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The man sprawled on the hot Kentucky pavement isn’t dead. He’s just taking his sweet time dying.
Eggsy glances at the sky and shifts his weight on his back foot to wait. It’s not as if either of them has anywhere to be.
Death is patient like that.
He ignores the clusterfuck inside the church. All the fresh ghosts in there are too caught up in a violent nexus of their own making to acknowledge him, and he’s too uneasy to deal with their shit. Thing is, the reaping gig isn't exactly taxing; he shows up, he sends the willing on their way, and then he’s off somewhere else to do the whole routine all over again. Rinse and repeat. Eggsy’s an old hand at it by now.
But today something is wrong with the world—with the air, with the soil, and with the sky itself. Darkness ripples outward from the center like an oil slick, devouring the clouds, blotting out the sun.
It isn’t like there's anyone he can call to ask, hey, are things good? And it’d be pointless to—he knows they’re not. That endless spill of black like a seeping wound is a warning. Something far worse than this massacre looms on the horizon, on a scale that yearns to crush him between the earth and the sky.
Wanting, needing a distraction, he steps closer to the dying man.
He lets out a low whistle of appreciation. ‘Cos Eggsy’s dead but he's not dead- dead. And this bloke is proper fit with broad shoulders accentuated by an expensive suit and legs that went on forever. The bugger probably took real good care of himself, followed doctor's orders and ate his multigrain bread and watched his salt intake and ran thirty minutes on the treadmill every day.
Pity that he hadn't learned how to dodge bullets. Whoever got him got him good right through the eye, bullet exiting through the back of the skull, a spray of shiny bone and gray matter spilled on the ground like a smear on a canvas. The body shudders through the last flickers of neurons firing, the curtain coming down, no encore, show’s over, that’s all, folks.
Most of his face is intact. Eggsy peers down. The bloke is the older side, edging fifty? Perhaps a little less, though he wore it well.
Had. Did. Does. Terms were complicated between the dying and dead.
The insects already descended. It’s a steaming, boiling hot day, and the blood is a tacky, molasses-like stain on the asphalt. The flies are drawn to it, eager to consume, and Eggsy has no beef with them, circle of life, kumbaya, all that jazz. Though he does wave off a few flies from landing on the ruined orbital socket, shards of glass glinting, plastic mangled, and his fingers phase through skin that’s still pliable, still warm.
He frowns, studying the etched lines of unhappiness around the mouth that even death can’t erase. It makes Eggsy think of snow, of mountains covered in the stuff, of a howling wind—and a warm hand on his shoulder, a quiet voice posing a question:
What is your name, young man?
Recognition knocks him on his arse.
“Oh, fuck me,” he swears, reaching inside his shirt, clutching at the medal on his neck. He should go, pretend he doesn't know the man, but since everything is proper fucked anyway—Christ, even the insects seem more aggressive than they should—he shoves his fingers up to the second knuckle in the mess of viscera, straight down to the guttering neurons turning off one by one.
□mo□vi□ e□
HɑRRY□ A□T░□ VALEnTINE□▲□□ JɑM □ S□□CHIP□ □chip□ □I
̴͘͝W̴̡̹̺͂̕A̸͘͝ͅN̴͎̈́T̸̞̔E̵͙̭̗͌D̶̳̕͘͝TO□□□loyAlty□□▲□ERLIN□□world□□ □□dangerdangerdanger□
sɪᴍᴄᴀʀᴅ░░□ᴷᴵᴺᴳ ˢᴹɑᴺ▲□kent□c□□cky□□□
□□ gΛᄂaha๔ca ny░uhear[̲̅m] e □□□
Memories flood in from the dying man. Words and places and secrets. Panic. Gunshots and explosions and rage. The empty white noise of nothingness.
Eggsy thinks: The world is ending.
He also thinks: The man, this Harry Hart, who had squeezed his shoulder and promised a favor that Eggsy never got to use, can put a stop to it.
And he’s dying.
The world is ending. The noise is not white. The noise is a jarring, sickening scream of black.
Eggsy has already made so many bad choices for the right reasons. What’s one more?
—
Harry wakes up in a pool of blood.
“Merlin?” is his first instinct, croaked between dry lips. There’s no reply. The glasses have stopped transmitting.
He’s on his own.
How am I alive?, he wonders while taking stock of the situation. Other than the steady buzz of flies, it's silent. There is only the dead.
He stumbles to his feet, aware that there's been a clerical error on a cosmic scale. Valentine shot him point blank. So how the hell is he up and feeling…
“Dazed” is too trivial for the utter disconnect he feels from reality, as if his feet on the ground are a lie, the sun pricking through his suit a distant, alien sensation. But it's the closest word he has for it.
He touches his forehead, expecting to encounter a wet tangle of exposed bone. Pain rocks through him. Not a real hurt but a phantom echo, incongruent with the reality meeting his fingers. While his mind and nerves are in agreement that the left side of his face should be caved in, there's only sticky, drying blood. So much so that his eyelid is glued shut.
Valentine missed. It's a miracle.
That's a lie, I felt it, I felt the bullet carve through me and lodge in my skull. I died!
It stings as he forces the eyelid free. More than the knife wound on his back, the cracked knuckles, and bruised ribs, a blaring agony as he regards the world with both eyes—and it’s a strange sight, lopsided, a chiaroscuro of too much and too little that subsides when he squints.
Psychosomatic?
(ɪ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ɪᴛ'ꜱ ᴡᴇɪʀᴅ ʙᴜᴛ ᴡᴇ ɢᴏᴛᴛᴀ ɢᴇᴛ ᴀ ᴍᴏᴠᴇ ᴏɴ!)
It doesn’t matter. He’s on his feet. Somehow he's walking, then he's running for the car.
It's there. Thank fuck.
He checks for signs it's been tampered with, for a—
(ɴᴏ ʙᴏᴍʙ. ʏᴏᴜ’ʀᴇ ɢᴏᴏᴅ. ᴄᴀʟʟ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴍᴀᴛᴇ.)
Upon finding it as he'd left it, he accesses the secret compartment beneath the seat, unlocking it with his thumbprint. As the lid lifts, it hisses, depressurizing, revealing a cache of guns, money, passports, and a few Kingsman-proprietary tools, including the spare set of glasses he slips on.
“Merlin?” How long was he out? From the lack of local authorities swarming the area, it couldn’t have been too long. Someone must have noticed either the commotion or wondered why their loved ones hadn’t returned from their wretched church service yet.
Either that or he’s too late and the world’s already collapsed into chaos.
Something twines around his leg like an affectionate cat. Harry glances down and sees nothing; the distraction lasts long enough for Merlin’s shocked inhale to wind down across the Atlantic. “Galahad?!”
“I assure you that the surprise at my survival is mutual. One second.” Harry takes off the glasses, turning them to face him so that Merlin can see that it’s him firsthand. “Are we good?”
Merlin is too much of a professional to yell over comms, whatever the circumstances. “Welcome back, Agent Galahad. Status?”
Harry fills him in. Minor wounds and abrasions. Possible concussion, potential nerve damage to the left eye. Still in possession of all his gear. Mental status functional, emotional status to be determined at a later time.
Then he asks, “Valentine?” and, sounding grim, Merlin replies, “We’re working on it. Head to the airport, your plane hasn’t left yet.”
“Right. Patch me through to Arthur?”
“No, I’ll inform him that you survived personally. Focus on getting home, Galahad.”
Harry starts the car. There’s an infinitely small moment where he stares hard at the passenger seat.
Then he pulls out, burning rubber, and leaves the corpses in his wake.
—
The plane is refueled and ready to go. Harry shakes hands with Isolde the pilot, whose eyes are suspiciously red-rimmed, but like Merlin she’s too circumspect to do anything else but duck back into the cockpit and leave him to it after he dismisses her offer of help. As the plane taxis off the runaway, Harry patches himself up.
Washing away the blood reaffirms that Valentine must have jerked his hand to the side. There isn’t a mark on him regardless of how Harry turns his face or combs his scalp for signs of a bullet graze. There’s a spot at the back of his head that twinges when he prods at it that must have occurred when he dropped, but that appears to be the extent of his injuries.
So where the hell did all the blood come from? How did my glasses shatter?
Something is wrong.
Something is wrong about all of this.
Maybe it’s been wrong since he left England.
Bothered by the thought creeping at the edge of his mind, not fully formed but persistent, Harry doctors the knife wound on his back and then pops an analgesic tablet. He then lies down on the cot in the back; no agent worth their salt turned down the opportunity to get some rest.
—
There’s a cliff.
There’s a cliff, and a figure stands at the top. Although the incline is steep, Harry climbs. He must, fueled by a drive to meet that person, to demand answers from them.
There’s no color, no sound, and everything feels lifeless, an empty, shallow reflection of itself. The pulse in his ears is all that Harry hears, and it sounds like an urging, a command to hurry up and reach the zenith, which he does after possibly hours. He encounters a man.
“You,” accuses Harry, and then falters as the conviction that he knows the person dissipates into bewilderment. Who is he?
What is he?
Unlike their indistinct surroundings, there’s color to him, cheeks a windswept pink. He’s young with a strong jaw softened by a lush smear of a mouth but it’s the eyes that capture Harry. Green enough that, in that monotone world, they hurt to look at.
The stalemate ends with an anticlimactic pfft of released air between teeth and a distinctly MLE-accented drawl. “Well, that’s us fucked.”
Harry lifts an eyebrow. “Are we? We haven’t even met.”
The young man shoves his hands into his jeans. His attire is of poor quality, matching the defensive curl to his shoulders. He hunches inwards. Something niggles at Harry, an echo of familiarity. His eyes snap to the face. “ Have we met?”
“Yeah. You was the bloke to tell us my dad weren’t coming home.” There’s a challenging smile on the other’s lips that dares him to deny it. “You was younger then. So was I, being a sprog an’ all.”
“I don’t… Forgive me. You can’t be.” Lee Unwin’s son? The resemblance is there, but Harry doesn’t buy it. It’s impossible.
“Life’s funny like that, innit?" The young man laughs, nose scrunching up in distaste. “Oh, sod all this. You shouldn’t be here.”
“Here being where?”
A pertinent question that drops Harry’s stomach. At the peak of the cliff, he can see that it isn’t all hazy; there’s a black ocean pitching violently into the horizon, monster waves that toss and ripple into the air without making so much as a whisper.
“Couldn’t tell you," claims the boy.
“Couldn’t or won’t?”
“Couldn’t. I don’t have any clue where we are, alright? This ain’t my usual hangout. Pretty sure you’re deffo not supposed to be here, tho’. Being alive and all.”
“... Am I to infer from that claim that I’m speaking to…” Harry rolls his eyes. “A ghost? How very Dickensian. Besides, I’m sure Gary Unwin is perfectly fine. This charade of yours is unconvincing.”
The young man’s disdain deepens. He presses a fingertip in the center of Harry’s forehead where the throb of an impending headache is strongest.
Harry snatches up his wrist, pulling him into a chokehold even as images flare in his head like a projector reel spinning out of control, and he sees—
Himself. No gray in his hair, fewer lines around the eyes. Looming large from the perspective of someone who has to use both hands to hold a snowglobe. He can smell the hot sand clinging to his skin, count his own eyelashes. “ What is your name, young man?” the other him asks, tipping his head to the side.
“Eggsy," answers a small voice.
The scene blurs. A woman is screaming.
“Eggsy! Oh my god, oh my god, baby!”
Harry is on the floor looking down at his abdomen, at the chef’s knife buried in it, blood seeping around the blade. Hands pull it out and he wants to shout no, don’t, and sees Michelle Unwin—older, haggard and showing flagrant signs of drug use—throw the knife to the side in a panic.
It clatters on the linoleum.
There’s so much blood.
“Yeah,” agrees the boy who should’ve been choking in his grip, a ghost of flesh and bone. “Was a hell of a dramatic way to go.”
Harry releases him.
Gary, or Eggsy, or whatever he calls himself—turns and digs under the collar of his tee shirt to pull out a medal. The pink and gold enamel gleams.
“‘Oxfords, not brogues.’ That’s what you promised,” the boy reminds him. “Well, bruv, I’m calling it in.”
—
“Agent Galahad? Sir? We’ll be entering London FIR in thirty minutes.”
Harry stirs, wincing. His body had locked up while he’d slept, and he feels every inch of his fifty years, joints cracking as he works himself limber. “Have we had a status update from HQ?”
“No, sir. It’s been quiet.”
“Understood. Don’t raise them unless they make contact first.” Harry rubs his temples, unhappy that his vision hasn’t returned to normal. His left eye persists in perceiving the world in burnished streaks of shadows and light. Medical will have a field day running all sorts of exams on him.
He showers, mindful of the bandages, and changes into his spare suit, dressing with habitual care, smoothing the cuffs. There’s something to be said for operating on default. It allows him to sequester the events of South Glade Mission Church into an oubliette. He’s killed his share of people, but never like that. He can’t rightly claim those men and women had been good or righteous but he would have never slaughtered them wholesale if he’d been in control of himself.
Though, if he’s being honest, it’s that he’d wanted to do it that will haunt him. He'd enjoyed it.
Harry adjusts his tie, thanks Isolde for her service, and is greeted by Merlin at the foot of the folding stairs.
“Galahad, good to see you. Walk with me.”
Harry observes that the activity in the hangar is not that of an organization gearing up for war. He brushes imaginary lint off his sleeve, speaking out of a corner of his mouth. “You spoke with Arthur?”
“Aye. We had a fascinating chat." Merlin jabs at his clipboard. “Come along, then. He’s got much to say on the subject of Valentine.”
Harry nods. Their quick pace leads them to Arthur’s office. Merlin unlocks the door via a swipe on the clipboard screen, which is, if Harry’s not mistaken, a very new function.
The tableau that greets him is both what he’d braced for and also something he never, ever could have foreseen.
“Shit,” he exhales flatly, hand on his gun holster automatically, though Arthur is long past caring.
From the corner of the room, Lancelot doesn’t miss the gesture, her own pistol quickly aimed at his heart. “Sir?”
Merlin shuts the door. “Stand down, Lancelot.”
Their newest agent lowers her weapon. She hadn’t really been intending to shoot, Harry notices absently, but he supposes her nerves are on edge. Their King is lying lifeless on the floor, after all.
(ᴏᴏꜰ.)
“You?” he asks.
To her credit, Lancelot’s eyes don’t betray Merlin.
“He sold us out.” Merlin drags a weary hand across his face. “He sold you out, and Kay and Bors. They were KIA. I managed to pull Gawain and Percival out in time. Gawain is landlocked in Chile, so he’s not of any use to us. Percival is badly injured, but he’s here, with three of my assistants, doing a scan of the estate. Chester planted several modified SIM cards on his way out.” He gives the corpse a disgusted glare. “I caught him preparing to leave. Our discussion escalated.”
“To a nine millimeter, I gather.” Harry sidesteps the body to kneel down. The plush wool carpet that had always been a point of pride and joy for Chester, rumored to have come from Versailles, is ruined by the sludgy puddle of blood haloing his head. Rigor mortis hasn’t yet set in, so he’s able to turn the head and inspect behind both ears. The proof of betrayal is damning in the opened slit in the skin. “The bastard had a chip?”
“Aye. I’ve extracted what I could from it but, more importantly, Valentine sent out the coordinates for his chosen elite to gather at his hideout two hours ago. We were waiting for you to arrive.” Merlin gestures at the space around them. “I’ve done my best to ascertain who might have been an accomplice but it’s taking too long. Of those currently present in the UK, I trust you two, Percival, and my team. I don’t believe we’ve been compromised from start to end, but neither can I risk tipping Valentine off.”
Harry spares a final glance at his erstwhile mentor.
(ɢᴏᴏᴅ ʀɪᴅᴅᴀɴᴄᴇ.)
“Good riddance to bad rubbish, then.” He dusts his hands.
They fall into action. Percival will be left behind to prepare for the fallout regardless of whether their mission is successful or not. Lancelot will be their backup. Hopefully she’ll survive her first mission; Harry would hate for the first female agent in half a century to go down mere days after joining.
On the plane ride he sleeps again. Partly out of conventional wisdom—Lancelot follows suit—and partly because something inside urges him to.
—
He's back again in the nightmare world, like he never left. He touches the medal. It feels solid, the metal cool. “Who killed you?”
“What do you care?”
“I—”
Eggsy stops Harry in his tracks. “I seen it, yeah? Like, all of it. What you did in the army, in your trainin’ to be Galahad. How you found my dad to be your caste-busting sacrificial lamb. Not once since you walked outta that door did you check on us. Don’t act like you care ‘cause you don’t. You got a heart of bleedin’ stone.”
As his sins are recited back to him, a blank mask slides over Harry’s face. The medal slips through his fingers to settle between Eggsy's collarbones. This isn't him facing off against some mastermind relying on psychological ploys to throw him off balance. There’s no hiding from this dead boy who is privy to all his secrets and regrets, that knows him in terrifying completeness.
In this place of nightmares, Harry accepts that this is bigger than him. Denial is not on the table.
“What do you need from me?”
Eggsy cocks his head. “Let me use you."
—
Because Valentine has no reason to think that Harry isn’t dead, no one spares him a second glance when Harry slips in using Chester’s name, allowing him to gain direct access into Valentine’s network for Merlin and to scout the layout of the main room before finally running into a problem: Charlie Hesketh, former Lancelot proposal and Chester’s godson.
Harry puts Charlie down when he starts shouting. The kill is quick but it's too late to stop the glitterati from stampeding. Well, the farce lasted as long as it needed to, really. Harry draws his gun out as Merlin spews invectives in his ear.
The satellite, the network, and Valentine—in that order. While Lancelot and Merlin deal with the former, Harry hunts for the latter.
He mows down Valentine's security as they approach him in waves. Merlin's busy cracking Valentine’s defenses so Harry’s on his own, relying on intuition to guide him.
That, and the Ghost.
Harry first sees it standing at the end of a long hallway, a mirage of shimmering edges that hurts to directly look at. Harry averts his gaze.
The Ghost blinks out of existence.
Harry swings back, squinting. The Ghost jerks an arm at him.
(ʜᴇ’ꜱ ᴅᴏᴡɴ ᴛʜɪꜱ ʜᴀʟʟ, ʙᴜᴛ ʜᴇ’ꜱ ʙᴏᴏᴋɪɴɢ ɪᴛ. ꜱᴏᴍᴇ ᴋɪɴᴅᴀ ꜱᴀꜰᴇ ʀᴏᴏᴍ? ꜱᴏ… ʏᴏᴜ ɪɴᴛᴇʀᴇꜱᴛᴇᴅ ɪɴ ꜱᴀᴠɪɴ’ ᴛʜᴇ ʀᴜᴅᴅʏ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ ᴏʀ ɴᴀʜ?)
For some reason, Harry follows it.
