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THOMAS SHELBY TOOK EVERY MOMENT after the war as a debt he never took up, but the one he had to pay back all the same.
And to whom? To God, for letting him live even after he prayed day and night for him to end his suffering, down in the endless abyss of tunnels, of damp earth and even damper prospects. To life itself, perhaps, even though it paved his way with barbed wire and hedges, even when it took and took and asked for more, threw him into the mud and left him to fight his way back up with bare hands and gritted teeth.
No more climbing, not this time, only mud.
Eye for an eye, life for a life. It was Death that would come as a pale rider to avenge all the lives that stained his hands since France, a debt collector of the imminent kind.
Was it because he didn't pray enough? No, God rarely had anything to do with bastards like him.
Thomas Shelby knew Death was inevitable even before they forced him to his knees in the muddy field somewhere outside Epsom and pointed a loaded gun to his head. He had seen it many times, all its forms and shapes, felt it fill up his lungs and his brains.
Once, he would have welcomed it like an old friend.
Now, however, it was only regret that collected like a familiar stranger. Everything, he had nearly everything, right there in his hands and now it's dissappeared like a quicksand thorugh his hollow grip.
As Thomas kneeled deep in the mud — it stained his suit, the cold soil soaking greedily into the fabric, turning his stomach with memories he so long tried to surpress and yet here they were again, wrapping their pale hand around his throat — he tried to recall some prayer or another, some of those that Polly tried to ingrave into their brains back when they were little and the most of their worries revolved around the rain and the sun.
None came to his mind save the foreboding tune of a Christmas caroll they sang back in the trenches, the Small Heath Rifles, a promise to be recited over each of their graves.
How funny it was, that he'd have to say the words for himself.
Thomas Shelby was a selfish man, yes, because there was only one person on his mind, the love of his life to whom he promised he would return to, no matter the cost, no matter how many lives he had to take to taste her lips again, to hold her tight and never let go again. He promised her the world and yet there he was, kneeling, waiting.
Thomas waited for a gunshot with his eyes closed firmly shut, ready to die with her name on his lips.
