Chapter Text
The grand story of Eggsy Unwin—two-time saver of the world and general kickass super spy—is actually quite easily divided into neat little chapters, which he gets to revisit each time his life flashes before his eyes. Which is often, considering his line of work.
Chapter One: Before Dad died.
Chapter Two: When he did.
He doesn’t really enjoy the next few chapters after that. And they can be pretty much lumped together anyway so the story mostly goes like this:
Chapter Three: Before Harry Hart came into his life.
Chapter Four: When he did.
And of course from there on out the chapters include a lot more evil plots and saving of the world and, as of two weeks ago, even getting married to a princess of all people, which is chapter twelve. But exciting as they are, when Eggsy is staring down the barrel of a gun, it isn’t any of those events that jump to the forefront of his mind. It’s the moment of agreeing to a drink with the pompous asshole who just bailed him out of jail.
The problem, Eggsy decides, is that he probably fucking imprinted on Harry while he was a maggot or larvae or whatever being transformed into a caterpillar, which is why he can’t get the man’s face out of his mind when he really should be trying not to die.
There’s eight of them, all with guns or knives in hand, and he’s surrounded. Normally this would present no problem, but he was an idiot who decided to leave his umbrella behind in the cab along with the pocket grenades and then took a jump he really shouldn’t have and dislocated his shoulder while catching onto a windowsill and losing his gun in the process. His first response is to ask Merlin to find him a bloody way out of this, but of course there is no Merlin. Or at least, he’s not the right Merlin. Acknowledging this new tech assistant, even if it would be the intelligent thing to do, feels like outright betrayal. The only voice Eggsy wants in his ear has a rough Scottish accent. This new guy has a tendency to babble anyway.
Also, he might have lost his glasses in the fall.
Well, if he’s going to die while his brain plays those first few hours with Harry on endless repeat, he might as well get it over with. He tries to shift his dislocated shoulder and is only rewarded by pain. Okay, he’s doing this one handed.
It really sucks this was a solo mission in safe hometown London. He hadn’t said a proper goodbye to anyone.
Eggsy straightens up the best he can, puts on his cockiest grin, and gestures for the men to come at him.
Two shots ring out. Eggsy winces, but there’s no pain. Or at least, no extra pain to tack on. He opens his eyes and sees the two men dead on the pavement. That definitely was not him.
Not that he’ll say no to a little aid here. Another few shots go off, but Eggsy is preoccupied with rushing the man who had been pointing the gun in his face, now a shouting and confused wreck, searching for where the sniper is hiding. He gets his wits about him and sights Eggsy when Eggsy makes his move, but panicked bullets are easy to dodge. Eggsy reaches for his wrist, and then twists the man’s arm up and around until he can snatch the gun for himself. Three more go down with cries of surprise before they can turn on him. Eggsy shoots the last two himself, thanks whatever guardian deity of spies there is, and then looks up to the crumbling brick wall where his unexpected helper sits balanced with their rifle in their lap, watching him from beneath the brim of a baseball cap.
“Um...thanks,” Eggsy calls up. “You really saved my ass.”
“Buy me a drink and we’ll call it even,” the mystery shooter calls back, and then jumps neatly from the wall so he can see her smile, even under a cloud-laden night sky. Eggsy’s chest seizes up. Because the story goes like this:
Chapter Nine: Kingsman is destroyed. Nothing left. All gone.
Chapter Thirteen: Except for Roxy.
“How the hell did you get out? I thought you were dead. I thought you were fucking dead!” After they had blown up the chemical lab on the Thames that was the mission, Roxy had taken the wheel of Eggsy’s cab without question, so now all Eggsy’s remaining energy can be spent on freaking out. “Have you been stalking me?”
Roxy sighs. She’s dressed more casually than he’s ever seen from her, the cap and a sweatshirt with worn-out jeans. She could have passed as his neighbor growing up, no trace of her posh upbringing. “Bomb shelter in the floor beneath the bed. Twelve inches solid steel on all sides. Crude, and resulted in a few broken bones and a severe concussion when the whole building caved in, but obviously it worked.”
“So you’ve been alive the whole time?” Eggsy has gotten over Harry’s not-really-death with the fact Harry wasn’t even aware of the emotional distress he caused Eggsy pretty much daily, but it’s been nine months since Poppy Adams’ attack. “You could have given me a ring, said hello.”
She takes a particularly sharp turn down a side street and glares at him. “I was in hiding. Well, intensive hospital care, and then hiding. Totally cut off until I decided to risk it two months back. But the shop is gone...so was your house...I didn’t even know for sure you were alive until I saw it in the newspaper. Your marriage, I mean.” She turns her attention back to driving. “I’ve been tailing you since you got back from your honeymoon. Had to make sure, you know?”
Yes, he knows. His first instinct after Poppy’s attack had been to pull a gun on Merlin, after all. “Well, thanks for the help back there.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“So do you trust I didn’t set a missile on you now?”
She eases into a stop and grins at him. “We’re good.” The stop turns into a quick and precise parallel park. “This is my place. Let me set your shoulder.”
