It was as unlikely as their first encounter. Evey went to a movie, turned left down a street to take a shortcut to the cafe that stayed open late, and V was there.

She stopped in her tracks, her breath catching in her throat.

V was clearly not expecting her any more than she was expecting him. His attention was entirely focused on the three fingermen attempting to kill him. They weren't having much luck; One of them fell to the ground with a knife in his chest almost as soon as she registered what she was looking at.

V had always said there were no coincidences. At that moment it felt like he was right, like fate had a heavy hand at her back. As if it had some kind of massive design it was painting, and she was a brush stroke that needed to be precisely placed or the whole thing would have to be scrapped.

V hadn't seen her, and her first thought was that she could step back behind the corner building, and he wouldn't ever know she'd been there. He could continue killing the three fingermen- four fingermen, she corrected herself, there was one crossing the street headed his way- and she could go home and feel conflicted about the fact that she was bizarrely pleased to see him.

She was pleased to see him. Like he was a friend she hadn't seen in months, instead of a...

Her mind groped for a word, but there wasn't one.

Then the fourth fingerman pulled his pistol, distracting her. V didn't notice him; He had turned to strike the fingerman's last living colleague, sending the man flying into the alley.

A dreadful sense of foresight shivered up her spine. She could see what was going to happen. The future laid itself in front of her in horrifying clarity. She could see it.

The fingerman stepped into the street, raising his gun to aim it at the back of V's head.

There was a loose brick laying by the side of the steps leading to the building beside her. Evey was running, brick in hand, before she had time for a coherent thought.

Evey bashed the fingerman in the head as hard as she'd ever hit anything in her life.

He had been close enough to blowing a hole out through the front of V's mask that he clamped down on the trigger as he fell. The shot went wild, shattering a window.

V whirled around, knife in hand, and saw her.

He froze.

The fingerman slumped to the ground at Evey's feet like a dead thing. She stood in the street, the moment thick in her throat, halfway between the corner where she'd been and the alley V was currently standing in front of. Halfway between two worlds. She was still holding the brick.

V lowered his knife. He straightened, his shoulders dropping, everything in his body language screaming that she'd astounded him just by existing in front of him. He looked like he was seeing a fantasy from legend brought to life. Evey Hammond of the Dunedain.

His mask tilted down, taking in the sight of the fingerman laying at her feet. Then back up.

She didn't want to be pleased to see him. Or...well. She almost didn't want to be pleased to see him.

V had given her a pale blue hardcover of 'The Fellowship of the Ring' and cooked eggs for her in the morning and played swashbuckler for fun. He had hurt her in almost every way someone could be hurt. He'd given her Valerie, and the horror that came with loving her, and he was tearing apart the system that had murdered her with his bare hands.

They stared at each other in silence. It felt like the whole world went still, like there was something huge teetering on the edge of a cliff, poised to destroy everything below.

"Evey," V said quietly, with wonder. The longing in his voice, in the way he held himself, was shockingly clear. As if everything inside him was saying 'Here is Evey Hammond, the woman I owe my soul to for all I've done'. He didn't sound conflicted, not in the slightest.

He took a step toward her. "How..." He spread his hands. How are you here?

"I was going for a coffee," Evey said, faintly.

He let out a breath. "Of course." There was a kind of grim amusement in his voice that she found appropriate, given the circumstances. Fate was playing with both of them.

The scales tipped his way, and she took a step toward him.

The fingerman on the ground in front of her shot him in the stomach.

She recoiled, startled that the fingerman was still alive. It became a moot point almost immediately; He sprouted one of V's knives from his neck virtually the moment she looked at him.

Across the street from her, V stumbled back a step, and braced himself against the building.

Evey's heart rose up and ate her alive.

"V!" Raw panic. She didn't even recall running to him. She was shoving at his cloak to get at his coat underneath. Her fingers came away bloody.

"There's no time." He pushed her hand away. "It's not bad." He sounded somewhat out of breath. His head turned sharply to the left, looking over her shoulder.

The sound of the shot had echoed off the buildings like a crack of thunder. Even if the Ear hadn't heard, someone would report something.

"We can't stay here," he said, an edge to his voice. He took a single step, hunching over slightly as if it hurt a great deal more than he wanted her to know. Without a word, Evey shoved herself underneath his arm to take some of his weight.

It was immediately obvious that his height combined with her slight build made the position impossible to maintain. Evey staggered, and V reached out with his free hand to grab the wall.

"You can't," he said. "Evey, you need to go. They'll have seen you on the cameras, but if you move quickly-"

"Shut up," Evey said, angry. She pulled him toward the alley. "I'm not leaving, so come on."

Wisely, V obeyed her. There was a lip in the wall, where the next building along the alley was slightly set back, and Evey shoved him against it. It helped a little, to block him from view.

He made a small, gasping sound of pain and clutched at the bricks. His hat brim hit the wall and it slipped from his head. "I fear...they'll have their prize sooner than I'd hoped. It won't take them long...to find us." He had to pause a little to breathe between words.

"I know," Evey said. She reached up for the fastener to his cloak. "Can you make it to the Shadow Gallery from here?" She slid it off his shoulders like a silk sheet dropping to the floor.

"Not nearly fast enough- What are you doing?" V asked. She was sure he'd have fought anyone else, but with her he was just curious.

Evey pulled the cloak around her shoulders. It was so long, it pooled on the ground around her, like she was dripping shadows. "I'll meet you there later tonight, if I can." If they don't catch me. If I'm still alive. She reached down for his hat, set it neatly on her head.

He put it together with a sharp inhalation that sounded like horror. V caught her hand before she took one step.

"Evey, stop."

He didn't grab her arm, or her wrist. He held her hand. The intimacy was surprising. He held it like they might thread their fingers together. The feeling cupped itself around her heart in a way that felt strangely inevitable.

Evey looked back at him, clear eyed and calm. "No."

It was interesting to see emotion in someone whose face was covered. He let out a breath, and it looked like awe. Just a moment of it, then gone.

"If they should catch you," he said, then stopped. Their linked hands were stretched across the space between them. His fingers tightened on hers. "'I am afraid to think what I have done; Look on't again I dare not.'"

Macbeth, she thought.

There were shouts now, on the street. fingermen, or police. They were out of time.

"What happens on the fifth of November if you're dead?" Evey demanded, shocking him silent. "If they kill you, all of this will have been for nothing." She took advantage of the emotions that hit him with that and threw his hand away, deliberately harsh. She took off running.

V watched her go, and loved her more than anything he had ever loved in his life.

'My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite'.

If he didn't have the Fifth ahead of him and all the responsibility that went along with that, he would have happily slit his own throat to get her to run the other way.

That was not the case, so he did nothing. He let her go.

Evey's voice came to him then with the nasty frightfulness of Robert Marley's ghost.

'I feel sorry for Mercedes.'

There were moments when he hated himself with a passion that was only eclipsed by the hatred he had for the people he was destroying. It was all that was keeping him alive, at times. His only comfort was that soon enough he would get what he deserved.

V pushed himself away from the wall. There was an entrance to a tube station not far away.

It took him far too long to get there. Long enough that he was certain she had beaten him back to the gallery. When he stopped a moment to rest he realized that he was dripping a trail for the police to follow, right to his front door, like Hansel dropping gleaming red pebbles. They had followed Evey, not him, but there was no need to make things easy for anyone with an interest who might accidentally stumble by. He pressed his handkerchief against the wound and shifted his belt up, binding it tight. He was fairly certain that it would take more than one bullet to kill him, but at that moment he was less certain about that than he'd ever been.

The walls rippled around him uneasily.

He could not die, he told them. Not here, not yet. Evey was waiting for him, and he would cheat death a thousand times over for that little miracle.

He was picturing her standing by the piano, looking triumphant or exhausted or even, unlikely though it was, relieved to see him. But when he finally staggered his way to the grating hiding his door, he remembered that the place was locked up tight. Unless she came down through the actual rails the train ran on and up through half a mile of tunnels, which she didn't know to do.

She'd gone out this way, so it followed that this was the only way she knew to come back. She should be standing there outside his door.

The place was empty and quiet, as only an abandoned railway deep beneath a city could be. He could hear his own breathing coming back at him from the walls. He didn't hear hers.

V's heart started to drop in his chest, a swift tumble down towards dread.

The door was still locked. He entered the Gallery and called for her anyway. It had never looked more sinister, standing empty. Certainly, she should have been there. Certainly by now...

It was so clear in his mind's eye, the fierce look on her face just before running from him. She took up his hat and his cloak and his mission and ran towards death without an ounce of fear. His mission, not hers. She was supposed to live. She was supposed to live-

'I'll sacrifice the lamb that I do love; To spite a raven's heart...'

He put his hand out and leaned against the wall, suddenly dizzy. Dear Viola offered Orsino her life on a plate, he thought, feeling sick. He noticed there was blood on the wall. V touched the wound at his side; He'd forgotten about it, one pain subsumed by another.

She might yet come; She may have simply been delayed, or forced to conceal herself somewhere. It would not do for her to arrive and find him dead on the floor.

And if she didn't arrive, a small, nasty voice in the back of his head added, he couldn't afford the luxury of dying on the floor. Not yet.

He went to tend to himself.

V set his mask aside without concern; Ideas did not bleed out on their bathroom floors. He, however, was definitely making a go of it. V stopped partway through to rest his head against the cool porcelain of his sink, but did not dare linger too long. He thought of Evey's face as she sat in the prison he'd made for her. Calm. Fearless.

V remembered that feeling, and took a breath, drawing it close. His shoulders relaxed. He continued, and did not stop again until his wound was neatly dressed. Then painkillers, and state-of-the-art antibiotics stolen from a medical research lab he'd burned down.

As fortified as he was likely to get for a good long while, V replaced his mask and stepped back into the main gallery.

The utter silence turned the space menacing. Some part of him, he admitted, had hoped she had arrived while he was distracted.

He would wait for her. She might still...

He would wait.

