Passion Bearers

The letter

We sleep until we fall in love, we are children of dust, but you fall in love and you are God, you are pure, as if on the first day of Creation
-Lev Tolstoy

(for full experience listen to I Found by Amber Run)

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Dear Tess,

I am not a man of many words. But, thoughts have been them collecting in my mind, gathering together like a well catching rainwater and I've understood a few things. I don't know when you will get this, but I am writing to you two months since I left Cornwall. These past two months were one of the worst ones in my life, if not accounting for those spent tunnelling through France.

I miss you. I miss our children, so much so that I have to lay down in their little beds sometimes, inhaling the smell that is soon vanishing. I miss swinging Charlie in my hands, I miss kissing Tara's little cheeks. I did not think I could love someone as much as I love them. As I love you.

I miss the smell of the kitchen when you cook meat pies for Christmas. I miss coming back to a house alight with life. I miss reading that silly little book about a rabbit that Tara had been obsessed with for a few months, the one she wouldn't stop asking for each night. I miss seeing you smile, you smiled so rarely before you left and I keep regretting the fact that I did not notice.

Regret is a feeling that often follows me like a shadow. I regret ever going to your vardo that night, when you held that liquor tightly in your hands. We were so young then, Tess, so fucking stupid too. I did not quite realise how young we were until later, until now. Were I in the same situation today, Tess, I would come kneeling to your mother's door, begging her to let me marry you. That's what I should've done, I should've taken you to see the pictures, I should've given you flowers, the ones you like, forget-me-nots.

I had loved you for such a long time without realising, Tess, that there is no point in trying to figure out when it all started. Perhaps it was when I was seventeen and I got sick during one of our explorations and you were the only one who volunteered to take me back to the caravan. I remember seeing your hair light up in gold in front of the fire and thinking that I'd met an angel. I remember how the whole encampment used to be abuzz about how I fancied your sister, Esmeralda, because John caught me staring at you and your sisters. Esmeralda would try to be cheeky with me until the next year's fair but you must know Tess, that I was looking at you. I was always looking at you.

Had I done the right thing, who knows where it would've led us?

I keep thinking that had I not come to you that night and put a child into you, that you would not love me. That you'd be happy with Randy Young, raising his ginger children. Perhaps that would've been better. God knows that Randy probably deserves you more than I do. I never deserved you, not really. I want things that I cannot have, Tess, and raise hell to get them. Greed and ambition gnaw at me like dogs gnawing on bones. It is forever in the back of my mind. I want it all, Tess, I want it all for us and heavens know I am not afraid to step on heads for it.

Never think that I was with other women because you were lacking. It was I who was lacking. Courage, responsibility, kindness, whatever else there is. The war had blurred many lines between what was good and bad and I became a monster, Tess. I look into the mirror sometimes and I do not recognise myself. The man who I was before the war is no longer the man I am now. At least, not in the ways that really matter.

Think carefully, Tess, think for as long as you need to, be it months or years, if this is the man that you want to spend the rest of your life with. Because, know that if you come back to me, I will never, ever let you go.

Sincerely yours,

Thomas Shelby.

Notes:

I hope the formatting change doesn't trip you out. Also, side note, the reason Tommy and Tess knew each other so well as children is because Tommy's grandmother was a Boswell and they are known for hosting the Appleby Horse Fair for gypsies so they would have spent a lot of time together as children, even outside of the fair.