❝WE'RE NOT WHO WE USED TO BE❞
---
tommy shelby loved greta jurossi, they loved each other more than anything else in the world. but then came their daughter, amelia, proving them wrong.
but then the sickness came and took greta away, and then the wa...
word count, 3,338 PROLOGUE, PART ONE before the war
"through the wind, down to the place we used to lay when we were kids, memories, of a stolen place, caught in the silence, an echo lost in space." - DEAN LEWIS, waves
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
BIRMINGHAM, NINETEEN-FOURTEEN
***
THE STATION WAS alive with sound that day in nineteen-fourteen, a harmony of bitter laughs, resentful cries and dismal words echoed upon the soiled walls.
In the midst of it all was a young man, a head surging with resentful notions was strained high as he led himself and the young child gripped to his hand through the swarm of fretful men, a little girl who was his own. He knew these were his last minutes with her, he knew that coming home was a pipe dream, and that if he ever did, he would never be the same.
Still, he buried his emotions deep- cramming and hoarding them in the darkest crevasse of his mind, amongst the grief that had burdened him these past few months.
Three months weren't enough to console heart-break. It was bad enough that he loved her, more than any palpable thing in this wretched world, before the child clinging to his hand. But the sorrow stung deeper still, of how a love so beautiful and kind and nurturing and strong-willed had been torn so cruelly from him.
Its intensity swelled with the persistent thoughts, the memories of her never once surrendering despite the throb hitching his heart, only becoming more vivid under the strain of it all. They became stubborn to his desires, the wish to stash them away and never remember the soft edge to her eyes, her gentle smile... Instead, they flooded him mercilessly, inundating in the tenderness lost, body flushing cold as he remembered once more that the woman enacting these scenes stitched so firmly into his memory, was gone.
In a way, war was an escape. A way to flee this corrupt reality in exchange for another, a way for something other than her suffering, her limp hand cold in his, to prevail his mind.
Engine smoke billowed out from the train, dancing in the air, darkening the conserved space with the thick, dense fumes. Sounds from the train, the closing of doors, the grunts and whines of the engine clashed with the cries and voices nearby. There was a constant battle for dominance, the bold screams of already grieving widows holding their panting husbands brawling against the commands of the train, the hiss of the engine seemingly scolding them against their whines and pleas.
In the madness, this was the only thing that attracted Amelia Jurossi's young imagination- eyes fixated on the vehicle as her father timidly led her through the mass of people clumped together.
