This began as a drabble which then mutated and grew into what you are about to read. Hopefully. :P
Windows to the Soul
It was so hard to see his eyes. His real eyes. His fake, black, unforgiving eyes would follow her across a room or peer at her from under the dip of a hat. Would gaze at her so flatly that she sometimes wondered if he possessed a different set of eyes under the mask, or if stark, emotionless stares were all he had to offer her.
No, he relied on his body language to express his emotions. But just once, only once, Evey wanted to see the emotions painted in his irises, whatever colour they may have been, to prove that he could feel. Anybody could act. With theatrical gestures, inquisitive tilts of the head, stillness played off against manic movement, anybody could portray emotion.
It became something of an obsession. She would find herself staring unabashedly into the black holes that passed for eyes, sometimes for minutes at a time, until V would express embarrassment with an uncomfortable tilt of the head. Often Evey would wonder if that was an a act, too.
She did not stare again.
As the months passed she wondered about the colour of his eyes. What colour would such a contradiction of a man be suited to? Blue, green, brown; inky black, like Guy Fawkes' eyes?
Try as she might she could not see. Instead she imagined the colour of his eyes for herself, imagined that he would one day sweep off his mask and wig as they danced to 'Cry Me A River' and his eyes would be… what colour? And holding what emotions for her?
One day she switched all the lights on in the Shadow Gallery, contradicting its namesake. She lit all the candles she could find in hopes of piercing those black holes with light. She briefly debated the merits of shining a flashlight into V's face, found it to be too like an inquisition and later realised that she was not prepared to deal with the aftermath. This operation required stealth.
Smiling sweetly at V's obvious surprise, she'd simply explained that she was not used to living with so little light. V had shown an emotion, if it could be called that, akin to guilt, and would not meet her eyes until she'd touched his cold, steel face with her warm, pink fingers. At that he'd stilled as if physically frozen, and she had been able to peer safely into his mask.
Nothing. Nothing at all. A blackness so deep she would have said his eyes were two never ending tunnels if she hadn't known it couldn't be true. Then she recalled his horribly deformed, scarred hands and recoiled despite herself. What if V didn't have eyes? It seemed to be the only logical explanation that didn't make sense.
V recovered movement and strode quickly from the room. Evey watched him leave from a different pair of eyes herself, watching as he neatly navigated a path around a suite of armour and skirted the light from the candles. A creature of darkness. Nocturnal. Blind?
She had heard of cases of blindness in which the victim's other senses had heightened to make up for their lack of sight, but to imagine V with such acute senses that he could take down two Fingermen without trouble strayed towards impossible, ridiculous even.
She dismissed the thought as such and moved towards other questions.
Questions that V forced into her head, through ice cold water, burning hot steam and days without food. The torture was sometimes unbearable, sometimes maddening, sometimes she wanted to simply curl up and die. Questions she'd never asked herself became her only companions. The uncertainty of her predicament, not knowing if she'd ever see the light of day again, if she'd see V again, nearly drove her insane. She grew to hate her shadowed tormentor. But not V. She could never hate V.
Upon her release she stared into his mask's eyes and once more was met with nothing. No pain, no regret, no anything. Because masks could not feel emotion.
She could not stay. The ever-present shadowed eyes haunted her every movement, pretending to only glance at her, but Evey somehow felt that those eyes could see deeper than the surface. Not for the first time she wondered if V had eyes at all; if he could see what he had done to her.
Towards the end her thoughts were consumed of Parliament and of V's promise and so there was little space for anything else. The 5th of November was now so close that V's eyes, once an object of fascination and frustration, meant little to her.
She returned, as promised on the day of the 5th.
They danced, and Evey, held so close to his chest, could have glanced up into that smiling visage and seen through the mask to his eyes. But she kept her head tucked against his chest and closed her eyes for fear of the emotion she knew she would see, reflected in her own eyes, if she dared look up.
It was cruel and strangely fitting that she only saw through the mask at the end. But mercy, whilst sometimes kind, had a vengeful sense of humour.
He lay dying in her arms, riddled with Creedy's men's bullets, and told her he loved her. The eerie light in the tunnel shone at an odd angle onto his mask. She saw the emotion in his eyes and knew that he saw her for what she really was. He had seen what he had done to her, and had felt disgusted and triumphant simultaneously.
She saw his real eyes; and smiled for finally seeing through the mask. She saw his real eyes; and sobbed for not seeing it sooner.
Fin
Review please!
EDIT: Fixed some spacing mistakes. Thanks Writer From Rivendell!