Unlike a handler, the Ghost doesn’t tell him what to do or what to watch out for, yet Harry understands what it wants implicitly. Over the next ten minutes he burns through all his ammo and resorts to grabbing guns off the fallen guards. Harry is tired, wounded, and running on fumes. If it weren't for the flash of the Ghost ahead of him, staticky and erratic, he would have walked straight into Gazelle's blade.
As is, the barrel of the gun is sliced in twain instead of him. Unfortunately for Gazelle, that doesn't stop the weapon from working as intended. He blocks her kick and fires four bullets into her sternum point blank.
(ʜᴏʟʏ ꜰᴜᴄᴋ, ᴛʜᴀᴛ'ꜱ ᴄᴏᴏʟ. ꜱʜᴇ'ꜱ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴀɴ x-ᴍᴀɴ! ᴡᴇʟʟ. ᴡᴀꜱ. ꜱʜᴇ ᴡᴀꜱ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴀɴ x-ᴍᴀɴ. ʏᴏᴜ ɢᴏᴏᴅ, ᴍᴀᴛᴇ? ᴀʀᴇ ʏᴏᴜʀ ɢᴇᴇᴢᴇʀ ʙᴏɴᴇꜱ ʜᴜʀᴛɪɴ’?)
Harry rakes his disheveled hair back from his face and reloads. “Merlin? Sitrep?”
“Almost in. Lancelot’s ETA is seventy seconds. Have you found Valentine?”
“No.” He takes a breath that sends a burn through his ribcage, down his spine, unpleasantly sharp. “But I have a good idea of where he is. Gazelle is out of the game.” He absently shoots her again, leaving a dark hole between her eyes.
“Excellent news. Now bugger off and do your job so I can do mine.”
(ʙᴀʟᴅɪᴇ’ꜱ ɢʀᴏᴡɪɴɢ ᴏɴ ᴍᴇ. ɴᴇxᴛ ʜᴀʟʟᴡᴀʏ. ʜᴀɴɢ ʀɪɢʜᴛ, ꜱᴇᴄᴏɴᴅ ᴅᴏᴏʀ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴇꜰᴛ. ʜᴇ’ꜱ ᴘᴏɪɴᴛɪɴɢ ᴀ ɢᴜɴ ᴀᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴏᴏʀ, ʙᴜᴛ ʜᴇ’ꜱ ɢᴏᴛ ʜɪꜱ ᴇʏᴇꜱ ꜱʜᴜᴛ ᴀɴᴅ ʜᴇ’ꜱ… ᴄʀʏɪɴɢ. ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴇʟʟ ɪꜱ ᴡʀᴏɴɢ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʜɪᴍ?)
—
Eggsy leads the way. He’s stopped considering the consequences because, sod it, he’s got to keep a shit-crazy bellend from damning humankind.
Last call, he thinks, stopping in front of a door. He makes a stay there, be a good boy gesture at Harry and slips through, preferring to dissolve rather than to pass through it directly—his brain still throws a fit that he shouldn’t be able to do that, though apparently dematerializing is a-OK —and re-forms on the other side only to balk in disbelief.
God, seriously?
Valentine isn’t even leveling the gun at the door anymore. Instead, he’s frantically typing away at a computer terminal, even as he scrubs tears and snot away from his face like a five year old. He’s trying to, if Eggsy’s not mistaken, get a new satellite running, which means that Lancelot bird got her job done. But does Valentine think he’s leaving this room in anything but a bodybag?
Maybe he might have, if Eggsy weren’t there, tuned into his signal like a bloodhound.
“You waitin’ for an invitation, mate?”
The door bangs open.
Harry doesn’t give Valentine the chance to turn around. He shoots him in the back because it turns out spies aren’t heroes even when they save the world.
And it’s done.
While Harry speaks to his people, Eggsy nearly drops to his knees, overcome with relief. The oppressive sense of doom recedes with dizzying speed, as if the earth had been caught in the grip of a foreign moon twisting its gravity. He wants to go out to see the sky for himself, but when he turns there’s Harry, stepping close to him.
“Are you real?” The man lifts a hand, and Eggsy’s reaction is to duck away, a lifetime of ingrained mistrust resurfacing, but Harry is faster.
They both hiss as Harry’s fingers sweep through his cheek. Eggsy can feel it, like pressing down on a bruise.
When Harry speaks his voice is low. “You aren’t a symptom of madness, are you?”
Eggsy flashes him a grin and shrugs. He’s been so out of line in every decision he’s made over the past, what, eight hours— Jesus, how time flew when it was all hitting the fan?—that Harry’s got reason to wonder.
“Who are you? Where’s Gazzy?”
Eggsy’s head snaps towards the corpse. Of course Valentine’s awake and gagging at the sight of his body. Of course he’s one of those sods who popped right back up like a jack-in-the-box. Motherfucker.
“Sorry,” Eggsy says to Harry, utterly unrepentant, and ignoring Valentine’s increasing panic, he vanishes.
—
Cleanup takes days. Days in which there’s no time to waste on wondering if the Ghost was real or not. Harry has to keep moving, hunting down what remains of Valentine’s army while also lending Merlin a hand to ensure that the right people go where they’re supposed to be, and that they know exactly what they’re supposed to know.
They go through so many amnesia darts that they give up and switch to syringes sixteen hours in.
Harry, Merlin, and Lancelot go home to clean house top to bottom. While Chester didn’t have enough time to turn over anyone to his side, he did do enough harm to cripple the Table. Tristan resigns. So does Bedivere, who was near retirement to begin with, but this loss is deeply felt since he was the natural successor to Arthur.
Agravain and Caradoc are fine, but Agravain is so deep undercover that he hasn’t surfaced in three years, and Caradoc preemptively apprises Harry that he’ll be vanishing into the Andes if they so much as suggest him for Arthur. That leaves three viable candidates; Gawain, Percival, and Galahad. (Due to her inexperience—not her gender—Lancelot isn’t in the running. She doesn’t seem too offended.)
In the end, they don’t flip a coin to see who comes out the loser only because Harry’s so very, very tired. Too tired to delay the inevitable.
When he finally collapses into his bed, it’s a testament to his exhaustion that he only kicks his shoes off because they get tangled in the sheets, and then he’s out like a light.
He dreams of peculiar things, of walking between the pews of the South Glade Mission Church and sidestepping the bodies, listening to a hissing noise that sounds like a whistling kettle, and he’s not alone. There’s things moving through the air. They brush past him and his skin shudders, hackles raised.
He dreams of stepping outside the church. Valentine isn’t waiting for him. Neither is Gazelle.
No, it’s just him. On the ground. The way he should have been. Lifeless.
It doesn’t jar him. If anything, Harry feels that he should lie down beside himself and let the insects commence their feast, waiting for the peck of carrion birds, the scavengers. His blood has seeped into the dust, anointed the ground, and he belongs there.
He dreams of an empty cliff and that bothers him more than his own corpse.
—
Life goes on.
New recruits are found to fill the gaps in the Table. He dutifully participates in his weekly therapy sessions with the Fisher King and bows to the demands of Morgana, who ultimately decrees that his eye damage is permanent. Harry accepts the diagnosis and declines experimental surgery.
Being Arthur, as he dreaded, is an endless mountain of paperwork. So much so that he starts burning documents in the fireplace for catharsis. It helps. So does going down to the firing range and blasting through a small army’s worth of ammo. Or tapping in to provide hand-to-hand combat experience to the trainees, though a glowering Merlin puts a stop to that, because what the fuck is he supposed to do with trainees with broken bones? To which Harry shrugs, sighs, and sullenly returns to his office to be confronted with yet another stack of files in need of review. Protocols that require a swift kick in the arse to be brought up to twenty-first-century standards. Operations that have to be triaged.
After twenty-six years being an active agent, being considered too important to do anything riskier than wiping his own arse is unendurable. When he reads mission reports, he doesn't think like Arthur; he thinks like Galahad. Of what he would have done differently, of how much fun it sounded, even if oftentimes being on the field was actually not fun but tedious stretches of time where nothing happened, then short stretches of time where everything happened—God, he misses it.
One of the first things he does enjoy using his power as Arthur for is to change the policy regarding proposals who died during training. He ropes in the Finance Department and a few others and politely bullies them into agreeing to his terms.
Unfortunately, as he discovers, it all comes too late for Lee Unwin’s family. Years too late.
By the time Merlin comes to see him, Harry is on his third shot of bourbon.
Merlin observes Harry's position by the fireplace and the snifter and promptly serves himself liberally from the bottle. “Do I bother even asking why?”
“Dean Baker killed that boy.” Harry swirls the bourbon in the glass. His bones feel tired. “It wasn’t the mother.” He swallows his drink. It settles like a living flame in his gut.
“The evidence pointed to her.” Merlin sits in the chair opposite Harry. There are heavy bags under his eyes from too many sleepless nights. “I harbored my own doubts while reading the case. Michelle Unwin might have been a junkie, but she had no history of violence. Still, people do snap. And even if she was innocent, we do not go around involving ourselves in vigilantism."
"It was either I ordered the hit or I handled it personally.” Harry arches an eyebrow. “Which would you have preferred?"
"Neither,” sighs Merlin. “But what's done is done."
It isn't. Gawain is primed to take the shot if need be, but he's smart enough to wait for an opening to stage the kill as a mugging gone wrong or a fight between criminals. Something so banal as to not draw the attention of the Met. There's time to call it off.
Neither man does.
—
The cliff is a lonesome place to be. Though the black ocean has quietened, Harry is not eager to go near it. He has no wish to discover what lies in the depths. Someday he might not have a choice in finding out. But until then, not a day sooner.
