Work Text:
In another life, another decade, she could have worn Louboutin. Sleek heels of a woman who clung to no arm, that flashed red passion beneath the sober black. Tall and rapier-fine, no bands nor buckles to hold her into herself, nothing but bare shape and shining ambition.
But Katya, for all the beautiful things she had been adorned with, her life walked in different shoes. Velvets and kid leathers, bows and small rhinestone flashes, demure straps with silver clasps across her arches, around her ankles, matching the metal timepiece bound on her wrist or pendulating along her gown. Katya wore black suede or brown, or pink – love dilute, love behind cloud, love blushing and looking away. Once, at the party, she wore golden sandals, tied up all round, and felt the bindings and the fear. How easy to tumble on such feeble Italian frivolity.
The night they fled, her shoes were secret-black, but beneath, where the blood remained, their soles were red. Whether it dyed through, or wore away, as they ran through the fog in the night, ran to the dock, the boat, the waves beyond, touched with blush-pink sunrise, who can say. She burned those shoes, Katya did.