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“You look like shit, Hart.”

He’s so exhausted he can barely summon the strength to lift his head and shoulders up off the pillows when he spots the figure lingering in the doorway to his recovery suite. He tries to push himself up onto his elbows, wincing as pain lances through his temples.

“How is he?” Harry demands groggily.

“We’ll talk about this later.” Merlin settles a hand on his shoulder, pushing him back down onto the pillows with an alarming lack of effort. “Right now you need to rest.”

Harry feels as weak as a new-born lamb, limbs leaden and slow to respond to his command, fine tremors in his hand as he lifts it to grasp onto the man’s wrist.

“Merlin, please,” he insists, fighting against his traitorously drooping eyelids, blinking hard to keep his gaze focused. “I need to know.”

His friend and partner regards him silently for a moment, clearly debating the wisdom of acquiescing to Harry’s request, but after a short pause he gusts out a sigh and lowers himself down into the chair at the bedside, pulling off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose, posture slumped. The man looks exhausted, as though the weight of the world is resting upon his shoulders – and Harry supposes it is, in a manner of speaking. The British government has all but fallen, and it seems as though MI6 and the Kingsman Service are the only ones managing to keeps their heads above water. Valentine may not have succeeded in killing ninety-five percent of the world’s population, but he’s left things in shambles nonetheless.

“Eggsy’s alive,” Merlin tells him after a short pause, and Harry feels his hope begin to wane, because it’s clear that’s the only piece of good news the man has to deliver. “Gazelle’s blade sliced clean through his abdominal cavity, puncturing his spleen and nicking his celiac artery, causing in heavy internal bleeding. It’s a goddamn miracle he made it back to the plane without collapsing. Medical supplies on the jet were limited, and by the time we reached the nearest facility to transfuse him, multiple organ failure had already begun to set in.”

The handler puts his glasses back on, his face drawn and haggard, exhaustion etching fine lines around his eyes. “It took the surgeons nine hours to repair the damage; he went into full cardiac arrest on the operating table at least twice. And then they had to take him back to theatre this morning to remove one of his kidneys, he’d gone into renal failure and the tissue had turned necrotic. He’s stable for now, but…” The Scotsman shakes his head, face grim. “It doesn’t look good.”

Harry’s stomach has soured, his mouth run dry, and there’s an aching lump swelling hot and tight in his throat as he takes a deep, steadying breath in through his nose.

“I’d like to see him.”

Merlin shakes his head, brow creasing in a faint frown. “Absolutely not. Forty-eight hours ago they were screwing a plate over a hole in your skull, I’m not about to let you go wondering about willy-nilly.”

“Then get me a bloody wheelchair,” Harry insists, his voice terse.

“No,” the Scot argues firmly, leaning forwards a little in his chair, warm fingers curling around Harry’s hand in a crushing grip. “I won’t have you risking your life on my watch. I lost you once already this week, I’m not going to stand by and let it happen again.”

Merlin’s words hang heavily in the silence that lingers between them, Harry’s eyes trained on the tension in his partner’s shoulders, the flare of his nostrils as the man tries to slow his breathing. With a great deal of effort, forcing weakened, resisting muscles into motion, he brings Merlin’s hand up to his lips, pressing a lingering kiss against the roughened knuckles.

“I’m going to be fine,” he promises, lips moving against the warm skin.

Merlin bows his head for a moment, pulling off his glasses again and gusting out another shaky sigh, knuckling at his eyes. “You damn well better be after the hell you’ve put me through, Hart.”

Despite the pounding in his skull and the hot ache in his throat, and the overwhelming enormity of everything else, Harry feels his lips twitch upwards at the corner.

“I seem to recall you saying something remarkably similar when I asked for your hand.”

“And you’re still every bit as aggravating now as you were fifteen years ago,” Merlin tells him, gruff but affectionate as he puts his glasses back on again, outwardly composed save for the telling dampness of his eyes. “Don’t know why I put up with it sometimes.”

“Because I make excellent cherry scones,” Harry points out mildly, eyelids beginning to droop again.

“Mm, I suppose you do at that,” his partner agrees, voice gentling. He squeezes Harry’s hand one more time as he stands, leaning down to press a kiss against the man’s brow, carefully avoiding the bandages. “Get some sleep. I’ll see you later.”

