V IS FOR VENDETTA

Broken

Like almost every morning since she arrived in New York, Lena stirs the silk sheets of her king sized bed with a pounding headache and an unfocused gaze, but the moment the dripping in red bedroom comes into focus she can tell something is different. Admittedly the thrumming in her veins could just be a sign she is still violently drunk, and so could the foreboding feeling the she has forgotten something terribly important.

She glances over to find her current boyfriend passed out beside her- she'd lost count of how many she'd had in the last twenty something years, but immortality was both a blessing and a curse. She never stuck around long enough for any of them to question why they weren't both going through the crisis of finding their first gray hairs.

And then it clicks.

Twenty something years. How long was it actually?

In only her black lace underwear she darts out of the doorway and into the long hall where the air is thick with smoke that reaches far enough to pollute the lounge, where she makes no effort not to disturb the several bodies sprawled across her mahogany floorboards. A few irritated groans sound when they get knocked in the head or side in her rush to get to the calendar on the refrigerator. Amongst the sea of smashed beer bottles and dead cigarette butts, it was lost as the only remotely domestic fixture in the entirety of the manor. It had once belonged to a widow who had kept the place exactly the same since her husband passed until her own dying days. Safe to say, the moment their gang set their sights upon it their framed marital photos and folksy belongings were shattered against walls and across the once pristine flooring, and even a year later one of them would often cry out after treading on a shard of the remnants they hadn't bothered to clean up.

Lena hated that even after destroying them, life still found a way to remind her of all the quotidian things that were fundamentally unattainable for her.

This calendar was the only thing she owned that made her feel somewhat human. Something she could pretend applied to her as she checked it routinely each morning only to find each day was as unremarkable as the day before it.

Except for one.

One day out of all three hundred and sixty five would have a number neatly fitting within it's square in bold red marker. This number represented how many calendars she had gone through since her cursed arrival in this new world.

As she rips the magnetic booklet off the door to anxiously flip through it until she lands on the month she can't recall, she knows she's right. She can feel it in her bones before the ink even catches her eye.

Twenty eight.

Twenty eight years since she had lost everything and nothing and now the curse was broken.

A wicked grin pulls at her lips tinted with only a brief hint of the crimson shade she'd worn the night before and she pokes the tip of her tongue between her gleaming white teeth to bite on it, ineffectually containing her elation.

It's time.

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~

"Open up, or we're coming in!"

Regina rolls her dark eyes at the flimsy threat as it carries through the white painted door that matches the near collapsing picket fence of her mansion, opening it without hesitation.

"Can I help you?" She spits insincerely as she folds her arms across her fitted black blazer in an unimpressed manner.

The flame headed doctor quickly recovers from his immediate alarm when he senses the mob behind him, relying on him to lead them for some godforsaken reason. "That smirk isn't going to last forever, Regina. You took everything from us and now-"