"V?" The Doctor looked up from his cognac and skeptically at the Guy Fawkes mask, cocking his head. "The hell kind of a name is that? 'V'. It sounds like some ridiculous code name from bad late-night television."

"Simple and elegant. It begins a lot of auspicious words."

"Like 'vendetta'?" muttered the Doctor.

"Like 'victory'."

"Aaah."

"Also, I liked the way it looked." V's voice—so strange that it was only a voice—was quite expressively wry. "Very—"

"I look at that, I think 'chalice' and the sacred feminine in your old Earth symbolism. Then again, I was reading that awful book yesterday evening. What was it? The something code?"

"I don't do much reading anymore."

"…No, I'd guess not. Can you see through that thing?"

A deliberate pause. "Doctor, I don't have to."

…The Doctor paused himself, then took out that marvelous little pen-sized device and shined its blue light across V's mask—and froze. "—Good thing, that, seeing as you've got no eyes and all. How the devil did that happen?"

"It is a long story of no actual importance. A…metamorphosis. Mostly involuntary."

"That's—"

--the pauses or a chance in stance or something, as if V was letting the mask's forever-painted smile serve as a smile in actuality; it almost worked. "Vagueness also begins with a V, Doctor."

"Touche." He leaned back against the wall, letting his head touch the wood. Hard cedar. You could almost smell it, mixed with the scent of the cognac and the bitter atmosphere of old untouched dust. …he closed his eyes. "What was it you said you did, V?"

"I was something of an anarchistic terrorist, owing to the oppression of the regime here. You could find it all in the histories. They're somewhat accurate, now."

"Vigilante." The Doctor drank. "Another V word."

"Verily." V shrugged. "I…"

"…You what?"

"…Nothing. What I did was who I was. I should have—" Another one of those pause-smiles. "—vanished."

--the Doctor glanced at him sharply. "Oh?"

"I wanted to be more and not quite a man, I think."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I wanted to exist as an undying idea." –and another. "It almost worked."

There was a long silence.

"…an idea?" When the Doctor spoke at last, it was bitter. "You can't become an idea. No one lives as an idea. Beings live to believe in an idea and they die that much more quickly."

"You're quite a cynical man, Doctor."

"I'm not a man." He waved a hand in dismissal, tone still raw and caustic. "Anyone can try to live another way but in the end every conscious being is the same, you most of all. Your people." –and such frustration. "All the same wretched, ephemeral, pathetic walking fires of intensity waiting to set your own world ablaze in a passion for something that only matters to you, now that's an idea."

"You talk like someone who has had far too much time to think."

"—I've had that," said the Doctor, eyeing the sky wearily. "I have…definitely had that."

"…You said you weren't…"

"In the philosophical sense, I guess that I am, but I was talking about biology." He tapped his forehead. "Not human. Alien. Didn't I say that earlier?"

"I…do not think you did. So alien life exists?"

"—you lot don't know that?"

"All astronomical studies and attempts at space travel were abandoned as unnecessary in this society a while back." –there's the anarchist talking, but he's got a point. "It is something only the free are allowed."

"Wonderful." The Doctor sounded a tad disgusted. "Another digression. I think I might have even seen that one before."

"…What exactly are you, Doctor?"

The Doctor didn't answer.

"…I do apologize if I have brought on still more unnecessary thought," said V wryly, "but I was not speaking existentially."

The Doctor's answering smile was equally sardonic. "I just was racking my brain for a better scientific term. All I can come up with is 'leftover'."

"Leftover?"

"I exist more currently, somewhere else. With someone else, hopefully. I don't know what happens after I stop existing. Probably just as well, isn't it? Maybe I'll disappear soon, wouldn't that be something? Like a magician's trick. The Tardis can do it easily enough, why can't I?"

"Are you a…memory, perhaps?" V suggested.

"Memories can't manifest themselves," said the Doctor shortly. "It's some anomaly in the continuum, is what it is. I always confuse it. It's nothing but that. Everything should be set—set right soon."

"Forgive me, Doctor." An elegant bow. "I am an incurable romantic."

"The incurable romantic terrorist?" The Doctor raised an eyebrow.

"There's romance in revolution, Doctor."

"…There is." He closed his eyes. "It's why it's so bloody dangerous."

"...Everything that is worth pursuing is dangerous, Doctor."

"Maybe so." ...The slightest touch of laughter, too.