Chapter Text
The life of a proper young lady is measured in stillness.
You learned this before you learned to read. Stillness in posture: back straight, hands folded, chin level. Stillness in speech: soft tones, careful words, nothing that might displease. Stillness in ambition: there was no need to dream when your future had been decided the moment you were born.
You would be married. To a man of good standing. You would manage his household. Bear his children. Smile at his guests. And in all things, you would be appropriate.
Your mother made certain you understood what this meant. A wife does not voice opinions her husband has not asked for. A wife does not walk ahead of him, but always a step behind, a shadow to his presence. A wife does not draw attention to herself, does not laugh too loudly, does not question, does not refuse. A wife is obedient. Timid. Grateful for the honor of being chosen.
You practiced this role like you practiced your needlework. Your mother would walk ahead of you through the house, and you would follow three paces behind, eyes lowered. When your father spoke at dinner, you kept silent unless directly addressed. When guests visited, you sat with your hands in your lap and smiled softly, spoke only when spoken to, never offered thoughts of your own.
"A man does not want a wife who thinks herself his equal," your mother told you once, adjusting the pale ribbon in your hair. "He wants peace. Gentleness. Someone who makes his life easier, not more complicated."
You were being trained to be invisible. A lovely, obedient ghost who would haunt some man's house and call it a life.
Your days bled into one another, each indistinguishable from the last. Morning lessons in deportment. Afternoon lessons in household management. Evening hours spent in the drawing room while your mother entertained guests, you displayed like a porcelain doll: pretty, silent, breakable.
The only mercy was your sketchbook.
Even that was monitored. Your mother approved the subjects: flowers, landscapes, the occasional still life. Nothing improper. Nothing with passion or life or color. Just gentle pencil strokes on white paper, as soft and inoffensive as you yourself were expected to be.
You barely left the house. There was no need, your father said. The world outside was dangerous, full of improper influences and unseemly people. Better to stay inside, stay safe, stay controlled.
You had no friends your own age. The other young ladies you met at carefully curated social functions were just like you: polished, proper, performing. They spoke in the same soft tones about the same acceptable topics. None of them ever said what they actually thought. None of them ever felt anything beyond what was permitted.
Sometimes you wondered if you were even real. If you were a person at all, or just a collection of rules and expectations shaped into something resembling a girl.
Your world was grey. Beige. Pale cream and muted pastels. Even the colors you were allowed to wear were soft, demure, forgettable.
You felt like you were fading. Like you'd been fading your whole life, becoming more and more translucent until one day you'd disappear entirely and no one would even notice.
You would marry a man whose name you might not even know until the engagement was announced. You would walk behind him for the rest of your life. You would speak only when he permitted it. You would exist in his shadow, and call it duty.
This was your future.
It was boredom that brought you to the window that night. Nothing more.
You couldn't sleep. You never could, not really. The silence of the house pressed down on you like a weight, and your mind refused to settle. So you sat at your window in your white nightgown, staring out at the street below, at the buildings across the way, at the moon hanging heavy in the sky.
There was nothing to see. There never was. Just the same view you'd stared at a thousand times before, the same empty street, the same dark windows.
You were about to turn away when you saw movement.
The apartment building across from yours had a flat roof, accessible by a fire escape. You'd never seen anyone up there before. But tonight, there were figures. Two of them, standing near the edge.
Your breath caught.
Even from this distance, even in the dim moonlight, you could see her.
Red.
That was the first thing that registered. A shock of color so vibrant it didn't belong in your world of greys and whites. Red hair catching the light, a red coat that moved like liquid as she gestured wildly, red that seemed to pulse with life.
She was tall. Striking. Moving with a confidence that made your chest tighten. She turned, and the moonlight illuminated her profile, sharp and beautiful and utterly arresting.
And she was loud.
Her voice carried across the space between the buildings, cutting through the night air. You couldn't make out the words, but you didn't need to. It was the sound itself that captivated you: bright, unrestrained, unapologetic. She laughed, and it wasn't the soft, polite titter you'd been taught. It was full-throated and shameless, the kind of laugh that demanded to be heard.