“Mum didn’t make it, huh.”
Like a hooked fish being reeled in, Harry turns his head to find Eggsy standing beside him.
He looks so young now that Harry knows he was a month shy of his twentieth birthday when he’d been murdered. Sadness turns the corners of his mouth downwards.
Paltry as the words are, Harry offers them anyway. “I apologize. I should have kept an eye on you both.”
Eggsy shrugs.
Harry is filled with self-recrimination, a grating, ugly thing that settles into his blood. Kingsman failed the Unwins, yes, but he wasn’t without resources. Neither was Merlin, nor was James. None of them did what they should.
Sometimes all apologies seem to do is to rub salt into the wound, so instead he says, “She didn’t suffer long in the end.”
“OD and cardiac, yeah? I know,” Eggsy says vaguely. “I’ve been around.”
“Have you, now? Been around, that is. I can’t help but wonder why.” Harry's eyes catch on the details that he didn’t take in before. The pale freckles. The beauty mark on Eggsy’s throat. The way his chest dips and swells, skin flushed as if blood beats through his veins. While in reality Gary Unwin has been in the ground since August 10, 2012, here he’s fascinatingly rife with life.
Eggsy looks back at him. There’s something that reads like chagrin in the little abortive shift of his mouth. “I might have made an executive decision concerning you. And it worked out better than the shitshow I was expectin', but… "
"The ends justify the means?" guesses Harry. He's been there, made that call. Over and over again. The moral equation of an atrocity committed to avert a worse tragedy. "What is it that you did?”
Another shrug, this time defiant. "I kept you alive."
"Ah."
Eggsy side eyes him. "That's all you got? Bit repressed, innit?”
“Thank you?” says Harry dryly, and for that Eggsy scoffs at him. “You’ve got cheek, you know that? It’s all a bloody sham, that poshness. I’m sayin’ you’re s’posed to be dead. I didn’t do you a favor. I just used you.”
“You saw a discarded weapon and you decided to pick it up. It was the correct choice.” Harry isn’t bothered. Kingsman long ago burned the sentimentalism out of him. Even if it hadn’t been a choice he made, the results can’t be argued against. His people survived and so did the world. If he now has to face the consequences of that, so be it. “I imagine there are repercussions to this sort of business. Shall I be struck down by some freak accident soon? Some rebalancing of cosmic scales?”
“You’re not gonna die—I mean, eventually, yeah, but not… This isn’t a rugpull. There’s no Grim Reaper boss checkin’ names off a list like a wack Santa Claus.”
“What is there, then?”
“It’s just—people like me. Playing tour guide. Not to heaven or hell, just… the next bit. Like being made a prefect outta nowhere, except there are no benefits or power or anythin’.”
“I’d argue what you did was a considerable demonstration of power.”
“That’s the thing!” snaps Eggsy. “I don’t know what I did! I mean, now I get what I did, but you was dyin’ and the world was going tits up.” His shoulders slump. “Not sure I woulda done it if I’d known Mum was already gone. I want to think I would’ve, but that’s—doesn’t matter.” He shakes his head. “It’ll be easier if I…”
Eggsy’s fingers encircle Harry’s wrist.
Harry doesn’t get a scene playing out line by line like snatches of a movie. Instead he’s bombarded with abstract concepts and impressions, a running buzz of apprehension paving the way for a piercing shriek scraping the inside of his skull, a noise a thousand times worse than nails on a chalkboard. He breathes out pain, a blinding agony that Kingsman had never trained him for, couldn’t train him for, but when those clammy fingers withdraw, he clamps his own around them.
No. Let me see. Let me see you.
He wants it in the same way he takes risks no one else would—that led him to striding into South Glade Mission Church sans backup, full of confidence in himself, in his abilities, that he could fight his way through anything if push came to shove. He’s reckless and curious and, more than anything, not an especially decent man. No Kingsman is.
He wants it for the ravenous hollow that craves ruinous things, that brews murderous impulses, that’s cold and brutal and all too sentimental; for that desire that wants to learn everything there is to know about Eggsy, the same as Eggsy has unspooled the fibers of his soul.
Quid pro quo.
Eggsy reels back. “You,” Eggsy starts, and then he shivers, almost imperceptibly. A bemused smile slices across his face. “You asked for this,” he warns.
Harry’s vision shutters down to glittering green eyes. “So I did.”
It all goes topsy-turvy after that.
—
Harry comes to flat on his back, facing a starless sky.
When he’d been a child, his father had taken him out camping. An old family tradition, he’d been told. The Harts had owned land in Mendip Hills since as far back as records would show, though they’d moved to London by the turn of the twentieth century in order to be closer to their business interests, even if it came with a tradeoff of heavy smog and crime.
The camping was not the point. It was the setup. They fished and did well enough to feed themselves, and Harry found it all wonderfully disastrous, from the scale removal to eating with his fingers, hot and sticky, careful to spit out the bones. Then in the morning they hiked until they reached what Harry thought was a queerly round hill until his father led him to a jagged opening in the earth.
It wasn’t a hill. What it was, instead, was an ancient catacomb. Who had built it was lost to time, but the Harts owned it and the Harts had preserved it. His father took his hand and walked him inside, and they put down their bedrolls and spoke deep into the night, the sort of heart-to-heart conversations that stuck with Harry and shaped his worldview.
But nothing quite impressed him so much as when his father turned off their lanterns and plunged them into perfect darkness.
The same darkness was now above him. Not a trace of light to be seen. There were no planets out there, no suns or stars—it was a void.
Someone—Eggsy—nudges his ribs. “You alright there, bruv?”
Eggsy is standing above him, arms crossed, wearing his worry like a funeral shroud.
There is so much he now knows about Eggsy that it’s almost humbling.
Horrifying, certainly. For a man who had long ago accepted that he would be alone, at a remove from not just the strappings of a normal existence but that he’d even keep his closest allies at an arm’s length, he is now intricately and unequivocally interwoven with someone else’s soul. That should be enraging, another instance of a loss of control, of something done to him, choice taken out of his hands—
But it is what it is.
“You bound yourself to me,” he states, because they do have to talk about it.
Eggsy’s eyes shy away. “I guess I did. Sorry, but I think we’s stuck with each other.”
“A fate worse than death, I’m sure,” Harry says absently, for which Eggsy snorts, “Oh, sod off.”
“I shall not. I am deeply grateful for what you did for me, to say nothing of what a favor you did the world.”
“Didn’t do shit. ‘Sides, you did your bit. Even got back at that wanker Dean for me. I saw. We’s square.” Eggsy flops down on the ground beside him, not with false modesty but with embarrassment.
You silly fool, Harry thinks.
—
The prolonged psychological assessment that follows the Table’s reshuffling is one that Harry submits to with as much good cheer as can ostensibly be summoned for being sat in the Fisher King’s cozy office for an hour every Monday and Friday. He politely skirts around the classified material that even their head psychologist doesn’t have the clearance for, drinking tea and more often than not musing on how strange it is that he no longer hates being Arthur.
Four weeks into their sessions, the Fisher King lowers her notepad. “Pardon me for the intrusive question”—they exchange wry looks, but the polite fiction must be maintained to a degree—“but have you started seeing someone?”
“Other than you?” asks Harry after a pause.
She waves her hand. “Not like that. I mean have you met someone,” she clarifies, much to Harry’s genuine surprise. “Although you may have dodged being in this office with admirable dedication for many decades, I do know you, Harry. You chafe at the changeover from a field agent to support, and we’ve barely touched upon the trauma of what happened in the church, and yet I sense a… contentment about you. One I typically associate with the presence of a supportive romantic partner.”
“Madam, I rarely leave my office and when I do, it’s to go home,” says Harry amusedly. “I remain the confirmed bachelor I’ve been since time immemorial.”
The Fisher King is excellent at what she does. She wouldn’t be where she is otherwise. But the same applies to Harry, who has no problem lying with the same ease that he blinks, or in this case, welding falsehood and truth together; he has not met someone.
They’re long dead, after all.
(ᴍᴍɴ. ꜱʜᴇ’ꜱ ɢᴏᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴘᴇɢɢᴇᴅ.)
Harry smiles beatifically, thanks the Fisher King for the session, and leaves her office.
—
There’s no inch of HQ that isn’t covered by the all-seeing eyes of multiple cameras. Even Arthur’s office is no sanctuary, though there are degrees of invasiveness, layers upon layers of security clearances, with Merlin and himself at the top of that pyramid.
So Harry waits until he’s arrived at his house to indulge in his hobby. Merlin’s aware of it to some degree as Harry hadn’t attempted to keep it a secret, but he has not asked nor pressed. They’re all dealing with the upturned status quo in different ways. Their new Lancelot, for example, has taken up knitting. She might even become very good at it provided she can refrain from using the needles as impromptu weapons.
Harry’s new hobby is less wholesome. He can admit it. He’s under no illusions that the Fisher King wouldn’t pounce on it like a bird of prey sighting a fat morsel.
Harry goes home, eats dinner, cleans after himself, serves himself a finger of scotch, and then logs into his home network, which remains deliberately separate from Kingsman, to immerse himself in his magpie collection of everything digital that proves Gary “Eggsy” Unwin once lived.
His obsession has led to this: a hefty cache of certificates, government records, arrest reports, and even the archived contents of all the social media accounts that Harry could feasibly get his hands on. Sooner rather than later the mania will overtake common sense and he’ll go searching for physical objects that belonged to the boy, assuming that they haven’t yet been destroyed. He knows some are being held in an evidence locker, and he’ll be picking those items up when there’s a discreet moment to do so. The prize he has his eye on is the Kingsman medal—as it was part of the crime scene, it remains in police custody. Safe.
