Unmasked

Chapter 10

Come Home

It was so so quiet. If Evey listened hard enough she could hear her own breath reverberating through the tunnels of the Shadow Gallery. During her whole stay here she'd never felt like this. When V had gone on his various errands, sometimes for a night and sometimes for days on end, it felt empty, yes, but it was a different kind of empty. She had always been certain he would come back to her and once he stepped over the threshold Evey had always known. She had always been able to feel his arrival, even if she couldn't hear his footsteps. He was always quiet as a mouse, but she always knew when he had finally arrived.

This was like that and not.

The atmosphere had a similar feeling of those times before he had returned home, but it was still so quiet. No clash of swords. No turning pages of a book. No sounds of the television or the small clink and sizzle of V making one of his culinary delights off in the kitchen. Evey felt stuck in a parallel universe where she was there and he was not. She had to remind herself every hour, every minute, every second that he was alive. She found herself placing a hand on his chest and putting hear ear to the mask to check his breathing more than was probably necessary. She changed his bandages when needed and was pleased that none of her work seemed to have done any irreparable damage.

"Come home, V," she whispered, her voice hoarse from her episode the day before or from disuse, she was uncertain. Not that it mattered. She meant every word. The Shadow Gallery had been home to her and it was beginning to feel like one again, but it could never fully become that without him there.

Home is where the heart is, as they say.

Though she was still afraid to admit it, even to herself, her heart was laying right there under the sheets in front of her.