Sonnet XLVIII

Disclaimer: V for Vendetta is the property of DC Comics and Warner Bros. Entertainment Co.

I do not make profit from this story.

I have written in a couple different fandoms before but this will be my first in V-verse. I am not well versed in classic literature and I applaud the many authors are or have looked up many a great quote to have come from V's mouth in their fanfics. I can only hope, however, that someone will enjoy my story.

Thank you.

Chapter 1

She grazed her palm against the ends of her short bristle of hair. It wasn't quite bristly like she remembered her father's beard shadow after he came back from a long day of work had been, not scratchy, but it didn't feel as soft as when her hair was long.

She put her almost frail hand down. It was still an odd feeling, this buzzed hair cut, even though Evey had it like this for a while now. It was just that when she had been imprisoned she hadn't dared touch her hair in her sorrow and pain from everything else, the tortures, she only allowed herself to curl up on the floor of her small, sickly cold cell.

Evey looked at herself in the mirror. She was no longer starved looking, but there was something hollow about her eyes even while they were piercing to any observer, piercing with strength that she had gained. Her hands looked frail; she looked frail at a glance and was sure it had to do with her shorn head; she hadn't fully recovered from her false incarceration as well. But she realized that she was far more fragile in another way before the transformation, before meeting V.

The young woman turned away from the mirror and flicked the light off with her fingertips as she walked out of the bathroom. She smiled as she walked back to V's room. Yes, he was alive and well, as well as a body could be that had been riddled with bullets little less than a week earlier. She stepped in from the cool stone hall to his darkened room, no longer locked with the master's return from what had seemed to be the final farewell. He was sleeping, probably, Evey couldn't always be sure since he continued to insist on wearing that grinning macabre mask (or that is what she had thought in the beginning, now it was to her as soft and full of expression as a real face most of the time when V wanted it to be, and for V it might as well have been his real face since his voice held enough inflection in it self to show expression, but he was also infuriatingly aggravating by how he hid so much in his verbose displays when all she wanted was a straight, succinct answer).

For now, by the tilt of V's face, soft black wig splayed out around his head, his slack body, arms lying limp next to his body on top of the comforter, Evey accurately guessed his state of unconsciousness.

She softly closed the door behind her, the light from the door narrowing into a slit and disappearing, and stepped into the book-lined room that was V's, most likely the library before she had come into his life. She slowly padded in on bare feet, thankful the floor had a rug upon the cold stone. She reached his side and sat in the chair next to him, reaching out with a thin hand to his large resting one. His bare hand, her lips curled gently as she clasped their hands, she had won that argument. She sighed with the feeling of his oddly raised flesh, not rough, but smoothly snarled if that was a way to describe it. She gently rubbed the back of his scarred hand with her free one, loving the feeling of it, the feeling of V. His warm fingers slightly curled around her hand with no other movements to suggest consciousness.

The room was sparsely furnished, only the chair she sat on and a cot which he slept upon aside from the cases of banned books. She remembered when she had argued with him after they had cleaned him up, telling him he should have her bed since it technically was his and would be more comfortable, but he didn't listen and she dropped the issue after realizing the depth of his convictions on this point and not wanting him to expend precious energy that should be put forth into his healing. Stubborn man.

She still couldn't believe how quickly a year went, from their meeting, her running away, the false imprisonment, and destroying Parliament. And how he came back…