A/N: Chapter has been edited & reuploaded.
Disclaimer: I own nothing...except Dara. She's all mine.
Chapter Four
Dara was still furious over the loss of her sword the next day-especially when her mind started to wander further down the path of memory toward the other part of last night that she really did not want to think about. So, she focused. She fumed. She dwelled.
She'd been given that sword six years prior as a gift for her twenty-first birthday by Will and Liz. It was a sword that they'd had specially wrought for her by a highly skilled smith in the north of England who also happened to be a sympathizer with their cause. A one of a kind piece, especially as the maker had since passed on.
Now, it was gone, and all because...
"Dara? Are you even listening to me?"
Her attention snapped back to the present, eyes refocusing on the woman standing in front of her, hands on hips and eyes narrowed in a sharp glare. "Sorry, Patricia...what was that?"
Patricia, a particularly snotty programming exec, rolled her eyes, thrusting her coffee mug into Dara's face. "Decaf, non-dairy mocha latte," she barked, "and do please try to remember the cinnamon this time, will you?"
Tempering the immediate response that sprung to mind, Dara forced a smile to her lips as she reached out to pluck the mug from the other woman. "Right away, Patricia."
She had worked at the BTN for nearly a year, and it still took every shred of will power she had not to smack Ms. Patricia Harding in the face with her own mug. But one did what one must—and Patricia, if left unappeased or provoked in any way, could make her life a living hell.
And as the electric bill was coming due and rent loomed on the horizon, Dara swallowed her pride, stashed her mail cart in a supply closet and headed downstairs to fetch Patricia her decaf, non-dairy mocha latte with cinnamon. A little menial labor was far preferable to unemployment, no matter how demeaning it might be. On the way back up, the lift stopped several floors before her destination. She grinned in welcome as one of her fellow gophers stepped through the doors, loaded down with an ridiculously large stack of interoffice delivery envelopes. "Morning, Evey," she said in greeting.
"Hey, Dara," Evey Hammond said from behind her armful. "Is it really still morning?"
"'Fraid so," Dara commiserated. "What floor?"
"42," she replied. "I need to deliver these to Mr. Dietrich."
Dara pressed the button for her. They fell silent, the small LCD screen above the panel showing the current news broadcast. They were talking about the destruction of the Old Bailey—as if they could have tried to talk about anything else.
'On the lighter side of things, the crew responsible for the demolition of the Old Bailey wanted to give the old girl a grand, albeit improvised, send off.'
'Although the demolition had been planned for some time, the music and the fireworks were, according to the crew chief, definitely not on the schedule.'
"D'you believe that?"
Dara glanced over at Evey. "Believe what?"
Evey nodded toward the screen. "That it was a planned demolition?"
Careful, Dara reminded herself, be very careful. "D'you?"
A small shrug was all that Evey could manage with her arms as full as they were. "I dunno. Seems a little far-fetched to me…I mean," she shook her head, "did you see it?"
The lift came to a stop then, and Dara breathed a mental sigh of relief as the bell signaling the opening of the doors chimed. "Gotta run," she said, hoping that she sounded apologetic rather than relieved, "Patricia's waiting on her coffee, and you know how she gets if it takes more than five minutes to get it to her."
Evey gave her a sympathetic smile. "Oh, believe me, I do know. Last week, it took me fifteen minutes to get it up to her and she threatened to have me written up for incompetence."
"Yeah, that's Patricia all over," Dara laughed. "Have a good day."
"You too."
The doors of the lift shut again and Dara headed for Patricia's office. Once she had delivered the coffee—receiving a tongue lashing for not putting enough cinnamon on it—she retreated as quickly as possible from what many in the office had quietly labeled the Lion's Den.
Hastening back to the mail cart, she rechecked her list and pushed the laden cart into Stage 3 Wardrobe. "Suzette...where d'you want these?"
Suzette Jennings, Wardrobe Coordinator for the station, glanced up from the bead she was reattaching with a frown, her glasses perched on the very tip of her nose. "What are they?"
Dara shrugged. "No idea—they're just marked Stage 3."
"Oh bloody hell," Suzette snapped, handing over needle and thread to one of her assistants before rising. She grabbed one of the boxes from the cart, tearing into it. "Probably something for Prothero."
Her hand dipped into the box, pulling out...
Eyes widening with surprise, Dara stared down at the grinning face of Guy Fawkes. Suspicion began to creep through her veins and she eyed the other boxes on the cart dubiously, memories of the night before still all too fresh in her mind. The prospect of what the rest of the identical boxes contained left her feeling vaguely uneasy and more than a little twitchy. He'd already blown up one landmark? Who was to say that Jordan Tower wasn't next?
"Bugger," Suzette cursed, tossing the mask and cloak down on the cart. "Just take them into the studio and set them off to the side," she instructed, waving them away dismissively. "There's not enough room in here for that great mess when I don't even know what they're for."
Dara nodded, but said nothing. Her instincts were screaming at her, telling her in no uncertain terms to get moving. She dumped the cart where she'd been instructed and then all but ran through the halls toward the tiny cubbyhole that was the gophers "office". She stopped short at the front desk, noting with increasing dread the empty chair where Fred, the day guard, should have been seated. Ultimately though, it was the snow on the security monitors behind the desk that turned her suspicions into a single, solid certainty—she needed to get the hell out of the building as quickly as possible.
"Attention employees," she jumped at the sound of the voice over the PA, "please proceed to the nearest exit. The building must be evacuated. Attention employees..."
"Shit," she muttered, sprinting the last few feet to the door of her office and ducking inside to grab her bag. Heading back out the door, she glanced both ways up and down the hall—a hall suddenly full to bursting with nervous people. Deciding to go with the flow, she dove into the throng, working her way toward the stairs.
