Kingsman's holding area was as state of the art as everything else, and nearly inescapable besides. Eggsy qualified it as 'nearly' now because Guy Bennett had managed to pull it off without anyone even noticing.

A long-standing argument in the tech department was that they need cameras in the little cells, but they needed to not have cameras because a huge portion of their prisoners were tech gods or just too crafty to be near wires, and in the end the least technical thing about the place was that they had no cameras trained on most of the prisoners. Otherwise, it was over a hundred feet underground, the cells layered with the double protection of a solid lead shell that moved aside if you wanted a look at the prisoner to reveal a layer of six-inch bullet-proof glass.

Bennett had gotten damn lucky with all this. He wasn't in his cell every morning, Eggsy figured, but no one checked until he was safely back where he always was, hunched and still against the cell wall, for all outward appearances one of their most cooperative prisoners. That was where Eggsy found him when the lead draws off, sitting unkempt against the far wall with a vacant look in his eyes.

Eggsy bid the attendant to leave and again was glad for the lack of cameras. Bennett was classified as extremely low-risk; he was a scientist, but not particularly a genius, dangerous with a pad of paper and access to but not so much with only his mind and a few wires. That, and he was over one-hundred years old. The physical threat to an agent or indeed a relatively healthy child was non-existent. Yet circumstances afforded them the privacy to talk unmonitored.

Knowing this, Eggsy didn't bother with the speaker system and instead opted to walk straight into the cell where Bennett was tucked onto a sparse mattress.

"Guy," Eggsy greeted "I didn't get you in too much trouble with the missus, I hope," Bennett deigned to glance up and glowered at him, which told him all he needed to know on the matter. "What do couples as old as you even do together? He can't make you sleep on the couch."

Bennett was still frowning, but eventually he said "We watch cricket."

For some reason, this made Eggsy laugh, and Guy joined with a chuckle after a few more moments spent sulking. For a while after silence reigned in the little room.

"You want to tell me what the hell is going on?" Eggsy finally asked.

"A dream." Bennett replied. He didn't move other than to speak, still. Eggsy imagined that was what a man waiting to be dreaming looked like.

"But it's real, innit?"

"Real?" now he huffed "As real as this world is awful."

"Then it ain't a dream," Eggsy reasoned "So what is it?"

"What's a dream," said Bennett "but a wish fulfilled in sleep?"

"Very deep," he waited, and eventually Bennett gave in to the urge to monologue. He gave himself two points. Silence always worked on megalomaniacs - couldn't stand to find an empty space and not fill it with their own ego.

"It's another world. Just like ours, except the men we loved never died."

"How do you know Harry died?"

Bennett leveled him with a flat look, which Eggsy didn't think he deserved.

"I knew who you were the moment you walked into my compound, spy boy. He was in the ground, and you the walking dead. It's familiar from my own mirror."

Eggsy had to look away from him, his face, so much older than most would ever be, was like some terrifying void of secret truths. Eventually he found himself asking:

"Who is he?"

Bennett didn't seem to expect this question. Slowly, for what was probably the first time in ages in the prison, he uncurled from his spot on the mattress. Hands like bone-claws dug into his pocket, and Eggsy wondered briefly how he'd smuggled anything in, but then remembered he might have taken it from the other side. Still, the faded picture he withdrew seemed so worn with age that he might have believed it traveled with him from the bronze age. With some reluctance, he held it out.

"Tommy Judd. We went to school together. He died in the Spanish Civil War."

Eggsy didn't dare touch the picture. Something about it made him feel that it would fall to dust in hands any younger than Bennett's own. But he did look, and there, yellow and faded so it looked almost more like a painting, were two smiling young men, one with dark hair and the sort of winning smile and smarmy air that still seemed to cling to Bennett, the other seemed caught in what he assumed was a rare true grin.

"No one could make him laugh but me." Bennett said wistfully. "Not for real. He was - so I thought - straight as an arrow. Only one in the whole school, so naturally I fell in love with him. But it was not to be, and eventually I got used to working around it. Strange how much room there is in the heart. And a damn shame," he seemed to think on this for a bit, tucking the picture back into his prison suit as he did "I'd like to say I got along alright after he died, but I should think I got along as well as you, which was not at all. Defected to Russia - he loved Russia. People do the dumbest things when they pretend not to be grieving. Took me four or five decades to work out how much I wanted to see him again, and even then," he paused again "I never expected so much."

Eggsy could relate. He felt a flash of terror, looking at Bennett, for the glance at the life he might have lived.

"So that dud bomb-"

Bennett scoffed. Kindred spirit or not, near enough to a century of villainy wouldn't be left behind in a few weeks, and the haughty attitude that went with it was seared into his bones, though there was a chance that was all his own originally. Either way, it wouldn't let him stay quiet when someone else talked shit on his plans.

"The bomb wasn't a dud, spy boy. This was what it was meant to do. Of course, you were an unexpected tag-along, but it was a resounding success."

Eggsy thought about this for a few long seconds. "I don't suppose there's a way to just...stay."

"No," Bennett replied, short again and pursing his lips - probably because he'd thought about it even more than Eggsy himself. "It's our price, I'd say, to keep the universal balance sheet in check. I'd pay a thousand times more."

Eggsy considered this for a while, "It is a bit wonderful, innit?" he asked, smiling.

"He lets me kiss him," Bennett said, like some kind of schoolboy.

Eggsy found himself laughing. Alright, so maybe Bennett wasn't so bad after all. He ended up leaving with a smile on his face, at any rate. So the other world was real, or as real as he could have hoped. If he must, he would live with this one too, and come home every other day to Harry Hart waiting for him.

That meant he had a few other stops to make before he went back to bed and back where he belonged.

