Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The police were in the hallway asking about Eggsy. About her. It was proper scary, and Daisy found herself hiding in the loo next to the overcrowded room they’d shuffled Eggsy into, madly clutching the phone she’d nicked from one of the nurses and hoping they wouldn’t find her. She knew what police meant. Police meant someone taking her away from Eggsy and putting her with strangers. Or, worse, giving her back to Dean. Eggsy was still sleeping, and the doctors all said they didn’t know when he would wake up. And the nurses had tutted over her, but then they’d called the coppers.

The phone had a crack running halfway across the screen, but it weren’t passworded, and it unlocked when she swiped the screen. There was a picture of the nurse and a grey kitten on the screen, and Daisy promised herself she’d give it back once she’d called the number. She pulled her medal out from underneath her shirt and turned it over. It didn’t look like a proper number, but Eggsy had promised her it would work, and Eggsy never ever lied to her. She had to be brave. Had to be.

She dialled and waited. And when someone finally answered, she barely let them speak before her words were spilling out, beyond her control.

“M’names Daisy Unwin, and my brother is Eggsy. He got hurt real bad. I’m at hospital, and there’s coppers here and I think they’re gonna take me away.” She scrunched up her eyes and remembered the last part. The part Eggsy made her say every night before she told him their nightly story. “Ossfords, not brogues.”

The posh voice on the other end took a long moment to reply. “Your complaint has been noted, and we hope we have not lost you as a loyal customer.” There was a pause, and then, “Someone’s on their way, love.”

Daisy couldn’t smile while Eggsy was hurt, but breathing suddenly came easier. She held the medal tighter in her hand. She sat on the floor in the loo, tucked between the wall and the toilet, listening to the grumbling voices of the coppers outside. Eggsy said there was two sorts of police: the nice ones, who wanted to help but couldn’t, and the mean ones who was always looking for trouble. She didn’t know what sort these were. Better to stay quiet and hidden.

They found her about fifteen minutes later.

“Come on, then.” The man was heavyset, and had hard hands. He grabbed at her arms and yanked roughly, trying to drag her out from her hiding place. “Out you come. Time to go and talk to some nice folks about your brother.”

Daisy pulled against him until she was sure she’d have bruises all up her arms. “No. I’m staying with Eggsy.” She braced her feet against the toilet and pulled her arm back. His hands slid down her jumper’s threadbare sleeves and he cursed when he lost his grip and stumbled backwards. “’m not going anywhere.”

He called her a fucking brat under his breath and said, louder, “Your brother’s in real trouble. Not going to be able to take care of you much longer, is he? Not when he’s in jail.”

The thought made Daisy freeze, gripped through with terror. The copper lunged forward, grabbing at her and managing to pull her out in her distraction.

Eggsy couldn’t go to jail.

The copper picked her up like she was nothing, and his hands were still too hard. He smiled smugly at his partner, and carried her towards the door. As they passed through Eggsy’s room, she caught a glimpse of her brother on the bed. Still. Marks that hadn’t bruised up yet all over his face. Tubes and bags and all sorts of things stuck to him.

And Daisy felt herself snap.

“No!” she screamed. She kicked and scratched, and bit until the hands holding her loosened. The man swore and dropped her. She hit the ground hard, her knees banging against the tile, and she scrabbled to get up. The other copper tried to grab her, but she kicked at him, too. In the shin, exactly where Eggsy showed her how. He loosed a vile curse, but moved just enough for Daisy to duck under his legs and take off down the hall.

She didn’t know where she was going. Somewhere to hide until Eggsy woke up. The library, maybe. Miss Phelps who worked there liked them well enough to let them kip on the big, comfy chairs sometimes. Or maybe she could find another loo to hide in until the police left.

She barely made it a few feet down the hallway before she connected with a pair of legs. She’d been looking over her shoulder, not sure if they were after her, and the sudden impact sent her sprawling across the ground. She jumped up, prepared to fight, but paused at the sight in front of her.

“That kind of toff, ” Eggsy had whispered into her ear, “They always got money on ‘em, Daise. And they can afford to lose it, can’t they? Look at that one. See the watch? Prolly worth a few thousand quid. Enough for us to eat with the Queen, innit? But they got mad smart eyes. Watch for the eyes, Daise. Can’t let them catch us, can we? ”

Still, she didn’t want to steal from this man. He was tall, and imposing. An umbrella hung from his arm, and a pair of expensive-looking glasses sat on his face, one of the lenses completely blacked out.

“Pardon me,” he said, as though Daisy hadn’t run full-tilt into him. He’d barely budged. “Are you Miss Unwin?”

The coppers chose that moment to run into the hallway. She gasped when they spotted her and prepared to take off. Before she could, the man ducked half down to catch her eye. He didn’t move to touch her—probably for the best, since she would’ve clocked him the same as she had the copper who’d grabbed her—but he did smile. And his smile was lovely. Reassuring, almost, though she couldn’t’ve put a finger on why. She paused before running, and darted around behind his legs instead as the coppers ran at them.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “I believe you’ll find that Miss Unwin has been released into my care for the time being.”

“Bollocks,” the copper she’d bit growled. “Who’n the fuck are you, then?”

“Language, sir. There’s a young lady present.”

A warm feeling gathered in Daisy’s chest.

“I am Miss Unwin’s appointed guardian until such a time that her brother is able to resume the responsibilities himself.”

“Awfully long time, that,” the other copper snorted. “Charging him with petty theft, aren’t we? Found about eight different wallets in his pockets, none of them his own. And he’s wanted for kidnapping this one.” They gestured towards her.

“Is that so?” the toff said mildly. “Well, I’m sure that when you check again, you’ll see most of the former will be sorted. And the latter, I’m sure, will explain itself in due time.” He turned away from them, directing the whole of his attention at Daisy. She wondered what he saw; Eggsy shopped thrift to keep her dressed, and she wasn’t very clean from kneeling on the street while waiting for the ambulance. But, from the kind expression in his eyes, he might’ve been looking at Princess Charlotte herself. “Shall we go and check on your brother once more before going?”

He didn’t offer his hand, which was a relief. Daisy weren’t no kid anymore. She was almost seven years old. But he did hold out his arm, like they was in a movie.

Her mouth dropped a bit, and she shied away. He lowered his arms, fake polite smile in place, and walked through the coppers like they weren’t there at all. They parted for him as though he was the king or something. Daisy followed in his wake, turning around long enough to flip the bird at the coppers when Harry wasn’t looking. They glowered at her, but didn’t give chase.

When they stepped into Eggsy’s room, Daisy moved to the bedside. She’d wanted to be there the whole time, but between the doctors and the coppers, she felt like she’d barely gotten a second before having to hide in the loo.

Eggsy looked proper awful, and she hesitated before grabbing onto the one hand that didn’t have anything stuck on it. It felt clammy and lifeless. Nothing at all like the warm gentle hands Daisy was used to.

The toff gave her a few moments before speaking. “Now, Miss Unwin, my name is Harry Hart.” He eyed the medal hanging from around her neck. “I gave your brother that medal. His father saved my life.”

Daisy grabbed onto it and held it tight. “He told me it were magic,” she said. “That if I was in trouble, to call and someone would come help. And you did.” She winced. She’d sounded like a baby. Magic weren’t real. Eggsy tried to make it seem like it was, but if magic was real than all her wishing she’d done by throwing spare coins in fountains would’ve worked. Maybe it would’ve if she hadn’t fished them out again right away.

Harry smiled, though it seemed sad. “Before we continue on, Miss Unwin, I am going to have to ask about the kidnapping charge. I had been informed of the petty theft, but kidnapping is a far more serious crime.”

Daisy frowned, even though she liked that he was asking her, instead of assuming things he had no business assuming. “He took me from Dean,” she said quietly. “When I was little.” Harry seemed bemused at this, but she soldiered on. “Dean weren’t nice. Used to smack Eggsy around pretty bad. But he only ever hit me once, and Eggsy took me away that night.”

Harry glanced at Eggsy, still asleep, eyes softening somewhat. “I see.” He turned his full attention back to Daisy. “And your mother?”

Daisy shrugged. “Gone.”

“Ah. And you would prefer to stay with your brother?”

“I ain’t leaving Eggsy!” she all but yelled.

Harry held up a placating hand. “Nor should you. But I’m afraid kidnapping is a somewhat more challenging situation to address than simple sticky fingers. You may have to accompany me for some time, before we’re able to resolve it completely.”

Daisy’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not funny, are you?” Eggsy had taught her about all the signs to watch for. Harry didn’t seem to be asking her for help, but she didn’t know him, for all he’d saved her from the coppers.

“I assure you not,” Harry said, though not obviously affronted. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a small pocket watch. It looked like it was made of gold, and her eyes widened. If she and Eggsy sold that, they’d be settled in the hostel for more than a month, probably. “Here. Look.” She warily approached his side. He turned the knob at the top until the hands were aligned at six-thirty. A small knife the size of her pinky finger popped out the bottom. “If you were to cut someone with this, the paralytic on the blade would render them immobile before they so much as registered the pain of it. I give you full permission to use it on myself or anyone else who tries anything… ‘funny.’” The way his jaw clenched when he said it, the flash of anger in his eyes, that was almost more comforting than the knife.

“How do you put it away?” Daisy asked.

“Carefully,” Harry replied. He crouched down and used the floor to push the blade back into the watch, then passed it to her. It was still warm from his pocket, and Daisy held it tight between her hands.

“This is proper magic, isn’t it?” she asked.

“A famous author once wrote that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” Harry replied.

“That’s Arthur C. Clarke, that is,” Daisy said. Harry blinked in surprise and Daisy added, defensively, “Eggsy reads to me, doesn’t he?”

“You are quite extraordinary, Miss Unwin,” Harry said, offering up his first real smile. “Now, shall we go and have some dinner?” He looked Eggsy’s way. “I find myself quite peckish.”

Daisy’s stomach growled. “But what if he wakes up?”

“I’m afraid the doctors aren’t confident that your brother will wake anytime soon, but I have them under strict orders to call me the moment he shows any sign of coming to,” Harry told her.

Daisy managed a bare smile, her chin wobbling embarrassingly. She weren’t a baby. She wasn’t going to cry. “All right.”

“What do you prefer to eat?” He smiled. “Lady’s choice.”

“Nando’s,” she replied immediately. It was a special treat, usually reserved only for birthdays, but Eggsy always said their chicken was the best in the world. And she needed something Eggsy might like for leftovers, for when he woke.

“Delightful,” Harry said.

This time, when he offered his arm, she took it.

Half out of the room, she turned. "Wait." She looked round and spotted Eggsy's rucksack, abandoned in the corner next to his bed. She darted in to grab it.

Harry held out his hand. "Allow me."

She shook her head. “It’s got all our things.” She slung the straps on over her shoulders. Eggsy usually carried the bag. It was heavy, but after a moment of shifting it about, she managed to adjust it so she didn’t feel like she were in danger of toppling over.

Harry waited, patiently, until she once again took his arm to accompany him out of the hospital. On the way out, she spotted the nurse who’d helped her out with the phone. Daisy pulled away from Harry for a moment, long enough to slip the phone back into the lady’s pocket, then followed him out the door.

The contents of the rucksack proved frugal, but fascinating. A change of clothes for Miss Unwin—worn almost through, but clean—two library books, four more wallets apart from the ones the constabulary had already retrieved, a key to a youth hostel in Kensington, a hundred pounds in cash ferreted into various pockets and deliberately situated rips and tears, a notebook filled with alternately indecipherable writing and a rather splendid attempt at penmanship from a much clumsier young hand, and a few odds and ends that Harry himself might have brought along on an extended mission, such as matches and a pocket sewing kit.

And one of his Aunt Myrna’s decorative spoons, presumably gleaned from his dining room during their brief tour of his home.

It did lack pajamas for Miss Unwin, however.

"Eggsy says it's better to sleep dressed, in case we have to run," Miss Unwin explained patiently.

"Very efficient," Harry said. She preened on her brother's behalf. "But there will be no need to run tonight. Perhaps you might be more comfortable in one of my old shirts?"

Miss Unwin considered the prospect. "Yeah. All right."

From the backpack, she produced a pink toothbrush with a rather grotesque cartoon character on it and disappeared to use the loo.

"I like your dog," she told him when she emerged.

Harry couldn't help but smile.

She tucked herself into bed, idly playing with the medal around her neck a moment. While obviously hesitating over something, Harry wasn’t sure if it was a something about which he should pry; worries about her brother, perhaps, or something more sinister such as the police constables he’d unceremoniously dismissed earlier that day.

Finally, gripping the charm tightly in her hand, she met his eyes. “I always tell Eggsy a story at bedtime.”

“Wouldn’t that be more his purview than your own?”

“It’s tradition.”

“Then by all means.”

Miss Unwin took a deep breath, and while she turned in her bed to face the wall before her, she did cast him occasional, searching looks. “Once upon a time, there was an escapologist.”

“Not a profession much called for these days, I imagine,” Harry commented.

Miss Unwin ignored him. “He was a good person, but a terrible escapologist. He trapped himself in a small box, with a vile baddie and his dogs. And no matter what he did, they kept him locked inside with them.”

“Oh dear.”

“One day, a little girl came along, who was a thief. And she picked the lock to the box and the escapologist finally managed an escape, and quickly shut the door behind him so the baddie and his mean dogs couldn't follow.”

“Whatever happened then?”

“The thief and the escapologist became best friends, and they travelled the world together. But they didn't know that right behind them was the baddie, who swore to hunt them down and kill them.”

“In an appropriately gruesome fashion, I assume.”

“Totally bloody. The dogs all has rabies. They was foaming at the mouth and wanted to bite open their bellies and gobble up their intestines.”

“How wonderfully grotesque.” He waited, but Miss Unwin seemed settled with that small snippet of narrative. “And how does the story end?”

Miss Unwin shrugged. “I don't know yet. Can you pass me my book?"

Harry glanced into the rucksack. "Is madam referring to Zita the Space Girl or Pygmalion?"

Miss Unwin gave this a grave amount of consideration. "Eggsy wouldn't be happy if I read ahead in Pygmalion," she decided, to Harry's amusement. "He reads to me when I'm going to sleep. It gets loud, sometimes."

"I do hope you'll find it comfortable here," he replied.

"Ta, Harry." She accepted her book. "Night."

"Goodnight, Miss Unwin."

Once confident she had every possible comfort he could offer an unexpected guest only six-and-three-quarters (“I’m seven in only three months, Harry.”), Harry headed down to his sitting room. The temptation to reach for his decanter of brandy was there, but he decided the safer option was to keep his wits about him, should she wake in the night and need him. Or, more realistically, should she wake in the night and decide to steal away with the silver.

“They’re a rough couple,” Merlin said, having managed to tear his attention away from the op in Marseilles to send Harry all the information he’d managed to dig up on Mr. Gary “Eggsy” Unwin and Miss Daisy Unwin (nee Baker, though the adoption was unorthodox to put it mildly, not to mention terribly illegal).

Of the two, Eggsy had significantly more documented. A laundry list of petty crimes contrasted with impressive achievements, all coming to a halt almost three years prior, when he’d disappeared from the world completely. The kidnapping charge had come as a surprise; apparently, one needed to have a child in their care to qualify for assistance, and Mr. Dean Anthony Baker had brought the kidnapping to the attention of the police only a day after being informed that he would no longer be receiving the stipend.

“I found the accident,” Merlin continued. He streamed the poor-quality CCTV to Harry’s glasses feed, and Harry watched with a small frown as Eggsy, chased out of a One Stop by an irate-looking clerk and darted into the street, directly into the path of a speeding sedan. His body flew through the air and hit a bicycle rack before dropping lifelessly to the ground.

A smaller figure—Miss Unwin—ran from between two other buildings, frantic. She reached Eggsy’s side and began shaking him, mute screams of terror sending a lurch through Harry’s chest.

“That’s enough,” Harry said quietly. Merlin cut the feed. “The doctors seem uncertain about his head injury. Possible brain trauma, which is more than believable considering.”

“Considering,” Merlin agreed. “Harry, you don’t mean to keep the lass, do you?” Harry hummed under his breath noncommittally and Merlin swore.

“We owe her brother a debt. I think that caring for his sister until he’s able to resume the responsibility of doing so is a perfectly acceptable means of repaying it.”

“And when he’s up and about? Going to turn them back out on the street, are you?”

That, at least, gave Harry pause. “Beg pardon?”

“Harry, the only way anyone disappears the way these two did is by living on the street. Those petty theft charges you had me dismiss aren’t a young man stealing for a lark.”

Harry frowned. He hadn’t considered that as an explanation. Possibly because he wasn’t quite prepared to deal with the gut-wrenching guilt that might accompany the thought that he’d failed Lee Unwin’s son so spectacularly. It put a number of statements Miss Unwin had made into perspective, certainly. She’d been wide-eyed and overwhelmed the moment she’d stepped into his home, and while she’d obviously been hungry, she’d only tucked half her dinner away before asking them to save the rest for her. But while she wasn’t the picture of neatness, she was at least well cared for. Not malnourished or neglected; for all they’d been living on the streets, apparently, her brother had done his utmost in caring for her.

Perhaps it was time for someone to do him the same courtesy.

“I’ll hold off on decision-making until he’s awake enough to be part of the process, I think,” Harry decided.

His thoughts flit, for a moment, to the young man lying still and unconscious in bed back at the hospital. Beneath the bruises, and necessary medical equipment, there had been an attractive man. Perhaps not one life had treated kindly, but one resilient enough to ensure his young sister didn’t allow the grimmer realities of her situation to defeat her. For all intents and purposes, Miss Unwin did seem happy. And she obviously adored her brother. He must have been at least as extraordinary as Miss Unwin herself.

At around midnight, sleep barely brushing against his consciousness, Harry heard the telltale sound of footsteps in the hallway outside his bedroom door. He rose, collected his dressing gown, and silently padded across the floor of his bedroom to peer out the door.

Miss Unwin was in the process of breaking into his study.

The lock on the door was rudimentary; if someone went to all the trouble of bypassing his security measures on the exterior doors, there wasn’t much point in securing his study. Everything sensitive inside was hidden anyway. But it was fascinating, watching her put the small serrated blade into the keyhole and wiggle it to and fro until she’d managed to disengage the lock.

She swung the door open and Harry clapped, momentarily forgetting that she surely meant to rob him.

Daisy jumped up and backed away from the door, cheeks red with embarrassment. Her small fingers tightened around the rudimentary tool she’d been using. Rather too blunt at the tip to stab him with, unless she put all her strength behind it. He’d have to take some time to makes sure she was appraised of the most effective places at which to aim.

“Bloody good show,” he told her. “Did your brother teach you how to open doors, then?”

Daisy nodded. “I’m not too good at pins yet,” she told him. She glanced into the study. “I wasn’t going to steal nothing.”

“Then would you mind if I asked why you decided to break into the room instead of asking me what was behind the door?”

“You’ve a dead dog in your bathroom, don’t you? Wanted to make sure there weren’t no bodies or nothing.”

Harry blinked. “I thought you liked Mr. Pickle.”

“’s still a dead dog, mate.”

For a moment, Harry could clearly see the influence of an older sibling in the rough turn of phrase and mulish set to her jaw. It was an interesting dichotomy; a brother who read her Arthur C. Clarke, Pygmalion, and who knew what else, but then also taught her how to pick locks.

“Then by all means.” He waved her in.

She noted the display of Sun front pages with casual dismissal, instead intent on her thorough examination of the room in search of dismembered corpses. And honestly, he was impressed at the sense of self-preservation, but obviously someone needed to impress upon her that most serial killers were usually somewhat more careful about disposal. At least, when they anticipated houseguests.

“Something’s not right about this room,” Miss Unwin decided after a few minutes’ look around. Her gaze turned again and again to the false wall concealing his modest home armoury. He doubted she’d be able to tell it was there; the seams were well-hidden, the construction Kingsman-level excellence. But still. Interesting she noted it at all.

“You’re welcome to poke around the other rooms as well…” Harry trailed off as she approached his desk and looked at it with suspicion. Her attention glanced over the false veneer that concealed the switch to open it, and he didn’t quite breathe out a sigh of relief that she hadn’t noticed.

“I’ll figure it out,” she finally informed him, stepping back and regarding him with the very picture of sincere obstinance.

“I’m sure you will,” Harry agreed. “Would you also like to search the basement for my dead wives, or are you content enough with your findings to sleep through the night, now?”

Miss Unwin considered it carefully. “Will there be spiders down there, you think?”

“Of Tolkien-sized veracity, I should imagine.”

“Maybe not, then.”

She went back to bed without further commentary, and Harry, smiling privately to himself, returned to his room.

Barring her nocturnal investigation of his study, Miss Unwin proved a rather quiet houseguest the first full day of her stay.

Harry rose at his usual time, a little before half-past seven, and showered before pulling on his housecoat and making his way downstairs for a cup of coffee and bowl of porridge. He paused at the doorway to his kitchen, somehow surprised to discover he’d almost forgotten he had a visitor. A visitor who’d pulled a chair from the dining room and was using it to search his cupboards.

“Anything in particular you’d like for breakfast, Miss Unwin?” Harry asked.

Miss Unwin leaned back and peered at him around an open cabinet door. “Do you have any cereal?”

“I was going to make myself porridge. Would you care for a bowl?”

Miss Unwin considered this with appropriate solemnity before nodding and hopping down from the chair. She dragged it back across the floor, the ear-splitting screech filling the room in such a horrific manner that Harry could only speculate it had initially been drowned out by the shower when she’d moved it into the kitchen in the first place.

Her rucksack, he noted, was tucked into the corner nearest the dining room entry, but she seemed content to leave it there in favour of hovering at his side and looking at the countertop to watch him prepare breakfast. While he preferred his porridge plain, he sprinkled some cinnamon and a small scoop of demerara sugar overtop hers, before carrying both bowls to the dining room. She trailed after him, pointedly not looking at the rack displaying Aunt Myrna’s spoon collection which was now missing an additional three items from its collection.

“When are we going to see Eggsy?” she asked.

Harry hummed. “Yes, I suppose we should make a point of swinging by the hospital to see how he’s getting on.”

She gobbled up her breakfast so quickly he’d almost resigned himself to having to perform the Heimlich maneuver, though ultimately it proved unnecessary. Thank god; she was rather smaller than his usual fare and his first aid training had been so long ago he could scarce remember if the hand placements were the same.

Miss Unwin raced down the hallway when they reached the hospital, leaving Harry behind to speak with the nurses and administration. It was a work of moments to arrange for her brother to be moved to a private room, instead of settled amongst five other beds, and when he reached the room he found Miss Unwin perched on his bed, glaring at him as though personally offended that he hadn’t woken yet.

“The doctors have said his is a positive prognosis,” Harry told her. Miss Unwin blinked at him, owlishly. “It means he’ll hopefully be awake soon. They don’t believe there to be significant brain damage, though they can only make so many assumptions on that front while he’s asleep, and his ribs should heal up well.”

Miss Unwin curled in upon herself, looking terribly small. “What happens if he don’t wake up?”

“I…” Harry paused. “I don’t know.”

Miss Unwin looked back at her brother, and clutched desperately at his hand, as though she could bring him back to consciousness through force of will. If anyone was capable of it, Harry decided, it was likely her.

While they spent much of their first day in Eggsy’s hospital room—Miss Unwin convinced with childlike stubbornness that her insistence on focusing the whole of her attention on her brother would ultimately result in his miraculous recovery—Harry was determined not to allow them to wallow away at his bedside when there was no sign of his imminent return to consciousness.

That, however, left him with the quandary: what did one do with a young child?

Merlin, when questioned, presented a terribly unhelpful attitude which indicated that Harry, having chosen the linens for his bed, was now free to enjoy them at his leisure. And as he didn’t want to turn to the dubious convenience of Google, he decided instead to go right to the source.

“I thought after we visit Eggsy, you and I might explore London a bit.”

Daisy glanced up, but seemed unimpressed. A brief stop at the grocer’s yesterday had yielded some heinously sugary monstrosity in cereal format, to which Daisy was now applying herself. “I done loads of exploring, Harry.”

“Well.” So much for that, then. “What do you usually do in a day, then?”

“What day is it?”

“Wednesday.”

“We already went to the library. Could go to the park.” She pushed a colourful piece of sugar masquerading as a grain about the bowl. “Eggsy and I work the crowds a lot.”

“No need to do that at present,” Harry assured her. Daisy shovelled another sizable scoop into her mouth. “How do you like to have fun?”

Daisy shrugged. “Go to the playground. Or the museum has free programmes for kids. Eggsy usually finds something fun to do.” Mention of her brother brought a trouble furrow to her brow, and she turned her eyes down to her bowl.

There was a lovely garden close by, but unfortunately not a playground. Perhaps they might find something closer to the hospital.

The doctors presented no updates in Eggsy’s condition when they visited after lunch, and thankfully made a point of speaking in front of Daisy. It made her more willing to leave his side, though not without obvious trepidation. Still, she was willing to tear herself from his side, though she followed in Harry’s wake with such a forlorn air that Harry almost turned right back around to return to the room. Still, better for her to be out and about, he thought, and he steered them towards what looked like a promising bit of green not far from the hospital doors.

It turned out to be a rather marvellous playground, which Daisy looked at with equal amounts of awe and excitement, playing with the straps on her bag.

“I’ll watch over it for you, if you’d like,” Harry offered.

Daisy bit her lower lip. “Either me or Eggsy have to carry it all the time.”

Eventually, Harry was going to figure out what was so important about the bag. Until then… “If you say so, but my offer is open.”

Daisy smiled and darted off to a small knot of children—all younger than her, thought not by more than a year or two—disappearing into the twists of colourful equipment and wood chips.

Harry took a seat on one of the benches lining the playground and settled in to review his daily updates. Lancelot would be returning to HQ shortly, her mission to CERN completed satisfactorily. Percival was still in Malaysia, though anticipated wrapping up his assigned assassination shortly. Galahad had checked back in for debriefing the previous evening, which had probably served to drive Merlin to distraction considering their ongoing power struggle which, Harry continually pointed out, was nothing at all like his own power struggles with the man over the years, given that there was no love lost between Merlin and the agent who had assumed Harry’s former title. No one else reported anything of significance, though Ector was looking for approval to shift his objective to one which required more… percussive persuasion. Harry’s lips twitched as he signed off on it. Ector was the only agent with more tenure in the organization than Harry himself, and yet could count his historied assignments on one hand which hadn’t ended with something exploding.

Daisy, it seemed, had immediately bonded with the scurry of younger children in a manner suggesting that they’d been in want of leadership before she’d arrived on the scene, and was leading them through an impressively complex game involving plans to replace Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II with a giraffe.

It was during his assessment of their operations in Kenya that Harry found himself looking up just in time to see her leaping between play structures, a short span that would’ve been nothing to an adult, but was gut-punching when her tiny body was flying through the air.

She landed on the next one, hard, and Harry was up on his feet and crossing the woodchip-laden space between them in seconds.

“Are you quite all right, Miss Unwin?” he asked, scaling the small ladder to the landing at the top of the gym set.

Wincing, Daisy pushed herself up. The weight on her back made her stagger, and she had to brace herself on the side of the equipment as she pulled herself up, but she brushed off the scrapes on her palms with little more than a wrinkled nose and a press against her trousers.

“Fine, Harry.”

“Might I suggest avoiding the gymnastics while wearing your bag?”

She looked at it over her shoulder, regretful, but nodded and returned to her nascent revolution without further comment. Harry watched a few long minutes, assuring himself that she hadn’t done more than bruised a shin, before reapplying himself to the matter of determining exactly which of his knights would be tackling matters in Nairobi.

The game eventually ended with a group of nannies rounding up their charges and leading them out of the park, leaving Daisy on her own to ensure that His Majesty King Spots I was properly situated before she trudged back Harry’s way and slumped onto the bench beside him.

Unzipping her bag, she pulled out a small baggie of mixed nuts and dried fruit and tucked in.

“Want some?” She held out a handful.

“Thank you, but I thought we might go out for supper.”

Daisy pondered over this through a mouthful of disc-like dried apricot. “Where?”

“There’s a smashing trattoria not too far from home.”

“That’s, like, pizza, right?”

“I believe pizza is on the menu.” He glanced across the playground as a daycare’s worth of children appeared on the other side. “Perhaps once you’ve finished your plans to overthrow the monarchy.”

Daisy carefully resealed the plastic bag and placed it back in her backpack, then took off again to join her potential playmates. Her rucksack, Harry noted with some interest, was left forgotten on the bench next to him.

It took him the better part of an hour to notice that Daisy—for all he was keeping half an eye on her progress through the playground—seemed equally intent on keeping an eye on him.

At first it seemed casual. The children moved through the equipment with marsupial-like ease, Daisy once again at the head of the pack, and they rounded the playground in flocking movements, sweeping past Harry’s bench every so often. It kept them all moving, but Daisy especially rounded back towards him every few minutes, pausing for only a half-second in step when he came into sight before taking off again. The tenth time, Harry put a protective arm across the top of the bag and, satisfied, Daisy grinned his way and turned the whole of her attention to her new cohort.

Eventually, he gave up on reviewing his reports and turned his attention towards her, happy to note that—unencumbered—she stuck the landing easily on her next attempt at novice BASE jumping.

Once the daycare crowd dispersed, Harry led them to the trattoria. The venture proved successful, and Daisy wasn’t afraid to tell him that her margherita pizza was almost as good as Domino’s. At home, Harry allowed her to watch the entirety of a brightly coloured animated film which caught her fancy, and tucked her into bed after listening to the impressive conclusion to King Spots’ reign.

Not ten minutes later, when Harry was going through the routine motions of his evening ablutions, Daisy appeared in the doorway of his bathroom.

“How’d you lose your eye?” she asked as he gently patted the area around it. The scar tissue wasn’t particularly sensitive, but he didn’t care for the hazy, spectral image it presented when he closed his right eye and tried to look out his left. Too much like a preview of what might have been awaiting him, had Valentine’s aim been any better and the lens in his glasses any weaker.

He snatched up his glasses and tucked them back over his face. “I’m afraid it’s not a terribly nice story, Miss Unwin.”

“But you’ll tell me some day?”

“I…” Harry paused. It wasn’t a story he cared to think on, for all he thought about it frequently. “Some day,” he finally agreed.

Daisy nodded. “I need to use the loo.”

“Ah.” He stepped out and allowed her to shuffle inside. He settled and resettled his glasses on his face, frowning at the opposite wall as he waited for her to finish.

When she emerged a second later, she paused before returning to her room.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me,” she said, patting his arm. “Eggsy’s got a scar on his face he don’t like to talk about, too.”

“Thank you, Miss Unwin.” Harry managed to both conjure up a smile and resist the urge to fiddle with his glasses once more. “Goodnight.”

“’night, Harry.”

On the third day of Miss Unwin’s stay with him, the need to go into HQ more and more pressing, with no sign of her brother regaining consciousness, she approached him with her rucksack tucked over her shoulders. “Harry, I need to go to the launderette.”

He glanced up from his Sun, unsurprised to find she was wearing the same shirt as the day before. He seemed to recall there being very few changes of clothing in her bag, after all. “All right. I believe there’s one not too far from the hospital. We can go once we’ve visited Eggsy.”

