Tommy Shelby has always been a fixer. He grew up with a drunk liar for a father, one whose absence broke his family in two. He'd fixed that by letting his older brother Arthur become the head of the Peaky Blinders rather than demanding it went to him, as it should've - he was more intelligent, more cunning, more daring, more ambitious. But Arthur Junior needed something to make him feel like he was needed, like he was important, and so Tommy had fixed his older brother in the best way he knew how.

He'd fixed his sister's unwanted pregnancy when she was only sixteen by taking her far away to a doctor who he'd made sure would never speak a word of this incident to anyone. He'd kept this secret from the girl he'd loved because his sister had begged him to even though he'd hated every second of it. He'd fixed his sister's problem at the expense of lying to the girl he loved, but he didn't mind - Ada had been fixed.

He'd fixed this girl he'd loved more than his own life, purely by loving her. He'd made an unhappy and miserable girl smile and laugh and for some strange reason, him being with her made her happy. He'd fixed her, and in return this little red-headed, mucky, uneducated but brilliant girl had fixed him too.

For the first time in his life, Tommy Shelby isn't sure how to fix this.

It was hard falling in love for a second time. It wasn't as easy as the first time - he was more cautious, more angry, more disillusioned with the world and especially so with the idea of love. His heart had been broken by a girl and his body and soul had been broken by his country. In a lot of ways, Grace had fixed him. He'd not meant to fall in love with the quiet Irish woman with the voice of an angel, but slowly and almost unwittingly, he had done. Of course, when he had found out that she was lying to him the entire time, when he'd found out that she was working with a man he despised, she'd broken him again. It was a strange feeling for Tommy - a man who is never affected, never broken - to have his heart broken only by two unassuming girls. Almost embarrassing, he supposes, that a war couldn't make him feel empty but two girls could.

The re-emergence of Grace in his life had thrown him for a loop. Two women had reappeared in his life - the same two women who had loved him and left him - at around the same time and both appeared to want to be with him again. Both appeared to be sorry, to want to fix him again.

By that point, Tommy wasn't sure he was worth fixing. He'd done so much since Daisy had known him, done so many things that he knows Grace had never been aware of. He wasn't the man these two women had fallen in love with anymore. But then, they weren't the same girls either. They were not girls anymore.

Grace's appearance hadn't shocked him much. He was surprised, of course, and a little confused but overall, their reacquaintance had been…nice. Yes, she had broken his heart, had betrayed him in an awful way, but he understood her. She was following her principles and Tommy could never despise someone for standing for what they believed in. She told him that she loves him and he believes her. He believes that she does love him, but he's not sure that she's not just with him for the rush, for feeling wanted. He's sure that husband of hers doesn't make her heart beat wildly in her chest, and he's sure that she feels that she needs that flutter. Tommy's sure he can give that to her. He's sure that being with him feels dangerous to Grace, that by loving him, she feels rebellious like her nature demands of her. He's always been happy to give that to her. A woman like Grace's love is never something to dismiss. Tommy's still surprised that someone like him can be loved, and not even just by one woman.

By two.

Daisy Smith is another matter entirely. She's never loved him because he's aloof. She's never loved him because he's powerful, or because he makes her feel alive in a world that sometimes feels like it's dying. Grace feels like that. Grace loves him, and she does, because he is familiar to her - she is used to violence, to power, to danger. He is everything she shouldn't want in a man but she does.

Daisy is so very very different. She loved him for him. For his quietness, for his contemplativeness, for his brains, for the security she needed so desperately at that time. She loved him for reasons he's never quite understood. She was always so innocent, so kind, so unaffected by the shit hand that life had dealt her. He'd never felt like he deserved her love, but he always knew he'd work tirelessly throughout his life to feel like he had earned it. He needed to keep her love, because having her love made him feel ten feet tall. Made him think that maybe there was more to life than fighting, than violence, than fixing his family. She made him believe that he could be truly happy. That there was more to his life than the Peaky Blinders. She made him feel special - him, Tommy Shelby: thug, criminal - had the love of a good woman. A woman who was kind and selfless and endearing and funny and smart in a way that she shouldn't have been for a woman so uneducated, so downtrodden by the world.

He'd felt betrayed in the worst way when he'd heard she'd started whoring herself out to men. She had shattered every illusion he'd had of her, every pedestal he'd placed her on. The war especially had made his memory of her skewed, he knew that. He knew that she wasn't infallible, that she had her own flaws. She was naive and silly at times, but he'd never minded. Her flaws had melted into virtues as he laid in the cold, muddy disgusting trenches in Verdun. She'd been an angel that had kept him alive. He knows now that it wasn't fair of him to place such impossible expectations upon her, but she'd always been the constant in his life since the day he'd met her playing with Ada in the park. The little girl so brave, so determined to play hide and seek with her friends. She'd always been so good. For him to return to England and hear that she'd become the thing he'd had to spend so many nights in her teenage years promising her that she would never become, so many nights he'd spent holding her as she'd worried out loud about her fear of becoming a whore… for her to have disregarded all of her morals, all of his reassurances… it hurt him. It angered him. It broke every single memory he had of them together. And he'd hated her for it. For years, he'd not remembered their relationship in any positive way. His broken heart had made him view their time together as her way of practicing, using him to figure out what men like him needed in a girl. He'd stopped viewing her as naive and started thinking of her as a con-woman, someone as cunning and steel-hearted as his own father. Just like Arthur Senior, she'd made him feel like he was loved for purely being him and then she'd abandoned him when he'd needed her most.