Harry hums his agreement, hovering on the brink of oblivion, but he manages to summon enough strength to grip onto Merlin’s fingers a moment longer. “You should rest. I’m not…not the only one who looks like shit.”

“Charming as ever.” Harry’s hand is gently laid back down on top of the covers. “Don’t worry about me, alright? Concentrate on getting better; we’ll have a mutiny on our hands if you leave me in charge for much longer.”

Harry very much doubts that. Merlin has been quietly assuming Arthur’s role for years now; overseeing the position by task if not by title, pulling strings and gathering intel and authorising missions (often behind Chester King’s back) while their esteemed leader had been away talking politics and polo with their sponsors. There isn’t a Kingsman agent in the service who wouldn’t swear their loyalty to Merlin in a heartbeat if he chose to take Arthur’s seat at the head of the table, but Harry knows he’s happy in his current position. That, and the man so thoroughly detests polite small-talk that they’d probably lose all their sponsors within a matter of weeks if Merlin came within half a mile of them.

“And what makes you think the others will choose to elect me in your stead?” he asks, too fatigued to force his eyelids open again.

Merlin pats his wrist. “They already voted on it this morning. Congratulations, Arthur.”

“Sod off.”

A quiet chuckle, and then there are lips pressing against his forehead again. “Sleep, love.”

Harry does.

…………………………..

They don’t let him out of bed until another forty-eight hours have passed, and even then the medical team are visibly reluctant to aid him in his escape.

In the end it’s the newly appointed Lancelot who comes to help him. The girl looks every bit as exhausted as Harry feels, but she manages a genuine smile for him as she pushes an empty wheelchair up to his bedside.

“Lancelot,” he greets, setting down his teacup (the medical staff had tried to put another bloody straw in it, again, so he’s started twisting the bloody things into miniature pipe-sculptures on his table).

“I don’t believe we’ve had the chance to be properly introduced, Sir,” she says, and holds out a hand. “Roxanne Morton. But please, call me Roxy.”

“Harry Hart,” he replies in turn, shaking her hand. “A pleasure. Congratulations on becoming Lancelot, my dear. Your uncle has always spoken very highly of you.”

Indeed, Percival had apparently refused to shut up about his niece’s top-of-the-class test scores for the duration of her year’s training; it was almost a blessing that Harry had spent several months in a coma and had therefore slept through the worst of it. Rumour has it that both Gwaine and Bors had volunteered for deep-cover missions simply as a means of escaping headquarters, while Elyan and Morgana had begun placing bets against Roxy just to aggravate her uncle. It had been amusing to see the usually unflappable agent ruffling up his feathers about something, but Harry can’t deny that he’d felt a similar level of bias towards his own candidate. After all, he too had gone to great lengths to defend Eggsy’s suitability to Arthur, to the point where he’d all but bluntly accused Chester King of being a weak-chinned snob when the man refused to see things from his point of view.

“Thank you, Sir,” Lancelot replies, her tense posture relaxing a little as she drops her hand and nods towards the wheelchair. “Merlin said if your headache’s improved, you might like to visit Eggsy for a short while. I’m sure he’d appreciate it, he must be sick of hearing my voice by now.”

Harry accepts her offer of assistance gratefully, as today he’s found the act of transferring himself from bed to chair alarmingly difficult. The motion leaves his head spinning, but he waves off Roxy’s concern with a strained smile, gripping tightly onto the arm of the chair with his other hand as his head pounds, neck muscles straining.

“I’m quite alright, thank you. Shall we?”

Eggsy’s ICU suite is only a little ways along the corridor, and even though Harry spends the short journey there bracing himself, nothing can fully prepare him for the site that greets him when Roxy wheels him into the darkened room.

The boy’s skin is shockingly pale, almost as white as the sheets beneath him, dozens of wires hooking him up to monitors and IV drips and infusions pumps, dry lips parted around the long, green breathing tube that’s hooked up to a ventilator nearby. Harry has been at the bedside of countless colleagues over the years, standing vigil as they recovered from injuries sustained in the line of duty. But none have ever hit home like this; like a sudden, violent punch to the gut that tears the breath from his lungs and twists his stomach into tight, nausea-inducing knots.

