The stench of death permeated the air, until not a single breath was spared from the oxidized burn of bloodshed and loss. A bitter coating, like the particles of oxygen were suddenly bathed in the metallic bite of her blood and suddenly the smoke that lined Thomas Shelby's lungs, no longer seemed to be the densest matter to cloak them in an aching element.

Through shallow inhales, the scent he knew all too well from this cursed life, carried over his senses. Like it was a red river running down stream, gliding down his throat in a narrow trickle of thick, heavy moisture, until he could just about taste the splatter of lost droplets on the tip of his tongue.

It was a sensation he'd known since the moment his bullet tore through that Prussian boy not much older than him, the one whose name would forever remain a mystery, but whose piercing eyes of green would haunt him until the day the devils came back to claim him.

Tommy knew what it felt like, when it oozed through the creased lines of his palms like thin canals, never to be cleansed. He knew what it smelled like, when it burned his senses as it dripped down from the blades once rimmed along his peaky cap, staining itself into the fabric of stitched tweed. He was not a stranger to bloodshed, his life rather bled at the seams of his war-torn mind that he'd poorly sewn back together, his sight bathed with an evocative taint of crimson.

But even with the mark of the devil etched on the flesh of his hands and the weight of restless souls burdening his weary conscious, Thomas Shelby knew no amount of life taken by his own doing or witnessed by his own eyes, could ever make watching it seep from that of the one he'd allowed his heart to love any easier.

The rain hadn't ceased since it'd begun the night before, when the gunshot rang out and the resounding bang of a bullet ignited the floods from the heavens above. As the echoing sensation of the gun clattering to the ground and the rush of chaos ensued, the clouds blew in and rained vengeance down upon the misery laden streets of Birmingham.

Thunder roared as though it were the Gods shouting with outrage and anguish, lightening flickering across the ebony-stained sky like Zeus's own bolts had been sharpened and flew through his fists in a blur of fury. The downpour was heavy and laced with a chill that could have only fallen from the lashes of mournful angels, as it seemed to pierce through the mid-summer warmth like the harsh breath of winter's memory. The storm refused to let up, even when it was the sun's turn to surely rise over the horizon and bathe the land in the sparkling promise of a new day, the rain persisted, and the sun was nowhere to be seen.

Thomas's swift and imposing gait echoed within the bleak room, as the conviction dipped down from his each and every step and pounded the cement as if he were striding into battle. A weight bored down upon him, like it was the very hand of the universe itself. And Thomas knew when the palm was wretched away, a handprint laced with the evidence of his own blood was bound to be stained against the fabric of his crisp black jacket.

For the hand that reached down and nearly cemented his footprints in the concrete beneath him, was coiled in the strings of his severed heart. Like ivy woven around fingers of calloused and harsh flesh, the nerves and the arteries once safely tucked away, now dangled over the edge like roots ripped up from the Earth.

The mortuary was empty, a stark grey room of surrounding stone and cold cement that only seemed to accentuate the very feel of death that lingered in its presence. Not a window in sight to let in the futile light, not a lamp brighter than that of a flickering citrine glow, dusty and saturated. It struck him, as his confident strides were undeniably slower than they had ever been known to be before, the bewildering sensation of being the only living, breathing being in this very place, but feeling like a dead man walking towards the very rope that they'd used to hang him.

Hesitation beat like a snare drum in the base of his chest, emotion he seldom allowed himself to feel freely climbing its way up his throat like vines twisting around age-worn brick. For as his feet carried him closer to the metal tables lined up in a single row, reality felt like an iron grip around his being. They were all empty except for the center slab, the one bathed in a pristine white sheet with the outline of a body residing just beneath its sheath. His heart, the muscle torn to shreds as if the bullet that wounded her had ricocheted, and the shrapnel had slashed through him just the very same, thudded as his feet drew closer to that table.

Tommy knew what awaited him, he knew the sight that was bound to grace his eyes and yet, he knew once he laid his eyes on what rested beneath the blanket of white, there would cease to be a day when he never saw that sight again. For it wasn't the kind of thing that left a human being, the sight of the dead, the lifeless mold of the person he loved. The soul was forever haunted by that of a body whose own soul had since left this world, witnessing a cavity where life once resided, and Tommy knew what a beautiful life that had been.

Twenty-four hours had passed since his eyes had last seen her own, the orbs that glistened with the sheen of her own breathless tears as she made her way down that aisle. He'd seen those eyes when they were bright and starry-eyed in the core of Small Heath, when not even the plaguing smoke of the churning factories and the dense cloud coverage of a ceaseless melancholy sky, could obscure the hue from her irises.

A pale shade, one that belonged in the very clutches of an early spring season, but they sparkled as if the sunshine that never quite shone down on Watery Lane, were right there in the ripples of honey-soaked embers that made the color she adorned come alive.

