It is not panic that overcomes her when she wakes to water tearing her out of a peaceful sleep with her covers floating away. In fact, Roxy feels a macabre sense of being home for the split second it takes her to remember water can actually kill her now. The lights above their beds flicker on one by one, each revealing a new terror struck face in fluorescent detail and she kicks her way out of a tangle of wet bedding. Everyone is on their feet with their skin breaking out in gooseflesh, cold clothes clinging to their heaving chests and her pulse is slowly picking up on the impending danger. Opposite her Digby jumps upwards in vain, pushing in the tiles of the roof. Roxy catches Eggsy's eye and thinks perhaps the body bags do exist for a reason.
Across the room Charlie yells "Use snorkels!"
"Use snorkels?" Eggsy asks and Roxy has to agree. What sort of fucking idea is that supposed to be? They aren't about to go for a swim in the ocean. The water reaches her chest and Roxy shudders.
"Showerheads!" She screams the thought without warning, a firing synapse spilling a lightning flash idea from her mouth and the entire room makes a dive towards the silver pipes at the end of the room.
Roxy takes a leap, gulping in as much air as she can and she can barely hear Eggsy yelling something about the door in the background. It takes four seconds to reach the showers and another seven to rip the showerhead from the fixed piping. Half the boys are already screwing the head off the tube and showing them down the toilets, while Roxy's still detaching the bloody thing from the water pipes. Roxy tugs feverishly at the metal and shoves her way between Charlie and Rufus, plunging the pipe into the toilet bowl. Meanwhile Eggsy's fighting with the door and her heart speeds up when she sees the sheer look of desperation on his face.
He changes tactics and swims towards them with firm strokes, wings dragging in the water and Roxy gets her tube into the airspace at last. She takes one breath, a second, and then a third in quick succession, vaguely recalling the century she spent roaming the bottom muds of Acheron for scraps of lost little souls. Now she could hold her breath for a minute at best.
Eggsy passes them and she turns towards him instinctively. He grabs hold of the railing, left hand and both feet holding on for leverage as he slams his right fist into the mirror with air bubbling from his mouth. She catches a glimpse the rage in his eyes in his reflection, spotting the will to live reflected off the glass and miraculously enough the quivers turns into a crack that spreads along the pane with two well placed punches. Roxy sucks in air as the glass cracks and the contents of the room go rushing right through the jagged hole in the wall. She kicks off milliseconds before the glass gives in, crashing into Eggsy and holding on for dear life as the other recruits tumble over them and wash up against the back wall.
"Oh god," someone gasps behind them. A mismatched flurry of coughs erupts around her and she's clapping Eggsy on the back to ease his watery coughs.
By the wall to their right, Merlin checks his watch and greets them with dispassionate congratulations while he makes a note on his clipboard. The recruits get to their feet, one by one with their heaving breaths sounding over the drip drop of the water draining away.
"Charlie, Roxy, well done," Merlin continues, "For those who're still confused: If you get a breathing tube 'round the U-bend of a toilet, you have an unlimited air supply. Simple physics. Worth remembering. Eggsy, well done for spotting that was a two way mirror."
He lets his gaze wander over each of them: barefoot, bare chested, hair stuck to their scalps and the back of the necks with shock grasping at their reeling minds. Roxy lays her palms flat against her ice cold thighs, somewhere in the back Digby bleeds out of a glass cut. She's overcome by a sudden rush of joyful pride - or perhaps that's the adrenaline kicking in - because they've made it out alive and somehow remarkably intact.
Eggsy catches his breath and mutters, "I've seen enough of 'em." Considering he's an angel condemned to mortality, it makes perfect sense to her. She's sure Charlie is already mustering up a demeaning retort to something he couldn't even begin to comprehend with his pea brain.
Merlin decides to cut their collective glee short. "Yeah you can all wipe those smirks off your faces. Because as far as I am concerned, every single one of you has failed. You all forgot the most important thing: Teamwork."
The confusion etched across their faces is replaced by a dawning realisation of the fact that there's only eleven of them standing. In their dormitory, Amelia lies lifeless on a bed two rows away from the showers and Roxy feels a sense of horror creep into her bones. In the back, someone mutters an indistinct 'shit' and Roxy glances at Eggsy with her heart racing.
