Vantage Point

A V for Vendetta Novel

By April French

 

Author's Note:

 

Alright, this is the chapter where it gets dark. No erotica, although I again make reference to my story Variations (which isn't available yet), but much in the way of medical ick and other stuff. Maybe I'm being overly cautious, but it never hurts. Some of the description of the aftermath of Larkhill was lifted (ahem) 'verbatim' from the novel Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake. No copyright infringement is intended, I was just too taken by the passages to leave them out. The descriptions of V's mental state are informed by Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. Amazing book. READ IT. That being said... I want to repeat that I don't mean to offend anyone with this story. For all intents and purposes, Larkhill was a concentration camp, and not being qualified to describe anybody's experiences in a concentration camp, I fell back on someone else's. Lastly, the, er, 'intimacy' in this chapter was inspired somewhat by the back-bandaging scene in The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King.

 

Sooooooo many people are going to murder me for this chapter (including my boyfriend), it's not even funny. But I stand by my decisions.

 

~~~

 

PRELUDE

 

Part Two: Verbatim

 

"For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation."

-- Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)

 

Evey sat up suddenly, completely alert and awake. "V?"

 

The room was dark, but not entirely so, for near the door, in a wall sconce, was a single candle, enough light for Evey to see by but far enough away from the room's main décor, which was books -- more books than the average person could reasonably expect to see in a lifetime, let alone read. Forbidden books, books that would never again see the light of day: The Picture of Dorian Gray, Vathek, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1984. The fantasy works of MacDonald, Tolkien, Lewis and Rowling. The science fiction of Heinlein and Bradbury. All black-listed, and all saved from the fires by a man whom history would know only as 'V.'

 

That same man was now lying on the room's only significant piece of furniture, a full-size bed, and was bound in an uneasy sleep, twitching frenetically and muttering under his breath. "V," she called again, softly. He did not respond.

 

Evey rubbed the last vestiges of sleep from her eyes and got up from the pallet she had spread on the floor beside V's bed. She had insisted he take his rightful bedroom back, but also refused to leave him alone in his condition. Despite his assertions that his body would heal itself -- for the most part -- he was still extremely weak and prone to infection  and fever, and had finally capitulated to her demand that he allow her to sleep in his room. There she had stayed for the past two weeks, watching and waiting.

 

Taking the candle, she slipped from the room and returned a short time later with a bowl of cool water and a washcloth. She replaced the candle in its socket by the door, set the bowl on the nightstand, and sat carefully on the bed.

 

V had cautioned her never to wake him if he appeared to be having a nightmare or any kind of violent dream. "In all likelihood, I will be dreaming of Larkhill, and if I were to mistake you for one of my tormentors..." He hadn't finished the sentence, and Evey had thought better of pressing him for an answer. So most nights, if V became entangled in one of his fever dreams, Evey would sit with him. She had convinced him to sleep shirtless, rather than fully clothed as he normally did, and she would sit with him, sometimes for the entire night, gently bathing his feverish arms and chest until he calmed and slipped back into sleep.

Even in the dim light, Evey could see the diminishing patches of scarlet, angry surface reactions to the foreign masses V's body was trying to expel; as the bullets were pushed further out, the patches had begun to shrink; his chest was looking less like it was covered in a bad rash and more like he had been attacked by a swarm of wasps. The visual was still bad, but more localized. She could also clearly make out the neat bandages on his arms, creamy yellow in the candlelight, where only that morning V had dug several slugs out of his own flesh, strapped into a chair to keep himself steady, a piece of tough leather between his teeth to prevent his tongue from being bitten. He had made Evey sit with him during that procedure, that she might have a glimpse of what her eventual task would be.

 

Neither of them mentioned it, but they both knew that Evey's performance would be a far more crucial one, as well as potentially devastating. Although all of the slugs had been propelled from his vital organs, they had not all migrated out of his ribcage. And they needed to be taken out, because although the bullets would eventually push through his skin, they would also have to traverse across layer upon layer of thick, toned muscle, something that, V had confessed, he was 'undone by the very thought of.' one mistake, It was Evey's task to get them out; she could very easily be the death of the man she loved. Bad enough she was certainly going to be the cause of an ungodly amount of pain. He had barely made a sound. Would he have as much control when she was the one wielding the knife?

 

After V had washed and bandaged his arms, he had silently poured Evey a large shot of whiskey, which she had just as silently drained in one gulp.

Although she always bathed his wounds as lightly as she could, tonight she felt the change in his breathing as he woke. "'We shall find peace...'" he murmured. "'We shall hear the angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.'[1] I cannot imagine," came V's voice, husky and warm with sleep, "a better way to awaken."

 

"Careful," Evey smiled, swabbing at a particularly swollen spot just above his lowest rib, "all that flattery will go to my head, and then where will you be?"

 

"Probably in bed," V yawned, "with you putting deliciously cool water on my chest."

 

Evey smothered a grin; one of the most charming things about V was that he rarely if every remembered the things he said when he was half-asleep. "It would feel better on your face," she pointed out. Wetting a second cloth, she wrung it out and folded it. "I can almost see you sweating through your mask." She turned away so that V could position the cloth on his forehead and settle the mask over top of it. "Were you having another nightmare?"

 

V laid his head back against the pillow; the tilt of his head gave the mask an almost serene expression. "I don't remember."

 

"Do you ever remember your dreams?"

 

"Only when I don't want to."

 

"I didn't mean to wake you," Evey continued, after a minute or two passed in which she hoped V would drop off again.

 

"Don't apologize to me," he retorted drowsily. "I'm sure you never imagined yourself playing Florence Nightingale to a middle-aged man in a mask."

 

"No. Then again, you probably never dreamed you'd need one."

 

"Up until now, injuries for me fell into two categories: minor and fatal. Neither needs professional help--" He stiffened violently when Evey's ministrations passed over the left side of his upper chest, directly over his heart, and melted limp and boneless against the mattress when the pain had passed, a moan escaping from his lips. Evey watched helplessly, a muscle in her jaw twitching. "Oh my... God."

 

"It needs to be soon, doesn't it?" she asked.

 

V could only nod.

 

Evey swallowed. Setting the cloth aside, she picked up her blanket from the floor and wrapped herself in it. "Go to sleep, V. You need your strength."

 

She felt his eyes on her. Then, to her amazement, he lifted his less-bandaged arm and held it out to her. "So I do," he murmured.

 

Carefully, Evey settled herself into the half-circle of his arm, laying her head gingerly on his shoulder. "Am I hurting you?" she asked tentatively.

 

"More than you will ever know," he replied softly, his fingers splayed against her hipbone.

 

***

 

"You alright, Inspector?"

 

Finch didn't answer, just stood and stared out the window into the rain. He had been doing a lot of that lately.

 

Dominic grimaced, rubbing his strapped collarbone. A week in hospital followed by half of a two-week stint on desk duty, and he was getting antsy, a state of mind his boss was not helping. Just over two weeks since he'd received the unwarranted beating at the hands of the mob... since he'd been saved by the very terrorists he had spent a year hunting. Dominic was not an overly imaginative man--a model of the stolid British bobby in the true fashion of Conan Doyle and Lestrade--but even he was aware of the irony of having been saved by Codename V.

 

"How was the meeting last week, Inspector?"

 

Finch finally roused himself. "Frightening. The Hammond girl knows what she's talking about; she's as good as he is for convincing speech and compelling quotes... although she doesn't use nearly as many long words. She's got one up on V: people can see her. She's not an abstract idea, she's a person. Ideas make people think, get them motivated; individuals get them moving. She's good at that. It's quickly becoming a council of war--the Vox Council, they're calling themselves."

 

"All of them?"

 

"Well. Everyone except Evey." Finch drummed his fingers against his desk and stared at the bright red light of the active jammer. "Slocum hasn't been back since the first night, but at least he's kept his mouth shut." He snorted derisively. "Minister of Defense. Man's got no more spine than Bunny Etheridge."

 

"So you're in favor of what they're doing?"

 

Eric Finch sighed tiredly. "Dominic..."

 

"It's terrorism--treason--we'll all be shot--"

 

"And what's the better alternative? To live under men like Sutler and Creedy? Or their replacements? High Chancellor Ducane and Party Leader Abelard?" Finch mouthed the names with a surprising sneer, showing plainly his disdain for the men who had completely ignored the Cabinet hierarchy and chain-of-command, and simply inserted themselves into power. "The truth is, Dominic, that I'm tired of living like this. I'm tired of living under constant scrutiny, of trying to uphold law and order in a country that doesn't give a shit about the one and can only keep the other at the point of a gun. I'm tired of having to work in a police force that's almost entirely on the take."

