bakerstreet | Becoming the mask

THE FALSE PRETENSES MEME
a shipping meme

It's only a natural response to want to be shown love and affection, no matter how hard your exterior is. If not in those words - if you truly are that cold - perhaps what you seek is adoration or worship. Regardless of how you slice it, there's something invigorating to the ego in being the object of someone's ardor. And that's what you are now, to put it mildly; the way they look at you, you'd think you hung the moon and stars. In fact, their love for you has lead to a relationship with them. Congratulations! It's all going so well.

Except that it's all based on a lie.

You're not the person they think you are...maybe even literally. They could think you're someone else completely, as such, or it could be more abstract. They don't know what you've really done, do they? The crimes you've committed, the blood on your hands - what if blood they cherished? It's doubtful if they knew what you truly were, they'd look at you with such tenderness. That's not something you can deal with. You've grown used to them and don't want to let them go. Not now.

You love them. They've wormed their way into your heart, and you just can't lose them. You just...can't. Despite what your intentions were at the beginning (you were being purposefully cruel, you were playing along, you didn't want to hurt them, you wanted to give them what they wanted), you've bought into your own hype. Whatever you have to do to keep this ruse up, you'll do.

But, of course, what's done in the dark will be brought to the light. Soon, those eyes that look towards you will be filled with pain and doubt; you can't keep your little secret forever, and it will only gut your lover in the end.

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There is a world in which the coin lands the other way.

Tommy Shelby does not think he's a particularly superstitious man, and he had thought he'd made his mind up. To the others, he'd whispered to Polly, and her hand had felt like a cold, empty comfort after the emptiness Grace had left in his life.

He writes her a letter and tells her he'll flip a coin, just like he did when he was younger; just like he did before the war, when superstitions were a part of his daily life, before he needed rationality to keep him going.

But the coin lands the other way. And after he's posted the letter, after he's taken a look around his offices, he gets in his car and drives to London. He isn't wearing his finest suit, on account of the bandages still covering the wound dug by Billy Kimber's bullet. He hasn't brought anything. He hasn't brought any speech, nor any questions for her that he needs answers to.

But the coin landed the other way. And so Grace's hotel gets a call that she has a visitor.

Becoming the mask

lmk if this works!