peaky blinders imagines

what is saved and what is lost; tommy shelby

Tommy Shelby had heard innumerable screams in his life, but the blood-curdling one which struck the calm that had enveloped Birmingham was all too familiar.
He abandoned his path to the Garrison and broke into a full sprint down a side dead-end. The scream which gave him deja vu echoed again, and its source quickly became apparent.
A body was crumpled by the end of the street, and by it was a large man, club in his left hand and knife in his right.
Tommy took out his gun without thinking, firing blindly at the man bent over his wife, watching as he crumpled to the ground and his wife let out a short whimper.
His lungs were aflame. He'd stopped running now, too busy frantically hovering over her collapsed body, folded in on herself like a doll stuffed into a box. He knelt down frantically, hands grasping at whatever he could reach. A new painful feeling intruded  into his lungs, a white-hot rush of panic that poked holes in his ability to breathe and threw him halfway down the lane to a panic attack.
Tommy cradled her as best he could, hoisting his wife into his arms and gazing around wildly down the poorly-lit street. His brothers were nowhere to be found, but it was safe to assume they hadn't gone far.
The thought fled his mind as soon as it entered, choosing to prioritize the life of the woman in his arms over the men who were supposed to be with her.
His wife started to wake up as his walking increased in speed, murmuring protests into his sleeve. He shushed her as reassuringly as he could while feeling his heart rate increase, nearly kicking in the door to their home.
Placing her as gently as possible on top of the covers of their bed, he sprinted out of the house again, skidding as to avoid collision several times. He knocked frantically at Polly's door, a pace so breakneck it almost echoed the tattoo of his heart against his rib cage.
She was irritated to be awoken at first, pointing a well-manicured finger at the clock, but upon her nephew's desperate and rushed explanation, she abandoned her plans for sleeping and followed him to where his wife was, having now curled herself into a ball and having begun to shake violently from some unforeseen cold certainly not caused by the balmy night.
His aunt lurched nearly violently at the state of his wife, blanching further than the whitest powder.
She told him in a sharp, low voice to get his brothers' wives and return immediately, and he obeyed, trying his hardest not to look at the pool of blood congealing near his wife's abdomen.
Esme and Linda both were as unhappy as Polly to be woken up, but within the quarter hour he had three anxious women hovering over his girl and he was not-so-kindly ushered out of the room.
There he remained for the better part of three hours, perched on the top of the staircase, chain-smoking incessantly until the window panes were tinted pink from the newly rising sun.
When the sun was casting a faint shadow over his incessantly tapping left hand, he was told there was a baby.
Was.
His wife was four weeks pregnant to the day until she was bludgeoned directly to the abdomen, and lost any chance of keeping the baby.
He was told the best thing he could do was be there for his wife.
Tommy glanced at the bedroom door, and then down the stairs, and proceeded to storm to the first floor.
He laid waste to the kitchen, shoving chairs into walls and yelling obscenities at whatever deity would listen.
His rampage only ended when a shard of wood from a partially broken chair went directly into his arm and he stared at it numbly before it occurred to him to pull it out.
Tommy went back up the stairs, then, and rested shakily onto the bed, letting his wife pull him closer and sob openly into his shoulder. There was nothing that could rectify the loss of a child, no words he could possibly say, so he let her cry herself to sleep on his chest before getting up, tucking his Colt .45 into his waistband, and setting out to find his brothers.
-
Lucky for him, they were together, chatting and laughing as they took down chairs and brought out alcohol from the back to set up the bar for the day. Their initial greetings of him were jovial, even going so far as to ask how his wife was, but he reached Arthur first, and laid him out over the counter with a punch to the nose.
Arthur was shocked and John immediately sprang into action, grabbing him by the shoulders and attempting to persuade him to calm down.
Tommy's furor only increased, grasping his brother's collar, shoving him hard into a mirror and watching shards of glass rain down on the both of them before whipping out his pistol and alternatively pointing it between the two of them.
His original plan was to offer no explanation, to seek vengeance without feeling the need for justification, but at his brothers' shocked and offended expressions, he broke down for what felt like the twelve-hundredth time that morning, informing them that their inability to protect his wife had led to the premature death of his first child.
The cold, lightning-fueled anger that had propelled him to the spot where he now stood was rapidly fading away, but he'd later learn it had found a home in Linda and Esme Shelby, who's husbands would be banished from their bed for a week and a month respectively.
His wife was awake when he returned home, reaching out for him with a frantic expression at the sight of his blood, but her expression quickly dimming so she was only looking at him with hollow eyes as he grasped both of her hands and swore never to leave her alone again.