Chapter 12

V woke and pulled himself into a seated position in his bed noticing several disturbing things as he did so.  First, he was in a good deal of pain.  Second, his waistcoat was open and missing most of its buttons.  Third, and much worse, he was without trousers.

Why was he in such disarray?  V searched his memory trying to recall the events of the night before. 

Memory bubbled up revealing the past few days and the pattern repeating over and over in his head.  Evey’s face, etched with concern, beneath which anger lurked, burning deeper, haunting him from the recesses of her chocolate gaze. 

Madness had finally forced him to reopen the room.  The pattern burned into his skin, written in his blood and witnessed by Evey.  V had not explained.  She had asked and he had not answered. 

Instead he had told her to leave.  Apparently, for the first time in memory, Evey had done as she was told.

Where were his trousers?  V lifted the covers and looked.  The bandage wrapped around his thigh was amateurishly tied.  It was not his work.

Oh. God.

Evey had seen him naked.  She had touched him.

She had left him.  Of course she had.

Naked.  Insane.  Either was ample reason.

Exhausted, in pain, and completely disgusted with himself, V slowly swung his legs over the edge of his bed, waited for the dizziness to pass and slowly made his way to the bath.

Once there V stripped out of his ruined waistcoat and shirt.  Standing before the mirror he turned a critical eye on himself. 

Reflecting back at him was a scarred ruin of a man.  Body, mind, and soul, none had survived undamaged.

Were Evey still there, could he explain? 

A creature born of fire was destined to burn until the flames that gave him life were snuffed out.  V could not help what he was. 

When his madness impacted no one but his enemies it had not seemed important.  Instead he had viewed it as an asset.  It enabled him to set his own course and operate outside the moral construct forced upon others.  He could do what most dared not. 

When Evey arrived everything changed.  Suddenly his madness had an audience and what had seemed normal to him suddenly seemed less so.  V stopped talking to the paintings and moved most of his swordplay out of the living areas.  He locked his projects and hobbies behind closed doors to avoid explaining them.  The longer Evey lived in his home the more aware of his abnormality V became. 

His scars took on a new identity and where once they had been prized badges of honor, now they were a source of fear and self doubt.  V well remembered the pity and revulsion on peoples faces in the early days after Larkhill.  He had been an object of fear and pity for all that saw his skin.  Experience taught him his allies were shadows and his home was in the darkness human eyes could not penetrate.  To see pity or fear on Evey’s face would have killed him.  When she came home with him to live, the Guy Fawkes costume also took up permanent residence.  There had been no other choice.

Now Evey had seen.  His carefully kept secrets were exposed.  She had violated his privacy and then, just as he feared, Evey had run away. 

Grief washed over V. 

“V?”  Evey’s voice was like a knife cutting into his misery.

He almost fell over in his rush to slam the door closed.  With fumbling fingers V turned the lock and then stumbled back to lean against the sink.  She’s still here!  

“God, you scared me.  I thought I lost you again.”  Evey said, her voice closer informing him that she was in his room. 

She’s still here, ran repeatedly through V’s head like a mantra.  Ambivalence stole over him.

There was silence for a moment and then a loud creak as Evey leaned against the door. 

“I’m so sorry, V.  I wanted to be here when you woke up.  I just, I just had to take care of something.” She paused for a moment then continued slowly, “I know you must be furious with me.  You were bleeding and I had to make a choice.”

It was clear to V that she had scripted the scene in her mind.  Her words sounded rehearsed in his ears. 

Planned or no, it was a damning admission.  She understood what she risked and had proceeded anyway.  Anger took over as the dominant emotion on his internal battlefield.

From the other side of the door Evey had no way to know that he was entertaining thoughts of violent reprisals.  Her monologue continued, “Was that selfish of me?  Wanting you to live?  You really would rather I let you die than see your scars?” 

Every fiber of V’s being screamed, YES!  His hands balled into fits as he fought down the terrible desire to crash through the door, rip her eyes from her skull, and take back all she had stolen from him.

Silence ensued again as Evey waited for a reply far past the point when it was apparent there would be none.  With a sign she tried again, “V, this would be so much easier if you would come out here and talk to me.  I know you’re angry.  I knew you would be.”

