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Light and Cloud Shadow
A "V for Vendetta" short story by
Tina Price.
Preview: V's life was forever changed the night he brought an unconscious Evey Hammond down to his home. Little had he realized that they would ultimately change each other's life... for the better.
Disclaimer: V for Vendetta and all characters therein are the property of Warner Brothers Entertainment Company and DC Comics.
Authors note: This story is rated R. Criticism and advice are always appreciated!
Chapter Four: Of hope and Heartbreak (continued)
They stared at each other over their shot glasses, as time seemed to stop. Then he turned away from her for a moment, upending both his mask and the shot. When he turned back, she stopped staring at him and likewise downed her scotch.
"Ahhh..." he sighed. "I had forgotten just how good this particular bottle was."
She nodded. "I'm feeling warmer already." Then, she put down the shot glass, her eyes never leaving his mask. "So, are you going to ask me or not?"
He felt a sudden trepidation over her meaning and quickly moved to pour them more scotch. "Ask you what?" he finally asked.
"Don't you want to know what I was doing in that phony detainment center of yours?"
"What makes you think it's phony?" He kept his voice even, reasonable but knew that he was getting into dangerous territory with her. Still, he was past the point of lying to her.
"Are you telling me that you've actually tortured people in there?" she sounded horrified.
He merely nodded.
"Bloody hell!" She downed another shot and then coughed as it went down the wrong way.
"Evey, you have to understand," he explained as he thumped her back for her, "There are those in positions of power in this government who actually enjoy abusing and killing people everyday. But worse yet are those who work for them, who know what they do and yet remain silent. They are the worst dregs of this society. On occasion in the past I've had no alternative than to interrogate these so-called human-beings to that I could obtain the information I needed for my plan."
"So you've tortured people in there." The look she gave him was one of disgust.
It made him feel ill to see her regarding him in such a way, but he was determined to see this through. He again upended a shot and then faced her.
"I'm sorry if you're offended by this. I daresay that some of the people who have seen the inside of my detainment cells were probably responsible for your parents' arrest or even their deaths."
Her eyes widened in shock and he reached out to refill her glass as he let his words sink in.
"Now tell me, Evey, what were you doing in the detainment center?" he finally asked, handed her the scotch and changing the subject
She seemed to regain her poise and settled back deeper into the cushions. At least she no longer seemed repulsed by him. "Actually, I was trying to figure out where you slept.".
He was completely surprised and a few seconds ticked by before he managed to reply, "Bored were we? Why ever should you care where I sleep?"
She flushed. "You sound miffed."
"When have I ever been 'miffed' at you? Although, to be honest, I am upset that your curiosity has led you to hurt yourself." With a sigh, he pulled off his boots, threw himself into the opposite corner of the sofa and lifted one bent leg up onto its cushions. "And here I thought that you went in there to confront what happened to you, to exorcise your demons, so to speak."
Evey ran her eyes over his legs, then flushed a deeper crimson as she realized he was watching her. "I did BEGIN to come to terms with what you did to me there," she protested. "but, it will be a while, if ever, before I can say that I've made peace with it."
They both fell silent for a time.
He was thinking of how best to continue the subject of her false imprisonment when she shifted slightly, her foot contacting his own beneath the hem of the robe he had lent her. He felt a jolt of excitement at that small contact. Had she done it intentionally?
"V, may I ask you something?" Her words were somewhat thick, her eyelids growing heavy.
"Anything," he replied, straightening somewhat to show his interest.
"First, let me say that where you sleep is of interest to me because I am the one responsible for usurping your bed," she explained. "Now please tell me, why do you sleep in that awful place? Why would you want to revisit so dreadful a time in your life?"
How best to explain this to her without hurting her? Putting his foot back on the floor, he scooted across the sofa so that he was seated beside her. Then, hesitantly, as though doubting whether he should be this close to her, he took her hands in his own.
