Summary: After Michael’s death, Gina recalls a moment between the two of you before she got married. And now widowed and all alone in the UK, she leaves everything behind.
Gina laid in her lavish bedroom with her one year old son, Lawrence, together on her king size bed that she used to share with Michael. But now, Michael is gone. Killed by the hands of Thomas Shelby. Snuffed him out before their love and marriage could fully blossom. Leaving her a widow all alone with her child.
She watched her son as his chubby hands meddled with the wooden car and horse toys that—ironically, gifts from the very man who had taken Michael’s life. Thomas had given them before the boy was born. Gina’s heart twisted at the sight of her son’s innocent smile. He would look up and coo for her attention, not knowing that his mother struggled to love him the same way she once had. Not because she didn’t love him—how could she not?—but because every glance at him echoed the man who was no longer there.
The bags around her eyes had already begun to darken and drop from the sleepless nights. Because every time she even dared to shut her eyes, she would see someone she never wanted to see ever again. No, not Thomas. Not Michael. But you.
Your face would appear the moment she felt herself finally beginning to fall asleep. You haunted the space between her dreams and waking. The way you looked at her would jolt her body into a shock, as if she were falling off a building. Gina didn’t want to remember you anymore. Not after what happened. Not after you proved yourself right. You were the memory she wished she could bury deepest. The one that always clawed back to the surface.
America, 1929
The air was heavy with smoke and sweat in your small New York apartment. You and Gina were sprawled on your twin bed. Fur coats scattered all over the hard wood floor. The springs beneath you creaked with each shift, protesting the wildness that had just consumed you both. Your lips trailed and pressed on the delicate slope of her neck, your hands caressed the curve of her slim waist, leaving her breathless as you worked your skilled fingers that brought her bliss by the end of it.
The two of you snuggled naked under the blanket, lighting a cigarette to cool off. You looked over your shoulder and revelled in the artistic sight of her. The way her bare shoulders called for your lips once again. The way her lips took a drag of the cigarette and the way she blew the smoke. She was art to you. With every other detail you would notice, it always somehow makes her even more beautiful than you already knew.
You could fall deep into her beauty as long as you wanted. But you could never settle with the fact that she wasn’t going to be yours by the time the sun would rise. She was pregnant with Michael’s child and was going to marry him soon.
You reached out to play with her blonde curls, she smirks and props herself up with one hand, her dainty fingers holding your chin, cold fingertips guiding your chin toward her lips.The both of you crashed lips, Gina climbs to straddle your lap, grabbing a fistful of your hair. The sky was starting to pinken and you knew that there wasn’t enough time before Gina had to go back. Before she would be away from your grip. You didn’t want to let her go. And you thought at this moment, maybe she didn’t want to let you go either. The way she was holding your body and the way her thighs wrapped around your hips. Gina pulled away with a sharp gasp, holding your shoulders for support. She stood up and picked her coat from the floor.
“Sorry Y/n, I have to go now” she said hurriedly as she worked with her buttons, and swiftly fixed her hair.
You sat up, anger curling in your gut. “Really, Gina? You’re going to marry a man you barely know?”
She had only known Michael for a month. And yet, she had already decided she would belong to him forever. As if everything before him meant nothing. As if she’d forgotten that you were there first long before the men who took her to fancy restaurants, ordering wine she didn’t even like, offering her lives that never fit.
Back when you were teenagers, she had to sneak out to meet boys, but never for you. With you, there was no need for secrecy—only quiet kisses in your bedroom while your mother cooked dinner downstairs. Every time she left someone else’s bed, she somehow always found her way back to yours. She slept better with you. Safer. She’d beg you to take your time, to move slow, to stay close. There was never any rush between the two of you. Time used to be kind then. But now, it felt like time had turned against you, pushing her away, pulling her toward someone she barely knew.
As if time itself was telling you: she’s not yours anymore. It’s time to let go.
“Y/n we’re not going to do this again. I have to go”
“Go where, Gina? Go and be with someone you don’t even like half as much for the rest of your life? What about us? What about our life? You just gonna throw all of it away? For what? You exclaimed.
“There is no us Y/n! Let’s not pretend we were ever more than this. What—you want to walk down the streets of Manhattan, hand in hand under the streetlights? Do you hear the way people talk about us? About what we are? I’m pregnant, Y/n. I need a life. I need someone who can give me that.”
Your eyes glistened, you wanted to scream and yell at her, but all you could do was sit in silence with disappointment in your eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that”
“I gave you my life Gina. You’re giving yours to waste” you rasped.
