Here do I present my latest offering to the FanFiction altar in response to requests that I continue.
This fic shall be more than one chapter in length, my persistent friends. I hope you enjoy this angle.
Disclaimer: I do not own this concept, this movie, these characters, or these symbols.
Sacrifice
Bursts of scintillating light, burning against the darkness...
Thunderous chords shaking the very earth in a familiar triumph...
Thousands of heads turned skyward, watching the future descend...
This is his world, his dream, his memory.
It is right that he should witness this, his world made flesh. Right that he should not be part of the fantastic explosion, but watch from afar until the life shudders from his body.
Evey had created a grand funeral procession, complete with overture and explosives. A true Viking send-off.
And yet here he sat, on an anonymous roof of London, the idea stripped away and painted across the sky in a burst of sparks. His name. His symbol. Not blood-red, like the life that drained from his body and stained the ground, not black, as his clothes, the mask's cold eyes, the handles of his knives, but white. Flushed with the glory of new hope, of peace, a fierce white.
He wondered if Evey was watching his final display. His coup de grâce.
Somewhere from his haze of pain came a sharp spike and his breath hissed. Dying never got any easier.
The mask felt so heavy, spangled with bullets, a sharp circle of steel. But even now, at the bitter end, he had not the courage to remove it. The ghoulish grin was as much a part of him now as any other limb.
Twenty years, he had planned this revenge. Twenty years, he had endured.
And only now, the night of his death, did he truly live for the first time. How cruel that love had come now, the moment when he most wanted to die.
The fireworks had faded now.
His letter drifted in a haze of smoke, disappearing into the night sky.
All was dark. The people drifted off, free.
A shower of grinning masks were laid down in breathless homage on the lawn where so many had stood. All watching the sky. Silently approving. Except one.
It was so cold. His wounds had faded from fire to ice. There was nothing more to give through those bullet holes. The black fabric of his cloak was heavy with blood and offered no warmth. The stars offered no light. Her face swam over his clouded vision.
He drew a knife, its blade glittering, a deadly point of death.
He wondered vaguely if Evey should ever return to his Shadow Gallery, his domain of shadows and beauty. He wondered if she should ever find the note he had written, a few scraps of song that had once meant something.
"So when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And music shall untune the sky."
He raised the knife to eye level, appreciating its beauty. How could something so beautiful be used for such carnage? And, oh, the death he had wreaked upon his victims.
He was an idea no longer. He was just a man. Guy Fawke's visage could no longer hide him.
Raising the knife to his wig, he deftly cut the scraps of leather that held it in place.
And only the sky dared witness his sacrifice.
She stood.
Not a frightened girl, not a confused child. Cleansed by rain, by lightning. Her dark eyes were filled with peace.
Somewhere a voice sent a prayer.
A breath. A promise. A vendetta.
"Evey."
A woman and a mask searched the sky for hope…
And found the dawn.
Please review, if it doth pleaseth you.
The song lyrics are from John Dryden's poem, a song created for Saint Cecilia's Day, 1687.
Taluliaka