V sat down on the red velvet settee. It was the nearest horizontal surface to the door. He lowered his head, folded his hands, and began his vigil.

After a thousand years something occurred to him, and he got up to switch on the television.

He didn't have to wait; There was a large panel at the bottom of the screen that read "Terrorist killed by police?" The newswoman was speaking about reports they had received, that the police had done just that.

He let out a sharp breath, as if he'd just taken a punch. He stepped closer to the screen, staring intently at the newswoman's eyes. She did not appear to be blinking an unusual amount.

Then, to his horror they showed a blurry, far off image obviously clipped from a surveillance video. The hat and cape were familiar, but even at a distance, it was perfectly clear that it was Evey wearing them. Evey lying on the ground. V's attention splintered, his mind no longer able to follow what the newswoman was saying. He stared blindly out at his gallery with a dangerous, teetering incomprehension.

She was supposed to live...

He could see her face in his mind, a hundred different ways, flipping through his memory like a film reel. Evey afraid, confused, furious, laughing, resolute. It was so real, she could have been there.

She wasn't there though, was she. She was gone.

'I feel sorry for Mercedes.'

The thought twisted his heart like a dishrag, and he had to brace himself on the piano. For a moment, his mind went utterly empty; There was nothing but pain. His own heart was slashing at him in rage and grief, and he could have fallen to his knees, begging it for mercy.

He came out on the other side of the moment gasping and shaking, clutching uselessly at the gleaming wood. He had done this. V had done this, he had let her go and the police had-

They had-

He was going to kill them.

V straightened at the thought, curling his hands into fists. His mind gleamed like a cracked mirror. If he knew how to do anything, it was this. He walked to the suit of armor and rested his hand briefly on its greaves, like he used to do back in the old days, when he was closer to madness and enjoyed chatting with it.

He could get into the surveillance network easily. He would find them. V flashed on the night he'd met Evey, on the face of the fingerman he had fought on her behalf, cringing on the ground and begging for mercy. V would find him too. They would all beg.

He would...

His thoughts trailed off, something cold and despairing setting on his shoulders. V sagged slightly. It wasn't enough. Nothing would be enough.

He tore the helmet off the suit of armor and threw it across the room.

There was a portion of time that he didn't remember. He was flinging the helmet at the wall with a strangled sound, and then he was standing amid the wreck he'd made of his own home. Listlessly, V cast his eyes over the room.

Nothing irreplaceable damaged, he thought, without really caring. He looked down and was dimly surprised to see the broken leg of his piano bench in his hand. He dropped it.

V sat on the ground abruptly, jolting his spine. It was a vague surprise; He couldn't imagine why all the strength was suddenly gone from his legs.

V put his head in his hands, and wept.

Evey was so tired she was shaking. She'd been running all night. She hoped beyond hope that the door to the shadow gallery was open, or at the very least, if it was locked, that V was not passed out unconscious inside. Evey didn't think she physically had it in her to break a door down at that moment.

The door swung open easily, and she shut her eyes, sagging in relief. V certainly must have beat her there by hours and hours. If he wasn't there, or if he was passed out bleeding on the floor, Evey officially reserved the right to collapse for five minutes before getting up to deal with it.

She stepped inside and hesitated, feeling a sudden chill. She shut the door quietly behind her, took two careful steps forward. Something was wrong.

She took another step down the short hallway, her heart clenching. Beyond the hall, in the main room, she could see a candelabra on the floor, wax spattered on a beautiful Persian rug. She could just barely make out one of the paintings, knocked off its easel and lying flat on the floor.

They could have followed V back to the gallery. They could have killed him, they could have taken him...

A scream was building in the back of her throat. Evey picked up a beautifully decorative and rather heavy little statue from a table, moving silently toward the main room. The closer she got, the more it looked like a storm had blown through the gallery. Or a group of fingermen. She poked her head around the corner fully expecting the worst.

V was sitting on the floor, in the middle of the whirlwind.

The moment she saw him, his mask snapped up. Evey wanted to take a step back. She couldn't see his face, but she could see just from the way he drew himself up, from the sharp intake of his breath, that something extremely bad had just nearly happened. She'd interrupted...something. V shot to his feet like someone had pulled him up by his strings. The puppeteer was shit- he immediately overbalanced and stumbled back a bit.

Evey dropped the makeshift club and lunged for him, catching his arm. Her passing disturbed one of the pieces of armor strewn all over the floor.

"V, what happened?" Evey asked, shaken. His breathing sounded labored and...wet?

"I-" his voice was strange, shockingly thick, "I thought you'd been-"

He'd been crying, she thought with shocked recognition. That was what crying sounded like behind a thick metal mask.

He gestured vaguely toward the television with a high, slightly hysterical laugh.

"Terrorist killed by police?" the television said, in large black letters.

Evey's eyes went wide. "Oh." She looked from the TV, to the mess on the floor, and back up to V's face. "I see."

Her heart thumped once, uneven and painful. She hadn't thought, even for a moment, that he cared that much.

"They nearly caught me," Evey said. She'd fallen flat on her face at least twice. The length of the cape had proved to be a problem. "I had to break into one of the tube stations to hide." The Underground had been sealed, blocked up, boarded over. She lifted a hand, showing the bloody scrapes and the nail she'd completely torn off while peeling the boards apart with her bare hands.

"Oh," he said, a soft exhalation of breath. V took her hand gently, turning it over. He swayed into her a little, bumping into her shoulder with his. She put her hand on his shoulder, trying to steady him on his feet.

His shirt was wet. She looked down. He'd gotten blood on her sweater.

"You're still bleeding," she said sharply, pulling at his shirt. He wasn't even wearing the soft jacket he usually wore inside. Just a shirt and some kind of black stretchy thing underneath, pulled up so it wouldn't press on his stomach. There was a fresh bandage there, white gauze wrapped around and around, that he had bled through.

V lifted his arms out a little to give her better access, somehow giving the silent impression that he wasn't exactly following what was going on.

"V?" Evey got a better grip on him. "I think you should sit down."

V turned his mask toward her face and looked at her silently for a moment. "I'm sorry?" He spoke with a kind of polite confusion, as if it had taken a second for him to realize she'd said something to him.

"I think you should lie down," Evey revised.

"I'm fine," V said, sounding faint. "I'm fine. I must have torn a staple." V looked down at himself, then at the debris around them. His voice turned wry. "I've had a bit of exercise."

"I can see that," she said, pressing her lips together in a thin line. She tugged him gently toward the room she'd slept in. She had no idea where his room was; He'd been very cagey about the locked doors in the gallery while she'd been living there. V followed her rather like a man in a dream. His mask was tilted in her direction. She thought he was staring at her.

"You're all right," he said, his tone shockingly soft. His voice didn't make it a question. It was a question anyway.

"Yeah," she said gently. Then, "I'll be better when I know you're not going to fall on the floor."

V let out a breath. It was not a laugh, but it came from the same extended family. To her surprise, he sat down on the bed, and just kept going down. It was as if the second he'd relaxed a little, he was so tired that he was nearly asleep before remembering he only meant to relax a little.

Evey was startled, but moved fast enough to divert his trajectory from a headfirst crash onto the floor into a graceless collapse back onto the bed.

Evey put a knee on the mattress and leaned over him. "V?" She wasn't sure if he was still awake. She tugged experimentally on the bloodstained shirt. "I need to look at this."

V hummed sleepily. He lifted a hand and patted searchingly at the bed, as if he had his eyes shut and couldn't see what he was looking for. He found her hand and squeezed lightly.

"You don't have to stay," he said softly, dreamily. "You can go."

Evey went sharp and prickly all over. "V," she said, irritable. He'd been telling her to leave all day. She was damned if she was going to nearly kill herself running all over the back alleys of London to keep him safe, just to leave him to die. Without even getting a hot meal and a safe place to sleep for the effort she'd made on his behalf, she added sarcastically to herself.

"No locked doors," he murmured, startling her. "Can go." He sighed, sounding exhausted. He relaxed into the bed all at once, like air rushing out of a balloon.

"Oh," Evey said, a shock of understanding turning her heart tender.

He didn't want her to feel trapped. He didn't want her to feel like this was someplace she needed to escape from.

She brushed the painted cheek of his mask with her fingertips. He was already out. "Thank you," she said anyway, her voice soft.

She sat back with a sigh, looking down at him apprehensively. Evey knew essentially nothing about medical care. She had some vague idea that it was a bad idea to remove the gauze he was wearing. She could put more on top, she supposed.

The bathroom, when she went to check it, looked like a slaughterhouse. She stood at the doorway in dismay. There was blood everywhere. Dripped on the floor, smeared on the sink. She supposed he hadn't been in the best condition to clean up the place.

Evey thought briefly of the armor and the papers scattered on the floor, of the wet muffled sound of tears under a mask. She sighed and took the gauze.

V had a desperate sense of being too cold and too hot. He was freezing and he was roasting and he was trembling on the bed. Perhaps he'd died and was in hell. His soul certainly wasn't going anywhere else.

"No," Evey said, startling him, her voice strange. "It's not hell."

She felt like static, washing in and out, but she had to be right, there wouldn't be angels in hell. Her hand was soft and shockingly, wonderfully cold against his cheek.

There was something about that that meant something, something important. Her skin on his skin and it filled him up right to the brim until it spilled over.

"I love you," he managed, his voice ragged. The room wouldn't focus and if he wasn't in hell he must be dreaming, or dying. He had to tell her, before he died. "I love you. I don't...deserve..." Was he speaking out loud? It didn't matter. I don't deserve to love you. I can't help it. I can't help it...

"Shh," Evey said, and her lips brushed against his cheek. It felt as though everything he was, every single part of him, relaxed all at once. Dreaming then...

He didn't recall what came after that.

V awoke feeling like a great deal of time had passed. He was more comfortable than he could ever recall being in his life. His limbs felt heavy and there was a bone-deep contentment humming under his skin. Something warm and lovely was pressed close. He was barely awake, but sleep was already dragging at him in a wonderful way. He was inclined to indulge it.

