Title: Material Culture

Author: Nemo the Everbeing

Rating: I'm going to be cautious and give this chapter an R rating for a graphic description of a dead body and some nasty implications

Summary: Every object has significance. The goal of study is to determine what it is. (Finch/Dominic)

Disclaimer: 'V for Vendetta' belongs to Alan Moore and David Lloyd. The theatrical version of the story belongs to Warner Brothers, the Wachowski brothers, and possibly a few other brothers. I don't own any of it, am not a brother, and write this solely for my own pleasure.

oOo oOo Chapter 3: Antique Clock oOo oOo

After three weeks Stone stuck his hand out over their desks and waited. Grudgingly, Finch shook his hand. The next day, Stone set a clock on his desk. It was a little thing, not digital, and probably dated from well before the Reclamation. Finch once caught a glimpse of words on the inside of the back face, but had no time to read them before the clock was shut up tight again.

Finch wondered where Stone had got such a lovely thing. Most antiques had vanished during the Reclamation, and Stone's family didn't seem the sort to have such elegant things about their little home. So to see something so obviously incompatible with everything Finch had read about him and his family made Stone a bit of a mystery. But only a bit. And really, Finch told himself, he didn't care either way. It was just Stone trying to muddy his waters to make them look deep. Just because he wasn't the political toady he looked to be didn't make him interesting, or particularly good at his job. Finch got back to work.

oOo oOo oOo oOo

"Police!" Stone shouts, vaulting a row of pipes as they try to run their suspect down. "Stop or I'll shoot!"

The cracking of several gunshots and the wild clang of bullets embedding themselves in rusted piping dangerously close to Stone's head is their only answer. Finch struggles to keep up with his athletic younger partner. The man they're hunting is the dangerous sort, taken to killing young people out after curfew. Finch doesn't trust Stone to take him down without bollocksing the whole affair, or getting killed himself. He's just the type the killer might fancy: young and attractive and far too confident in his own abilities.

Finch ducks under some low-hanging beams, Stone's shape getting smaller as he pulls ahead. Finch curses his age, his physical condition, and the rash young man ahead of him in equal measure. Sometimes it takes a bullet to convince the younger coppers they aren't invincible, and if they're lucky—

Two guns thunder almost as one, and Finch's thoughts lurch to a halt. He feels like he's standing next to himself, observing the shaking grip on his gun as he sees the distant figure of his partner fall back against a wall. Stone slides down the bricks as one might fall off a cliff: slowly, but with inevitability.

If Finch was asked that morning how he might react if Stone was shot, he would perhaps have shrugged and said, "Be a bit concerned."

It's different when he's drawing close enough to see the smear of blood on the bricks. Finch runs, his feet pounding in the echoing confines of the concrete tunnel. He sees the mad bastard they've been tracking step into view. They've not seen him before this. They had no ID. All they knew this morning was the general area in which he liked to hunt, and all they had was the hope that they could catch him at it. His identity was easy enough to confirm when they saw him run away from the still-warm body of a young woman with long brown hair, dropping the knife when he went to do up his flies.

And now Finch is torn between charging in and lining up a careful shot. Either is a risk and either could get Dominic killed. He weighs the options and tries to ignore the notion that, for the first time in their partnership, he's slipped and thought of Stone by his first name.

The killer stands over Dominic—Finch can't bring himself to change the name in the privacy of his own head—and seems to be waiting for something. There's a wash of relief when Finch sees Dominic struggle back against the wall, his legs making some uncoordinated bid to get back on his feet.

It's the hardest decision Finch can remember making to hang back, but the killer's gun is lax at his side, and Finch is a cautious sort of copper. It's safer not to startle a psychotic. It's safer to line himself up and take one good shot rather than a few poor ones, during which Dominic might well get shot in a more fatal way. Finch has to believe that his current injury is non-fatal, though he can't see it.

His mind is in a shambles, and he's no good to anyone like this. He shuts off the feelings this whole fiasco has conjured up in him, and then looks on the situation with all the dispassion he can muster. He squares himself and then raises his gun. The killer's head lines up in his sights. The mad bastard is staring at Dominic. Finch doesn't allow himself to check Dominic's reaction.

"Lord, but you're a sight," the mad bastard says, faint at this distance but still audible. "They never told me the Met was putting out dishes like you, all dressed up and nowhere to go. Don't worry, I'll see to you. You saw that little bit back in the alleyway, didn't you? You want a taste, copper?"

The mad bastard unbuttons his flies. Out of the corner of his eye Finch can see Dominic lunge sideways. The killer's gun comes up in a flash and Finch is out of time.

Finch fires. The shot goes wide. Finch doesn't have time to panic.

The mad bastard grabs at Dominic, and Finch has no doubt the killer will use him as a human shield. He tries to get off another shot, but there's too much movement and in the poor light he can't be certain of his aim.

He runs forward. He needs the clarity of proximity. The killer has Dominic in his arms, and Finch can see metal between them, flashing and indistinct.

Another shot rings out.

"Dominic!" he shouts as the two figures collapse together.

He springs over the last branch of pipes in a burst of agility that he'll never be able to duplicate. The huddle on the floor is a mess of blood, and he grasps at the mad bastard, tossing him off Dominic with a heave.

Dominic lies covered in blood and gasping. His left arm is a mess, cut badly. Finch realizes that the bullet caught Dominic straight through the face of his watch, probably breaking his wrist in the process, and sending glass and workings scouring across his skin. For all that, he looks . . . he looks all right. He gives Finch a pained little grin. "Thanks for distracting him, Sir. Couldn't have got my gun if you didn't. Daft twat should've shot me in the other arm."

