The flickering light from an ignited match illuminated the man in black. A citrine flame burnt dark orange, glinting across the shrouding shadows that engulfed him, like the moonlight dancing along a crashing sea. Trails of smoke whispering away like a forgotten prayer, fading into the winter atmosphere as a forsaken breath, never to be remembered when its scent drained from the air.

Snow dusted his shoulder tips, as though the flakes of pure crystalized droplets dipping down from the evening's hidden clouds, could endeavor to seep past the fabric and lighten the darkness that tainted his soul and burdened his heart.

It was a fast flurry of descent in which the Christmas snowflakes fell upon the worn cobblestone streets of Small Heath. A blur of white contrasting the perpetual shade of grey that inhabited the city, like a breath of clarity breaking through the exhale of smog, even if just for one single night. It settled within the cracks of the street, piling in the crevices for the heat of the nearby factories and busy footsteps to melt away.

But they fell from the heavens without a single taint to their flakes, as the effect of mankind had yet to swipe its bloody hand across the surface and the grips of reality had not yet captured them in their calloused palms. It was a peaceful sight, something so seldom witnessed within the confines of Birmingham and by the eyes of those who had had them recently scarred by the sights in France.

Tommy Shelby couldn't remember the last time he'd witnessed a snowfall as serene as this. For even when the flakes would bathe his shivering shoulders down in those trenches and obscure the land in a blanket of white when he emerged from beneath the Earth, it was a cold sight. A frigid notion that grasped tightly to the human soul, as though the ice that coated the soil and the blistering freeze that captivated the atmosphere, signaled a place forsaken and abandoned.

It didn't make the grounds, that were too frozen to absorb the blood pooling from comrades sprawled and deceased, appear softer as it did here on this Small Heath Christmas night. It didn't have the power to make the sins of mankind seem to disappear in the blizzard of a pure virgin snow, not when his eyes peered at the evidence staining his numbed fingertips in an unforgiving hue of crimson. It wasn't a snow that made the world seem as though hope lingered just over the horizon, for it felt as such an emotion was buried six feet under in the tunnels that he'd crafted with his own two hands.

It was the first snowfall Tommy Shelby witnessed back on home soil and it was the first one that felt different in every single flake and every single frozen breath he took.

Black wool, tailored and trimmed, draped down his frame. Layered over soft grey tweed and a button-down shirt that whispered a faint blued hue, like the softened waves of his cerulean gaze that had yet to resurface since his return home to Watery Lane. With his cap snug upon the bridge of his scalp, reflecting the natural light that radiated from the fresh snowfall off of the silver razors stitched intricately into its rim, Tommy nearly vanished into the December night's ebony shadows.

But the Sweet Afton he cradled between his two fingers, paper worn and turning darker with the burning tobacco rolled tightly inside, illuminated his presence when he took a drag. For even as Tommy belonged to the darkness that sought to consume him, there was a resilience to the light of the universe. Like a moth drawn to a flame, the slightest shred of light seemed to seek him out and project a sharp juxtaposition across his being.

Perhaps, she'd known it was him far before the sight of his features came sharper into her view. Perhaps, she'd known it from the scent of his smokes, that engulfed the dark December night in an aroma she hadn't forgotten in all of the years apart. Maybe she'd simply felt him, his presence a beacon of light reflecting upon of an abyss of nothingness, for the first time since he'd left this place.

But Tommy watched as she approached. Boots tenderly journeying over fresh fallen flurries as her footsteps left a dusted path in their wake, in the middle of the deserted street left quiet and echoingly empty as all souls resided inside of their warmed homes, warmed by coal and by the heat of a holiday known to light every single fire.

Tommy watched her long skirt sway with her bounding steps, as her long tendrils swept over her shoulder blades from the way her gaze peered down to watch her steps. She walked a few paces that way, lost in her thoughts and unaware. But the moment her head began to lift and the eyes that Tommy couldn't see in the midst of a blurring flurry of snowfall, but instinctually knew twinkled a shimmering green that put the deepest evergreens to shame, landed upon the sight of a man donned in black waiting on her doorstep, her footsteps came to a stumbling cease.