And he'd seen them just the day before, when she made her way towards him in a gown that swept the floor and a ring balancing on her finger that finally, after all this time, graced her with the Shelby name. They were just as bright, if not even brighter that day, and they glittered with a light she'd only ever held for him. The kind of light he was never deserving of, not in this life or in any life that was to come, but she held it like a candle that burned with an eternal flame.

They smiled at him when her lips were too busy keeping her tears at bay, as he lifted the veil and let the hue of her gaze wash over him. They whispered to him, there in that moment as Jeremiah blessed their union and in all of the other moments they'd spent together in the decades before, her eyes whispered out "I love you". 

Up until her last dying breath, when she could no longer speak, and the words were nearly lost from her breath, Tommy heard them even then.

She'd traded one shade of white for another, Tommy observed as he finally approached the metal table where her body lay. The sheet carefully concealing her body; a stark medicinal white compared to the softer pale ivory that had bathed her in the hours before. 

She was radiance, beaming down from the heavens. A lost angel walking the Earth as though it were the golden streets of an eternity far beyond. The embellishments of her dress, beads of silver sewn by hand amongst the fabric of stunning satin, reflected in the light flooding through the windowpanes. Twinkling like the evening's stars had become tangled up in her gown, the lace of her bodice making her flesh appear softer than it already was. The veil had been her mother's, handed down to drape over her bouncing curls like the familiar embrace of the woman who had long since left this world, her memory woven within strands of intricate lace and shimmering ivory.

Tommy could remember the days when he'd witnessed her in worn patchwork dresses, cardigans with loose unwinding threads, bare feet pattering the cobbles, curls mussed by the winds and the rain, and still thought her to be the most breathtaking woman his poor gypsy eyes had ever laid upon. But when she walked towards him in that gown of pristine ivory and exquisite lace, a tasteful diamond balancing on a silver brushed band, her vows of forever balancing on the tip of her tongue, it felt like he was looking at her for the very first time all over again.

She had made the most beautiful bride; Tommy recalls as his feet halt beside her tableside. Like that dress was always meant to be hers, no matter the city it was sewn in, no matter the frame it draped down, it would always belong to her as if it would never quite fit another soul until its fabric adorned her own. Like her very name was woven into each and every inch of thread.

But like all purity Thomas Shelby has ever known in this life, tainting was inevitable and as his eyes had yet to fall down to gaze at her sheet cloaked being, his sight lingers on the sight of marred beauty a few feet away.

They'd stripped it from her body when she'd been brought in, peeling the lace from her flesh and the embellishments that once twinkled with a reflective light of their own, were suddenly sullen and grey. Lost of their silvery shine, they were simply beads connected to thread. They'd hung the gown a few feet away, a metal hanger wrapped around a lamp sitting idly beside one of the unused slabs. The fabric sweeping across the cement like it was just another article of clothing, not that of a gown signifying both the beginning of a future and the end of a life. But what Tommy couldn't tear his eyes away from, was the stain that muddled the once immaculate shade of ivory.

Crimson like the shade he'd witnessed laid out over Flander's Fields, until not a blade of grass, not an inch of unearthed soil, not a soul that had fought on that land was left unscathed by the evocative stain of sullen loss and mortal sin. It stained the fabric just below where her heart had once resided, as if the bullet had torn through that very beating muscle and allowed it to drain until the very last string ceased to pull. It was a shade of red that was to never be cleansed, from the filaments that would forever be cursed with the bloodshed it held, to the eyes that witnessed the life seeping out of that rounded puddle of perishing crimson. 

Tommy had waited his entire life to marry her, but the world had swooped down and stolen her in a matter of minutes.

Her features bled through the cloth that conceals her, like the faint trace of charcoal along a stark white canvas. The curvature of her nose, that his fingertips had traced a hundred times over, in the twilight hour when sleep still clung to her bones. The bridge of her scalp, lined with the curls that tumbled over her shoulder blades like a ceaseless current of amber scented tendrils. The intimate shape of her chest that Tommy's eyes had been the only ones to know, the sheet threatening to dip down into the valley of soft flesh, now cold and lifeless, that would never heave from his touch again.

The structure of her arms and her legs that more often than not, he'd find entangled with his own when she drifted off in his embrace. Even the shape of her knuckles, the petite bones that would never bend again, the ones he'd held tightly to just the day before when he'd slid that ring upon her finger and promised forever.

With the sheet cloaking her in a blanket of white, she could've been any soul in the world, with her identity concealed as though it had gone and vanished off the face of the Earth. But as Tommy peered down at the body resting a mere inch or two away from him, he would always know it was her... from the way it felt when she was beside him, down to her very last feature.

The deep shadow cast by his imposing frame, threatened to subdue the saturated glow of the insufficient citrine light, as it bathed her in a coverage of darkness tainted with the touch of his sorrow. His wedding suit, the rich onyx fabrics he still adorned, as he hadn't made a single effort to peel them from his skin, carried in the scent of the rain.

