Okay, I have always loved V for Vendetta and can't believe it took me this long to attempt writing something on it. *is ashamed*

Anywho... a couple weeks ago I had a dream about V... which was strange in itself but whatever. It sent me into a spiral of 'I love V for Vendetta' stuff. I looked, naturally, for fanfictions and was ever so pleased I found as many as I did. I am, however going off the beaten track here.

Some may have a problem with it, but I don't care. When I read V with Evey people ALWAYS take his mask off. If you do, its great! its your prerogative LOL, I however wanted to see him actually make love to her (without being OOC and being a complete beast about it and KEEPING HIS MASK ON!) There weren't any exactly like that, but I admit I didn't read EVERY one of them either. There was one where he pleasured her, he kept his mask on, but he didn't get any pleasure out of it...GUH... to me its not incredibly important for their lips to touch. So keep the mask on. so there... LOL... enjoy! :)

Pairing: V and Evey

Rating: NC17

The sweet light scent of lavender and honeysuckle loomed in the steam filled bathroom, the cling of droplets sliding over the ornate mirror as Evey Hammond drew the towel over the back of her head, her hair too short to spend more than a swipe of time that she used for the rest of her body. The bathroom seemed lavish… too perfectly rich to be underground but such as it is, it reflected, like everything else in this wonderful dungeon, the mysterious and whimsical fancy and character of its owner.

Owner may be a heavy word and V would certainly correct her if she said 'owner' to him about the art and books and music he adorned his home with. Without it, it would be a maze of tunnels with nothing but the accompaniment of echoes. Footfalls of many issuing from the sound of one, a mere laugh from a single set of lungs would sound like a jovial theatre reacting to the jesters antics.

Evey brought the towel down her back slowly to lightly take the spring of dewy shower water off her skin as she mused. Over the time she had been here with V, she had experienced a cacophony of feelings and emotion for the man in the mask as well as the antonymous sensations of appreciation and not a little careful zealous curiosity about who he is and what lays behind the mask. He was alluring to her in a lot of ways, yet she was also afraid of him. He is so uncharted.

She had escaped him before, and only now did she see that her flee was not out of fear of him, but perhaps fear of herself and what she found herself feeling, despite his action and vehemence in vengeance and retribution, about this veiled entity who seemed beautiful in one aspect… and completely horrifying in another.

Only recently did she discover in herself the ability to feel beyond the sanctum of her own body; being molded into a drone of civilization in the reclamation project for children of neo demagogue(1) parents who stood against London's fascist upheaval; she was able to sense other things than the mundane pitfall of regular life, run of the mill stuff that everyone felt and the clouded emotions they were too afraid to experience lest a black bag be placed over their head and they are irradiated from the world like they never existed.

It may have been the weeks she spent in V's containment cell, reading letters from a time long passed, starving, cold, sick, lonely, wanting and wishing for any other sign of care… even at the time of her imprisonment, daring to wish for that frozen forever grinning mask of V to come in and sweep her out of Creedy's holding cell as she clings to him, his arms around her heroically. It was hard not to think of him in this situation. By being thrust into it herself, reading another prisoner's log of the events as it happened, dropping to her lowest state… scraping the dregs of her misery with desperate claws, she found a higher level of understanding herself in the deepest and darkest of all her hours. It was like she was reborn, a new Evey Hammond walked through that door from the savage pit of the deepest and evilest part of V's mind and into a warmer more homey atmosphere of The Shadow Gallery, a new Evey Hammond screamed at V… called him evil… called him sick… knowing he was right, she collapsed in his arms, tears pouring down her face as she looked up into that mocking yet soothing grin of a mask. The mask she had simultaneously hated and loved. His voice so soft, the purr of a content beast even when his words stung like a venomous bite and killed as quickly. Oh his voice… he can disarm you with his versed ways, the mere swish of his hair, or cloak was as mesmerizing as the magic a child would see in a fantasy movie. V was everything Evey had imagined would strut about on stage, parade his pretty poems and acute knowledge of all the finest in the world the way a fiddler would play a fiddle, his hand expertly and without apparent effort plucking the right combination of strings to cast his spell. Oh… V's hands… the hands so gentle that then on her revolution that her captivity had been in itself a mask to uncover hers touched her shivering body, so warm even from under the leathered gloves, only known to her before this by understanding were rough with her. They hurt her… bruised her, tortured her. These delicate yet deadly hands, scarred too beneath the cover of the shiny black gloves, picked her up, held her… soothed her when not mere hours before that; or so it seemed… time was not a cognizant thing in a dark cell with naught but your own dark thoughts, her face was being held down in a bowl of water, keeping her submersed until she nearly faded away.

