WERE HE AN ARTIST, Thomas would be able to sketch her face from memory by now. His dreams are filled with the sight of her, often alongside a black cat, quickly darting in & out of his field of vision like a phantom, & when he wakes his mind reels & tries to make sense of the broken shards of hazy memory leftover from the night before. He's never seen her in person. Does not recognize her from anywhere in his past. His memory is so sharp that he must be careful not to cut himself with it ; if had seen her somewhere, if she'd left a mark deep enough for him to dream of her ghostly form night after night, he knows he would be able to remember where he'd met her.
Rarely does a dream bother Thomas enough for him to bring it up to Polly ; in fact, rarely does anything bother Thomas enough that he brings it up to her, outside of official business. In a pinch, though, even Thomas knows β Polly knows best when it comes to matters of the heart. When he'd explained it late one night in a booth in the Garrison, long after the pub had closed its doors to the public, she had listened carefully & tilted her head in consideration afterwards.
"A black cat dream is never wrong. Seems like there's a snake in the grass, somewhere. Whoever it is in these dreams, Tommy β she's trying to warn you," Polly said.
He'd taken Polly's advice to heart as always & decided to wait for fate to make its move. The dreams did not stop. Soon enough they become another part of his life & he comes to expect them. His routine remains largely unchanged in the face of news that there is a traitor in his midst ; he continues to visit the Garrison, to steal glances at the beautiful new barmaid, until one day he walks out of the snug to find the woman in his dreams standing at the bar.
For one of the first times in his life, Thomas Shelby is caught truly off-guard.
Standing motionless in the middle of the pub is not something that a man like Tommy can do for long without drawing the attention of curious patrons. It's only when he feels the few sets of eyes boring holes into him does he snap himself out of the stupor & approach the woman at the bar.
Tommy sets his empty glass onto the counter & takes two coins from his pocket, placing them in front of his glass even after the bartender attempts to assure him that his drink is on the house.
"Whisky. Irish," he says, then gestures to the stranger beside him. "And whatever the lady wants."
plotted starter for @giftsight
