The bullet hit him in the soft flesh of his side. He thought it might have dinged off his hip bone and out the back. Wasn't bleeding any worse that he would expect. The odds had been bad but he couldn't see another way for it to be done...
"The world is grown so bad, that wrens take prey where eagles dare not perch..'" He said it softly, and there was no one about to mark him.
He had to leave her to do it. He'd set it up so he wouldn't have to leave her again, not for any length of time, for weeks, if events went as planned.
He'd had only a few minutes. Things had accelerated, he hadn't any choice. No time to get into a face and cut the scene short with Evey. And if she...if she suspected...if she saw...all he'd done would have been for nothing. He'd left her there and gone out.
An hour, he'd thought. An hour at most. In and out. Four hours later he was just getting back, he hadn't even gotten himself ready for her yet...
V went right to the makeup table, strapping a wadded up handkerchief to his side with a twist of his belt. The pain jolted him, a deep, twisting body pain that made him queasy and lightheaded for a moment.
No time. Four hours she been racked up, and she hadn't been looking well, not eating much at all, not since she finished reading Valerie's letter. Her eyes had changed and he'd wondered once or twice if she was trying to starve herself. Her mother had...no, Evey wouldn't do that. She was so strong...
He walked swiftly from his home into another world, painted gray and echoing with his own demons.
She took his breath away, sometimes.
He felt his stride changing, his posture shifting as he opened the door, his lips ready with a strange speech, an unfamiliar accent.
He saw her.
He didn't think. He didn't have the time to think. In a split second her saw her face, registered the utter stillness, the white of her lips and he was running, grabbing at her.
"no..." he gasped, fumbling with the unwieldy weight of her, trying to lift her up, take the tension off her wrists while he flailed at the cuffs with the key.
Her head fell back, bonelessly, exposing the utter white curve of her neck, and he moaned in anguish, trying to, to hold her, free her...
He'd, he'd wanted to free her...
The cuffs clicked with a sound like pure desperation and she fell into his arms like an angel from the sky. He caught her, laid her out on the ground, on a bower of pain, cradling her head as she took one shuddering breath...
Her eyes cracked and he tensed, thoughts spiraling...if she knew, it would be for nothing, he would have done it for nothing. The pain he felt at that moment was the worst of his life. For a moment he couldn't see with the strength of it, nothing could be worse...
until...
until her lips parted and she whispered, a bare, cracked whisper that somehow held all the warmth of remembered joy like a candle in the darkness.
"So they are...alas...they are so..." She breathed out, and did not breathe in again. Twelfth night.
'To die, even when they to perfection grow'. His mind supplied the words.
He cradled her close, with a dangerous, teetering incomprehension.
"Violet." he said, in his own voice, and it did not matter. Gone. She was...He made an animal sound back in his throat. It echoed on the tile as he heaved himself towards the door, tucking her head gently against the crook of his arm.
The infirmary, he could...
He ran down the hall, slamming the door at the end open with a shoulder. He put her on the gurney, turned to grab-
Raggedly, behind him, she inhaled. He whirled in time to see her chest rise. His hands came down, hard, on the edge of the gurney and he leaned over them, sagging against it. He reached out blindly, touched her stomach, felt it rise.
Lack of oxygen...
Her diaphragm tightened up, tightened until she couldn't breathe anymore, and she'd passed out from lack of oxygen. With a sudden, sharp gesture he clutched her shoulders, pressing his ear to her narrow chest. He shut his eyes, his whole world opening darkly but for the thin thread of sound that held him back.
Quietly, he wept into the tattered shift he himself had dressed her in.
He couldn't do this anymore. He was killing them.
She'd read Valerie's letter. She hadn't broken, not even after...why hadn't he told her yet? She was ready, she was ready for it, but...god...
He turned his face into her shoulder, the only thing keeping him from her a thin layer of latex and an even thinner piece of cloth. He was nearly...he was nearly holding her now and he had to stop that, had to get her back to her cell before she woke up.
He lifted her, the weight of her suddenly almost unbearable.
He laid her out with care, knowing that was wrong, that he ought to toss her, leave her crumpled and uncomfortable. He couldn't make himself do it. He just...he couldn't...
Two days ago, during an interrogation, she'd looked up at him with clear, glittering eyes and said,
"Vi veri veniversum vivus vici."
He'd nearly drowned her, for that. It didn't stop him from seeing.
God help him, right now, she loved him. And when he...when she knew the truth...
She would...hate...him.
He found himself on the other side of the cell door with no real memory of moving. Sternly, he got hold of himself. Evey would hate him. She would be right to hate him. At this point, it was all he was due from her.
Inside the cell, he heard her shift, heard her sigh.
"'The lady stirs'..." He breathed, and stopped, startled to hear his own voice. He took a step back. It was past time to be done with lies.