By pure chance, her eye caught and held the gaze of a man standing at the end of the hall. She recognized him immediately, so often had she seen his face on evening news reports—Eric Finch, Chief Inspector of Police. It shouldn't have been a problem. In fact, it shouldn't have mattered in the least that the Chief Inspector of Police was looking right at her—and on any other day, it wouldn't have. But today was not just any other day. Today was the day after the night before.
And the night before, she realized with a sinking stomach, had changed everything.
The grim, undeniable truth of her epiphany was brought sharply home when the Chief Inspector raised his arm, pointing directly at her. "There she is!"
"Fuck me," she muttered, immediately spinning around and fighting her way back through the crowd. Luckily, the officers now in pursuit had to fight through the same mess, giving her a not considerable, but adequate, head start. Bolting around a corner, she darted into an empty store room, seeking a place to hide. That hiding place ended up being beneath a table, on her stomach, with a few hastily rearranged boxes blocking her from view.
It was only a minute or so later that the door flew open, and the sound of footsteps echoed off the tile floor. She held her breath. Every muscle in her body went tense with anticipation. Just one officer—she could handle one officer.
He wasn't particularly thorough though, no doubt due to the sheer chaos of the current situation, and he left the room after only a cursory check. Breathing a sigh of relief, Dara inched her way out, careful not to knock anything over or make any noise—the last thing she needed was to draw attention of any kind.
She was approaching the door, hand extended toward the knob, when the television mounted high on the wall of the office lost its signal, the latest Storm Saxon episode disappearing into a sea of static. But then, only a moment later, an image clicked in, and her breath caught in her throat.
V.
"Good morning, London." His voice fell into her ear like honey, and she was astonished at how welcome the sound of it was. It had only been hours since last she'd heard that voice, but to her strangely parched ears, it felt like days. Especially strange considering how angry she was at him—but the ability to think about such things ground to an absolute halt as he continued, his words drowning out all other thoughts.
"Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of every day routine—the security, the familiarity, the tranquility, the repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration—thereby those important events of the past usually associated with someone's death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, a celebration of a nice holiday—I thought we could mark this November the Fifth, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat.
"There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the annunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and depression—and where once you had the freedom to object, think, and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission.
"How did this happen? Who is to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable. But again, truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease—there were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now High Chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.
"Last night, I sought to end that silence. Last night, I destroyed the Old Bailey, to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago, a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice and freedom are more than words—they are perspectives. So if you've seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you, then I would suggest you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever be forgot."
The image of V disappeared then, lost to the hiss and pop of static. Dara stared at the screen long after the image of the man had died away, frozen into immobility by the enormity of his message.
She'd gotten a glimpse of his intentions last night on the rooftops of London, and she had understood.
But this…
The true expanse of his plan was now laid before her, and it painted an intricate pattern that sent a low tremor of anticipation through her. She'd seen the death of Norsefire in the set of his shoulders last night, and now, she could hear all the hope for the future in the cultured resonance of his voice. A thousand questions that only he would be able to answer ran roughshod thorough her mind, almost dizzying in their intensity—questions that she would have loved to ask, but doubted that she would ever get the opportunity to.
"Stop right there!"
The shout sounded from the hallway outside, making Dara jump. She was at the door in an instant, pulling it open quietly, peeking out to see what was going on—and what she saw was a detective, gun drawn and aimed unerringly at V's back.
She almost laughed. She didn't believe in fate, but this was almost too convenient to be called anything else.
"Get your hands up and turn around!"
"I must say that I'm astonished by the response time of London's finest," V's voice was perfectly calm. He turned toward the officer, hands raised obediently. "I had not expected you to be quite so Johnny-on-the-spot."
"We were already here when you got here," the officer said, almost smug. "Bad luck, chummy."
Generally speaking, Dara considered herself to be a rational, levelheaded woman. She had been trained to keep her head low, to steer clear of any situations that could reveal her as more than just the extraordinarily ordinary young woman that she appeared to be. At that moment however, she found herself making a decision that didn't just fly in the face of that training—it disregarded it entirely.
Oh bloody hell…in for a penny, in for a pound. They're already after me as it is.
She stepped out the door, eyes meeting V's as she moved silently down the hall. Somehow, she could sense the nod he gave her, though he didn't move at all.
In fact, he gave no outward sign at all that she was there, other than cocking his head ever so slightly to the side. "Oh, I don't know about that. Luck, you see, has rather a funny way of changing—and always when you least expect it."
Dara's hand clamped down on the detective's shoulder at that moment, spinning him around as she prepared to deliver what she intended to be a knock out punch. Intended being the operative word. Instead of the solid strike she'd meant to dish out, the punch landed as nothing more than a glancing blow to the nose that left the detective reeling, but still conscious…and now, on the defensive. He swung out blindly before she could react, catching her just above the eye with the butt of his pistol.
Pain exploded through her skull and she staggered backwards with a grunt. Her vision had gone blurry and she blinked furiously. The haze cleared just enough for her to see the detective, blood dripping from his nose, draw down on her.
"Oh, fuck," she groaned, seeing the inevitable a moment before it became reality.
She felt the tearing pain in her left shoulder almost before the sound of the pistol firing registered in her ears, and she let out a wail of agony as she slumped against the wall. A moment later, the detective dropped to the floor in front of her, finally—finally—unconscious. She slid to the floor, the pain in her head combining with the pain in her shoulder and leaving her hovering on the edge of consciousness.
She heard her name called, but it sounded far away and fuzzy. Instinct forced her head up to answer the summons though, and she had just enough time to see V moving toward her before she gave herself up to the encroaching darkness. Her head lolled to the side and, with a tiny whimper, she followed the detective into oblivion.