If he’s lucky, and very dedicated, he might even be able to dig up the boy’s other medals in gymnastics. Macabre as it might strike other people, he intends to frame them in shadow boxes to accompany his butterflies.
There’s a flutter at the periphery of his vision. Harry turns his head to regard the Ghost out of his flawed eye.
“Hello,” he greets. “Come to keep me company?”
(ʏᴏᴜ’ʀᴇ ꜱᴜᴄʜ ᴀ ꜰʀᴇᴀᴋ, ʜᴀᴢ.)
The Ghost moves closer, intangible, prickling his skin as it settles behind him. It peeks at the screen over his shoulder. Harry settles back, unbothered, even though he despises being hovered over. It’s a different story with the Ghost.
It could be because the Ghost is a figment of his imagination. A further sign of a waning mind. But Harry doesn’t believe that.
(ᴍʏ ᴘʀɪᴍᴀʀʏ ꜱᴄʜᴏᴏʟ ᴘɪᴄꜱ? ʙʀᴜᴠ, ꜱᴇʀɪᴏᴜꜱʟʏ, ᴍᴀᴊᴏʀ ᴋɪᴅᴅʏ ᴅɪᴅᴅʟᴇʀ ᴠɪʙᴇꜱ. ᴀʟꜱᴏ, ᴜʀɢʜ. ᴍᴜᴍ ᴡᴀɴᴛᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ꜱᴀᴠᴇ ꜱᴏᴍᴇ ᴅᴏꜱʜ ʙʏ ᴄᴜᴛᴛɪɴɢ ᴍʏ ʜᴀɪʀ. ɪ ʟᴏᴏᴋᴇᴅ ʟɪᴋᴇ ꜰʀɪᴀʀ ᴛᴜᴄᴋ. ᴡᴀꜱ ɴᴏᴛ ᴀ ɢᴏᴏᴅ ꜱᴛᴀʀᴛ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ʏᴇᴀʀ, ʟᴇᴛ ᴍᴇ ᴛᴇʟʟ ʏᴏᴜ. ᴋɪᴅꜱ ᴀʀᴇ ᴠɪᴄɪᴏᴜꜱ.)
He rather suspects the Ghost is Eggsy, though maybe that’s fanciful wishing on his part. Why would it be him? Where’s the logic in that?
Somewhat daringly, Harry attempts to grasp the Ghost’s arm. A hum of static electricity shoots up across his fingers and winds around the bones of his wrist, a dull shock. Though the Ghost has no physical presence, an absence occupying space, it has the rough outline of a human male and enough attitude that vocal communication is redundant.
Right then the Ghost is playing coy, drawing back, wagging a finger as if Harry is a misbehaving pup, only to then surge forward, a riot of hair-raising sparks as it sweeps through Harry like mist. Harry swears it’s having a laugh when he starts, whipping his head around to track the Ghost’s passage.
(ᴄᴏᴍᴇ ᴏɴ, ʜᴀʀʀʏ. ʏᴏᴜ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴅᴏɴ’ᴛ ᴡᴏʀᴋ ꜱᴏ ɢʀᴇᴀᴛ ᴏɴ ᴛʜɪꜱ ꜱɪᴅᴇ. ᴛʜᴏᴜɢʜ ɴᴏᴛ ꜰᴏʀ ʟᴀᴄᴋ ᴏꜰ ᴛʀʏɪɴ’, ʏᴇᴀʜ?)
Harry lifts his drink to his mouth. “One day,” he promises, eyes heavy-lidded.
—
“This is deplorably unfair.”
“I don’t make the rules.”
“I am aware.” Harry cards his fingers through what might be gorse, though all the color is stripped clean from it like flesh picked off a carcass.
They’ve taken to walking away from the cliff, discovering that wherever they go the haze will momentarily part. It sways and coils around them, tracing their steps like a loyal bloodhound, churning around their feet and legs. Purposefully they bypass the shore, steering away from the sand.
Eggsy is more at ease here than Harry is. He walks with a rolling gait, hands in his pockets, rarely examining their surroundings. Harry hasn’t asked him how much time he spends here—because that would be indirectly asking how much time Eggsy spends with him. As Eggsy had explained, a kilometer was the furthest he could go before their connection snapped him back like a rubber band pulled too tight. Which meant he had three options: (1) he could follow Harry around, even though Harry couldn’t properly hear or see him while awake; (2) he could wait in this other world; or (3) he could … stop existing for a while.
Sleep, Eggsy euphemistically called it. From Eggsy’s expression, he didn’t like it much.
“There must be a mechanism behind it all. Nothing can function without internal logic, even this,” grouses Harry, whose theories are all very well and good, but are utterly worthless since he's a clueless clod when awake. Blind and deaf and useless.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but it's becoming rather undignified to spend his days besotted with a lad he can never remember he spends his nights with.
Eggsy, on the other hand, is having a marvelous time teasing him. "Why? You bothered? It's kinda cute in a psycho kinda way. You even watch my old competition videos! Which, again, Haz, could be taken super outta context. Or, you know, not." His eyes dance gleefully, and even if it's at his expense (God, nobody takes the mickey out of him since he was kinged save for Eggsy) Harry is not immune to falling for it.
"You are a pest,” he sighs. “A bête noire of the highest order. I rue the day our paths crossed. I shall hire an exorcist once I come to my senses and rid myself of your terrible insults.”
Eggsy’s laugh bounces back at them from the fog, husky and full-throated. “Brilliant! You think I could make you vom pea soup?” The apples of his cheeks flush with humor. Harry pretends to be greatly offended.
As it turns out, it's rather pleasant to be haunted by one’s past mistakes.
—
Eggsy is bored.
He can talk to Harry, but while awake Harry doesn’t consciously process Eggsy’s presence, and he can’t go around doing that forever. Harry’s under a shit-ton of pressure. Being Arthur is a bloody misery, but since Merlin shot the old one in the heart, someone has to bite the bullet.
And Christ, what a prick Chester King had been. As a ghost, he’d taken one look at Eggsy and sneered as if it were his fault that he’d betrayed his people, as if Eggsy had a ruddy thing to do with anything that happened with him. And maybe if you squinted and drew some bits of colorful strings between one event and another, you could correlate that it was his fault that Chester wound up on a slab instead of partying it up in Valentine’s bunker for his naff End Of Humanity bash, but, well, Eggsy isn’t sorry. Rank bastard.
Chester is gone now, which isn’t like the Lost. They tended to hang around long after they should have scrammed, which meant a reaper swung by and somehow Eggsy didn’t notice, which is…
Well.
He’s ambivalent about the whole business. About apparently not being a reaper anymore, though he isn’t one of the Lost, either. It’s weirdly like being alive again. The date suddenly has value again. He tracks the cycle of days and nights. His clock ticks by the compass points of Harry’s daily life, from his morning routine to his habit of knocking back something brown and malty before bedtime. Then come their meetings at the cliff.
Looking back on it now, being a reaper has the fuzziness of a stupor, of episodes of lucidity in between long stretches of emptiness. He’d thought it a sweet gig at the time but maybe it’d been a punishment in the end? Unanchored, drifting, largely emotionless, led by some silent mandate that plonked him down at any random spot—a ghost in every sense of the word.
Not that his current existence doesn’t have its own kind of emptiness, though Eggsy does his best to entertain himself. His favorite spot in HQ is the garage. It’s full of the black cabs that Kingsman favors—Harry is ferried to and from the tailor shop in one of them—and they pack some serious James Bond shit on the inside, but it’s the shiny, expensive beauties that he gravitates to. There’s a Koenigsegg Agera that he practically swoons over. Fuck, what he wouldn’t give to slide behind the driver’s seat and take it out for a spin.
When it does finally get taken out, it’s by some stoic nerd in a suit who Eggsy thinks (reaching into the grab bag of Harry’s memories that he keeps otherwise closed) is called Percival, and he’s shaking his head inconsolably that the Agera probably isn’t going to even go near the speed limit when it suddenly rockets out of the garage, and he’s left wide-eyed, joy burning through his veins like nitrous oxide as Percival expertly guides it into the morning sunlight and takes off like he’s running late for the Monaco Grand Prix.
Fuckin’ A.
Percival is now his new favorite agent.
At least until he pops into the R&D lab and meets Caradoc, who is a nerd of a different caliber, the kind that rigs up bombs out of a paperclip and a tennis ball, which Eggsy later swears to Harry isn’t a joke, and Harry’s forbearing reaction indicates it’s not that unusual, and in turn he recounts the op where Caradoc nearly burned down the Sydney Opera House.
On “accident.”
So sure, Eggsy can’t affect the world around him or even himself, nothing but an audience to the living, but if he’s gotta be anyone’s audience, then he’s happy that to be Kingsman’s. He learns the names and faces of the staff and sits with a blue-haired handler when she collapses in the utility room and sobs her heart out after a mission goes pear-shaped, offering silent company.
In an alternate universe where his father didn’t die, he would have interacted with these people, worked long hours with them. Maybe Eggsy would have followed in his father’s footsteps and not bled to death in a kitchen. Maybe he would have been part of the exhausted group running laps around the mansion to see which of them will become Tristan.
Whatever. Belonging to the other side has granted him a lot of perspective. And being in limbo is simply giving him another dose of that. Restlessness aside, Eggsy can honestly say that he's happy.
He can’t help but wonder when or how it all goes to shit.
—
“You’re like a ship’s cat,” comments Harry.