“Thank you.”

“You are most welcome.”

They left the hospital later on, dissatisfied that Eggsy hadn’t woken to properly appreciate Miss Unwin’s struggle with the word ‘matrimonially’ as she’d read aloud from Pygmalion in the hopes of him waking to scold her about it, and made their way to the laundrette. Harry sent everything out to Kingsman for dry cleaning himself, and had less-than-enticing impressions of squeezing oneself into uncomfortable chairs and listening to thunking machines churning about other people’s unmentionables. Still, she seemed determined, and with Harry’s laundry cared for professionally, he’d never had cause to keep a machine in his home. So off to the launderette they went.

When they arrived, Miss Unwin ducked into a dodgy-looking bathroom and emerged a few minutes later wearing what was presumably one of Eggsy’s shirts—moderately clean, if of unfortunately garish colouring—and hauling a small bundle of clothing along with her rucksack.

Somehow, despite having taken inventory of the bag, Harry hadn’t cottoned on to the fact that she only had two changes of clothing.

“You understand, being in my charge, that I am accountable for all your needs,” he told her after she’d loaded the meagre bundle into the machine. Miss Unwin blinked. “If you did need more clothing, it would be remiss of me to let you go without.”

“Not sure there’s much room for it in the bag,” she replied.

At least it wasn’t a ‘no.’ “I did notice your preferences to travel light. But perhaps you might make use of the spare drawers in my guest room, for the time being.”

She shifted about nervously, “You’d have to let me n’ Eggsy pay you back.”

“On absolutely no account,” Harry replied. “I assume all responsibility for any charges associated with your guardianship.”

Her nose wrinkled. “What’s that mean, then?”

“It means,” Harry said with no small amount of relish, “We get to go shopping.”

Shopping with Miss Unwin, Harry reflected about an hour later, was not unlike shopping with Aunt Myrna.

(“You can’t get that, Harry. It’s not warm enough. It’s nice enough in the summer, but what do you do with it when it gets cold out? You can roll up the sleeves of a jumper, but you can’t sew sleeves onto a shirt.”)

With some exceptions.

(“And what, may I ask, is wrong with a dress?”

“It ain’t practical, Harry. It wouldn’t keep my legs warm, would it?”

“But it’s pretty.”

“Yes. It is very pretty.”)

Merlin contacted him about an hour and a half into proceedings, when they’d paused at a small café to address the wide-eyed appreciation with which Miss Unwin regarded the row of pastries in the window. Harry sipped at a macchiato, pointedly ignoring the encroaching cloud of confectioner’s sugar floating his way from Miss Unwin’s plate. The café was not quite as crowded as the store around it, though a few of the tables were taken up with small families enjoying similar repasts. Miss Unwin’s eyes again and again went to a mother and daughter at a nearby table enjoying a plateful of chocolate croissants. He was about to offer to order her one when his glasses chirped.

“Harry, a word please,” Merlin said.

“I’m rather busy at the moment,” Harry informed him primly. Miss Unwin barely looked up from her cream horn.

“It can’t wait.”

Harry frowned. “What is it?”

“Hold on. I’m switching to my private line.”

Harry’s brows shot up. Merlin’s private line was secured beyond the normal parameters of Kingsman’s communications. Only Arthur had access to the logs, and thus the only times it tended to be used was when Arthur alone was to be privy to the information. There were a very particular set of circumstances that necessitated its use in an official capacity. Harry hated all of them.

“I’ve received a ballistics report from one of our agents embedded in the Police Nationale. There’s been a body recovered from the Seine with two of our prototype bullets in its chest.”

Harry frowned. “Any of our agents operating in Paris?”

“Not currently. And I’ve run diagnostics on the bullets themselves. They were reverse-engineered, not quite a perfect match, but close enough that they couldn’t have been working from used slugs.”

“Are you suggesting that someone sold off a prototype to an unknown entity?” Harry demanded, clipped.

“There’s no other way this particular prototype could have been manufactured,” Merlin said. “They contain a small explosive round designed to maximize tissue damage and leave no ballistic evidence of the bullet. They couldn’t have recovered a bullet from some John Doe moldering at the bottom of a river and figured out how they were designed.” Harry could imagine his snarl. “The only reason I was able to run trace on them at all was because they weren’t as refined as our models.”

“Do you suspect someone in ops?”

“I don’t. The bullets themselves are a close approximation, but if someone from my department had done this, they would have sold off the plans instead of the bullets themselves.”

“Can you absolutely guarantee that?”

“We track our munitions testing closer than we do agents taking toys out for a spin, Arthur,” Merlin said, icily. “If something went missing from my purview, it’s because I did it on purpose and we wouldn’t be having this discussion.”

Fair enough. “What would you recommend as our next steps?”

“Despite the bullets being nigh impossible to trace, the police already have someone in custody. I’m going to follow the investigation and follow back where the bullets could have come from. If it comes down to an internal investigation, we’ll have to handle it in-house.”

“Of course,” Harry said with a nod. “Keep…” Harry blinked, suddenly realizing that his dining companion had left the table. “Buggering fuck. She’s gone.” The table beside him cast aghast looks his way.

“Who?”

“Miss Unwin.”

He stood and looked around the café, but there was no sign of her. The bags filled with their shopping were still at the table, but the rucksack was gone. He gathered up the parcels and walked briskly towards the door. It opened back into the department store, but the area was crowded.

He tapped his glasses, pulling up the tracking application.

“You bugged her,” Merlin said, proving his capacity to state the obvious didn’t merely extend towards Kingsman-related matters.

“Of course I bugged her. I’ve also bugged her brother, the nurse’s station at the hospital and the bloody rucksack she won’t leave behind.”

She wasn’t far. Only a few hundred metres away, and not moving. He marched determinedly in that direction, not all together fond of the mild panic that had resulted in her disappearance.

He found her standing before the dresses they had admired earlier, hands tight on the straps of her bag, frowning.

“Miss Unwin,” he said, surprised to find he was actually quite angry. “If you feel the need to disappear without telling me, I must insist that you do so in such a way that at least alerts me to the fact that you’re going.”

She barely looked at him. “I’m sorry, Harry.” Her voice was quieter than he was used to, and Harry frowned.

“What’s wrong?”

“There was a girl wearing that dress in there,” she told him, gesturing to the frankly boring frilly pink frock on display in front of them. Harry nodded; apparently, she had not been inspecting the chocolate croissants after all. “I wanted to look at it again. I’m sorry.”

“Yes, well. If you want it…”

“But what would I do with it, Harry?” she demanded. “It’ll sit in the bag getting wrinkled. Or we’ll end up selling it when it gets too cold out for me to wear it.” Her lower lip quivered, and Harry was quite horrified to realize she might be close to crying. “It’s not the sort of thing for girls like me.”

It took Harry a moment to properly compose himself before he could reply. “Dressing oneself shouldn’t always be done for practicality,” Harry informed her. “Sometimes, a lady must dress for no other reason than to please herself.” He knelt down beside her. “But if you did already see someone wearing this particular frock, we might want to cast our nets further abroad for something uniquely you.”

Which was how Miss Unwin came to be the proud owner of a much more tasteful offering from a small children’s boutique not far from Kingsman Tailors, and Harry came to be two hundred pounds further out of pocket. Well worth it, he ruminated, to have seen her smile stretched larger than he’d seen it since making her acquaintance.

Later that evening, once he’d tucked her into bed and allowed her to extract a promise to take her round to the library for a new book the following day, he was finally able to review Merlin’s findings. His fingers tightened on his brandy glass until the glass splintered under his grip. It seemed that Merlin, in his relentless diligence, had found their previously unknown entity.

“The Butcher of Belgrade,” Harry murmured. “What do we have on him?”

“He’s only recently entered direct supply,” Merlin replied. “He used to sell through legitimate channels, but the demand for his particular fare has decreased since the fall of Milošević. He’s started getting involved in black market work. I haven’t been able to find if he’s sold more than one clip of our prototypes.”

“We need to have someone on him. Find out if he keeps files on suppliers and who provided the bullets.” Harry tapped his lips. “Have Percival in my office tomorrow morning, will you? This seems like his sort of case.”

“I’ll schedule him in for 1300,” Merlin said. “He’s just back from Kuala Lumpur and he’ll need the time to adjust to the time difference.”

Harry sat back in his chair, abandoning the cracked brandy glass. “I’ll be bringing Miss Unwin to the estate.” Perhaps she could spend some time with Lancelot, though it would behoove him to make sure that Roxy knew it was because Miss Unwin could stand some lessons on defending herself, rather than because Roxy was the only woman at the table.

“Think that’s a good idea, do you?” Merlin demanded.

“If she’s going to be staying here in perpetuum—”

“Which is still one of the stupider ideas you’ve had.”

“—then I may as well introduce her around the estate.” Harry smiled. “She’s far too clever not to figure out something about my profession. And I think she’ll have fun, don’t you?”

Merlin’s opinion was so peppered with obscenities as to be unrepeatable. Harry helped himself to another brandy, not quite grinning.

Of all the things Roxy was expecting that afternoon, Arthur walking in through the HQ front door with a young girl and the smuggest possible grin on his face was not in the remotest realm of possibility.

Next to her, Bors walked into a doorframe.

She wasn't hallucinating, then.

"Ah, Lancelot. Excellent. I was hoping to introduce you." He very formally tilted at the waist. "Lancelot, this is Miss Daisy Unwin. She is temporarily in my charge."

"Hullo," Daisy said, waving shyly. Harry coughed pointedly and she straightened. "I mean, it is a pleasure to meet you, Lancelot. Mr. Hart has said many pleasant things about you."

Harry smiled like a proud parent. It was... terrible. Absolutely awful, actually. Roxy hoped she never had to experience it ever again.

"The pleasure is all mine, Miss Unwin," Roxy managed.

Daisy grinned between her and Harry, obviously pleased with the performance, and then turned her attention to Bors, who was still staring as though she was something Merlin had cooked up and was counting down towards detonation. To be fair, she was carrying a heavy-looking rucksack on her back. Perhaps this was a drill.

“It’s a child,” he finally declared.

“Very perceptive, Bors,” Arthur said with a roll of the eyes. “Miss Unwin is going to accompany me to my office for the morning, and then I was rather hoping I might talk Lancelot into giving her a tour.” Roxy’s hackles raised, but only until Arthur tipped his head her way. “Perhaps especially to the gym? I understand Merlin was having you test out some of our new tasers.”

Roxy found herself smiling. “It would be my particular pleasure.” She bowed to Daisy. “I’ll wait upon your company.”

Daisy tugged at Arthur’s sleeve, and he bent down. The proximity, and her attempt at a whisper, didn’t quite hide her question about why everyone was speaking as though they were in a movie.

“What sort of movies do you enjoy, Miss Unwin?” Arthur asked in lieu of answering.

Daisy shrugged, practically dislodging the pack from her shoulders. “Normal ones. But Eggsy likes that old shite. We watch ‘em sometimes in the library.”

“I confess to being a fan of old shite myself,” Arthur admitted. “Now, then. Shall we go? Lancelot, I should appreciate it if you dropped by my office after lunch.” He nodded to Bors, who was still ogling the girl as if the digital timer was closing in on zero and he was out of options.

“Lancelot? Don’t let her get into the tasers,” Merlin ordered over her glasses.

“Sorry, Merlin, didn’t quite catch that,” Roxy replied. She tapped off her glasses before he could reply and smiled at Arthur’s back as he made his way down the hallway. “Do close your mouth, Bors. You’ll attract flies.”

That morning, Harry showed her around the palace he absent-mindedly referred to as ‘HQ.’ If she didn’t already know he was rich, it would’ve really sealed it. Every corner they turned was some sort of statue or painting that looked well expensive. It got proper boring after a bit; all the art and stuff was the same. Eggsy’d taken her to the National Gallery plenty of times, and she didn’t like nothing in HQ near how much she liked some of the stuff there, even if a bunch of them did have naked ladies.

What she liked was when Harry brought her to the basement.

“This, Miss Unwin, is our firing range,” Harry said. A nice-looking lady with long legs and loose hair was waiting for them, with a gun settled on a tray. “We’re going to test out a special sort of bullet this morning.”

“What does it do?”

“Let me show you.” Harry picked up the gun, looked it over, and then moved down the range to a spot on the end. Daisy trailed along behind him. Once they reached the end, he picked up a long-ended pin that had a crest on it which reminded her of her medal. “Do me a favour, and when I signal you, tap on the end of this three times.”

He then passed her down a large set of earmuffs.

“What are these, then?” Daisy asked.

“These, Miss Unwin, will prevent your eardrums for perforating when I fire this gun.”

“Oh.” She wasn’t quite sure what ‘perforating’ meant, but it sounded nasty.

She slipped the muffs over her ears and watched as Harry took aim and fired down the range. Instead of the paper target she’d seen on telly, there was a small bag at the end. The bullet hit dead centre, and sand began spilling out.

Harry waved his hand. Daisy tapped the end of the pin, and shrieked in surprise when the bag exploded.

“That was fucking sick!” she declared.

Harry beamed, though when he caught the lady at the end watching them with a happy grin, he coughed and his mouth settled into a straight line. “You see, the pin acts as a detonator to the small explosive inside the bullet. It can be used up to two thousand metres away.”

“Three thousand, sir,” the lady corrected. Harry lifted his eyebrow in that funny way he did and the lady flushed under his look. “Once Kay beat his record in the field, we extended the range for the bullets adapted to a sniper rifle calibre ammunition.”

“Very good,” Harry told her. Her flush deepened. “Please forward me any and all ballistics reports on this particular specimen, will you.”

“Already done, sir.”

“Thank you.”

Harry led Daisy back out. The basement had an elevator that led back up to the main floor—they’d taken it on the way down—but this time they took a wide staircase going back up. He brought her to his office, which was rather lacking in butterflies and dead dogs, but had plenty of old-looking books.

“What do you do, Harry?” Daisy asked once they’d settled in.

“What do you think I do, Miss Unwin?”

Daisy gave it a long thought. “Are you a spy?”

Harry smiled, but didn’t answer. It were answer enough, she supposed.

After lunch, Harry settled her in with a new colouring book and an entire package—an entire package!—of brand new, smelly markers. They were lovely. First, she decided, she needed to colour a picture for Harry, as thanks for choosing her out such wonderful artsy things. She took her time carefully picking out which page to colour on, and even more time choosing which colours to use.

“Harry,” she said, “Do you think Moana would wear a purple skirt?”

“She’s royalty, my dear. Moana can wear whatever she bloody well pleases.”

Grinning, Daisy applied herself to the picture, though she looked up a few minutes later at a hard rap on Harry’s door.

“Come.”

The man who walked in was a few years older than Eggsy, and everything about him was sharp; his nose too pointy, his chin like a knife, his cheeks high and sticking out as though he might use them to open bottles. His hair was carefully brushed, and his suit—though not as nice as Harry’s—deserved his stupid, boring black tie. Harry’s own soft pink was much better. He’d chosen it out specially for Daisy when she’d picked out her new jumper and soft denim trousers that morning.

“Galahad,” Harry said in greeting.

From the first glimpse, Daisy did not like Galahad. She did not like him at all. And Eggsy usually agreed with her when she decided these things.

Galahad looked towards Daisy like someone had let their dog make a mess on the carpet. Harry might’ve been the sort of toff who Eggsy told her to avoid—too clever by half, Daise, look for the ones with the cow eyes keeping their faces in their phones—but Galahad was the sort of bloke who’d sneer at them as he walked along. Daisy’d seen men like him pass them by a thousand times, glowering at her and Eggsy like they was shite on his boots. Eggsy called them prime pickings. And Daisy knew how to deal with men like that.

“Sir,” he said, “I was hoping I might claim a few minutes of your time.”

“Certainly, Galahad. Though I’m expecting Percival for one o’clock. What do you need?”

Daisy wasn’t sure if Harry could tell by the look on his face, but Galahad was thinking some quite nasty things about her. “Would you mind terribly if we spoke in private? Some ears don’t need to hear the words of their betters.”

Daisy’s hand clenched tightly and her marker slipped right off the page. Right. Galahad made her ruin her picture. She stood, smoothed down her jumper, and marched up to Galahad to offer her hand.

“I’m Daisy Unwin. Very pleased to meet you.”

Galahad seemed irritated by the pleasantry, and but returned it regardless, though he inspected her with a curled lip as he did. He shook her hand quickly, and tugged himself free after only a moment of contact. That was all right, though. A moment was more than enough. She knew she wasn’t dressed as nice as Harry, or any of the people he worked with. Even with her new jumper. But her hair was fresh washed that morning, and Harry had even tried to tame it before giving it up as a lost cause, as Eggsy usually did after only a few strokes with a brush, and resigned himself to her usual hopelessly unkempt pigtails. She’d gotten their mum’s hair, Eggsy said. All thick and wild, especially with all the rain they’d had. Right now, it only added to Galahad’s impression of her as some sort of horrible little toad, she was sure.

“If you’d excuse us,” Galahad said pointedly, “And wait in the hall.”

“I’ve arranged for Lancelot to entertain her this afternoon,” Harry said, rising from behind his desk. “I’ll make sure they’re set up properly. If you’d pardon us.”

He stepped out of the room, waving Daisy out before him.

“Now then,” he said, closing the door firmly behind him. “While I can understand the temptation, and am quite impressed by the execution, I’m afraid I’ll need to ask for Galahad’s wallet back before I can let you leave.”

Daisy’s gut turned icy, as it had when he’d caught her at breaking the lock in his study. She’d been so careful. Used every trick Eggsy taught her about liftin’. She was sure Galahad hadn’t noticed; he looked the type to raise a fuss. Her lips drew tight—she’d bollocksed it all up, hadn’t she? Harry was going to put her out on her arse. Or worse… call the coppers to come and get her. She pulled the fine leather wallet out from under the hem of her jumper and handed it over, gaze fixed on her feet. She was going to cry, and it would be terrible. She never cried in front of nobody. Not even Eggsy. Only she couldn’t stand the way he looked when she did.

“None of that, now,” Harry said. “A lady must maintain a stiff upper lip.”

“I ain’t no lady, Harry,” Daisy whispered.

“You most certainly are,” Harry said. “And a lady shouldn’t stand for such insult. And while you paid him back accordingly, I’m protecting my own interests, you see.” He gestured with the wallet. “Better he not find out a guest of mine repaid his rudeness. He would be too embarrassed to speak to me again, if that were the case, and I need to have a conversation with him.”

Daisy wasn’t all together certain he was telling the truth, but she nodded reluctantly. Harry hadn’t lied to her, yet. It made him one of very few people she could say that about. Including Eggsy, though he only ever lied about being fine when he obviously wasn’t.

“I’ll slip it back to him when he’s not looking,” Harry promised. “And for now, I believe Lancelot is waiting on your company.”

Down the hall, Lancelot appeared around the corner as if by magic, smiling welcomingly. She had the same umbrella as Harry, and her suit was almost as pretty, especially with her beautiful purple tie.

“Ready to have some fun?” Lancelot asked when Daisy reached her side.

Daisy smiled reluctantly. “Yes, please.”

Abel Artbuthnott was the youngest member of the old guard, in that he had joined Kingsman a little over a year ago at twenty-eight years of age yet acted like one of the seniormost members, already in his dotage and every inch the entitled bastard Harry had striven to avoid appointing to the table. It had galled Harry initially, that their new Galahad was such a poncy git, but he supposed that they had to take the good with the bad in order to maintain the level of competence necessary. For all his snobbishness, Galahad was an excellent agent. He’d excelled through the trials, and seamlessly stepped in to begin taking missions after he’d passed the loyalty test without so much as flinching. Harry needn’t like someone personally in order to respect them for their capabilities.

(Fortunately for Galahad).

True to his word, Harry slipped the wallet back into the man’s pocket without the other man’s knowledge. Still reeling from the effortless way Miss Unwin had acquired it—had he not been looking directly at her, he would have missed it entirely—he barely heard Abel’s multitude of reasons as to why she shouldn’t be allowed to remain on the grounds, considering the confidential nature of their work and potential for disaster that followed. Had it been anyone else, Harry might’ve paid it due attention. As such, it rankled.

“And she’s just not… like us, Arthur,” he finished. “I strongly recommend you reconsider allowing her access to Kingsman resources.”

Somehow, Harry doubted his opinion of her would improve if he knew how wonderfully light her fingers were. “I’m surprised you managed such a thorough diagnostic evaluation of her after fifty seconds of interaction.”

“I would consider the analysis to be rather obvious,” Galahad sniffed. Speaking through his nose was a tiresome habit, but one Galahad seemed to enjoy as a vocation as well as a pastime.

“Was there anything besides her presence you wished to discuss, or was that the whole of your request for a conversation?”

“There was something else,” Galahad stated, barely waiting a beat now Harry had opened the door for complaints. “Merlin won’t allow me to requisition a new watch.”

Harry blinked slowly. “And you saw fit to bring this to my attention rather than discussing it with him yourself?”

“Obviously.” Galahad, Harry considered mildly, persisted in viewing Merlin and the others in his department dismissively as ‘the help’ and accorded them all the respect he might give a dishtowel.

“Dare I ask what happened to your last one?”

Galahad’s lips thinned into a hard line. “Do you need to?” Harry maintained eye contact, and hoped his gaze conveyed how fucking stupid he felt the question to be. Galahad held out for only a few seconds before breaking. “It’s been misplaced.”

“You lost one of our watches?” Harry demanded.

“I’m sure that anyone who finds it will think it’s simply a watch. They are designed to pass for normal unless unlocked by fingerprint identification.”

“Yes. However, should anyone take the time to break it down to component parts, it’s going to be quite obvious that it is not, in fact, a normal fucking watch. And if that were to happen, I’m sure you can appreciate the awkward position we might find ourselves in.”

“I’ll find it, Arthur,” Galahad said, pale face aflush with embarrassment. “But in the meantime…”

“I will ask Merlin if he can provide you with one more,” Harry said. “Ask. I do not issue orders to Merlin in matters of operational efficiencies.” And for good reason, as he wanted there to be operational efficiencies and Merlin was the only real guarantee of that.

“Thank you, sir,” Galahad replied, deceptively even. He made his way back to the door.

“Oh, and Galahad?”

“Sir?”

Harry continued, in a tone he hoped brokered no argument. “A gentleman always pays his dues, and Kingsman as an organization owes a debt to Miss Unwin and her family.”

“Do you think anyone of our standing could really be in a position to owe a debt to someone in hers?”

“I’ve always found that respecting others—regardless of their ‘standing’—is more a reflection of your own character, rather than theirs. Perhaps something upon which you might ruminate.” Harry settled himself back behind his desk. “If Percival is waiting, please send him in.”

Galahad nodded, lips thinned into an annoyed moue, and left the room.

Lancelot only tapped her glasses back on after demoing the tasers, Merlin noted with mild ire. Cheeky monkey. She and their young guest, both.

“And this stone, when you twist it, comes off and dissolves in less than a teaspoon of any liquid, then knocks out the target,” Lancelot continued, counting out the diamonds on the elegant bracelet. “And this one can be used as a tracking device. You see? If I press the stones around it like this, it lets my team know where I am anywhere in the whole world.”

Merlin watched with only a half-eye. He did have other things to do, after all. He’d only remoted into the surveillance cameras in the gym because he wanted to make sure nothing exploded. Lancelot seemed to have everything well in hand, however.

“And this one acts as a signal blocker.”

Harry was almost through with Percival’ briefing. The agent was off to Geneva to investigate this… Butcher of Belgrade, and see if there was a way they could get some insight as to how he’d gotten his hands on Kingsman technology. He’d moved to Switzerland a few steps ahead of a Serbian firing squad, planting himself as an ex-pat with a different name, but the same unfortunate face.

“This is wicked,” Daisy breathed out. “It’s some proper spy shite, innit? You’re all spies.”

Lancelot laughed. “I’m not sure if Harry would want you using that word.”

Daisy shook her head. “Don’t worry. Eggsy taught me how to keep a secret.” She grinned, showing off the small gap in her smile. “He’s never grassed up nobody in his life.” She lifted her chin proudly.

Merlin watched Lancelot’s smile turn ridiculously fond and tried not to scowl. He hadn’t expected Harry to get Lancelot on side so quickly. In fact, Merlin was increasingly wondering if he wasn’t the only reasonable one in the bunch capable of remembering that UK HQ was no place for a wean.

“What’s this one do?”

“That one’s just a diamond. Our wizard got a bit lazy.”

“You don’t really have a wizard, Lancelot.”

“We do. He’s probably watching us right now,” Lancelot told her. “Want me to prove it?” Daisy nodded. “I bet, if I whisper something in your ear, he’ll hear it and do it.”

“Try me,” Merlin glowered.

Lancelot ignored him and leaned in quite close to Daisy. “I think if he’s really powerful as he thinks he is, he’ll lower the lights.”

“Really?” Merlin demanded. “That’s the test of my powers? Dimming the lights in the fucking gym?”

“Do you think he’ll do it?” Lancelot asked.

Daisy looked around, uncertain. When the lights failed to dim, her face fell. “I suppose not.”

“You’re going to pay for this, Roxanne Morton,” Merlin stated.

“Promises, promises,” Lancelot muttered through her unfaltering smile.

Merlin flicked at his tablet and turned the lights off entirely, to Daisy’s delighted shriek. He most certainly did not smile.

Harry joined him in his office shortly thereafter, as Lancelot was in the midst of promising the lass a bracelet of her own. With pink gems, obviously. Because Merlin had nothing better to do with his time than requisition a child-sized bracelet with accoutrements enough to run a small black ops mission in Guam.

“How are they getting on?” Harry asked, loitering in his doorway like an Austen heroine.

“The shopping Lancelot is doing on her behalf is coming out of your budget,” Merlin muttered.

“That’s an interesting look on you,” Harry commented.

“What’s that?”

“I would call this one ‘begrudgingly charmed.’”

“Piss off and go collect her. Visiting hours at the hospital are over soon.”

Harry smiled. “As you say.”

Eggsy still wasn’t awake. Daisy crawled onto the bed next to him, careful not to dislodge any of the pipes and tubes and sticky things. She took his hand, carefully, and stared at him. Eggsy was never still. He was always moving. Jumping, and showing her gymnastics tricks, or even walking through a crowd and lifting wallets and watches for them to fleece. She’d seen him beat up, once. She’d made a shite lift and Eggsy had stepped in and taken the blame. The mark and a bunch of his blokes had laid into Eggsy something terrible, and he’d been laid up in the hostel for three whole days before he’d been able to move. They’d run out of money on the third day, and he’d had to force himself to get up and out the door. The hostel staff were nice, mostly, but they could only turn a blind eye for so long before the owners got after them, and Eggsy was desperate to make sure they didn’t draw attention. There weren’t too many hostels that let him get away with not having any ID, and they couldn’t afford to sour things with any of them.

“I saw the car that hit him,” Harry said. “He was running out of a store. Had he stolen something?”

Daisy sighed. Harry didn’t seem to mind at all that she and Eggsy weren’t no good, so it wasn’t like she needed to pretend otherwise. “He was checking PINs on the machine inside. I think the clerk noticed.” Eggsy knew all the machines with broken cameras in them. But there was always the danger of someone catching on. It’s why he made her wait outside while he went through the cards in the wallets he nicked. A lad alone ’s easier to ignore than a lad with a kid, Daise. But don’t you worry. I’m coming out with a flake for us to share, all right?

“Industrious. Though I’m not sure the owners of the cards would agree.”

“They’re insured, ain’t they? Eggsy says. They’d only be out a thousand quid, and we don’t lift from people that can’t afford it.”

“Ah. Very noble.” From anyone else, it might’ve sounded like they was taking the piss. Harry sounded wonderfully serious. “I did notice some cash remained in your bag.”

Anyone else, she’d’ve wondered if he’d took it. She didn’t have to wonder with Harry. She knew it’d still be there when she looked. “That’s our fuck off money.”

“I’m not familiar with ‘fuck off money.’ However does it work?”

“When we’re down to our last quid and someone tells us to do something we don’t want to, we always have to have a little money set aside, so we can tell ‘em to fuck off.”

“Ah.” Harry leaned forward from where he was sitting in the chair alongside the bed. “And has there been a time when someone told you to do something you don’t want to?”

Daisy looked at him, wondering if he was being thick on purpose. “Yes. That’s why we have fuck off money.”

She unshouldered Eggsy’s rucksack—never leave it behind, Daise, you never know if someone’s gonna nick it, and then our whole lives are gone¬—and pulled out Eggsy’s library book. He’d stuck a marker in between a couple of pages, and she flipped it open. They spent loads of time at the library near the hostel, ducking in when they could do to scour through the books, watch the movies, and use the free internet. He’d tried applying for jobs, once or twice, before they’d caught wind of Dean’s attempts to get her back and Eggsy stopped trying so they wouldn’t draw attention. And with nothing else to do, Eggsy’d made his way through so many books she’d lost count.

Pygmalion he’d chosen because he’d picked it up off the rack and someone a few shelves over had laughed and said he wouldn’t like it. He’d loaned it out ten times, now. And made her sit through the bloody musical.

Eggsy was good with teaching her words. He listened to her read and helped out when she found one or two she didn’t understand. You need to read, Daise. You’re so fucking smart, it’s not gonna be a problem for you at all, is it? They’d been working on her letters, too, though her lower cases was still shite.

“Would you like a hand with that?” Harry asked as she clamoured up onto the bed next to Eggsy, the book tucked under her arm. It was an older copy, the spine already giving way. “I could read if you’d like.”

“No, thank you,” Daisy said, as plummy as she could manage. Harry grinned, but not like she was doing a trick or nothing; he was proper chuffed whenever she brought out her best manners. “But I may ask for help, if I don’t know a word.”

“I am at your disposal.”

She’d stuck Eggsy’s marker in at the beginning of a new scene when she’d left off during their last visit, and Daisy looked at the words a moment before slowly untangling them. Words was all about putting sounds together, weren’t they? This wasn’t no different than reading Zita.

“The Wimpole Street laboratory. Midnight. Nobody in the room. The clock on the mantelpiece strikes twelve. The fire is not alight: it is a summer night…” She read as well as she could, keeping her voice quiet in case they drew the attention of the nurses who might come to kick them out. She didn’t think they’d dare, not with Harry so close, but she didn’t want to risk it. Eggsy needed her.

She only stumbled over a few words at first. Sounded out some that weren’t so familiar. She liked that Harry didn’t correct her at all.

She finally paused when she ran across something she didn’t recognize, and held the book out to Harry.

“La Fanciulla del Golden West,” he told her after a quick skim of the line.

“What’s that, then?”

“It’s an opera, Miss Unwin. A rather famous one.” Harry smiled, but it wasn’t a very nice look. “I’m surprised that Eggsy hasn’t been seeing to your education in classical music.”

Daisy felt her cheeks heat and she frowned. “That’s something like Galahad would say, Harry.”

Harry’s face drew. “I… of course you’re right.”

“Eggsy does the best he can, yeah? Just because girls like me, we’re not supposed to be smart—”

“Miss Un… Daisy,” he interrupted. Daisy quieted. He hadn’t called her that before. “I apologize. I think you read beautifully. I simply supposed that your brother would have priorities other than your education.”

