scars in the night

The wind howled like a wounded animal in the night, prey captured in the indigo abyss of the evening's wilderness. Strung up by woven threads of faintly flickering constellations, tightened by the intensity of the storm that shook the pavement waiting below and threatened to bring the sky crashing down from the open heavens.

For the thunderstorm raged on, as the universe teetered on the very verge of the midnight hour. With the rain dripping down like blood seeping from punctured flesh, glazing the cobbles in an oozing current of bloodshed and lost tears. Thunder bursting through the smoke that coated the atmosphere like an impenetrable blanket of cloud coverage in the absence of daylight. Booming with a mighty fury that resounded inside of the snug walls that encompassed you on Watery Lane, like it was the final gunshot putting the poor creature out of its misery.

The bedroom was shrouded in the shadows of the night that had fallen over Small Heath. Engulfing the cobbles and every last soul in a sheath of darkness so heavy, it was if all sources of life appeared drained straight from the flooding streets.

For it was only in the sharp slashes of lightening, blistering somewhere off far on the horizon, that just barely glinted a blink of light against the windowpane. Draped in thin ivory curtains, lightweight lace and linen, the light of the battling sky and the faintest exhale of a drowning moon bled through the futile fabric. It seeped across the hardwood panels, like its whisper of light might just slither down into the worn wood and illuminate the room with a semblance of peace. But it had been ages since this bedroom and the man who owned it, had last seen such a thing.

The entire room smelled of him. Of Thomas Shelby. An intoxicating and almost contradictory combination that assaulted your senses with each newly inhaled breath you took. Rich with cigarette smoke, both fresh from the last stick extinguished a mere hour or two before on the nightstand beside you, and lingering stale from the years worth of tobacco consumed in this small space.

It dominated the room, weaving its presence into every thread of fabric found within the tight four walls. Clinging to the curtains and to each and every article of clothing adorned in this place, it resided heavy in the atmosphere as if he didn't even need to light a new cigarette to taste the tobacco in his lungs, all he had to do was breathe.

Beneath the tobacco of familiar Sweet Aftons rolled and brushed along his bottom lip, lingered the secrets he didn't know you were well aware of. The opium, it hung in the room like a dirty little secret that he thought he tried to hide, but it wasn't an odor you could simply will to dissipate. It loitered within the walls like the gold tainted truth waiting to be freed, and even as he hid away his efforts to numb the pain in his head, you heard the truth like the smoke itself had gone and whispered its voice softly in your ear.

But beyond the smoke, the scent of the man you loved resided. Sharp and soothing like the perplexing burn of an Irish Whiskey, his cologne stung your senses but there was something addictive about the scent that made you inhale one more breath.

For even as the rich spice and heady sandalwood burned its way down into your lungs, you found yourself craving the scent. Whether worn in the air and nearly faded by the fall of day, or fresh on his flesh that was heightened by the warmth of his body, there was something in the strong aroma that wrapped itself around you and threatened to never let you go. And as you felt yourself aching for one last breath of its intoxicating presence, you prayed it never would.

Tonight, Tommy smelled of the day. The crispness that had been introduced to his skin that very morning, in the low gleam of the barely risen sun, from the bar of soap and cloth of warm water was now a distant memory. In its place remained the memories of his day etched along the worn lines of his skin, like a map of where all he had been.

The smoke of Small Heath and ceaseless crackling coal presented itself like an invisible layer of black that ought to be wrapped around his extremities like a blanket of ink. Something sharp hit your nose the moment he hit the mattress beside you, metallic and dark like the lines of his palms were stained with the evidence of bloodshed long ago washed down an open drain. The salt of his sweat, the richness of the Earth from the rain that had found him late into the evening, and now, bewildering but comforting, the sweetness of your own scent that had found itself against the formed muscle of his chest.

The cracks of lightening far off in the distance and the futile flooding of the last sliver of a dying moon, tried to illuminate his frame pressed close beside you, but even in the darkest of shadows, you knew each and every inch of Thomas Shelby as if he'd been a creation from your own mind.