The best shop in town was, as expected, not that far from Kingsman's storefront. He waltzed in and was still briefly amazed that he was let into these places now, whereas before he'd have been blocked at the door. He spent about an hour staring at glittering diamonds (too gaudy, would get caught on things when he fought), slate-colored titanium (too dark, though it would match most of his suits, too simple), various well-crafted glittering circles of less precious stones that were none the less gorgeous (and a tad too flashy), before he conceded he would never make up his mind on his own and thought for all of no time before ringing up the one person in either universe that would stand a chance at offering useful advice.

"Merlin! How you doin' old man?" Eggsy bent down over another of the gleaming jewelry cases.

"...Eggsy?" Merlin sounded dubious.

"Oi, did you delete my number, you git?"

"No, no, never mind. You sound...good."

"Yeah, yeah, you sound same as always even though it's what, two a.m. over there?" he checked the row of watches to make sure he was right "How's things with that pretty tech bird? She still kicking your ass at everything?"

Merlin coughed "Maybe. Is there something you want?"

"Yeah, now that you mention it, but it's a bit weird."

"Wonderful." Merlin grumbled "Well, get on with it."

"Did Harry ever take a shine to any jewelry?"

There was a long silence on the other end.

"Said it was weird. Rings specifically, other than the signet."

"...He had a penchant for wood and dark colors. Anything that matched his outfits would do." Merlin said at length. One of the security cameras turned very slowly towards him. Eggsy winked at it.

"Thanks a bunch, Merlin. So how's America treating you?"

"Like nobility." Merlin muttered, but the security camera kept following him as he perused the store's collection of earrings, just for fun. It occurred to him that his money here wasn't tied to his money on the other side, and he eyed some of the expensive dangly ones with more interest. His mum might appreciate something nice. Things could go back and forth with him anyway, which was the whole crux of this plan.

"It's the accent, innit?"

"It's like catnip. I can't even have a pint in peace."

Eggsy whistled "Got 'em linin' up round the block for you, and all you can think to do is complain."

"You try having half Kentucky throw themselves at you and see how you like it." Merlin grumbled "I don't date agents, let alone repressed cowboy agents."

Eggsy laughed, earning a glance from the shop keep.

"Our boy Merlin, only into the nerds and-" he paused, realizing suddenly that this Merlin never married Roxy. He couldn't, because she was dead, which was why no one in the tech department dated agents. Merlin, who'd quit the moment the new Lancelot was sworn in and fucked off to Kentucky to slum it with the yanks and some pretty magician they'd managed to recruit, like he couldn't bear the sight of the Kingsman mansion a second longer.

He'd already been in love with Roxy.

"Hey, Merlin," he said eventually "I'm...sorry if I brought up any bad memories."

Merlin was quiet again, then a soft sigh reached his ears "No lad, not bad ones at any rate. I'm glad you're doing better. You should call more often."

Eggsy waved at the camera, which got him another look from the clerk. "Been spying on me?"

Merlin scoffed "I'm a spy."

He hung up.

Eggsy grinned.

He wandered around a bit more and made the shopkeeps nervous, then made them extremely happy when he ordered a custom ring with a price tag that might have covered a moderately-sized mortgage and a nice pair of earrings, and left whistling happily, off to see to the one last person he had to visit.

"It seems a bit weird, asking you for permission to ask you to marry me," Eggsy said into the soft breeze "Still, seemed wrong not to."

Here, the Hart plot is a sobering reminder of how impossibly lucky he really was. He'd never had a chance to fall quite so stupidly in love with this Harry before he was gone. There were no precariously-stacked closets left in his house for him to dig though while Harry tried in vain to keep them from spilling; record music would echo mournfully around the empty rooms no matter how upbeat the tune was. They never got to argue about what to eat, or kiss at the end of the day, and Eggsy couldn't steal his cardigans while he waited for him to come home because there were no more cardigans that smelled like him, and he wouldn't be back before they were gone again if there were.

"Fuck," he muttered, tipping his head back and blinking fast. Harry died years ago, not that morning, he told himself, there was no way he was crying over it some more. Still it felt like he'd died that morning, and every morning since this whole thing had started. Before, he'd grown numb to Harry being gone, but now he lost him every day. He looked back down and touched the edge of the cool, smooth stone. He hated it. He wanted it to be warm like the person it represented, but nothing had ever managed that - not the bright, burning summer sun, and not Eggsy's back when he'd sat against it for hours in the past, clinging to this one connection.

How had he even gotten on this? There was a world where he was going to ask Harry to marry him. This was a happy occasion.

"I don't think I was ever going to come back from losing you," he found himself saying "even though I told myself I had. It turns out there's a big difference between moving forward and moving on. I guess Bennett had something there."

The breeze ruffled his suit, the setting sun cast the dark stone in the sort of stark relief that would have made any photographer stop and take a shot. Harry's name stood out somehow in the strange shadow twilight cast on the backs of stone, knightly even in death. On the impulse of some still-bleeding scar on his heart, he leaned down and pressed a kiss to the chill marble beside carved letters.

"I love you Harry. Now and always."

He went home, and remembered before he went to sleep that the very first time he'd drifted back he'd taken Harry's red robe with him, and sure enough he rummaged around and found it, still faintly smelling of Harry. He was a bit surprised Harry hadn't mentioned it yet, but he was glad, because it meant he could go to sleep in it now.

He woke up in Harry's bed and snuggled down further into the covers for a bit - he liked these mornings. Eventually the sun tracked across the sky to gleam rudely in his face and forced him from the tangle of blankets.

