TWENTY ONE.
THE FALLEN KNIGHT

Bex wasn't sure how much time had passed when the phone rang. She jolted forward at the shrill ringing, the soft silence shattering around her. She looked around to find a landline lying next to Eggsy's bed. She picked it up and answered tentatively.

"Hello?" she answered, gripping the cheap black plastic.

"Bex?" a voice asked, grainy and distorted through the tinny speakers.

"Who is this?" she asked.

"It's Eggsy. Bex- I need you to come to Harry's right now."

"Wh-

"Just come now. You need to hear about this."

And with that, he hung up. Bex was left with the dial tone and hundreds of questions. There was a sharp urgency in Eggsy's voice that had left her unsettled. Her stomach turned at the thought of something happening to him or Harry.

Her mind racing through endless possibilities and scenarios, she grabbed her jacket off the bed. Bex walked to the kitchen silently, a year and a half of training embedded in her steps. Michelle was nowhere to be seen, much to Bex's relief. She still wasn't sure how to face her now that Michelle knew who she really was.

She darted out the door, softly shutting it behind her. Bex raced down the concrete steps, taking them two by two. Her mind refused to be silenced, screaming hurry hurry hurry. Heart pounding, Bex stepped out into the street. She ignored the cars racing towards her in waves as she hailed a cab.

With startling quickness, a cab pulled up to the corner. It's black paint was unusually shiny, as if it had been dipped in oil. Bex clambered inside. She moved to tap the driver on the shoulder, but her fingers met only air. She gaped as she realized the driver's seat was entirely empty. Then she saw the Kingsman logo on the dashboard, the familiar K inside a circle, and everything became clear.

"Merlin, you clever bastard," she said with a small smile, leaning back in her seat.

She tucked her knees up to her chest as the cab pulled out into the traffic. There was still a veil of unease resting over her, making her stomach twist. Bex watched London go by in flashes, counting the blocks in her head anxiously.

Finally, the cab pulled into a small, cobbled alley lined with quaint whitewashed town homes trimmed with balconies and boxes of carnations. Bex was pushing the door open before the cab had even stopped. Nearly tripping in her haste, she slammed the door behind her and broke into a run. Her sneakers pounded against the cobblestones until she reached a pale blue door. Bex pounded her fist against it forcefully.

The door opened after a moment to reveal Eggsy. She breathed an involuntary sigh of relief when she saw that he was all right.

"I came as fast as I could," Bex said. "And I'm not even going to make a 'that's what she said' joke about that because of how worried I was."

Eggsy's brows had pulled together in worry, the rest of his face carved in stone.

"Come upstairs," he said quietly. "You have to see this. It's...awful."

She had never heard his voice like this, quiet and close to shattering.

Heart beating unsteadily, slipping from beat to beat, Bex followed him up the stairs. He pushed open a door into the strangest room Bex had ever seen. It was painted bright red and bare except for a desk and a chair in the center. It would've seemed empty had it not been for the hundreds of front pages of newspapers adorned the walls in neat rows. They were adorned with gaudy colors and bizarre headlines. The effect was dizzying.

Eggsy walked around the side of the desk, where a plain gray laptop stood open. Bex could hear tiny sounds coming from the speakers. Swallowing hard, she followed him, bracing herself for what was on the screen.

Once she saw, she realized no amount of bracing could've prepared her for this.

"Oh my god," Bex whispered.

On screen, a grainy off colored picture displayed flashes of limbs and blood. The camera moved around sickeningly as the people on screen tore each other apart. She watched in horror as they killed each other through any means possible, snapping necks and firing bullets.

She squinted, immediately regretting her decision to look closer at the massacre.

"Are they-?" she asked tentatively.

"Inside a church? Yeah. South Glade Mission Church," he replied tonelessly.

"Eggsy, what...what happened to them?" Bex asked, feeling her stomach turn.

Her training had prepared her for violence and gore, but never for anything like this.

Bex finally noticed the hands flashing at the bottom of the screen, which were wrapped around the neck of a middle aged man.

"Eggsy?" she asked again, dreading the answer. "Who's glasses feed are we watching?"

"Harry's," Eggsy said, and she felt the name in her chest like a blow.

It was Harry who was murdering these people. Harry, who had given her her father's watch. Harry, who had made her tea with honey when she'd gotten sick. Harry, who had been there every step of the way, a man made of stone, unwavering and steady.

"I don't understand," she said hoarsely.

"Me either," Eggsy said, eyes glassy. "He's gone mad, and I don't know why."