The bow tie once snug around his neck, since discarded for the wind to carry on its way, lost to the wilderness as he'd ripped it from his skin like a noose woven from filaments of cotton and satin sleek linens. Buttons undone; fabrics creased, and knees of his trousers worn from their harsh placement grounded into the floor, but it was the cuffs of his once pristine white shirt that were tainted with traces of her blood.

They were a bold contrast, as Tommy's hands reached out towards the top hem of the sheet, witnessing the splatter of crimson staining his wrists like a battlefield placed in a winter scene. Perhaps, it had been the sweat that coated his flesh in a cold sheen of clammy moisture, that had miraculously wiped the red from his palms. Maybe it had been the outpour of tears, from her eyes or his own, the salt eroding away the metallic presence that oozed from her wound.

In all of the chaos that followed, in all of the time that had passed when Tommy was sure he hadn't taken a single breath, maybe it was simply Polly kneeling down and rinsing the blood from his hands herself. But what could be cleansed from flesh by the dampening of a cloth, could never quite be freed from the stitching of thread that clung to the crimson like it claimed its very shade of tarnishing red.

Tommy could still see faint traces of it lining around the sandy tone of his fingernails, dipping down into the crevices of his palms and into the creases of his tired and sore knuckles, but even when the fall of the evening's rain was bound to eradicate every last trace, he would forever feel her blood staining his skin until the day he took his final breath. 

The sheet was rough between the worn callouses of his palms, unlike the soft sheets she cocooned herself in back home, these were cheap and futile. They served a single purpose and comfort wasn't it. Bunching the hem in his hands, Tommy slowly began to peel down the fabric.

His movements agonizingly slow, as if one were expecting something to jump out from beneath the hidden sheath. But with a sturdy breath in his lungs, Tommy proceeded. Inch by inch he rolled that sheet of white down, until the very crown of her curls met the open air and he caught sight of the baby hairs that were always tousled by the wind, the ones she had hated all her life, suddenly flat and thinly laid against her temples.

Tommy's breath might've hitched in the base of his chest, but his hands refused to halt until the sheet was folded just above where her eerily still chest resided, the structure of her collarbone sharper than he'd ever witnessed it before. Like the bones might just pierce through her now futile flesh, and rip what remained of her to shreds.

Her curls were all but brushed out, as her locks rested in even cascades over her shoulder blades. The tendrils that once bounded with her each and every stride, the ones he used to watch blow in the wind that rumbled its way down Watery Lane in the early morning light, were now dull and motionless. Even their shade, that once captured the light of the sunshine like it might just hold onto it for the days when the sun was nowhere to be found, appeared weak and brassy. Like loose threads of frayed copper wire.

They'd cleaned the blood from her lips, the trickle of crimson that glazed down her chin as the bullet tore the life from her body, now erased as if it hadn't imprinted on Tommy's memory. They were ghost white now, drained of the shade they once were, their peony whisper lost.

Her flesh had almost always been bare, as she never liked to muddy her flesh with the weight of makeup, but rather embrace the impurities that made her beautiful, was sullen and grey. Even the freckles that had once dusted her cheeks, the indentations of where her bright dimples once punctured her cheeks from her sickeningly sweet smile, had faded from view. Whispered remnants of where they once sat, faint memories of her features nearly lost in the oblivion that cleansed her flesh as if her body were to start anew.

Tommy felt the lump thickening in the base of his throat, his latest breath caught without a space to squeeze its way past, as if it were there to absorb every last droplet of oxygen his lungs so desperately craved. For his eyes, the ones where his sheen of frozen cerulean waters suddenly thawed, and the abrasive salt of the ocean eroded the waves into the deepest shade of sapphire the sea had ever known, skidded their gaze away from her pale features and landed on the sight of her eyes.

Veiled in the thin sweep of her delicate lashes, the sight of her orbs was lost to his own. Concealed in the sheath of her own thin flesh, they sat unnervingly still. For Tommy could recall all the nights when he would watch them flutter like wings along the curve of her cheekbones, as dreams drove them wild.

She looked asleep, like the arms of slumber had woven their embrace around her bones and held onto her for dear life. But as Tommy lifted his right hand in a swift motion, letting the pad of his thumb tentatively brush along the faded dusting of freckles that once mirrored kisses from the evasive sun, he knew this was a slumber she'd never awaken from.

For her flesh was cold, unlike any winter she'd ever sustained in all of her years, Tommy swore he could feel the way the blood simply ceased its current in her veins and the life that once beat with a rhythm inside of that heart of hers, was now gone.

He swallowed a breath, a lasting trace left lingering in the crevices of his aching lungs, as the lump lodged in his throat refused to budge. Tommy could still taste the acidic sting of bile on his tastebuds, the putridness lingering even hours after it had first spewed from his lips in a moment of sheer shock and world-altering emotion. It coated the pavement as he watched the ambulance take her body away, and even the rain that poured down heavily from the heavens in anguish and outrage, wasn't strong enough to wash it from the concrete. 

