Nothing Will Change

The End - Season 1

Thomas Shelby stood at the station with a ticket in one hand and his hat in the other. The blade shined with his danger, the most threatening man in Small Heath. He was power and hunger personified in a man who had seen so much. And done so much more. He had killed many men, burying bodies under his fingernails like the dirt that lay on top of their bodies. Cruel would be one way to define him, a foreboding presence burning into the retinas of all those so terrified of him. Stationary with his hands clasped together, his knuckles pricked in scars, he kept his head down, as he did not need to look up for everyone around him to know that he was Thomas Shelby, the king of Birmingham.

In a farm that grew flowers is where Rose was next to go. Tommy looked down at the ticket, every letter memorized in his mind. He was so close to buying a second, to go with her as he knew the grief of losing a parent. But he stopped himself. He stopped himself because underneath the urge to be her savour he knew it was only a journey she could go on her own. With her mother. She would have a parent with her to say goodbye to the other, she would not lose them to the drink and the night. Because Rose was unlike him, she lived peacefully, and if he went with her he would ruin that.

Rose was the sky at sunrise, the plants peaking through the concrete that brought the tiniest bit of green to the gray city. She was a little robin bird, gentle and soft, singing tunes so synonymous with comfort. During visions of opium she's at the end of the tunnel, and he is crawling to her; the light, the safe place. She's all of it combined. He could hold her in his hands and she'd still feel so above his state of being. How could the most dangerous man be handed a pristine white feather and be told not to let it turn red? How could she stay white and untouched? She was picked from a dove or the wings of an angel, and he thought he should give her back as if holding on she'd turn red and lose what made her beautiful.

As she approached him at the station with her bag in hand, it was so hard not to be consumed. It was stupidly difficult not to remind himself of the very ways she made him first fall for her. From the very start it was her aura, the suffocating eariness of innocence that punctured his lungs trying to rid it of the gunk that occupied him. It was her polite smile and lack of fear to stand so close to him. Tommy knew from the first instance she was conflicting from himself. But that was the very reason as to why people fall for one another, they crave what is unlike themselves. His sorrow could be saved in her daintiness, and he could give her what would make her even more alluring. And knowing you can help someone become what they should become is an all too pleasant feeling.

Standing across from himself, she put down her bag and he contemplated giving the ticket at all. She looked down at it in his hands, firmly guarded from herself, and she smiled back up at him.

"When you told me about your mother I was so far gone I didn't know what to say. I'm sorry. If she was anything like Ada I would have loved to have met her," she said, unlike anything he was expecting from her.

"Ada has more of a temper," he scoffed a laugh and his expression warmed by the mention of his mother again.

"Even still... You don't speak of her much."

"I speak of her."

"Once on our date, but that was all happy. You never told me how she passed."

Tommy took hold of her coat to pull her closer, slipping the ticket into her pocket as he did, "cause it's in the past. And the past is not my concern, you're my concern."

The gasps of the trains could be heard arriving in the distance, Rose stifling a sound knowing they had so little time. It had slipped from their palm like water, and they were far too ambitious to believe they could capture it. It was so uncertain and so fleeting, bringing them together to force them apart.

"I will come back to you Thomas Shelby," Rose assured him and he hugged her again ignoring the pain in his chest. Every embrace they shared seemed to be lasting a second longer each time, or perhaps it was the need to never let go which grew stronger each time. How many thoughts in his head will be repeated just with the passing of her, how many times will he debate the same thing in his head over and over? Enigma, to be loved, how much he wanted to put a bullet through time and take her back into his arms.

He chuckled, "you still have a contract of employment so I would suggest so or I'll be looking to terminate your position."

She rolled her eyes, "always such a tender use of words Mr Shelby. Even In such circumstances you're just as heartless."

"Oi I'll terminate you right now," he pulled away and wagged a finger at her, completely losing his concrete wall which Rose continued smiling at. Polly was right about her control over him, and she'd miss the cracks of the old Tommy she was the only one able to break free. She hoped from her presence he would start to shed the shell of war even slightly, let himself be at peace. Her eyes watered gazing up at shadow that used to be the man she was in love with, and how she yearned for him to able to share it with the world like he used to.

"I'll write to you," she promised.

"And I'll write back."

Hair flying passed as the train rushed to a halt, Rose nervously picked up her suitcase and watched the other travelers prepare to leave. And catching her nervousness, Tommy placed his hands either side of her head and kissed her the way she taught him. He trailed down from her forehead to her mouth, letting his eyes close as he was consumed completely. And soon that feeling faded, and will continue to fade for long after the train disappeared down the tracks, but he would hold onto it. It would sink into a distant memory of the time they sahred and he would reminisce of the time he let his walls be broken just for a moment.

As the train took off down the tracks and the vision of her in the window along with it, Tommy sighed. His hand dropped to his side where he had waved her goodbye, the glow on his face dissipating with it. What was welcomed back was the Tommy everyone feared. The ruthless, heartless Thomas Shelby with the blade in his hat and a gun under his coat. The cold, stoic man whose eyes of ice were burned with the faces of those he had killed, burned with the layout of tunnels he dug underground. Clutched in his hand was now a cigarette, stinging his lungs just to feel something, knowing as soon as he got home that night he would be clutching the opium pipe; the only way to cloud the memories of terror.

For that moment in time had passed, that moment to which he would let a glimpse of himself be seen was gone. She had taken it with her, and until she returned it would not come back to him.