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“What did you do?”
“I named her. The power of a name. That's old magic.”
Gary’s father is not coming home. He knows it the moment his mother lets the tall man into their home; his suspicions are confirmed the moment she starts to cry. Gary ignores their hushed tones, turning his snow globe over and over in his hands. He continues until the man crouches down to speak to him.
“What’s your name, young man?"
There’s nothing about this man that makes him look out of the ordinary, but there’s still something about him that puts Gary on edge. He feels too dangerous, too much to be in the small apartment with them. Gary waits a beat before he answers, considers what he knows; his father is not coming home, and there is a strange, dangerous man trying to give him a favour in return for his name.
His mother has been telling him fairy tales for years, every night before bed. If there’s three things he’s taken away from them, it’s not to trust strangers, that names have power, and that one should certainly not be giving their names away.
Once they have your name they’ll be able to steal you away forever, make you into something else , Gary hears his mother warn. In a split second he makes a choice. He doesn’t want to be taken away, not like his dad.
“Eggsy,” he lies, staring the man right in the eyes, defiant even though he can barely hear his own voice over how loudly his heart is beating, rabbit fast in his chest.
For a moment, they stare at each other, and he’s certain that he’s been caught in his lie. But then the man smiles at him.
“Hello, Eggsy,” the man says, handing over a favour in return for the lie.
When the man finally leaves, all he’s left with is a favour and a name. He thought he’d feel safer, now that the man is gone.
He doesn’t.
It wasn’t the fae that took his father, after all. There were no tricks to overcome, no riddles to solve, no lanky pale eyed creatures to charm. His father was a soldier, and he died. Life is a bit like a fairy tale; full of harsh lessons, blood, darkness, and disappointment. So it goes.
Despite the fact that Eggsy was a name chosen on a whim, it sticks. He stays Eggsy, at first because it makes him feel safe, and eventually just out of habit. There is no mysticality to it, no magic keeping him safe, just another thing for people to judge him by.
“Eggsy is not a proper name,” a teacher tells him once, after Eggsy informs him that it’s the only name that he’ll respond to. “We must call things by their proper names, or no one will take you seriously.”
Eggsy balances his chair on it’s back legs, smirking. “Then you won’t mind me calling you a proper dickhead?”
He gets detention. It doesn’t matter; the teacher wouldn’t have seen him as anything but a lost cause, no matter how Eggsy would have responded. He knows something that the teacher doesn’t; he can’t just go back to being Gary, not here, not now.
Eggsy is a rare case; he gave himself his true name, doesn’t owe anyone for that gift. It’s a thin layer of armor that he can hide behind, something that is entirely his. It doesn’t keep the names others throw at him from sticking, but it keep him from becoming them.
Rentboy. Idiot. Slut. Maggot.
They’re names that slide through the cracks in his armor, leaving shallow cuts behind. Dean is no genius, but he understands what that teacher didn’t; that if you call someone something long enough, you might wear them down enough for it to become the truth. Until you don’t know which came first, just like in the fairy tales. Were Cinderella, the evil witch, the wicked stepsisters, the big bad wolf all those things before someone named them thus, or were they something else, before?
It’d be a lot easier for Dean if the names he threw at Eggsy stuck, if they crawled under his ribs and broke them. Twisted Eggsy into something new, something weak and malleable. But Eggsy keeps himself wrapped tightly in the name that he gave himself. There’s power in that, not enough to keep the knives out but enough to give him the strength to pull them out, time and time again. It’s enough to keep him from becoming something else.
Eggsy joins the military in an attempt to become something new. He leaves his name behind with his mother, like he can hand off the lie to her to keep her safe. He tells himself that he doesn’t need it anymore, that he can be Gary now. That if he becomes Gary, that he won’t need armor anymore. That it can be enough.
Gary Unwin is his father’s son. He does not believe in fairy tales, is not afraid of being snatched up by the fae if he gives them his name. He can protect himself.
And it works, for a little while. Gary thrives in a military setting. He’s succeeding for the first time in his life, and he’s happy. It feels like he’s doing the right thing.
