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This mission was a screwed up mess from the beginning. The intel they were given them insisted that the guerilla force they were targeting had only small caliber weapons and would be a relatively easy job. That should have been Harry’s first clue things were about to go sideways. No job that claims to be “easy” ever is.
In between their intel being gathered and the actual op being initiated, their guerilla force made friends with some rather nasty arms dealers. Which resulted in their plane becoming the target of anti aircraft fire, and everyone needing to bail out much sooner than expected.
Even then, they might have been fine. If they hadn’t continued taking fire. If Eggsy’s parachute hadn’t collapsed, if he hadn’t gone down hard into the mess of sprawling, uncharted jungle below them.
By the time Harry landed, with a bullet in his own leg (even the Kingsman suits have proved not to be a match for the high-powered weaponry they’re up against) Eggsy had gotten himself out of the ruined parachute and was sitting with his back against a tree, a clearly broken leg stretched out in front of him, looking in shock at the blood oozing out from the hand pressed against his stomach.
“I’m sorry, Harry,” he whispers softly as Harry rushes up as quickly as his bad leg will let him. “It just all went to shit.” He slumps over and his head falls to his chest.
“Oh no you don’t.” Harry shakes the boy’s shoulders until pain-clouded blue eyes open. “You don’t get to give up that easily.” A Kingsman doesn’t die lying down . He doesn’t want to think about the possibility that Eggsy is, in fact, going to die here. He can’t. Harry refuses to let another Unwin die on his watch.
“How do you ‘xpect me to stand on this leg?” Eggsy mumbles, gesturing halfheartedly to the broken, twisted limb stretched out in front of him. Harry holds out the umbrella he always carries.
“Keep this up, and you’ll be issued one of our weaponized canes.” The kid’s already taken a bullet in that leg, and broken his other ankle on an ill-advised jump he promised he could have done in his sleep. Harry’s going to get that boy fitted for a suit made of bubble wrap.
He patches up Eggsy’s stomach wound as best he can, but it’s already starting to look infected. He knows how fast these kind of injuries can go bad, if the intestine’s been nicked. And in the jungle, there are a thousand things that could already have gotten into the wound, things he doesn’t want to think about. The faster they get out of here, the better off Eggsy will be.
He helps Eggsy to his feet, wraps an arm around the boy’s shoulders, and pushes the umbrella into his other hand. His own wounded leg screams for attention, but he’s already wrapped it, the bullet is still inside, and he can’t do anything else about it until they get back to civilization.
Besides, he let Eggsy get hurt. This is only fair punishment. He made a promise on Lee Unwin’s grave that he would never let what happened to Lee happen to his son. And now Eggsy is injured and bleeding out and they’re at least four kilometers from help, in rough jungle.
Harry pulls out his compass, orients himself, and begins the long, slow trudge toward their exfil team, medical attention, and safety. He stumbles over a root, and Eggsy groans, letting go of the umbrella to clutch at his stomach.
“I’m sorry.” He catches Eggsy before he can fall all the way to the ground.
“What’s wrong with your leg?” Eggsy mutters. Damn it. He saw. The kid was bent half over, no wonder he noticed the bloody bandage on Harry’s leg.
“Just a scratch.” Harry says. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” Eggsy mumbles. “You shouldn’t have to carry me.” He tries to pull his arm off from over Harry’s shoulder.
“None of that now.” Harry keeps a firm grip on Eggsy’s wrist. “You and I are getting out of here together.”
They make it about two kilometers more when Harry’s leg gives out altogether. He collapses to the ground, with just enough time to make sure he doesn’t land on Eggsy. He takes the brunt of the boy’s weight, but Eggsy still moans softly and flinches, his face twisted with pain. He coughs, and there’s a faint mist of blood splattering his lips. Harry cringes. A broken rib must have stabbed into his lung when they fell.
If he could, Harry would take all the pain himself. His heart aches for the boy coughing and shuddering on the ground in front of him. I want to make it so you never hurt again. If I could, I would. I would bear anything to keep you from suffering. Kingsman has put this boy through so much already. It’s cost him his father, it’s dragged him into a life where the probability is that he will die young. Harry’s wondered, too many times to count, if it was worth helping Eggsy become a Kingsman.
He presses his hands into the soggy jungle mud and struggles to his feet. He bends enough to get his arms under the now unconscious boy, and picks him up carefully, letting Eggsy’s head fall against his shoulder.
One step at a time. He stumbles, a flare of pain burning through his leg, but he can’t fall. He can’t let Eggsy fall. He can’t let Lee down. Lee died to protect him. If that’s what it takes, he’ll die to protect Lee’s son. It’s only fair.
Eggsy’s breathing is shallower, sweat soaking his hair, and Harry can’t tell if it’s the jungle heat or a fever slowly burning its way through his body. He keeps walking, forcing his aching legs to move, gritting his teeth against blinding pain. One more step.
And then there are people rushing toward him, shapes that blur in front of his good eye as he wavers. Someone tries to pull Eggsy from his arms and he begins to fight back, reaching for the knife in his belt, before he realizes these are his own men. These are the people he came to find.
He drifts in and out of consciousness on the ride to safety. He hears a lot of shouting, a lot of muttered orders, and once he thinks he hears Eggsy scream, although he can’t be sure if it’s reality or a nightmare.
He wakes up again in a hospital bed, his leg throbbing but bandaged, and he can tell already that the bullet has been removed. There’s another bed across from his, silent. He carefully struggles to his feet and limps over to where Eggsy is lying, pale and still but with his chest rising and falling, and the monitor beside him blinking the green rise and fall of a steady heartbeat. Harry sinks into a chair beside Eggsy and takes the boy’s limp hand in his. I made a promise to your father. And I’m going to keep it, no matter the cost.