He’s rewarded by Eggsy’s double-take, the fearsome snap of his eyebrows. “Oh, no, no, mate. No. You ain’t lobbing a non-sequitur like that and then not committing. How am I like a cat?” he demands, seemingly missing the irony that he’s half-sprawled over Harry’s lap, all loose limbs and drowsy eyes.
It had taken months for personal boundaries to completely collapse, but now Eggsy demands the easy affection. And who is Harry to deny him?
“A ship’s cat. Wonderful beasts.” His fingers stroke at the tender dip of Eggsy’s nape. “As vital a part of the crew as any man or woman aboard. Excellent hunters to safeguard the vessel against vermin—"
“—Rats, just say rats, we’s not using Scrabble scoring—"
They could argue about the merits of utilizing one’s full vocabulary or Harry could scratch right at the junction between neck and shoulder that makes Eggsy melt.
It really isn’t a decision.
“Stop that,” Eggsy grumbles, half-heartedly punching Harry’s thigh. “Not gonna work. S’distracting but not that distracting. Rats.”
Harry again declines to argue. “A ship’s cat also provides comfort and affection to the crew. It makes the rounds and makes sure that things are as they’re intended to be: productive, calm, and focused. Thanks to you, I’m kept abreast of how my people are doing to a degree that I doubt any other Arthur has been privy to.”
Eggsy squints up at him. His plush mouth pinches mulishly. “ Rubbish. I’ve done nothing.”
Harry thinks of Cordelia Fromme, one of their greenest handlers, weeping by herself in seclusion, now on a once-a-week therapy schedule. That had been Eggsy's doing, interwoven in his usual offhand remarks to Harry, a bit of compassion in between his excited retelling of Gawain's deftness with a sniper rifle at the galley. He thinks of how furious Eggsy had been when he overheard Merlin and Lancelot discussing the dog test and put two and two together that the Tristan candidates aren't being gifted puppies for no reason; now Harry is rethinking the policy because absolute blind obedience in a vacuum had ended up being, in Eggsy’s parlance, something of a shit-show with Chester.
He also thinks about how Eggsy watches over the trainees, bewildered at how young they are even though all of them are older than Eggsy himself. How Eggsy’s comments have prompted Harry into viewing situations differently; his people like him, respect him, are well-versed in his history of serving the cause, but betrayal leaves an indelible stain. The position of Arthur will never again be revered as it once was, and that might be for the best, but in the meantime the wound must be addressed. Eggsy’s insights have influenced that process. He doesn’t tell things to Harry with an agenda, other than the row over the dogs; he’s simply observant.
Observant and lonely, even if he won’t admit it.
Harry knows how to walk through the multitudes while apart from them, how to wear a mask so that no one can see who he really is. He was a spy and now he’s a king, and he’s trained how to be the man nobody remembers, that no one notices, but it’s always been a choice, a conscious action. Eggsy didn’t get that.
Only for a handful of hours does someone see Eggsy. And it is Harry’s honor to be that someone.
“You are ridiculous if you think that,” Harry says.
He thinks, too, of how Eggsy protects him. They haven’t discussed it, but he suspects that the violent melding of their souls is right on the crux of the events of that day. The Fisher King continues to prod at Harry for signs of PTSD over what he’d done in that church, all the lives he’d taken, the carnage, but he cannot assert that he feels guilty or disturbed by any of it. He acknowledges it happened but only at a distance, shielded from the fallout as if by a barrier—and if he isn’t wrong, that barrier is this daft, sweet boy who’s busy scoffing as if Harry is the soft touch.
“Shove off.” Eggsy sits up. “I’m not doing anything but having a chin-wag. You’re prob’ly sick of me bleating. You already know everythin’ that goes on, you’re Arthur. ”
“Being Arthur hardly grants one omnipotence,” Harry deadpans, urging Eggsy to lay back down. There’s a lovely line of strength in Eggsy’s body from years of vaulting off railings and scrambling over roofs, all taut skin and corded muscle wrapped around bone. If he wanted to resist, he could, but Eggsy’s more bark than he is bite.
At least with those he likes.
“I value your input, Eggsy. I shall never forbid you—nor can I, yes, I can hear you snickering—from roaming HQ. So yes, you have done much, and will continue to do so, and I’m certain we will clash on more than one matter—” Eggsy shifts, looking up at him under a veil of eyelashes. “—And I look forward to those debates. I expect you will hold me accountable to my many sins, and will berate me when I’m behaving like an unrepentant bellend.” You are the better half of me, quite literally.
Eggsy stares at him.
“Why do you make it sound like we’re married?!” bursts out of him, and Harry doesn’t quite manage—nor does he particularly try—to subdue his amusement.
“Am I? Interesting. We were in a church when you decided we should be bound together for eternity…”
“You’re actually rank, you know that? I didn’t know what I was doing! And that church was full of corpses!”
“As if that bothered either of us.”
“Corpses, Harry! Some was in bits!”
“Yes, dear,” he soothes.
“Oh, piss off.” Giving him the time-honored two-finger salute, Eggsy flops back into his semi-boneless sprawl, now with his back turned to Harry, the tips of his ears as pink as carnations.
—
The list of Valentine’s co-conspirators pulled from all walks of life, including individuals too lofty for any public agency to go after without inciting civil unrest. These were the names that Kingsman withheld, obscuring their involvement or even occasionally allowing them to masquerade as innocents that Valentine had kidnapped.
It is dirty business to let them go, but Kingsman neither forgave nor forgot, and they’re patient enough to play with kid gloves until the time is right. Half a year since V-day and dozens of those on the list have passed on in different tragic accidents, continents away from each other, no thread linking them other than their hidden involvement with the maniac trying to save the world by ending it. Over the next five years Kingsman will systematically dispose of them in myriad other accidents and incidents, with a side of nudged-along natural causes.
However, a very select few are more valuable alive than in the ground. Harry is not fond of this tactic, nor is he pleased to give the order to spare them, but emotions cannot stand in the way of logic. Those spared from the culling will be under strict surveillance for the rest of their days or until their usefulness runs out—depending on whether or not they can contain themselves and not tip their hand into another madcap scheme.
On the days when he has to deal with these people, Harry is in such a foul mood that even the Ghost stays out of his way, which somehow only makes Harry feel even more unsettled even though the Ghost is only a presence drifting at the edges of his awareness.
The thing is, they’ve begun to communicate with increasing precision. After all, Harry might be losing his mind, but it appears to be for the benefit of all involved.
The change doesn’t go unnoticed.
Merlin comes to visit him with the quarterly R&D summary, and when they’re done, he lingers instead of going on his way.
An unexpected perk of being in charge: Harry doesn’t have to even pretend to heed a schedule anymore, so he’s already taking the decanter out when Merlin finally says, “You’ve lost Caradoc a good amount of dosh.”
“How so?” Harry splashes a liberal amount of whisky into the cut glass.
“He wagered you’d have chewed your arm off by now and ran off to Mykonos.” Merlin accepts the drink with a tip of his head. He crosses one leg over the knee of the other, setting his tablet to the side. “And before you ask, no, I didn’t throw my bid in.” A sip. “Mostly due to them deciding I wasn’t allowed to as I’d have too much of an advantage. Insider influence and all.”
“Most vindictive of them. Your people?”
Merlin snorts. “Of course it was my people. Your lot can’t organize a bingo night to save your lives.”
Harry gives him a hurt look and deliberately adds another splash to his own drink. “That’s nonsense. We arranged for Tristan’s stag do, did we not? That obnoxious bit of business with the Penose aside, I rather recall it being a success. We even brought the groom back in time for the rehearsal ceremony.”
“He was shot. Came damned close to losing his bollocks. No bloody wonder he retired.”
“At any rate, it was a successful endeavor,” Harry insists, and was it really that much of a disaster? The bride had laughed her arse off once she’d realized Tristan was fine—and could stand for the wedding ceremony—though the cover story involving an incident with a loaded antique hunting rifle had admittedly been only a trifle less absurd than confessing that Tristan had been evading an angry honeypot target with a grudge and poor aim.
Poor bastard. Harry misses his surliness. There isn’t a single candidate in the batch who shows anywhere near enough bitchiness to be his true replacement.
"To Tristan's bollocks making it out," he toasts, for whoever claimed Kingsman wasn't staffed by a bunch of immature rotters was a filthy liar.
“Slàinte.” Merlin salutes, and tosses the entire contents back with a smack of the lips and nary a grimace. “And to your bizarre aptitude to being Arthur.” He leans back, eyes drifting almost shut. So they’re having it out now, are they?
Well, alright; it’s overdue. Harry taps the button to lock the door that happens to be conveniently located on the underside of his desk.
Harry serves them both another finger and then puts away the decanter. “So,” he says.
“So,” says Merlin, equally cryptic. “Fisher King downgraded you to one session a week.”
News traveled fast. Harry smiles, half proud of his staff and their insatiable appetite for gossip. “Much to my dismay, I’m apparently not that much of a fascinating specimen.”
“But she doesn’t know about your dead lad. You didn’t tell her.”
Of course not. Armed with that information, the Fisher King would have gone down a path that he truly, sincerely, didn’t think was warranted. Poppycock about Lee and the ultimate fate of all the Unwins. He didn’t feel guilty. He wasn’t projecting.
Alright, perhaps there was some guilt, and perhaps he was doing a bit of projecting. Not, however, in a way that anyone could understand.
