Author's Note: A birthday present for the lovely and talented Rouen French.
On Account of Darkness
It isn't until later that she realizes she has always seen him best in the dark. She has spent so much time trying to look through the eye slits of the mask, coming to imagine that he has only gaping emptiness beneath it. And yet it is in the shadows that the sharp lines of the façade begin to blur. It is in the darkness that the mask appears so dynamic it is nearly organic. In the darkness, Evey thinks that perhaps his true face is finally revealed to her, if only for a moment.
Sitting in the darkness of her cell, Evey thinks back to the first time he rescued her. She closes her eyes and lets her mind wander to the shape of his mask gently glowing in the moonlight. To the little burst of hope it afforded her heart.
"The multiplying villainies of nature do swarm upon him…"
Evey presses gritty eyelids together and plays the moment over and over again in her mind. She tries to feel the moment that she first recognized him as her savior, wishes to have her stomach flutter with the faint promise that she just might get out of this alive and whole yet. When it doesn't come, she shuts her eyes tighter, until spots come blood-red on the backs of her lids. Now she tries to conjure the fear, feel the painful hold of the club against her neck, rancid breath on the back of her neck making her stomach turn. When that doesn't come either, Evey curls up on the floor with her arms around her knees and sobs dryly, because the tears have abandoned her too.
When she has at last come in from the storm, and the warm water of the claw-footed bathtub replaces the cold sting of raindrops on her arms and shoulders, Evey's mind wanders curiously back to Gordon Deitrich's yard and the beginning of her captivity. She saw his eyes then, didn't she? She remembers the chill they sent through her even unwittingly, as they caught the moonlight just before the black bag was stuffed over her head. It makes her shiver afresh as she remembers, and yet…yet she has no memory of what the little flash of him she has seen was like. Funny, how she can have such a visceral memory of the moment, and yet retain no information.
And she has to have seen his face sometime over the past weeks, hasn't she? She gets the impression that he's been unmasked the whole time he's visited her in captivity. Watching her, for once, with only his own unshielded eyes. But always, always from the shadows.
No matter though. Now the mask is back in place, obdurate as ever, and he is taking care to stay in the light. She thinks that maybe he's afraid of letting her see.
The next time he finds her in the dark, it is to wrest her from the grips of a nightmare. Evey is falling from the imaginary sill of a window that has disappeared, and she can never seem to hit the ground. The pain is coming, she knows it must, and yet she is stuck in eternal dread of it.
"Evey."
She is dimly aware of his gloves on her arms, but can't quite gain the strength to shake off the dream.
"V, help!" Evey sits bolt upright in bed, hands thrown instinctively in front of herself to break the imaginary fall. V's hands to go her waist as she jolts out of the dream, and she falls back in surprise, her back colliding with his chest. He lets out a little puff of breath at the impact, though she is certain her weight could not have hurt him.
"You saved me," she murmurs breathlessly a moment later, then laughs at her own foolishness.
"Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety." 1His voice seems to have dropped a notch, and it rumbles through her back and shoulders, making her dizzy all over again.
"A pretty picture," says Evey, hoping that he will stay if she can get him talking. But he is already moving away from her, settling her gently against the pillows, adjusting the blankets to wrap more securely around her.
The night before she is to leave, Evey finds her way into his bedroom. She can feel more than see the mask lying on the bedside table. She knows that is where it is from the way she hears him sit up in a panic, rustling the sheets. From the tension that hangs heavy in the air when he makes no further move. Wordlessly, Evey closes the door, plunging them both into complete darkness.
"Night's black Mantle covers all alike,"2 she says, sitting on the edge of the bed. "I'm not going to look."
"I know." He sounds sad, she thinks, resigned. Has he somehow guessed her intentions to leave him?
"Can I stay here tonight?" she asks, suddenly hearing the child in herself once more. "I don't want anything," she adds hastily, "I just can't be alone right now."
He makes no answer but a short intake of breath. Evey takes his lack of a reply as silent agreement. He moves over as she lifts her legs up onto the side of the bed and feels for the edge of the blankets in the dark. She is so convinced that he will keep a safe distance between them, she nearly cries out at the sudden sensation of his arms winding around her.
Listening to his breathing in the dark, Evey fights the urge to kiss him.
When she wakes, there is a lamp burning beside the bed, and he is gone.
When they meet for the last time, Evey secretly hopes for it to be in the dark. She longs to revisit that place they found on their final night together. But when she arrives, the mask is already on, and the Gallery is ablaze with light.
Evey sighs and lets her eyes fall closed as V wraps one gloved hand around the curve of her waist.
For now, she will have to make do with memories of the night.
1 William Shakespeare
2 Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas