Archive of Our Own ^beta

So, he doesn't tell anyone. At first, he's not really trying to keep it secret- he never really has, it just never seems to come up. In part because it's no one's business but his, you follow?

Then again, there's really no good way to work into a conversation that you're basically immortal, is there?

If Eggsy were normal, he already would have died four times protecting his sister from Dean, and a further six protecting his mum. If Dean was just a little bit smarter, a little more observant, Eggsy would have been up shit creek ages ago.

He still doesn't regret a single one of those times.

He almost gets found out during training, time and time again.

During the water test, he manages to hold his breath a smidge too long to be completely believeable. However, which seems more likely: that Eggsy has more lung capacity than suspected, or that Eggsy doesn't really need to breathe? He knows which one Merlin and Harry are more likely to think, but he does try to be more cautious.

It's not really a secret so much as it is his family's private business, but it's not something he'd like to get out, either. He wouldn't like to get experimented on.

Harry's quite interesting, for a posh bloke.

He's normal, but... not.

In fact, the more Eggsy got to know the man, the less normal he appeared.

Normal people can't get you out of jail that quickly.

Normal people can't take out a whole room full of sluggers and enforcers that easily, or stylishly.

Normal people wouldn't slip a bug on your jacket, or have amnesia darts in their watches, or an umbrella that's bulletproof. (Eggsy's favorite cousin would love a bulletproof umbrella, though she'd prefer a parasol.)

Normal people weren't international spies.

Harry Hart was quite the opposite of normal. And yet... As far as Eggsy could tell, that was what he was. Normal. But... not.

And that was all in the first twenty-four hours of knowing the man. (He got stranger, later. The butterflies were one thing, but who stuffs their dog and keeps him in the loo? Honestly, and Eggsy thought he and his family were weird.)

His mum's not like him, Eggsy knows. If she was, Dean wouldn't have been a problem. There wouldn't be bruises decorating her face almost every day, and she wouldn't wear collars of purple and blue every other week.

Daisy is perfectly normal too, and that's why he worries about her and mum so much. They're completely normal, average human beings. Just as fragile as any other.

Eggsy's not really a whole lot like his mum, or his sister. He takes more after his da.

The second time he's almost found out during training is an accident. The whole slew of them, already reduced to six, were playing cross-country capture the flag, mixed with paintball.

Well, Merlin had called it 'training for item retrieval and protection in outdoor conditions', but Eggsy was no fool. Merlin was a tricky fucker. The weather had been clear all last week, and their training hadn't been very challenging. They could have done this then. Instead, Merlin waited for it to rain so they'd have more difficult terrain to maneuver. It was glorified capture the flag using small teams and paint guns played in the mud.

Eggsy was on a team with Roxy. He'd be making a run for a flag cross-country through the trees, bushes, and the mud while Roxy acted as the rear-guard, lurking about the bottom of the hill and patrolling. If another team got close to their flag, she'd fall back and defend it. If their flag was taken, she'd go and retrieve it. If Eggsy took too long to get back, she'd assume he was captured or otherwise incapacitated and make a run for another team's flag.

It just so happened that as Eggsy was running down another hill towards Charlie's flag, he fucked up. He missed a step, sliding on the mud and snagging his ankle on a root, tripping him up and sending him tumbling arse over tit to the bottom of the steep hill. He didn't get up immediately. In part due to having the breath knocked out of him, and also in part because he'd broken his neck.

He blacked out for a moment, in all honesty, but he did luckily manage to get himself in an upright position and hastily straighten both his neck and his collar moments before Roxy crashed through the underbrush towards the small clearing he'd fallen into. It was sheer chance she ran into him- he'd been out long enough to pass their safe point, and she thought he'd gotten captured. She was actually trying to capture another flag and hadn't even known he was in this direction.

She asked if he was alright, and it wasn't a complete lie when he told her he was fine. She didn't seem to buy it entirely, but he managed to convince her it wasn't anything serious, just him being careless and clumsy.

She kept eyeing him for the rest of the afternoon, whenever they were close enough for her to check on him. He kept on like it wasn't anything to be concerned about, even as his neck kept twinging something fierce for the next few days. The first time something broke always hurt the worst, and he knew he got off lightly with just being sore.

