Vivified: a Verbose Vignette
By: Sinead

Chapter Two

The date was the fifth of November, nearly the sixth. The smoke from Parliament was already rising, the fireworks still boomed overhead . . . Evey wasn't caring about watching the smoke from the former buildings blemishing the otherwise clear midnight skies. She wasn't going to be found among thrill-seekers who were looking to get a brick, or a piece of glass, so that it could be held as an heirloom for the great-grandchildren to point at and ask, "Grannie, Grampie, wha's tha'?"

In which the fortunate elder would reply, "That, my darlin', is from the night we became free. Come, bring a new cuppa tea for my old bones; I have a story to tell you . . ."

No, Evey Hammond was half-dragging the man she loved into the Shadow Gallery, fortunately helped by Eric Finch and Dominic Stone, the former who had somehow found her pressing hands against V's wounds, tying bandages around his arms, slowing the flow of blood as best as she could.

The moment that Inspector Finch had come through to her talking, hearing her side of things as she moved quickly to save the life of the terrorist . . . upon hearing a miniature Big Ben tolling the half hour from somewhere within the train . . . she got up, ran to the lever, saw the domino . . .

Cried.

Pushed the lever down, leaving a bloody handprint behind.

Running back through blurry vision, she kissed the forehead of the mask. "V, it's off."

"I wish you would let me die, Evey . . ."

"Bollocks."

"Dammit, knew you would disagree . . ."

Finch was glaring between the two of them. "Why should I be helping you, now?"

"Because he's the one reason why we've gotten this far," Evey snarled back at the man, sharp and, at the moment, quite as lethal as the blades V normally sported. His empty dagger-belt was the first thing she had taken off, using it to wrap around one leg with a rather large and nasty hole in it, one that she had patched up first. "Look, we've got to get him back to where there are medical supplies."

"I suppose . . ." Finch sighed, then rubbed at his face with the back of one hand. Sniffing mightily, he sighed, wiping his hand off enough upon his pant leg to pull out his phone. "But we're going to need someone else to help us. He's my partner . . . you can trust him."

"What . . . makes you think . . . that we trust you?" the halting, venomous question hissed forth from the mask.

"Have I given you any reason not to?"

"V, stop being difficult," the woman admonished softly, bloody fingers tying another bandage into place. Thank God for his thickly woven, double-lined cape. And the fact that she had begun to carry even a simple pocket-knife around at V's behest. He had no weaponry left upon him, and she didn't think that he was going to magically produce a dagger from a hidden pocket. She had even checked his boots, and he didn't even have a throwing knife or a stiletto within them.

"Mff . . . very well."

And so with the help of the younger detective, the very one whom she had maced, they rested V upon her bed, and then the men went in search of a medical kit. V gave Evey instructions to where one was, and as Dominic stood transfixed beneath an epic painting that Evey no longer noticed, she ran right under his nose, skidding around a corner and . . . facing the door that had led into the Larkhill exhibit.

"V, your sense of humor is severely lacking!" she roared over her shoulder, slamming the door open and continuing down the bleak halls. Within a minute, her hand was upon a true field medical kit, and she was running back under Dominic's nose again.

This time, he pointed to her in sudden recognition, but couldn't get any words out as Finch shook his shoulder. "Dom, I need you to go and keep tabs on what's going on up there."

"But Inspector–"

Finch grabbed the younger man's collar. "They might tolerate me, Dom, but I was pressing my luck when I asked for you to help us bring V down into where he could recover. I knew that the moment that I had asked. Get topside and keep me informed."

"But Inspector–"

"Do you understand me."

"Well, yes, Inspector, but–"

"But what."

Dominic sighed, defeated by his commanding officer's logic and steadfast insistence that he be the eyes aboveground. Looking back up at Finch, he then asked, "Should I bring breakfast down here, then, or leave it somewhere?"

Thinking upon this, Finch replied, "Call me in a few hours, and I'll see."

"Yes, Inspector."

"Get moving."

Dominic was out the door and up the stairs with the snap of his tan trenchcoat against his legs. He didn't like being underground one bit, and that entire place creeped him out almost as badly as the St. Mary's mausoleum.

Finch made sure that his subordinate was up the stairs enough not to come back down, then walked through the first door, then paused at the ajar one, hearing scissors upon fabric, and the gasp of pain. He brushed his knuckles against the door instead of knocking, knowing that it would be heard. Evey's voice replied softly, "Yes?"