“It’s not like I can go to a proper school. They’d call Dean on me,” Daisy told the pages of the book. “And we don’t steal all the time, do we?”

“I suppose that the wealthy of London would be much poorer off if you did. Best to give them some respite.”

Daisy tried not to let herself smile; she wanted to be angry. “Eggsy says this is just My Fair Lady without music. He made me watch it, once. I didn’t care much for how Higgins treated Eliza.” It seemed that Pygmalion was pretty much the same. Another rich toff deciding what was right. She didn’t know why Eggsy liked it so much.

Harry’s lips tugged into a kind smile. “He was a prat, wasn’t he?”

Daisy nodded, and set herself back to reading.

About halfway through the act, her eyes began to droop. Harry gently lifted the book out of her hands, and carried on reading as she dropped off against Eggsy’s side, his voice barely drowning out the steady beeping of Eggsy’s heart.

All things considered, Harry should have been less surprised when he jerked awake halfway through the night with the sound of her wretched sobs filling his ears. They were mostly muffled, as though she was trying to hide them, but their rooms shared a wall, and as he blinked away the remnants of sleep and realized what he was hearing, he didn’t even bother with his housecoat, half-running down the hallway to the guest room. He knocked in a perfunctory manner, not waiting for her to call him inside, and dropped beside her bed.

“Daisy?” he asked, alarmed. “Are you well? Are you… sick? Hurt?” She hadn’t cried once since coming into his care. He’d taken it for granted that she wouldn’t.

“I’m sorry,” Daisy sobbed into her pillow, half-hiding her face away from him. “I’m sorry, Harry, I’m sorry.”

“Whatever for?” Harry asked. “Is it… is this about the spoons?” He’d quite given up on putting Aunt Myrna’s collection back together.

Her entire lower lip wobbled alarmingly and her sobs increased. Harry hesitated, his hand stretched halfway towards her, unsure if he should rub her back or attempt to offer some sort of comfort in ways that, to him, had always seemed horribly uncomfortable.

When he finally pressed his palm between her shoulder blades, and felt the heaving of her lungs beneath his hand, his forearm shuddered with the weight of it all. He kept it there, a steady presence against her, until her crying finally calmed to whimpers of breath beneath his hand.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, her voice still tear-choked and hoarse.

“Daisy, I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me what you’re sorry for that I may forgive you for it.” Because he would. Instantly. For anything.

“I had a dream that Eggsy never woke up,” Daisy whispered. She sat up and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, rubbing at them until they were even more red. “And I took all your spoons to pay a witch to make a potion to help him.”

“Ah. Well. I don’t believe my silverware could be put to much more nobler purpose,” Harry said. “But surely you understand that it was just a dream?”

“Yeah, but then I woke up and… Harry, what if Eggsy never wakes up?” Her breathing hitched, and Harry realized with horror that she was on the verge of tears once more. Bracing himself, he eased an arm around her shoulders in a tentative embrace. Daisy immediately curled into him, rubbing her snotty nose against his pajama shirt.

He took a breath. “Then I suppose you’ll have to resign yourself to staying in my care,” Harry said.

That brought Daisy up short. “What, like, forever?”

“Until you tire of my company, presumably.”

She seemed to contemplate this a moment before squeezing him tight around his waist and lying back down. He reached for the bedcovers to pull back up over her shoulders, pausing when she caught his hand in her own, small fingers.

“You ain’t Professor Higgins, you know,” she told him, studying him with altogether more gravity than he might have expected for someone so young.

“No? Is there a literary character I have the dubious honour of representing?”

“Eggsy’d know someone,” Daisy declared, her eyes already drooping. “Prolly, like, James Bond. Or Daddy Warbucks.” Harry froze, the cover only halfway up her shoulders, heart stuttering in his chest. She was asleep before he finished pulling up the sheets, wholly unaware of how he stood hovering next to the bed—frozen—for a frankly ridiculous amount of time.

When he finally realized he was gripping the sheet in a white-knuckled hold, he eased it down over her shoulders and backed away from the bed.

He lingered in her doorway for an impossible length of time, staring at the small lump tucked into his guest bed and decided, privately, that if anyone ever laid a hand on her, he would deliver a truly blinding atrocity upon them.

Percival checked in four days later.

“It’s bad news, Merlin,” he said over his feed. He’d located the Butcher—now going by Goran Ratković, and living a comfortable life in Geneva, maintained by his black-market contacts—and introduced himself as a potential business contact, referred in by a couple of Kingsman CIs who they kept on tap for such an occasion.

He’d allowed himself into Ratković’s flat, a Haussman-style apartment a few minutes from city centre. They weren’t expecting to find proprietary Kingsman material casually lying about, but it might at least give them some insight into how much the man had.

Merlin was trying not to draw conclusions. Yet. He was hoping that there’d be something to indicate that Ratković had happened upon an undetonated bullet in the aftermath of a field test. Whether or not this would prove more serious was something all together entirely.

Percival searched the apartment with grid-like efficiency, moving from room-to-room, examining every nook and cranny with his brand of distinctive thoroughness. He found a multitude of hidden guns, a few small bladed weapons, one particularly sinister-looking IED. And, after locating a hidden catch in the wall, an entire roomful of familiar-looking gadgets.

An umbrella broken down to component pieces. A watch. Two of their lighters. A whole host of ammunition. Things that could easily walk out of the armoury in dressing room three, lost to the annals of mission expediency. If it hadn’t been for the bullets being a strictly-monitored prototype, they might never had known there was anything gone astray.

“How does he have this much?” Percival asked.

Merlin’s gut sank even considering it. There was no way someone happily stumbled upon this much of their tech. This was deliberate, careful cultivation of goods. This couldn’t end well.

“Percival, I need to bring Arthur into the feed.” Percival hummed in acquiescence, and Merlin called up Harry.

It was past the lass’ bedtime, apparently, and Harry was probably sitting in his room reading one of his terribly trashy paperbacks when his glasses chirped. He pulled them on—quickly setting aside something he obviously didn’t want Merlin to see, easily confirming it to be exactly as bad as Merlin expected of him—and answered with a brief greeting.

“You aren’t going to like this,” Merlin told him. He brought up Percival’s feed.

Harry examined the room in silence, occasionally asking Percival to turn about and check another corner of the room. By the time he’d finished, his breathing a reedy sound in Merlin’s ear, Merlin’s shoulders ached with the tension.

“Thank you, Percival. Return to your hotel room for now, and await next steps.”

“Very good, Arthur. Merlin, I’ll send you confirmation once I’m in for the evening.”

He signed off, leaving Merlin and Harry with a rolling replay of the footage.

“How much would a man like Ratković pay for this much of our equipment, Merlin.”

“I can’t even guess,” Merlin said. “A half million? I can take inventory and give you a rough estimate.” They could run it against bank accounts held by Kingsman employees, but Merlin doubted they’d find anything; someone with enough savvy to have kept this much equipment appropriation below board wouldn’t stash away the profits in their personal chequing account.

“Do that,” Harry said, his tone completely neutral. That’s when Merlin realized how apocalyptically angry he was. “We’ll need to pull Percival off this. We can’t have an agent investigating other agents.”

“Then that leaves you and me,” Merlin replied.

“Yes. I’ll leave for Geneva Thursday. I’ll need you to read Percival into a Kansas City Shuffle, making me a better potential buyer for Ratković to work with.”

“And if Percival is the one who’s been selling him tech?”

“Based on your evaluation of his performance so far, would you say that’s likely?”

Merlin gave the question due consideration. It wouldn’t be outside of Percival’s skillset to manufacture such a thing, but Ratković’s reactions had seemed too natural upon their meeting, and Merlin doubted the other man was that good an actor. “No. And we’ve never had cause to doubt Percival’s loyalty.”

“Before now, I’d say the same about anyone sitting at the table.”

Merlin had hoped that after Chester King’s death—his head exploding after Lancelot and Merlin had made the decision to detonate all the implants of Richmond Valentine’s followers—all such treachery would be done with. Apparently they weren’t finished yet.

“I’ll have a cover in place for you right away,” Merlin said. “What are you going to do with your girl?”

Harry hummed in thought. “Well, I do recall there being some rather smashing intern positions in your department.”

“Harry, no.”

Oh, but Harry yes.

Harry took Daisy by the library the morning prior to his departure for Switzerland. She assured him that even though it was a different library than the one she and Eggsy frequented it was perfectly adequate, and while she returned her copy of Legends of Zita the Space Girl, she renewed Pygmalion. She browsed through the knee-height shelves in the children’s section, very carefully considering her options when it came down to two contenders.

(“Why not take both?” Harry offered.

“Weighs the bag down,” she replied absently, inspecting the cover of something garishly pink and poorly illustrated.)

She decided on a cartoonish-looking graphic novel about a boy with a sword written by the same author as Zita, and they headed out to HQ.

Merlin was waiting for them inside the doors, holding a piece of paper and looking torn between deep amusement and soulful irritation. It was a look Harry was uniquely acquainted with these past twenty-odd years.

“This is not going to fly,” Merlin told him, waving the paper at him. Harry noted with some interest, his counter-signature was in the requisite place. His tantrum was apparently for show purposes only.

“Daisy, this is Merlin,” Harry said formally.

“Your wizard,” Daisy whispered in awe. Harry nodded. “It is very nice to meet you, Merlin. Harry has said many nice things about you.”

From look on his face, Merlin knew exactly how much codswallop that gem was.

“Merlin, this is Miss Daisy Unwin. My candidate for our Squire Initiative.”

“The Squire Initiative,” Merlin repeated, “Is for college students who we’re considering as future members of our tech department, and exists to gauge how well they deal with stressful situations.”

“It explicitly says that school-aged candidates are permitted on Kingsman premises to observe our operations on the understanding that they sign an NDA,” Harry recited. “I believe you’ll find the NDA with the rest of the paperwork.”

“Yes. I appreciated the purple smiley face sticker next to the signature line. This is bollocks and you know it,” Merlin said. He glanced guiltily at Daisy and added a gruff, “Sorry.”

Daisy shrugged. “M’brother says worse all the time.” She frowned uncertainly and looked at Harry, gaze drifting back to Merlin as he fumed at them. “Do you want me to go back to hostel?”

“On absolutely no account,” Harry replied. “Merlin is to be responsible for you until I’m come back from Switzerland. You’d do best to mind him, despite his grumping. He can make things explode with his mind.”

Daisy apparently decided this was bloody brilliant, as she immediately attached herself to Merlin’s side like a Burberry-patterned barnacle. He looked down at her, at a loss, before casting a helpless look Harry’s way.

“Must get to the hanger,” Harry said. “Miss Unwin, please do your utmost not to destroy anything irreplaceable.” He grinned and tipped his head. “Merlin.”

With that, he dismissed himself, only allowing half an ear to listen for Daisy’s rather mystified request for an explanation about what constituted replaceability as he dropped himself into the headspace for assassination.

While Merlin had a fair hand dealing with children, it was usually only in passing, and he looked for the soonest opportunity to hand them a sweet and send them back to their parents. Having sole custody of a wean for an entire stretch of two days wasn’t in his oeuvre. Daisy followed him about, already familiar with HQ thanks to Lancelot’s previous tour, sticking close to his side as he took her down to the IT department. He ran a complement of eighteen fulltime staff, three part-time, an injured agent working through physio before returning to the field, and one actual candidate for the initiative Harry was happily exploiting. They were all well-trained enough that not a single eyebrow was raised when he walked in with a child trailing behind him.

“You’ve signed a paper saying you won’t tell anyone about any of this,” Merlin reminded her as she stopped next to Vivienne’s desk to admire one of their new pens, zeroing in on it with single-minded interest.

“Except Eggsy,” Daisy said. Merlin sighed when he recalled Harry’s meticulous handwriting amending the first paragraph on the second page. "Does this shoot lasers?"

"No."

"Do you have any that shoot lasers?"

"We have a lighter that explodes," Vivienne offered. She refused to cower under Merlin’s glare; he really was going to have to step up his efforts.

“Shut up,” Daisy said, obviously delighted. “Can I see?”

Vivienne looked at Merlin. He shrugged. There were worse ways to spend the morning, he supposed. And they’d been looking for an excuse to test out the new payload anyway.

Roxy was already at the firing range, and brightened when she saw Daisy walk through the door. “Miss Unwin, how delightful to see you.”

“Hi Lancelot,” Daisy said. “We’re going to blow things up.”

“Wonderful! I love a good explosion.”

Merlin recorded their results. Detonating explosive devices could only be called science if one recorded the results. The prototypes were heavier by approximately 0.018 stone, but the radius of the explosion had been extended by at least a half metre. Lancelot looked thrilled to test them out provided, she said with a smile, that she got to keep one or two for her personal kit.

“I want one too,” Daisy told Merlin solemnly, looking at the small crater in the ground where the first one had detonated.

“When hell freezes over,” Merlin replied.

Daisy set her chin stubbornly, but didn’t press the point.

He found out why about an hour later, when he went to put back the remaining inventory and found one missing. His eyebrow twitched, and he tapped out a quick message to Vivienne.

The pen is missing too, she shot back.

Their lass was light-fingered, then. He’d have to have a word with Harry about communicating relevant information. Worst part of it was that he might have overlooked it entirely, if their recent case hadn’t made the necessity of keeping better records abundantly clear.

Daisy was tucked away in the commissary with Roxy, applying herself to a cheese and tomato sandwich and chatting away about Harry’s many virtues. Not a topic to which Merlin had ever given much consideration, in view of its limited scope, but Daisy seemed happy enough. And, from the wicked gleam to Roxy’s eyes, she was providing sufficient blackmail material for the next time Lancelot wanted to swap out a less-than-desirable mission and needed some poor patsy to fall on the proverbial sword for her.

Merlin didn’t bother sitting down, instead leaning across the table and locking his gaze with Daisy’s. She dropped her eyes right away and, with a sigh, pulled out the lighter and the pen from a side pocket of her bag.

“Never again,” Merlin told her, voice hard as he could make it.

Daisy’s lower lip wobbled, but she nodded, still unwilling to meet his eyes.

“Sorry, Merlin,” Daisy murmured. “Eggsy won’t let me have no weapons, either. But I thought maybe he could use them.”

Merlin’s speculation as to what her brother might do with a grenade was momentarily suspended by the appearance of Galahad. The man himself had been short-tempered and irritable lately, likely a result of Merlin’s refusal to give him a replacement watch. Merlin had responded to Harry’s half-hearted attempts to intercede on Galahad’s behalf with a snort, and Harry wisely hadn’t pressed the point.

When he noted Merlin hovering at Roxy’s table, he tilted his chin with a superior air and deliberately stretched for the tea in the highest cupboards, showing off the watch on his wrist. He must’ve bullied someone into handing it over, considering Merlin had flat-out told him ‘no.’ Fucking tit. Merlin couldn’t even bring himself to be angry at whomever it was had been swayed; Galahad was threatening enough to make it seem like obliging him was the path of least resistance.

“Merlin,” Galahad said, triumphant in his greeting. He ran a hand through his hair to show off the watch again and then, realizing he’d upset it from its over-gelled coif, rushed to smooth it back into place. “Lancelot. Is Arthur not available for nannying today?”

“I’d suggest remembering who it is you’re asking after,” Merlin said coolly.

“I’m merely expressing concern that he may be—” his eyes cut to Daisy, “—distracted.”

“No more so than usual,” Merlin muttered.

“If you say so,” Galahad sniffed. He took his tea and left them sitting in a cloud of expensive cologne and disdain.

“Prick,” Daisy muttered. “Harry should’ve let me keep his bloody wallet.”

Merlin turned an interested eye on her. “You nicked Galahad’s wallet?” She nodded. Light-fingered, indeed. After a moment’s consideration, he added, “Next time, go for his watch.”

Daisy turned a reluctant smile his way. Meanwhile, Roxy was staring with such starry-eyed amusement at him, he might’ve hung the moon. Galahad hadn’t been subtle in his dismissal of her as an agent, and while Roxy was, at least, too polite to let slip how much she disliked the man it was obvious to anyone who cared to look.

“Now, then,” Merlin said. “Our neighbour in the next estate runs an animal rescue. Shall we go and see if there are any puppies in need of a good cuddle?” Kingsman's funding kept the place running, for the most part; the organizer provided puppies when needed for their new recruits. It was a mutually beneficial operation, and he couldn't imagine being turned from their doorstep. He’d offer to let Daisy adopt one, but that would really only play into Harry’s need for something small and furry to cuddle, and he wasn’t giving the other man any reason to be more smug than he already was.

I never knew you were such a softy, Roxy sent him once he and Daisy left the commissary.

Watch your fucking mouth, he replied. Do you know what would happen if that got out? Fucking Christ.

They passed Galahad in the hallway from where he’d paused to snipe at Bors, one of his favourite pastimes. Daisy bumped into both of them and offered the shallowest apology Merlin had ever heard in his life. Once they’d turned the corner, she handed Merlin Galahad’s watch.

Merlin pretended not to notice when she dropped the man’s wallet into one of the potted plants lining the hallway.

"Merlin, I'd like to make biccies for the nurses who're taking care of Eggsy."

Merlin blinked into his coffee, eyes still slightly crossed from an evening of barely sleeping in Harry's second-best chair, and slowly raised his head. Daisy was standing in the kitchen doorway, unsurprisingly dressed in a nightgown and house coat near identical to Harry's—the daft bastard really didn't have a clue, did he?—and waiting for Merlin to respond.

It shouldn't have come as a surprise. Harry had taken her to see her brother every day since he'd picked her up from the hospital. Somehow, Merlin hadn't registered it as being part of the routine. He was due back at HQ, not only to observe Harry's upcoming op, but to offer support for Kay's incursion into the UN Headquarters. The time zones were relatively complementary, he supposed. A detour to the hospital to check in on the lad wouldn't be the end of the world.

"Can't we buy a tin?" he asked.

Daisy crossed her arms over her chest and fixed him with the most disapproving glare he'd entertained from anyone under the age of majority. It was so impressive he found himself handing over his spare tablet. "Here, then. Find a recipe."

She smiled, satisfied.

They made a mess of it, of course. He was no hand at baking, and Harry didn't exactly keep ingredients for shortbread ready in the cupboards, leading to several desperate Google searches for acceptable substitutions. But when they walked into the hospital later that morning with a bag of dried out, flat and half-burned biscuits, Daisy still looked well pleased with herself. She handed them over to the nurse on duty with a polite smile, blithesomely soaking up the old woman's cooing gratitude.

They made their way to Eggsy's room afterwards. Harry had arranged for a private room, though the lad hadn't woken at all to appreciate the courtesy. Merlin's first glimpse of him firsthand was like looking at Lee, and for a moment all Merlin could see was the lad's father asleep in the dorms, exhausted after the day's trials. Was that what had driven Harry’s consideration of them? Daisy, obviously, only took after Lee in a second-hand fashion; small behaviours she'd undoubtedly picked up from her brother, conscious or not. It was there, if he chose to look for it. Harry undoubtedly saw it all.

Daisy plopped herself on the bed next to Eggsy and stroked her tiny fingers across the back of his hand. "Eggsy, this is Merlin. He won't let me have any explosives, but he's all right, I guess."

Resounding endorsement. Merlin tucked himself into the chair next to the bed to review Lamorak's recent mission report. The man had an overenthusiastic approach to semicolons that Merlin didn't appreciate in business documentation.

They stayed for little over an hour before Merlin bustled her out the door to head back to HQ. She stopped to say goodbye to every nurse on the way out—all of them fawning over the pathetic attempt at biscuits, and one or two shyly taking a moment to thank Merlin personally—and tucked herself into the cab Merlin had summoned to wait for them outside.

"What are we going to do today?" she asked when they pulled out of the car park.

"What would you like to do?" he replied easily. Probably visit the puppies again, he thought to himself. She'd enjoyed it well enough, and as a happy consequence trailed an exceptional amount of dog hair all across Harry’s upholstery. Too bad his housekeeper would be around before he got back.

Instead of the easy answer, Daisy began playing with the strap of her bag. "Do you think... could we check in on Harry? Make sure he's safe?"

It was on the tip of his tongue to turn her down; he didn't anticipate Harry's mission turning sour, but with Harry one could never be completely sure. But there was something cagey about the way she asked. Something buried in the request that made him hesitate in shutting her down.

"I suppose," he finally allowed. “Though there’s something I’ll have to show you first.”

Daisy grinned. Until that moment, he hadn't noticed the sheer amount of stress packed into Daisy's tiny body. It made sense, after a fashion: Harry was the one looking out for her while her brother was in hospital. If something happened to him, there was no way for her to know what would come next. Making sure for herself that Harry was healthy and whole, and would be coming back to them, provided a certainty that she needed.

Which is why circumstance found them less than an hour later tucked into one of the side rooms with a handful of squibs and a remote detonator.

"Now, wee miss, this is straight out of the movies.”

Daisy watched, enraptured, as Merlin affixed a small white bag to the wall. They’d cleared out of his office for the demonstration, and he’d led her through the tangle of hallways around his branch of HQ until they’d found a relatively quiet little nook not far away from the server rooms.

“This is an explosive capsule,” he continued, holding up a tiny device no bigger than a thumbnail. “It’s triggered remotely, by this.” He waved a detonator in the air between them. He stuck the explosive to the bag and stepped back. “Come.”

She followed him out of range. “What happens now?”

“Now, I’m going to let you press the button.”

Daisy’s eyes lit up and she made grabby hands for the detonator until he handed it down to her. She cringed into herself, eyes squinting but still open and fixed on the bag. When she pressed the button, a small ‘puff’ of air followed, and the bag burst, spitting out fake blood in a generous splatter across the floor.

“Was that it?” Daisy asked with a disappointed furrow to her brow.

Merlin was not going to give in. He was absolutely not going to show off the any more incendiary devices. No matter how much she pouted. Not after yesterday’s debacle.

“What does that look like to you?” he asked.

“Blood,” Daisy said. She didn’t seem turned off by it, though she did check her shoes to make sure they were clean.

“Yes. So I want you to imagine what would happen if someone had that bag on under a shirt, say.” Her eyes narrowed in thought. “It might look like they were dead when really—”

“Is that how they do it in movies?” Merlin nodded. “That’s brilliant. I can’t wait to tell Eggsy.”

“Yes, well. Given we’ll be watching the video feed of Harry's mission this evening, I thought it might do well to show you how it’s going to work.”

Kingsman glasses did not come in child sizes, for obvious reasons, and Merlin had to tuck Daisy behind his desk and pull the feed up on the wall-mounted screen.

“Checking in, Arthur.”

“Confirmed. I am at the rendezvous point and waiting on Percival’s arrival.”

“Who’s Percival?” Daisy whispered.

“Another agent,” Merlin replied.

“Ah, Miss Unwin. I had wondered if Merlin hadn't fed you to the alligators in our swimming pool.”

“There’s a swimming pool?!”

“Back to the matter at hand,” Merlin grumped.

He pulled up a second feed on the screen. Percival was laughing at the target’s elbow, somehow managing a credible performance as a forty-year-old, male ingenue. His top couple buttons were undone, and he kept managing to spill small bits of champagne out of his glass, tripping over his own feet as he led the target away from the party.

“Who’s that?” Daisy asked.

“Percival,” Merlin said, gesturing to his agent. “Along with a very, very bad man.”

Daisy made a small ‘o’ with her mouth and settled in to watch.

“You know,” Percival told the target, finishing off the toothful of bubbly left in his glass. “I didn’t think I’d like you half so much as I do, considering the nature of our business.”

“We should get to business,” the target replied. He nudged Percival towards a small balcony overlooking the city lights. “You haven’t given me your deposit yet.”

“This is boring,” Daisy muttered. Merlin side-eyed her. “I thought there was going to be more shooting and less talking.”

“I’ll transfer it now,” Percival promised, turning to face the other man. The face of Goran Ratković filled the screen. He wasn't a pleasant-looking man. The weight of his sins, perhaps, or the twisted calcium deposits scattered across his face coupled with a nose broken multiple times and never set properly. His eyes were cold and cruel. Empty. Merlin doubted the man had the capacity to love anyone, though it was a concept he knew how to manipulate—his MO was to shoot wives and children first.

“Watch close, wee miss,” Merlin said. “And remember what I showed you.”

Percival frowned over Ratković’s shoulder and stepped back. Through Percival’s glasses feed, they all watched Arthur approach from one of the museum's empty hallways.

“Who the bloody hell—” Percival stepped back from Ratković, exposing his chest. And Arthur put two bullets into his heart.

Daisy gasped, her eyes fixed on Harry’s feed. “That looked really real, Merlin.”

“It wasn’t,” Merlin promised. “When he gets back, I’ll introduce you.”

Ratković practically roared in surprise and swung on Arthur, freezing as the gun—now free of the two blank cartridges Harry had fired, and prepped with active rounds in case shit went sideways—swung up to aim directly at his forehead.

“Mr. Ratković,” Arthur said. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“Who are you?” Ratković shouted.

“I’m the man who just saved your life,” Arthur told him. He kept the gun trained on Ratković, but crossed to Percival’s side and rolled up his left sleeve to reveal a syringe tucked into Percival’s wrist. “This is Mortimer Antilla, a professional hitman more commonly called the Partridge.”

“The Partridge, really?” Merlin asked, rolling his eyes. He glanced at Daisy. “Your guardian has a penchant for adlibbing I don’t much care for.”

“I think it’s cool,” Daisy supplied.

“He’s been targeting you for termination,” Arthur continued. “Possibly in conjunction with the FIS.”

“I… No. Impossible,” Ratković growled.

“I’m afraid so,” Arthur said. “May I lower my gun, or are you going to try and extract revenge on behalf of a man who meant to kill you?” Ratković's beefy hands twitched, but he shook his head. Arthur holstered his gun. “Excellent. Now, having saved your life, I will expect certain considerations in return.”

This, at least, Ratković accepted with a begrudging nod. In his world, no one did good deeds without cost. “What do you want with me?” Ratković demanded.

“You supply weapons to very bad people. I, myself, am a bad person. I imagine you can do the math.” Arthur tugged at his French cuffs, sniffing at a spot of blood on his sleeve. “You, I believe, were the one to provide the excellent explosive ammunition to Andrej Kasun,” Arthur said. Ratković nodded hesitantly. “I want to buy.”

Ratković peered at him curiously. “How much?”

“All of it,” Harry replied. “I’m willing to pay a premium, even if you have to renege on other arrangements.”

Ratković considered this. “They’re not cheap. They use a remote detonator that can work up to two hundred metres.” Merlin noted it in their private file. Whoever had given Ratković the ammunition obviously hadn’t managed to smuggle out any of their detonators.

“Wonderful,” Arthur said. “I’ll have the lot. Price is no object.”

“It will take me sometime to get everything I need together,” Ratković replied. “At least a few weeks, if you want the whole stock. I have a number of them still in production.”

“Very well.” Arthur withdrew a burner phone from his pocket and tossed it to Ratković. “When everything is ready, please give me a call. My number is programmed in under ‘Bloke Who Saved My Life.’” Arthur looked down the hallway. “Now, you’d best be getting back to your party. Don’t trouble yourself over clean up. It’s all part of the service.”

Ratković glowered at Arthur, then at Percival’s body, and ambled back towards the sounds of the party, attempting and failing to look casual. Arthur waited until he was out of sight before tapping Percival’s shoulder.

When Percival stood, Daisy laughed. Merlin didn’t imagine the relief he heard in her tone.

“I’ll be honest,” Percival said, accepting a harness from Arthur and clipping it around his waist. “I’m curious as to how this will play itself out.”

“I don’t have to tell you how imperative it is that you not mention this to anyone,” Arthur said.

Percival levelled an unimpressed half-glare Arthur’s way.

They anchored themselves to the balcony and they dropped unnoticed into the car park.

“Extraction is in one hour,” Merlin informed them. “Sending coordinates to your feeds. See you soon, gentlemen.” He turned off the projection, though kept a background feed running to his glasses in case they managed to cock things up between the museum and the air field. Percival was usually reliable, but Arthur still attracted trouble as though he were a particularly large magnet, a bygone of his days as Galahad.

“Now then, Daisy. You’ve seen your first undercover op. How do you think it went?”

Daisy’s face wrinkled up and she shrugged. “I thought there’d be more jumping off buildings and explosions and such.” She tugged on Merlin’s jumper until he lowered his face to her level. “Do you really have a swimming pool?”

Merlin sighed.

“—ggsy. Wake up.”

Eggsy’s eyes were too heavy to open. He tried, but every time they slid closed again before he could get purchase in consciousness. His body felt too-too heavy, and even the faintest fluttering of his eyes took what felt like Herculean effort. Every second they closed was a small eternity before he could force them to the barest slit of an opening once more.

He managed to open them for an entire second, and found himself looking, unfocused, at a blurry outline of halogen lights and drop ceiling tiles.

“There we go. Up and at ‘em, now. We’ve got important things to discuss.”

Eggsy’s head lolled to the side, but his eyes slid stubbornly shut once again. It was as though his muscles weren’t working proper. It was all too easy to fall back into the warm ease of sleep. But there was something important pressing at him. Something he needed to do.

“Daisy,” he breathed out. Her name made the world more concrete, and he managed to push his way out of the heavy-limbed call of slumber.

“Yes, that’s right. Daisy. Where is she, Muggsy?”

Daisy wasn’t there?

Daisy wasn’t there.

A surge of panic slammed into him and a groan punched out of his lungs as the too-bright light stabbed like falling icicles into his eyes at the too-bright light. He thrashed about, until two hard hands closed on his wrists and forced them back onto the bed. He shook his head, trying to knock away the dizzy feeling of sleep clinging to the back of his eyes. He blearily looked around, trying to blink away the cruddy sleep scraping at his eyelids, shapes around him slowly sharpening into recognizable figures.

“’s she?” he demanded. He began struggling against the hands holding him down. “Daisy? Daise? ”

The hands released him. Before he could twitch off the bed, a hard clap across his cheek froze him in place.

Dean.

Was he back home? No. That didn’t sound right. Hadn’t… did they still live with Dean?

Where was Daisy?

Another blow across his other cheek—a backhand this time—and it snapped his head to the side. It didn’t do anything to order his thoughts. He was suddenly ten again, everything too bright and confusing as Dean clouted him for the first time and he’d hit the corner of the kitchen table. He reached for his face, certain he was bleeding and panic lacing through him when Dean's hands tightened on his wrists hard enough to bruise.

No. Nothing about this was right. Daisy hadn’t been born the first time Dean’d belted him.

Where was Daisy?

Dean released one of his wrists and grabbed his chin to jerk his head around until their eyes met. His breath smelled like tobacco and lager, vomit and tar. Eggsy almost choked on the familiarity of the stench.

“Me friends at the station said some rich toff walked out with her. Who was he, Muggsy? Huh? Where’s the girl?”

Eggsy tried to pull himself out of Dean’s grip, but his muscles didn’t want to work proper. His body felt like one big bruise, and he was barely strong enough to budge out of Dean’s hands. But he had to, didn’t he? Someone had walked out with Daisy. NSPCC would’ve given her back to Dean, surely. Someone else had her. Someone had Daisy.

