p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" When Eggsy had stumbled upon the room the first time, still in training with the newly-named JB plip-plopping beside him, he hadn't paid it much attention. It was just a room with some paintings; nothing of any real interest, so he'd closed the door behind him and noted the location before moving on. He only had so much free time to use and getting lost inside of the facilities was not part of the plan./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" Now, many months later, Eggsy sought out the room in hopes of some relative privacy. He threw open the door and closed it softly behind him. The paintings were just the same, little placards with names adorning the bottoms where they hung in the seemingly small space that the office had. He sat heavily at the desk set up at the back wall and held his head in his hands, not noticing the portraits moving at the sound of someone in the room./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" It had been almost three days since V-Day, as Kingsman was calling it, and it was only now that Eggsy was able to fully process all that had happened. He hadn't been able to shoot JB and had failed to become Lancelot. Harry had been disappointed in him. Harry had gotten killed by Valentine after what was probably the most elegant show of violence Eggsy had ever witnessed. Arthur had been on Valentine's side and had probably sent Harry to his death in the first place. Roxy'd had to go to bloody space to shoot down a fuckin' satellite and he'd had to kill lord knew how many people to save the world./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" He'd also managed to avenge Harry's death by killing Valentine, and bummed a princess, but that didn't make up for the rest of it. It wasn't as if he hadn't trained to kill before; he'd been pretty good at the Marines stuff before his mum begged him home, and Kingsman training had obviously prepared him for killing or being killed. But he'd still gone from being a failure to a hero with real blood on his hands within a few days, it was enough to make anyone more than a little out of sorts./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" More than all of that, though, Eggsy had never had the chance to mourn Harry. Not in the way he deserved to be mourned, at the least, with drinking and reminiscing and confessions that would likely never have been made to his face. The kind of things people say to the dead when they know they won't be answered. So here he was, sitting in a room he'd stumbled upon as a trainee, silently trying to work through this sudden immeasurable grief./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Eggsy?"/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" His head shot up, scanning the room for possible hiding spaces in the sparsely furnished office. He hadn't heard the door open, and no light had spilled into the dimmed room, so that meant someone had been in here the entire time. The portraits were eerie, now that he actually looked at them, too lifelike- like wax figures. Looking like they should be alive, but weren't. Finding nothing, and writing off the voice as his imagination, he relaxed back into the chair before feeling as if someone were watching him. Not the camera stuff he knew Merlin had but real human eyes on his back, something he was all too used to with Dean and his goons, so he turned around warily./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Oh, great, now I've gone mad. The painting's lookin' at me."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "I can assure you that you're not going mad, Eggsy."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "And now it's talkin' to me."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "I guess you haven't gotten the full briefing, then."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Not much time to do that, considerin' the state of things."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Well I wouldn't know much about that, I've only been here a few days and haven't had the chance to really explore my limits."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "So it really is you, then? Like, all of you?"/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Well you're taking this surprisingly well."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Ain't got much choice, have I? Between this and faintin' I'd rather talk to you- don't know if I'll ever get to again, you know?"/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" Eggsy drank in the sight of Harry greedily, hoping to replace the last time he had seen him with this near flawless replica. The portrait was not dishevelled, hair and suit arranged as immaculately as they had been the day they'd met again, and smiling blandly at his silence. He's not entirely sure what to do from here, but knows that he doesn't want to leave without making sure that at least this Harry, some version of him that can understand him, knows all the things he never got a chance to tell the real one. It's better than talking at a grave, but so much harder to get himself to do./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "I don't know what to do from here, mate."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "What do you mean?"/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "You wasn't supposed to be here. I was supposed to come in here and cry a bit and then go out to some pub and have a Guiness and talk at your headstone a bit after that. I dunno what to say, I don't even know if this is real, I just dunno what to do."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Well this certainly shouldn't be that unfamiliar a circumstance, then. As I recall you've spent quite a lot of time not knowing what to do."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Oi!"/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "I never said that was a bad thing, Eggsy. You've certainly come a long way and have accomplished some amazing things if what I've heard the last couple days is in any way accurate."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" There was humour in Harry's voice, the likes of which Eggsy hadn't heard outside of the time they'd spent together before the last test. The 24 hours they'd spent trying to teach him to be a gentleman, Harry looking like he was trying not to chuckle each time Eggsy needed correcting. Martini making lessons that had ended in giggly conversation and bad telly, Harry looking for all the world composed if not for the gleam in his eyes. A closer and more honest friendship blooming from their mentor/mentee relationship as short lived as it had ended up being./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" It hit him in a thousand shards of memories, in smiles and repressed laughter that he never got to hear burst forth, that there was nothing he could do to get that back. No way to replicate that feeling of home and belonging. The sound of tears hitting the floor caused Eggsy to draw a shaky breath, lifting a hand to his face to wipe them away. He hadn't even realised he was crying, and when he looked up Harry was looking at him worriedly, confusedly, as if he had no idea what had caused Eggsy such distress./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "I loved you, Harry. I mean I wasn't in love with you or nothin' but… you saved me, you know? You pulled me from bein' nobody to bein' somethin' important. You helped me save me mum, and Daisy, and the whole bloody world and damn it, Harry, the last thing you ever told me was you was disappointed in me. I never wanted anythin' as much as I wanted to make you proud. I don't remember much of me dad, and Dean's a fuckin' prick on his best days, but you was there 'nd you believed in me and that was good enough for me, bruv. Just. Thanks, you know? For doin' what you did."