He had no plans, so he had a late shower and wandered aimlessly about the house for awhile, walked J.B., and thought briefly about paying Roxy a visit before his mother's signature bell-ringing technique roused him from his fuzzy, disconnected morning.

"Mum?" he greeted when he opened the door and found her there, dressed nice and sans Daisy.

"Eggsy babe!" she paused in texting to drag him into a hug. Eggsy hugged her back in confusion.

"What are you doing here?"

She drew back and dropped her phone into her bag with a grin. "Exams just let out and I'm here to see my boy!"

"Oh," he said intelligently, then "You got a real sixth sense for gifts, yeah?"

Michelle made the most girlish, high-pitched sound he'd ever heard from her, and he noticed she smelled very strongly of coffee and had cleverly covered her lack of sleep with makeup.

"What'd my darling son get me?"

Eggsy laughed and went to fetch the earrings from the bedroom where he'd left them that morning, having stuffed them in the pocket of the dressing gown, and enjoyed watching his mum's eyes go wide when she opened the little box. Then he was whisked away on an impromptu 'girls' day' that in fact had no girls in it, but he didn't mind. He saw Michelle often enough, but he had rarely got a day with her in either universe. He got his nails buffed to within an inch of their lives, the posh kind of facial, and narrowly escaped getting his hair frosted; and they were having a nice street-bought lunch in the park when his mum casually asked:

"You gonna tell me what you was doin' in a jewelry shop?"

Eggsy stopped chewing his mouthful of chips to blink owlishly at her. "What? I was gettin' you a gift. Exams and all that," he said, wincing when he swallowed a few chips whole to do so.

Michelle picked at her own food innocently "Really? Not a single one of your good-luck texts, but a set of thousand-dollar earrings?"

Eggsy ducked his head. Alright, so he was a git and forgot all about exams. He scuffed his foot on the ground and mumbled his reply.

"'M gonna ask him to marry me."

Michelle lowered the plastic cone that held her food, her expression going serious. "Eggsy, are you sure?"

"'Course I'm sure, mum. You think I been shacking up with him to keep the rent down?"

"I know, Eggsy," she replied, sighing "Listen, you know I ain't been a fan of him and you since the get." Eggsy winced, because actually no, "But it's been long enough that I can see how good he is for you. Turned our lives around and that wasn't even the best thing he did. If he's it for you, love, then get on with it, yeah? Neither of ya is getting any younger." She returned to her food "'specially him."

"Mum!" he admonished, and she shrugged.

"What? 'M just statin' facts."

"Can you not?"

"Alright, alright." For one hopeful moment he thought she was done, but then she continued "But you know, I'll be on rotation for the rest of school, so if you ever need any o' them little blue pills-"

"Mum!" he cried, and she cackled at him.

A few minutes later he nudged her foot "Thanks."

"Oh sure, prescriptions can be a pain."

"For your blessing," he stressed.

"Yeah, yeah," she waved him off "If you think I'll go easy on him you're dead wrong," she hopped up to throw her now empty paper away "Come on, I've got hours more planned!"

Elsewhere, the early morning sun filtered into Galahad's office and shone on Roxanne Morton's platinum blonde hair.

"Lancelot," Harry greeted simply.

"Merlin hasn't said anything yet," she replied, dropping into an armchair he usually reserved for guests (read: Eggsy).

"He hasn't?" Harry asked airily.

"No," she frowned "it might have something to do with my avoiding him."

"I see."

"Which is your fault, by the way. I'm not sure I can cry convincingly enough to my husband over the death of my best friend who is mysteriously alive, so the least you can do is let me hide in here."

"Of course, if you feel you need to."

"Harry, you don't understand. I haven't had sex in three months, and you're making me avoid my husband."

"Terribly unfortunate situation."

Roxy squinted at him. "What did he do to you?" she asked, and Harry did look up at that, blinking innocently.

"Whatever do you mean?"

"I mean you look-" Roxy grimaced and made jazz hands at him.

Harry continued blinking, then gave a polite cough and set aside the documents he now realized he hadn't been reading.

"I'm...developing a theory, Roxy. It may help you with your act, if you must act."

Roxy seemed to wisely not mind this change of subject, "Oh?"

"...I'm not sure the boy you saw last night is Eggsy."

"Harry, my god, that's serious-"

"He is Eggsy, Lancelot, there's no doubt in my mind about that." Harry cut her off with a hand out to stall her understandable response. "Perhaps I should rephrase, it is rather convoluted. I am beginning to think that he is another Eggsy, as it were."

"That still makes no sense."

"Thus it is in development."

Roxy frowned at him, and he had a moment to wonder at how changed she was for her and Eggsy's friendship - and possibly her association with Merlin and Harry as well, though it was less obvious. She had been tense and tightly controlled at first, a model agent whose missions seemed straight from textbooks - if Kingsman were the type of place to have textbooks. Over time, however, and exposure to the more brash of the agents, she'd acquired a sort of brashness of her own that lead her to be less exemplary and more legendary. And to loose her particular kind of relaxed behavior on them, cool and sharply sarcastic, which Eggsy had always taken delight in.

"What makes you think it is and also isn't him?" she asked eventually.

Harry scavenged for tact, as he was not such a master of fucking last month seemed beyond the scope of proper workplace conversation, "There were things he was...not quite so skilled at-"

Roxy caught on anyway and threw up her hands to stall him "I do not want to know."

"-and he has more scars than you and I combined." Harry transitioned smoothly "Nothing he could have gotten in the week between his death and revival. From what I can gather he scarcely knows what's happening to him himself. So far as I can tell, something is wrong with the Bennett job. You know Bennett?"

Roxy nodded "Yeah, I read what I could stomach of the file. Good riddance."

