Work Text:
The first time Eggsy did it, it was a knee jerk reaction.
Bullets rain from above as he propels himself forward, winding through the carnage and jumping over bodies with the hot Egyptian sun burning the back of his exposed neck. His suit takes the worst of it, the fabric catching the bullets as it was meant to but fuck him it still stung every time a bullet hits its mark. Eggsy turns a corner, nearly braining himself on the dusty road when his sprained ankle catches on a discarded backpack. The streets of the rural village are nothing like he has seen it a week before when he first dropped in. The awnings are torn to shreds, the little shops and kiosks all but ruined, and not a soul that wasn’t in Kevlar is in sight.
He is empty handed, bloodied, bruised, and Merlin’s voice is the only thing that guides him through the blazing clay maze. Eggsy spots an overturned jeep and dives, his cracked ribs protesting when he all but curls under the temporary shelter as voices continued to yell foreign words and bullets a constant presence in the way they ping off the vehicle. Eggsy’s breathing is ragged, his glasses steams up from the heat of it and he knows that the wet wheezing cannot be a good thing. Merlin’s voice in his ears tells him to hold on, to stay alive just a little bit longer whilst he deploy backup. Blue eyes are wild as they scan the immediate area, looking for something –anything- to arm himself with. His heart is beating a thousand miles per second and it feels like it’s about to jump out of his chest. Somewhere, a hand grenade explodes and Eggsy curls tighter to avoid the worst of it.
Then he sees it. His thin chain, peeking from his opened shirt collar. He can barely see the pink medal it holds, barely notices what he’s doing until his blood-crusted finger presses the tiny button of his frames.
“Eggsy, Eggsy what are you doing? I’m still here-“
Merlin’s voice is cut of midsentence, but Eggsy barely notices as he breathes the number, low but enough for the glasses to pick it up.
“Dial 121997.”
Eggsy holds his breath, his bloody left arm is wrapped around his torso, the palm of it presses against a tear in his suit and the blood that flows from under it. He can distinctly hear footsteps approaching once the bullets stopped, but he doesn’t care about that. His body is still as he waits and waits and then;
“The number you have dialled is no longer in service.”
All the breath that he’s been holding seem to leave his body all at once and he is empty. Eggsy allows himself another moment to let the emptiness take him, to let the stifling knowledge of he’s gone you fuckwit he ain’t coming to save you wash over him like tar. The footsteps stop just a hairsbreath from his shelter and Eggsy grits his teeth, throws his shoulder back and prepares to leap.
He can save himself.
He does it again and again and again, and it drives Merlin up the wall when Eggsy cuts off in the middle of a fucked up mission the moment the older man assures him that backup is coming. Eggsy knows this. He sees this.
He sees it in the way Merlin’s jaw is tight and a vein pops at his temple, just slightly above his left ear. He sees it in the way Merlin’s eyes are just a little suspicious. He sees it –after one particular bad mission in Amsterdam where he nearly burns to death or die of smoke inhalation, whichever takes him first- when Merlin flat out clutches Eggsy’s head to stop him from pressing his face into the hospital pillow, to force Eggsy to look him in the eye and to tell him;
“What are ye doing, Eggsy.” Dark eyes pierce Eggsy and he finds it unfair that he’s practically strapped to the hospital bed. “Ye tell me the truth now, or I swear on all that’s holy I’ll put ye on the bench until ye either grow some fucking sense of self preservation or find it that brain o’ yours to tell me what the bloody hell is going on with ye.”
Eggsy snorts, knowing that Kingsman can’t afford to bench anyone in the aftermath of V-Day. So Eggsy shrugs, complains about horrible bedside manners and pretends that Merlin doesn’t look a little hurt by the brush off.
But Merlin finds out anyway.
“Eggsy!” Roxy’s voice is a fixed point in Eggy’s mind and he runs towards it, often catching himself on crumbling pillars. Debris fall from the cracking ceiling as another explosion wrecks the old church, shaking the entire foundation and threatening to collapse into the watery graves of Venice.
“Roxy! Roxy where the fuck are ya?!” Eggsy coughs, feeling the gritty dust in his lungs. His suit is beyond ruined, stained and torn but his glasses are miraculously still intact. The cut on his cheek bleeds but he pays no mind to it as he jumps to avoid a crashing metal support. A shout has him whipping his head to the side to see Roxy running parallel to him, her suit equally ruined and blood stained. “The door! Roxy get to the fucking door!”
Both agents all but slams into the closed double doors at the same time as the world literally crumbles around them. Parts of the mosaic flooring have sunken in and Eggsy can hear water splashing as stones crash into them.
Panic does not even begin to cover the depth of Eggsy’s feeling at that point as he looks up just in time to see the stained glass at the far end of the aisle crumble and rains down in a shower of light and colour in the afternoon sun. “Roxy,” he clutches her arm. He turns and Roxy is plastered against the heavy double doors, lips pressed in a stubborn line but the eyes behind her glasses betray her.