“Look who I’ve along brought to see you,” Roxy says cheerfully, pushing the wheelchair up to the bedside before navigating herself around the various IV devices with the confidence of someone who has clearly spent a lot of time in this room over the past four days. She perches on the edge of the bed opposite Harry and leans down to brush a kiss against the lad’s hairline. “I know, I’m wonderful. You can pay me back later.”

Harry reaches out to clasp Eggsy’s hand where it’s resting on top of the covers, careful not to dislodge the plastic cannula taped to the back of it. “Hello, Eggsy.”

He doesn’t know what he’d been expecting – a uptick in the boy’s cardiac output on one of the monitors, a muscle twitch, some sort of sign that Eggsy’s still there, that he can hear them – but when the lad remains lifeless and immobile, the ache in Harry’s chest worsens tenfold. He clasps the boy’s hand a little tighter between both his own, gaze trailing down Eggsy’s torso to where his abdomen is swathed in op-site bandages. 

“I think I’ll go and fetch myself a coffee,” Roxy says suddenly, standing up from the bed. “I’d offer you one, sir, but I’m afraid I’m under strict orders from Merlin to keep you away from caffeine. I’ll be back in a bit.”

And just like that, they’re alone together, with nothing but the steady shhhh-tissss of the ventilator filling the heavy silence that hangs between them. It’s unnerving to see the boy so quiet. So still. Even at rest, Eggsy has always been animated; a pen flicking between his fingers while he sat and studied in the library upstairs during his downtime, his hands moving in emphatic gestures whenever he spoke passionately about anything (and Eggsy, he’s learned, is passionate about seemingly everything, from disbanding the class system to Heinz spaghetti hoops, whatever those are).

Without that energy – that life and enthusiasm - he’s almost another person entirely.

“You’re looking a little worse for wear, my boy,” he admits quietly, thumb tracing the grooves between the lad’s knuckles. “Nothing a good cup of a tea and a few biscuits won’t put to rights, I’m sure. You’re far too young to be laid up in bed like this.”

Shhhh-tisss. Shhhh-tisss.

“Merlin sent a team by to check on your family, did he tell you?” Harry continues. “Your mother and sister are both in good health, and JB has temporarily moved in with Lancelot. As far as Michelle’s aware, you’re busy helping as a volunteer with the nationwide clean-up crew; Merlin used voice recordings from your initial months of training to fabricate a voicemail message, so as not to alarm her. We felt, in light of your previous adherence to secrecy, that you’d prefer we kept your current condition under wraps.”

He leans forward a little in the wheelchair, lifting a hand to gently trace the purpling bruise beneath Eggsy’s eye.

“I saw the footage of your battle in Valentine’s bunker. You fought beautifully, down to the very last bullet. I’ll wager there are scarce few agents in the service who could have pulled it off, and given that this was your first field mission, I’m afraid you’ve set the bar rather high for yourself. The others will be expecting great things from you.” His fingers carefully smooth back Eggsy’s fringe, revealing another row of purpling bruises along the boy’s hairline. “Although I’m confidant you’ll rise to the occasion. You do seem to have a knack for exceeding people’s expectations.”

Shhhh-tisss. Shhhh-tisss.

Harry braces his elbow on the edge of the mattress, suddenly feeling overwhelmingly bone-weary and despondent in the face of Eggsy’s lifelessness. His head throbs and eyes burn, and it’s not just because of the low light.

He can’t help but recall his last conversation with the lad – bitterly disappointed on Eggsy’s behalf in light of his dismissal from candidacy, he’d allowed that to translate into anger and frustration at the lad’s inability to harm JB. Try as he might, he can’t banish the memory of Eggsy’s hurt, defensive response, nor his look of wounded betrayal, as though he realised that his trust in Harry had been misplaced.

And perhaps it had. Harry had spent months building the lad up, praising his test scores and offering him both moral support and guidance in his Kingsman education, and not once had he cautioned the boy about the nature of the true loyalty taste. Not once had he alluded to the fact that the trial at the train tracks was designed more as a test of nerves than faith, and that the true loyalty test would force him to choose between his career and his dog.

