Nothing Will Change

Season 2

2 years later

Thomas Shelby was an allegory, a metaphor for something more than what most people wanted to know. Underneath he was a cosmos of mayhem, and no one wanted to venture down the pathway that was his mind. No one wanted to crack the surface of what went on inside, as what they saw was already terrifying enough. The king of Birmingham was so secluded no one had a chance to crack the surface. Apart from Polly.

Sitting with a cigarette in his hand and a glass of whiskey across from him, Tommy sighed. Two years and time felt like it barely passed at all. Was he any better than who he used to be? Now that business is booming, is he any closer to becoming a stronger man? Or is he still the same reclusive gargoyle they all feared? Likely so. His care towards how he was viewed left when she did, and it has been gone ever since. There was no one able to crack the surface because they could never be like her. And as every day passed, the more whiskey he tipped down his throat brought only the image of her. It did not matter how many ways he would try to drown her out of his mind; every blink, every sip of whiskey brought back the image of her. No longer were the scars on his fists related to war, they were from him punching the wall yelling to get some form of peace.

It didn't matter that business was booming, or that he was sitting in his new ornate office, not when she never came back. Dark oak under his fingertips and pictures of his horses and men, none of it mattered. It mattered that she never came back. His office was so grand, but he was so small, sat at his desk where he did not belong. Tommy could feel himself shrinking, sinking back to the many thoughts of how it was his fault she never came back. It was the only logical explanation. Sighing again, the worst part, the part that kept him awake every night since she left, was that he was not angry at her for it. That she shouldn't come back. That he didn't deserve her.

It was all too good. It was all too pleasant for the scum that was Thomas Shelby. He could be so arrogant, and yet he had never felt so low as to know it was him that made her not come back. But he wanted to know. He wanted to know how she was, how her mother was, how her farm is doing and if she'd done any more sketches. Though every time he sat down to put it into words in a letter, the ink was compiling what did not sound like him. It all came out so wrong. His bin filled with the scrunched up papers that all ended in desperate cries of why? Why would you not come back? Why would not write to me? Do you understand what you did?

So he gave up the letters. He stopped trying to write to her. What was the point? She clearly did not want to come back, and he would not give her a reason to fog that decision. It was the right one. So he leaned back in his chair and sucked every last breath of tobacco out of his cigarette, until it was a tiny bullet between his fingers, not even needing to be put out. And then he would take another cigarette and do the same, getting up every so often to pour more whiskey, the one she had. The day would go like they did all the same; Tommy drinking and smoking before his brothers invited him to do more with them. He would return in the early morning, and wouldn't sleep. Because he had work to do. Because he was Thomas Shelby, and Thomas Shelby doesn't sleep. Not when his business was expanding.