She moved like she owned the world. Gestured with her whole body. Threw her head back. Spun on her heel. Everything about her was excessive, theatrical and alive.
The other figure said something, and she responded with an exaggerated wave of her hand, her whole frame vibrating with energy. She was everything you'd been taught a woman shouldn't be: loud, bold, taking up space without apology.
She was magnificent.
Your heart was pounding. You pressed closer to the window, your breath fogging the glass. You couldn't look away. Couldn't blink. This woman, this stranger bathed in moonlight and draped in red, had shattered something inside you with nothing more than her presence.
She represented everything you weren't. Everything you'd never be allowed to be.
Freedom. Confidence. Control over her own existence. She didn't follow anyone. Didn't soften herself. Didn't fade into the background. She was vibrant and loud and completely, utterly herself, and she didn't care who saw it.
You wanted to be her. You wanted to know her. You wanted to understand what it felt like to move through the world like that, untamed and unafraid.
The figures moved toward the fire escape, and panic seized your chest. No. Not yet. You weren't ready for her to disappear.
But she did.
One moment she was there, a slash of red against the dark sky, and the next she was gone, descending into the building and out of sight.
You stared at the empty rooftop for a long time, your reflection ghostly in the window glass. White nightgown. Tamed hair. Colorless.
Everything she wasn't.
When you finally pulled yourself away from the window, your hands were shaking. You crawled into bed, but sleep didn't come. You couldn't stop seeing her. The red. The movement. The absolute certainty in the way she carried herself.
You didn't know her name. Didn't know who she was or why she'd been on that rooftop. Didn't know if you'd ever see her again.
But you knew, with a certainty that terrified and exhilarated you in equal measure, that you needed to.
The next morning, you opened your sketchbook to a fresh page. Your pencil moved across the paper almost of its own accord, trying to capture what you'd seen: the wild red hair, the confident stance, the way the moonlight had haloed her figure.
It wasn't perfect. You were working from memory, from a distance. But it didn't matter.
For the first time in your life, you were drawing something you wanted to draw.
Something that made you feel alive.
The drawings consumed you.
Page after page after page, filled with her. You drew her from every angle you could remember, tried to capture the way she'd moved, the tilt of her head when she laughed, the dramatic sweep of her coat. You drew her hands mid-gesture, her profile against the moon, the wild fall of her red hair.
You'd never drawn like this before. With urgency. With need. Your pencil flew across the paper during the few moments you had alone, your heart racing as if you were doing something forbidden.
You were.
Days passed, and she haunted you. Not like a ghost, but like a fever. You couldn't focus during your lessons. Your mother scolded you twice for being distracted, for letting your mind wander when she was teaching you how to properly arrange a tea service.
"Where is your head today?" she'd asked, exasperated.
With a woman in red, you thought. With someone who would never waste her time learning which fork goes where.
At night, you returned to your window. Every night, you hoped to see her again. But the rooftop remained empty and the street stayed quiet. Yet you kept watch anyway, kept hoping, because the alternative was unbearable.
What if you never saw her again? What if that one glimpse was all you'd ever get?
The thought made something desperate claw at your chest.
Your sketchbook grew heavier with drawings. You hid it under your mattress now, afraid your mother would find it and ask questions you couldn't answer. How could you explain this fixation? This obsession with a stranger you'd seen once, from a distance, for mere minutes?
You couldn't. So you kept it secret, this one piece of yourself that belonged only to you.
But it wasn't enough. The drawings weren't enough. The memory was starting to fade around the edges, becoming less sharp, and you needed more. You needed to see her again. To know she was real. To prove to yourself that you hadn't imagined the whole thing.
A week passed. Then two.
You were going mad with it. This wanting. This ache in your chest that wouldn't go away. Everyone around you was the same as they'd always been: bland, colorless, going through the motions of their carefully prescribed lives. And here you were, falling apart inside because a woman in red had laughed on a rooftop and made you realize how small your world was.
