Victoria came home late. The sun had set hours ago, leaving the colony wrapped in darkness and the low hum of evening activity. A crowd lingered near the entrance, neighbours chatting, children playing, but she barely registered them. Her mind was foggy with exhaustion, her body moving on autopilot.
She just wanted to sleep.
The moment she opened the door, the headache came.
They were all there. Her parents, seated in the living room with warm smiles and across from them, the engagement partner and his family, looking entirely too comfortable in her home.
Her mother's face lit up. "Victoria! Come here, greet our guests."
Victoria's jaw tightened. She forced a nod.
Her mother, oblivious to her stiffness, said. "We've arranged for you two to spend some time alone and get to know each other."
Victoria wanted to laugh. Instead, she said nothing as she was guided into another room with the man.
Alone with her, he smiled. Confident. He told her he really liked her. Said all the right words, sweet, empty, meaningless. He spoke about their future as if it were already decided.
Victoria listened. Waited for him to finish. Then, quietly, she told him the truth.
"I'm not interested in marriage. At all."
He blinked. Recovered quickly. "Maybe you're nervous. Everyone feels that way before -"
"That's not it." Her voice was ice. "And I'm not nervous. I'm just not interested."
He didn't believe her. She could see it in his eyes, the certainty that she'd come around, that this was just a hurdle to overcome.
Days later, the families fixed the date. Her father didn't ask. Didn't discuss. Just told her it was done.
She had no chance to retaliate.
The argument came after the guests left.
Victoria faced her father in the living room, the air between them crackling with everything unsaid. She told him she wouldn't do it. Wouldn't marry. Wouldn't be forced into a life she didn't want.
Her father's face hardened.
"You have to get engaged. The date is fixed." His voice was cold, final. "And if you don't turn up at your own engagement, then forget that you have a father."
The words hit like a slap.
Victoria stared at him, hurt and fury warring in her chest. She said nothing.
Later, Mike came.
Her brother. The one she'd always been closest to. He sat on the edge of her bed, his voice gentle but confused.
"Why won't you agree?" he asked. "Do you have someone else? Someone you like?"
She shook her head.
"Then why?" Frustration bled into his tone. "If you don't have a valid reason, don't make this house a mess."
Valid reason.
She didn't have words for what lived inside her. So she said nothing, and Mike left, and she was alone with the weight of everyone's disappointment.
Sleep wouldn't come.
Victoria scrolled through her phone, wanting to distract herself.
And then she saw it.
A headline. A photo. A girl's clothing she recognised.
The world stopped.
That dress. The thin fabric. The too-small fit on a little girl sitting on steps in the cold night air, eating ice cream with sparkling eyes.
No.
Victoria couldn't breathe. She stared at the screen, at the blurred image, at the words that told her what had happened to the child.
That girl was gone.
Something terrible had been done to her, and now she was gone.
Pain, physical, unbearable pain, clawed through Victoria's chest. She gripped her phone like it might anchor her to reality, but reality had just become a nightmare.
I gave her ice cream. I put my jacket on her. I smiled at her.
And now she's gone.
She read further, each word a knife. The suspect came from a powerful family. The case was falling apart. Justice was slipping away.
He's going to get away with it.
Victoria couldn't breathe.
That night, Victoria wished for the end of the world.
Not dramatically. Not poetically. Just... truly. Completely. Because if this was what existence meant, innocence destroyed, monsters walking free, then existence didn't deserve to continue.
She would rather the world didn't exist than see harm inflicted upon the innocent.
The feeling consumed her. She didn't sleep that night. Didn't sleep the next night. Didn't sleep for a long time after.
Insomnia became her companion. Pain became her language.
Her family noticed.
Of course they did. She moved through the house like a ghost, clumsy and hollow. They thought she was upset about the engagement.
They had no idea.
Victoria couldn't tell them. Couldn't explain that a stranger's child had broken her open. Couldn't say that she was grieving someone whose name she never knew, whose face she'd never truly seen, whose life had intersected with hers for one brief moment and then ended forever.
So she said nothing. And the silence grew.
Days passed. Then the next news came.
Case Closed
The suspect walked free.
Victim's Mother Hospitalised
The woman who had knelt to embrace her daughter, who had worked so hard and lost everything, had tried to escape her pain by ending her life. However, she survived.
Victoria read the words through tears and couldn't stop.
She couldn't overlook it this time.
She had to do something.
That night, Victoria made her decision.
She packed quickly, essentials only. Wrote a letter. Waited until the house was silent.
The clouds drifted across the moon as she slipped out, hiding her escape. It felt like the universe itself was saying go.
She didn't look back.
Behind her, she left a family who wouldn't understand. A life she couldn't live. A girl she couldn't save.
She didn't know what she would become. How would she fight for justice?
She only knew that she couldn't stay.
The world had broken something in her, and the only way to survive was to break it back.
That's where her story started.
The story of a person who would bring great changes to the world. Someone who would hold power, not the power of money or politics, but something deeper. The power of women who refused to stay silent. The power of those who had been broken and chose to fight instead of shatter.