Every scar that puckered his skin, some you'd known back when he was a boy and all the ones he adorned now as a man roughened by the life of a solider and one who'd made it out alive. All the lines that ran faintly along the flesh of his expressions, like rivers on a map that flowed from a lifetime's worth of turmoil and sleepless nights that aged him beyond his rightful years. Every little detail of his appearance, from the light dusting of freckles that journeyed up and over the bridge of his nose and down along his deeply chiseled cheekbones, to every inch of ebony ink that dyed his skin.

And even in the dark, you could still see his eyes as if they were the bright cast of the moon whispering the promise of a new tomorrow.

The turmoil that eroded his war-torn mind like a cancer, never vacated his flesh when the sun fell beyond the horizon and the shadows of midnight engulfed the land. When Tommy slept, it almost seemed to magnify the pain he endured, for he was no longer alert enough to conceal it from the eyes that sought him out.

He could hide secrets in the currents of his cerulean orbs, like the azure abyss obscured the bodies that sank beneath the surface and out of your sight. He could keep his expression stoic as if his immaculate features really were chiseled by hand right out of stone. He could keep his demeanor calm in an unnerving fashion, one that nearly made it seem as if nothing and no one had the ability to rattle the Earth beneath his sturdy feet. He could speak with such conviction and ease, that you believed the facade of composure and peace in his words.

But when Thomas Shelby slept, the demons came out to play and you could see all their bloody tracks left behind, as they tore him apart piece by fragile piece.

His lashes of deep raven, the very same shade that captivated the soft fringe that just barely began to fall over the bridge of his forehead, beat like the pulse of his dreams were a living, breathing thing taking over his being. Unlike the delicate flutter of butterfly wings once witnessed in the way they used to gently descend down upon his soft cheekbones, they now pounded the pavement of his flesh like the lash of a whip. They flogged his skin while his well concealed eyes shifted back and forth with a fury, like every ounce of his soul ached to be freed from the cage his nightmare had captured him in.

Tommy was silent as he slept, not a sound slipping from his full lips in the dead of the night, but the pouted furrow deepened when sleep found him. Frowning an expression that not a word could quite touch, for he didn't need to form a single word or moan a semblance of a breath, the expression he wore like the mask he adorned since stepping back on Birmingham's soil, had finally slipped to the ground and you felt all of the pain that resided beneath.

It was palpable, his pain and his torment. Like an air that wrapped its presence around your very lungs and threated to squeeze with the might of the Gods. Even now, as you turned on your side to face the man battling a war beside you in that cramped twin bed on Watery Lane, you knew the ache was nearly tangible. Like if you reached your fingertips out and let them gently dance along the curvature of his flesh, that the pain would be there like blood on the swirls of your fingerprints when you pulled your hand away.

His back rested against the wall, bare flesh pressed against worn and slightly peeled wallpaper aged beyond your days, as Tommy always ensured you had the most space upon the mattress that groaned beneath the weight of two bodies cradled together. But most evenings you spent warming his bed, warming that room that hadn't felt a sliver of heat since the war had gone and extinguished the once blistering flame, you found yourself clutching tightly to his frame more so than any of the mattress or pillows provided.

Maybe it was simply in your sleep that you reached for him, a gravitational pull strong enough that even in the oblivion of rest, you couldn't refute its formidable hold. Maybe it was the way you drifted off after intertwining yourself with him, limbs lost and flesh forged. Or perhaps, it was due to the deep yearning still burning wildly in your heart for the man you feared you might still lose.

His warmth was all-consuming. A beaming source of heat that put the very hearth in the Shelby's front parlor to shame. It radiated through his layers of soft tweed and crisp white linen, and even now as his flesh was bare and firm beside your aching touch, the warmth that consumed him spread along your own skin like smoke churning out of a Watery chimney.

It made the chill of the storm that raged on the other side of bedroom wall, seem like a distant memory. For even as the shadows stole any last trace of warmth that had been introduced earlier in the daylight, and not a single flame flickered from a dying candle or crackling fireplace, you didn't feel any touch of the brisk night's embrace.

