I think this one is finished.

[singleword]

She goes back once, in late February.

She flicks off the TV in disgust and stalks the limits of the one room flat, fretting her sleeves to threads with angry nervous fingertips. Bad enough to blame him for St Mary's. Now they're picking names of rioters, the kind who'd been locked up in the end, and according to Roger bloody Dascombe her own father had been part of the terrorist ring 'V' from the very beginning ... not that he wouldn't have been proud to be, of course, but ...
"A man after my own heart."
And with that split second memory Evey realises she's not sure of the way back to the Shadow Gallery. She doesn't remember, anymore, the name of the street where she'd surfaced.
She grabs her coat from the rack by the door and runs.

And now. Her instincts aren't so bad as she feared. She slips between shadows and whispers down the alleyway, hands tight in pockets and shoulders up for warmth. She knows there are hidden cameras, here, but she's not afraid of them. If he should see her coming she needs only to think of what to say to him, which is not such a thing to fear as how to explain herself to the law.
(Or perhaps it is only a different kind of fear.)
The lift doors shudder open. She steps into the dark.

The decent is an interminable sixty-seven seconds, which is incidentally the longest she could hold her breath underwater. The goods lift is the same size as her cell. It's as dark inside as the corner of his neck and shoulder when she pressed her face into his shirt.
When the doors open she emerges gasping, three running steps into torchlight and safety.