If Eggsy had been normal, like Roxy, he'd be dead, or paralyzed. He didn't allow it to bruise, so no one knew he'd gone and broken his fool neck. Except him. Merlin had asked if he'd slept wrong, but he was more pointing out that Eggsy had rubbed his neck four times in ten minutes and didn't seem to have noticed anything beyond that single comment.

It did start him to wondering- would it really be so bad, if he told Roxy? Just Roxy. Having someone to complain to and help cover would have been nice. He'd have to think about it.

Eggsy's never been as close to his da's side of the family as they would like. It's not that they don't accept him and care for him, or that they don't love him or that he doesn't love them- it's his da's fault, honest. The way Da used to tell it to Eggsy, secretly as a bed-time story just for the two of them, he'd had enough of being strange, of being different. So he ran away, and changed his name and pretended to be normal.

He'd pretended so hard, he'd never let Eggsy's mum know he wasn't, and if it weren't for Da coming home at exactly the right moment to catch Eggsy playing with the kitchen shears and a plugged in electrical wire and coming out the other side unscathed, Eggsy didn't reckon he'd know his da wasn't normal either.

(Nan found da not long after, but she could respect his desire for privacy, and for the most part, left her son and his young family alone in respect of his wishes. More or less.)

When his Da died, Eggsy was too young to know most of the secrets that came about from being his father's son.

Too young to know much about his family history, though Nan did her best to correct that. He was too young to understand why his da had run away from home, too young to know his da was training to be a spy, and worst of all, too young to know how he really died. Just too young.

The parachute test almost gave him away. He fucked up something in his legs on the landing, came in too hard. Then he had to stand there and pretend for Rox that he was fine, and instead covered the pain with anger that he turned onto Merlin.

Eggsy'd be fine, most likely, if he didn't have a parachute, but what if it'd been some other poor fucker? Plus, it wasn't like they would know that he would be fine, so it was a dick move all around, yeah? Or so he thought, and pretending to be mad suddenly turned into actually being pissed as hell.

(It also hurt more than he thought it would, looking Merlin straight in the eyes and thinking that this man he was beginning to trust had chosen him as the write-off.)

Except, it turned out, it was another stupid fucking mind game and his parachute was there all along.

Later, Eggsy'd be glad Merlin had walked away first, because in that moment, Eggsy didn't think he'd have remembered not to limp and give away the damage done to his legs that was already trying to heal. If another candidate had hit the ground like he had, they wouldn't have even been able to walk. Perhaps ever again.

(Eggsy was fine by dinner.)

Eggsy really had to give it to Merlin though- it wasn't just the pain of his bones resetting themselves that had his legs a mite shaky after that.

There's limits to what he can recover from. Not a lot of limits, admittedly- he's recieved postcards from the american branch of the family, and he knows he's got at least one relative who's been reduced down to almost nothing. That was in large chunks though, or so the theory goes, given that everything but one hand has been missing for decades.

Plus, he isn't half normal, like Eggsy is. Eggsy isn't as resilient as the rest of his family.

Eggsy's Nan used to make a wonderful belladonna berry tea, and she always made scones chock full of the extra berries to enjoy with it. Poisons are nothing to his side of the family, and belladonna is wonderfully sweet besides. She also used arsenic liberally as a spice in pretty much everything, much like salt, or pepper.

He misses his Nan. She was a tough old biddy who probably would have skinned Dean alive for laying a hand on her family, but she'd gotten too old to do much of anything anymore- or so she said- and Eggsy hadn't heard from her in years. The last time he'd seen her, she'd said something about retireing to the country to have an easier way of it. Next time Eggsy tried to pay her a visit, the house was empty and unlived in, like it'd been abandoned for years.

Eggsy wasn't sure what she'd done or where she'd gone, and wasn't sure if he'd ever find out.

Still, while he didn't know of many weaknesses, and didn't want to test anything to be sure, there were limits. There was at least one thing he knew for sure that could end someone from his da's side of the family. His da had been the one he'd learned it from. Explosives at a close distance combined with being torn into small enough parts will do the trick.

Merlin didn't play favorites.

Except, of course, for how he did.

It took Eggsy a long time to catch on, and he probably wasn't supposed to ever figure it out. But once you figured Merlin out, it really wasn't all that hard.

(Just like how Roxy was a little confusing at first, until things settled a bit and he realized she's the best mate he's ever had or is likely to again.)

