Chapter Text
Grace Burgess had always considered herself to be a good person.
A good person, with a good heart, and all the right morals and qualms.
After all, everyone had always told her that was so.
From the moment she was born, she was a blessing to her family. She was their, well... grace. Until it came her dying day, Helene Burgess swore up and down that her daughter slept through the night from the very beginning, and hardly ever cried.
Incongruous though this story may have been with the truth, from the very moment she entered this world, Grace was mild mannered, considerate, and content.
Everything about her was just good.
And Grace believed that being good mattered, that it mattered above all else.
At the end of the day, Gracie, all you are is the decisions you make, and all you have is your reputation.
She could still hear her father’s words clearly, though he spoke them so long ago. Could smell the tobacco from his pipe, feel the wool at the edge of his sweater scratch against her hand as he held it in his, taste the sea salt in the air that was ever present at their waterside home in Galway.
The severity in his voice still shot through her like lightning.
She’d been young - 7 years old, if even - but Grace knew then that it was how the world would always come to regard her: by reputation, and by decisions made.
And it’s not that her father was a sanctimonious man, at least she'd never thought so.
He was just... good. Genuinely, effortlessly good at the very core of his being.
James Burgess had a moral compass that pointed due north, and no time for ethical ambiguities. The great philosophers and poets could say what they like, but to James: there was good, and there was bad, and it was not difficult to distinguish between the two.
James believed in leaving the world better than he found it, living life on the straight and narrow. He joined the force, defended the Crown, married a good woman, reared good children, provided for his family; he was even a churchgoing man. In these instances, as well as all others in his life, James followed the rules; it was all he knew how to do.
Following the rules was the only way to be a good man; in fact, following the rules was the only way to be good at all.
And he took care to instill this into his daughter, though never out of necessity; his Grace was better than good, she was the very best.
She was his mirror image, his living legacy. She was smart and beautiful and kind and good down to her bones and God Almighty, she had meant everything to James.
Which was why, when his life was cut short by the rebels, Grace did a good thing. The good thing.
She became an agent of the Crown, and dedicated her life to being good.
Because as she'd learned from her father, being good often meant fighting bad.
To Grace, the worst of the bad was the IRA.
The bastards had taken her father from this Earth, not to mention countless other fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters. She’d had sympathy for the cause as a younger woman, and perhaps she still did; she couldn't say for certain either way, for it had been so very long since she'd thought about their cause at all.
Her mind did not turn to the cause when considering the Republicans anymore, only the methods. Only her father's blood on the living room rug.
The righteousness, that’s what really got her.
Grace was able to understand how someone could do cruel things if driven there, but she could not stomach those that tried to mythologize their cruelty. That the IRA proclaimed themselves to be God fearing men in pursuit of justice while children lay dead in the streets at their hands made her skin crawl. It was the ultimate manipulation, wording their bad actions to seem good.
The IRA was the worst of the bad, but criminals of any creed were the enemy. Criminals had been the life long bane of James Burgess, and in his memory, so too would they be the bane of his daughter.
Which is why she'd jumped at the opportunity to join the mission in Birmingham. Convinced as she was that the IRA was responsible for the stolen weapons, not only would this job allow her to make a name for herself (to build an almighty reputation), but also to avenge her father. Keeping military grade weapons out of the Republican’s reach was the greatest good she could do, for her family, for her country, for herself.
James would be proud, he'd be so, so proud.
And disappointed though she'd certainly been when it became apparent that the Fenians hadn’t committed the robbery, her belief in the mission did not falter.
IRA, communists, gangsters, or otherwise... whoever was in possession of those guns was bad.
...
Chester Campbell was a good man, or so Grace had always thought.
She’d grown to know him over the years as her father’s colleague and trusted friend; he was a man of integrity, a man who had dedicated his life to fighting the good fight. The Inspector also had a great deal of faith in Grace, encouraging her to join the force even as a young woman. She’d do good things as an agent, he assured her, and would be highly honored to mentor her himself.
