Rating: R
Summary: After the Fifth, Evey learns something, and makes some decisions.
Warnings: Language, references to sex
Disclaimer: Still not mine. Thanks for rubbing it in.
'Sentence first, verdict afterwards. '
- Lewis Carroll
The universe certainly had a hell of a sense of humor.
It had been one week, two days, fourteen hours, and six minutes since the world had ended, and nobody but Evey knew.
In the days since the Fifth, nobody had asked what had become of V, at least as far as she knew. There were so many people running around wearing his masks, so much chaos and mass hysteria as the country tried to bring itself under control, that it had not occurred to anyone to wonder what had happened to the masked vigilante that had brought about the change.
Evey's knowledge of the outside world was limited. Finch and Dominic were keeping her as insulated as possible. She sat around Finch's flat, watching the telly and remembering. That was what had become of V's accomplice, Evey Hammond.
The only joy in her life at the moment was when Finch would take her back to the Shadow Gallery. They had only managed one trip so far; Finch was inordinately worried about her safety. And try as he might, he couldn't rationalize endangering her life just so Evey could wander about the Gallery, touching things in a sort of daze.
For his part, poor Dominic just seemed afraid of her. He was polite and concerned and exceedingly proper with her. Evey was half convinced that he kept expecting her to Mace him again. Frankly, she hadn't the energy.
And outside, the world battled and fought, and the old regime was dead, and Finch was working desperately to make sure that the new people in power deserved the honor of rebuilding England. Dominic was working day and night to bring people to a sense of order, to protect those who were the most in danger.
None of it mattered.
Realistically, it was the natural progression of things. People died. People had sex. People got pregnant. Between Evey and V, they had covered all the major events in life.
Nobody knew. Evey didn't know Dominic well enough to tell him. He would probably just politely inquire about her health. Or start crying, if he had had a bad day at the office. And she was fairly certain that Finch would have a stroke if she told him. There was no one else.
Evey was watching 'The Count Of Monte Cristo' when she realized that V was dead. The knowledge hit her suddenly, with a devastating clarity. Before then, the knowledge had been purely academic. But as the film ended, she found herself waiting for him to call out gleefully, 'You find your own tree!' And she knew, on that primal level that is physically painful in its accuracy. She would never watch a movie with him again, tell him a joke, argue with him, touch him.
He would never know. No matter how Evey spent the rest of her life, how good a person she was or how nobly she lived, no matter what she did, V would never know he had fathered a child.
Ideas can't die, but they can apparently knock you up.
She hadn't taken a test. She didn't need to. Her period was over a week late. She had been ill in the mornings, alone in Finch's flat. She had been pregnant that last night, when they had danced.
She even knew the time. In the alley. The last time. It had never occurred to her. Or to him, she would imagine. He had not thought himself human.
Ideas can't die, but they can apparently break your heart.
She hadn't decided what to do. Part of Evey wanted to get rid of it. Shed this last echo of V. A sort of 'fuck you' to the man who had done this. A complete refusal of the task he had unknowingly assigned her. Deny any of it had happened, a quick procedure, no pain, pretend it all away. As if on some other plane, V would know she had effectively erased this last vestige of his being. The last proof that there had been a man behind the idea. The last proof that someone had survived Larkhill.
Evey could never erase the idea. Nor did she want to. It wasn't the idea she had fallen in love with, anyway. It wasn't the idea that had made her scream and cry and lose everything that had made sense. It had been a man. An unbalanced, scarred, violent man. A dead man. In a sad, pathetic sort of way, this act would give her the last word.
But for some reason she kept remembering V playing with the suit of armor. She could perfectly recall the almost childlike joy that she had been lucky enough to witness. He had been genuinely happy, simply losing himself in acting out the scenes on the screen. V had been playing with his only friend. Evey was aware that she was the only person alive who had ever seen such a moment. Who would ever see such a moment. There were no more moments left to collect.
