devil's backbone 🗝 tommy shelby

chapter 16

n// imagine me updating anything else but this book wow what a concept!! oh well you're stuck w me :) as i promised some of you, long chapter ahead! enjoy <3

ps you're welcome ;)

Thomas wanted to do many things at the moment.  Part of him wanted to scream, the other wanted to cry, the other wanted to kill someone, the other wanted to just laugh until all the pain went away, and the last part of him wished he'd never been born at all.  But the thing that these parts of the man agreed on was this: when times were as hard as they currently were, there was only one person that could make him feel better.

He really didn't have the time to go see her.  Truly, he didn't.  Between his now legitimate business, is illegitimate business, the inspector, the guns, his personal life, and every other little speck of bullshit in his life, he shouldn't have been making his way over to the local school.  But, alas, he was.  His feet were on and his common sense was off; he needed this more than he knew.

As he entered the school, he was met by curious and judgmental looks, but he didn't pay them any mind.  He just kept his cool, his peaked cap over his eyes, and his cigarette in his mouth.  There wasn't a damn thing that could stop him from seeing his Sybil Day, especially in times like these.

He glanced at the children as they played, smiles on their faces and laughter in their hearts as they did so.  He found himself remembering all the times where he was in that situation as a child, and how Sybil was never one to join.  She was always sat off to the side, nose in a book that as more than likely far too mature for someone her age to have been reading, trapped in another world.

The thought of it brought the slightest of barely-even-there smiles to his face, but quickly snapped out of it as he approached her door.  Opening it, Thomas walked right in, and let the door slam behind him, causing Sybil to flinch harshly.

"Jesus!" she gasped, placing a hand over her heart.

Tommy looked her over, seeing that she looked how she always did.  Same blonde hair, same brown eyes, same style of dress that she wore so well, and the same book that he'd seen in her hands when she was teaching.  But although she looked the same, Tommy knew that there was also something very different about her.  She wasn't the same Billie that he'd gotten to know after the fateful wedding.  The woman that he'd sat next to at the church was bold — a streak of violet in the dull Birmingham sky that everyone sought after.  The woman before him, she wasn't Billie.  Her eyes had sunken into her lovely face, she looked paler than usual, her hair looked mousy, and she looked as if she had one more little fright she'd croak on the spot.

And although Thomas loved her the same, he did not want to have to love her the same.  He never wanted to see her live a life where she wasn't that streak of violet through the grey.  He wanted her to be as happy and vibrant and colourful for as long as she was on this planet.  Seeing her in her current state just broke the Blinder's heart.

"You must stop doing this," Billie sighed, relaxing a little bit. "And you must also learn how to knock!"

"Couldn't wait." he shrugged, nonchalant as ever.

Sybil looked at him for a moment, and really took in his appearance.  He was smoking — as he always seemed to be — and he didn't wear a smile — as he never seemed to do.  But, he was striking nonetheless.  His eyes popped brilliantly against his dusty black coat, and although she was sure that the circumstances of his visit were certainly not clean, she couldn't help but be a mixture of happy and frightened at the same time.