This is much in the same vein as my first Chicago fic, Little Match Girl, only this time using Annie (Six). I may end up writing fics for all the Cell Block Girls, who knows.

Disclaimer: just borrowing the characters, folks.

Red Riding Hood

If someone were asked to describe Annie in only two words, the first one would be 'redhead' and the second would be 'vamp'. There was simply no better way to describe her, what with her long legs and fire-coloured hair. People used to say she was made to be stared at. Even in prison no one had given her any reason to doubt it. When she was only sixteen she was able to flick her hair in a way that made every boy on the street buy her anything she wanted, and could lean against a lamppost like she was doing it a favour. Annie Fairchild was a vamp, a temptress, a femme fatale in the most literal sense and she had never been ashamed of it.

Now that she was a murderer the press were determined that she must have been something of a scarlet woman as well. They were certain of it in the same way that they were convinced Liz was a psychopath and the Hunyak was guilty. Not that the press in Chicago was ever known for accuracy, as Annie was fairly sure the Hunyak was innocent (not that that mattered to her, of course), and while something was certainly wrong with Liz's head, she wasn't completely mad. Not yet. As for Annie, well. For once the press may have been right.

She was not the type of person who was destined for prison, but Annie had become a survivor over the years and did well for herself even amongst the steel and concrete of Cook County Jail. Her mother, a chemist's assistant, was a professional widow; "my husband, God rest his soul" was the most common phrase on her lips and her children were expected to have the same reverence. The husband in question, Lieutenant George 'Ginger' Fairchild, was mostly absent even when alive, so when the news came in 1918 that he had had a bad run-in with a grenade somewhere in Belgium, Annie, then in her teens, donned the mourning weeds but otherwise didn't miss him much. Black always suited her anyway. She ran off with her boyfriend early the next year.

The relationship didn't last, of course, but it set Annie off on her long career of men. She prowled the upper crust of Chicago, decked out in the latest fashions, making an industry of herself. She was not a prostitute; she refused to sink to that level. But she knew her way around, always wearing black and red, her hair like a fiery halo around her head.

Then Ezekiel Young came along. The man she now exclusively thought of as a 'that bastard'. He was everything she wanted, handsome, intelligent, and above all, very rich. Annie even thought she might love him. Surely, she thought, this time it will be permanent. Mrs Annie Young.

As if.

Two years and a dose of arsenic later and Annie was residing in a draughty cell in Cook County Jail. She had made quite an impression when she was locked up, as she was only the second killer at that time. She was introduced to Liz the following day. Her fellow murderess took one look at her and let out a screeching maniac laugh Annie would come to know well.

"Wha' happened, Red Ridin' Hood," Liz sneered, striking more matches. "Foun' ya boyfriend was the Big Bad Wolf?"

So Annie was nicknamed Red Riding Hood, which was then in typical prisoner fashion shortened to Red. Silly little Red Riding Hood who was deceived by the Big Bad Wolf while off in some romantic dream land. Suitable, really. It all made perfect sense.

And what would she be like, then, when decades later she was finally released? Annie did a swift calculation of her age twenty years in the future. Forty-eight. The number hit her like a slap. Forty-eight years old! Twenty-eight was already older than she had ever intended to be. Would she be like Velma Kelly, staying twenty-nine for three years? Already her looks were beginning to subtly fade under the prison conditions. She tried to prevent it as much as possible, but her skin became sallow and her red hair, once bright and shining, became limp and drab in the laundry steam.

"Annie?" Mama would laugh with her colleagues. "Well, if you think she's pretty now, you should have seen her when we brought her in. What a stunner she was!"

She hated that past tense. All those years Annie had been living a precariously shallow existence, revolving around beauty, mostly her own. Life was very long when it had lost all meaning.

So, Red Riding Hood. It wasn't a very appropriate name after all. The girls in fairytales were all innocents who fell into a trap just as young girls tend to do. They don't pour poison into people's drinks. They don't decieve. They certainly don't kill.

Annie was the Big Bad Wolf.