Something shifted the bed a little.

He turned his head, and beheld a small miracle.

Evey was tucked up next to him, head on his shoulder, fast asleep. As peaceful and content as a nesting dove. Her hand was curled around his arm, keeping him close.

He looked at the soft curve of her cheek, at her scraped knuckles. The warm weight of her felt like it had soaked right into his bones. He could have rolled over and put his still-beating heart in her hands. He could have put all his plans for the fifth in her hands. He could have shut his eyes and slept peacefully in that bed with her for a thousand years.

Beneath the pure physical contentment that was in command of his attention, something shifted in the bedrock of his convictions. Deep under the earth two tectonic plates scraped against each other, and one of them gave way. Faintly, he could feel the rumbling under his feet.

At the moment, V didn't care. It felt so lovely to lay there beside her. He was so tired. He rested his cheek gently on top of Evey's head. It was sweeter than he could have imagined. Everything else fell away.

She made a soft, contented sound, pressing closer to him. Alive. Safe.

Safe, he thought with something like bliss, and relaxed back into sleep.

When V awoke again it was with the odd sense that he'd missed something. For a moment, before thought intruded, he felt slightly bereft at the emptiness of the bed beside him, and wondered why that might be.

Then-

"Evey," he said, ice creeping through his veins. She'd been there, he thought, looking at the empty space beside him on the bed.

Hadn't she?

He remembered seeing the report of her death on the television, and the moment his mind had cracked like glass in response. And then, somehow she'd appeared. She'd returned to him and...he had some vague notion that she'd helped him walk somewhere. The bedroom he was now residing in, most likely.

And when he'd opened his eyes she'd been lying right next to him. He'd seen her.

A shiver of doubt crept in. Something had shattered inside when he'd learned of Evey's death. His mind had cracked along fault lines, jagged pieces everywhere. Had he killed someone? Or had he just been thinking about it, lusting after it as he had in the early days after Larkhill when his dreams of vengeance were so vivid he sometimes woke feeling as though he'd already killed them.

No. No, she had come back, alive and solid and very real. He'd seen her.

Hadn't he?

He reached out and touched the emptiness beside him. The blankets were cool, but he was distracted from that fact by the brush of the pillow against the side of his face.

He hissed in a breath, reaching up. The mask. The mask was...

A memory dropped into his mind like a pebble into a small pond, sending ripples spreading everywhere. The feeling of Evey's lips against his cheek.

Horror crept up his spine. He felt lightheaded. He reached down with a dreamy kind of absentmindedness and pressed at his side where his wound had been, feeling no pain.

V healed quickly. Quicker than was strictly possible for a human to heal; A little gift from Larkhill. His body would boil itself alive, everything churning, his immune system running wild and his mind fracturing into a thousand glittering shards. He could heal what would take 12 weeks of recovery in 12 hours, but it wasn't without cost. V was always more or less delirious while he was mending; He supposed Evey must have been frantic.

So of course she had-

She had removed the mask and seen-

That face.

V was shaking. That face. His hands were shaking, and he was on his feet somehow and there was a sound crawling up his throat that he thought might be a sob and when that happened he would lose his mind he would lose his mind he would-

"Shh."

Evey. It was a memory. It wasn't real. But it rose up clear and sweet and unbelievably comforting. V felt the muscles in his shoulders relaxing.

"Shh," she'd hushed him, and kissed him, and even the memory of it was enough to calm him again.

She'd seen everything, and kissed him anyway.

V turned his eyes to the door, a flush of warmth blooming in his chest. Evey was out there, somewhere in the Shadow Gallery. He stood, picking at the bandage around his now-healed wound. His skin beneath was scarred and terrible, but free of bullet holes. He tugged his shirt down, tidying himself as best he could. He wished badly for his mask, but given that Evey had...seen, and still...

The die has been cast. Time to see what has become of it.

He stepped out into the gallery, looking around cautiously. The television was still on, but everything else was quiet.

His mask was sitting innocently on the piano, smiling at him from a pool of black fabric. V approached it warily. It made no sense, but something about the familiar face unsettled him. As though it was alive, and had secrets it was keeping. He reached out and ran his fingertips over the dark fabric; One of his capes. His first thought was that it was the one Evey had worn adventuring.

It was soaking wet.

He frowned, rubbing his fingers together. That wasn't right. It hadn't been raining, and judging by his healed state it had been at least half a day since he'd been shot. Even if she'd gotten wet for some reason, it should have dried by now. V picked up his mask, turning it in his hands as though it could tell him what had happened in the hours he'd been sleeping. He lifted the mask to his face with a faint sense of relief at the chance to armor himself against whatever emotions he would be facing when he saw Evey again.

He froze, and nearly dropped it.

It smelled like her. Like the floral soap that had sat unused in his cupboards until Evey became his guest. Wherever she'd walked, the scent of roses had trailed behind her. The mask held the delicate remnant of it.

She'd worn his mask.

V caught his breath, suddenly, inexplicably aroused. He lowered the mask, conflicted. Perhaps he should wipe it down. Perhaps, he thought with a shiver, he wouldn't. He had nearly replaced it on the piano, when his attention was caught by something else resting on the dark cloth.

He picked it up, curious. It was a bit of paper.

'7-1026-1, 39-20-8', it read.

V jerked back from the table. They were codes. The codes to enter the cable junctions inside Farrington, and St. Luke's. He had tapped into the interlink years ago; Their security had improved over time, but the simplicity of a physical fob at a vulnerable juncture hadn't ever occurred to them. There was a regular rotation of maintenance; All he ever needed to do was move the fob before they arrived.

V snapped his head toward the television with a thrill of alarm, looking for the date. If they found his equipment he would be in trouble. He'd been meaning to move it- needed to move it- but surely it couldn't be the third already, surely-

'September 3, 5:15 pm' the screen announced cheerfully, disregarding him.

He'd been asleep for two days.

"Evey," he said, with feeling, charging toward the surveillance room. He'd kept it locked the entire time she'd been there, but not since she'd left. He'd left the bloody door unlocked...

She hadn't even bothered to close it behind her. It stood open, waiting.

V let out a breath, long and slow. His mask was still in his hands, and he silently strapped it on. The scent of her, of roses, filled his nose.

V stepped inside, braced (he thought) for anything. She wasn't there. His papers were scattered messily, but not maliciously. Things had obviously been looked through. There was a map of the junction station on the desk, and the calendar with the maintenance schedule, with the third circled. They had both been fastened to the wall the last time he'd seen them.

V switched on a screen in the corner, bringing up a view from Farrington. A maintenance worker was looking around, obviously bored. He switched to St. Lukes. Empty.

V leaned briefly against the wall. Evey had put everything together, with a handful of clues he'd unwittingly left lying about. Instead of...of leaving, or ignoring it, or any number of things, she'd chosen to don his mask and his cloak and had gone out into London to do the work he couldn't do himself.

He couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't breathe. A spike of pure adoration had driven clean through his chest, pinning him like a butterfly to a board. If Evey had been standing there he would have fallen at her feet.

He looked toward the door, beating his heart back down like a rabid beast, until he was capable of thinking again.

V rushed back out into the gallery. He needed to find her. The kitchen was dark, the tv-

Evey was lying on the couch like she'd been dropped there; Like she'd been asleep before her head hit the cushion. Her expression was as clear and peaceful as a classic painting. Pleasant Dreams, by Henry Nelson O'Neil. One arm extended out over the edge of the cushions, her fingers not quite grazing the floor. She had a rough scrape on the inside of her elbow.

Slowly, V sat down on the edge of the cushions, careful not to jostle her. He caught her hand at the wrist, meaning to tuck it in close to her. She had delicate wrists. Her fingers were curled loosely, and he drew his thumb lightly over the cup of her palm. He was careful, but not careful enough, and she started awake under his hands.

Evey opened her eyes and almost jumped out of her skin. That white mask loomed out of the dark, and she had a wild, confused thought that he'd broken into her apartment. Then her memories rose up and crashed over her, like someone had chucked a bucket of water at her face.

"V?" Her eyes went wide. The last time she'd checked on him- She shoved herself up with a flare of alarm, reaching for him. There was a real danger that he wasn't coherent. "Are you all right, you-"

"I'm fine," V soothed. Calmly, rationally.

"You were burning up," Evey said cautiously. You were out of your head, she didn't say.

He was cradling her hand against his chest. It was distracting.

V let out a breath of laughter that did a lot to convince her that he wasn't lying. He released her hand, so he could tug his shirt up slightly. The bandage was gone. There were scars, terrible scars, but no wound, and no blood.

"I'm a rather fast healer," he commented, "though as you no doubt know, it does not come without cost."

She was thoughtless in her relief and reached out to feel for herself. Her fingers touched his skin, and he started like a cat, snatching at her wrist.

"I'm sorry," she said quickly.

He tugged her hand away from his side, but didn't release it. He looked down at it for a moment, tracing little circles in her palm with his thumb.

I love you, he'd said. I don't deserve to love you. Later, when he'd been much worse, he'd begged her not to tell. Please don't tell her, she shouldn't have to hear that, not from me...

After a long pause, V spoke gently. "It's all right." He hesitated, and his voice attempted lightness in an extremely unconvincing way. "I imagine you've already seen the worst of the damage."

The words stumped her for a moment. She'd been apologising for startling him; He couldn't have often been touched, being covered head-to-toe all the time. "Seen the worst..." she trailed off.

Silently, V gestured at his face.

Evey froze with a chill of realization.

He thinks he needs to apologise. For looking the way he does in front of me.

"I don't care," she said, her voice hard. "Why would I care?"

V leaned back as if she'd given him a push. He got very still, looking at her. The mask tilted a little, as if seeing her from a new angle might help him understand her better.

"'The quality of mercy is not strained, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, Upon the place beneath," he said finally, sounding a little bewildered.

