A/N Sorry for taking so long to update, I had important things to do. But here it is. This might be the last update in a while, so bear with me.

Disclaimer: You know it.

Chapter 3

Charlotte gasped as she hit the wall. They had taken the blindfold from her, but her eyes still had not adjusted to the darkness, and so she had been unable to stop herself. As a result of that, she had run headfirst into the brick wall at the opposite side of her cell, and was at this moment kneeling on the floor clutching her heads and moaning in pain. It hurt. A lot.

"Get up you worthless piece of junk. C'mon!" Wilkinson, the guard that he been assigned to her, aimed a well placed kick. She grunted, and curled herself into a ball. She didn't want to move. She wanted to lie there, and slip into oblivion. But evidently this was not going to happen. Rough hands grabbed her arms, and she was hauled into a sitting position. She groaned and looked into the eyes of her tormenter.

"Piss off." she whispered and ducked as he tried to punch her. But he had obviously taken her words to heart. Grunting like a pig, he staggered off, and closed the door. She heard the bolts sliding themselves into place. Charlotte rolled herself into a ball and started to think about what had happened.

It had been a hellish 5 months. She had been beaten, drowned, hit, whipped, and had nearly died on many occasions. Starving as she was, dehydrated as she was, she could still think, and this had made her stay alive, keep on enduring her suffering. And now she thought about the eyes. Blue or black, she couldn't tell. It was difficult, but somehow the eyes kept her sane. She focused on those eyes now. They were beautiful.

A bell rang. This disturbed her. She knew that bell. She got up, wincing as she did so, and looked out of the window. She gasped.

Students were pouring out of the doors either side of the building, books in their arms. She knew this place. They had taken her back to her school. She started beating the window, calling for help. She knew she was in the old telephone booth. They had converted this into a cell.

Her constant beating attracted the attention of none other than Zanthe and Jo. They looked at her, and their faces turned pale as they saw the face of their best friend. They dropped their books and ran to the window. Charlotte pried the window open and reached out.

"Zanthe! Jo! Oh God, I've missed you guys so much." she cried, reaching out thin arms and grasping their hands. Tears flowed down all of their faces.

"What's happening to me? Do you know?" Charlotte asked urgently.

"No! Sorry." Zanthe said whilst Jo nodded in conformation. Charlotte thought hard. She had a week till she died. And all that would happen in that week would be more interrogations. But Creedy had mentioned something special to happen during this week. She hoped that it had nothing to do with the school, but she had a nagging feeling that it had. After all, they could have killed her behind the chemical sheds, but instead they had brought her to school.

Suddenly a shadow appeared behind her two friends. Charlotte gasped, but the shadow grabbed her friends by the arms and hauled them away.

"I suggest that you stay away from her," said the guard, "You could end up like her." Zanthe and Jo turned back and mouthed a 'goodbye' at Charlotte.

Charlotte slid down the wall. The brief feeling of happiness that had filled her body had been snuffed out, and she was feeling empty and cold. There were no radiators where she was, and so her cell was freezing. She curled herself into a tighter ball and tried to ignore the pangs of hunger that shot through her body. It had been several days since she had eaten, and her body was showing the effects of that. Her gums were starting to bleed, and she was several stone lighter than when she had gone into prison. At a pitiful 6 stone, she looked like a skeleton, but with skin and muscle. She had no hair to keep her warm, for all of the hair on her body had either been burnt, or waxed off. The constant exposure to heat had left her skin with a red look, and she had now no fingerprints, these had been burnt off her by the men, when they had been particularly drunk. The constant beatings had reopened old wounds, and so she was constantly bleeding. She had no hair on her head. It had kept growing back, but then it had been shaved off time and time again. Eyebrows gone, eyelashes plucked off, she looked a thoroughly miserable sight. It was only her lips and eyes that had not been changed.

