*Author's note: This Fic is based off the events in the movie, not the graphic novel. I did this (a) not to spoil the novel for those who haven't read it and (b) because more people have seen the movie than have read the novel.
"Bombs have been made with fertilizer as long as they've been making bombs."
- V for Vendetta: From Script to Film, Spencer Lamm
For every action there is an equal and opposing reaction. Basic law of the universe. Yin and yang, some might call it. Where there is a shadow, there must be a light.
So, when a scarred, vengeance-bent vigilante is on the streets with the appetite for blood, somewhere in the universe there must be a reflection, a healing light that likewise wanders the streets, acting as a counter-weight against the violence. One harms, one heals, and balance is maintained.
Veniversum
Chapter One.
Getting burned alive wasn't exactly part of the plan. In retrospect they figured out it must have been a natural gas line somewhere in the building that amplified the already-flammable facility. But, whatever the cause, that night some emergency burn treatment was in demand.
"Jesus H. Christ! What happened to him?" The male EMT that leapt from the back of the back of the ambulance had seen burns, but this was more like a roast duck.
"Smoking kills," replied Ms. Carson, who helped lift the body on to the stretcher.
"Can't let you in here, I'm afraid," said a woman EMT.
"It's all right, I'm a registered nurse," said Ms. Carson as she followed them into the back of the ambulance. She quickly flashed a plastic identification card. "And," she added suddenly, "I'm his sister."
"A'right get in!" said the first medic. The truck doors slammed shut and the vehicle sped into the dark with sirens blaring. It should be noted that the black smoke they left behind was not (as the educated reader might have guessed) from a building at Larkhill, but instead from one in the town of Durrington. This abandoned home went up in flames the same night as the fated Larkhill detention facility, which met its fate less than half an hour before the ambulance answered a call for a house fire on 32 Willow Drive, Durrington.
"We're nearly to the hospital," the male medic assured Ms. Carson.
"I know," she replied, looking out the back widow, watching the sirens light up the dead trees. The body, his burned, scarred body, was covered in a white sheet up to his jaw and they had him on oxygen, but she didn't want to look at him. She had this nagging, anxious feeling that he might have let the fire catch him. It's so like him, she thought.
The hospital came upon them like a giant mouth with fluorescent teeth, swallowing the ambulance whole. A rush of rubber hands and voices swept Ms. Carson and his burns down a white tunnel. When his burns disappeared behind a double doors at last, Ms. Carson turned around to face the authorities and became Ms. McGuiness.
"Andrew McGuiness," she told them. "He has a drinking problem, and he smokes."
A young man in scrubs with a clip board wrote everything down from his seat behind the glass.
"How did you find him?"
"He left the house in a fit, which happens some times, but usually he comes back after a few hours. It was 11:30, I think, and he hadn't come back yet, so I left to look from him. I only went to the fire because, well, it was a fire and I worried it was him. I guess I was right."
"Where do you live?"
"Durrington," she replied.
"Alone?"
"With my fiancée."
"How long?"
"A hundred years."
The man in the scrubs paused and looked up at her. He was young and fresh, sort of spunky.
"I almost wrote that down, you know!" he laughed a little.
Ms. Carson just raised her eyebrows slowly and stared at him.
"Sorry," he muttered after a moment. "We have to ask that," he added. "Protocol and all."
"It's all right," she replied. She went on to give him a fake address to match the fake phone number, as well as the fake names and fake dates of birth. In three years and two months, the first publicly-available thumbprint identification systems would be released.
It took him a while to get his vision back. His eyes were the last thing to heal. But he wasn't in the hospital when he opened his eyes again. He had stayed there only as long as it took the doctors there to stabilize him.
When he could finally see again, he found himself in a dark bedroom, clearly a guest room based on its sparse decoration. He was alone, bandaged all over. He was in pain; the pain never seemed to stop, it just subsided from time to time. He wasn't sure the time or the day, but it didn't matter. His world had become a routine of drifting in and out of sleep, waking only when he needed to eat or relive himself. Ms. Carson always there frequently, helping him to eat and tending his wounds, but she wouldn't answer his questions about the outside world. His one request that she refused to honor was the morning paper.
"They really did believe I was your sister," she told him one night as she went through the process of changing the bandages on his arms.
"But you don't look a thing like me," he replied in his usual witty way.
"No, I don't look like lasagna."
He exhaled sharply through his nose in response.
"You're not very compassionate for a nurse," he said after a moment.
"Sorry," she said immediately. Then added, "But, after what you did, I think you deserve to be called a lot worse than lasagna."
"Not," he returned immediately, "worse than what they deserve…"
"That's all you ever think about, isn't it?" she asked as she applied the new bandages over the burns.
"No, not all," he defended himself. "Sometimes I think about gardening."
Ms. Carson sat back and looked at him with her brow lowered, shaking her head slightly.
"What?" he shrugged, trying not to wince. "I do. But I suspect their foul bodies would make a poor fertilizer."
That made Ms. Carson shudder sharply.
"Bad image, bad image," she breathed, taking off her sterile gloves and opening the door to leave.
Just before she turned the light off, he was able to get a good look at her for the first time since before the fire. His vision was a bit blurry, but she still had the same sharp features and critical eyes. Her curly red hair was stilled tied tightly behind her head in a long pony tail, and she still stood with her shoulders back and chin up like the proud commander of an army. As always she was dressed almost entirely in white, though it looked more like she was on her way to play golf than work in a hospital.
"Are you going to work?" he asked before she closed the door.
"No, I'm taking a break. I fear I might be sleeping on a cot there before long."
"Why's that?"
She paused and thought about her answer.
"No reason," she lied, and closed the door.