The surrounding fresh air bit with the bitter cold of the falling December snow. The sky above void of any mere touch of a gentle blue, replaced and now resembling the clouds of smoke swirling in the air from Thomas Shelby's burning cigarette. The cloud coverage dense as the thick grey filled the chilled atmosphere around you with a melancholy feeling. As though the sheer sight of the depressing sky, was palpable in a sensation that soared into each breath inhaled deeply into your expanding lungs. Even the flurries of freshly fallen snow, held a sadness to their fluffy white flakes. As though they were tears falling from the heavens, frozen in mid fall and landing against the dead and barren land in restless breaths. A sight usually so beautiful in the midst of the cold winter months of Birmingham, felt numbing in a completely different fashion. 

The car was parked upon a wide stretched field, the engine stilled and silent as the only sound came from the howling wind, rustling through the bare branches of nearby trees. The ground once plentiful and lush in a beautiful jade green, now crumbled in dying shades of brown and the harshest hue of lifeless yellow. Gone were the traces of wildflowers once bloomed in the middle of spring, washed away were the remnants of an environment once alive and glowing with an intimate beauty. A dead slice of land, lonely and afraid, cold and empty, now left in its place. The melancholy sky stretched its bleak grey hue across the horizon, until it nearly vanished into the shadows of tomorrow thousands of miles away. Crippled branches of exposed and stripped trees stood like silhouettes against the depressive backdrop, and it felt as though they were limbs reaching out to the heavens for a helping hand.   

Your hands laid still in your lap, wringing your fingers together through the thick leather lining of your gloves. The leather brushing against the soft wool of your deep burgundy coat, draping over your thighs and concealing the beginning of your black heeled boots. The wind blew across the bare nape of your neck, as your hair remained hidden in tightly coiled curls beneath the comfort of your matching winter hat. Feeling like Father Winter's fingers trailed across your flesh, leaving traces of ice beneath the very surface of your bare skin. The early evening air seemed colder than that of the morning chill, even as the snow had begun in the early hours, it felt as though the temperatures around you had dipped drastically since the drive out of the city. 

Your eyelashes fluttered against the blow of the cold, feeling the dampness of stray snowflakes landing upon the black swoops of your lashes, before almost immediately soaking through like saturating tears. Your lips felt moments away from being numb, as you moved them faintly, the sight of your softly exhaled breath freezing in the air in front of you. The soft puff intertwining with the darker swirls of Tommy's exhaled cigarette smoke. Watching as though they danced with each other, before dissipating into the bitter cold together. 

"Why did you bring me out here Tommy?" They were the very first words either of you had spoken since that late morning, when he'd picked you up without a single warning, claiming he wanted to take you for a short ride. Hours passed by as the sight of Small Heath disappeared into the rearview mirror. A silence falling over the car, one that never felt uncomfortable to you but rather an expected part of Thomas Shelby's company. But now, as you sat shivering in the snowfall as the night slowly began to approach the lasting hours of the daylight, you couldn't help from speaking up softly. 

Turning your head to the side, feeling the smooth upholstery of Tommy's car brushing against your shoulder, your eyes fell upon his stoic frame. His eyes trained upon the field stretched out before you, his body straightened and sitting tall in the driver's seat beside you. His hands rested against the neatly tailored fabric of his suit, fingers brushing over his thighs, as a burning cigarette hung from his slightly parted lips. The pink of his full and even lips, standing out with the worn white of the cigarette balanced between. Watching the trail of dark smoke fizzling upwards into the open air, the end burning and turning to ash in the passing seconds, as the strong but familiar scent of tobacco smoke filled your senses.

It was simply a part of his scent, cigarette smoke lacing his steps just as the trace of whiskey remained on the soft blow of his breath, while something pure and earthy, something undisguisable and yet undeniable, swelled from his skin. It was the scent of Thomas Shelby, and you knew in the deepest parts of your soul, that there would forever be a comfort found within it. 

Your words froze in the December air, knowing full well that they had graced Tommy's acutely entuned ears, but he remained as silent as the sky next to you. His face gave not the slightest clue away, his expression kept stoic and still. It was a hardened expression he wore a majority of his days, the chiseled build of his appearance rigid, while the emotion within and behind the blue of his eyes fell tortured and cold. He hadn't always been this shell of a man, a statue too afraid to let any semblance of the man once there out into the light of day. For you'd seen it, with your own two eyes, you'd seen Tommy Shelby the way God had created him and he was beautiful.

