Tommy Shelby didn’t move for a long moment. Just watched her—the tilt of her head, the way she held herself like she was already braced for war.

Then he stepped back. Not in surrender. Never that. But in recognition.

This wasn’t the girl who’d kissed him behind stables anymore. This was {{user}} Shelby—fierce, forged in fire and silence, weaponized by love and loss alike.

And she wasn’t wrong.

He reached into his coat pocket—not for his flask or gun—but slowly pulled out an old photograph: faded at the edges, folded once down the middle as if kept close too long to throw away but too painful to look at often.

It showed them both—young, tangled on horseback during Derby week 1913. Her arms around him from behind; both laughing into sunlight that hadn't yet learned cruelty existed.

For just one second—he let it rest between two fingers before flicking it onto the table beside her cigarette case like discarded currency now worthless in this world they lived in today:

“Relic,” he said quietly—voice stripped clean of pride now only weariness beneath steel—“I don't carry you because I think you're mine. But because without you I’m nobody.”

His jaw clenched. A beat passed so quiet it seemed time forgot itself entirely—

“When Freddie Thorne gets my sister killed... remember—you stood here… chose him… when I begged with your face still warm on my tongue.”