 

"Oh, come on, Inspector--"

 

"I'm not blind, Dominic," Finch retorted. "I know better than anyone how much money is slipped under the table in this place. So much money, I'd wager that if there was a revolution, most of this police force would turn tail and head straight over to the Finger." He ran a hand through his rumpled brown hair. "So much corruption in the public works. In their hearts, the public may agree with V--that much was plain two weeks ago--but if it comes to more than a peaceful demonstration--if it comes down to actual bloodshed--an actual war--will anyone stand with him?"

 

"Will you?" Dominic hadn't meant to ask the question, but it was out on the table now and couldn't be taken back.

 

Finch didn't seem offended. Actually, he smiled. "If I should live so long, then... probably."

 

"You think a revolution will take time? The terrorist seems to want it now."

 

Terrorist or patriot? Finch wondered. "V wants a revolution yesterday. Last week, last year, twenty years ago. But he's patient. He's proven that. No, I think, that if this war does come about, it will be because Evey Hammond decides it, not Codename V."

 

"You really believe she's the power behind him now?"

 

The chief inspector nodded. "I do. And the funny thing is, Dom... we know more about him than she does. That gives us a weird sort of advantage in predicting what they'll do next. But right now he's injured and his defenses are down; the longer she stays with him, the more she'll find out. Then she'll have the advantage over all of us. And who knows what the outcome of that will be?"

 

***

 

If Evey could have heard Finch's words at that moment, she would have laughed in his face, as the only new thing she was aware of 'finding out' about V was that he was completely unused to the sensation of being an invalid, and equally unfamiliar with being taken care of. He sometimes forgot that he was sick and hurt, until he moved in a certain way, felt the bullets in his body rubbing up against a bone or a muscle and collapsed in pain. It frightened Evey, the amount of pain he appeared to be in, pain that not even Guy Fawkes could hide; it was in his voice, in every movement of his hands. In the stiffness of his spine as he walked from the bedroom to the TV room, from the couch to the kitchen. In the way he sagged limply against Evey when she helped him from the bathtub. She had only a rough idea of his age--just as he did, although he'd told her once he thought he was in his mid-forties--but whatever it was in truth, he appeared now to be far, far older.

 

Age. Injury. Sickness. Ideas didn't get sick.

 

But it was still part and parcel of V's brain that he was only an idea, ether made corporeal. He did not react well to his deficiencies... although he was not a peevish patient by any means. He was tolerant of her, of his present limitations... but she could sense it in him.

 

He was depressed.

 

Evey turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, the hairs on her shorn scalp each glinting with individual drops of water. The tri-cornered scar on her forehead winked at her from the mirror. She usually forgot it was there, unless someone pointed it out to her. Drying off and dressing, she hung up her towel and went to spend an afternoon curled on the couch, watching movies with V the way her mum had watched TV with her when she was sick. She had been meaning to ask him about Red Dwarf...

 

She found him leaning against the piano, his large hands splayed over the lid for support, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps, and abruptly, Evey began to shiver. Taking him by the arm, she slowly led him into the chamber he had long ago fitted up as a surgery for his minor wounds... and his fatal ones.

 

By this time, Evey was completely used to the sight of the jagged keloids and tight twisted flesh that made up V's chest, and she had seen him more or less naked a number of times. But this time, watching him stripping to the waist in preparation for what was to come made her feel peculiar. Now, she could plainly see the places on V's body where the bullets were working their way loose, round brands of swollen scarlet dotting his mottled torso. Her imagination told her she could actually see them throbbing beneath his skin. She tore her eyes from his chest, only to have them fall on the tray of gleaming surgical instruments. "I do not want to do this."

 

"I know."

 

"Just how allergic to morphine are you?"

 

"I suppose I could manage a dose, if you want me to get violently ill while you're trying to perform a delicate operation..."

 

"That's alright," said Evey quickly.

 

V took three hesitant steps forward and gently grasped her shoulders. "You won't have to cut very deep," he tried to reassure her. "I can feel them; they are fairly close to the surface. A few centimetres."

 

Evey laid a tentative hand just to the right of V's sternum, feeling the slightly feverish heat of his skin and the gentle rush of blood beneath it. "I just hate the idea of being the one to cause you more pain--"

 

"Turnabout," he interrupted with a soft rumble, "is fair play. And those whom we love are often the cause of more pain and sorrow than those we hate, and there is nothing in the world that can prevent that."

 

She searched his mask curiously. "Then who would choose to love?"

 

"No one," V shook his head understandingly. "That's why we don't." He removed her hand and raised it briefly to his unmoving lips before turning away abruptly. He picked up several sets of restraints, heavy leather and steel chains. "I will have to be bound. My ability to understand the inner workings of my body unfortunately also grants me heightened sensations of touch, both of pleasure and of pain. I'll be thrashing around like a herring if I'm not tied down. I confess... I hate the idea. Although," he mused, "knowing I'm letting myself be bound makes the act somewhat easier." He hoisted himself onto the steel table and lay down.

 

Feeling strangely emotionless, Evey took the restraints. She passed the sturdy leather belts through slits in the tables and bound his wrists, his biceps, his thighs, his ankles. She bound his waist. Because he had asked her to.

 

Walking away from the prone man, she washed her hands. She stared at the tray of carefully sterilized instruments, which she had cleaned herself, under his direction. She picked up one of them, and slowly advanced on the table, scalpel in hand. As if watching from somewhere outside her body, she carefully swabbed the first of the swellings with alcohol, painted it with iodine, lifted the scalpel and...

 

Her hand was shaking. Where was the blessed feeling of an angel now?"

 

V could only stare up at her, trying with all his might to convey his trust in her. "'Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too,'" he said in his soft, commanding way, trying to ignore the feeling of nausea, to command his muscles to cease their trembling. "'This is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.'[2] I have faith in you, Evey."

 

She bit her lip, closed her eyes, and breathed. Taking a fresh grip on the knife, Evey reached out her hands, now perfectly steady, and began.

 

***

 

The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.

 -- Seneca

 

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. -- Oscar Wilde

 

The hardest part of the procedure, Evey decided, reflecting on it much later, was not actually cutting into V, or the sight of his blood. Nor was it all of the metal clamps she was forced to use when she had to cut deeper than expected, to keep him from bleeding to death. The hardest part was trying to control her own body's reactions; every time V jumped, every time he twitched or spasmed or cried out in pain, her muscles tried to do the same thing.

 

For the most part, he was remarkably silent, biting down on a piece of thick leather, only emitting the occasional deep grunt, as though he were ashamed of the sound. But his well-trained muscles had failed him, and when he felt pain, his body reacted. He had been right; the restraints were needed.

 

She had been in his bed, and had felt his body on hers. But this was a kind of intimacy she had never imagined, and did not want to be experiencing. She hated the idea that she was leaving more scars on his already disfigured body.

 

They have to come out. They have to come out. They have to come out.

 

Despite the antibiotic-laden milkshakes V had been downing, many of the swellings were infected. Evey would make an incision, and not only blood but pus would begin oozing out. She'd had to stop the procedure almost immediately to rip gauze with which to drain out the infection.

 

And that was how the day progressed. Evey would lance a swelling, clean out the first oozing of pus, clamp down on a spurt of blood, feel with her fingers for where the bullet was lodged, carefully grasp it with forceps and pull it out--for by then her fingers were slippery--pack the open wound with small cigarette-sized rolls of gauze, wash her hands thoroughly, and begin again. She had to stop between each removal to give V time to recover. It might have been better for them both if she had just kept going--the ordeal certainly would have been over more quickly--but by the time the bullet was actually removed from his flesh, his muscles were so tense and rigid it was impossible for Evey to operate further until he relaxed.

 

Hour by hour, bullet by bullet, they progressed, part of Evey's brain focused on her task, part attuned to his shuddering, ragged breathing and the rigor-like fists his fingers were curled into.

 

She became aware that her mouth was moving, but could not focus on the sound of her own voice and had no idea what she was saying. It was only when she had removed the seventeenth bullet--this one from between V's floating ribs--and was washing her hands that her voice and brain began to sync up.

