InsaneJournal

Who: WS Peggy and Eggsy
Where: Kingsman Tailors
What: Introooo
When: Sunday night, late
Open: Not today
Status: gdoc/Complete

Screams invaded her mind as she was dragged through glass into consciousness. The darkness surrounded her completely but there were certain smells she could discern from the cacophonous assault of jasmine and musk that lingered in the air. Someone had been here recently, wherever here was. She wasn’t sure. Dragging her flesh arm to her ear, she tapped the piece inside it for instruction, but none came. There was no static, no voice, no tone. No orders. Just radio silence greeted her. Battle armour had gone too, ripped off her torso to leave her in a black tank top and combats, with boots with leather thick enough to swallow any force.

For the first time that she could remember, not that that was much, there were no orders beyond the primary objective to eliminate SHIELD assets and make it look like accidents or enemy fire. She had already taken out two targets in a fake car wreck, from what she could recall, but there had been far too many to count now. Government officials, bystanders, hackers. Anyone who wouldn’t come into the fold was eliminated by her hand.

Her metal arm flexed in the light coming from outside the … store? She had no weapons but her own brute force and didn’t need any either. She tapped her earpiece over and over, repeating the words, ”Pоза расцвела...” over and over until she became frustrated at the lack of response.

***

Eggsy sat (slumped, more like) at the desk within the shop, a whole array of screens in front of him. He stretched, working out some kinks from his training earlier in the afternoon - martial arts training in a suit, since he'd almost always be wearing one when he was doing actual proper fighting for work - and grinned at the sense of relief when his back cracked a couple of times. He'd head back round to Harry's house in a while and get a second shower. Harry's shower had one of those amazing showerhead things that worked miracles on sore muscles, and the thought of spending at least half an hour in that shower was becoming more and more attractive. And yet he still wanted to work on the computer for an hour or so longer. He was busy concentrating on working through yet another layer of Merlin's fucking ridiculous computer security system; he found it oddly relaxing, like how his mum enjoyed untangling knots in necklaces and shit like that. The embarrassing photos of Harry and Merlin getting hammered at their first Kingsman Christmas do must be all kinds of awful for them to be hidden so fucking well, he reckoned, frowning in concentration as yet another attempt failed.

That said, it only took a moment for him to pick up the movement on the monitor showing the camera footage from outside the shop front. Most of the time, it was forest creatures going for a wander, but not this time. Peggy was stood outside, looking proper lethal... oh. Oh, wait, she had The Arm. This wasn't Peggy, it was Anna. He fiddled with some of the controls until he could pick up the audio feed, and the near-constant muttering in Russian confirmed it. Thank fuck for Dmitri and his lessons. A quick scan through the contacts list showed that Peggy was still on the island, which was a huge fucking relief. Eggsy buttoned up his shirt as he sent a very quick text message to Peggy and her husbands, letting them know of the new arrival, before standing up and walking over to the hatstand in the corner of the office he'd claimed as his. Once he'd tucked his shirt in, he put on his suit jacket. Anna looked well pissed off, and Eggsy didn't fancy taking any chances, so he’d go out fully suited. He didn't want to startle her or piss her off any more than she already was, though, so he decided to go out through the front door of the shop. She'd see him coming from a mile off. Granted, it might give her time to think up an attack, but he'd be able to cope with that. He hoped.

Once he reached the shop floor, there was no going back. So he kept walking, his glasses doing a bang-up job at monitoring everything outside, and his stride didn't falter one bit. He got to the inside door and pulled it open, then paused when he was in the porch until he heard the automatic click of the door locking behind him. Merlin's fucking ridiculous security system extended to more than just the computer servers, after all. The front door was opened carefully, and then Eggsy stood on the steps looking down at Anna. "Здравствуйте. Я могу вам помочь?"

