A/N: Feedback, dear lurkers, would be nice. Knowing there's some sort of interest is always encouraging.

-

(a toast to the champions)

-

-

Third time, it was deliberate.

A Chardonnay, 1967, of slightly spicy bouquet.

I drank with grim satisfaction, and then with slightly less grim pleasure, and finally with giggling release. I was singing when V finally appeared.

"Really, Evey," he tsked. "Wine like this should be appreciated."

The sofa sank as he sat by me, reaching for the bottle to pour himself a glass. I watched with dutiful admiration as not one drop landed on the table. It'd been very tricky to do that for the last couple of glasses.

"Took you long enough," I sighed, and leant my head on his shoulder. He put the wine-glass to the amber-dim light from the kitchen and admired the colour: the liquid of a dark-wound, rich as ichor in its blood-beauty.

"This is from the Gallery," he said approvingly. He pulled me down from the shoulder so my head was on his lap. I twisted my body clumsily to adapt to the awkward position, and found my vision blanked out by his hand across my eyes.

My protest was cut short.

"Be still," V's disembodied voice came to my muddled senses. "I want to drink."

He took his time to appreciate the wine; I was humming by the time he was done. His other hand crept to cup my throat lightly, feeling the vibration as if he would steal my voice away.

I giggled when he started to join in with the words, his voice clearer than usual. I wouldn't have thought V would know the lyrics to a pop song.

"You sound so different," I said dreamily. His fingers under my jaw moved up to explore: the curve of my neck, the sensitive skin under my ear. One gloved finger brushed across my lips, quick as a tease, and my lips parted instinctively.

"The mask muffles," he answered. "You won't believe how long it took for me to learn how to throw my voice without sounding as if there were cotton balls lodged in my throat."

"No, not just that," I mumbled, but I couldn't remember what I meant to say. A hint of melancholy started to seep in, cosy with the glow of the alcohol.

"Where have you been?" I asked, soft and slurred. It sounded so sad, and lovely - everything was lovely, so sadly lovely. Lovely, sad V. "All this time… Why now?"

"I've been dead."

"Yes, but…" There was something important I had to say, I was sure of it. V traced my collarbone with his thumb, then moved up to cup the side of my face, his touch wondering and gentle as he stroked my cheek, unabashed. I shivered and turned my face into him, yearning and dreading.

"I've always wanted to do this," he said. "Did you eat anything before you started drinking?"

"What?"

He sighed, and then his hand lifted and I was staring at the implacable grin of Fawkes again. "You need to eat more, Evey," he said patiently, as if I cared about that. "You're too thin."

"I wanted to see you," I mumbled, trying to make sense of our conversation. The ceiling behind V's head retreated and advanced with disorientating insistence. I grasped at V's wrist, his palm still warm against my cheek, and tried to hold on as if it would prevent him from fading away. Hold on, don't let go. The room spun. I was starting to fall.

The mask gleamed as if from a distance, a pale starkness at the end of the line. "You have a weak constitution," it gleamed. "One glass would've been enough."

I held on stubbornly, clutching at him like death itself. "Did you miss me?" I said, not caring how it sounded.

"I never stopped," he replied, and there it was, in the way he said it: so easily, as if he opened his heart up everyday; so sincerely that the knot of angry misery deep in me tightened till I wanted to cry. A pain beyond tears, an anger without hate, a mirror smashed inside. It had been carving shards into me ever since the night he died and I wanted him to bleed like I did.

"I don't want you to go," I whispered, dizzy with wine and grief. "Is that wrong?"

There was another small sigh, another shard in my treacherous heart. Damn, damned man.

"I never asked you to stay, Evey," he reminded gently.

"You asked me to come back."

A pause. V was the only sharply etched thing in the dim blur of my peripheral, a creature of angled shadows and unforgiving whites as he looked down at me. He was warm and tense beneath my head, and for a moment, I could not doubt that he was real.

He twined his gloved fingers between mine carefully, an affection the V of old would never have allowed. "One glass," he said. "And no promises."

I was afraid of what I would say if I spoke, so I only closed my eyes and nodded.

When I opened them, I had overslept and was late for work. The room was airy with the morning breeze from the open balcony, and the two wine-glasses I'd placed on the table were somehow stark in the emptiness. One was half-filled with red, my unfinished drink.

The other was clean.