According to a timeline I found, movieverse!Evey spent only 1 month with V before the whole betrayal-Gordon'shouse-torture arc. And then 2 months after the torture before she leaves. Which is terribly short for someone to get to know another, let alone fall in love, but yeah. So I guess this takes place somewhere near the end of the very short 1 month stay with V before the B/G/Torture period. 1 month is pretty short, so realistically, Evey's probably unlikely to be all that close to her captor.
Fairly unedited, warnings of OOC liek whoa, ramblings. Should continue on a lighter note after this one, but really, I'm not quite sure where this thing is heading. Movieverse. Thanks for all feedback. :)
Thursday; 3:50 am.
Dear John,
God, what an ungodly hour to be awake. My internal clock has long given up on me ever since entering the dark underworld of London's bowels, but my head – and eyes and back and oh, everything- is throbbing enough to remind me of the atrocious hour. And it doesn't help that I haven't written for so long.
V's shivering has finally died down: he's sleeping now, turned to the side under a mountain of blankets. He's quite a picture- ha, imagine if I'd a camera—our terrorist, bombs and blood, exhausted and tucked into bed. Watching him makes my own fatigue worse-- his even breathing, the dim light casting shadows on the rise and fall of the sheets, antibiotics like sickly sweet and--- arigh, am so tired.
Sleep first. Explain later.
- Evey
Grandfather chiming 6 from the hall.
Dear John,
It's amazing what one hour of sleep can do to you. Equally amazing how the next hour can undo all that restful bliss.
When I woke, my first action was to check V's temperature- the best way I can, anyway. Placed the back of my hand lightly against his neck and tried to gauge how high his temperature is. It says a lot of his condition that he never even stirred. This man, who lives in a constant cacophony of music, background drama and -- noise and would still spin around like a cat startled whenever I passed the room's doorway. Who had never let himself slip after that single first day – did I tell you that he actually apologized?-; gloves and long dark shirts becoming his second skin with such diligence that, till now, I've become too self-conscious to even venture that I really don't mind. I know, its none of my business. But I've always wondered if I made him uncomfortable, and whether he thought it was the other way round.
I felt the side of his uncovered neck, back of hand pressing under the jaw, not believing the temperature, and he never woke up. It seems his scars stretch all the way to his neck, and I suspect it continues throughout his entire body, an interlinked roadmap of burnt nerves. That was the least of my concern, however. His temperature was beyond feverish. It burned, John, like the way you did. I know heat probably collects more in the concave of the throat, and touch is hardly the best way to judge fever- we're always too subjective, aren't we- but it frightened me: it was like touching liquid heat, his pale scars like lava currents. I couldn't believe he could sleep through it. I stripped off the layers of blankets, hysteria at the back of my throat.
'V, wake up, wake up. Wake up!' I gripped his shoulder and shook him. He didn't respond and for one terrible heart-stopping second I thought he had died while I had napped beside him. And- don't judge me, please- I remember a brief but unmistakable flash of how inconvenient passing through my mind. Resigned dismay escaping uncensored. Yes, I know; I'm ashamed to admit it- but when the-rest-of-your-life hangs precariously on the goodwill and breath of a semi-sane terrorist, is it really so mean-spirited to mourn the passing of your own survival before his?
To my immeasurable relief, he groaned a sound and turned his head in a way that told me he had opened his eyes. I nearly hugged him out of sheer sweet gratitude for not dying. Good thing I didn't; he's always radiated an impression of reluctance to intimacy disguised as politeness, and ambushing him during his moment of weakness would probably encourage him to kick me out—politely, as he infuriatingly always is. I took one of his hands instead.
'You're burning up, V,' I rambled, trying to move him to an upright position, a hopeless exercise without his co-operation. 'We need to get you to the bathroom, you need a cold sho—no, cold bath, I'll fill it up wi—you can leave your clothes on but—please, V, move-- I'm sorry, I know you want to sleep, but you're burning, we have to bring the temperature down or-- V, please, get up.' I was a frenzy of useless activity- tugging encouragingly on his arm, using his shoulder as a futile support to pull him upright. Dread tasting the same after all these years, like old mothballs clogging.
