Chapter Text
There were a lot of factors involved in me becoming homeless. At first it was the poor grades, then the hate-tinged divide between my living family and I, then the shitty jobs with shitty hours and while desperately trying to attend medical school. Honestly, I think the real punch in the gut was that rain-slick night running to my night shift, and the subsequent street cross and resulting car crash that left me without a left leg and in 20,000 dollars of debt to the local hospital. Everything might have turned out ok If my parents were still around. But dad was dead, mom had been gone since I was eight, and all other subsequent family members and friends had hauled ass as far away from this place as they could. I could have just returned to my job, if they're let me. But I suppose being a table server might be better for someone with two legs. And without an expensive addiction to painkillers they developed in the hospital. I tried everything, really, I did. There aren't really any sparkling job positions for boney and sallow girl with stringy hair and bruise-blue eye sockets, save for hauling the occasional trash bag and a few pity-quarters from pudgy old ladies with smiles lines on their faces.
There was a homeless shelter 3 blocks away from me. I never went. Anybody with even a second of life experience knew to never step a foot in there. They'd wash your clothes, sit you down for a big hot meal, let you shower, and give you a warm blanketed cot to sleep in. Then in the morning you'd have vanished, cot sheets gently refolded and all your possessions in the 'free to take' box by the door. The shelter is a death sentence and everybody knows it, but we don't talk about it. We're not supposed to.
Technically we're not supposed to be out after curfew either. Easier said then done when you don't have a single place to go. You really can't be caught out after dark, especially us; again, we'd disappear, vanish like mist from the town we lived in just minutes before. By week two I had pretty much solved that problem by spending most of my nights in the least monitored alley I could find, behind overflowing bins and stacks of wet and unattended cardboard. But still, sleep is always fitful. I always wake up to listen to any passing footsteps from the nearest street.
But lately life had gotten harder. Temperature started to drop, and my two sweatshirts and shitty sleeping bag weren't cutting it anymore. From what I heard on passing radios, there had been a recently implemented 'initiative to restore the cities of England'. By restore, they meant make the curfew tighter, watch us all more closely. It set my teeth on edge. Acquaintances I made in my time on the streets started to disappear. Corners of the city that were once safe were being watched, converted into metaphorical mouse traps. It wasn't a restoration initiative. It was a move to purge the blemishes.
It's Friday, some time around midnight. I quietly quake under the nylon fabric of my sleeping bag on the icy concrete, running my cold knuckles over my chapped lips in the semi-darkness of the alley. A set of watchmen footsteps in the distance had jolted me awake five minutes ago, which means in five more minutes another set would walk by. I Idly breathed warm air over my hand, eyes unfocused and staring at the wall across from me. Maybe tomorrow would be the day. Maybe I'd walk into that shelter, take their damn food, drink their damn tea, get into one of their damn beds, and wait to disappear. Another numerical mark in somebody's task ledger. Fading away had to be better than this; hell, anything to be better than this. I was sick of the cold so freezing that my skin went numb and hot. I was sick of my heart racing with the sound of footsteps on pavement. I was sick of the sharp ache that sat behind my eyes, sick of the stares, sick of being lesser than human to the other humans that walked by and pretended I wasn't staring at them with my livid gaze.
I do not fear death for one and one reason only. I don't want to become like the others i'd seen, cowering in the dark with their hollow eyes squinting out from behind cardboard, fearful and afraid until their heart stops from stress or age or both. I will take any measure to avoid this.
In my shivering daze I pick up the sound of another pair of shoes on the street. But these are faster, lighter than the watchmen. Not to mention two minutes early. And headed down the alley. I sit up straighter against the bin as the footsteps get closer and closer, tired and cold and much angrier than I imagined I'd be when ultimately got arrested. A few months ago I would have imagined myself scared shitless. Now i'm just disappointed in how warped terrible every single thing on this goddamn planet is.
The fast footsteps are just a couple strides away now.
"Finally. Come put me in the back of a van and pretend I never existed? Took you long enough." My loud and pointed silence-breaker surprised even me with its venom and heat. The footsteps stopped just a few feet away, enough so that I could make out a general blob of height and shadow that denoted a man in the semidarkness of the alley. The stranger was completely still, and there was complete silence save for the frigid wind and the occasional truck rolling past. I rolled my eyes, continuing to stun myself with my fearlessness (or complete lack of regard for self-preservation) "You know, people like you make situations like this even more unpleasant. I mean, you're already running around bagging random people and feeling like shit about it, probably so much that you won't even admit it to yourself. Because hey, as long as you're the one doing the hurting and not getting hurt, it should all turn out fine, right?" I exhale hard into the cold night air and watch the pull of steam that follows. "But come on, not even talking to me? That's just a dick move."
The silence in response to my one-sided and poisonous banter is deafening, but instead of it striking me cold with fear, it makes me even more frustrated. I want a rise out of this excuse for a human. I WANT to make him feel how I feel; angry and tired and like there were bugs under my skin that never went away. I pull both shaking hands away from the warm air by my mouth and hold them out in front of me to the darkness. "See? Lookie, I may not have both legs but at least I have two wrists to cuff. Doesn't that just make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?" I let my arms drop into my lap. "What do you want? Wanna say a few words, rough me up, go on a little power trip, be the big security guy protecting his city? Go ahead, I'm all ears, but that won't stop me from reminding you that it's bullshit." I'm minutes away from what in all likelyhood is death, and I'm realizing with a dawning chill that i'm too hungry or tired or exhausted to care.
