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From across the room they looked as if they might animate themselves into action. Evey sat curled in a dark corner of the Gallery staring at V’s boots. They stood upright and gleaming with purpose inside the glow of his bedroom, the door casually ajar enough to reveal them. She was sitting, almost collapsed, against a wall of the main gallery. In the gloom her eyes narrowed to flinty ovals as she absently rubbed her stubbled scalp over and over.
She didn’t need to see them: she had watched him care for those boots a thousand times. She knew every crease, every marbling of the leather’s color. In the early days she sat and watched him as he cleaned them, moisturized the tanned skin, and finally applied the boot polish, his wig swaying gently as he buffed the surface to a glow. She had watched him put them on and later remove them with a satisfying grunt. Occasionally, she had offered to polish his boots for him. Happy to be helpful, she had looked up at him for approval and guidance; like an eager child to a doting parent. The mask had always stared back with the same expression.
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply: she could smell them. The vaguely mammalian smell of oiled leather warmed with use, and mixed with hints of copper, rain and rotten earth. She opened her eyes again and glowered at those boots as if challenging them for their master’s crimes. How many times had blood been washed from their surface? How many marks had they left on lesser men?
The boots just stared back dumbly – just like the mask. They were just boots, after all.
Evey’s hand rubbed forward on her scalp and covered her eyes when she sighed.
“Evey?”
She opened her eyes and saw V bent double at his bedroom door hands behind his back, one side of his wig pointing towards the stone floor.
“What are you doing?” he said, turning his head to stare at his boots, the other side of his wig now tilting downward.
She rose from the floor and composed her emaciated limbs. He thought that she walked towards him with an insect’s grace and menace; like something fragile yet deadly. As she drew close her face formed a rictus that he supposed was meant to be a smile.
“Oh, nothing.” she said evenly, curling an arm around his as he rose to his full height. They walked together towards the sitting room. She dropped his arm within sight of it and continued on ahead of him.
“I was just pondering all possible meanings of the adage: You never really know a man until you’ve walked a mile in his boots.”
V stopped dead in mid step. His blood ran cold as the insect curled herself into the plush folds of his couch, rubbing her scalp absently.