 

She was reciting Twelfth Night from memory.

 

Dear God, she hadn't even been aware she knew the whole play by heart.

 

As soon as she realized what she was doing, of course, the rest of the play went out of her brain. But the mindless recitation--the sound of her voice--seemed to calm V down, make him relax, which made her work go faster, so Evey began parroting whatever she could think of--other random bits of Shakespeare, poetry, snatches of songs from the jukebox. She remembered reciting Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' speech, and singing 'Greensleeves,' all the while terrified that he would go into shock at any moment; the amount of pain his nerves were being bombarded with must be astronomical, which was all the more astounding when Evey took real notice of V's breathing, the regular flexing of his tendons, and realized--although the mask prevented any certainty--that he had been awake and conscious for the entire operation.

 

But when the last bullet was removed--from just above his heart--and the wound packed, and Evey could at last drop the vile sharp instruments of torture into their tray, she heard him sigh, a long, loud exhalation of sheer relief.

 

She taped a sterile dressing to each individual wound, and then bandaged his torso, supporting him with an arm behind his shoulders. "Can you walk?" she asked, not expecting an answer but getting a somewhat drunken nod in reply. And he did try to walk to the bedroom. However, Evey ended up half-dragging, half-carrying him, at least partially grateful for the weight he had lost in the past two weeks. 

 

V flopped down on the mattress and sighed again. "Thank you," she heard him whisper.

 

Evey passed a hand over her forehead; she was dripping with sweat and felt cold and sick, and not in the least as though she had done anything deserving of thanks. "You're welcome," she said anyway, hearing the shake in her voice. "You should go to sleep, V, if you can."

 

"Evey." She paused, waiting. "Sing 'Greensleeves' again?"

 

Evey just wanted to collapse onto her pallet. "Alright." She sat on the edge of the bed and held his hand and sang the old ballad, the entire time feeling tired and nauseous and in desperate need of a shower--had she really just had a wash-up that morning? What time was it, anyway? What day was it? Dear God, what century was it? London might have been destroyed by a nuclear explosion--the Day of Judgment could have come and gone for all she knew. Evey didn't care. V was out of danger. All she wanted now was a shower, and sleep, and perhaps some food in a good long while.

 

V was asleep, his hand curled tightly in hers. Succumbing to her body's needs, Evey laid down beside him--gently, gently--and was soon asleep as well.

 

***

 

She was rummaging around in V's private room when she found it, three days later. Completely accidental, completely innocent. But having known V for so long, she could no longer chalk up such an occurrence to simple coincidence.

 

She had been looking for a specific mask, the one he had worn last Christmas. It was no different from dozens of his other Guy Fawkes masks, except that this one had a cloth flap where the mouth would be, allowing V to eat in front of her without exposing any part of his face to view. She wanted to find it soon, because she wanted to make damn sure V was eating properly, his modesty in matters of personal hygiene notwithstanding.

 

And so, Evey had been pawing around in places she didn't normally go. And in the drawer of a desk, she found a handwritten manuscript on antique rag paper, stiff and yellow with age, dusty, and covered in an elegant inky scrawl.

 

V's handwriting.

 

I am writing this document for no one. Not even for myself. I lived it. I don't need to write it down. I'll write it and send it off to some university library somewhere, and they'll thrown it into a corner until it rots, or until some deserving students digs it up and gets a D History out of it.

 

This is for the future.

 

I hope to God this country has one.

 

Evey set the book down quickly, feeling all-overish and trembling. "I've got no right to read this," she muttered, wanting to thrust the pages back into their drawer and have done with it. "It's obviously private. A diary, maybe..."

 

But it said 'for the future,' did it not? And was it not clearly written before V had met her? So... was she not the future?

 

Having to deliberately force her fingers to pick up the manuscript and open it again, Evey read a bit more.

 

Larkhill.

 

I can no longer remember how I got there, what I did to deserve being thrown into that pit. Most likely nothing, at least nothing that would have been considered a crime in former days. I remember arriving in a truck with some dozens of others... being cold and wet and half-naked as I was herded barefoot down a ramp... being shaved... not my head, which was already shorn when I arrived. But my chest, arms, legs, genitals... every other strand of hair on my body was shaved off. Barely any clothes, no shoes, no hair.

 

No name. No past. And clearly, no future.

 

Evey sank onto the backless leather couch, barely any longer aware of her surroundings.

 

Although I cannot now recall who I was or where I came from, I can actually remember the act itself. So clearly, in fact; crying, fingers digging into my scalp as I tried desperately to hold on to just one scrap of my life, just one memory to prove that I had not been born in this hellhole, that I was in truth something more than what I had been forced to become.

 

I remember forgetting.

 

It seems strange to write it, but can you, whoever you are, even imagine that sensation, of everything that has made up your life to this point just slipping away like water through your fingers? Every day, something more was taken from me. Every night, I dreamed of fire, and in the morning woke with only vapors to cling to. And little by little, it all just slid away... until the day The Doctor looked at me and asked, "What was your name, Five?"

 

And the shame of having to say "I don't remember" will be with me until the day I die.

 

It was as though a blast of cold air had suddenly been blown directly at her, but, Evey realized, it was only the clamminess of her skin as the blood drained from her face and hands.

 

***

 

The scent of honey wafting into his warm dreams... that was what finally roused V from his healing sleep, and he woke to find himself ravenous, a state of being caused partially by having eaten next to nothing since his resurrection, and partially by the grand smell coming from the tray on the bureau.

 

V might have excellent control over his muscles, but his stomach had always had control of him. He got up to investigate. Oatmeal and cream, orange juice, toast and honey. He ate everything, very thankful no one was present to comment on his spectacular lack of table manners.

 

Readjusting his mask, he fingered the bandages on his chest and arms; he felt remarkably free of movement, now that all of the blasted pellets had been removed, and could sense that the repair of his musculature was nearly complete. A careful session in the training room, he decided, followed by a warm shower to get the last of the knots out and she should be right as rain. Abandoning the chamber he no longer thought of his own anyway, V crossed the Shadow Gallery, aiming for his private room and a change of clothing.

 

To his surprise, he found Evey sitting on his couch, looking very pale and shaken. "Evey? What's wrong? Are you..." He trailed off, his voice losing all potency as his eyes fell on the sheaf of papers in her lap. "Oh," he managed, one hand going to his mask in an unmistakable gesture of agony.

 

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't mean..." She shook her head sharply, tongue tripping over the words. "I didn't read past the first page--V, I'm so sorry--I know you must never have meant for me to see this--"

 

"I wanted someone to," he interrupted her, both hands on his mask now, the features hidden behind his hands, muffling his voice. Then they fell limply at his sides. "Dear God. I'd forgotten I wrote that thing." He huffed humorlessly. "My memoirs." Seeming to gather himself, V walked stiffly into the room, past Evey, to gather some clothes for himself. As he turned, Evey gently caught hold of his arm.

 

"V. I did not mean to go where you didn't want me to."

 

He paused. "I am not mad at you, Evey. I told you: you won't find any more locked doors down here." He looked down at her, seeing the grin of the mask in his mind's eye and cursing it for a mockery of the misery that old book was about to bring them both. "You may read it. You should finish it. It will certainly answer questions about me that I will never answer aloud. But it will destroy your image of me."

 

"You said that once before, and it wasn't true."

 

He laid a hand over hers, purposely emphasizing the contrast between his flesh and hers. "I feel no shame over the appearance of my body. But what was done to me, Evey... is in those pages... the transformation of a man into a monster."

 

Evey winced, hating hearing the words she had thrown at him driven deeper by the man himself.

 

And so she read the rest of the document. As she had once called his bluff, she would do it again.

 

Once and for all, she wanted to prove him wrong.

 

***

 

It was not a diary in the strictest sense; it had been written many years after the fact and not all at once, as evidenced by the differing appearance of inks and texture of paper. Nor was it linear; the ordered and orderly V that Evey was accustomed to had either not yet come about or had been pitched out the window in the writing of this document. It jumped from event to event, year to year, person to person, apparently at the writer's whim, depending on what he was feeling at that particular moment.

 

It was a brutal account; the words V had used were not meant to soften or sugar anything, sounded nothing like what she could imagine him writing, but were words to describe what he had felt and experienced. It was horrifying, and compelling; spellbinding on a level of terror Evey had only tasted briefly before freeing herself.

