A/N: This was written for the Shadow Gallery's recent Anti-Cliche Challenge (their link is on my profile page). Therefore, to the best of my abilities, I have tried to set two common V for Vendetta movie clichés on their heads (with side forays into a few others, such as that V is an excellent cook, and plays the piano beautifully); namely that Evey, presented with such a wealth of culture and knowledge, is bored silly because she can't go out, and that V has a remarkable ability to pull the perfect quote out of thin air, without actually going too far out of character for either of them. Oddly enough, I realized, in doing so, that at least a couple of the movie clichés are directly contradicted by the graphic novel. For example, in the GN, V mourns the fact that he can no longer watch Storm Saxon; the dialogue, he says, was better (than what he's picking up from the government's spy cameras). Movie!V has shown no such penchant for such stereotyped fare. It has also been suggested that Movie!V cannot play the piano, and mainly has it there to impress girls; this is probably because GN!V has a highly expositional scene with the piano, and the song "Vicious Cabaret", which was left out of the movie; in fact, we never see Movie!V play it at all. However, most of us assume that V can play beautifully in either version. So you may as well assume that this is in the movie universe because, where there was a contradiction between the two versions, I played with the movie. Please, if you read, send me a review! I mean it!
Unsurprisingly, I own nothing. Don't sue.
Evey was having the time of her life.
The Shadow Gallery, and its contents, had opened a door to her that she hadn't even realized was shut. She devoured the books and films V recommended, and eagerly sought out more. She felt as if she was stretching out muscles that had atrophied for so long she hadn't even realized she had them.
She felt as if she could fly.
When V was there, they often watched films together, V explaining the cultural backgrounds and references to her, or played chess, or simply talked, for endless hours. It was easy to lose track of time in the unchanging incandescent lights, and V seemed to have no troubles in matching his schedule to her own rather erratic one.
When V was away, as he was now, she often explored the Gallery itself. She felt quite free to poke about anywhere she wished; she was confident that if there were anything he wished to keep hidden from her she would not be able to find it, and to do otherwise seemed more than a waste; to not take full advantage of the wonderful new world opened to her seemed an actual crime. "How boring," Evey often thought, "To suddenly find oneself in Wonderland, and simply spend the whole time trying to find something decent on the telly!"
She did occasionally flip through the few channels, although more and more she found herself uninterested in anything but the news; even that was increasingly puerile in its attempts to deceive. Surely any reasonable person could see straight through the lies and misdirections they spun on a nightly basis?
But they couldn't, she realized. Even she, when she had first come to the Gallery, had had to rely on her knowledge of the newscasters as people to ferret out the truth. V had not needed any such crutch, she realized, and when they brought in a new anchorman and she could still spot his lies, she realized that now, neither did she.
And she was finding the entertainment programs increasingly childishly simple and idiotic, although she rather suspected that V nursed a secret affection for Storm Saxon. She'd heard the theme music, and Heidi's trademark screams for help, on more than a few nights, very quietly in the background, when she couldn't sleep. However, V never mentioned it, and she never called him on it.
V. The man had been a puzzle, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, when she'd first arrived. With her new-found education, though, she was finding him increasingly predictable. She'd come across many of his favourite quotes in the books she'd read, and had privately begun to make something of a game of trying to predict which choice morsel he'd bestow upon her at any given moment, given the circumstances. It amused her how often she was correct; apparently, they were more alike than she ever would have thought.
Ah, yes: V. Her wanderings had taken her to the very lowest levels of the Gallery, where a long row of masks and cloaks hung. To all appearances they were identical; however, further perusal had revealed subtle differences between many of them. There were several much heavier masks, for example; she suspected that the metal one he had worn the night they met was one of these. A few of them were of very light plastic and were probably what he wore on a day-to-day basis in the Gallery; they seemed the most comfortable when she tried them on.
Funnily enough, though, they seemed to have slightly different material covering the slits of the eyes. Rather than the simple mesh the others sported, these ones also had a dark, slightly tinted plastic behind the mesh.
She wondered what it was for.
She also wondered if there was any shortbread left; her explorations had left her rather peckish. V was an absolute fiend for her buttery shortbread, and tended to make midnight raids upon her stashes despite her best attempts to keep them hidden, but she was pretty sure there was one he'd missed. "I wish he'd just let me teach him to make them," she grumbled to herself as she ascended the inner spiral staircase, cloak dragging over the treads behind her. Unfortunately, he had a bachelor's tendency to fry everything; and while he made the best eggies in a basket she had ever had, his culinary skills really didn't extend past them, whatever he might think himself.
But really, she mused, passing the media room with its endless banks of television monitors, what else would you expect from someone who acted like Julia Child while he was frying bread? Especially from a man who acted like Julia Child. Really, that apron was a dead give-away. It was nothing a respectable chef would ever wear; she rather suspected he had chosen it because its hideousness would distract from his lack of culinary skills.