Merlin's favorites were Eggsy himself, and Roxy. He wasn't obvious about it, and being his favorite for the position didn't mean they got special treatment. They didn't get more or longer breaks, or any little treats like extra dessert or less laps. He didn't make anything easier on them, not one jot.

Instead, he was tougher on them.

Eggsy thought at first that Merlin disapproved of them being so dissimilar from the other candidates- what with him being poor and obvious about it and Roxy being female and unapologetic, but Eggsy paid attention. It wasn't that.

Instead, Merlin was pushing them harder- subtly, but still pushing- because he thought they could take it.

It was kind of thrilling, every time he challenged them, however subtly, and they rose to the occasion. Merlin never outright smiled at them for succeeding, but the gleam in his eyes did look proud, and that made it even better. Impressing the man who did not seem to ever be impressed, a challenge Eggsy was happy to meet.

There were benefits to being half normal.

It made it far easier for him to blend in with the rest of the population, for one, and fit in with the rest of his normal family for the other.

He would never be as pale as his cousins- the ones his mum didn't even know existed. No one would ever mistake him for a corpse upon first glance unless he wanted them to. He could fake being injured much more convincingly, without having to use props.

He aged faster, though part of that was on purpose, to blend in. He didn't have to age at all, if he didn't want to. His favorite cousin had been twelve for a very long time, since before he was born.

His pulse was steadier, more obvious. He didn't have to do anything elaborate to hide from the doctors, which was one less thing to worry about. As far as he knew, it didn't really effect much other than that.

So yeah, there were some benefits.

Things really got fucked on the honey-pot mission.

Eggsy tasted the poison in the drink, how could he not?

Though, to be honest, it hadn't been one his Nan taught him- this was one he learned growing up in the estates. Everyone there learned right quick what to look out for to avoid bad consequences. Or they didn't, and if they were lucky, they lived to regret it and learn from the encounter.

It was a poison though, a drug, however mild, and so didn't work on him. He almost didn't pay any attention to it, given it wouldn't effect him anyway. But then Eggsy realized his drink wasn't the only one spiked.

First Charlie started slurring his words. Alarming enough, as the git always emphasized his posh accent around Eggsy to try and shame him for not being born in the right tax bracket. Then Roxy started getting woozy, swaying and visibly fighting back waves of dizziness by blinking heavily.

Eggsy took one blink of his own, two- and then he sidled up to the pretty girl they were ordered to seduce and wrapped an affectionate arm around her waist, holding her close. In his other hand he cradled a small blade that was decidedly not Kingsman standard issue, and tenderly he lay its cold sharp edge over the thin fabric stretched over her vulnerable stomach. A silent and effective threat.

Immediately, she tensed. She tried reaching for her phone and drawing away from him, but he didn't allow that to happen. She tried to slide away with a coy laugh. Eggsy didn't let her move an inch. He yanked her snug againgst his side, and nuzzled his nose into her hair. To the rest of the club, this all looked merely like the intimate embrace of a young couple as he lowered his mouth to whisper roughly in her ear.

"Sweetheart, you best hope whatever you gave my friends doesn't hurt them, or you and I are gonna have a real problem, you get me?"

Eggsy may have... fudged a little, on some of his exams for Kingsman.

He lied, a bit, to the doctors when they asked if he had any allergies. The real answer was no, of course- nothing was really toxic to him, even in large quantities.

But it relaxes people to think you have a weakness, however slight. Makes them think you're as vulnerable to the world as they are. Same reason Eggsy always lets Dean's hits on him bloom dark bruises even when he didn't have to.

Well, that, and if he didn't, Dean would eventually pick up on it, then who knows what might have happened? Dean probably would have tried harder to hurt him, tried to make him bleed just so he could see Eggsy in pain. He was that kind of person.

That's if Eggsy were lucky. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been surprised if Dean had started making him join underground fighting rings for the money, make all the drug runs to the shittiest parts of town instead of just most of them, or even tried selling him to some mad scientist to study.

Dean was a shitty person, and Eggsy didn't want to give him any opportunities to be even shittier to him.

Appearing a little weak, in a normal, human way was a far better alternative.

Being a little weak, in the expected ways, allowed him to blend in, even in a group of normal not-normal people.

Even a super-secret spy organization, while wanting its members to be the peak of human fitness, would much prefer that they have a weakness, however small.