“Fuck’s sake these villains are getting more and more dramatic I swear to god.” Merlin’s voice echoes in their ears and Eggsy watches Roxy’s face shift before settling into quiet relief. “Got a team coming, ETA 2 minutes,” Eggsy’s stomach drops. They haven’t got two minutes and Roxy knows this as well as he does, her lashes flutter as her eyes shutters close, body slumps ever heavier against the door. “Or less so just hold on-“
Eggsy stops listening.
It is almost automatic now, the way his right hand raises to the side of his frame and smudging blood all over it. His forefinger presses delicately over the tiny button and he is calm when he recites the familiar words.
“Dial 121997.”
Eggsy presses his back against the shuddering doors, his head tilted up and he lets his eyes idly roam the ruined painting on the ceilings. Angels and cherubs and people on clouds stare back at him through their cracks and chipping paint as they crumble to dust. He feels Roxy moving closer to him, pressing her side to his. He can hear her speaking –shouting really- to Merlin over the chaos of a collapsing church.
“The number you have dialled is no longer in service.”
The laugh is terrible.
It crawls up from the depth of Eggsy’s heart into his windpipe and out of his mouth like pieces of the broken mosaic. It bursts from Eggsy’s mouth in tiny shards of sharp glittering glass and it cuts everything it touches. With how close Roxy is pressed against him, Eggsy does not miss her violent flinch and shudder.
But then the heavy dark doors begin to split and there are voices on the other side, shouting reassurance that the cavalry have arrived. Eggsy cuts off the comm and his gaze is steady as he looks Roxy in the eyes.
Looks Merlin in the eyes.
Eggsy shrugs.
Merlin doesn’t let him go on solo missions now, not if he could spare anyone.
But Kingsman is still missing it’s Knights and joint missions are now a luxury.
In the grand totally of 20 months that Eggsy has been a Kingsman with an impressive number of successful missions in his repertoire, missions that involves information extraction is his least favourite. The best thing that can happen is that the mark is an easy one, where all Eggsy has to do is to pull a honey pot manoeuvre or straight up infiltrate a base or other. The worst thing, however, is him being discovered and beaten within an inch of his life in exchange for information on his employers.
Coincidently, he finds himself in the position he loathes the most where he is completely helpless. He is stripped down to his trousers with the rest of his clothes and equipment tossed to a corner of the clichéd dark, wet cell. Eggsy is lying face down on his front with one eye swollen shut. Blood and spit dribbles from the corner of his mouth and it disgusts him that he can feel the damp and slimy floor covering his exposed skin.
His head his violently pulled back and his spine protests at the difficult angle it is being bent in. His left shoulder is dislocated, his fingers are bent out of shape and he can feel the lacerations from the whips on his back. Still, he grins. “I said I aint givin ya nuffin, didn’t I?”
The blows are expected and if Eggsy is being honest, welcomed. They ground him to reality and stop him from losing himself to the darkness where he can pretend he’s somewhere else entirely. The blows stop him from indulging in fantasies of a life where he wakes up to mussed up rich brown hair peppered with greys and indulgent smiles that emphasises the crows feet around rich whisky eyes and deepens the laughter lines around thin lips.
Most importantly, the blows are bringing him closer to the thug and the Kingsman glasses he has tucked in his jeans pocket. Eggsy can just barely see the metal of it poking from between the folds and lets himself go limp. The thug yells, shaking him violently before throwing him clear across the tiny cell. Eggsy curls into a foetal position and counts his breaths, his mind clear despite the screaming pain.
He only has one chance and he uses it well as he all but cracks the thug’s head repeatedly against the floor. Eggsy’s hands are shaky and putting on the glasses is a chore with eight broken fingers, but he manages. There is only static when he opens the communication channel, but that doesn’t bother him.
“Dial 121997.”
Eggsy drags himself to the far side of the cell to face the bolted door and waits for the routine to complete itself. He can see shadows of movement from the little sliver of space under the door and he loses himself in them.
“The number you have dialled is—“
Eggsy sighs.
Beep
Beep
“---what’s the password?”
Eggsy inhales sharply. The pain is blinding, his heart is beating like a drum, his lungs expand, and spots danced in his vision. The glasses’ interface shows that it is connected, that this is happening, that a voice answered and it sounded like—it sounded like—
“Eggsy,” rich, deep baritone that speaks his name like a sigh, “I can’t help you without the password.”
And Eggsy thinks that this is it. This is the end, this is how Gary Eggsy Unwin dies: beaten to a pulp in a cell in the middle of bumfuck nowhere with a dead man’s voice in his ear. There is a commotion outside of his cell, now. Explosions and machine guns and shouting, but Eggsy is suitably distracted. He slams his head weakly against the wall.
He opens his mouth.
“Oxfords, not brogues.”
Beep
Beep
“Hold on, Eggsy. Hold on.”
When Eggsy comes clawing back from the darkness, the first thing he registers is the familiar softness of a Kingsman hospital bed. The second thing he registers is the sound of his own heart monitor and the beepings of machines. The smell of antiseptic comes next and Eggsy feels the beginnings of old grief crawling up from the soles of his feet up to his chest like ants. Eggsy swallows and forces his eyes open.
Harry Hart is sitting in the same old brown leather seat that Eggsy used to commandeer after the incident with Professor Arnold. He is alive and his touches are soft, almost as soft as his voice when he says;
“You rang?”