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Chapter Text

Harry was tired.  Tired of running.  Tired of being.  Tired of being the good guy, the guy in charge.  The one everyone looks to.  

“Death?”  He called out, looking out at the stars.  

“MASTER?” his ever faithful servant and constant companion appeared.  Death was everything and nothing.  The end to all, and as such was black.  Nothing, not even light could bounce off of their robes.  The only concession to light was their eyes.  Bright white.  Death needed to see the living to know when to take their souls.  

“I don’t want to do this anymore,”  Harry said, gesturing at the battle robes he wore.  It felt like every time he lived a mortal life, he was drawn into a war.  “I don’t want to be a soldier anymore.”

“MASTER, YOU ARE NOT MEANT FOR A LIFE OF LEISURE, BUT IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER, IN YOUR NEXT LIFE YOU WILL NOT BE A LEADER UNLESS YOU WISH IT.” Death said.  

Harry sighed.  He knew that in many of his lives he could have avoided being drawn into war, but it was all he knew.  “Make it so, Death.”

Death snapped their fingers.  As blackness fell over the room they said one thing that Harry would have never expected to hear.  “LIVE, MASTER”

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Harry opened his eyes blinking in the light.  He didn’t think that Death would have sent him back to be a baby, but their last words rang in his head.  He wouldn’t put anything past the entity.  

It was a sunny day.  He was lounging on a wall outside what appeared to be a police station.  Between one blink and the next he remembered who he was.  Harry Hart.  Spy, gentleman in Kingsman.  Harry snorted.  He guessed spy was better than soldier.  

“Everything alright, Galahad?”  a scottish voice said from his ear.  Or his glasses really.  Only thousands of years of being a soldier and being ready for anything, along with the memories trickling in prevented him from startling in any noticeable way.  

“Of course, Merlin.”  He replied.  In a very dusty corner of his mind the boy he once was and the boy he vowed to never be again was laughing.  Of course the quartermaster was named Merlin.  

“The boy should be coming out any time.  Ye really want to do this?”  Merlin asked.  

“Of course, if nothing else he will want to know how he was released.”  

Almost as Harry said that a boy came out the doors.  He would have known this boy was the one he was supposed to pick up even if his Other senses hadn’t screamed at him.  

“Gary Unwin.  He goes by Eggsy, bit of a trouble maker, but you knew that.  Good luck Galahad, he doesn’t seem like the trusting type.”  Merlin said in his ear.  

Harry could only stare at this boy.  He knew that he could see the aura of people if he wanted to.  And he knew he could see the mark of death around people, it grew brighter the closer you were to death, but even babies had the mark, no matter how faint.  This boy was different.  He was cloaked in Death.  The very air around him was sucking the light from it.  But the boy didn’t seem to be affected.  In fact he was almost taking the light from his cloud.  It wasn’t something he had ever seen.  And in his very long life, he had seen a lot.  

“Eggsy,”  he called out, Harry planned on talking to the boy, but now he wanted to learn about the boy and uncover his secrets.  

By the time they were sitting in the bar Harry didn’t know any more than he had started with, but he was even more intrigued.  A youngish boy, a cute little thug came over and started saying threats against the boy.  What intrigued Harry was the cloak of death, for it could be nothing else, not that color, or lack of color really, sharpened.  It crept over the the little thug and circled around them, Harry could tell it was begging to mark these boys for death.  Make it so Death would see them and take them away.  It was fascinating.  Harry had never seen something so interesting.  He knew there and then he wanted to study Eggsy, figure out if he could be trained to use his aura as a weapon.  If he could mark someone for death, and control how dark the mark is, he could commit murder without ever being caught.  

He fought, knowing that he was showing off, just a little.  He hit the bartender with an amnesia dart and then pointed his watch at the boy.  It was always telling how people responded when under pressure.  

“Please, don’t shoot.  I won’t grass, never have, ask anyone.”  the boy begged.  How very interesting, Harry thought.  

“Everything in his past would agree with that statement,” Merlin said in his ear, “there are many times that the police questioned him, and nothing came about from it.”  

Harry blinked, and lowered his arm.  “Of course not, my boy,”  

“I would put a tracker on him, just to be sure,”  Merlin suggested in his ear.  