Finch is too busy calling in medical to reply. Now that the panic is gone he's left with a vague rage that he has the good sense to know would be misdirected if he started shouting at Dominic.

"I'm all right, Sir," Dominic says. "Nothing that a few stitches and a cast won't cure."

"Shut it," Finch orders.

"I'm fine, Sir. My wrist is the worst of it, and you can't do much about that. We need to identify the killer," Dominic says.

"I need to see you on a stretcher."

"That bastard had free run of the city after curfew, Chief!" Dominic sounds less like the puppy who's been following Finch about and more like he sounds with the lads: rough and clever and unapologetic all at a time. It gives Finch pause, which Dominic takes as consideration. "I told you I'm fine, and I mean it. I appreciate the . . ." he cuts himself off before he says 'concern' and Finch is required to throttle him on principle. Dominic tries again, "I appreciate you looking after me, Sir, but I'd feel much better knowing who he was, and how he did it." He jerks his chin toward the unmoving man behind Finch. "Go on then."

Finch rolls his eyes, but has to admit that the same questions have gnawed at him. "Fine," he says. "If it'll shut you up and get you in an ambulance I'll check. Enough?"

Dominic flashes him a grin that's only perhaps half pained grimace. "All I ever wanted," he says.

Finch rises in a huff and prods the bastard over with his foot. The killer's eyes are open and fixed, and all of him is very dead, right down to the neat hole in his head. Even the exit's quite clean, and only the size of a pound coin. He has to admit, if only grudgingly and to himself, that Dominic has made a very neat job of the whole thing.

The killer is yellow: his teeth, his skin, even his hair. The dead tend toward a queer sort of yellow cast, but Finch thinks he's an ugly fucker regardless, with his flies undone and his yellow cock hanging out against a wet stain. He pissed himself when he died, then. Most of the dead did that too.

Finch fishes inside the man's pocket for a wallet or something, and instead happens upon a slim, rectangular flipper. His stomach lurches. He knows that shape. He pulls the black leather out, and he can feel Dominic's eyes on him, eager for the result, for the answer. He's half-taught Dominic that taste, but it also came with him. He wants to know. More than anything, they both want to know.

Finch flips the top and reveals the red double-cross.

"Oh, shit," Dominic breathes. "Oh, fuck, he was a Fingerman."

Dominic tries to get up, only to strangle a yell in his throat and fall back. Finch drops the Fingerman's badge and catches Dominic before he can crack his head. Dominic must have put his weight on his wrist without thinking, the great idiot, and now his arm is bleeding more heavily, and his wrist is swelling fast.

"I shot a Fingerman," Dominic whispers, his voice ragged with pain.

"You shot a murderer." Finch's tone brooks no argument. "You shot a rapist. And you shot him after he'd already put one in you."

It doesn't seem to comfort Dominic all that much. "Is the Finger going to launch an inquiry on me, Sir?" he asks. He sounds worried.

"Why? Shouldn't they?" Everyone has at least one interest or hobby or stupid past action that could damn them with the Finger, but Dominic seems more frightened than he ought to be if he'd just had a few cigarettes or the like.

Dominic's laughter is shaky. "Call me a cynic, but I got the feeling that didn't matter all that much. If they want to find evidence, they will."

Finch sheds his jacket and wraps Dominic's arm with it, applying pressure. Dominic bites his lip so hard it bleeds, but he doesn't shout. "You listen to me," Finch says, surprised that he sounds so heated. How many years has it been since he used that tone of voice? Even with Delia he's never got particularly worked up. Then again, Delia never gave him this much trouble. "We take care of our own, and you're not going to be bagged for doing your job. Not even Creedy is mad enough to go to war with the Met. And it would be a war. I'd see to that."

Dominic seems as startled as Finch. "Thank you, Sir," he whispers. "I . . ." He doesn't seem to know what else to say, so he looks down at his arm. Finch unwraps it to check the slowed bleeding. "My poor watch," Dominic says under his breath. "I don't suppose you know what time it is, Sir."

"I left my mobile in the car. You can check that lovely clock of yours once you get back to the office." Finch doesn't mention that he expects Dominic to take at least a week of medical leave. It isn't yet the time for that fight. He'll let his partner get his wrist into a cast first.

Dominic looks up at him and then away. "You never noticed, did you?" he asks.

"Noticed what?"

"It doesn't work. It never has."

"Why would you keep a clock that can't tell time?"

Dominic shrugs, and then winces as it jostles his arm. "I don't know. I've always thought it looked nice, is all."

"But it doesn't work." Finch likes practicality, and the notion of a clock that can't keep time is the most ridiculous thing he's ever heard.

"It doesn't have to."

"Of course it does. It's a clock, and you were cheated."

Dominic's eyes hold a glint of challenge. "And what if it was never meant to work? What if that's not the point?"

"Then it should be a piece of statuary and not a clock. You never struck me as the sort who'd fancy form without function."

"Guess I'm a mystery then, me and my clock."

"No, you're just defective, the both of you."

For a second, Finch sees that same flash of worry in Dominic he saw when they realized the Finger were going to get involved in their case. He frowns a bit, wondering quite out of the blue about the writing inside the back face of the clock. Perhaps the shell itself is just a veneer, keeping something secret locked up inside its useless, false guts. Dominic, too, has something secret in him. Finch is a cop, one of the old school of coppers who want answers for their own sake. He'll puzzle Dominic out. He can't do anything but.

His voice is gruff when he says, "I won't be telling Creedy that you're defective, if you're worrying yourself. Now hold your hand over your head while we wait, or they won't be able to fit your wrist in your cast."

He grips Dominic's fingers gently and helps support his arm. Dominic considers their hands and doesn't say a word.