"Did . . . Did you need assistance?"

"Pain . . . Evey, ouch, that– Evey!"

"V, it's a bloody bullet wound! I'm well aware that it's going to hurt with me pulling the farking bullet out!"

Finch hadn't heard any muffles upon that voice at all . . . the mask was off. He cleared his throat, and V growled something low out. Evey translated, "Only if you don't puke and have something to dull the pain." She added on, "There's a good amount of strong whiskey down near the Valerie shrine, in the bottom of a black china cabinet."

"No alcohol!" V gasped out. "Dammit, Evey . . ."

"V, stop wiggling, I almost have it."

Finch would have smiled at the verbal sparring had it been any other time, but he asked, "Did you want me to get some true painkillers, then? I have a doctor friend . . ."

"Yes!" they chorused. V's voice was first heard after that. "Fast! Augh . . ." Finch heard pained panting from the other side of the door, "Lift . . . behind the door painted on the wall . . . by the Egyptian Goddess . . . oh . . . what was her name . . ."

"Isis," Evey replied. "V, shut up and bite on this so you don't break a tooth. I've still got to get that bullet out of you."

Finch took off towards the statue he had seen of the Egyptian deity, found the lift, called the doctor's mobile phone, and fashioned a meeting. He was glad that his friend was still out partying as it were, and smiled as he looked up at the fireworks that were now being set off carefully by quit possibly the army itself.

.v.V.v.

Evey pulled the bullet out of his skin, feeling his hand grip her arm the moment that she had pulled it clear. He had put the mask over his face again, hiding his pain from her, and she let him. She had cut away the sleeve on his right arm, as his left hadn't been hit more than once. She pushed his weakened hand down, then pulled the top of the mask down so that she could see his pain-tortured eyes. Her voice was soft as she began to croon against the bridge of his nose, "You'd better come, come-come, come-come, to me . . . You'd better run, run-run, run-run to me . . ."

"Cat Power."

"Yes . . . it's all right . . . Hush, now."

"I . . . I might want some of that whiskey, now."

"Not if you're going to have professional pain killers."

He bit back a groan of pain as she kissed his bruised forehead. The steel mask had deflected any head-shots, but it had bruised the proud forehead and the aristocratic cheeks. Evey whispered, "Will you let Finch help?"

"Yes," he whispered hoarsely.

.v.V.v.

After two more hours of patching an increasingly more abstract and drugged V back together again, Evey was beyond tired. Eric Finch understood this, but didn't suggest anything to her. He looked at the books around him, once they were done and V was rambling to himself under his mask about some old movie and how wonderful it had been. The older man saw titles that he had never gotten the chance to read before they had been banned. "'Nineteen-Eighty-Four'? 'Catcher in the Rye'? 'Animal Farm' and 'The Color Purple' . . . By God, all these have once been considered classics . . ."

Evey tried to hide a yawn. The extra sheets that she had put upon the bed were bloodied and hopefully saved the other sheets beneath them. She tugged on the rolled-up sleeve of the detective. "Can you help me with this? I need to get these dirty sheets off . . ."

"Right." He carefully hooked his finally-clean hands under V's armpits, hefting him up enough that Evey could pull three layers of sheets off of the bed, seeing that the quilt had been affected. Finch winced at seeing that, but Evey just pulled that one off as well, pushing it aside with all the other dirtied linens. She pulled the clean bedsheets down, then nodded to Finch, who carefully laid V back down, noting that he had finally silenced.

Evey pulled the sheets back up around his chin, then picked the bloody sheets and one quilt up. "Inspector, if you could please follow me?"

He turned, saying, "You don't trust me alone with him."

"Not yet."

"I don't see why."

"You don't have to," she replied after a pause, opening a door into the laundry room with her foot and then opening a washer door with her knee, thankful that the door was upon the front of the machine and not the top. The sheets were shoved into the large barrel, the door swung and sealed shut, and the buttons pressed for the setting she had come to know would pull blood from cloth. After all, she had done this many times before when V had either not been as clean as he usually was, or had the odd wound inflicted upon him. Turning, she went into the washroom to clean her arms and face off. Finch followed her there. Drying off, she asked, "How long are you planning to stay down here?"

"Until he's awake and lucid enough to answer questions."

"I fear that he will only give you cheek."

"He trusts you, though."

Evey gave him a look of complete disgust. "If you think that I will be the mouthpiece for your questions, you are sorely wrong."

