it danced along your skin, as if Tommy couldn't bring himself to harm you again. You didn't want to peer up at him, for you knew as he stood this close, that if he were to lean in just an inch, you'd surely let him this time.

"If I said that I still loved you?"

Your eyes flickered up then, his words sparking a wildfire that soared within your soul, forcing you to gaze up through your salt-stained lashes to the man who had the only remedy in his icy blue orbs, to extinguish the heat. Of course, Thomas wasn't here to break up or crash your wedding, that simply wasn't his style. But what was, was creeping into the lingering crevices of your mind and of your heart that he knew were still left unequivocally vulnerable to him, the tender areas that he knew he could sway.

Swallowing deeply, you stared at Tommy without a clear notion of the words you wanted to say, for it was the one confession you hadn't a single notion of how you'd respond if it were to ever appear. But you found, as you gazed into the currents running rapid and remarkably blue, that maybe all you needed to say, was what you would have told him all those years back.

"Then I'd tell you that I never stopped."

You'd never truly forgiven Tommy for leaving you like he did, but perhaps, it was simply because you were trying to figure out how to unlove him first.

The day he left you and broke your heart, you wanted to hate him immediately. You wanted to curse his name and damn him to hell, but you found that you couldn't. Not really. You wanted to forget about the man with piercing blue eyes, that reminded you of your childhood and your future all at once. You wanted to stay and show him that you could live this life without him. You wanted to know why after all of the tears you'd shed and the way he walked down the cobbles as if he hadn't the blood of a broken heart on his heels, that you still loved him with every fiber of your being.

It wasn't easy to love him, but it was damn near impossible to unlove him, you realized.

Tommy took in another soft breath, before venturing to do the very thing you had been expecting him to do all this time. Realizing only now, as his eyes washed over you like a raging river that swept you up into its unrelenting tide, that a part of him had enacted the gentlemen. Waiting until you gave him the permission to do so or perhaps, simply the knowledge that in that moment in time, you craved him as much as Tommy needed you.

For Tommy Shelby kissed you then, with all of the words he wanted to say and all of the things that he couldn't. His hands sliding over the flesh of your cheeks, cradling you softly as you kissed him back like if you were to open your eyes, you'd simply be standing on the bank of the cut with the gypsy boy of Watery Lane.

Prompted by the deepest truth you'd hidden inside of yourself all this time, Tommy kissed you in way he'd never kissed you before. For he kissed you with an apology, he kissed you in a way that made you feel as though he was atoning for the sin he'd committed in letting you go. He kissed you with all of the "I'm sorrys" his lips could not form but with the emotion bold and undeniable as it coated your lips and dipped over the warmth of your tongue.

Love was a brutal thing, you realized. For it had the power to break you down, wear you to the bone, shatter the very foundation of your heart and of your soul, but in the very same breath, it had the ability to mend the very wounds that it itself had inflicted in the first place.

He tasted of your youth, as if by the mere soft flesh of his full and controlling lips, you felt the cobbles beneath you very feet again. For you couldn't count the number of times you'd kissed him back home, down on the bank of the cut where it felt like not another soul could reach you, not when you were with Thomas.

His scent, overwhelming in its masculine and intoxicating tones, transported you back to that little bedroom on Watery Lane. Where nothing lined the walls except peeling and wildly outdated wallpaper and a single landscape portrait hanging across the room from the bed. For as you grew older and intertwined the beginnings of your life with the Shelby boy, you rather spent more time under that roof and in that bed, than you did your own.

The way his hands cradled your cheeks, the warmth of his flesh rather soaking into your flesh as if you weren't already burning of heat from his kiss and his igniting words alone. But he held you like he never wanted to let you go again and as your fingers slid up and twisted themselves up into the collar of his inexplicably refined suit, you clung to him as if it were a plea for him to never let you.

Tommy was everything you remembered and yet, so remarkably different. For the war had changed him, leaving him irrevocably scarred in ways the wandering eye could not see simply on the surface of his flesh. And you liked to believe, as he had recalled with the underlying emotion, that forcing you out of his life in belief that it was for your best interest, had affected him as well.

For although his eyes of miraculously chiseled cerulean beamed like they had as the only bright spot amidst the depressive and melancholy haze of Small Heath, the bags beneath them wore down with a weight that only the men who made it back from France could understand. And his flesh, warm like it was back in the days, remarkable to you as the sun hardly graced the cold cobblestone streets, were shadowed with lines that spoke of an age that he hadn't reached quite yet. But his soul, the broken wounds of his war-torn mind and heart, they'd surely lived them all.