A deception of the eye or a dream from a weary heart, her lashes blinked without a single movement as she tried to decide. Was he a figment concocted up by her mind from years of missing Tommy like a part of her heart had traveled to France on that train with him? Was he particles of star dust from a dream that ensued, if her fingertips brushed through the path of freckles along his cheekbones, would he merely disappear, and she would wake? Was he a cruelty of spirit, eyes playing a twisted trick on what she thought to be seen? Was this the answer to the reason his letters had ceased to come after the months gone past, was what she witnessed the calling ghost of his soul that had been shed over Flanders Fields?

But there was something in the way he stood, something in the way he didn't endeavor to move or make a single sound, simply remaining stagnant on her doorstep nursing his lit cigarette, that pulled at the strings of her heart. The very threads that had been thinned and frayed over the years he'd been away, filaments nearly torn in two as their delicate stitches yearned to remain in place, keeping the muscle that ached with each lonely beat together and enduring until he reappeared again.

She felt him. Like his very presence could set her nerve endings ablaze, igniting throughout her veins until she tingled with the searing pain that burned with an ache so formidable, it could only be Tommy's.

A bewildering sensation, as the build of emotion climbed its way up from the tightened cavity of her chest and into the narrow tunnel of her throat, threatening to obscure the very breath that sought to trickle through. For she could feel the tears inside of herself, the very tears she'd known since the moment she waved goodbye on that train platform, until his presence was a mere speck in the distance and the future became a haunting mystery to them both.

They were the tears that had soaked her pillowcase and dripped against the wooden pew where she whispered her daily prayers, as the candle upon the alter burned with the call of his name. They were tears that she had cried for each of her days and yet, here as she stood feet away from a snow dusted Tommy Shelby who was real and a stark contrast to the boy she'd sent off, they ceased to come.

Perhaps, she'd cried them all. Perhaps, her body simply hadn't the strength to let another salt-soaked tear slip from her lashes and trail an agonizing path down her flesh. Or maybe, it was that sorrow was no longer the only emotion that eroded away at her bones like a tortuous cancer or thinned the formidable strength of her beating heart.

It was a sensation that soared through her chest like the sharpest inhale of the frigid December air, biting at skin and the interior of her being, but she shivered not a bit. For as the breath cleared her lungs like a puff of nitrogen, a warmth lingered just below its startling chill. A deceptive heat that grew by the second, flooding her veins as though the blood that coursed through them came back to life.

She could feel the inexplicable warmth pooling in the winter paled flesh of her cheeks, flushing them a heighted peony hue. One that contrasted the bright red that tinted the tip of her nose and ridges of her exposed ears. Bleeding into her lips until the blue that tinged them a tingling sensation, melted like ice dripping down from a sun-kissed rooftop at dawn.

For they defrosted and with it, came a break in the line they'd been stalled in. Twisting slowly and gently, a whisper of a smile graced the curvature of her lips, as her first breathless exhale made out one single word.

"Tommy?"

His name fell from her lips as though it hadn't been her each and every prayer since he'd gone off to war. Like the walls of her bedroom, stained with the scent of his stale cigarettes and rich cologne that seeped into the very paper that adorned it, didn't hear the cry of his name in her sleep.

She spoke his name as if it were the very first time. Voice weaving around the letters in a breath of airy warmth and tender velvet, like Tommy could very well feel the way she said his name. The way it felt right sitting upon the tip of her tongue and spoken in the softened nature of her Birmingham tone. For even as she spoke in a whisper that was all she could muster as shock still coursed through her awakened veins, he heard her through the blowing fury of Christmas snow, as though the world had dulled its noise just for them.

She watched as he lifted his ignited cigarette to his lips, smoking in silence as his feet began to move. A shadow of black emerging through a blanket of untainted white, like the way the blackbirds in the countryside stood a bold beacon amongst a crystal blue sky.