“And listening to how you really feel about us, showed me just how much of a coward you are. So go ahead, run. But when you wake up one day and realize you’re just someone else’s wife…don’t say I didn't tell you so”
She clutched her purse and slammed the door behind her before slamming the door behind her. Her struts became more staggered as she felt her throat tighten and her body shake. Her throat burned with the scream she couldn’t let out. She sobbed silently on the way home, but refused to let her mascara run.
She wanted you to be wrong. Prove that she could love Michael. And that she would be happy with him just as much as she was with you. And though she shared the same feelings as you, she could not risk the whispers and opinions that would be thrown onto her.
Maybe it was selfish. But was it wrong for her to think for herself? To not want to be perceived?. To choose survival over happiness?
And she was not vulnerable enough to let strangers see her the way she let you see her. The world would never be ready to see people be in love for someone as they are, and so was Gina.
The silence in the house was unbearable.
Gina stood in the middle of the nursery, her fingers brushing absentmindedly against the edge of Lawrence’s crib. He was asleep, little chest rising and falling in steady rhythm, his toy horse clutched in one hand. She should’ve felt peace watching him—but all she felt was the thick, suffocating weight of grief pressing down on her chest.
The whispers, the stares, the polite condolences from people who never truly cared. All of it had drained her. Nights bled into mornings, and still, your face haunted her dreams.
She missed you. More than she could admit. More than she wanted to.
She grabbed a suitcase, threw in whatever clothes she could reach—dresses, shoes, a coat for the cold, a ribbon Lawrence liked to pull from her hair and packed his things with trembling hands. She didn’t bother folding anything neatly. This wasn’t about appearances anymore.
She paid with cash that Michael left behind for the next available ticket across the Atlantic. And while Lawrence slept in her arms on the boat, bundled tightly against her chest, she remembered the words you’d once whispered to her so long ago, in the dark safety of your old apartment, when everything still felt possible. She hoped that you still lived there.
“I’ll keep my door shut, but I’ll never lock it for you.”
She hadn’t believed it then. But she hoped. God, she hoped it was still true.
Because she couldn’t keep pretending anymore. She couldn’t keep wearing the role of the grieving widow, of the woman who made the right choice, when all she wanted was to crawl into the arms of the only woman who had ever truly seen her. She wanted your warmth again. Your voice. Your mouth on her skin. She wanted to fall asleep to the sound of your breath and wake up knowing that, this time, you wouldn’t have to let go.
She needed you. And she was done telling herself otherwise.
The ocean stretched endlessly ahead, soft beneath the pale sky. Gina stood alone on the deck, her coat pulled tight around her, her son asleep in a bundle against her chest. The hum of the ship’s engine was distant beneath her feet, a low and constant reminder that there was no turning back now.
The wind kissed her face gently, carrying the chill of the Atlantic. The breeze slid over her skin like fingers once did, slow and tender. It reminded her of you. Maybe even gentler.
You had never touched her with anything but care. Never hurried, never harsh. Every graze of your hand, every press of your lips, had been patient and intentional. As if you were memorizing her like a sacred scripture.
And in this wind, she could almost feel it again—the way you’d run your fingers down her spine in the dark, just to calm her. The way your breath would brush her collarbone before you kissed her there. How you’d hold her afterward, like she was something precious.
Her eyes burned, stung by both the wind and the thoughts she’d tried so hard to bury.
She had told herself she was strong for far too long. That she could survive this alone. That choosing Michael had been for the best. But now, with nothing but sea and silence between her and what she’d left behind, she finally let herself admit it.
She missed you.
Not just your touch. Your presence. Your voice. The way you looked at her like she was more than her choices, more than her mistakes. She was tired of pretending the memory of you didn’t live in her skin.
And now, every passing mile across the ocean wasn’t just a journey back to America—it was a journey back to you.
Back to where she had always belonged.
You never forgot about Gina. No matter how much time passed. No matter how far she went. You held her in the quiet corners of your life, in the spaces where memory made a home and refused to leave.
You used to imagine her changing her mind halfway through the ceremony, standing in her ivory gown, flawless and beautiful, then suddenly turning on her heel and running. Running down the aisle. Out the doors. Back to you.
In your mind, she wore that dress not for Michael, but for you. And in your dreams, you stood beside her in one of your own, simple, elegant, with your hair pinned just the way she liked it. The two of you kissed beneath the altar, under flowers and light, and the world held its breath for something beautiful and forbidden.
