WARNINGS: Tommy being a jerk with Lizzie.

IMPORTANT: Thomas Shelby is a dark character, with more shadows than lights, and in my story I do not pretend to make him a good guy. As we saw in season 5, Tommy is completely broken, out of his mind, drifting into madness. He has attitudes that for me are reprehensible and unjustifiable.

As a fan of the series, and as contradictory as it sounds, what I like the most about Tommy is precisely that: his anti-hero quality, so I will not get rid of him in my story, but I will use him to my advantage to perfect his relationship with the protagonist, which and as you will see, is far from being a perfect woman.

We all have our dark side and I find it extremely dehumanizing to deprive the characters of it (plus I consider it a lack of respect for the original writer). I will do my best to make a Tommy as faithful as possible to the Tommy we meet on the show.

X
THE BLOODY BOX

Tommy arrived in Birmingham the next day, as the sun was beginning to set behind the grove of trees that marked his lands. He parked the car in front of the wide entrance to the mansion and Cyril came out to meet him, wagging his tail with joy.

"Hello, boy," he greeted the dog with the words since he couldn't pet it. He was carrying the box he had brought from London and it was heavy.

Frances, the housekeeper, appeared in the doorway, somewhat unsettled by what he was carrying, and offered to take the box as soon as Tommy entered the house.

"No, Frances," Tommy refused. "It's too heavy for you".

"We weren't expecting you so soon, Mr. Shelby", the housekeeper commented, following in his footsteps.

"Good way of telling me I'm not welcome in my fucking house," Tommy snapped as he hurried toward his study. Carrying that weight, he cursed how unnecessarily large the mansion was.

Behind him, he heard the housekeeper try to justify herself but couldn't come up with a sentence that sounded convincing enough. Tommy didn't care; he was aware that, in recent times, even the service felt a certain animosity towards him and, being honest with himself, he couldn't care less. He was paying them their wages to do the work they had to do, not to be his friends. Besides, Tommy had bigger issues on his mind at the time.

He arrived at the door of his study and noticed that it was closed, which caught his attention, since when he went out, he always left it open. It was a tactic that he had learned to implement to know when a person entered his study, since if someone did, it was to be expected that they would close the door when leaving.

Tommy looked at Frances and nodded for her to open the door for him. It was then he noticed that the woman was more nervous than she should be.

Striving to ignore the number of suspicious clues, Tommy stepped into his study. The first thing he did was look at his desk, which was spotless. He placed the box he brought on the couch as he felt his blood begin to boil.

"Where is the box?" He asked bluntly.

"Which box, Mr. Shelby?"

"The box on top of my desk, the one Ada brought in a couple of weeks ago."

Tommy witnessed how Frances was unable to meet his gaze and was breathing heavily. The housekeeper was holding back from speaking and he knew he couldn't pressure a poor woman who was only following orders.

"It's okay, Frances. Don't worry. I know who it was", he snapped and freed himself from his coat and cap, throwing them angrily on the desk.

He left the study and walked to the room where he knew he would find her. Lizzie was in the living room as always.

Tommy opened the door and Lizzie, who was sitting on the couch reading a magazine, jumped. The expression of terror she put on when she saw him made her know that fury was manifesting on her face in a disturbing way.

"Where is it?" Tommy asked "What did you do with it?"

"What are you talking about?" Lizzie leaned back in her seat and Tommy gritted his teeth at the realization that she was making fun of him. He took her by the shoulders tightly and forced her to her feet. Lizzie shook herself and tried to free herself from his grip.

"What the fuck are you doing ?! Let me go!"

"Tell me what you did with the box," Tommy demanded, his jaw clenched and his fingers buried in Lizzie's bare arms. "Tell me where the box is!"

"I don't know what box you're talking about!" His wife pushed him hard and managed to get him to free her but when she did, she was left sitting on the couch.

Tommy was furious. He clenched his fists and began pacing the room, concentrating simply on inhaling and exhaling. Lizzie watched him in terror from her seat.

"I'll repeat it just one more time," Tommy rubbed his face, "tell me what you did with the fucking box or..."

"Or what?" Lizzie stood up and approached angrily. "Or what ?! Are you going to hit me in front of your own daughter?" She pointed to a corner of the room that until then he had overlooked.

It was then that Tommy knew they weren't alone in that room. Looking where Lizzie was pointing, he met Ruby's eyes, flooding with tears and fear. The little girl had backed up until she was against the wall and there she had remained, still, staring in amazement at the monster she had for a father.

If Tommy had a piece of his heart left, he was sure it had been broken in that instant. He gulped and flopped onto the couch, stiff. His body lost all traces of strength and vehemence as he was aware of what he had caused.

"Ruby," he spoke to the girl. She was still motionless and then Tommy stood up and walked over to her, "I'm sorry." As he tried to hug her, he noticed Ruby flinch. She was afraid of him.

"Leave her alone". Lizzie scooped Ruby up and pulled her away from him. "I don't want you to go near my daughter again, Thomas Shelby. I don't want you to talk to me again. I'm leaving. We're leaving, " Lizzie muttered. "It was your sister who took the bloody box, if that's what you want to know. She came yesterday morning, with your aunt, they went into your study and took that box."