 

It had taken V years.

 

I do remember the numbing horror of realizing just what function I had been culled from society to fill. I realized it the first time we were all prodded into the laboratory, bashed into a cohesive line, perfunctorily swabbed and injected.

 

I was a lab rat.

 

For the first few months, they softened us up. They gave us easy injections, simple diseases. The measles. Rubella. Diphtheria. I know now what the purpose of Larkhill was. They needed strong test subjects, so they exposed us to every likely disease in order to build up our immune systems. I have no idea if that's sound medical logic. Doesn't seem like it.

 

As the months passed--we were marched in and out of compounds on a fairly regular basis, so that I could observe the changing of the seasons--I contracted tuberculosis. Hepatitis B. Shingles. I survived them all, and with a minimum of medical attention. I was given drugs with addictive properties, to make me submissive to my physicians.  I was starved, beaten, tortured physically and mentally.

 

I don't know why... It seems redundant to keep writing that, but it's the crux of the whole affair. I don't know why any of this was done to me. It doesn't matter why--it should never have happened to anyone.

 

But I don't know why.

 

Then came the day. Over three-fourths of the people I had been brought in with had died, during the 'softening up.' From disease, malnutrition... Commander Prothero's billy-club, Father Lilliman's 'reverend ministrations'... I hope to God I wasn't someone's father before I was carted off... because I saw fathers in Larkhill go mad when they found out what Lilliman did to their daughters. The Doctor--Dr. Diana Stanton she was called, though she's changed her name since--came to the general ward with her assistants carrying syringes on trays. I have a hazy memory of exchanging vague glances with the other inmates, a look of 'Here we go again.'

 

How could we have known what we were helping them to create?

 

So they injected us with more chemicals, and we all of us knew before the day was out that this time, things were different. Before the day was out, we were all vomiting thick purple mucus as the linings of our throats literally began to rot.

 

At some point, I was moved to a private cell. I thought, in my delirium, that this was because I was dying. I had no idea that it was because everyone else was already dead, and that only five of The Doctor's test subjects were left.

 

My tongue swelled so badly I could not swallow; they had me hooked up to an IV drip to keep me hydrated. That scared me more than the experiments or the doctors or Prothero's nightstick.

 

They wanted me alive.

 

The skin all over my body erupted in patchy lesions, acidic to the touch, so of course The Doctor insisted on prodding them constantly, every day when she came on her rounds. I had lesions on my face, my chest, on the soles of my feet; I could not walk. On my genitals, so that relieving myself was excruciating. I had them on my back, behind my knees, between my fingers.

 

Every day, they came and stared at me, talked over me--tried talking to me once in a while, but I was past talking--I had lesions inside my mouth, in my throat--I could barely breathe, let alone talk--why did they try to ask me questions? Every day they came and took my blood, my skin, my urine, my saliva--always with their neat latex gloves, their hazmat suits, their face masks.

 

And at the end of every day, I wanted to curl up into a ball and finally die. Then I received the letter.

 

Then, I believed in coincidences. Coincidences happened every day. But I didn't trust coincidences. Now, I know better. It was no coincidence that brought that roll of scribbled-on toilet paper to a man with the mind and the capacity to destroy Hell, who lacked only a light to show him the way out.

 

Coincidence has a higher master, and now, so did I.

 

Evey had to put the papers down, just to catch her breath. It was like reading Frankenstein in reverse, the story of a man-made man, and the uneasy feeling of being watched, the back-of-the-neck feeling, still had not gone away. Were had V gone? Was he waiting outside the door, listening covertly for any hint as to her reaction?

 

But no, he had left the door open.

 

I lived, and more than that, as I recovered, I began to see more and more of The Doctor. I intrigued her. Something had happened to me, and The Doctor noticed. She came to my room to study me. Sometimes she tried to talk to me, and sometimes I answered. But more often, I just stared at her, thinking. Noticing.

 

The way she breathed. The scents below the antiseptic. The three distinct colors in her irises. I had been noticing a great deal more about things of late.

 

One day, I was sitting on my bed (well, shelf) and she was standing by the door, scribbling on her clipboard. She turned to speak to the guard outside the door, and her pen slipped from her hand. I was beside her, the pen in my hand, without her even realizing I had moved. For me, it had all happened in slow motion; I felt the pen's position change in relation to my body, and reacted to it. After recovering from the guard's duty to protect The Doctor from the dangerous inmate--she could be very attentive to her prize specimen, and got me an ice pack and some aspirin with admirable speed--I explained as best I could what had happened.

 

As I say, I intrigued her. But the same could not be said in reverse. She seemed to me as little more than an insect, fluttering ignorantly into the middle of a grand spider web. I knew that she had a purpose to play in, as did I, in fulfilling Valerie's dream of escape. And so I knew that she could be of help to me, as long as she got what she wanted from me.

 

I gave her the samples she wanted. In return--when she was certain I was no longer contagious--she gave me a garden.

 

Ostensibly, I was to sort out the whitefly problem that had bewildered the former gardener and supplement the prison food supply, which meant that the last unfortunate to be saddled with this task had either died or rebelled--which still meant that he was dead--and that I would actually be feeding Commander Prothero and the rest of the overfed staff.

 

And God help me if I stole so much as a cherry tomato.

 

But to my surprise, I enjoyed the task. Was I a gardener in my former life? Someone who did this for a living? Or just as a hobby? I seemed to know instinctively how to deal with the insects, how to rearrange the plants to make maximum use of space, light, and water. I had a modicum of freedom, a task I took pride in.

 

I was more trapped than ever, and every bone in my body knew it.

 

Then The Doctor came out to the garden one afternoon, as I was on my knees among the radishes. She was holding out something to me.

 

A gardening supply catalog.

 

I ordered more fertilizer, better chemicals to keep the insects down, and ammonia.

 

And Violet Carson roses. The first time they bloomed, I loved them, loved them as I loved her, if only in my heart.

 

I still grow them, in her memory. But I give them to others, upon occasion.[3]

 

At that point in the narrative, Evey's mind went inexorably to the news reports, the deaths of Lewis Prothero, Anthony Lilliman, and Delia Surridge, the former Dr. Diana Stanton. V had left a Violet Carson rose with every one of them. He had once told her that he had a rose in his garden for every person, good or evil, in the world. All he had to do was pluck it. "'To pick a flower is not a large thing,'" he had said. "'As easy as it is irrevocable.'"[4]

 

Looking back on those words, Evey realized that that was probably when she had stopped thinking of him as irresponsibly mad. If nothing else, V always understood the consequences of what he did.

 

Nearly always.

 

The first time I killed a man, it was an accident. No, that is not accurate. I had fully wanted to kill him. I had imagined killing him. But I never thought I would get the chance, or if I did, I would be dead long before I got my hands around his throat.

 

I knew, from the evidence of my ears if nothing else, that no one cared tuppence if the guards took turns with the women. If the fellow's natural proclivities ran in the opposite direction, it was a bit more difficult, since if anyone found out, that guard would be the next up on the list for the black bag, if not thrown living into the furnace. The one blessing of the medical block was that it was almost entirely able to spare its inmates this one of the grosser human indignities that were inflicted on the remainder of the inhabitants. Almost.

 

Unlike many of the other male subjects, I was never castrated in the hopes of keeping me 'docile.' I overheard The Doctor saying once that she wanted to be sure the hormone levels in her subjects were correct. This was not exactly a boon from Lady Luck.

 

There was one guard, who even though he had been warned to "keep his gun sheathed" in the experimental ward, just couldn't keep his bloody trousers on. Didn't seem to care what he might catch, and cells I-V seemed to be on his weekly round of jollies.

 

The nonchalant tone of the writing sickened Evey, and she put the manuscript pages down quickly. Had V really been...? She picked up the book again, determined to keep reading.

 

But since the others died fairly quickly, I was the only one left for him to play with.

 

This time, Evey threw down the book on her way to the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet before she began vomiting. There was nothing in her stomach to come up, really, she hadn't eaten in several hours, but the retching would not stop. She choked on her own saliva, tears and sweat dripping down her cheeks.

 

It was the one, perhaps the only torment that V had not inflicted on her during her time in the simulated prison. As a prisoner, she had feared its happening every moment that she breathed, until the exact moment when fear left her body. During her recovery, after she had stopped thinking of V as a sick and evil thing, she had assumed that it was a line the man behind the mask couldn't bring himself to cross.

