a/n: So, I've said four more chapters last time, but immediately after I looked at them and merged one of them into another - oh well.

Anyway, I've been fairly excited about this one! You're going to see why in just a minute.

There'll be a bit longer note at the end, since I'm getting a little emotional, because ... there isn't much left and it's been such a long time. It's crazy. Even crazier, people keep reading! You're insane, and I'm incredibly thankful for anyone who has stuck out with me on this journey.


Kay had never been a particularly well liked man, not even as a teenager – always too eager to prove himself better than anyone else, always too open with what was on his mind. But he had been dutiful and true, which had scored him a decent rank in the British Air Force before a family acquaintance had proposed him for the position of a Kingsman agent.

He had held that job down for about fifteen years now and he had done it well. The late Arthur had been satisfied with his results, the acquaintance had never regretted this little venture, and he himself had never wanted to do anything else.

Sure. Others had always surpassed him. He held resentment for that. Ultimately though, they were all doing their job: That was the important part.

And, sure. He disliked Galahad – old and new alike –, Merlin, the newest addition to their service, as well as the hitman. It was the whole point: He didn't like them, he was concerned about what that meant for the service, and he was uncertain whether he would want to place his life in any of their hands, but even he had not wanted all of them to disappear into thin air because he wasn't a bloody fool. Without Merlin, they were fucked.

Lamorak had expressed his opinion in his own unique way. Tristan had hummed in agreement when he had brought up how utterly blind and deaf they were without their eyes and ears, and – the two of them had been friends for the better part of a decade now. They had been through much shit, they had survived a manhunt for their lives, and he valued him greatly.

Yet, Tristan seemed so undisturbed. So satisfied with himself. He had caught him faintly smiling to himself, looking pleased or very carefree countless times over the last few days.

Kay did not mean to be overly suspicious or paranoid, despite being a spy. Above all though, he didn't want to suspect the only friend he had in the service of being a traitor, which was a serious accusation, considering they all had sworn an oath.

The truth terrified him. What if he was right? What was he supposed to do then? There was no protocol; betrayal was unheard of … had been. Until Valentine had come along and somehow convinced Arthur to abandon everything.

He shook his head. Among his few redeeming qualities was, above all, his sense of loyalty.

It hurt. Like a stab in the back, or a bullet, or a grenade launcher. Even worse, Tristan could assume that he would share his views readily because he harboured so much resentment for all those who had gone missing.

So. It hurt. And he would rather take a bullet to the groin than admit that he felt strangely ashamed about the whole ordeal because he had never suspected a thing until now and perhaps even given Raleigh a reason to go through with it.

Kay gritted his teeth as he forced himself to think rationally. But no matter how he looked at it, it all lead to the same conclusion: Tristan was involved in something that possibly threatened all of Kingsman. His duty as an agent was to stop him. His duty as his friend was … to give him a last chance, maybe, if there were any to be given.

The desperation he had felt the night he had watched four screens go black turned into cold, hard anger. It turned his blood solid and froze his bones, it made every breath ache like a thousand needles in his chest – he was angry at himself, at Tristan, at himself again.

Kay took a moment to breathe. In all honesty, he didn't have a plan. He only knew that he needed to inform Lamorak of his suspicions and, from there on, hope for the best.

He knocked on the door. Twice.

"Come in," the man grunted.

In a fluid motion, he swung the door open, stepped inside the office, and closed it behind him, before he walked up to Lamorak's desk and dropped into the chair in front of it, opening up the buttons of his jacket.

"You look terrible," the agent scoffed as he looked up from his paperwork.

Kay smiled in return. It bit at his lips, tore them up. Winter was starting to roll in. "Tristan might be a traitor," he said without wasting time for a polite greeting or whatever; they had never gotten along, as Lamorak didn't get along with anyone, and he wasn't here to mend the bridges he had burned on more than one occasion.

His head snapped up. "Excuse me."

He scoffed. "You heard me."

