I find it hard to believe that, considering the psychological effects of torture and captivity, Evey got away with so few mental scars. Especially since V was the torturer in the end- talk about a psychiatrist's field day. That said, this is by no means an anaylsis of any sort on torture's effects. This is as likely to be continued as it isn't. I just wanted to get this to stop bugging me before it really formed a plot. And of course, procrastination.
There are minor references here to a drabble in Without Verdict.
Anyway, thanks for all feedback. :)
- i. there comes a time -
Evey tries to keep a journal when she finally moves out. Standing in the dust and twilight of a new home. Her fingers, only slightly swollen, reaching out and cupping the air, twisting a pen out of nothing.
There is only one true window in her apartment. She faces it now, hand reaching out almost unthinkingly. Conducting starlight symphonies with trembling muscles still too weak from- from that place-, her fingers fisting against her palm, then flexing again. Her arm like a conductor's wand, calling forth the cold beauty of stars long dead. It takes a while before she realizes what she is doing; then she lowers her shaking arm, wipes the wet salt off her cheeks and goes to the only bedroom to sit.
The floorboards doesn't creak when she moves. There is no stutter of branches against windowpane; the humble cabin hole in her room is more for ventilation than anything else, with stagnant air smelling of mildewed cupboards and undisturbed places seeping in in airless breaths. The bed is a simple affair, sheets neatly folded at the end and the limp pillow propped against the wall. There are no rugs, no pictures, not even interesting cracks or discolored stains that might betray the clumsiness of a mundane past- nothing. When Evey switches on light, the yellow oil the room suddenly plunges into makes this simplicity an abrupt cuss of vulgarity; she hastily clicks it off again and blinks till the blur in her eyes sharpens back into the familiar angles. Then it is fades back into an artist's dream again, with blue-shadows and rough shading around the edges.
It was very quiet, and still. Four walls around, faintly bleached light marking patterns on the door hinges across her. The smoothed wood cool beneath her soles, cotton bunching between her fingers, her breath even and somehow so intimate in this alien room, like the heartbeat before a secret.
Evey thinks that she wants to love this place, to slip into it like a second skin. She wants to understand the dialect of the silent static watching from the dark corners of the wall, to brush whitewash on her fingers and smile because it holds her secrets. She wants to imprint part of herself into this place, so plain and unremarkable and ordinary; she cannot imagine a place where V will look more out of place. It is an apartment high enough from the street that a fool can pretend to be separate, and low enough that London in all sharp-eyed vigilance can still perch on the window's edge every morning.
It is a place where V can be put aside but not forgotten.
In her backpack, her fingers brush against the curled spine of a notebook. A pen falls on the bed covers next, plastic shell gleaming dully in the ghost-light. Evey stares at the objects and does not remembering throwing them in; all she remembers is a rawness searing her eyes and throat and heart, and only the steady chill of her will floating her over. She pushes everything on the floor with one tired sweep and the muffled thud brings her fatigue rushing to her head like adrenaline- Evey falls asleep curled up amidst mothballs and linen with her fists curled and ready for flight.
- ii. it is not the end of the world -
When she wakes she is suffocating, her hands are already clawing at her throat. It takes a while before she realizes she is merely drowning of air- abundant, sweet, giddy oxygen- and stops scrapping at the phantom hands bruising her neck down.
The sobs die in her throat and leaves her feeling strangely unsatisfied, as if being stopped in a meal halfway. Evey wonders if she might be missing V already. She feels foolish, then irritable, then the flash of longing in her mouth again and back to hot, unforgiving anger.
It is not a very good way to start the day.
-- is what she writes on the first page of the journal. Then she tosses it under the bed and straggles out of the sheets that have somehow twinned themselves around her body, feeling lethargic and a little drugged. Possibly even a little heady, because there is no great pristine adventure ready for her; the unflinching burden that comes from today and today's eternity of tomorrows lining up in infinite, insignificant moments is already enough to make one lightheaded. Evey stumbles out of the small bedroom and walks straight to the Window, near enough so her breath condenses on the glass in little puffs. She wants to splay her fingertips against the pane, to press her forehead against its smoothness, and so she does- carefully, deliberately. The first embrace of her new home; she could almost press her cheek against the cool flatness to hum throaty undertones of welcome and regret just to hear the sound. This is a little startling, this unaccountable surge of longing; Evey shakes her head and forces a yawn to clear her head.