Evey had no idea why, out of all the memories of V she contained, that particular one kept coming back to her. But it struck her, how rarely he had seemed to be simply happy. Whatever had been between them had not made him happy. There was no point denying that. She had not been part of what made him happy. He had loved her, and there had been pleasure and excitement and rage and passion in what they had shared, but happiness had never been part of the equation.
And Evey knew - she just knew - that this child would have made him so happy. Had she been able to tell him, she would have heard his smile behind the mask. Had she been able to look into the eye-holes of Guy Fawkes, she would have felt his joy. Whatever fears and concerns the information would have brought him, he would have been happy.
In a very real way, this would have proven to V that he could do more than merely destroy. He was more than a tool for killing. He would not just have the deaths of all the St. Mary's victims on his head. There would be more to him than that. He had created a life, simply by loving her in the most basic, most human way possible.
Evey found herself sitting on her small bed in Finch's guest room, sobbing. The first time she had cried since the Fifth. She had been incredibly, unnervingly calm since the fireworks at Parliament. She had been running on autopilot. But watching that movie, realizing that V was truly gone, had ruined her attempt at conscious denial. So she cried. As hard as she had when she had been released from her prison, but without any sense of relief.
Everything was wrong. V was dead, she was pregnant, the whole world had gone to shit, and she hadn't been able to save him. That was it. That horrible, disgusting fact she had pushed away from. Evey could have saved him.
Standing with him on that platform, beside the train that would carry him to the second great explosion in his life, she had known it wasn't enough. What she was about to offer, what she had the nerve to ask of him, wasn't nearly enough.
She had asked him to give up everything he believed in for weak promises and one last, empty kiss. And part of him had wanted, so desperately, to believe her and accept her offer. The weak, human part of him that he hated and she loved. She had done that to him - made him regret, at the last moment. She could have saved him. if she had been smarter, stronger, braver, better, she could have saved him.
But she was still so angry. Even at the eleventh hour, she had been trying to get back her pound of flesh. With their child growing unknown inside her, she had still let him go. The only thing she had really done was be a witness to his death.
Evey had been angry, was still angry, because she finally understood him. As much as anyone ever could. She had understood that he would say no to her pathetic offer. She had understood that, in many ways, he would never be finished until the end had come. He had suffered for twenty years. She had brought him pleasure, true, but she had reminded him of his wants, of his humanity. And V was so tired. He wanted to rest. With understanding, came hatred.
She had been angry because he couldn't take off the mask, ever. Even in the dark, even when he was inside her, as close as two people could physically be, he had not had the courage to remove the mask. Because she had not given him a reason to.
She was angry because he didn't love her enough to live. Logically, she knew that he loved her. And that as much as he loved her, surviving his vendetta had never been a reality. That wasn't how he was wired. But it didn't hurt any less.
She was angry because she hadn't showed him that she loved him enough to make it worth his survival. Evey had given him nothing to hope for. She had left him. She had hurt him, at his most vulnerable, because he had tortured her in a cell. But his torture had been for a cause. Her torture, the way she had fucked with his mind and control, and called it love - that was simply revenge.
She was angry because as much as he had loved her, a woman twenty years gone had owned all the rights to his heart. And her ownership was far more justified than Evey's ever could have been.
She was angry because even if she had given him everything, it wouldn't have been enough. By wanting him to live, she had negated his whole purpose in life. He never could have lived. It had not been a possibility. She kept tell herself that.
But she still could have saved him. He would still be dead, but she could have saved him, let him leave this world as a more complete man than he had entered it. Evey knew she could have, knew she had that power. But she had not been willing to give him that. She had never told him she loved him.
And now he was gone. And Evey was so angry.
Still crying, Evey placed her hand onto her stomach, hoping for some sort of connection. But there wasn't one, not yet. She felt sick. Her anger was impotent. There was no one left to be angry with. She was kicking the ashes of a ghost. If she was honest - and at this point, she might as well be - she wasn't angry about the cell anymore. Except for lingering flashes of self-pity, that anger was beginning to fade.