"Most people would think it a very stupid choice to risk their lives for a few angry words." the low and clipped voice makes me startle in my sleeping bag after so much silence, but my response is immediate.
"Well, most people won't even discuss the fact that it's completely fucked that citizens of this country just go missing for no reason, so I think that may invalidate your argument." I retort, pulling my loose knitted beanie down harder over my frozen ears. "And anger is always better than fear."
A truck passes in the distance.
I blink in bewilderment at the sudden white oval that's hovering in the darkness before I do a double take and realize it's a face. A grinning porcelain mask, to be exact. The man wearing it steps forward into the watery yellow lights that weakly shine into the alleyway, and my first reaction is to let out a snort. He looks like some sort of harlequin pilgrim, with a wide brimmed hat, a straight-cut wig, a long black cloak, and shining leather boots. He almost undetectably cocks his head at my poorly concealed outburst.
"Maybe combining stealth combat with new world settler chic was a revolutionary move in the Fingermen dressing department, but it certainly was an idiotic one." I quip as the man moves his gloved hands to his neck, unbuttoning the fasteners on his cloak. He pulls it away from his shoulders, and twin sets of sparring knives glimmer on his belt. Ok, that's admittedly pretty terrifying. But hey, if he brought them here, at least I won't have to suffer through some cramped van ride to what would probably be some horribly dystopian warehouse.
Before I can really process what's going on, the man has grabbed my wrist and pulled me into a standing position on my sleeping bag, and slung the heavy cloak around my shoulders. The fabric is so thick and so warm that my frozen skin practically burns, and I instinctive nuzzle my nose down into the high neckline as two gloved hands quickly button it back up. Only after I've inhaled the scent of some strange perfume (cloves, maybe? The smell of wood smoke? Wet stone?) am I shocked enough to wonder why a law enforcer just kept me from freezing. I apprehensively look up at the man in the half-light, strings of oily hair falling over my eyes. His form-fitting black doublet cuts an intimidating silhouette, his masked face unreadable and impassive. Abruptly, he bows, taking his hat off with a flourish. For the second time that night I'm overwhelmed with the urge to laugh at this ridiculous and odd circumstance.
"I'm terribly sorry that I haven't so much as introduced myself. You may call me V: stoker of fires, man of madness, bringer of change that is long overdue." He sets his hat back on top of his wig. "And to whom do I owe the pleasure of this meeting?"
"Impressive titles for a man standing in a trashy alley at ungodly hours of the morning." I deadpan, sidestepping his question, "If you're not a civilian, and you're not working for the establishment, who are you? Should I be running away from you?"
"I should think not," He replies, and smooths the lapels of his doublet, "Not yet anyways. You may have to wait a few months. For now you'll have to settle for running in general."
My eyebrows furrow. V remains still, save for bringing both gloved hands together. I can't shake the feeling that underneath that mask he's weighing me, weighing my words and my actions and observing me down to the very last minute detail.
"The patrol is out in triple force for the night. I suggest finding somewhere much less apparent and open than here to stay until the sun rises."
"Why are they out in triple force tonight?" I press.
"They were alerted to some preparations I was making."
I waited for an elaboration, but nothing came. The strange man gave me nothing else but a clipped 'good evening' and turned heel to walk away.
"Wait." I said harshly, shaking fingers clutching tight to the inside of his cloak. He stilled in the yellow light, but did not turn around. "Why did you stop? Why you talk to me even after all the crazy things I said?"
He was silent for a moment before speaking. "There are wolves in the sheep pen, madame. It's my profound duty to get the sheep out. When I looked over," He turned his head just enough so I could see the mask's dark eye-hole over his shoulder, "You were staring at me from the other side of the pen fence. Quiet interesting indeed."
And then I was alone again, standing by myself next to a garbage can in the middle of an alley in the freezing midwinter air, surrounded by the smell of cloves and wood-smoke and stone. Somehow despite how ridiculous and stupid and straight up drug-trippy my most recent conversation was, something deep inside me told me it was best to listen to that man's advice and find somewhere to lay low for the rest of the night. I stooped to grab my medical crutch-turned-walking stick and my over-the-shoulder messenger bag with my essentials, taking a half second to hastily stuff my sleeping bag into it. I slunk out of the alley into the dimly-lit side street, moving through the shadows to the best place I could think of; the abandoned railroad yard just a mile or so away.
A half-hour later I shakily crawled into the back of a hollow freight cart, curling into one of its frigid corners after carefully checking for city-skulking animals or other unpleasant surprises. The world around me was silent, but my head spun as I settled deeper under a mound of clothes, the cloak collar wrapped tightly over my nose and ears. All around me was the smell of that tall man, that terrifying and confusing man. What was his real name? Was he a criminal? What was all that talk about sheep and revolution and 'waiting just a few months'? I ran my tongue over my teeth; any average person would discard him as a rogue crazy, or more likely report him to the authorities. But I was not normal. I was angry enough for all of London, and sick to shit of this life, these people, those fucking cameras that stared and stared and scared even the children of this nation absolutely shitless. For the first time in ages, I felt a second heartbeat next to mine, another quiet voice telling me something was very wrong with this world. He promised me change. I tasted that promise, held it close, and locked it in my heart. And I burned for more.
I felt the iron chains of exhaustion wind their way up my ankles and willingly relaxed into them, the rusted walls around me blurring and fading. At least I knew one thing. That man is very, very important, and I will not forget him.
I did not feel alone anymore.