“Then why?” V spit the words out between clenched teeth. 

Evey tried the lock.  “Are you serious?  Choosing between your life and your privacy?  If the tables were turned, you would have made the same choice, V.  In fact, you did.  Twice.  Once to save me from a black bag and again to rescue me from fear.  Remember?”

“Evey, I…”  His rage sputtered to a banked flame. 

She had a point.  Had he not stripped her naked?  Had he not made sure she felt the sting of his staring and the malicious intent of a guard awaiting only opportunity? Though he hated himself for it, a part of him had been appreciative of the view.  What a monster, V thought.  I am naught but what you accuse, Evey.  

Her preplanning was beginning to pay off and V was grudgingly forced to admit Evey had caught him off guard and without the ability to refute her claims. V said nothing suffering through the silence that drew out between them as he waited for her to make the next move.

Finally Evey stopped rattling the door handle.  He heard a thump on the door as her head hit it.  Her voice was exasperated and sad when she said, “V, I wish circumstances had been different.  I really am sorry.”

V moved to the door and put a fire mangled hand on the cool wood.  A hand such as his, so ugly, so blood stained, could never touch the smooth ivory skin of the beautiful girl only two inches of wood away. 

No fairytales here.  The Beast would never be a fair prince.  Instead Beauty, seeing the ugliness within, must run to avoid being eaten alive.  V could do nothing to restore himself in her eyes.  “I understand.”

“Please come out.  I don’t want to do this through a door, V.”  There was an edge of anger in her voice now. 

V’s first response was a childish one involving staying right where he was until the stars fell from the sky.  His second was to cringe at his own ridiculousness and his third was to confront the inevitable with the dignity required of him by his age, if not his current level of maturity.  “A moment please.”

“Okay.”

For a split second, V considered walking out as he was.  She had already seen him naked.  Part of him needed to see her pity and disgust in order to abandon completely the foolish hope that perhaps she could love him in spite of himself.  If he could hate her, he would forget her but his pride failed him.  V could not stand to see what he knew he needed to in her eyes. 

V dressed in the only clothing available to him without asking for Evey’s help. In the treatment of burns there were many unpleasantries not the least of which was controlling the growth of scar tissue.  Pressure garments were used to combat their growth.  For twenty-three hours a day for a little more than two years V had worn a custom made bodysuit that clung to him like a second skin.  By the time he was able to take it off, he no longer wanted to.  It had become his skin and V had new suits made in a thinner, more compliant black material. 

Many years later the habit remained.  In the pre Evey’s days, V had not bothered with clothes over them unless he was heading topside.  With a woman in the house, the bodysuits became inappropriate.  Comfort gave way to chivalry and Guy Fawkes took over as second skin.

V glanced in the mirror and decided he cut a fine specimen of manliness as long as he was covered over with something.  His physique was quite good, especially when one considered his age.  Self confidence proved fleeting however and it was not long before he thought himself a silly old man attempting to impress a girl with his muscles as if he were a teenager.

Reminding himself that no matter what he did she was leaving, V finally opened the door. 

Evey had moved to sit on his bed, her knees pulled up to her chin arms wrapped protectively around her legs.  She looked small, fragile and lost. 

When she saw him Evey unfolded and stood, eyes on the floor.  V tried to stand still against the scrutiny of her gaze as it lifted from his feet to the mask.  “Wow.  That’s an…interesting look for you.”

“Don’t mock me, Evey.  You haven’t the right.”  Anger flared and V began to wonder if staying in the bathroom until she left would have been the wiser, or at least safer, course of action.

Her head dropped and Evey slumped back onto his bed.  “I’m sorry.”

V’s emotions vacillated again and he found himself feeling sympathy for her.  It was terrible she had been forced to witness his insanity, touch his lizard skin or feel such pity for him as she gathered the courage to leave.  He felt compelled to lighten the load for her and get the nasty business of goodbye over with.  “I knew eventually you would see and I knew what the result would be.  I expected this.”

The energy in the room shifted again.  Evey’s head jerked up sharply and there was irritation in the glare that searched behind the mask for his eyes.  “Really?  Expected what exactly?” 

