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Roxy Morton’s first coherent thought is a well-placed, emphatic FUCK. Being hit by a missile is generally the sort of thing warranting expletives if you don’t happen to be in a situation to do anything else about it. She’s not.
She can barely breathe, and she’s buried in the rubble of her own damn home, which is the most immediate problem to solve. The best she can do now is assess it, and avoid losing consciousness again.
Roxy inhales shallowly, then winces at the sudden pain. Her ribs ache, but she would have died already from a punctured lung. No other extremities seem broken. Injuries, then, are limited to her ribs (excruciating) and her head (concussed). She’ll at least stand a chance of getting away once she’s no longer buried alive.
But there lies the issue: someone sent the missile, someone with a vested interest in killing Kingsman who knew most agents would be home.
(Eggsy wasn’t home. He was at dinner with Tilde’s family, and Roxy was helping him not look like a moron around the potential in-laws. Assuming whoever’s responsible for this hadn’t decided to throw a missile at Swedish royalty for good measure, Eggsy should be fine. The same cannot be said for the rest of Kingsman.)
For now, Roxy remains alive. Thanks in no small part to the seconds of warning she had. Likely still more than anyone else.
Whoever fired the missiles, they’ll want to be sure. They’ll want to confirm their kills, to dig out bodies, to take a headcount of who’s left to worry about. Roxy can use that. Someone will be looking for her.
(She’d prefer someone who doesn’t want her dead, but Kingsman agents recently hit by missiles can’t be choosy. Roxy has to be ready; at least she doesn’t have to worry about bleeding out while waiting.)
Ultimately, she can only plan so much with little knowledge of who’s coming for her. Eggsy mentioned, before it was off to Tilde’s, that he’d run into Charlie. The last person to fail out of the Kingsmen. Before Eggsy technically did as well, then un-failed his way back in because Arthur was in league with the bastard paving the way for a new world by destroying the old and someone needed to become Galahad. Refusing to shoot a dog was much less final than, say, choosing to betray Kingsman.
Roxy waits, and she copes, and she seethes, and she plans. And, when enough of the rubble is unearthed by a man with a golden circle tattoo, she holds her breath long enough for him to report that Roxy Morton is dead.
Dark spots dance in her vision by the time he hangs up. Too late, it occurs to him that he should check for a pulse.
Fortunately for Roxy, she is a well-trained Kingsman agent. He’s nothing but talk, especially once disarmed. She takes his firearm, shoots his communicator, and limps away as fast as her battered ribs will let her.
(It isn’t very fast. She’s so far from fine that it almost wraps back around to being comical, but she’s still alive, and that’s got to count for something.)
They didn’t really cover ‘everyone you work with might be dead and you’ve got to take out the people who killed your people and probably save the world from them’ in training. Though, in fairness to those running the training—Merlin, mostly, looking back on it—she doesn’t think anyone would have predicted something of this magnitude happening two years in a row. No one reasonable would have.
But no one reasonable would be trying to destroy the world. Which, with her luck, she’s sure is the end goal here. Again.
Still, with Kingsman utterly in shambles, Roxy’s first priority is staying alive until regrouping is possible. There are many benefits to being best mates with Eggsy Unwin, such as useful information for a worst-case scenario. Where to get injuries treated without difficult questions or IDs. Roxy had several; they went up in flames with her house. So did several other things she would have rather didn’t go up in flames.
(She’s never been more glad that her dog was at the groomer’s. She probably can’t let the groomer know she’s alive right now, let alone Squire. At least she has something to come back to, assuming she’s able to come back. The sort of people who would preemptively wipe out Kingsman are also the sort to plan something bad for the general longevity of the human race, so... putting it lightly, Roxy has a lot to worry about.)
Her ribs, shockingly, aren’t broken. She’s concussed to the point where she’s told not to sleep for more than an hour at a time, though that’s making some bold assumptions about her ability to sleep at all. But she’s alive, and she has a firearm, and that is... more than can be said about most of Kingsman. The prospect’s daunting.
A royal palace being hit with a missile would have made the news. Notably, it didn’t, and it’s highly likely that whoever sent the missiles didn’t know Eggsy wasn’t at home. The visit was off the books, something that Roxy’s only knew about because Eggsy needed her wingwoman services. Merlin had some idea that he was up to something romantic, and definitely knew that Eggsy was seeing Tilde, but she somehow doesn’t think Merlin would have assumed apropos of nothing that Eggy’s date was multiple countries away. That’s generally the sort of thing you’re supposed to clear with Kingsman first, not that Eggsy has ever been a rule-follower if he thinks they’re stupid.
She’s somehow both more in agreement and less in agreement with Eggsy now. More in agreement, because he’s safer than her. Less in agreement, because she’s dealing with this alone.
At least she can safely assume that Eggsy’s alive. She can’t contact him so he doesn’t assume the reverse, or else she’ll risk a bigger target on both of their backs.
Waiting out the concussion, enough that she can walk and shoot straight, isn’t something she’s keen on. But it’s something she grudgingly does anyway, while keeping an eye on the news of terrorist attacks on a group of tailors.
