Freedom, a v for vendetta fanfic

Title: Freedom

Author: Aproclivity Formally Kim, The Manipulative Little Mo

Rating: PG-13 just to be safe.

Summary: Learning how to define freedom.

Disclaimer: I don't own V for Vendetta, the girl in the glasses, or the song lyrics that are italicized in this story. They are from the song "Free" by VAST, and you should check the band out.

Author's note: Spoilers within for the movie, which is what this fic is based off of. I have not read the novels, though I'm working on getting a copy. Also, this is my first fanfic in quite some time, so I can use some constructive criticism. If you like it, let me know, and if you don't, let me know why.

Freedom

For her, the word had never actually been defined. Once when a boy in her class had asked what it meant. The teacher had asked where he had heard it from, and when the boy; Aaron, she remembered now, had said that he heard it from his parents, she could recall the woman's hand flying to her mouth, and she left the room.

That night the boy's family was taken.

A few weeks later, the teacher disappeared too. No one was really certain as to why she was gone. There were rumors that she had killed herself when she learned that the boy had been taken, and there were rumors that her report had placed she herself under suspicion.

These things can only be seen in hindsight.

But freedom still lingered there, a question as to what it was and why it was so bad. She couldn't tell you what it is, and yet she could feel it it her veins. She dreamed of places, and of flowers in bloom.

She dreamed of laughter, because no one was allowed to laugh any longer.

"It's time to laugh it's time to cry

It's time to be what you need to be

It won't be long 'til they are gone

and we can be what we want to be

I wanna run from everything

everything that holds me down

nothing to win nothing to lose

you can't tell me what to do anymore

now I'm free

now I'm free..."

When she was nine, another definition of freedom would be offered. She could hear the words being sung, the tone of key and flat as they were hissed against the parchment thin sheets of walls that separated the neighbors secrets from one another. The man next door was decrepit. His skin hung from his face in deep lines, and the coming blindness had leeched the once vibrant blue from his eyes.

He had apparently heard that his daughter and grandson had been taken, and he was finally ready to tell the premise of England Prevailing to sod off.

Fingers crept from the shadows that night, and her parents sent her to her room so that she wouldn't see them as they came for the man. Instead she heard the sound of the windows breaking, the trumpeting of the boots as they brandished weight and might across the stairs...

But above it all, she could hear him offer the repetition of the song that he had been singing all day. His voice was softer now, hoarseness ringing through it, but emotion offered him a platform that mere noise could never subscribe too.

"I'm gonna run

I'm gonna win

I'm gonna do what i need to do

'cause it's time to be what I need to be

it's time to be what i need to be

you can't tell me what to do anymore

now I'm free

oh yeah

I want to hold air in my hand

own the one thing you can't buy

nothing to win nothing to lose

it's time to be what i need to be..."

The door to the outside of the apartment splintered, she could hear in a frightening counterpoint to the beat of the music. It was really rather upbeat. She wondered who had sung it before, if the man had simply made it up. Somewhere along the course of the music, she had found herself folded below the sagging mattress of her bed. Fingers stretched, nails scoring along the chipping paint that made up the baseboard. The girl wanted to offer him some comfort, and ask him a question, but all she could do was touch the outside of his wall.

Strength, slight and only able to be gleamed by someone who had been listening to him so intently that her heart might break, returned to his voice as she heard the shouts of the soldiers telling him to stop singing from outside the door. The other hand clamped across her mouth, wanting to stop the whimper that was forming between her lips. She heard the door fall against the floor, and she could feel the weight of her body bounce because of it.

"I'm gonna run from everything

everything that holds me down

nothing to win nothing to lose

it's time to be what I need to be

you can't tell me what to do anymore

you can't tell me what to do any-"

The word was cut off, ended with the heavy sound of what could only be a blow. She cried now, and tears laced the underside of the coke bottle lenses that she wore, pooling there. The lyrics were committed to memory, and she spoke them silently as the old man's apartment was torn to shreds, and a black bag was placed over his head.

She still wasn't sure what freedom was, but she knew that the old man had it now.

The lyrics lingered in the back of her mind, trying to resurface with each new sour note that was whimpered across the telly, with each new story and new piece of violence. More people were taken, stamped out with the black bags of the government. They were disappeared, all of these people she knew, and she never would an answer be found upon them. The girl had to force herself not to recall the man, not to remember the sadness in his face when he watched her playing, not to remember the terrible sound that his head made as it struck wood. Instead, she placed his memory with Aaron's and wrapped them with the song.

Then came the Fifth, and a new cry of freedom was found within her.

Music that was joyful and proud was heard again, and the town seemed alive once more. In fact, it was more alive then she had ever known it to be. And then the man with the mask was on the telly, offering them hope.

She wondered, however dimly had it been the man who had lived next door.

A part of her knew that he wasn't and that he never could be.

And then there were 345 days in which she found more of the lost freedom every day.

At first she would simply allow the lyrics to come to the forefront of her mind, to act them upon a center stage there. She could see V there, and it was almost as if he was singing them, the suaveness of his tone blending with the guttural singing of the man next door. Then, her own voice would join the two, a sort of concerto that only she could hear.

More and more people started to disappear, and her parents fought about it constantly, hissing at one another that they would be next for idea of misdemeanors that the party had placed within their heads. The gaze of the government had to be everywhere, they argued, even in their very thoughts.

Our girl knew different, and she fought for that difference, and finally, she was able to mouth the words, and then she would hum the tone, and finally, she felt free enough to say them. From there, it was quite clear that she was a lost cause, at least in the eyes of the government. She sprayed the letter 'V' where ever she could, and then when the mask, his mask came, she donned it with pride.

And she donned it without fear.

She was singing the song when the fingers found her. The words were loud, but slightly muffled through the air holes of the mask, and she knew that she looked ridiculous with her glasses strapped over the mask, but she didn't care.

She felt the searing pain long before she heard the shot, and when she did hear it, she simply thought it was her flesh offering the scream that her lack of breath could not. When she hit the ground, and saw the mask roll away from her, she knew what freedom really was. They no longer scared her, and the mask would live on when others wore it.

She was free now.