"One minute. The solider's minute."
Gwendolyn Stuart and Thomas Shelby. Two people who are opposites yet one in the same. Will Thomas save Gwendolyn from herself or will he push her past the point of no return?
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Gilded Lily - Cults
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Gwendolyn was a paradoxical figure - both destroyed and comforted by solitude. She draped herself in fashionable attire and fancy accessories, all to conceal her vulnerabilities which she believed were visible to everyone.
Yet, amidst all the agony, she could sometimes catch a glimpse of the bright light that symbolized the life she had always longed for. But life had a way of throwing obstacles in her path - twisting roots and sharp rocks that caused her to stumble and fall.
With each stumble, she gained a new scar and lost a fragment of hope. Seemingly, things were always destined to go wrong for poor Gwendolyn. Casting herself as the lead in a comedy show inside her own head seemed to keep the dread at bay.
A white cross adorned her bedroom wall, a relic from her infancy that her mother had placed there to bless Gwendolyn's life. Certain mementos seemed to ache more than others, as if they held a piece of the past within them that she could somehow slip back into.
But dwelling on memories was no way to live - the past was gone, and the journey forward weighed heavily on her soul.
Time was supposed to be a balm that slowly healed wounds, but for Gwendolyn, it only tore open old scars and caused them to bleed anew. She adored her brothers, but they could never replace the hole that her parents had left.
She sensed that they felt the same, but they never spoke of it or showed any emotions. Gwendolyn felt frightened by the thought that their hearts might be freezing over, just like Mr. Shelby's. The boys she once knew as kind and sweet had been through so much that their hearts had become rough and worn.
Malachi called it "The Great Stuart War" when he was drunk on too much whiskey. He would make jokes in front of Adrian, sparing his little sister the pain. The brothers battled their demons by pushing them deep down into the recesses of their subconscious, locking the key and throwing it away, never to be opened again, except in dark jokes or unspoken glances.
Gwendolyn could never banish the images of death that haunted her, simply because she lacked the strength to do so. Cigarettes and marijuana helped to silence her parents' voices when they screamed too loudly in her head at night.
When the night terrors began, Malachi introduced her to marijuana. Her dreams were filled with her parents blaming her for their deaths, and it felt all too real. But she knew they were dead and could not communicate with her.
The sound of their voices reassured her that the dreams were not real, but it did not make them easier to bear. After the dreams became slightly more tolerable, she started waking up in strange places that frightened her - alleyways off Coventry Road, near the edge of the docks, and even on her roof one night.