So he lied. He said he had a very mild reaction to flowering trees- nothing serious enough to need medicine, but he got a little sniffly sometimes and had a little bit of a sore throat, nothing that could impede him on a mission or be proven one way or the other.

He lied during the section of the trials where they worked on poison identification, too. He knew all of the ones they were tested on, and many more besides, his Nan had made sure of that. He wanted to pass the test, but he also didn't want to appear suspiciously knowledgeable about the subject. Some of the poisons they were taught were controlled substances, and they'd want to know where exactly he learned about them. He couldn't tell them he'd learned from the different biscuits his Nan would serve him at the kitchen table.

He kept a weather eye on Rox during this section, as subtly as he could manage, and kept his score about even with hers. Merlin noticed- Merlin knew everything- well, mostly everything- and Eggsy could see in his face that he'd seen Eggsy's focus on Roxy's test.

He hadn't outright cheated though, and had clearly answered questions before Roxy in several instances, and differently in several others. There was nothing substantial to call him on.

Besides, gathering intelligence and taking advantage of their surrounding were things they were supposed to do as spies-in-training, right? That was his story, and he was sticking to it.

He pretended to 'wake up' a little after they'd tied him down.

He really hoped this was part of the test, or he might be in some actual trouble. The man questioning him was too professional to actually appear surprised, but Eggsy could tell he'd probably timed his waking too soon for whatever they'd injected him with when he didn't take the bait. Whoops.

(Drugs and poisons didn't work on him, how was he supposed to know how long it should have lasted?)

The man pressed forward with his plans, and immediately revealed what he knew- or at least part of what he knew- about Eggsy. Then he started asking questions.

Eggsy had a simple, two word answer to all of them, "Fuck you!"

His mind was racing. If this was part of the test- and it probably was, it was too weird and Bond-movie-like not to be- set them up for a honeypot, drug and kidnap them, then question them with no physical torture- what were they testing? What did they want to see from him? The man asked another question, this time about Harry, and just like that, Eggsy had his answer.

This was like when Harry had cut him loose with a bug on him to see if he'd snitch to anyone. Or, at least, he hoped it was. They were testing his loyalty, seeing if he'd grass anybody up.

Fine.

The threat of the impending train was one he probably would have taken more seriously if it weren't so damn cliche and if it could actually permanently take him out of commission. Sure, it'd hurt like fuck, legacy of being part normal, but it wouldn't take him very long to pull himself together again. Not in a tunnel, where there were only so many places and so far his body could go.

So, he kept his secrets, and told the man to go fuck himself again.

This was either part of the training, or he'd have one hell of an advantage on this guy when it came time to get his own back.

Life wasn't a movie, and dead was dead. Usually.

Except for Eggsy and his family.

No one actually ever expected the dead body to get back up and stab you in the back, which only made it that much easier to do so.

Of-fucking-course it was another goddamn test.

Eggsy tried not to be too smug that Roxy had passed, he'd figured it out, and that fucker Charlie had washed out. He didn't hide it well, going by the amused looks both Harry and Merlin shot him. Oh well. He wasn't trying to hide it very hard anyway.

The armoury was incredible. Chock full of things that came right out of a bad spy film, but real! Eggsy felt a little giddy, like a kid in a candy shop given free rein. He also kind of wished he had an excuse to take pictures, because his cousins would shit a brick over some of this equipment.

They'd be so damn jealous.

Eggsy had to hide a laugh when Harry warned him about the toxin on the shoe's hidden blade. It was nice of him to worry. Practical, too- if Eggsy had been normal, that certainly would have been something to be cautious about.

Eggsy knew that poison though- he recognized its sharp smell the instant the blade popped out. A few years ago, the most it would have done to him would have been some dizziness.

Now? Eggsy didn't think it'd even make him blink.

Running into Valentine the moment they came out of the door was unexpected.

What was more unexpected was the woman standing behind him. Harry and Valentine were exchanging barbed words over their heads, until Valentine turned to leave, and the woman deliberately caught Eggsy's eye.

"Cousin," she said with a regal nod of her head.

He tilted his own just a tad in return. "Cuz."

She stepped closer, easy and lethal, eyes dark and dancing with amusement. "Valet?"

He shrugged his shoulders fluidly and slouched a few steps closer. Glanced away before looking back, straight into those dark eyes. "Pays the bills."

