"So, what are we doing down here?"

Ignoring her question for the time being, Merlin continued fiddling with the microchip he'd been working on. Eggsy had returned Samantha only an hour previous, leaving her instructions to join him in the tech lab. She seemed rather pleased with herself when she strolled through the iron door, Rocky's tail wagging happily as she peeled the dog away from Merlin. He'd taken care of the beast for the evening, rather enjoying the company he provided. Samantha had done well with his training.

She's perched on one of the metal tables in the centre of the room, feet swinging idly as she watches him work. He'd offered her the promise of his attention earlier, but if he was being honest, he wasn't sure how much he'd be able to give her. His job at Kingsman kept him perpetually busy, a fact he was grateful for, but it made it difficult to have spare time outside of sleeping and eating. She was getting bored however, and had already spent twenty minutes showing Merlin all of the tricks she'd taught Rocky. She'd grinned like a kid on Christmas when she proved to Merlin that she'd taught Rocky how to 'sing.'

While he managed to look busy, he was doing no more than stalling. Grace from the R&D department was supposed to be bringing up a project he'd been working on for some time now, but had been delayed by processing. His eyes flit to the screen of his clipboard once more. Still no response. "We're waiting." He chimes, leaning over to grab another tool.

Samantha makes a bored noise, still swinging her feet. "On what, then? Starting to feel like you've got me trapped down here." She asks, glancing down at the watch they'd issued her. No more than five minutes had passed, but it felt like an eternity. She rolls her neck, stretching it out. Merlin doesn't reply to her pestering, facing away from her as he works on something she couldn't even see at this distance.

The tech lab looked exactly like she had been expecting-another room of boring grey concrete filled with old projects and computer screens. The only interesting bit was the wall of discarded inventions, clearly ranging through several decades. Her favourite one was a grappling hook, but as he'd explained, it was a technology that they technically hadn't outgrown. Just improved upon. She wasn't known for being the most patient person, and after her night with Galahad-Eggsy-she was desperate for more of the excitement she'd grown used to over the past few months.

Her mood had switched come morning, no doubt thanks to the tension that had finally broken between her and Eggsy. He'd given her a quick kiss on the cheek when he escorted her back to HQ, promising that he'd be there to celebrate her when she made it through training. She'd tried to convince him that he'd put too much faith in her, but he was having none of it. She'd never met someone so optimistic.

The door to the lab opens, revealing a plain-looking woman with light blonde hair. She's carrying a rather heavy looking green box, smiling sheepishly at Merlin. Rocky, always desperate for new friends, trots over to her happily. "Sorry, Merlin." She says, voice barely above a whisper. The lenses on her glasses are so thick that Sam almost wonders if she'd cut them from the glass of a bottle. "Processing wasn't keen to let this out of their sight."

"Not a problem, Grace." Merlin says, rising to greet her. The woman smiles gratefully when he takes the metal box from her, setting it down on a nearby table. Samantha slips to her feet, going to greet the shy woman. She was prettier up close. Sensing his candidate's approach, Merlin clasps his hands behind his back to introduce the pair. "Grace, this is Samantha Ackart. She's currently in the running for-"

"I know who she is." Grace says, smiling at Samantha as she offers her a hand to shake. "There aren't too many women here, so we tend to keep track of the few who join us." Her grip is surprisingly firm despite her demeanour. She nods towards the metal box behind them. "Have you told her yet?"

Sam's eyebrow raises. "Told me what?"

Merlin clears his throat. "Not quite, Grace. Thank you." He offers her a curt nod, and she apparently takes this as her signal to leave, but not before offering a quick word of 'good luck' to Samantha. She liked Grace. Merlin moves past her, pulling the box closer to him as he unhooks the latches. "I have something for you."

"A present? For me?" She gasps, rounding the table to stand opposite to him. He's trying to hide the amused smile that creeps onto his face, but isn't doing a great job. "Merlin, you big softie. It's not even my birthday."

"It's not a present, Samantha." He states. He pauses for a moment, wondering if he'd done the right thing. He'd helped R&D develop this when she'd first started to succeed in training, willing to do anything to aid her in the process. Merlin had grown rather fond of his candidate, despite what he was willing to tell anyone. "Y'might not even want it."

She snorts. "I doubt that. Mum once gave me a book on local wildflowers and I carried it around with me for weeks. Used to get excited about all sorts of little things." She gestures at the metal box. "Something tells me this'll be a gift for the ages."

"Your mother is a lovely woman, Samantha. I'm willing to bet you still have that book."