He batted at Dean’s arm and received another smack across the mouth for it. “You’d better start talking, you little fuck.” The hand dropped to his throat, squeezing tight enough to block the little air Eggsy was able to drag in past the panic welling up in his chest. The rapid beeping of heart rate monitors began driving into his skull, ratcheting up his panic. He was in hospital. He was in hospital and Dean was here and Daisy was missing.

“That’s quite enough of that.”

Dean dropped his hand and stepped away quickly. Eggsy’s hand flew to his throat for a moment before he tried to pull the IV out of his arm. It fucking hurt, but he tugged at it uselessly. He needed to get the fuck out of here.

“Eggsy.” The sound of his name, dropped in a posh accent, paused his struggling. He finally looked towards the doorway.

The man standing at the doorway was well fit, if a bit older than Eggsy generally pulled. Tall bloke. Nice suit. Glasses, though one lens were blacked out and covered up most of his temple. Brolly tucked into his elbow. Casual look about him, as though he belonged there. But he weren’t no doctor, Eggsy’d bet on that.

Satisfied that Eggsy was no longer pawing at his IV, the bloke turned his attention to Dean. “It’s time for you to leave, Mr. Baker.”

Dean tensed, ready for a fight. He preferred battering people who couldn’t take care of themselves, and the bloke in the suit looked proper confident. The set of his shoulders was practically inviting Dean to try something. And, for a second, Eggsy sort of wanted him to, so Eggsy could see how well that easy confidence served.

Instead, Dean lowered his hands to his side. “This piece of shit kidnapped me little girl.”

“Your little girl still lives in terror of you,” the gent told him, voice hard as nails. “Now, you have ten seconds to leave this room before I have you arrested and you end up in jail for a very, very long time. Believe me, I have the resources to make sure it happens.”

Dean cast a last look at Eggsy. “I’ll be back.”

“No, I don’t think you will.” The man took a few steps forward and loomed over Dean. “You’re going to forget what Eggsy and Daisy look like, or so help me, I will do something far more drastic than arranging for your incarceration.” Those threats wouldn't be enough to have him stay away, Eggsy knew. Hopefully the rozzers who'd grassed them up hadn't figured out where he and Daisy usually kipped.

Dean snapped. He took a swing, and the newcomer easily stepped back, out of reach, and directed Dean’s fist into the hard metal doorframe. Eggsy winced at the crunching sound of bone breaking, and Dean howled, tucking his broken knuckles in against his chest.

“Care to try again?”

Dean spat at the man’s shoes, but shied away when all it earned him was a slightly raised eyebrow.

“Delightful. I left your friends in the car park,” the toff told him, all casual like. “I believe they’re in limping distance to the A&E doors.”

Dean scuttered, and Eggsy was suddenly alone with the scariest bugger he’d ever seen in his life, trying to calm his poor, confused heart.

“Daisy,” he croaked.

The man turned his full attention Eggsy’s way. He crossed the final few steps to the bed and placed a hand on Eggsy’s back, easing him back down. When Eggsy struggled, he tutted and raised the back of the bed instead, and passed him a small glass of water. Eggsy gulped some down and then nearly coughed it all back up again.

“Slow.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Eggsy demanded between heaves of his chest. And, for what felt like the hundredth time, “Where’s Daisy?”

“To answer the more pressing question, Miss Unwin is safe with my colleagues at present,” the man said. “My name is Harry Hart. I gave you the medal you passed onto her, which she used when you were admitted to hospital.”

Eggsy felt the panic melt away, leaving him wrung out and exhausted all over again. He'd never put much stock in the thing, but his dad's memory had come through after all. “Can I see her?”

“As soon as I can leave to fetch her. I was on my way back to her when I overheard the nurses commenting on the dubious company that had entered your room.”

Eggsy nodded. He wasn’t sure if he was willing to trust this Harry Hart, not until he saw Daisy alive and well, but he was too exhausted to do much more than lean back and take a few more sips of water. The muzzy feeling of unconsciousness was creeping back up again, treacle-thick and pulling at his eyes. He couldn’t sleep, though. Not until he saw Daisy.

“I’ll bring her back as soon as I can,” Harry told him. “You have my word on it.”

“Don’t know you,” Eggsy protested.

“Perhaps not yet,” Harry agreed. “Though I’ve come to learn rather quite a lot about you. And I am relieved that you’ve finally joined us back amongst the living.”

It was all too much. Eggsy couldn’t help himself as his eyes began to close.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Harry promised. He pressed a gentle hand to Eggsy’s own.

Eggsy wasn’t sure why, but he decided to believe him. It was a warm comfort, like a blanket draped across him, as sleep chased him down once again.

Harry had formed most of his opinions of Eggsy Unwin from Daisy’s stalwart compliments, despite his certainty that they were all impossibly biased. It was gratifying, however, to discover firsthand that his priority was Daisy; it gave Harry more comfort than he’d anticipated. Perhaps exactly because he knew that Daisy’s assessment of the situation was coloured by her youth and their closeness. It would be easy for a child—even one as canny as Daisy—to be overly generous in their estimations of their guardian. That he cared for her was obvious, and combined with the intent and attention he’d given her despite their circumstances, it spoke well of the possibility that he was actually deserving of her adoration.

He took the tube back to HQ, and took himself directly to Merlin’s office. Inside, Daisy was hovering at Merlin’s elbow, showing off a drawing of what appeared to be a garish tiara.

“…this one is the one you drop into milk to make it chocolate,” Daisy said, pointing at a bright red whorl on the page that Harry imagined symbolized a gem. “And this big one blows up.”

“Very good,” Merlin said, more amused than long-suffering, as he had been when Harry had left them. “And this one?”

“That one folds out into a helicopter, so you can escape.”

“And how do you expect to build this?”

Daisy bit her lower lip and narrowed her eyes in concentration. “How did you learn to do all this, then?”

“An overactive imagination supplemented by years and years of school.”

Daisy’s face fell. “I don’t suppose I’ll get to make it, then.”

“Nonsense. You’ll be in school sooner than you’d expect,” Merlin assured her. Harry heard the steely promise in his voice, and wondered if Merlin hadn’t been watching his interaction with one Mr. Dean Anthony Baker. “Perhaps even the one I went to. It was boarding school. You stay throughout the year, but it’s one of the top-rated schools for learning about engineering and invention.”

Daisy grinned. “You think they’d like me?”

“I’m sure of it.”

As if suddenly noticing they weren’t alone, Merlin turned to regard Harry, and the fond look on his face fell away to a poor impression of his customary irritation. “And here’s Harry now.”

Daisy lit up and charged at Harry, half-bouncing off his legs.

“Did you know there’s a secret metro down here?” Daisy asked. “Merlin took me on it to get home yesterday. It was sick.”

“I was aware. I’m glad you found it to be sick,” Harry replied cheerfully. “And I have some good news for you. Your brother woke up this afternoon. Only for a short while, mind you, but the doctors have said it’s a good sign.”

Daisy pressed her lips together. “Did he ask about me?”

“Darling girl, you’re the only thing he asked about.”

Daisy grinned, blindingly. “Can we go, then?”

“I’ll call a cab.”

“Wait.” Daisy grabbed his cuff. “Can I put on my new dress first?”

It was easier by far struggling his way towards consciousness this time. The syrupy-thick hold wasn’t gripping him quite so tight. He blinked his way to awake, eased from his initial confusion when he heard Daisy’s voice.

“Now, the history of Eliza Doolittle, though called a romance because of the…” She paused. “Harry, what’s this one?”

“Transfiguration.”

“Like Harry Potter.”

“Exactly.”

“—trans-fig-ur-ation it records seems exceedingly im-prob-a-ble, is common enough.”

“You reading ahead without me, Dais?” Eggsy whispered.

There was a delighted squeal, followed by his breath getting punched right the fuck out his lungs as Daisy launched herself at him. He took in a shuddering breath and tried his best to raise his arms up to hug her, only to have one of them tubes catch against his bedside.

“Allow me,” Harry said. A moment later, the tubes came loose, and Eggsy could hug his sister properly.

“Aw, Daise,” Eggsy whispered. He tightened his arms until she squeaked and then let her go. His eyes were all cruddy again, and it took some work to force them open, but seeing her sitting on his legs, practically glowing with joy, was well worth it. She settled back, giving him a good look at her. She looked healthy. Fed. Her hair was clean, and someone had even gone to the trouble of braiding it, which Eggsy’d tried and failed at about a hundred times.

The dress gave him pause. It was all pink and yellow flowers, with a bright pink sash. But there was no way it was thrift. The material was too fine, and it had a newness to it that Daisy’d never had in any of her clothing, even back when she’d been an infant and they’d been living with Dean. He knew for children’s clothes, and this one weren’t cheap. His medal still hung around her neck, though, and when he glanced about the room he saw their rucksack sitting next to the door.

On his guard, he glanced sideway at Harry Hart.

“Eggsy,” Harry said in greeting. “Glad to see you awake again.”

“Right,” Eggsy frowned. He shifted and winced. He could tell from the gross taste in his mouth they had him on some mighty painkillers, but that couldn’t quite numb the achy feeling from the combination of lying down too long and blood fighting its way back to his limbs. “Nice dress, Daise.”

“Harry bought it for me,” Daisy said, joy lighting up her eyes in a way Eggsy hadn’t had much cause to see before. It almost made him want to overlook the fact a stranger had dropped probably a few hundred quid on a dress. In Eggsy’s experience, no one did shit like that without an angle. Daisy seemed happy, sure, but what did Hart want in return? No simple favour owed to a dead man explained it all away.

Harry eyed him from next to the bed, as though conscious of the defeated tenor of Eggsy’s thoughts. His eyes were calculating, yet also somehow kind. He could see how it’d be easy to trust him, this posh toff who walked through the door, saved him a beating, looked after Daisy, and seemed now content to sit back and give him and Daisy some space.

But they’d trusted people before, hadn’t they? When they was first running and sofa surfing between his mates, looking for a small measure of permanency and a decent night’s rest. Dean’d been on the lookout for them, not because he gave a solitary fuck about Daisy, but because she was his and he couldn’t stand the embarrassment of admitting he’d lost her, even before they’d cut off his stipend. He’d gotten to Liam’s dealer, laced his green with ice and gotten him hooked, then squeezed until Liam gave them up. Eggsy’d escaped with a black eye, sprained wrist and a month’s worth of poor sleep as he calmed Daisy through her nightmares. They’d cut off contact with his old mates, after that. Much for their safety as Eggsy and Daisy’s.

He didn’t blame Liam for it; hated him a little, yeah, but didn’t blame him. Dean was a nasty fucker on a good day. Eggsy didn’t even entertain the thought that Harry might’ve scared him off for good.

He hoped Liam was alive.

“Would you like us to bring you anything, Eggsy?” Harry asked. “Books, music…?”

“Uh, well, I guess if we’re all done with Pygmalion…” He tried to smile, but his thoughts’d turned too sour to make it real.

“Harry an’ me can stop by the library tomorrow,” Daisy offered. Harry didn’t contradict her, and Eggsy tried not to be too thrilled at the small courtesy. “We need to get you some spy books.” She and Harry exchanged a look Eggsy didn’t know how to interpret. An inside joke, like. Something he was missing. He wasn’t sure how much he liked that.

“I weren’t ever a big James Bond fan,” Eggsy told her. “But I s’pose I could give it another try.”

Harry rubbed his left temple, next to the glasses blacking out his eye. When he noticed Eggsy watching him, he dropped his hand back into his lap. “I admit I find myself rather jaded towards Ian Fleming myself.”

“I mean, the Bourne books’d be fine by me.”

Harry grimaced. “If you insist.”

The pained expression looked so out of place, it struck Eggsy as helplessly funny, and he grinned despite himself. Harry returned the expression and for a single moment, Eggsy saw something other than a potential threat.

Dangerous thoughts, those.

The visit lasted until one of the nurses reluctantly interrupted them with a gentle reminder about visiting hours. Surprisingly, they’d been allowed to stay a full half-hour past time.

Daisy ran to use the loo, leaving Eggsy and Harry on their own.

“Here,” Harry said, handing over a new-looking smart phone. Something else they owed him, then. “I’ve programmed in my number, should anything urgent arise, or if you think of anything else you need for your present comfort.”

Eggsy stared at the phone, then glanced up at Harry. “Don’t s’pose you could bring me some wine gums.”

Harry chuckled.

But the next day, when they came ‘round, along with the first three Jason Bourne novels—not cracked and well-loved library paperbacks, either, but brand-new books that smelled like fresh ink and creaked when he opened them—was a full bag of wine gums, and another one of those beautiful, dangerous smiles.

Merlin arrived at his front door a little after ten that evening, and let himself in with a key that Harry certainly hadn't given him. He offered Harry a quiet greeting as he passed by the entrance of his sitting room en route to the dining room.

He reappeared with a small scowl, “I suppose Daisy still has my tablet?”

“Oh, is it yours?” Harry asked, not bothering to hide his smile, “She’s quite taken with it. I hadn’t the faintest idea what ‘unboxing’ was before she showed me earlier this evening.”

Merlin huffed and took a seat on the settee.

To business, then. Harry leaned forward. “We’re both agreement that there’s no way Ratković could have come into that amount of our tech without a direct supplier. We need to narrow down who it was, and eliminate the threat of further exposure. In the meantime, Ratković will have to be monitored to make sure he’s not distributing any of our equipment to the mass market. The results would be catastrophic.”

“Agreed,” Merlin said with a nod. “I’ll call in someone from our Berlin branch—Amelia, maybe—to observe his movements. From what I saw in his possession, everything he had came from London.”

“Worse and worse,” Harry muttered. To have anyone betray them was a blow, but to have it be someone from Harry’s own seat? He preferred to think of himself as a man who inspired loyalty, and there couldn’t have been a worse example of how wrong he was. “Have we at least managed to determine if it was an agent or a support member?”

“Not yet,” Merlin said. “You need to have Ratković give them up, somehow.”

“When I meet with him next, I’ll see what I can do.”

Harry stood to pour a few drams of Taketsuru twenty-one-year-old malt; Merlin frankly looked like he needed it.

Whether the clinking of the glasses or the not-so-hushed voices, something drew his young houseguest out of bed a few minutes later. Eyes still heavy with sleep, she slumped her way into the room—dragging the blanket from Harry’s guest bed behind her—and dropped to the floor at his feet, tucking herself into the hollows of his knees.

“Did we wake you, Daisy?” Harry asked quietly.

“No,” Daisy yawned. “Had a weird dream.” She looked blearily around the room. “Hi Merlin.”

“Good evening, Miss Unwin,” Merlin replied. “Where’s my tablet?”

She yawned and dozed off again against Harry’s knees instead of answering.

“Pardon me for a moment, won’t you?” Harry said. He scooped Daisy up without more than a half-grunt of breath.

Merlin rolled his eyes, but seemed content to wait while Harry carried Daisy and the blanket back up to bed.

“What are you talking about so late?” Daisy asked.

“A story of the round table,” Harry said.

Daisy yawned. “Let’s have it, then.”

“I thought you were supposed to be the one who liked telling stories,” Harry commented with a half-raised brow.

Daisy blinked slowly and then, speaking through a jaw-cracking yawn, was good enough to humour him. “Once upon a time, there were a bran muffin what wanted to be a cupcake…” She drifted off before she could get any further, and Harry stroked her hair back away from her face before returning downstairs.

Merlin, tapping away at his clipboard-tablet, barely glanced upwards. “There are a few agents we can safely cross off the suspect list. Our long-term undercover operatives, for starters.” Tristan, Harry decided, considering he’d been in deep cover the past twelve months keeping tabs on the American president and making sure that the man’s ego didn’t accidentally result in nuclear war. He wouldn’t have had access to the armoury in the time since they’d begun development on the bullets. He was loathe to think Percival might be involved, and the man’s willingness to investigate Ratković was a point in his favour.

“Perhaps we need to begin by determining which of our agents would have had opportunities to cross paths with Ratković in the first place,” Harry said.

“I’ll see what I can find, but we haven’t run any active missions out of Serbia in the past two years.” Merlin hummed under his breath. “Tracking the knights’ layovers is going to be hell.”

“I have faith in your algorithms,” Harry assured him. “I might not be available to return to HQ for the next few days. Do make sure to keep me appraised of your progress.”

Merlin’s eyebrow twitched. “Planning to spend your time at the hospital, hmm?”

“Merlin, now that he’s awake, do you think there’s any power in heaven or earth able to stop Daisy from spending all her time at Eggsy’s side?”

Despite his usual penchant towards omniscience, he hadn’t expected his words to be quite so prophetic. Almost immediately upon waking that morning, Daisy insisted on dragging him back to Eggsy’s side. The nurses seemed content to let them skirt through the other side of visiting hours; cooing over “the little girl who made us such lovely biscuits.” (Merlin snorted in the background at that, muttering over Daisy’s mastery of the art of manipulation at such a young age).

Harry was stranded in London, for now, as he waited on Ratković to call and arrange a meet up. And he was thus content to bring Daisy round to the hospital and trying to avoid intruding upon the time between her and her brother. Eggsy still tired easily, but spent every moment basking in his sister’s adoration and keeping a half-eye on Harry as though worried that he planned to up and disappear with the young Miss Unwin at any moment.

Three days after Eggsy awoke, when the doctor had proclaimed that another day or two of observation were required before he could be comfortably discharged, Daisy produced a deck of playing cards from the rucksack.

“Eggsy does tricks with shuffling,” she informed Harry. “He’s very good.”

“Thanks, Daise,” Eggsy said, not-quite preening at the praise. Harry watched over the top of his newspaper as Eggsy fanned out the cards and then shuffled the deck with quick, efficient movements. Noticing Harry’s attention, Eggsy winked at him and offered up a masterful Sybil flourish.

“See!” Daisy waved her hands. “I can’t do that yet. M’ hands are too small.”

A twinkle in his eye, Eggsy offered her the deck. “Maybe not yet, but have you shown him your trick?”

Daisy grinned and waved Harry over to the bed. She shuffled through the deck—her movements not nearly as smooth as Eggsy’s had been, but credible nonetheless—and picked out the two jokers and queen of hearts. Eggsy grabbed two five quid notes from one of the pockets of the rucksack, and waited for her to begin. He passed one her way and folded the other up in his palm.

“This is the money card,” she told Harry solemnly. “Keep your eyes on the queen.” Harry stared, reluctantly delighted, as she put together a very credible three card monte. While her hands were too small to manipulate the full deck of cards, the three singles were easy for her to shuffle about. “I’m only a child,” she told Harry solemnly. “So it should be easy for you to win.” She turned to Eggsy. “Would you like to try your luck, sir?”

“I dunno,” Eggsy said, drawing out his words slowly and perfectly rehearsed. He would be an excellent roper on the street, playing on the egos and expectations of passersby. “I’ve heard there’s a trick to this.”

“I’m only six,” Daisy replied, speaking slowly as though Eggsy was the world’s thickest moron. “Do you think you could be tricked by a six-year-old?”

Harry could see how an unsuspecting mark could be easily drawn in; the inherent challenge in Daisy’s expression seemed to imply that Eggsy was an idiot, and not nearly the only idiot around. Eggsy’s scripted condescension was perfect; Harry could easily put himself in the place of a hapless tourist allowing themselves to get tempted into playing.

She allowed Eggsy to win the five quid off her, and pouted in Harry’s direction. “Would you like to try, sir?”

“Very much,” Harry replied, obligingly. She was deft hand with tossing the queen, and if he hadn’t been aware of how the swindle worked, he might’ve easily been taken for the entire contents of his wallet in increasingly frustrated attempts to win against her. He lost his money, but it was well worth it.

“You should give it back, Dais,” Eggsy told her when she went to secret the bill into their bag.

“Nonsense,” Harry said. “She won it fair and square.”

“Well, unfair and a little bent,” Eggsy said. Daisy put the deck back together and handed them his way, grinning when he did a one-hand cut and waterfall shuffle. “Tourists are more like to fall for it than anything else. Easy to walk off with a few bob, anyways.”

“Eggsy’ll work the crowd, too, if we get enough people watching,” Daisy mentioned offhandedly.

Eggsy flushed awfully, looking guiltily down at his hands and shuffling the cards about a few more times. “Well, gotta eat, don’t we?”

Shame, Harry decided, was not a good look on the young man.

“Exactly so,” Harry assured him.

Eggsy eyed him sidelong, weighing his sincerity. “Right,” he finally muttered, a small smile tugging at his mouth.

“Harry took me for Nando’s,” Daisy told him.

Eggsy laughed. “What, did I sleep through your birthday?” He lunged for her, grabbing her around the middle and tickling the breath out of her. Daisy’s peals of laughter filled the room. “Did I sleep right through the winter? Is it the new year?”

“No, no, no,” Daisy giggled. “It was a treat, Eggsy. He’ll take you too, when you’re out.”

Eggsy’s fingers paused against her ribs. “Daise…” Harry could see his thought process in the downward turn to that expressive mouth. Once he was out of hospital, the favour to Lee Unwin would be discharged as well, and they’d be back to the street. Better off, certainly, with the charges against Eggsy cleared and the odious Mr. Baker no longer looming large in their future. The potential existed for Eggsy to get a real job, a flat, find a way to put Daisy in school, though guardianship would have to be arranged. But it wouldn’t be a simple task for him. Not while still stuffed into a hostel or sleeping under a bridge.

“I think Nando’s sounds lovely,” Harry said. “To celebrate when Eggsy’s out of hospital. And, perhaps, you two would do me the honour of staying with me until Eggsy’s all the way back on his feet. It would help me sleep easier, certainly, knowing that you’re somewhere safe while he heals up.”

If it had been only Eggsy, he would have refused. Harry could see it in his gaze. But as that same gaze drifted helplessly towards Daisy, he ended up nodding his head. Her well-being, it seemed, took precedence over what remained of his pride.

“Thanks, Harry,” he whispered quietly.

“Don’t mention it, my boy,” Harry replied.

And thus it was, two days later, that Harry helped Eggsy mount the stairs up to the guest room, Daisy trailing behind them with take away containers and their rucksack slung over her shoulders.

“Bit like a museum, innit?” Eggsy asked, eyeing the butterflies hanging on the walls. “Should have little plaques telling me what these are.”

“That one’s a Sara longwing,” Daisy told him with a proud grin. “I already know a bunch of ‘em. Harry’s been quizzing me.”

Eggsy managed a small smile. “That right?”

With Harry’s help, he eased himself into bed. “Is there anything you need?” Harry asked.

“Nah. Think I’ll have a bit of a kip, actually.” It was a clear dismissal, and invitation for Harry to bugger off that he and his sister might have a few minutes on their own. Harry couldn’t bring himself to blame him.

He nodded and showed himself out the door, pausing only at the magnetic quality of Daisy’s delight. "Can I tell you all about Lancelot and Merlin and Percival?" Daisy sounded excited beyond measure, and Harry smiled to himself.

Eggsy yawned, but replied, "Sounds like a great story, Daise."

Harry left them to it.

“Eggsy doesn’t believe me about you and Merlin and all your spy shit,” Daisy told Harry later on that evening, Eggsy sleeping upstairs.

Harry hummed over the stovetop, a simple stir fry in the works for supper. “I can’t imagine it’s an easy thing to believe.”

“But I don’t tell fibs,” Daisy said, glowering at a pile of chopped carrots and snow peas. At her insistence, Harry had set the small pile of bell peppers aside to serve raw. Cooking them was, according to Daisy, a criminal offense.

“No. But there is the matter of believability where my ‘spy shit’ is concerned, you must admit.” He added a small measure of bottled teriyaki sauce. “He probably thinks it one of your wonderful stories.”

“He ain’t never not believed me before,” Daisy said. “Can’t you talk to him?”

“It very well may be that he needs time to heal properly, before we inundate him with more surprises,” Harry told her. “Why don’t we leave it for now and bring it up again when he’s feeling a bit better?”

Daisy pondered this as Harry fussed with the mushrooms. He’d previously laboured over the assumption that Daisy, like many children her age, would be a picky eater. He’d rectified the thought within a day of her staying with him, when he’d found her munching away on a few pieces of sharp cheddar which had gone mouldy, the offending bits simply scraped off. It presumably came from a place of needs must, but made meal planning worlds easier.

“I want him to like you,” Daisy whispered, finally.

Harry’s eyebrow twitched upwards. “Why should it matter if he likes me?”

“If he likes you, he’ll want to stay.”

Harry turned away from his skillet and focused the entirety of his attention on Daisy. She’d taken to poking at the small pile of sprouts on the cutting board, picking them out individually and stacking them in a credible attempt to recreate a log cabin. Her fingers trembled, and she cast furtive, quickly averted glances his way. He wasn’t accustomed to seeing her unsure.

“You’re both welcome to stay as long as you wish,” Harry promised her. “But I can’t guarantee that your brother will choose to remain here after he’s healed. He and I don’t know each other terribly well, after all.” The only thing tying them to one another was Daisy herself. It was a dreadful responsibility to put on such small shoulders.

“Then you need to get to know him,” Daisy insisted. “Take him for a cream horn, maybe.”

Harry nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.” He considered her closely. “Would a cream horn do it, you think? I was under the assumption they were your favourite.”

Daisy officiously tilted her head back in a wonderfully familiar fashion. “They might be.” She finished with the sprouts and nudged the tidy stack towards Harry. “Could we go pick some up after dinner? Just to see if it would work.”

“I suppose we might do.” It had been a couple of days since they’d visited the bakery down the road, and considering the amount of custom Harry had offered since Daisy had come into his care, he and Daisy were in danger of being subjected to a search party if they remained away too much longer.

“Good.” Daisy pursed her lips thoughtfully. “We could get him some new clothes, too.”

A good idea, though Harry wasn’t confident that Eggsy would be as accepting of it as Daisy had.

He finished up with the stir fry and scooped it out onto a few waiting plates. Eggsy’s went into the oven to stay warm, and he and Daisy ferried their own out into the dining room. She patiently sat through his brief tutorial on chopsticks, and proceeded to clumsily poke at her dinner with them. He didn’t correct her attempts, confident in her ability to either figure it out on her own or improvise her way around it.

She stabbed a piece of carrot with the end of one of her chopsticks and shoved it onto her mouth, glowering at him as though daring him to comment.

He simply pushed the plate of chopped peppers her way.

“Are you going away again soon?” Daisy asked.

“Perhaps. You recall the gentleman Percival and I were dealing with?” She nodded. “There will be call for me to visit him again.”

“You’ll tell me before you go?”

“Of course.”

She frowned at her plate. “What happens if you don’t come back?”

Harry paused, a small scoop of rice and chicken halfway to his mouth. He tucked his chopsticks to the side of his dish and considered her carefully. “There’s always going to be a chance of that, Miss Unwin.” He reached for his temple, unconscious of the movement until his fingers were brushing against the arm of his glasses. He tucked his hand back to his side, hurriedly.

“Are you going to tell me what happened, now?” she questioned. “Was it while you was off saving the world?”

“It’s not a flattering accounting of my competence,” Harry admitted. “I admit I bungled the world saving quite terribly. If it hadn't been for Lancelot and Merlin, everything would have gone to shit.”

Daisy looked torn; as loyal as she was to Harry, he was not blind to the utter worship with which she considered Lancelot and Merlin. Hungry for stories of them, he could see her nonetheless biting back the desire to ask after it.

Better not to torture the poor girl. He slipped easily into the tale of Lancelot and Merlin saving the day; making his involvement flattering, considering his part in it comprised largely of unconsciousness, was slightly more difficult.

He’d only just reached the part of the story where he’d walked out of the church and into a bullet when Daisy leaned across the table, as though she could see through the black out lens covering his eye. A bitter, mean part of him thought of pulling his glasses off; watching as shock and horror crossed her face and scaring her off. It wouldn’t work, he decided in the next heartbeat. His Daisy was made of much sterner stuff than that.

“Did you have to go to the hospital?”

“I was very lucky, as a matter of fact. Another agency came to investigate the goings on in the church and helped me before the damage was irreversible. My glasses were damaged, but not completely destroyed. If they had been, Merlin wouldn’t have known to come and collect me once he’d finished helping Lancelot.”

“And Lancelot and Merlin stopped him?”

“Yes. The former Arthur before me made a critical error, you see, in deciding that having aristocratic connections, Lancelot would be happy to join him. Two of the other knights had already done so, and he thought she would fall easily into line.”

“Never,” Daisy stated. “She wouldn’t.”

“You have a better understanding of Lancelot’s character than Arthur did. He offered, she declined. Violently. And then she and Merlin tracked Valentine back to his lair and saved the world.”

Starstruck though she was, Daisy still managed to assuage his ego. “But I bet you've saved the world loads of times before,” she said diplomatically.

“I’m going to tell you a very grown up secret, my dear. Sometimes, no matter how much good you do, all you're able to think about is the bad. Your mistakes become more meaningful than your triumphs. And, occasionally, it's a good thing. Because it makes you want to do better, and often wanting to do better inspires you to be better. True nobility, Daisy, lies in being superior to one's former self.”

“Then you shouldn’t feel too bad over losing your eye, right?”

Harry blinked to himself. “I suppose that’s correct.”

She tucked back into her stir fry, chopsticks at the ready.

A few minutes later, Harry heard Eggsy stumbling down the stairs. Rising, he moved to assist, only for Eggsy to reach the bottom step with a pained grin that was two-thirds grimace before he could so much as reach the hallway.

“I’m all right,” he insisted. “Smelled supper.”

“I kept some warm for you. Please. Come sit.”

Eggsy trailed him into the dining room, not bothering to wave Harry off when he hovered rather too close. Instead of taking the natural seat across from Daisy, he sat in the chair next to her, examining their humble supper with the interest of a man who’d come unfortunately accustomed to hospital offerings. Or worse.

Harry retrieved his plate from the oven and set it in front of Eggsy, alongside chopsticks and a fork.

Eggsy eyed the fork with disdain and picked the chopsticks instead, spinning one effortlessly around his fingers. “What you two been up to, then?”

Harry could see it on the tip of Daisy’s tongue, to try and reiterate her excitement over Harry’s chosen profession. Instead, with barely a glance Harry’s way, she smiled and poked Eggsy’s arm. “We’re going to go shopping tomorrow.”

“Shopping?” Eggsy repeated. “I don’t think we need much else, Daise.”

“Eggsy,” she said officiously, “Sometimes, a gentleman must dress for no other reason than to please himself.”

Harry chuckled through a mouthful of rice. Eggsy levelled an amused-concerned look his way, as though trying to determine the likelihood of Harry choking. Satisfied that his existence wasn’t in mortal peril, he tucked into his own stir fry.

“I want to do something nice for Harry," Daisy told Eggsy, hands on her hips. The man in question had left for work less than ten minutes ago, and Eggsy had been looking forward to a quiet morning. His ribs were going well; he could get out of bed and actually walk about, which was the biggest relief of his life. And while he knew in theory they should’ve been walking out the door, it was nice to sit back and relax a bit. Their host didn’t seem to mind them taking up space, anyways, and the bed he was sharing with Daisy was a far sight more comfortable than a thin hostel mattress. Or worse.