How small you were.
On the fourteenth night, you made a decision.
You were going to find her.
It was reckless. It was dangerous. It was everything you'd been taught never to do. Young ladies did not sneak out of their homes at night. Did not wander the streets alone. Did not go looking for strange women in dark places.
But you couldn't stop yourself.
After your parents went to bed, you waited and listened to the house settle into silence. Your heart was pounding so hard you were sure someone would hear it, would come investigate, would stop you.
No one came.
You slipped out of bed, still in your nightgown. You should change into something more appropriate, but you didn't want to waste time, and didn't want to risk losing your nerve. You grabbed your sketchbook, clutched it to your chest like armor, and crept toward the door.
The hallway was dark. The floorboards creaked under your feet, and you froze with each sound, certain you'd be caught. Yet the house remained quiet.
You made it to the front door. Your hand shook as you turned the lock, as you eased it open. The night air hit your face, cool and strange. You'd never been outside alone like this. Never outside at night at all.
For a moment, you hesitated. This was madness. You should go back inside, back to your room, back to safety.
But the thought of returning to that grey, colorless existence without even trying to find her was worse than any danger waiting in the dark.
You stepped outside.
The street was eerily quiet. Streetlamps cast pools of sickly yellow light at intervals, leaving long stretches of shadow between them. You were wearing a white nightgown and thin slippers, carrying a sketchbook, looking for a woman you'd seen once from your window.
It was absurd. It was desperate.
It was the first real choice you'd ever made.
You didn't know where you were going. Didn't have a plan. You just started walking, your eyes scanning every shadow, every alley, every rooftop. Looking for a flash of red. Listening for that loud, uninhibited laugh.
The city at night was different than you'd imagined. Darker. More alive in strange ways. You heard voices in the distance, saw movement in windows, felt the weight of the shadows pressing close. Your heart raced with every sound, every flicker of movement.
You should have been terrified. Part of you was. But there was something else too, something bright and fierce burning in your chest.
You were doing something. For the first time in your life, you were choosing, acting, reaching for what you wanted instead of accepting what was given to you.
Even if you didn't find her, even if this was all for nothing, you'd still have this: the knowledge that you'd tried. That you'd been brave enough to step outside your cage, even just for one night.
You turned down a side street, then another. The buildings here were older, closer together and the shadows deeper.
You passed a narrow alleyway and almost kept walking.
Then you heard it.
That voice. Loud and bright and unmistakable, echoing off the brick walls.
Your breath stopped. Your heart nearly burst out of your chest.
It was her.
You crept closer to the alley, every nerve in your body screaming with excitement and fear. The voice was coming from deeper in, around a corner. You could hear another voice too, male, responding to her.
Your hands tightened on your sketchbook. You knew you should leave. This was clearly something private, something you weren't meant to see. But your body moved on its own, drawn forward like a moth to flame.
You pressed yourself against the wall and peered around the corner.
And there she was.
The woman in red, even more breathtaking up close. She was standing over something on the ground, holding the strangest weapon you'd ever seen. She was talking to someone else, a young man, but you barely registered his presence.
All you could see was her.
She was close. Closer than she'd been on that rooftop. Close enough that you could see the way her coat moved as she gestured, the shine of her hair under the streetlamp, the expressiveness of her face as she spoke. She was even more magnificent than you'd imagined, and you'd spent two weeks imagining her.
Your heart thundered in your chest. Your grip on your sketchbook was so tight your fingers ached. You were actually here. Actually seeing her. Standing close enough to hear her voice clearly now, not muffled by distance but bright and sharp and real.
They were discussing something. You couldn't focus on the words. Couldn't focus on anything except her. The way she moved. The way she existed so completely, taking up space like it was her right.
There was something on the ground near them. You didn't look at it. Didn't care. Your entire world had narrowed to her, to this moment, to the fact that you'd found her.
But now what?
