Chapter Text
"…time of her arrival? Very good. Keep me informed on her progress," a voice speaks calmly through the black red haze over Harry's mind. "Now, moving onto Gawain – yes, thank you, Merlin. What's the situation with the aerial view – do we have that satellite yet? Yes, of course."
Harry struggled against the fog, against the gravity trying to pull him back under and into the black nothingness. He knew that voice – he could almost name it. It meant something.
"Do as you feel necessary. Can you patch me through to him? Thank you," the voice said after a moment. "Gawain, give me the sit-rep. How does it look? Yes, yes… are you sure? Merlin, can you confirm the read? Well then. At least we know now we can trust their intel. Merlin, opinions; is it worth it to try and retrieve it?"
Following the voice – clinging onto it desperately and using it as a life line to crawl his way back up and to the surface – Harry managed to shake the fog. With its retreat came sensation and more noise than he'd registered before – the steady beat of a heart monitor, the creak of what sounded like leather, a breath of air on his face – wind, an open window approximately a meter and half to the left of him. No sound of traffic, distant sound of rustling leaves. Not a bunker then, and not London. The room was sizeable and at least partially furnished – there were no echoes, neither from the man's voice nor from the heart monitor. Not a hospital.
"Alright. You heard Merlin, Gawain; get to it," the voice said and there were sounds of slight movement, a shift of cloth, a creak of leather, and the tap of a finger against something solid. Tablet computer perhaps. "Yes, Merlin, I'm looking at it right now. I'm going to take a moment to read this through – yes, good. Carry on."
Harry opened his eyes, instantly seeking out the source of the voice. There was a young man sitting on a leather armchair not far from him, an IV stand and a tea table between them. He looked familiar and strange all at once, in his bespoke suit and black framed glasses, hair slicked into a neat arrangement, face calm and collected as he flicked a finger gently over the surface of a tablet, eyes flicking back and forth as he read. He had one leg casually crossed over the other and on his finger he had a signet ring.
Harry opened his mouth to try and say something, but in that moment there was a quiet buzzing sound, and without looking up from the tablet, the man in the armchair took out a mobile phone, glanced at the screen, and then answered the call.
"Arthur," Eggsy said, calm and confident and looked up. His eyes landed on Harry and widened ever so slightly. "Mr. Wellsby, how good to hear from you again," he said into the phone, his voice still even. "I trust everything is quite alright? Quite well, sir, thank you. And you? I trust the family is doing well?"
Harry stared silently, as Eggsy exchanged a few pleasantries with Mr. Wellsby, whoever that was. Eggsy's eyes were still wide as they flicked down, to Harry's side – and looking down Harry could see the call button. It was set right next to his hand, within easy reach. He didn't press it.
"We are, as always, at your disposal, Mr. Wellsby," Eggsy said, a slight frown marring his face now. "What seems to be the problem? Mm, yes… Yes, right… Alright. We'll look into it, Mr. Wellsby, it will be our top priority. Yes, of course. Thank you very much, Mr. Wellsby. We'll be in touch. Good day."
The moment he could hang up, Eggsy was up from the armchair, tablet and phone both abandoned on the tea table. Harry blinked and Eggsy was already at his side, checking his face, his eyes – pressing the call button Harry hadn't. "Harry?" he asked. "Do you know me?"
"Arthur?" Harry asked and Eggsy's eyes widened and then narrowed suspiciously. Harry let out a huff, shaking his head a bit. "Why are you answering your phone by Arthur, Eggsy?"
That made Eggsy relax a bit, made his eyes brighten. "A lot's been going on, Harry," he said with a tight little grin that was there and gone again as quick as it had appeared. "What do you remember?"
Harry closed his eyes. "Kentucky," he muttered and coughed. His throat was dry and tight.
"Oh, thank fuck. It's been a while since then, though," Eggsy said, his voice loosening as he quickly reached for the tea table and grabbed his own tea cup, bringing it Harry. "Bit over six months, actually. We've been worried about you – you got shot in the head, you know."
"I'm well aware," Harry answered roughly and drank the tea carefully. It was almost cold and there was touch too much sugar in it, but it was enough to moisturise his parched tongue and throat, and his voice came a little more even as he asked, "Valentine?"
"Dead, long dead," Eggsy answered and looked up as there was a knock on the door. "Left us one hell of a mess to clean up too. Come!" he said.
It was Merlin, of course – who was quickly at Harry's side, aiming a pen light in his eyes and running him through the usual post head injury and long coma check-up. Did Harry know his name, did he know the country, did he remember various dates or people, and so on.
"You're one lucky son of a bitch," Merlin said. "Cracked your skull twice – first when you got shot and then when you hit the pavement. It was touch and go for a while, from what we know. Swelling, bleeding – they had to do three surgeries to relieve the pressure. You've got a couple of plates on your skull now, but at least you didn't actually get a bullet in your head – it hit at a bad angle and didn't fully penetrate."
"Thank fuck Valentine was a shitty shot," Eggsy agreed.
