Chapter Text
The first thing he felt was pain. Agony in his chest, and no wonder. He hadn’t counted the number of bullets he’d taken to the torso, but it had been many. His body had other aches – bruises and scratches on his arms and legs – but they were nothing compared to the bullet wounds.
The second thing he felt was surprise. He was alive. He’d been certain that he was dying, and yet he was alive.
He tried to sit up. All he achieved was a slight twisting against his pillows which made the pain all that much worse.
But he was lying against pillows. Someone was looking after him. Someone had kept him alive.
V opened his eyes. He recognised the stone ceiling immediately; he was in the Shadow Gallery. Home.
Evey must have brought him here. Had she decided to send off the train? He hoped so, but if she hadn’t then he would respect her decision. He loved her too well to do anything else.
It was then that he realised that something was wrong with his view of the ceiling. He wasn’t looking at it through eyeholes.
Someone had removed his mask.
Panic gripped his chest with an iron fist. The wig was gone too, he realised. He could feel the soft fabric of the pillows against the scarred skin on the back of his head.
Someone had taken off his mask.
He cried out. “No, no, no!”
That mask was his armour, his identity, his everything. It was his face; it was more his face than the scarred thing he’d been left with after the fire at Lark Hill.
And someone had taken it off.
Had it been Evey? Had she seen him?
“V, you’re awake!”
Speak of the devil, and he will appear, and apparently that worked with angels too.
“Evey,” he croaked.
She sat down on a chair beside his bed. “Does it hurt? I have painkillers.”
“Yes, please.” A gentleman always remembers his manners.
She handed him two pills, which he swallowed. His hands fumbled on the glass of water she brought him, so she raised it to his lips instead.
V leaned back on his pillows. He’d only just woken up, but he felt exhausted. “Tell me, Evey, how am I alive?”
“After you passed out, Inspector Finch showed up. He helped me slow the bleeding and carry you to a car. He drove us both to the back entrance of a hospital, went in, grabbed a whole lot of medical supplies, and helped me get you stitched up. You needed two blood transfusions. If it weren’t for how fast you heal, you probably wouldn’t have made it.”
“Did he – was he there when you took off my mask?”
“No, I did that later. And I brought you to the Shadow Gallery on my own, he doesn’t know where this place is.”
“Evey you –” his voice cracked, almost a sob, “You took off my mask.”
There was a deep sadness in her eyes. “I had to, V. To keep you alive. I had to pour water down your throat to keep you from dehydrating.”
“I see.” He swallowed. “I – I did not want you to see me without it.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“If you like, you can bring it to me and I’ll put it back on. To spare you the view of my face.”
“Do you want to put it back on?”
V shrugged, then winced. “I don’t see the point. Codename V is no longer needed in Britain, and you’ve already seen me without the mask. But that doesn’t mean that these scars are easy to look at, so if you’d rather not see them…”
“They’re fine, V. I won’t lie to you, I was shocked at first. But I’m used to them now.”
Something occurred to him. “How long was I unconscious?”
“A few weeks. I wasn’t sure if you’d pull through at first, but you made it.”
V closed his eyes. It was easier to phrase his next question with his eyes closed. “Did you send off the train?”
“Yes. The fireworks were beautiful, V. I wish you could have seen them.”
He opened his eyes and looked up at her. “I never intended to see them, Evey. I intended to die.”
“Do you wish that I hadn’t saved you?” she asked softly, frowning slightly.
V thought about it. After a time, he told her, “I sincerely do not know. I confess, I don’t know what to do with myself now. But I remember – you didn’t want me to die, Evey. And for that, I’ll stay alive.”
He still remembered how it had felt to lie there in Evey’s arms, his life’s blood draining out of his body, as she wept and told him that she didn’t want him to die. It was the most beautiful thing that had ever happened to him.
The painkillers had started to do their work, making him drowsy. Evey left him to sleep.
*
His recovery was going to take a long time. His muscles were still strong and toned from what they’d done to him at Lark Hill, but the bullet wounds and blood loss had left him weak as a child.
He needed Evey’s help for the most basic things. V tried his best to not feel humiliated. It was easier than he’d anticipated, for an unanticipated reason; whatever humiliation he might have felt from needing her help in sitting up and lying down and holding a cup was far outweighed by the fact that she was touching him.
V couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched him skin-on-skin. It must have been back at Lark Hill, but he couldn’t recall the specifics.
But now, Evey touched him every day. Simple touches, gentle touches. A hand to his forehead to check that he wasn’t running a fever. Fingertips at his wrist to take his pulse.
Under the sheets, he wore only loose, soft trousers, his chest bare, and twice a day, Evey would change the bandages. She would help him manoeuvre himself into a sitting position, his hands gripping the mattress so that he didn’t topple backwards, and then she would use scissors to gently cut away the bandages. She’d spray the wounds with antiseptic, which stung, but he didn’t let on, and then she would wrap him up in fresh gauze, and all the while, V tried not to think about the fact that the two of them were alone in the Shadow Gallery, sitting on a bed together, and he was half naked.
The first time she changed his bandages while he was conscious, V thought he might die from how deeply her touch intoxicated him.
But he hadn’t died. Not from the bullets, and certainly not from the careful touch of a pretty woman.
He knew he ought not to think about – that. About what Evey meant to him. But at the same time, denying the existence of his feelings would be useless.
Before, when she’d kissed his mask, he’d been almost certain that she felt the same, but that had been before. She’d been kissing a symbol just as much as she’d been kissing him, and he hadn’t felt her touch through the mask.
He had wanted to, though.
But now? The symbol was gone. She’d unmasked him, and now he was neither an idea nor a concept; he was a man.
Evey had loved V the symbol, V the idea, but did she love V the man?
He didn’t know if she could.
His appearance didn’t help, of course. Burn scars from head to toe, soon to be joined by bullet scars on his chest, and Evey had seen it all.
V wasn’t going to pretend that he didn’t have any attractive qualities. He was intelligent, and if it weren’t for his wounds, he’d be the most physically fit man on the planet. He could be kind; he could be dashing.
But it wasn’t easy to be dashing and debonair from a sickbed.
That, and the scars, and the fact that he wasn’t entirely sane.
(V was well aware that sane people did not dress up as Guy Fawkes and blow up London monuments in order to take down fascist governments. He wasn’t sure what they did to take down aforementioned governments, but they didn’t do that.)
Evey deserved someone better. Someone sane and unscarred. Someone who could actually function out in this new world that he and Evey had created together.
Perhaps, after she found such a man, she would still visit him at the Shadow Gallery.
The fact was that Evey had had ample time while she tended him to raise the subject of his love confession back in the London Underground, and she hadn’t. He had lain there, he had thought he was dying, and he had confessed his feelings, and she hadn’t mentioned it once in the time since. And if she didn’t want to talk about it, then V wasn’t going to raise the subject either. He wasn’t sure if he could stomach an overt rejection. Better to go gentle, to let the memories fade.
*
V was a much better cook than Evey, but the soup she’d made him was warm and filling, so he drank it down anyway.
She sat on the chair by his bed, sipping her own soup. “I’m going to be rich,” she told him.
“How so?”
“Gordon’s will. Apparently he changed it only a few days before Creedy got to him, and he left everything to me.”
“Congratulations. Any plans for what you’ll do with the money?”
“I wasn’t sure, at first.” She took another sip. “But then Finch told me that they’re starting to release political prisoners. I thought I might donate some money to help them get their lives back together.” She paused, frowned slightly, bit her lip. “V, I was thinking that maybe we could move into Gordon’s house.”
“What?” She looked startled. He hadn’t meant to snap at her like that.
“V, I’m doing what I can for you, but the most training I ever had was first aid. If I hired a private nurse, things might go easier for you. We could figure out the best way for you to recover from this. I can buy you a fake ID –”
She stopped talking when he raised a scarred hand. “Evey, I appreciate your kindness, I truly do. But I’m not ready to exist outside the Shadow Gallery – exist as a man, I mean, not just as a symbol. Perhaps one day, but not yet. And I really am sorry about my condition. I know it’s not easy for you to have to look after me like this but –” A note of vulnerability crept into his voice. “Please. Please don’t ask me to go out into the world yet. You’re well within your rights to call me a coward, but –”
She smiled. God, how was she always so beautiful? Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? No, that quote wasn’t right for her. Evey wasn’t temperate, and he didn’t want her to be. She was made of sterner stuff than the darling buds of May. “V, I could never call you a coward. It’s fine, we’ll stay here. Gordon’s house is still a mess after Creedy’s men broke in, anyway. And I don’t mind having to look after you, you’re an excellent patient.”