He was stronger and more hardened in the way he carried himself, but even as he'd changed in more ways than one, he was still familiar to you. He still reminded you of home, he was still your Tommy Shelby, even if nowadays, it meant sharing him with the rest of the world.

The faint pop of your lips pulling apart sounded in the suddenly quiet room, only the steady exhaling of deep breaths and the rapid pulse of your heart in the echoing cavern of your head remained louder. For you peered up through your lashes, finding that Thomas's were already open and gazing down upon your softly illuminated expression and as you stared at the man before you now, you spoke in a breathless tone with the weight of every emotion you had within yourself to possess. "Promise me Tommy, that this, that you--"

The tears halted your admission, for you paused abruptly in your words as you pressed your lips harshly together. When Tommy's blazing eyes were upon you, it was rather hard to think straight and the sensation of him left tingling behind on the trail of your lips, was like a drug to your system, muddling your brain but allowing you to soar with your truths unbridled and free.

"Promise me, you'll never leave me, not again."

Promise not to break my heart again Tommy. Promise not to let me go from your grasp. Promise not to send me away when your demons become too potent for you to handle. Promise to love me, like I've always loved you.

His thumb, burning with the heat from his tender flesh, brushed against the teardrop that had dipped down from the curve of your lashes. Absorbing it upon his own skin, before ever allowing it the chance to trail down and stain your cheek. His eyes, bold and unrelenting in their pursuit of you, bounded ever so faintly to and fro as he gazed into your strong stare. And his lips, full and illuminated by the palest streak of the low flickering candlelight parted with his answer. "I promise."

Tommy didn't say more than that, perhaps, he didn't need to. For when Tommy Shelby made a promise, he kept it. He kept it until it damn near broke him. A man of honor, a man of integrity, a man who understood what it was to give your word and stand by it.

He proved yet again what it meant to make promises to you, for he spoke them softly to you not three weeks later, when you yourself had written down your own set of promises to the man you loved. Tommy promised you, that late day in May, upon the alter in front of witnesses of family and kin, before whisking you back down the cobbles on your bare feet.

He'd promised to love you, as the train of your heavenly white gown blew effortlessly behind your steps. He'd promised to cherish you, as your laughter filled the lonely streets that had hardly heard the joyous sound. He'd promised to protect you, as you traveled with him towards the reception waiting down on Watery Lane, flying down them with bounding steps that soared air through your lungs and made you feel sixteen again.

Tommy promised you that day, as the purity of your white silk bled into the deep indigo of the night, like they were saturated oils upon a canvas, streaking together to create a bewildering masterpiece, that he'd spend every day of the rest of his life, making up for the time that he'd lost with you. Making up for his mistake, making up for letting you go. Tommy promised you and you believed him.

A/N: WOW...just WOW!😭❤

Where to even begin with this piece?! It turned out wayyy longer than I ever envisioned it to be but as I started writing and the scenes and descriptions simply started to flow from my hands, I couldn't stop myself and didn't want to confine myself to a specific length and sell the plot here out short.

This idea came to me suddenly one day, falling into piece as I could see Tommy's particular expressions in some moments, to the sound of his voice saying these things. It reminded me, in the way he posed things hypothetically, a little bit like the scene when he's talking to May about Grace. I used that and how he is with Grace, to help format just how believable/unbelievable, how realistic, how in character his lines could be in a very dramatic, emotional, vulnerable, romantic moment such as this one. And I feel looking back, that I was able to find the balance of keeping Tommy's same distinct qualities and mannerisms, the identifiable characteristics of his character, while still being able to write a piece more romantic and dramatic.

I did second guess it at times, whether it be because I'm a perfectionist, or because I pride myself so deeply in staying true to Tommy Shelby's character, but as the story continued to flow from me and as I read it now completed, there's too much in this one that I love that I couldn't simply give up on and I'm very glad that I didn't.

I'm so proud of this piece, not only the time I put into it and its rather long length, but of the writing I was able to craft for it. It came alive for me as I was writing, the descriptions and imagery and emotion I adore creating, having a life of its own as it flowed from my fingertips onto the page. I hope you all enjoyed this piece, I would love to hear your thoughts!❤😭