Chapter Text
The cooling solitude of the Gallery enveloped Evey. She sat in the darkness and concentrated fervently on nothing at all. Her pulse had slowed to a hypnotic beat within her, and now, with each pendulant pulse, the darkness appeared to throb in sympathy as if she were a secret engine that powered this small universe. The Gallery was truly a sanctuary for her, though she usually preferred it lit and musical; this time she chose to experience it at its most basic. It had an almost nascent quality to it: like the unconscious comfort that entering a nursery brings to someone who has long since outgrown it. In many ways, this wasn’t far from the truth to Evey’s mind: she had been reborn here, and though the birth and growing process had been awkward, she nevertheless felt that this place above all others was home. The only thing that disrupted her enjoyment of this place was V.
V’s character was too complex for a simplistic childlike qualification. He wasn’t a father, or a teacher, or a guardian, or a companion, or a captor, or a liar, or a killer – he was all of them. It ruined the memory of the place for her. She was inwardly happy that he wasn’t present here anymore, and at the same time she felt the stab of guilt at this thought followed closely by the overwhelming feeling of profound loss. Her heart fluttered and her pulse increased as she began to be swamped by emotions that she kept tightly in check: sorrow, anger, grief, but above all, love. She dove deeper into herself in hopes of swimming under the emotional turbulence rising within her and resurfacing in the calm pool of memory once more. It was like this every single time, and the span between the serenity and the reality grew shorter each time that she came here. She wondered why she persisted in indulging in the fantasy when it was so clearly fragile.
Because, she told herself, it’s the only time that you are ever happy.
She shook her head slowly to clear her mind; everything here was at half speed isolating her further from reality. She liked the feeling even if it was frustrating in the moments to come. A door behind her opened emitting migraine-inducing light into the cavernous Gallery. He stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the light, tall and sure, as he always seemed to her.
“Evey?”
“Yes, V. I’m here.” She said it exactly as she had a thousand times before and turned to face him.
“I have something for you, Eve. The only gift that I can give you….”
“V, don’t!” she tried to stop him but here time always sped up and carried her like the crest of a wave breaking across his inevitable action.
V removed his mask and cradled it against his chest. She never saw his face. Fissures and cracks of white-hot light criss-crossed his body increasing in intensity until he was brighter than the light behind him. The smell of singed hair and burning flesh seared her nostrils as she felt her own skin begin to blister and peel away from the heat. A roar of oxygen-hungry fire burst from his chest just as he exploded into splinters and hot ash. The fire rolled towards with exquisite fury slowing before her long enough to speak.
“For you, Evey…”
It wasn’t his voice; it wasn’t even human. It was the combination of the voice that you love the most and the voice of the creature that utters the first words to you after your death: it was the voice of finality. The fire blew through her then separating flesh and muscle from bone, and reducing bone to ash after that. It all happened in an instant.
“Goddamn you, V!” was her final thought.
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Evey woke with a startled meep in the backseat of the office town car spilling the paperwork laid across her to her feet. Sleep dulled her senses for a moment until she regained her bearings and saw that they were parked in front of her apartment. She caught Charlie’s worried stare at her in the rearview mirror.
“You had that dream again, didn’t you?” he stated plainly.
“It’s fine, Charlie. Please, let’s not get into it again – I know how you feel about this.” She shook her head and crouched forward to claim her paperwork. “It’s just stress. I always have the dream when I’m overdoing it. Once the by-election is over it’ll go away.”
“I don’t think that’s the reason why you’re dreaming, Eve.” Charlie turned in the driver’s seat to face her. He was a remarkably ugly man even by St. Mary’s victims’ standards. Every visible part of him was covered in twisted and gnarled scars that altered his physical features into garish caricatures of human emotion. He had no hair at all but wore a wig for a semblance of normality, and his eyes had a preternatural gloss to them that made them appear almost silver. When she first met him, Evey assumed that he had been blinded, until she found out that he drove a cab for a living. Most others assumed that Eve Hammond’s driver was some kind of werewolf, and Charlie seemed happy not to disabuse them of the notion.
“People don’t have the same nightmare for 10 years, you know. Something’s wrong, and instead of trying to ascertain what you are trying to tell yourself, you continue to shrug it off as a by-product of too much work.” Charlie grumbled. “And speaking of work, Minister Finch expects too much of you. He should value your efforts more. I’d love your permission to go “speak” to him about it…” He turned back to face the front of the car while keeping his eyes on her in the mirror.
Evey suppressed a smile: she loved Charlie a great deal. She even found him attractive, although she couldn’t say what it was about him that turned her on. Most could barely stifle their horror at his appearance, but she found his lack of concern for his visage and his disarming physical grace compelling. And nobody messed with him. Aside from his tortured looks, he was tall and solidly built. He also had an air of dangerous entitlement about him that dared anyone to refuse him and deal with the consequences. Most never took him up on the offer. All in all, when Eric Finch was elected Minister of the Interior four years ago and Evey, as his right hand, was swept into the public eye, her charming if overprotective downstairs neighbor seemed the ideal choice as her driver/security/assistant. Aside from Eric, he was her closest companion and was the only other person that she had ever told about V. When he moved into the flat below hers five years ago – exactly five years after the explosion of Parliament – it signaled the end of Evey’s solitude and the beginning of her re-emergence into life, although, according to Charlie, she would have to do a fair sight more before he considered her life to be “fully realized”.
