Patience is a Virtue
The suffocation began to take hold again, like a villainous vine creeping up to choke the pure flower from the sun and drag it down to the tendril's all-consuming darkness. It was internal anguish and how he both hated and loved every moment of it. It spoke of an unfathomable depth that was greatly unexplainable, a highly respectful ambience smoothing out the harsh wrinkles in a shirt. It was fascinating and reproachful. The need to want to find out more was shoved back by the need to get one's head above water -- never mind the pretty visuals beneath such dark waves. It was a terrible battle that threatened to rip him in half if he wasn't careful.
V stood, a silent shadow in front of a wall of televisions, musing vicariously over the lives of those walking hither and yon to their purposeful destinations. But there was one that instantly caught his eye and birthed the cause of his current emotion. He knew her well and yet not at all – a simple black dot upon a canvas of red, an auspicious beauty in the middle of squalor and rubbish, purity amongst the tainted, good amidst evil, an angel entertaining devils and demons. He pulled his fingers tightly into his palm as his gaze pierced her form through the glowing screen. He watched and waited, his heart feeling as if it were outside his body and held within the now balled up fist in his hand. His grip tightened and his heart tripped over its pulse in response.
Every room was tangibly connected, the floors interlocking upon each other like a living puzzle, a very labyrinth with no discernable way out. Upon reaching the end of the rainbow, there lies no pot of gold, merely broken promises and dying wishes born from childhood fancy to be unremorsefully murdered by adulthood's reality. There was no room left for such dreams within a dreamless world. But he resided beneath the concrete streets, like a prisoner within the confines of his own architecture -- a beautiful incarceration. He remembered bitterly the long years he had spent alone and enjoyed it but now that he knew such a thing as companionship, he desired something that felt not his to have. He felt it had something to do with the very make up of his genetics, the way he was built, the way his mind worked, the way past experience shown him again and again that such beautiful things were always brief in their euphoria and cannot be revived once choked to death.
She disappeared from sight into the Kitty Kat Keller and his dark gaze flickered over the moving bodies of strangers: mothers, children, husbands, wives, lovers, workers, friends … the human condition was the same for any and all; it was the profound depth of such a condition that set everyone apart. V shut his eyes. Everyone was warranted some kind of reprieve. After all, there were so many things that lay hidden from such a steely gaze as his, certain ideas that were beyond his reach to comprehend without the proper information to better scrutinize and avoid useless assumption. But he couldn't deny the change that was building inside nor the weight of his work dragging him down. Patience is a virtue, said Piers Plowman once. A virtue that was very hard to keep from turning into a vice of itself.