The familiar burn of a welcome Irish Whiskey tingled on the back of his tongue, but when the liquid had poured down his throat in an exasperated breath, he couldn't taste a bloody thing. And the smoke that coated his lungs in a thick impenetrable layer of tobacco, tainted the flesh of his lips as it'd been the only motion he could muster for hours after. The simple, mechanical like brush of a cigarette across his lower lip and the mindless click of a lighter singeing the end.

They'd washed away her scent, antiseptic and the unmistakable aroma of death eradicated the heady amber and the softer notes of a sweet vanilla honey that always clung to her skin, tainting her kiss like she was the very sweetness of the Earth. They'd traded warmth and an intoxicating treacly presence, for that of chemicals and soap. But if Tommy tried hard enough, in his memories of the hours long before, he could just about smell her on his skin. 

Embers of a crackling amber crystal against the edge of his cheek where her own palm had pressed, the rich vanilla weaving its presence into the threads of his very suit from where her arms had embraced him, the supple honey withstanding the bile and smoke and the Irish Whiskey on his lips, in the faintest memory from her very last kiss. Her scent had always been inebriating, but there was something about it now ingrained in the base of his recollections, that felt all-consuming and suffocating like a hand reaching out from the void beyond, threatening to pull him deep into an abyss he might never escape from.

Bending down, without a breath in his lungs and barely a trace on his lips, Tommy brought his lips down towards the crown of her head. Ignoring the sting of antiseptic soap against her skin, his kiss gently brushed along her forehead.

"I'm sorry," He whispered in a breath that only he alone could hear, and in a voice that only he could feel, as he swore the severed strings of his heart became frayed and torn by the ache in his tone. The vulnerability that he'd allowed to seep from his eyes all but once in the past twenty-four hours, apparent there in the words that he breathed out. "I'm sorry."

Tommy Shelby couldn't break, for there was nothing left to be shattered. She'd been the last piece of himself left whole and unburdened by this cursed life, she'd been the final remnant that had withstood the impact of France and the weight of the life he'd returned to after, she was all he'd had left of himself.

Letting his kiss pull away, feeling the cold tingling on the flesh of his nicotine laced lips, Tommy reached into jacket pocket and withdrew the only item that had been taken from her body by the hands of her family, and not that of medical professionals prepping her for the grave.

Polly had slipped them from her before they could take them and slid them into his tightly wound fists out on the street curb in the pouring rain. He'd held them up until this very moment, like he might just press the metal into his very flesh and indent them there forever. But the diamond weighed heavy in his pocket, like an anchor dragging a body down to the ocean floor. He glanced down at them, the sleek silver band that mirrored his own and the glittering gemstone that deserved more than this futile citrine bathed mortuary light.

Tommy twirled them between his fingertips one last time, before reaching across her sheet cloaked body and lifting her left hand up to slide them where they belonged. She was to be buried a married woman, a bride in her prime of life, the girl he'd fallen in love with all those years ago and the one who'd loved him when he hadn't deserved a single shred.

Tommy Shelby took one last look at her before they were to place her into the ground in the coming days. The burn of tears pricked like the tip of a blade in the corner of his azure burdened eyes, but he couldn't help the way the very edges of his lips twitched softly at the sight of her. A sorrowful tilt of his lips, a bittersweet ache that plagued his chest at the sight, a love in his eyes that would never perish in this life or the next.

Still, she was beautiful. Without an ounce of life left lingering behind in an empty crevice of her soul, her beauty still remained.

*   *   *   *

The haze of the morning's fog, like her exhale descending downwards from heaven, enveloped the land in a mournful breath of melancholy. For the sun had failed to make another appearance when dawn broke, a bleak light emerging over the horizon like the ashen replacement of a once burning sun, igniting the day with the sorrow that beamed like loose rays.

The rain that began the night she was killed, still continued to pour. Although thunder no longer shook the heavens like it aimed to shake the very bones of the souls remaining below, and the sharp bolts of lightning no longer illuminated the sky in bursts of electric color, the rain persisted.

Three days later and the droplets that had once fallen in torrents of an impenetrable chill, were weakened and now a sorrowful drizzle that still managed to soak those who stood beneath its path. It was like the last of the angels' tears crying down from heaven, as they shifted the Earth and placed her under its surface, knowing that dry mornings were to follow as the healing was bound to begin.

But that morning Thomas Shelby stood beneath its mournful cast, allowing the drizzle of persistent precipitation to drench his clothes and soak down to the very surface of his bones, like the misery that fell from the open skies might just eradicate any last trace of his own.

She'd been buried beneath the shade of a looming oak tree, with its branches blossoming leaves of deep evergreen that embraced the summer air, but that morning it appeared more of a weeping willow than that of a strong tree that had stood for decades unscathed by the world's ugly touch. For the leaves bowed under the weight of the falling rain, the bark beginning to peel like flesh torn from exposed bones, even the shade that adorned the tree she would've loved, seemed to dull in the surrounding melancholy haze.