Harry agreed with that thought and put a tracker on the boys shoulder.  He finished his beer, and left.  

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It turned out the boy spoke the truth, even faced with what sounded like a knife, he wouldn’t give up Harry’s name.  

If Harry hadn’t been planning on proposing this boy, he would have decided then and there.  That sort of loyalty wasn’t something you could train for.  

Harry waited in the shop, idly drinking and sorting through Harry Hart’s memories.  It appears the man was quite skilled at being a gentleman spy.  A wisp of death caught his attention at the edge of his awareness.  He very carefully didn’t sit up or change his attention physically, but every spare part of his brain was focussed on figuring out this boy.  The blackness grew deeper and more solid moments before the boy opened the door.  It hovered in front of him, almost protectively while his eyes scanned the shop.  Only by virtue of being both a trained spy and a soldier kept alive only by noticing subtle changes in someone did he notice when the boy saw no threat and relaxed, the cloud of death relaxed into the gentle cloud like cloak it was in before. 
Harry made note to test the boy’s reflexes and the clouds reaction to stress at some point.  

On the way down the elevator Harry got close enough to Eggsy to stand in the cloud.  The part of him that stood with Death at his back, and knew Death more than he ever knew life could feel the cloud.  It didn’t feel cold, or malicious, it didn’t even feel like the emotions an aura projected, the part of Harry that was a Hart couldn’t even tell anything was there.  He reached out with his Death magic and touched the cloak, gently and as if to say, I am here.  Eggsy didn’t appear to react, but the cloak spread, trying to cover them both.  

Harry released the boy into Merlin’s care and went to his office to see the film of the flooding, curious beyond words what the cloud of death would do.  

It ends up being rather anti climatic.  The cloak touches all the trainees when the water starts, but leaves them all fairly quickly.  The only one who still has any trace of death on them is the plant, Amelia.  And even then the cloud seems confused, like it thinks the girl should be dead soon, but at the same time won’t be.  Harry had been suspicious about how much Eggsy’s knowledge influenced the cloaks, but this cinches it.  The cloak itself could tell that the girl wouldn’t die, but the boy subconsciously was aware of her apparent drowning.  If Eggsy was aware of Death then he could use that to his advantage.  

He decides he needs to speak with his candidate.  Observations would only get so far.  It wasn’t uncommon to have private discussions with your mentor during training, but they tended to be unscheduled and were often interrupted and were more like tea time than any sort of training.  

Harry pings Merlin, ‘I need private training with my candidate’ 

‘Why?’ Merlin answers, ‘you never have before’ 

‘I can’t tell you why,’ Harry writes, knowing he will one day have to come clean, or figure out how much magic this universe has.  

It doesn’t take long and Merlin sends back a schedule of the candidate training, and blocked out is ‘meeting with mentor’.  A note is attached to it ‘you owe me.’ Harry smiles.  This will be fun. 

Chapter Text

Eggsy has always known when someone would die.  It was never anything more than a small amount of attention to a person, a whisper that said to say good-bye.  He had never met anyone like this Harry Hart.  The man felt like he should be dead.  But at the same time, he would never die.  

When Harry told him about being a Kingsman he wondered if everyone in the organization felt the same way.  It would make sense that spies would live on the balance between life and death.  

That idea was shot down when he met Merlin.  The man felt alive, and like his death would be years in the future.  Eggsy decided to chalk it up to getting confused after being in the police station.  Maybe they had been walking close to someone who was going to die very soon.  

Before he had any more time to think about Harry he was drowning.  Except not quite.  It took a minute, but as he punched the glass, all he could think about was surviving. 

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Training was hard.  He thought he would have had an edge from being in the military, no matter how briefly, but the other candidates had similar training, so he quickly realized he had to learn and get better.  And he did.  

The only part of his training he was confused about was his time with his mentor, Harry.  They didn’t seem to make sense.  One day they would stroll through the park.  The next they would go over historical examples of espionage.  One time they went to a hospital and volunteered.   The strange feeling around Harry never left.  He felt like he was already dead, and at the same time he felt like he would never die.  

From an early age Eggsy had learned to never talk about knowing when people will die.  It never turned out well when a small child pointed at someone and said “He’s going to die soon,”  His mother told him to never talk about it again.  It wasn’t a hard directive to follow, it was a very soft feeling, and easy to ignore.  