Harry hated that bloody test. Because of course Eggsy was never going to shoot JB; a year of training within the service couldn’t change his true nature. The boy had first gotten himself arrested because he refused to run over a wild fox, for Christ’s sake. Harry had known who he was; where his priorities lay. And still he had pushed the boy, proposed him as a candidate, walked him through the trials and built him up to what would ultimately be his failure. Led him like a lamb to the bloody slaughter.

He drags a hand down the lower half of his face, blinking hard against the fierce heat building up behind his eyes, gaze coming to rest on Eggsy’s lax face once more.

“This was my doing,” he confesses, in a hoarse voice that sounds very much unlike his own. “I’m sorry, dear boy. I’m so terribly sorry.”

The sound of approaching footsteps has him leaning back again in his wheelchair, wiping the telling dampness from his cheeks and fighting to regain his usual mask of composure.

“Ah, Ms Morton,” he greets quietly, with the barest shadow of his usual smile, his vision going hazy for a moment. “I fear I’ve rather overtaxed myself. Would you mind terribly assisting me back to my room?”

The pounding in his skull is worsening by the second, and the harsh glare of the corridor lights is an unpleasant shock as they emerge from the darkened ICU suite. He brings a hand up to cover his eyes, muscles seizing up, and dear God his neck hurts. He can scarcely breathe through the pain, face flushing hot, and he must make some form of verbalisation to indicate as such, because suddenly young Lancelot is crouching down in front of him, her brow creasing worriedly.

“Sir? What’s wrong?”

He tries to assuage her concerns, but finds himself distracted by the patter of warm liquid against the back of his hand. He glances down to where the appendage is resting in his lap, and realises with a detached sort of curiosity that he’s bleeding profusely from his nose, his skin stained a vividly bright crimson to match his dressing gown. The colour rather suits him, come to think of it. A pity he’s so tired, he’d like to stare at it a little longer…but his vision’s starting to grey out around the edges now, and it’s raining fine silver dots.

There are hands on him – whose, he can’t quite say, everything seems to be happening in such a rush – and suddenly he’s laying down again, which would be lovely if it didn’t make his head pound so. There’s a tight knot at the back of his neck that protests any and all motion, so he wisely stops moving altogether, closing his eyes against the harsh glare of the overhead lights.

There are more hands and more voices, and a sharp scratch in the crook of his arm, but he’s too tired to pay attention anymore. He’ll have to make his apologies later. Right now he needs to…

………………………

Voices, so many voices – blurring into one another, rising and falling like waves.

Soft, warm, soothing. Wrapping around his hand. A gentle reassurance. Love.

Angry. Someone’s angry. And upset, too; they’re crying. Angry crying against his chest, it’s damp there now, he can feel it through his pyjamas. Someone really ought to comfort the poor boy.

Laughter. Two new voices now. Friendly, familiar, teasing. They’re laughing at him, just as they always do. The slap of cards against a table. The smell of coffee and almonds.

His head hurts terribly. The voices are a pleasant distraction, but they don’t make the hurt go away, not really.

Light. Pain. Why is light so painful? Still, he can see it. That’s new. He can see colours, too, and vague shapes hovering above him. The voices nearby are urgent now, excited. But he’s tired. Too tired to move his limbs when the kind-faced woman asks him to squeeze her hands, too tired to do much more than blink when she shines an even brighter light in his eye.

The voices vanish after that, and for the first time he doesn’t drift on an ocean of static. He sleeps.

…………………………

“You’re a bloody idiot,” is the first thing Merlin says to him when he regains full control of his senses.

Harry’s mouth feels as dry as Ghandi’s sandal, but that’s clearly the least of his problems. In the dim lighting he can tell he’s been wired up to full cardiac monitoring again, and there are IV lines connected to plastic ports in both arms. But more alarmingly, he can’t see out of one eye.

He moves his tongue around his mouth, the muscle feeling thick and swollen, fruitlessly trying to wet his lips with what little saliva he finds there. Merlin takes pity on him after a moment and brings a straw to his lips, and he gratefully sips at the fresh, cold water.

“I’m glad to see you, too,” he manages after a pause, and dear Lord in heaven, his voice sounds dreadful.

“I thought you and I had come to an agreement about you dying on my watch,” his partner remarks, setting the cup aside and leaning his arms on the edge of the bed, looking every bit as exhausted as he had when Harry had first woken up two days ago.