"That is a serious accusation," the other agent said slowly and put down his pen, taking off his glasses. From one moment to the other, he had aged several years. "And you two are friends."

"I thought we were, at least," he replied bitterly. "Anyway, you haven't noticed anything strange about the way he's been behaving? At all?"

"I … didn't say that." He was reluctant to admit it though. Considering their position, he supposed most people would have been. "And what do you want me to do about it?"

Kay shrugged. "Dunno," he muttered, "I felt like I had to let someone know, in case- … someone else has to know."

Lamorak eyed him, seized him up, probably though the same everyone else would think of him: weighting the option of him becoming a traitor himself against his sense of duty, estimating his chances in a fight.

He had no interest in knowing to which conclusion the other agent had come; Kay couldn't just sit around doing nothing any longer, the feeling of impending doom creeping up on him. In his youth, he had been a good little soldier, blindly following orders like a lamb to the slaughter. Dumb luck was the only reason he had made it out alive. Now, more than ever, he needed to trust his own judgement before everything went to shit.

Slowly, he pushed himself into a standing position. His knees threatened to give under him. His muscles tensed.

"Well," he said and swallowed around the lump in his throat, "if I'm not coming back, you ought to try and do the right thing. A dead man's last wish and so on."

Lamorak opened his mouth to speak, but Kay shut the door behind him before he could get a word out.

It was true, he wasn't a particularly well liked agent and only had few redeeming qualities and he didn't even like the people he was sticking his neck out for, but, at the end of the day, his loyalty and sense of duty prevailed. Even if it meant he had to kill his best friend.

Tristan was usually to be found in the dining room these days, like he owned the place – which he did not and never had; he had been in closer consideration for Arthur's replacement but that was as close as all of them had gotten to it.

He had taken up his designated spot, laptop set up in front of him and papers spread out around it. At first glance, one could think he was simply doing paperwork, but Kay noticed the small, nearly vicious smile before it vanished.

"Hello," Raleigh said, "what's wrong? You look terrible."

"Yeah, I keep hearing that," Kay replied. The lump in his throat choked him. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his pants, not knowing what else to do with them.

Two chairs between them, which he could use too his advantage – they were both carrying their weapons, though. And he didn't want to shoot him, but hoping for all of this to be a misunderstanding was like hoping for a miracle.

"Maxwell. Talk to me." The expression on his face was serious and concerned, like it had been so many times before when he had called him out on unnecessarily pushing himself – now, however, Kay found himself wondering how much of it had been true.

"I've done a bit of thinking, recently," he said eventually, every word cutting into his tongue like a knife. "It's been … difficult."

His friend – no, the other man nodded, understanding showing on his face, just being the supportive guy he had always been. It made him physically sick.

"And, I've noticed, that you've been awfully content."

Tristan was silent for a second. The all-present tension in the room crushed him: oppressive air, the promise of a fight, the knowledge that this might very well mark the end of what he thought had been his best years.

"That is true," he admitted eventually, folding his hands neatly on the table.

"Is there any reason in particularly?" Kay asked. How long could he keep this stupid little game going? There was only so much he could do about hiding his feelings in company of someone who knew him; he didn't want to just go and say it, because on the off-chance that he was wrong, he'd ruin their friendship.

"Why don't you take a seat?" Raleigh suggested and pointed to his left. It was an invitation – to what, exactly? On the surface, it was perfectly innocent, like any other had been, and he wondered if he was out of his mind to see anything else in it.

"I'd rather stand," he replied. Tension snapped at his spine. His pulse quickened. So. Had he been right?

Tristan frowned. His expression turned serious and then became blank.

"I have noticed your dislike for … certain recent additions to the service," he began. "And, since I share your opinion, I'd like to offer you something."

There it was: all the proof he needed.

"You've never told me you agree," Kay noted, shutting off his feelings one by one until all that was left was anger. "And you've never talked about people like that."

"We all have our roles to play, Maxwell," he answer with a simple shrug. "Well, what do you say? I'm offering you a way to rebuild Kingsman without the faults that have entered its system. Nothing would change."