What was less easy to ignore was how many close to death people they were near when he and Harry had their meetings.  

Eventually he decided to say something, this man who felt different from anyone else he’d met might just understand what he was saying.  

“Hey Harry,”  Eggsy was walking past a group of girls who felt like they would all die in a few days, all together.  Probably a car crash.  

“Yes, my boy” Harry answered, strolling along looking like any English gentleman.  

“This might sound weird, but promise not to freak out,”  

“Of course, what is it?”

“Not that I don’t love our time together, and whatever it is your teaching me, but could we hang out around less dying people?”

If Eggsy had looked he would have seen Harry smirking, “what ever do you mean, my boy,”  he gestured around them, “none of these people appear to be dying.”

Eggsy rolled his eyes, “this is the weird part, those birds are going to die soon.  I can’t explain how I know, but we’ve been by too many dying people for it to be a coincidence.” 

“That is something that sounds odd, but I think it’s time we had a private discussion,”  Harry said, then changed the subject to how to tell if someone was concealing a weapon in unusual places.  

Eggsy wasn’t too worried, but nevertheless he paid extra attention to Harry, the feeling of death had gotten stronger.  For the first time since he was a small child he was curious about his gift. 

Chapter Text

Harry had been observing Eggsy both during his training, as well as on their outings.  It was easier than one would think to ‘run into’ dying people, especially when you were the Master of Death and could see everyone’s death clock, as it were.  

It rather surprised him how quickly Eggsy confronted him.  Harry had plans to ‘happen upon’ someone actively dying soon.  He had been slowly closing the gap.  At first they went by people who would die in a month, then a week.  The girls they had gone by were going to die tomorrow in a bus crash.  The driver was going to be distracted by a girl darting into traffic and not notice a lory running a red light.  

Harry had long ago given up on stopping early deaths.  It both went against the natural order, and everyone had to die sometime.  If everyone lived to be 80, the world would be in even more chaos than it currently was.  

He was surprised at how readily Eggsy admitted he would sense death.  Even if he really didn’t say anything explicit about sensing it, the fact that he opened up at all, was impressive.  

The next mentor meeting he had they stayed in his office.  He had spoken to Merlin beforehand and explained that they needed to have a very private conversation, and could he misplace the office feed during their conversation?  

Merlin had wanted a return favor, which Harry was willing to grant within reason.  It really was nice working with people who knew him.  He remembered a life where he had to infiltrate a base where no one knew him.  That hadn’t been easy.  

There was a knock on the door, bringing Harry out of his thoughts.  “Come in, Eggsy,”  

Eggsy came in, just by the cloud of death hovering rather protectively in front of him, Harry could tell he was nervous.  “No need to be nervous, nothing we discuss will leave this office unless you allow it.”

Eggsy sat down in the chair across from Harry.  “I guess I should ask.  Why do you feel like you’re already dead?”  

Harry blinked in surprise.  He didn’t think Eggsy would be that sensitive.  “Do I feel just dead?”

“No, you also feel like you will never die,”  Eggsy said, twisting his fingers together.  

“Explain that please,” Harry wanted to know if his connection with Death was influencing his death clock, or if being Master of Death was what was influencing it.  

“Everyone feels like they will die, even babies that will live to be 100 have just a whisper of death on them.  I can’t even feel the smallest of whispers on you.  Aside from the fact you should be dead with that amount of death on you.”  Eggsy looked at his hands, “You probably think I’m crazy,”

Harry couldn’t believe how forthcoming Eggsy was.  He had a decision to make, how much to reveal. “I guess the reason I feel dead, is because I have part of Death in me.”  

“Death?  Like the grim reaper, end of all, that Death?”

“YES, ALTHOUGH I AM NOT THE END OF ALL” Both Eggsy and Harry startled when Death appeared.  

“I didn’t realize you were going to show yourself, Death,”  Harry said.  

At the same time Eggsy gasped, “Death, like a person who comes and cuts the cord with life?”  

“YOU HAVE A GIFT, YOUNG ONE, HARRY WILL TEACH YOU TO USE IT, FOR IF YOU DO NOT, THE END OF TIMES MAY COME SOONER THAN WE HOPE.”  and they disappeared.  