He blinks, or at least tries to, and finds it rather disconcerting that his left eye refuses to obey him. There’s something pressing down on it, and after flexing his facial muscles experimentally, he realises it’s some sort of bandage. He lifts a too-heavy arm from the mattress to try to trace his fingers over it, but Merlin catches his hand gently before he can make contact.

“Leave it be,” the Scotsman tells him. “They only finished operating last night, you’ll need to keep the pressure bandages in place for at least another twelve hours if you don’t want to lose your eye.”

Harry obligingly lowers his arm again, his uncovered eye narrowing a little in confusion. “What happened?”

His partner sighs grimly, taking Harry’s hand to clasp it between both his own. “Your intracranial pressure spiked, and it began to destabilise the fracture around your eye socket. You’re lucky to be alive.” He bows his head, brow pressing against their joined hands briefly. “You need to stop doing this to me, Harry.”

Harry probably ought to apologise, but he’s still processing his most recent brush with death. That and he has no idea what time it is, because there isn’t a bloody clock in site, and he hates being so terribly unaware of such basic facts.

“How long was I out?” he asks, flexing his fingers and toes to ensure that he still has control over all four limbs.

“Four fuckin’ days, you bastard,” comes a new voice, and Harry’s gaze snaps across the room to where Eggsy Unwin is wrestling with his wheelchair to propel himself through the door.

“Eggsy,” Merlin says, exasperated. “You’re supposed to be in bed, lad.”

“I’ll stay in bed when I’m dead,” the younger man retorts, and finishes it up with a cheerful, “YOLO.”

Merlin pinches the bridge of his nose and sweeps his other hand in the boy’s direction. “Do you see what I’ve had to put up with for the past ninety-six hours?”

“Don’t listen to ‘im, Harry,” Eggsy insists, wheeling himself to the bedside and propping his arms up on the edge of the mattress. “He’s just jealous of my mint battle scars.”

“Yes, I’m clearly green with envy,” the handler agrees, moving around the bed to crouch down beside Eggsy’s wheelchair, pushing up the boy’s pyjama shirt to inspect the white dressings taped to his abdomen. “If you’ve pulled your stiches again, I’m letting Bors do the next lot.”

“Oi, I like Bors,” Eggsy defends, lifting his arms a little so that Merlin can study his injuries to his satisfaction. He grins at Harry cheerfully. “He’s gonna teach me how to poison people an’ shit. An’ Gwaine says it’s a crime that you haven’t taught me how fly a helicopter.”

“You’re not going anywhere near a helicopter until you’ve been cleared by Medical,” Merlin tells him firmly, tugging the boy’s pyjamas back into place. “Aren’t you scheduled for PT in ten minutes?”

Eggsy wrinkles his knows. “Bruv, Luke’s a nice bloke an’ all, but all I’ve been doing the past three days is learnin’ how to sit up and lay back down again. It’s fuckin’ borin’.”

Merlin sighs again pats his shoulder. “The exercises are designed to help you regain your core muscle strength, lad. If you skip straight to the long-jump, you’ll find yourself back at square one again. But, I suppose…” He straightens up slowly. “Let me go and have a little word with your therapist, I’ll see what I can do.”

“You’re the governor, Merlin,” the youth tells him with a wink. Merlin hums, a curious sort of smile playing at his lips, pats the boys shoulder again, and leaves the room

“It’s wonderful to see you up and about, my dear boy,” Harry says after a short pause, moving his hand to lay it over Eggsy’s wrist. He has a feeling Merlin won’t thank him for the blatant contradiction later, but he’s far too elated at the boy’s miraculous recovery to worry about such details. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m s’posed to be the one askin’ you that, guv,” Eggsy replies with a wry smile, laying his hand over Harry’s. “Woke up the same night you had your collapse, didn’t I? Ta for stealin’ my thunder, by the way. Proper scared the shit out of everyone, you did.”

“My apologies,” the older man says, with sincerity. “It was never my intention to cause alarm.”