He strode like a man as he made his way towards her, a slight shift in the way he carried himself. He walked like a man who now anticipated his each and every step, thinking about them and where exactly they might carry him. Tommy walked like a soldier but still, she ached to throw her arms around him and hold him close like they were starry-eyed teenagers and naive children all over again. Like they didn't know what the world could do to a couple of unknowing souls.

The soles of his shoes crunched over loose cobblestone and left behind imprints of his presence in a dusted trail behind him. But when only a few mere paces remained between them, Tommy's steps came to a slow and he planted himself to where the shadow of his all-consuming presence grazed over her own shielded and snow dusted toes stood against the pavement.

The cloud of him enveloped her like the arms of a familiar being, his scent rich in the air until not a breath she inhaled was left untainted by the pungent bite of tobacco and subtle notes of warm spice and deep cedarwood. She could no longer smell the smoke that permeated the city and all of its lingering crevices, she could no longer sense the roasting and baking of the day that emerged from the Watery Lane homes, she could barely feel the sharp tinge of winter that carried no clear scent but was identifiable in each and every breath.

She simply smelled Tommy and she forgot how much she had yearned for such a scent.

Blades of silver reflected the light of the gathering snow, twinkling like the stars lost amongst the hazed cloud coverage that had brought the frozen precipitation. For his gaze peered down at his steps, as Tommy's fingers moved to withdraw the burning cigarette from between his full and slightly pouted lips, extracting with a stream of smoke tumbling past. Like fog dipping over a valley side, ashen grey fading into the atmosphere along with the exhale of his breath. But as his hand dropped back down to his side, Tommy lifted his chin and rested his eyes on her.

"I'm sorry I'm late."

A lighthearted burst of laughter nearly escaped past her parted lips, a wavering breath of emotion that emanated from the pained depths of her yearning soul.

Tommy had been adamant he'd be home by the holidays, that she wouldn't be spending Christmas alone or without the sight of him on Birmingham land. Even when the first had past and the second approached without a single sign of his return, he'd remained sure that he'd be back for the third. He never made it home for Christmas, but as time dragged on and the prospect of his demise somewhere over in France became a more terrifying notion with each passing day, she just wanted him home. She didn't care if it was in the midst of summer or on her doorstep on Christmas Eve, she wished him home in any way that God could bring him here.

With a mirthful smile kept gentle and kind, she peered up at him through her lashes that glistened with crystalized flakes that clung to the darkened sprawl. "You're here now."

"Yeah," Tommy exhaled with a smoky breath and a nearly imperceptible nod of his head. "Home at last."

His voice carried with it a deep sense of melancholy, the kind of blue that buried itself into the ruins of a human soul and coiled its roots around the beating muscle of a weary heart. Tommy was raw, a beating wound open and exposed. Like a nerve ending ripped from the seams, but alive and aware until every inch of himself could feel it's sensitive pain.

Home was no longer just home. It was now a place he feared he hadn't the right to be, not when so many men had perished but he'd walked away seemingly unscathed. These streets echoed with the ghosts of the men who'd never return, but Tommy remained one of the few who walked down them.

Why hadn't the sheers snipped through his taut held line? Why hadn't the ground swallowed him whole and allowed him to make peace with leaving this world with a semblance of dignity? Why had he made it home when he hadn't any more reason than the men who hadn't?

He was home... but where was home for Tommy Shelby after all, where was his roaming and restless soul ever meant to rest?

Home felt foreign to Tommy now and yet, home was also where she was. And that had to amount to something... if not everything.

Her hair was dusted in the glistening descent of a thousand flakes. Like iridescent starlight caught and captured within a tangled mess of loose curls and windblown copper strands. The white that enveloped the Earth, emboldened the green hue her irises offered the world.

