AUTHOR'S NOTE: Choleric, linked with "bile", means a person is predisposed toward anger and furious outbursts. This is the least developed of V's traits (in my not-so-humble opinion), at least as he displays them toward Evey.

xXx

He exploded away from her, breaking their embrace with all the violence of a bomb.

"V—"

"No, that's quite enough, Evey." He took a deep breath; she watched his shoulders rise and fall with it. "What is behind this mask deserves imprisonment."

"Oh come off it, V!" Evey threw her arm wide, gesturing to all of his possessions, to him. "When are you going to stop feeling sorry for yourself? When are you going to take responsibility for what you are? Everyone else has to take responsibility, but you don't?"

"I have taken responsibility for my actions and I'm prepared for the consequences. I knew when I began to walk this path nearly twenty years ago that it would end in my eventual death."

"That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about me."

"You?" Anger surged in him as he looked at her. Had he not tried to allow her a measure of self-governance? Had he not tried to offer her a way to assist him? And when she had thrown them back in his face, had he not let her be, regardless of the threat she presented? And it was still all about her?

"Yes, me. I know that there is more to you than the mask."

She looked at him, his knives absent from his person, knowing that unarmed as he was, he was dangerous, and yet, her fear was gone, washed away with the rain so many weeks ago. When she spoke again, her anger was gone, replaced with a calm he envied.

"You released me from my prison, now I will release you from yours, V."

"And if I do not want to be released?" The silky threat of violence lay behind that mask, but—Heaven help him!—she only smiled.

"You didn't offer me a choice, V."

She shrugged off her coat, heaping it on the floor. V's mask, that awesome fortress, gave nothing away. Evey slipped off her boots, and then reached to the collar of her shirt, undoing the first, second, third buttons.

"Evey," he said tightly. "Don't make choices you'll regret. Don't do this."

"Are you begging on your behalf or mine, V?" Her tone was playful, but her eyes continued to look through the holes in his mask, look though his eyes and into the core of him.

"That was hardly begging. I'm simply imploring you to be aware of your decisions."

The fourth button popped free. He swallowed hard; strange that a woman could bring his defenses down with relative ease, where the British government had tried so hard and failed. The fifth button. She eased her shirt off her shoulders, and her skin warmed in the Gallery's lighting. He'd seen her breasts before, during her confinement in his cells, but this was different. She was revealing herself to him, her face as open as she'd ever been during any of their long discussions, during any of her torture (oh, the irony!)

Honesty was painted on her face, all over her exposed skin. God help him, he gravitated toward her as she pulled the shirt off her arms. The clean smell of soap, of the damp outdoors, hit his nose. She kept him in her thrall, her eyes plumbing the darkness of the slits in the mask. Evey reached for the top button of her trousers.

"Evey, please." His voice had lost none of its gravity, though he was strained to the breaking point. She smiled sweetly at him, stepping closer and embracing his stiffened arms. "V, please," she parroted back at him.

"You don't know what you're asking for," he ground out, his normal theatricality crushed beneath the boot of desire. "You won't like what you get."

"I'm not asking for a perfect romance. I'm asking for you. I want the man behind the mask. It was no ideal that picked me up from the floor of BTV. It was no ideal that asked me to dance with him. Can't you understand, V?" she asked. Her face looked at him, pleading and questioning at the same time. "Can't you understand that I need you?"

He groaned, his breath catching. She would say something like that, ask that of him; didn't she realize that dying was difficult enough to do without leaving someone behind?

"I am not a man, Evey. I am a monster, and this is a monster's body. A monster's body," he said, his gloved hands slid up her arms and then around her shoulders, clamping on with a painful grip. "Not mine."

"V, that's not good enough." Her hand closed over his, and she picked it up, holding his by the wrist. His claw-like grip released her shoulder reluctantly. She tugged at the fingers of his gloves, but his curled his fingers into a fist. "There's no point in resisting. I've seen these hands without their gloves." A pause, that impenetrable mask leering at her, and then his hand relaxed. She removed the glove and it dropped to the floor, the leather hitting the stone with a loud slap.

V's hand was mottled and roped with the scars of fire, the color of meat. "Are you satisfied—"he began, but his words stopped as she dropped her cheek to the back of his hand, where the unnatural shine of scar tissue formed a smooth plane. The sneer that had curled his natural lips faded, replaced by a silent moan of shock. And then her lips, her breath on his own skin, and he could stand it no longer.

He crushed her to him, hearing her gasp, before flinging her away from him. She landed on the floor, and he fought within himself, trying wildly to regain control, his breathing ragged. Evey was slow to get up, slow to face him, and when she did, she looked at him without judgment, without reproach.