"Bennett is also still alive, and shacked up in Hampstead with another man born at roughly the start of the Jurassic period. It's as if the blast fractured them into multiple people. I've no way of understanding, in truth."

"Have you tried asking Eggsy?" Roxy asked slowly, as if she fully expected an answer she disapproved of.

"No. Sort of."

"May I ask why?"

"He hasn't said anything about it."

"Neither have you?"

"I don't want to know." Harry said with more force than was necessary. He took a deep breath, then removed his glasses so he could rub the bridge of his nose "If...if his time is limited in some way or another...you didn't see his body and I hope you never do. This cannot come free. If he thought I could help I've no doubt he would come to me, but he hasn't and I'm too much a coward to ask."

"Oh, Harry." Roxy sighed "Let me know if there's anything I can do, alright? I keep saying this, but he's my best friend."

Harry spent a while staring aimlessly at the floor, then replaced his glasses and straightened up. "Of course," he returned to his papers "and you're welcome to stay in here as long as you like."

Roxy smiled wanly "Thanks, Harry."

As Eggsy saw it, this was probably the best possible time to go and have a chat with his dad's grave.

"You think he'd be pissed?" Eggsy asked. Michelle had been surprisingly agreeable about following him to the graveyard that evening, shrugging with a 'I should rub it in his face how good I look' and a smile edged with something so familiar he'd had to look away. His mum was a stronger person than he, he suspected. Sure, he'd survived Harry's loss before, but after a few years and a kid? He'd be gone.

"You got a lot of who you are from your dad, Eggsy. It's why you couldn't take life in the estates."

"That ain't an answer?"

"He'd either be very proud or murder Harry in cold blood," She smiled and produced three beers from her tote bag, at which Eggsy raised his eyebrows.

"Needed 'em, didn't we?"

He conceded her point and took the one she held out for him. She produced a bottle opener next, popping open both of the other two beers before setting one on top of the weathered old stone they stood before and handing the opener off to Eggsy.

"Hey dad," Eggsy said, starting to smile a bit "'m gonna get married. I hope. You might know the bloke, goes by Harry Hart." His mum huffed beside him "Please don't haunt him in a ghostly rage," he added.

Michelle laughed and raised her bottle "He's got my blessing, Lee. I wish you could see how disgusting they are together." She winked at Eggsy, and he let his smile take over his face as they tapped all three bottles together "To a happy engagement."

"I hope." Eggsy added, and drank about half the thing in one go. Fuck, he was going to ask Harry to marry him.

"Oh, as if he'd say no. You've got that man wrapped around your little finger."

Eggsy was about to reply when the sound of boots crunching over gravel prompted him to look up, or, to be more accurate, the abrupt halt of them. Usually any meeting of eyes in the old graveyard was the one social situation where no outward acknowledgement of the glance was required - both could look away without so much as a nod and know that no offence was taken. That was what Eggsy usually opted to do. Not so this time.

Merlin's strangely intense gaze was affixed to Eggsy's face. He looked a bit like he did when nothing but him and his hacking skills stood between the world and an untimely apocalypse. But Merlin could be as dramatic a bastard as any of them at times, and barring any immediate threat, Eggsy figured he had time to shoo their audience away before he was either briefed on the mission or chastised for something.

And they did have an audience. Beside Merlin, a calm but confused little man had stopped a few paces after him. Eggsy had seen him around enough to assume he was the graveyard's custodian. That was a little unnerving, he had to admit, but he'd seen Merlin's grieving face enough times and saw that he wasn't wearing it, so he bid himself to be calm.

"Merlin!" He greeted happily, raising his beer in hello. He hadn't actually clapped eyes on Merlin in more than a year, and their calls were infrequent at best. He was secure enough to admit he'd missed him a bit.

This seemed to snap Merlin out of his odd trance. His shoulders made a funny little shrug as they did when he was forced from his mind back into the situation, usually rudely. Eggsy figured it helped that now everyone was looking at him. Rather than say anything in response, however, he turned to the custodian and held a low, quick conversation with the little man, who seemed only more perplexed by whatever he said.

"I remember you," Michelle said eventually, cutting Merlin's private conversation short. Eggsy understood, it was a confusing statement. How the hell Merlin had met his mum, Eggsy had no idea. "The accountant for the tailors' shop, you said. Roxanne's husband, yeah?"

Merlin turned, suddenly the picture of calm. "Merlin, Miss Unwin."

"Oh, Michelle, please." She held up her beer "I'd offer you one, but I'm afraid I figured three was lush enough. Though I doubt Lee would mind."

"No, thank you," Merlin looked like he wanted to say more, but the custodian cut in.

"Are you sure you want to reschedule t-"

The custodian's question was cut off by a sudden burst of bubblegum pop. All of them looked at Michelle as she cursed and dug her phone out of her purse.

"It's my alarm!" She located it and shut the sound off "I have to go, Eggsy, I'm due to pick up Dais."

The custodian gave Merlin, who was once again unwilling to take his eyes off Eggsy, one last questioning look, before turning to Michelle. "I can call you a cab, miss." he said, offering her his arm.

"Oh, would you? That would be great!" She turned to Eggsy, who shrugged one shoulder.

"I'll catch a ride back with Merlin, if it's all the same to you."

"Yeah yeah," she leaned up to kiss his cheek "Don't end up in one of these any time soon, alright?" with a wide gesture to the graves she started off, quickly striking up a conversation with the custodian as they headed towards the road.

Eggsy watched her go, smiling, unaware of the shadow that slunk up to him gradually.

Merlin waited until Michelle was safely out of sight to strike. Once minute Eggsy was standing giddy and content, the next he found himself in a headlock that was not at all softened by the jumper that covered Merlin's arms.

