The dark shadows of night shrouded the small bedroom, fighting for dominance over the timid candlelight that flickered in a soft sway, nearly extinguishing the single flame beneath the weight of it's suffocating indigo presence. The Small Heath sky was void of starlight that night, lost like the sliver of the moon behind the haze of cloud coverage. But you couldn't help but wonder, if the stars themselves had simply ceased shining when the constant breath of smog, that didn't even disappear in that of the evening's shadows, threatened their twinkling light. Resulting in a blanket of indigo that was more black than blue, casted across the city, bleeding it's darkness into the very air of the Watery Lane walls.
Silence trailed on it's heels as though it was a packaged deal, the faded wallpapered walls eerily dense with the void that engulfed the bedroom. You sat alone, the only soul in the house, having pulled the small metal bathtub to the foot of the bed, beneath the window cracked open barely a sliver for the crisp evening air. Your toes pressed softly against the smooth metal, as the tips of your bare knees met the cool air as they bent and broke through the surface of the now lukewarm water.
The tub was cramped and when you reclined your neck back, the edge grew to dig into you skin like the winter wind biting at your flesh. But there was something in the feeling of washing away the day, even with lukewarm water in a narrow metal tub, that relaxed you. A calm that cascaded over you just as the rinsed soap trickled down your flesh and back into the gathered water in the tub, cleaning the grim of the city from your skin while easing the memories of the day in a breath of relief.
You hadn't heard him enter the bedroom, as the only sound that echoed against the four surrounding walls, belonged to the timid trickles of droplets as your arms swished softly through the bath water pruning up your bare skin. But even if you had rested soundly in bed, you knew you wouldn't have heard his steps ascending the stairs, because for a man who held a profound presence that immediately demanded the attention of whoever stood in the same room he inhabited, Thomas Shelby could be as silent as the hand of death itself.
It was only as the softest creak echoed through the air from the pressure of his side leaning against the doorframe, the aged and worn foundation groaning beneath his presence, and the distinct scent of cigarette smoke funneling into the room in the thinnest breath, that your head turned to the side and peered towards the doorway. His shadow cast across the hardwood, as though the hovering shade beamed from that of a fully bloomed sycamore.
For even as the dim light of the flickering flame, danced in a gentle beam of bright citrine against the adjacent wall, it was as though the shadows that engulfed his frame extinguished the glow before it could ever graze across his flesh. The faintest hint, glinting across the shaved side of his scalp and reflecting back in the sheen of his orbs, but ultimately falling futile at his feet. But you'd learned to view Tommy Shelby in all of his forms, even if it meant training your eyes to seem him as clearly in the darkness of all-consuming shadows, as you did in the overcast light of day.
His left hand clutched tightly to his peaky cap, nearly crushing it in the grasp of his coiled fist. It was damp, but you knew from the lack of rainfall occupying the still and sullen night sky, that the moisture soaking through the tweed fabric was one in which you preferred not to ponder longer than necessary. His knuckles, braced so tightly that it bled a striking white against his warm toned flesh, were torn. Caked in crimson that adhered to his skin, no longer trailing down his long fingers or the curl of his wrist, a dark trail of red peeking out from beneath his cuff. His right, concealed by the way his shoulder leaned that arm against the wooden doorframe, was bound to be just as bloodied and bruised as the one visible to your eye. You couldn't see the bruises along his left hand, from where he stood in the doorway and where you remained submerged in a tub of lukewarm water, but you could imagine the sight of the shades blending into the shadows. A deepening purple that teetered upon the line of a emboldened blue, days from now turning to a ripe and aching greened hue that consumed the entirety of his cut up knuckles.
