Evey's chest cavity shook with another trembling sigh.
She half-heartedly pushed the queen to D3 with the tip of her left finger; her head resting upon her right hand.
The chess set, standing solemly and warm in the smallest corner of the main room was the source of many a rainy day for the Shadow Gallery's occupants: herself, and the wily V.
Of course, Evey back then wouldn't be doing half as well in such a game as she was doing all by her lonesome - V would discretely align his troops, marching into marblized battle to swipe the battlefield clean...
...leaving Evey the night to spend sulking in her room. Often as V would retire to his record player or jukebox, listening to whomever would have the honor of being placed within the confines of the instrument.
She laughed, irony dripping from the many memories as she switched to the chair opposing her team.
"Ah, but look, Evey," she muttered to herself, imagining what V would most likely be saying just then.
"See that your Knight lay unattended? And your King, unguarded within his unstable domain," she continued, refering to the white chess pieces' open Knight, King, and Rook.
She slid the black queen into the place of the white.
"Check."
She switched sides.
"Oh, but what the use?" she asked herself in a droning fashion, rolling her eyes as she so often did.
She took her King, and moved the ungrateful piece a square closer to the Queen's.
"Have done," she replied with finality, prepared to push back the chair and stand.
"Patience is a virtue."
"I'm sure it -" Evey snapped, whirling her head around.
Not realizing until the last possible second that she had previously been talking to herself.
Her jaw dropped.
Her face turned the gray that was never conceivable with this character, his shadow cloak and flickering visage glistening within the polished reflection of the marble chess pieces.
A leather-bound gloved hand gently overcame the black King, placing the white Queen upon the well deserved square.
"Checkmate," V stated passively, his Guy Fawkes mask grinning with the smug preacher's tone that he ever so implied.
"V...?" she gasped, her mind blinking from it's daze in all the instant it took for a grin to form.
"V! Is that really - ?"
She blinked.
And he was gone.
Stunned, she stood half-risen from the black ebbed chair, rooted to the spot.
A tea kettle - one that she had been waiting upon, long since forgotten - began to whistle, the hot water steaming out of the dew flecked spout.
As if the noise itself were the rupture to a broken heart, her face contorted into the nastiest of leers.
With a cry, she picked up the chess board - pieces and all - and flung it across the room.
"Damn you!" she shrieked, savoring the crunch of splintering wood, denying all that was truth.
"Damn you..." she shouted once more, her lung muscles and throat aching from over-exertion.
The board landed partway upon the rug and wooden floor, splayed open, chess pieces scattered about like rolling glass marbles.
She stumbled towards the kitchen, but never quite made it before she collapsed to her knees, all hope lost.
"V!" she cried out, dragging his name out in one breath until her lungs gave completely, part in anger for deceiving her yet again; part in all the anguish and horrible sadness that had welled up inside of her yet again since the destruction of the Parliament.
Shaking with racking sobs, her head fell into her arms as her vision swam into darkness.
Evey opened her eyes.
She was lying on the round center rug within the shadow gallery, more or less in the same position that she had cried herself to sleep in. Upon her knees, her head upon her folded, tear-stained arms.
The tea was most likely lukewarm. According to the small, rounded tin clock that V kept upon a lamp stand, no more than twenty minutes had passed.
Not bothering with the chess pieces, she slumped into the kitchen. Pouring herself a cup of the brackish water, she fell back into a dining room chair.
She studied the ingrain of the table surface, each fleck of paint like a separate pebble, or grain of -
She gasped.
Where is it?
Where her hand was resting should have been a journal that she had brought; leather bound and blank. One word graced the title page, what had begun to be something of...a memoir...
"Vendetta"
Mail, too, was stuck into the leaflet of the leather cover, but that was unimportant. What was probably the most essential of the paraphernallia would have been the bookmark within.
A trinket of sorts, that she had found among V's books, and had liked enough to borrow for a time.
It was velvet lined, a deep crimson red. Alive and bursting with the vivid color. Emblazoned upon the topside was a black circle; within, parting the perfect dimensions, was the letter V.
Shaking her head slowly, she left her cup upon the kitchen counter and hastily stood.
Combing the room, she leafed through the stacks of books and volumes, convinced that she had placed it upon this novel, or that sofa cushion, or perhaps this chessboard...
The chessboard.
She ran to the board, kneeling beside it, and turned it over.
There, beneath the symbol of regret, was her notebook. Aside from a slight wrinkle of the fabric, it was intact; apparently thrown from the chess table along with the board.
Smoothing the leather, she opened the miniature novel with a flick of her wrist...
...and nearly dropped the thing.
For, along with the implacably written cursive "Vendetta", there was another line.
In another hand.
"Dictated by Evey Hammond," a beautiful cursive calligraphy announced, the swirling black ink letters captivating her attention.
She looked upwards in slow confusion, eyes unseeing the room before her.
"I...didn't write that..."