“Only because I have an excellent nurse.” See? He could still be charming.
She stood and took his cup from his hands. “Well, as your nurse, I say that you need rest.”
Evey helped him lie back against his pillows, and V tried not to drown in the sensation of her hands on his body.
She picked up the cups and seemed to be about to leave, when she turned back and kissed the top of his head.
“Sleep well, V.”
If he cried himself to sleep, then that was nobody’s business. There was no future for the two of them, sitting together in a tree and laughing, and if there was, then Evey didn’t want it.
And V should have known better than to want what he couldn’t have.
*
Over the following few days, Evey continued to be an excellent nurse.
She fed him and changed his bandages and gave him his meds at regular intervals. But it was more than that; she played music from the jukebox that echoed through the halls of the Shadow Gallery and found V where he lay.
She sat by his bedside and read to him. By now, V was confident that he had regained sufficient strength to hold the books himself, but he never asked to take them from her.
She read him Twelfth Night and Cyrano de Bergerac and The Three Musketeers.
V was half-dozing one evening when Evey came in pushing a wheelchair.
“Are we going somewhere?” he asked her. He was getting better at standing up, but walking more than three paces was liable to make his head swim.
“Movie night. My treat.”
“Mademoiselle Hammond, you are too good to me.”
He leaned on her arm to get into the wheelchair, and she helped him pull on a grey shirt. He didn’t bother buttoning it; it would be more comfortable if it was loose, and Evey had seen it all before.
She pushed him through the corridors of the Shadow Gallery. V found himself starting every time he passed a mirror. It wasn’t his own reflection that startled him, it was the fact that his reflection was accompanied by Evey’s.
He’d missed these hallways. After weeks abed, the contents of his bedroom had become somewhat dull. As she helped him onto the sofa, he remarked, “I feel like an old man.”
She smiled. “You’re not that old, V.”
“You don’t know how old I am. Neither do I, as a matter of fact.”
Her eyes widened. “You don’t?”
V shrugged and tried to make light of it. “My memories from the time before Lark Hill are far from clear. My date of birth, what I looked like before the fire, my name…”
“You don’t remember your own name?”
“I don’t. And all records of the prisoners taken to Lark Hill were destroyed years ago, so I’m unlikely to find out. V serves me well enough. Though I may have to choose something else, the next time I step out of doors.”
*
The Count of Monte Cristo was as good as ever. Or at least, V assumed it was, because he only woke at the very end.
Falling asleep during a film was most uncharacteristic of him, but he had been sleeping a lot lately. Evey said that it was a good sign; his body was healing itself.
Speaking of Evey, she was – good god, she was leaning on him. Her head resting on his shoulder. V felt the breath catch in his throat, and he tried not to start.
Whenever they had watched a movie before, she had kept to one side of the sofa, and he had carefully kept to the other. But now… They were so close. They had been this close before, but this wasn’t dancing while he wore gloves and mask and wig, and this wasn’t the necessary touches that came with changing his bandages. This was Evey, leaning her head on his shoulder.
After a time, he spoke. “Evey, I would appreciate it if you would be kind enough to help me up to the roof.”
His voice had surprised her; she sat up sharply, and V was already regretting having spoken. He could have sat there with her head on his shoulder for hours. “V, you’re awake.”
“Indeed.”
*
They went up in the lift, and when Evey pushed him out onto the roof, V closed his eyes and took a moment to breathe the fresh air and feel the wind on his face.
When he opened them again, he saw a cloudy night and a half-moon. V put his hands on the armrests of the wheelchair and pushed himself onto his feet.
He swayed, and Evey caught his arm, steadying him. His chest twinged with pain, but it wasn’t overwhelming. He took a deep breath of the crisp night air. “There’s nothing like a midnight view of Old London Town, is there, Evey?”