 

But now... now... she understood.

 

Evey leaned her forehead against the cool porcelain of the toilet bowl. What kind of person would be perverted enough to rape an experimental subject? Rising none too steadily to her feet, she made her way back to the living room. She knew now that V had truly hoped someone would eventually find this document and read it, not because of its brutal honesty... but because she knew, from the tone of his writing, from everything that he had left unsaid, that there were things that had been done to him that he would never be able to bring himself to discuss or record. Tortures that would never see the light of day. The yellowing pages were scattered over the couch and floor, and it took some time for her to properly arrange them. But order them she did, and continued to read where she had left off, because she simply could not stop.

 

I could have reported him. I might have even been rewarded for turning in such a 'deviant.' But I didn't, not out of any pity for the sick bloke's preferred tastes, but because I knew if I even mentioned the incident to The Doctor--the only person who might conceivably believe me--the only thing that would most likely happen was that the guard would be given medical treatment to off-set whatever 'toxins' he might have picked up from me and transferred to another camp. He would continue, because no one would stop him.

 

But I would stop him.

 

After I was permitted to work in the gardens, he usually tracked me down there, trading duties with my normal warden and bribing him to leave us entirely alone. One day--I remember it was summer, and very hot, because the compost heap was stinking--he came upon me as I worked among the roses. He grabbed my tunic, wrenched me to my feet, and knocked me down again. This was his usual beginning.

 

I would not submit. Not this time. Not even an inch.

 

Instead of remaining where I lay to have him drag me up again, I got to my feet under my own power. I stood up, weak and emaciated and diseased, and looked the bastard dead in the face. I must have scared him. He reached for his stick.

 

After that... I don't know. He had his nightstick and his cattle prod and his gun, and I had only my fleshless bony hands and the idea that I wanted to strangle him... but those hands lashed out with a speed my own eyes could not follow, grabbed him with a strength I must have drawn from the earth itself, and snapped his neck.

 

The next few moments I remember with blinding clarity. The rush of ultimate power... not over the guard's fate, but over my own... it was intoxicating, and accompanied by an almost clinical calmness. The body had to be disposed of. I could bury it quickly--the soil was well-turned and soft--but it had to be some place where the lump of the body would not be noticed.

 

I buried him in the compost pile. Commander Prothero had unusually rich eggplants that year.

 

***

 

Evey put the book down, by no means finished, but unable to sit still any longer. Her hands and legs had gone numb. Was it really that cold in this chamber all the time? Or only because of the ghosts she was keeping company with? She paced until the circulation had returned to her extremities, gritting her teeth against pain in her feet and calves.

 

There began to grow in my barren cell a tiny town, like a model railway without the train. The Doctor was fascinated--The Commander was disgusted. But they never thought to stop me. No, then I might have become 'uncooperative,' and they clearly couldn't have that. Besides, what could be the hurt in it? Both of them watched what I did and deemed me insane but harmless.

 

Insane, perhaps... How else could I bear to live in a hollowed-out block of cement that reeked of ammonia and chlorine, whose floor was slippery with grease and animal offal, the intricate patterns and fractals achieving an eerie beauty in their very composition of cast-off chemicals and dung and rendered fat.

 

The piles and pyramids of chemicals, the lines and circles of grease and fertilizer were a language unto themselves for me. They spoke to me, shaping and reshaping themselves right down to their component molecules until I understood precisely why these tools had been given to me.

 

And so I undertook the liberation of Hell.

 

The narrative was becoming increasingly erratic, mirroring the state of mind both of the writer and of the subject as he recalled the experience of setting the last of the chemicals in order--"aligning the patterns of force," he called it--and preparing himself either to walk away from the cataclysm or to die in flames.

 

Either way... I would be free. We would all be free that night.

 

I did not choose the Fifth of November by accident--but I did not choose it at all. The completion of my preparations had brought me to that night, a night that would end in fire.

 

There was no way for me to escape being the one to trigger the blast. I might avoid the napalm and mustard gas that was intended for others, but the initial explosion would be mine to bear. I was on my knees, thinking to remain close to the floor--I cannot say that my brain was entirely my own, or that I was reasoning clearly--I was past that point. My mind was totally calm and serene--my thinking may have been less so. The explosives were placed near the door--I was crouched in the corner farthest from them--in my tiny cell, it was not very far. Not very far at all.

 

I pressed the last of the powders in the palm of my hand, squeezing them into a tight ball--I remember lifting my fist to my lips, murmuring a prayer to whatever deity was pleased to listen--I threw the detonator at the door--threw up my arm to shield my eyes from the blast--felt a rush of heat such as I had never even conceived--and fainted.

 

When I awoke, I was in pain. It may have been only a few minutes--it may have been an hour--I was lying on my stomach on the fiery concrete, the skin of my torso tearing away as I rose. I felt myself melting--the very world before me shifting in shape and color in the heat.

 

But the block had been torn open. I could hear the screams echoing in the night--and there were no guards to block my exit. I strode forward through the flames, feeling myself becoming purified as my clothes and skin were scoured away. I would be left clean and fresh and new...

 

If I survived.

 

It was then that I saw The Doctor. I saw her... and she saw me... I know that she recognized me, even as I understood I would never recognize myself again. I was no longer the Man from Room Five, just as six long years before I had ceased to be whoever the person was who entered Larkhill, barefoot, wet and afraid.

 

I stretched out my arms and roared into the inferno, bellowing in the giddy adrenaline rush of triumph.

 

What had I to be afraid of anymore?

 

But the feeling ebbed as quickly as it had burst on me, and then I felt just how much pain I was in. There was only one thing I could do. I knew that I had only a few moments in which to act. My head swam, and a darkness filled me, but I began to run, my burning hands spread like starfish at my sides, to run in a dizzying curve of weakness towards a low moon that cast no light upon the earth.

 

I ran from Larkhill--I ran from Hell--gulping great mouthfuls of the freezing night air into my scorched lungs until I began to drown in it. I ran... how long? How far? Not far at all... but lifetimes. I ran until I could run no more, and then suddenly I was swimming, sinking, drowning again. My hands scrabbled for purchase in the water until they touched mud, and I hauled myself up again into the night air. The water had drawn away what shreds of clothing and skin the fire had left. I was naked, covered with burns, half drowned, my body shaking with an icy cold, my brow burning with a feverish heat.

 

I crawled up the bank, not knowing what I was doing save that I must find some place of neither fire nor water, I came I think at last to a patch of mud, and there I fainted, collapsing into darkness.

 

When I came out of my faint and when the consciousness of the horrors through which I had passed returned to me, as they did in a flash of pain for I was raw with the searings of the fire, I got to my feet like a cripple and staggered through the night until I came to a doorway. There, after beating at the door with my feverish forehead, for my hands were scalded, I fainted again where I stood and knew no more until three days later when I found myself staring at the ceiling of a small room with green walls.

 

For a long while I could recall nothing, but bit by bit the fragments of that violent evening pieced themselves together until I had the whole picture.

 

I turned my head with difficulty and saw that the door was to my left. To my right was a fireplace, and ahead of me and near the ceiling was a fair-sized window over which the blinds were partially drawn. By the dusky look in the sky I guessed it must either be dawn or evening. Part of a building could be seen through the gap of the curtains, but I could not identify it. I had no idea in what part of the country I was laying.

 

I dropped my eyes and noticed that I was bandaged from head to foot, and as though I needed the reminder, the pain of the burns became more acute. I shut my eyes and tried to breathe evenly.

 

My body could do little but my brain was active and resourceful as always. But there was a difference. My mind was acute as ever, but unknown to me at that time, there was something that had been added to my temperament, or perhaps it was that something had left me. There was a change, and when I was woken an hour later by a sound in the room, and when on opening my eyes I saw a flame in the fireplace, I started upright with a cry, the sweat pouring down my faces and my bandaged hands trembling at my sides.

 

For a long while I lay shuddering. A sensation such as I had never experienced before, a species of fear unknown even to one such as I was near to me, if not on me. I fought it with all my reserves of courage. At last I fell again into a fitful sleep, and when some while later I awoke I knew before I opened my eyes that I was not alone.

 

This was something Evey had wondered about every since she had come to understand the severity of her friend's injuries. How had he come from a burned and naked invalid to the most feared man in London?