He doesn't appear to be home. The gallery is quiet, musicless. She treads gingerly through the rooms, hands in fists in pockets. It feels like trespassing. Every painting stares mutely at her, the sculptures glare. The Lady of Shallot somehow agrees with her by her grip of fingers on the prow of her boat - a world fallen to pieces, and no soul notices but one. Evey shivers, and continues.
The television is flickering silently. The sofa, when she dares to touch it, is cold.
The kitchen is darkened, but she can make out the shapes of saucepans piled beside the sink. She smells basil. She moves on quickly.
What's he been doing, since she left? What had he done, day to day, before she'd ever arrived? Has he now, perhaps, just slipped back into normalcy as if she'd never been?
She passes the piano, the lid up and the bench askew. The door to the false prison is shut. It is, in fact, half obscured by a painting of what could be shattered glass. Something cubist. The contrast is bizarre, and she wants to laugh. Artists use lies to tell the truth? Surely Dali would have been more appropriate.
The quiet presses in on her. Her boots are too loud, creaking when she shifts her weight. Desperate, suddenly, she drops to the floor and tugs them off, pressing the soles of her bare feet into the flagstones. The cold aches. She remembers staggering into this room, confused by the piano, baffled by the art. She remembers the burn of air as she'd struggled to breathe.
She shoves herself off the floor, stumbles in a random direction. His quarters. The rooms she's never seen. There are suddenly fewer paintings and more posters, low shelves holding books and less precious sculptures. In a corner, a statue of a boy examining his own foot is draped in a black cloak. Her bare feet are quiet. She breathes carefully, trying so hard to be silent. Her hands fidget uselessly. It's darker here. When she turns a corner in the hall she finds the end of it in shadow, and one door of many is open. Just a crack.
Past a grandfather clock, one hand lifts to the stone. The lintel. The door. She steps close, peers through. A bedroom - the expected furniture of bed, dressing table, chair, wardrobe. Piles of books. All dim, vague shapes - and a shadow in the bed. She blinks, slips through the doorway, and waits for her eyes to adjust.
He sleeps on his side facing the door. The strip of dim light falls across his arm and shoulder, not the pillow, so she cannot immediately tell if he is awake. She listens, watches. Her heart's not under the floorboards but it sounds so loud to her she thinks he must hear it anyway. She holds her breath, struggling to hear his.
Deep and even. Rough, the edge of it, and she's somehow sure he's not faking. He wouldn't fake that edge of voice in the sound.
She doesn't quite close the door behind her. Bare feet whisper on the stone floor, scuff on the carpet by the side of his bed.
The mask is a dim white shape on the table. Beside it is an empty glass and she can smell something of medicine in it.
He shifts in his sleep. He almost whimpers.
Has he been drugging himself, so as not to dream? Such an action seems a weakness. Unless, something had made his dreams worse.
She'd had nightmares, in prison. She'd woken thrashing from them. Once she'd slammed her head into the stone floor hard enough to pass out again. If V had nightmares as bad, he'd destroy half the Gallery without meaning to.
The whimper sounds again, small and frightened, and she's a step closer without noticing the movement.
She can see the shape of him, dark against pale sheets. The curve of his shoulder, an arm curled around the spare pillow. She reaches out, guided by the sound of his breathing and the warmth of him.
Her fingertips brush bare skin. She flinches at the contact, and his voice finds an almost-word.
"Eve -"
Evey stops breathing. Does he know she's here?
Quiet, again. He's only dreaming.
On the other hand, what is she doing? Why is she here, deep underground with this creature she'd sworn she hated, this terrorist, this madman - what does this make her? She's watching him sleep like a mother would her child, and that just makes no sense at all.
His breathing isn't quiet. He sounds like he's dreaming of running. She leans against the mattress edge, her outstretched hand tracing him, forearm to wrist. His hand, a fistful of pillow, tendons prominent. She pulls back. She steps away.
She's gone mad, obviously. She should get out of here.
He says something. The words are indistinct, but the tone freezes her steps. "Eve?" like a lost child, and something in her lurches off balance.
He whimpers, again, loud suddenly - a moan cut through with a sob for air. He's crying, and she's beside him, kneeling, lying alongside him propped on one elbow with her other hand reaching for his shoulder. His skin is bare but not smooth. The curve of his neck is pockmarked and rippled, the back of his head is the same. Her eyes are nearly blind in this room, all her sight is in the palm of her right hand and fingertips. But her touch doesn't soothe him. His voice is raw, broken edged -
"Evey, help me, I - no! Stop hurting - ! Evey I'm sorry - oh stop, please - "
His hand clenches in the pillow, and at sudden movement she hears the cotton begin to tear. She summons courage -
"V."
Her voice cracks. He doesn't seem to hear her.
"I'm here. I'm safe, V, no one's hurting me."
"Mea culpa, mea ... "
"I'm safe, V."
The movement quietens, but he buries his face under his arm and the sobbing continues.
"It's alright. It's all over now."
".. Evey, I'm sorry."
"I forgive you."
And she does.
He goes still. She's sure that by now he's awake, but she doesn't move. His fist relaxes, he shifts. She feels muscle slide under uneven skin as he reaches his arm out for her. The back of his knuckles bump her cheek, clumsily, then his hand turns over and gently, gently, frames the curve of her jaw.
He'd held her like that when she'd struggled to breathe, lost in the haze of hating him and the fear of what she'd become. She remembers gloved fingertips along her jaw, near her mouth, and the solid grip of them around the back of her head forcing her under water.
She gasps, now, drinks the air. He's so warm, the palm of his hand is so soft. Her own hand tightens in the crook of his neck and shoulder, she shifts herself closer. And perhaps he's not awake, because he lets her, his fingertips soft on her skin and his face a dim arrangement of shadows against the white pillow and her pale hand. His eyes are closed. His breathing is not quite even, but that she ignores.
Her knee hits his. The shape is muffled by her jeans and the layers of blanket. He moves, then, and she holds her breath again. He traces along her neck and down between her shoulder blades, fingers catching in the wrinkles of her shirt and the ridges of her ribs and settling, finally, in the small of her back. She's fitting all along him, now, her shape small against his.
She hears him inhale, deeply. His forehead rests against hers. His voice, when he speaks, is still rough with the memory of tears, and she feels his breath ghost across her mouth like a dying kiss.
"And there I dreamed, ah, woe betide."
And at that, Evey doesn't know how to answer. So she says nothing.

She doesn't sleep, even when he does. She plays Viola in her head, reciting all the parts she can remember and making up the rest. She listens to the clock in the hall outside chiming the half hours. She measures the seconds between by the beat of his pulse under her hand. Close to morning he stirs, and she has a sudden aching wish for dawn, for sunlight through an apartment window, for anything that would let her see the man across from her. He's only shadows, in her eyes, and her hands do not see the same way.
This wish is brief. Fear of his reaction clenches in her throat. If he catches her here - carefully, she pulls away from him. Her bare feet hit the floor, she backs to the door. He doesn't make a sound, doesn't move. He sleeps, still. Just a man, she thinks, he's just a man.
Somehow, it doesn't make it any easier to leave him.
"Goodnight," she whispers, although it is morning. On impulse, she adds, "A thousand times, goodnight."

She's back in her own apartment before the sun has properly risen.