He might have said more- he was thinking something along the lines of 'fancy seeing you here', but Valentine had noticed that she wasn't following him, and swung back to see why, inserting himself into the conversation.

"Oh, do you two know each other?"

Harry seemed just as interested in an answer, stepping up to Eggsy's six, but staying silent and letting the look on his face do the questioning.

Eggsy lifted his brows at the woman in return. He didn't actually know her name, but something about her was undeniably familiar. He might have met her at a family reunion once or twice. Or he might know her from somewhere else. She looked a lot like his Nan, years younger and missing her legs.

Her face was impressively impassive, but her eyes laughed at him just the same.

"We are cousins... of a sort." she said with a wry twist of her lips and suddenly Eggsy knew what exactly was going on. Just as he had relatives who chose never to grow up, he also had relatives who liked living a full life, and then living another.

Guess he knew what happened to his Nan now.

"Of a sort?" Harry prompted impatiently.

"Yeah," Eggsy said with a lazy grin, all teeth, "We share the same Nan."

Eggsy saw that Harry had questions that Eggsy couldn't answer, because technically they weren't really his secrets. So he pre-empted them, or at least tried to.

"That was a surprise."

"Oh?" Harry asked, deceptively mild.

"Yeah. Last we heard, she was dead."

Lucky for Eggsy, Harry didn't have time to question him about his family tree. Unfortunately, it meant his time with Harry had come to an end, for now.

Fuck the dog test.

Fuck Arthur.

The goddamn test was rigged- being given blanks meant jack-shit when he was too close to JB for that to matter. It made no damn sense anyway- why kill an innocent for no reason at all? If it was to save lives, or to protect someone, Eggsy could understand.

But this wasn't for either of those things.

This was, "Shoot the dog, because I told you to." Blind loyalty. If they wanted that, they could brainwash themselves some Marines. The training so far expected them to think, and when he thought about it, this test made no sense, no sense at all.

But Eggsy didn't get a chance to explain that to Harry.

Harry was disappointed in him, and his words rang in Eggsy's ears long after he'd landed in Kentucky. They still echoed the entire time Eggsy watched Harry in that church. They were as clear and loud as the blood pumping in his ears, until the very moment Valentine's shot rang out.

Then, after a brief and startled scream of sudden grief and loss, Eggsy's everything went silent.

He took a breath. Smoothed down the front of his jacket. Pulled out his phone.

Made a call.

Then he went to HQ.

Eggsy wasn't born as invulnerable as he was now. He had to grow into it, courtesy of his mother's contribution to his gene pool. It meant he got right queasy on a visit to his Nan's from some hemlock salad when he was seven. Hemlock didn't bother him a bit, now.

When he was eight, and Dean hit him for the first time, he bruised for real. It stopped being real as soon as Eggsy turned eleven.

He has scars, all due to Dean or his buddies roughing him up before he really grew into himself and started faking the hurts. According to Nan, Da didn't have any scars. So in some ways (a lot of ways) he is different from his da after all.

But now he's older. Stronger.

He's not weak anymore.

Meeting with Arthur right after Valentine shot Harry was both everything Eggsy had expected, and yet not. He really wanted to talk to Merlin- but given he'd failed the Lancelot trials, he'd figured he'd probably have to pass by Arthur first. He'd expected Arthur not to listen to him, not to value his words or his worth because he didn't have the right pedigree, and to dismiss him the instant he showed up.

In a way, Arthur had. He looked down on Eggsy, and was not subtle about it. Yet, he hadn't sent him away, had instead invited him to sit and toast Galahad with him, like Harry was nothing, just a title.

He'd expected the sneer, the disdain, the condescension.

He hadn't expected for Arthur to try to murder him, or for him to be a traitorous murdering backstabbing bastard.

It hadn't even taken three seconds for Eggsy to know what he was going to do next.

Arthur had one of Valentine's chips in his neck. He was probably going to try and get rid of Eggsy, mark him down as collateral.

So he made his decision. Asked a dumb question as distraction, moved.

He could have done something else.

The poison wouldn't have harmed him. The explosive would've stung like a sonovabitch, but he'd probably be fine. Eggsy could have sat there, drank the poison, waited for Arthur to prime the pen, and then taken care of the traitorous fuck while he still had a look of dumb surprise on his face.

But that wasn't good enough.

