𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐃𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒 ♛ thomas shelby

xxxɪᴠ | ɴᴇᴀʀʟʏ ᴇᴠᴇʀʏᴛʜɪɴɢ

"So fucking close," Tommy turned his face towards the Heaven, a place he'd likely never see. Eyes closed, he could almost touch the reality that could have been, should have been. But sinners like them rarely seemed to have a happy ending. "Oh... And there's a woman. Yeah," he repeated, taking a long drag of his cigarette. One last villain to be defeated and all would have been well and truly set in stone, stones paved over their path.

"A woman, who I love...and I got close," he exhaled, hoping the numbing rush of a cigarette would calm his racing heart, ready to burst out of the confines of his shirt-clad chest. "Nearly got fucking everything!"

"Oh, what the fuck? Get it done, boys." He smoked his last and it was time to go.

With two shaky steps, he moves in front of the grave they have dug for him and he forces himself to stay calm.

When he stands beside the grave, he begins to remove all the trinkets he collected with care. First, his watch has to go and while he takes it out it feels heavier than usual, and falls quick into the dirt. There's a handkerchief in the inside pocket of his coat — he knows it because he put it there just that morning — and he takes it out before throwing his coat in the ditch. It's a small piece of white cloth, littered with faded stains ( bloodstains that couldn't be washed out of the fabric properly despite the thorough scrubbing of Polly's brush )  and Thomas lets his thumb go over the initials embroidered in the corner, two red C's entwined.

     He couldn't recall the exact moment he fell in love with her. Maybe it was that first smoke they shared in his dingy kitchen at Watery Lane, or when he twirled her around at Cheltenham ballroom, both so oblivious to the people surrounding them, high on the elation of a well executed plan of taking Kimber down.

Perhaps it was the night she spilled her heart into his hand, surrendering it freely to the pain of heartbreak. He never regreted doing the same.

They were bad, the two of them, the worst of their sort — but not to each other, never to each other. Thomas clenched the handkerchief firm in his grasp, eyes screwed tightly shut as if that could be enough to erase the gravity of the situation before him, and brought it up to his nose. He tried desperately to imagine the scent of mint and earl grey she always carried with her, waves of her dark hair spilling over her shoulders.

     Would it be awfully funny if he considered it his lucky amulet? Perhaps, but he's accepted his Gypsy legacy a long time ago and so he stuffs the embroidered handkerchief into his pocket, close to his heart where it belonged, where she belonged.

When his coat is thrown in the soft soil of the ditch, along with his lighter and pack of cigarettes, the man from behind him approaches Tommy, gun in hand. "Comrade, we have our orders. You know how it is."

     "I know how it is," he confirmed, jaw firmly set. He put down many horses before that, wounded horses, liabilities that proved of no use. That's what he was, nothing more than a nuisance in the eyes of the greater people.

The man behind him grabs onto his shoulder and pushes him to his knees. Tommy almost wants to thank him because his legs would've given out at any moment. Words die before they leave his lips, but there is a tune that had been plaguing his dreams for nights now, one of a distant Christmas carol echoing back from the frozen trenches of Flanders.

     "In the bleak midwinter."

     Danny. Freddy. Arthur. John. Ada. Finn. Polly. Cat.

The echoes of a gun shot ring in his ears, — is it England or France? — he tumbles into the fresh soil of his own grave, but there is not pain, no metallic taste of blood, no darkness.