There were moments...
Only ever moments, of course, and usually when her father was too distracted with business to notice...
Moments when Campbell would look at her in a way that made the hair at the nape of her neck stand at attention...
But, fortunately, she'd always managed to recognise her mistake, to realise that it was her at fault, not him. She was misreading the situation, grievously so.
Inspector Campbell was a good man.
And Grace kept reminding herself that Campbell was a good man; kept assuring herself that she was misreading the good Inspector while they were in Birmingham.
He was one of her father’s very closest friends, after all. His affection for her had to have been strictly familial... paternal, even!
And yes, perhaps he was a touch... awkward in his expression of care, but social skills had never been the poor man’s strong suit.
He was a respectable man who'd taken it upon himself to see to her wellbeing in her family's absence, and Grace was surely mad for ever fearing otherwise, no matter how briefly.
James Burgess was a good man.
Chester Campbell was a good man.
Grace Burgess would be a good woman, she would be.
She would be!
And she'd do good in Birmingham.
Even if it killed her.
...
Thomas Shelby was bad, he just was; and he’d happily tell you so himself.
Yet he ever fought that categorization in Grace’s mind, always sneaking his way to the good list too quickly for her to realise she'd misplaced him.
The way her heart fluttered when he said her name was of no consequence, she reminded herself.
And she found it needed reminding more than once.
That the lights in the room got just a bit brighter on the rare occasions he smiled, that they’d danced like lovestruck teenagers at Cheltenham, that kissing him in the church pews had been the very first time Small Heath had begun to feel like her home...
None of it mattered.
None of it could matter.
Thomas Shelby was a criminal despot.
A thief.
A gangster.
A murderer.
Bad. There was just no way around it.
But there was a goodness behind his eyes, dormant though it may have been.
He wanted to be good, wanted it desperately, she could tell.
But being good had never been in the cards for a Shelby man, and it was all Tommy could do to use his bad towards a good end: use his cunning strategy to fight for his country, use his wanton ambition to provide for his family, and even use his bloodlust to protect Grace, the only good he’d ever known.
Because that was what he’d done, wasn’t it? That day in the Garrison, when blood and brains rained on the dusty wood floor as Tommy had taken a life with nothing but a spitoon and his own hands. He'd protected Grace, putting himself at risk to fix her reckless decision.
He was her savior, even if he was also a monster.
And Grace knew she was a monster, too.
Her image of herself as it related to good and to bad had been slowly deteriorating since she had stepped foot in Birmingham, but it had taken its last dying breath when she fired that bullet into the man’s head.
She'd managed to write off all her previous actions as the necessary evils of being good, even when it came to the first IRA man she shot dead.
That was different. He’d had her up against a wall, shooting was a matter of survival.
But in the Garrison...there'd been a choice. She’d chosen to shoot even when Tommy told her explicitly not to, even when the men posed no immediate threat to her. She’d taken a life and forced Tommy to take another, for nothing more than her own insatiable need for vengeance.
Good people didn’t do that.
And so it was that night, walking the grimy streets of Small Heath with Tommy at her side that she'd first acknowledged that she actually wasn’t good, not good at all.
Maybe she never had been.
As she'd taken a drag of his cigarette and looked into those piercing blue eyes, Grace knew that she and Tommy were just the same.
They were precisely the same at the very center of their beings, she just didn’t know what it was they were.
Were they good people, rendered bad only by circumstance?
Were they bad people, each with a secret, futile ambition to one day become good?
And did it really matter all that much either way?
Damned is damned, regardless of the packaging it comes in.
...
It was at the grave of the not-dead Daniel Owens that Grace had realised that Inspector Chester Campbell was not a good man.
The sight of Campbell standing before her with a ring in his hand, surrounded by diligent agents and reclaimed ammunition... it made Grace’s stomach turn in a way she hadn't known it was capable of, a way that it never had before, not even at the sight of death.