She was angry with herself. Self-loathing had never overcome her so completely. Evey felt that she had failed. In some massive, vague, desperately important way, Evey had failed. V had trusted her with everything. He had given her more than he could afford to. And she had spat in his face and called him a monster, because she was angry, and unable to reconcile her love with what he had done.
Evey couldn't follow him. She was not ready to go where he had. She didn't have the same pain, the same exhaustion. He had meant for her to keep living. Her life, in some warped way, had come to represent his. And whether or not he had known it, V had given her the best of him. His child had been with her when she pulled the lever. A gift unknowingly given that summed up everything about him.
If Evey threw away this last piece of V, she would be losing the best part of herself. Everything he and Valerie and even Evey had created would be gone. Everything she had gone through would amount to nothing. Every moment she had shared with V would be stained. Every feeling of real, human emotion V had ever experienced would be gone forever. Because this child meant something.
This child could be V, as he should have been. Undamaged and loved and not forgotten. None of the scars that had shadowed V for twenty years. None of the insecurities and pain. Their child would have a name. This child would have everything V couldn't have. V had destroyed the old world; his child would live in the new.
'V, I'm pregnant,' she told the empty flat. Her voice rang out, her throat still raw from crying. But the words were steady. There was no cosmic response - V didn't step out of the shadows, she didn't hear his voice. Truth be told, she felt more than a little silly. But she kept talking, to the only person she wanted to speak to.
'I didn't know. On the Fifth. I didn't know. I swear I didn't know. I would have told you. For the wrong reasons. To keep you alive. Guess there's a reason I found out... after. No coincidences, right?
'We made a person. Just by needing each other. We created someone. Because we loved each other. I loved you. You thought I hated you. I told you I hated you. I didn't hate you.
'I was so angry, V. I still am. Maybe a part of me will always be angry. But that's OK. As long as it doesn't take over.' Evey took a deep, shuddering breath. Even if he couldn't hear them - and she didn't believe he could - she needed to say these things out loud, just once.
'I should have told you I love you. I love you. You're it for me, V. I'll never feel what I felt for you with anyone else. I'll never love anybody the way I love you. That's OK too. We were on borrowed time. I think I always knew that. You definitely did. You always knew.
'I held you while you died. I couldn't tell you I loved you, and then you were gone. And I knew you were gone, but I kept calling you. I didn't take off the mask, V. I never did. If you couldn't, I had no right. I gave you roses. The only thing I ever gave you
'I hated that you never took of the mask. You never kissed me, you know. Not once. Everything we did, and you never kissed me. Something as simple as that, and we couldn't reach it.
'We hurt each other so much, V. From the first night. I took something beautiful, and I brought you pain. I couldn't admit I wanted you. So I twisted it, made it a punishment. I'm sorry. I wasn't strong enough. I guess you weren't either, in a way.
'But I love you. I will always love you. Something as small as death can't change that. The way I feel about you now is the way I will always feel about you. Fifty years from now, I will love you. You knew that too, didn't you?
'I promise to be a good mother, V. I promise to teach your child about books and movies and art and freedom. I promise your child will play the piano, and know about their father. I promise to tell our child that I love them, every day. I promise to remember.' Evey's voice broke on the last word. She waited, for what she did not know.
Nothing happened. Nothing at all. But she felt more human. She felt, for lack of a better word, OK. V was still gone, of course. He would always be gone. But she wasn't. And soon, there would be a second chance. For both of them.
When Eric Finch returned from another exhausting fight among the members of the temporary government, he found Evey sitting on the couch reading 'Twelfth Night' aloud. She seemed happier than he had seen her since the Fifth.
'Evey?' Her name was a question. She stopped reading and smiled at him. She looked beautiful. Finch was baffled. What had happened? Standing, she took his hand and led him to the couch.
'What's going on?' he asked uneasily as he settled onto the couch. Evey went and got him a glass of scotch.
'Evey?' he asked again. But she was silent until he took a drink from his glass.
'Don't have a stroke,' Evey began.