WRITTEN FOR ME ( thomas shelby )

012 ━ Letters Almost Lost in Time ..

"Yet the letters are written for me," Thomas reminded him, a hint of pride bringing his chin upwards. Truth was, he would have indulged with his brother's complaints had he not already known Jackie's letters to be capable of completely undoing every single façade and mask he's made for himself with tact his whole life. On waters of such vulnerability, he had to chart alone, in a certain degree of privacy, for there was a high chance something between the news she'll share and the terrible suffocation of missing her voice attached to her carefully crafted words will bring him to tears.

Since her last letter, Tommy hasn't slept much, perhaps especially for what John had managed to figure out as well: though he knew she was alive, nothing changed of his condition of uselessness in aiding her return to safety. No matter how many times he reread that first letter, nothing new was revealed to him and he was still as far away from her as ever before.

For such reasons of emotion, it was paramount that he waited for his solitude to be complete before opening the first letter, containing several pages, with certain paragraph more calligraphic than others too. The first part of the letter was a mess that had slowed down his reading to try and make everything out.

MY DEAREST HUSBAND TO BE,

          In my hours of hopelessness, I find myself writing to you though I have no guarantee you'll ever read any of this. It is easier, I believe, for me to take account of my emotions by imagining I am speaking them to you. I would conjure up your ghost from the depths of my memory and have it keep me company while these metal walls suffocate me into delusions, but my mind is too scattered to form vivid images anymore. So I write... with no hope that I will survive this journey and that this letter will not sink with us to the depths of the Pacific Ocean, I write to you.

My father was a sailor by passion. He'd speak of the ocean, much to my mother's disdain, as a man would speak of his first love they never forgot. On his line, the Alloways name goes back entire generations of men who have answered the call of the waves and conquered the ocean's many faces. It is the pride with which he talked about our legacy that I recall now, when I know my underestimation of the ocean's wrath makes my ancestors turn in their graves.

All these advancements in nautical travel, but when the storm rages on the ocean, even the sturdiest ship groans and creaks and reminds us all that we are human and mortal, and that the ocean is filled with rotten corpses of men braver than ourselves. After seeing waves the size of mountains, I am left a shivering mess.

And our fuel is running low.

I set us all on this course and should this journey lead to our demise, I'll have their names drag me to the bottom of this dark ocean. So I turn to you in this hour, though my brothers have plagued my mind with facts that dismantle my better illusions... I trust you to be the keeper of my dreams, of my thoughts, of my emotions, though I have nothing but my foolish hope reassuring that you're alive and that you do not yet hate me. This letter might never reach you, my love, but even so, my love for you persists to fuel an impossible optimism.

After all, if I am to drown, I would prefer my last words to be written to you. I only wish I could have your hands cover my ears safe from this thunder one last time.

          THOUGH THE LETTER DID NOT END there, Thomas Shelby took notice of the messiness of the writing coming to an abrupt end. The next paragraph started with a much more chiselled calligraphy, reassuring him right away that the storm had passed.

          My brothers are right. I do not say this often and I almost never write such obscene admissions down, but here's a truth I will only ever offer you: they were right that I have been wasting money by sending you that first letter the way I had, selfishly and desperately, even if those two flaws meant that I was having a conversation with someone given no means to talk back. What I am trying to say is perhaps different from what my brothers hoped of me to understand, but regardless, it is true.