It was all becoming too much for V.  Please just go, Evey.  Do you not see how you are torturing me?

“That I’m leaving?” She asked when he said nothing.

V nodded and felt the floodgate of cold despair open and wash over him quenching the remaining embers of his anger.

Evey laughed derisively. 

V wanted die. 

Stifling a giggle she returned to staring at him. “You really are a very silly man.  Let’s go through all the reasons I should have already left, shall we?”

“You have killed probably hundreds of people and you are completely unapologetic.  You blow up buildings.  You tortured me, the woman you say you love.  And, as if I should be surprised, you have your own rubber room.” 

Evey marked his sins off with her fingers, each damning him further into a lonely hell that was as much his creation as his tormentors.  Put like this, he was the most retched life form on earth.  He wanted to correct her, reset the death toll to sixty-seven, but the exact number was not the salient point.  The fact that there were any was damning enough. 

And as if to drive a final stake through his heart she asked, “What did I say to you yesterday?”

It was a rhetorical question and V waited for her to answer it.

Evey stared him dead in the face.  “I said I loved you.”

V noted the past tense.

She stood and moved toward him.  V suppressed the urge to take a step back and regretted it as her hand reached out brushing the cheek of the mask.  He pulled away, but Evey moved with him refusing to let him break the touch.  “Do you really think after all that, a few scars would change my mind?”

“Evey…” V felt confused and betrayed by the hopefulness that encroached on the grief he was prepared for.

She kissed the mask. 

V was shocked.  In all his preformed expectations of eventual exposure, this was not among them.  Surely she could not know the real extent of the damage. 

Without meaning to he gave voice to his concern.  “How much…”

“Did I see?” She finished as if expecting the question and wanting to hurry past it.  Her hands on his second face became caressing.  She looked down examining his chest for moment and then back up, trying but failing to meet his eyes.   “I was as respectful as the circumstances allowed, V.”

“Is that so?”

Evey blushed bright red and dropped her eyes.  “I could pretend I didn’t see your…um…” she gestured toward his hips, her blush spreading to her throat.  She could not look him in the eyes when she continued, “I tried not to look.  Really, I did.”  

V found himself thankful for the mask that hid his own blush. 

“Are you very angry with me?”

That was a good question.  V considered it for a moment and decided he wasn’t angry, embarrassed in the extreme, but not angry.  To take down the tension of the moment he offered, "You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer. Nevertheless, you shall not get the better of me. I am an Englishman." [11]

“I’ll take that as a no.”  She laughed.  “So we’re okay?”

We.  Seconds before V had been convinced she was leaving.  Now, she was referring to two very separate, very different people as ‘we’.  Evey said it so casually as if it were the natural state of things.  How much the small word implied.  Trust, love, respect, and an intimacy he had never considered sharing.  If V was a member of a unit of ’we’ then he not only had all of those things he had to reciprocate them.  Could he do it? 

Evey had his love and his respect, had had them from the beginning.  But was he capable of trusting?  Of being trustworthy?  What about intimacy?  Another big word with many implications such as honestly, openness, and sex. 

It would be less than truthful to say V had not considered the later or to deny the copious number of hours spent in its contemplation.  But he had never considered the possibility could be in his immediate future.  It had all been a sort of dream, a non-reality he found pleasant to drift off to sleep with.

Unable to address such thoughts with Evey so close to him, his mind bounced on to the question of honesty which was an equally large hurdle.  V had sworn honesty, but he was also maintaining an ‘if-you-don’t-ask,-I don’t-tell’ policy regarding the truth.  It was working well for him since Evey had learned early on not to ask.  

There were so many deliberately evaded questions and so many more unasked ones V could feel them bouncing soundless and unuttered off him whenever they were in the same room together.  He knew there would be even more now with the temporary insanity and the nudity.  Can I do this?

“V?”  She nudged him.

“Sorry.”

“I can understand if you’re still upset and...”

He cut her off.  "You anticipate what I would say, though you cannot know how earnestly I say it, how earnestly I feel it, without knowing my secret heart, and the hopes and fears and anxieties with which it has long been laden. If ever there were love in the world, I love you." [12]

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[11] & [12] Charles Dickens – A Tale of Two Cities

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