It was a patch of land unmarked by man; a simple field discovered on the outskirts of the countryside, a place in the open wild where the embrace of nature and the whisper of peace would have surely called upon her soul. There was no burning vargo carrying her spirit off to the world beyond, there was no precession of black feathered horses or tears from those who hadn't known her, there was no smoke or smog or even the faintest trace of coal to be found.

There was peace. There would be sunshine when the rains ceased, there were open fields that were sprinkled with the faintest burst of brightly colored wildflowers, there was fresh air untouched by mankind. This place would be hers and hers alone.

Beneath the low riding ridge of his snug peaky cap, Tommy peered up at the sullen clouds that loomed above his rigid frame. A dense coverage of grey spread across the sky like a blanket of ash, eradicating any last trace that the atmosphere once held a blue toned hue and making the light of the sun sound like a memory from a life long ago.

The smoke twisting upwards from his half-smoked cigarette, faded into the atmosphere like it blended right in with the bleak affair that beamed across the horizon. As his exhale coated his lips in a breath of tobacco, a tumbling current of thick smoke cascading over his pouted flesh like a rolling river, the scent that coiled its pungent presence around his lungs and every inch of his senses, nearly melded with the rich scent of the Earth. The soil emboldened by the saturation that created puddles in the thick mud, suctioning to his each and every step until even the long blades of summer grass weren't enough to pull the land from his soles.

They'd buried her in white. A dress untouched by the vicious stain of crimson, of bloodshed and death. She looked beautiful, when they'd slid the lid across her casket and lowered her into the ground. But when Tommy's eyes closed, he could still see the burning image of her in that flowing gown of ivory, wrapped in his arms as the life drained from her body.

It was an image that would forever haunt his tortured mind, as if the devils that waited for the arrival of his infamous soul, felt he deserved more suffering than he'd already had. Like a lifetime's worth of grief and guilt and overwhelming burden wasn't enough for a man like Thomas Shelby... and perhaps they were right.

Dropping his head, as Tommy's eyes landed aimlessly upon the sight of his burning cigarette snug between his fingers, he could still see the blood that had once saturated his flesh, like the crimson had absorbed into the palms of his hands and forever lingered beneath the surface with a pulsating presence. It had ebbed between his fingers like a rippling creak, thick and unnervingly hot, thin streams of crimson that only seemed to flow faster with each passing second. It didn't spurt and it didn't gush from her wound, but it cascaded over his hand that pressed tightly in an attempt to slow that ooze without hesitancy.

Tommy's hands had shook like a normal man in that moment, when he felt the life leaving her body, in the warmth that seeped from the bullet wound torn through her abdomen and through the breaths that puffed past her lips in sharp exhales coated in the blood beginning to drip down her chin. It was a blur of time, where each minute felt like mere seconds, when time eclipsed and Tommy couldn't seem to grab a hold of it in his hands.

For she bled out faster than his hands could try to stop it, she reached out to grasp his arm before he had time to register her touch, and she died before he could tell her everything he could have ever wished for her to know.

Bringing the cigarette to his lips, letting the smoke coat his lungs with one last deep inhale, before flicking the ashen end off somewhere in the field beyond, Tommy's eyes closed with a deep exhale. Silence enveloped him, pierced only by the sorrowful drizzle of the rain and the way it blew softly through the surrounding branches, the world felt utterly quiet.

Polly had been the very last to leave him there in that field, standing in front of her grave like he might never move from that single spot. She'd tried to talk to him, they all had.

Arthur tried his best to reach his brother with his vulnerable heart, even as he cried the tears for his sister-in-law that Tommy himself couldn't quite bring himself to shed, but his efforts were met with resistance and a dismissive wave of a hand.

Ada had done little things throughout the week that she hadn't realized Tommy had even noticed. From keeping a tea kettle always warming and freshening his sheets whenever he managed to leave the bedroom that carried her scent. Up to that very morning, when she'd laid out his pristinely pressed funeral suit on the bed for him and made sure a fresh pack of cigarettes were tucked in the pocket.

But no one had gotten through to him, no one had managed a word to heal the ache, no one knew what to say to a man withering away.

Polly hadn't wanted to leave him there at her grave all alone, but she'd seen the look in his eyes. The one that told her that the Tommy Shelby they'd all come to know, was never coming back. He'd been buried right alongside her, deep in the Earth where his remnants would burden the soil and his soul would surely seep down into the waiting clutches of the devils beyond.

Tommy's eyes opened when the wind rustled through the rain-soaked branches of the full, lush trees surrounding her resting place, for the summer air tainted by a sharp and inexplicable chill pricked its way up his spine with unnerving ease. Glancing around at the nature that erupted around him, he swore he could hear her voice whispering through the pines, like a lone melody of a mockingbird echoing in the wind.