There is nothing to eat here. The kitchen is unapologetic and bare, upturned grey counters like swept graves. If she opens the windows, she would smell the frying grease from next door. Evey remembers, belatedly, the money in her bag and pulls herself away from the view of the sky to retrieve it.
It is three wads of thick, tightly-bundled leafs: paper food. Evey pulls the band off the first and draws in her breath sharply when her eyes lands on the corner of the second sheet. She has not seen this large an amount for a long time. She pulls apart the bundle, her urgency spilling the money from her hands and rustling the sheets to the floor. It spreads like a pool of fragmented light, shimmering like fish scales in the coated plastic. A multitude of Adam Susan's face stares back at her, frowning with noble determination.
Now Evey doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. She picks up a piece gingerly and does a bit of both, a hermaphrodite of a hiccup. She smiles a grimace. Typical V. No doubt he did this because he was concerned, he wanted to help her. His compassion was always razor-sharp like that.
She wonders if she would have taken it if she had known the money was this much beneath the grubby dollar bill that camouflaged the exterior. Probably she would have just taken one roll, for practicality's sake. Not enough to feel as if she owed him anything, just enough to survive on for a while. Though she might have taken none and been insulted at the audacity of wads of hundred dollar bills, tossed unabashed and arrogant into her clothes drawer.
The next two rolls are more tens than hundreds, a relief. Evey peels off a few, mentally cataloguing her needs of clothing, food and basic essentials. A shower might even be enjoyable now, if she does it carefully.
Before she leaves, she scribbles a note on a ripped notebook paper and slits it in between the door as she closes it. Then she adjusts her beanie so it is snug against her scalp and walks down into the world.
- iii. the discordant note as our love song -
Lunch is a simple affair, very comforting. For once, the bread is not toasted and tastes soft and pliable between her teeth, like wheat flesh. Its grainy quality gives a peculiar nutty taste which does not go well at all with the canned soup. Evey manages to finish the broth and wipes the last drops from the bowl with the scrap of bread.
When she turns on the tap, the pipes under the sink groan and judders the tap in her hand alarmingly before the shock of water blasts in three coughing spurts, spraying her jumper a splash of abstract darkness where her stomach is. Her hand is dipped red, blinding red when she lifts it to her face and Evey is terrified, strangled gurgles coming from her throat like she is speaking in tongues. There is liquid choking up her gullet, from her windpipe and out of her nostrils; she can't breathe she can't breathe she can't breathe and oh god, she tastes copper, it is happening again.
Then her knee jolts her when it hits the tiles and she is back, panting and mumbling half-pleas. Her hands are slick with transparence and when she looks down, it is only tap water that stains her clothes.
Her stomach is comfortably full from thin soup, not blood-tinged water pumped into her. Not vomiting it out again from precise, vicious kicks to her bloated stomach, not drowning in her body's efforts to save itself. No hidden bag of blood soaking her abdomen surreal scarlet, no horrifying agony of death, no monster's deep hiss of salvation for just a few words, be a patriot and save yourself for a few words…
No tears blurring her eyes; her hands are wet but her eyes are still dry, now.
Evey lets herself rest on the floor for a while. Waits for her heart to slow. Waits for the sleepy silence of the apartment to collect and drift into the kitchen. She can still taste the saltiness of the ham-and-pea in the roof of her mouth and sucks her lower lip, wanting more.
You will not cry, she tells her body fiercely. You will not fail me again. I am stronger than this. I am Evey Hammond. I am made better than this.
I am Evey Hammond. I am made better than this.
After a while, the trembling stops. Evey tests her legs tentatively, then with growing certainty. She picks up the bowl from the sink and the sound of running water fills the room. The most banal of all daily sounds, a chore. She finds the skin on her arms is prickling, a strain on waiting for something to snap.
But she survives washing the cutlery without so much as a flashback and wipes her hands on the towel with a sense of defiant triumph. It could be childish if there was anything childish about it; V would understand.
Evey could seethe at him for that. Despise him, really. But she is also grateful and, she thinks, more than a little messed up so she might leave that for another day when she has more energy.
These little nuggets of muscle-memory has happened before. She had hoped that a new move might change it though now she knows she had never quite believed it. Instead, she crackles open the packet of batteries she'd bought and inserts them into the remote. She manages to stay on the sofa for about five minutes before she feels nauseous and shifts to the more solid floor below, eyes never leaving the screen.
In afternoon obituary of television soaps, V had once told her in a rare moment of lenity towards television, almost no one is watching. It is when, should one know how to squint properly, the truth of England's future can almost be reflected in their scripted lives.