There are very few people in the world who know that Kingsman isn’t just a group of tailors. Someone wanted them out of the picture.
She’s disappointed, not surprised, to find nothing but rubble by the time she makes it back herself. The same goes for every other residence of an active Kingsman agent she can recall, Eggsy’s included. She holds a brief moment of silence for JD, while she’s there.
On a whim, Roxy goes looking for Merlin’s home. It’s empty.
But someone’s been here recently. At least two someones, if the shot glasses are any indication. That’s almost certainly Eggsy and Merlin. She can’t be sure.
Probably-Eggsy and Probably-Merlin didn’t cover their tracks well. They left in a hurry. Strangely, Roxy can’t find what they were drinking, though she can’t fault them for it. She’d have done the same, if liquor and concussions weren’t a terrible idea to mix.
(Absolutely nothing indicates where anyone’s gone. If she didn’t know better, she’d think there was a connection with the missing bottle of what was presumably rather strong alcohol. But that’s ridiculous. Isn’t it?)
She knows at least two other Kingsman agents (Eggsy and Merlin) are alive. Whatever clue they’d found, they’d been careful enough that she can’t follow them, and it’s absolutely infuriating.
What is she supposed to do? Twiddle her thumbs until something points her in the right direction?
There’s no thumb-twiddling involved, but maybe there should have been, because Roxy’s out grabbing more painkillers for her ribs and her concussion when one of the pharmacist’s other customers goes, “Hey, mate, have you seen the news?”
Roxy hadn’t seen the news. Fortunately, neither had the pharmacist, so some light eavesdropping worked wonders. The news are still talking about it when she finds somewhere to watch it, but they’re saying little about what it actually is.
But she always has the internet. No matter how much people try to scrub things from its servers, anything put on the internet tends to stay on the internet long after it’s been deleted, provided one knows where to look.
This is how Roxy learns about Poppy, who controls the worldwide drug trade. About her quite cheerfully holding the world for ransom unless the US president (does she seriously think the rest of the world will fall in line after him if he agrees to her demands?) decriminalizes drug use.
...Before becoming a Kingsman agent, Roxy would have had very different opinions on this. She’d become friends with Eggsy, and by extension, some of his mates, who thought she was weird but were as happy to absorb her into the friend group as they were to include a literal Swedish princess, and also cared as little about the princess thing as they did about Roxy’s background.
Roxy knows better now. She knows drug use isn’t exactly black and white, that little in life is. And that—especially after the last incident—world leaders are generally not as altruistic as their campaigns would have the people believe.
Most importantly of all, she knows that—wherever they are—the other remnants of Kingsman must have seen that announcement too. If she involves herself, she’ll find them again.
The president will likely cave to Poppy’s demands sooner rather than later. When he does, Roxy can trace their communications to Poppy. The plan is foolproof.
The plan is not foolproof. Roxy failed to account for the fact that the current president of the United States is a cunt.
(She’s well aware that word has stronger connotations on this side of the pond. She fully stands by it anyway.)
Internally, he’s claiming that anyone who has ever used any illegal drug is a degenerate the world is better off without. Externally, he’s claiming that everything’s fine and they’re negotiating with Poppy. It’s possible that Poppy herself thinks he’s planning to agree to her demands.
But he’s not.
Eggsy and Merlin can handle Poppy, wherever they are. This technically shouldn’t be Roxy’s jurisdiction, but it is, because Poppy is holding the entire world ransom on the whims of someone who should never have been elected to his office. Last Roxy checked, Britain’s still part of this world.
The White House doesn’t have as good of security as it should, though that makes Roxy’s work significantly easier. She needs something incriminating, the worse the better. If Eggsy can’t pull this off fast enough, she’ll need something to blackmail the president into following along with Poppy’s demands, at least until Eggsy can do the job they both trained for. Once he does, she needs proof that he was willing to sacrifice countless people. From all walks of life.
(She feels bad for his secretary. Hopefully her case won’t progress too far before Kingsman can bring Poppy down.)
It’s when she’s hacking into the president’s computer, or trying to—of course he has better security there than anywhere else, of course he cares more about his personal files than anything else—that something she didn’t expect happens.
“You’re not supposed to be here.”
A voice she’s never heard before. Possibly feminine. Definitely American—that accent is incredibly strong, though that could be because it’s unfamiliar. And, most importantly, she sounds curious. Not angry, like security personnel would be.
“You’re telling me?” Roxy says, glancing up from the laptop. She’s glad, now, that she’d made an effort to disguise herself. “I doubt you’re supposed to be here, either.”
A laugh. “True. But I’m not. Physically, that is. Call it the wonders of technology.” A pause, from whoever’s on the other end. “Much as I’m enjoying our banter, I don’t have time for this. You’re not working for Poppy.”
Roxy raises an eyebrow. “And what tells you that?”
“Ha—because you’re looking for files that’ll directly undermine her, and ’cause you clearly know what you’re doing.” Another pause. “Tell you what. If you’re looking for what I think you’re looking for, we can help each other. Turn the screen towards the seal on the wall?”
