Vfic the first: Verification

Hi! As you might have noticed, this story isn't exactly set in either the GNverse or the Movieverse. Rather, it hangs somewhere in the limbo between the two, soaking up the best aspects of each (well, what I consider the best at any rate). I've tried to create a careful blend between both works, keeping V's romanticism from the movie as well as his rather striking insanity, Evey's ingénue characterization from the GN as well her incredible metamorphosis, and have a lot of things planned.

Much love to ephemereal, my beta!


I count the hours: you count the days.
Together, we count the minutes in this Passion Play.
Walk dusty miles. And I ride that train
on a first class ticket, just to be with you again.

Picking up tired feet. Back from a far horizon.
Cleaned up and brushed down. Dressed to look the part.
Fresh from God's garden, I bring a gift of roses:
To stand in sweet spring water and press them to your heart.

-Jethro Tull, "A Gift of Roses"


"Hold it there."

There was a click from Evey's side, and the voice of Eric Finch booming from a blind spot in her mask. Finch's arrival somehow didn't surprise Evey. Then again, nothing had much surprised her since the prison ordeal and the year spent away from V, and her times in the Shadow Gallery. She slowly turned her head until she faced him – he stood before the dead V, pointing his pistol at the vivified V, and looked between them with an expression that belied confusion bordering on frustration.

The two faced off against one another in the dim light of the Underground, Evey dressed ridiculously in V's clothing which hung off of her thin frame and sagged around the tops of her boots and gloves; Finch, pointing the gun and dressed in two-day old clothes and smelling of stale tea and whiskey and something else – something earthy – she couldn't readily identify. There was a wild look in the eye of the detective, and a shake in his hand.

Finch wet his lips and took a deep breath, steadying his nerves. "Drop the flowers, Codename V, and take off your mask," he ordered.

Evey was not impressed, nor was she afraid – her imprisonment had given her that at least. Her voice was reinforced with steel bands when she responded, simply, "No."

The detective's eyes widened at her unexpected voice. Suddenly, Eric Finch looked tired and glazed, and dropped the veneer of the "bad cop". A rose fell from the overstacked bundle in Evey's arms, but she held her ground and stared at him intensely from behind the mask.

V had done the very same thing to her on so many occasions that she felt old hat at it, and it seemed to have the same effect on Finch as it always had on her. His gun shook a little more as an awkward, pregnant silence rose up between them.

"You're assisting a terrorist, Hammond. Do you know what are you doing?" he asked finally, breaking the silence and lowering his gun, though the haunted look on his face hadn't yet dissipated. "Why are you dressed like him? Why do you have his roses?"

"You wouldn't understand," Evey murmured from behind the mask. She was suddenly grateful for the gleeful facade of Guy Fawkes – she hadn't realized how tightly she'd been clutching the armful of Violet Carsons, and underneath his smiling visage she grimaced as the roses' thorns bit into her chest and little rivulets of blood ran down her torso.

Finch looked down at the body separating them, then back up at her. "That's him, then?" He prodded the dead man's side lightly with the toe of his shoe, then knelt next to him. "That's him. Codename V," he said quietly, more of a spoken thought than an actual statement. He reached a cautious hand towards the corpse's throat, slipping it just below the end of the mask to confirm his death. Evey sucked in a mouthful of air between her teeth, and was beside Finch before she quite understood what was going on, dropping the roses all over V and the stone ground and into the track below.

"Get away," she hissed, her hands upon the other man's collar, yanking up as violently as she could. "Get away, get out and leave us be!"

Finch gasped for a moment before batting the woman away and returning to the V's side, feeling once more at the dead man's collar. "Damn it!" he exclaimed as Evey went for him again. "Let me alone, woman! I'm not desecrating his body!"

"I won't have you prodding him so!" she snarled, missing and stumbling, then drawing up to her full height. From underneath the cloak she drew V's knives, knowing full well she had no idea how to use them and not particularly caring.

A curious expression manifested itself on Finch's face as he checked the body's vitals once more, Evey standing watch nearby. Surely she couldn't have missed…? Surely she'd thought to take his pulse, check underneath the mask for signs of breathing? Suddenly, he understood – the roses, the train, and her she-bear attitude all came together, all made sense. "Were the roses for him?" he asked quietly, pressing down further and feeling the warmth of his throat and the butterfly taps of the terrorist's heart.

