Summary: Tommy last saw you before the war, he never thought he would see you again. But what brings you back to him, gives him no joy, and yet, there is something he can do to help. And nothing will stop him.
Word count: 1835
A/N: This fic was purely inspired by the gif above. I just love it. It's one of my fav's. Credit goes to the creator.
Warnings: This is a heavy fic, proceed with caution. Mentions of domestic abuse. Violence in the family setting and descriptions of physical injuries. Some swearing
A/N: Please feel free to send me a message or comment, I would love to know what you think.
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The last time Tommy saw you, was the day he enlisted. He broke your heart that day, and in turn, you broke his, remembering it as if it were only yesterday. Dressed in his brand-new uniform, he came to you asking for your hand in marriage. And instead of saying yes, he stood there helplessly as you took in his uniform, watching all the colour drain from your features as a stream of tears trailed down your cheek, before turning around and walking from his life. You left Small Heath. You left Birmingham. Left your whole life behind to run away and forget him. To pretend he never existed, in a bid to avoid the heartache when the dreaded yellow telegram was delivered to your door, so sure you were that he would not return. Just like the telegram your mother received, just three months after your father left for the battlefields of South Africa. And in a way, you had been right. The man that left Birmingham barely resembled the one that returned.
Maybe a part of him did die; left behind and buried in those dark suffocating tunnels beneath the battlefields of France. Gone forever. Or maybe that part of him died the moment you walked away and left him standing in his uniform under your favourite oak tree, a tree that until that moment, had been a place of only beautiful memories. Maybe he would never know when that part of him died. But what he did know, was that when his eyes saw you sitting by the fire in his kitchen, after years of thinking he would never see you again, he felt a jolt in the long-lost regions of his heart.
Tommy had been home from France for less than a year, and he had not heard a word about you. He didn't go searching for any either; it was too painful. Of course, he still saw your family around the streets of Small Heath, and they were a constant reminder of you, dredging up all those sweet memories and the heartache that still burnt raw in his chest. Because Tommy still loved you. He would always love you. No number of women, whores, barmaids or otherwise, could ever change that. It was a permanent thing. All he could do, was let you be, and hope you found the peace and happiness that he knew he would never find without you.
The evening had not been a good one. Like every other night, Tommy's sleep was plagued by the nightmares he lived through, day and night, during his time in France. Finding himself sitting on the edge of his bed, his chest heaving and forehead covered in sweat, he heard the panicked voice of Curly calling out his name from the street below. Throwing his clothes on, Thomas rushed out into the pouring rain, where Curly took him to Charlie's yard to find his horse lame and cursed by the bloody Lee's, leaving him with no other choice, but to shoot the damn thing. And it was while he was gone, that you arrived under the cover of darkness, taken in by Polly to warm up with a whisky and dry by the fire.