She couldn't understand him at all. He was more real than any other person in the world. When she'd seen him again it had felt like fate had grabbed her by the back of the neck. Why in God's name should his face matter to her now? Apologising for how he looked was beyond ridiculous. It felt like he'd whittled her down to a knife's point and now he was trying to use her to slit his own neck.

He'd apologised to her enough, for the things that actually mattered. About 10 hours after she'd gotten V settled in her old room, his growing fever had skyrocketed, until she'd been almost certain he was going to die. Not on the fifth of November. Right there, right then, in front of her. He'd begged and wept and choked out his regrets for what he'd done to her until she'd have done nearly anything to get him to stop. It wasn't even said for her ears; At that point she was fairly certain he wasn't aware of her at all. No, he spoke like they were things he said over and over to himself.

Her current emotions were deeply confusing. Sometime during the second day she'd started telling him that she forgave him. She didn't know if it was completely true, but it had been completely true when she'd said it.

"I know what you've done," he said, as if in answer to her thought. Evey looked up, startled.

He handed her a familiar slip of paper, the codes written in her handwriting. Evey relaxed, feeling a little foolish.

"I saw, on the papers you left out..." She looked at him uncertainly. "I was right, wasn't I? It had to be gone before they found it."

When she couldn't take any more apologies she'd paced through the gallery, wondering what the hell she would do about the Fifth if he died. She hadn't known his plans, couldn't imagine how she could manage it without them, and wasn't quite sure she wanted to.

There was a room, though, that she'd thought might have answers. She didn't think V had noticed her spying, but after she learned Prothero was dead and started thinking about escape, she'd started to pay attention when he went into an always-locked-room. One of them had looked like it had a lot of screens inside. When she'd tried the lock this time, it had been open.

"Yes." V was leaning toward her like she was the brightest thing he'd ever seen. Sunflower adoration. She couldn't see his face, but now that she knew how he felt about her, it seemed like she should have guessed. His body language was practically shouting the truth. I can't help it, he'd said. I'm sorry, I can't help it...

V's voice was warm with admiration. "If they'd found that fob I would be in more trouble than you could possibly believe."

Evey raised her eyebrows, her mouth twisting into a wry expression. "I don't know, I can believe a lot." Her voice was dry.

V drew in on himself sharply, looking smaller. He hadn't meant to imply anything, she realized.

He was silent for a long moment. Then, "yes, I suppose...yes." The sunflower wilted, and she found she didn't care for it.

V took a deep breath, and squared his shoulders. "Thank you, Evey," he said, the gratitude plain in his voice. "You..." He shook his head with a little self-deprecating shrug. "You didn't have to."

"Well," she said with a slight smile, "I'll admit, as a profession, I'm not over-fond of terrorism. I'm just glad the man I was filling in for is alright."

"Are you?" V's voice was tender, with the faintest hint of surprise. His mask was very close to her face. He had a stray hair caught on the corner of the mask's smile.

Evey reached up and brushed it aside. Her heart gave a little twinge. "Yeah," she said softly. Vaguely, she noticed that his hand was resting at her waist, that he was drawing her into his arms. She wasn't sure he realized he was doing it.

If he hadn't been wearing the mask, she might have kissed him.

Instead, there was a sudden, strident chiming, and she jumped. V stiffened, his head snapping towards the sound. Without a word, he leapt to his feet and charged across the room.

Evey scrambled up off the couch much less gracefully, her heart pounding. He was going toward the door, she realized with genuine alarm. What was the sound warning him of?

"V?" She followed him, slower, wondering if she should grab a weapon, or try to hide.

"Stay back," he snapped, in a way that wasn't comforting at all. She heard the door open, and held her breath, expecting to hear...she wasn't sure. Police, possibly.

There was nothing. Silence.

V coughed, and she realized he'd stepped out into the tunnels when he entered again, still coughing, but much louder. The door slammed forcefully. It was not a 'that-was-nothing' door slam.

When he rounded the corner he was running, and she felt a spike of honest fear. "What-" It was all she managed before V grabbed her arm just above the elbow and started dragging her along with him, heedless of her stumbling shock. "What's wrong, what's-" Evey almost fell on her face. V didn't stop, his grip on her pinching like a vise, hauling her along regardless of any help her feet gave.

"Gas." She'd never heard his voice sound so cold.

"What?" Evey said, her voice rising in alarm. She dug her heels in and looked behind her. Was that something rolling through the air along the floor? "Oh my god," she said, with feeling.

"Mr. Creedy's becoming desperate," V said, and flung open the door to her own version of hell. "In here, we'll be safe."

The sight of the hallway that led to her imaginary prison hit her like a slap in the face.

"No," she said, yanking at his grip on her arm. He didn't relent, silently dragging her forward, and she started fighting him in earnest. "No, V, I don't want to go in there."

He yanked her across the threshold, down the hall toward her old cell, and she started kicking. "Let go of me!" She was snarling and hitting him, and he actually had to stop and wrestle with her for a moment to keep her from either breaking his grip or tearing her own arm off.

It was a trick, everything was a trick, She thought wildly. He dragged her around the corner, and she could see her old cell, doorway open. She was suddenly fighting him for all she was worth, fully ready to make him kill her before he could put her back there.

He slammed her up against the wall, his arm across her throat. She went for his eyes, scratching at the mask, but he jerked his head back and leaned over to hit something on the wall. There was a hiss and a thump and the door to her right swung open to a cell she'd never seen the inside of before.

He backed his arm off her throat. As soon as he let up she ducked around him, quick as a cat, and tried to run for the door back into the gallery. He caught her by the back of her shirt just as she stopped on her own. There was a curl of something that almost looked like smoke, creeping along the floor into the hallway.

V yanked her back so hard she heard seams tear. Silently and without mercy, V slapped his hand at her back and threw her inside the cell.

She smacked her hands against the concrete, shoes skidding beneath her as she clawed herself upright and launched herself at him. He caught her just as the door shut behind him with a familiar clunk, locking them both inside.

Evey did her best to get past him. She didn't remember, exactly... she was shouting and crying and the walls were dark and cold and pressing in on her...

V was talking to her. She thought he might have been talking to her for a long time. He had her immobilized up against his chest, pinning her arms to her sides in a tight grip. Her toes barely touched the ground; He was lifting her whole weight like it was nothing. For some reason she'd let her head fall back against him, as if he was comforting her instead of torturing her. The hard curve of the mask was pressing into the side of her neck as he spoke into her ear.

Gradually, she made sense of what he was saying. "It's not a trick, Evey. It's not a trick, I'm right here beside you. I'm here." He was breathing hard.

Evey made her mouth work. "You're such a liar." There should have been venom in her voice. She just sounded tired.

He inhaled sharply, tensing a little at her back, as if he'd been waiting for her to respond for quite a while. He set her back on her feet, gripping her arm and turning her around.

He was covered head-to-toe, and yet she could read him clearly. V looked desperate.

"No, no lies." He cupped her cheek with one hand, the other stroking down her shoulder, as if trying to soothe her. He still sounded calm, somehow. "I'm in here with you, Evey. It's not a trick. When the gas has dissipated we can leave here together and you'll never have to see me again." His other hand came up, and he was holding her face in his hands. His voice cracked when he spoke again. "I swear it."

Her fingers were curled into the dark material of his shirt.

"I want to go. Right now." Her voice was flinty. She didn't want to believe him. If he was tricking her again it would hurt too much.

"You can't," he began.

"Now!" she snapped, louder, and tried to shove him out of her way. It was like shoving at a wall, and for a brief moment she struggled with him, half ready to start fighting again.

Then V caught her shoulders and stepped to one side, like he was shoving the sight of the door at her eyes. There was a window, set in the door. Beyond the glass was something grey and cloudy, like smoke. Evey doubted it was smoke.

"If you step outside that door, you'll die," he said, giving her a shake. His shell of calm had cracked, and the splintered tension was clear in his voice. "They've either given up trying to find where I'm hiding or something's happened to get the Chancellor on their necks so hard they'll do anything." His voice got rougher, gained a quality Evey recognized from an awful night of wild raving and desperate remorse. "They released that gas to kill anything and everything in the underground, and it does its job horrifyingly well."

Evey looked from the window to his face. She pushed him away, and he let her. "I'll hold my breath," she said.

V clenched his fists, either not catching that she'd just admitted she believed him or too far at the end of his rope to care.

"That's the first thing everyone tries." His voice dropped an octave. "You think I didn't try that?" He leaned toward her and took a single step forward.

The motion radiated a distilled and purified sense of aggression. Evey felt a chill, and suddenly understood a great deal more about V than she had a second before. It was the first time he had ever done anything with such an air of menace toward her. The faces he'd worn in the prison had been matter-of-fact about their actions, even bored. She might have thought, in the past, that the banality of the way he'd chosen to act was proof that he was dangerous. Evey had been entirely and completely wrong. She saw him lean toward her and realized she'd never even seen real rage in him.

V's voice was a ruin of its usual self. "It burns your eyes first. That was the worst part, worse than not being able to breathe. Your skin burns, your lips, your nose," V lifted his hands toward the mask, his fingers like claws. "But your eyes," he hissed.

Evey took a step back in rising horror. V followed. He hunched forward a little, like the emotion of the moment was trying to rip its way out of his throat.

"I would have torn my eyes out," he snarled, "I would have scratched them out of my head if my hands hadn't been bound. I would have been glad to be blind."

Evey understood, in horrible clarity, exactly what was happening. Exactly what it meant.

"I'm sorry," she said breathlessly, her heart contracting.

"You think I could allow that to happen to you?" V continued in anguish, as if he hadn't heard her. It was a distinct possibility.

Evey reached up, touched the mask's painted cheek. She slid her fingers back; There was uncovered skin there, hidden by hair.

"I didn't know," she said, eyes wide. I didn't know this was what they'd done. "I'm sorry, I am."

V jolted when her fingers brushed bare skin, his chin turning fractionally toward the hand in question.

He jerked back from her, stumbling in a lack of grace she'd never seen from him. He caught himself on the wall and stood there panting for a moment. Then he sort of...folded, sliding down the wall until he was sitting on the floor.