The thought cut through your haze of fascination. You'd found her. You were here. But what were you supposed to do? Approach her? And say what? That you'd been obsessed with her since seeing her once from your window? That you'd drawn her over and over in your sketchbook? That you'd snuck out of your house in the middle of the night just for the chance to see her again?
It sounded insane. It was insane.
Your mind raced, trying to formulate some kind of plan, some way to make this make sense, when suddenly both figures turned.
No warning. No words exchanged. They just turned directly toward where you were hiding.
Panic exploded in your chest.
You jerked back behind the wall, pressing yourself flat against the brick, every muscle in your body locked tight. Your breath came in short, shallow gasps that you tried desperately to quiet. Maybe they hadn't actually seen you. Maybe you'd pulled back fast enough. Maybe if you stayed perfectly still, they'd think it was nothing, just a trick of the shadows.
Your heart was so loud you were certain they could hear it.
Seconds crawled by. You didn't dare move. Didn't dare breathe. Your whole body trembled, adrenaline singing through your veins.
The alley had gone quiet.
Maybe they'd gone back to what they were doing. Maybe you were safe. Maybe you could slip away before—
You turned your head to peek around the corner, to see if the path was clear.
She was right there.
A strangled squeak escaped your throat. You jerked backward, your feet tangling in your nightgown, and fell hard onto your backside. The impact jarred through you, and your sketchbook flew from your grip, hitting the ground and skidding across the cobblestones.
It hit the ground a few feet away, and the momentum sent it skidding across the cobblestones. Pages fluttered, flipped, fell open.
No.
You stared at it, frozen in horror, as it came to rest between you and her. Open to a page covered in sketches. Sketches of her.
For a moment, nothing existed except that sketchbook lying there like evidence of your madness.
Then you dragged your eyes up.
She loomed over you, and up close she was devastating. Tall and striking and so vibrantly alive that it hurt to look at her. The streetlamp behind her created a halo effect, catching in her red hair, outlining her figure. Her lips were painted the same red as her coat. Her eyes gleamed with something you couldn't name as she looked down at you.
The chainsaw was still in her hand, idling with a low mechanical purr.
You couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Couldn't do anything but stare up at her like she was an apparition, a deity, something beyond human comprehension.
Your face burned with mortification. You were sprawled on the ground in a dirty alley, wearing nothing but your nightgown, your sketchbook open between you displaying your obsession for her to see.
This was a nightmare.
This was a dream.
You couldn't tell which.
The young man appeared beside her, hands in his pockets, looking down at you with mild curiosity. "Well," he said. "That's unexpected."
But you barely heard him. All your focus was on her, on the way she tilted her head slightly as she studied you. On the way her eyes moved from your face to the sketchbook and back again.
She reached down and picked it up with her free hand.
You made a small, helpless sound in the back of your throat, but you couldn't find words. Couldn't protest. Could only watch as she flipped through the pages, her expression unreadable.
Page after page after page. All of her. Dozens of sketches from every angle you could remember, some rough and quick, others painstakingly detailed. All of them drawn with desperate, obsessive focus.
The silence stretched unbearably.
Then she looked back at you, one perfectly sculpted eyebrow raised.
"Well, well," she said, and her voice sent a shiver down your spine. It was even better up close. Rich and theatrical and completely confident. "It seems I have an admirer."
She said it lightly, almost amused, like this was curious but not particularly important. Like finding a stranger who'd been obsessively drawing her was mildly interesting at best.
You tried to speak. Your mouth opened, but nothing came out except a mortified whisper. "I... I..."
The words died in your throat. What could you possibly say? How could you explain this?
"These are quite good, actually," she continued, turning another page. "You've captured my best angles. I appreciate an eye for aesthetics." She glanced at her companion. "Ronald, look at this one. She got the coat perfectly."
Ronald leaned over to look, letting out a low whistle. "Dedicated, I'll give her that."
Your face was on fire. You wanted to sink through the cobblestones and disappear. This wasn't how this was supposed to go. You'd had some vague, foolish fantasy of seeing her again, maybe from a distance, maybe catching her eye for just a moment.
