NEW REIGN || Tommy Shelby

XV. THE LAST VOW

- THE LAST VOW -

She was dreaming. She thought she was, at least, as she stared out at the dark, lamp-lit medical tent that was too detailed to be a dream and too fogged to be a memory. The tent looked exactly like the ones she had spent so many years in during the war, except it was empty and silent; there were no shells exploding in the distance or men screaming and crying out. The beds were made, the medical tools all sparking silver in the low light. She turned, once, twice, examining the world around her that had somehow become more foreign than familiar.

It wasn't until then, on her third turn, that she thought of Tommy. Her heart lurched in her chest as she stared at the beds, looking for him lying on one of them; but he was nowhere to be found.

She moved towards the exit of the tent, bracing herself for the pain of her body- her very last memory- but there was nothing. Her body moved like the wind, no pain, no sound. She pulled open the flap to the tent, and when she stepped through it, she walked into another tent that was three times the size, but this time it was definitely not empty.

The noise was deafening- shouting, crying, glass breaking, nurses yelling. She tried to steel herself but found nothing left to gather together, her heart now fragments and shards of what she and Tommy had held and patched together. She walked through the beds and none of the men seemed to see her as she did. It was strange and eerie, like walking through a photograph of a time gone by.

The beds seemed endless, just as the anguish on the men's faced seemed to seep back into her bones slowly but surely. She finally reached the end of the tent, looking for another exit- for a way to get out of this hell of her own creation- when a voice called her name. She wheeled around and gasped.

The men were gone. The noise was gone. The beds were empty again, and there were no nurses and doctors dancing between cots and patients. She didn't have time to process it all when her eyes landed on one bed in the middle of the masses, a small oil lamp hanging from the wooden post next to it.

There was a man lying in it, his eyes closed, his face half shadowed in darkness. But she would recognize the shape of him anywhere. She would recognize the rise and fall of his chest, the tilt of his jaw, the silhouette of his body. She would know him even in death.

Tommy was lying still, alone in the ocean of other beds. He must have known she was there because as she took a step towards him, he turned his head, greeting her with a small smile. When she reached his bed, she sat at the end of it and he grabbed her hand.

He looked different, she realized. Younger. There were bags under his eyes, but everything else- the winkles that edged his steel eyes were gone, his cheeks were flushed pink, his hair was jet black, no sign of the greys that had begun to show behind his ears.

She wished they had had more time. The time they had loved each other had been so fraught with violence, so ruled by fear, that seeing him so young and calm was jarring. He looked up at her and smiled, the looked she had imagined he always wore before the war. She smiled back, squeezing his hand once.

"Why are you here?" he asked, his voice hoarse and quiet. She leaned closer to hear him. It was a strange question- was her mind playing tricks on her? It seemed that every thought she had, every decision she had made, had lead her to this moment. To the end of his bed, the the warmth of his hand in hers.

"Why are you here," she said finally, unsure of how to answer his question. In response, he let go of her hand and pulled the blanket that had been covering him down. She gasped.

His chest and his abdomen were carved with deep gashes, each of them perfectly stitched with blue medical thread and cleaned neatly. But the cuts were familiar. She had traced her fingers over the scars of them so many nights, but it was not just that. The stitching, the curve of the wounds- they struck a chord so deep in her heart that she wondered if she might fade away one last time.