The sheets that cradled you were futile in their efforts to provide substantial warmth. Cotton once dyed a rich blue hue, now greyed with age and worn of its texture, down to the very last filament of woven thread. Even the patchwork quilt thrown sung over the top, stitched of mismatched patterns and textiles of colors that were now a lost dream in the melancholy that captured Tommy's bedroom, wasn't enough to bring warmth to this bed.

But Tommy managed to bring the heat of a dying sun, like with him, you were destined to never grow cold.

He looked exhausted as he slept, like it wasn't the tranquil arms of safety and serenity that found him, but rather the hands of a devil far beyond this life. Talons sinking into the wounded flesh of his already bleeding mind, clawing until his soul was left mere shreds of what it once was.

Shifting closer to his body, barely an inch until the silken material of your nightgown brushed along the ebony rays of his tattooed sun, your hand emerged from beneath the bundle of sheets tucked around your frames. Lifting it upwards until you met warm flesh, you let the pad of your thumb gingerly brush along the sunken bags beneath his brilliant eyes.

Creased flesh burdened with a lifetime only barely half lived yet carrying the weight of a hundred.

Your knuckles grazed against the peppering of soft freckles sprinkling his skin with the kiss of the fleeting sun, but they resided upon his flesh as if they were embers just beginning to spark, allowing warmth to pop beneath the surface and nearly burn into your touch.

Sweeping your thumb back and forth along the curve of sleepless nights like the pendulum of a clock, you wished more than anything that you could take some of the burden from Tommy and impart even a breath of sleep onto his withering soul.

For this world broke him down, throwing him into the mud and stomping him into the Earth like dust formed back into place and yet, he continued to stand up and carry on. But even as he strode through this life with his palms stained with crimson and his long black coat laden with the mud and the rain and the unmistakable weight of guilt that could tarnish a human spirit, he was walking in the boots of a dead man.

A crash of thunder radiates throughout the open heavens like a clash of heavy metal hitting another, but it isn't the storm that startles you, forcing your hand to fall down from Tommy's face. It's Tommy. As he begins to thrash beside you, so violently that you can feel the rickety twin bed beginning to buck with the strength in which his body shakes. Rustled sheets from tangled limbs shuffling down his body until he's nearly completely revealed to the open air.

His face is twisted and contorted into an expression you'd never seen display itself along his familiar features, something has a hold on his being and is tearing at him with all of it's might. Eyes squeezed shut so tightly you fear the white that resides will be bathed in the blood of popped vessels, and the clench of his jaw is so rough, the sight of it protrudes through his taut and well-defined features.

In the darkness, you can make out the sight of fists formed of rigid knuckles bound to be as white as the first snow yet to hit the cobbles. The tension in his body is palpable beside you, as every muscle inside of himself constricts like he's fighting for his life.

Anxiety overwhelms you, like the crash of a tidal wave threatening to pull you under its daunting abyss. You knew of Tommy's nightmares, whether by the rare nights in which he opened up about the haunting echoes of shovels and the scaring image of death by the thousands, or by the sheer knowledge of such a trauma eroding his bones and scathing his mind like a blade, you knew how they controlled his nights and refused to allow him the rest he so desperately needed.

You'd even witnessed one or two before, on the nights he asked you to stay, you'd awaken in the middle of the night to heavy breathing bathing your neck or a jostle from his body beside you. Seeing the expression wide in his eyes, feeling the cold sweat on his skin and hearing the panic palpitating in his breathing.

But tonight, it was different. Tonight, it was as if Tommy had found himself back in the body of that blue-eyed solider who fought for his life in those tunnels. Back in the very moment the remnants of the man once known to the world as Tommy Shelby, were shattered to a million pieces and buried in the ash and death laden land in France, and he emerged as the man he was today.

Tears welled in the creases of your vision as you reached over towards Tommy's shuttering frame, nerves bundling like tightly coiled knots in the base of your throat, as your stomach suddenly felt as if it had been twisted and dropped down inside of yourself to where you could no longer locate it.