“I made the decision that it was irrelevant. Let us not mince words. If for even an instant it seemed to you as if I were barking mad, you wouldn’t allow sentimentalism to cloud your judgment. I’d be deposed, Round Table vote or not,” points out Harry. “It’s not the most orthodox interest, that I can agree with, but neither is Caradoc’s love for explosives, or even your own highly questionable collection of underground Russian cartoons—”
“They’re artistic and deeply philosophical.”
“If you say so.”
“Twat,” Merlin mutters into his drink.
There’s a snarky reply on the tip of Harry’s tongue that gets derailed by the change in that atmosphere. One moment they’re alone, and then the Ghost is there, formed as if a will-o’-the-wisp, luminous and soft. Long-accustomed to controlling his facial expressions to give nothing away, Harry ignores the new presence. Merlin won’t notice they have company.
“He is not my lost Lenore,” Harry returns to the topic. “I am neither delusional nor foolish enough to fall in love with a ghost.”
The Ghost jerks in his direction.
(ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴀᴄᴛᴜᴀʟ ꜰᴜᴄᴋ?)
“God, I should hope not. That would be a new one to add to the files,” Merlin grouses, unaware of the wordless conversation playing out while he measures the dregs of his drink. Harry’s eyes soften ever so slightly, halfway to asking for forgiveness, and the Ghost is, quite eloquently for lacking a face, giving him a hell of a look.
(ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ʙᴇʀᴋꜱ ᴇᴠᴇʀ ᴛᴀʟᴋ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ᴀɴʏᴛʜɪɴɢ ɴᴏʀᴍᴀʟ? ᴊᴇꜱᴜꜱ. ᴘᴜᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅʀɪɴᴋ ᴅᴏᴡɴ, ʜᴀʀʀʏ. ʜᴀᴠᴇ ꜱᴏᴍᴇ ᴍᴇʀᴄʏ ᴏɴ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʟɪᴠᴇʀ, ɪᴛ ᴀɪɴ’ᴛ ᴇᴠᴇɴ ʟᴜɴᴄʜᴛɪᴍᴇ.)
An all-but-imperceptible pause and then Harry hides the quirk of his lips behind the rim of the glass.
As the morning light coming through the window shifts into the deeper hues of the afternoon, Harry has a laissez-faire lunch with his oldest friend while the Ghost lounges on the one of the wingbacks, nonchalantly listening in even though it generally doesn’t stick around for small talk.
It also avoids going too near Merlin, a tendency previously noted. Though Harry is exempt from such considerations, the Ghost does have a sense of personal space, dodging around people when it strolls through the halls, stopping short if it thinks it’s going to collide with someone rushing by. It's yet another factor that makes watching the Ghost one of Harry’s favorite pastimes even if it brings on headache after a while, as if the action required his ions to generate a different kind of electricity in order to see the Ghost, energy his body was incompatible with, the equivalent of plugging into a foreign socket. There’s a static feedback to it, a steady, exquisite sort of pain verging on a full-on migraine.
Merlin leaves. Harry waits until the door clicks shut to rub his temples. After a few seconds of this, the Ghost presses a…something palm- shaped over Harry’s forehead, and it feels as if the electricity in his body rearranges into neat, orderly impulses; still uncomfortable but soothed, like menthol cream on a burn.
Harry mouths out a thank you.
The Ghost retreats after that.
—
"Why does it hurt?" Harry asks curiously. "You rewired something when you saved me, that much is obvious. There's significantly less fallout when I rely on the compromised eye, though really—care to venture a theory?" He has a few of his own but he'd like to hear Eggsy's thoughts on the matter.
Eggsy opens his mouth, probably intending to give another dismissive I don't fucking know, mate replies that he's so fond of, but settles for a gusty sigh and flicks a blade of grass at Harry. "You're never gonna let this go, are ya?"
No, he isn't. There must be a way out of this catch-22 limbo they’ve found themselves in. Harry hasn’t watched Ladyhawke in thirty years, and he hadn’t particularly liked the film even then—now that he’s living a twisted version of it, he likes it even less. There is nothing romantic about yearning for someone who was right bloody there at his side every day.
There is only so much Harry can do at night that his idiot, blind self doesn’t undo the next morning. Attempting to court Eggsy is tricky enough as is, what with them having skipped several steps to literally having their souls bound together, but he could do without that added challenge.
Eggsy’s deliberate obliviousness notwithstanding.
“Your guess?” he prompts, undeterred.
Eggsy plucks out another blade of grass, winding it between his fingers. It’s not his only tell; he’s also worrying at his lower lip, dragging his teeth across it when mulling over something. “Will ya laugh at me if I say I think it’s psychosomatic?”
Harry holds back the urge to reach over and grab his chin to make Eggsy look at him instead of the blank wall of fog. “In what way?”
“Like, I think your brain doesn’t want to understand what it’s seeing, because it knows that’s not how things work. I don’t think your fucked-up eye makes it hurt less in the way you’re thinking. You might be, uh...” A furrow runs between Eggsy’s eyebrows. “Confl… conflagrating—”
“Conflating?” suggests Harry.
“Oh fuck me, you’ve got me Scrabbling now too,” Eggsy mourns. “Yeah, fine, sod it, conflating the two. Awake-You ain’t ready to accept me. Your freaky psychic eye sees me better than the not-fucked eye, but that isn’t the hold-up. Awake-You’s subconsciously in denial.” Demonstrating his point, Eggsy taps the side of his own head. “I do it too, sometimes. Like, I don’t even have brain meat anymore and I can’t die, can’t even feel pain, and yet I panic when I’m falling. I flinch if I think I’m gonna get hit.”
That… has an unpleasant ring of truth about it.
“You may have hit upon something there, my dear.” Another blade of grass gets flicked at his face. Harry brushes it off, only to have a third lobbed at him.
“We’s not married, you git. ” Eggsy’s eyes gleam at him with annoyance and embarrassment. “Knock it off with that dear shit or I’mma start calling ya sweetums.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“I’ve called ya worse.”
—
There’s one thing that Harry doesn’t know.
Eggsy’s not sure why this is what he chose, of all things, to keep a secret, other than the vague worry that Harry wouldn’t react well to the news, or more likely he’d fixate on it, approaching it as a problem to be solved when Eggsy doesn’t… see the point in viewing it that way. Or in tackling everything like something that needs to be deciphered, categorized, dissected.
Some things just aren’t supposed to be fucking known or examined or have any underlying reason.
Well, in all fairness, the reason for this isn’t that mysterious, but Harry’s a bloody-minded control freak. He’s also fussy, vain, and a smug bastard. God damn him for somehow making that combination hot as fuck. Eggsy could have a little peace of mind if he weren’t, but no, he had to go save the suave motherfucker with the warm brown eyes and perfect voice, and that the only place where Eggsy can escape him is by “sleeping.”
Eggsy tips his head back, legs sprawled over the pew in front of him.
It’s not the real church, obviously. South Glade Mission Church had burned after the events of V-Day. Even if Kingsman had been in a position to send a team out there to erase the evidence, there hadn’t been anything left. If someone—say, Merlin—wondered what the hell had actually happened that day, the scene of the crime was gone.
Poof.
Yet here, time and time again, is where Eggsy finds himself when he wills his mind to shut off.
Unlike the cliff, there’s life to this dream. There’s color and noise, even taste and smell. The splatters of blood are so vivid that they’re a cheerful Christmas red. There’s people, engaged in their various atrocities, limbs splayed out, teeth bared, tearing into each other like animals.
And out there, beyond the front doors, is Harry on the ground.
It all replays over and over. The screams. The fighting. The brutality.
But Harry is never there to reenact his part of the massacre. He’s not invited back into the fun, so to speak.
Eggsy knows the whole routine by heart. He knows when the man with the beer gut and acne scars will turn and bite out the old lady’s throat. He has it timed, down to the second, when the pastor will screech like a monkey and throw himself into the fray. He knows that this pew doesn’t get touched, that he can slouch down until he’s got both legs hanging over the pew in front and that at no point will any of the combatants notice him, interact with him, that no bits of bone will hit him, no splinters, nothing. He can stay in his little corner, unperturbed by the whole show, and if he hadn’t already been desensitized to so much mutilation and death during his tenure as a reaper, well, he’s well-cured of any queasiness by now.
Gory as it all is, he’s rather over it. If anything he’s started to come up with morbid games to entertain himself. Like giving out imaginary awards for the most creative kills, that sort of thing.
“Sleeping” sucks, is Eggsy’s opinion.
But sometimes he needs to get the hell away from Harry and his questions and—and all the flirting, fuck, and the niceness, and the compliments, all the meaningful looks. The fucking double entendres and the ridiculous endearments.
That, and Harry needs actual sleep. Actual dreams for his subconscious to rummage through the rubbish. They can’t be together all the time. Forever. Can they?
Eggsy pinches the bridge of his nose, grimacing as he predictably gets stuck on the thought. He’s chewed on this so often that his metaphorical jaw is tired and achy. It’s a weird idea to entertain. Forever. Legitimate, literal forever with someone. Not the sort of forever that birds swoon about, that gets carved into trees (did anyone do that anymore?) and sworn in wedding vows.
Wedding vows.
Impossibly, Eggsy slides down another inch in the pew, now cradling his head with a soft whine. Shit, they might actually be married. This might actually work out.
Well. Other than the fact that Harry forgets who he is for two-thirds of the day.
—
One night Harry thumbs through his collection of vinyl sleeves until a whim strikes on something a little jazzy. The needle settles into the groove, a brief burst of crackly sound, and then he returns to the kitchen where he’d begun preparing a ratatouille as Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” pours out of the speakers.
“I do miss it,” he comments while finely paring the vegetables.