"Who are you?!" Merlin demanded, in the split second before Eggsy's instincts kicked in. In a blink he bent and flipped Merlin to the other side of the row, dancing away before he could be caught again.

"Oi, oi! Merlin, what the fuck, it's me!"

Merlin was glaring at him, lit like fire by the orange light of the setting sun, indignance coloring his features like he couldn't believe that Eggsy'd just had the balls to throw him off. Or possibly the skill. To be fair, Merlin's grip had been more practiced and vice-like than he was expecting, and he was keen to stay outside the man's lunging distance. Which was pretty far. Fuck, Merlin could be intimidating.

"Then tell me how I have your body on ice in the Kingsman morgue!"

Eggsy stilled. "What?"

"Eggsy Unwin was killed in an explosion over a month ago," Merlin pulled himself back to his full height, but Eggsy was too busy trying to swallow his heart back down from his throat to its place in his chest to step away "I'm in this graveyard to bury him, so whoever you are, it isn't Eggsy Unwin."

Oh, no, Eggsy thought. Another world, Bennett had said. But one with a perfect Eggsy-shaped space just waiting to be filled. Moments over the past month replay in his head, moments that make a fuckton more sense and others that make absolutely none. Harry letting him walk away from what should have been worrying gaps in his memory. That first night, when he'd been so calm, like he'd been waiting for Eggsy to come home.

"Does Harry know?" his voice comes out soft and hollow.

"Does Harry know? He's the one who dug you out of Bennett's compound!"

"He didn't say nothin!" Eggsy shouted, finding his voice and powering it with the rising horror in his chest "I walked into his house and he just made me pancakes at fuckin' midnight and didn't say shit about me bein' dead!"

"I'm not so besotted that I'm blind to what is so obviously a fake," Merlin was there, suddenly, grabbing the front of his suit with none of the deadly grace of before. Rather than blind, as he'd said, he was at least disturbed at finding another Eggsy out and about. "Just who are you?!"

"I'm Eggsy fuckin' Unwin! I grew up in the estates with my mum and I had a shitty stepdad named Dean and everyone I fuckin' love is dead!" He shoved Merlin off in a parody of his usual skill, but Merlin fell back just the same. Eggsy barreled on, all the truth and pain spilling out like the stopper had been pulled.

"That scar on Harry's forehead is another inch to the right, and that-" Eggsy pointed sharply to the empty plot two over "is where I go when I want to talk to him, and this," he jerked his finger to the ground between him "is where I go when I can stand to remember what my mum and baby sister looked like when they pulled them out of a car crash on the highway," now he threw his hand off to the west "and out in the country is another one I go to when I get the time to apologize to Rox for not bein' fast enough to dig her out before she ran out of air waitin' for a rescue that wasn't fuckin' comin'!"

"Roxanne-" Merlin was pale, suddenly, her death finally getting to him, but Eggsy plowed on.

"I'm Eggsy fuckin' Unwin, Gov, who you fucked off and left alone in London, and until I woke up in a fuckin' puddle in Scotland in this little universe that seemed like it was built just for me, I was waitin' around for the day when it was my turn."

He took a shaky breath and looked into Merlin's narrowed eyes "Merlin, I can't lose this," he swallowed hard as the chill in his blood continued to spread. "I'll go if Harry asks, but nobody else."

For a long, terrible while there was nothing but silence. Eggsy crumpled under it, leaning on Lee's headstone and putting his head in his hands.

"We need to get to the bottom of this," Merlin said at length, and Eggsy laughed humorously.

"Nah guv, it's Bennett. 'Es as lonely as I am, is all. Built a bomb that blew us both clean into this place. Well, not clean, but near enough for us."

"The suit," Merlin muttered to himself.

Eggsy lifted his head and found Merlin frowning the way he did when given a problem to work out "What suit?"

"Harry brought a suit in, asked us to run some tests on it. We didn't find anything conclusive, but I asked the department to keep digging a bit longer after Harry told us not to waste resources. I assume it was yours? Green, muddy, smelled like the tube?"

"Yeah, 's what I was wearing the first time I came in."

Merlin nodded "I called a physicist I know at Oxford. To simplify, he and twenty others around the world found more and are baffled."

"'M not surprised."

"That's not all. The effect is inconsistent."

"So?"

"So, whatever it is that brings you here - it's breaking down in the suit. Eggsy, it might break down in you as well."

Well, that was ominous. This talk was shaping up to be awful. Still, there was one light in Merlin's words, and he lit upon it rather than what science only Bennett would be able to unravel - mostly because he made it.

"So you believe me, then."

Merlin scowled "I haven't decided. But you're here, and if I could get you to the lab I might be convinced."

"If? You'd let me go? Even though you're half convinced I'm some clone infiltrator? You're losing your touch, gov."

"Eggsy," Merlin put skeptical stress on the word "I was there with Harry and the retrieval team. There are two ways Kingsman agents die - unexpectedly, as in your case, and intentionally. So, to answer your question, I'll let you go because if I don't Harry Hart will be killed on his next mission."

Another mystery solved itself in Eggsy's head. Harry, home at five o'clock sharp every day.

"You've grounded him," he said aloud.

Merlin nodded "As is policy when emotional distress is suspected. But I can't keep him from the field forever," sharp eyes turned on him then "You, I've mourned. Losing you again won't gut me. Harry stands a chance at being saved if I use you right."

Harry. What the fuck was he doing, Eggsy wondered, letting some doppelganger into his house without so much as a tell me, how do you keep looking so life-like? over dinner.

"I better get home, then. Harry will be worried already. I'll be gone until late morning, but if you like I can come in then."

"Gone?" Merlin raised his eyebrows "Where?"