You weren't sure what to do in that moment, as anxiety clutched tightly to the rapid beats of your worried heart. You weren't convinced you should try to wake him up or if you even could with how deep he appeared to be in the hell he was in. But how were you supposed to let him suffer like this for a second longer? How were you to watch his body convulse so hard he was bound to feel the extent come the morning and witness the way his mind was tearing itself apart? How could you let him experience this pain, when seeing him in such a state, made your heart break and your eyes weep for him?

"Tommy." You whispered into the darkness, like the gentle ebb of your voice might just coil itself around him and lull him out of such panic. But reaching your hand up towards his face like before, you cradle his cheekbone with the palm of your right hand, sweeping your thumb along the chiseled bone, you knew your voice alone might not be enough.

But just as your lips began to part again, with the call of his name teetering on the very tip of your tongue, you never got the chance to free them into the air, you didn't even get the opportunity to swallow them back down into the base of your throat.

Tommy's hands found you suddenly, as his body shot up from his previous position and he now hovered above you in a swift motion, one that felt like you'd gone and blinked, only to discover that the entire room had shifted. Tommy's hands had touched you a thousand times over the years, in a hundred different ways and in places only he alone knew, but his hands had never touched you in the way they did in this moment.

Locked around your throat, with all of his weight baring down onto his palms that wrapped themselves around your windpipe and tightened with all of their might, Tommy Shelby hovered above you on bent knees as his fists strangled you in the night.

Never had you witnessed such violence from Tommy before, in spite of the evidence that lingered behind his each and every step like a blood-stained path, he'd obscured the sight from your eyes. Never had you known it to be in him like this to strangle a human being with his bare hands, despite the knowledge of the unthinkable things he'd been forced to do in the war, he no longer killed without reason and his rage was a calmed and controlled secret locked away.

Never had you feared Tommy as you did in this very moment in time. For even as the stories circulated, and the truth appeared when you caught a glimpse of his razor brimmed cap, you knew in the furthest depths of your soul, that Tommy Shelby would surely die before he ever harmed you.

But fear coursed through your veins, and you felt as your blood suddenly turned cold.

Pinned to the bed with bunched sheets digging into your lower spine, the linen once warmed by the entanglement of limbs and hearts in the tenderest of forms, now suddenly abrasive and cold.

The room took on an eerie kind of light, for bathed in the shadows his frame was illuminated by something beyond your ability to understand. As if it were your overwhelming notion of shock that rattled your very bones and saturated your veins in something far more potent than the blood that had long gone cold, that suddenly became tangible and outlined his formidable frame like coal-stained lines smudging a crisp clean slate. His silhouette clung to the darkness that craved his body like a parasite to a host, but there was something in the shock and popping embers of growing fear that accentuated the sight of him.

Because even in the indigo abyss the density of night had to offer, in spite of the fact Tommy's eyes remained shut and completely tied off from the world, you could see just how far he truly was from his own body. The man whose hands, calloused by life and stained with sin, tightened around the flesh of your throat, was a stranger. It was a menace in the body of the man you loved, fooling your eyes but refusing to outsmart your mind.

This wasn't him; this wasn't your Tommy, and you knew the moment he opened his eyes, he would see you and know that whatever threat he was fending off with his bare hands, was just a figment of his war-torn imagination.

The shock that had paralyzed your body, feeling like ice had glazed the surface of your muscles and threatened to shatter the bones lingering beneath, slowly began to thaw. Fear clawed at your nerves as if they were knots thrown out to a thrashing body swept out to sea, but the panic that had embraced you finally faded from the blur of your vision, allowing you to blink away the fresh burn of tears, but it refused to leave your body.

Reaching up, feeling as your nails scraped against the warm skin of his wrists, you tugged at his hands with all of the strength he'd yet to squeeze from your body. Curling your fingers over his own like you might just be able to hook them around his knuckles and loosen the clutch he forced upon you, but they were an iron grip around your neck.

You'd never felt such power coursing through his veins like this, as your nails grazed over raised veins running emboldened and intensely blue beneath the backs of his hands, you could nearly feel the surge of adrenaline and force that radiated through his body.

