You like being a hero, sure.
You were born into it, really; your mother was a hero and her mother before that, and her mother before your mother’s mother, so on and so forth to the woman who started it all by slaying a dragon. You’re from the Retrian family, and the kingdom has prospered because of the Retrians for centuries. It your duty to be a Retrian, so you, Dahlia Retrian, wear your crest on your heart and carry a sword on your hip.
And it is….fun! Yeah, let’s call it fun. You’re stronger and faster than most other girls your age, and they give you weird looks when you give them a little smile and a wave, but that’s fine. You didn’t grow up with them. You didn’t really care to, honestly. You find solace in the vast library hidden in the back of Retrian manor, learning about the monsters you encounter in your quests, or the training room that sprawls through the basement, padded floors soft under your bare feet, or the babbling brook that passes through the field behind the house; not with other people. You understand what you must be and you’re fine with it, and honestly you really like punching things. Dahlia the headstrong, they call you. Or that stubborn Retrian heir. Whatever. Going in first is your instinct, so you do it.
Though it’s not all great. Long hours are spent getting bruised or your clothes torn or hearing the shit your mother spouts about honor and duty and responsibility and being a model family member. Loneliness is comfortable, yes, but it is still lonely- you wish for the women in your town to see you as Dahlia first, not Retrian. You live with it. What you don’t live with, however, is the goddamn armor.
When you were nine you went through your mother’s armory and found nothing that made sense. The great protection of the past Retrians seemed uncomfortable, unwearable, even. Metal was forged into curves that weren’t natural and guarded places that didn’t need protecting. Some of them had fucking nipples, for gods sake! It was ugly and stupid and you told your mother that, because you’ve always been an opinionated little thing. You expected her to shout, or something, show how it worked, maybe make a comment about going through the armory. But her eyes softened. A deep sigh rung through the bedroom.
Dahlia, we do not make the armor for ourselves. Us women have to put up with what we have, even if it was not made with us in mind. It is an honor to serve our community, and the honor outweighs all. I am sorry, my love.
That is the only time your mother apologized for the work you must do, so you grin and bear it. In secret, you make your own protection out of leather and dare not call it armor, even though you are sure it saves you more than whatever is in that armory. You hide it in a chest under a floorboard in the library, careful to only take it out when your company is the great heap of knowledge surrounding you. You sing small words into the material, hide it amongst your things when duty calls, wait until the woods shield you and change by where the brook turns stream turns river. Nobody knows you are a Retrian there. You bear with the uncomfortable metal the old wise men give you when you parade your victory to the villagers, hating how you cannot feel the warmth of their gratitude through it.
Your mother is killed on a hunt by a great lumbering beast ransacking a town. She is buried wearing what she did that day. You cannot help but think, in between sobs, that she would still be alive if she hadn’t worn that horrible armor that did not cover her pierced through heart.
The armory piles up with suits that the wise men promised would give the strength of twenty in one, or the speed of a foreign animal. You, Dahlia Retrian, are the head of the family, and you take great pleasure in watching the bullshit collect dust in a forgotten room. Your crest is burned into leather that sits neatly over chain mail that flattens your chest. When the villagers come to thank you, they are so warm with love that you cannot help but cry, because this is all you wanted. You wanted to help people. You wanted to be safe. You wanted to dive in and live another day to read more and sit by the brook and breathe.
It does not take too long for the wise men to take offense. Dearest hero, they cry, where is your armor? Have you lost it? You will die out there if not for what we can make you! And you just laugh, because you have spent enough time in the library singing little words into leather that it makes their enchantments look like parlor tricks. You laugh and you laugh because they knew not what was best for you but best in their minds eye; they profited off seeing you dressed like a whore and dying because of it.
When they push you back in a moment of rage, their palms are icy cold, and enough reading has taught you that only monsters can feel like that. You do not hesitate to swing your sword, Dahlia Retrian the headstrong. And that is the most fun you ever have with being a hero.
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