All rights belong to Alan Moore, along with my awe and admiration.


Evey Hammond wonders what it would be to make love to an idea.

She can't help but wonder this. She thinks it would offend him, that as they read or listen to music or speak of politics that she considers the flesh and blood he himself denies possessing. But then he has never been offended. Concerned. Contradictory. Never offended.

Tired of philosophy and overtures and eggs, she once asked him to tell her the dirtiest joke he knew. Her intent was to compare it with hers, but what he told sent her to the floor in hysterics, unable to speak. He was delighted. Odd how we adapt to body language, she thinks, that she was able to divine the pleasure of a man wearing a mask and clothed in solid black. She longs for this pleasure. She looks over the rim of her book and longs for it. The correct tilt of his head she finds unbearably erotic, that permanent smile - there was only one other time she had seen a smile like that on a man, a real man, with a real face, only one thing that caused such a satisfaction.

But with the mask he expresses that satisfaction always.

It is frustrating.

She wants him to appreciate her. She hides behind her book as he turns her way and she thinks, cannot help but think, of how she wants his hands on her, wants her breasts cupped by thickly gloved hands, wants to pull the satisfied mask to her neck and feel the lips move, part, and teeth beyond. But no.

He is satisfied with everything. Evey knows it isn't true, but the mask undermines her. But that sated, erotic look, aimed at everything, from roses to breakfast to swords to television to her, her in her morning shlub, her with a headache, her being bitter knowing he'll only listen and nod.

His opinions. His challenges. His tests. His nonsensical rambling. His giddy laugh. All coming from the clownish face Evey wants to pull between her legs. But what, she thinks, would it do there, besides be metal and motionless and cold? Besides look with satisfaction upon what it saw?

She thinks, maybe that would be enough.

Her face flushes. She hides behind the book. She knows he looks at her. She knows he must know, has has to know, to feel it too, what sort of man has a woman captive in his lair and doesn't watch the sway of her hips, study intently her glistening bottom lip? She imagines undressing for him. He would be motionless. He would uniformly approve. The only way she would know, could be sure, was if she were to climb into his lap and feel it.

But that would be bizarre, because his very reality was bizarre, and to feel such a thing would make him warm and humanly real in a way he wasn't, in a way heâ€™d manufactured himself not to be. Every could not, would not, ask him to sacrifice that to sate her animality. Never, unless he asked her to sate his.

But how, she wonders.

Clothed, she thinks. Fully clothed besides what was nessacery. In her nightgown fresh out of the shower, he would embrace her against a wall and she would feel that which she knew she'd never feel, and she would know. He was burned. Was he burned there as well? Would he feel rough, scaled? Every doesn't care, she just wants him inside her, wants him to rip her apart. And she thinks of a place on him she knows, a place she's seen on him. His jawline, where the mask ends before the hair begins, and place that is exposed once in a great while - a patch of savage skin, his real skin, large enough for her to press her lips against. She imagines him shudder. Shudder because she knows that secret.

He'd be silent. He'd barely breath. But he'd be forceful. He would bruise her bucking hips with his hands, tilt her, push her, put her where he needed. And she would comply. She would moan and purr to contradict his silence. When he came he would push up, up, hard into her for that longest of moments, but not a sound, not a sigh. She would expose everything to him while he revealed nothing, such is the nature of their relationship.

But he may surprise her. He often surprises her.

Maybe, she thinks, with a blindfold, a soft, thick blindfold that presses against her eyes and allows no light. And he'd allow her to touch his uneven, singed skin and feel the hidden human warmth. She could wrap her legs around real hips, and when she pulled the face between her legs the lips would part and move. But still he'd be silent, no hint of deep voice that would indicate it was him moving with her, in her. Only an idea, thrusting hard, not an idea of justice but an idea of man at his most exalted, and Evey- she too, she realizes, would become an idea, an idea of woman at her most attuned and receptive, because that too, was the nature of thier relationship. Evey, attuned and receptive, to his brilliance, to his lessons, to his unfailing, satisfied, joyful, permanent expression.

She would press himself against his still body, his wet and human body, put her lips to that patch of skin, and god - no, she never would, she never, ever would, but she does - she whispers, she wants his child. Because Evey does, she wants his child with desperation. She wants to hold his essence inside her and care for it forever.

The words on the page of her book blur. Her eyes have filled with tears. She wipes them away. But he saw. She knows he saw.

He sees everything.

The jukebox plays, a beautiful crooning voice and a slow and sweet melody. She looks up from her book and he stands there, hands clasped, pleased, that pleasure she has learned to divine from the silhouette of a man with whom she lives but has never seen.

"Evey," he asks, "would you like to dance?"

"I'd love to," she says.

She would love to.

She'd love to dance with him forever.

The End