She'd grown up around this man, she'd trusted him as her mentor.
And yes, fine, perhaps she'd disagreed with him more than she'd ever let on, with his ideologies, his methods... but out of respect for her father, she’d still seen him as family.
She’d still seen him as good.
But this wasn’t good. Good men didn’t look at their friends’ daughters this way; good men didn’t use their influence over a woman’s career in attempt to cajole her feelings.
A good man in Chester Campbell’s position would have seen Grace as, above all else, a good agent.
Because.
She.
Was.
She was capable and she was diligent and she was dedicated and and she'd been willing to put her own life at risk for the sake of what was right, what was good.
But he didn't see her as a good agent, he never had.
Maybe he didn't see her as an agent at all.
Above all else, Chester Campbell saw Grace Burgess as a good wife in the making.
Yes, it was at the grave of the not-dead Daniel Owens that Grace had realised Inspector Chester Campbell was not a good man.
But it was a busy night at the Garrison when she realized that he was, in fact, a bad man.
Asking for Tommy Shelby by name, Harry had said to her.
By.
Fucking.
Name.
And the coppers were already in Digbeth.
She'd barely had the time to contemplate just how bad it had all gotten before Tommy himself was standing in front of her, beckoning to the snug with a knowing look in his eye.
...
Thomas Shelby didn’t look like a bad man that night in the snug. Not in the least.
He looked tired, and more so than usual. His exhaustion wasn’t just physical now, it was mental, emotional. He looked like a man running out of time, though he was pragmatic as ever.
When I get back, I’m gonna tell you some things.
His words were vague so the look he gave tried to make up for them. He willed, desperately, for Grace to read the thoughts on his face. To know that he didn’t want to leave her, how much it pained him that he had to.
He needed her to understand, without him having to say it, that the when I get back wasn’t really a matter of when, but a matter of if.
And that if he didn’t, he had wanted her to be the last one he saw.
A man running out of time, indeed.
And of course she saw it all, clear as day.
They were the same, after all
But she'd still wanted to hear him say it; to fill the silence between heartbeats, if nothing else.
You took a chance coming here. Why?
He was tempted to tell her, he really was.
And he might have.
He very nearly might have
If not for -
The police are in the lane, Tommy!
In that moment, Grace still didn’t know what she and Tommy were, good or bad.
She didn’t know if she believed in good or bad at all anymore, the world seemed to have much more nuance to it than her father had ever let her know.
But she did know that those she had thought to be bad were capable of good things, and those she had thought to be good were capable of bad things, the very fucking worst.
Because that’s who Chester Campbell was: the worst of the bad, just like the IRA.
Not for his cruelty, but for his righteousness.
The Peaky Blinders were bad men, but they had no delusions otherwise, particularly not Tommy. Every man with a razored cap walked the streets of Small Heath certain that they’d never see Heaven. Perhaps better men would have stopped doing what they knew to be wrong, or would’ve never done anything wrong in the first place.
But Tommy never asked for so much as absolution, let alone praise.
Campbell wouldn’t just ask for praise for his actions tonight, he’d surely receive it. He’d be lauded by Churchill, by the Crown, as a hero for ridding Birmingham of its most notorious villain.
That the guns had already been recovered would be of no consequence. That it was unnecessary, cruel, and motivated by the petty jealousy of a bitter and lonely old man would be of no consequence. That Campbell had sworn to her, given her his bloody word that Tommy would not be harmed would be of no consequenc.
All this time, Grace had been working for a man that embodied all that she hated most. Chester Campbell was the worst of the bad, and Grace didn’t want to consider what that made her father.
Grace didn’t want to consider good and bad at all anymore. They were childish classifications used by those whose minds were too small to wrap around all the shades of gray that existed in the world.
And if goodness didn’t equate to honesty, to courage, to justice - then was good was it?
Grace didn’t care about being on the good side anymore.
She just wanted to be on Tommy’s side.
Come with me.