Now… it was like she was sensitive to everything. She can feel the emotions of her captor… her friend, her enemy, her lover. A couple months had passed since her liberation from the confines of enforced societal thought forms and the plunge into the sweet freedom of gratis notion which made her stronger than she even dared to suppose. It made inhibitions about her feelings toward certain things fade away. Where once her fear of ideas in her head about this veiled vigilante frightened and drew her away from him, the thoughts now to her seemed to be expected… wanted even after the abuse she suffered at the hands of the idea in her head, the feel of his humanity caressing her.

Before this, before this night she stood in the center of the bathroom drying off her slim yet shapely body, before her reinvention in V's reconstructed memory, she had only ever really viewed him as the idea he presented… even being seduced secretly by his suggestion… the tall… darkly clothed, lithe and strong form… like a doll… a fine doll, V presented himself to her in a manner of a doll shop proprietor displaying his premium merchandise to the ogle-eyed child mystified by the center attraction known to Evey as "V". She admitted to being attracted to him. Not to his face… or his mask, but to him in general. Her figurative fingers would touch the fragile glass separating them, wishing she could feel beyond the boundaries but was not able too at the time.

Now, she had seen him more human. Where before he was just a walking idea, a misshapen scheme wrapped in a long black doublet, he was now the embodiment of the torture Valerie went through… his own torture, his deep-seated and troubled mind forever hidden behind the metal Fawksian mask. But when she came from the ashes of her reinvention she felt the retreat… people can say they are sorry, or they didn't mean it and not feel it, not believe it… but when Evey asked V why he did this to her she felt him recoil as if genuinely disgusted with himself for what he did to her. He turned those black well eyes away from her as she listed to him the things he did to her, shoving his abuse back in that mocking face to which he surely wasn't feeling at that moment; he was human… weakened and sickened by his own actions forcing her to live through what he had… what Valerie had… what he was destroying London's government for.

The soft white towel felt and smelt of him somehow, as if everything he touched he left his mark on. Not physically but supernaturally. The soft white glow of the semi wet towel almost felt like the whisper of his breath coming out of the mouth slit of the white grinning lips with the slightly tinted pink lower lip. Yes, her rollercoaster relationship with V had allowed her to see passed all the hate in his heart and the fear in hers. She can sense his humanly ways even though she had seen him before, her senses shut off, watching him cook for her as she sat at the table speaking with him about art and music… all the things that were sadly forgotten. It seemed like eons ago that he fed her breakfast and they first talked about how Parliament was a symbol and his act to destroy it was also a symbol. But now… a few months away from his moment of victory, he had done more for her than merely teach her about the form and function of symbolism while she ate real butter on her egg for the first time in years. She was naïve then… so naïve.

The towel slipped from her body and she placed it on the rack near the sink and draped the silken violet robe over her shoulders and tied it about her waist. She turned and left the bathroom, her bare feet padded over the cold stone of the floor and down the hall toward the main gallery; the scent of shower still clinging to her. Her hand fell on the heavy door separating the hall her soft bare footfalls echoed in to the main gallery and her eyes adjusted to the lack of light. V had turned in, evidently. The overhead lighting was off and the display track lighting made odd angles of statures and the corners of paintings stick out like the dark shadows were reaching for her.