At first, she had almost suspected him of being gay, wearing that ridiculous flowered monstrosity, but after repeated viewings of his fine selection of banned television programs she had come to the conclusion that, rather, it was conclusive proof that he was not. Gay men, she had learned, had universally exquisite taste; not a one of them would have been caught dead in it.
Aha! As she had suspected, he had not found her one remaining stash, hidden behind a cupboard of cleaning supplies. Man, being mortal, must fear poison, she mused, biting into a tender, crumbly morsel. And besides, only an idiot would hide biscuits behind the bleach.
Besides, for all his ability to dust, he really didn't use anything but the duster, and occasionally the broom behind the kitchen door. He was an idea; but he was a male idea.
"Fear me!" She intoned around a mouthful of shortbread, "For I am V, the Idea! I am not a man; I am the Idea of a Man! Fear my inability to cook! Tremble before my mighty ignorance of all cleaning products!" Sweeping the mask down over her face she rose and struck a dramatic pose. "Weep at my hopelessness at sorting laun—What the hell?"
She raised the mask to get a better look, but as soon as she did, the dark smudges covering almost every available surface of the kitchen disappeared. "What the hell..?" she repeated. She crossed to the kitchen table and bent down until her nose almost touched it. Plain white Formica. Nothing unusual at all.
Frowning, she carefully lowered the mask back into place. And there it was. Slightly blurry dark ink, all over the table. "I dare do all that may become a man; who dares more is none," she read. "WS, Macbeth. Why, that sneaky little faker! Mahomet found in the first heaven a cock of such enormous size that its crest touched the second heaven…"
The table was literally covered with quotes. As were the walls, the fridge, and even a good part of the cupboards. She lifted the mask again; to her naked eyes all was pristine. Pulling it off she examined the tinted plastic over the eyeslits again, but could discern nothing unusual about it beyond the slightly odd colour. "V, you sneaky little bastard," she half-murmured, pulling it back on, "Let's see what you've been up to!"
Most of the ones in the kitchen seemed to be scrawled rather hastily; probably while she had slept, that first night. The ones scattered about the rest of the Gallery were rather neater. And the rest of the Gallery was not quite so densely covered as the kitchen had been, probably because of the lack of available surfaces. The glass of the Wurlitzer had a few choice remarks to share, however, as did the coffee table. The piano, surprisingly, was bare. "He must have been afraid his magic ink would ruin the finish," she smiled, running a finger across the gleaming surface. She'd never heard him play it; she was abruptly beginning to suspect that he couldn't. She was suddenly finding herself seeing V in a somewhat different light…
Her bedroom was thankfully bare; she didn't really want to imagine him sorting through his library for quotes appropriate to… whatever he might imagine might end up going on in there. She was a bit reassured, until she came to the loo. Literally every inch of the walls, cabinets, and even the ceiling, were covered in quotes. Most of them were rather saucy. "Oh, bollocks… of course; he'd probably have the light off! Oh, bollocks…"
Suddenly, V seemed a lot less like a dashing romantic revolutionary hero, and rather more like some pervy bloke trying to sneak his way into her pants. Fine, she thought; I'll fix him!
Windex had no effect on the writing on the table; Vim lightened it only slightly. The bleach only made it run slightly, but not enough to render it illegible. She worked her way through most of the products until, finally, she found that a simple combination of sodium bicarbonate and vinegar smeared everything into an unintelligible mess.
Gotcha.
She paid particular attention to the bathroom.
And once the bathroom's collection of risqué comments was thoroughly obliterated she returned the mask and cloak to their proper location before giving the rest of the Gallery a thorough scrubbing. The last thing she wanted was for V to realize she had discovered his secret, and cleaned up on purpose!
She was enjoying a nice relaxing cup of tea when he returned. "Ah, Evey…" he seemed slightly disconcerted. "Been doing a spot of Spring cleaning, have you?"
"Yes, V! It's so good of you to notice!" she replied cheerily, taking another sip.
"Ah. Well. Sodium bicarbonate and vinegar…?"
"Yes; my mum used to swear by it. Has a lovely fresh scent, don't you think? It was beginning to get quite musty down here, and, well, like Jean Cocteau once said, 'Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job.'"
"Ah… Quite right, Evey."
"'The rest is literature.'"
"So it is."
"So I left the book dusting to you. I can't reach high enough."
"Very well. I'll just… I'll just go and change then, shall I?" V wandered off, apparently non-plussed, as Evey hid her smile behind her tea.
V. At a loss for words. Some things you just couldn't buy.
finis
Quotable Quotes – a regular article in the Reader's Digest magazine;
"To suddenly find oneself in Wonderland" – a reference to 'Alice in Wonderland', of course;
…A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma - Winston Churchill, speaking of Russia;
Man, being mortal, must fear poison paraphrased from the wonderful movie, 'The Princess Bride';
I dare do all that may become a man; who dares more is none – William Shakespeare, 'MacBeth';
Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature. – Jean Cocteau;
There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard – American ad campaign, paraphrasing the common cliché (I'm sorry!) that money can't buy happiness. Although, you know, it will buy the things that make you happy…