“Leave Eric be, Charlie. He’s just as stressed out as I am. He never asks anyone in his office to take on any more than he is willing to do himself. The circus that surrounds the process of responsible government is daunting and something that neither one of us was fully prepared for. Makes you wish for the good old days of secret terrorism and dramatic explosions – at least you knew whom you were fighting against then.” Evey sighed and hauled her files into her arms. Before she could reach for the door handle Charlie was outside the car opening the door for her. “Thanks, Charlie.”
She made it halfway up the front steps before she started dropping file folders again. Charlie scooped them from mid-air and tucked them under his arm before relieving her of most of the files that she still held.
“Oh, thank you, Charlie! I’m a basket case this evening. What would I do without you?” she said while smiling and unlocking her apartment door.
“Without me, all sense of justice and order would come to a grinding, glorious halt, Miss Hammond.” he said bowing dramatically and flashing one of those snarled grins that only she loved.
“No doubt.” she giggled as she beckoned him inside. “Would you like a cuppa?”
“At this hour? It’s no wonder that you have trouble sleeping, my dear.”
“Fine.” she rolled her eyes dramatically “I’ll make it herbal, just for you.”
“Deal.” He grinned as he placed the considerable stack of files on the kitchen table and looked at it suspiciously as the table make a cracking noise. “I don’t think that you brought enough work home with you, Eve. Perhaps you’ll need the caffeine after all.”
The sarcastic remark caused Evey to glare at him and she saw him setting about the making of tea with an intimate familiarity of her kitchen. It was not unusual; they were both in and out of each other’s flats frequently and spent several nights a week together cooking, watching movies or hashing out the day’s events. It suddenly struck her that this set up was eerily like a marriage without the intimate physicality: it was very much like her life in the Gallery. She felt a chill shiver down her spine. Perhaps sensing the charge in the air, Charlie began speaking without turning to look at her.
“It’s time to address it.”
“Address what?” she stammered.
“Your dream.” He turned and stared through her. “You’ll never get past it if you don’t understand it. I know what it means, Eve.”
“You do?”
“So do you, if you care to examine it. So few people bother to search beneath the surface of things – they are afraid. Are you afraid, Eve?”
The shiver became an icy trill that started to prickle the back of her neck. Her palms started to sweat and she felt her mouth go dry. Damn right, she was afraid.
“I’m not afraid of a dream, Charlie.”
“It’s not the dream that you fear, but what it stands for.” His eyes never leaving hers, he walked through the kitchen and set a cup of tea before her. “Some schools of psychological thought believe that escapism is an unconscious attempt to go back to the womb, but it’s more likely that such attempts, like your dream, are yearnings for simpler times – before your innocence was lost.”
He raised an eyebrow while stirring his tea. He allowed a long silence to follow but when Evey didn’t speak, he began again.
“The Gallery, in the dream, is your innocence, your security, your childlike self. But it is dark because that age has passed. You cannot maintain its comfort because it is no longer a living, real thing to you. You grew up, Eve – we all have to.” Charlie sipped his tea and cocked his head slightly before continuing.
“As for V…”
“Charlie, don’t.” It was almost a whisper.
“As for V,” he began again more gently “You resent his presence in the Gallery because it was he who both gave and destroyed your innocence. All of the reasons that you cared for him are simultaneously all of the reasons for which you now resent him. Everything that you have now: freedoms, strength, courage, a hand in the making of this country’s future are gifts that he gave to you. But then he left you, and now you feel these gifts are burdens.”
“No I don’t! I’m continuing where he left off – this country wasn’t going to be magically made right by the actions of the 5th! Someone had to make it work, and I am doing that. Eric and I are doing that!” Evey started to shake. She wanted to yell, but yelling at Charlie would have been pointless: he was calmer than a Buddhist monk, and he wasn’t whom she was angry at.
“And don’t you hate V for dying and leaving all of that responsibility on you?”
“No!”
“Haven’t you felt terribly alone since he chose death and his vendetta over life and you?”
“No!”
“Really?” Charlie’s tone was calm as he took another sip of his tea. “Well then, explain why you allow every waking moment to be consumed by work, why you have no friends save Eric Finch and me, and why, in ten years, you have never once had a romantic relationship?”
“I…I…” Evey stuttered on the verge of tears. “Why are you doing this!”
Charlie abandoned his tea and grabbed Evey by the shoulders staring at her unrelentingly.
“Because he wouldn’t want this for you! Can’t you see that he gave you everything that you would ever need to live a beautiful life and instead you chose to mourn him and a past that limits your potential.” His grip was hurting her but she was hypnotized by his eyes. “Shed your resentment and start living your life, Eve – that’s the meaning of the fire that consumes you in your dream.”
“But everything I’ve done….its all been for him.” She let her head droop; she didn’t want him to see her tears. “If I let it go – if I let him go – what do I have left? Who am I, Charlie?”
He released her shoulders and wrapped his arms around her pulling her head into his chest.
“Do it for yourself. Or do not. Once you start living for yourself, your prior motives won’t matter. His importance, his work will remain – no one can change that now – but it will no longer be a burden to you. You will find yourself, in time.”
He stroked her hair gently; so gently for such a large man. She felt his heartbeat, slow and steady, where she rested against him- so much like hers in her dream. Her body felt like lead and her legs could barely stand under her. All she wanted was to sleep. As if she had spoken aloud, Charlie effortlessly scooped her up and deposited her on the couch. He folded himself in next to her and sat silently until her breathing became soft and regular, and he knew that she was sleeping. He remained and stroked her hair for some time. Finally he rose, arranged a blanket around her, and softly kissed her face.
“I’m so sorry, my Evey.” he whispered “I did not know that it would be like this.”
Quietly crossing the room he turned out the lights and opened the door. Standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the hallway light, he looked at her once more before closing the door and returning to his flat downstairs.