"Back where I come from. Listen, I really should go."

He pushed himself to his feet, driven by the sudden desire to collapse into Harry's arms, but slowed by the possibility that once Harry knew that Eggsy was not his Eggsy - a fraud and a thief in his place - he might not be welcomed there.

"Would I find anything of use if I brought down the full force of Kingsman R and D on you?" Merlin asked, holding up a staying hand.

"Probably not," Eggsy admitted "I'll be Eggsy Unwin down to my bones, and if you spent a good few years on it you might figure out what the hell Bennett did, but that's it."

"Then don't bother coming in. I'll use other channels."

"Don't bother Bennett. Not in front of Tommy, at any rate, you'll never get a word out of him. When I get back to London I'll see what I can find out."

Merlin shot a glance at the tall buildings rising in the near distance, London's skyline glinting in the sun.

"The other one. I'll wake up in Denmark in a few hours, somebody's got it in their head that they can crash the whole global economy and rebuild the world in their image. Give me a day or two," He started off, headed for a nearby tube station.

"Kay is on that mission," he heard Merlin mutter.

"Tell him it's the red switch he wants to hit. Almost had to fight a lion. Eccentric fucker."

Merlin strode through the halls of Kingsman not long after he'd watched Eggsy Unwin - or someone - wander off into London like he wasn't sitting dead three floors down in a cold metal refrigerator, barely recognizable. If he'd seen Harry he might have brained him with his clipboard. Heartbroken old fool, he thought, not for the first time. Eggsy's words echoed in his ears again, he didn't say nothin'!

Of course he didn't. And he'd go on saying nothing to anyone, Merlin expected, for as long as he possibly could. If Eggsy was a fake, he was a damn good one. A good part of Merlin's hope that Eggsy's story was true came from a healthy fear of whoever might have the ability to clone a Kingsman so convincingly. But he was flawed - in a terrible way that only made him seem more authentic. And that was what he guessed had Harry so savagely defending and hiding him.

Not for the first time he wished he hadn't caved and let Harry come to Scotland. Maybe if Eggsy's death hadn't been given such tangible reality so quickly, Harry might not have taken on that goddamn look. Maybe if he hadn't been the one to find the body, Merlin wouldn't have stood over him and felt the shock of two losses, one just confirmed and the other now inevitable.

But it was that tragedy-built instinct that had drawn him up short in the graveyard. 'I'll go if Harry asks,' Eggsy had said, with that look in his eyes. If Harry asked, he'd go alright, and there'd be no retrieving him after.

No one could fake that level of devastation.

Every Merlin learned that look the hard way once. His own had been the Lancelot James had replaced. He'd learned the lesson well the first time. Then, both Lee and James had been the unexpected kind of death, the kind that came with the biggest of foes. Merlin had never lost another agent to the single, bright kernel that kindled in them after terrible things, the one that would stay their gun arm and make them hesitate on the threshold of a crashing plane, the one that made death something to be considered rather than fought.

Seventeen years his record had been spotless. Then, out of his own control, Lancelot had been lost. His entire career could be marked by Lancelots, it seemed, if not his life. He considered this as he scoured the mansion for the latest in the prestigious line, arguably the best of the bunch. Eventually he found her napping in the chair in Harry's office, tucked under a blanket, the room lit by nothing but the fading light of day from the windows.

That was a strange place to find her, he acknowledged as he roused her. Roxanne blinked at him blearily, frowned, and then frowned much harder as she came around.

"Hey Merlin."

Merlin only raised his eyebrow when the anxiety switched off and he was treated to the best of her seductive Agent Lancelot smiles.

"Roxanne," he replied "a word."

This being the second time in two days the young Lancelot had been asked such with quiet earnesty, she barely kept from groaning. She uncurled from the chair with a stretch and looped her arms around his neck on their way back, smiling as she leaned close.

"Must we talk?"

Merlin squinted at her, "You know."

All the agents had a healthy fear of Merlin's detective skills, or as Eggsy called them, freaky mind-reading powers. Roxanne was no exception, and he caught the moment when the anxiety flashed in her eyes again before she could hide it behind innocent ignorance.

"Know what?"

"I ran into him in the graveyard."

All pretense dropped. She fell back enough to look at him, frowning again. "I found out by accident," she said quietly "Harry begged me not to tell you. I didn't want to keep it from you, but he's so-"

"I know," Merlin interrupted. To an agent who'd never seen the look before it would be terrifying for unknown reasons.

"Did he really die?"

"He is dead, Roxy. He told me some things, but it all comes down to this: whether he's Eggsy or not, the one we knew did die in Scotland."

Roxy bit her lip, her eyes beginning to shine, and ducked her head. Merlin pulled her close.

"What can we do?"

He drew a breath and let it out. Eggsy seemed convinced that whatever Bennett had done wouldn't be recreated easily, let alone understood.

"I don't know."

Eggsy closed the door behind him as softly as he could. It was dark out already, the interior of the house all aglow the way it never was in the other world. He'd never come home later than Harry, not since that first night, when it had been too late for all the lights to be on, and it stopped him dead in the hall. Like water slipping through his fingers, this could all be gone. He didn't have time to dwell as Harry, attuned to his house, came around the corner a second later.

"There you are," Harry strode over and kissed him firmly "you're late."

And there it was, fitting in like the missing puzzle piece to the mystery - the nervous energy that surrounded Harry, the way he never asked questions when he damn well should have.

His Eggsy was dead.

And Eggsy, himself, was, what? Stealing, keeping him from letting go. An ugly selfishness reared up in his chest. Why couldn't he steal this world, he wondered. Why couldn't he let this Harry have him, and take him for his own, when the rightful one was long gone?