"So much for classic army technique."
Of course they have to jump out of a bloody airplane. The longer the trials draw out - drowning, rifle hunting in the dark, knife fights, diffusing chemical bombs - the more convinced Roxy becomes it's all an elaborate plan for Merlin to watch each of them nearly die without a hint of emotion on his face as he scribbles their performance reports onto that bloody clipboard with sadistic satisfaction creeping into his eyes. Her stomach lurches uncomfortably as the locks of the cargo door churn.
Roxy holds her breath to a count of ten followed by a rapid, superficial breathing that fogs up the glass of her helmet. She makes the mistake of making half-frenzied eye contact with Eggsy, who doesn't miss the way she clings to her seatbelt in sheer terror.
"You're afraid of heights?" he asks, a bit incredulous but mostly concerned, and Roxy hates the thought of having to admit to such a plebeian weakness. No less to a literally godforsaken angel, who lives to feel the breeze along the tips of his wings.
Roxy snaps, "Yes, but I've done it before."
She fails to mention she'd tumbled to the ground nearly blinded by a downpour of tears and a shortage of oxygen, on the verge of a panic attack with legs that refused to carry her, so she'd vomited in the very spot she'd landed with her fingers clutching the earth below. "Probably alright if I don't think of it."
"Hey, you'll be alright. You're top of the class." He squeezes her leg with a wide smile and Roxy can imagine him swooping through the sky as the patron saint of all the forgotten preternaturals. She offers him a half hearted smile that's more an indicator of her nervousness than his assurance.
Merlin - being the bastard he is - decides to ruin her barely plausible denial of the situation by announcing their impending doom. "Listen up, the mission is to land in the target without the radar detecting you. If I read you on the radar or you miss the target, you go home. Is that understood? Drop zone coming up. 20 seconds."
"We gotta go," Eggsy says, head tilting towards the cargo door and she wonders whether this is really worth it. She nods and gets up anyway, staring down into a patchwork of fields miles below and any semblance of confidence she may have had disappears at the sight of bloody cloud shreds underneath the plane.
"Eggsy, I really don't think I can do this," she says in a single, hurried breath, incapable of tearing her eyes from the very sight that makes an aneurysm seem like pleasant option.
Charlie, the utter prick, has the nerve to scoff at her. "Of course you can't," he says and she wishes she could drown him in knee deep water just to make a point. He shoves her aside, barking, "Get to the back and I'll show you how."
The light bleeps, turns green, and they're all running in pairs towards the skies. The four recruits before them drop carelessly out of the open back and Roxy wills herself to just take that step into the void and fall without a thought. Her mind, or rather her arm, catches her at the very last second on the roof. She breathes a panicked 'Eggsy. Eggsy… wait. Hang on.' with the landscape below materialising in her consciousness.
It doesn't quite get the chance to seep in, because he shakes her, forcing her to look him in the eyes instead. "Roxy, stop fucking about," Eggsy says, "Follow me, yeah?"
She barely manages to nod before he's tipping backwards dangerously, putting on a goofy expression as though they're just kids falling back on a trampoline. And she honest to god wants to cry, seeing him fall with his arms stretched out towards her and a stupid grin plastered across his face. Roxy stands on the edge, nearly leaning over a tipping point and she's sure she's forgotten how to breathe altogether.
"Roxy, it's now or never."
She perches herself and holds her breath for a moment to hear only beating of her own heart. It drowns out even her mind and when Eggsy tells her to jump, she leaps and blinks into the sudden brightness of all encompassing sunshine.
The others are all laughing when she dives into the ring they've formed, Rufus and Hugo doing somersaults in the air and she's got to grin at how mad this is. Eggsy cheers for her and she forgets she's falling as she watches the others bob up and down and upside down with childish glee.
Merlin pages back in, amusement dripping from his voice as he says: "My my, you're all very cheerful. You really think it was gonna be that straightforward? Any idiot can read a heads-up display. A Kingsman agent needs to be able to solve problems under pressure. Like what to do when one of your group has no parachute."
