Unmasked

Chapter 11

The Mind is a Dangerous Place

It had been 46 hours 52 minutes since Evey had brought V to the shadow gallery.

She had slept very little. She had not eaten or read or hardly moved other than to tend to V. She could do none of that while she was still unsure that he ever would again.

She had turned it over and over in her head, what they might say to one another if he woke up. When he woke up. She wondered if he would be angry or embarrassed or inconsolable once he awoke. The guilt at invading his privacy had not left her, though she still felt justified in the fact that it had, as far as she could tell, saved his life.

She had not forgotten his last admission either.

"I fell in love with you, Evey...like I no longer believed I could."

Was that the god's honest truth, or the ramblings of a dying man? In her heart, she knew the answer to this question. It was not one she ever had to debate seriously in her mind. She knew V. She often thought that she didn't. She often felt it. She had told him that she knew not a single thing about him and it was partially true.

She didn't know his birthday. She didn't know who his parents were. She didn't know what his favorite birthday gift he had ever received was. She didn't know where he grew up. She didn't even know the color of his eyes. Conversely, there were so many things about V that she did know. Things that were only for her. Things that no one else got to know. She knew he was a brilliant artist. She knew that he loved to cook more than he loved to eat and that when he did cook he had an adorably tacky apron that was very unbecoming of a vigilante, but so very, undeniably V. She knew that he preferred to sleep on his back. She knew that he didn't like different foods on his plate to touch. She knew that he loved patterns, finding them in the day-to-day and making them for himself. She knew he liked planning and routine and he was good at it. She knew he never took sugar in his tea. That he always put his jackets on from left to right instead of right to left and he always double knotted his shoelaces. She knew what his gloved fingers looked like as they danced across the keys of the piano. She knew what his footsteps sounded like and how he breathed. How he always watched a movie like he was watching it for the first time. How when he listened to music, he didn't just listen to it, he became the notes that pour through the air around him. She knew that he always touched doorknobs twice. She knew that he'd been through so much and yet was still able to find the beauty in the music and the painting and the movies and the horrendous apron and she love him for.

This man had killed people. She didn't know how many but she knew he had. This man had tortured her, maybe for her own good, she thought, but he had still done it. It was beyond reason and comprehension, but she loved him more than she thought she'd ever loved anything else.

He is not allowed to leave me, she screamed in her mind.

He had already tried once, but she would not allow it to happen again.