Harry caught his hand and tore him from his thoughts. He blinked and found Harry giving his nails an inquiring look.

"Mum's done with exams," he said faintly "she insisted."

Harry smiled, and it just about shattered Eggsy's heart. He had a right to know. "Ah, then I suppose it's a wonder you haven't got matching eyeshadow. And a shame."

That startled a laugh from him "You kinky fuck."

"Come now, Eggsy, eyeshadow is hardly kinky." Harry stepped closer, pressing him between the door and his chest "Now, fishnet stockings," he began, and Eggsy laughed again and found himself being kissed. The house be damned, this was coming home.

Tomorrow, Eggsy promised himself. He'd talk to him about it tomorrow.

Tomorrow came slower for him than it did for everyone else, his existence broken up by a stakeout in Copenhagen, but it was still too soon. He woke in an empty bed and fear seized him at the thought that soon, when Harry found out that he wasn't the man who died a month ago, the bed he woke up in in both worlds would be made up and untouched on the other side. Where the house with only his name on the deed feels wide and hollow, that day this one pressed in as though the very walls were watching him in accusation. He was chased out by it.

Aimlessly he wandered the streets of London, dogged by the void of loneliness he knew and the very real possibility that he might know it twice over. He couldn't shake the feeling that he was an invader in the world, somehow out of place no matter what street he was on and in spite of the fact that he'd walked here for weeks without noticing it.

And that was how he found Tommy Judd, muttering reproachfully at a car that Eggsy suspected was as old as the man himself - if they made cars back then. While shimmering black and clearly redone a few dozen times, it seemed it hadn't been enough to keep it from breaking down, if Tommy's hunched and frustrated form over the engine was anything to go by.

"Got a problem, gov?" He found himself asking.

Tommy looked up, his aged face pinched into an expression of intense frustration and decorated with a smear of engine grease, and only frowned harder upon recognizing Eggsy.

"Oh, if it isn't the tailor," Tommy's tone said exactly how much didn't buy that cover.

Involuntarily, Eggsy felt himself start to smile. "You sound like you got bit by one, but that's me. Eggsy Unwin. And you're Tommy Judd yeah? Bennett's man."

Tommy scoffed "I am my own man, and I'd thank you to remember it."

"Alright, alright," Eggsy raised his palms in surrender "didn't mean nothin' by it, gov. You want a hand?"

"Not at the price you're offering."

Eggsy took Tommy in again, and saw something a little different this time. Here was a man who'd stuck by another Bennett, one who'd given him cause to find passing strangers on the street suspect and occasion to learn to spot an agent with a few words and a squint. Eggsy knew others like Tommy, he supposed - women, mostly, the wives of cutthroats and the dealers who rose fast, all made of tougher and more loyal stuff than him, usually.

"Tommy, you and Bennett haven't got a thing I can't get easier myself. Today I'm just a man out for a walk to clear his head who could use a bit of work to keep his mind off his life. Now, do you want a hand or not?"

Tommy glowered at him, now both mildly affronted and mildly impressed, and deliberated only a moment before standing aside and sweeping his hand at the engine. "Be my guest."

Eggsy ended up less helping and more being a strong pair of nimble hands, since it seemed Tommy knew the engine as well as he knew the color of the sky. Eventually the engine flared to life and he found himself bamboozled into driving Tommy back home while the old man grumbled about the aches and pains of too much activity on old bones. Eggsy hardly minded. A little unfamiliar company was welcome to keep his mind off things, and whatever it was about Tommy that compelled Eggsy to like him only seemed to grow stronger as they went.

The house they eventually pulled up in front of was nice, very suburban, with a small, plush lawn and unkempt roses climbing above the door. It suited Tommy. Eggsy couldn't help but think it was a strange place for the fortress-dwelling mastermind that was Guy Bennett to be living.

Tommy frowned at him when he hovered too long by the car, lost in thought though he'd meant to be on his way.

"Well? Would you like to come in for tea or stay outside and gape?"

Eggsy blinked, and found himself smiling. If he didn't know better, he'd think Tommy had taken a shine to him, too. Once inside, Eggsy was directed to sit as Tommy tottered about making the tea.

Their kitchen was bright and decorated with at least four decades worth of collecting. Gaudy old souvenirs, mismatched silverware, and the odd fifties style of wallpaper all gave the place the air of a home much lived in.

"How long have you two lived here?" he asked.

"Together? Just over a month. Off and on before that, when he could tear himself away from his work."

"You serious?" Eggsy pictured Guy, sitting listless in his cell, waiting for sleep, at the end of thirty years research into how to see this little old man again and giddy at the thought of kissing him "What the fuck was he doin', leavin' you alone?"

A perfect Eggsy-shaped hole, he thought just as he finished speaking, and reeled. There had to be another perfect match, hadn't there? One for Bennett to fill in. What had Bennett done with his duplicate in this universe?

Tommy was too busy pouring the tea to notice his dazed look. And perhaps too lost in his own thoughts. He set a cup in front of Eggsy and sat with his own, his frown softened and considering.

"He's been different lately. Since about when you started coming around. If he wasn't so old I'd probably be off my head with jealousy."

Eggsy laughed "Nothin' to your taste, gov, but I seen the pictures and he wasn't really my type back when neither. Be more likely to be using him to steal you away." Eggsy winked, and Tommy gave him a long-suffering look "But seriously, Guy did me a favor. Kinda an understatement. Saved my life is more like it, even if it was an accident. I'm really fuckin' grateful."

Tommy set down his tea, some shadow crossing his features "Eggsy, I've seen enough like you to know you're not a tailor. I won't ask how you know each other, but he said he's quit and I can't take it if he's lying again-"

"He has quit, gov, swear down. He loves you more than you can imagine and nothin' but nothin's going to tear him away from you after all this time."