Was she listening, he wondered? Was she looking down on him from heaven or the place where her spirit now resided?

Swallowing a breath, Tommy let his sight drop back down to the stone etched with her name. A marbled headstone, one that would surely glisten when the sunshine returned, but her name and the years she'd lived here on the Earth, were like the cut of a blade. Engraved by eternity's permanent hand.

"I promise you," Tommy whispered beneath the soft exhale of his breath. "I will make this right."

His girl was at peace, but Thomas's soul would never rest again.

*  *   *  * 

The rain reached its decrescendo that night. As the indigo abyss closed in and eradicated any trace of light from the weary skies above, the storm that had once held the city captive since the moment the angels stole away her soul, drizzled it's last dampening drops.

Tommy could see the smog again, the smoke that churned from fires cracking in the midst of coal factories, painting the atmosphere black like even in the density of the overwhelming evening hour, it was a shade that was bound never to fade from one's sight. Staining the world until every inch of Small Heath was tainted by the handprint marred with soot and misery.

The puddles left behind by the heavier rains in the days prior, still muddied the cobbles. Currents of soiled precipitation lingering in the cracks and crevices of Garrison Lane, and even as they slowly died out of the skies, the rain that continued to patter in soft mists, trailed down the bricks and the worn-down stone of the structures that made up the city.

Even the alleyway that Thomas Shelby stood in, was not left immune to the evidence that the outrage had managed to touch this very spot as well. For his boots crunched against rain-ridden cobbles, as the scent of mildew and smoke mixed in the breaths he inhaled. It smelled of Small Heath, of the grim and the pungent aromas he'd known since he was just a boy, but there was something about tonight that felt different. 

Every sensation was sharper, like he could feel the sparking embers flying off the coals, smell the murky water beneath his feet like it bathed his flesh, even see the pathway in a shade never witnessed in the beam of daylight. Small Heath was just the very same and yet, as different as one place could ever be. For it lacked something he'd never known the city to be without. Her.

The weight of the pistol in his hands pulled Tommy's gaze back down towards his calloused fingers coiled around the sleek black weapon. It wasn't heavy like crates of whiskey clattering into the Garrison at opening time or the piles of Earth he'd managed to move with his bare hands and a few metal shovels down in those cursed tunnels back in France.

It was an intangible weight; a burden Tommy couldn't quite feel upon the surface of his strong bones but rather that of his war-torn and ever lost soul. A pressure that yanked at each of his funneling breaths like a noose had been fastened around the expansion of his smoke tainted lungs, for this gun knew his name. It knew his every kill, his every battle, his every daunting task he placed a bullet in the chamber for. No other soul would know the weight this particular gun carried; it was a burden that Tommy would have to shoulder on his own.

A single bullet resided securely in the chamber; brushed gold carved with a single name.

It had been a message that night, a warning that Thomas Shelby would never soon forget. Perhaps he should've known better, having gone into business with a man that was like visiting Hell and shaking hands with Hades himself, but his ambition and his twisted view of mortality unshackled the chains of hesitation and sense and let them fall unburdened into the murky waters without his body attached.

He should've known better, as the knowledge gnawed at his bones like a predator feasting on what remained, but Tommy believed if there was pain to be had, a price to be paid, it would surely be his body laid out in the mortuary as his soul ascended into limbo. He'd never anticipated there'd be a bullet with her name on it, carved with the whisper of his wrong-doings and the evidence of his mistakes stuffed inside like gunpowder as it tore through her body.

All because if someone wished to maim Thomas Shelby, the man who had faced death in the eyes and walked away without a shred of fear in his bones, they knew she would always be where his sense of pain resided.

Vengeance was a right not left up to a man but rather that of the almighty above, but Thomas Shelby didn't believe and even if he had, he knew all the faith stored in his soul would've seeped out of him that night like the blood that pooled from her open wound.

This was the only form of retribution that Tommy knew. Branded in bullets and the spray of gunfire, of bloodshed and death spilled over cobblestone. And Tommy would never sleep again until that man, who had killed his wife on the day that should've been the very start of her life, was no longer walking the same fucking Earth.

The tweed that once glinted with the silver embellishments of razor blades, now blended into the darkness that Tommy had always called home, as the bridge of his snug peaky cap obscured the sight of his eyes from the world.

The last lingering semblance of rain that had saturated the woven threads he adorned, dripped down against his palms as he stared down at his hands, eyes piercing holes into the weapon readied in his grasp. Letting his thumb brush along the safety, as his heart beat with the ticking hands of his pocket watch, the night brought the man whose fate had been decided not by the universe but by one single scorned man, closer to his demise.

The crunch of his shoes against the sodden pavement sounds around him, as Tommy begins to make his way towards the threshold of the alleyway, but as the sensation of shifting cobblestone and loose gravel vanishes from the air, a new sound arises.

"This won't bring me back."

