She woke up with a sob in her throat. A habit from prison, mourning lost dreams and the return to an unforgiving reality. For a moment she was confused as to why the tears didn't come, why she felt so happy. Why she was comfortable.
The memory flashed back to her with such an intensity she thought she might incandesce. She opened her eyes, looking around wildly...it had to be real...it HAD to be true...
V sat beside her, folded comfortably into an elderly chair. She froze, relief stealing her breath..
Truth.
She wasn't in the book room. She was somewhere she'd never been before. Behind one of the locked doors. The bed she was lying on felt almost obscenely soft, after so long on bare floors. It was a canopy, with red curtains pulled back. She looked over at V, and after a moment of rising disbelief realized he was sleeping. She debated back and forth for a moment, sure he was simply sitting quietly, but there was no reaction to her awakening. After some small time he shifted a little in the chair and she relaxed, convinced.
She drew herself up on an elbow, and noticed she was wearing something black and soft and too large for her. She thought about that as she watched him. He had brought clothes from her own closet for her to wear, the first time she'd woken up in his home. At the time it had frightened her badly. After spending months hiding out in Gordon's flat wearing mens clothing, she had a sneaking suspicion V had meant it as a kindness.
She had left everything behind when she'd run away. Theoretically she should still have clothes to wear. He'd dressed her in his own clothes instead.
She thought, paradoxically, that he had meant that, too, as a kindness. He'd tried to wrap her in his cape on the roof, she thought with a sharp stab of memory. She touched the sleeve. Black like his cape.
Evey looked over at him. Had he put her in his bed? It seemed likely, though in the weeks she'd stayed with him she had nearly convinced herself that he never slept at all. She remembered hearing him on the piano very late at night. No matter how little she'd slept he always seemed to be doing something. She woke once from nightmares and found him sitting quietly in front of a painting, looking at it like he'd never seen it before. Just a woman in a boat. The Lady of Shalot. He'd spent an hour telling her the story. He'd even sung "Tirra Lira" for her.
She reached out across the distance between them and laid her hand on his arm. Her touch was light, even affectionate, but it woke him anyway. He jumped a little, under her fingers. The man who'd nearly drowned her, who'd hung her up by her wrists for hours, who'd sung her "Tirra Lira" and laid her in his own bed.
"Evey." He said, sounding caught off guard. He straightened hastily in the chair. He did not ask her if she was all right. That would have been an insult to both of them. She thought he was looking at her hand on his arm. After a hesitation, he covered her fingers with his.
"You must be hungry." There was some awkwardness in his voice. As if he was thinking of her long nights with almost nothing to eat.
"Did you eat, when I couldn't?" She asked him, suddenly bold. His mask came up sharply. Did he look thinner than he had before? Covered as he was, it was difficult to tell...
He withdrew from her. He stood, gesturing towards a chair in the corner, piled in cloth.
"I brought some of the things you left, if you'd care to dress." He sounded very strange, almost embarrassed... With a sharp twist of intuition she saw the truth of it. He hadn't eaten. Not one bloody bite before she did.
She shivered, fingering the dark fabric he'd wrapped her in, oddly reluctant to trade it in for something else. He watched her do it, and his posture changed. Softened, somehow.
"I'll eat if you will." She said quietly. He went still for a minute, as if considering what to do, what to say. Then, with some real reverence, he bowed his head to her.
"As you wish." He didn't deny anything, and she almost smiled at him. He stared at her for a little bit too long before he left her. Her mind picked at it as she looked through her clothes. Pieces in her mind, turning them around, trying to make them fit.
She almost missed the paper on the table. She stared at it for nearly a minute with a slow, numb shock creeping in at her before she let herself realize what it was.
Valerie. She snatched it up with a fierce protectiveness, not thinking, not really thinking until she unrolled it again, looked at it again. It was a strange mixture of love and hate that snuck over her. Not Valerie. She wasn't real. Just V.
If he asked her to stay, it was just possible that she might kill him.
If he let her go, she might just have to love him.
She was crying, so she wiped at her face, put the paper back on the table and went to breakfast in her own clothes.