Lizzie took off the wedding band and threw it in his face. "I should have done this a long time ago".

Lizzie took Ruby with her and Tommy did nothing to stop her. He deserved that. He deserved to live and die just like the piece of shit he was. Now, he only had Charles and not because the boy wanted to stay by his side.

Tommy drank all the laudanum that was left in the bottle that he always carried with him and left the mansion under the inquisitive gaze of all the service personnel, who had already learned of the scandal. He got in the car and drove at the speed limit into Birmingham.

Night had already fallen when he reached Ada's home and the immense disgust he had for himself along with laudanum, prevented anger from taking over his body once more. Tommy rang the bell, although he could have opened the door with his copy of the keys.

"Tom?" Ada approached the hall to see who was the person Karl had just let in.

"Where is it?" Tommy asked again. Ever since he had arrived from London, the words he spoke seemed to always be the same.

"Where is what?" Her sister looked confused. "Are you feeling okay?"

Tommy leaned his weight against the wall. He felt like he was going to fade away and he witnessed how Karl looked at his mother with concern.

"The box," he came to say, "Where's the box, Ada?"

Ada looked away and bit her lower lip. She was immensely uncomfortable, and on her face Tommy couldn't tell worry from fear.

"It was a mistake to give you that box, Thomas." Polly appeared coming down the stairs. She was carrying Beth in her arms. "Ada should never have given it to you".

He was about to insult his aunt but his throat tightened. The moisture that appeared on his cheeks led him to know that he was crying.

"Give me..." he said and his legs gave out, causing him to fall to the ground.

"Tom!" Ada leaned closer, alarmed.

"… my Olivia back".

Her sister, in dismay, turned her face to Polly but the latter remained unfazed. Tommy tried to get up but couldn't, and, as his eyes blurred with tears, he glimpsed Olivia's figure at the end of the stairs. She watched him and noticed how sorry she was for him. He wanted her to hug him and tell him that everything was going to be okay.

"Ollie," he called her. Ada turned her eyes to where he had them. "Please, Ollie, convince them".

"We should call a doctor," Karl suggested palely.

"No". Polly walked over to Karl and handed him Beth, who had begun to sob. The girl was also upset by all this fuss. "He's hallucinating, "she explained, turning to Ada. "Help me get him to his feet. We will lay him on the couch".

At first Tommy resisted, but he was so weak it didn't take long for the women to carry him into the living room. They put him on the couch and Ada took off his shoes while Polly looked for a cold-water washcloth to put on his head. The only thing Tommy aspired to at that moment was to claim what he believed was his rightful, which was something as simple as the truth, but his languid body and troubled mind made it so impossible that he had to give in to the will of his sister and aunt.

Before he lost consciousness, he learned that he had spoken Olivia's name a few more times, and when things turned dark he heard Ada and Polly comment on his deplorable condition. He couldn't tell how long he was in the limbo between conciousness and dreaming, but when he opened his eyes, the light emanating from the Tiffany lamp led him to groan.

Ada and Polly were still there. Ada was sitting on the one-body couch and Polly stood with a cigarette on her lips and a glass of gin in her right hand.

"You see?" Polly spoke to Ada. "I told you he was still alive. A man capable of withstanding multiple bullets and a concussion doesn't die from a little opium".

"The box…" Tommy wouldn't give up so easily.

"God." His aunt let all the cigarette smoke out of her lungs. "We won't give you that box, Tom. You see what has happened. These are the consequences of your sister's impulses".

"I did it because I thought he deserved to know what the diaries were saying," Ada defended herself. Her nerves were frayed.

"Well no, he doesn't deserve it," Polly snapped. "If reading a couple of entries he killed a man and faced another, what do you think he would be able to do if he was knowledgeable about everything else?"

"Why the fuck…" Tommy sat up on the couch. He had a headache so bad that he felt nauseous "...did you take the box from me?"

"Do you insist?" Polly walked over and crouched beside him. She fixed her dagger-like black eyes on him. "When you left here the other day, your sister called me in anguish and told me that you were heading to London to meet Olivia's ex-boyfriend, that you said a bunch of nonsense. I asked her how the hell you got to that state and she confessed that she gave you the box with the diaries". Polly took him by the face and pressed his cheeks, as she used to do when he was a disobedient child. "You have no idea what you're doing, Thomas. If by behaving like this you only exterminated yourself, it wouldn't be so bad, but you expose us all. Wasn't it enough to expose Olivia?"

"Olivia is alive." Tommy took Polly's wrist and forced her to release him. "I know she is".

"What the fuck are you saying?"

"She's alive, somewhere, and you're hiding her from me," he spat out those words with anger, "and you took her diaries to alter them, so I wouldn't discover the truth."

Ada and Polly exchanged glances. The rational side of Tommy told him that they did it because their attitude worried them, but the madness that increasingly took over his mind, whispered that such behavior denoted that he had hit the nail on the head.

"You're wrong, Tommy." Polly shook her head.

"Polly, I think we should ..."