He smiled, wide and true as the extent of his expression shimmered in the depths of his strong blue irises. He laughed, all of the time, the joyous sound would grace your ears and immediately feel a smile of your own tug its way upon your lips. He wasn't afraid to be soft with you, he wasn't completely ruled by the demons in his head and the barrenness in his heart. You'd known that Tommy Shelby, you'd loved him... but then the war happened... and he never came back. 

Looking down at your hands that tugged aimlessly at the leather concealing your fingers, your lips parted and another breath twisted in tandem with his smoke as you spoke up softly in the deafening silence encircling your bodies. 

"Why did you bring me here? Because I know you're not a nostalgic man and you haven't ventured to watch the sun set in ages." 

There was no sun to watch that evening, only grey inevitably fading to black as though the draw of a curtain call. But even as the source of daylight felt vacant from the sorrowful snowy skies, you could almost feel the timing of a sunset approaching. That moment when you can nearly feel the day escaping your grasp as the night slowly crawls to replace it for the hours to come. 

Your eyes had fallen back upon Tommy's face as your words blew across the flesh of his neck, and you knew that he heard your words, that were concealed in a rather sugar coated lighthearted tone, when the very edges of his lips twitched. His hand raising to pull the cigarette from between them with his calloused fingers, blowing the strong stream of smoke out in a simple breath. They stilled once again into an even line, as the end of his cigarette burned now in the grasp of his fingers, and it was as though the faintest ghost of a smirk hovered against the shadow of his lips. As though they wanted to pull upwards, showing off the softest hint of amusement in your words that never ceased to keep his mind wondering what you might possibly say. But as soon as the ghost appeared, it disappeared as if it had never been there to begin with, a figment of your wistful imagination. 

Perhaps it was in the sound of your voice, or the way your words managed to capture his attention, that finally caused his head to turn to the side and his eyes to fall upon your awaiting gaze. But in the truth of it all, unbeknownst to you, Tommy felt compelled to look over for you had always managed to know him. Even when you teased in the softest banter beside him, your remarks were true and it felt as though you knew him better than he knew himself most of the time. 

You realized, as Tommy's eyes collided with your own like the strong crash of the tide against the shore, that the sky had been bare of it's rightful blue, for it had all been poured into the delicate irises of Thomas Shelby's eyes. Orbs that resembled gems beyond anything else, sat in the focal point of his face. It was a mesmerizing sight, the way they glistened with a boldened blue you had never witnessed quite like this in the features of a human being. They were beautiful while being ever so cold, strong while almost seeming to sink in the depth of his lost soul. They were void of emotion and yet, there was an ocean amongst his blue eyes waves that washed over you with a feeling so powerful, it was as though you might drown beneath the weight. 

"You remember the first time I brought you here?" 

The words fell from Thomas's lips in a soft muse, taking you back for a moment as a hint of remembrance filled his low tone. Watching as his eyes tore away from your deepening gaze, putting his cigarette out against the steering wheel before flicking it out the window.  

"I remember it was a much nicer day than this." You remarked with an arched brow. The slight mirth in your tone not falling lost on Tommy's ears, as his eyes returned to your watchful stare and the ghost returned over the edges of his lips. 

"The sun was bright, nearly blindingly so, and it wasn't so bloody cold. It was warm, but it wasn't sweltering. Spring was just beginning to fade into the first breath of Summer. And the trees out there," Your eyes moved away from his expression and looked out across the horizon. "they had budded and bloomed in full thick branches of leaves."

The scenery around you was a stark contrast to the once that you painted with your softly spoken memoires, and even as your eyes traced over the dead land that seemed to stretch for miles to come, it was as though you were seeing the field as it had been that day Thomas brought you up here for the very first time. 

"The grass wasn't dead as it is now, it was tall and a lush green, with marigold and deep violet wildflowers popping up amongst the tangled weeds. You drove me up here and we just sat as we are now, not doing a bloody thing but not needing to. I grabbed your hand as the sun began to set, and we watched the colors paint the sky like we were watching a live painting being sculpted."

