Lightly armed, her stele hidden under her tunic and her hair braided in a distinctly Rohirric style, the Shadowhunter found herself back in the Hall where they had first met the King of Rohan. Aragorn and Gandalf were speaking softly with the King, but Legolas and Gimli were seated at a wide wooden table pressed up against a far wall. A selection of bread, meat, and cheese as well as some truly impressive tankards of alcohol.
Aiedale settled herself down beside the elf and the dwarf, her eyes sliding back to the three figures huddled together. They were clearly engaged in some heated conversation. She thought about asking her two companions what they were discussing, but she already knew: how Rohan would respond to the threats it faced.
Would the King of Rohan summon Eomer back? He would need to, she thought. The funeral had been an uncomfortable affair to attend, but it had provided an opportunity to see some of the population of this city. There were few men of fighting age. Beyond the threat posed by the disgraced wizard was Sauron and his legions of orcs…and there was Gondor. How deep did the ties between Rohan and Gondor go? Would the King of Rohan be willing to risk his people to aid an ally that, from what Aiedale had gleaned from Boromir, had been far too focused on defending its borders than helping Rohan.
The dwarf slid a plate of bread and cheese over to her. "Eat," he said, "we will be here a while."
"Have they been at it long?" asked Aiedale with a nod to the three figures.
"Yes," said Legolas. His face was unreadable, but Aiedale knew he was tense from the way he occasionally ran a long-fingered hand over the hilt of a knife in his belt.
She tuned in for a moment to the heated conversation. The wizard was urging the King to war, Aragorn was trying to plead the case of Gondor, and the King of Rohan was terrified.
Shadowhunters knew that fear could kill. Doubt was a treacherous liar. But fear…it had no decency, respected no law or convention, showed no mercy. It went for your weakest spot and made you a slow, hesitant idiot. It began in the mind, always…so you had to fight to shine your light upon it, to defeat it.
She sighed. The King was afraid, terrified of the battle coming to his people and his fear was driving him now. He would push back against the Ranger's urges to look to Gondor for fear of what that would mean for his people. The wizard urging for open warfare would also probably make him dig in even more into his terror given that most of his army was riding away from the capital. Rohan was a not a kingdom of fortresses and organized armies supported by supply chains that could be mobilized at a moment's notice. Where would it lead them? Defeat?
Aiedale glanced at one of the tankards and a sudden thought crossed her mind as she thought back to the last time she had drunk bad beer at a seedy bar. It had been her nineteenth birthday and the mood too grim at the Institute for celebrating a trivial thing like a birthday. The mundane bar with a karaoke machine where her cousin and her had sung their versions of Celine Dion's greatest hits had been a welcome distraction.
"You know," she said as she lifted the tankard and took a hesitant sip of the earthy smelling liquid, "I think I am twenty. I must be."
She'd been in Middle Earth for months now. Her birthday was in June and it had been a rainy November evening when she had departed Paris — if you could even call what had happened that.
"Really?" said the dwarf.
"Really," said Aiedale lifting the tankard of ale again. It wasn't great, but her standards had been lowered drastically after she drank werewolf moonshine and then they had fallen even more when a Greek vampire had cracked open a few amphorae that looked like they had been around when Troy was sacked by the Greeks. She'd drink just about anything after she'd tried that…
Legolas shook his head, liquid gold hair shimmering with the movement, "This is not the way to celebrate." Clearly the elf was inwardly lamenting her age and knew better than to voice his thoughts. Twenty was so young. Aiedale glowered at him.
"I don't know," said Aiedale, "last time I celebrated my birthday I got fall down drunk." She peered into the tankard at the dark mead, "I think that sounds pretty good right now. I've got the alcohol. And your company would be far more pleasant if I was drunk."
Gimli chuckled, trying to imagine Aiedale ever finding it in herself to thaw her icy exterior with alcohol. It just didn't fit. "You? You've gotten drunk?"