It's an all-consuming voice that breaks through the heavy void, like a sheet of glass shattering into a thousand shards by the single brush of a nail across its sleek surface. There's a formidable silence that follows, as the words take up residence in the atmosphere and leave barely a breath to be had in its place.

For Thomas can feel it, like the words are spoken along the trail of his ear and the warmth of her breath whispers its way along his skin. He can feel it creeping down his spine until every hair on his neck stands up straight and goosebumps erupt their presence up and down his concealed arms, even as the summer's balmy breeze surely returned to the Birmingham air. But apart from the way his body physically feels the effects of a voice beyond this place, Thomas can feel it inside of himself.

A hollow cavity where his heart once resided, something clambers within its empty chambers, like it seeks out change in the pocket of a destitute man. He feels it there like a lost echo of a ghost, its inexplicable and intangible and yet, its weight is overwhelming as it forces Tommy's feet to halt.

"This won't heal what you're looking to forget," She whispers, her voice the only sound that graces the atmosphere, as if all of the world had gone silent when her spirit reappeared before a broken man. "It'll only add to the pain weighing on your heart."

Her voice is just as it always was, airy and genteel. It was beauty in a place the world had sworn off such existence, like she'd captured a ray of pure sunshine and locked it away inside of herself. It contrasted the chill of his own Birmingham rich tone, soothing out the edges of his abrasive tendencies and softening the apathy from a man cynical of the world that had wronged him. Even in death, she sounded just the same and if Tommy had had anything left inside of himself to break, he knew the pieces would surely litter the cobblestone for the morning light to uncover.

He knew why she'd appeared, whether a projection from his burdened conscience or a sign from the world beyond, he knew why she'd chose tonight to appear. Why her vacancy left him drowning in the silence and the cold that wove its way into their bed, night after night, without a trace of her there to comfort his anguish. Why the world continued on, even when the very reason for his had been snatched from existence in the blink of an eye, without a hint of her presence to get him through each new day that dawned. He knew why she'd chosen tonight, and the reason stared straight back at him as his blinding cerulean gaze had yet to abandon the sight of the weapon firm in his grasp.

She'd come to stop him. She'd come to save a life. Not the life of the man who had killed her in cold blood, but rather that of Tommy's own weary one. If she were here in the flesh, her palms would coil over his own until she nearly held the gun tighter than he did. Amber crystals and sweet vanilla would invade his senses and the calm nature of her voice would force him to listen to her words. She'd talk him down off of a ledge, she'd cleanse the red from his skin before it had even been spilled, but she wasn't here. She wasn't holding his hand and her scent didn't intoxicate him like a strong Irish Whiskey. She wasn't here and it was for the very reason, that Tommy couldn't be swayed away.

Lifting his head sharply, feeling the faint mist spray against his cheekbones, he proceeded down the alleyway towards the light of the factory fires coming further into view. His blood boiled beneath his suit of coal toned tweed that made him appear a ghost in the night, tainted with outrage and burdened with pain, he was more vengeance than man.

"You can cock that gun and fire that bullet Tommy, but the void will remain the same. I won't be here when he's dead and slumped against a wall. I won't be here when you close your eyes and think his death will bring you peace."

Footsteps of another being crunched against the cobbles in the distance, their approach appearing right as her words struck the last lingering chord left inside of himself. Perhaps, it was a chord that Thomas wasn't even aware he had dangling inside of his soul like a noose dipping down from the ceiling, or maybe it was the one that she had placed there so long ago.

A tethered thread now, frayed by the damage of her death and thinned by the absence of her light. But her fingers coiled around that futile string and tugged with all the might of her spirit, her words halting his steps there in the shadowed threshold, but not yet relinquishing his grasp of the trigger cocked in his hand.

Tommy could see the man now, walking freely through the night as if the blood of Tommy's wife's didn't stain his ledger. Illuminated by the spitting embers of the crackling fires, the misting drizzle of the evening's last lingering rainfall dusting his shoulders as his head craned downwards, gazing at his boots stomping against the pavement.

The world lost its noise in that moment, as the hands on his pocket watch seemed to slow and everything in that single breath came down to this one action. Tommy's feet took one step further, nearly revealing himself and letting the citrine glow bathe him just as his enemy. But just as the ridge of his cap began to cross the line between darkness and light, she spoke to him one last time.

"I won't be here. But you'll be more dead than I'll ever be."

Tommy wasn't sure what pounded louder in the base of his ears, where the blood coursing through his veins seemed to bleed out the sensation of sound. For the moment he stood immersed in, this split second when retribution was sought, and the window was open for vengeance to come through, thundered like an ominous snare drum in the background of his skull. An all-consuming intensity that he'd known far too well.

He could feel the beating of his heart, the muscle's deep restrictions and boisterous patters inside of his chest with each breath he inhaled sharply. But then there was her. Her words resounded in his head like they beat with the very pulse she'd lost.