Your words seemed lost in a different age and perhaps they were, for they found where your memories remained from years gone by. A time long ago when the man you knew, the man you loved, was still alive. When it didn't sound like a farfetched fairytale that you had watched the sunset with the man you loved but rather, a moment you'd treasure in the first few weeks he'd left. Although your heart had begun to heal from the pain of having to let Thomas Shelby go, the memories of the man once known would forever hurt like a knife twisting in your heart. 

Squeezing your eyes shut in the tightest fashion for a mere moment, before opening them wide to the cold that invaded your lungs with a deep inhale, you turned your head back to the side and returned your attention to the man seated beside you. You weren't sure why it surprised you the way it did, but finding that his bright blue eyes were still there, watching and waiting intently for your own gaze's return, left you taken aback for a breath. 

As you stared at Tommy, pulled into the waves of his intoxicating bright cerulean eyes, feeling not a single urge to struggle beneath the crashing pressure, you found the answer to your question in the silence that captivated the bitter evening air. You saw the truth in his eyes while his lips remained still, the words right there in the swirls of his irises when they couldn't form against the tip of his tongue. This was Thomas Shelby's way of saying goodbye. 

You were bound for a ship to New York in the early hours of the morning, the prospect of a new life guiding your anxious steps as you turned from the only home you had ever known here in cold and depressing Small Heath. It had been a moment long in the making, for before the war, you had a reason to stay. A reason greater than any yearn you could have for a life beyond the smoke and the streets you'd known all your life. You had Thomas Shelby, and so you stayed by his side.

But when he left for the war and didn't come back the way you had sent him off, your reason for staying slowly began to fade. You stayed for another year or two, holding onto the hope that had gotten you through those dark nights he was away, fighting for his country and for his very own life. You stayed because you loved him, but as time passed you by, watching the woman reflected back in the glass of your mirror grow as lost as the souls wandering the cold cobblestone streets, you knew you no longer had a reason to stay in Birmingham.

You hadn't realized the emotion of your painful memories and aching thoughts had overflown into the grasp of your sight, until the burning sting of fresh tears clouded over your vision as your eyelashes fluttered to clear the view. The wind was like ice blowing its chill across your flesh, but as a single tear flickered down from your fluttering lashes, it felt as though the hottest tar trailing down your cheek. Searing the bitter skin beneath, leaving a tightened and reddened path in its wake. Thomas's eyes remained steady on your own, as though there was a magnetic force at play that kept your contact focused on one another. But you knew it was due to something far greater. 

The blue of his eyes seemed to be the only hue for miles to come, sitting bold within the warming tone of his skin. Bags tugged at the underside of his eyes, begging for the sleep that had evaded him for far longer than he ever let on. His lips stilled in an even line, the palest pink as if a mere blush of your cheeks swelling against the nicotine tainted skin. The faintest sprinkle of freckles danced across his cheekbones, fading into the lines that spoke of the stress weakening his heart and the horrors haunting his mind. Thomas Shelby was beautiful, in the perplexing way that broken things managed to find the slightest glimmer of a light somehow, reflecting back the beauty of the whole they once were. 

His right hand lifted from it's placement against the charcoal grey of his suit and broke you of your deepening scrutiny against his simultaneously breathtaking and heartbreaking features. You felt as your shallow breaths seemed to halt all together, holding onto the thin breath of air sweeping through your chest, as his hand reached out towards your face. Feeling the ache in your lungs burn, until his fingers landed like the snowflakes against your coat, and the cold and calloused nature of his thumb brushed softly against your cheek. His body radiated a warmth through that of his tailored attire and yet, his fingers that were void of any covering to brace the bitter cold, sent a faint shiver down your spine as it made contact with the skin that burned beneath the weight of your streaked tear. 

You felt your breath escape past your faintly parted lips as his thumb brushed against the trace of your fallen tear. Exhaling into the December air, freezing instantly in the space, knowing that the next inhale Tommy took would include the chill of your once warm breath. His hands were coated in a violence, a shade of red that could never be washed away and yet, the way his thumb swept across your cheek in an effort to clear away the evidence of your sadness, there was an unmistakable gentleness to his action. A familiar tenderness that you had thought was lost from the world forever or perhaps, just from the man sitting beside you. But here it was, a mere sliver of the gentleness Tommy Shelby once possessed. 

"You know I loved you, don't you?"