The fighting only lasted moments more, but for Bex they were eternities. She saw the bloodshed through Harry's eyes as the camera panned across the ruins of the church and down to his own two bloodied hands. The camera shook as Harry made his way to the door unsteadily. Outside, in the burning evening sunlight, was Richmond Valentine.

"What the hell?" she whispered to herself.

"What did you do to me?" Harry asked in a quiet voice that trembled with unsaid rage. "I had no control. I killed all those people. I...I wanted to."

Valentine stood, cap tilted on his head and a crooked smile on his face. He was dressed in a ridiculous outfit, but it suddenly didn't seem amusing to Bex anymore. His assistant stood next to him, legs of sharpened steel glinting in the sunlight. Nothing about them suggested a friendly welcome for Harry.

"Clever, isn't it?" Valentine grinned. "In simple terms, it's a neurological wave that triggers the centers of aggression and switches off inhibitors."

"Transmitted through your nasty SIM cards, I assume," Harry said.

"Do you know what this is like? It's like those old movies we both love," he said.

Valentine was still grinning widely.

"Now, I'm going to tell you my whole plan, and then I'm going to come up with some absurd and convoluted way to kill you, and you'll find an equally convoluted way to escape," he continued.

"Sounds good to me," Harry said quietly.

The smile finally disappeared from Valentine's face.

"Well, this ain't that kind of movie."

Bex faintly registered that he was pointing a gun at Harry's head. She watched as he fired. She watched as Harry crumpled to the ground, all the strings holding him up severed. She watched as a pool of black blood crept across the ground in a halo around his head.

"No!" Eggsy screamed, gripping the sides of screen with knuckles of white bone.

Bex didn't hear it.

Something had risen inside her, a hungry numbness that spread through her chest. The roar of blood in her ears suffocated all other noises. Bex couldn't look away, eyes frozen on the screen. She was collapsing, blown to pieces, and she couldn't even feel it.

She stood up. Eggsy's mouth was forming her name. She didn't see it.

She was a puppet, succumbing to unknown strings that guided her down the stairs. They took her into the kitchen. They sat her down in a chair. Then they split apart, and she collapsed against the edge of the table. The wood buried itself in her ribcage in a way that should've been painful, but her mind and body had been occupied by grief and there simply wasn't enough room left to feel anything more.

Bex was unaware of anything other than the beating of her own heart. It was miraculous that it beat at all anymore, ticking away inside her chest like a bomb that threatened to blow her apart at any second. The truth was, Bex's heart was weary. It was battered and worn and held together only with hope.

Hope. What a violent thing it was. Bex had been a stranger to it her whole life until now. To have hope and have it extinguished was a pain she had never known, worse than grief. Grief was a low, steady ache. Hope was a blade that sliced through her.

She realized Eggsy was standing in the doorway, cheeks line with tears. His gray eyes met hers, pits of smoldering ash, the fire within them extinguished. And Bex couldn't bear it.

She had survived so many fires, she could no longer tell if she was alive or if she was still burning.

Bex stood up. She walked over to the glass cabinet across from her, filled with glass bottles of amber liquid. With a trembling hand, she took one out. She had made a promise to herself, but now she was about to break it.

The alcohol sloshed from side to side inside the decanter as her shaking hand raised it. Then, there was a hand on hers. She turned to see Eggsy guiding the bottle back down with his warm palm. He didn't look at her as he took the alcohol out her hand and gently set it down on the counter.

She looked at him.

"Harry, he..."

"I know," Eggsy said softly.

"My mother gave me life, but he's the one who taught me how to live it," she said faintly.

"Bex, I know. But you said it yourself. You'll never find happiness at the bottom of a bottle. It won't cure your grief, Bex."

"I wish it would," she said softly. "I can't take this anymore."

He put both hands on her shoulders.

"Then don't, Bex. Remember your training. Grief is an afterthought. Turn it into something else, and use it."

She was suddenly aware of the world again, in all its raw beauty and cruelty. She looked at Eggsy. Something twisted in her chest, grief taking a new shape.

Grief had always been messy to Bex. It had been broken whiskey bottles and cold linoleum floors and crying into pillows that smelled of smoke. It had been a ruthless snare to which she had fallen victim night and night over. But this kind of grief was different. It pierced her mind like a needle. It cleared the fog and the empty, aching numbness. All that remained was sharp, white hot anger, and one thought.

"I'm going to kill him," she whispered. "I'm going to kill Valentine."

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a quick note:

chapter unedited as usual but it's here anyways. farewell, harry, my sweet prince. this chapter weirdly was not sad to write, maybe because (spoiler alert!) i know he's still alive now. ALSO: thank you so so much for not only getting this story to 200k but also ranked #3. that's crazy, guys. i love you.