"You could start by putting back those little teaspoon things you keep nicking," Eggsy said, not looking up from his book.

Daisy pouted. "But I like the one with the elephant on it." She crept to Eggsy's side. "I thought we might make him supper. Proper supper. With pudding and everything."

Eggsy finally peered over the top of the book. "I heard the nurses talking about those biccies you tried to fob off on them to extend visiting hours."

Daisy glowered. "That were all Merlin’s fault."

Eggsy tried not to let his mouth twist up in too obvious a smile. Eggsy had heard all about Daisy’s wizard and his exploding lighters. Staying with Harry had certainly been good for her imagination; her stories were getting less random, even though they were starting to be more violent.

“You think a proper cook up is something we can do?” Eggsy asked, genuinely curious. The best cookery Daisy had gotten from him in the past year had been pot noodle heated over a rubbish bin fire, and he doubted she remembered much from before they’d fled the flat.

“Yes,” she said, confident.

“Well,” Eggsy said, drawing out the word. “I suppose we could give her a try, then.”

While Harry had manfully attempted to not let it influence him, the non-state of their investigation was driving him to irritation by the mere state of its existence. As the cab pulled up to the mews that evening, he tried not to let it cling to him. Merlin had provided him with a rough estimate of the moneys that would have changed hands, and that someone had sold out Kingsman for what seemed like a comparatively trifling amount grated on Harry’s nerves until he was little more than a hard line of stress through his own shoulders.

When he stepped through the door of his home, he was taken aback by the scent of cooked sausage and the sound of Daisy’s laughter. With little other prompting, he found his terrible mood sliding away from him. He left it on the doorstep, moving as silently as he could towards his kitchen.

“We should have bought it ready whipped,” Eggsy said, fruitlessly smacking about some whipping cream with a whisk, apparently ready to concede defeat.

“The recipe says fresh,” Daisy informed him primly, Merlin’s missing tablet nestled atop her knees. “‘Serve with fresh whipped cream, sliced strawberries and a sprig of mint.’ Only we didn’t get strawberries or mint, did we?”

“I guess it’s all ruined, then,” Eggsy said, gnawing on his lower lip as he beat the cream into submission. “Might as well bin everything and get take away.”

“You’re not funny,” Daisy told him.

“Lies. I’m a fucking joy to be around.” Satisfied with the state of his cream, he turned to pop it into the refrigerator and jumped a half foot in the air when he saw Harry lingering in the doorway. “Jesus fucking Christ, Harry.”

Daisy looked up from the tablet and grinned in delight. “We made you supper!”

“Did you?” Harry asked, wondering if he had any bismuth on hand and then immediately feeling poorly about the thought. “What are we having, then?”

“Toad in the hole,” Daisy said, proudly. “The table’s set and everything.”

“Lovely.” Harry smiled. “Allow me a moment to change, and I’ll be down to eat.”

The table was set in such a way that Harry imagined Daisy had Googled it and eyeballed her way through the flatware in his drawers. It was on the tip of his tongue to correct it when Eggsy carried in the casserole dish with the evening’s offerings. A gravy boat followed allow with steamed vegetables. All together, a rather smashing attempt.

“We made pudding, too,” Daisy said.

Harry glanced sidelong at Eggsy, who grinned. “Jam roll. She says it’s your favourite.”

Eggsy did the dishes, as well. Harry actually felt quite spoiled.

Daisy drifted off to sleep halfway through Mastermind, and when Eggsy stood to carry her upstairs, wincing as he levered himself off the couch, Harry stood instead. “Allow me.”

Eggsy trailed him up the stairs, a silent shadow surprisingly light on his feet, and pulled back the covers for Harry to ease Daisy into bed.

“Join me for a martini?” Harry asked.

Eggsy considered Daisy’s sleep-lax face for a moment before nodding. “Yes, Harry.”

Eggsy grimaced into the martini glass at first—“not quite a pint, is it?”—but his smile slowly softened from the hard, sarcastic twitch of lips into something a bit more genuine, and unfairly attractive.

Having Eggsy in his home was beginning to feel a poor idea.

“I may be leaving town shortly,” Harry said, eyeing up the olive in his glass and trying to decide if he had too much dignity to go fishing about for it with his fingertips. “One of our customers—a sheik, actually—has requested a fitting in his home. He hasn’t confirmed his appointment details, yet, so I suspect it will be on very short notice.”

The smile vanished from Eggsy’s face. “Oh.” He eyed up the remnants of his own martini and tossed it back, olive and all. “We can clear out anytime, Harry. I know you weren’t really expecting to have us here, mucking up your life.”

Harry frowned. “That… No. You should both feel free to stay as long as you need.”

Eggsy eyed him up, suspicion writ in the furrow of his brow. “You can’t mean us to stay while you’re out of town.”

“Whyever not?”

“Because we might make off with the silverware, for one,” Eggsy told him with a mordant twist to his mouth. “That’s what anyone with sense would think. We ain’t your problem, Harry. And I appreciate you letting us stay while my ribs get back to rights, but you can’t mean for us to hang about forever.”

“You think I have such a thriving social life that I can’t afford to have two fairly well-behaved house guests stay over?” Eggsy snorted at ‘well-behaved’ but Harry trundled on. “I have no objection to you two staying.” Frankly, his silverware would be an acceptable sacrifice, as far as he was concerned, if it meant Eggsy and Daisy weren’t tucked into a doorway somewhere unforgiving, freezing as the autumn nights began drifting towards winter. “At the very least until your ribs are healed, though I’ve no objection if you want to remain here until you can find reliable accommodations of your own.”

Eggsy pursed his lips and looked at Harry, searching. Harry allowed the inspection, and tried to remain seated in an indolent slouch instead of straightening into stiff-backed perfection. He doubted Eggsy would appreciate it much; might see it as a subtle invitation to fuck off, which Harry found was the last thing he wanted.

“You doing this because of my dad?” Eggsy finally asked, voice quiet despite the silence in the room around them.

Harry’s brows twitched up. “I can’t say that my debt to him isn’t informing my approach,” he finally offered. “Had your sister not called the number on the back of your medal, I would never have thought to look in on you.” Which would have been a dreadful oversight, and one Harry couldn’t truly forgive himself for. “But I have come to find her company, and yours, pleasant in its own way.”

“Charmer,” Eggsy laughed, some of his previous good humour returning. “We’ll try to keep our sticky fingers off your shit, then.”

“I’d appreciate it,” Harry replied. “Especially with regards to my spoons. Aunt Myrna would have been quite shocked to know the collection was broken up.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want to disappoint Aunt Myrna,” Eggsy mocked, affecting the worst adenoidal shrill Harry’s ears had ever suffered through, even more insufferable than some of the worst members of the table.

Harry grinned, not quite loosing the burgeoning laugh hiding in the back of his throat.

Eggsy went to sleep that night curled around Daisy, and knowing three things with absolute certainty:

1. He really, really liked Harry Hart
2. And he was absolutely buggered because
3. No one was as good as Harry Hart was pretending to be.

“I still say leaving them on their own in your house is a terrible idea," Merlin said, poking away at his clipboard in preparation for the meeting of the table. "Daisy's a sweet lass, but you'll be lucky if her brother doesn't rob you blind."

“You’d prefer me to install them at HQ again?” Merlin glowered and Harry, his attention obviously half on the video stream from his home, hummed noncommittally. "I doubt it will be a problem.”

“You doubt it will be a problem?” Merlin repeated incredulously. “A common thief has free reign of your house which, I’ll remind you, is stuffed full of thirty years’ worth of ridiculous and expensive bric-a-brac and you don’t think it will be a problem?”

“I wouldn’t call him common,” Harry replied evenly. “Not at all.”

Merlin rolled his eyes. He’d long ago given up on trying to talk Harry out of being an idiot and wasn’t sure why he’d decided to try again today; it was his shite to lose, after all.

Galahad, Bors and Lancelot arrived a few minutes later, the only ones currently at home. It was unusual to have even this small handful of knights in London proper; there were days during which Merlin and Arthur were the only ones physically seated at the table. Bors was still favouring his left leg, a compound fracture during his last mission having left him half-crippled before physiotherapy had commenced. He’d been assisting with ops the past two months as he’d healed. Lancelot, on the other hand, had been deep embroiled in researching some of their Scandinavian contacts, rushing to learn Swedish with enough competency to work without the aid of a translator. He dared not speculate as to why she’d been so insistent on taking the assignment, though he suspected it had something to do with one of the dignitaries they’d saved from Valentine’s mountain lair.

And then there was Galahad; the weapons-grade gowk sitting there, grinning at Merlin as though he knew something Merlin didn’t. As though he ever could.

“Glasses, everyone,” Merlin said shortly, trying to keep himself from glaring.

The meeting itself went smoothly; mostly updates from their deployed agents. Percival remained silent, contemplative and aloof, though no more so than usual. It didn’t draw attention when he discussed the weather in Brussels rather than his actual mission. The table understood the need for discretion, when called for.

“Lancelot, how long until you’ll be ready to head to Gothenburg?” Arthur asked.

“Another couple of weeks, I think,” she replied evenly. “I’m struggling with the vowel phonemes, but it’s coming along. It would help if I had a native speaker available for conversational practice.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Merlin offered. “There might be a local college that can offer some assistance.”

“I had someone in mind already, thank you,” Lancelot replied evenly. Merlin twitched an amused eyebrow at her, which she ignored with more dignity than the other two agents at the table could ever dream of mustering.

Arthur turned his attention. “Bors, have the doctors provided any further estimates on returning to the field?”

“Three months at least,” Bors huffed, picking at his thumbnail in a terribly telling fashion. “I guess Merlin will have to put up with my poor efforts at mission direction until January.”

“Your help is appreciated,” Merlin told him, honestly. The man had a good head for it, though his work was more instinct than fact-based. The curse of all agents, it seemed.

“And Galahad. Everything in Dublin settled?”

Galahad smirked. “No complaints from my end.” As though being halfway competent in bed when necessary was a praiseworthy feat. Merlin had watched the footage from the honeypot; if there’d been no complaints, it was because the encounter had been utterly forgettable.

The man noted Merlin’s attention and rested his hands on the table in front of him, showing off yet another fucking watch. Merlin glared at him across the table, wanting nothing better than to smear the smug asshole’s face across the table top. He’d warned his staff off giving way to Galahad’s bullying. That Galahad was apparently more intimidating than Merlin was beginning to feel like a personal affront.

After the meeting of the table, Galahad clapped him on the shoulder. “Careful, Merlin. Your face might freeze that way.”

Merlin gritted his jaw and decided that more drastic action was required.

When Daisy woke up that morning, there was a flashing icon on her (Merlin’s) tablet. A video that’d been downloaded overnight, she figured once she’d unlocked the screen. From Merlin? Maybe some proper spy shit. A thrill ran through her. She glanced at Eggsy. He was a light sleeper, but the medicines had done a number on him. His arm was still hanging off the edge of the bed, his hand tangled in the straps of their bag, but that she’d been able to wriggle out of bed without waking him was unusual, to say the least.

Still. Better not to risk getting caught doing something sneaky after she and Harry had decided to wait until he was healed through.

She crept across the hall to the loo. Turning on the faucet, she settled herself down on the toilet and opened the video. Merlin’s face filled the screen. He was seated at his desk, a half-empty cuppa sitting at his elbow and his ever-ready clipboard at his side.

"Good morning, Daisy. I have a mission for you, should you choose to accept it."

Daisy grinned. Fucking right she was going to accept it.

Eggsy clamoured out of bed about half an hour later, wincing when he rose. His ribs were all wrapped up, but she could see the bruises peeking out from beneath them. He seemed to be moving a bit easier, though.

“Where’s Harry?” he mumbled, stumbling towards the bathroom.

“Left early,” Daisy said. If Harry had an idea about her mission, he hadn’t said anything. He’d dropped a half-conscious peck atop her head, studying his mobile as he made his way out the door. It’d be quite like having a proper dad, actually. It was nice. Scary nice. She didn’t say as much to Eggsy.

He turned on the sink and she yelled through the door, “He didn’t even get a proper breakfast! Just toast and tea!”

Eggsy hummed, though he clearly weren’t connecting the dots.

“I think he said he weren’t too busy, today, either.” She paused and counted to five in her head. “Maybe we could go by his shoppe and bring him lunch.” Another five count. “Oh! Maybe we could bring a picnic.”

The toilet flushed and Eggsy stuck his head out the door. His hair was plastered to one side of his head, and sticking up the other side. Daisy stifled a laugh and he glowered at her, running his hands vainly through it. “Not sure Harry wants us bothering him at work, Daise.”

“Come on, Eggsy.” She tried to sound as sad and miserable as possible. “He told me he never takes a break.”

Eggsy weren’t stupid. He studied her narrowly, and Daisy tried not to look too innocent, or else he’d know something were going on.

“He’s been so kind,” Daisy said.

It was the final nail in the coffin. “Yeah. All right. We’ll pack up a few things and take them over for him. See if he’s busy. But, Daisy, if he is busy—”

Daisy waved her hand. “Yes, yes, yes. I’ll go see what’s in the fridge.”

She didn’t quite skip down the hall, but it was a near thing. She had this spy shit down pat.

They left Harry’s home about half after ten for the long walk to Savile Row. Eggsy was still slow moving, and she paused occasionally at shop windows to look inside and let him catch his breath. Sleeping in a bed was helping him with healing up, and having real meals was a change for the better. She could tell in the way he moved. And the way he smiled. For real, not like he was trying just for her. He was too good at that.

It was well after noon when they reached Savile Row—Eggsy might have more spring in his step, but she could tell his sides were bothering him, and it slowed them down—but when they walked through the door, Andrew greeted them with a warm smile.

“Miss Unwin,” he said. He stepped round the counter and bowed to her. Daisy giggled; a proper gentleman bowing to her was never going to get old. “How lovely to see you again. And this young man must be your brother.”

“Yes. This is Eggsy. Eggsy, Andrew runs the shoppe.” She hadn’t spent nearly so much time with Andrew as she had with Merlin and Lancelot, but he was a good chap. And he kept a bowl of humbugs behind the counter that he pretended not to notice her dipping into every time she and Harry passed through. “We brought Harry a lunch.”

“How thoughtful. I’m sure Mr. Hart will appreciate it immensely. I’ll give him a ring.” He paused and glanced at Eggsy. “He’s meeting with someone at present, but I’m sure he’ll only be a moment.”

He was at the estate, then. The tube ride weren’t too long, though. Long enough for her to show off Kingsman Tailors to Eggsy.

What she really wanted was to drag him into Fitting Room Three, and show off all the wonderful shit on the walls. But she’d promised Harry that she’d let him do the talking when it came to his real, real job. And while showing off the exploding lighters would probably convince Eggsy, she didn’t want him feeling too bad about thinking she was telling fibs. And she wasn’t sure Merlin would be quite so nice about it if Eggsy took any of those lighters, either. He probably wouldn’t get to play with the puppies, anyways.

She’d thought to wait for Harry to show up and ask him to introduce Eggsy to Galahad, but it went a little sideways as Daisy dragged Eggsy over to look at the ascots and Galahad himself appeared. He looked sour as always, and took a half-step backwards as he descended from the rooms above and caught sight of her and Eggsy lingering near the doorway.

Daisy lit up. “Oh, Eggsy, this is Galahad.” Daisy practically skipped over to Galahad, curbing it at the last minute when she realized that he might think it suspicious. She grabbed Galahad’s arm and tried to drag him Eggsy’s way, yanked backwards by her own momentum when he refused to budge. “Galahad works here, too.”

Eggsy spotted the second she slipped Galahad’s watch off his wrist, his eyes going wide. “Hullo,” he said, holding out his hand. His eyes were still fixed on Daisy, a half-angry downturn to his mouth, though he struggled to make it look more like a smile when Galahad began eyeing him up.

Galahad cast a look Andrew’s direction and Eggsy furiously mouthed at her, “Put it back.”

Daisy shook her head wildly, equally silent.

Galahad yanked his arm from her grip. “Andrew, it might behoove you to remind Arthur that we expect rubbish to go through the back door.”

Eggsy suddenly looked a lot more at peace with her nicking Galahad’s watch. And that was just fine. She had a mission, after all.

Galahad tore out of the room like a spoilt girl in a movie, less the flipped hair, and Daisy headed to fitting room two. She tucked the watch into the secret compartment Merlin had told her about and pulled out the identical one waiting for her. She thought it more than fair she be allowed to keep the original, but Merlin had made it clear that he had plans for it.

“Daise?” Eggsy asked from the doorway.

“Don’t worry, Eggsy,” she said, holding the second watch aloft by the buckle. She was careful not to touch the straps. “I’ll give it back to him.”

Less than a minute later, the entire time spent awkwardly shifting under Eggsy’s suspicious glare, Harry emerged from fitting room one, breathless from what Daisy imagined was the run from the underground.

“Daisy. Eggsy. What a delightful surprise.” He smiled like he meant it, and Daisy ran up to hug his knees. “I was hoping for something to shake up my day. Shall we go for lunch?”

Eggsy knew there was something going on. Daisy could tell. Her brother was the smartest, best boy she’d ever known, and he always knew when there was something tricksy happening. But he also knew never to turn down a meal. “We brought a picnic,” he finally said, passing a look back and forth between the two of them.

“Excellent.” Harry looked down at Daisy, still tucked against his legs. “What is that in your hand, my dear?”

“Oh. Galahad dropped his watch,” Daisy said. She pulled herself away and offered it up to Andrew. “Please make sure he gets it back.”

“I will, little miss,” Andrew promised, looking not half so suspicious as Eggsy. She noted, however, that he took it by the buckle as well. She couldn’t help her grin. “Thank you.”

Grabbing hold of Harry’s hand, she pulled him towards the door. The front door. Because Galahad could go soak his fucking head. Prick.

“I hope we ain’t disturbing your day,” Eggsy said. “Daise got it into her mind that you’d never had a picnic before, and insisted on a proper ploughman’s lunch.”

They’d wandered over to Berkeley Square, only a ten-minute walk from the tailor’s, a tidy and well-kept garden that Eggsy wouldn’t have trespassed into without a bloke like Harry walking beside him. His ribs were well aching by the time they sat on the bench Daisy had laid claim to a bench immediately upon arriving, and he would’ve dropped half-dead on it if it didn’t know how painful it’d be to jostle about.

He barely managed to get a roll in her mouth before she took off to explore the statue of a half-naked bird down the path.

Harry grinned. It did uncomfortable things to Eggsy’s guts. “Not at all. This is a refreshing break to my day, actually.”

Eggsy pulled the thermos of tea from his bag and passed it Harry’s way. It wasn’t a pint, but it would serve.

“You’re always welcome to visit me, you know. I’ll tell you when I plan to be out of town,” Harry said idly, picking at a small bundle of grapes Eggsy had salvaged from his fridge. They were small, wrinkled offerings, but they’d take the sting out of Harry’s horrid aged cheese.

“Wouldn’t want to be a bother,” Eggsy muttered. “Besides, not too sure your friend ‘Galahad’ appreciated us stopping through.”

Harry blinked slowly. “I’m sorry he was the first person you met.”

“Well, I saw him anyway. He was too busy looking down his fucking nose at us to shake hands or whatever.” Eggsy nipped a small wedge of the cheese and a tomato, and stuck both in his mouth with a bite of soft roll.

“He’s a prat, isn’t he?” Harry offered.

Eggsy laughed around his mouthful. “Seems a proper tit.” He bit his lower lip, thinking of Daisy nicking his watch and then insisting on giving it back again. It weren’t like her. Maybe all this time around real gentlemen was doing her better than he’d thought. “Worth it, though? Working with him?”

“Oh, yes,” Harry said. His voice was still soft, but rock-hard vehemence underlay the words. “I can’t help but wonder if you wouldn’t enjoy it.”

Eggsy shrugged. “I’m a fair hand at darning and shit,” he replied. Had to be. A bit of thread was cheaper than new clothes, even thrift store ones. “But I don’t think your Galahad would want me hanging about.” The ‘rubbish’ comment still rankled him, and Eggsy bit viciously into his roll. Daisy should’ve taken the fucker’s wallet, too.

“Seasons change,” Harry said, apropos of nothing. “And I promise you, he’s not ‘my’ anything.”

Eggsy looked at the trees overhead, barely beginning to yellow, and tried to convince himself that wasn’t a relief to hear.

Sitting with Harry was nice. It didn’t feel like the times they’d been on their own, Eggsy watching Daisy at play and thinking about hours upon hours of nothing waiting ahead of them. That sort of boredom got soul-crushing, really. It drove others in their situation to turn to the sort of shit Dean dealt in when they needed something—anything—to make the days seem shorter. He didn’t like to think where he might’ve been, if it weren’t for Daisy. He wasn’t too proud to steal. Sometimes, he hadn’t been too proud to beg. But he wasn’t going to put any shit in his body that might’ve made it so he couldn’t take care of her. Same reason he wouldn’t get on his knees for a few quid; there were days when he’d’ve done it if it were him alone, but he couldn’t do it, knowing she might see it as an option for herself when she was older. Fuck that completely.

“You seem deep in thought,” Harry commented mildly.

“It’s a nice day,” Eggsy said.

“It is, at that.” Harry helped himself to a bit more lunch. “You know, I can’t remember the last time I could enjoy simply sitting like this.”

“No? Life as a tailor keeps you busy?”

“You have no idea.”

Harry grinned. The expression lit up his face, taking him from merely a handsome man to fucking gorgeous. It was the type of smile people would try to take subtle pictures of and then stick them up all over the internet with fucking stupid hashtags. And while it did make Eggsy want to do stupid things, he simply dropped his gaze and applied himself to his lunch. Thinking a bloke was fit was one thing; thinking a bloke was fit when he was, essentially, floating Eggsy and Daisy on charity alone was entirely different. There weren’t no way Eggsy was going to fuck up the best thing that’d happened to them in years. Not when he was still so unsure about why it’d happened in the first place.

He wasn’t fooling himself. Harry’d get sick of them eventually. He’d trip over Daisy’s plimsolls in the front hallway, or go looking for something in the fridge Eggsy’d already eaten. He’d get irritated, and then mean, and then Eggsy and Daisy’d be out the front door with scarce time to duck a backhand. They’d have to be ready for it.

But for now, Eggsy decided, he could pretend that things might stay nice.

When lunch was over, they walked Harry back to the shoppe. Daisy stuck out her chin and informed him that they’d make supper again, to which Harry beamed and assured her how much he looked forward to it. Once he was safely deposited, Eggsy turned them in the direction of Hyde Park.

“Are we gonna do some lifts?” Daisy asked, peering about as they crossed into the park.

“I—” They should take the opportunity to nick some extra, for when times were lean and they needed to get into a hostel to escape the cold. Winter was coming, after all. But Eggsy couldn’t help but think about how good it might be to just stroll through the fucking park. To let her explore instead of looking out for tourists and potential marks. Let her be a little girl, for once, instead of an accomplice.

“Nah,” he finally said. “Why don’t we go worry at the geese for a bit? We still have a roll or two left.”

“We can’t feed the geese bread, Eggsy. I heard it’ll make ‘em explode.”

How a six-year-old managed to make him feel like an utter moron, Eggsy couldn’t say, but it made him grin ridiculously all the same.

When Harry got home that evening, he made appropriately doting comments over Eggsy’s attempts at chicken tikka, and complimented Daisy on her fine fruit custard, even despite the lumpiness of the filling.

It felt like a good evening.

Harry did the washing-up after dinner, then left Eggsy and Daisy in the front room to watch telly while he excused himself to his study. The most recent report on Ratković had come through on his way home, and while Harry hadn’t let himself be distracted overmuch during dinner, it did deserve his full attention.

Still no word from the man, and Harry was beginning to worry they’d shown their hands too much by requesting all the ammo. But Amelia’s reports detailed the man’s movements, and besides the comings and goings from his apartment, there seemed to be no indication that he believed himself stung by the very operation from which he’d been benefitting. He spent most of his days tinkering away in the secret room—the contents of which Amelia speculated were weapons-based, though she hadn’t managed a decent look inside—and going ‘round to the local bar for a drink afterwards. A boring man, living a boring life, that happened to coincide with countless deaths. It galled they couldn’t simply do away with him.

At a loss to do much more than sit impotently and bemoan his situation, Harry soon gave concentration up as useless and went to fetch himself a martini.

Passing by the guest bedroom, he paused when he heard Daisy’s voice from inside.

“Tonight, I am going to tell the story of a duck named Dragonface.”

“Sounds proper scary,” Eggsy replied.

Harry lingered outside the door, half-listening as Daisy recounted the tale of a duck determined to terrorize the fellow residents of his pond, any passing civilians and generally make life miserable for all and sundry. Whether informed by their afternoon visit to the Serpentine, Harry could only hazard a guess.

“And then they found out that Dragonface wasn’t a duck, he’d been a goose all along.”

“Seems about right,” Eggsy agreed. “Those geese were bastards, weren’t they?”

Daisy hummed in agreement, a sleepy sound that was quickly followed along by the sound of rustling bedsheets and Eggsy crossing the floor.

He stepped into the hallway and jumped nearly a foot in the air. “Harry, Jesus, stop scaring the fuck outta me!” He glanced over his shoulder and pulled the door over, leaving it cracked by only a thin sliver. “Everything okay?”

“Yes. My apologies.” Harry considered him closely a moment. “Would you care to join me for a drink?”

Eggsy’s mouth quirked. “Making it a habit, are we?”

“Unless you have an objection?”

“Nah. ‘s quite nice, actually. Just took my meds, though, so I should probably stick to water for tonight.”

“Come along, then.”

He could practically hear Eggsy rolling his eyes, but the younger man followed him gamely down the stairs and into his sitting room.

He poured Eggsy a soda water, and went about making himself a gimlet, lost in the familiar movements of his hands and the smell of limes. When he turned, he caught sight of the most unfairly attractive smile gracing Eggsy’s features. The pull of his lips and warmth in his eyes was startling in the quiet of the room, though Harry couldn’t account for what, exactly, was causing the sudden skip in his heartbeat.

“Dare I ask?” he questioned.

“Something Daisy were telling me when I was out of hospital the first night,” Eggsy said, his gaze fixed on the martini.

“She’s a talented storyteller,” Harry agreed. “She told me a very interesting story about an escapologist, at one point.”

The smile disappeared, and the room felt colder for its loss. “Not my favourite, that.”

Harry had guessed as much. “Still, very well composed. I suppose you’ll be looking for schools for her shortly?”

Eggsy took a sip of his drink, though Harry privately decided that the length of time the glass lingered on his bottom lip was more to give him the opportunity to collect his thoughts that actual appreciation for the complicated nuances of carbonated water. “I’d like to,” he finally said. “But even with the kidnapping charges all dropped, it’s not going to be that easy. Dean’d never turn over legal guardianship to me. Not in a million years.” His nose wrinkled, as though he’d been asked to pick up runny dog shit.

“Eggsy,” Harry paused. It wasn’t a comfortable question, but one that he’d never mustered up the will to ask Daisy. “Might I ask about your mother?” Harry asked.

“Died,” Eggsy said, flat. He seemed unwilling to look at Harry a moment, until he finally raised his eyes. He had the look of a man who’d cried tears enough, though the sentiment behind them was still tucked into the corners of his eyes. “When she were pregnant with Daise, she tried her best to take care of herself. Didn’t drink. Didn’t smoke. Nothing. Even let me get between her ‘n Dean when they went at it, though she hated doing it. But getting around got to be a real hardship for her. She had all these problems with her hips, right? Made walking tough. And Dean’d never offer to drive her anywhere, so she didn’t go for regular check ups or nothing. Figured she’d been through it once, right, and she knew what to expect.

“I took her to hospital the night Daisy were born. Dean was out with his fucking mugs, and I had to steal a car to get her there. It didn’t seem so bad, to me. Like, she told me what to expect, right? But she kept saying that her head ached worse than the contractions did, and the nurses were all busy with other patients. Anyway, it took her no time at all before Daisy was born. And I got to hold her first. But I was so focused on Daisy, I didn’t notice when she… fuck.” Eggsy stood, scraping a hand through his hair. “Eclampsia, they said. Something they could’ve caught early, if she went to the doctor. It’s not s’posed to kill anyone anymore. Not in London, anyways. But she seized, and that were it.

“And I was such a fucking muppet. I still wrote Dean’s name in on the certificate, didn’t I? Never thought it’d be much concern, since he weren’t going to be too involved with her anyway, I thought. But he’s never gonna let me keep her. Not without a fight. And I know it’s a fight I have to have, yeah? She deserves to be in a proper school, with real teachers instead of having me fumbling about. But it’s been such a struggle to even keep her fed, y’know?” The wind went out of Eggsy’s sails and he collapsed back onto the couch, wincing when it jarred his sides. His agitation disappeared, leaving him obviously exhausted.

“I can appreciate the struggle it’s been,” Harry said by route. What else could he say?

Eggsy studied him carefully. “No, you can’t.” Harry blinked. “You’ve done a lot for Daise and me, Harry. But you can’t really ‘appreciate the struggle’ until you’ve spent the night sleeping in a doorway. Or looking for a late-night café and hope they won’t turf you out when you finish a coffee and cup of hot cocoa because you can’t afford more. It’s not… it’s not been a good thing for her. I know it. And I think everyday I done her wrong, making her live that way. But then I think of what he might’ve done to her, what he done to me when I was a kid, and I can’t let it happen. I gotta be the one to decide whether her sleeping somewhere warm is more important than her going to bed with a handprint across her fucking cheek, yeah? She deserves so much better than I can give her, and there’s not a day goes by where I don’t have to own up to that.”

“And what about what you deserve, Eggsy?” Harry asked. Eggsy frowned. “A young man with startling potential, throwing it all away to care for a younger half-sibling? Haven’t you entertained, even for a moment, that you deserve better as well?”

“First, you call her anything other than my sister again, we’re gonna have words,” Eggsy said, eyes dark. “And I ain’t thrown nothing away deciding to care for her, get it? I had nothing. I still have nothing. But at least I got her.”

“Understood,” Harry replied.

Eggsy glared at him, and Harry weathered it until the other man tossed back the remnants of his drink and stood. “I’m off to bed, then. ‘night, Harry.”

“Good evening, Eggsy.”

Eggsy paused at the door to the study, and cast another look behind him. “I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate what you done for us, Harry. I do. But… she’s my everything, you know? And it kills me I can’t do better by her.”

“Believe me when I say, in that, I do understand,” Harry said.

Eggsy nodded and disappeared upstairs.

Harry was a long time finishing his gimlet. It was too sour; he hadn’t mixed it properly, with Eggsy’s eyes digging into his back. He tapped his finger against the stem of the glass, until finally standing to discard the remnants.

The next time Galahad saw fit to show off his wrist, it was covered in a particularly nasty-looking rash. It was only his breeding that stopped him from scratching and picking at the raised red skin throughout their meeting. His face twisted up, he glowered at Merlin across the table.

“Careful, Galahad,” Merlin said as the meeting broke up, “Your face might freeze that way.”

With a half-growl, Galahad stalked out the room, leaving Merlin chuckling in his wake.

