Disclaimer: If V were mine, halfway through the movie someone in the audience would have said, 'Hey, why is that short girl tackling V and dragging him offscreen?' None of it is. Alan Moore, Wachowski Brothers, David Lloyd, Vertigo, and men in scary business suits own V and Evey. I just think naughty thoughts and giggle to myself evilly. I am making no money off of this. I do this instead of my homework. Please do not sue me. I have no money, and my organs have been tainted by smoking and alcohol, making them unsaleable on the black market.
"Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth."
- Diane Ackerman
The smell sends her back. It always does. Every single time. Walking down the street on a lovely autumn day years after it all happened, her mind occupied by a million different things, (she hasn't thought of him in weeks, she swears) a single hint of that scent throws Evey Hammond back underground, slams her into his bed.
She still doesn't know how she ended up in his bed. She remembers the way to his bed, the slow steps that took her there. Hair still shorn close to her scalp, body still weak from torture and starvation. But she was strong enough to hold him to her, to keep him alive for even just a few minutes longer. She would keep him alive, keep him in this bed if she had to drag him out of hell herself.
He is slow, his movements hesitant and jerky - it is years later before it occurs to her that he was terrified. His hands move over her body reverently, pausing at the bruises he himself had inflicted on her, shaking slightly against her warm flesh. The only noise in that black, endless room is his long, unsteady breaths. She lays beneath him, feeling him shudder, feeling the battle between his mind and his body as his hands continue their uncertain journey along her breasts, his roughened fingers splaying across them with a possessiveness that breaks her heart.
He flinches whenever she touches him. Nearly leaps out of her arms when her hand slips smoothly between his legs. Now groans punctuate the silence. He wants to speak, she can tell. But there are no words, or too many words, to fill up the space between them. The noise he makes, ripped from his very soul, is one of hunger and shame. Even when his lean hips begin rocking against her hand, his breathing steady and short, his face buried in the crook of her neck, she can feel his shame. It washes over them, permeates the room. The shame of wanting her, of needing her. Needing this in a way he could never verbalize. Shame at not being strong enough to say no. Shame at wanting anything anymore, with the future rushing up to strike him. She can accept this, accept his shame. Like this night, it changes nothing.
When he moves inside her - a sudden sharp thrust, as if he is panicked that after all that, she will actually say no - she lets out a sob that seems to speak for both of them. For a long time, there is no movement. She cannot see, she cannot hear anything but his ragged breath, can feel nothing but his tortured body on top of her and inside her. This is, she realizes in an hysterical moment, the longest he has gone without speaking since she has known him.
When he finally begins to move, Evey wants him to stop. If he never begins, this will never end. They can live and die in this moment as long as he doesn't move. But she does not stop him. After a second, she doesn't want him to.
With every movement of his body inside her, every thing he does to bring her pleasure, every time he clutches her as if she can save him, Evey Hammond dies. She is crying now, calling out the only name she can call him by, her legs driving him into her, her nails digging mercilessly into his shoulders. She needs this to hurt. If he hurts her now, she can hate him. If this hurts, it will be real.
But he can't. His incoherent whispers - his voice rough, the sounds coming in time with his speeding thrusts - soothe her, and she knows she lost this battle long before she ended up in his bed. She moans helplessly, and as she cries out her pleasure, she loses herself. There is only joy, and him, still moving frantically inside her, as if he cannot bear to let it end. (Don't let it end please God. I'll give you everything if you give me this). He pulses deeply inside her, his cries as far from human as she has ever heard him. He collapses, shaking violently, his hands gripping at her reflexively.
She holds him, listening to his heartbeat and hating it. It mocks her. It is beating now, pounding in her ear. Its steady noise is only a reminder that it will one day stop. She wants him to live forever and she wants to destroy him. She could, she realizes as his fingers run gently over her lips. With one word, one look, she could destroy everything in him that had survived so long. She could stop his revolution by the smallest gesture. If she breaks him here, he will not have the strength to go on. Not when he has given her everything that makes him human.
The realization kills the urge, and she feels his heart beating. It does what it must, and so must he. Neither his heart, nor the man stroking her cheek, will think about what must be done. She can ask, beg even, but she could no more stop the procession of his life than she could stop time, or the steady music of his heart
She presses her cheek tenderly against his. Cold metal, made slightly warm from their exertions. (even in the dark, even after everything, he couldn't take off that fucking mask)
When Evey Hammond returns to herself, she has no idea how long she has been gone, standing on a street corner with a blank look on her face. She continues walking, wondering if the people can see the missing pieces he took from her, wondering if they can tell that she had him, for one night she had him. Probably not. She sighs, feeling old and ageless. Every time. The smell of roses. Every fucking time.
A/N: Not sure if I will do any more from Evey's perspective, but this sort of wrote itself. Anything is appreciated, per usual.
Never Gonna Be The Same - Courtney Love, 'America's Sweetheart'