***

Spotting the boy before she could do a sweep of the area, it amazed her that he was brave enough to come up to her. Her head was bleeding and there were gashes across her flesh arm that she hadn’t even acknowledged; there was no pain she felt that could compare to the pain of the wipe. She knew it was necessary but it was far too mired in pain to be enjoyable to sleep once more. Whatever this boy was, it wasn’t afraid of her. He should be.

Cursing her lack of any physical weapon, she instead put on her curious expression as he spoke from a distance away from her. She couldn’t say why she didn’t run; maybe it was pride or arrogance or perhaps she just wanted to see why he was so curious about her but she didn’t run. She couldn’t run. Hand to hand it would be. “Your Russian is wrong. Where is this place?” she said in English, recognising the inflection in the boy’s voice that indicated his true heritage. “Tell me where I am.”

***

"Your attitude is wrong," he was quick to point out, his accent matching the suit, before walking down the steps as he continued to speak. "This is an island. The people who live here call it Neverland. It's... a bit strange. You're injured, you know. Or did you not know?" He gestured towards the visible wounds, careful to keep an eye on her at all times. He really didn't fancy getting slammed against the shop steps or thrown through the front window or anything like that, just because he'd glanced away at the wrong moment. "I know it's night, but I don't know how long you've been here. Have you seen anything you recognise?"

***

She never took her eyes off him, unblinking and unbending, willing and ready to snap his neck if he threatened her. The cocksure strut was perturbing her for some reason she couldn’t put her finger on and the Soldier took a few giant steps towards him just to put him in his place. “I see nothing, that is why I was asking but since you play games instead of provide information, you are of no use to me.” Not wanting to go against her orders, she resisted the urge to do major bodily harm to the boy and instead punched him in a swift uppercut with her flesh hand. It was a kindness, she thought blindly. If she had used her beautiful metal prosthesis, his flesh would have been ripped from his face.

Turning heels, the soldier strode off in search of a radio tower she could use to scavenge for parts to repair her earpiece and contact her handler before they wiped everything out.

***

Oh fucking hell. His glasses flagged up the incoming punch just before he realised himself, and he was able to move with it so that the damage (and pain) would be a bit less than if he'd just stood still, but his jaw still hurt like fuck. He staggered back a bit, catching himself before he landed on his arse. His glasses were fine, he noticed, scanning not-Peggy's arm as she stalked off somewhere and notifying him that it was mechanical and most likely dangerous. No shit.

"I told you the truth," he called after her, then licked at his split lip as he followed after her. "ah, fucking hell... Peggy! Or Anna or whatever name you're using now. Rose?"

***

The Soldier glanced around the place for the tallest spire she could find, ignoring whatever it was that the boy was yelling at her. She had to chuckle wryly at his tenacity, throwing pointless names at her just in case something stuck. Her head was a void of echoes, past lives being constructed as dreams and forgotten just as quickly. She knew his lip was split and bleeding, probably needing attention. Another and she could knock him out cold so she could continue her mission to find her handlers.

“Go home, little boy.” She muttered to herself, one more yell away from engaging with him against her first orders. There would be punishment but satisfaction was rarely had these days, she thought that it might just be worth the torture afterwards.

***

"Will you listen? Fucking hell, I'm trying to help you!"

His glasses had flicked to night vision as they had entered a part of the city where the street lights weren't all working, and he could see she kept looking round... and up. Of course! She thought her radio wasn't working, she kept trying to check in, so she'd need to find some way of boosting it or getting it fixed and that meant she'd be looking for radio masts, which would be on the tallest buildings.

He sped up a little bit, not wanting to lose her in the city. She was obviously supposed to be on some sort of mission or waiting on orders or something, so leaving her to wander the streets wouldn't help anyone, least of all her. If he could get her to stop running off and calm down, maybe even go to the hospital or the clinic to get her injuries seen to, something like that, then it'd be fuckloads better for her in the long run. At least he had the home advantage, so to speak. He knew the streets, day or night, especially in the area around the shop.