But like everything else in his life, it doesn’t last. His name is what brings him back, but it’s not the fae that drag him away, but his mother.
“Eggsy,” she pleads, voice tinny sounding through the old landline phone that he has clenched in his hands. “Eggsy please come home. I can’t do this without you. I can’t lose you too.”
It’s in that moment, feeling the tug of his name through the phone, that he realises that he hasn’t been Gary in a long time. That he will never be Gary, that it was a poorly fitted coat he’s been wearing since he got here. At his core, he really is Eggsy now, his thin armor having melded to his skin long ago.
He leaves Gary folded up along with his uniform on his assigned bed. It’s not really a choice, but it seems to fit. Afterall, no one has any grand expectations of Eggsy Unwin. He’s not his father’s son, he’s his stepfather’s punching bag, a drug runner, a deviant. He won’t be missed when he’s gone.
It occurs to him that maybe he should keep his name close to his chest, like he used to keep Gary, but discards that thought quickly.
Even if the fae were to come, they wouldn’t want anything to do with the likes of him. They’re not interested in failures, and there’s other things he needs to worry about.
It’s easy enough to let the names that Dean’s goons throw at him bounce off of him, but he’s still trying to keep the names disguised as kindness from cutting too deep. It’s always easier to dodge a clear attack then it is to avoid an unintended one.
The strangers Eggsy goes home with in an attempt to forget the disappointment that his life has become are all unintentional assassins. They pretend to care about him, even just for a night, but each time they call him ‘babe’ or ‘luv’ they’re just giving him broken glass wrapped in nice paper.
They’re a means to an end as much as much as Eggsy is to them, but it still cuts deeper than he likes when he hears the “ You aren’t worth enough for me to remember your name” hidden behind each poorly disguised endearment.
Eggsy wants to be able to forget their names too, to pay them back in kind, but he can’t bring himself to. He can’t even give them a fake name, too afraid that that one will stick too. He remembers each and every one of the people who he let use him. When the lists becomes too painful to hold in his head, he stops adding to it.
Even though he stopped believing in the fae a long time ago, Eggsy has always been hesitant to call in the so called favor he’s been wearing around his throat all those years. The world is harsh enough and he still carries enough scraps of superstition with him that he knows deep in his bones that whatever this favor is, it will not be free.
Nothing ever is.
But sitting in that police station, he also thinks of little Daisy and the black eye his mother is currently sporting and knows that some things are worth bargaining your soul for.
That’s how he meets Harry Hart again, the man who he had given a lie and now holds his true name, because that’s just how things work out for Eggsy, isn’t it? And while Harry Hart may not be fae, he definitely holds enough power that Eggsy doesn’t trust him. When he offers Eggsy a drink, he does not drink it. He knows better.
After Harry Hat proves that he is dangerous, more so than Eggsy would have ever expected, he starts to reconsider. And when he offers to spirit him away, to not only take away the meat cleaver that is very literally pressed against Eggsy’s throat, but to do something more than this?
Eggsy responds by doing what he’s tried and failed to do before; he runs. But this time, he’s running towards something, not away from it. Eggsy has always been too curious and too reckless for his own good, and Harry has proven himself to be both powerful and lethal. He doesn’t know what else he has to lose at this point. Harry already knows his name.
It feels like he’s been moving towards this since the day they met. So might as well get there quickly.
Through all of Kingsman training, Harry is a constant presence in the background. It should feel like a threat, a warning of what will be owed if Eggsy fails, but instead it feels like safety. He carries Eggsy’s name carefully, but uses it constantly and without hesitation. At worst, it’s been used as a warning, a slap on the wrist, and at best it’s been a pleased compliment, delivered with pride. Harry never tries to use Eggsy’s name as a weapon, never tries to turn the truth he helped create back against him. It feels too good to be true.
Eggsy fails to shoot JB, and he expects it to be the punchline of the cosmic joke that is his life. It isn’t, and neither is it the way that Harry’s disappointment and anger twist Eggsy’s name into something that is nearly regret. Left alone in Harry’s house with his thoughts, Eggsy waits for Harry to return so that he can deliver the final blow.
