Unmasked

Chapter 1

The Final Hour

Evey felt as though she was in a dream. If not for the slight pressure of V's hand on the small of her back and the feeling of his rigid muscle beneath her hand which rested on his shoulder she may have accepted it as such. But she also knew that there, in the shadow gallery swaying back and forth as she danced with V, that this dream was coming to an end very soon.The fourth of november had crept up on Evey without warning. Here, looking into the eyes of the cruel Guy Fawkes mask and trying desperatly to picture the eyes beneath it, she was almost able to forget that in a few short hours V would blow up Parliment and start his revolution. She had almost forgotten.

"You've been busy," she remarked, breaking the trance.

When he had no reply she continued, "They're very scared right now. I heard Sutler's going to make a public statement tonight."

He didn't seem suprised by this news as his tone became almost sad, "It's nearly time."

Evey swallowed. Trying to think of any way she might keep him here with her just a little longer.

"The masks were ingenious," she smirked lightly, "It was strange to suddenly see your face everywhere."

She didn't mention that the appearance of many false V's around the city had only made her yearn for the real man. The one that perhaps only she saw as a man before a figure or a revolutionary or a vigilante.

"Conceal me what I am, and be my aid..." he quoted, and she smiled at the familiar line, "...for such disguise as haply shall become the form of my intent."

"Twelfth Night."

"Viola," hearing the smile in his voice only made her long to see it with her own eyes.

She looked away from him as she contemplated the more serious topics of tonight, "I don't understand."

"What?" he asked curiously, cocking his head in a way that was so familiar to her.

She looked back again, searching once more for her friend beneath the mask, "How you can be one of the most important things that has happened to me and yet I know almost nothing about you? I don't know where you were born, who your parents were if you had any brothers or sisters," she reached up and caressed the cold sides of the mask in her hands, "I don't even know what you really look like."

He held her wrists, not allowing her to remove that wretched scrap of clothing, "Evey, please," she felt his eyes, the eyes she couldn't see, searching her face, "There is a face beneath this mask but it's not me. I'm no more that face than I am the muscles beneath it or the bones beneath them."

"I understand," she nodded. She did understand. She understood how private of a person he was. How much disdain he held for the body under the cape and the wig and the mask.

"Thank you," he said with relief. "There isn't much time. I have something I must give you."

She felt her heart leap into her throat. It was almost time already? Where had the night gone? All she wanted as V grabbed her by the hand and lead her away was to stay in their little underground world forever.