He knew these were her last words, that her spirit was bound never to visit him again in the future. There was something final about her words, something sorrowful and serious that weighed them down, like she'd finally succumbed to the knowledge that she couldn't change this moment. Disappointment perhaps, that her untimely death had only led to more bloodshed and burden on Thomas Shelby's conscious.

It wasn't that she had been there in the flesh, he hadn't laid his eyes on her again or smelled her scent coiling its presence around his bones, but her absence was overwhelming as she faded away with her last words. Like Tommy stood in that alleyway, gun in hand, and lost her all over again. For the silence was deafening, but the impact she'd left behind was deeper. It was as though her words were edged with the sharp prick of a blade, and as she threw them into his conscience, she'd torn through his flesh and managed to pierce what was left of his soul.

The man's footsteps approached quicker, a few paces out of range, and the bullet carrying his name felt like a brick in the palm of Tommy's hand. It was a crossroads Thomas Shelby had never found himself in. For in the war, he'd never questioned whether the lives he was taking were justified, if they'd do more harm to him than good, because he wasn't allowed and perhaps, he already knew the truth. As a Peaky Blinder, he made his own rules, he formed his own truths and morals. But this was different, this wasn't a question about what he was willing to do or just how far he was willing to go, this begged the question, what would she have wanted?

Would she have wanted the man's blood spilled over the cobblestone, just as her own blood had been spilled over hard wood and ivory lace? Would she have wanted another soul to perish in this world, no matter how tainted and damned? Would she have wanted death to rain down upon Birmingham again, like a curse that kept this city locked in an iron grasp of misfortune? Would she have wanted Tommy to pull that trigger and have one more corpse haunting his conscience and burdening his weary soul?

His answer comes as Tommy watched the man walk straight past him, so close he can nearly smell the cheap beer and stale tobacco on his clothing. He watches him disappear into the night, as the gun shakes gently in his grasp.

Tommy had let him walk right on past... for her. 

The rain stopped the next morning, the sky was a bleak affair of timid blue washed out by the presence of a soft ashen grey. But the atmosphere was dry and only the memories of such precipitation loitered around in the puddles collected on the streets, muddied and murky. But there was something lighter about the way the world felt when Tommy woke up alone.

His hands weren't burning the harsh sting of blood that had been rinsed but not erased, his mind wasn't plagued with the sight of a life draining out from the irises of a man's eyes, his heart felt weak but cared for as if she'd sought him out in the night, wrapped her arms around him when slumber had discovered him and held him until the dawn broke.

But beyond the tangible evidence he could feel inside of himself, there was an ease in which the air funneled into his lungs.

For the man who cheated death and the bullet crafted for his skull by Thomas's hand, had been met by the unshakable hand of fate after all. A fire ignited in the early morning hours, engulfing his business and his life in a fiery inferno. It wasn't the Blinders who had set that fire, but rather the universe that forced the man to repent for his sins as he perished in hell.

Justice had been reinstated, and she ought to be at peace. But she'd brought Tommy more than what the universe had provided her resting soul. Mercy. It was mercy. Not for the man who'd met his fate in a fiery blaze of scalding flesh and righteous retribution. But mercy on Thomas.

He hadn't had to pull that trigger, he hadn't another life burdening his hands, but still he got what he wanted after all. What he needed to move on, what his own soul needed to feel even a sliver of peace now that she was gone from his life.

It would never eradicate all the lives he'd taken before; it would never wash away the sin rooted in his character like it grew vines, it would never heal what could never be repaired. But she'd saved a little bit of Thomas Shelby that night, even when he hadn't been able to save her... she had him in this life and in the next.

A/N: Wow, this is my longest piece to date and I had no idea that this piece would grow to be what has become!❤😭

This one was another labor of love, as I definitely hit some bumps and self-doubt and a lot of restructuring. This idea was originally formed from just the first part, in the mortuary, it was meant to be a one shot set only in that environment and moment with flashbacks. But as I began writing it, I started to get more ideas for how I wanted the story and Thomas's character to go and realized I needed to expand the piece. Which led me to have the idea to make three sections that all tumble into one another and touch upon different stages of mourning and loss.

I knew I wanted to make the third piece about Thomas seeking justice from his own hands, because that's who he is and what he would need to start the "healing" process best he can. But I didn't want to end it with more death (from his hand) I didn't want to end it on a really dark note since this whole piece is very heavy and depressing, I wanted something that wove together different and conflicting emotions and intensities. I really tried my best to form the last part to fit Thomas Shelby's character in a realistic way, I wanted you to be able to truly believe he would do what he did. I worked very hard and can only hope that I succeeded with that!

This piece is pure angst and depression and although it was definitely a heavy mind space to be in while writing this, honestly breaking my own heart at moments, I am very proud of what I was able to craft here. There were moments that I faced some self-doubt and second guessing, but I'm proud of the way I created this one shot by trying a layout I've not yet tried much of before and letting the story simply drive my direction. I hope you all enjoyed this and I would love to hear what you thought!❤