She sent him a dour look. "I have been drunk plenty of times, dwarf." She lifted her chin, struggling to keep a grin off her face and continued archly, "And I've drunk stronger than this." Which made her take a rather large bite of bread, remembering the last time she had gotten drunk on an empty stomach and her fervent promise to not do that again.
"Oh," said Gimli thoroughly enjoying the turn in conversation, "when was that?"
"Paris on multiple occasions…then in Alicante," said Aiedale with only the barest flicker of emotion, quickly contained, "after we burned too many comrades' funeral pyres and then got told it was our duty to go celebrate the victory no matter how depressed we were. I got so drunk that night drinking werewolf moonshine and very good wine I couldn't tell vampire from werewolf." She paused, amusement flashing through her as she suddenly reflected on just how disastrous that could have been if everyone else — werewolves and vampires included — hadn't been as plastered as she had been.
And then she had ended up back in the arms of Caleb and decided that she liked him enough to keep that relationship puttering along. You did stupid things when you were in the middle of a war and then when you were heartsick in the aftermath — things that weren't easy to turn away from when you woke up sober. You let people keep on thinking things that might not be true about yourself just because it was easier than trying to explain they had been a convenient pair of lips and a warm pair of arms on nights with the right last name to reassure your aunt you were taking the strategic approach. Things you didn't know how to explain when the whole world was spinning from the alcohol and the deep, bone crushing guilt that hit you like waves….one after another.
She took a large drink from the tankard.
"Aiedale" said Legolas warningly, "you may want to forget your troubles for a moment, but this isn't a good time."
"It's always a good time," said the dwarf with a shrug. "Let the girl loosen up, princeling."
"Princeling?!" said Aiedale with an amused laugh.
The Wood elf frowned; looking at both the dwarf and the Shadowhunter with a look of long suffering annoyance tempered with genuine concern.
"You look like my brother," said Aiedale with a small smile, "he would also be lecturing me about the inadvisability of getting drunk." She looked at the elf hard, "And I would remind him of the all the times I've helped sober him up. Surely you've gotten yourself drunk more than once."
"Yes," admitted Legolas, "but my elders were quick to inform me that it was folly and my own life experience has shown me that they were correct."
The elf studied the Shadowhunter for a long moment. The resolve which lit her fëa was like a beacon. He wasn't surprised that the young mortal thought alcohol would make her troubles seem easier to bear. But he was not happy to see it. She clearly knew that but still she dared him to react, using it to push those she was close with back, even now.
Even after Moria, after Lothlorien, after Amon Hen…even after all that she still sought to incite a reaction that would lead to a fight, a chance to highlight the divides between them, push them away and lock them out. The elf wanted to know why but now seemed like the wrong time to press the issue. With Aiedale, he had come to learn, timing was everything.
The elf rested a hand on Aiedale's arm, "Reconsider." He did not raise his voice, he did not justify or explain any further. He removed his hand away quickly, aware she did not much like physical contact.
She sighed, her eyes narrowing with what might have been mocking amusement but then she nodded. "Facilis descends averni," she said as she pushed the tankard away.
"What?" asked Gimli as he moved to take her tankard.
"The motto of the Nephilim," she said with that casual, slinky shrug that somehow managed to convey a whole lot of attitude and snark…and deep-seated sadness and vulnerability if you knew how to look at her. "It means: The descent into Hell is easy."
The elf Prince glanced sharply at her, trying to read where Aiedale was directing the conversation, but Gimli chuckled, "Is it?" The dwarf was good at taking things at face value, smoothly sailing over her potentially treacherous waters. She appreciated that about him.
"Yes," said Aiedale, "it is. I've heard it one too many times from a vampire."
The dwarf shook his head and took another long draft of the mead, seeming more intrigued in her than Aiedale had seen him for a long time. "Vampires….what are they? Blood sucking monsters?"
"Think attitude," said Aiedale, "and then multiply it by ten. They always go for the jugular, both literally and metaphorically. " She sighed, hands clasped tightly in front of her, "Do you know," she said, "the vampires say that they are damned and because they are damned they have no moral objection to the Nephilim."