A couple of the buildings up ahead had balconies just above street level, and he knew he could use those to get in front of her. He’d built up enough speed to be able to bounce off a park bench, and then the building wall itself, and then he was up on the first of four balconies. He put on an extra burst of speed, running along their walls and railings and jumping from one to the next before dropping back down to the ground in front of her. “I swear, I’m telling you the truth,” he began, his real accent bleeding through as he spoke, “can you not take a couple’ve minutes and just listen to me?”

***

Having spotted a spire in the middle of the horizon ahead of her, the Soldier set her sights on it, calibrating her arm as she jogged towards it. There were few things that could ever distract the Soldier, and stop her path of single minded mission completion. This child wasn’t in her mission data banks but she didn’t have explicit orders to kill him either. Without her handlers giving instructions, she did not want to risk a punishment for an unsanctioned kill unless provoked though he was doing a pretty good job at provoking her.

As she got more speed up, something felt heavy in the pocket of her combats and she slowed so her fingers could pull it out. It was a primitive phone; she recognised the casing and basic functions but there was no signal on the outer display. How had that got into her pocket.

The next thing she saw was that fucking child again, in her face. “Was this you?” she said, grabbing his shirt scruff with her metal arm and lifting him clean off the floor. “Did you put this in my pocket?” perhaps the kid knew more than she thought.

***

He choked a bit, before pulling himself up on her arm and giving himself a bit of breathing room. He glanced down at the phone and shook his head once, trying to pull her metal fingers loose. "It's the island. Gives us... gives us them when we arrive," he told her, then looked right at her. "I'd've told you that if you hadn't fuckin' smacked me in the bloody face."

Her fingers weren't loosening, so he quickly activated his signet ring and pressed it against her arm. 50,000 volts surged through the mechanisms, doing fuck-knows-what amount of damage to it, and her grip was suddenly a lot less firm. Eggsy quickly brought his legs up and kicked forward against her torso, which pushed him back and into the air away from not-Peggy. Flipping over in mid-air, he landed on his feet in a ready stance.

"You's on an Island," he repeated, then kept talking even though he knew it wasn't what she wanted to hear. "You was brought here, same's all've us, and you can't go home until the people what're in charge decide you can. They ain't normal people, you get me? We can't get to them or talk to them unless they let us, and that is hardly ever. Swear down."

***

She screeched and grunted as the volts coursed through her arm and up into her brain, scrambling it into omelette. The Soldier flexed her metal fingers as he shocked her and refused to give in until he kicked her with her grip loosening by the second. It had been a point of pride, if she could feel pride, at being the unbeatable foe. They told her her work had inspired a generation and moulded the state of the world and here she was, being brought down by one bratty little British boy.

Stumbling at the force of his kick, she looked around her for something she could make into a weapon and found some large rocks, jagged and sharp enough to cause a sharp force trauma dazzling enough so he would stumble and she could snap his neck. The punishment for an unsanctioned kill would be worth it so hear the snap and crack.

“Do you ever shut up?” she grunted, swinging the rock at his head.

***

Bollocks! His eyes widened as he saw the rock, and he just about managed to avoid it as it swung past his face, shifting backwards as quickly as he could. He grabbed her arm as he did so and yanked, trying to pull her off-balance with the combination of her momentum and his. He twisted as he fell back, intending to pull her over and onto her back, so he could get rid of that rock - he had no desire to get his brains dashed out over the street.

How the fuck was he going to get her to stop fighting? She was clearly going for the kill, but Eggsy didn't even want to hurt her, let alone attempt to kill her. Part of him even felt kinda shitty for disabling the metal arm, because... well. She was Peggy! Only not really. It was like Peggy if she'd been caught up in V-day. Not all of him felt shitty, mind. He wasn't fucking mental, and he'd take any advantage he could get; deactivating the metal murder arm was a pretty significant one, but he was pretty certain this Peggy would still kick his arse and then wipe the floor with him with only three working limbs.