"Evey, one stone floor in this place is just as cold as another. We humans are creatures of habit. We feel more comfortable with things we know. I suppose that may be in part why I first chose that particular room to bed down in. I chose to go on sleeping in there because it reminded me of my purpose – of why I have toiled so hard these past twenty years." He sighed and squeezed her hands. "Truth be told, I feel that I'm in danger of losing sight of that goal, and Evey... that is the one thing I cannot do."
She stared up at him, comprehension visible in her expression.
If he were a normal man, he would have kissed her then, he realized sadly. Instead, he took in her posture, the way she slumped against him and realized she was exhausted.
"It's very late and I dare say that you're tired," he stated. "Are you feeling any better?"
"Much, thank-you," she nodded. "My shoulder has stopped pounding and I actually feel warm."
Standing up, he pulled her to her feet. "Right then, off you go."
As she stood, she swayed slightly. Whether from fatigue or drink or a combination of both, he couldn't say. Almost without realizing he as going to do it, he scooped her up in his arms.
"V! What are you doing?" she gasped. "You don't need to carry me."
"I thought it was obvious; I'm taking you to bed," he answered, blushing as he realized what he had just said. To cover up the awkwardness of the moment he immediately headed off towards her chamber.
Evey offered no further protest and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, all the while studying him intently.
He wondered what she might be thinking. He himself was indulging in a brief fantasy; imagining that he was indeed 'taking her to bed'. How wonderful it would be to die, at last having the memory of so sweet a moment!
As he entered her room and prepared to release her, he again reminded himself that he was not meant for such love, such sweetness. Everything that he was, was destined to end the night he fulfill his one purpose in this life. Then, and only then would he finally rest.
Even if Evey came to love him, how could he allow it? How could he give himself over to her and then tell her that he would be taken from her in a few short months?
Sighing inwardly, he pulled back the covers and placed her in the bed. As she removed his robe her nightgown was snared by the material and hiked up over one smooth thigh.
He thought again about the strangeness of human nature: that the unintentional baring of so little could excite him so much more than the forced viewing of her entire unclothed body.
Quickly he accepted the proffered robe and he tucked her under the covers, one hand lingering on her shoulder. "Good night, Evey," he said, with a small bow, intending to leave the room as quickly as possible.
She caught his hand. "Wait."
"Yes?"
"You're not going to spend the night... there, are you?"
"No. Actually I was going to remain out on the sofa in case your shoulder gets worse during the night. You'll let me know right away if that happens?"
Her eyes softened. "You could stay here," she offered. "There's plenty of room for both of us."
Her offer was like an arrow piercing him. Was she innocently offering to share the bed, or was she hoping that it would lead to more? He knew what he most fervently wished to reply, but also that he would do the right thing.
"That is an offer that most men could not refuse," he whispered, running the back of a gloved hand across her cheek. "but I'm afraid that as a gentleman, I must. You're ill and you've had a bit to drink. In good conscience I cannot accept your most generous offer."
She pouted, then smiled to show him she was acting. "Alright. Sleep well then."
Again he made a small bow, then turned out the light and exited the room, leaving the door open a crack behind him.
Returning to the sofa, he partook of some more scotch and then settled down with the robe as a blanket.
His body was weary from three days toil in the tube, but his mind was active as always. Since Larkhill, he rarely slept more than a few hours in any given day.
He doubted he would get even that much sleep this night.
Evey awoke from a vivid nightmare to find that it was still continuing. Strong hands gripped her own as she fought, kicking and screaming.
"Evey! Evey!"
With a start, she finally realized that she was awake, that V was gripping her arms and calling her name.
As soon as she stopped fighting, he released her hands and with a tremulous moan, she threw her arms around him, shaking with reaction.
"Hush now," he soothed, holding onto her and rubbing her back. "it was only a dream."
Only a dream... If only he knew that her nightmare had been about him, about him suddenly metamorphosing right before her eyes into a monster who flogging her, tortured her... In her dream she had pleaded with him, begged him not to do it, but he had simply continued on as though he couldn't hear her.