She instinctively took a step toward him when he fell. Then she took another, her movement more careful. Cautiously, she knelt down beside him, tucking her legs neatly underneath her.

V looked at the floor, and said nothing. They sat there for a minute or two. Long enough for Evey to start to feel the heaviness of the walls all around her.

"How...long do you think we'll be stuck here?" Evey asked softly.

V's mask tilted slightly in her direction. Not enough to look at her, just enough to acknowledge he'd heard her. He made a small 'mmm' sound. Noticing she believed him now, probably. "Three or four hours, I should think."

Evey slumped a little. She looked around the bleak and unadorned cell for a moment, just breathing. Then she shifted herself, scooting over to sit closer until she could have easily reached out and touched him. She leaned back against the wall and drew her legs up, resting her arms on her knees.

V watched her do it. Evey chose to sit close to him, and she thought he caught what that meant. He crossed his legs indian-style, his posture relaxing, and for a moment it almost felt companionable.

"You built this room." Evey glanced at the door. There was some kind of seal around it, keeping the gas out. "Were you...expecting this to happen someday?"

V tilted his head. "How do you know it hasn't happened before?"

Evey recoiled a little. "What?"

"London has a plethora of tunnels running underneath her, and despite these troubled times, she has an unusual lack of homeless undesirables living in them, don't you think?" V asked smoothly.

Evey's mouth was open, so she shut it. "That's...that's..."

"Monstrous," V supplied quietly. "Yes."

The word fell like a dead thing in between them. They created a monster. The room around them was silent and indifferent and very, very cold.

"I shouldn't have said that," Evey said, not even trying to pretend it wasn't what they were both thinking about. "It's not true."

"On the contrary," he replied. He looked down at his hands, and his voice turned dark. "And for my deeds I shall receive what I am owed. 'For, as thou urgest justice, be assured; Thou shalt have justice more than thou desir'st'".

Evey paused, thinking hard. She pushed herself up onto her knees.

"Maybe you will," she said. She reached out and slid her arms around his neck, drawing him into a hug.

V let out a little 'whouf' of air, obviously shocked. His hands rested lightly at her waist, then slid up her back as if he were confirming she was actually there, and he wasn't imagining things. He tightened his arms around her and clutched her to his chest like she was holding his last inch, as if she was the only thing in the world worth having. He made a choked sound, like he'd been gutted.

The point of her chin was resting against the soft black cloth of his shirt. His hair was in her face, and she didn't care.

"Oh," V said into her shoulder, as if she'd just split his heart open. V was pressing the hard curve of his mask against her skin, as if he was placing a kiss there. As if they were doing something else entirely.

Evey let her arms loosen from the death grip she'd had on him, pulled back enough to look him in the face. His arms were a bit more reluctant to relax their grip on her. He'd essentially hauled her up into his lap.

She was close enough to the mask that she could almost see his eyes, his real eyes, on the other side of the dark screens.

"You're in love with me," she said. It wasn't a question.

V was stunned silent, and his arms went briefly slack around her. He looked down, his shoulders dropping, as if something was pulling him towards the ground. Then, slowly, the mask came back up.

"Yes." The word was a caress. She wanted to curl up around the warmth in his voice. Tuck it in her pocket and bring it out on cold nights.

"'Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much,'" he continued softly. He'd gone gentle all at once. The mask was making little movements, and she was close enough to see that his eyes were searching her face. "May I inquire...how did you know?"

A smile flickered at the corner of her mouth. "You mentioned it. Yesterday." Repeatedly.

V went very still, as though his mind had turned toward something far away. "I remember," he murmured. "I laid my heart bare," He looked at her and his tone of voice changed, "and then you kissed me."

It was probably cruel that she didn't immediately know what he was talking about. It had been a long couple of days. Her first thought was that he was wrong, that he might have hallucinated it. She felt a pang of compassion, and had already half-resolved to lie about it when she remembered. A kiss wasn't only lips to lips.

Evey darted in and kissed him on the cheek, as a way of confirming that he was right. Then she curled herself up against him, hugging him close. One arm around his middle, one slung around his neck. She'd startled him, and he took a moment to respond. Then she felt his arms tighten around her, and she pressed her face into his chest.

"Evey." V said her name like it was being pulled out of him. "You shouldn't have to weather my feelings, it was badly done. 'Thou know'st no less but all. I have unclasped to thee the book even of my secret soul.'"

Evey lifted her head. "Twelfth Night."

V looked down at her. "Viola," he said, adoringly.

The room was still soulless and grey and terrible, but the space between them felt like a pocket of warmth and color. The curve of her arm and the fall of his hair made a small, intimate little space that felt very far from their surroundings of concrete and despair.

"I don't mind knowing," she said. Maybe it should have hurt. Maybe she should have been outraged that he could lock her in a cell and then claim to love her. It didn't, though. In fact, it almost made things make sense. Knowing how he felt about her was a long way from knowing all the secrets of his soul, however.

"It's hardly true though, is it?" Evey continued. "I know almost nothing about you." She let out half a laugh. "You're the most important thing that's ever happened to me, and I don't even know who you really are."

V's hand came up and stroked her cheek. "You know everything that matters." His voice was achingly tender. "And more than anyone else alive."

Evey gave him a slight smile. "Tell me something that doesn't matter, then." She looked around at their grim surroundings. "A nice memory, maybe," she revised. "From when you grew up."

V tensed under her hands. He was silent too long, but Evey let it stretch. She wondered suddenly if the last person before her who had cared about him was Valerie. They hadn't even been able to speak to each other.

"I can't," he said, his voice strangely thin.

Before Evey could feel more than a swoop of disappointment, he continued.

"I was the man in room five, and now I am V. All else has gone, I'm afraid." He sighed, infinitely weary. "I suppose I must have been someone. I don't remember."

Evey pulled away from him slightly. She was snapping several scattered puzzle pieces together. Most of them were still on the floor and the picture wasn't finished, but she was getting the gist of it now.

"You don't remember anything?" she asked delicately.

"Please, Evey," he whispered. "Not here." He leaned down a little, rested his forehead against hers. "Not here."

In a cold cell, not unlike the place where he'd done the forgetting, she suspected.

"All right." Her voice was gentle. She stroked her hand down the front of V's shirt, thinking. If he didn't have any warm memories to chase away the chill of the place, maybe she should share some of hers.

"You know, my mum grew roses. In the back garden, when I was little. When I read Valerie's letter, I thought how weird it was," Evey gave him a rueful expression. "Mum planted Scarlet Carsons, they were right under my brother's bedroom window." The memories warmed her voice. "I loved them, but Mum never wanted us to touch them. Sometimes my brother would open the window at night and steal one for me."

V took a long, slow breath, in and then out. As if she'd said something deeply exciting or incredibly moving.

She smiled faintly. "Funny, isn't it."

"Not at all," V said firmly. "I assure you, coincidence is merely the shadow-puppetry of Fate."

Evey let herself relax against him. "She grew peonies and hollyhock and lavender, too. I don't know if that was fate. Mum would pick the lavender and put it in a little jar by the windowsill in the kitchen..." Evey tucked her head underneath his chin and did her best to paint a sunny, carefree picture of her life before St. Mary's changed everything. She wasn't her father, but she could tell a story well enough to bring a little warmth into the cell.

V went very still, listening, like he was soaking up every word.

It had been safe to leave the room for over half an hour, but V didn't have the slightest desire to do so.

Evey was sleeping in his arms.

She'd wanted something from him, some kind of comfort to be found in hearing about a simpler part of his life. Unfortunately, there was no 'simpler part of his life' to share. She'd already seen everything there was that had ever been good and comfortable about his life. She'd eaten his cooking, read his books, watched his movies. Once, before she had realized he was a killer, he had set up a target to practice throwing his knives and surprised her by tacking up a photo of her old boss, Lewis Prothero. He'd handed her a fistful of darts, and she'd laughed out loud. It had taken a bit of practice, but by the end she'd put a dart directly into Prothero's exceptionally large nose. Her mischievous delight had immediately gone on the list of 'best and most enjoyable things that had ever happened to him'.

The list was an exceptionally short read.

Thwarted, Evey had taken her desire for distraction and instead painted a picture-book for him of her childhood, filled with color and light.

Even if she left the moment he opened that door, and he never saw her face again, he would remember every single word she'd said. Evey had hidden stolen roses tucked behind her bedroom curtains, a green plastic cup standing in for a vase on the windowsill. Her brother, ignorant of his inevitable fate, had crept out of his room to pass it to her after they should have been asleep, proud of his illicit, innocent prize. The next afternoon, when he'd been sent to his room for some small childish infraction, she'd stolen a Cornetto from the freezer and sneaked it to him in recompense.

Little disobedient Evey, before the world had taught her fear.

Not long after, Evey's voice had grown distracted with exhaustion, and had finally trailed off. He'd realized with a rising sense of awe and disbelief that she'd actually fallen asleep, curled against him, sitting in his lap.

For twenty years the sum total of his desires had been for the destruction of the people and system that had torn him to pieces, torn Valerie to pieces, and tried to make them into things; To turn them from people into weapons to kill the innocent. There was little else for him to long for. He'd dreamed of being able to touch Valerie's hand, sometimes. Of being able to speak to her, to hear the voice he'd come to know from her films. In 'The Salt Flats' she'd actually said the words 'I love you' to her co-star, and more than once he'd sat in near-tears, whispering the words back to her.

Evey had blown into his life like the storm that had raged over London the night he'd released her from her cell. His indifference to personal dreams beyond his plans had been thrown into the winds, tangled and broken and washed into the sea in a torrent of rain.

Now Evey was resting calmly and fearlessly in his arms, and he had never desired anything more in his life than to have the moment continue. To cast it in amber and lay his heart there forever. It felt as though his feelings were too vast for his body to contain; As though he must be breathing it into the air around them. Riding his every exhalation was a silent 'I love you'. It was both excruciating and one of the greatest pleasures he could ever recall experiencing in his life.