He didn't even bother answering her question. "You're Margaret Carter. D'you remember that?" he asked as he got back to his feet. He had to get rid of that rock.

***

The Soldier grunted but didn’t fall onto her back, though she ended up dropping her only weapon as he attempted to out manoeuvre her off her heels and onto her back so he could gain the upper ground. He had to be trained in order to do this to her; there were still shocks going up and down her arm and through her spine that made her eyes wild and dangerous. “Who do you work for?” she seethed and punched him again. “You have a choice of a quick death or a slow one but either way, you will tell me who sent you to get me…”

She was, for the briefest of seconds, dazed by the name. It felt unfamiliar and worn but there was a tiny spark, maybe. What was it? The Soldier gazed at the boy, forgetting about the rock to his right. “Who are you?” she said, the arm starting to regain its power as the shocks wore off.

***

He didn't quite get to standing upright, as yet another punch landed on his face, knocking his glasses from his face and landing him back on the ground. His left eye this time, same side as his sore jaw and split lip, and he could feel it starting to swell shut even as he jumped back to his feet. "I ain't chosin' either type of death, and nobody sent me. You showed up at my door, remember?"

He turned his head and spat off to the side, since getting hit had set his lip to bleeding again. Not that it had stopped before, more... slowed a bit. Mouthfuls of blood weren't fun for anyone, though. He grinned at her very slight pause, although he didn't drop his guard for an instant. "I'm Eggsy," he offered, "and I'd like to say it's nice to meet you, Margaret, but you're kinda knockin' my shit in."

***

“I didn’t show up anywhere!” she thundered, stepping back as he got up off the floor. She had mangled his face really, his lip was split and his eye was bruised and swelling already. She wouldn’t be surprised if his nose was broken too. Not a single cell of her felt bad about her injuries to this child and instead she put up her guard to punch him again. One solid punch to the middle of his forehead with her left hook would snap his neck back and she would get her satisfaction.

Why she paused, she wasn’t able to answer. “Why do you call me that, that’s not my name. I don’t have a name!” she thundered and clenched her fists hard, metal and flesh together. “Just stop. Just stop!”

***

"Well, you sure as fuck wasn't just out for a midnight stroll! Where was you before I met you? Do you know?" he asked, his tongue snaking out to lick at the split in his lip again. His glasses lay on the ground a few metres away, one leg bent at a very strange angle, and he felt a bit weird being in the suit without the glasses on. Or maybe it was just that his face was really fucking sore that made him feel a bit weird.

Ah shit, her arm was back in operation again. At least mentioning her name seemed to distract her a bit from the absolute kicking that was no doubt not too far away in his future. "I'm callin' you that 'cause it was your name before the whole..." and he paused to gesture towards her arm. "Before all that happened. Margaret Carter, but you liked Peggy better. You's rememberin' it, ain't you?"

***

Glancing at her metal arm as he gestured at it, the Soldier took a second to linger on the reverberating names in her mind. She had never had a name, did she? Not once had anyone called her a name other than Soldier or the Rose. They never even attempted to give her a human name, because she really wasn’t human. But these names the boy was sputtering through blood were making her stumble, making her fall, making her fail. Failure was impossible - there was no room for compromise or mistakes. Get in, do the job, get out. Over and over, she thought.

“I don’t remember anything. I don’t remember…” she said through gritted teeth, falling over herself to keep her fists up. Her protocols told her to eliminate the target but why wasn’t she? He should be mush on the ground under her boot right now, not making her fail. Since when did the Soldier fail? “How do you know that name?” she whispered.

***

"I've met you before," he replied carefully. Not quite a lie, and not quite a truth. But then, explaining how he knew Peggy Carter was most likely not going to go down well at all, really. Not right at this point in time, anyway. His mind raced as he tried to think how best to get this over and done with, as quickly as possible. Where they stood was dark, only lit by a couple of street lights, and his vision was getting worse and worse as they stood there. He'd already had to shift his stance ever-so-slightly so that it was easier to watch her with his good eye.