She took some deep breaths and after a time calmed herself. After all, here he was, the V she knew, holding her and comforting her as she had wished him to in the dream.
Slowly, she straightened up and pushed away from him.
"I'm alright now."
"Are you certain?" He asked, still sounding concerned.
She nodded. "It was a recurrent nightmare. I'll be fine."
"Is there anything I can do to help?"
She stared up at the darkened eyes of the mask and tried to recall the true eyes that hid behind them. How could she tell him that he was the cause of her pain and that only he could end it?
"Not right now," she finally replied.
He studied her a moment and then rose and poured her a glass a water from the tray he had delivered while she slept. "Lemon?" he asked, then plopped a wedge in when she nodded.
She took the glass gratefully and quickly downed its entire contents. She had been very thirsty. "Thank-you," she said, handing the empty glass back to him.
He refilled it before setting it back on the tray. "Once again I bid you goodnight," was all he said, as he bowed, turned out the lights and swept from the room.
After a time, she heard him settling down on the couch, then all was quiet.
...maddeningly quiet.
Time slowly ticked by as she tossed and turned and sleep continued to elude her. Out in the Shadow Gallery she even heard V snort once, then sigh and become still again, apparently sound asleep.
After what seemed to be an eternity, but which her bedside clock said had been only 41 minutes, she gave up and padded out of her room. Perhaps a book to read...
Although she literally had thousands in her own room, she decided to go in search of the one V had recently been reading. She paused in her search as she passed close by the sofa.
...And there he was, stretched out on his back, one arm dangling so that his fingers brushed the floor, while his other hand lay atop the book she searched for, which was upon his chest.
So much for reading that, she thought.
As she turned away, intent on returning to her room, he stirred, then spoke, his voice groggy.
"Evey? Are you STILL awake?"
"Sorry," she mumbled. "I was just wandering about. I didn't mean to wake you."
He sat up and scratched his head through the wig. "Don't trouble yourself over it," he yawned. "I was only dozing." Then his mask swiveled around to better see her. "I do wish you would come sit down and tell me what this is all about."
When she hesitated, he patted the cushion next to him. "Please, I insist. Let's get to the bottom of this and get it over with."
With a heartfelt sigh and feeling as though she were approaching the hangman, she complied.
He threw an arm around her and squeezed her shoulder in a fatherly fashion. "Now then," he began. "I know that I was the cause of your nightmare..."
At her shocked look, he explained, "You were yelling aloud for me to 'stop'. Given that, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that I'm the problem. This is about my 'setting you free', isn't it?"
She shook her head. "No, this is about you torturing me," she corrected. "V, how could you do such a thing? Do I really mean so little to you that you could do that to me?"
He froze, his hand stilling on her shoulder, then the mask tipped down to stare at her. "Quite the contrary," he replied.
"I don't understand."
"I don't think that I can even begin to make you understand what it cost me to hurt you like that," he explained. "I did try once before to tell you, then thought better of it. I knew you weren't ready to listen..."
"What it cost YOU?" she cut him off, feeling an anger rising up in her the likes of which she had never known. She shoved him and then scooted away. "WHAT IT COST YOU!"
"Evey, please..."
But she'd jumped to her feet and was rounding on him, "How dare you sit there and tell me how it hurt you! You beat me! You burned me with cigarettes! You kept me from sleeping! You made me wet and soil myself by binding me and leaving me on the floor for a full day!"
V shrank back and flinched with each accusation, yet refuse to look away from her or deny them.
"You stripped me... "
"V, you humiliated me sexually in the shower room," her voice began to tremble as she fought not to cry.
The mask turned away from her then and stared down at the floor.
"Are you going to tell me THAT hurt you?" she accused. "Are you going to tell me that you didn't enjoy that?"
His mask swiftly returned to her face. "Evey, no!" he protested, but again she interrupted him.
"Don't you dare lie to me!" she continued. "Don't you dare tell me that you didn't want to see me naked, that you didn't enjoy tearing my clothes off or using that power washer on me... scouring me until my skin was raw and I was screaming.."
