I never thought I'd fully enjoy cleaning.
Such was the thought that went through Evey's mind as she wiped a dust rag over an old-fashioned alarm clock. She was never an overly messy person, but she still—like the majority of the population—considered cleaning to be a chore. Yet she couldn't deny the fact that everything in the Shadow Gallery was so interesting that she fully enjoyed the task of tidying up. The objects often led her to wonder how they fit into V's past and why the greater public was forbidden to obtain them.
A butterfly collection, she noticed with a smile, looking at the framed set of winged creatures hanging from a wall. Knowing V, he'd probably say something about how they symbolize the metamorphosis we all must go through before we can acquire true freedom She laughed quietly to herself, not wanting to attract the enigmatic man's attention. She hadn't seen him since breakfast, which was just as well. He had filled her up with so much food that she wasn't sure that she could take any of his conversational riddles until dinnertime.
As she moved to a nearby table, her foot kicked at something that resulted in a dull rattle. Hoping she hadn't broken anything, she looked down. Crouching to the floor, she picked up the object. It was a small box with a single rectangular item within. She picked up the item and held it to the light. It turned out to be a black and red domino. Looking back at the box, she saw that it once contained twenty-six such pieces. Peering about the floor, she wondered what happened to the rest of them. V usually kept his things together and in very good condition.
Possibly something relating to how all details affect a greater chain reaction, she thought as she stood up, still trying to step into the man's uncommon mindset. She walked towards a small closet, meaning to put the box away as she absently began to hum a very old nursery rhyme her mother used to sing to her. "Pockets full of posies," she murmured thinly. "Ashes, ashes; they all-"
She stopped with a startled "Oh!" Evey had opened the door to the closet, only to be caught in an avalanche of haphazardly-placed empty boxes. She reached out her arms to grab them as they fell. When they were gathered up, she looked at them quizzically. They were all duplicates of the original box of dominoes she had picked up. What in the world-? Looking up into the closet, an inexplicable chill overcame her. The entire closet was filled with boxes of dominoes, each of them empty.
Feeling that she had stumbled across something that related to V's mission even more than she had initially thought, Evey arranged the empty containers back into the closet, prodding them at random to be sure that they were all vacant. Taking a step back, she looked at the closet and attempted to do the math. There were six boxes lining the bottom of the closet, each of them marking a column of fourteen. Eighty-four boxes times twenty-six dominoes per box… nearly twenty-two thousand pieces. What on earth would V want with so many dominoes?
"They all fall down," Evey whispered quietly. "Set them up, knock them out. Ashes, ashes; they all fall down." Was she babbling? Finally going mad due to her captivity? Putting her hands over her ears as though that would block out the barrage of mental imagery, Evey continued to back away from the closet.
The song she had been singing was often thought to be based upon the Bubonic Plague, then came to be related to the horrid St. Mary's virus. And like the victims of St. Mary's, all of V's victims would ultimately "fall down." He chose his methods carefully, steadily, as though setting up an elaborate domino scheme. Was St. Mary's somehow part of this scheme? Did he have something to do with it? Or was it simply the first link in a long chain of events? And what, dear God, what would be the culmination of these events? "They all fall down," she breathed again.
"Evey?" Evey put her hands down and turned sharply. V was standing at the doorway, his head tilted at an angle as though to relay his concern. "Are you all right?"
Could she trust him? In this world, could she trust anyone? Her government was out to get her simply because she witnessed the destruction of the Old Bailey. This masked man refused to show even a glimpse of his actual body, and what little she managed to see of his hands proved to be deformed. Was he some sort of living monster?
"Yes," she replied, albeit too sharply. Taking a deep breath and wiping her face of the tears that somehow managed to gather, she elaborated. "I was just… I'm still a little overwhelmed by everything that's happened. It's a lot to process, you know. "
V said nothing for a long stretch of time, observing her in the thick silence that followed. She wondered if he saw the open closet filled with the empty domino boxes, if he would know that she somehow stumbled across his sinister ultimate plan. She wondered how long it would be before she simply knew too much and V's kindness reached its limit. She wondered if she would ever be given the opportunity to escape and run away, run far away, before she sank deeper into the unknown world that V was attempting to create for all of England.
"Of course," came the response from V. "It would be ridiculous to think that such a transition would be easy for you. Perhaps lunch would help. You are not allergic to seafood, are you? That would be most unfortunate."
Evey replied that she wasn't and followed V towards the kitchen. As they walked in silence, Evey wondered over the panic attack that was nearly had simply at the sight of a closet filled with empty boxes. Was she going mad, or did she actually have reason to distrust the man behind the mask?
Whatever the outcome, Evey knew for certain that she would not allow herself to be among those who would fall down.