"I'm not saying that," the inspector said patiently. He took his turn at the washbasin. "What I'm saying is that eventually, he might come to trust me. I just want to understand him and his motives."

Evey tried her very hardest not to retort to that sharply. She was tired, worried, and had been concentrating upon V's survival for the last three hours, and it had drained her considerably. But somehow, her skepticism was clear to Finch. The man looked at her. "How long did it take for him to trust you?"

"What level of trust are you asking about?"

"To show you his face."

"It took him seven months to trust me enough to show me all of what he kept here, all his treasures, all the doors, all the exits." That had been just after she had recovered from the ordeal with the false Larkhill. And she had left . . . only to come back a month and a half later, realizing just how lonely she was.

"And what of his literal face?"

"In darkness, which hid most of the scars, ten months. To see it every day in the light, almost eleven." She looked square into Finch's eyes. "Don't think that you're going to get anywhere near that kind of comfort level with him. I'm telling you, Inspector, that it took me that long only because I had lived with him of my own volition. And that I had also become friends with him, understanding him as no other has in over a decade."

As Evey walked away from the washbasin, Eric Finch took her place. He rubbed at his face, feeling the warm water relax some part of the skin there . . . and he sighed. "I hope that a professional trust can lie between us, then." Patting his face dry, he asked, "Do you have a coffee machine here?"

"And real coffee, not the diluted version you must be still drinking," Evey said with a proud smirk. "And real cream, real butter, real eggs, and imported sugar."

"But . . ."

"V has made it part of his work to supply us with true food, not just the rations that everyone has to deal with. I'm assuming that will change, soon."

"Indeed," came the sadly-smiled reply. "Would you like coffee, then?"

"No," she replied softly, rubbing her arms wearily. "I'm going to sleep for a while."

"Where will you be, so that if he wakes up I can call you?" Finch asked, indicating the room of books with his thumb. "His room is a bit out of the way, and I wanted to keep watch in case someone else might have made the same connections that I had."

The ghost of a smile lit the woman's face, and her eyes softened. "I will know before you will when he awakens. Why do you think I had him brought to that room?"

Realization dawned upon Finch, and he nodded at the logic as they started moving towards the main hall and the kitchen. "Why didn't you have us put him into his room, then?"

She answered him with a question, an odd blush riding her cheeks. "Would you rather wake up in a cold hospital room or the room of a close friend if you were sick? Knowing that they would be there and waiting for you to wake up, with cool cloths to rest upon a forehead and a comforting hand to hold?"

"I see your point." Finch smiled and they paused at the kitchen. "But, out of curiosity . . . have you been in that position yourself?"

"Yes, twice, since I came here. Once of somehow catching a cold, the other . . ." After he had tortured her . . . no, she couldn't say that. Never could she say that. "The other after I had been through a horrible experience, seen the death of a close, close friend, and as a result, went into a form of shock." Shaking her head, she digressed. "I'm going to sit beside him, now. Please knock if you need something."

As Evey was turning away, Finch called out after her, "Dominic might bring breakfast back with him. Should he come down here with it or should I meet him somewhere to pick it up?"

Thinking as V would, Evey came up with the appropriate reply. "Meet him somewhere. And hope that he forgets his way down here."

"He's hopeless with directions. Reckless driver, too."

"Good. V might be a touch grumpy with the fact that two people have found the Gallery in one day," Evey said with a smile. "Good night, Inspector."

Checking his wristwatch, Finch corrected, "Good morning. It's almost four."

"Already?" her voice echoed back to him. "Well . . . if he calls about what to bring, ask him to make sure that we can warm it up when we're more awake. And to bring soup makings for chicken noodle and vegetable soup . . . and tomato soup and beef soup . . ."

Finch smiled to himself as she gave herself over to thinking about V again. He knew that the two had gotten to be more than accomplices, although he never knew how that had happened. All he knew about them he had gotten from surveillance cameras, the ones of them a year ago in the alleys and at the Jordan Tower incident. Nothing more. But now, seeing how they hadn't even had to speak for someone to move or hold an arm just so . . . seeing how Evey had responded to even a tilt of the head, a set of a single shoulder, the crook of a finger . . . Finch had to wonder how they had gotten to know each other so intimately, and how that trust between them had become so concrete.

And speaking of intimacy, Evey was a pretty girl, and V . . . well . . . obviously a man. Even though Evey was careful to keep such sights under sheets and discreetly so, but even then . . . could they have . . . ?