"Rebuilding implies some degree of destruction." His voice had gone cold. Had he truly given him enough reasons to think that he'd just agree like that?

"You wouldn't have to do anything," Tristan explained. "Just sit back and do nothing."

They were roughly equally skilled, so he needed to take every advantage he could get – but all his limbs were frozen solid, wouldn't move, the shock sitting to deep; despite it all, he had been his friend, and it was substantially harder to kill someone you liked than someone you didn't even know.

Kay breathed. "What you're suggesting is treason."

"It is," Tristan confirmed. "One could also argue that not acting that way would be betraying the ideals of Kingsman." What a sick bastard.

"What ideals?" he asked. "We swore an oath to protect people from harm when no one else could. This has nothing to do with it."

His expression went dark. The silence slammed into him like a freight train.

"I'd hate to have to kill you," Tristan said. "Give it some thought."

"If you think I'm going to join you, you've never known me," he replied, the anger replaced by tingling fear. He had never killed someone he knew. He had never wanted to. Sure, he'd been in the Air Force, but he had barely made it through training before being recruited. He had never seen someone die so close to him.

"One last chance," the other man warned as he stood.

"Never." There was no hesitation on his part.

Tristan pulled his gun. Kay dove to the side. A shot rang out as he rolled away from where he had been a second ago, reaching for his own weapon. The chairs provided minimal safety, barely did anything to obscure vision.

He came out at the other end of the table and fired, going back down right away. Wood splintered inches from him. The years of training and experience took over; coming back up, two well timed shots.

Only the dull sound of a body dropping to the floor shook him out of his calculated state. It wasn't his own. The quiet was sickening.

The pictured etched itself into his memory: One bullet had passed right through his head, the other had punctured his neck. Blood soaked into the carpet. Dead eyes stared at him. The truth was difficult to bear – Kay had killed him.

He sucked in a breath, glanced at the laptop, and swore.


In his youth, dying had seemed impossible, but as he had grown older, he had realized that the reality was a much different thing: Loosing Lee in Afghanistan had been a harsh reminder of it.

So, when Valentine had pointed that gun at his head in Kentucky, he had expected to die, as one would. He would not have died without regrets, too many could have said the same that day, but, in the grand scheme of things, while his life had flashed before his eyes, it had been fine. Merlin and Arthur surely would be able to stop the world from falling to those nasty SIM-cards, even without him.

Now, Harry wasn't dead. Which, of course, was a lovely turn of events, until he reached the conclusion that he had lost his right eye, several months worth of memory, and that he was being kept as a prisoner by none other than Eldric Barlow.

So, no, he was not particularly thrilled about being alive at the moment and had not been for weeks on end because all his escape attempts had been unsuccessful. The more time passed, the more concerned he grew.

Barlow had been a Kingsman agent long before Harry had even heard of it and he had presumed the man dead, killed in action during a mission. Obviously though, that death had been faked.

Regarding the reason of his return … he had no idea. His thoughts had run amok more than once over the course of his capture and only left him a bitter taste in his mouth. Could he have done something differently? Where would he be then? How was Merlin doing, Eggsy, Roxanne? What had become of Valentine?

He could count the interruptions of his daily routine down on one hand.

Today marked the sixth time.

A trio of armed men entered the room. Rifles, helmet, bullet-proofed vests. Probably hired mercenaries or private security. Their presence rarely was an indication of anything good.

The one in the middle motioned the other two to get him. They carefully pointed their rifles at the ground; it would have made no sense to just kill him now after keeping him alive for so long.

The mercenary who had remained at the door gasped. Red gushed out of his neck.

The other two whirled around, almost too late. Shots. They screamed, rifles rattling to the floor as they held their elbows. Right. There was an unprotected spot on the inside of their arms; it was not easy to hit, by far, but for people with extensive experience …

A woman quickly took advantage of the confusion. She leapt forward, slitting both of their throats.