She can feel the brows on her face raising even higher, but she does so. “And how do I know you’re not working for Poppy?”
“You don’t,” the voice says. “Hmm... try Inauguration Day.”
“Which is?”
“January 20th. Or 21st, if the 20th is a Sunday... it was the 20th for this president. Not that I voted for him.”
“Me neither,” says Roxy, a British citizen, as she tries 0120 for the passcode.
The laptop unlocks. She never would have thought of that on her own, not least of which because she’s not American and she usually doesn’t have to care about American politics.
Whoever this voice is, they’re good. And as little as Roxy wants to trust anyone not in Kingsman, she doesn’t have other options. She’d like to trust someone.
So she says, looking at the seal on the wall—presumably, there’s a camera planted in it, “I have friends who I trust to handle Poppy.”
“That’s a fun coincidence,” says the voice. “I do too.”
They could be the same friends. But Roxy isn’t quite willing to trust that far.
“Assuming your friends or my friends succeed,” Roxy continues, “which I feel fairly safe in assuming, the normal occupant of this office will try to hide every bit of evidence that he was going to leave a lot of people to die.”
“Definitely,” says the voice.
“I’m going to gather as much as I can,” Roxy says, “and send it directly to as many news outlets as I can.”
“Blunt,” says the voice. “I like it.”
“Can you help me? If you have cameras here...”
She pauses, for long enough that Roxy worries she’s lost her.
“You have around five minutes. I’ll warn you when the president’s on his way back.”
Roxy could, hypothetically, jump for joy. She’s not going to, because she has incriminating files to download, but she could.
“That’s more than I thought I’d have on this,” she says wryly. “What should I call you?”
“You first,” says the voice. Fair.
She could say Lancelot, which could make its way back to Eggsy and let him know that she lived, bitch, she fucking lived. But there’s still enough doubt to worry her. As much as she’d like to trust this woman, she’s not answering to Lancelot or Roxy until Poppy is gone.
“Guinevere,” she says. There’s no agent associated with Kingsman by that name. But in the actual Arthurian mythos, Guinevere was the name of Lancelot’s lover. If she can trust this woman, and if that name makes it to Eggsy, she’s confident her best friend can connect the dots from there. Otherwise, it’s not the most uncommon of names, and it’s not directly connected to the Knights of the Round Table.
“Then you can call me... Ginger.”
With Ginger’s help, Roxy makes it out more cleanly than she would have alone. Unfortunately, the only speaker that Ginger’s organization has within the White House is inside the Oval Office, so once she’s out, she’s back on her own.
By the time she turns on the hotel television, it’s clear that someone released Poppy’s drones with the antidotes. Roxy knows as well as Ginger that it can’t have been the president, because he wasn’t in his office when it happened. Not that he would have.
(Cunt.)
The information goes out. The president is impeached, removed from office, and immediately thrown into prison. Roxy is no closer to reuniting with what’s left of Kingsman than before, but heading back to England to pick up the pieces of her life after getting hit by a missile is probably a good place to start. She’s pretty sure her family thinks she was one of Poppy’s victims, given the timing, so it’s... surprising, but pleasantly so, that they’re not disowning her over it.
“Sorry I’m so late,” she says to the groomer when she finally picks up Squire. “Life... happened.”
“Oh, I fully understand,” the groomer replies. “Life happened to a lot of us recently. By the way, did you hear, this Swedish princess is marrying a commoner?”
Apparently, meeting with the in-laws didn’t end quite as catastrophically as Roxy thought.
“Oh my god. Rox? ”
“Hey, Eggsy.” Tilde’s security doesn’t look all that happy about Roxy getting his attention, but they can’t stop him from rushing over to the railing in front of the church. “You thought you’d get rid of me that easily?”
“Nah,” Eggsy says, “but I did think you were dead. How’d you…”
There’s only so much either of them can say in public. But she catches the meaning of what he’s asking.
“I didn’t,” she says, meaning the missile, and his eyebrows shoot up. “Talk more later. But you didn’t think you were getting married without your best mate, did you?”
“I’ve kinda… got another best man,” he says, very sheepishly. “But you’re good to join. I thought—fuck, it’s good to see you.”
Alive, he doesn’t say.
“Me too.” She takes the opportunity to duck under the railing, trying not to wince at the motion. “Catch up later?”
“Catch up later,” he agrees. “One other thing. Guinevere?”
“You figure that out now?” Roxy can’t hold it against him. “Though I do have to ask. If I’m not your best man, then who...”
“Second pew on the left, aisle seat,” Eggsy says. “He’ll squeeze. See you in there.”
Slowly, Roxy nods, and heads on inside, not remotely sure what to expect—Merlin, maybe? But there’s no sign of Merlin in the church anywhere, which doesn’t bode well for him having survived Poppy.
Ultimately, she’s about as prepared for who’s actually sitting in that spot—wearing an eyepatch, and a surprised look — as she was to be hit by a missile. Which is to say, not remotely.
“Harry Hart?!”
Evidently, she wasn’t the only one whose death report was greatly exaggerated.