The moment could not last. Evey had surprised him again today, had stacked the debt he owed her to the clouds and higher. She had been kind, and more than generous, but when the door opened she would leave him. He'd had his 'once more, before the fifth' meeting with her and would go forward alone.

And he wished, with all his heart, that he didn't have to.

The world was an unkind place toward wishes. Evey shifted in his arms, stirring. He loosened his arms and deliberately did not cling to her.

"Bonjour, Mademoiselle," he said gently.

"V?" Evey sat up in surprise. She glanced around, and he watched memory settle over her. She extricated herself from his arms with delicate politeness. V ruthlessly beat down the twinge from his heart in reaction. He got to his feet, brushing himself off.

"How long has it been?" She asked.

"Five hours."

Evey frowned. "But-" She glanced at the window in the door. It was clear.

V extended a hand to help her up. "I didn't want to wake you."

Evey gave him a half-smile, displaying the same little oft-hidden flash of intelligence in her eye that had first made him start to like her. She took his hand, let him help her to her feet.

There was a real possibility that when she left this time it would break him, V thought, his heart sinking.

V opened the door cautiously. There was a small light wired beside the handle, that forty minutes ago had turned from yellow to green. The air was clear.

He motioned for Evey to follow him. She stepped through the door and stopped dead. He turned his head to look back at her, curious. Evey was staring at her old cell. The image was surreal and grotesque. For a terrible moment he was once again dressed in another man's face, and it was just another day, dragging her back from interrogation.

Evey turned inside the shell of hell he'd built for her and looked at him with steely, unconquerable eyes. She knew exactly what he was thinking. Exactly what he was remembering.

He took a step back, shrinking into himself a little.

I had no right to tell her that I love her.

Then, to V's alarm, she turned from him and walked right over to her cell. He thought for a queasy moment that she would walk inside, but she stopped dead, looking startled. V stepped closer, and a memory he'd completely blocked out slapped him in the face. He'd torn the door off its hinges. He'd torn it away from the wall with his bare hands and used it to bash a hole in the concrete wall of the cell.

Oh. Yes. After Evey had left he'd come back here. V only vaguely remembered it. He'd been screaming. He thought he'd been screaming.

"You did this," she said. Tentatively, Evey reached out to run her fingers over the twisted remains of a door hinge.

"Evey," he choked, reaching out to her. His heart was snarling at him. Nothing in there should ever touch her again.

Her head snapped toward him. She narrowed her eyes a little. V's hand was hovering in the air, and she glanced at it, her expression thoughtful.

"Your hand's shaking," she said.

It was. V pulled his hand back, curling his fingers into a fist.

Evey sighed, and something about her softened. She raised an eyebrow at him. "Are we going, or are you planning to move in?" For some mad reason she touched his arm as she walked past him.

He followed her, thoroughly confused.

When he entered the gallery Evey was standing by the piano, looking at the hallway that led to the door. With a sharp shock of misery, he realized that she might leave him forever, right then, without another word to him.

"If I may impose upon your patience for a few more moments," he said quickly, "I have a few things that need examination before I can pronounce the underground safe to traverse." It was entirely true; It was also entirely true that he wanted an excuse to delay her departure.

"All right." Evey's voice was patiently polite.

V went to the surveillance room first. He located the relevant communications between officials calling for the gassing of the tunnels; It had ultimately come from Mr. Creedy. Had V been conscious he would have caught it in time to make himself scarce.

It occurred to V that if he had slept for just a little longer, Evey could have been killed before the gas filtered into the bedroom and woke him. She hadn't known about the safe room. She would have died screaming and tearing at her eyes.

His heart thumped once, hard and unpleasant. He had a wild, urgent thought that he needed to tell her everything immediately. All his precautions, anything that might keep her safe in his home if something happened to him.

A split-second later he remembered that she would be gone soon, and it didn't matter.

It took him a moment to focus after that, but he breathed through it.

They'd exhausted nearly all of their standby supply of the gas in their attempt to kill him. V was pleased; They wouldn't be able to make a sufficient supply of it in time to deploy it on the fifth against the populace. He hadn't planned on this, but had he thought of the benefits he might have tried to goad them into doing it. Still, V made a mental note that he would need to begin Creedy's part in the plan soon. He wasn't a stupid man, and he needed to be handled.

V had cameras set up throughout the tunnels close by, and in several areas of interest to V further out in the underground. Everything looked clear, though one of the cameras looked at though it had moved slightly. He could rotate them from this room; It was possible Evey had done it accidentally while he was indisposed.

"Anything?" Evey asked, startling him a little.

She was leaning against the door jamb, arms crossed casually.

V tapped on the screen in question. "One of the cameras has moved. I doubt it's anything to worry about, but I need to have a look at it, just in case." He stood up, hesitated awkwardly.

"You'll be able to keep track of my journey on the cameras," he cleared his throat. "If you'd like."

Evey looked thoughtful for a moment, then stepped inside. "What do I do?"

He gave her a quick explanation, and pulled up a rough schematic of the tunnels in question, pointing out the positions of the cameras. Evey settled herself in his chair looking as comfortable with the situation as if she was there every day.

V paused at the doorway, struck by a thought. She might not be staying, but she was here now, and he had to protect her.

"It's unlikely, but if...something should happen," V began delicately, "You can take the lift to the roof and step right out onto the building next door. The gap is only about two feet. There's a fire escape on the far side, you can get away unseen."

Evey's expression dropped in a way that made him wonder how, despite everything, she could still care about him.

V dressed himself in anticipation of an ambush. Doublet, knives, cape, hat.

'Advantage is a better soldier than rashness'. He went as swiftly and quietly as was possible.

The tunnels were still, and wanted to echo his footsteps. The faint smell of the gas lingered in the air. It pushed his mind to a razor's edge, rattling memories behind heavily bolted cellar doors, making the caged demons they bound restless and angry. He almost hoped he would run into someone he could release the horror and rage into; That he could simply leave it somewhere, bleeding out on the floor. His eyes watered a little, but it was merely distracting. He was exceedingly resistant to the effects, but even so, he judged there was nothing present at a level that would incapacitate Evey.

The camera was still hidden well and didn't appear to have been touched by human hands- it had either been accidentally done by Evey, or a rat had jostled it moving along the crack in the concrete it was tucked into. He didn't see any signs that anyone had been by, apart from himself.

V gave the camera a tip of his hat, in case Evey was watching, and headed back to the Shadow Gallery.

When he got there, she was gone.

He stood staring at the empty surveillance room for a moment in pained understanding. He would not get the chance to tell her goodbye a second time. V would never see her face again.

V turned away from the surveillance room, wanting badly to reject the truth. The main gallery was empty. She wasn't by the TV, not in the kitchen or the bedroom or-

The door to Valerie's shrine was open.

V froze. Then, much more slowly, he approached. Through the doorway he saw Evey in profile, looking down at Valerie's roses. Her face was glowing with reflected candlelight. She must have lit them herself. As he watched she looked up reverently at Valerie's picture, her expression revealing the same emotions he himself had felt a thousand times.

V looked at the two great loves of his life, one beside the other, and all the tension melted out of him. He paused at the threshold and removed his hat, abashed at the seeming rudeness of wearing it in such a meaningful place.

"I missed this," Evey said to him, without turning her head. She glanced around at the various photos of Valerie, before returning to the one from 'The Salt Flats'. "I miss her," she said longingly.

V's heart twisted in sympathy.

Evey let out a rueful breath; It wasn't a laugh, but it was close. She looked at him. "Is that insane?"

It felt a bit like V's heart moved toward her and was just dragging the rest of him along. "If it is, I went insane a very long time ago."

Evey gave him a swift, amused glance. The gleam in her eye was dazzling. "An insane masked vigilante?" She said it as though it was the most unlikely and outrageous thing she'd ever heard of.

Softly, V laughed.

Evey looked at him thoughtfully, stepping toward him. "Can I read it again? The letter?"

"I..." V had to give himself a little shake. Of course, it would mean as much to her as it did to him. "...Of course." It was as safe in her care as it was in his.

V's heart went still. It would be safe with her. He would have been happy to leave her the entire Shadow Gallery and everything in it, but if she left now this might be the only chance for him to pass anything on to anyone.

"You should keep it," his voice sounded strange in his throat. There had been a point in his life when, like Evey, he would have liked to die with it in his hand. Now the thought of her story vanishing with him made him feel sick.

Evey's eyes were huge. "What?"

"It's the last of her, and it shouldn't die with me." His voice was rough. He looked toward the door, already turning to go. "I'll fetch it, you can take it with you-"

Evey caught his arm, stilling him instantly. "V," she said, meaning 'stop'. She had a strange look on her face, rather like someone who had something caught in their teeth and was working it loose. Her focus was entirely internal for a moment.

She made some kind of decision, her expression softening. "Thank you," she said finally, sincerely. "But I didn't say I was leaving."

The words knocked all the thoughts out of V's head. "What?" he whispered, the words punched out of him.

Evey was very close to him now. "I can't tell what you're thinking if I can't see your face," she said, reaching up.

His mask. She was-

The scattered splinters of his thoughts scrabbled themselves together in a desperate realization of urgency. He caught her hands gently before she could remove the mask and destroy whatever miracle that had grown in Evey's heart, to allow her to be kind to him.

"Evey please," he begged. "The face beneath this mask will give you no answers. I wish you would forget you'd ever seen it. It isn't mine. It's not me. I wear a mask under a mask, one I can't ever remove."

There was a light in Evey's eyes that was as far from pity as the stars were from the ground at his feet.

"I understand." She nodded to herself, as if he'd only confirmed something she suspected. She lifted her eyebrows and smiled at him in a way he didn't understand. "But it makes this harder."

Her eyes dropped to stare at something on the bottom half of his mask. V had time for a flash of confusion before he registered that she was leaning towards him with a purpose, that she was...

Evey kissed him. She pressed her lips against the mouth of his mask, warm lips to cold ones.

Everything stopped.

Oh-

He couldn't...She couldn't, he was...