Her re-emergence into his life had hurt him more than the time she'd left him.

He can still recall her face, the shock, the confusion, the pure unadulterated bliss at seeing him… and he'd known straight away that something wasn't quite right about all of this. When he'd found out her side of the story, he'd been confused and angry. Like he'd never been angry before. He'd wanted to make her hurt the way she'd made him hurt so he threw some awful words at her that he'd known full well were out of order, that he knew would hurt her the most. And he'd felt like utter shit after. When her face had crumbled, when her eyes had flooded with tears - the same eyes that he'd spent so many years staring into, that he'd looked into as he'd spoken those three little words for the time time in his life - he knew that she was, at the core, the same Daisy he'd grown to love. She was still the girl who would apologise for the slightest mistake because life had taught her that if she didn't say sorry, she would be beaten. He'd known that she was still the same girl who could cry at the drop of a hat, tears that he used to make fun of even though he'd always secretly loved that she was so vulnerable, so affected. But he had also known something else - she wasn't that vulnerable girl anymore. Any woman who was friends with Alfie Solomons, who had managed to navigate the shark-infested waters that was mob-ridden London could not afford to be vulnerable or affected or dainty or unassuming. This was not little Daisy Smith, orphan girl whom he had fixed. This was a strong woman, Fleur, who could command the respect and desire of men twice her size, men who had grown up with the best teachers money could buy, men with more money than they knew what to do with. In some twisted way, he respected her as Fleur more than he'd ever done when she was the little girl he knew.

It had taken him some time to reconcile the two of them - Daisy and Fleur. He knew she wasn't the same girl he had known, that he had loved, but he also knew that that girl was buried somewhere inside her still. It was those small clues to her old self that had made him think maybe I can love this woman more than I had loved this girl. Maybe this woman can fix me again, and maybe I can fix her too.

But those thoughts had been dashed and divided by those two words Grace had told him in his hotel room.

I'm pregnant.

He'd never thought of Grace saying those words. When they were together, they never spoke of a family, of normalcy. They'd never been the kind of couple to discuss such matters. Times were too hard, violence too rampant to consider raising a child. Whenever he'd thought of hearing those words, he'd imagined them coming from Daisy's lips. Smiling lips, excited, screamed out in happiness as she jumped up and down and ran towards him and thrown her arms and legs around him. He'd imagined himself catching her, smiling quietly into her shoulder and stroking her hair softly, his fingers getting caught in the tangle of curls. He'd imagined himself kissing her neck softly over and over as she cried tears of happiness - of course she would be crying, she always did when she was this happy - and imagined himself saying "a baby" through his own smile.

He realised now that it did her an injustice to think of her in such an idealised way. The girl he'd known would have that reaction, but the women he knew now… he wasn't sure what her reaction would be. But he knows that he wants to find out. He wants to know this new Daisy… he thinks, he knows, he can love her more than the little girl he used to love. He doesn't know her as well as he would like to… but he knows that he wants to, that he needs to give them a chance. He needs to give the one true, great love he's experienced in life another chance. They don't know each other anymore, but god he wants to. He wants to come home to her, to her bright eyes, to her soft hands tickling the back of his neck like she always did.

These dreams, all of them, all of these ideas, these memories, these ambitions - all gone in the space of three little syllables.

He loved Grace. Not as passionately, or as strongly or as idealistically or purely as he'd loved Daisy, but he had loved Grace. He doesn't want to leave her to do this alone; he knows he can't. But in a lot of ways, he wishes he could. He said it to her in a frenzied manner "go home to your husband Grace and lie, tell him it's his, lie to him Grace, go home," yet he knew he didn't mean it. If there was the slightest chance that it was his, he knows he can't leave her to do this alone. But he also knows he can't trust her fully. Not after what she did. At least Daisy had a reason for her betrayal - can he still call it a betrayal? - whereas Grace lied to him from the first. She went off and married some rich bloke who can't make her heart beat fast, and now she wants him to jump at the chance of a life with her.

He can't leave her, but he bloody well doesn't have to trust her.

He sits alone in a quiet bar, nursing his fifth glass of rum. It's been two days since he's seen Daisy and two more since he's seen Grace. He needs to fix this - he needs to find away to make the two women he has loved in his life happy. Both of them deserve it. For the first time, Tommy Shelby is at a loss; he doesn't know what he needs to do next, doesn't know what takes priority: the woman he's loved since he was fifteen, first in a sisterly way and then more, or the woman carrying what she says is his child.