For it was though the evergreen mirrored the luscious countryside land, the meadows and rolling hills now doused in the virgin breath of a pure unscathed snowfall. The shade that had gone dormant beneath the bitter winter cold, like the universe trusted her enough to keep it safe, until the ice melted from the brittle blades and life reemerged in the promise of spring.

She looked different; in the time he'd been away, but also just the very same as he'd remembered. She'd grown, just as he had, the marks of maturity and adulthood not as blatant on the exterior as they were on the interior. Forged from a time which forced everyone to abandon the adolescence still lingering inside of them.

But she was just as beautiful as Tommy had never dared to forget. Breathtakingly so, like he had to make a conscious effort to keep the oxygen funneling through his lungs when he caught his eyes straying a moment too long. She was effortlessly beautiful, the kind of beauty that one could possess without having the slightest shred of knowledge about it. But he'd always made sure she knew.

Even when it was the break of dawn and the faintest breath of a pale morning light spread across the soft crinkles indenting her flesh from her squinting brows, he'd tell her she was beautiful. When she was soaked to the bone in cold Birmingham rain, mood as sullen as the melancholy skies, he'd kiss her moistened cheek and tell her the very same. She could have tears falling from her eyes, blood dripping from the cut he'd witnessed grace her chin when they were younger, matted tangles of windblown hair after a day with the horses, even in the darkness when he couldn't see a glimmer of light, Tommy would tell her even then. That she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever laid his eyes upon.

And now, as she stood a mere step away from his own, Tommy ached with the very same words burning a hole on the very tip of his tongue. Where they teetered with a fiery passion, yearning to be freed into the open night air. But he found as he stared at her, the flakes dusting her lashes that made the green glisten of her sight peer through like sunlight beaming through a tree line, that something held his tongue. Something deep inside of himself, something newly built from the ruins that France and all he had seen had left behind, that made him hold back all of the words he once could say.

Tommy's eyes scanned over her frame, the soft trembles starting to become evident in the gingerly way she swayed softly back and forth, tugging her coat closer to her body. But she didn't dare tear her eyes away from his steady gaze, nor did she make a single shift to move out of the cold, as if she moved and he'd merely fizzle into the atmosphere like a spared breath.

"Are you cold?"

Inquiry exhaled in a breath of dense smoke, she shakes her head with a gentle breath of her own. "Not really."

Like a ghost, a smirk grazes over the curvature of Tommy's full lips. A memory of the smile that once graced those precious lips, the boyish grin and charismatic charm that could make anyone feel like the only person in the entire world when the sight fell upon them. Tommy's lips twitch imperceptibly at her response, the sugar laced lie falling effortlessly from her lips even as they begin to turn blue.

Tommy doesn't say another word, as he brings his cigarette up for one last drag, before flicking it off into the snow dusted cobble. Watching the faint glint of ash and embers popping from the harsh conviction in which it meets the pavement. She watches with silent eyes as he slips his long black coat from his lean but imposing frame, and cuts that final step by draping the fabric over her shoulders.

It smelled of him. Of his warmth and his spice, of the wind and his smokes. The woolen threads absorbing the notes of Tommy and enveloping her entire body like his arms are suddenly snug around her. His heat bleeding into her flesh, until she can nearly feel the ice that coats the surface of her chattering bones begin to melt away. He smelled of home. The very scent she'd been missing all of this time.

"Now you'll be cold." She whispers, watching her words freeze in a soft cloud before her eyes. Her fingertips curl around the collar of the coat, pulling it closer to herself until she was nearly cocooned in it's warm and heady scented embrace.

Tommy's lips purse in a soft motion, before he shakes his head. "Experienced far colder than this."

He'd never escape those tunnels and the dense mud of the trenches. He'd never make it out of France, even as his body resided on Birmingham land. He was trapped there, buried beneath the Earth, like he was merely another soul lost and tucked away beneath the carnage and decay. Tommy Shelby was still lost, like he'd never really found his way home. The war had claimed him, as though this life he lived was no longer his own. And in every aching fiber of her being, she yearned to call out to him and draw him home.