Unlike the words you had spoken prior, you weren't convinced they would carry over to Tommy's ears, for they broke as soon as they entered the unforgiving winter air. A breathless crack in a void of silence that felt stifling and overwhelming, in a way that nearly suffocated you right there on the spot. Every emotion that had torn through the strings of your heart all of these years, the feelings you were certain were under control and healed deep enough that they wouldn't burden you in the way they once had, suddenly overflowed into your words. It felt as though your heart spilled from your lips in that moment, as Tommy's thumb lingered against your skin, a part of yourself you had hidden in the darkness of your heartbreak finally seeing the light of day once again. 

"I know the man you loved died in France."

Perhaps it was the breaking piece upon it all, the confirmation from the man himself, that the one you loved was no longer inside the shell of the man who looked just the same. An all-consuming cold overtook your body as his monotone response hit your ears and the touch of his fingertips pulled away from your tear stained cheek. Falling back to it's placement against his lap, but his eyes didn't shift. 

"I curse them," A sob climbed like twisting ivy up from the base of your throat, choking you on the dense collection of tears that began to overflow from your burning eyes. Falling freely as though the rippling tide of a creek down your cheeks, washing away any trace that Thomas's touch had ever been there. "I curse them every damn day of my life for what they did to you in France, Tommy Shelby."

It felt as though you were saying goodbye to him all over again. 

"I loved you."

Thomas looked at you for a moment of pure and unsullied silence, watching with the weight of his blistering blue gaze as the tears trailed relentlessly down your cheeks in a remarkable quiet that even surprised you. You watched as his Adam's Apple bobbed with a deep swallowing breath, before his dark lashes swept over the sight of his beautiful blue stare and his head turned away from you. Looking straight ahead as he had before, but you watched from his nearly perfect side profile, as his full lips parted and four words made their way into the open snow filled air. 

"I know you did."

Thomas Shelby knew because in the deepest part of his cold and barren heart, laid the last lingering trace of a warmth found in the emotion of love that had beat alone solely for her. Even after all of these years, after the hardening of a heart once open and the destruction of a mind once clear and light, Tommy loved her just as strongly as the day he said goodbye to her at the train station. Promising her he'd be home soon, that he would come back to her... little did he know that he never quite would. Thomas knew she loved him, he knew she dedicated her life to him all those years ago. He knew she loved him... for he knew what it was like to love her back in the very same way. 

He'd managed to see the world through her eyes once, for just a mere moment in time, one that felt ages away when his feet returned to the Small Heath cobblestone streets, but it was a miraculous view. Thomas Shelby knew she loved him once, for he'd witnessed the way she saw him and he wanted nothing more than to bring that man back to life for her. But he was gone, and so was the world once shown to him through the beauty of her eyes. 

It was a beautiful world she'd seen, back when she was in love, but the real world... the world Thomas knew all too well, had grabbed hold of her and changed what she saw. They now shared the same world view, yet somehow, she had the strength to step away from it all. And even as his hands no longer laid claim to keep her here, he hated to see her go, but he did. For Tommy believed the world she'd once seen, the one she'd showed him years ago, was still out there and waiting for her. But she was never bound to find it stuck here in the bleak streets of Small Heath and Thomas knew well enough to know that she would never find such a world if she stayed here... loving him.

A/N: Wow, I think I might've just broken my own heart while writing this one.😭

The idea for this one shot first came to me when I found this GIF (that unbelievably beautiful GIF, omg my heart😍) and felt instantly that there was an emotion of heartbreak and goodbye in the way I viewed it. A coldness that drove this piece, from the bitter winter season to the numbing ache of a breaking heart. I could look at that GIF all day long honestly, the beauty of his eyes is so strong, but there was something within that beautiful blue that ultimately inspired me to write a heart-wrenching longing goodbye piece. I crafted the scene as I went along, having a clear view of the scenery and tone I wanted to set for the overwhelming feel of the one shot itself, and allowed for the dialogue and descriptions to form freely and organically with the flow of where the piece was headed. 

I knew from the beginning that this was not going to have a happy ending, it was not going to break your heart and heal back together. But even as it honestly hurt my heart to write and to create with such emotion, I find that there is still a beauty found within the ache of this piece. I am very proud of the one shot I created here, the scene and images I was able to craft and bring to life, and as your hearts begin to heal again from this sorrowful piece, I hope that you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!❤