The shoulder under my palm tensed slightly before diluting limp and boneless again. While his breath had been shallow and even before, it was deep and ragged now, unnaturally loud in the high ceilings of his room. I thought he was coughing till I realized the hacking jerks was his painful adaptation of a laugh. 'Think I'll survive a second fire?' he managed, voice sounding rough and strange. I thought I detected a sardonic trace of a laugh within and wanted to shake him, torn between anger and terror.
'Please try to get up, V,' I tried again, using as much strength as I could without straining his body unevenly. 'You're delirious. I need you to focus.'
He tensed obediently, struggling to drag unwilling muscles up. It must have been a frustrating experience, for a man so used to lithe grace in everyday movements to lose control of his body to an unseen enemy. He managed to pull himself up on one elbow, breathing in gasps, before his body gave up and collapsed on itself. 'I can't,' he said simply while I fussed over him, murmuring meaningless comforts and ignoring the hot sting in my eyes. If he went unconscious like before, right now, it might kill him. Even the sheets radiated heat from around him.
Warmth enveloped my hand, squeezing weakly – a first for him in initiating touch. 'Oh well,' he sighed, a long sing-breath of each syllable. 'To die would be a great adventure.'
My head snapped up. I must admit I lost it a bit there, in my tight anxiety. Unfair of me, when it had been the sickness speaking. But Dad had told me that at the funeral too, forgetting that Barrie had been knocked off the shelf long before my time and the words would be more careless cruelty than comfort. I never forgave him for that for the longest time.
'What?' I said sharply, a curse-word being cut. 'An adventure? All your talk and future and goals, and you're giving them up like that? Ideas don't die. Ideas don't get sick. If you die, so does England. If you die, no one will remember the Fifth and life like this not only goes on, you bloody well make sure it does. So go ahead, die, and we'll remember you alright- as another faceless threat that our brave Chancellor saved us from!'
Was I too harsh? If I had V's morality, the ends justify the means. Destination, not journey. But fear is no excuse, and I am not V.
V looked at me. The silence was undermined somewhat by the gradual shaking of his body, uncontrollable I know, because of the stilted start and stop of the tremors as he tried to force it down.
'Is a record being kept?' he said at last, and the lilt of his enunciation was clearer than before. He sounded tired, but awake- at last.
'Yes,' I said. I took a breath. 'Your fever is worse. Can I give you more of the pills- or the bottles...?'
He started to shake his head, but stopped when the effort seemed too much. The extent of his weakness was shocking; breathing seemed to take up most of his energy, his body tremors the rest. Each word was a superhuman exertion—why didn't the medicine work? I despaired.
'Evey,' he mumbled, and stopped. I squeezed his hand gently, terrified that he had drifted off. I needed all the information I could get; he hadn't said anything on his illness ever since I found him sprawled on the couch, only partially conscious.
He seemed to have difficulty gathering his words, another first for a man whose normal mode of communication was prose. 'I need—water. Please.'
I moved like I was struck. 'Yes, yes, of course!' I garbled. 'Hang on, I'll be—' I was stumbling out into the hall light before I finished, a beeline to the kitchen. A kettle of water, a cup. Panic bred inspiration and I found a small bucket under the kitchen sink and filled it up with cold tap water, hooking it on my arm and stuffing a face towel in my pocket as I passed the toilet. When I returned, half the blankets were piled back on. The hollow of his throat heated my fingers when I touched him lightly; he was too weak to move away.
'You have a high fever, V,' I said quietly, the nurturing sadist as I stripped off the blankets. The useless visitor—oh shush, John. 'Your body needs to cool down,' I explained, a murmur of reassurance more than anything. He shifted, seeming to close in on himself for warmth, but made no protest. I wondered if he was watching me, whether his eyes were bright or dull with fever. England's revolutionary shivering and helpless without so much as a thermometer, and burning up with a sickness he won't explain and medicine he won't take.