Everything, everything was...

If...he...

Her hands were cupping his face. He was rooted to the spot. He would grow leaves and bark and live and die there.

She pulled back a little and looked up into his eyes. The look on her face was anything anyone's treacherous heart could possibly dream of, in the quiet darkness when they should be sleeping. Her eyes were gleaming with soft affection.

He was holding her close, one hand at the small of her back and the other higher, between her shoulder blades. V wasn't sure when he'd done that.

"What are you doing?" V said breathlessly, the yearning in his voice embarrassingly clear. She could crush him with a single word, and he supposed he sounded like it.

Evey's fingers stroked down a painted metal cheek, and he felt it.

"Forgiving you," she said.

He let out a sharp breath, as if she'd given him a shove.

Evey slipped her arms around his neck and kissed him again, pressing her lips gently against the mask. V yielded to it, stumbling back against the wall, his lips parting beneath the mask as if longing alone could somehow bridge the small distance between them. When Evey lifted her mouth from him she didn't go far, lingering and breathing softly against his lips. There was a gap in the mask that he breathed through that was just as capable of passing her breath to him as his to hers.

He had made a fist in the back of her light blue sweater. It lifted the fabric enough that the hand he rested at the small of her back was touching bare skin. He thought he might apologise for that, try to pry his hands off of her and retreat to someplace the things he was suddenly craving could never trouble her. He was distracted from that by something Evey was doing at his neck. He'd barely looked down in curiosity when his cape fell open and slid smoothly off his shoulders onto the floor, like he was shedding his shadow. V froze. Slowly, he lifted his head and looked up at her face.

With a calm confidence he could never have hoped to achieve, Evey reached down and caught the edge of the sweater he had pushed halfway up her back, and flipped it over her head. For a brief second he thought she would have nothing on beneath and almost had a heart attack on the spot. He was incorrect; She had a singlet on underneath it that he hadn't even realized she'd been wearing. Evey gave him a steady, knowing expression, and her point was devastatingly clear. If she didn't realize what he'd just been imagining, at the very least she wanted him to get started thinking along similar lines as soon as possible.

Arousal bloomed like a lovely, treacherous thing.

V was absolutely capable. The damage he'd suffered both from the experiments at Larkhill and from the fire hadn't taken that from him. However, an erection for him was a tangle of sensations. The pleasure of becoming excited enough to be affected was mixed with the bite of stretching scar tissue. Skin that longed for stimulation was marred by skin decidedly against the idea. The result was a thorny mix of pleasure and discomfort. He had certainly learned to manage it over the years and was fully able to enjoy himself from time to time when he had a mind to. However, there were often times when he avoided it, simply because the desire wasn't enough to overcome the discomfort involved.

At that moment he couldn't have convinced that particular part of his anatomy to calm down if his life had depended on it.

Evey took advantage of his momentary shock to attempt to unfasten his belt, shifting the weight of his knives. V caught at her hands, and she went still, her eyes searching the mask as if it would reveal something.

The situation had turned dreamlike, so far beyond improbable he didn't know what to do with what he was seeing and feeling and doing. V unbuckled his belt and set his knives aside with care. Wouldn't...wouldn't want them to fall and get dinged on the stone...

He reached out for her hand, and she gave it to him. He looked down at it, small fingers against black gloves. Real. He put his other hand on her arm, stepping closer. Still real. He took another step and his heart launched itself at his brain, beating it senseless. Then he was sweeping her up, and crushing her close.

There was a burning joy roaring in his heart, and he was going to kiss her. Evey's head went back and her eyelids lowered, and she wanted him to kiss her, he was going to-

The nose of the mask brushed hers and the feel of it stopped him dead, half an inch away from passionately and thoughtlessly bruising her lips on a hard metal smile. Evey didn't waste a second; She got a good handful of the fabric of his doublet and took a step back, continuing V's motion and tugging him toward the door. She seemed to know what she was about, so V followed her, feeling rather like he was chasing her lips for a kiss that he himself was keeping from them both. At some point she got his doublet unfastened, and he shrugged it impatiently to the floor. Its passing left an unguarded slice of skin between the edge of the mask and the collar of the compression shirt he wore underneath. Evey had backed up against a door, but when she saw it she pushed herself up and pressed her mouth there.

V made a soft sound and had to brace himself on the door frame to keep from ending up in a pile on the floor. He took a moment to breathe, and she let him, gently resting her forehead against his.

I love you, he thought. Oh, how I love you, Evey.

"Then stay," she said, startling him.

He must have said that last part out loud, he realized. For a brief moment of shock, he thought she was speaking about the Fifth. That she was asking him to make certain he survived it. His stomach dropped. He'd expected to die, the thought had been a relief to him for years-

Then Evey opened the door she was standing in front of, revealing his mistake.

The light inside the bedroom was warm and did lovely things to Evey's complexion. It also provided him with a problem very different but perhaps equally difficult as the one he'd thought she was speaking of.

He turned his head toward the light, then back to her.

As if reading his mind, Evey switched it off. She took a step back, into the darkness.

"Please," she said. "Stay."

The fifth suddenly seemed impossibly far away. How could he ever reach it when he was going to die right there where he was standing? Something in his chest had contracted, making it almost impossible to breathe.

"If you wish," V managed, his voice soft. At that moment he would have said the same words if she had asked him for anything. If she'd demanded his liver he'd have handed it to her. V stepped forward into the dark, into a formless future he suddenly couldn't see the shape of. The door shut behind him with a click.

There was an unbearable moment where they both stood alone, breathing into the darkness. She must have found it as oppressive as he did, because when he reached for her she was already reaching for him. It should have been clumsy, they should have fumbled or missed each other. Darkness underground was total blindness; It was as if black paper had been taped over his eyes.

They found each other's arms effortlessly, like they couldn't possibly have done anything else.

He pulled her singlet over her head in a whisper of fabric. She tugged at the fastenings on his compression shirt while he peeled himself out of his gloves, and then it was skin-on-skin. His to hers. The pure physical joy of embracing her without any barrier between them was astounding.

He swept his hand up the back of her neck to the bristle of her hair and back down again. He felt drunk on the feel of her, on the warmth of her skin.

Evey tugged at him and stepped back. V followed her, until his shin hit what could only have been the bed. He heard the rustling sounds of Evey crawling onto the covers. V sat on the bed and ripped his boots off, possibly actually tearing the leather.

While he did it, Evey mimicked what he had done to her, running her hand from his shoulders up the back of his neck until the wig impeded her progress, and her fingers retreated the way they had come. V shivered under her hands. He was so aroused he was almost incoherent.

He turned to her, wanting to kiss her, and was blocked again by the reminder of the barrier between them. With a snarl of irritation he pulled the mask off and tossed it aside.

Evey heard enough to wonder. "V?" she said.

He kissed her. V had wanted to so often for so long that the relief of finally pulling her close and pressing his mouth to hers was honestly euphoric. The feeling of warm lips to warm lips lit a magnificent, brilliant joy that shined right through his soul and out the other side. It felt like the entire Gallery was vibrating like a piano string. He kissed her and the world played a major chord. I knew I never wanted to kiss any other lips but hers again.

Evey might have been about to say something besides his name, but the only thing she uttered was a shocked sound. Her lips parted under his, and he felt that sound in his own mouth, like he could eat it in little bites.

They lay there, wrapped around each other, and kissed for a thousand years. Cities and Empires rose and fell and still he lay with his beloved, not able to have enough of her mouth to ever satisfy. She made soft sounds of pleasure against his lips, each one nailing itself into his memory, never to be forgotten. At some point he found himself between her thighs, and pressed himself against her with desperate, hungry adoration.

They came together and there should have been discomfort, there should have been a twinge of pain alongside the pleasure; There always had been before, it was how he was built. He was waiting for it, expecting it, and was blindsided by the difference. There was a fine, burning joy in his heart and the sensation of pressing against her was all it took for it to completely consume him. There was not a single ounce of him left to feel anything as flimsy as discomfort.

She raised her hips up to meet him, and he moaned softly into her mouth. She was clutching at his arms, breathing warm words against his lips.

"Please," she gasped. "Let me just..." She turned her face away from him, she was struggling with something...

Evey got her pants unzipped with a snarl and shoved them down, trying to free herself of constraining cloth. V's brain felt as thick as concrete, but he had enough sense to realize what a good idea it would be to have less clothing between them.

She was a genius, his Evey. "Ah. Yes," he managed, fumbling with his own fastenings. His trousers and pants came off smoothly but Evey's jeans got tangled and it took them both a moment to realize his knee was pinning one of the legs of her jeans to the bed. Finally, V just stripped them off her with one swift yank. He threw them impatiently to the side, it was intolerable not to be holding her...

Evey had less patience than he did and was already pulling at him. "Come here." She sounded desperate. "God, come here."

He braced himself over her, hesitating. V had done this before, though all he had left of the experience was something that felt a bit like muscle memory. It didn't seem like he should feel the way he did; Or at least, he didn't think he'd ever felt this way before. He wanted her so badly he almost felt sick.

He paused to get a grip on that, but Evey would have none of it. She squirmed underneath him, pulling at him with arms and legs, letting him know clearly where she wanted him. Then she lifted her hips, and he drew in a ragged, shocked breath because she was suddenly right there, all he would need to do was...

He flashed on that moment when they'd first reached for each other in the dark, how effortless it had been to find her, to fit himself together with her.

She could find him anywhere, he thought deliriously, and he her. He knew exactly how they fitted together. It happened as smoothly as breathing.

He almost dropped dead on the spot.

"Evey." Her name punched out of him in stunned elation.

Evey made a sweet, dulcet sound of relief, and he honestly lost his mind.

For a few moments he wasn't V, or the man from room five, or whoever he had been before that. He was only the sound of her, the feeling of her against him, and the silent roar of his own feelings. He loved her, and he was loving her, and that was all he was. His heart had brought him to heel so completely there was nothing else left of him. It was frighteningly, speechlessly, staggeringly glorious.

