This story was a pain to write. I got terribly mixed up with the timeline and ended up having to rewrite most of it. And it was only after I'd written it that I remembered that V said he'd never danced to any of the songs in the jukebox before. So just forget that line for now. Sigh.
Dancing With Death
Tonight a beautiful song was floating from the jukebox, ensnaring her senses and rooting her to the spot.
V danced before her. Entranced, she held her silence and stood back into the shadow of her room's doorway in order to watch him a little longer. Arms wide, he ducked an imaginary partner and was there to catch her fall. His body swayed and spun in perfect synchronisation with the music. Evey could have watched him forever.
"You dance beautifully."
Her voice must have startled him but he finished the step he'd started before turning to look at her casually, then dropped his arms to his sides.
"Yes, well, when you've been by yourself for as long as I have…"
Evey got the distinct impression that he was embarrassed.
"My favourite song," she murmured to break the awkward silence.
"Then we do have more in common than previously thought," V recovered smoothly. Evey thought she could hear a smile in his voice, though with the mask's obnoxious grin muffling his voice it was hard to tell. He held out his hand to her. "Care to dance?"
She hesitated for a long moment, the evening news about Prothero's death still far too fresh in her mind for her liking, but glided forward and accepted his hand. As if V had planned the whole thing, the jukebox immediately switched to the next song, and familiar words caressed her.
Nobody knows it
But you've got a secret smile
And you use it only for me
So use it and prove it
Remove this world in its sadness
I'm losing
I'm bruising
But you can save me from madness
V held her lightly, at arm's length so that Evey would have said he was nervous of touching her if she hadn't known him better. They danced in slow silence, somehow knowing the steps without question. The sway of the music lulled her. V's hands felt strong yet gentle at the same time, and she yearned to rest her head on his chest and let him guide her feet.
" 'I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer,' "(1) V mused. Evey smiled despite herself.
"My mother used to sing this to me, when I was very little, before it was blacklisted," she confided with a soft smile. "How odd to hear it again, all these years later."
"There is no such thing as a coincidence," V said seriously.
Evey nodded slightly, considering the words for a long minute. Did V mean that since before birth she was meant to come here, to meet him, and everything in between? Had some higher being detailed this moment to every breath and beat of the heart? Was she meant to be dancing with him this second, or was that just coincidence? She didn't know, and she wasn't sure she liked the implications of V's complete and utter disbelief in chance.
V's small content sigh startled her. She looked up into his ever-grinning mask and this time sensed the caring smile beneath it.
Caught in the moment, she was tempted to forget all that he was, that just the night before she had witnessed him sparring mercilessly with a suit of armour. Comical at the time, yes, but Evey knew he would have no qualms about slaying a real, living breathing foe just as he had the metal one. Prothero's demanding 'voice of England' floated unbidden into her mind.
"Evey," V said quietly, and she jumped, realising she'd been staring into the inky eyeholes of his grinning façade for far too long. "I've been meaning to enquire," he continued, "Is it really so unbearable here?"
Evey blinked at the question. So innocently asked, such vulnerability in his tone, anticipation in the way he looked at her; as if her answer meant the world to him.
"No," she replied, and gave into temptation. She closed the distance between them and laid her golden curls on his chest. His heart beat a rapid staccato beneath her cheek. "It's not unbearable at all."
Her reply slowed his heartbeat and Evey felt a smile stretch her face to resemble V's grinning mask. The song stopped but they danced on.
Each night onwards V would knock three times on her door, bow courteously and offer her his hand. Each night Evey would delicately accept, and for the length of her favourite song she would forget all that V was as she laid her head on his chest, and danced.
---
The Bishop's hand drew idle circles on her knee. Evey watched the hand warily with one eye as she garbled out the truth to a man who was about to rape her. A Bishop. She saw the untamed hunger in his eager eyes and knew he wasn't taking in a word she was saying. Sweet little girls weren't supposed to talk, they were supposed to lie still and not complain, she surmised.
The hand travelled up her thigh towards her pretty pink miniskirt and she slapped it away in aggravation, pushing herself away from the old man and to the end of the double bed on which they sat. Bishop Liliman's ever-present hands followed her, so she stood, raising her voice to be heard.
"No, listen-!"
On the edge of hysterics she yelled out as he lunged and caught her wrist, pulling her roughly back to the double bed.
His hands at the back of her neck forced her lips down towards his, but, impeccably timed, Evey caught sight of V's familiar black attire. The Bishop paused as he felt Evey become deathly still beneath him. With something of a sixth sense he craned his neck around to see the cause of her stillness, and when he looked back at Evey it was with terrified eyes that knew his fate had come too soon. Evey quickly found herself released from his greedy grasp and she flailed away from the Bishop and V, only then noticing the room had blurred through the crystal facets of her tears.
"Oh, God, she wasn't lying! It's you!"
V inclined his head and stepped towards the Bishop.
Evey turned and fled, flinging open the heavy oak door as if it were weightless, pounding down the corridor and stifling a scream when she found Bishop Liliman's assistant, Dennis, dead.
She came to a halt over his body, fingers pressed against her mouth to prevent any sound escaping, then abruptly turned on her heel and ran back the way she'd come, back to the wooden door she'd seconds ago flung against the wall. Leaning her back against the stone wall outside the room, she listened intently.
"Please, have mercy!"
Heavy footsteps on a wooden floor. The hiss of a blade withdrawn from its sheath.