It was frightening, to feel the way they only seemed to tighten their grip around your neck as your hands scratched at his hold. Because all of the times his hand had touched you in the past, all of the times you'd felt the warmth of his swollen veins and the heat that lingered within the etched lines of his palms, flashed before your eyes like a flip of a light switch. One second blindingly bright and familiar in the way his flesh felt against your own, and then in a blink of an eye, darkness and a sensation completely unknown flooded back in like a rushing tide.

All that you remembered was suddenly lost, as Tommy began to slowly lift your neck upwards in his grasp and pound you back down onto the mattress with such force, it would've surely knocked the air from your lungs if there had been a breath to be had.

You couldn't pry his hands from your throat, as you felt the smoke of a rising fire beginning to burn in the base of your lungs. They moaned with each passing second that ticked by in an agonizing pace, their screams not far as they constricted inside of your winded chest. Your lips tried to move, attempted any semblance of a voice, but you hadn't any air to form a single word, much less the call of his name. Panic shot through you as your hands pulled away from his and reached further away from your throat, landing on the chiseled bone of his cheeks, you clawed at his freckled flesh.

Tommy wasn't himself. It was like he'd completely abandoned his body like a shell of a man that had once walked this Earth, ascending somewhere you couldn't access, a place that was merely a prison of his own mind. But as you felt the fire spread throughout your lungs and the screams of their torture resounding like bodies burning alive, you found in this moment, that suddenly you were no longer yourself either.

For you clawed at Tommy's face without hesitance and even as tears flooded your vision, you felt your legs begin to buck and kick under the weight of his body. You were no longer yourself; you were now a woman simply fighting for her life.

Your nails sunk into him, pulling at flesh that had been battered and bruised and peeled away far harsher than you could ever hope to inflict, but you fought against him with every ounce of strength that lingered inside of yourself. It wasn't much, as petrified sobs became trapped in the base of your strangled throat like his hands weren't the only ones wrapped around you, and smudges of ebony appeared in the corners of your eyesight, but you scraped the base of your bones for any strength you could muster.

Heat seeped beneath the curvature of your fingernails, as sticky moisture suddenly glistened the path you'd scraped down his cheek. Drawn blood, evident on your hands, just as your tears leaked down onto the flesh of his palms that aimed to strangle the last breath of life from your being.

The smudges of black in your vision began to grow, threatening to overtake the entirety of your sight, but just as your tears dripped down from your lashes and fighting began to feel futile, Tommy's eyes opened.

His eyes flashed open in a fiery blaze and yet, the beautiful blue of his irises was gone. Staring up at Tommy's hovering frame, your eyes were wide and glossed in a thick sheen of unshed tears, but you saw the way blackness had consumed his eyes. As though chiseled mounds of coal had taken up refuge in the very caverns his cerulean sight had once resided.

It was a shade of black you'd never witnessed before, a darkness so deep it felt as if you were peering into the abyss of the world beyond and you couldn't help but fear as the very last of your breath fizzled away off the tip of your tongue, if you'd already crossed over.

But in the mere tick of a second, the darkness that had overcome Tommy's gaze, suddenly faded. And his palms that had you suffocated against the bed, immediately abandoned you, dropping you and ripping his touch away from your body as though your flesh scalded his hands like crackling coals. He was awake in the way he hadn't been seconds before; his eyes had been opened but he couldn't see. Not until the lack of his orbs had been eradicated and clarity washed over him like a tidal wave certain to take him under.

For Tommy's eyes were wide and his mouth gaped slightly, puffs of harsh breath blowing past as he sought to catch his breath.

His eyes were back to their rightful icy shade of blue, a chill that oozed over your flesh that burned as if his cigarettes slid along your wounds. They were cold and vacant, as though the mesmerizing hue of blue discovered only in that of the most miraculous of gems, was merely a diversion to distract from the emptiness and evidence of a lost and wandering soul that swam just below the surface.

Yet even so, as the chilling burn of Tommy's blue-eyed gaze overwhelmed you as you remained flat on your back, chasing after your own breath, you saw flickers of emotion within the crystal-like waves. Like embers of a burning fire crackling in the hearth, they flared in the shadows of the oppressive night, and in the brightness of a blue that made your newfound breaths hard to come by.

