At The End, A Beginning
Summary: The third visitation of Novemeber 5th on Evey's life is cause for reflection.
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Don't own a thing from VfV. This is Just for fun.
He is gone and I am alone. A year has passed, yet I still don't quite believe it.
Remember, remember the fifth of November...how could I forget? That night is twice seared into my memory, twice responsible for profound life changes.
He loved me. I know it in the same elemental way that I know the sky is 'up' and earth is 'down'. I knew it so far back as the scaredy-cat phase. Knowing it scared me. A man like V was so far beyond my experience that everything about him terrified me. I was most afraid of the fact that I had feelings for him too. He was a risk I could not take.
So rather than face what I feared I betrayed him. I ran back to my mouse hole and compounded my general fear of everything with the specific fear of his disappointment.
He paid me back of course though I doubt he ever saw it that way. I believe that he decided to simulate my imprisonment because he could not allow me to be what I had become to him. He could not abide my weakness. He would say that he did it to liberate me. His version of logic could turn imprisonment into freedom. His experience could too. And in the end, so could my own.
Now that it is too late, I believe him when he said that it was the most difficult thing he had ever done. He inflicted pain on me, it is true, but in doing so he hurt himself far worse. I came away from that horrid experience a stronger person than I ever thought myself capable of being. But in contrast I think it diminished him, shook his self confidence and rocked his conviction in the trueness of his chosen course. I believe that is what ultimately killed him. He was willing to die because he saw no redeeming virtue in himself and no personal future to keep him going.
It is my fault he died.
I avoided him until that final night but he never left my thoughts all the time we were separated. It was during that time that I discovered the truth of his speech. There was the literal essence of what he said but beneath them lurked layers of metaphor and emotion that gave new and more important meaning to his words. Why was I so slow?
It is my fault that he died.
He wanted so much for me. He left me, paid the ultimate price so that I could have those things he thought I should possess. He never specifically named them but I know he wanted me to have the things he didn't. He wanted me to have a companion and lover, a friend so true I would never be alone. They were the things he could not hope for himself and I was too late in offering.
It was that last night, November forth when I finally worked up the courage to face him. I knew what I had to do, what I had wanted to do all along. I succumbed to fear and later to anger. I could not forgive him for what he did to me because my pride got in the way. To forgive him was to make everything he did to me disappear. I admit I wanted to punish him for it and the only way I could do that was to remove the one thing he wanted more than anything - my friendship.
I regret that it took me so long to overcome my fear, anger and lastly and most cruelly, my pride. It is my fault that he is dead.
I went to him prepared to be an open book, ready to reveal everything that was in my heart. I wanted to tell him that I was his, that I could not imagine a life without him. I wanted to tell him that the last few months without him had been a shell of a life, a mere husk without substance. He was the center of my thoughts, the reason I pushed on when I was imprisoned, the one thing precious enough to me to be worth my life. Even my soul belonged to him, had been claimed by him those first weeks in the Shadow Gallery. I planned to tell him, to show him, to do whatever it took to convince him that for the first time my judgment was not clouded by fear or anger or pride.
But he remained oblivious as only someone filled with self hatred can. And that was to be my mission, to rid him of his self loathing as he had rid me of my fear. The approach would be much different but I was confident the result would be the same. He would see himself though my eyes just as he had become my mirror.
It was too late though. By the time I finally went to him too much had already happened, the wheels were set in motion and he was on a collision course with a destiny he had resigned himself long ago. As I danced in his arms, held far away from him by his sense of propriety, I lost the words I meant to say. They dried up on my lips and I gave in to the safety of small talk and surface niceties. Why did I let that happen?
It is my fault that he is dead.
When he gave me the gift of the train it was way too late to tell him I loved him. His course was unalterably set. Why should he have believed me? I had had months to tell him, to convince him, that above all things he was the most important. But I waited until the last second when the finality of the moment would be enough to induce nearly anyone to lie to save a life. He couldn't believe me. Oh how I wish I had returned to him sooner if even by only a day. I could have made it clear to him that he had something more than revolution to live for. He had me.
By procrastinating, I killed him.