Harry doesn’t come back. The punchline doesn’t comes with gunshot, either, with the screen going red for a split second before it goes dark. It doesn’t come until later, when Eggsy is sitting in the dining room where they’d eaten breakfast a few hours and a lifetime ago, holding a tumbler of whiskey in shaking hands.
It comes with the realisation that Eggsy has had the joke wrong, all along. He thought that it had been set up from the moment he picked up the phone to call in the favor, but that’s not it. The joke started when Eggsy had looked Harry straight in the eye and had given him a false name in return for a favor. And for the brief moment it took for Harry to respond, it had remained a lie. But then Harry taken the lie and made it the truth, had handed it back to Eggsy along with a favor. Eggsy may have created the name, but Harry had made it real. It’s one thing to name something, but to make something true? That’s real power, but it’s also responsibility.
Now that Harry Hart is dead, Eggsy should be free. This is what he intended, when he had lied to Harry. But Harry has always been a wild card. He had to take the lie and make it the truth, to make it a shield until he could come back for him. Eggsy is free, and it’s the worst feeling he’s ever experienced.
That’s it.
That’s the punchline.
At least he’s laughing.
Eggsy isn’t used to things coming back to him, after they’ve been taken away. When Harry gets back from Kentucky with a scar on his temple and a minor tremor in his hands, Eggsy starts using Harry’s name nearly as much as Harry uses his in an attempt to keep him there with him. That maybe, if he says it enough, that Eggsy will uncover the true name underneath and get to keep Harry like Harry keeps him. He doesn’t understand the logic behind it, but it makes Eggsy feel better and Harry doesn’t seem to mind the possessive way he says it.
It’s Eggsy’s unspoken claim on him, to go with the claim that Harry has on him. It’s a warning, to anyone who can hear it, that Eggsy is not going to let anyone or anything take Harry away from him.
Never again.
Harry has never been one to do anything by halves, so he doesn’t stop at giving Eggsy one name. The second name he gives him feels too big and regal for him, but less like a lie than the first time. When Eggsy relays this to Harry he gets a raised eyebrow in return.
“It’s not the name that makes you a knight, Eggsy,” Harry tells him seriously, from his new spot at the head of the table. “It’s what you do with it.”
“You tell me that saving the fucking world doesn’t count then, since I wasn’t Galahad yet?” Eggsy says, using a wry grin to cover his insecurities.
“You saved the fucking world, Eggsy. I think we can let it count just this once,” Harry responds dryly, but the corner of his mouth twitches upwards. Eggsy’s forced grin transforms into a proper smile.
Eggsy takes the name Galahad from Harry, wears it until it fits him like a second skin. It’s the first time that Eggsy is given a name that is neither born of fear or meant to hurt.
There’s one more name Harry gives Eggsy that changes him. Harry doesn’t make it real like the first time, or give it to him like the second. Instead, he offers it with hesitancy that seems out of place to Eggsy, who knows without a doubt that he will take the name that’s being held out to him. Eggsy tells him as much, and as predicted the name fits as comfortably as the ring that accompanies it. Unlike the others, the name takes no time to break in, fits like it was made for him.
Harry asks him what he’s thinking about as they move leisurely through the other couples on the dance floor. Eggsy grins up at him, tightening the grip on his left hand so he can feel their wedding bands clink together.
“It’s nice, is all,” Eggsy says, “To have a name that fits without having to break it in first.”
“Eggsy,” Harry says fondly.
“It’s Eggsy Unwin-Hart now, I’ll have you know,” he responds, the haughtiness of his tone ruined by the completely smitten look he’s sure he’s wearing. But it doesn’t matter; Harry is wearing a matching smile on his.
“Thank you, Eggsy Unwin-Hart,” Harry says instead.
“What for?” Eggsy laughs, curious. “For marrying you?”
“Yes, for that,” Harry says, voice soft and earnest. “But also for giving me your name. For taking mine.”
Eggsy has to swallow the lump in his throat, smiles past it with no small effort. “We named each other. We’re even, now.”