(ᴡʜᴀᴛ? ᴛʜᴇ ᴀɢᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅɪɴᴏꜱᴀᴜʀꜱ? ᴄʟᴇᴀʀʟʏ.)
The air shimmers to the far right. Harry doesn’t turn his head. “I miss being on the field. The independence of it. If I made an error in judgment, it was only my life on the line—and in the end, even that didn’t matter. Galahad can always be replaced.” The overhead light flashes on the edge of the knife, sharp enough to slice through muscle. Harry cleans it with a flannel each time he places a different vegetable or herb on the cutting board. “I’ve no qualms with my nature or what I’ve carried out in the name of queen and country. I simply…”
He trails off.
Damn Chester and his superiority complex.
The music crescendos with the coda and peters out with low trombone. Harry puts the knife down; as he studies his hands, still strong and lean, the bombastic intro of “ Sunrise Serenade” nearly swallows his chuckle. “You must find me a terrible bore.”
The Ghost stands at his side. (ᴍɪꜱꜱ ᴍᴇ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ꜱʜɪᴛ. ʏᴏᴜ’ʀᴇ ᴀ ʟᴏᴛ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜɪɴɢꜱ, ʜᴀʀʀʏ. ʙᴏʀɪɴɢ ᴅᴏᴇꜱɴ’ᴛ ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ɪᴛ ᴏɴ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ʟɪꜱᴛ.)
Harry cocks his head. He thinks, sometimes, that he does hear the Ghost speaking to him—but down that path might lie true, genuine madness.
He stands like that for a long minute, face unreadable. Once, he’d dismissed that anything came after the body ceased to function. If his belief in a higher power hadn’t already been shaken by uni, it was razed and salted by second year at Kingsman. The subsequent decades hadn’t done anything to alter that.
Technically, he still doubts in a god. But he can’t dismiss the rest.
Abruptly, he asks, “Are you James?”
The Ghost stills.
Harry adds, “If you were Chester you would have tried to kill me by now. Are you Kay? Bors?”
He thinks the Ghost shakes out a “no.”
The list of the fallen is long, but there’s only one name that burns on Harry’s tongue, though he’s held off out of superstition that if he probed too hard the spell would break, revealing this to be the death throes of his brain splattered all over the asphalt. Harry’s throat clicks. Blood thuds in his ears. He wishes the Ghost would leave, cutting him off from saying it.
He’s grateful that the Ghost instead stays, that it has put up with this plodding journey until Harry was ready.
“Eggsy.”
(ʏᴇꜱ, ʜᴀʀʀʏ!)
He thinks the Ghost—he thinks Eggsy —is pleased, draped against the kitchen counter beside him, and fleetingly he’s not looking at some phenomena of distorted space and light but a young man with bright eyes and a cheeky, dimpled grin.
“Hello, Eggsy,” Harry says fondly. “I shan’t inquire as to how this came about nor why you’ve elected to remain by my side. I shall simply be selfishly glad that you did.”
(ꜱᴇʀɪᴏᴜꜱʟʏ? ꜱʜᴏᴜʟᴅᴀ ᴛᴡɪɢɢᴇᴅ ᴀᴡᴀᴋᴇ-ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀꜱ ɢᴏɴɴᴀ ʙᴇ ᴀ ꜱᴀᴘᴘʏ ʙᴀꜱᴛᴀʀᴅ.)
Harry’s pulse quickens. “Did you say something?”
If he’s not mistaken, that grin just went as sharp as the knife laying between them. Frisson winds down his spine; tense, anticipatory.
Familiar.
“Why am I struck with the suspicion that you’ve been on your best behavior thus far?” he asks, allegedly exasperated, but he feels lighter than he has in longer than he cares to examine.
(ᴡᴇʟʟ, ʏᴀ ᴡᴇʀᴇɴ’ᴛ ʀᴇᴀʟʟʏ ʟɪꜱᴛᴇɴɪɴ’ ᴛᴏ ᴍᴇ ʙᴇꜰᴏʀᴇ, ᴡᴇʀᴇ ʏᴏᴜ? ᴍᴀɴɴᴇʀꜱ ᴍʏ ᴀʀꜱᴇ. ʏᴏᴜ ɢᴏᴛ ᴀɴʏ ɪᴅᴇᴀ ʜᴏᴡ ʀᴀɴᴋ ɪᴛ ɪꜱ ᴛᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴋ ᴛᴏ ꜱᴏᴍᴇᴏɴᴇ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴘʀᴇᴏᴄᴄᴜᴘɪᴇᴅ ᴡɪᴛʜ ꜱᴛᴀʀɪɴ’ ᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴏʟᴅ ᴛᴡɪᴛᴛᴇʀ ꜱᴇʟꜰɪᴇꜱ? ʀᴀɴᴋ, ʜᴀʀʀʏ. ᴀʙꜱᴏʟᴜᴛᴇʟʏ ʀᴀɴᴋ.)
Satisfaction bleeds between them until Harry is certain that, even if his ears don’t register any actual sound, he’s grasped perfectly well what’s being said to him. His darling ghost is a snarky little shit.
If this is psychosis, it’s one he can live with.
—
“I can’t believe that worked.” Eggsy sounds downright mystified. “That shouldn’t have worked."
Harry reminds him, “Nothing about us should have worked. Why not this?”
Eggsy chews on the inside of his cheek and stares out at the dark sweep of the ocean. Like this his profile is all dramatic angles, the kind of beauty meant to be immortalized in marble, not gone and forgotten by the world.
“I guess we’ll see if it sticks," says Eggsy eventually.
—
Their frail bond is tested sooner than either of them expect it.
Harry is relaying to Percival the specifics of his assignment when the Ghost—when Eggsy—strays into the Table room as he typically does, his edges fuzzy. Harry’s gaze flicks in his direction once and then settles back on the dossier spread out in front of him, smoothly picking up where he left off.
Percival is nodding, writing down his own notes. Since Harry isn’t paying attention, and Percival can’t sense him, neither notice when Eggsy’s outline sharpens. Harry does notice when he makes a sudden move towards Percival, leaning so close that their faces are nearly touching and Eggsy’s hand plunges into Percival’s chest, disappearing beneath the layers of silk and cotton.
Harry falters. Percival’s eyebrows quirk. “Is something the matter?”
Does he not feel that? Harry’s skin vibrates whenever Eggsy touches him, like lightning playing across his nerves. But Percival is unperturbed even with Eggsy’s arm up to the elbow in his ribs as if searching for something. When he can’t find it, he pulls back, tangibly frustrated. He bends over to inspect Percival’s notes.
Harry clears his throat. “Would you give me a minute? I have to make a call.”
Obviously, Percival finds this strange, but he bows his head. He walks right through Eggsy on his way out.
The door clicks shut behind him.
(ʏᴏᴜ ᴄᴀɴ'ᴛ ʟᴇᴛ ʜɪᴍ ɢᴏ ᴏɴ ᴛʜɪs ᴍɪssɪᴏɴ. )
Eggsy’s agitation is obvious. While their form of communication is limited to concepts rather than literal words, Harry has the gist of it. He folds his hands together. “This is a perfectly routine operation. Why shouldn’t I send Percival?”
Eggsy makes a sharp cutting motion across his throat. The message is clear. So Harry can either trust this possible hallucination of his… or ignore it, maintain his professionalism and send one of his best agents out to potentially die.
Not that there isn’t always a risk of that.
(ꜰɪɴᴇ. ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ʙᴇʟɪᴇᴠᴇ ᴍᴇ. ɪ'ᴍ ᴊᴜsᴛ ʏᴏᴜʀ sɪʟʟʏ ɪᴍᴀɢɪɴᴀᴛɪᴏɴ. ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴅᴏ I ᴋɴᴏᴡ?)
There’s a note of finality there that Harry doesn’t like. Like he’s disappointed Eggsy. “Are you sure about this?”
Eggsy nods. He’s melted back into a blurry, indistinct shape, light caught and diffused.
“Right, then.” Harry gathers up his papers, tucks them into the folder and closes it while a part of his mind rebukes that this is crossing a line, that he'll have no option but to lie to Merlin's face if he raises the issue. Telling him the truth would have unpleasant consequences for all of them.
If he were a crueler, more calculating man—if he were Chester—he might choose to let Percival go nonetheless, putting the hypothesis to the test. Discover if he's barking mad, or if he truly has an unthinkably powerful tool at his disposal. The ways that Kingsman could functionally be altered if he could know at all times when someone was going to die; what would having that power do to a man?
It'd be playing god.
"Eggsy," he calls out to the retreating figure. "Don't tell me this again. I shouldn't know. And more to the point, I don't want to use you like that."
Eggsy pauses, looking back at him. Harry can’t see him smiling but he can feel it. His chest aches with warmth.
(ʏᴏᴜ ʀᴇᴀʟʟʏ ᴀʀᴇ ᴀ sᴀᴘ.)
—
Eggsy reaches over and interlocks their fingers one by one, slotting them together like a key meeting the pins of a lock until their palms are flush against one another. He feels Harry’s surprise for a fraction of a second, and that’s fair, Eggsy’s not been the one to initiate contact too often.
Things are a little different now. Harry is somehow simultaneously terrible and wonderful, and Eggsy’s never fallen for someone before, caught up in too much fear and anger while alive. But he thinks this is probably love. A weirdly fucked-up kind of love that might have a chance of working after all. It’s not as if they have to worry about anyone separating them. Not social status, not age, not death, not anything.
Harry squeezes his hand. He doesn’t say anything, and doesn’t have to.
Eggsy has already made so many bad choices for the right reasons. What’s one more?