"I kept your letters," She whispers, fingertips tingling with the memory of all the times she'd run her pads over the scribbled letters smudged with dirt and spilled ink. "Every last one of 'em."

Tommy's lips twitch again, as he wants to say that he'd kept all the ones she'd sent him over the years. All of the letters he'd never responded to, all of the letters he couldn't bear to bring himself to read again, and all of the letters that had gotten him through some of the very worst nights he'd ever been alive. But he couldn't, something inside of himself painstakingly silent.

And so, he takes a single step forward and what he can't seem to say in words, Tommy can only hope she can feel when his touch tenderly brushes over her own. Fingertips calloused and dry, grazing against flesh supple and soft, cradle her cheeks until his palms rest flat over skin pinched red from the Christmas cold.

His touch is bewilderingly warm, as she feels herself nearly melting into the curvature of his gentle hold. Snow dusted lashes batting against his skin, as her eyes squeeze tight at the sensation of the way he holds her after all this time.

The world is quiet, a stillness to the frigid atmosphere not often experienced in the core of Small Heath. A silence that radiates through the falling flakes, but the soft thundering of heartbeats persists, making the void that swallows the evening feel less unnerving. For the silence that envelops the two bodies a mere breath apart, is muted to the ear but boisterous to the soul. As if the strings of each beating muscle pulls with a melody that the other can surely hear.

"I don't have a gift for you this year." Tommy's voice rumbles lowly, seeping into the cold and quiet current, like a gentle wave joining into the stream. His tone is gentle and sheepish in nature, something that makes her smile softly at the way it reminds her of the Tommy she'd sent away. His right hand falls away from her cheek, as his fingertips toy and twist a loosely fallen curl between the grips of his pads. Copper dusted by rich white flakes melting underneath the heat of his tender touch, before tucking it securely behind her ear.

"That's alright," She whispers, eyes dropping to the shade of ice toned blue that clothes his chest. It's a muted color, a hue of blue left futile in comparison to the abyss of cerulean that captivates his irises. Her arms shift beneath the weight of his wool coat, hands reaching out as her fingertips rest against the thin shaped buttons lined tight down the valley between his pectoral muscles. The softening shade of cornflower blue, hiding away the rays of the onyx sun imprinted against his flesh, like the indigo that obscures the day from the night.

She fiddles with the buttons, smoothing them beneath the soft pads of her fingers, as the evidence of her voice dissipates from the light cloud between them. Before her eyes peer back up through the dusted sprawl of her lashes, glistening orbs of evergreen crashing into the formidable sight of deep azure awaiting her gaze.

"All I wanted was you anyways."

Tommy's face was one of mesmerizing contradictions. For the sharp chisel of his bone structure was hardened and abrasive, like a statue molded by hand. And yet, there was a gentleness to the warmed hue of his flesh. The faint dusting of freckles along the bridge of his cheekbones, as if the sun had kissed him in another life.

His eyes, bold orbs of churning azure, could strike like a lightning bolt hurdling through the sky. But beneath the crashing waves of his cerulean gaze, there resided a softened tone, a lighter shade that appeared like a lost star in the night. Flickering every so often with the whisper of a man who he once knew, a kindness glinting like the fuse of his hidden and forsaken heart hadn't quite gone out after all. She'd dreamt of those eyes, like a lost northern star reemerging over the indigo horizon line.

The shadows adored him but light still endeavored to seek his wounded soul, like a lighthouse beaming against a capsized ship in the darkness. He was a collection of broken pieces, the Tommy that was once known, shattered and strewn across the floor. But the shards littered at his clay-stained feet that dripped in the saturation of his blood, still managed to reflect in the faint nearly futile light. Mere edges peering beneath sheaths of bloodshed, twinkling like lost ruins discovered in the fresh beam of morning light.

What was broken could still be beautiful and what was torn apart could surely be mended again.