She's confused for a moment, just before remembering. "Right. Keep forgetting you know her." Merlin had been schoolmates with her Uncle Thomas, even been a guest at his wedding. She'd never met him before Kingsman, of course, but Tommy had always told the story of the time the two of them snuck out of class to meet their girlfriends at a local park after one too many whiskeys. "Still not allowed to call you Hamish here, right?"

"Not a chance." He responds sharply. "If I find out you've told someone, please know that I'll have you in that body bag faster than you can say your own name."

"You'd be so much scarier if I hadn't seen photos of you from Tommy's stag party."

"Samantha."

"Sorry." Her fingers tap against the metal of the box. "So what's this, then?"

He stares down at the box, once more questioning if he'd done the right thing. He wasn't trying to fix her, of course, but he couldn't fathom how she'd made it so far in training without the use of both of her hands. Yet, she'd held her own, and even pushed towards the top of the class. Merlin turns the box to face her, no longer wanting to delay the inevitable.

Lifting the lid, Samantha's hand recoils as if she'd been burned when she notices what's inside. Upon first glance, it had appeared to be a severed hand, skin lifeless as it sat on the velvety cushion inside the box. But as she stared at it further, it seemed almost… metallic? Her heart hammers in her chest, and she wonders if this is what he's thought of her the entire time. A project, a toy doll, just waiting to be fixed. "What the fuck, Merlin?" She seethes. "Are you taking the piss right now?"

She'd never felt so betrayed in her life. Her disability was something that defined her, and she was proud of it. Not a single point in her training had been impacted by her lack of a second hand, and he knew it. But doing this? Making her this? It was the physical embodiment of his disbelief in her abilities.

Merlin sighs a little. "I was worried you'd react like this." She shoves the box back towards him, metal scraping against metal. "I didn't have our team make this because I think you can't get on without two hands. You've proven that time and time again during your training."

"You're fucking right I have. You just think I'm some little broken thing you need to make whole again, yeah? I can't fucking believe that you would-"

He cuts her off short with a sharp crack of her name. "I don't think you're broken, and I sure as hell know that making you a prosthetic won't make you 'whole,' or whatever you want to accuse me of next." He shoves the box back towards her. "But it's my job to make sure that my agents-my candidates-perform the best they can in the field, no matter what. Even if it means making a robotic hand for someone who doesn't need it to snap a man's neck."

She's glaring at him, practically spelling out 'fuck you' with just her gaze. He takes a steadying breath, realising that he needs to adjust his course of speech. "Do you know why I chose you as my candidate?" Samantha doesn't respond, but he does notice her shoulders drop slightly, unsure where he was leading with this. Merlin can still see her outside of that bus stop, soaking wet and cursing at the phone she'd just dropped into a puddle. "I didn't choose you as a candidate because I wanted to make you into one of my projects. I chose you because you know how to survive, no matter what."

Samantha shuffles on her feet, glancing down at the box. "When it came time to draw candidates, I nearly chose someone else. I knew who you were, knew your family. I didn't want to bring you into this without knowing that I could keep you safe, and even then it was a risk. I picked you only after I'd read your file." He pauses, gauging her reaction. "Samantha, you should have never made it out of that prisoner's camp alive. Y'can't blame me for trying to give you the upper hand now."

There's a long pause before she speaks, the anger slowly seeping out of her body. He was right, of course. She'd managed to keep up with the other candidates during training, but learning how to do everything separate from her peers had been a struggle. Reloading a gun, learning how to apply a tourniquet, strength training-all of it had to be adapted to her lack of a second hand. Her disability had never made her feel less than, but here she was. Berating the man who had literally made her a new hand. "That was a shit pun, Merlin." She eventually sighs, deciding to let go of it for now. "Not doing a great job of keeping me safe, though. Already nearly died once."

"Might've been easier to hold on if you had a second hand." She shoots him a look, and he wipes the little smug smile off his face. "I won't apologise for trying to help, but you don't have to accept it if you don't want it. You get on well enough without it."

She wants to keep being mad at him, to be upset that he did this without her permission. But the longer she thinks about it, the more she knows she can't. He'd kept it from her for this long, probably fearing the exact reaction that she'd given him. She'd considered prosthetics in the past, but they had always been too expensive and too bulky to be a viable option. "Come on, then." She mutters. "Show me how it works."

…

It was scary, really, how much it resembled what her hand used to look like. The only thing missing was the freckle on her middle finger, but that was something Merlin had assured her they could fix. The hand moved almost without her thinking, fingers flexing smoothly at her will.

Her first test, upon her insistence, had been a game of rock, paper, scissors; she'd lost to Merlin almost every time she forced him to play. Afterwards he'd made her run through the various actions that she'd had to adapt to the use of only one hand. It was annoying how quickly she'd been able to complete each task, but she wasn't willing to give him the satisfaction of being right quite yet.

