The flickering light from an ignited match illuminated the man in black. A citrine flame burnt dark orange, glinting across the shrouding shadows that engulfed him, like the moonlight dancing along a crashing sea. Trails of smoke whispering away like a forgotten prayer, fading into the winter atmosphere as a forsaken breath, never to be remembered when its scent drained from the air.
Snow dusted his shoulder tips, as though the flakes of pure crystalized droplets dipping down from the evening's hidden clouds, could endeavor to seep past the fabric and lighten the darkness that tainted his soul and burdened his heart.
It was a fast flurry of descent in which the Christmas snowflakes fell upon the worn cobblestone streets of Small Heath. A blur of white contrasting the perpetual shade of grey that inhabited the city, like a breath of clarity breaking through the exhale of smog, even if just for one single night. It settled within the cracks of the street, piling in the crevices for the heat of the nearby factories and busy footsteps to melt away.
But they fell from the heavens without a single taint to their flakes, as the effect of mankind had yet to swipe its bloody hand across the surface and the grips of reality had not yet captured them in their calloused palms. It was a peaceful sight, something so seldom witnessed within the confines of Birmingham and by the eyes of those who had had them recently scarred by the sights in France.
Tommy Shelby couldn't remember the last time he'd witnessed a snowfall as serene as this. For even when the flakes would bathe his shivering shoulders down in those trenches and obscure the land in a blanket of white when he emerged from beneath the Earth, it was a cold sight. A frigid notion that grasped tightly to the human soul, as though the ice that coated the soil and the blistering freeze that captivated the atmosphere, signaled a place forsaken and abandoned.
It didn't make the grounds, that were too frozen to absorb the blood pooling from comrades sprawled and deceased, appear softer as it did here on this Small Heath Christmas night. It didn't have the power to make the sins of mankind seem to disappear in the blizzard of a pure virgin snow, not when his eyes peered at the evidence staining his numbed fingertips in an unforgiving hue of crimson. It wasn't a snow that made the world seem as though hope lingered just over the horizon, for it felt as such an emotion was buried six feet under in the tunnels that he'd crafted with his own two hands.
It was the first snowfall Tommy Shelby witnessed back on home soil and it was the first one that felt different in every single flake and every single frozen breath he took.
Black wool, tailored and trimmed, draped down his frame. Layered over soft grey tweed and a button-down shirt that whispered a faint blued hue, like the softened waves of his cerulean gaze that had yet to resurface since his return home to Watery Lane. With his cap snug upon the bridge of his scalp, reflecting the natural light that radiated from the fresh snowfall off of the silver razors stitched intricately into its rim, Tommy nearly vanished into the December night's ebony shadows.
But the Sweet Afton he cradled between his two fingers, paper worn and turning darker with the burning tobacco rolled tightly inside, illuminated his presence when he took a drag. For even as Tommy belonged to the darkness that sought to consume him, there was a resilience to the light of the universe. Like a moth drawn to a flame, the slightest shred of light seemed to seek him out and project a sharp juxtaposition across his being.
Perhaps, she'd known it was him far before the sight of his features came sharper into her view. Perhaps, she'd known it from the scent of his smokes, that engulfed the dark December night in an aroma she hadn't forgotten in all of the years apart. Maybe she'd simply felt him, his presence a beacon of light reflecting upon of an abyss of nothingness, for the first time since he'd left this place.
