She was an impossible beauty that Thomas Shelby had never known. A mystical legend of the afterlife, a blessed being donned with wings woven from thread of impenetrable gold and adorned in the shining light of redemption, like her hands hadn't a single trace of sin lacing the lines that curved along her palms.
She was folklore. Tales told to the children whose hands were already dusted with the soot of the cursed Birmingham streets, their lungs stained by the smoke and the smog that coated them in a glaze of suffocating grey. Whose lives were already tainted the moment they drew a breath in the damned city where God had yet to lay a hand, in an attempt to mystify them with the idea that there was such a thing as salvation for their poor souls that were already slated against the odds.
She was the whispers of what could become of a soul when immaculate and cleansed of sin and trouble, in a city that churned out such things like smoke passing through an old Watery Lane chimney. She was the tall tale of peace in a time when such a notion had been shattered to a million lost pieces, buried in oblivion beneath the death laden soil back in France.
She was the little white lie told as a soul readied to cross that threshold into the next life, a beautiful mosaic painted across their demising minds of what might be awaiting them past their last weary breath. When the reality was nothing more than a bleached white cloth draped over the eyes of those desperate enough to believe such an eternity was there. Where their names were written in stone and their souls were welcomed beyond gates of pearl toned gold and glistening lights brighter than the sun had ever shone.
She was the angel that Thomas Shelby had never known. For a man like him, he'd only ever known devils in this life, and he knew without a shred of doubt residing in his mind, that those were all that awaited him when they finally returned to claim the soul he'd long ago sold off.
He was a dead man walking, a mere ghost wading through this life. For he wore death like shackles, coiled tightly around his ankles with the sharp bite of metal piercing against his flesh with each stride he took. The chains of his forsaken soul clattering together in the echoing silence, as the devils owned the other end and clutched them tightly in their grasps. Pulling on them every so often, just enough to tease Tommy with the notion of death, but never delivering the final blow of mercy a man like him so hopelessly craved.
He was a man out of time and yet, the devils kept the thin hands of his brushed gold pocket watch ticking. He had purpose on this Earth, uses for his hands that delivered the bloodshed the spirits beyond could not. Uses for his mind that was far too intelligent and methodical for his own good, a burden carried on the bones of his body that carried on with each and every battering he took.
Tommy was immortal to the world, a man who'd stared death in the eyes and tasted the very blood of his demise on the tip of his tongue but walked away with his life still hanging on by a precarious thread inside of his chest. Tommy was mortal to the devils that lingered beyond however, for they owned him... and when they were ready and he'd accomplished all that was left to be done, they'd sever that thread with a simple snip of a shear.
The cathedral was an oasis on the outskirts of Birmingham, an establishment that withstood the harshness the city ensued and when Tommy Shelby proceeded to step past its tall wooden doors, he felt why it had stood for so very long in this cursed city.
It was a breath unlike any found in the nature of the countryside or even the air that saturated the finest of establishments. For the atmosphere that awaited him, felt as if it had been lift untouched by man. Even as it was the calloused palms of workers that laid the glistening-stained glass windows, the sweat coated muscles of the men who placed the aisles of endless oak pews, the lives that decorated the alter with all the evidence of a faith manufactured to answer a single question, it felt cleansed in a way that the city Tommy knew inside and out, had never felt before.