Evey wasn't very tired at the moment but sleep could come at any time and she wasn't going to try to rush it so she walked over to the ever lit jukebox and pressed a single button. It was V's… and her favorite song. She stood with her hands pressed to the sides of the display case, looking down into the inner workings of the elaborate music box.

You drove me, nearly drove me,
Out of my head;
While you never she'd a tear.

Remember, I remember,
All that you said;
Told me love was too plebeian (2)

Ah Julie London's voice seduced the dark with sexy quavering inflection to which Evey could only mouth silently. V had nearly driven her out of her head. He didn't until the end show some human grief without overtly weeping at the destruction he made on a woman he never wanted to hurt. However… his actions, and not through spoken words, suggested he may really think love was too plebeian even for his taste. But now… with London's sultry voice and the dark surrounding her, Evey felt V's presence like a looming spirit engulfing her. She even had to look over her shoulder to see if he wasn't really there, the shadows and music play tricks on her sometimes. V had a knack of detaching himself from the Gallery and stand as still as his statues before she knew he was there. But still… even the idea of his body shedding from the gloomy corners, a prick of white that was his face like an formless apparition floating toward her in the dark still sent shivers up her spine and goose flesh to erupt up her arms as he whispers in that sweet gravelly voice '…Evey…'like autumn leaves windblown over grass.

Hearing him say her name even in her head made her womanhood ache for him. Never before this had she ever considered being truly and deeply in love with someone. Her past had reared the uglier side of attraction where it was mostly physical desirability and little deeper than what you can delve into when shedding your clothing. Yet…

Evey turned; she could feel the silken material of the loose fitting robe caress the contours of her naked body that wasn't pressed to her angled or curved points, mostly at her hips, her shoulders and the peeks of her breasts. She looked toward the shaded arch to the hall that leads to V's bedroom. She had never been down that way. He never told her she couldn't but out of respect for his privacy… the respect he gave her… the only time he'd been in the room now dubbed as hers after she had gotten there on the first night, was in fact the first night when he carried her bridal style into the room and lay her down on the bed, making sure her body appeared comfortable before he left and never entered that room again while they had the idea that it was her room.

She could not help the secret… perhaps not so secret anymore by the hints she carelessly let slip that she knew V was too receptive to miss… the longing to go down that previously untraveled hall, open his door and be his visitor in the night. She would make love to him… if it was the only joy he would ever get before his inevitable fate come the 5th… and who knows… maybe her fate too, she would do that. Not only for him, but because she wanted it too.

Evey knew he would resist, even tell her he doesn't deserve it… or is not comely enough to have her see him when it came time to bare more than just his soul and love to her, likely even tell her that he can't love. Evey smiled because it seemed just the song and dance he would play if she swept upon him with intent to make not only his body alight with passion but his voice. He rarely spoke over a casual level, even in the heat of battle his banter was even. The longer she knew him, the more passion he would allow to come out but never in the manner she wanted to hear.

Some part of her mused as she slid away from the jukebox, another song sliding in after Cry me a river by Julie London was over. Her hands, as her eyes closed, traveled up her own body as she swayed to the soft sound of Dean Martin filling the space like his voice was the embodiment of V.

Retorna me

Cara mia ti amo

Solo tu, solo tu, solo tu, solo tu

Mio cuore (3)

V would never be comfortable bearing more than he already has. The skin of his hands were accidental she happened to come across him as he had the gloves off while cooking. Beside the little bit of neck sometimes seen and the bob of his jaw as he spoke peeking out from under the high collared black material or the white fabricated jaw of his mask. She never really considered seeing him without the mask. She knew she had fallen in love with him more deeply than she had ever fallen before and merely by his inner self, as introverted and mysterious as it was. She couldn't deny that when she first met him in that alley when the Fingermen were threatening to rape her, scared yes, but some part of her saw the way he moved… his doggerel as he struck down the offenders with effortlessness and hardly a hitched breath, she felt some sort of desire revolving around him.