Upon arriving home that evening, without preamble or any emotion beyond mild satisfaction, Harry offered Eggsy a parcel of papers.

“What’s this, then?”

“The legal paperwork making you Miss Unwin’s official guardian,” Harry replied.

Eggsy stared at the papers, hands trembling at his side. He didn’t dare take them. He looked up at Harry’s face and saw only kindness. And it was fucking murderous.

“Wot?”

“As you said, it’s going to be next to impossible to enroll her in school without them,” Harry said. “And I think she’d prefer to go in as an Unwin, rather than a Baker, don’t you?” When Eggsy didn’t take the papers, Harry set them down on the small side table next to the front door. Eggsy’s rucksack was hidden away beneath it, close to the door, and Eggsy’s eyes traitorously found it there.

“How?”

“I’m not without my influence,” Harry replied.

“Merlin prolly did it,” Daisy said from the stairway. Eggsy looked over his shoulder at her as she skipped down the last couple of steps. “He’s better with computers.”

“Lies and slander,” Harry replied cheerfully. He looked at Eggsy carefully, probably seeing the way all the blood had drained away from Eggsy’s face, and the strain around his eyes. “Perhaps I’ll let you two discuss it between yourselves. A quick walk around the block, I think.”

He bowed to Daisy and walked out the door.

“Eggsy?” Daisy said. She tugged at his hand. “Eggsy, what is it?”

Eggsy finally managed to pull in a breath. “We need to go.”

Daisy frowned. “What?”

He ducked down and grabbed his rucksack out from where he’d taken to leaving it next to the door. With a quick glance at the papers, he gave in and grabbed them, too, and shoved them into the front pocket.

“What are you doing?”

“Get your shoes, Daise.” He glanced around the front foyer, spotting half a dozen things he could fleece for more than a few quid, and immediately discarded the thought as utterly revolting. He'd never havered at doing what he had to do to keep them alive, but there was lines he couldn't bring himself to cross. And stealing from Harry, after everything, was the clearest line he'd ever drawn for himself.

Daisy shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yes, Daisy. We’ve gotta… we’ve gotta go. And That’s all there is to it.”

Daisy stepped back towards the stairs. “No. I don’t want to leave Harry.”

“Daisy—”

“No!” Daisy took off up the stairs, darting into the guest room and locking the door behind her before Eggsy could even reach the landing.

“Daisy, please,” Eggsy begged at the door. It would be easy as breathing to pick the lock and haul her out, carrying her out the front door over his shoulder and disappear back into London. But she’d hate Eggsy forever if he pulled her away. And Eggsy could deal with a lot of things, but not Daisy hating him. “Daise.”

“I’m not leaving until I talk to Harry!”

Eggsy dropped down, back against the door, and pushed his forehead into his palms. “Daisy, I know there’s so much nice stuff here. I get it. It’s not things we ever had. But…” He paused. “Daise, he might not ask for you to ever pay him back. But he might ask me, and I don’t know if I can give him what he might ask for.” It had been stuck in his craw the whole time, hadn’t it? The way she obviously adored him. And he could be big enough to admit that it stung, when Harry could give her everything Eggsy couldn’t. But there was always a price for shite like this. Always another shoe waiting to drop. And if Harry wasn’t going to drop it on Daisy, he was almost certainly gonna drop it on Eggsy.

And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Because he liked Harry. Liked him so much that when the other man did something terrible, Eggsy would probably let him do it. And he didn’t know if he’d be able to survive the afterwards.

“Harry’s not like that!” Daisy screamed.

He wanted to believe that, he did. But except for his mum, everyone else in his life had been like that, one way or another.

It was useless. She wasn’t going anywhere. And since he couldn’t stomach the way she’d look at him if he forced her, there weren’t nothing he could do about it, except wait.

Waiting were always the hardest part. When Dean’d come home from the bar, wobbling in place and wandering through the kitchen to pick through the meagre contents, Eggsy had hated waiting to see what sort of drunk he’d landed on for the evening. Sometimes it was simple as him sitting with Eggsy and his mum on the couch and changing the channel. Other times he weren’t so peaceful. The anticipation of it all made Eggsy sick, every time, and the same nausea churned up his guts as he sat outside Daisy’s door.

He listened to Daisy’s muffled sobs, feeling like a right arsehole, until Harry showed up a few minutes later. He didn’t say anything, simply moved to sit down on the floor beside Eggsy, as though it weren’t rumpling up his bespoke suit and ruining his lines, or whatever.

Here is comes, Eggsy thought, Should’ve left when we had the chance.

“Just say it,” he finally said, lowering his voice until the door would muffle it from Daisy. “Whatever it is.”

“It’s never been my intention to ask for repayment for anything I’ve done for your sister. Or for you,” Harry stated. Eggsy turned his head to look at him, looking for the tell-tale signs of lying. Harry Hart, he figured, was probably a very good liar. “I owe your father a debt I could never repay, and all of this has been my paltry effort of scratching the surface of that debt.”

“Bollocks,” Eggsy said. “What you done doesn’t have nothing to do with my father anymore.”

“Well, I admit. I have become quite fond of you both,” Harry said. He sighed. “You said it yourself when you first arrived, didn’t you? This house is a museum. I collect fine furniture and old books and butterflies and elegant paintings, but I sit in the same chair every night, and eat simple meals off the same plates, and read trashy paperback novels that I can easily walk away from. All this finery around me, and yet this house is utterly empty. It’s been refreshing, having you and your sister here.”

“‘Refreshing’?” Eggsy repeated with a huff of a laugh.

“Oh, yes. Helps me remember why I do the job I do, really. For the longest time, it was all a matter of duty and honour. It means rather more to me now than it did a month ago.”

As though a tailor was concerned about duty and honour. Eggsy mustered up a smile. “She’s good at that, isn’t she?” He glanced behind him, at the door. “If it were only me, I wouldn’t accept all this, you know. Even if it’s for her, it’s hard to believe that you’re not going to ask me to pay you back with something I don’t want to give.”

“Your sister explained such possibilities are why you keep ‘fuck off money’ around.”

Eggsy chuckled, though even to his own ears it sounded weak and watery. “Yeah. Well. Can’t be too careful these days.”

Harry regarded him closely. “Life has not been kind to you, and for that I feel I must apologize. Had your father remained alive—”

“I wouldn’t have Daisy then, would I?” Eggy interrupted. He met Harry’s eyes. “Call us square on that, then.”

“As you wish.”

“I’m sorry I thought the worst. Good shit doesn’t happen to us types, you know?”

“Types?” Harry repeated faintly.

“Common. Poor. Thieves. Pick one.” He leaned his head back against the polished wood. “I taught her all the wrong things. How to pick pockets. How to short change. Lying. Grifts. Shite she shouldn’t have had to learn.”

“You also taught her to steal only from those who could afford it. How to read. How to protect herself. She has a remarkable moral backbone for a young lady with such light fingers. I would say you did the best you could for her, considering the circumstances.”

Eggsy scraped a hand through his hair. “Shouldn’t’ve put her in those circumstances at all, though.”

“When the alternative was staying with Dean? ” It was actually pretty funny, hearing Harry say his name. Like Dean was some sort of fungus. “Need I remind you that I walked in on him beating you while you were in a hospital bed?”

“Shit with him was okay for a while after Daisy were born. Went real smoothly. But after a while, he started talking about how I need to start pulling my weight again, once she was old enough to take care of herself. Fucking three years old, like she can be left on her own. I didn’t want to, Harry. But when he started talking about kicking me out… she didn’t have no one else, right? One of the neighbours offered to watch her once in a while, but no one reliable. Only me. And if Dean kicked me out, there wouldn’t be anyone. I started running drugs for ‘im again. Like I had when mum was up the duff and it were that or watch him threaten her about.

“But one night, I come home and Daisy’s hiding under her bed, won’t come out for nothing. That were the night I gave her my medal. She’d always liked it, even when she was a baby, and I had to trade it to her so she’d let me crawl in with her. And when I eventually get her out, I see she’s got a black eye and split lip. And that’s… I saw fucking red, Harry. I don’t think I ever come closer to killing a man. But I couldn’t do it with her sitting there, in my lap, and by the time she fell asleep it were more important to me to get us both out of there. So I did. Packed up what shit we could, took the money I’d gotten from the run, and we just walked out.”

Talking was untangling all those feelings he’d been fighting since waking and seeing Harry for the first time. The ones he’d been afraid of, when he thought they’d come parcelled with an obligation to the other man. “It’s not going away, you know. Me worrying over this.”

“I’m not going to ask you for anything you’re not prepared to give me, Eggsy,” Harry told him. “And I am thankful that your circumstances, for better or worse as they might have been, at least brought you to my door.”

Eggsy’s gaze flitted down to Harry’s lips, and Harry stood abruptly. Eggsy could’ve kicked himself, but then Harry offered him a hand to help him stand.

“You’re remarkably terrible at hiding what you’re feeling,” Harry pointed out. Eggsy’s face washed across with fire. “Once you’ve decided there’s not a price tag attached to it, do tell me, won’t you?”

Eggsy could barely manage to nod.

With a brusque incline of his chin, Harry nudged him aside and rapped on Daisy’s door. “Miss Unwin, your brother has come to his senses, and I am in need of someone to set the table for supper.”

The door opened slowly and Daisy peered out, eyes red and nose snotty from crying. She glowered at Eggsy mistrustfully, which almost ripped his heart clean out.

“’m sorry, Daise,” he said. “Harry is going to let us stay as long as we want.” He realized his misstep and looked to Harry quickly; there hadn’t been any such agreement, even if it had been implied.

Harry however, simply nodded. “Though I do believe that when one acquires roommates, it’s tradition to make up a chore chart.”

“You have a housekeeper!” Daisy pointed out, voice hoarse from crying, as she opened the door fully and stepping out. Harry offered her arm and she took it with a tiny smile.

“Well, one mustn’t ignore traditions, Miss Unwin. We’ll just have to modify ours appropriately.” They wandered to the stairs together, and Eggsy was helpless to do anything but follow. “I’m putting you in charge of dusting Mr. Pickle.”

Two days later, Harry caught him off-guard yet again.

“If I give you your own key to the front door, will we be required to have another heart-to-heart? Because I confess to find them exhausting.”

“Sod off,” Eggsy replied with a watery laugh.

He took the key.

“Hello Miss Daisy!” Merlin said with poorly-concealed delight as Daisy and Harry stepped off the metro. Harry quirked an eyebrow at him, and was subsequently ignored. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”

“Eggsy is running an errand, and Harry said I could come and see you,” Daisy said. She hugged Merlin’s legs. “I brought my bathing suit.”

“Well, then we’d best have you set up in the pool, hadn’t we?” Never mind the pool was in fact more appropriate for SCUBA training than entertaining a young child. She’d already explained, at length, that she and Eggsy had explored every public pool and lido over the summer months and she swore she was more than happy to risk drowning in order to go for a proper swim.

Harry smiled and followed gamely behind them as they made their way through the corridors.

“What is your lad up to?” Merlin asked with mild curiosity as they directed her to the changing room.

“He’s gone to speak to one of his old friends,” Harry said. From the look Merlin passed his way, he hadn’t quite managed to keep the disdain out of his voice. “Unfinished business, he said, now that Mr. Baker is out of the picture.” And would remain out of the picture, if Harry had a say in it.

“And you’re happy to let him disappear, what with his ribs still healing?”

“Hardly,” Harry said. He tapped the side of his glasses, half-listening to Eggsy make his way up the stairs to his friend’s flat. “I have a vested interest, after all.”

Merlin scoffed. “I’m sure you do.”

Daisy emerged and took a running jump in the pool with abandon. At the same time, Merlin apparently suffered a minor stroke thinking he’d have to dive in after her—brogues half off, already at sprint before she bobbed to the surface with a happy scream—and Eggsy walked into his friend’s apartment.

“Eggsy?” The other man sounded dreamy. Likely high. Probably a mixture of marijuana and possibly methamphetamines, though certain painkillers would have similar effects.

“Hey, Liam.” Eggsy sounded lost. Helpless, lost and impossibly vulnerable.

“Daisy Unwin, you get off that diving board!" A laugh, a splash, and then, "That's not what I meant!"

There was a long pause. “Is Daisy with you? ”

“She’s safe. ”

The words warmed Harry’s heart, even as it skittered about in his ribcage, his stomach churning as he half-listened to their conversation. He’d known, when Eggsy had tugged him aside that morning, that there might not be the happy ending Eggsy was anticipating when it came reuniting with his friend. Harry wanted it for him, despite his purely cursory knowledge of the details that had led to their last parting. He’d kept the opinion to himself, though, and taken Daisy with him when he’d left for HQ.

“Well that’s interesting,” Merlin said, pulling Harry from his thoughts. “Ratković’s burner is ringing.”

Harry glanced at Daisy, bobbing in the pool with a brilliant smile. He turned off the feed from the bug he’d planted on Eggsy, and turned Merlin’s way. “I’ll take it immediately.”

Eggsy wouldn’t’ve recognized Liam, if he hadn’t known him since they was kids. His skin was pockmarked with scars and small scabs, his hair limp and unwashed, and while he’d never been a thin lad, he’d probably put on three stone. It made Eggsy conscious of his own good-keeping, that he was doing such worlds better than Liam despite not having a flat to crash in before now.

“Where’s Jamal and Ryan at?” Eggsy asked.

“Hmm? At work, I think. Haven’t seen them round here, much.” Liam barely looked up from the telly, though the screen was black. “How’ve you been?”

“Good,” Eggsy said. “Surprising good.” He took a seat next to Liam on the couch. “You’re looking rough, mate.”

“Yeah. Well.” Liam shook his head and began picking at a loose scab on his face. When Eggsy tried to bat his hand back, Liam idly smacked him away. “Thought you was dead.” The words were so flat it made Eggsy’s stomach sink.

“Dean tried once or twice. Never managed, yet.”

Liam sniffed and glared at his knees, but said nothing more about it.

Eggsy hadn’t come for an apology. More because he wanted to see Jamal, Ryan and Liam, and assure himself they was doing all right. Jamal and Ryan hadn’t caused him too many worries; Jamal was wicked smart, and Ryan’d been taking care of himself since primary. Even Brandon could be relied upon to get himself out of any scrap he might land in. Eggsy never doubted they’d do something useful with their lives. But after he’d started with the ice, Liam had gone downhill so fucking quick it’d practically given Eggsy whiplash to watch. Once you started with that shite, you never really got off it. Cleaned up, maybe, but the happiest ending was you becoming an addict who didn’t do it no more. The want of it never went away.

“I understand,” Eggsy said. “I always did.”

Liam wouldn’t look at him. “You two still out there, then?”

“Nah. Found us a good thing, didn’t we? Bloke who knew m’dad decided we was worth his time and took us in.” Eggsy wasn’t sure when he’d decided that Harry meant it when he said there weren’t no string attached, but surprisingly he did. Maybe because Harry didn’t seem the type to enjoy anticipation. Eggsy’d seen him flip to the last few pages of his novels when only halfway through, and look up movies they watched together on his phone to find out the ending. If he meant for Eggsy to pay him something in return, he would’ve asked by now.

“Good for you,” Liam said without inflection. He looked around his mother’s apartment, as though seeing it for the first time. “Bit of a mess in here, isn’t it?”

“A bit, yeah,” Eggsy said. “Can I… help?” He still didn’t have much to his name, but Liam deserved more than this, especially since he’d come to it because of Eggsy.

“What, you want to clean my fucking flat? Nah, bruv. You should get outta here. Go back to Daisy. She’s gonna need a bottle soon, isn’t she?”

“She’s a bit too old for the bottle, mate.”

“Whatever, then.”

He turned his attention back to the broken telly—Eggsy spotted the frayed cords sticking out of the wall—and Eggsy stood to go.

He was halfway out of the estates when he ran into Jamal.

“Hey cuz,” Jamal wrapped hard arms around him in a hard tackle of a hug. “Good to see you!”

“And you. Looking right proper, you are.” He did. Nicer clothes than Eggsy’d managed to get ahold of, anyways, even before they’d run off. A valet uniform for somewhere. “I was checking up on Liam.”

Jamal’s face fell. “Won’t even open the door for me no more. I kept trying to get him clean.”

Eggsy frowned. “That’s all my fault, Jamal.”

“What’re you talking ‘bout, then?”

“His dealer stuck ice in his grass because Dean was after ‘im to find me. Thought he’d bend a bit easier if he had leverage, like.”

“Nah, bruv. That ain’t what happened. Liam was into the ice long before then.” Eggsy frowned. “You didn’t know?” Eggsy shook his head and Jamal’s face grew steely. He grabbed Eggsy’s shoulders and forced him to meet his eyes. “This one ain’t on you.”

“But he told Dean where Daise and I were staying. He wouldn’t’ve done that.”

Jamal shook his head, but looked unwilling to concede the battle. “Ryan gave Liam a good bollocksing over it. Thought he might’ve killed him, if I hadn’t dragged him off. Almost let him, when you disappeared. Thought the worst, didn’t I? Until Dean kept poking about looking for you.” Jamal frowned, as though suddenly realizing Dean might still be on the lookout. “Are you safe, Eggsy?”

“Yeah. Safe as houses.”

“Good. Then stay safe.” Jamal reached into Eggsy’s jacket to fish out his phone, not even blinking over the fancy make of it. “M’number hasn’t changed, right? You keep it, and call me when you’ve got some real time to spend with me and Ryan. And don’t you spend one more second thinking that Liam is any sort of friend to you.”

Shaken, Eggsy accepted his phone back with numb fingers, allowed Jamal another hard hug, and then watched him disappear off to work.

He barely remembered the return trip to Harry’s place. He tubed it, and walked a fair distance back to the mews houses, feeling numb and dizzy with the revelation.

When Eggsy got back to the house, the hallways were filled with the sound of Daisy’s laughter and quieter, female voice. Fuck, had Harry gotten a sitter? Or did he have a bird tucked away somewhere and hadn’t told Eggsy about it? He warily made his way to the sitting room, not sure what to expect.

“Eggsy!” Daisy cried the second she spotted him. She looked ready to jump up and greet him, but remembered at the last moment that there was a bird sitting behind her with fingers buried in Daisy’s hair. The mystery braider, Eggsy decided. “This is Lancelot.”

Eggsy blinked. All this time he’d been figuring Lancelot for an imaginary friend. “Hey,” he said, slowly. Then again, there was a bloke what worked with Harry named Galahad. He shouldn’t have been too surprised. It was some weird posh tradition, for all he knew.

“Hello,” ‘Lancelot’ said. “I work with Harry. He’s been called out of town on short notice, so I volunteered to watch Daisy until you came home.” Like Harry said, Eggsy didn’t have much of a poker face. She watched him carefully. “Daisy and I got takeaway. There’s some left in the kitchen, if you’d like.”

“Thanks,” Eggsy said, though he was superbly not hungry. The very thought of food made him ill. He plopped down into Harry’s chair anyway, watching.

Lancelot effortlessly tugged and twisted Daisy’s hair around into a neat-looking French braid. He leaned forward, eyes narrowed.

“What?” Lancelot asked.

“Trying to figure out where the witchcraft comes in,” he told her. “I tried watching a few tutorials and YouTube and couldn’t make it work.” His fingers always tangled in the knots Daisy’s hair collected like breathing, and he never muscled through when she started crying over it.

Lancelot shifted over on the couch and smiled invitingly. “Come on. If Daisy doesn’t mind, I’ll show you.”

Lancelot—“call me Roxy, please”—was a decent sort. Daisy obviously adored her, and she braided Daisy’s hair with the ease of someone who’d been dealing with unmanageable hair her whole life. Eventually, the siren call of a potential ending to the daily brush battle brought him over, and she showed him a few easy braids, her hands elegantly weaving his sister’s hair into something ordered. She sat all the way through Trolls, kissed Daisy goodnight and shook Eggsy’s hand firmly on her way out, handing over her number before she left in case he needed anything while Harry was out of town.

“Seems nice,” Eggsy said to Daisy as he carried her upstairs.

“Wait ‘til you meet Merlin,” Daisy yawned. “He’s a spy too.”

“Whatever you say, Daise.” He popped her into bed and bussed her cheek before demanding their nightly story.

Once she was done, he couldn’t help but ask, "You still like it here?" Because he weren’t going to stop asking, it seemed. Especially since it was starting to feel as though they'd be tucked away here for a while; surrounded by Harry's museum, and wanting for nothing. It was a heady, terrible thing to get used to, he decided.

"Mmhmm." Daisy reached out and took his hand, folding her tiny fingers over his own. "Do you?"

"I do," he admitted. "Wasn't sure about it at first." He glanced at the rucksack, tucked in next to the door. Daisy's old clothes were still inside, but he knew if he were to peek into the drawers in the antique dresser next to the bed he'd see more clothes than she'd ever owned in her life. Same as the ones stuffed full of clothing in his size, though he’d been hesitant to try any of it on, at first. It felt good, though, to wear something different every day. Harry had even deigned to buy some proper Adidas shit, though it obviously pained him. Bit of a dandy, their Harry. But Eggsy was quickly discovering how little he minded. "Weirdest tailor I ever met."

"Spy," Daisy corrected. Eggsy grinned and shook his head. She rolled over to bury her face in her pillow, which she only did when profoundly irritated and overly tired. They shouldn’t’ve let her stay up past her bedtime. "Really. Study’s got a funny wall,” she told him sleepily. “I broke the lock.”

Eggsy brushed a few loose hairs already escaping the braid back out of her face and pulled the blanket up, then stepped out into the hallway to think.

He wandered down the hallway, touching walls and counting doors, until he came to Harry’s study. True to her word, he could tell she’d used the rake pick. The lock was completely buggered. He took a moment to feel guilty about it—had Harry been angry? Had she been afraid?—and reluctantly pushed the door open. A funny wall, she said. Daisy had a good eye for that sort of shit.

Last winter had been hard for them. It was a thousand times harder to nick someone’s wallet while they was bundled up in ten layers of thick cloth. Harder to spot the right sort of target, too… he’d grabbed a bird’s wallet, at one point, thinking it was designer and found out it was a cheap knockoff with a single tenner inside and an ID that pointed them back to the council estates. He’d felt sick with guilt, and carried Daisy all the way to drop it off through the mark’s mail slot. It’d been one instance of many where they’d walked away empty-handed. Options had been running out, and eventually they’d turned to squatting.

There were a lot of empty houses across London. Nice ones. Still furnished, even. And it didn’t take much of an eye to spot which ones had poor security and easy access. He’d taught her to break locks and then swept her into house after house, moving ahead of coppers looking to clear out vagrants. It’d been a long winter; a lot of the places didn’t have heat, and they’d huddled together in small corners wrapped up in each other and whatever else they could find. To keep her hands busy—moving fingers didn’t freeze as quickly—he taught her about locks. Everything he knew. And they’d searched the fancier houses for hidden safes. He was a fair hand at safecracking. Not the best, but there was a few tricks that usually took care of things. They’d made decent bob off that trick, a time or two.

Not that he wanted to break into Harry’s shit.

Not at all.

But he walked into the study anyway.

“Fuck me,” he muttered, looking at the walls plastered with covers of the Sun. It wasn’t even like there was a theme to them. ‘Judge and the Rent Boy.’ ‘No-Nobby Bobby Keeps Jobby.’ “‘Brad Pitt Ate My Sandwich,’” Eggsy read aloud. “What a bastard.” He chuckled. It was nice to know Harry wasn’t perfect. Mr. Pickle should’ve been the first clue, of course, but this really did make it obvious he was just as mad as your average rich bloke.

The false wall was to the right of the desk, if you were sitting down. It was good quality work. No obvious way to open it. Most hidden safes were concealed behind ostentatious paintings or obviously fake shelving. This one was top drawer. He dropped into Harry’s chair and studied it. It was for Daisy, he told himself. Make sure there wasn’t anything strange. Clearing the air with Harry had taken away the horrible feeling of simmering anxiety that’d built up since walking through the door and seeing the luxuries Harry enjoyed as a daily habit, but that didn’t mean he was going to be stupid about things.

He rested his chin on his palm and peered at the wall. His elbow shifted on the desk and he felt it catch. Looking down, he grinned when he saw the false panel in the veneer.

“Very clever, Harry,” he told the room. He flicked it up to find a small button hidden in the desk. He pursed his lips, but the debate really only lasted a moment before he pushed it.

The wall slid up.

His mouth dropped.

It wasn’t a safe.

There was about five guns—pistols, mostly, but one sniper rifle strung across the top—three pairs of shoes, two umbrellas, a couple of watches, a whole host of smaller gizmos, and two pairs of glasses. He owed Daisy an apology for accusing her of telling tales; Harry was, in fact, a fucking spy.

He stood and moved to study the contents. The guns he weren’t interested in. The lighters he took a closer look at, remembering Daisy’s stories about explosives. But what really caught his attention were the glasses. The frames were too thick, and the logo on the arm was the same one as the one on dad’s medal. The same as the pair that Harry never seemed to be without.

He picked a pair up and tucked them on.

Sure ‘nuff… they weren’t prescription.

What they were doing, though, was giving him a look-see at what someone else was seeing. A small restaurant with dark blue walls and fancy fabric chairs, a glass of wine, and a plate of mussels. Whoever was filming looked up as the door opened and an ugly blighter walked in, a small satchel held tight in his beefy hand. A few lines of text ran across the bottom of the miniaturized screen: Target identified as Goran Ratković, aka. The Butcher of Belgrade. Was someone having a chuckle? Who the fuck actually called themselves the fucking Butcher of Belgrade? What did a bloke have to do to earn the name 'Butcher of Belgrade'? The baker of Belgrade would be terrifying enough, thank you.

And suddenly there was a very irritated, very Scottish, voice in his ear.

“Target confirmed. Who’s patched into the feed?”

Eggsy’s eyes widened. “Umm.”

“You must be the brother. Be a good lad and keep your fucking gob shut.”

Eggsy’s mouth screwed shut, biting back the automatic urge to tell the anonymous Scot to go fuck himself. He didn’t fancy ending up dead in the Thames.

“Mr. Ratković,” Harry’s voice filled his ear, utterly unconcerned that Eggsy had decided to eavesdrop. Or faking it well, anyway. “Thank you for agreeing to meet me. And such a lovely venue.”

“It’s shit,” Ratković responded. “Overrated shit.”

A waitress who’d been walking towards the table turned and walked the other way.

“I think the mussels are lovely.” Harry picked up the glass of white wine and swished it about in the glass before taking a sip. “You have my ammunition?”

“Yes. All of it.” He dropped the hard-sided bag on the floor next to Harry’s feet. Harry leaned over and unzipped the top to inspect the contents.

Bullets. A few hundred of them, easy. Not ones Eggsy recognized, though he’d guess around 9mm, if he had to. Dean’d wanted to deal in guns, as well as drugs. Thought there’d be more money in it, anyway. Eggsy and Daisy had gotten out before he’d made good on his business plans.

“Excellent. And the detonator?”

The bloke handed over a small device, about the size of a smart phone. A host of schematics—most of which Eggsy couldn’t read—appeared before him as the glasses, or whoever was controlling them, did some sort of inspection of it.

“Lovely. Now, I don’t imagine you’re the one who invented such marvellous offerings, were you? As I understand, you’re in production instead of planning.”

“What’s it to you?”

“I’m interested in the industrious mind who came up with these. See what else they might be able to offer me.”

“I’ve got more from the same supplier,” Ratković told him.

“I would be interested in seeing what you have, certainly. But I’d be even happier to send along a few specs and have something custom-made.” Harry turned his full attention on Ratković, and Eggsy could easily imagine the single-minded intensity to his glare. “Could you put me in contact with them directly?”

Ratković hemmed over it a moment, his nose twitching until he rubbed at it with a meaty finger. “He won’t take new clients without proper vetting.”

“Surely men in our business don’t require written references,” Harry said, dry. “Or should I make a point of saving his bloody life as well?”

“Don’t fuck with me,” Ratković muttered. “I know what you did well enough. If I set up a meeting, we’re square. No more favours.”

“Fine by me,” Harry replied. “You’ll call him now?”

“No. He contacts me when he has something new. As soon as he does, I’ll give him your number.”

“Excellent. I’ll await his call then.” Harry took another sip of wine. “Are you sure I can’t tempt you with something from the menu?”

Ratković shook his head and pulled his portly body up out of his chair. Without a word of goodbye, he walked back out of the restaurant.

“Put a standing termination order out, to be executed as soon as we make contact with the target,” Harry said. “Destroy the entirety of his apartment contents, as well. We can’t let the tech he has get out.”

Harry delivered the kill order so casually Eggsy almost missed it for what it was. Instead of finishing his meal, Harry placed a few bills on the table—euros instead of pounds—and stood, picking up the satchel and taking it along with him. “Merlin, would you give me a moment?”

“Certainly,” the Scot—Merlin—replied. Merlin. Of course. What else had Eggsy dismissed as fantasy?

Harry stepped out the door, and looked up and down the street. “Geneva. Have you ever been outside of London, Eggsy?”

It took Eggsy a second to reply, and he wasn’t even sure Harry’d be able to hear him when he did. “Not much chance to travel, but spent some time in Devon, during basic training.”

The glasses seemed to work as a microphone, though, and Harry hummed in acknowledgement. “Ah, yes. Your time with the marines.” Eggsy was going to stop being surprised at how much Harry knew about him, now. At first he’d thought it was only Daisy getting over-excited. Guess now he knew better. “But not outside of England.”

“Nah.”

Harry seemed to make a point of looking up at the beautiful buildings around him. It was late night. The sky was clear. The moon out. The film was capturing every small detail, and it was all beautiful.

“Wanna tell me what this bloke Ratković has done to earn himself a bullet through the skull?”

Harry paused to study a comparatively boring grey brick wall. There weren’t writing or graffiti on it or anything, only grey stone that looked almost white in the light cast by the nearby lamp. “He’s in possession of a number of very dangerous weapons created and used by my organization, and has been selling them off to unscrupulous buyers, my alias included, and will continue to do so if he’s not stopped.”

Eggsy frowned. “And your organization needs specialty weapons, does it?”

“Yes. Kingsman does what it can to avoid their use, but sometimes violence is called for.”

Kingsman. Eggsy wrapped his lips around the word. He frowned in sudden thought. “My father—?”

“Yes,” Harry interrupted. “Died saving my life, and the lives of two others, including Merlin. He was an amazing man, Eggsy. And I find myself thinking of him frequently, and what was sacrificed to make sure I lived.” Harry paused. “I am trying to make up for it.”

“I think you done a good job,” Eggsy told him.

“Not hardly so much as I ought to have,” Harry replied. “Are you planning to be gone when I get home?” he asked, suddenly. “Pack up Daisy and disappear?”

“Why would I?” Eggsy asked.

“I’ve been misleading about my profession,” Harry stated. He looked down at his shoes before seemingly remembering himself and turning his gaze back up at the city around him. “And I wouldn’t consider tonight’s transaction to be particularly flattering example of the work we do.”