She nearly wept at how beautiful he was. Even now, exhausted down to his very bones and surely scarred with images she couldn't begin to fathom. But her Tommy, her sweet blue-eyed boy she'd sent off all those years ago, was finally home and more beautiful than her memories of him had ever been.

Perhaps, Tommy could see the love in her eyes like a glistening beacon. Embers popping within her irises like flames glowing through the luscious countryside bloom. Maybe, he could feel it in the way it radiated from her flesh as if she hardly felt the cold that marred her skin bright red. But perhaps, Tommy just simply knew.

For as she stared at a man irrevocably broken and unlike the one she'd sent away, she looked at him not with pity paving her gaze or belief that she could patch every hole that littered his soul like a bullet torn ship sinking at sea. She looked at Tommy with every ounce of love in her heart and Tommy knew. That after all this time, that even after what he'd become, that she still loved him even then.

Tightening his hold of her cheek tenderly in his palm, tilting her chin up the slight inch as he peered down into her eyes. Witnessing the way that they made him feel for the first time since his boots crunched upon Birmingham soil, that he was anchored to something far greater than himself and that something would surely be there to save him when he began to drift again.

"I love you."

And in those three words, resided all of the words Tommy wanted to say and all of the others that he couldn't.

But as her own hands traveled up from their placement against his chest, he realized she wasn't looking for more. That those three words and the fact that he was home and here with her now, was all she'd ever needed.

Her own fingertips, tingling with the sensation of frost nipping at the surface of her bones, swept through the dusting of freckles along his cheekbones. As she smiled at him with a tearful expression, "Merry Christmas, my love. Welcome home."

Tommy kissed her then, for the first time since their lips had met that fateful day on the train platform. It felt like coming home when they touched. Like the Earth had shifted back beneath their stilled feet and Tommy felt for a single moment, as though he knew exactly where he was meant to be.

The Christmas flurries engulfed them, raining down shimmering flakes of iridescent light that shone amongst the darkness, and illuminated their future. It might not have been a smooth road, with bumps and turmoil lining its path and the end of the tunnel obscured by a blanket of an unknown abyss, but they'd make their way together. They'd journey the uneven road, weather the blistering storms, endure all of the inevitable pain together.

A/N: Merry Christmas Everyone!!❤🎄

This piece was a labor of love and took a lot of patience and grace with myself to create, I'm not going to lie. I pride myself on creating a Christmas themed piece every year, but I found for the second year in a row now, that I struggle when it comes to writing holiday infused Thomas Shelby One Shots. This year might've been a bit harder as I was so happy and proud of the piece I created last year, something special that came together so spontaneously and beautifully, that I felt there was no way I was going to be able to "top it" or at the very least create something that could meet the same standards.

But I've had this idea for quite some time now, something about it just always felt like a perfect Christmas piece to me. Something about the emotions, something about the setting, something about the intimacy and softness and rawness of the moment, I just always believed it would always make a beautiful holiday piece. (I know it might not be completely correct when it comes to dates and times with history, but I wanted it set at Christmas and bent it a little to create it to how I envisioned it in my mind all this time)

I took a lot of time crafting this piece as I wanted to make it as beautiful as I possibly could. I definitely second guessed and doubted myself along the way. In the past, too "soft" of pieces made me anxious, but I found with this one, I was worried it wasn't "soft" enough for a Christmas piece. I didn't want a straight depressing piece, I didn't want a sappy and unrealistically happy piece, I didn't want something that was blatantly holiday but lacked substance, I wanted to create something that had a bit of everything. I wanted something reuniting and wholesome, something bittersweet and tinged with the weight of the reality faced, something that pulled at your heartstrings but could make your heart swell just the same.

I stayed true to myself and my writing with this piece, and I'm proud of that. I'm happy with what I've created here. I hope you all enjoyed it and didn't find it too depressing for a Christmas piece, but rather a balance of all the emotions that would come with a scene such as this.❤

I'm wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and that your day is filled with love, joy and happiness!😊❤🎄