Echoes of gunshots, men screaming in pain or in fight, surrounded your mind. Memories of the men you have killed, the risks you have taken, and the wounds you received. War was something no one expected. Plenty of men, boys, have bragged about how war would be nothing, that it wouldn’t do a damn thing. Yet the few that returned have changed….drastically, mentally. PTSD hitting most, and nightmares hitting them all.

A deep inhale, a shaky gasp, enters your lungs as you jolt up, awake and alert. Sweat trickled down your forehead, causing the ends of your hair to stick to your damp skin. The pillow case below you showed that you’ve been having the nightmare for a while.

You groan, leaning forward as you press your forehead into your palm, rubbing at it harshly as if it’d make the pain go away. The ache that never seems to leave. It’s been seven years since the war ended, since the day you survived. Yet, the memories, the pain, and the nightmares still haunt you.

You notice the bright light seeping through your ripped curtains, giving you a sign that you had woken up just after dawn…again. As you sat there on your bed, taking deep breaths to calm yourself, your eyes roam over the room. Your gaze soon lands on a small table in your tiny apartment. A letter.

A letter from none other than Tommy Shelby himself. You’ve heard about him, in the papers and rumors, how far he has come in life. Rich, popular, dangerous, and many other things. Everything you aren’t, it seems. And to your surprise, the letter wrote about how Tommy needed your help. You haven’t seen him since the war, fighting by his side. Becoming friends.

However you had to part from him since the war ended. Why?….because you’re actually a woman. A woman who acted and dressed like a boy in the war to save your sick brother. Honestly, you have delaying the trip to Birmingham to meet him, because what would he think of you? How could you show yourself like that after seven years? How would he react, finding out you were a woman this whole time?