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "I didn't do anything spectacular, Eggsy. I saw potential, the same potential that I saw in your father, and I gave you the tools to unleash it." Harry looked as if he wanted to embrace Eggsy, wanted to provide to him the kind of physical comfort that he was denying himself, but all he could do was talk to him. All he could do was try to ease the burden of loss as best he could./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "But you should know, Eggsy, that you've done nothing but make me proud. I was disappointed in myself, that day, for expecting you to be someone you're not- and I took it out on you. I wanted you to succeed so badly that I ignored the very fabric of your character. I'm so sorry for not having told you that more often when I was alive, but I'll try to do better now."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" The next few hours were spent talking, Eggsy filling Harry in on all of the details that gossip erases, before he noticed the time. He'd been there for hours, and Merlin was probably wondering where he was unless one of the other portraits had managed to get a message to him. Either way, he had to get back to his mum and Daisy and spend whatever time he could with them before being sent back off who knows where. He was Galahad now, after all, and a Kingsman is never truly off the clock. Heading out, he paused with one hand on the doorknob, unwilling for this time to end. He didn't want to face a reality without Harry Hart to guide him./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Can I come back here, sometime? To talk, or whatev er?"/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "That's what we're here for, Eggsy," Harry gestured to the other paintings, who had helpfully stayed silent during their entire exchange. "We're here to talk to and seek guidance from, so we expect you to come by every now and again. Perhaps we should continue our lessons - you have some pretty large shoes to fill now, Galahad."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "You got it right in one. I'll be back. Thanks again, Harry." He smiled, half waving towards the canvas, before walking out./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "You're welcome, Eggsy." It was spoken softly, to a silent room, but it sparked conversation./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Hey, now, why didn't he want to talk to me? I'm his dad, after all!"/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Lee he didn't even know you were here, he barely remembers your face, you can mess with him next time. And you're a painting, not his dad. Goodness knows he'd had enough of a shock tonight with Harry."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Yeah I'm surprised he didn't faint. Didn't you faint the first time, actually, Harry?"/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "If I could I would smack you, James. Be happy I'm stuck to portraits of myself."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" Now, many months later, Eggsy sought out the room in hopes of some relative privacy. He threw open the door and closed it softly behind him. The paintings were just the same, little placards with names adorning the bottoms where they hung in the seemingly small space that the office had. He sat heavily at the desk set up at the back wall and held his head in his hands, not noticing the portraits moving at the sound of someone in the room./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" It had been almost three days since V-Day, as Kingsman was calling it, and it was only now that Eggsy was able to fully process all that had happened. He hadn't been able to shoot JB and had failed to become Lancelot. Harry had been disappointed in him. Harry had gotten killed by Valentine after what was probably the most elegant show of violence Eggsy had ever witnessed. Arthur had been on Valentine's side and had probably sent Harry to his death in the first place. Roxy'd had to go to bloody space to shoot down a fuckin' satellite and he'd had to kill lord knew how many people to save the world./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" He'd also managed to avenge Harry's death by killing Valentine, and bummed a princess, but that didn't make up for the rest of it. It wasn't as if he hadn't trained to kill before; he'd been pretty good at the Marines stuff before his mum begged him home, and Kingsman training had obviously prepared him for killing or being killed. But he'd still gone from being a failure to a hero with real blood on his hands within a few days, it was enough to make anyone more than a little out of sorts./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" More than all of that, though, Eggsy had never had the chance to mourn Harry. Not in the way he deserved to be mourned, at the least, with drinking and reminiscing and confessions that would likely never have been made to his face. The kind of things people say to the dead when they know they won't be answered. So here he was, sitting in a room he'd stumbled upon as a trainee, silently trying to work through this sudden immeasurable grief./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Eggsy?"/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" His head shot up, scanning the room for possible hiding spaces in the sparsely furnished office. He hadn't heard the door open, and no light had spilled into the dimmed room, so that meant someone had been in here the entire time. The portraits were eerie, now that he actually looked at them, too lifelike- like wax figures. Looking like they should be alive, but weren't. Finding nothing, and writing off the voice as his imagination, he relaxed back into the chair before feeling as if someone were watching him. Not the camera stuff he knew Merlin had but real human eyes on his back, something he was all too used to with Dean and his goons, so he turned around warily./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Oh, great, now I've gone mad. The painting's lookin' at me."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "I can assure you that you're not going mad, Eggsy."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "And now it's talkin' to me."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "I guess you haven't gotten the full briefing, then."