Harry stared at Eggsy, his cloak was expanding, is almost seemed more solid, like it was protecting him from the being that made it, “That’s ominous,”  Harry said, “I think I should explain what I can see around you,”  

Eggsy was in shock, the being, man, person, god? Appeared, said something, and was gone.  He turned to look at Harry with wide eyes.  “What, what the heck was that?!”

Harry smiled.  “That was Death.  They’re less of a god and more a personification of death itself.  They marked me years ago, which would be the death you sense around me.  Due to my unique relationship with death I won’t die unless they will it.  So that would be the lack of death in my future.”  The cloud of death around Eggsy was expanding to fill the room.  It brushed up against Harry like a cat.  “Now, the reason you are here.  You have the sense of Death.  I see it as a cloud like cloak around you.  I would have confused it for an aura except it is the same color and feel as the cloak around Death.  From observing you I suspect that the reason you can feel the coming death of people is because your cloak is interacting with the mark of death on someone.” Harry paused, and looked at Eggsy, “Have you ever seen someone die?”

“No, I haven’t”  Eggsy said, almost looking embarrassed.  

“Well then, I think you need to see and feel a death, then perhaps we can train you to mark people with death.”  Eggsy looked nervous and confused.  

“Mark people with death?” he echoed.  

“Yes, I suspect that if you had the right training you could mark someone for death.  With proper practice, you could make someone die days after you interact with them.  In our profession, it would be the perfect tool.  It would be untraceable because Death doesn’t use bullets.”  Harry smiled.  “Our meeting is almost over, I think we will go on a little excursion for our next meeting.”  

Eggsy left, unsure and confused, but very sure that he wouldn’t tell anyone what just happened.  Not that anyone would believe him. 

Chapter Text

Harry searched for a person who would die during their next meeting.  Even though thousands of people die every day, finding a person who dies at a certain time is a lot harder than one would think.  Finally he found a man who would overdose and die during their meeting time.  

He collected Eggsy at the appointed time. “We’ve got a ways to go, so let’s hurry,”

They rode the bullet train to London then took a taxi.  Harry very carefully spelled traffic to let them get there faster.  

Before they knew it they were standing in an alley, next to a man who was passed out on the ground.  

“Tell me, Eggsy, what do you feel,”  Harry asked, looking down at the man. He could feel the man had maybe minutes left.  

“He’s going to die soon.  Maybe 186 seconds,”  Eggsy replied.  Harry was impressed.  With his thousands of years of knowledge and experience he could narrow down the timing to seconds, but Eggsy, who by all accounts had no training, shouldn’t have been able to.  

“Very good, Eggsy.”  Harry praised, “if you feel anything, tell me,”

Harry looked closely at Eggsy and his cloud.  It stretched out to cover the man, then when the man took his last breath, it sunk through him.  

“He’s dead,” Eggsy announced just as the man’s soul was collected. 

“Very interesting.  If we began CPR do you think we could revive him?”  Harry asked.  

“No, he’s gone,”  Eggsy said with such surety that Harry wouldn’t question him.  

“How do you know?” Harry pressed.  

“I’m not sure.  But it just feels like a body, the man isn’t there anymore.”  Eggsy answered, shrugging.  

“Very good, Eggsy,” Harry praised.  “What you’re feeling the lack of is the soul.”  Harry explained, “The lack of soul is what causes the body to die.  Sometimes a soul may leave the body before the body’s heart stops beating, this is what they call ‘brain dead’.  Conversely if the body dies, the heart stops beating usually, and the soul doesn’t feel like it’s its time to die, it will stay around, which is why someone whose heart has stopped can be brought back to life.  Life both has free will and predetermination.  When a baby is born they have a counter, usually based on number of heartbeats, then they will die.  However, an accident can cause premature death.  If I wished, I could save someone marked to die, or cause someone to die early.  I won’t because there are consequences to actions changing the lives of humans, but nevertheless I could.”  Harry paused, looking at Eggsy.  “Does that make sense thus far?”

“I mean, it’s totally crazy, but yeah, you make sense.”  Eggsy said.  

