METHOD OF MADNESS ━ 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐬 𝐒𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐛𝐲 ¹ (Under editing)

𝒾. 𝒯𝓌𝑜: gushing hearts

ᴺᴼᵂ ᴾᴸᴬᵞᴵᴺᴳ : drown - seafret

⇄ ◃◃ ⅠⅠ ▹▹ ↻

i. two: ❝Gushing hearts❞

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Garrison, Small Heath

THE AFTERMATH OF WAR hung over Birmingham like soot in the winter air—clinging, choking, never letting go.

Men had returned from the trenches with lungs full of ghosts, skin thin as paper, souls carved into by mud and gunfire. They stumbled back into streets that dared to remain unchanged, where washing lines sagged between the back-to-backs and women scrubbed steps as though the act itself could erase blood from memory.

But nothing was the same.

Wives bore the brunt of it—bodies bent from years of rationing and labour, voices sharp with worry, faces that had aged far quicker than their years. They carried the war on their backs like packs they could never set down: the keeping of houses, the raising of children, the tending of husbands whose minds were lost in France though their boots now walked Birmingham cobbles.

And Marianna James watched it all. From the corner seat by the Garrison's window, where the pane trembled when a tram rattled past, she sat with a stub of pencil poised over a scrap of paper. The images would not come. Once, sketches had poured from her like wine from a cracked jug—untidy, abundant, intoxicating. Now, her pencil scrawled nothing but dead ends.

Grief had stilled her hand, war had silenced her tongue.

Except for him. Tommy Shelby.

Even thinking his name sent a current through her, sharp and unpleasant, like striking a live wire in the dark. His letters had once filled her head with fire: soldier's scrawl, stiff with duty, softened only by phrases that read like promises he never intended to keep.

In those nights of blackout and hunger, she had clung to his words as though they could keep her warm. Now, with him back, flesh and breath, they scorched her instead.

The spirits whispered it to her often; Tommy was a storm you could not love without drowning. She heard them now, the murmurs at the back of her skull, the ghostly hush of Mal's voice reminding her how easily Shelby men swallowed women whole.

She smiled faintly. She was not a woman built to be swallowed.

Her thoughts were torn away by the small shadow darting past the bar. Finn Shelby, cigarette carton tucked under his arm like stolen treasure, trying to vanish into the smoke-filled room unnoticed.

Marianna narrowed her eyes, hazel glinting with that sharp, secretive amusement that made people uneasy—like she knew too much already. Her voice sliced across the room, smooth and cold. "Oi, Finn. What the fuck d'you think you're doin' with them?"