Tommy dropped his eyes to his tea, suddenly looking his age.

"Then where does he go every morning?"

Eggsy blanched. It might be something Harry can accept that his young and fit lover isn't in bed at six in the morning, but Bennet at one-hundred and five shouldn't be evaporating to go for a run.

"Tommy, you're going to have to just trust me on this," he said eventually "because there's no way you'll believe the long version. Getting out had a price, and it don't involve no one but him. He's not building or informing or probably even moving around much most days. And I can tell you from experience that all he does is kill time until he can get his arse home."

"Does it have something to do with the quantum mechanics I keep finding scribbled on napkins after I leave him to himself?"

Eggsy huffed, but filed the information away - Bennett was still working on something, and if he had to guess, it was a way to force more time out of this situation.

"Yeah."

"He never liked physics before. Couldn't so much as integrate."

There was another question there, fragile but less worried, but the door slamming distracted them both. Tommy looked up, and Eggsy could only hope he'd get to be one hundred and five and still be that smitten with Harry. Bennett was whistling happily until he came into the kitchen and spotted Eggsy at the table.

"'Ey gov," Eggsy greeted, enjoying his agitated frown far too much.

"Tommy?" Bennett asked.

"Lenin's starter went. Eggsy happened to be passing by and drafted himself into fixing it for me." Tommy climbed to his feet and crossed the kitchen, eventually drawing Bennett's sharp gaze away by pressing a kiss to his cheek. Bennett promptly forgot about Eggsy in favor of giving Tommy the most besotted look Eggsy had ever seen - at least since the last time he'd run into them.

"I'll get out of your hair," Eggsy offered, standing. Bennett looked downright torn between frowning at him and actively trying to drown himself in Tommy's eyes.

"Are you sure? We're just about to sit down for lunch."

Bennett's face told Eggsy exactly how much he was not invited to said lunch, which almost made him say yes.

"That's real nice of you gov, but I should head home. Maybe next time, yeah?" He picked up his rainmaker from where he'd set it by the door, then, on a whim, drew a pen and a crumpled receipt out of his pocket, scrawling his number down and handing it over "Tommy, give us a ring next time that old junker cuts out, yeah? Can't have a pretty thing like you out on your own," he winked, and Guy looked so affronted behind Tommy that Eggsy almost laughed.

"That car is a masterpiece of craftsmanship," Tommy began, also affronted but less so, but cut off when Guy's arm landed possessively on his waist with a look on his face that said he'd forgotten what he was about to rant over in his bewilderment.

"It was wonderful of you to come by, Unwin, but isn't someone waiting on you?" Guy said, all of his seventy-odd decades of espionage and assassination coloring his voice and turning the polite inquiry into something just shy of a death threat.

Tommy was still looking between Guy and the offending hand, so Eggsy allowed himself to grin slyly at Guy. "'Course. 'Till next time, then."

"The nerve of that boy-" he heard Guy grouch as he shut the door, undercut when Tommy got his voice back and asked somewhat shrilly "What the ever-loving fuck, Bennett?"

He didn't tell Harry that night either. Something about seeing Tommy that day kept him quiet. He was rewarded for this by Harry pinning him to the bed and demonstrating exactly how easily he could ruin Eggsy's stamina if he felt the need, twice.

Eggsy finally made it back to London in the darker timeline the next day, and wandered down to the prison, more for someone to talk to than any duty to Merlin. Bennett was, as expected, tucked against the wall staring dreamily into space. Waiting. Eggsy moseyed in and joined him.

"I'm dead there, Bennett," he said eventually, when neither of them acknowledged the other for a long while.

"As am I, though I can only assume it was much more deserved." Bennett replied.

"What are you on about?"

"Tommy," he sighed "Every time I do anything sweet, he looks at me like he's never seen me before. Suffice to say that for the last few decades, my counterpart has done nothing but squander the gifts the universe gave him. I think they, that is, Tommy and your Harry and your friends, needed us as much as we needed them."

Eggsy entertained that idea for a spell, that he was less an invader and more a bandage, something to plug up a wound. He didn't have the energy for deep thoughts just then, though, and let it lie.

"Are you two married yet?" Eggsy asked.

"Oh, no. Tommy is insufferable about those things."

Eggsy felt a smile tug at his lips "What, marriage licenses?"

"Politics. Drives everyone who'll listen mad. Says the marriage act is just to keep people from noticing what else the PM is doing, not to mention about eighty years late."

"Yeah, alright. You could ask him anyway. If nothin' else, he'll be happy to have something to rant about."

Bennett smiled too.

Eggsy sat in Harry's office for hours the next day, mulling over the landslide of things he'd gained to mull over. Tommy, Bennett, Merlin, and Harry all had a part. Tommy, befuddled that the man he'd spent his life tied to suddenly loved him beyond reason. Bennett himself, much faster than Eggsy in reaching the point he was at now, bestowing his conclusion: they were needed, not parasites. Merlin letting him go. Harry never asking, only accepting, somewhat desperately, Eggsy's return.

In the end, it was what Merlin had said in the graveyard that brought him to a decision. After a month of drinking in the joy of a world brimming with the things he'd lost, he could look back and see what Bennett saw in him, and what Merlin saw in Harry. They both had been at the ends of their respective ropes. If Harry was willing to let it go, then Eggsy saw no reason to shatter them both. He feared it was a selfish decision, his own desperate grip on the brighter timeline justified by any means necessary, but the decision was made.

A thief he would be, he decided, for as long as Harry would have him.

And so, another two months passed.