“Good.  What I suspect you can do is tear off a little bit of your cloak and attach it to someone.  Death knows when to take someone by the depth of their death-mark.  With practice you could change the depth of the mark you leave, changing the length of time before their death.  I would caution against setting a death-mark out too far into the future.  The little choices you make could make your car 5 seconds later to that red light you would have run through.  So if we want a precise time of death more than a few days out, I doubt that is possible.”  

Eggsy looked at Harry with wide eyes.  “I don’t even know how to begin to train this.”  

“Leave that to me.  I will warm you.  You will be causing the death of people.  I will begin with criminals, people on death row as it were.  But we will eventually cause the death of at least one person who would have lived a full life.”  Harry rested his hand on Eggsy’s shoulder.  “You need to be comfortable with taking a life.  But remember, you would have to take a life at some point if you got this job.”

Eggsy was a little pale at the thought of taking a life.  “I’m not sure I can take the life on an innocent person, but if I can take a life to save another, I can do it.”  

“Good man.”  Harry praised. “Next time we meet I should have someone.” 

Chapter Text

Harry found a man who would die several hours after their meeting.  He was perfect for Eggsy’s training. He would die of a heart attack, so their killing wouldn’t have any impact on anyone else.  

Eggsy and Harry went into this man’s apartment.  Harry had stupefied the man, the less pressure Eggsy had the better.  

“Alright, this man will have a heart attack in a few hours.  We’re going to speed that up a little bit.” Harry said.  “What we’ll start with is almost tricking your cloud.”  Harry moved over behind Eggsy.  “I want you to feel with all your being that this man will die in 60 seconds.”  

Eggsy closed his eyes.  He imagined the feeling he had gotten from the man he saw die, it was like his entire being was shouting at him about Death, how close they were.  He felt that feeling throughout his body, trying to get that feeling to come from the man laying on the bed.  

Harry was watching Eggsy and his cloak of death.  It fluttered, like it wanted to cover the man, but wasn’t convinced.  Harry waited a long 60 seconds, but the cloak never settled fully over the man.  Harry was concerned that Eggsy was fundamentally too Good to ever take a life in that way.  

Eggsy was getting frustrated.  “It’s not working,” he said.  

“Talk me through your thought process,”  Harry suggested.  

“I’m trying to use what feeling I remember from that other man and feel the same thing right now for this man,”  Eggsy said, running a hand through his hair, making it stick up.  

“I believe that’s your problem, you need to expect to feel that feeling.  Your gift is likely different from mine, so perhaps try something else?”  Harry said.  

“Alright,”  Eggsy said.  “He is Dead.  He will Die, he is Dead.”  he whispered over and over.  It only took moments, but Harry saw a difference in the cloud of Death.  

It no longer was fluttering around the man, but was pointed like a spear and pressing into the man’s chest.  Harry suspected with practice Eggsy could change the cause of death.  

Harry counted off a minute again.  The man was not dying, but was much closer than he was before.  “Much closer Eggsy,” he praised.  “What were you thinking of this time?”

“I know he’s going to have a heart attack, so I tried to convince myself that it was going to happen sooner than I had thought. I think it kinda worked, but it still feels like it’ll be closer to an hour than 60 seconds.”  

“Hmmmm, I think we’re going about this in the wrong direction,”  Harry mused.  “You’ve tried to feel the same thing as last time, but I don’t think that’s going to work.  Did you ever read any fantasy where you could use magic to cause instant death?”

“Yeah, Harry Potter.”  Eggsy replied, “Those were awesome,”  

Harry smirked, it was always fun when the life he lived was fiction in different worlds.  “Yes, like Harry Potter.  I want you to think about Avada Kedavra.  What it does, how it works.  I want you to think about using that spell on this man.  It’s painless and just cuts the soul off.”  

Eggsy closed his eyes.  He told himself that he was fighting an evil foe, that there was no other choice.  Avada Kedavra! He pictured the bright green light coming from him and hitting the man in the chest.  Immediately he felt a difference.  The man’s soul was slowly slipping from him.  It was much slower than the drug addict from last time, it almost felt like it knew it wasn’t time to go, but was going because it was told to.  

He opened his eyes.  Harry was still standing off to the side, with a smile on his face.  It was interesting, his eyes were the same color as the killing curse he had imagined.  Eggsy turned his attention to the man.  It was obvious that he was closer to death.  But yet was fighting it.  

“Much better Eggsy,” Harry praised.