There they are; those blasted shovels, softly scraping against rotting wall and thin, blue wallpaper.
Dink, dink. Thud. Shudder.
There they are, like always. After the sweet clouds of ochre smoke have slipped through the floorboards and dissipated, they draw close again. The echoes of shovels and the visions of creeping, quietly - so quietly - on hands and knees like dogs. The King's loyal dogs, picking through dirt with calloused fingers, shoulders bowed and bent from brushing tight walls.
What were they, really?
Animals? Tunnellers? Cannon fodder?
But it's the wait that haunts him. That long, drawn wait, while the shovels on the opposite side of the tunnel scratch on; the rapid breaths that are hot in his mouth, where he can only taste the memory of nicotine on his lips. The counting of each one. Each breath. That long, drawn wondering - if each damned breath will be his last.
Scratch, scratch. Quietly, softly.
Thomas Shelby's dreams are not dreams. Not dreams at all: they're ugly reincarnations. The taunts of war. Badly healed wounds, clawing with broken nails and bloodied finger tips, past the scarred skin that has so desperately tried to bury them, only to bleed freshly once more. To taunt again, each night, when the numbing hands of Opium withdraw, and Tommy Shelby - impenetrable, unreachable - is left naked and exposed.
Those minutes - those soldier's minutes - spent waiting for them to come. For the wall to break. For that final, victorious dink. Those minutes steal hours from his life.
Those minutes, those bated breaths, have stolen more than just time.
Though Tommy Shelby will never admit it, not to anyone. Not to Arthur, to John, to Pol, not to Ada. To no woman, not even to Grace, the barmaid with hair like the wheatbarley that grew in the fields of France. Though Tommy Shelby will never admit it, those minutes, in that tunnel, with the soft scrape of shovels, stole part of him that is irrevocably swallowed.
Irreplaceably buried.
In those minutes, Thomas Shelby dug a grave for that part of him, and let die what all men that fought in France did: a fracture of his humanity.