The old bastard was going to die, and what better way than for him to do it to himself?

So Eggsy switched the glasses.

"Thought it tasted a bit shit."

The look on the old bastard's face as he died was one Eggsy might have enjoyed if it weren't for the fact that the only reason it was happening was because Harry was dead.

Hard to enjoy anything, right then.

On the way in to Valentine's secret mountain lair, fighting his way past the guards to get to Valentine himself, Eggsy was honestly going through the motions.

Relying on reflexes.

Until there were too many enemies and reflexes and a bulletproof suit weren't enough anymore.

Merlin cried out, startled, in his ear the first time one of the bullets made it past Eggsy's guard and whipped across his cheekbone, eerily similar from Eggsy's viewpoint to the shot that killed Harry.

Eggsy didn't even so much as flinch.

He was channeling his heritage in a way he'd never done so directly before, and this was all modern ammunition, shot from modern guns. The only bullets or weapons that even had a chance to hurt him had to be specially forged and blessed. All of these came off an assembly line.

Normally, normally- Eggsy would have tried to hide it, fake being normal.

Not today.

Today, his normal mum and normal baby sister were in danger. Merlin and Roxy were in danger too, but at least they had chosen to be. His mum and his sis didn't even know they were in danger.

Today normal Harry Hart had died. For all the ways the man wasn't normal- his fantastic fighting skill, his career, and his manners even, which were in Eggsy's experience the most abnormal thing about him- he was normal enough, in the end.

Today, Eggsy had no patience for normal, not when it meant that all the people he cared about that were normal were in danger. Harry, his mum, his sister, Roxy, Merlin.

Today Eggsy was all out of fucks to give about keeping secrets.

He kept going, fighting his way through the guards, slogging down a hall starting to resemble a slaughterhouse.

He lost count of how many hits should have killed him. Would have, if he'd been normal. He wasn't even consciously dodging anymore, allowing strikes to hit if it meant he could get through easier.

He made it all the way to an intersection and stopped for a moment, breathing harshly, a reminder of his mum. The rest of his family wouldn't have to take a breather, wouldn't need a break to recuperate a little.

A voice crackled in his ear. Merlin.

Eggsy'd honestly thought the man had dropped him from the comms.

"Take a left." was all he said, and he was clearly trying to keep an even keel so Eggsy didn't mess with him. He didn't have it in him right now anyway, and it was understandable that Merlin was a bit shaken.

Eggsy turned the corner obediently.

It was taking too fucking long to get to Valentine, fighting through his personal army at every turn. Eggsy had an idea. An awful idea.

"Hey Merlin? You know those implants in Valentine's people's necks?"

"Yeah, what about them?"

"...Can you turn them on?"

The aftermath was a fucking mess. Literally, figuratively, metaphorically, whatever. Just a mess, all around. The halls of the complex were slick with gore. Who knows how many heads of state were included in the number of people with implants he and Merlin had blown up. How many governments had been destabilized with the push of a button.

All the prisoners had to be freed. The two of them had to find any with pilot training among them, and separate them by plane and general region. It was a desperate attempt to get everyone home and working on global damage control, and overall it was an organizational nightmare.

Finally, finally, everyone was gone, and it was just him and Merlin in the mountain. They'd given Roxy a call to let her know they were going to be late a lot earlier in the evening when it first became obvious they wouldn't be able to get away without handling shaky political prisoners. Now they were finally free to pick her up.

Once they had, of course, they had one more stop to make.

Eggsy just had to convince Merlin of that.

Eggsy had one more thing to take care of before he could leave with Merlin, and this one he figured he'd better actually keep secret, unlike the other secret(s) he was already planning to spill.

He told Merlin he had to take a piss, and managed to 'accidentally' leave his glasses on his seat in the plane. Then he carefully made his way back to the main room, where Gazelle and Valentine's bodies were still sprawled across the floor.

Eggsy just looked for a little bit, admiring the artistic fall of Gazelle's hair. Then he nudged her hip with the tip of one of his oxfords.

"Oi. Show's over, Nan. Time to get up."

Her unnaturally still limbs didn't move.

Eggsy nudged her a bit harder. This time, when he spoke, his tone was admonishing instead of gently teasing. "Nan."

One heartbeat passed, two, three- and she began to stir.