When she was a little girl, her mother used to say that if anything was going to attract a man, it would be those eyes and lips. She had scoffed at this, and carried on playing with her Barbie's. But as she grew up, and boys had started noticing her, she had to admit that her mum may have been right. Her lips were full, and, in the days when she had had lipsalf, soft. But now they were slightly chapped. As access to any sort of lip moisturiser was impossible, she had used her tongue to soften them. This had done the job, but had left her lips slightly broken.

Her eyes were probably the best feature of her face. Large and green, they had attracted the attention of any man that cared to look. Before the prison, they had been a very dark green, almost brown. But now, since her exposure to drugs and the chemicals kept at the place, they had turned to a shocking light green. They were so light green, that they almost looked florescent.

A clanging interrupted her thoughts, and she looked up from her arms to find a tray being pushed through the door. It had nothing more than her rations of flour and water, but she fell on the food like a wolf. She ate with her hands, and when she could reach into the crevices of the bowl, used her tongue instead.

"Thank you." she said as she pushed the tray back. A grunt of acknowledgement, and the slit closed. Charlotte settled down on the hard floor, and shivered. Even though she knew that it was the middle of the day, she still wanted to sleep. She wanted to pass the hours of her freedom dreaming about the eyes. She lay down, and closed her eyes. And soon, Charlotte slipped into sleep.

EV

Year 4 was usually a very happy year. They had a wonderful teacher, they were all close friends, they had wonderful senior school friends, and the work was not very difficult. But right at this moment, they were not very happy. They had nasty black men with guns around the classroom, and they had to sit at separate tables. They were doing very hard work.

Phoebe looked at one of the men. He was tall, with a black helmet. A large gun was held rigidly in his hands. The man's head turned towards her and he gave her a nasty glare from his helmet. She quickly turned her head.

Suddenly there an explosive crackling, and a voice was heard from one of the men's walky-talkies. The man pulled it out, and spoke back into it. Then he turned his head, and grinned evilly and the year.

"Let's go and see a little show." he said. The men stood the year up and marched them into the Great Hall.

EV

Charlotte sat down in the rough chair, the wood hurting her bum. She was blindfolded, as always, but she could hear the tell tale sounds of water. 'Oh, God' she thought. Trial by water, it was one of their favourite tortures. But something was odd this time. As well as the sound of running water, there was the whisper of voices. Anxious voices punctuated the gloom, and the pattering of small feet was heard. Slowly the blind fold was lifted from her face and she had a chance to look around.

Packed into every corner of the room were her school friends. They had mixed different groups, so that the year above her mingled with the year fours. She noticed that they had converted the Great Hall into a chamber, and so all of the children had an ariel view of what was going on. It made her feel sick to her stomach. But Charlotte's thoughts were distracted by the appearance of Creedy, coming from a side door and sitting down in front of her.

"Now, Miss Finch, I assume you know why you are here." he said in that smooth, slick voice. Charlotte nodded, and the crowd above her sifted and buzzed, and though it was a swarm of bees.

"Please, Mr Creedy, not in front of them." Charlotte pleaded, straining from her bonds that held her to the chair. Creedy laughed, and nodded to Wilkinson. Suddenly her head was submerged in the bowl in front of her. Dimly she heard the cries of her friends, but soon she was concentrating on fainting. She had learned this trick from the very first day. If she fainted, she would go back to her cell, and would not be put through any torture that day. But the guards had learned her tricks, and so they knew just when to pull her out. She felt like a duck, bobbing in and out of the water.

By the time she was pulled out, her lungs felt like bursting, and the people above her were screaming in protest. She was losing it, she could tell. The combined stresses on her body, lack of food, abuse and expurgation were draining what little energy she had. For the fist time in her life, she wanted to die. It was pitiful thought that her life should end in this awful way, being shot at dawn. It was the kind of thing that happened to criminals, not 15 year old girls, with the only her beliefs to live with.

It seemed like an hour, but it was only a few minutes. The continuing gasps of air, with the sweat and tears running down her face with the water. The screams of her school mates as they pleaded for the torture to stop. It was slipping, the laughter, the jeering, the screams, the water…

EV

She woke, hours later. Her head was pounding and there was a small cut above her eye that was still bleeding. She groaned.