"Please don't..." he pleaded, his hands clenching into fists atop his legs.
She was crying openly now, but managed to choke out the rest; "As I hung there in pain, you dialed down the spray and used it on my privates, forcing me to climax and then making cruel jokes about how you could always tell which ones were whores..."
Tears rolled down her cheeks as the pain she had been holding inside was finally out in the open.
V reached out to her, but she stepped back a pace and shook her head.
"Go ahead," she taunted. "Explain to me why you had to carry it that far. Tell me that it hurt you to do it..." here she hissed, "...tell me you didn't stand there with an aching hard-on the entire time."
He came to his feet so suddenly that she jumped.
He cried out and in a blur of motion, grasped the bottle of scotch off the coffee table and lobbed it the entire length of the Gallery. Then he was moving, even as the bottle exploded against the far wall, destroying several pictures in the bargain.
She looked around, stunned to see that he had disappeared from view.
Somewhere in the gallery a heavy door slammed shut.
"V?"
Realizing that she may have gone too far, that she might have severely damaged their relationship, Evey sank to the floor and sobbed as though her heart were breaking.
Equal measures of pain, fear, regret and even, strangely enough, relief filled her.
Truthfully, she was deeply troubled by his reaction to her accusations. She never would have imagined the usually reserved, cool man she had come to know having such a passionate fit. He had always seemed so in control, so poised, so civilized around her...
...Still, she had gotten her pound of flesh back from him and felt better for it. Let him suffer for a time. She had little doubt that he would eventually understand why she had to do this once he thought things through.
Drying her eyes, she stood up, snatched his book off the coffee table where he had left it and went back to bed.
Hours later, Evey was startled awake by the sound of an incredible din. Good God! Was the Gallery falling down about her?
She sat bold upright and listened, trying to make out what was happening as her heart hammering wildly in her chest.
Another loud boom echoed through the place, followed by a loud crash and some miscellaneous cursing.
"V?"
She glanced at the clock and saw that it was nearly six in the morning. She had been asleep a few hours.
Was he still THAT upset and what precisely was he doing?
She rose from her bed and made her way out into the Gallery itself. If she wasn't mistaken, he had retreated back to the detainment facility when he'd run off earlier that morning, so that is where she headed.
As she reached the heavy wooden door, another loud boom reverberated from the other side, again followed by a crash and some shouting, although she could not make out what he was saying.
It was as she went to open the door that she was surprised to discover it locked. With her hand placed upon it, she could feel as well as hear the thudding of rhythmic pounding. It went on for some minutes and was then followed by the same kind of boom and crash that had awakened her.
She lifted her hand as if to knock and then paused, torn between knocking and the conviction that he probably wouldn't answer, even if he did hear her. Her hand lowered. It would probably be best to let him exorcise his demons. When he was ready he would seek her out. If not then she would wait for the right opportunity to seek him out. In the meanwhile, she really didn't see this as something to be concerned with... or so she tried to convince herself.
Looking for some way in which to pass the time while taking her mind off the din he was making, she decided to cook breakfast.
The cacophony continued unabated as Evey finally gave up trying to eat a full hour later. She had already cleaned up the dishes and saved him a plate, but had lost her own appetite from worry.
Perhaps a nice shower to take her mind off the situation...
Six hours later two separate dishes sat wrapped upon the kitchen table: breakfast and lunch. Evey had cleaned or dusted most of the objects in the gallery and now sat upon the sofa with the TV volume turned up as loudly as she could bear it. Her nerves were shot and her conscience weighed heavily upon her.
She was beginning to think that she could take it no longer, that she would have to break down that door and make him stop, when, with a final crash, the noise suddenly came to an end.
She turned off the television, barely able to believe it, but there it was; blessed silence.
Would he come out now?
She stood up and as she turned, he appeared directly in front of her. The hair at the base of her neck stood on end at the silent, unnatural way in which he conjured himself and she wondered yet again if he were human at all.