He bent his head and kissed her. V actually froze in shock. It was, impossibly, even better. Evey made a broken sound into his mouth. The angle was a little different, he had to be slower, but Evey caught and matched his rhythm so perfectly it was like they had been with each other a hundred times. They came together as though they were meant to. It ached so badly he wanted to scream, he could never get enough of her, never...

Evey was tensing up underneath him, her breath coming in ragged pants. He wanted that. He was as hungry for that as for his own release. The motion between them rolled in perfect synchronicity, building effortlessly, rising in sweetness. Evey started making little whimpering sounds. She had a good grip on his back and she suddenly shifted underneath him, wrapped her legs around his waist. He was suddenly shockingly deep inside her. V sagged over her for a moment, groaning in disbelief, and Evey echoed him, losing her grip on his back and briefly going limp on the bed.

He pressed against her again, feeling like he was headed over a cliff.

"Oh, my god," Evey choked out. The sound of her voice burrowed into his brain, and his heart lit firecrackers through his entire body.

He was going to climax. He was going to have a stroke. His next movement drew a strangled sound out of him and a high-pitched exclamation from Evey. She was grasping at his arms, fumbling and desperate and when he fell against her again her head snapped back and she convulsed under him and the world went white and-

V came harder than he had ever come in his life. It was the lengthiest, most intense orgasm he could ever remember having. It boiled internally; Every time he thought it was over he shivered and there was more. By the end his body had wrung him out so far beyond endurance with the pleasure of it he nearly collapsed. He sagged over her, his head hanging limply, and briefly considered fainting dead away.

Evey was making shocked, vaguely hysterical little sounds on every exhalation that rather nicely summed up his feelings as well. He parted from her with an odd little twinge of loss and managed to tip over to one side. He sagged into the bed.

It was unpleasant. A song sung out of tune after the finest of arias. He reached out to Evey almost on reflex; She was already turning towards him. V embraced her tightly, and sighed in exhausted relief, the odd bit of tension melting away. Evey was in his arms, so things were as they should be.

Evey woke up, completely starkers, face down, limbs everywhere. V was not there, but there was a spot next to her where he'd obviously been, the covers on that side of the bed pushed back.

"Ugh," she mumbled, pulling the blankets up over her head. It was dark and cosy under the blankets. She didn't have to wonder about what the ramifications were of what she'd done last night by dragging V into bed and having the best sex of her life with him if she stayed under the blankets.

The best sex. By far.

She couldn't say exactly why she'd started it. Something about the way he'd been standing there, hat off, looking at her and that picture of Valerie. The room was a shrine and for a moment it had felt like V was quietly worshiping there. Like Evey had become something as sacred and unreachable and indescribably important as Valerie was. And then he'd turned away from her after so-casually offering her that letter as if he was about to politely excuse himself to go write his suicide note. "I, V, of sound body and questionable mind, bequeath the most important thing I possess to Evey, the woman I love". He'd turned away, and she knew-not suspected- KNEW; He was going to let himself die on the fifth. He wasn't just being pessimistic about his chances. He wanted to die for what he'd done- both for the things he had intended to do and the things he hadn't.

Maybe he deserved it, she couldn't say. But right then it had felt more important than air for Evey to make him believe that she wasn't one of those things he should feel he needed to die to atone for. And once she'd had him in her arms...she hadn't wanted to stop.

Evey pushed the blankets off, sat up, and rubbed her face. Beside the bed, her clothes were folded on top of a short stack of books. There was a strong smell of butter in the air, and what she realized after a moment was cinnamon. Cinnamon. It had been so long she was honestly surprised she remembered what it smelled like.

Evey abruptly decided whatever she was going to have to face when she got up was worth it if she got a taste of whatever-it-was V was making.

The telly was dark, and the Wurlitzer was playing one of her favorites. V was in the kitchen, his back to her, humming along. Evey stepped closer. He had something in a pot, and he was brushing the contents over a tray of-

"Cinnamon buns," Evey said, awed.

"Ah," V said, pleased. He turned to her, pot in one hand, spoon in the other. He stopped dead.

The moment he looked at her the world shifted. He was wearing the mask, it made no sense; It wasn't as if she'd looked into his eyes or seen a particular expression on his face. Regardless, the moment his attention turned to her it felt like someone had stuck a pin in her heart. The air was heavy, like she was cast in concrete.

She wanted to kiss him. With the lights on, in the kitchen, while he was wearing his stupid flowered apron and holding a pot full of icing.

The Wurlitzer chimed in, cutting through their silent stare. "Remember," it urged with Julie London's voice, "I remember, all that you said-"

V dropped the spoon and stepped toward her. He gave every indication that the sight of her had caused him to forget he had hands when the pot of icing nearly followed the spoon. Evey lunged toward him, but he recovered just in time to save it. He turned quickly to put it back on the stove with a little flustered sound. Evey scooped up the spoon from the floor. When he turned back she handed it to him.

"Thank you," V said. His voice had the same kind of stunned awareness that she suspected was painted all over her face. "Did you...sleep well?"

She imagined that particular question had several meanings. Evey raised her eyebrows with a little flash of humor. "Amazingly. But then I've heard part of that depends on who you sleep with."

V let out a breath that sounded like relief. "Ah." He said it in a way that made her think he had been up for hours thinking about her answer.

"What about you?" she continued lightly.

V was silent a moment. "'I would not wish any companion in the world but you,'" He quoted. He turned and placed the spoon in the sink. "'Nor can imagination form a shape, Besides yourself to like of.'"

The Tempest.

He turned back toward her, adjusting his flowered apron as if it had suddenly become uncomfortable. He very deliberately didn't look at her face. There was longing written in every inch of his body. Evey reached out and slipped her arms around his waist, hoping she was guessing correctly on what she ought to be doing.

V sagged a little, as though he'd been wanting her to do that as soon as he'd set eyes on her. He pulled her close and squeezed her tight. The flowered apron was scratchy against her cheek.

Evey's heart warmed disgracefully. "You made cinnamon buns," she said.

"Rather a lot of them, in fact," V admitted. "I do hope you're hungry."

"If I'd eaten ten times today I'd find a way to make room for those," Evey said honestly.

V made a pleased sound. "Good," he purred. He retrieved a plate from a cupboard and handed it to her. "Shall I make tea?"

"Please," she said, meaning 'sweet Lord yes'. "That sounds wonderful."

It was a simple, structured gesture of hospitality, so of course V found it delightful. He always made little humming sounds as he bustled around. When she'd lived here she'd taken tea even when she hadn't really wanted it; he seemed to like doing it so well. His little routine was familiar and surprisingly nostalgic.

Evey approached the table with a kind of merciless joy. She was going to absolutely destroy those pastries-

She stopped.

There, sitting on the table in a faceted canning jar, were sprigs of lavender arranged in a little bouquet.

Evey set her plate on the table. For a moment she could see her mum in their old kitchen, before everything had turned terrible, bringing in fresh lavender from the garden to set on the windowsill over the sink.

"You," she said, and was surprised to hear tears in her voice. V's head snapped around instantly, his body language on high alert.

Evey pointed silently at the flowers, overwhelmed.

"Ah," he said, relaxing. "Yes. I thought, as a gift for you, I might bring memories of more innocent times into the present."

Something huge and hot and tender unfurled in her chest.

"Evey?" V prompted, sounding concerned.

Evey took one large step toward him, caught his face in both hands, and kissed him right on the frozen smile.

V started under her hands, and then let out a soft sound of amusement. His hands came up and stroked down her arms, wrists to elbows. "You like it," he commented, his voice warm.

"It's one of the most thoughtful things anyone's ever done for me," Evey said honestly, stepping back.

V made a sort of breathlessly pleased sound that made her think he'd spent a great deal of time that morning thinking of the best way to do something nice for her. She suddenly wondered if she'd mentioned something about how much she'd loved cinnamon buns as a girl. She couldn't recall any particular conversation, but it was a coincidence she suspected meant she'd made a comment about it at some point.

As she stepped away from him, his hands trailed down her arms and gently caught her hands in his.

"May I ask," V said slowly, looking down at their clasped hands, "last night you indicated that you wished to remain. Was that desire merely for the evening?"

Evey looked at him evenly. "I'd like to stay." She was struck by a thought and tilted her head. She continued, honestly curious. "Would you like to stay, V?"

Would you like to live?

V froze. "I..." He let go of her and stepped back a little. She let him. "What I would wish to do matters very little in the face of what must be done."

"It matters to me," Evey said. I don't want you to die.

V looked at her sharply.

Evey pressed her lips together and shrugged. "I wouldn't have asked otherwise."

V stared at her for a long moment. The mask was expressionless, but she could see him thinking. Slowly, he brought his hand up and brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers. "If it were possible, I would choose to never be parted from you."

Silently, she nodded. Evey hadn't been sure. Good enough.

Evey glanced at the pastries, and had an idea. "We should eat while they're hot," Evey said, nodding her head at the table. "Cinnamon buns are always better hot."

V had given her a single plate, had brought out a single cup for her to take tea in. She brought out another teacup and set it on the counter. Then she turned back to V and held out a second plate to him.

V froze.

He'd never eaten in front of her, for obvious reasons. It should have been silly, that something as simple as handing over a plate could feel so important. Evey suddenly flashed on that moment, days ago, when she'd knocked out the fingerman and stood frozen in the middle of the street, staring at V. Halfway between two worlds. Halfway between two paths her life could take.

For a moment, Evey could almost see the future. If he took the plate from her now, if he chose to eat with her and live with her and showed her his face until it felt so natural he stopped thinking about it, he was never going to want to leave her. He would bury himself in her heart and tear the world apart if that's what needed to be done in order to stay there. There was a wide, vast sea between passively accepting the possibility of his death and actively doing everything he could to prevent it.

Slowly, V reached out and took the plate from her.

Evey smiled like the sun rising. Like a thousand new possibilities branching out and gleaming in the early morning light.

Evey picked up the extra cup. "Tea?" she asked.