You wrote her letters that never got sent. Dozens. Maybe more. Poured your heart out in ink you never had the courage to send. Most were just quiet confessions or fragments of dreams and old jokes, things only the two of you would understand. You kept them in a shoebox under your bed, tucked between old photographs and her a pack of her favourite cigarette brand.
You couldn’t stay angry at her for long. You knew where her fears came from. How sharp the world’s eyes could be. How cruel the whispers were. She had grown up under pressure, always performing, always surviving. Of course she chose safety. Of course she picked the path with fewer wounds.
If she wanted to stay hidden, you would’ve hidden with her. You’d have turned the lights off, drawn the curtains, kept your love tucked safely between shadows if that’s what she needed. You just wanted her back.
You missed the weight of her in your arms. The curve of her laugh when she let herself be soft. The way her fingertips would linger just a second longer than needed, as if reluctant to leave your skin.
Her undergarments still lay folded inside your dresser, delicate lace and satin touched by her skin. She had left them there one time just in case she would come back to your place.
Some nights, when the loneliness became unbearable, you’d reach in and lift one of her bras—the pale pink one with the frayed strap she always complained about. You’d run your fingers over the fabric, press it to your face, close your eyes and breathe her in. And then, reverently, you’d slip it on. Adjust the straps. Let it cling to your body like a ghost of her touch.
The fabric would warm with your body heat, and sometimes you’d cry quietly, face turned to the pillow because it was the closest thing you had to holding her again.
The moment Gina stepped off the boat, the cold American air struck her like a breath she hadn’t taken in years.
She clutched Lawrence closer, his small face tucked against her neck, as she flagged down a taxi with a raised, shaking hand. Her voice trembled when she gave the driver your address but she didn’t stumble over a single syllable. She remembered it like muscle memory.
The city blurred past her window in shades of gray. Towering buildings, neon signs, strangers wrapped in thick coats. Alll of it rushing by like a dream she’d fallen out of. But her thoughts weren’t on the skyline.
Her head pounded the closer they got. A drumbeat behind her eyes. Every turn of the cab, every stoplight, made it worse. Doubts crept in like smoke, choking her resolve.
What if you’re not there anymore?
What if you’ve moved on?
What if you don’t want her back?
Her fingers gripped the handle of her suitcase so tightly that her knuckles went pale. When the cab stopped, She paid quickly, stepping out onto the familiar street as the city around her pulsed with life, unaware of the war inside her chest. Your apartment building looked exactly the same—red bricks weathered by time, the chipped door frame, and the iron rail that you used to lean against while waiting for her.
She climbed the stairs slowly. At your door, she froze. Her heart thundered now, harder than it had during the funeral, harder than it ever had with Michael. Her hand hovered midair, clenched in a fist.
She could turn around.
She could go back.
She could pretend she never crossed an ocean for you.
But she reached her heavy hand to knock anyway.
Once.
Twice.
A third time, softer than the first two.
And then she waited, breath held, every part of her body trembling, not from the cold, but from the unbearable possibility that you might open the door.
When you opened the door, time didn’t just slow—it stopped.
There she was.
Gina.
She looked different. Not in the way people do when they cut their hair or wear new clothes but in the way people do after they’ve been dragged through fire and made it out on the other side. The softness in her eyes had been weathered. There were shadows under her lashes, her skin pale from sleepless nights, and in her arms, a sleeping child pressed against her shoulder.
The world had taken pieces of her. But still, somehow, she reflected the sun.
She didn’t speak at first. Just stood there, trembling slightly, lips parted like she wanted to say everything at once but couldn’t.
Quietly, she asked, “Can I come in?”
“Of course Gina.”
You stepped aside, letting her walk past you into the familiar scent of your apartment. It was still the same small, warm, cluttered with the life you built in her absence.
She set her bag down and gently laid the sleeping boy on your couch, then turned back to you. You didn’t ask anything. Not about Michael. Not about what happened. Not about why she came back now, after all this time. You could see it on her face—the exhaustion, the grief, the ache of trying to hold herself together for too long. The explanations didn’t matter.
So you just watched her, silently, as you moved toward the kitchen and made tea with a trembling hand. She sat at your table, her fingers wrapped around the porcelain cup, but didn’t drink.
You sat across from her. For a while, neither of you spoke. She stared into the steam like it might tell her what to say. You watched her in that quiet, still loving her in all her brokenness. Both your presence felt like a warm blanket pulled over old wounds.
“I’m sorry” she whispers.