Why did you have to kiss her?

He's not sure why he did it. He hated…no, he fucking despised seeing Sabini all over her, and her all over him. He hated seeing her laugh in his arms - god he used to love it when she'd laugh with him, used to love feeling her body shake with giggles - and more than anything he'd hated that she'd made it so clear what kind of profession she'd been busying herself with since he'd seen her last, that final night in 1914. She had always been so worried about ending up in this 'business' and to see her in action, to that level, had made him so angry. Angry at her for letting herself succumb to such a fucked-up line of work, angry at himself for not being able to save her from this life, angry at the world for forcing him into a war that took him away from her. And then she'd been so angry at him in turn, the only person who ever truly spoke her mind around him, and she looked so beautiful and he hated seeing another man's hands on what was once his that he'd snapped - he'd kissed her, like she deserved to be kissed. Thoroughly.

And he'd known that he couldn't go another second not telling her everything. He couldn't, wouldn't, do that to her. She needed to know the whole story, but then he'd realised too late that he didn't want to let her go, yet he knew it was cruel, so cruel, to ask her to wait for him. They both knew he had to stick with Grace, had to support her, had to look after her and their child. Yet he was selfish - he wanted Daisy, too. He wanted her fire, he wanted her smile, her laughter, her awful jokes, the joy that always seemed to surround her. He wanted to protect her, to love her, to comfort her… but he couldn't leave Grace. Not when she carried his child. Not after everything they'd been through.

How could he ever fix this?

He orders another bottle of rum, since he's finished the one he bought previously. The bartender gives him a look of 'are you sure?' but eventually gives him the bottle filled with a dark amber liquid.

The second he hears heels clicking against the floorboards, he knows it's her.

"Grace," he acknowledges, throwing back another mouthful of alcohol.

She places her hand on his shoulder to help her balance as she sits on the chair next to his, and he tries not to cringe at the touch. Unexpected contact still gets him sometimes, after everything he's been through. Loud sounds he doesn't expect, a touch he doesn't see coming… it brings him back. To the trenches, to the feel of the tunnels surrounding him in such a claustrophobic way, crushing down around his head…

But he is not allowed to feel such worries. So many people depend on him and his strength, depend on his to be the one stable constant in their lives even when everything else is falling to shit. He is not allowed to feel scared or worried or nervous. He cannot flinch at a touch, or jump at a sound. The only times he's remembered being truly scared always involve Daisy: the time he'd had to leave her to go to the Front - her tears, her soft lip she was biting to hold herself together, her trembling body as he'd hugged her goodbye... yes, he'd been scared then, but not for himself. For her. The time in the club, the fancy fucking club he'd hated being in, when an entire glass panel had fallen on her... scared. Having to tell this woman whom he'd loved for a lifetime that another woman was expecting his child - that may have been the worst. Her face. God, her face. He had hated every second of that encounter and, at that moment, he wished like hell he'd never heard the name Grace. He should never have had to endure such an awful conversation - hadn't God punished him for his crimes enough? Hadn't his time at the Front served its purpose of redeeming the shit things he's done in life? Perhaps this was another punishment for his current crimes. For fixing races, for hurting men who only had the misfortune of 'backing the wrong horse'. For not contacting Daisy after the war. For letting himself fall in love again. Is this punishment? He thinks so.

"You've not been to see me." Her voice is soft, gentle, lilting. It's calming, but at the same time it aggravates him. He's not calm at the moment - he doesn't want to be calm. He's not got time to talk to her when he's thinking.

"I've been thinking."

He hears her sigh. "And? Do you still want me to go back to him?"

A part of him wants to say yes so badly. Wants to eliminate one of the million-and-fuckin'-one issues he has right now. But he can't. He knows he can't. Daisy knows he can't. And he'd bet money that Grace knows he can't.

So he takes a long swig from the bottle, standing up and throwing down some bills onto the counter. "No."

And then he walks out of the pub, feeling like any chance of a reconciliation with Daisy has just been thrown out of the window. He feels… numb. Probably like Daisy did two days ago. Her face freezing, her eyes widening, her mouth dropping open. She looked shell-shocked. He thinks maybe he is, too.

He walks straight out of the pub without looking back. If he did, however, he would see Grace Burgess smiling in satisfaction, breathing a sigh of relief and placing her hand on her stomach - a stomach that she knows full well is entirely empty.

What's this? A speedy update? From this author? No!

Hope you enjoyed this chapter from Tommy's perspectives. If you all like it, I'm happy to throw in some more - I'd always told myself I wouldn't put in Tommy's perspectives for this story but this just had to be written!

Thanks for reading, reviewing, following, favouriting etc. It makes my day getting those emails! x