Another piece born of procrastination; pretty plotless. Warnings of fluff, maybe OOC, and random ending. Can't believe I'm still doing this.
Thanks for all feedback, anyway.
Evey starts to let her hair grow out a month after the Fifth. V notices after the fifth week but is wise enough not to say anything. The closest they get to a reference of it is when she complains offhandedly on the quality of shampoo over the dinner table and finds a new bottle in the shower the next day.
Life after the fifth is not hard (though of course, hard has many, many definitions and it's all relative, really). It is almost normal, really.
They stay in the shadow gallery. V hunts down bad guys at night, manipulates the system by day and cooks their meals. After one disastrous attempt to bake, Evey finds a job and starts to make money, not that they need it but still.
Sometimes V comes back and finds the place empty. Sometimes she comes back late and finds a covered plate with simple instructions like 'Heat.' or 'To be eaten cold.' Sometimes he comes back bleeding and looking as if he's been through a small war, and she'll rant and rage about his masochistic tendencies and oh god, at least carry a gun if you must and don't you dare talk to me about bloody poetic justice, all the while patching him up and trying not to cry.
Evey has learnt more first aid then should be marginally healthy and V has learnt not to quote too much during these periods. It weakens him to speak anyway and all it does is make Evey hate Shakespeare or Milton or Blake for the next couple of days.
They don't talk much about where do we go from here or where do we stand or god forbid, lets talk about us that is slowly starting to creep in, almost sheepishly, on the pages of the newly added Entertainment Pages of the newspaper. There was a jolt when her eyes met the bold subheading of ASK ANNIE. She had nearly choked on her coffee, her breath punched out of her. Funny how people work- give them a masked vilgante and fireworks and they applaud politely and moon around waiting resignedly for the end, but give them a cliché commercial relic in national black-and-white and then they sit up and really start hoping. But anyway—they don't talk about it at all, actually.
Maybe that's the point: that there's just so many things happening nowadays that neither of them have the time (or energy. Or certainty. Or courage) to confront one another. Evey's not even sure there is even a 'them' to begin with, or at least, admit to, so the question just hangs around in the air like an annoyingly polite, uninvited guest when all other conversation runs out. When it's late and the tv is flickering, her sleepy head on his lap. Over breakfast when she mentions something trivial about the future of the newly-christened London News (she had been determined to break the media up into local charters again; England still watches one channel but in a few more months…) and a pregnant silence hangs between them, awkward and embarrassed and giving birth to more embarrassed, pregnant silences.
In the evening, when they watch the news presenter going nearly hysterical in an explosive debate with three deemed 'expert opinions' about England's future.
'We should...' V says, and the sentence falters nearly before he stops.
Evey is sorting out some paperwork from her job; the backload she has personally made her duty to sort through is making her satisfied in an irritable sort of way. Media work has always done that to her.
'What?' she says bad-temperedly, twisting her head to the side. V is behind her with one hand absently kneading the back of her neck while she works sitting on the floor. She can feel his warmth as he sits over her from the sofa; it gives a sense of both edgy claustrophobia and cocooned contentment while she sits trapped in front of the table with her spreadsheets.
V draws back his hand. 'Nothing,' he says quickly, and the silence comes again. She accepts distractedly- there is data error in the files that is itching at the back of her mind and she barely notices when he leaves the room soon after.
It is only later that Evey realizes that that was the perfect moment for a confrontation of sorts. Maybe even a pinch of where do we go from here, after the introductory What do you mean, we? Then she remembers the way V had drawn from the room, quiet and as unobtrusively as possible, and wonders.
Maybe… it is better…?
The next morning, she wakes up earlier than usual. Tiptoes to the kitchen, feeling foolish and propelled by a strange sense of inevitability. V would have called it fate.
She has used up two precious eggs by the time she produces a relatively edible looking fried toast, which is about the same time V ambles in.
'Good morning,' she says too cheerfully. She grips the ladle clumsily, feels as if she's standing before trial. Thanks the gods secretly for the deer-in-the-headlights look that is at least reflected in V's stunned silence.'I made breakfast,' she says weakly.
'Yes, I see,' says the man of the moment. 'I'm glad my powers of observation aren't failing me.'
They stare at each other across the kitchen table.
'Egg on fried bread?' Evey says at last.
V gets the cutlery while she concentrates on fishing the slippery and admittedly soggy piece of bread out of the pan. She keeps the two blackened predecessors on a separate plate for her own breakfast- no point wasting food.
Then they sit across the table with the plates between them like peace offerings and stare.
'So,' V says finally, addressing the plates, 'how late are you going to stay after work today?'
It is the first time he has mentioned her work in relation to himself. Evey's smile is like the rising sun.
They start to eat, V slipping the occasional torn piece of bread under the mask with an experienced hand, but it is the talking that fills their attention.
Little things: the weather improving, his roses, money. Her hair driving her crazy in its half-grown stage.
General things: the street situation, the elections, the market. The mutual agreement that V as the public persona has to fade quietly into the textbooks.
Talking as if the future had a plural pronoun in front of it. Talking as if there is finality buried somewhere beneath. Evey tries to keep the wonder from her voice but hears it in V's anyway.
It will only be later, as the weeks pass, that they would shift the topics slowly and subtly into deeper waters.
Necessary things: what he'd said to her on that catalytic night of the Fifth, when they both thought he was going to die and so to hell with all pretenses.
Fragile things: what she'd said to him in the few, scattered nights like rare gems throughout the past weeks that they keep pretending never happened, in the cloaking darkness of his room.
And from there, even later, all the unspoken things will flare alive and that will be when it starts. Later, she will find herself speaking his quotes without thinking and he will find himself forgetting to put on the gloves and not really caring. Later, there will be arguments in that passionate, stubbornly silent way of theirs. There will be drama and she might cry angry tears and one of them will not come home, and eventually they will work it out and compromise. And later, the sharp, careful distinction of their behaviour between Day and Night will start to blur till they realize this idea of we and us is actually starting to make sense, and things will never be the same again while not really changing at all. His bed will become their bed but it will only be when Evey decides to use the ex-prison cell to grow her own rose hybrid that they'll realize how far they've come.
But now V is thanking her for her breakfast, and Evey looks down and realizes he has switched their plates somewhere during their conversation- she has eaten his meal without noticing.
There are only black crumbs on his plate. Through her horrified fascination, she remembers V is as faithful a believer in free will as fate.
'"A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner,"' V sighs suddenly, and there is only the slightest of hesitation before he covers her eyes with one easy movement. The chair screeches back when he leans over but neither of them are listening.
Simple things: this is not their first actual kiss and a quote is not exactly what a girl wants to hear before something life-changing happens.
Important things: this is probably their first actual kiss and who really cares about words when the uncertainty of lips brushing is all a girl needs to decide?
Evey opens her eyes and V looks uncomfortable as he lowers himself off the table, mask not quite straight. For one awful moment, Evey thinks she might just cry from happiness.
Instead, because life with V has taught her to be pragmatic and they're still almost too clumsy for moments like this to be romantic, she leans over and straightens the mask with one brisk movement before spinning around to find medicine for food poisoning.
Simple things: they'll probably never really know the answer to where do we go from here and life isn't going to be happily ever after.
Important things: this is life and really, once they stop smiling like that, this- is almost normal.