"That and I ducked," Harry answered, rubbing a hand over his forehead where he had a whole new scar to contend with. Valentine's aim had been just slightly off, and there'd been a split of a second opening to take advantage of it – avoiding getting hit completely at that distance was impossible, but he'd done what he could to try to survive with only a surface injury. "Why didn't they shoot me when I was out?"
"Valentine was haemophobic – didn't check the body, couldn't stomach it" Eggsy said with grim satisfaction and glanced up as his phone began to ring again on the tea table, buzzing hard against the wooden surface. With some reluctance he glanced at it and then picked it up with a sigh. Then his whole demeanour changed. "Pardon me gentleman, I need to take this," he said, and walked out of the room to answer. "Arthur," he answered the phone, just as the door closed after him.
"Busy boy," Harry commented, glancing at Merlin. There was a hardness to Eggsy that hadn't been there before – which might've been explained by the six months that had passed… but the hardness was in Merlin too. Something was very different – and very wrong. "Why is Eggsy answering his phone as Arthur?"
Merlin let out a snort. "Well," he said. "The world went to shit and we ended up with… limited man power."
"That's not an answer."
"No, it isn't," Merlin agreed, glancing away and then walking to the side to get a chair, dragging it from under the window and to Harry's bedside. "The SouthGladeMissionChurch was a test – Valentine testing the effectiveness of the neurological wave of his. And Valentine had been planning it for a while – preparing for it. By the time the test took place, he had everything already set for a global activation."
"You're shitting me," Harry murmured.
"I'm afraid not. Of course it wasn't the first test – those incidents Lancelot had been investigating all related to Valentine's signal. The tests and preparations have been going on for years, with no one the wiser. And it gets better," Merlin said, and took off his own glasses, handing them over to Harry who pulled them on with slightly shaking hands.
With his ever present pad, Merlin activated a nearby portrait as a screen and with somewhat bleary eyes Harry watched as lists of names and faces and facts scrolled down the screen.
"Valentine was a supporter of Professor Arnold's Gaia theory – and he figured that Earth was in need of a population culling before the planet itself would wipe us out with global warming and whatnot," Merlin said. "He'd been working at it for a while. The mysterious disappearances and kidnappings that happened at that time? Valentine's doing. He approached pretty much every influential person on the planet – political entities, business moguls, celebrities… royalty. He pitched his plan at them and if they agreed to it, they were chipped with the same implant Professor Arnold had. And if they didn't…"
The view on the portrait changed, into an image of a long corridor, the architecture of which had a decisive bunker feel to it. There were heavy metal doors on both sides of the corridor, with key pads – and the floor was stained with blood. As Merlin activated the video, letting it play out, Harry saw Eggsy opening doors, letting people out, talking and shaking hands with them before pointing them where to go. They all looked various levels of shocked and pale.
There were a lot of faces Harry could recognize – not just from the missing person's reports that had been all over the news, but even from before. There were politicians, a young man who looked like he might be the Prince of Wales – and the blonde woman who lingered at Eggsy's side was definitely Princess Tilde of Sweden.
"Valentine's secret base housed almost five hundred hostages," Merlin said. "We didn't know it then, but Valentine used them to get at their family members – so long as their families cooperated with Valentine, the hostages wouldn't be hurt. We think that's how he got so many world leaders implanted."
There was a grimness to the way Merlin said it and Harry glanced at him. "What happened, Merlin?" he asked. "In order, please."
So Merlin told him. Told him about Arthur – whom Eggsy had killed with his own poison pretty much the moment he'd seen the implant scar. Told him about taking out one of Valentine's satellites, which hadn't been enough. Told him about Eggsy, who raided Valentine's base pretty much all by himself.
"All in all it went pretty well, up until the moment Valentine got another satellite and about two hundred more troops," Merlin said, looking at the pad and not at Harry. "We were fucked. So at Eggsy's suggestion I triggered the implants. It was the only thing we could do to try and stop it. We didn't know back then just how many of them there were, how many people had been implanted."
Harry looked at the portrait, at the list of names – the long, long list of world leaders. "Shit," he muttered.
"And then Valentine activated the SIM cards – and, well," Merlin shook his head. "It all went to hell. We managed to stop it – Eggsy killed him, stopped the signal. But it took a few minutes. The signals effectiveness was… the losses were devastating."
Harry swallowed as the videos from all over the world began playing. Most of them were security camera footage from streets or public places – which gave a more than clear image how effective the thing had been. Not that Harry needed to see it to believe it. He'd felt it. "How long did…?"
"The signal was activated all told four minutes and twenty seconds, give or take," Merlin said and changed the image – to that of a black and blue world map, quickly bleeding into red. "It took about twelve seconds to fully take effect on the victims. Every city with more than a hundred thousand people was activated within twenty seconds, which left about four minutes of utter bloody madness. At fifty seconds, it had near global coverage – there were some sparsely populated places where it wasn't so effective but Valentine was very efficient in spreading those free SIM cards of his around."
Harry stared at the map and then closed his eyes – and then quickly opened them again. It was too vivid, in his head, behind his eyelids. That scene in the church, all those people dying. Him, killing all those people. Wanting to kill them – and taking no joy or satisfaction in it, just wanting to kill, kill, kill… "How long was the signal active at the church?" he asked quietly.