Harry didn't recognize her. Sharp features, tanned skin, brown hair. Black body-suit. Covered in dried and fresh blood alike. Maybe a few years older than Eggsy. Her right hand was in his blind spot but she figured she held a gun in that one; in her other was a knife.

He had met hitmen before – cold-blooded killers, to whom human lives were but another form of currency. Her eyes reminded him of the very same.

"You're not someone I'm looking for," she said. Russian accent.

"Who are you looking for?" he asked, turning his head in her direction.

She studied him, determining whether he was a threat. "Not your problem," she answered. "What's your purpose?" She had the advantage of youth, two good eyes, and weapons. Harry would loose a fight within a matter of seconds, if he managed to free himself.

"A bargaining chip, perhaps?" he suggested.

"Probably not." Her voice was cool.

"Probably not," he agreed. "Would you mind untying me?"

Briefly, she hesitated, before cutting him free.

"Do you know how to use a gun?"

Harry bristled at her tone. Rude.

"I knew my way around one before I lost my eye," he replied.

Wordlessly, she tossed him a standard nine millimetre. "If you fall behind, I'm leaving you."

"I won't," he assured her. Lovely character. Then again, he did look more like a liability to her than she needed. For now, considering she had taken out the guards, they seemed to share a goal. If she was here for Barlow, all the better.

"My name is Harry Hart," he introduced himself as he checked the gun. Full magazine. "Might I ask yours?"

"Darja," she said after a pause, squinting at him. "Let's go."

He followed her out of the room, keeping close to the right side of the hallway. By now, he was accustomed to his field of vision, but he had spent fifty years without such limitation; whether he could land even a single shot was up for debate.

Darja did not seem in need of his help, though. They encountered a pair of guards, which she took out quickly, and then three more who were guarding a door. She opened it with a key she took from one of their bodies.

Harry glanced back and forth before entering.

Storage room. In large, plastic boxes was a wildly chaotic assortment of weapons.

Delighted, she pulled them from the shelves, digging through their contents. Among the items were Kingsman issued gadgets. Enough for three agents. They were considered – proving that she knew what they were – before she put them back, pulling out a dagger with a triple-edge blade. The likeliness of which was banned as the injuries it caused were inhuman. In most situations, such as this, it was an absolute overkill.

She smiled. Small, sharp, dangerous. Maybe a little on the vicious side. Darja kept digging until she found two more daggers, several smaller knives, and a pair of pistols.

His stomach sank, twisting violently in knots until he pushed past it. No reason to worry. He had come up with enough gruesome scenarios. He didn't need to imagine more.

Harry had not noticed when she had started watching him.

"Is there a problem?" he asked. In this narrow room, crowded with shelves, his chances were absolutely catasprohic. So, if she had decided that he was not worth the effort- Well. The best he could do was hope that she had not.

"That depends," she said courtly. Tension rose in her shoulders. "What were you doing before you got shot?"

"I was an agent for a secret service," he replied. Lying would only get him shot again.

"Any in particular?" she asked, jabbing her thumb at the boxes she had left mainly untouched. "Like, the one who produced these?"

"Perhaps," he said. "What about you?" She did not strike him as an agent. Too ruthless. Too brutal. Too eager to kill. Several agents would have protested against her being hired.

"Long story," she said simply as she rose to her feet, tension easing from her. "So you're the guy who everyone has been mourning. You've been gone for over a year."

"So long?" His voice didn't betray him. He felt sick nonetheless. "Well, I did think I was dead."

"Yeah, and some people are going to be mad if you die on me," she muttered. "So. Don't." Her gaze caused him increasingly more unease: she was studying his weak points, despite her words, and he was painfully aware of all of them.

What was her connection to Kingsman? And who did she know? Merlin? Agents? They had never relied on outsiders, much less people like her.

They left the room behind, pressing onward. The hallways contained fewer guards than he had anticipated; surely, there were only needed so many to protect a place, and they were well-equipped to deal with any threat, unless, it seemed, it came in form of a frighteningly skilled woman such as Darja.