All that she could remember was the feeling of bursting lungs. No recollection of what had happened came to her mind, but the fact that her tunic was still damp was a lasting reminder of what had happened. It was a side effect of her exposure to the drugs. She had acute memory loss. She couldn't remember a thing about her past, and things that happened to her went out of her mind. But the big things stayed. Like the fact that she was Charlotte Elizabeth Diana Finch. Like the fact that she had supported what the masked man was doing in London, and that she still did. Like the fact that she was at the school where she had spent the happiest days of her life. She knew that, on Tuesday, she was going to die in front of the school, and be thrown into one of the mass graves.

And she remembered the eyes. These eyes had captivated her, and made her go on. She would dream of those eyes now. The window showed that it was late in the night. Charlotte settled down her weary head, and slept.

EV

The guard dropped like a stone. Despite the man's lithe body, his muscle still made him a difficult man to move. But V managed to get to get the man into the corner that he wanted. He was not dead, but the chloroform was going to give him a big headache in the morning. V grinned behind the mask and moved quickly to the window. It was small. There was no way he was going to get her through there. V shook his head and looked into the tiny space.

The girl was huddled at the opposite corner of the cell. The food tray that customarily came was pushed to one side, and she was clutching her arms around herself, trying to keep out the cold. She was dressed in the thin orange tunic of a prisoner, and she certainly had the look. Emaciated and with sores covering nearly every inch of her body, it made the eyes hurt to look at her. V swallowed, and hoped that the plan the he and Evey had put together would work.

Evey was currently at the house, getting her costume together. Since she had been released from her own prison, she had proven to be a great fighter. Not as adapt with the knives as V was, she had a gun with her, and used her body more in combat. V had given her one of his costumes, including wig and mask, and she was adjusting it back at the house. Together, they looked nearly identical, except the height. They had been around London in as a pair, keeping down the crime, and making sure that they were both seen together. Their pictures had been in the paper, and the Mr Finch at the nose was working overtime trying to catch them. But he never did, and so they had taken this opportunity to come to the country, away from the bustle of London.

V pulled out a little wade of paper out of the pocket of his trousers. It was the letter, written by Valarie. The letter that had helped both V and Evey in their imprisonment. Had taught them to be strong, and to stand up to their beliefs. The letter went with them whenever on e of them went out of the safety of the Shadow Gallery. It gave them courage, and helped them in whatever task that they were going through. And now it would be given to a girl in exactly the same position that V and Evey had been. This girl needed the words of a long friend to give her strength for Tuesday, and this was it.

V slipped the little piece of paper through the window. It landed on the floor. V nodded and disappeared into the night.

EV

The cold, harsh light of the morning woke Charlotte long before the bell did. She stretched, and winced at the cramps that had formed in her muscles. Looking round the cell, her eyes lighted on a piece of paper on the floor near the window. She crawled over to it. It was made out 5 sheets of toilet paper. Unrolling it, a smaller piece of paper fell out. She picked this up and read the words upon it.

Read the letter, and be brave, my child.

Charlotte frowned at the note, then slowly unravelled the sheets of paper. She looked at the name on the last sheet. Valerie. Charlotte settled herself down on the ground and read the letter.

By the end, tears were coursing themselves freely down her face. She felt like she was floating on a cloud. Valerie had been through the same things that she had been through, and had died. But for the first time since she had been taken, Charlotte felt loved.

She would face the torture that would happen during the next week. She would face the water, the beatings and the laughter. She would listen to the screams of her school mates. And then, on Tuesday, she would die with her head high. She wasn't afraid, not any more. She wouldn't beg for mercy, or cry. She would die with dignity. And Charlotte smiled to herself, and faced Wilkinson at the door, ready for the day, still with a smile on her face.

A/N I am so sorry for making you wait. I have been snowed under with work. Next chapter: Tuesday, and the shooting. Or so we think…