“Aw, c’mon, you’ve always had a flare for the dramatics,” Eggsy teases. “Manners maketh man, an’ all that.” Then he sobers up a little, his smile fading as he lowers his gaze to their joined hands. “I remember you comin’ to visit me, y’know. All the other voices before had been blurry an’ hadn’t made a lot of sense, like I was listenin’ to a broken radio or somethin’. But I could hear you just fine.”

The youth glances up again, his brow creased. “How come you said you was sorry?”

Harry sighs, closing his eye for a brief moment. This topic had been much easier to broach when Eggsy was still unconscious.

“For a number of reasons, I suppose,” he finally admits. “I was sorry that you’d been injured in the line of duty. I was sorry that I’d been so ill-tempered with you during our last conversation. And I suppose, in a way, I felt responsible for what had happened to you.”

There’s a beat of silence.

“Huh,” Eggsy says after a pause. “Well, that’s bullshit.”

Harry opens his eye again to glance towards the lad, eyebrow arched. “I beg your pardon?”

“Well, it is,” Eggsy insists. “Look, I’m pretty sure there’s only one person responsible for landin’ me in a coma, an’ unless you’re hiding twelve inch steel prosthetics under them blankets, it ain’t you.”

“Eggsy-”

“No, shut up,” the boy tells him, and pokes Harry’s bicep with an emphatic index finger. “You don’t get to foist the blame on yourself for this one, alright? I ain’t gonna be another Lee Unwin, you don’t owe me shit, an’ the only person I blame for me getting’ stabbed in the gut was that psycho chick who stabbed me in the gut. You can feel sorry for bein’ a total prick about me failin’ the whole shoot-your-dog trial – and seriously, guv, now that you’re Arthur you gotta get rid of that fuckin’ test – but I don’t wanna hear you apologisin’ for me gettin’ my arse kicked by the bad guys. ‘Cause that’s an occupational hazard, an’ I can’t deal with you bein’ all guilty an’ shit every time I get roughed up a bit. Clear?”

Harry clamps down on the automatic apology that’s about to escape him, and feels a smile twitch at his lips despite himself. “Quite.”

“Good. Thank you.” The younger man deflates a bit after that, the wind gone from his sails, and suddenly looks as exhausted as Harry feels. “I thought you was dead, you know.”

Harry squeezes the lad’s wrist gently, concerned. “How so?”

“Saw it on your fuckin’ laptop, didn’t I? Your glasses streamed to your home terminal, an’ you hadn’t logged out or nothin’, an’ you’d told me to stay at your house until you got back, so I was watchin’ when that bastard…” Eggsy’s voice breaks and he clutches Harry’s hand a little tighter. “I thought he’d killed you, Harry.”

“He didn’t,” Harry murmurs, lifting his other hand to touch Eggsy’s cheek lightly. “I’m still here.”

“Just don’t…don’t scare me like that again, alright?” the younger man beseeches, turning his cheek into the contact. “Merlin says that Arthur doesn’t hardly ever get to go out on field missions an’ shit, so I guess it’s gonna be safer for you now, but don’t go fallin’ down the stairs an’ breakin’ your hip or somethin’ daft, yeah?”

Harry sniffs a quiet grin. “Shall I also endeavour to stay away from black cats and avoid walking underneath ladders?”

“Ladders are fuckin’ dangerous, guv,” Eggsy insists, utterly serious. “Walked under one once when I were twelve an’ got paint all over my new footy kit. That shit’s bad luck.”

“Duly noted.” His eyelid is drooping again, his strength waning, and he gives Eggsy a weary smile. “Would you mind if we continued this conversation later on?”

Eggsy nods. “Yeah, ‘course. Shit, you should be restin’, an’ here’s me babblin’ on.”

“That’s quite alright,” Harry reassures, the words slurring, and feels himself beginning to slip under again.

The blankets are tucked up a little higher around his chest, and the light against his eyelid dims. Harry really ought to tell Eggsy not to do so much moving around with his wounds still healing, but he feels so dreadfully tired all over again, and for once his head isn’t pounding. Perhaps he’ll sleep properly this time. A real, non-sedated, restful sleep. That sounds marvellous.

“Night, Harry,” he hears, as his hand is finally released and set down to rest atop the blankets.

Just before darkness takes him, he swears he feels the faintest brush of lips against his cheek, but perhaps it’s just the beginning of a very good dream.

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