Author's Note: This story takes place after the rest of my Gorgeous Carat works, most notably "The Captain" and "Less Than Love Is Nothing".
Disclaimer: I own nothing related to Gorgeous Carat. In addition, "Red Dress" is the title of a song by Jonatha Brooke, which inspired this story.
Red Dress
Florian had been gone from Noir's home for two years when the woman in the red dress came to visit.
She arrived innocuously, without even the minute fanfare of a cab; rather, she simply strode around the corner and up to the Courland manor's open gate, her shoes clicking against the pavement as though the street belonged to her, or she to it. And yes, perhaps that had been true once, what felt like lifetimes ago.
It made her happy to realize that, though she had changed so irrevocably, the place had not.
With only the briefest hesitation, barely enough time to examine the perfectly-tended flower beds by the gate, she strode up the walk and knocked on the front door. The weight of the brass knocker was at once familiar and foreign, and her smile grew broader, accompanied by a very minute quivering of her lips.
She was fortunate that Juliette was the one to open the door; it would have been more difficult to talk her way past a stranger. She greeted her former colleague warmly, but politely, and waited for recognition to cross Juliette's pretty features before pressing a finger to her lips. Don't say anything. Don't let him know I'm here just yet. Immediately, Juliette stepped aside, and returned to her cleaning of the entranceway ornaments. Their professional rapport, it seemed, had not been diminished by their time apart.
The woman in the red dress crossed the corridor slowly, yet resolutely; she made sure to keep to the carpet which ran down the center of it, lest the noise of her shoes on the marble floor should give away her presence. When she came to Noir's study door, she knocked lightly, just the slightest fluttering of her knuckles against the door. It was likely that an ordinary man wouldn't even have heard her, but the man she had come to see was anything but ordinary.
"What is it?" he called, and though his voice was a bit rougher than she remembered, the familiarity of its curtness threatened to make her laugh.
Instead of answering him directly, she turned the doorknob and let herself into his private sanctuary. The scent of the place, a combination of expensive cigars and ancient texts, assaulted her memory, and she blinked rapidly, both to focus herself and prevent her eyes from tearing. There was a time when she would have thought nothing of crying in front of him, but that privilege had been left behind with all the rest.
His initial reaction to her presence was mystification, and she supposed that she could forgive him for not recognizing her immediately, though she had hoped that he would. Her hair was longer, nearly past her shoulders, and immaculately styled; her dress was something she would never have glanced at while he had known her. Diamonds adorned her ears, her throat, and her wrists, though she had never had any interest in accessories before her desertion. Only her eyes were the same, she knew from staring at herself in the hotel mirror, and it was on these that his emerald gaze was fixed when understanding finally flickered through it.
"Good afternoon, Noir," she said, and folded her hands in front of her as she awaited his reaction. Would he actively banish her, with threats and thrown objects? Would he freeze her out, and make it impossible for her to stay? Or would he conjure up the old guilt, which still tasted so fresh after all these years, and force her to run from its lashes?
To her utter shock, he laughed, far more sincerely than she could remember, and she realized that, perhaps, she was not the only one who had changed. "I never thought I'd see the day," he said, and rose from his chair. She searched his eyes for any sign that his happiness was insincere, and found none. "How are you, Laila?"
At the sound of her name on his lips, much of her regal bearing evaporated, and she permitted her posture to slacken slightly. "I've been doing well," she said, acutely aware of how much more cultured Michel's endless parties had rendered her speech. "I hope the same for you."
"I'm very glad to hear it." He did seem glad, she realized: glad, and relieved. "Won't you have a seat?"
She avoided the chairs directly in front of his desk, which were meant for business visits, and instead reclined on the couch closest to him; he reclaimed his desk chair, which he turned to face her. "Thank you," she said, and he nodded graciously.
For a few moments, neither of them said anything; though she could barely guess at what fuelled his silence, she knew that she was beyond content just to bask in the comfort of his presence, to have come home at long, long last. "I've missed you," they finally said, in unison, and their laughter was as synergistic as their partnership had been.
"I have, you know," she said once they had calmed down.
"So do I," he said. "Every day. I keep expecting you to walk in with breakfast every time I pull an all-nighter; I'm always surprised to see someone else reorganizing the library." He snorted. "You know, they're all perfectly awful at it."
"Then perhaps you should do it yourself."
He grinned, and the impishness of his expression ignited countless similar visions in her memory. "And sacrifice the fun of complaining? Never."
She chuckled, but distractedly; she had just noticed the strange aura in the house, the near-desolation of it, and her next words were hesitant. "Is Florian home?"
A shadow passed over his face, and she wondered whether she might have done better to keep her mouth shut. The words, of course, could not be taken back, and so she was left with no choice but to wait for his reply. "I imagine so," he replied eventually, laboriously.