The longer they went without encountering anyone else, the more agitated she grew, which lead him to the conclusion that this was a personal matter for her – someone she was looking for was important to her. Harry had been a spy, after all. He knew the signs: the way she tensed and held her weapons, the way she lashed out more and more, the way she looked.

More guards fell to her. She left an impressive trail of corpses behind, adamant about checking every room. While he would have offered his help, she appeared to be sufficient enough on her own Plus, he figured it was better to let her take out her anger on someone that wasn't him.

"You're a hitman," he stated after a while.

She glanced at him across her shoulder. "Took you long enough to figure out."

"I was not sure," he said simply. "For a moment, I nearly thought you were a better person." There was nothing wrong with having to kill people but she was taking some sick pleasure in it like she liked to see the world burn around her. Destructive tendencies, perhaps. Or homicidal tendencies. Whether she had developed them on her own or someone had cultivated them, he could not tell.

"It's not a moral failing to get paid for what you're good at," she said, stopping. The hallway spread out in four directions; the building was a maze and they were running out of ways to go.

"No one is born being good at killing," he noted as he came to a halt behind her. Up close, he spotted bruises blooming across her jaw and throat, perhaps two or three days old, cuts on her face, a concerning amount of blood, the sharpness of her features. The body-suit she was wearing seemed familiar; Merlin had been working on a similar model shortly before Kentucky.

"No," she agreed, looking at him. "I was given a chance and I took it."

"To live your life like this?"

"You have your reasons for becoming part of a secret service, I have my reasons for becoming a hitman," she snapped. "Let's leave it at that." She bared her teeth in a dangerous smile.

Harry knew better than to push his luck. "I'm trying to determine where you stand, in all of this," he said.

"You'd be surprised," she said with a twitch of her lips.

"I suppose I would," he replied. "Tell me one thing, then: What is your connection to Kingsman?"

To his surprise, she fell silent. Her expression grew serious, and she turned herself inwards, hiding herself away.

"I was hired for a job," she said eventually. "It turned out to be bad intel – I was being purposefully lied to. I was being set-up."

"And you took that personally," he concluded.

"As did your friends." She arched an eyebrow.

Slowly, the pieces put themselves together. It was … curious. And it made sense, the longer he thought about it, although the fear settled into his bones – if it hadn't been for the intel, how many agents would have died by her hands? Too many. She was capable of violence like only a person who had trained with nothing else in mind good, like only a person without any hesitation could be.

"And, it seems," she added, "that that case is coming to a close soon."

Harry noted the strange tone in her voice. "You nearly sound regretful."

"Shut it." The edge to her voice wavered slightly; he had found a sore spot.

"I suppose, at the end of the day, even you are just human," he said.

"I'm starting to see why someone would want to shoot you," she returned with another glare. Lovely. Briefly, he felt young again, but the memory slipped from his grasp.

Darja turned right. Harry followed her.

The next pair of guards were no obstacle. She launched herself at the first one before he could make a move, wrenching the triple edged dagger into his neck. In a fluid motion, she pulled it out, whirled around the gushing red blood, and stabbed the other. No wasted movement, no wasted energy. The efficiency would have been stunning, if it was used for better things.

Calmly, she motioned him to pay attention before she swiped the key card she had acquired across the lock. It opened. Inside were, evidently, more guards.

A shot rang out. She staggered. Hand pressed to her stomach.

It was hard to see of there was any blood.

The first one got through the room. She pushed away his rifle and slid open his throat. Then, she kicked the next off his feet and proceeded to shoot the one behind it before she took care of the other. Then, she paused.

Had she found whoever she was looking for?

A heavy, oppressive atmosphere quickly spread throughout the hallway.

He opened his mouth-

"Darja?" Young, male, southern London accent. "You ain't dead."

Harry knew that voice. He knew it very well. It rooted him to the spot.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, tone soft. "Why are you here?" She stepped over the bodies and through the blood.