 

The family's name was Russell, and I had stumbled into the door of their farmhouse, only a few miles away from what they euphemistically called "the resettlement camp." The  farmer, Charles, and his wife Judith had a smattering of first aid between them, enough to keep me from succumbing to shock in the aftermath of my burns and to prevent infection from setting in, but not nearly enough to heal me completely.

 

My body was now a motley of red and white scar tissue over remnants of twisted pocky lesions, with a few patches of starkly undamaged flesh from navel to mid-thigh. An ironic decision of the bitch-goddess Fate of which I remain acutely conscious... My eyes were protected by the instinctive actions of my arms, but the rest of my face looks rather like a neglected stub of candle. I have no fingernails. I have no facial hair. Some of the hair on my head tries to grow back occasionally, but it has to push through the scar tissue on my scalp, which is singularly unpleasant, so that I must keep my head shaved.

 

As soon as I could bare the weight of it, I asked Judith for clothes--and for a mask. Not for my own comfort--I had demanded a mirror as soon as I could speak--but for the sake of her small children, who were both attracted and repelled by this strange red-and-white man in their garret bedroom. She rummaged around and produced a grinning white visage with a mustache. A Guy Fawkes mask, left over from the holiday a few days before.

 

Singularly appropriate.

 

They called me 'V'. They had asked me my name as soon as I was conscious, but the only moniker I could give them was 'Five,' and I refused to answer to that. There was a small scar near the inside of my right arm--a burn scar, not of fire but of acid--where it appeared that a series of tattooed numbered had been 'removed.' Over them had been inked a dark Roman numeral V. Charles and Judith thought it might have meant something to me in my past, and called me 'V.'

 

I told them briefly about Larkhill. But I never mentioned Room Five. I would not allow Five to reclaim any part of my life.

 

I became, therefore, V.

 

But there was more ahead of me than just the creation of a new identity. The damage to my senses, to my perceptions, was even more overwhelming than I had realized. I had kept my reasoning in the camp long enough to destroy it and escape... I should have known that there were be a reckoning. I should have known that even a mind determined to overcome and succeed in the face of unimaginable horror--especially such a mind--would, at the realization of its goal, abruptly collapse.

 

I found myself experiencing waves of agoraphobia. Just being in the high-fenced garden with Charles was too much. Walking through the secluded back pasture was out of the question. I clung to my attic bedroom just as eagerly as before I had waited with prickling anticipation for the door of my cell to swing open, to see The Doctor's face, to be let out. Now, I was the one closing the door. I was the one drawing the blinds across my window because I could not tolerate the light of the sun, the oozing thickness of it, like clotted blood, rather than the warm, velvety blackness of night, or the cool grey light of my prison cell. I could not eat the food my friends tempted me with, coaxed me just to taste, and one day found myself actually fighting the Russells' collie for his bowl of dog food, because my tongue had grown accustomed to it. I was unable to process basic sensory information, incapable of responding to simple human interaction. I jumped at loud noises, was terrified by sharp objects, cowered if two people spoke to me at once, screamed if I was even lightly touched on a rare patch of undamaged skin.

 

The adjustment was galactic in scope and glacial in progress, but had I been allowed to adapt normally... how does one adapt normally to such a situation, when such a predicament cannot by the furthest stretch of the imagination be called 'normal'?

 

Had I been allowed to adapt normally, I say, I might have made slower but more dependable improvement. I was not allowed.

 

The Fingermen came. Charles and Judith hid me in my garret bedroom... and I was forced to listen as my friends--and their children--were beaten and black- bagged. I discovered later that the Russells were well known members of a sort of 'underground railroad,' spiriting 'undesirables' out of the country. Muslims, Jews, Asians, Arabs. Homosexuals.

 

One man in a black ski mask was foolish enough to climb the stairs to the garret. He fell down the stairs and broke his neck.

 

But I remained hidden. To my shame, to my disgust, to my utter self-loathing... I did not even attempt to help the people who had saved my life.

 

It was the first time the all-consuming purpose of the vendetta would override my compassion.

 

It was not the last.

 

O for a voice like thunder, and a tongue

To drown the throat of war! -- When the senses

Are shaken and the soul is driven to madness,

Who can stand? When the souls of the oppressed

Fight in the troubled air that rages, who can stand?

When the whirlwind of fury comes from the

Throne of God, when the frowns of his countenance

Drive the nations together, who can stand?

When Sin clamps his broad wings over the battle,

And sails rejoicing in the flood of Death;

When souls are torn to everlasting fire,

And fiends of Hell rejoice upon the slain,

O who can stand? O who hath caused this?

O who can answer at the throne of God?

The Kings and the Nobles of the Land have done it!

Hear it not, Heaven, thy Ministers have done it![5]

 

When the house was finally quiet, I crept down the stairs... I had heard shots, but I had never imagined... I see in retrospect that it was a mercy. I would never have wanted the children to end up in a place like Larkhill.

 

I appropriated some of Charles' clothing, food from the kitchen, and a few belongings of the family that had become precious to me. I knew there was only one place for me to go after the Russells were murdered. 'The great cesspool,' it was sometimes called. It took me weeks to skulk across the country, but I knew that if I could only get there, I would be  able to hide, and so begin my work.

 

It has now been ten years since my arrival in London... nine years since the terrible plague that took so many lives... that I helped to create. I am a victim of this plague, of this government, as much as the children who died in that school--as much as the dead in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. But of them all, I am the only one who can still rise up and take a stand against the evil that permeates this country.

 

I will not submit. Not even an inch. Not anymore.

 

Am I mad? I asked myself this question on a regular basis. How can anyone endure what I have been through, and still be sane? Madness would be an easy explanation, an easy escape from the things that have been done to me... from the thing I have become. But does not the very fact that I believe I may be mad prove that I am not? Everyday I asked myself that question.

 

I still do.

 

Of all the questions I have--will always have--I know of one truth that you who are reading this could never believe. Whatever else I have done, will do, may do or dream of doing--however history remembers me, if it deigns to do so--I do not hate her. I can't. It is not charity that keeps me from hating her, but pity, because I know in my heart what she wanted. There were times when she would spend days in my cell, talking to me--at me--about her hopes and dreams for 'her project.' Her work. She talked at me, over me, around me, because she did not see me as another human being, but as an experimental rat who would offer no opinions, level no judgments. She talked to hear herself talk.

 

But I can't hate her. I've tried. Every other face I see from that place... Commander Prothero... Lilliman... Someday I will kill them as they killed me--not cleanly, and with no consideration for our shared humanity. I will kill her, too, and gladly. But gently.

 

She and I... had one thing in common: a profound love of beauty. She called me ugly, but in some other way, I know I was a beautiful creature to her. She was like a child in her laboratory, and I a natural phenomenon placed before her like a fairy tale. I was her proof that scientific work need not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the ever-present chance that a scientific discovery may become like a benefit for humanity. For the sheer beauty of science.[6]

 

She told me once that she had begun her career in botany. She loved my roses. I'll give her one, someday. Quietly. In the moonlight.

 

***

 

Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.  -- Dr. Alexis Carrel

 

God gave us memories that we might have roses in November.  -- J.M. Barrie[7]

 

It was done. Her reading was complete. Evey felt... did she feel anything? Could she feel anything after a confession of intent, of motive on that level of agony? Did she have any right to feel anything ever again?

 

Oddly, she felt as she had when she had finished Valerie's letter the first time... and the second... and the last. Total communion of will, accompanied by tears of like those of spirits at last soaring to Heaven. And though the final words were of murder and resignation rather than life and love, Evey still kissed the pages.

 

She was calm, and she was still. And yes... she felt like an angel.

 

Outside the door was a tormented soul, waiting--he feared in vain--for one touch of grace.

 

V was staring at the silent television screen when he felt her approach. He twisted, half-rising from the couch... and then he saw her expression. Eyes blazing and hands outstretched. Her fingertips touched his shoulder as he tried to stand, curling into the flesh beneath the heavy black fabric; his eyes lifted to hers when he felt her hand--the sensation of the simple touch was unlike any he had ever experienced. And he saw in her eyes... so many things.

 

Sorrow. Regret. Pity.

 

And acceptance.

 

Trust. And understanding.

 

Because, V realized, now...

 

Now she knew everything.