The strangeness in the sexual and enigmatic herald brought her breath to a slow and trailing standstill as she listened to his character elucidation with much verbal dancing that she was stupefied. He had hardly changed in that forte, his words like arms wrapped around her most of the time, either shielding her or comforting her. She learned to fall in love with that man in the alley… the gilded visitor in a Guy Fawkes mask.

She even cherished the notion that she would never ask him to reveal his face to her. She would never feel the need to ask him to remove his own sanctuary for her sake. She knew he was burned… scarred. She knew he would be repulsed by the thought of revealing himself so openly to her. Maybe over time he would feel comfortable with it, but she need not pressure him; not in light of events to come.

Why remove the mask when it mattered not to her what he looked like under it. Yes, the mask was a façade… or veneer as he would say it, but it is how she fell for him, looking into the masks face, learning to interpret the emotions beneath rather than having them overtly displayed by a raise of his brow ridge or a curve of his lips. The tilt of his head and the slight breath of movement from his curtain of hair to the posture of his black clad body, let alone the energy he emits was enough for her to allow him the safety of his disguise. She didn't need him to reveal himself completely to love him and that was what made her know it wasn't just sexual. Oh yes, she wanted him sexually… but she also craved his intelligence, his acumen, his artisan ways; even his vendetta.

If he felt one day he could show himself to her, then she would allow it to happen on its own time. She did not want to scare him off with ideas that she would not have him if he kept hidden. She felt the Dean Martin song end, his sensual voice coming to an end and as another song slipped into place she opened her eyes and looked back at the ach leading to V's room. She wondered if he was awake in there. Her stomach fluttered and clenched pleasurably as she thought of him reciprocating a tentative breath of nervous passion as she slid herself over his long powerful body. Rarely does he touch unless to crush or hurt. So such soft caresses and warmth pressing on him with ardor would be something wholly new to him.

Oh I do believe
in all the things you say
what comes is better that what came before

And you'd better come come, come come to me
better come come, come come to me
Better run, run run, run run to me
Better come (4)

Cat Power gave Evey the incentive to take a step forward toward the precipice like her words were fingers on her back pushing her in V's direction… the long dark tunnel to V's abode, his inner sanctum. Her feet fell without sound as the dark shadow gave way to a heavy wooden door left partially open as if beckoning her. What sort of things did he keep closest to him? The things only meant for his eyes to see where he is most free from restraint? It thrilled her to see him lying in a large perhaps circular bed, overly lavish in design which would suit his apparent taste, his body still wholly clad in black, his face unmasked but hidden by the darkness. A part of her wanted, upon opening his door, to see his body on the bed, the natural white glow if the mask; like a beacon, enticing her still further into his space.

Still she had to travel his hallway, some smaller doors lined its length but there was a door down at the end that her eyes fell on and felt instinctively that it was the door to his room. It was like a light the way it drew her eyes, as if years of him setting his hands on it had left an impression of himself in the wood forever more. She let out a slow nervous breath as she came within arm's reach of the door and stopped, lifting her slender arm to touch the wood around the metal antique hinges that looked like they dated back to the middle ages and it tingled with an electric ambience, so much like his presence does. Her hand slipped down to the circular cuff that offered means to open the door and she hesitated.

*/*/*

Earlier tonight during the moment she ate her dinner, V sat with her, customarily she ate in his company, but he ate alone. She was never bothered by this, understanding why being alone was important to him when he ate. They spoke as they often did as she dined and he watched her eat, he lounged in the chair next to her, his long black legs crossed in a casual manner, his hands, as they often are, clasped in front of him, his head tilted to the side marginally as if surveying her. If one did not feel V for what he is… know his oddities such as they are, one would assume he was bored or asleep. But he stayed like that… speaking fervently to her, interested and engaged in conversation, always pleased to exchange information and stories with her. She never once felt he was disinterested in what she said or did. Just as she could no more feign the attention she felt for him.

Tonight's events during her nightly meal led to them reciting Romeo and Juliet together… Perhaps that was what lead her to feeling this way… the way his voice carried such heavy words with passion set her heart skipping beats here and there, forgetting the foot, eating and drinking him as he sat there, her perfect Romeo.