“Daisy told me you was a spy the first day I came here,” Eggsy shrugged. “My fault for not believing her, innit? She tells stories, she doesn’t tell lies.” He sat forward in his seat. “This baddie you’re trying to track down, then. He’s one of you, ain’t he? Would have to be, to be selling off your shit to this Ratković bloke.”

“It does seem so,” Harry said stiffly. A sore point, then. Eggsy could appreciate that, especially after today.

“Do Daisy and I have to worry? If there’s someone working directly with you what’s betrayed you?”

“I will do the utmost to ensure that you two are not dragged into this more than strictly necessary,” Harry said.

“Well then,” Eggsy shrugged. “Don’t see what the problem is.”

“You and your sister have been surprisingly nonplussed about this whole affair,” Harry commented.

“Harry,” Eggsy said, trying to keep his voice level as possible. “A rich bloke showed up, swept us off our feet, offered us a place to live, fixed up an adoption making it all legal for me to keep her, and…” And Eggsy was a bit in love with him. Best to leave that part quiet, though. “You being James Bond isn’t the most unbelievable thing about this.”

Harry sniffed, but Eggsy could tell he was holding back a laugh. He continued his walk for another half hour, pausing whenever something caught Eggsy’s interest and gamely taking a closer look, until the Scottish bloke came back on the line.

“Your extraction is ready when you are, Arthur,” he said. He paused. “Another candidate for the Squire Initiative?” Arthur. Merlin. Lancelot. Galahad. Didn’t take a genius to figure out where Harry stood, did it?

“Perhaps we’ll discuss it when I return home tomorrow.”

Eggsy grinned.

Eggsy met Merlin the next morning.

Tosser almost gave him a heart attack when he walked down the stairs and found him sitting at Harry’s dining room table, sipping a cup of coffee from an excessively large cardboard cup and poking away on a tablet that looked suspiciously like a clipboard. He’d collected Harry’s paper from the porch, which lay under a large envelope on the table before him.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Eggsy said, hand flying to his fucking heart. Did Kingsman train people specifically to sneak up on unsuspecting house guests? “Who the fuck are you, then?”

“Eggsy?” Daisy called from upstairs. She thundered down the stairs, running into the dining room before Eggsy could stop her. “Merlin! Did you come for breakfast?”

“Might have put some Chelsea buns in the kitchen,” Merlin said mildly, studying Eggsy with a frankly terrifying gaze, as though he was taking his measure and judging him all in the same heartbeat. The scrutiny put Eggsy on the defensive, but it was hard to stay that way when Daisy shoved a sticky pastry into his hand.

Eggsy let Daisy push him into a seat at the table, eyes still fixed on the bloke. Despite having Harry’s confidence from the night before, he couldn’t say for certain the man wasn’t here to kill them. Eggsy scanned the table. No cutlery, but he could always grab one of the decorative plates off the wall and throw it if it came to it. Upend the table on top of him, jump on it a few times to wind him. Grab Daisy under the arms. Fuck, their bag was upstairs. They’d have to go without, and maybe come back for it when the house was empty.

Even as he planned their escape, Merlin kept an eye on him, head tilting in mild interest, as though he knew exactly what Eggsy was thinking.

He took a long sip of coffee. “I have some forms for you to sign.”

“Come again?” Eggsy asked.

Merlin gestured to the envelope on the table. “Forms. Kingsman takes privacy seriously, and we need to know you’ll do the same.”

Eggsy tugged the envelope towards him and pulled out a stack of papers as thick as his forearm. “You think a piece of paper will stop people from talking?” Despite the words, he began sifting through it. A lot of legalese, but straightforward enough for him to parse it down to ‘don’t say a fucking word or it’s your ass.’

“It’s worked in the past,” Merlin said when Eggsy began scouting around for a pen. He handed him one and watched closely as Eggsy signed his name. “We have ways of making sure of it.”

Eggsy glanced at Daisy, happily munching away on her treat. “Not sure I want to know.”

“Harry amended Daisy’s version to cover her in case she slipped to you. Which I understood she did within five hours of your being released from hospital.”

“That’s about the gist of it, yeah.” Eggsy flipped to the next document. “Daisy, did you sign all of this?”

“Harry explained it all to me,” Daisy said with a shrug. “I put a sticker on mine.”

“You wrote your name out very beautifully,” Merlin assured her.

Reluctantly won over—he really was a sucker for anyone who complimented Daisy—Eggsy meandered through the remaining paperwork. There was something called a Domestic Agreement Form towards the back of the package. It listed all the things he might prepare for while living with a Kingsman, including a point about Kingsman’s lack of liability should he be killed as a result of an agent’s job, but ultimately read more like a marriage contract than a roommate’s agreement and didn’t bear thinking about too closely. He signed his name to everything and tucked it all neatly back in the envelope. Felt a bit like Faust, putting his name all over shite like that, but at least he wouldn’t have to worry about a bullet through the back of the head as long as he kept his fucking mouth shut.

“Does this mean Eggsy can come see the pool?” Daisy demanded.

Harry returned after Daisy went to bed that evening; she’d rallied, calling for Eggsy to let her stay up until he got home, but she’d been fast asleep against Eggsy’s side an hour before the other man finally walked through the door. He seemed unsurprised to find Eggsy seated in the front room, and looked like a bloke being lead straight to the gallows when he stepped inside.

“I don’t get you,” Eggsy said. He’d only turned on the small reading lamp next to the chesterfield, and while it cast the rest of the room in calm amber light, it didn’t make Harry’s inscrutable expression easier to read.

“In what way?” Harry asked.

“Doesn’t seem very secure, taking us in when you’ve got this whole—” Eggsy waved at the bespoke suit, the brolly still tucked into his arm, the haunted look in his eyes—“secret agent thing going on. You had to know one of us would find the shite in your study.”

“I understood the risks the first night Miss Unwin spent in my care. Which, coincidentally, was the night she broke into my study.” Harry’s posture was picture-perfect; unyielding and unreadable. Everything tucked away and hidden from view in a way it hadn’t been when he’d been traipsing through Geneva, looking at anything and everything that’d caught Eggsy’s fancy. “She accompanied me to our headquarters, actually, when you were still unconscious. Wasn’t much else for it, when I was called away on assignment.”

“And yet you’re willing to let us walk out the door, hoping we won’t tell no one?”

“I trust your discretion.”

“Why?! ” Eggsy jumped to his feet, his feet carrying him from one side of the room to the other in violent, agitated movements that felt to him like he was an animal pacing back and forth in a zoo somewhere, waiting for someone to stick a hand into his cage. “From the beginning, you’ve decided we won’t fuck you over. Won’t take your shit. Won’t rob you blind. I want to know why. It’s not,” he growled, glaring at Harry, whose open mouth snapped shut before he could get much as a single word out, “because you trusted my Dad. It don’t work that way.”

“Perhaps I wanted to trust you, rather than knew I could,” Harry admitted. Eggsy paused. “I have very little faith in people. Humanity in general, seems to me, to be comprised of self-serving bastards looking to fuck over the world around them. But you’ve spent the last six years caring for your sister, and doing the very best you can to make sure she is happy and healthy, despite your circumstances. I see potential in you. Someone who wants to make a difference and do something good with his life but lacks the resources to make it happen. And you’ve passed those qualities onto Daisy, as well. And I suppose I let that potential carry me through all the contempt I have for the rest of the world.”

Eggsy stared at him, heart hammering hard in his chest. Harry met his eyes, his expression guarded and prepared for the worst.

Fuck it all.

Eggsy crossed the room, moving into Harry's space until their chests were a hairsbreadth apart and he could imagine the furious beating of Harry’s heart echoing his own. And that's where he stopped, suddenly unable to follow through with more than as piercing a gaze as he could muster. Harry looked at him, waiting, eye locked on Eggsy in tense anticipation.

Eggsy's fingers flitted across the fine fabric of his suit, the barest touch confirming it felt as soft as it looked. Harry's gaze dropped to Eggsy's hands, his breath coming in deliberately measured puffs of breath that brushed across the fine hair dusting Eggsy's knuckles.

Eggsy caught his gaze once more. “You can’t say that shit to me Harry,” he whispered, “I’m not good.”

“You are,” Harry said, his breath brushing against Eggsy’s lips. “I am so fed up with hearing you and Daisy both tell me how fucking rotten you are.”

He pressed down, finally kissing Eggsy as though he was dying and Eggsy was his last snog, his desperation and want burrowing into Eggsy’s skin. His fingers pressed into Eggsy’s hips hard enough Eggsy was sure he’d have bruises the next day, and he relished the idea. Harry’s fingers rose to trail across Eggsy’s neck, sneaking up to rest against his cheek for only a moment before tilting his head and sweeping his tongue into Eggsy’s mouth. It was the barest brush against Eggsy’s lips before Eggsy opened for him, wanting more. Wanting it all.

Eggsy wrapped his hands around Harry’s tie and began pulling on it, stumbling over the unfamiliar trinity knot until Harry’s fingers tangled with his and helped him pick it apart. Eggsy pulled it away from his neck and pulled back his collar to mouth at the skin beneath, the smell of airplane air and Harry’s cologne half-hiding the scent of Harry’s neck. Harry shuddered, his hands creeping under Eggsy’s shirt to palm the flat planes of his stomach.

“This isn’t… fuck… what I was expecting when I came home this evening.”

“Wanted to check on your silverware, did you?” Eggsy demanded, biting down on an apparently very sensitive spot and sending a full shiver across Harry’s body.

“It never even crossed my mind,” Harry assured him.

“Fuck.” Eggsy moved from his neck to kiss him again. He slipped his fingers down the line of buttons of Harry's shirt, undoing them all with nimble precision, barely paying mind to them as they opened and revealed Harry's chest. There was a scar beneath his collarbone, a gauge the size of a cigar butt and puckered deep into his skin. Eggsy pressed his mouth to it, earning himself a hissed-out breath and Harry's hand in his hair. "Bullet?"

".45 calibre, yes," Harry gasped. Eggsy's hand trailed down to rest on his crotch. "Eggsy, I—fuck, will you—"

"I will," Eggsy agreed with a laugh, though at the sight of the small, pleased smile that crossed Harry’s face, he couldn’t help pressing upwards to capture his lips once more.

"You're so fucking gorgeous," Harry told him, his lips moving against Eggsy's own so the words slid in a touch between them.

Eggsy reluctantly pulled back, though not without another sweep of his tongue against Harry’s lips. "I should go check on Daise," he whispered. Harry looked disappointed, but nodded in understanding. "Then, maybe, I join you in your room?"

Harry hemmed and hawed for a moment, though even his blustering couldn’t mind the pleased gleam in his eyes. "I don't know... my bed is barely big enough for me. I'm afraid we'll have to sleep quite close to one another."

"Bullshit," Eggsy said firmly. "You sleep in a proper king bed, you fucking hedon. You just want to hold me close because you're a sappy bugger."

Harry couldn't quite hide his fond smile, and Eggsy had to kiss it one more time before legging it upstairs to make sure Daisy was still asleep.

"Eggsy? Did Harry get home?" Daisy asked sleepily when he tucked up the blankets closer around her.

"Yeah, Daise.” Eggsy ducked down next to her to kiss her forehead. I'm going to sleep in his room tonight. Make sure he don't wander off nowhere."

"Good idea." She was asleep again before he could respond. Smiling fondly, Eggsy tucked the comforter up around her shoulders and then headed next door to join Harry in bed. Predictably, he was waiting for Eggsy, sitting up in bed, already in fancy-looking silk pajamas and reading from a first edition copy of Pygmalion.

"You've grown accustomed to my face," Eggsy accused, slipping in next to him.

"Yes. Well. Don't let it go to your head."

Eggsy laughed and tucked himself into Harry's side.

Bors had taken up one of the empty offices underground at the estate, permanently wired into Ops and performing whatever functions they demanded of him, given his limited mobility as his leg healed. Roxy liked to drop in on him every so often and remind him that, despite his current limitations, he was still very much a valued member of the table. And well missed. Bors had come aboard shortly after Roxy, when his predecessor had been discovered less a head in his suite at HQ shortly after she’d taken care of Valentine, and was one of the very few people at the table whose company Roxy could stand in a social capacity.

Like many of the members of the table, Bors came from a wealthy background. Unlike the rest of them, however, his family had fallen on hard circumstances after his father had been exposed as one of Valentine’s co-conspirators. Bors had always insisted that he’d had nothing to do with it, and given the continued integrity of his skull, she’d been willing to believe it. He’d had a few years of living in significantly reduced means before Galahad had proposed him as a member of the table. Galahad never let him forget that he’d still be there, if it weren’t for his charity.

“Wotcher, Bors,” she said, sliding into his room with a tea tray.

“Wotcher, Lancelot.” He smiled shyly her way and gestured to his desk. The screen that took up most of the wall opposite him, the live feed from several agents, as well as the HQ grounds, was a chaotic collection of quick movement, and Roxy watched as he reorganized a few of the windows before sitting down across from her. “How’s the assignment going?”

“Slowly,” Roxy admitted. “Until I pass the language proficiency, I’ll be working out of HQ.” To say she was motivated to get to Sweden was an understatement.

“It’ll be nice to have you about,” Bors told her honestly. He poured a cup of tea, dabbing in a little lemon juice and a fingernail-sized scoop of sugar before passing it over. She smiled and thanked him. “I feel like such a useless git right now. If I hadn’t stuffed things up in Glavičice I wouldn’t be stuck here running missions for other agents.”

“I know your talents are appreciated here. Merlin’s always talking about how nice it is to have you about.”

“Well,” Bors shrugged and looked down, though she doubted she was imagining the pleased smile curling up the corners of his mouth. “It’s been good at getting perspective. The team in ops does significantly more than I thought they did. I almost feel as though everyone should have a turn with them.”

“I’m sure Arthur and Merlin would agree with you,” Roxy told him. “If you wanted to suggest it at the next meeting, I’d support it as an initiative.”

“Thank you, Lancelot.” His expression was all together far too earnest. It actually reminded Roxy a bit of Daisy’s brother; Bors’ eyes were a bit more guileless, his manner quieter, but they shared a pleasant sort of quiet sincerity that she’d always enjoyed when in company. “Do you really think I’m talented?”

Before Roxy could respond, the door banged open and Galahad marched into the room. Shocking how the man could never manage to simply walk anywhere; the very mechanics of locomotion seemed to scream for his particular style of melodrama.

His mouth was open before he even noted Roxy’s presence. “I need another watch, Bors. Merlin’s been all over my ass and…” He paused, eyeing Roxy. And without any prompting, a knowing smirk tugged at his mouth. “I didn’t realize you were entertaining company. My apologies.”

Roxy maintained eye contact, face a mask of perfect neutrality. “I thought he’d informed you that you weren’t to receive another, considering how easily they seem to slip off your wrist.”

Galahad snorted. “Bors will help me out, won’t you Bors? Haven’t disappointed me yet.”

Galahad, Roxy thought privately, a chilling glimpse into what might have been if Charlie Hesketh had managed to keep his gob shut during the train test.

“It is easier for me to get into our inventory stores right now,” Bors told Roxy quietly. “And I don’t mind helping.” He stood and crossed the room, back to his desk, to begin fishing about in his drawers.

“If Merlin finds our you’re the one who keeps supplying him…”

“But he won’t, will he?” Galahad leaned over Roxy’s chair, giving her a heady whiff of his expensive cologne. It might’ve been pleasant, had he not seen fit to bathe in it. He was an unfortunately handsome man, and used to getting his way. Neither of which was a characteristic Roxy found particularly endearing. “You wouldn’t want Merlin and Bors to be at odds, surely. If Merlin stops requesting his help, he’ll end up cutting fabric on Savile Row and getting fat and useless like the others who work out of the shoppe.”

“I’m fairly confident that Andrew could give you a run for your money,” Roxy told him, voice level and even. She barely spared him a glance in her peripheral vision. “He was former SAS. And you were former polo champ, weren’t you? Strikes me that your horse did most of the work on your behalf.”

Galahad’s smile sharpened, becoming nastier. “I’ve always treated my rides well, Lancelot. Perhaps I could give you a first-hand demonstration?”

“Here,” Bors said, half-throwing a watch at him. “Take it. Don’t tell Merlin I’m the one giving them to you.”

“Oh, don’t you worry, Bors,” Galahad said. He swung an arm around Bors and leaned heavily into him, forcing him to catch himself on the back of his chair when his bad leg buckled in response. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” As he strapped it onto his wrist—the skin still bright red from the rash he’d ‘acquired’ the last time he’d found himself a replacement—his attention traveled over Bors’ monitors. His eyes narrowed when he spotted Arthur walking through the front doors of HQ, Eggsy and Daisy trailing after him. Eggsy looked around, wide-eyed and reluctantly impressed, while Daisy chattered at his side, gripping his hand and tugging him about. “Another one? Are we going to become an Approved Premises, then? Let whoever wants to waltz through the door set up shoppe and stay a while?”

“Maybe they can have your room,” Bors muttered behind them.

Lancelot smiled into her tea cup, watching with mild interest as Arthur led the Unwins through the corridors to his office. She noticed Arthur staying quite close to Eggsy’s side, his fingers occasionally brushing up against Eggsy’s. It was sweet. And much less terrifying than Harry’s swerve into parental affection.

“If you don’t mind, I think Bors and I are going to finish our tea,” Roxy said.

“Whatever you like, Lancelot. If you do get sick of his company, find me out, won’t you?” He winked and slid out of the room, closing the door behind him with enough force to shake the walls.

“Prick,” Bors muttered.

“If you don’t like him, why are you helping him?”

“Seems like less work than not helping him,” Bors laughed, self-deprecating. He pushed his glasses up his nose; one of the few pairs in Kingsman that had corrective lenses, on top of the typical hardware. Bors was quiet; one might even call him nebbish, if feeling ungenerous. He was an all right bloke, but most of his success in his trials had been because he was smart, rather than the brute force some of his fellow candidates had tried to employ. She’d rather liked him from the get-go. “But he shouldn’t speak to you that way. You’re a member of the table, not just some random woman he’s trying to pull.”

“True gentlemen are hard to come by,” Roxy said. “Even in Kingsman, it seems, though I’ll admit we have more than our fair share.”

“I’m a gentleman,” Bors said. “Or, I could be. Would be. If you would join me for dinner sometime?”

Roxy smiled, trying to come across as conciliatory instead of irritated. “Thank you for the invitation, Bors, but I’m not particularly interested in crossing my social life with my professional one.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’re not,” Bors said, turning a half-hearted glare at his teacup. “Not with me, anyway. I understand.”

Privately, she doubted it, but she chose to sip her tea and nod blandly instead of trying to disabuse him of the notion.

Within seconds of being shot down, Bors was back up out of his seat, muttering at length about how busy he was and how he needed to be getting back to work. Roxy took it as the invitation it was and showed herself out.

Harry quickly and dangerously grew accustomed to waking up with another body in his bed.

Eggsy, he found, slept lightly, and the slightest twitch would have him snap to attention. It wasn’t all together a happy complement to Harry’s own habits, which frequently found him waking throughout the night. Still, though, the pleasantness of falling asleep with his arms wrapped around Eggsy’s shoulders, Eggsy’s nose burrowed into his neck, made up for the restless sleep.

It was all together unexpected, however, to wake suddenly as a substantial weight dropped down against his chest.

He jolted away, half throwing Daisy off him and barely managing to catch her from toppling off the side of the bed. Daisy giggled with delight, fisting her hands in the front of Harry’s pajamas to keep herself steady.

“Daisy,” Harry slurred through a sleep-heavy throat. “You’re up early.”

“Eggsy and I have a surprise for you,” Daisy told him. “Come on. Eggsy’s got breakfast ready, and then we’re going out.”

Harry blinked through the blanket of recently-interrupted sleep; stunned and struggling to put a coherent thought together with another. He blinked owlishly at Daisy, her hands still wrapped up in his pajama shirt, until she laughed at him again and pulled herself away.

“Come along, Harry. Eggsy’s almost done with the fry up.”

She darted out of the room as quickly as she’d come, though with less violence done to his person. Harry lay back, squinting at the ceiling, blinking his way slowly to consciousness.

It was a full five minutes later when Eggsy appeared in the doorway with a cup of coffee in his hand, carefully cradled in one of Harry’s good saucers.

“Morning, love,” Eggsy said. He crossed the room and settled the coffee on Harry’s bedside table. “Sleep well?” Harry murmured, likely incoherent, but Eggsy smiled anyway in response. He pressed a kiss to Harry’s mouth—a barely-there grace of his lips—before drawing back and rubbing his nose up alongside Harry’s. “When you’re ready.”

“Five minutes,” Harry murmured.

Five minutes edged into ten before Harry was finally able to lever himself out of bed and grab up his housecoat. He carried his coffee as carefully as he could, drinking half of it before he reached the top of the stairs, and made his way down to the dining room. He rarely had the opportunity to enjoy a full English breakfast, and the sight of it warmed something in him that reminded him of cold winter mornings with his family, a feeling that pressed even tighter against his breast when Daisy grinned at him, mouth half-full of tomato and teeth stained with red.

Eggsy topped up his cup without a word and settled himself to Harry’s right. They both watched him, expectantly, until the paranoia got to be too much and Harry narrowed his eyes Daisy’s way.

“If I’m the butt of a joke, Miss Unwin, you must tell me at once so I may brace my ego for it.”

Daisy rolled her eyes. It was terribly unbecoming, and Harry found himself to be equally terribly fond of it. “Look under your plate, Harry.”

He looked down at his plate, and saw three slim tickets peaking out from beneath. He pulled them out to examine them.

“The museum’s got their butterfly exhibit back,” Daisy said, barely able to contain herself. “We got tickets!”

“They’re open,” Eggsy said, more sedately. His gaze was pointedly focused on his own breakfast, trying to convey how little he cared about Harry’s good opinion. His eyes—darting to the tickets in his hand—betrayed how feeble the masquerade to be. “We can go any time. But if you’re free today, what with your spy shit and all, we thought we could make an afternoon of it.”

“Lovely," Harry decided, scooping a healthy heap of beans onto his toast. "I don't have anything pressing at the moment."

Eggsy looked at him. "What, not off to save the world or nothing?"

"What you'll quickly discover, Eggsy, is that two thirds of all espionage involves waiting about for someone else to fuck up. An afternoon at the museum sounds utterly delightful."

Daisy wore a sunny yellow dress, tablet clutched tight in her hand as she wandered throughout the pavilion. Harry's own feed mirrored the one from her tablet, automatically updated through the Kingsman’s servers and listing the names of the specimens around them and a piece of trivia or two.

Daisy stooped to offer her hand out for a particularly marvellous Attacus atlas, waiting with more patience than one might expect from a young lady of her age. She grinned widely when it flitted off its perch and came to rest on her fingers. Once the moth took off, she tapped something into her tablet; an update to the lepidopterian scavenger hunt Merlin had uploaded prior to their arrival.

"We talk about this kind of shit, you know," Eggsy told him as they wandered by a cluster of Caligo martia happily perusing a tray of orange slices. "Finding things you'd like. Butterflies seemed the safest. Also like I wouldn't have to find myself a suit or nothing."

"Oh? Do tell, what was the option that involved you in a suit? I'd happily provide one for your convenience."

Eggsy rolled his eyes. "No doubt you would. Daisy keeps insisting posh shits like you like the opera, but I seen your vinyls. You're all for disco shit like Elton John and ABBA."

"Dismissing Sir Elton and ABBA as simply 'disco shit' is a grave disservice to the musical stylings of some of the greatest artists of their time." Eggsy looked on the verge of laughter, and Harry continued. “Besides, the former is no longer touring and the latter have been broken up since 1982, and since the death of Ola Brunkert have really failed to recover their zing."

"I s'pose the butterflies'll have to do, then."

"It is a pleasant want to spend an afternoon," Harry agreed.

"Want me to start humming out some 'Waterloo' for you?"

"Do shut up, Eggsy."

Laughing, Eggsy tucked his hand into the crook of Harry's elbow and dragged him after Daisy.

Once they’d explored the area in its entirety, Daisy convinced them to get gelato at a nearby café, quite intently studying the excessive notes she’d taken in her attempts to fully catalogue every species. After uniformly declaring Greta oto to be her favourite, she smeared a blob of half-melted chocolate gelato on her tablet when she lunged across the table trying to get a taste of Eggsy’s single scoop of praline. Her elbow went wild, knocked up against Harry’s wrist and sent his own dollop of white chocolate and rose water tumbling into his lap. Mortified, Daisy flung a dozen napkins at Harry while Eggsy tried not to choke on the gelato he’d inhaled in his attempt to keep Daisy from getting her hands on his last spoonful and Harry desperately tried not to asphyxiate on his own laughter.

The call came in that evening, when Eggsy was helping Daisy get herself ready for bed: Ratković had finally come through. Harry tucked himself away in his study, though he didn’t bother to bar the door this time. Daisy was already in bed, and Eggsy would know enough not to stumble in if the door was closed.

“Is this ‘the bloke who saved Ratković’s life?” Whoever it was had deemed it necessary to use a voice scrambler. Properly ingrained paranoia. Definitely an agent, then.

Harry activated his own before replying. “It is. I understand you can help me with some specialized equipment?”

“I might do,” the man replied. Harry’s glasses began tracing the call, though he was unsurprised to find it bounced around VOIP proxies across the world. Fortunately, Merlin’s bots were more powerful than a handful of proxies, even if they did end up belonging to Kingsman. “What are you looking for?”

“I have a preference for KWA TT-33 model Tokarevs,” Harry said. “And at present, I’m finding they leave too much in the way of ballistic evidence. Since you were able to put bullets that don’t leave a trace in Ratković’s hands, I thought you might be able to assist me with an actual gun.”

There was a brief pause. They had such guns at Kingsman; not many of them—too expensive to create, too hard to maintain. They could usually only manage a few rounds before the friction bullet casings left inside the barrel created an identifiable signature. But they existed, and were available to anyone in Kingsman looking to acquire one. And each of them was currently in possession of a tracking device which, should Harry fail to apprehend the traitor himself, would point him and Merlin in the right direction.

“If I was able to do this for you, how much would you be willing to pay?”

“I have sufficient resources,” Harry said. Silently, he wondered about the asking price for selling out Kingsman.

“For what you’re looking for, it will be a half million per gun.”

“Sterling?”

“Yes. Cash.”

Harry nodded. “Done. When can I get it?”

“Give me a week. I’ll text you the address where you can pick it up. Are you still in Geneva?”

“I’m flexible.”

“Make it London, then. One week. And bring the full payment up front.”

The other hung up before Harry had the chance to do so. Harry considered the burner phone and then tapped the side of his glasses. “Merlin?”

“I traced the signal as far as London before it began running afoul of our own security measures.” Harry cursed. That meant that they could be either in HQ, the shoppe, or any number of safehouses Kingsman kept across the city. Even a private residence wasn’t out of the question; when Kingsman needed to keep themselves hidden, they made sure that there was no possible way to trace their agents down. Including, it seemed, from the efforts of their own security. “It’s next to impossible to track it down any further.”

“I suppose it’s back to waiting, then,” Harry sniffed.

“I suppose so.” Merlin hummed. “In the meantime, we have a workable timeline.”

“Delay the termination order on Ratković until after the meet up. I don’t want to scare our traitor away.”

“Agreed. I’ll contact Amelia and let her know.”

Pleasant as it was coming back to a full home and waiting meal in the evenings, Harry could perhaps be excused for forgetting that despite everything, Eggsy and Daisy were brother and sister, and thus prone to the ferocious bouts of sibling contention to which every family ultimately succumbed. There were a number of extenuating factors which prevented it in regularity: the paternalistic role Eggsy had assumed in order to care for her; the pressing reality of their lives prior to meeting Harry; their own easy-going natures. However, when he walked through the door that evening to the sound of high-pitched, inarticulate screaming and thundering frustrated responses, it was to the realization that peace was a fleeting concept.

Considering their last battle had ended with Eggsy in the throes of justifiable despair and Daisy locked away in the guest room, Harry felt it prudent to check in on them. He suspected, now that he and Eggsy were… involved that he would be offered a token farewell if Eggsy was considering running again, and it was armed with this surety that he made his way through the house to the back door. He hadn’t a yard so much as a smallish terrace paved with grey stone and lined with a few empty planters to which Daisy had already laid claim for the coming spring, but there was an appropriately sized wicker patio set for those rare perfect summer days when it was lovely to take tea outside.

Apparently, it was also an acceptable venue for a bloody good row. Harry peered out the back door, noticed Patricia Knightley across the way assiduously overwatering her dead azaleas in a weak attempt to disguise her eavesdropping, and decided that perhaps intercession would be for the good of the community.

As soon as he was spotted, Daisy turned a fierce glare his way. She stormed across the terrace, pointed back at Eggsy and growled, “talk to him” in such a way that Harry feared Merlin had been far too influential on her, and carried on back into the house, slamming the door behind her.

Eggsy, flushed with anger, stood panting a few feet away, shoulders heaving.

The reason became apparent as soon as Daisy was out of earshot and he turned to face Harry, jaw set in a very familiar way and obvious exasperation writ large across his face.

“Dare I ask?” Harry questioned.

“You don’t even wanna know,” Eggsy growled. He crossed the small space and dropped a quick peck to Harry’s lips. His mouth was set in too tight a line for it to be the usual, generous caress of lips.

“Does this have something to do with the box of Coco Pops I saw turned over on the countertop?” Harry asked.

“That might’ve started things, yeah,” Eggsy replied with a sigh that was halfway a growl. “We were out of eggs this morning.” Harry couldn’t deny the thrill of joy shivering through him at the casual domesticity of the statement, as though Eggsy truly considered this their home, ovular deficit and all. “She’s been in a bit of a mood all day. I ate her cereal, the library didn’t have any of the books she wanted, got grounded from telly when she had a tantrum over cleaning up her room, and I just had the fucking gall to tell her that muffins with frosting weren’t the same as cupcakes.” He leaned in. “It were funny for the first couple of hours, but it’s been all fucking day.”

Harry nodded, and brushed his fingers across Eggsy’s cheek. “Would you like me to speak to her?”

Eggsy, surprisingly, seemed to give this offer serious consideration instead of immediately dismissing it. “Might be better than me trying again. We’ve been at each other’s throats since breakfast. I thought for sure she was going to throw one of them tea light holders at me before you got here.”

“I’m glad she didn’t. I quite like those and I’d hate to see one broken against your head.”

Eggsy finally managed a small smile, kissed Harry again and swept back into the kitchen to begin prepping for supper. Irritation was still obvious in his jerky, half-coordinated movements, but at least he had something new upon which to focus. If he began slicing the onions with a bit more force than was required, Harry wasn’t the one to judge.

Harry headed upstairs, surprised to find the guest room—Daisy’s room, really, since Eggsy spent most nights in Harry’s these days—empty.

There was muffled sobbing coming from the loo, however.

Harry stood awkwardly in the hallway, until he was confident that the retreat had been more strategic than biological imperative, and decided to take his chance and knock on the door.

“Go away, Eggsy!”

“It’s me, dear girl.” Harry studied his feet a moment. “I thought I might come up and see if there was anything you needed.”