You couldn't move, you couldn't speak a word, you could barely keep up with the air that rushed through your lungs like a river unleashed. But as Tommy caught his breath, staring at you with shock and bewilderment and all the emotions you couldn't read, he stumbled off the bed. Listening to the collide of his knees against the harsh wooden flooring, he shuffled along them as he forced himself to stand up straight on wobbly and shaken legs.

The void that encompassed that tiny room, snug on Watery Lane, was all-consuming. It was empty of all sound and sensation, except for the lost echoes of the venging storm still lingering beyond the smudged windowpane.

For even your breaths, drawing upwards from the furthest depths of your lungs that continued to ache with the remnants of the fire that once burned inside of them, could barely be heard over the deafening sound of a suffocating silence. An oblivion that latched onto the two souls that clung to their slipping breaths.

Tommy's bare feet paced along the well-worn floorboards, but he stared down at his palms as if they were bathed in blood that dripped down to his footprints. Like the evidence of what he'd just done remained etched along his flesh like the very lines of his palms and the whirls of his fingerprints, a part of him, stained and cemented like stone to his very touch.

"Fucking hell," His voice returned to the room like a blaring siren. His whisper, a mere exhale beneath the harsh coating of his exasperated and shaken breath, pierced through the indigo void like the tip of a blade slashing through the density of the night.

Slowly, you peeled yourself away from the linens dampened with the salt of your sweat and the stain of your tears, letting your legs dangle off the edge of the mattress as you regarded Tommy with concerned eyes. Your lungs ached as if their base were scattered with the remnants of extinguished ashes and each breath you inhaled burned with the cool rush of the bedroom's stale air.

Your fingertips danced along the inflamed flesh of your neck, feeling the heat of his touch still tingling beneath the surface like embers ready to awaken with the strike of a match. But in that moment, you stared at Tommy's state and all you felt was the urgent desire to heal his pain.

"Tommy."

Your voice meets the atmosphere in a croak, a pained whisper that barely scrapes the space in front of your sight. The mattress moans as you slowly ease yourself up, letting your own bare feet patter along the worn wood and the fabric of your loose flowing nightgown falls back down over your thighs. Tommy stands paces away, nearing the door like it's taking everything inside of himself to refrain from storming out and never returning.

"Tommy--"

His back is facing you, witnessing the tension that captures his each and every muscle like a vise, the rigidness that locks up his entire body. But even as his eyes are cast away from your approaching frame, he feels your presence drawing near and halts you where you stand.

"Stay away from me." Tommy warns in a sharp exhale, extending his hands out at his sides like a sign to hold you at bay.

"Tommy please."

Tommy doesn't say another word, but his hands lower and he slowly begins to turn on his heels. Maybe it's the desperation in your voice, maybe it's the ache of physical pain that still cloaks your tone, or maybe it's simply the fact that he knows he can't avoid you... that he doesn't want to avoid you that prompts him to move. Tommy doesn't take a step towards you however, and you don't take a pace forward either, but he faces you and acknowledges you with great hesitance.

He doesn't meet your eyes, barely even lifts his head upwards from his incessant stare down at his hands that shake softly in the nearly imperceptible cast of light. And it is in that very moment, that you realize you're witnessing something you've never seen from Thomas Shelby before in your life.

Fear.

Fear in the prospect of facing you, of seeing the way you'll look at him after what he's just done. Of witnessing the emotion in your eyes, the trepidation in your blood stream, the way you're sure to regard him as a monster. Fear in what his own two hands had managed to do to you, always believing he'd never place his hands on you in any manner that might bring harm to ill-will to you. But above all, fear of himself. Fearful of the way he hadn't a clue what he was doing, fearful that he might just do it again.

Tommy might be too afraid to look at you in that moment, too fearful and too shaken to approach you and speak a word into the silence that surrounds you. But you're not.

Your bare toes shuffle along the floorboards as you make your way towards Tommy, slowing only as you reach him and extend your own hands out towards him. Pressing against the swell of muscle beating rapidly with the race of his heart, feeling the slight flinch of his body as your touch finds his flesh. As if the man, whose hands are laden with a life full of bloodshed and death, whose fingers were minutes ago coiled tightly around your own neck, is suddenly nervous of your own.