(5) "Farewell, farewell! One kiss and I'll descend." V said in his velvet voice that she could clearly hear the smile on his lips and the purr on his tongue, she could feel him looking at her intently and oh… how it made her yearn as she thought for a moment, Juliet's lines and hoped in the romantics of the moment she didn't spoil the verse.

(6) "Art thou gone so? Love, lord, ay, husband, friend! I must hear from thee every day in the hour, for in a minute there are many days: O, by this count I shall be much in years ere I again behold my Romeo!" She felt her lips form the words and new somehow his eyes were watching her mouth too. They came out as effortlessly as she may have actually been Juliet. Her heart hammered and wondered if he could hear it… or feel it. For when he spoke the next line, it was softer still, his hands came unclasped, one rested on his knee and the other came to the table top, drawing idle circles on the laminate top.

(7) "Farewell! I will omit no opportunity that may convey my greetings, love, to thee."V said. The smile was gone from his voice but a dutiful sort of lust pinched it when he said the word 'love' to her. She noticed and leaned forward, more to keep it going because she felt herself being pulled in even more by her heart, not wanting it to stop, than to cover up whatever he felt at the words he said.

(8) "O think'st thou we shall ever meet again?" Evey said quickly on a whisper. V tilted his head the other way and hesitated for a moment. There was absolutely no way he didn't know the next line… it was as if he was deciding how best to say it. His legs came uncrossed and he leaned forward slightly to her, his voice lower still.

(9) "I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve for sweet discourses in our time to come."

Evey drew a bit closer, so moved by him. They had shared poetry and play acts before but not this intensely.

(10) "O God, I have an ill-divining soul! Methinks I see thee, now thou art below, as one dead in the bottom of a tomb: Either my eyesight fails, or thou look'st pale. "She swallowed nervously as she finished the line, looking into that mask… was he shaking? Was his breath bated and his heart hammering? He could very well be pale with nervousness under that mask, but when he spoke next; his voice did not indicate it.

(11) "And trust me; love, in my eye so do you: Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu, adieu!" V said and the resonance of his voice seemed to shake the walls. For a moment they sat looking at one another, breath shallow and eager. She leaned in, in spite of herself, his head drawing back only marginally to keep her face in sight as she tilted her head to kiss him. He didn't stop her but she felt his leg muscle tense under her palm when she used his leg as a brace to bring herself closer to him. She felt a sharp exhale come from the inside of the mask and knew he was shocked. She froze with her mouth mere inches from the metal pink lipped smile, wanting to desperately kiss him but knew it wasn't the right moment so she pulled away. Her cheeks flush as she looked down at the temporarily forgotten meal with an embarrassed smile on her face, afraid to look at him as her hand came away from his thigh and… to her horror, her other hand came away from hold his other hand on the table loosely.

"Sorry, V. You made a convincing Romeo… I forgot myself for a moment. I didn't mean to scare you." She said with her face aiming at the plate. V returned fluidly to his normal position with his head tilted and his legs crossed, hands firmly clasped at his lap.

"And a convincing Juliet you are, Evey. I don't scare easily… I ponder the riddles of spontaneity far too often to let it rattle my core. Merely frozen for the act, if it were meant to happen, would still happen whether I try to stop it or not.' V nodded his head as she looked at him, perplexed. She knew for a fact that her leaning in to kiss him had thrown him off a little, despite what he said, he perhaps felt she knew this so he added with a wry smile in his voice "Eat your dinner, Evey, before it gets too cold."

To be concluded in the next chapter

reference points

(1)Neo-demagogues – Rabble-Rouser. Name used to describe V and Evey by Prothero in V for Vendetta.

(2)Julie London – Cry me a river

(3)Dean Martin – Return to me

(4)Cat Power – I found a reason

(5-11) William Shakespeare – (Capulet's Room) Romeo and Juliet

(12) Shakespeare

(13) Thomas Hood