Roanoke verse drabble under the cut:
As a young boy, Harry made the conscious choice to convolute his nature. To be himself was unacceptable so it was imperative to him that he must not know himself. Identity was to be stamped out, for behavior outstripped motivation. You mustn’t be, you must do. Behavior goes where reinforcement flows. Manners maketh man.
Desensitization had become less armor and more exoskeletal. He could not shed it without a new layer growing around him from the depths of his conditioning. Nonchalance in the face of violence and a soldier’s dedication to thinly veiled bloodsport had taken root within him and grew alongside him such that little remained that was not tainted by it. Metastatic or symbiotic, it wasn’t going anywhere without taking a substantial piece of Harry’s identity along with it.
Thus, when Richmond Valentine’s bullet stripped Harry of his memories, what remained were benign yet incomplete fragments. There was an open wound that hadn’t yet grown scar tissue, a premature birth of a man—easy to love for its fragility but far easier to destroy for the same reason.
It was this fragmented incarnation of Harry that Agent Succubus met first. She realized all-too soon that restoring him meant tainting him, instilling the pain that brought his defenses forth, peeling back the chrysalis before the butterfly had grown. Restoring him did not mean fixing him, because all the missing pieces remained jagged.
It seemed impossible to reconcile the contradictions of Harry’s existence, but Agent Succubus was something of an expert in doing the impossible. Rather than file down his sharp edges, she gave them room to grow and smoothe with the layers of time. What softness he learned from allowing himself to love—a door that Merlin had unlocked, Eggsy swung open, and Succubus all but tore off its hinges—was not that of the boy with butterfly wings, but something only age could bring.
As a result, when the matter of Poppy Addams has been settled and Kingsman began its path to recovery, Harry lay down his Kingsman weapons and joined the Borley Council. After all, he was no longer a mere mortal, but a man who had risen from the grave. Not quite preternatural, but no longer altogether bound by the laws that had created him. Besides, when one gives body and soul over to a Succubus, certain... privileges are awarded.
Let Eggsy, still pure of heart, take up the red-crossed shield. The title of Galahad suited him as though bespoke. Harry had grown too old for doe-eyed virtue, his gentleman’s armor caked in blood and grime. Best to leave innocent chivalry to the young. The Roanoke Society was born of an older world, of that which was beyond the understanding of the present. It was to such a world that Harry now belonged, having ascended not to heaven, but Olympus.
Finally, Harry understood what he was, the whole of the man in all his contradictions. Like the Titan god, at once capable of noble service and brutal violence. Like a peacock preening in his ego and as humble and resilient in the face of extinction as the brown butterfly. A watcher, a soldier, and a spy; one-eyed yet all-seeing. Thus, he took the code name Agent Argus.
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