"Three and a half minutes," Merlin answered. "From the start of the signal to when you… when it was over."
In three and a half minutes over two hundred people were dead at that church. The world had been under for longer than that.
The door opened and Eggsy re-entered. Merlin and Harry both glanced up. "Sorry about that," Eggsy said and looked between them before glancing at the portrait. His face hardened for a moment and then he shook his head. "Where we at, Merlin?"
"Just about to get to the aftermath," Merlin answered and turned to Harry. "When we got back to Kingsman HQ, we found most of the staff dead – and every senior Kingsman agent either missing or dead."
"They couldn't have all had the implants," Harry said, stunned.
"They didn't. Some of them probably did – the ones we couldn't find. Gawain, Lamorak, Kay, Bors… we still haven't been able to find them," Eggsy said, folding his arms as Merlin brought up the bios of the Kingsman agents on the portrait. "They're probably all headless in some bunkers somewhere, rotting away. The rest were either assassinated, or they fell under the signal effect."
"Kingsman HQ was littered with Vphones," Merlin said darkly. "Turns out Arthur had given a lot of bonuses to Kingsman staff members in the previous days – Vphones for personal usage being included in the bonus packages."
"Jesus fuck," Harry said, his hands tight on the bed covers.
Eggsy shrugged. "He needed to take the Kingsman out – those who he couldn't turn to Valentine's cause anyway," and glanced at Harry. "Too big of a risk, keeping them around in a post V-day world."
"In the end we were left with one agent, less than fifty staff members and a world gone to hell," Merlin said. "We had to improvise."
"Everybody had to improvise," Eggsy agreed and sat down on the leather armchair with a sigh. "People died in the hundreds of millions. Over forty countries had headless leaders and a lot of their governments had been killed in the massacres. Add to that, that pretty much all armed forces all over the world had just shot their mates. You'll have a tough time trying to find someone who didn't lose somebody that day – or who didn't kill somebody."
"Fine fucking mess," Merlin agreed.
The communications icon started flashing in Merlin's glasses and Harry took them off, handing them back just as Eggsy touched his glasses. "I'm listening," he said to whoever had contacted him and Merlin donned on his own glasses, tapping something on his touch pad and listening. Eggsy glanced at him and then nodded at the door – Merlin stood up, giving Harry an apologetic smile as he strode out of the room.
"Gawain's investigating the base of a scientist who got his hands on some of Valentine's tech," Eggsy explained to Harry. "You have no idea how many people are trying to reverse engineer the stuff – and how many people have gotten too damn close to replicating the tech."
"Gawain?" Harry asked, frowning. "You've already had time to recruit and name candidates?"
"We're still under staffed – Merlin's training more people as fast as we can find them. We only have four active agents right now – Lancelot, Gawain, Percival and Tristan. All of them are from the Lancelot candidate trials," Eggsy shrugged. "I work in the field as much as I can, but most of time I'm too busy managing things."
"And how precisely did you end up as Arthur?" Harry asked, eying him half in suspicion. "Why didn't Merlin –"
"We need Merlin to be Merlin more than we needed him to be an Arthur," Eggsy said, shaking his head. "And Lancelot didn't want to do it. Plus, I made some connections at Valentine's base – a lot of those people ended up being crowned or elected in the following months and the rest were more than instrumental in keeping the world intact. Princess Tilde is Her Majesty Queen Tilde now, and we've got a nice handsome young King here in the UK. I have tea with him every Saturday."
Harry stared at him and then ran a hand over his face, trying to catch up. "Shit," he muttered then and looked at Eggsy again, taking him in. Now that he was really looking at him, the change was obvious. Though he still slipped into his original loose accent every now and then, he more often snapped into more even, sharper tones – and most of the slang was gone from his speech. More than that, though, was how comfortable he was in his skin – in his suit, in his hair cut, in his posture.
Eggsy looked somewhat older now. Tired and overworked.
"Six months," Harry said. "I'm gone for six months and everything goes to shit."
"It's been fucking wild half a year, lemme tell you," Eggsy agreed with a little grin and then eyed him levelly. "When we found you, we had you down for Arthur, you know. I was so fucking relieved but… you didn't wake up. And we couldn't wait. You really need to stop doing this, Harry. These long convalescences just won't do."
"I'll try my best to avoid them in the future," Harry said, swallowing. Him for Arthur. Jesus. He wasn't sure which was worse – that it had been a possibility or the fact that it wasn't anymore. Because Eggsy had been Arthur for months now, he'd settled into the position – he'd build up connections.
"Well," Eggsy said, picking up his phone and tablet and standing up. "I'll call in the doctor, see about getting you checked up and back to a hundred percent," he said, tapping a few keys on the tablet and then handing it over to Harry. "So you can catch up with things. Everything you might want to learn about should be in here," he said as Harry accepted it. "Anything you need?"
"No, thank you," Harry said, looking at the tablet and then up at Eggsy. "Eggsy, you…" he started and then stopped. "Thank you."
"Get well, Harry," Eggsy said with a smile and turned to leave, his shoulders a little stiff – and as the door closed after him, Harry realised that not once had either Eggsy or Merlin called him Galahad.