The dwarf snorted, "They sound pretentious."
Aiedale couldn't help but smile slightly, "That is one way of putting it." She sighed, "But they can be surprisingly insightful and considerate. I had one close ally who was a vampire. He asked me when I first met him to think: what if everything I believed in was wrong and I could still be loved and still be forgiven?" Aiedale was silent for a moment, "He knew how to find the flaws in my arguments; knew how to get me to think…"
Legolas glanced sharply at her. A chink in her armour had been revealed, he thought.
"What happened to him?" asked Gimli.
Aiedale shrugged, "Probably still running the Paris enclave."
"Dangerous?"
"Vampires are always dangerous," said Aiedale. She shook her head, "They were people once. They were once humans who hoped and dreamed and bled. They still are in many ways. To remind them that they are damned for all eternity, unable to step out into the light of day…is unwise."
"You sound like you spent a lot of time with them," said Legolas "Were you friends with any other," he paused and spoke the unfamiliar word slowly, "Downworlders?"
"Me? Be friends with one of their kind? Orders are orders." Aiedale shook her head but there was a certain evasive cast to her eyes, a certain set to her mouth that spoke volumes. "All I can say is that emotional complications are death to operations like the one's I ran for the Clave. I had my duty, always. Where I could and when it was possible I tried to be compassionate and fair even if it was not always expedient."
She fingered the edge of her sleeve, her voice becoming more sober as she recited: "And at the last all that is good shall be safe, and evil thrust out. And so that trust be kept, it is given to the Nephilim. To safe guard and protect, to stand side-by-side with Nephilim brothers."
She did not say one learned quickly in the Nephilim ranks not to take anything for granted. That the closest of allies — even your own family — could quickly turn if the Clave ordered them to. No such thing as a free lunch and all that, she thought darkly. Friends could so easily become your one way ticket to a funeral pyre burial or, worse, an unmarked grave at some lonely crossroads.
Gimli grunted, clearly about to give his opinion about that little bit of Shadowhunter mandate but he was prevented by Aragorn, his face slightly flushed from the heat of argument.
They were silent for a long moment, not even Gimli seemed to have anything to say to her. The silence was broken only by a faint rise in volume in the conversation between the King of Rohan and Gandalf at the other end of the Hall. The two were clearly not agreeing. Aiedale continued to eat the bread, it was still warm and reminded her of the baguette that used to be delivered like clockwork at seven in the morning to the Institute.
"Isn't that lonely?" asked Legolas eventually. "Your lives as Shadowhunters…seem…"
"Empty? Devoid of anything but the stele and the seraph blade? That is the point — literally," replied Aiedale, saving the elf from trying to continue, and there was only the faintest flicker of a bitter, knowing smile on her face."There is a commonly understood truth about the Shadowhunter life," she said, " and that is that the best is only bought at the cost of great pain."
"When did you start training?"
"When I was very young."
"Was it all you wanted from your life? When did you decide?"
When had she decided to be a Shadowhunter?
She didn't remember any particular moment, just a collection of steps which had made not being a Shadowhunter increasingly unthinkable. Then had come the promises sworn to herself during the long lonely nights pacing the streets of Paris and the training sessions which left her black and blue. She had sworn she would never be a Shadowhunter that ran away from danger…or a Shadowhunter who irresponsibly forgot their stele or…any number of things. Those promises to herself, however, had always been framed by the knowledge that she was a Shadowhunter and that she would always be a Shadowhunter.
It was a burden. Any great power or talent was a burden. But there was nothing to be done. If you were born with the Shadowhunter blood, then you had to serve.
"I just was," she said, frowning. "I knew that was what I was, what I would be. There could be no other option, no other path. Sometimes I wondered," she admitted, "and sometimes there were times where I thought about what I could have been if I was not born a Shadowhunter."