 

She pitied him as a fellow sufferer and a human being, and because that kind of pity he could accept, V shuddered, fell back against the couch, buried his face in his hands and began to sob as he had never had before, not even when he had awakened in the tiny green bedroom in Salisbury, swathed in bandages and screaming, like a newborn child. Evey stayed where she was, only increasing the pressure of her hand on his shoulder, patiently waiting for the storm to ride itself out. It only got worse.

 

It was an eerie thing for Evey, hearing a grown man cry, and harder because she knew he would not easily let her comfort him. Swiftly, she sat down beside him, pulling his head to her chest. His gloved hands scrabbled and clutched at her blouse like a man drowning. Running her hands over his scalp and through the long wig, Evey found the two elastic bands that held his mask in place. In the circle of her arms, V choked and jerked when he realized what she was doing.

 

"I won't look," she promised, trying to soothe him. "I don't need to see. But you can't breathe in this thing right now. You need to let it out, V. You need to let go."

 

His subdued motions signaled his compliance, and she quickly unbuckled the straps, closing her eyes and easing the heavy mask away from his face. She pulled his head down again, this time to her shoulder, and he buried his bare face in the curve of her neck with renewed weeping. She stroked the soft black wig as if it was his real hair, trying to give him whatever comfort she could, feeling the motions of his jaw and the gentle movements of his facial muscles against her neck.

 

She understood, yes, understood everything, and even possibly, understood V better than he himself did at that moment.

 

Evey had cried like that before, too.

 

When there was only the sound of his ragged breathing, and then when that had slowly grown steady and even, she reached down and felt for the metal face V needed to cover his own. Closing her eyes, she laid the mask carefully against V's shoulder, felt him take it and sit up, heard the whispering sound of metal against flesh as he restored it to its rightful place. She opened her eyes to find V regarding her sadly.

 

"I don't deserve you," he finally managed, his voice soft and breaking. "I never will... but now you've seen that I never have, either."

 

"Why not?"

 

"I can see it in your eyes, Evey," V whispered, touching her cheek delicately with one gloved finger, "and I know it for the truth. Everything has changed."

 

She shook her head, taking his hand in hers and holding it tightly. "The only thing that has changed," said Evey firmly, "is that having read that book, I will never eat eggplants again." V stared at her, startlement plain in every angle of his body. Then, to her great pleasure and amazement, he threw back his head and melted into helpless, relieved, uncontrollable laughter.

 

It bordered on the hysterical, and unnerved Evey somewhat more than his fit of crying had. But it didn't lack long, and soon V was back to his normal, calm, if somewhat tense self. "I must admit... I had forgotten about the eggplants."

 

"You tried to forget that book, too."

 

"Yes. I never dreamed that you, of all people, would find that."

 

"But you wanted someone to."

 

"Yes. How did you know?"

 

"You told me," she reminded him.

 

"Ah."

 

And just from the way you described... certain things, I know you'd hoped it would be read at some point. So why did you hide it down here?"

 

"I suppose I was waiting for the right person," replied V, deliberately vague and just slightly teasing.

 

"But how could you be sure that person would come along?" She took V's arm and deliberately draped it over her shoulders, knowing that he relished these moments of physical contact but lacked the courage to initiate them himself. "Why write it at all?"

 

"I wrote it so that I could put the bulk of it out of conscious thought. As my purpose became clearer, more defined, I knew that I would never get anything accomplished if I concentrated too much of my energies on personal vengeance. I wrote to excise my bitterness. My hate."

 

"Did it work?"

 

V considered, his fingers curling delicately around her shoulder. "For the most part."

 

But not enough, Evey realized. Not enough to keep him from murdering over forty people with even the most tenuous connection to Larkhill. It struck her, blindingly as any flash of divine inspiration, that the three deaths that had occurred after she had met V were nothing compared to what had come before.

 

"That's what you meant," she said softly. "When you said you feared that book would change my perception of you." As if to take the sting out of her next words, she shifted her position and wedged herself tightly into the crook of his arm, pillowing her head on his collarbone. "That allowing me to get that far into your head would frighten me."

 

"Why not? It frightened me."

 

"Hmm." Even in his most vulnerable moments, V always seemed so strong. She had to stop thinking of him as superhuman... but although this man no longer feared anything outside his body, he was still terrified--and to some extent, trapped--by his own inner demons. She turned the conversation in a slightly different vein. "I think the most frightening thing was reading about your memory loss."

 

"Really?" V cocked his head at her. "It was... difficult to write, certainly... but harder to experience. The writing was troublesome because, how precisely does one find the words to describe the loss of a life? The very nature of the occurrence forbids precision."

 

"It was frightening to me. I had my life taken away, too," she reminded him. "Just not as completely as you did. I don't know what happened to my parents--I mean, I know that they died, but the details of what really happened, I don't have--but at least I remember them. Not having a past doesn't... It doesn't bother you?"

 

"In a way, not having a past has been a great freedom for me. Not having to wonder if my parents are still alive, if I left behind any unfinished business, a wife, any children... Whoever I was is dead; whatever life I led, is over."

 

"Sounds like a liberating feeling for a revolutionary."

 

"Yes. But I'm not a revolutionary anymore, am I?" His voice was matter-of-fact, but mournful.

 

Evey sat up, studying him quizzically. "Aren't you?"

 

"I meant what I said to the Vox Council, Evey. This isn't my fight anymore; it's yours."

 

"But I'll still need your help."

 

"And I shall endeavor to help you in any way I can. But after twenty years of working solely toward the Fifth of November--now that the task I set out to complete is done--what is there for me now?"

 

Me, Evey wanted to say. But she had discovered once before that she was not enough. If it had been within V's power to live entirely for one person as passionately as he lived for England, he would have.

 

Seeming to read her thoughts for once, V tugged her back down beside him. "I love you," he murmured, his deep, warm voice purring against her ear, "and I'm sorry. You deserve someone with a more generous heart."

 

"Bollocks," Evey retorted fiercely.

 

"I wish I could believe that. Evey... I have been recalled to life, but I don't know why. What is there for me here, in this life, in this England?"

 

"What life was there when you destroyed Larkhill?" she returned, not willing to let this man of all people slip into the dangerous morass of self-pity. "Nothing. You needed a purpose to make life worth living, so you created one."

 

"The purpose was there!" said V hotly. "It was only waiting for me to claim it!"

 

"Same thing."

 

V bit back a sharp reply. No more lies, he had promised her, and if he had one weakness, it was his inability to lie in the face of plain and unadulterated truth. The purse had been there already. Valerie had created it, given it life.

 

But the vendetta had been his own creation.

 

"I think you're lying to me," Evey continued. "I think not having a past--not knowing who you are--is what's hurting you now. This is the only life you've ever known. Now that it's been taken away from you--or you've abandoned it--or you don't need it anymore--whatever--you've got nothing to go back to." She took a handful of his jacket in her fist and looked him dead in the face. "For the first time since Larkhill, you're without an identity and without a purpose. And that scares you so badly, you're willing to deny yourself everything that's being offered to you. You'd rather hide down here alone--admit it!--than help me with your revolution." Her voice was gentle. The look in her eyes was not. "You are the only person, V, who can frighten you into giving up everything you've worked for before it even sees the light of day.

 

"Now tell me I'm wrong."

 

For a long time--who knew just how long?--the only sounds were of the two of them breathing, almost in sync with each other. "I can't," V said at last, breaking away.

 

Evey slammed her fist into the arm of the couch.

 

***

 

Dr. Delia Surridge was buried in a tiny corner cemetery just inside the city's quarantine zone. As far as Eric Finch knew, he was her only visitor. Usually he brought a bottle of Scotch for them to share. They didn't talk much, but he liked to think that she enjoyed the company.

 

So as he walked up to her headstone on that wet and chilly evening, he was surprised to see a dark figure already standing there. A tall, lean man, with long dark hair, and a pale rose clutched in one black-gloved hand.

 

Finch felt a residue of fear but squelched it. "That's an odd offering to someone you murdered."

 

"As she killed me with knowledge, so I did the same for her with roses," V replied, carefully placing the perfect Violet Carson at the base of Delia Surridge's marker. "She always loved my roses."

 

"She loved a lot of things," said Finch. "Like life."

 

"Ah, but after all she'd done, did she truly live?" Finch had no good comeback to that. "After all that we have done," continued V softly, "can any of us live?"