'Where do you keep the straws, V?' I resisted the urge to just take off the damn mask. 'I couldn't find any in the drawers.' He didn't answer. A quick assessment of his breathing told me he had lapsed back into uneasy sleep again; a miracle for all his minute shuddering. It was almost as if he was used to it.
Exasperatingly, we are all pretty much restricted to learning what people are like with our own confound presence, which is why chance glimpses of a loved one walking down the street can sometime seem so precious. It sounds like paranoia, but I've got a gut feeling that V has been—not putting on an act, but almost as if treading on cracking glass ever since I came into the Shadow Gallery and his life. Intangible layers more absolute and smothering than the full deck of his clothes, the distance of a lifetime and preciously nurtured ideals in opposition. Seeing him like that, in that vulnerable oblivion of sleep shared by both toddlers and terrorists, I felt touched. Irrational tenderness, I know- probably the disguised headiness of wielding the power of life and death, our roles reversed- but it is rare that I stop thinking of him as an idea.
There, I said it. Do you understand? I knew you, our rough and tumble play-fights, the arrogant certainty of our immortality that characterizes the young, the indifference to our bare-bone intimacy of each other. I knew you as a person, whole and grounded as a foundation of my world; I do not know V. Honestly, who quotes like that and speaks as if in a scripted play; who moves like that, fights like a dance to celebrate death, who is so perfectly created? He and the Count from his treasured film are really not that different: they're both the result of a series of deliberate choices. Sometimes I think—but I digress. Bear with me, John; I'm beat and barely legible as it is. Let's not beat around the bush: I had been glad he was sick. Secretly, selfishly gratified beneath the anxiety. Maybe it's the glamour-illusion that he can't die (its just not in-character, somehow, as if he playwrights his own dramas hahh) which is maybe why his unexpected carelessness to his own death made me snap so: V can't die. Impossible as faith. I've learnt more about my saviour-slash-kidnapper during the past two days then over the entire past month. Whether he is more or less himself, I don't know, but at least he is starting to be someone real.
I didn't want to wake him, but I needed to cool him down. Fully submerging him in a bathtub of cold water seemed out of the question, so I soaked the flannel in the bucket and spread it over his body, moving the cloth and re-soaking when necessary. I had to unbutton his shirt for it of course- the scars go in uneven patchwork of unmarred and mottled skin, by the way- but it was only halfway through my single-minded treatment that I realized that if he was rational enough, he would probably have some definite objections. To hell with that, I thought, and went to refill the bucket: the water was losing its chill. Death or privacy- not a difficult choice.
He was partially awake during some points of it, a quick indraw of breath every time I applied the drenched cloth. The sheets below him darkened with his outline. At one point, he was even coherent enough to mumble '-- freezin', the closest I've heard him come to a complaint, before he dropped off again while I murmured apologies and tried to estimate the heat of his skin. By time the second bucket's waterline had receded to half, I was spent. By making him turn to the side, I managed to wet his back as well by slipping the cloth under the shirt and while his temperature was by no means low, he no longer burned to touch.
The fever would have probably killed a less—other, fully grown men. I'm sorry, I'm being terribly insensitive again; I'm tired. I'm making excuses, forgive. It is very quiet now, watching him sleep. Everything is swallowed by shadows, only this sheltered lamp and scratch of my pen, a prelude of stillness. I have to check his temperature soon. My fear now is not that he'll die (dumb faith) but that the heat with affect him somehow, brain-damage via illness. It is not an unrealistic possibility, you and I both know. But I can't exactly remove the mask and soothe his forehead with a cool damp cloth- somehow, that goes beyond privacy and caves into something too darkly intimate for me to barge into, even at its risks. But my greater fear is what this sickness is.
Is this just a fever? Dear god, let it be. Its probably just old hauntings. I am no doctor, and amateur diagnosis is not even my forte. I will make him confess the next time he is conscious enough. Perhaps his fever has broken –don't scoff- and that's the end of it, only this rare glimpse of human banality beneath the impregnable magnetism of his persona as my only reminder. Perhaps in a day or two he will be baking scones and amusing me with choice quotes on the irony of life, infusing the Gallery with the vivacity of his presence.
- Evey