Gliding up the lines of his ebony sun, curling around his shoulders until they reach up and cradle the chiseled lines of his strong cheekbones, your tilt his head up until his cerulean eyes bathe you in a blinding pool of azure.

"Tommy," His name floats from your lips in the softest of whispers, a mere breath exhaled from your lungs, as though you were speaking his name for the very first time. "Are you alright?"

Tommy scoffs under his breath, as his deep brows furrow with tension so tightly they ought to wound into knots. Shaking his head emphatically, his eyes are still yet to find your own as they settle on the evidence of his touch strung red around your throat.

"You're wearing me bloody fingerprints 'round your neck, and you're asking if I'm alright?"

His hand twitches at his side, like his body aches to gingerly brush along the bruises already beginning to form along your flesh, but not trusting himself enough to touch you.

"Yeah, I am." You exhale softly, sweeping your thumbs back and forth along the freckles dusted lightly over his skin. "Because I know you. I know what this is going to do to you."

"Bruises fade Tommy," Your right hand drops down and grabs a hold of his own hand, lifting it up slowly and guiding his fingertips towards the site of your inflamed flesh. "These marks that I'm wearing, they'll disappear with time, and it'll be like they never even existed. But the marks on your conscious Tommy, they're wounds that I can't seem to mend."

"I know you're going to carry this guilt around with you until it bloody eats you alive or worse... pushes me away completely. So, hear this Tommy," You paused as you forced Tommy's eyes to peer up and face you for all that you were. "I'm not afraid of you."

Tommy searched your eyes in that moment, unraveling the shade that consumed your irises, peering through each and every wave of color, until he found the certainty his soul required.

"I hurt you."

Swallowing deeply at his haunting words, that seem to hurdle straight at your heart, you assure him. "It wasn't your fault. It wasn't you, I know it wasn't."

"What happens if I do it again, ey?"

Tommy's thumb brushes ever so lightly over the marks beginning to deepen along the swell of your neck, but his gaze remains within the clutches of your own strong unwavering sight.

"Then my bruises will heal and we'll carry on, just as we always have."

There were scars that lined Tommy Shelby's mind that you knew you could never reach, caverns etched along flesh worn and soiled by sights and deeds the human soul should never have to witness. You knew there was trauma so deeply enrooted inside of him, it was like they'd become tangled within the nerves and the arteries of his very self, until he was more suffering than human. Where one could never quite find where Tommy began and the pain ended.

But you loved him, scars and all. Perhaps, you loved him even harder now than you did before. Knowing that even though Tommy was rather abrasive and harder to reach these days, like scarred over tissue, tough and resisting, the wounds that ailed him required more patience and tenderness and love than he had once before.

You'd sworn to yourself the moment he'd stepped off that train platform and back into your arms, that you'd love him through whatever remnants of France remained on his flesh and inside of his mind, and you hadn't any intention of deviating from that promise any time soon.

It was a painful path, a trying journey, but you loved him... scars and all.

A/N: Ahh, what do we think??

So, little history behind this piece, when I first decided I wanted to write a Thomas Shelby One Shots book, this was the very first plot that came to my mind. I wanted it to be the first piece I wrote and shared with you all, but I could never quite get it to come together and form into a piece that felt complete and something I was proud of. So I put the idea on the shelf, saving it for a time when perhaps the inspiration hit and I was able to craft it the way I wanted it to be, and nearly a year or so later, I finally got the spark and sat down to create this piece!

It was definitely another labor of love, as I felt the beginning into the climax flowed from my fingertips as I was writing it, but then hit a wall at the middle and ending. The ending and confrontation part of this plot was a very spontaneous creation, it was dialogue I crafted on the spot which is very rare for me, but I'm quite happy with what I was able to create.

I wanted you to be able to really feel and see this piece, to experience all of the different heightened emotions and rawness that I tried to let bleed through this one. I hope it came across the way I always had this piece envisioned in my head and that you all enjoyed!

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