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Not much time to do that, considerin' the state of things."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Well I wouldn't know much about that, I've only been here a few days and haven't had the chance to really explore my limits."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "So it really is you, then? Like, all of you?"/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Well you're taking this surprisingly well."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Ain't got much choice, have I? Between this and faintin' I'd rather talk to you- don't know if I'll ever get to again, you know?"/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" Eggsy drank in the sight of Harry greedily, hoping to replace the last time he had seen him with this near flawless replica. The portrait was not dishevelled, hair and suit arranged as immaculately as they had been the day they'd met again, and smiling blandly at his silence. He's not entirely sure what to do from here, but knows that he doesn't want to leave without making sure that at least this Harry, some version of him that can understand him, knows all the things he never got a chance to tell the real one. It's better than talking at a grave, but so much harder to get himself to do./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "I don't know what to do from here, mate."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "What do you mean?"/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "You wasn't supposed to be here. I was supposed to come in here and cry a bit and then go out to some pub and have a Guiness and talk at your headstone a bit after that. I dunno what to say, I don't even know if this is real, I just dunno what to do."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Well this certainly shouldn't be that unfamiliar a circumstance, then. As I recall you've spent quite a lot of time not knowing what to do."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Oi!"/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "I never said that was a bad thing, Eggsy. You've certainly come a long way and have accomplished some amazing things if what I've heard the last couple days is in any way accurate."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" There was humour in Harry's voice, the likes of which Eggsy hadn't heard outside of the time they'd spent together before the last test. The 24 hours they'd spent trying to teach him to be a gentleman, Harry looking like he was trying not to chuckle each time Eggsy needed correcting. Martini making lessons that had ended in giggly conversation and bad telly, Harry looking for all the world composed if not for the gleam in his eyes. A closer and more honest friendship blooming from their mentor/mentee relationship as short lived as it had ended up being./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" It hit him in a thousand shards of memories, in smiles and repressed laughter that he never got to hear burst forth, that there was nothing he could do to get that back. No way to replicate that feeling of home and belonging. The sound of tears hitting the floor caused Eggsy to draw a shaky breath, lifting a hand to his face to wipe them away. He hadn't even realised he was crying, and when he looked up Harry was looking at him worriedly, confusedly, as if he had no idea what had caused Eggsy such distress./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "I loved you, Harry. I mean I wasn't in love with you or nothin' but… you saved me, you know? You pulled me from bein' nobody to bein' somethin' important. You helped me save me mum, and Daisy, and the whole bloody world and damn it, Harry, the last thing you ever told me was you was disappointed in me. I never wanted anythin' as much as I wanted to make you proud. I don't remember much of me dad, and Dean's a fuckin' prick on his best days, but you was there 'nd you believed in me and that was good enough for me, bruv. Just. Thanks, you know? For doin' what you did."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "I didn't do anything spectacular, Eggsy. I saw potential, the same potential that I saw in your father, and I gave you the tools to unleash it." Harry looked as if he wanted to embrace Eggsy, wanted to provide to him the kind of physical comfort that he was denying himself, but all he could do was talk to him. All he could do was try to ease the burden of loss as best he could./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "But you should know, Eggsy, that you've done nothing but make me proud. I was disappointed in myself, that day, for expecting you to be someone you're not- and I took it out on you. I wanted you to succeed so badly that I ignored the very fabric of your character. I'm so sorry for not having told you that more often when I was alive, but I'll try to do better now."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" The next few hours were spent talking, Eggsy filling Harry in on all of the details that gossip erases, before he noticed the time. He'd been there for hours, and Merlin was probably wondering where he was unless one of the other portraits had managed to get a message to him. Either way, he had to get back to his mum and Daisy and spend whatever time he could with them before being sent back off who knows where. He was Galahad now, after all, and a Kingsman is never truly off the clock. Heading out, he paused with one hand on the doorknob, unwilling for this time to end. He didn't want to face a reality without Harry Hart to guide him./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Can I come back here, sometime? To talk, or whatev er?"/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "That's what we're here for, Eggsy," Harry gestured to the other paintings, who had helpfully stayed silent during their entire exchange. "We're here to talk to and seek guidance from, so we expect you to come by every now and again. Perhaps we should continue our lessons - you have some pretty large shoes to fill now, Galahad."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "You got it right in one. I'll be back. Thanks again, Harry." He smiled, half waving towards the canvas, before walking out./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "You're welcome, Eggsy." It was spoken softly, to a silent room, but it sparked conversation./span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Hey, now, why didn't he want to talk to me? I'm his dad, after all!"/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Lee he didn't even know you were here, he barely remembers your face, you can mess with him next time. And you're a painting, not his dad. Goodness knows he'd had enough of a shock tonight with Harry."/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "Yeah I'm surprised he didn't faint. Didn't you faint the first time, actually, Harry?"/span/p
p style="line-height: 11.85pt;"span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif;" "If I could I would smack you, James. Be happy I'm stuck to portraits of myself."/span/p