But we do face our fates looking them dead in the eyes and heads held high, for what its worth. Looking life and death both square in the eye and never flinching. We may get shot up; we may get made to look like criminals and told that appearances are damning, damned if you do AND if you don’t, called hypocritic, lied about; have our lives torn apart… But we have our courage, our confidence, our unwavering resolve and determination. We have what fuels all of eternity. Take away everything we are and everything we love, rip it to shreds in front of us, break us… and it will always be the worst mistake you ever make. And when it comes down to our ungrateful protected ones as they turn against us and judge us and shed their respect and begin to claim they see what the world is like and dig into us the same as others not even knowing the fight we fought… It further burns the tragedy in deep beyond removal and we overcome even that. As far as I know, no one gets out of life alive and either you stand for something or you’ll fall for anything and everything.
After a while, the heroes just fight for themselves and the other heroes and eventually others they feel like fighting for, for love; because they are warriors.
I expect my enemies to cut corners, to try to make that stick and last based on so much shit that would work if they didn’t try to Tim the Toolman rig it all.
At the point of knowing I’m not able to dissuade them through violence or other means, I store my revenge for other days, other lives. I turn my back on it all. That is what a Hero does without tears, without pity or sympathy, but just a simple decision. That’s what all of a Hero’s battles buys them. A seeming coldness beyond breaking because they’ve already broken too many times along the way if they’d actually been fighting.
You can look around you at all the stories of heroes, but you only see the abridged stories, the happily ever afters. You don’t see the in betweens, you don’t see them all the time. You base in two hours the sum of an entire person, when their entire life might be a lie, pandering to an audience they might not know is there and can not reach except in abstract thought at best if they do. They don’t show Aragorn popping a squat in a field and shitting while trying to not piss on his feet. They don’t show the Heroes’ insecurities behind the scenes when they’re out of the public eye and all alone.
If they did, you would think them depraved, you would think less of them, for them made into mortal men and women that you can touch and relate to.