French, means: “It goes without saying”
Summary: V survives the shooting and the story continues.
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Nothing from V for Vendetta is mine. This is just for fun.
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Chapter 10
Evey had initially busied herself with tea she knew V would never drink. But when the futility of the task finally overwhelmed the escape of doing it she went to the roof and checked her messages.
Good news. Very good news. It meant a lot of work for her in the coming months but it was almost over. So close. Finally something in her world was going right.
Pumped up and brimming with confidence, Evey returned to the Shadow Gallery. V had not left his room yet. She tried to be patient and wait in the kitchen but eventually her curiosity got the better of her. There was more than a little trepidation that accompanied her journey down the hallway back to the room V had locked himself in.
Inside it was dark but not so much that she could not see. There was padding on the walls and floor and a punching bag that had seen better days hanging by only one of three chains. The floor had dull spots that scent told her were blood and it was littered with carefully placed stacks of paper. Some of it was shredded into little pieces and made into mountains. Some of it was folded into shapes like origami. Some was drawn on, the same sketch she had seen him produce over and over. Still more gruesome, some of the pages had been smudged with blood.
“Oh God, V,” she muttered, the high of success replaced by sorrow. It took effort to suppress the urge to check on him, take care of his wounds and ensure his physical wellbeing. But she knew he would never allow it. He would probably die before he let her help and the thought brought new tears to her eyes.
Instead she pushed the door open wider to let in more light and carefully stepped deeper into the room trying to reach the center. Perhaps from there she could see the forest for the trees. But it didn’t help, the pattern made no more sense there than it had at the periphery. “What can I do?”
She continued to look around, noting the huge amounts of dust that covered the untouched surfaces. There were cobwebs in the corners. It had been a long time since the room was last used.
Perhaps what she had just witnessed was a rare thing. But if it were, why would he have a room set up for the express purpose. Still it looked long unused.
“Evey, I wish you would come away from there.”
She had not heard him coming, not that there was anything unusual about that. Her cheeks burned red as if she were the one caught doing something strange and not the other way round. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t be here, I just…I just, I had to see for myself I guess.”
It took effort to look at him. Her gaze started at his feet and slowly ascended. He looked exactly as he always did, tall, straight, standing quietly at ease. When she finally made it to the mask, it was not looking at her but past her and down. His voice was hesitant, guilty. “I understand.”
In contrast, Evey’s confidence was rising. His façade of omniscience had cracked. She was getting her first real look a V. He was man like any other that bled, that suffered, that tried but didn’t always succeed. He was also loony as a mad hatter. Or maybe, to stay sane most of the time, he had to be insane some of the time.
She felt closer to him even as she knew he would try to put more distance between them. She wasn’t having it.
“You might, but I don’t. What happened, V? One minute things were fine and then, then they were really, really weird.”
His head fell and she had the distinct impression that he wanted to sink into the floor. “I don’t know how to explain, Evey. I am a verbose man whose voice shame has absconded with.”
V was the most shameless person she knew. He had always done what he thought was right even when it hurt. The myriad of sins he had committed in the name of his vendetta had not been worth even an unapologetic shrug. How could this make V ashamed? “I don’t get that either. What are you ashamed of?”
He gestured to the room around them, “With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.” [9]
“That is not a loss for words.” She snapped hating how he had a wealth of appropriate prose to draw from when he couldn’t conjure words of his own.
“I wish you hadn’t seen this.” He said as he held out a hand to her.
She took it and squeezed in hopes that the gesture reassured. He pulled her gently from the room and dropped her hand as if he didn’t have the right to touch her.
“Because you think I’m judging you for it?” She asked.
He took a step back from her and his head dropped even farther.
“Because you would be a fool not to.” He replied in a near whisper.
It was too much. She pushed him and he fell back easily against the wall as if all the fight in him had died. Anger welled inside Evey and she growled, “Good God! You’ve seen every bloody inch of me! You humiliated me, tortured me and…glutton for punishment that I am, I. Came. Back. You think that this,” she pointed back into the room, “is worse that that?”
The mask would not look at her. He instead looked at her hands still splayed on his chest.
“Misfortunes one can endure--they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one's own faults--ah!--there is the sting of life.”[10] He sighed. “What I did to you, Evey, that is my greatest regret.”
Her anger melted as fast as it had developed. She brought one of her hands up to the cheek of his mask. He startled at the touch but did not slap her hand away as she expected. He faced her and she stared straight up into the eye holes that let him see out but refused to let her see in.
“V, would you like to know what I think?”
Clearly he did not. His head fell again and her limited view behind the mask was canceled. He nodded as her hands slipped away.
Evey tried to be direct. “I think that if you need this room, that’s okay. I think that you might want to fix the punching bag and clean up a little, but if you have to do this from time to time, I’ll get used to it.”
His face rose slowly as if the mask’s weight was more than he could easily lift. Tilted to the side, it was up to her to decide if his body language spoke of disbelief or surprise.
“Thought I was leaving?”
“A sensible person would. Are you not a sensible person?” His voice had dropped to a whisper glutted with emotion.
“You made me fearless, now you get to live with the consequences.” She shrugged and put her hands back on his chest, feeling the muscles tense and rapid beat beneath her fingers. It was the only expression of fear he would give her.
He gave the slightest shake of his head. “Evey, this is no place…”
“If you tell me were my place is one more time, I will be forced to…” She ran though a series of possibilities like inflicting violence, filleting him with words, tickling him to death (which might not be a bad idea, just inappropriate for the moment) and came up with not a single thing she could threaten him with other than leaving which was counter productive in the extreme. “Point is, unless you want to put me out, you’re stuck with me.”
His head cocked again and she knew he was thinking hard about calling her bluff and that it hurt him to do it.
The time had come to finally pull out the big guns. “V, I…what I’m trying to say is…”
She realized her palms were sweating and at almost the same time realized it didn’t matter. There were several layers of material between her hand and his skin. He would never know.
She had come close before, telling him how she felt but leaving out the one life altering sentence that would solidify the future into a new form. She exhaled and closed her eyes. When she opened them she felt a little more in control. “I love you. You are a very, very odd man and I admit sometimes you scare me, but no matter how hard I’ve tried not to, I love you.”
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[9] George Eliot – Middlemarch
[10] Oscar Wilde - Lady Windermere's Fan
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