For a moment they stared at each other in silence.
Evey noticed that he was filthy, his wig, mask and clothes coated with gray dust.
"V.. Please let me apologize..." she began.
He held up a hand and she could see that his glove was torn and bloody. "Please don't..." he interrupted her. "Evey, I have a few things to say to you and I want you to just let me get through it."
She nodded.
"The first thing you need to know is that I cannot and will not apologize for those things I have done in pursuit of justice. This is who I am. Justice is my very reason for living. I cannot ask you to accept who I am or even what I am, but I hope that you can accept the truth of what I have just told you."
Before she could speak, he again held up his hand.
"I understand your anger over the way I..." he seemed to almost choke, then continued, "treated you."
"I acted only from the deepest conviction that what I did would finally bring you the peace, the strength of mind and will you said you wished you had."
"My dear, you leveled some dire accusations at me. You accused me of torturing you sexually for my own pleasure..." Here he broke off and seemed to have trouble remaining in control of himself. She noticed that he seemed to be shaking, though from a feeling of deep personal insult or shame, she couldn't say.
With a sigh, he began pacing. "Evey, you have to understand that torture such as I endured, as I then turned upon you, is dependent upon completely dehumanizing the victim. A major component of this involves removing all choice from them, of making them understand that they belong to you, that you decide when they eat, when they sleep, when they relieve themselves. You make them understand that you OWN them."
He stopped pacing and stared down at her. "And the best way to drive this point home, is..."
"Rape," she finished.
He nodded. "Yes. If I had truly treated you as government prisoners were treated, you would have been burned with blow torches, cut, raped, mutilated... and humiliated in every way possible... continuously. You would have suffered permanent damage to both your body and your mind, and that only if you lived."
She was stunned as it finally sunk in that V had been a prisoner, that he had been tortured for real and most likely raped as well.
Just then he moved as though to place his hands on her shoulders, but then stopped himself and merely regarded her. "I could never have done that to you, Evey, so I had to find another way."
"The power spray."
He nodded, then turned his back to her. "As for your allegations that I enjoyed these treatments, that I derived a sexual thrill from them..." He sighed deeply. "I fear that you were, to some extent, correct."
"V... please, you don't have to..."
He turned to face her. "Yes I do, Evey. I need to say this for myself as well as for your sake."
He gestured at himself with both hands. "The fact is that I am still a man. I'll not go into the reasons why I was one of the very few men at Larkhill to keep his genitalia, but as little of myself as I did keep, I am very grateful indeed for it."
Again he began to pace, restlessly running his fingers over the back of the sofa, the side table, and any other objects he passed as he wandered. Evey immediately understood that he was struggling to find the right words with which to say something he found very difficult.
"It made me ill every time I mistreated you, Evey. I was sick the entire time you were my unknowing prisoner. When I starved you, I starved myself. When you ate dog food because you could no longer refuse it, then so did I. Every single night you spent sleeping on the floor of your cell, I slept on the floor of the cell next to you. And when you cried all the night long, my soul bled until I thought my heart would give out."
"So it was that much worse when my body betrayed me during those 'delousing treatments'. Evey, my body betrayed me even as yours betrayed you during those sessions. And I hated myself all the more for it, but at the same time..." He froze then, his hands clenching and unclenching by his side.
"V?" She moved to lay a hand on his arm, but he jerked away.
"I do not deserve your pity, Evey," he growled. "Don't you understand? As much as I hated myself, I also enjoyed those sessions... because..." Again he seemed to choke and he had to take a deep breath before he was steady enough to continue. "For a time, I could imagine that I wasn't tormenting you, that I was touching you with my hands, not the power washer. For a time I could dissociate my mind from the torture and pretend that I was making love to you..."
"And in the end, to my eternal shame, I am not certain that I didn't perhaps drag you into that shower room more often than I needed to."
Without another word, he turned and all but fled the room, leaving her standing there, her heart aching for him.
Next time: Memories