"Not tonight."
Evey stepped out from behind the wall to see the footsteps stop and the blade flash against the Bishop's throat.
Blood stained her pretty pink skirt red.
---
Her favourite song was playing again. V waltzed about the room very gracefully by himself. Once more hovering in the shadows to spy on his dancing, she was reminded of one similar night all those months before... But now she fancied she could see a silver knife in his hand, that he swayed so elegantly around his next victim; now; he danced with death.
" 'Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under 't,' "(2) she murmured to herself. A large part of her, slowly diminishing as the days passed, wanted to crucify him for everything he'd put her through.
Then he saw her, and abruptly stopped, arms still outstretched ridiculously to hold an invisible partner. With one arm he gestured for her to come closer, and Evey could tell his real face was not smiling tonight.
"An imaginary partner is never again satisfactory once you've had the pleasure of a living one, especially one so light on her feet as you."
An eloquent compliment to cover the tremor of nerves.
Evey felt a fake smile rise of its own accord at the word 'living.' The Bishop's terrified eyes were superimposed in her mind's eye, but she stepped forward with little procrastination to take his hand.
As if her acceptance of his hand had been the answer to a question not yet voiced, V seemed to relax in her embrace.
His hands felt just as warm and comforting as they had before. His leather boots still squeaked quietly when he moved, and his voice still held the same charming, velvety quality that it had before she'd seen firsthand what he was capable of.
And yet she still danced with the devil. It wasn't so hard to imagine V's grinning mask to be a spectre of death itself, leering at her with unknown thoughts and emotions. He stayed hidden in the shadows, always hiding his face from her, always observing his own actions from afar.
The pressure building in her head threatened to suffocate her, and she quickly shut off the tortuous memories. She let the song's soothing melody take centre stage and for a while ceased to think.
So save me
I'm waiting
I'm
needing
Hear me
pleading
And soothe me
Improve me
I'm
grieving
I'm barely
believing now
"Tell me," V broke in conversationally as they waltzed in a neat circle, "Why is this your favourite song, Evey?"
"I don't know. It just was," she said careful to avoid his eyes as she maintained a good distance between their bodies.
" 'There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered,' "(3) V acknowledged. "Past tense," he added with deliberate lightness.
"Yes," she said, "Past tense. We don't have as much in common as I thought."
V stopped dancing but the music continued. "And why is that?" He asked carefully, voice full of trepidation. And rightly so.
Evey twisted away from him, suddenly angry. "It doesn't matter to you, does it? It doesn't matter that people are dead."
V stiffened. He laced his fingers together behind his back, as he always did when he didn't know what to do with his hands. "You are mistaken. It matters very much to me."
"No," Evey said bitterly, interpreting the meaning behind his words correctly, "That's not what I meant. I'm not talking about your vendetta. What matters to you is getting your revenge. Nevermind that Prothero had a family to think of. Nevermind that the bishop had a wife, children, grandchildren-"
"Nevermind that he was quite prepared to cheat on his wife with you," V returned judiciously, and Evey thought she could detect a note of resentment in his otherwise controlled voice.
His clipped tone suggested that she owed him her life, which she did many times over, but she wasn't about to thank him for it. It had been him who'd put her in that awful situation with the Bishop in the first place. It had been him that had shaved her hair and listened to her sobbing at night from the comfort of his own home.
"That isn't the point!" Evey exclaimed, startling even herself by the vehemence of the words. Before her imprisonment she hadn't imagined she'd be able to shout at V, who always appeared so laid back, so frustratingly, infuriatingly calm. Now she stoked the flames of fury resentfully.
"Then what is your point?" V answered evenly, demonstrating that iron self-control Evey knew he possessed.
"You murdered someone and you don't even care," Evey accused childishly. Her nose and eyes stung from the effort taken to stay calm.
"Yes," V agreed. "Though that sounds a little more like a statement than a point, if I may be so bold."
Evey stared at him.
"Ah. I see," V strolled over to the jukebox and delicately switched it off. "You do not like that statement," he spoke as if to the records inside the glass panel, head bowed.
Unsettled and shaking, Evey simply turned on her heel. "No, I don't. I… I'm going to bed."
She took a few deliberate steps away from him, feeling fury froth inside her. Why should she be so angry and V so calm? Why didn't he feel anything for her? Why should she stay here? Halfway to her room she suddenly stopped and whirled around, pointing a shaking finger at V.
And finally, the words she'd always needed to say burst out in the throes of blind rage, "You nearly killed me and you don't even care!"
Evey half expected him to return with some glib comment about 'suffering making her stronger,' and vowed to hit him if he did.
"No," V disagreed to the jukebox, perhaps unable to meet her eyes, "You did nothing to warrant it and I did everything to rationalise it."
V glanced over his shoulder to see Evey slam the door to her bedroom.
---
The next morning he made her egg on toast with freshly squeezed orange juice. She ran a hand over her shaved head as she watched him fiddle with the cooker and hum softly to himself. He was wearing his silly flower-patterned apron and his gloves were on the table.
Evey stared at the ugly scars twisting like snakes across his hands, and suddenly understood.
Fin
(1) Friedrich Nietzsche - The Gay Science
(2) Shakespeare - Macbeth
(3) Nelson Mandela - A Long Walk To Freedom
The song is Secret Smile by Semisonic. So it isn't particularly refined or good to dance to, but the lyrics fit!
Please review, and any constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated. :D