"Eggsy, how many times have I told you I'd eviscerate you if you disturbed me when I was sleeping?" she asked rhetorically, sitting up ungracefully for once.

"One too few. Now c'mon, up and at 'em- me and Merlin are about to fly the last plane out, you wanna hitch a ride or no?" he asked.

She reclined back on her elbows, looking up at him through her old, dark eyes. She hummed. "Do you really think that's a good idea?"

Eggsy snorted, then said, "No, I think it's a dumb as fuck idea, but I figured I'd ask."

Her smile was small as she said, "I think you have your answer. Don't worry about me, I can take care of myself."

"I know you can, I wasn't worried. I was being considerate to my elders, like you keep telling me." Eggsy said.

She shrugged.

Eggsy smirked. "Though I think this is probably less to do with you being able to take care of yourself, and more to do with not wanting to face your sister after faking your death for over a decade."

Gazelle grimaced comically. "There is that."

"Right. Well-" Eggsy shuffled forward, and bent to press his lips to her forehead. "Guess this is goodbye for now, then. Missed you, Nan."

It wasn't until he was already across the entire cavernous room and almost out of the room entirely that he heard her reply.

"I missed you too, Eggsy."

Without turning back, he raised a single hand in farewell, and left the room for the last time.

It took a bit of finagling, wheedling, whining, and outright begging to get Merlin to take the plane to America, and it was sheer luck they had enough fuel to do so.

Once they were there, safely landed in an airfield outside of New York, Merlin wanted answers. Demanded them. Roxy did too.

Answers Eggsy couldn't give them, not just yet.

First, they had somewhere to be.

See, Eggsy loved his family, all of it. And they loved him.

And Harry, well- he was practically family, right?

What else do you call someone who gets you off a prison-worthy charge, gives you the opportunity to better your life and your immediate family's all in one swoop, and tells you he sees someone with potential when he looks at you?

Eggsy wasn't dumb, he'd seen the looks the other Kingsman agents- barring Merlin- had given Harry on the few occasions they met around the mansion for supplementary lessons. Lessons for all the things all the other candidates had already known, growing up in privilege as they did, but had Eggsy hopelessly lost. Harry had gone out on a limb, putting up Eggsy as his candidate for Lancelot, and Eggsy knew that.

Eggsy'd also seen Harry interacting with the other agents, and excepting his behavior with Merlin and when he was alone with Eggsy, he was incredibly closed-off. So Eggsy figured it wasn't only Harry being good for Eggsy, but that Eggsy was also good for him.

Hell, Eggsy'd seen Harry's house, however briefly. No one had a house like that without being incredibly lonely.

So, they were basically family, right?

Right.

It was a good thing that Kentucky's not all that far away from New York, in the grand scheme of things.

The three of them washed up on Eggsy's aunt and uncle's doorstep like flotsam from the storm, bedraggled and weary. Merlin looked rather like he'd like to find himself a barrel of whiskey and drown himself in it. Roxy was still coming down from the adrenaline of being up so high.

Eggsy was sore and tired, and so, so very hopeful.

"You rang?"

See, Eggsy's family wasn't normal, not on his da's side.

Normal, human limits, like death, did not apply.

Harry wasn't blood related, and Eggsy wasn't sure how they fit, but he did know they were family, and Eggsy's family had all sorts of tricks up their sleeves.

Roxy tried to keep a calm face, but her eyes about popped out of her face. Merlin was gruff about it, but Eggsy was sure he'd seen something wet shining at the corners of his eyes before he put a hand over his face.

Harry wasn't even saying anything, but Eggsy didn't care. He couldn't stop grinning, grinning with all his teeth and his face all scrunched up and happy. His aunt and uncle stood in the doorway, leaning into each other with a proud gleam in their eyes as they watched their happy little reunion. His aunt hid an indulgent smile behind an elegant hand, and his uncle puffed on his cigar fit to fill a chimney, doing nothing to hide the grin breaking out around it.

They were going to tease him endlessly, as soon as Harry was a little more stable. Eggsy didn't mind.

Harry was alive, and that was all that mattered.

It did mean Eggsy would have to reveal some secrets. Looking around the room, at this little makeshift chosen family who were both normal and not- because spies were definitely not actually normal and Harry no longer was normal or normal- he couldn't give a shit. These people, right here- these family members he had and hadn't been born with- they were worth it.

And hey, they could keep a secret.