 

He meant it only as a rhetorical question, but his companion took it as something far more. Finch took a deep breath. "I don't think so," he replied, knowing his words for a revelation and a promise, "no."

 

He could feel the eyes of the man beside him probing him like daggers. "'There is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person,'" V conceded finally, husking the admission through the rain in reluctant assent.[8]

 

"So you've been thinking of it, too."

 

To that, V would not admit. But then, he didn't really need to. "There is one thing I would like to know," Finch said, hands deep in his pockets, drooping eyes fixed on the salmon-and-cream flower on his friend's resting place. "Why roses?"

 

"'Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of their character, though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning.'"[9]

 

Finch sighed, exasperated. "Don't you ever speak plain English?"

 

The masked man turned and tilted his head just slightly, the dim light of the cemetery turning the bleached steel into a ghostly jester. "'A quotation at the right moment is like bread in a famine,'" V returned, laughing under his breath.[10] "'I quote others only in order the better to express myself.'"[11]

 

"I'm never going to get a straight answer from you, am I?"

 

"I can't play favorites, Eric." The inspector stiffened. The terrorist had just addressed him by his given name, an intimacy which Finch was completely unprepared for, but which, he realized belatedly, he had in truth given permission for. "Or perhaps you're just not asking the right questions." V folded his arms under his cloak, his tall hat held in gloved fingers, his sleek head bowed in a solemn imitation of prayer.

 

Finch understood. "Do I have to ask?"

 

"You must ask yourself if you realize what you are committing yourself to."

 

"I do."

 

V straightened. "If that is what you wish," he consented, replaced his hat. He left as quietly as he must have come, the briefest touch of his leather-clad fingers on Finch's shoulder as a token that the two men would meet again.

 

Finch stared at the flower for a long time. But in the end, he left it.

 

***

 

When he returned, Evey was waiting for him in the kitchen, nursing a cup of his favorite Darjeeling Black. "There's more in the pot," she told him neutrally. V draped his cloak over a chair and sat down, setting his hat on the table. "Where did you run off to?"

 

If the tone or wording of the question surprised him, the essence did not. "Did you worry about me?"

 

"You run off at odd hours all the time. Sometimes for weeks. Before, that scared me. I used to think I'd be down here alone for the rest of my life. Tonight? Not so much. But yes, I was worried."

 

"You have more important things to worry about than an old man in a mask," he pointed out gently.

 

Evey snorted softly into her tea. "Are you all right?"

 

"For the moment, yes. I'm fine." He drummed his fingers on the table in nervous thought. Abruptly he rose and left the alcove, only to return a few minutes later, carrying something oblong and black. "I have a gift for you, Evey." V laid a leather-bound folder on the table. Evey looked at him curiously and moved to pick up the file; he caught her hand. "I want you to understand, Evey: I do not mean for this gift to hurt you." He released her, curling his fingers into a contemplative fist, leaning his chin on it.

 

Evey opened the folder cover, and was confronted by two official police mug shots: the faces of her parents.

 

She was speechless.

 

"You told me you had no memories of them after the time they were taken. That you had no idea what had happened to them." V folded his hands on the table, trying not to betray his nervousness. "And you were right. I did lie to you. It doesn't bother me as greatly as it once did, but... suffice it to say that I, who have no memories of my past at all, wanted to try and give you something back. It is horrid," he warned, "but it is truth. I hope you will forgive me," he said sorrowfully, "but after everything you have done for me, I needed to give you this."

 

Evey read through the entire file, reading of her parents' capture, imprisonment, interrogations. She read of their incarceration at Belmarsh Internment Camp, of their involvement in the hunger strike that nearly took the camp down, of her mother's subsequent death of malnutrition, and her father's murder when the military retook the camp from the insurgents.

 

She was crying silently when she closed the leather folder, tears streaming down her cheeks that she had no connection to, until she looked up, looked into the smiling Guy Fawkes mask that somehow embodied all the sympathy, pity and tenderness in the world at that moment. V held out his arms, and Evey went, sobbing against him.

 

He said nothing, only held her, the lips of the mask brushing occasionally across the crown of her head.

 

After what seemed like a long time, Evey quieted, her breathing hoarse but even, and she could feel the complicated weave of his jacket pressing into her forehead and cheek, could hear the steady rhythm of his heart and lungs below her ear... the drip of water in the kitchen sink... soothing, commonplace sensations. And knowing that he would forgive her, she said the first thing that came into her mind.

 

"Why is every good thing you do for me so painful?"

 

V had no immediate answer for that question, only the safe circle of his arms, which drew her even more securely against him. At last, from the depths of his unusually disordered brain, he drew a line. "'We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey,'" he husked with difficulty.[12]

 

"Where did you find all those files? And when?"

 

"In the bowels of Creedy's central computers. And months ago, when you first told me about your parents and how they were taken from you. I wanted to know their story." He touched a leathered finger to her damp cheek; Evey took his hand and pulled off the glove. He placed his bare palm against her face, the barest trace of a flutter in his nerves. "'Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears,'" he said, with amazing tenderness--and, Evey realized, admission, "'for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.'"[13] If his fingers lingered for an instant on her lips with gentlest regret, was that his fault? "I never wanted to hurt you, Evey."

 

That was a subject Evey did not want to get into right now. Possibly never. "It's late. I'll miss my meeting with the Council if I don't hurry."

 

V released her. "Will you come back?"

 

"I don't know. It's a long way back to my flat, so probably, if the meeting gets out as late as I expect."

 

"You know you are always welcome."

 

"I know."

 

Even after she was gone, V remained where he was, staring at his bare hand in contemplation, feelings the vestiges of her touch.

 

***

 

When he arrived, Finch was staring into a tumbler of Scotch, watching his distorted reflection ripple and shift. How long V stood there before Finch looked up, neither man was certain. "You certainly are a man of your word."

 

"For a man such as I, the words are everything. The words are all. All I have in this life."

 

"At least you've got something to cling to. Even someone," Finch pointed out. "I'm an old dog, but it's a dead one that can't see that girl's got a hold on you." He gestured to himself. "Me? A job. A partner who'll do well enough without me." He set his glass down. "He'll remember me. That'll be enough."

 

"Your life has not been as meritless as you have led me to believe." V cocked his head at the police officer. "Ralf Chaney. Mark Horn. Nathan Brandon. Susan Barber. All denied promotions by others on the grounds of their family history rather than their abilities. Chaney's ancestors were French. Horn's, Jewish. Barber married the son of a gay man. Brandon came from Canada as a child. Damning crimes to their original superiors."

 

Finch was no longer surprised by the amount the terrorist--patriot?--freedom fighter?--knew about his personal and professional life. "A few compassionate deeds don't blot out a career of blind service to the state."

 

"No," V agreed. "I was only suggesting that yours is the crime of omission, not of purposeful harm."

 

"Like Delia's?"

 

"Yes."

 

Finch smiled tiredly. "And am I going to die like Delia?"

 

"Yes." From the recesses of his cloak, V produced a syringe of clear fluid. "Are you quite sure you wish to do this, Eric?" Finch nodded. "It will be quick," he promised, "and you will feel nothing."

 

Finch took the poison. "Too bad. I wouldn't mind feeling something again. What will Dominic find?"

 

"Only that your heart stopped, quietly, in your sleep."

 

The inspector nodded. "I've never used a needle before--at least, not on myself..." V understood. He took the syringe from Finch's hand, rolled up the man's sleeve, felt for the vein, and inserted the needle impeccably under the skin, pressing the plunger down. "Thanks. How long will it take?"

 

"About ten minutes." V paused. "Do you wish to be alone?"

 

Finch gestured for his visitor to sit down. "No."

 

So V sat, doffing his hat and laying it on the coffee table, beside the empty syringe and a half-full tumbler of Scotch. In a silence that held nothing of the final or the profound, but had much of the companionable, he spent the last ten minutes of a good man's life. When the time had passed, he settled his hat back on his head, and locked the inspector's door on his way out.

 

Afterward, as he slowly made his way home, V pondered again what made his circumstances so different from Eric Finch's. After all, both were men with neither cause nor country left to fight for. What was left for V but to take the same road?

 

And then, inevitably, he thought of Evey, waiting patiently for his return.

 

And so, V went home, still wondering if Finch had not been right after all.

 

END PRELUDE

 

NEXT: BOOK ONE--VIS INERTIA