Arrow House resounded with the ever-present descent of rain. Soft torrents blowing in from darkening storm clouds obscured somewhere off in the shadowed distance, as the droplets that were kissed with the chilling touch of the entering winter season, endeavored to cleanse the blood from the gravel. Crimson settling into the crevices of loose sediment and rigid stone, while the midnight rainstorm merely made puddles out of the bloodshed, saturating the pebbles until the memory of what had happened out on those back steps would remain long after the precipitation ceased.
Night engulfed the mansion that stood as if not a single soul resided within its gothic presence. Shadows climbing the walls like twisted ropes of dangling ivy, broken only by the faint cracklings of lightening that loomed beyond the horizon and the fields left dormant in the cold November clutch. Silence echoing up and down the corridors, like all those who lodged in its quarters had discovered peace in the dark waning hours of the evening and the first breath of a new tomorrow quickly approaching. But the silence that engulfed Arrow House, was a contradiction in of itself.
For the halls might've been quiet, the voices of all those that had once graced the pristinely cleaned floors gone, the barrage of live instruments humming in every corner of every room erased as if their notes had never been strung at all. But as midnight settled in a rush of chilling rain, Arrow House stood anything but silent.
Secrets resided beyond the evergreen painted walls. Underneath the golden frames and the sleek brushed mahogany, past the fortune that adorned the house in a luxury the eyes of a Small Heath citizen had scarcely known, echoed the voices of lost souls. Like ghosts trapped in the walls, spirits clambering to get out. But it was not just the departed that cried out for freedom. The living suffered inside of these immaculate surroundings too.
A man; broken by a life crafted both by the devil's hand and his own, shackled to this place like he might never escape what it was that kept him tethered to this cursed place. Just a man, with air in his lungs and life in blood, walking these corridors as though his soul had abandoned him long ago and he strode a ghost in his own reality.
The pungent scent of his Sweet Aftons led you to him, an odor he wore like the smoke that coated his lungs, flowed from his pores and made up the very particles of his flesh along the way. It was a scent that made you think of home, when it was just a crumpled-up box of half-soiled cigarettes swiped off the streets and lit with a single match on the edge of the canal. When it was the scent you looked forward to smelling every evening you snuck out to see him, when it became the scent to overpower your first lousy flat and overwhelm your wardrobe like it stitched itself into the lining of your each and every dress.
When it was just you and Tommy against the world, when Tommy Shelby was still just Tommy Shelby.
But now, it was the smoke that clung to your Japanese silks and one-of-a-kind mink furs. It was the scent that battled the aroma of crackling cedar from the grand fireplace and the expensive tinge of amber that now coated your flesh. It was just smoke now, sharp tobacco that became of Thomas, as if in the creation of his very foundation the scent was woven like threads of soft tweed layered throughout.
You discovered him in the kitchen, the abandoned quarters that no longer echoed with the clatter of dishes and the rushing of waiters, but rather the stark silence that followed Tommy around like he was the shade of melancholy that dusted the world. His cologne had nearly faded from his flesh and yet, the sharp burn of the familiar spice still lingered in the air. Like the intoxicating burn of a fresh whiskey flowing down your throat, the sting that pricked along the trail of your senses, was welcome in the ache that followed.
Your footsteps made not a single sound as you tiptoed along the cold tile, the heels that had bitten into the flesh of your ankles in the previous evening's hour, now swung by their silver straps as you carried them in the curve of your fingertips. Brushing every so often against the slick satin of your gown, a shimmering sheen of sapphire gliding down your frame until it engulfed your body in a wave of pure and unscathed azure only the seas could envy.
