Author's Note: I am still trying to perfect my writing. If this pleases you, please review. If not, then tell me why so I can improve. Thank you.-To those of you are are baffled by this posting, I am leaving the original notes in place, adding only a comment or two extra. I've reread these stories several times since originally posting them and I wanted to clean them up a bit and kind of finish them off cleanly. I posted really fast the first time around and there were some niggling details that I wanted to set straight. After the chapters are reposted, I will leave them alone. I promise. Hopefully this effort will smooth out the road, silence any hiccups that remain and settle these tales once and for all. ES -

Disclaimer: I love V4V and I hate unhappy endings. I don't own the characters, I have no right to snatch them from their legally authorised tale and plunk them into a story that I crafted. I did it anyway. I make nothing of this effort, just the pleasure of crafting something that other people might read and enjoy. Thank you.

Like God, I do not play with dice or believe in coincidence.

November 4th, moments to go...

To lie in her arms, listening to her weeping, cut even deeper into his already agonized heart. To be still and silent as she screamed his name, the single letter filled with anguished longing and love...

Truly, this was hell.

Had she tried to remove the concealing mask, he would have been forced to stop her, but she respected his privacy despite her panic. Her hysteria deafened her to his still (albeit sluggishly) beating heart, rendered her incapable of feeling the shallow breaths that kept him from the numbness of death.

Not that it mattered at this moment. The 5th of November was drawing near and V needed to die. A revolution without a martyr was worthless. He needed to be the one to die and Evey needed to move on, to leave behind the glorified illusion of a hero, and to reclaim her new life under a new government.

That was the plan, wasn't it?

How she managed to get him aboard the train, he had no clear idea. Several times the pain had stolen his consciousness. When he woke, he was surrounded by the scent of the Scarlet Carsons. She'd made a bier for him, wreathed him the sweet velvet petals and the heady fragrance.. He lay in state as might some royal prince, but the display was for her healing since she believed him far beyond her touch.

She adjusted a flower, her fingers lingering upon the thorny stem. For a moment she hesitated, one hand brushing the cheek of the mask he wore, and then she turned away.

V's heart twisted when a strange voice broke the silence. "You're Evey Hammond, aren't you?" The police officer, V's one honest man. Would he stop Evey from her task?

The lever was thrown and Evey stepped off the train before the doors closed.

V was grateful to be alone. He counted silently as the train started rolling, seconds ticking by until he was certain that the train was out of sight of the platform. Aching, he sat up, brushing aside the roses and swinging himself into a more comfortable position. There were two stops before the train reached the Houses of Parliament. V needed to be ready and his battered body was not at all willing to obey his commands. If he missed the first stop, he would only have the failsafe before he was caught in the explosion that he'd worked so hard to bring about. Surrounded by piles of fertilizer and the devices for detonation, he felt muddled. He wanted to live, didn't he? He just needed V to die a martyr to the cause of destroying Norsefire.

The first stop came too soon.

He couldn't muster the energy to get off the train. He dragged himself to the doors, clinging to the rails, waiting for the second stop. He rubbed one hand over his belly, missing his blades keenly and all too aware of the deep muscular bruising that the breastplate hadn't prevented. His fingers itched with the memory of Creedy's throat and the soft popping of the vertebra as he broke the man's neck. It was a cleaner death than the master of the Fingermen had deserved. V felt no grief over his crime. In moments, it wouldn't even be his crime anymore.

The second stop came, doors whipping open. V fell through the open space and rolled clear of the car. He had approximately 32 seconds to move into the shielded area and close the door before fire consumed the tunnel.

He forced himself to move as the train set off again.

He found the door in the dark and flung himself inside, slamming the door behind him. He could hear the music faintly from the speakers outside. As the crescendo built, he tucked himself into a corner and prayed the door held fast against the percussion of the explosions. He wished he were back on the balcony with Evey, watching the show, but he knew how many years the fireworks had waited this day.

The first explosion was detonated.

The small room he huddled in rocked and dust sifted from the rafters. V counted each ignition off in his head, riding out the bucking room. Only when he was certain that the worst had passed did he lift his head, peering out of the mask's jolly eyes to take in the damage around him.

