Author's Note: The 365 Project is an experimental multi-fandom project to write and post at least one short every day for the next year, not including my semi-regular bi-weekly updates. For more details, see the relevent section in my profile. This is The 365 Project, 13 July.

In the immortal words of Samuel L. Clemens... "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR."

Disclaimer: Zorro (this version, at least) belongs to New World Entertainment and the Family Channel and is used without permission or intent to profit.

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"Admission"

'Admitting To Oneself'

By J.T. Magnus, 'Turbo'

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Diego de la Vega sat in the courtyard of the local mission, one of the few places he found that he could be at peace and be his true self. Zorro had to be dashing and cavalier, unafraid and daring, willing to fight for the people against a corrupt government no matter the odds against him - but at the same time, Diego de la Vega had to be a studious scholar, interested only in his books and sciences; a spineless, worthless disgrace unworthy of being called a man, much less a de la Vega. The two had to be kept as far apart as possible to keep people - the Alcalde especially - from connecting the two as one. The truth was that he was both and neither. He loved to learn, but it wasn't the entirety of his life; he believed in standing up for what was right... but he also believed that it was the duty of every person to do so, not just of a select few or even one.

It was over that belief that he had come to seek solace in the mission. He was tired; mentally tired, physically tired, tired down unto his very soul. He was tired of being trapped between two masks, tired of being trapped in a fight that he'd never intended... Tired of being surrounded by people too weak-willed or cowardly to fight their own battles, but filled enough with the bile of hypocrisy to deride him for not, where they could see it, fighting their battles for them. Diego de la Vega was tired. He had never wanted any of this.

What had he wanted? In Spain, he had wanted to finish at the University, to eventually return home to California and take his proper place as a de la Vega with all that went with it. When he had arrived back in the Pueblo de Los Angeles and had seen how the sister of his childhood playmates had grown up, his wants had begun to include her by his side. With the arrest of Victoria and his father by Alcalde Ramon, Diego had wanted to free them. He had dressed in black with cape and mask, carrying the sword of his mentor and teacher from the University and had freed them from the cuartel, released them from their imprisonment... and became a prisoner himself by doing so - not of walls and bars, but of a far worse prison; a prison made up of the expectations and the desires of others.

Almost overnight, Zorro became a hero and a symbol to the people, someone willing to fight the tyranny of the Alcalde. They immediately began to expect him to rescue them and fight for them, as though he were some great hero of old. He had never intended for such a thing to happen. He'd only meant to free Victoria and his father so that they could return to leading the people of Los Angeles - Dons and peons alike. Instead, they themselves were the first people to actually lose their own willingness to fight in favor of threatening the Alcalde that 'Zorro' would not stand for his actions or that 'Zorro' would right a wrong. Diego learned the hard way that neither his father nor the senorita to whom he had lost his heart wanted him, they didn't want someone who considered themselves what the English would call a 'Warrior-Poet'; they wanted Zorro, they wanted someone who would ride in like the demi-gods of myth and strike down evil with terrible vengence... And he became trapped; the only way to help them, the only way to be acknowledged by them, was to become Zorro again and again, and the only way to protect himself - and them - was to seperate Zorro from 'Don Diego' so completely that no one would ever be able to connect them...

And he was growing tired - so tired - of pretending, whether it was Zorro or Don Diego, of being someone he was not... Alone, with no one else in the mission courtyard to see him but the eyes of God that watch over His children, Diego put his face in his hands and began to cry.