"What happened… if I may ask?" She realized that she wasn't entitled to pry this deeply into his life any longer, but she couldn't quell the impulse to jump back into the trenches alongside him, the desire to provide whatever help she could to him. How easily we lapse into our old roles in the proper circumstances.
"It wasn't you," he said quickly, and she smiled despite the heaviness of the situation. "He moved out for a while. He's studying business law."
"I see." Part of her wanted to ask why Florian had had to move out to study, but she dared not continue any further down that line of conversation. She could see through his brave front as easily as ever, and the last thing she wanted to do was cause him pain. Not now. Never again.
"He wanted space. We had gotten so close, so quickly… I guess it was too much for him." Their eyes met, and she wished for a teacup to hide behind, for anything to distract her from that familiar, paralytic intensity. "You were right, though."
"About what?" she replied without thinking.
"I couldn't see anyone, or anything, but him when he was around." He leaned back in his chair, and she shifted on the couch. "I've wanted to tell you that since I realized it."
"I never thought I'd live to see you admit you were wrong," she said, and her half-hearted attempt at humour scraped the outer layer away from the tension that surrounded them.
"People change," he said, and she felt as though these words were a deep secret, the wisdom of which they alone were privileged to share.
A not-quite-comfortable silence followed; he lit a cigar, and she laughed aloud as she stretched her arms out in front of her. "I was so scared to come back," she admitted.
He inhaled deeply, and lowered the cigar; when he spoke, the words were punctuated with clouds of smoke. "And were your fears warranted?"
She didn't answer right away. Her feelings had suddenly become very complicated, and she wanted to give an accurate answer, less for his sake than for her own. "I was scared that you'd refuse to see me, that you'd still be angry. I'm glad that that wasn't the case." She rose from the couch, and began to circle the room. "But I am a bit disappointed." Her hand trailed across objects that she had dusted more times than she could count, and settled on one of the few things she had never seen before. "I wanted to come back home, I suppose. I wanted to go back to where we used to live, back then… back when we were partners, when we were together." She turned to face him, and saw that he understood, perhaps too well.
"You can go back to the place, but the time is gone forever," he said, and she nodded deeply, sadly.
"You always read me so well." She sighed dramatically. "I could never hide anything from you."
"Did you ever want to?" he replied smoothly.
She looked past him, as though she had just realized that there was something beyond him, and smiled in a way that he had never seen before, and that she knew he would be powerless to interpret. "There might have been one thing," she said cryptically.
He arched an eyebrow. "What was it?"
She winked, and took a step backward, clasping her hands behind her. "It's a secret, of course. A woman has to keep some secrets… especially from her first love."
"First love, huh?" A shadow passed over his face, but it bore no resemblance to the rage with which he'd met a similar confession one evening, which seemed so long ago and yet so alive in her mind. "Does that mean that there have been others?"
She let her hands fall back to her sides, and became serious, like a daughter eager for her father's blessing. "Yes. There have."
A smile spread across his face, hindered somewhat by regret, and she wondered whether he was considering what might have been, if things had turned out differently. "I'm happy for you," he said, and the words were sincere. "I hope you will be happy."
"I hope the same for you." She took another step backward. "I should be going; Michel only stopped here as a favour to me, and I imagine the crew is eager to be on our way."
"Will you come back?" His desperation was that of a forgotten dowager, and she hated to leave him alone almost as much as she valued the life she had built for herself, piece by painstaking piece.
"Someday," she promised. He nodded, and looked away, and she took a third step back.
Then, however, she paused, and began to move forward instead. She circled his desk, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders; her chin fit so perfectly against his throat that she wondered if they might fuse together that way. He went rigid at first, but relaxed far sooner than she would have anticipated.
"I still love you," she whispered, and kissed his cheek.
He took her left hand in his, and let their fingers intertwine briefly. "So do I," he said, just as softly.
Of course, she knew that they were speaking of different varieties of love; her childish delusions had been the first things to be sacrificed at the altar of her transformation. But the words were pretty, and for just a moment, she let herself fall into the dream they conjured, the dream to which she would have, not so long ago, sacrificed everything.
Then, as though to demonstrate how far she had come since she had last felt the pull of that dream, she let him go, and backed away. "I'll be back soon," she said, as though she were just ducking out to the bookstore, or perhaps the chemist's. "Take care of yourself."
"Tell Michel he doesn't deserve you." His voice was heavy with the force of their parting, and though she tried to ignore it, there are cracks in every façade.
"We all get what we deserve," she said, and the words seemed to echo through his empty house, accentuating the loneliness that, for a short while, she had banished. She worried that she had gone too far, that she had made a mistake at the very end, but when she glanced back over her shoulder, he was smiling. She couldn't tell if the expression was sincere or not: perhaps it was both, and neither.
"Do you really think so?" he asked, and the smile became a roguish grin.
She laughed, and turned away. Perhaps, by the time they met again, she would be capable of a proper reply.