Eggsy stammered. The words didn't quite register in his brain.

Surely, he was glad the boy was alive. Of course he was. Guilt still raked him about his Lee's death, he wouldn't want to imagine how miserably he'd be if he cost his son's life, too. But this was not how he had imagined their reunion to go.

Harry had imagined that he would start off with an apology – they had departed after a fight and he had barely said any of the things he had wanted to say. Like I'm still proud of you and you did well or I'm not upset that you didn't complete the final task; I always thought Arthur was an arse for establishing it or … something like that.

In all this time, he had never considered that Eggsy would have become an agent after that. Arthur … wouldn't have agreed.

They returned to the hallway.

His heart ached.

The boy, albeit a little dirty, was wearing a Kingsman suit. A sense of pride filled him.

"I've – found someone," Darja was saying and gestured vaguely towards him.

Eggsy looked. Shock. Confusion.

"Harry!" he exclaimed and rushed over to hug him. The strength of it crushed the air out of his lungs.

"Hello," he replied in a faint voice, swallowing hard. This was no place for a heartfelt reunion, despite the need tugging at his heartstrings. A good spy was one without attachments, as he well knew, and Harry feared he had grown soft.

Darja cleared her throat. "I'd hate to interrupt, but we're not out just yet." Her tone was cool, but he sensed a hint of understanding. Oh, humanity was such a sweet thing.

"Right," the boy said, nodded, and turned serious.

She tossed him a rifle and they continued.

Harry asked, at some point, for a quick summary of what he had missed, and Eggsy – Galahad, he realized with a tight feeling – had just gotten past the whole Valentine spiel, Arthur's betrayal, and onto how tough the following months were, when they found Roxanne. Lancelot.

"Where's Merlin?" she asked, regarding him with an awkward glance.

Darja's expression turned cold. Like someone had knocked all air out of her and twisted a knife in her chest. The two younger agents looked at her with thinly veiled concern she didn't seem to notice.

He was particularly curious about that story.

Eventually, the path ahead of them parted into two directions. One lead down a dark corridor and up several flights of stairs. The other lead down a light path with more guards stationed that had their backs to them. Both possibly contained trouble. But they had few other options.

"We could come at them from both sides-"

"Good idea," Darja said. "You take the right path, I take the other."

Eggsy's teeth clacked together. "Alone?"

She arched an eyebrow at him. It was a justified question, in this situation – all she had were her weapons and years of training. And a bullet-proofed suit, evidently, but for how long had she been keeping her rampage going? The only thing keeping her on her feet now was determination.

"I'll handle myself," she said with a sneer.

Harry had no doubt she would; she was a force to be reckoned with and he hoped that he wouldn't have to stand in her way one day.


a/n: So. I've said it at the very beginning - I believe - but I started writing the first draft in 2015, and finished it in 2016. Long before TGC was a thing. Up to date, I've seen it once and was criminally upset after the first 30 minutes.

Anyway, I always thought Harry's death was a bs even before TGC - don't get me wrong, it made sense and it worked, but it was still a tragic affair and I felt bad for Eggsy because I definitely saw that student/mentor relationship there (as well as Harry being a positive father figure). Obviously, a lot of people thought the same!

Another thing: I've recently bought TSS off Amazon (despite already owning it on DVD) and watched it again. I was struck by the realization that I've been trying too hard to craft a flawlessly realistic story for a source material that ... does not necessarily have a flawlessly realistic plot. Suspense of disbelief and all, you know, but there are some points that never receive much of an explanation - it gives me a little bit of confidence knowing that I can be bolder.

In addition to that, since I've been doing some plotting for prose works and completing +2k profiles about each character (it's more fun than it sounds!), I understand the importance of both. It's funny how much you can grow in such short time (three years does not feel short, but it kinda is?), and how much your views can develop.

Oh, and I will be in terrible need of a beta-reader for the re-write. Maybe I can kindly ask one of my non-judgemental friends or something.