He chuckles and Roxy blanches completely, yelling, "What? No parachute?" She has the terrible idea to glance at the approaching ground and screams a trembling 'who?'
Eggsy cusses, Charlie very unhelpfully asks 'Which one?', and Roxy is certain she is going to die within the minute.
"What do we do?" Hugo asks.
Merlin - and she's starting to suspect he may be Satan himself - says, "I told you. Aim for the target coming under the radar. And I hope not to be scraping one of you up. But if I do have to and you're inside the target… I'll be very impressed."
Roxy barely notices she's hyperventilating by the time Eggsy announces he has a plan. And perhaps they won't die; he can't be an angel for nothing and flying should be right up his alley. Roxy fights for breath, sucking in tiny increments of oxygen at a time. Eggsy grabs hold of her and she's momentarily safe from pissing her pants, because this may work out if they play it just so.
Next to them Rufus opens his parachute against their deal and Charlie curses him out, everyone breaking out in a series of screams. "Rufus you wanker!" Charlie yells after him, while Eggsy feverishly tries to think of a new plan.
"Alright listen!"
He hounds them all into a circle, pulling Roxy with him, until someone grabs her left hand and the knot into her stomach grows tighter and tighter with every passing second as Eggsy tells them all what's going to happen.
Merlin eggs them on, whispering a husky 'Hurry!' over the comms and Roxy swears she'll skin him once this is over. She holds on tight to Eggsy and Digby, who decides to try out his parachute first. It opens, a flash of bright coloured canvas pulling him up into the sky and right off her arm.
Roxy screams, scrambling for Hugo next. He too is gone right in front of her nose and another frightened yelp escapes her. This is exactly the sort of thing that couldn't happen in water, she thinks, heart pounding painfully against her ribcage. What on earth ever happened to drowning trespassing sailors? Charlie grabs onto her and she opens her eyes.
"I'm next!" he says, selfish survival instincts flaring up over his risk seeking nature. He pulls the tap and goes shooting upwards with a surprised look breaking out on his face.
Eggsy yells an earnest 'fuck', because it's down to the two of them and they've managed to slip apart during this crucial moment. He scrambles for her as vigorously as she does for him, trees coming into detailed view below them and red warning signs flashing across their helmet displays. Even so, he takes the two extra seconds to say, "No matter what happens now: I've got you, alright?"
She nods, mutters something, and tries not to grow deaf from the sound of her own blood rushing through her veins. Eggsy clambers onto her, wrapping his arms around her. "You first, okay?"
"Yep."
"Go on."
They fall, spinning and spinning and she can't get a hold of the bloody tap. The meter on her hand goes haywire and she even fancies she hears something shatter over the comms with Merlin mumbling indistinctly. The lack of oxygen is becoming disturbing combined with the vertigo and she squeezes her eyes shut with a desperate scream begging for any deity to save them.
In the end it's Eggsy who does, clasping at the string on her parachute and just pulling with a single furious tug. The fabric comes loose, blooming into the sky, but he's slipping dangerously and somehow they're both screaming helplessly with their lives about to end in the most horrific way. He clutches at her thighs, legs kicking in the air. Eggsy flaps his wings in desperation, but they're no use in this world, and she can't bear to look at him.
The Kingsman logo - their forgotten target - a near invisible dot for most of their fall becomes massive all of a sudden becomes as they tumble right into it. Eggsy's legs touch ground first and Roxy falls awkwardly half on top of him, crushing them for an instant before she's ripped aside by the parachute. Barely conscious and certain she's going to throw up, Roxy still manages to roll over and grab Eggsy's hand in her own.
His breaths come out as frantic puffs and she can't believe they have survived this too. A siren clasping at an angel upon falling miles and miles with a single parachute to share is such an anomaly it may as well be a considered miracle even by their standards. She laughs, albeit hysterically, and she's all tangled up in the parachute strings.
Roxy stares up into the sky, where the other four recruits are floating down with their multi coloured parachutes. She presses a hand against the solid ground and daydreams about taking an ice cold bath later on. Her racing heart is only just returning to a rhythm that isn't lethal in the short term and Roxy concludes sirens are most definitely not meant for the heavens, mortal or not.
A/N: Thanks for reading. You can find me on tumblr at .com