That's What They Want You To Believe

PROLOGUE

She was strange, this Erica Evans. Many doubted her loyalties due to the rather public image as the enemy and as a do-gooder for the Visitors. Once that was overcome – that initial distrust – they found plenty of reasons to frown at her strange behavior.

She never confided in anyone. Not all were as sharing, but she had her quarters and routines which she followed. They did not doubt that she would sacrifice everything for them and their goal, but her ruthlessness, which tended to resurface when it was met with equal callousness, was notorious and most strayed away from her path, especially if were she in a bad mood. Her problem was not that she didn't care; it was that she had done in the past and paid for it.

One day, a Columnist caught her doing exercises unfit for a federal agent – that was what she'd been, and had been treated and referred to as such during the first while – and was amazed by the tranquility and calmness. The movements were graceful but lacking the stealth and fatality she usually possessed, the sharp and deadly severity. The young member of the Fifth Column committed the truly gracious sight to memory and kept quiet about her findings.

It was easy to forget that she'd lost so many times. Few rivaled her fierceness, and her extraordinary ability to be so frighteningly inhumane was what made her so good, her will to sacrifice personally and numerously. She had to, and the loss of innocence showed by each tough decision and pending mass slaughter.

She had been human once; normal. Tragedy had taken away everything yet she found will to fight for the lives and freedom of others.

Whispers said that she'd once had her own Jiminy Cricket. Someone she'd cared about, someone she'd cried for; someone she'd lost to the Bliss. He was one of the Blissful, loyal to Anna and her cause without meaning to, his and so many others' freewill lost to the oblivion of utter devotion. Forced devotion. With him, each decision was made slightly faster, slightly more carelessly and mercilessly.

Many saw her as strong. It was hard when she looked so crippled, even when she had the strongest spirit, not doubted when she spoke to the masses. Nobody expected her to succeed without losing something, but only few knew of the personal tragedies and losses. That she'd lost her sense of self and that grasping unto the remainders of the Fifth Column inside Project Ares had been her last hope and resort. That she had lost her son, lost what morals she'd had as an FBI agent before the V's had arrived and obliterated all she'd ever known. She had lost friends, innocents, civilians, and codes of ethics, everything in her fight against the V's. She had lost her husband, her child, one to death, another to the high commander's sweet lies.

They needed a leader who would fight for the cause even as they crumbled. Because if they took Fifth Column from her, she was no one but a bunch of had-beens. FBI agent. Patriot. Mother. Wife. All titles traded into negative, darker ones: murderer, traitor, terrorist, killer, conspirator, madwoman. She was Fifth Column and its core. Her position was expendable, but her spark was not. She was Anna's ultimate nemesis, and would not succumb to compassion if she were given the opportunity to end the very existence of the Visitor high commander.

The world had been black and white once. Wrong and right, aspects easily separated. And Erica Evans was growing the darkest shade of gray in her fight against the V's. Many witnessed her decision-making and opposed her, but nobody wanted to admit the truth: that they needed her to be a bottomless darkness but expected her to fly with the grace of white angelic wings.

What they didn't realize was that Erica Evans had been stripped of her wings.

A/N:

This is how my first fanfiction to V (2009) begins. English is not my first language, I do not own V (2009) in any sense of the verb, and it will deal with how Erica dealt with the events in and post "Mother's Day". Reviews are very welcomed. Have I captured her spirit? It is an unknown party's point of view.