You reached across the table, your hand closing over hers.
“Hey—Gina…You don’t have to be.”
She started crying. Silent, shaking sobs she tried to hold in, but they came anyway. Her shoulders hunched, her fingers curled tight around yours, like she might fall apart if she let go. You stood up to move beside her, pulling her into your arms, letting her melt into you. And when her cheek rested on your shoulder, you leaned your face into her hair, breathing in the scent of sea salt.
Her breath hitched in your arms, body trembling as though she’d been holding herself together with nothing but will for far too long. And then she spoke, muffled against your shoulder, voice thick with pain.
“I don’t deserve this,” she sobbed. “You don’t know what I’ve done. You don’t know who I became while I was there.”
“I tried to forget you,” she whispered, the words dragging from her throat like glass. “I lied. I lied to myself, to him, to everyone. And I hated myself for it. I’m not the same person you loved. I don’t even know if she exists anymore…”
She pulled back to look at you, her face blotched with tears, eyes bloodshot and glistening with a kind of guilt too deep for words.
“I’ve done things you’d never forgive,” she said. “Things I don’t want to speak out loud.”
You lifted a hand to her cheek and brushed a tear away with your thumb.
“What happened in the UK,” you said gently, firmly, “can fucking stay in the UK.”
“I don’t care about England,” you added. “I didn’t find my love there.”
Gina let out a shattered breath, and her knees almost buckled beneath the weight of your forgiveness. You caught her easily, holding her up the way you always had. There was no more room for anger or judgment.
Her fingers dug into your dress as she buried her face in your neck again. You stood together like that for a long time, the child sleeping on the couch unaware that something fragile and sacred was being stitched back together in the next room.
“Welcome back home, Angel”
She didn’t tell you anything else. And you didn’t need explanations anymore.
For the month of June, I want to celebrate love and the beautiful women of our most loved franchise. I spent some time thinking about not only how I could do it, but how I can encourage others to join me. For the month of June, I will be posting a short something daily celebrating WLW love. In addition, I invite you to take part in a fun collaboration project. I would like to make a book(masterlist) of beautful WLW stories, drabbles, and edits of Peaky Blinders women and their lovers(xreader/OC).
How it will work:
I want to make a book which will look like a master list. You will write a one shot, drabble, or create a moodboard, and post it on June 25th. For any writing, I want it to truly celebrate love and affection. So, I would ask that you stick to fluff oriented themes. You are more than welcome to write smut, but definitely focus and tune in on the emotional aspect. Same for Moodboards.
The work will be entirely yours and 100% credited to you. I will simply link it to an index, properly crediting you. I only ask that you clearly state that it was part of a collaboration and tag me. One, for I can find it and two, for we can really zoom into the fact that this was a community effort. I, however, take no ownership of your work.
To join, just DM me and let me know. I will remind you June 15th. I also ask that you please, please do not blow me off. At least message me that you are unable to commit. I won't be mad.
Specifics:
All work, visual and written, cannot be AI generated. They all also need to be created separate from any multi-chapter/on going series. Please no previously written entries as well. I would really love this to be disconnected from anything previous.
For one shots, they do not have to be long. I consider one-shots anything 750 words and above. Drabbles, I consider 100-749. I know those are not the traditional 'rules', but that is what I go by.
For Moodboards, feel free to use any template you'd like! You can find many on Canva. You can also create your own.
You can use any Peaky lady below~
Lastly, I ask that you kindly proofread. I am not fussed about a typo or anything, I just have a personal pet peeve when people disclaim that they didn't proof read.
Aside from that:
Please properly tag, use proper warnings, and if it's not a whole lot to ask, please add a gif or edit for a header/banner. <3
Other than that, I am not fussed.
End thoughts:
On the 26th, I will create the "book" and properly tag everyone. You can feel free to ask me all and any questions. I will tag them #peakyblinderswlwcollab . The slots will look as such:
One Shots(xReader):
15 slots available as of 05/25
Drabbles(xReader):
10 slots available as of 05/25
Moodboards(xReader):
10 slots available as of 05/25
One Shots (xOC):
7 slots available as of 05/25
You can feel free to submit up to 1 entry for each category.
Above all, I hope everyone feels excited and inspired, and will have fun taking part in this project. I know that I am pretty excited. :)
I want to stress that everyone and anyone is welcomed to join. We don't have to be mutuals or friends or anything. We don't even have to be following each other. This is open to everyone 18+.
Tagging some people that may be interested or wouldn't mind sharing the project. No pressure on either end.
