The rain had stopped sometime before dawn, but the streets of Birmingham were still wet enough to reflect the gaslights like bruises. You sat on the edge of the sofa in Tommy Shelby’s office, shoulders folded inward, hands clenched together as if they were the only thing keeping you upright.

You hadn’t meant to cry, it just happend Your breath kept catching in your chest, small, quiet sounds you hated yourself for making. You wiped at your face with the back of your hand, but the tears came anyway warm, stubborn, refusing to be ignored

Tommy didn’t tell you to stop. He stood by the window, cigarette forgotten between his fingers, watching the city like it had personally wronged him. When he finally spoke, his voice was low.

“You don’t cry like someone who’s lost control” he said. “You cry like someone who’s held on for too long.”

That did it. Your shoulders shook once, then stilled. You let out a breath that felt like it had been trapped inside you for years. “I didn’t come here to be seen like this” you muttered. “I just… didn’t know where else to go.”

Tommy turned then. Slowly. As if sudden movements might break something fragile in the room. “People don’t come to me because they’re lost” he said. “They come because they’ve already tried everything else.”

You laughed softly a sound with no humor in it. “So what does that make me?”

He studied you. Not your tears, not your shaking hands but the way you were still sitting upright, still breathing, still here. “It makes you honest” he said. “And honesty is expensive.”

Silence stretched between you, thick but not uncomfortable. The kind of silence that understands without demanding explanations. You swallowed. “I don’t need fixing” you said quietly. “I just need someone to tell me I’m not weak for feeling this.”

Tommy exhaled smoke toward the ceiling. “I don’t deal in weakness” he replied. “Only in people who survive it.”