“Look, do you wanna just finish this and then we can go get a cuppa?” he asked, and waited to see her reaction.

***

“Your face isn’t in my roster, kid…” she replied with a dangerous low level, a thinly veiled threatening tone to it. “You’d be dead by now if it was.” The Soldier kept her distance and tapped her earpiece again, fruitlessly, and groaned in frustration when no reply came from base ops. Her vision wasn’t impeded by the darkness and she saw almost as well at night as she did in the daytime; it was a disadvantage for him that she knew.

He was back on nonsense again. She could barely understand his thick, ridiculous accented voice let alone understand. If he wanted it finished though, she would finish it for him. “What the hell is a cuppa?” she repeated and turned to leave before changing her mind and taking another wild swing at his face with her right hook.

***

"You need tea so ba-Fuck!"

He blocked the punch with his forearm, but only just, before slamming his own fist into her stomach. He aimed for the same place he'd kicked earlier, and swore when he needed to punch her there again. As she started to crumple in on herself, he got in an uppercut of his own that had her staggering backwards from him. Even though this was Peggy, he didn't pull his punches. He just needed to buy himself a little time. He didn't press forward as she stepped back, he simply reached down to his watch and quickly flicked at the switches until he reached the setting he was after.

***


The Soldier was naive to drop her guard around him at his use of that name, whatever it was that made her pause. She would not make the same mistake twice, for fear of reprisals and more wiping from her handlers. Grunting in pain as he hit her, she used the curb as leverage and jumped. Her thighs wrapped around his neck and she ended up sitting on his shoulders, her wounds ripping back open and dripping blood, Locking her ankles at his back, she twisted her hips, hoping to gain enough force to either break his neck or pin him back on the ground and subdue him once and for all.

***

Shitshitshitshitshit ran the litany in his head as he wound up giving her the sorest piggyback he'd ever been involved in. He tried shaking her off, but she was firmly in place. If he pitched forward, she'd smash his face into the ground and it was fucking sore enough already, thank you very much. Nothing for it but throwing them both down onto their backs, then. He flailed about a bit more for show, and then flung himself backwards with no warning.

Thankfully, his watch had a metal bracelet rather than leather straps with a buckle, so he quickly slipped it off his wrist as they fell, and fired a tranquilliser dart into not-Peggy's thigh at very close range. He had no idea how quickly it would work, or for how long, given her obvious super-soldieriness, but he had to try.

***

This boy and whoever had trained him had remarkable skills, as if he knew every move that she did and how to escape them. The Soldier didn’t know who had trained her, though the idea had crossed her mind that she wasn’t even human and had been created for weaponisation rather than as a real person. Humanity felt far away. He was fiddling with his watch and before she could prevent the close-range dart from entering her skin, they were toppling backwards onto the concrete and the cobbles.

The Soldier grunted and gritted her teeth at the impact, unable to remove her legs from around the kid quick enough. Her feet smashed on the ground and she felt the bones breaking under the imperfect flesh. Before she could think, though, her brain dulled and dulled. “Fucking Kingsman…” she muttered before blacking out completely.

***

Eggsy jarred his back and hip as they landed, but he didn't care at that precise moment. He tried scrambling away but couldn't get anywhere until her muscles all went lax and she muttered something about Kingsman. Squirming free from her legs, he scrambled to his feet as quickly as he could, and checked that he hadn't actually killed her and that she wasn't likely to wake up in the next few moments.

"Sorry, Peggy," he said quietly, and then nipped over to pick up his glasses. His head spun dangerously as he bent down to get them, and he knew he was in trouble. He couldn't carry her to the hospital, and he really wasn't safe to be driving; he'd be pretty fucking likely to crash into a wall and kill them both, so that wasn't an option. He'd left his phone back at the shop... but this Peggy had one! He crossed back over to where she was lying and found the phone easy enough and then dialled his Peggy. She'd be able to help.