"No" her aunt interrupted Ada and moved with her to a corner of the room. Tommy heard them whisper and strained to listen. His head was spinning. "Tom," Polly was turning to him now, "we've decided something. We will give you some diaries to read but we will choose them ourselves".

"I want them all," Tommy demanded furiously. "Ada, I want them all" he turned to his sister since apparently she agreed with him more than she liked to admit.

Ada snorted and closed her eyes, as if she was suddenly between a rock and a hard place. Tommy and Polly were waiting impatiently for her answer, both with very different expectations.

"Okay…"

"Ada!" Polly didn't agree that her niece had relented.

"Pol, we can't deny Tommy access to the truth. You know that no matter how hard we try to keep him away from this one, he'll find it anyway," Ada explained.

"You are aware of the consequences that all this can have, right?" Polly questioned, setting the glass of gin on the coffee table. She was upset.

"Yes, I am," her sister admitted, "and that's why, Tom, I'm going to ask you one favor only: you must keep reading them in order. Only then will you be able to understand".

Tommy, dismayed, looked at both women with confusion. Ada sat back on her couch and Polly took a drag on her cigarette. The stillness of those two lit all his alarms and beyond the lethargy caused by the laudanum, he felt the anger building inside him.

"What truth are you talking about?" Tommy asked.

"Don't make me regret this, Tom," Ada said, then glanced at her aunt for a slight nod. Polly reluctantly left the room and Tommy heard her going up the stairs. "You're hurt and I want you to know that I'm able to empathize with your pain. I loved Olivia too and that's why I'm giving you this opportunity. Don't spoil it."

"Ada," he called to her sister as he felt his heart clench with grief, "is she alive?"

He caught a glimpse of how his sister's eyes, which were always wet and bright, darkened, and the yellowish glow of the lamp betrayed the subtle change of expression on her face. Tommy couldn't tell if that was a positive answer, but it was an answer, after all. Ada couldn't keep her eyes on him and looked down at her hands as if searching for the words she needed.

"Whatever I tell you, you won't believe me," she whispered. "You have to read the diaries. Let Olivia give you the answer".

Polly came back to the living room carrying the bloody box. She placed it almost with anger on the coffee table in front of him and, taking the glass of gin again, left the room once more, but not before throwing a questioning glance at her niece. Tommy pretended to stand up and take the box but Ada stopped him.

"Don't even think about leaving this house."

"What?"

"Do you really think you can drive like this?" Ada got to her feet, very upset. "Let me tell you, you won't be able to read those diaries if you die in a car crash".

Tommy flopped down on the couch.

"I'll start reading here, then."

"Do whatever you want." He saw his sister swallow hard. "What did Fairfax tell you?"

"Bullshit"

"Well, it must have been pretty convincing bullshit to get you that way," Ada snapped.

Tommy leaned back and gave a weary sigh. He was still dizzy and confused, but even so, the memory of Andrew Fairfax disgusted him. He had a pending chat with that scum, and while he was a long way from London now, Tommy would make sure to convey everything he had to say to him.

"You will be surprised to learn that we both agree on something," Tommy confessed and waited for his sister to ask him what he meant.

"Unbelievable". Ada was a smart woman and she avoided the need to ask any questions. She knew Tommy was referring to Olivia's fate. "Well, I'll go upstairs with Polly, let's see if I can make her understand. Don't even think about leaving here, at least not until you're sober, did you hear me?"

Tommy nodded and his sister left the living room, but not before closing the door. Immediately after she left, he opened the box and, straining his eyes, tried to identify the diary that chronologically followed the one he had read. It didn't take him long to find it, although its condition caught his attention: its sheets were sticky and dark, wrinkled as if they had been soaked with some kind of liquid. Bringing it to his nose, he recognized the aroma of the coffee, and upon checking the entries, he discovered that the calligraphy was intact, so the coffee must have spilled before Olivia wrote on it.

"What a mess," Olivia said across from him, sitting on the one-body couch. This time, she was wearing the blue dress from the gala dinner.

"Ollie…" he muttered in wonder. She was so beautiful.

"It's difficult to write on dirty sheets."

"Why didn't you use another notebook?" He asked but she didn't seem to hear him.

"Do you remember the first time I served you coffee at the office, Tom?" She didn't let him answer as she kept talking. "It was that day… I… " She stopped talking and fixed her eyes on the box full of diaries.

"Yes, I do" The memory came to Tommy and the burning of the bile burned his throat.

The date of that disastrous event coincided with the one he was about to start reading. Then he understood the reason for the spilled coffee and the erratic and nervous handwriting. Suddenly, the immense need to get rid of Oswald Mosley had brought down the laudanum lethargy like a wall made of paper. His hands began to tremble and his pulse raced.

"You shouldn't have left me alone with him," Olivia said.

"I'm sorry…"

In the blink of an eye, Olivia was no longer there, and Tommy, nervous and victim of an uncontrollable urge to murder, forced himself to read: Ada had told him to read the diaries in order because in them he would find the answer he was looking for. There would be no distractions and he would read everything his eyes allowed him until his Olivia, the real Olivia —not the hallucination— confessed her truth through her words.