Finch shook his head, smiling to himself. Nah. Not in a million years. They were too different, and their ages were too far apart. Not to mention that there was the whole dark plotting of the vigilante, which didn't bode well for any potential relationships.

Satisfied with his conclusions and in a strange way, relieved that they couldn't've been banging, he reached for the coffee carafe, pulling it out and filling it with water.

.v.V.v.

Evey carefully climbed into bed beside V, laying upon the two other blankets she had placed over him to keep him warm. The moment she pillowed her head upon her arm, his mask turned to her in the semi-gloom. She had opted to keep the door open a slit, just so that she could see shadows in the hallway. So far there had been none, but she expected one to flit by. Finch made a living out of his curiosity, and she knew he was wondering how well they knew each other.

Smiling, she traced the smile and the mustache of the mask. "May I?"

"Of course."

Pulling it free with careful movements, Evey rested her fingers along a nose that had actually been more complete than she had first thought. The fact that it had been broken many times had accounted for her first thought that most of it had been burned off in the fire. After reaching over to a glass upon the side table, her cool fingers ran equally-cool water over his pockmarked brow, so that she could blow a soft breath of air across the surface of his skin, causing him to sigh and relax marginally. "V?"

"Yes?"

"How much of that muttering was drug-induced?"

"About half of it."

"How are you feeling?"

"Like I had after drinking myself silly a few months back."

"Already?"

"Mm. My body somehow negates the narcotic side of painkillers. Finch was looking for my rambling as proof that I wasn't feeling any more pain. You knew that I wasn't because I stopped flinching."

"So you're perfectly sober."

"Yes. Save for a headache."

"And only alcohol affects you."

"Somewhat. Unless I find it imperative to drink myself into a stupor."

"How you managed that while still keeping your mask on is still a wonder to me."

"It's called slight-of-hand, my dear."

"You should sleep."

"As should you." With a deep sigh, V winced as he pulled his left arm out from under the covers, brushing his shaking fingers along her jaw. His voice was a breathy whisper. "Thank you."

"You would have done the same and more for me," Evey replied in the same tone, moving closer so that she could crawl under some of the covers, leaving one sheet between them. "You're chilled. Get your arm back under the sheet and hold me, you goose."

"Goose?"

"Mm-hm."

"Interesting term, Evey."

"Sleep, will you?"

"Mask . . ." V trailed off, looking around for it as frantically as his body would allow him to.

Evey pointed to above his head, and he looked in the one direction he hadn't tried yet. It was resting upon a book above his head, perfectly in reach of his left arm. "Ah. Thank you."

"V?" He was about to reply when her soft lips were upon his own. Evey spoke softly. "Shut up. Sleep. We can talk more tomorrow."

He pulled her back down again, and she arranged herself against his side, careful of all his wounds, and most careful about the one she couldn't see: his heart.

Standing upon the other side of the door, Finch merely blinked . . . then shrugged, going back to his coffee. Looks like his instincts were wrong on this account. Those two were indeed closer than just close friends, but how could that have happened? Somehow, he didn't quite wish to know, as it was clearly something so private and something in such a tender, tentative stage that for him to comment upon it would be a grave blow upon both ego and self-esteem of both parties.

He poured his coffee and sat to await Dominic's inevitable call. Upon thinking of the younger man, who had undoubtedly taken a notice of the Hammond girl, Eric Finch allowed himself a chuckle while he pulled a book off of a shelf, noting that it was a Shakespeare . . . Macbeth? Interesting, and he hadn't read that since he was in primary school.

No, he wouldn't tell Dominic that they were involved. It would prove to be amusement for those who needed it the most: V and his lovely Evey. They needed smiles right now, true smiles and not the cynical, mocking smile that the Guy Fawkes mask always wore.

Looking back at the bookshelf, he saw the title Twelfth Night next to the hole where Macbeth had rested . . . odd. The titles were in alphabetical order by author, and within that author, alphabetical by title. Why would Macbeth and Twelfth Night be so close together? And that they had been at the very beginning of Shakespeare's work? Very odd. Why would that be so necessary? Were they favorites?

After a bit more of pondering, looking to see if there was any other pattern within the books, Finch shook his head, going to the coffee machine to pour his coffee. As he sat with the book, turning each page carefully, his phone rang . . . and he picked it up, knowing that Dominic had found breakfast.

Now to send the boy out on another scavenger hunt.

This time, for soup makings.