Evey remained silent, poised, waiting for the right moment to parry his gun and chase away the interfering detective. She didn't want to kill him – she told V she'd never kill – but if she was to get V on the train and sent off in time, then she have would take the risk. Finch peered at her, then at the gun in his hand. Slowly, he placed it in front of him and pushed it. It clattered at Evey's booted feet and lay still. In return, she sheathed the knives and stepped back.

"Once more, just to be sure," he said quietly, looking up into the face of Guy Fawkes for permission. "Then you can do whatever you wish with him and we can sort this out like rational people."

"'Bereavement in their death to feel whom we have never seen – a vital kinsmanship import our soul and theirs between...'" Evey murmured (1). "Leave him, detective. He's asked for a Viking Funeral –"

Finch was already pressing his fingers to V's throat once more, with that peculiar, unreadable look on his face. Through her grief she registered that something had just come to light, something likely significant, but the emotional side of her brain abruptly took over and the thought was left unexplored. She leaned down and, decisively displacing Finch's hand, hooked her gloved hands underneath V's corpse and braced herself to pick him up.

She was stayed by Eric Finch's hand.

"Ha – Evey," he began quietly, eyes following V's prone form. Her given name sounded strange in Finch's voice and she ignored him as she tried to lift V and failed. "Evey, don't send him off – he's not – "

She pushed his hand aside and struggled again with V's dead weight, this time managing to heft him slightly off the ground, draped awkwardly on her left shoulder.

"He's not, er, dead that is," Finch finished lamely, watching them in horrified fascination. Evey paused for a second or two to catch her breath and shifted the 'dead' man with visible effort. He had expected something, anything more than the detached response Evey gave him. Now she shuffled away slowly, and the logical side of Eric Finch cracked.

"Heavens above, woman! Are you daft?" the detective exclaimed, rising to his feet. "He's not dead! Put him on that train and he will be, though!"

Evey turned at Finch's words, stared at him from behind the mask.

"Evey, did you hear me? I said –"

"I heard you just fine," the girl said numbly. Now, his handgun and her roses and knives lay forgotten as the two figures faced one another once more, unsure of where to proceed. "What…" Evey began weakly, before clearing her throat and beginning, in a much more resolute tone, "Why are you saying this…?"

"I felt a pulse," Finch answered before she finished her thought, as he stepped forward, hooking an arm around V to ease the weight from her. Together they laid him down once more, pushing the mask away further and fumbling with the black cloth around V's neck. "There, where my fingers are. You can feel it when you press down…"

Evey reached towards the spot the detective pointed out feeling strangely dulled, her senses cut off. She pressed her leather-gloved fingers against the side of his aorta, just where Finch pointed out, and felt nothing. "Jesu –" she began, biting back tears. Then, in a gesture she least expected, Finch took her hand away from the fallen V and pried the glove off. She reached for the masked man once more and then – then she felt it.

Imperceptible at first, a faint but regular thump fluttered against her index and middle fingers. She drew a deep breath – then, boldly, slipped her fingers underneath V's mask and blindly groped for his nose, ignoring the texture of his skin. Again, a sign of life – the slight tickling of exhaled breath against her fingertips. Somewhere in the back of Evey's mind, it registered just how gross an invasion of privacy she'd committed.

Then, suddenly, the dam of held tears was burst, wetting her face and the black eyeguards of the mask and running into her collar. She pulled the mask off and tossed it aside blindly. It skidded across the floor like his gun had earlier and landed a few centimeters from the edge of the platform, where it teetered precariously.

Finch stood by uncomfortably as the black-clad woman in front of him began to cry, the sobs wracking her shoulders in a most frightening way. He had seen tears like that in the past– hell, he'd shed them himself several times. The humors of bitterness and pain and fear were obvious, but these were tinged with something extra. It hit him like a brick over the head, then – Evey Hammond wasn't just his prisoner, a poor girl brought into the entire mess by the whim of fate. She was in love with him. Hopelessly, unrequitedly, in a twisted Stockholm Syndrome kind of way. No, that wasn't quite it, but whatever the case, Finch could easily sum it up in less than five words:

That poor bastard.

Faintly, in the distance, bells began to ring signaling a new day, and Guy Fawkes leered up at him from the edge of the platform before slipping into the darkness below.


1) Emily Dickenson