Several chunks of masonry had worked loose, tumbled here and there across the floor. Dust tickled his nose and he sneezed violently, one physical explosion after another. He sat in stunned silence after the last one until he felt himself a buffoon for sitting there. He laughed softly. The chuckles became guffaws which became howls and he wondered if he were howling in truth. His plan had worked out so bloody well... He was alive. There was only one immediate drawback and it cut him to the quick.

Evey.

Hours ago, he'd danced with her in the Shadow Gallery, his arms stiff and proper as he held her slender frame. She had come back to him, Beauty to his Beast, her heart shining from her eyes, her shorn hair making her seem so fragile and yet so strong. Even now, he wanted to go back to her. He ached in his soul for the balm of her presence.

He closed his eyes. She thought him a monstrosity, didn't she? He'd built the illusion so carefully. He peeled off his gloves, revealing the disfigured hands and stared at them for a long moment. Then with very little thought, he peeled the latex from his hands, destroyed the ugly burn scars and set free the smooth and natural skin of his hands. He spread them wide, examining the real flesh thoughtfully. He wondered what she would say about this particular betrayal.

Not as much as about this one, he thought, and lifted away the mask and the black silky wig. His face was still shrouded in black, a thin caul that he swept away, baring the flawless skin underneath. He knew well enough what his face looked like, knew too that the almost militarily short hair that allowed for the wig was as black as jet. He looked like his twin before the fire had stolen his features, melting them into a travesty of a human face. He buried his face in his hands and wept.

It was all over.

V was dead, his body believed immolated in the fires that shattered Parliament. Whatever passed for reporting in the morning would declare the death of Codename V and the country would pick up the pieces of their lives, seize control of their government and they might mourn him in some fashion.

It didn't matter that V had died a very long time ago or that he had spent the last twenty years making V's vengeance come to pass. He counted the labor as a tribute to one loved and missed, his other half, even as he realized that the fire that burned in him for revenge was gone. V. A childish nickname, one they'd never grown out of, since V hated his real name. Evelyn, whose only other nickname had been Evey and who'd trounced anyone who dared use the hated diminutive.

They'd been separated at one of the youth reclamation centers, housed in different quads. Unfortunately for V, his unit had been transferred to Larkhill. Tested, tortured, and used, V's fury had reached across their bond of blood and there had been no thought but to find V and help him.

Too late, of course, too late.

V had managed to start a fire and destroy the facility, burning himself into a monster whose ruined face had turned from his twin when they had found one another. V had seen his loss reflected in his brother's perfect features and, as a result, his hatred deepened and turned inward. He became self-destructive and increasingly unpredictable. Not even their shared bond, the deeper than life connection, had brought him from the edge.

The burned man had turned to Vivian at last and begged. "Please kill me.' he asked."I am a monster, I can't even remember being human. You were always the stronger of us both; you can stop all my pain." He reached out with his ruined hands, the fingers gnarled with scars. 'You have to let me go, Viv." Vivian had refused Evelyn and V had found a way to manage the deed alone. Vivian remembered cradling his brother's dying body, much as Evey had cradled her dying love, his tears scalding his face with regret.

On his brother's corpse, he'd sworn an oath of vengeance. A vendetta for V's memory.

Vivian had become V in his brother's place, hiding his face, taking on the Guy Fawkes mask they'd both loved and feared in the childhood. For years, he'd laid his plans and, on the night of his first public blow against the hated Norsefire project, he'd run across a girl being terrorized by Fingermen. Rescuing her had seemed a fine cause, an overture to the grand gesture that would herald his movement out into the open, but when she'd looked up at him with those enormous eyes, he hesitated. He stared into that pretty face, unable to simply walk away. V'd wondered why he was so drawn to her.

When she said her name, he understood that the forces of the universe had tried to apologize or make restitution.

One Evey for another.

Vivian closed his eyes at the memory. Those luminous eyes stared at him with mute appeal, calling to the man beneath the mask, but it had already been too late to turn back from the path he'd prepared for so many years.

Evey, he thought with regret. Evey.