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[originallutece]

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how DARE you

[tailorable]

[ He wants to push his point, to quibble with Rosalind's classification of herself, but she shuts him up by touching his cheek and looking at him with such sharpness in her eyes. And there it is, the faintest blush. 'Course she still has the power, even when she's bedridden.

As she elaborates on her question, his stomach turns. His mouth twists downward, ostensibly in thought or over the breaking points that come to his mind. Is his world ordinary by comparison, even with all the spies and doomsday plots? Quite, but it's not entirely ordinary, no, not in the way that he knows she means. He could tell her everything, then, about an organisation that no longer exists, designed to protect a world that was lost — but that would expose Harry and Roxy. It's not an option, however much it pains him to omit the truth. ]

The first person I met here was a wizard. [ James. God, he thinks he'll miss James most of all. Forever, maybe. You don't often meet someone who you immediately know and have the privilege of being known by in return. ] Didn't blow my mind then 'cause he was such a lad. [ a friend like any other. James had felt as helpless as Eggsy had, unable to protect his son or prevent death even with fantastic magic. ] He was somebody's dad, too. Guess that set the tone.

[ He shrugs, a lopsided movement given his injury. Even the extraordinary is grounded in everyday relations and natural concerns. When Alan told him about the fantasy world awaiting him on the ground, he asked if it was all nobles and peasants because he knows exactly which category he falls into, particularly after Byerly reminded him. No questions about bloodthirsty dragons or alien attacks came to mind, not as the biggest of his concerns. Still, his confidence falters, a flicker of hesitation belying the missing piece of his answer. Then, his features soften. He can't tell her any of his shared truths, but he can still give her private pieces of himself. You trust different people with different things. That's the rule.

His voice comes out steady, if coloured by melancholy. ]

And I can think of a few things just as frightening as magic spells and sea monsters. [ She'll know what he means, as the only person on the planet who knows how he left the Marines. ] Ordinary as they are.

[ At least you can stab a sea monster and watch it sink to the depths, blood suffusing the water as evidence of your triumph. He couldn't even hit Dean before Kingsman. And the world ended before he got the chance to know if that had truly changed. ]

[originallutece]

You're right there.

[It hadn't been magic spells or supernatural things that had ended Rosalind and Robert Lutece, after all. Just an old man's paranoia and a young man's greed. For all their wondrous inventions, for all their awe-inspiring deeds, they'd died like ordinary people, their bodies broken and battered, killed by pathetically ordinary means.]

I'm glad, though. That you aren't . . .

[She wrinkles her nose.]

Frightened sounds infantile, but I simply mean that you aren't the sort to cower from it all. Most are. I can't tell you how many times my inventions were simplified and babied to make it easier to feed to the general public, all because they were frightened of new things.

But a place like this . . . I have my resentments. I have my problems with this world, and they are numerous. And I won't say I wouldn't bolt to my old state of existence the moment it became available to me if I had the chance.

But there's something wondrous about it as well, isn't there? About the unknown, getting to discover it all and go through things no one has ever gone through before. All these people gathered together, sharing in the same phenomenon . . . there's never been anything like it. I worked my entire life to try and open the same sort of doorway. To try and explore other worlds, just to see what they were like, and why.

[There's Robert. That's him, not her, that shining optimism and almost childish eagerness; the wide-eyed desire to see the unknown and push the limits. She'd thought that part of her long since suppressed, but Eggsy tends to bring out her better half.]