Merlin had continued to insist that she didn't have to keep the prosthetic unless she really wanted to, but the more she used it, the more she knew that it would be idiotic to not accept such a gift. It was unlike any prosthetic she'd ever seen-waterproof, capable of lifting nearly three hundred pounds without straining her wrist, and it even had a built-in taser. It was any agent's wet dream of prosthetics, and she hated it. Hated how natural it felt even though it had only been a few hours since she had it. Her body dysmorphia had kicked in tenfold from the moment it was on, but the longer it rested on her wrist, the closer she felt to her old self.

All she wanted to do now were the things she had struggled with over the last four years. She wanted to dice an onion, type as fast as she once could, even french braid her hair. Things that she hadn't fully realised she'd missed. She'd lost the reality of a normal, functional life years ago. Everything since then had just been about learning how to do without. She couldn't imagine using the hand outside of missions, but it was still a bit odd to imagine what she was capable of again.

She'd made Merlin promise to destroy it if she wasn't able to make it through the final rounds of Kingsman. He'd been hesitant at first, but she'd insisted that she didn't want any souvenir of what could have been. She was sure he'd lied to her, of course, but that didn't matter. A promise was still a promise, and she'd hold him to it. She glances over at Merlin, watching him stare at her as she flexes the fake fingers. "I'm still mad at you, you know."

"I'll survive." He responds. She'd been quiet for the past half hour, staring down at the manufactured palm. "Glad to see it's working as well as we'd hoped."

Rocky's head lifts from her knee, and she reaches down to pet him with the prosthetic. Her brain couldn't connect the visual of the hand with the lack of the sensation of touch, but she was growing used to it. "Only thing it's good for is petting this sweet bastard with two hands now." Merlin hums disapprovingly. "Thanks for the million pound dog scratcher."

"Several million, actually. A 'thank you' would be nice."

"Give it a few weeks and I'll consider it." She grumbles. She knows she should thank him, but she can't help but still feel a little betrayed. Her anger had subsisted, but too many emotions had been brought to the surface at once. Fuck, what she wouldn't give to have Eggsy here now. He'd give her some rousing speech on how he was only trying to do what was best for her safety, and that he'd meant nothing by it. Samantha sighs, leaning back in her chair to look at Merlin. "Thank you. Sorry I was such a prick about it."

"Can't say I blame you, Sam. I would've had a similar reaction if it were me." He watches her nod in agreement, wondering what must be going on in her head at the moment. He wanted to tell her about the near dozen times he'd cancelled the development, worried that she'd have the exact reaction she had. He can't worry about that now. "You can keep it for the night, if you'd like. Might be fun to try and convince Theodore you've had two hands this entire time."

Samantha snorts, already imagining that fuck's face when he noticed her miraculous growth of a hand. It would be fun. "Still can't believe he made it through training and Quentin didn't."

Merlin wasn't surprised. Quentin was a great candidate, but ever since his involvement in the accident with Samantha, the boy had turned into someone he didn't recognize. It was clear then that he wouldn't make it very far in the program, and learning that Quentin was weak-willed was nothing more than a relief to him. His betrayal was obviously resting heavily on Sam's conscience, but there was nothing he could do to change that. "Would you rather betray a friend or an enemy?"

Fuck, she really hated how right he'd been over the past few hours. She wasn't sure she could actually betray Quentin, no matter how much his behaviour had changed around her. "Not a fan of the betrayal bit, but I suppose you're right." She sighs, trying to push the ever-growing list of heavy thoughts from her head. "Might be nice to have a fair fight with Theodore for once."

"You've won nearly half of the sparring matches you've had with him, Samantha. It was always a fair fight."

"You're goddamn right it was."

His eyes flicker to his watch, hating how little time he was able to spend with her. Kingsman kept him busy, and he valued his position in the organisation. "You should get back to the barracks, Theodore will be back soon." Merlin nods down to her prosthetic hand. "Hold onto that for a few days. You can tell me all about how much you hate it after that."

Samantha rises from her chair, taking hold of Rocky's leash. "Back to business as usual, then. Thanks, Hamish."

"Don't call me that, Samantha."

"Don't make me a hand I didn't ask for." She retorts, offering him a fake salute as she heads towards the door. "See you in the morning. Should be a fun one."

...

Author's Note

I really struggled with this one. Wasn't sure if it was a betrayal to her character or not, but I couldn't push past the fact that Merlin would (canonically) do anything to help a Kingsman succeed. Even though she's not one yet, I didn't want to introduce it too late to the story. It won't come up much outside of missions, but I felt like it was important that she have the option of a prosthetic. Please leave your thoughts in the comments below, I'd love to hear your opinion on it. Thanks as always for reading!