Daisy opened the door. The toilet seat was down, and she scrubbed furiously at her red-rimmed eyes. “He’s being such a fucking tosser, Harry. I didn’t… I can’t…” She looked close to bursting into tears again. Terrified—this time, Harry was sure, she wouldn’t be mollified by assurances of her place in their home and a bedtime story—he crouched down next to her.

“Family often knows how to wind us up quite a bit better than anyone else, it’s true,” he said.

Daisy’s lower lip wobbled mutinously. “Do you have an awful brother, Harry?”

Harry shook his head. “Not unless you count Merlin.” Which, after a friendship spanning multiple decades, he supposed could be counted just as well.

“Merlin’s not awful. He’s the best.”

Thankful he had taken off his glasses prior to arriving at home—lord forbid Merlin ever hear such resounding endorsement, he’d be insufferable—Harry trailed close behind Daisy as she crossed her arms against her chest and marched down the hall to her room. From the kitchen, the unaccountably furious banging of dishes expressed Eggsy’s equally irate state of mind, and Harry wondered if perhaps heading back to the shoppe was the safer option of the evening.

Daisy didn’t close the door in his face, which Harry took as tacit permission to follow her in. The room was a disaster area; Daisy had, apparently, seen fit to empty all her drawers and leave every scrap of clothing as accent colours draped across the floor, bed and every other available piece of furniture.

“Surely this isn’t born of Eggsy eating your cereal,” Harry commented mildly.

“He’s not my dad!” Daisy shouted.

From downstairs, a brief pause before the sound of the front door being opened and slammed shut. Daisy’s eyes widened for a moment, stricken, before her face twisted back into righteous childhood fury.

Harry nodded, despite the kneejerk desire to wince. “True.” In the strictest sense, anyway. But he had a feeling Daisy was more interested in the emotive reasoning behind her small explosion, instead of the technical argument against it.

Daisy eyed him suspiciously, as though waiting for him to begin arguing against her on the matter. He (wisely) remained silent, and she growled to herself in a very Unwin-esque fashion; Harry had heard the same sound from Lee dozens of times, and more than once from Eggsy when he was particularly annoyed.

“He shouldn’t be bossing me about the way he does.”

“Dare I ask the cause of his bossery?”

“This ain’t my room, right? It’s your guest room.”

Harry blinked. He truthfully hadn’t thought of it as his guest room in well over a month. “I… suppose.”

“So then why should I have to clean it up?”

This, likely, wasn’t the true source of her irritation. Daisy had never shirked in her willingness to tidy up after herself, with minimal prodding.

Harry looked over the room, trying to see it through her eyes. The slate grey walls and navy blue window coverings; the unmade double bed with its beige sheets; the bookshelf that was empty save for a few old hardcovers with tatty dustjackets, none of which he’d read in years. The furniture was all antique. And save for Daisy’s clothing strewn about the floor, there was nothing to suggest a child lived here.

“Quite right, my dear,” Harry finally murmured. “It’s much easier to take care of one’s living space when able to take personal pride in it.”

“Exactly,” Daisy said, though he suspected the agreement was more pro forma in hopes of getting away with leaving it looking as though a localized nuclear device had been detonated. “Personal pride. It’s important.”

“You’re suggesting that, should you be allowed to decorate it to your own exacting standards, it will be easier to maintain it?”

Daisy blinked furiously. But, trapped, she finally nodded. “Yeah. I reckon so.”

“Then why don’t we make plans to go ahead and change things up. I should be able to take some time away from the office tomorrow.”

Daisy smiled, a small reluctant thing that nevertheless made Harry’s heart trip over itself when he saw it. “Really?”

“Of course.”

“Do you think Eggsy will want to come?” She frowned, poking a pile of discarded jumpers with her toe. “Only, I think he’s still cross with me.”

“I’m confident that, even if he were still cross, he’d get over it fairly quickly. He seems the sort to be generous with his forgiveness.” Harry leaned down. “Now, shall we clean up and then go and see about supper?”

Daisy nodded and set herself to work haphazardly stuffing her drawers full of clothing.

Eggsy returned a half hour later, and saw fit to linger in the kitchen doorway, watching with fond eyes as Harry and Daisy put together a rather haphazard hash from Sunday’s leftover roast and a few odds and ends they’d found in the pantry.

“Here,” he finally said. He put a box of cereal down on the counter next to Daisy. “Sorry, Daise.”

“Me too,” Daisy said. She wrapped her arms around Eggsy’s waist. “Harry says I can redecorate my room.”

“Your room, eh?” Eggsy said, glancing at Harry with the smallest smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“Of course, I draw the line at garish pink walls,” Harry stated.

“’s all right. I were thinking purple anyways.”

It was a dismal morning out. Eggsy woke to rain pattering against Harry’s window, strumming out a hard-enough tune that he knew they could probably expect hail later on in the day. He rolled over in bed and shoved his cold-tipped nose against Harry’s spine, earning himself a sound Harry would probably deny being shriek-like. Harry rolled over, pressed his mouth sloppily against Eggsy’s, and promptly booted him from the bed before tucking himself into the warm spot Eggsy had left behind.

Grinning to himself, Eggsy pulled on a pair of trackies and headed down to make breakfast.

Daisy was already set up at the table, poking away at her tablet and munching on a small bowl of dry cereal. She absently greeted Eggsy, tilting her cheek up for a kiss before returning her attention to whatever Merlin had sent her for the day. He seemed happy to forward small puzzles and games that looked vaguely like some sort of coding exercise for kids, and Eggsy was well happy to let her pick up as much as she wanted.

Eggsy made himself a cuppa, put Harry’s coffee in the French press, then took his seat at the table beside her.

Harry emerged a full ten minutes earlier than normal.

“Must dash,” he said, pausing only to down his coffee with impressive speed. “Running late for a meeting I arranged last week.”

“Yes, yes. Go off and save the world,” Eggsy said with a laugh.

Harry paused to consider him. Then, with a soft smile, bent down and kissed him with the sort of tender thoroughness Eggsy now associated with Harry, home and the welling feeling in his chest he daren’t put a name to.

“I’ll try to be home for supper,” he said against Eggsy’s mouth.

“Let us know,” Eggsy replied.

“I will do.” He kissed Eggsy again, dropped a kiss on the crown of Daisy’s head and disappeared through the front door.

Eggsy smiled at himself only so long as it took him to notice Daisy looking at him with half-narrowed eyes. “What?”

“You looooooooove him,” Daisy told him, her mouth spreading into such an obnoxious grin it were almost painful to look at. Half-chewed cereal slipped down from her lips and splatted on the tabletop and she scrambled to wipe it up with her sleeve. Eggsy reached over and tweaked her nose, earning himself a laugh and more clumps of barely masticated chocolate somethings splattered over his arm, but paused with his hand stretched out as her words really hit him.

“I think I do,” he admitted quietly, “Actually.”

Daisy peered at him closely and stood to make her way around the table and clamour into his lap. She was getting too big for cuddles, really. At least in the rigid wood chairs Harry kept at the table. But Eggsy shifted about until they found a comfortable position. She rested her head against his shoulder and Eggsy clutched her tight.

From his position at the table, he had a clear view of the front hall. To where their rucksack was still sitting under the credenza, waiting. What Eggsy had considered the whole of their lives, all packed up and stuffed into a single bag. It didn’t keep their library books anymore; Daisy’s copy of Matilda was sitting next to her bed in her room and Eggsy was muscling his way through Harry’s copy of Riders. The commentary Harry had penned into the margins made it infinitely more enjoyable, but even then it sat on the left bedside table. Next to his pillow. In their room. Daisy’s favourites were all tucked away safely in the pantry, and Eggsy didn’t doubt that Harry would let them know if he planned to be home for dinner. Even Daisy’s room had become unequivocally hers, with new pink tea-lights strung across the walls, the fabric-covered poster boards Harry had hung up to accent the freshly painted walls.

(“Harry said no pink, Daise.”

“’snot pink, Eggsy. ‘s purple.”

“The colour’s called ‘pink bliss.’”

“But it looks purple, Eggsy.”)

And, of course, Mr. Pickle. Moved from his home in the loo to a the top of the dresser in Daisy’s room. The better to dust the poor thing, apparently, and Eggsy’d be lying if he said it weren’t a bit less sinister to take a piss these days.

“You going to try a runner again?” Daisy asked. “Because I’ll tell Harry on you.”

“Nah,” Eggsy whispered roughly. “None of that, I don’t think.” He hugged her tight enough she squeaked in his arms. “Do you like it here, Daise? Really like it?”

She pulled back and looked at him as though he was the thickest person she’d ever met.

“Right,” he laughed. “Of course you do.”

She leaned back against him. “It’s home, innit?”

“Yeah,” Eggsy replied quietly. “I suppose it is home, at that.”

He released her to finish her breakfast, and then trailed behind her upstairs. He grabbed their bag, earning himself a suspicious glance, but Daisy seemed mollified when he made no move towards the front door.

In her room, he unzipped the top. The second-hand clothing inside had been replaced by a few of Harry’s offerings; sturdy shit that would hold up to London winters. He began pulling it out, tucking it away in Daisy’s drawers. She watched, grinning, and set to helping him by yanking his stuff out and ferrying it back to the master bedroom.

When he reached the bottom of the bag, he lifted the secret flap and pulled out a bundle of their fuck-off money. It felt heavier in his hands than fifty quid warranted. They hadn’t been without this little reserve since the second month of sleeping rough, and he felt a press of anxiety even thinking about spending it. But he had faith in Harry, didn’t he? That they’d never need to tell him to fuck off. And maybe that was a sort of love in and of itself.

“Want to go to the movies, Daise?” he asked, stuffing the small wad of bills into his pocket.

Daisy grinned. “Then can we go to the shoppe and see Harry? I want to tell him we unpacked everything.”

He’d know what it meant the second she told him. And another small press of anxiety shoved up against the inside of Eggsy’s ribs, relentlessly muscled downwards by the trusting swell of Eggsy’s heartbeat. “Sure thing. If he’s off doing his spy thing, though, we’ll have to wait until dinner.”

Daisy nodded agreeably, and shooed him out of her room so she could get dressed.

Their erstwhile traitor had directed Harry to a hotel near the Shard, a banal high-rise that boasted a perfect view of the Thames for those willing to pay top dollar. Harry couldn’t argue with the elegance of it, though he wished that their resources were being put to nobler use. That it was within only a few miles of the shoppe felt like insult to injury, but at this point both were grave enough to set his teeth on edge.

Before walking through the front door, Merlin made a point of overlaying every single camera feed with looped footage of the hotel lobby, collected on the fly minutes before Harry’s arrival. Anyone Kingsman trained would be tapped into the hotel’s surveillance, if they hadn’t already set up cameras of their own. Merlin forced Harry to malinger outside the doorway as he scanned for any remote signals matching Kingsman encryptions.

“There’s something,” Merlin said. “Not a video, but something streaming through another one of our proxies. I’ll start chasing it down and find the source.”

“You told me last week that was impossible,” Harry commented.

“Last week it was.”

He checked at the front desk and was given an envelope with a single room key inside for one of the upper floors.

“Elevators are clear,” Merlin said. “But keep your head down anyway.”

Harry nodded and hefted the carpetbag in hand. It wasn’t filled with the money their contact had requested, certainly not. Rather, a healthy collection of the exploding ammunition, with which Harry intended their traitor to become intimately acquainted. As Arthur, he was prepared to allow them to come peacefully. As Harry Hart, he was rather hoping they resisted. He twisted his umbrella handle back and forth between stun and kill, wondering which one would be better.

He exited the elevator and looked down the hallway for any sign of surveillance or resistance. Nothing. He palmed the keycard and made his way to the room.

“Ready?” Merlin asked him.

“Not at all,” Harry said. Someone on the other side of the door had betrayed them; had bargained away their secrets and inadvertently exposed Kingsman to risk; had sold them out for what Harry imagined was a trifling amount, considering what had been on sale was more than just Kingsman technologies.

He knocked before using the card, but didn’t wait to be summoned before stepping inside.

The room was empty; floor-to-ceiling windows showed off their appropriately gloomy weather, the bed was made with tight corners, and there was no sign of anyone ever having been in the room at all.

Until he saw the glasses sitting in the middle of the bed.

“Well,” he said directly to them. “I suppose this was to be expected, considering.”

“I was certainly expecting you,” the same, scrambled voice said from a bug planted beside them. “Too convenient, wasn’t it? An assassin happening to save Goran’s life, and in the market for exactly the sort of tech I have access to, willing to pay a ludicrous amount for it without so much as a quick inhale. It smacked of a Kingsman assignment. I’m only flattered that Arthur himself decided to come and get the lay of the land.”

“Who else would it be, when I couldn’t be sure of who sold us out.” Harry sniffed in disdain. “Think yourself quite clever, do you?”

“Cleverer than you and Merlin, certainly. Clever enough not to get caught in your embarrassing attempt at a sting.”

“Less than a minute,” Merlin said. “I have it narrowed down to HQ or the shoppe.” A shift, then. “Lancelot is in the clear. She’s standing right next to me.”

“Was it just the money?” Harry asked.

“Just the money,” the traitor scoffed. “Just the money. Kingsman is a bunch of pretentious twats playing at heroism. At the end of the day, it’s always about the money.”

“The shoppe, Arthur,” Merlin said in his ear. “The only agents on site are Bors and Galahad. Andrew at the front counter. No one else is in the building. Lancelot and I are en route to apprehend them.”

Suddenly, another voice. This one not scrambled, though it still filtered through the bug. “What in the blessed fuck are you on about?” Harry knew that voice. And he knew, with certainty, who the traitor was.

The sounds of a struggle, a single gunshot, and then, “Well. Seems I’ll have to dash.” Silence for a brief moment. “Oh, your family’s come for a visit. How lovely. See you soon, Arthur.”

Harry took off. Ignoring the elevator, he headed right for the stairwell. Hooking his umbrella on the side of the railing, he dropped off the side, allowing himself to fall as the handle unwound, the elastic chord easing his drop and preventing him from breaking both legs when he hit the ground running.

Eggsy and Daisy ran in through the front door, barely managing to escape the rain. Daisy laughed when Eggsy took his snapback off, grimacing at the extra three kilos of weight it’d soaked up in the moments he hadn’t managed to run between the rain drops.

Andrew nodded to them from his place behind the counter. “Mr. Unwin. Miss Unwin. How lovely to see you again.”

Daisy grinned and bounded up to the counter. “Is Harry in? We have something Very Important to tell him.”

Andrew offered an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, young miss, but Harry is out of the office, at present, and meeting with an important client.”

Daisy’s mouth twisted up, though it was more in irritation than disappointed, and Eggsy had to smile down into his shoulder in case she saw it.

“Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“I’m afraid not, my dear. But I shall make sure to tell him you both stopped by when he returns.”

Daisy huffed, all but stamping her foot, but accepted it without much more than a noticeable pout. Andrew handed over a humbug, a small consolation, and Daisy popped it into her mouth and sucked furiously.

“Come on, Daise. Maybe we could head to the library and see if they’ve got the next Mighty Jack back in yet,” Eggsy offered.

Daisy’s eyes lit up, but only for a moment before Galahad appeared at the top of the stairs. His usual git-slick hair mussed, as though he’d run his hands through it, and he was moving as though he wasn’t seeing the stairs he was stumbling down. Drunk? No. Eggsy didn’t think so. He looked the type to be nasty, mean sort instead of a clumsy one. But definitely out of sorts.

He stared at them a moment before toppling over, hitting the stairs and sliding down face-first.

“Christ, mate, you all right?” Eggsy started towards his side when another man appeared on the landing, gun in hand. Most of his weight was balanced on a heavy cane strapped to his arm, though he held the gun with quiet, frightening confidence.

“Everyone step back,” he ordered. “This one and I have unfinished business.”

“It’s looking pretty finished to me,” Eggsy said.

The man crept down the stairs, awkwardly balanced on his forearm crutch, gun at the ready. He kicked Galahad’s side, sneering when the other man didn’t move.

“Bors?” Daisy asked, quietly. “What’ve you done?”

“Believe me, he had it coming,” Bors spat.

He blinked when he turned around and came face-to-face with Eggsy. Then, slowly, he shifted the gun about to bring it level with Eggsy’s face. Daisy scrambled towards Andrew.

“What the fuck, mate,” Eggsy whispered.

“I,” Bors told him, voice strained, “Am going to get the fuck out of here.” He bared his teeth, a primal snarl trapped in his throat. “Andrew, call me a car.”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

“Do it, or I am going to put a bullet through this pleb’s head, then shoot you and call one for myself.” He stabbed Eggsy’s forehead with the muzzle, not quite hard enough to bruise, though it were probably a close thing. “You want that on your hands?”

Andrew reached for the phone. Eggsy wasn’t sure if Bors noticed or not, but as he picked up the receiver, he hit the panic button beneath the lip of his desk. Whether or not someone would arrive in time, Eggsy didn’t know. How fast was the tube beneath the shoppe? Probably not fast enough, he didn’t think. It was all going to come down to him staying calm and not getting himself shot through the fucking eye.

They waited a few tense minutes, Bors’ arms beginning to shake the longer he held his gun at the ready. His form and posture were both good; it was probably the stress of whatever’d made him snap. Because this? This was definitely an agent who’d snapped.

When the car pulled up, Bors gestured with the gun. “Go.”

“Fuck you,” Eggsy replied. “I ain’t going anywhere.”

“You’re coming with me and bringing your sister.”

Eggsy’s stomach dropped to the soles of his shoes. “No.”

Bors jerked the gun again, and between one breath and another slapped Eggsy across the face with the barrel. Eggsy’d taken worse before—Bors might be a Kingsman, but he had nothing on Dean’s left-hook—but when his body jerked back he tripped on the edge of the fancy Bokhara rug and toppled backwards. Bors was on him at once, straddling his waist and grabbing a fistful of his shirt to yank him back into the gun muzzle. Eggsy met his eyes, the crazy, glazed-over look of a cornered animal crowding into his gaze and swallowing up all but the narrowest bit of pupil.

“I don’t need you,” Bors hummed. “I don’t need you if I’ve got Arthur’s little girl.”

Eggsy’s hands clenched into a fist. He glanced towards the counter—Daisy was poking her head out from around the corner, though she jerked back at Eggsy’s wave—and then returned his full attention to Bors. The gun was still perilously close to his head, a fingers breadth from his right eye, but Bors’ jaw was quivering, and the slightest tremor in his hand was shaking the gun itself. His fingers clenched and unclenched on the handle of his cane, and he shifted minutely, trying to hide whatever pain his leg was causing.

Right.

Eggsy ploughed his knee upwards, catching Bors directly in the groin, and dodged his head to the side before Bors could fire. The other man shrieked in pain, and Eggsy cracked his forearm against Bors’ elbow, further throwing the gun out of range. He shoved upwards, sending Bors tumbling backwards, and jumped to his feet. Bors hadn’t lost his grip on his gun, but he was slow to bring it up, curling in on himself as though he wanted to heave from the blow to the ‘nads. His leg looked ready to give out, and Eggsy jumped at him, catching him across the jaw with a hard right hook and grabbing for the gun. Bors pawed at him, slapping ineffectually at Eggsy’s chest as he tried to keep the sig out of reach.

Eggsy couldn’t get a hand on it, and gasped when Bors planted his good knee in Eggsy’s sternum and pushed him backwards into one of the tables lining the walls. The unforgiving oak caught him, his head bashing against the corner, and he was slow to recover. Bors stumbled to his feet, gun swinging back to Eggsy.

Before he could fire, Daisy charged out from behind the desk. Ignoring Eggsy’s yell, she pushed a little gold pocket watch up against Bors’ leg. The man froze, and the gun fell uselessly from his fingers as he dropped to the ground.

When Daisy stepped back, Eggsy caught a half-glimpse of the small blade protruding from the watch before she was using the side of the desk to slip it back in.

“The fuck is that?” he demanded.

“’s drugged him,” Daisy said, proudly. “Harry gave it to me.”

Of course he bloody well had.

Eggsy stood, rubbing the back of his head to check for blood—none, the corner wasn’t sharp, only hard—and reached out to her. Daisy walked into his embrace, holding tight to his legs, until Lancelot and Merlin ran out from one of the dressing rooms a few moments later.

Lancelot looked round the shoppe and holstered her gun. She peered at Bors’ frozen body and gave it a poke with her toe.

“Good show, Eggsy,” Lancelot said, looking at him with warm approval.

“It were all Daisy,” Eggsy replied, earning himself a beam of sunshine in the form of Daisy’s generous smile. “I just distracted him.”

Merlin, meanwhile, darted towards Galahad to check for a pulse. From the relieved drop of his shoulders, Eggsy assumed the other agent was still alive. Good. He might’ve been a tit, but obviously he’d been a loyal one, whatever his other failings. “Arthur should be here momentar—”

As though summoned, Harry slammed through the door to the shoppe, and stopped short in place when he caught sight of Eggsy and Daisy. He took a step towards them before noticing Merlin and Lancelot, and their scrutiny, and pausing in place. His eyes shuttered, and he straightened in place, back to the fastidious Arthur, and nodded at Lancelot.

“Lancelot, would you please take Mr. and Miss Unwin wherever they want to go? Merlin and I have to deal with Bors and see Galahad to medical.”

Roxy blinked. “Certainly, Arthur.”

Eggsy frowned a bit in confusion, but gamely followed along behind Roxy as she headed to the door—presumably to the cab Andrew had summoned earlier. He tried to catch Harry’s eyes, confusion turning to fear when Harry wouldn’t look his way. Surely they hadn’t fucked up? Had they been meant to let Bors take them? Because that weren’t fucking happening.

Daisy, less subtle than Eggsy, wrapped herself around Harry’s legs. “Will you still be home for supper?”

Harry’s icy veneer fell away for a moment and he looked well shattered. “I don’t think tonight, Miss Unwin.” He finally caught Eggsy’s eyes. “But I’m sure your brother will make sure you’re properly seen to.”

With that, he pulled away and moved across the room, back to Merlin.

Roxy led them out to the cab, all of them quiet as they shuffled into the back.

“The fuck was that about?” Eggsy muttered.

“Can’t you tell?” Roxy asked. “He’s preparing himself for you two to disappear.”

Eggsy blinked owlishly at her, mind racing. And fuck if she wasn’t right. The cool dismissal, calling Daisy ‘Miss Unwin,’ refusing to look Eggsy’s way. What, did he blame himself because one of his agents went off the deep end? Idiot. Eggsy was going to give him such a walloping when he got home.

“We would never!” Daisy protested.

Eggsy wrapped an arm around her shoulders and she pushed up against his side.

Roxy smiled. “I’m very glad to hear it.”

Roxy directed the driver to a posh little flat in Islington. Predictably, everything was perfectly decorated and in place, though Eggsy was pleased to see a collection of wonderfully trashy movies lining the glass shelves next to her telly; her taste was almost as bad as his own. And Daisy was fucking thrilled to be introduced to Cordelia, a fussy-looking standard poodle who looked long-sufferingly Roxy’s way before begrudgingly rolling over and showing Daisy her belly for scritches. Daisy dropped to the hardwood floor next to Cordelia’s equally fussy-looking dog bed, and didn’t stir for even a second when Roxy headed into the kitchen, Eggsy following close behind.

“You comported yourself well,” Roxy said, opening fridge and passing Eggy a bottle of craft beer that likely cost more than a night’s stay in hostel.

“Did my best,” Eggsy shrugged.

Roxy considered him with narrowed eyes for a moment before smiling, a real thing that lit up her entire face and made her look terrifying as fuck. “Tell me, would you like to continue doing your best?”

When he walked in the door that evening, the rucksack was not in its customary place next to the door. There was no child yelling a greeting, nor a low laugh and call for Harry to join them in the kitchen. It wasn't painful, the emptiness of his home. For it to have been truly painful, it would have had to be a surprise. And it wasn't that. He'd anticipated it, hadn't he? Accepted the fact that Eggsy would have to put Daisy's best interests first, and those best interests did not lend to living with a Kingsman agent. But for a moment he'd hoped a fruitless hope that Eggsy might see things differently. He’d never, in his life, felt like such a foolish old man.

He spent a useless moment hoping for their safety. An even more foolish one hoping that Eggsy had finally relieved him of all the oft-discussed silverware and would use it to keep them from 'sleeping rough.' Perhaps he should have planted more trackers on them before they'd left the shoppe. Not to find them out himself, but to send plump marks walking across their paths with Harry's money lining their pockets. Debit cards for padded accounts with PIN numbers scrawled across the signature lines. Merlin might do him the favour of finding them using CCTV footage, but Harry didn't think he'd be able to bear the horrible understanding Merlin would treat him to while he did.

One maudlin brandy, he decided. And then perhaps he’d see if Merlin had an appropriately violent assignment somewhere overseas. Somewhere in Eastern Europe, preferably; his thoughts had a distinctly post-Bloc taste to them. He was Arthur, surely he was allowed the occasional liberty.

He was halfway through his brandy when he heard the sound of the key in the front door.

“Harry?” Eggsy’s voice echoed from the front hallway.

It was almost embarrassing, how quickly Harry abandoned his drink and made his way to the front of the house. He was in time to see Eggsy toeing off his shoes, his shoulders bare without the straps of his rucksack looped around them.

“Where’s Daisy?” Harry asked, at a loss to say anything else.

“Staying over at Roxy’s for the night. ‘Girl time,’ whatever that means. Roxy insists it’s important.” He smiled like a daybreak. “Not that I mind much, having you to myself for the evening.”

It seemed as though Harry had radically misread the situation. “I thought…” Had it mattered what he thought. “Wherever is your bag?”

Eggsy’s smile dimmed, but not sadly. It became almost contemplative. “Unpacked it.”

“You unpacked it?” Harry repeated dumbly.

“Yeah. Tucked it all away in the drawers upstairs. Thought. Well.” He took Harry’s hands and kissed his fingers. “I guess you know what we thought.”

“But after what happened with Bors?” Harry demanded. Eggsy nodded to himself, as though confirming the fact that they were about to have a conversation he’d already anticipated. “You and Daisy might have died.” His eye flew to the bruise on Eggsy’s face, the abuse marring the skin which had, for only a precious little time, been uninjured. He’d spent more time in Eggsy’s company while the other man had been tending to injuries than not. “How can you believe that staying with me is in your best interests? Or hers?”

“Harry,” Eggsy said calmly. “We might die living on the street. You get that, right? We’ve been lucky, but still came close once or twice. We ain’t in anymore danger living here with you than if we’re sleeping rough in a doorway somewhere in Westminster. Fact of the matter is, we’re probably better off, rogue agents and exploding lighters and all.”

“I could set you up in a house, far away from here,” Harry offered, a last-ditch attempt to be a decent human being before he gave into his selfish hopes, the dark desirous ones prowling about under his skin as Eggsy regarded him with his wonderful, terrible wide-eyed affection. “Daisy would never want for anything.”

“And what, you’d just visit on weekends and hols?” Eggsy scoffed. He regarded Harry closely, and some of the joy melted away from his gaze. “We’ll go if you want us gone, Harry. But we want to stay, if you’ll have us.”

Harry couldn’t summon up the willpower to offer again. He cupped Eggsy’s cheek in his hand and, after a last lingering look, caught up his lips in a half-desperate kiss. Eggsy opened beautifully, offering himself up to Harry's mouth with gorgeous surrender. It wasn't true submission—always, hidden in the contours of Eggsy's mouth and the in laughter of his eyes, the secret that Eggsy was in complete control—but it was everything Harry wanted. Everything he’d despaired of ever having again.

Eggsy tucked his hands into Harry's and drew him up the stairs to the bedroom. The bed was neatly made, military corners and perfectly arranged pillows. Perfect for a proper messing up.

Eggsy kissed him again, a brief press of the lips, before drawing back and slipping this hands under his own shirt and stripping it off. The broad planes of his chest were still slightly discoloured, remnants from his time in hospital, and Harry couldn't help himself from pressing his palms against the least faded of the bruises. Eggsy squirmed under his hand, a full body shudder that crept from his toes to his shoulders, ending at the pleased smile tucked into the corners of his mouth.

Harry tucked his body in against Eggsy's, relishing the warmth of his chest through his shirt, and found himself giddily unsurprised when Eggsy's nimble fingers undid his neat line of buttons without Harry even noticing.

"Your fingers," Harry whispered. He tugged Eggsy's had to his mouth and kissed his fingertips.

"I'm more interested in yours right now," Eggsy told him with a cheeky grin.

Coherent thoughts flew from Harry's mind, and he bore Eggsy down onto the bed.

Later, Eggsy looking delightfully fucked out splayed against Harry's chest, Harry found himself unable to keep those same fingers from running through Eggsy's hair.

"I thought you'd gone," he admitted into the darkness of the room around them.

"I know," Eggsy replied quietly. "Figured when I walked through the door and you looked at me like I was a ghost."

"It is dangerous," Harry said, in a moment worthy of canonization. "You and Daisy being here."

"Then you should probably train me up so I can help deal with it, hadn't you," Eggsy replied, half-asleep.

Harry blinked. "You mean that?"

"Roxy's putting me forth as her candidate for Bors’ seat, isn't she?” Harry tried and failed to summon up a measure of irritation at Lancelot’s presumption, but he supposed it was only to be expected. “Assuming you fire the fucking prick." Eggsy stretched, indolent as a cat. He responded to Harry's open-mouthed disbelief by pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth. "She told me to tell you that you'll have to find someone else."

"What about Daisy?" Harry asked, breathless as the kiss went from a half-innocent press of lips to a thorough exploration of his mouth. He tasted his own brandy hiding on Eggsy's tongue.

“Bit young for it, ain’t she?”

“You know very well what I mean, you little shit.”

Eggsy chuckled. "Daisy has informed me that she'll be attending the boarding school Merlin went to," Eggsy told him, a smile hidden in the corners of his voice. "And I'm not to cry when she goes, because she'll be back for half-terms, Christmases and over the summer, but she’s very grown up and wants to learn how to design exploding shit all on her own."

"And did our wizard have a say in that?" Harry asked, wondering if he needn't have a word with Merlin about meddling. Not that any of his words to Merlin about meddling had ever had the slightest impact.

"Our wizard thinks that Daise is going to end up taking over for him," Eggsy laughed. "She's still part of that squire shite, isn't she? Got it into her head that Merlin's already one foot in the grave and she's the only one who can save Kingsman from imploding once he goes."

"Well," Harry said, kissing Eggsy again. "It wouldn't be terribly fair to dissuade her from her chosen career path, would it?"

"Nah," Eggsy agreed. "Think both of us have a hand on what we want."

The hand in question squeezed Harry's spent cock, earning its owner a pleased laugh and another series of kisses peppered across his cheeks.

“I think it’ll be good for her,” Eggsy said a moment later, sobering. “I’ve been all she’s had for so long. Getting her around others, especially other kids, it’ll give her a proper chance to be a kid herself, y’know? That’s all I ever wanted for her.”

“You’ve done so incredibly by her, Eggsy,” Harry told him. “And if you’re set on becoming an agent, I can’t think of anyone else better suited to sit at the table.”

Eggsy kissed his bare shoulder. “We’ll try to do you proud, Harry.”

“Eggsy, how could either of you possibly do otherwise?”