Gun metal and Daisies (Thomas Shelby)

Nothing ends poetically.

"Everything alright?"
They ask.

I respond
As quickly
As I can
So they will not
Notice the earthquakes
In my voice
Or the tsunamis
In my eyes
Or the drought
In my heart.

When the Shelby family heard the news of the Monroe's leaving Small Heath, their reactions varied massively.

Esme stuffed the heels of her hands into her eyes as a means to block the tears. Arthur abruptly took a bottle of whiskey off the shelf and sat in a chair, his body caved in on itself as he held the bottle closer to his chest while his back strained from the tightness. John stormed out of the room- none of the Shelby's know where he went- he went and sat by Martha's grave. Finn cried quietly as he thought of all the things he lost because she had gone- no one had ever hugged him that hard with that much security. Ada kicked up and rioted; she shouted and pointed fingers; slammed her fists on Thomas' chest and demanded to know the reason why.
Polly only sipped on her tea, whispered a silent prayer and tucked a folded note under her saucer.

But thankfully things had gone back to normal- relatively at least.
It had been a whole year after all.

Thomas threw himself into his work. He didn't grieve: he didn't deny anything; he didn't feel an ounce of guilt; he wasn't angry; he didn't appear lonely; he didn't accept that something was missing.

He didn't think of Tammy, a girl who didn't understand much, but knew love like a mother tongue. Theo, a boy who was smarter than he was big and could set the world on fire with a smile and drink. Matilda who was so selfless that she didn't consider for a moment that the world was stacked against her, who's every bone in her body was jubilant, loving and maternal. Leah- so sweet and kind, she saw anguish and laughed in the face of sadness because her family held her hand- she saw love in a every nook and cranny and corner.

Charlie- a boy who would sacrifice everything for the safety of his family. And he did. He did for the ultimate price.
No, Thomas didn't think about the family that took him in when he had clothes on his back and money in his pocket- he didn't think about the family that he chose to love.

He also didn't think about the woman who had changed everything. Without her, he wouldn't of had this small army of people who laughed with him when he couldn't by himself.

No. He didn't think about any of that.

He did think about it though, at his brother-in-laws funeral. His old mate. The one that took a bullet for him in France.
It was only then, the day he was supposed to be grieving, did he finally allow himself to reflect.

It was after he got the news of his pub blowing up, that the first thought that flashed in his mind was the last funeral he was supposed to go to. The one he missed because he was too busy cursing life itself.

So instead of following his family to the ashen Garrison- he made his way to a particular hillside, that had a special grave on it.

The markings of the grave were unimpressive, null and void. It was a small stone with a big Cut carved into it, surrounded in a small circle with other stones.

He sat at the foot of the grave, he rested his forearms on his bent knees and held a cigarette in one hand.

Despite what the rest of the Shelby family wanted, he didn't go looking for them. He didn't send a scout- nothing.

"Fuck it." Thomas thought.

"I don't know what to do Charlie." He rested his head in his palm. "I don't know what to fucking do... I can't keep pretending- that- that everything's alright without you, without them, without her."

He, for the first time, allowed tears to dribble down his face, he sniffed and wiped his eyes, "I can't believe you're gone. I still don't believe you're gone. You can't be. You can't be."

In these kinds of situations, Charlie would have rolled his eyes and would have told Thomas to get a right fucking grip on himself and go find them.

"For a brief moment, everything was alright. I had her in me arms. I held her tightly in a way I had never done before. Fuck, I can still smell her scent. It's never left." His stubbed out his cigarette.

It had occurred to Thomas while he sat in front of that grave: that maybe sometimes, people don't want to ever get better or dig themselves out of the mud. People are afraid to heal because they have no idea who they are outside of their tribulations. And it was finally then, when Thomas faced that grave- that thing he'd been avoiding for about a year now- he realised that when he was with her, there was something outside of his pain. He was more than a ruthless gangster and a broken soldier. He was a fucking human, at that.

He wanted to move on. He wanted get rid of the love he held within, but he just couldn't. He just fucking couldn't. He wanted to move on. But moving on meant forgetting and he was not ready to let her go yet.

For so long now, only after they'd left- he'd been afraid. He'd been afraid about how she made him feel because he didn't want to feel anything- nay- he couldn't feel anything. Polly's God wouldn't let him.

Dorothy was like poetry for him. But like everything, nothing ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful. It was just red.

Thomas remembered something Polly said to John when he came home one night, drunk. She said; "you chug a fifth of alcohol by yourself and everyone around you is too busy cheering to wonder how empty you had to be in order to do it."
He scoffed at the time- but now those kind of incentives made sense.

"Fine then. I fucking need them. Yeah? That's what you wanted to fucking hear, eh? Cheeky bastard." He had a small smile on his face, that made him look like a mad man laughing beside a pile of rocks, but no one would point that out.

——

Sorry for the small updates, things are a bit hectic at the moment! Well, anyway- i hope you're all doing well and I hope you're prepared for these next few chapters! No spoilers!

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