Copyright Jazz- Once again, V and friends do not belong to us. Only the particular plot of this story.
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So it was a game, was it? A game of wits and persistence. Well, he was a patient man. He could certainly put up with this for the few nights that it lasted.
"Think I'll stay up a little longer." She glanced breifly up at him from the book she was perusing, flipping the page in an off-handedly smug manner. He could clearly see the fatigue written across her face, however, and gently tried to mock her to sleep.
"You'll have to sleep eventually. We all do." It came to his tongue more willingly than he had expected, and it seemed a little harsh, even for the soft mockery he was sure she had come to expect.
Was he comparing himself to something more than human? Certainly not. More like less than human. Comparitive studies at odd hours of the night. It could be a book of poetry. He was glad he wore a mask, the maze of emotional responses he'd have to make with his face as the conversation deepened would have been beyond him at this point.
"But you sleep."
Of course he did. To think he did not was simply... well, to put it quite frankly, stupid. He may of sacrificed himself to an idea, but ideas were just that. Intangible, untouchable. He was very much alive, living, breathing, at this point in time turned at a slight angle, perhaps 25 degrees, busily flexing one gloved hand unconsciously. Odd, did he do that all the time?
This was a game, he knew it. Evey may have moved into the realm of trust, but she still wanted to keep him on his toes. She wanted to know him, not the cold mask that the whole of London by now recognized. This is V, he is a terrorist. He is an evil, evil man. They must get more creative on the television stations, repeating words in one sentence for emphasis could only bore the viewer.
"So I do not have nightmares, although I do on occasion awake on fire." What in the world was he talking about? Of course, she knew nothing about his past. Not a scrap. So this wouldn't make sense to her. Her childish frown, chin resting on the top of the book she had long forgotten to pretend to read, made him want to tell her. It was an urge, and he could supress it. She never really told him anything, why should he give her any lead? No, no, no.
Silly little girl. The conversation was done, he had ended it by his own hand. He registered with an almost half-awake consciousness that he was sweeping away, boots clicking softly on the marble floors. He always entertained that this was the way a panther sounded when stalking it's prey, the soft paws, and the hard nails on the forest floor. Then he realized he was comparing himself to a large tropical cat. And then he realized he was insane.
He had a bedroom. This she knew, she had slept in it on more than one occasion, when he was out on the town, as it were. He flipped through the things he assumed she knew about him, either through experience or blind guessing. He slept. He had told her that. It was a flimsy little pamphlet, the facts she most likely kept stored in her mind about it. Most of it was trivial. He made breakfast while wearing a floral apron, he fought, and on occasion talked to, a suit of armor, he enjoyed watching old music, he liked to dance.
She could now add that he didn't dream. Or at least... he didn't categorize them as dreams. It fell along the lines of him sleep-walking. Of course, he could thank his own constant alert nature for the fact that he seemed to give logical responses to her questions while he was doing the sonambulism. Either that, or he would give some answer so ludicrous and vague that she would have to shrug it off as his unusual self.
His legs betrayed him tonight, it seemed. He ended up in the carousel room, instead of where he had intended. He wanted to take a roundabout way and return to Evey's side, and talk to her. And not be mysterious, stalking about the Shadow Gallery like an oversized black cat, grumbling and laying himself out on any flat surface available. The nature and identity he had formed himself into seemed unable to let go of the mask, however, and now he stood in the gloom of the carousel room.
The glint of dominoes scattered across the floor, in a yet unfinished pattern. He remembered when Evey had first come here. She had stumbled through them in the dark and ruined his labors of love. She knew better now, it didn't phase her to step over and around the dominoes to reach the other side of the room.
He slid his gloved hands over the carved legs of the suspended horse, one of many scattered across the room. This one was his favorite by far. It was dark green, full of blue swirls and a whole neck of beads. It's mane was carved to look like seaweed, and it's hooves looked more like fins than the normal legs of a horse.
Why was it his favorite? He knew not the reason, he knew not the rhyme. He hadn't seen the sea, not in recent memory. He was too busy to do such things. Was he?
Evey was on the move, he heard her cross the kitchen and into the bedroom she had inhabited for the past couple of months. He knew she was offhandedly looking for him, thinking he didn't know where she was going. Bed. He nodded to himself, turning towards the doorway as if he could see through the walls at her slight frame crossing his line of vision.
She was sensible, of course, only after she was insane. She probably was trying to do both at the same time, like he did.
He slipped one glove off slowly, looking at the scarred flesh beneath with a bemused interest. Hideous. In ancient Sparta, deformed children were thrown to the sea. Perhaps that was the connection he found in the carousel horse. He should be thrown to the sea, then maybe the government would be happy, the world would be satisfied, and the earth could dissolve into beautiful ruin.
He was, afterall, one man. He couldn't hold onto a revolution single-handedly.
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This was HARD to write. Just in case you were wondering, my writing style differs from Rooney's. She wrote the first chapter, you can find her on here. And I'm also using both movie and graphic novel references here, so if you get confused... sorry?