Not this. Not sprawled on the ground while she examined evidence of your obsession with casual amusement.
"I'm sorry," you finally managed to choke out, your voice barely audible. "I didn't... Ah... I shouldn't have..."
But even as you stammered, you couldn't look away from her. Even mortified, even terrified, you were drinking in every detail. The exact shade of her lipstick. The way her eyelashes caught the light. The confident way she held herself.
She was so close. You were closer to her now than you'd ever been, close enough to see the texture of her coat, to catch the faint scent of something floral and sharp.
Your heart felt like it might burst.
Grelle closed the sketchbook and held it loosely in one hand, regarding you with an expression somewhere between puzzlement and entertainment. "You've been following me," she said. It wasn't a question. "Watching me. Drawing me." She paused. "Why?"
The question hung in the air.
Why. Such a simple question. Such an impossible one to answer.
Because you're everything I'm not. Because seeing you made me realize how small my world is. Because you're the only thing that's ever made me feel alive. Because I'm obsessed with you in a way that terrifies me.
Because you're beautiful.
You couldn't say any of that.
"I..." You swallowed hard, your hands twisting in the fabric of your nightgown. "I saw you. On the rooftop. And you were... you were..."
The words failed again. How could you explain what she'd meant to you? How she'd shattered something inside you just by existing?
Ronald shifted his weight. "Grelle, we really should—"
"Shush," Grelle said absently, still looking at you. "I'm curious."
She crouched down, bringing herself closer to your level, and you forgot how to breathe. Up close like this, she was overwhelming. Too much. Too real. Too everything.
"You snuck out in the middle of the night," she said, a hint of amusement in her voice. "In your nightgown. To find me." Her eyes traveled over you, taking in your disheveled state, your white gown dirty from the fall. "That's quite bold for someone who looks like she's never left her house unsupervised."
The observation was accurate and cutting and you felt it like a physical blow. She saw right through you. Saw how sheltered you were, how pathetic, how completely out of your depth.
"I'm sorry," you whispered again, because you didn't know what else to say.
But even as shame burned through you, you couldn't make yourself look away.
Grelle studied you for a long moment, her expression thoughtful. Then she stood, brushing off her coat with her free hand.
"How strange," she murmured, more to herself than to you. She held out your sketchbook, offering it back. "Here. You'll want this back, I imagine."
You scrambled to your feet, ignoring the ache in your palms and backside, and took the sketchbook with shaking hands. Your fingers brushed hers for just a second, and the brief contact sent electricity shooting up your arm.
"Thank you," you breathed.
Ronald cleared his throat. "Grelle, seriously. We're running late. I don't want to work overtime because you're chatting with a human."
Grelle waved a dismissive hand. "Oh, fine, fine. You're so impatient." She looked back at you, her expression unreadable. "Run along home, little mouse. It's dangerous out here at night. You never know what you might find."
There was something in her tone, something that suggested she knew exactly how dangerous she was, and found your fascination with her both amusing and baffling.
She turned to leave, Ronald already heading back down the alley.
"Wait!" The word burst from you before you could stop it.
Grelle paused, glancing back over her shoulder. "Hmm?"
You opened your mouth, then closed it. What were you going to say? Don't go? Let me follow you? Tell me your name?
All of it sounded desperate. Insane. And maybe you were.
But she was leaving, and you couldn't bear it.
"Can I..." You clutched your sketchbook to your chest. "Will I see you again?"
It was pathetic. You knew it was pathetic even as the words left your mouth.
Grelle's lips curved into a smile that was equal parts amused and pitying. "London's a big city, darling. But who knows?" She gave a little wave. "Perhaps if you're very lucky. Or very unlucky. I haven't decided which you are yet."
And then she was gone, disappearing into the shadows with Ronald, leaving you standing alone in the alley with your racing heart and your sketchbook and the devastating realization that you were even more obsessed now than you'd been before.