It’s a crummy little apartment complex, but Eggsy grew up in places like this so he keeps his mouth shut. There’s no security heading into the building, aside from the lady smoking pot out on the steps who doesn’t even blink at Eggsy’s disheveled appearance. Roxy leads him up three flights of stairs, and then to a door located conveniently right beside the fire escape. She knocks twice on the brick beside the door, which flips around to reveal a retinal scanner, an electronic passcode, and a little light that turns from red to green when Roxy leans in and mutters her dead poodle’s name.
“That probably wasn’t part of the lease agreement,” Eggsy tries to joke as Roxy finally grabs a key from her pocket and lets them into the apartment, but mostly he just feels like shit. Roxy has been living like this because Eggsy never even bothered to think she could be alive, but Roxy is Lancelot, the one tried and true Kingman between them who actually passed the tests with flying colors. If Eggsy was able to cheat death, then of course she could as well.
“So...now you found me, you sort of know about what happened with Kingsman then?” he ventures as he goes to sit on the bed Roxy points him to. She nods as she moves across the one-room apartment to the kitchen area. A bottle of Scotch is unearthed from a cupboard, and then some bandages and wrapping from another.
“Yeah. Well, I knew it had to be a Kingsman agent who took care of the Poppy Adams business, but I didn’t know how bad it was…” She trails off, standing in the middle of the room with a single lightbulb on a string hanging above her head, and then she opens the bottle of Scotch with her teeth, spits the lid out at her feet, and takes a deep swig. She breathes out heavily as she lowers the bottle from her lips. “Didn’t know about Merlin. Thought Merlin would make it out, at least. Happy for you that Harry’s alive though.”
“Oh, yeah. Thanks.” The by-the-way approach to Harry’s resurrection startles him a little. He tends to assume that Harry has the same wrecking ball effect on the lives of everyone he meets, but Roxy just continues to the bed and hands Eggsy the bottle.
“Drink.” The bandages get dumped on the bed and Roxy sits on the side with the bad shoulder. “You drinking?” she asks as she gets both hands right where the bone is grinding wrong. Eggsy takes a quick sip and nearly spits it out when she pops the shoulder back into place with one precise and painful motion. A trickle of liquid escapes through his lips and travels down his chin. “Okay, better wrap that wrist.”
Eggsy stares down at his wrist, where the fabric of his suit had pulled away to expose his skin to the raking brick as he fell down the side of a building. The scrape is bright red and oozing little drops of blood, but he hadn’t really noticed it over the pain of his shoulder. Roxy gets back up off the bed as Eggsy works to bandage himself up. She leans against the wall and watches him with arms crossed. It hurts to see her so closed off to him. Best friend. Best agent. Jesus, that was so long ago.
“We got some Americans now,” Eggsy tells her as he covers some shallow cuts on his other arm. “Statesmen, they’re called.”
“I’ve noticed. They tend to walk funny in a suit.”
“Yeah, they do, don’t they?” He’s not sure how to continue the conversation beyond that, so they lapse once more into silence. Eggsy patches himself up and takes another drink from the bottle. “I should check in before they think I’m dead. ”
Roxy nods, but doesn’t move. She just watches as Eggsy stands and crosses the room to transfer the Scotch into her hand. “Don’t make me come saving your life again,” she tells him with a faint smile.
“You’re not coming with?” Eggsy’s stomach twists in and around itself. “Rox, come on. Kingsman needs you.”
She grips the bottle of Scotch tight as her brow furrows. “I’m not sure I’m ready to be an agent again.”
“Is this about the missile, because—”
“No, Eggsy, it’s not about the missile.” She rubs a hand across her face and sidesteps him so she can escape to the other side of the room. “Risking my life I don’t care about. But if I come back to Kingsman, who do I lose next? Arthur, Percival...all the other agents, and then Merlin...Christ, Eggsy, when do I show up for your funeral? Next week? Next year?” She shuts her eyes and snorts derisively. “I know that’s me being selfish. Kingsman saves the world and protects everyone who lives on it. I should be proud to be a part of it all. But nothing in our training...nothing…” She takes a long drink from the Scotch. “We never trained how to deal with it when everything gets taken away. If I don’t come back, I don’t have to drink to your memory when you inevitably die some gruesome and glorious death, do you understand that?”
Sort of. He had a while when the option of dropping it all seemed like it would be much less painful than continuing on. Chapter Six: Harry dies. But maybe it’s just the rough-and-tumble manner of his life that Eggsy has never been one to lie down and take a beating. Or at least, if he takes a beating he gets up again afterwards and brings a baseball bat with him for next time. Becoming Galahad became his way of coping that he was just as reliant on as Roxy is now on staying hidden. Without that option, he’s not sure where he’d be now.
“Rox, I’m not planning on dying anytime soon,” he says instead of trying to put everything to words, and Roxy just takes another drink. “No, I mean it. I’m tough to kill, you know that. Same as you. Because we’re partners, right?” He steps slowly across the apartment so she has time to move away before he puts a hand on her shoulder. “You’re my best girl, Rox. I still can’t fucking believe you’re alive. Can’t believe I’m that fucking lucky.” His hand moves to pat her cheek fondly. “Jesus, Roxy, how’d I get so fucking lucky?”
She eyes him up from beneath the brim of her hat, and then sighs and turns into his hand. “Really fucking lucky, Eggsy Unwin. I’ll come with. That doesn’t mean I’m returning for good. But I’d feel bad if I didn’t make sure the damaged goods got home safe.”
It’s close enough.