"And after you realized?" pressed the elf. "When you became aware? Did you think of another way to be?"
She shook her head. "While I could have asked to stay in Alicante or chosen not to pursue more advanced training, I could never have left the Clave completely. I could have stepped away from field work and directed my energy towards research like my brother does, only venturing out on the occasional patrol. But…" again she struggled for words, "I could never have settled for that. No…I couldn't have."
Why be the sheep when you could be the wolf? Why be the puppet when you could be the master of the strings? Why play the petty moves of a tiresome game when you could aspire to change the game?
That had made her one of the best. It had made her disciplined and sharp. She would not hear those who wept and complained about the sacrifice of the Shadowhunter life. Others paid far more than she did — the vampires cursed and damned for all eternity or the werewolves or the Fey.
The alcohol had loosened her tongue. She found herself continuing to speak, "But the Clave does not encourage independence. We are one force. Nephilim teachings insist that one's loyalty be absolute, unreserved." She glanced at her hands and the remains of the loaf of bread that she was methodically shredding into smaller and smaller bites, "They don't encourage — will not tolerate, I should say — a warrior to hold private knowledge, to withhold even tiny bits of information or to act outside the mandate."
"Why?" asked the Legolas.
Aiedale shrugged, leaning back, "If one starts questioning and withholding…then one might start trying to change things and that would be…uncomfortable. They see it as a form of insurrection and the Clave does not wish to become an object-lesson in the inadvisability of giving it's soldiers too much autonomy. The stakes of the fight are too high and our numbers too few."
"I see," said Legolas.
She wondered how much he saw, how much he had gleaned about her upbringing and how it shaded her view of the world. She wondered if he knew what it meant to give your life, your soul, your complete and utter existence to something before you were even ten years old. To come to feel that loyalty, that dedication that had once fired through you wane like the setting of a sun…
She locked the thoughts away, straightening her spine subconsciously as she did so.
She'd made an effort ever since she was a young warrior and taken to task by a vampire to be aware of her biases. Shadowhunter training instilled all sorts of biases in a person — some obvious and others subtle. But they were there, tinting and colouring the world just so, making it easier for the Clave to corral the wayward, independent, maverick warriors that made up the majority of the Nephilim fighting force.
The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who saw things differently. The ones who would always act differently, who were in some fundamental way resilient. The qualities that would keep them alive in the field, able to face down the most terrifying demon, were dangerous in a soldier. The Clave had to take them, had to take the ones who weren't fond of the rules and had even less little respect for the status quo and make them work together. Not just work together but fight together, swear the same oaths, die together by the same mandate. A Herculean task.
The foundation for the Clave teachings and the Law were begun before the Shadowhunter had time to grow into the rebellious angst of being a teenager warrior with a point to prove or a battle hardened pessimist. They were hammered in — both figuratively and literally into the impressionable minds of Shadowhunter children. The boundaries, the laws, the restrictions were engraved with painstaking care.
It was a good thing, she had told herself when that knowledge overwhelmed her. You had to know so you knew where the lines were. So that you knew what it meant when you gave your soul, your strength, your utter existence to the Clave and the mandate that you would die for. In that knowledge you could carve out a little space for yourself.
"Do you miss it?"
Aiedale shrugged, "Miss it? It was my life, my world. My whole world wrapped up and defined by the Clave." She looked down at her hands, "Besides it is easier to define yourself against a clearly defined unit. And the Clave is very well defined."
Perspective rid you of the illusion of depth, created by a frame, the arrangement of shapes on a flat surface. These words people threw around — mundanes, vampires, werewolves — were so empty. She had always wondered why there was a tendency to cover up the world with labels and to neatly sort things into boxes. The Clave would have liked her to arrange everything in her life against its mandates, to follow their neat categorizations of enemy and friend no matter how arbitrary they seemed.
And for the most part, she conceded, she had until that had become…difficult to maintain.
They were silent for a long time until Aiedale found herself speaking once more, the words coming out without her stopping to consider the wisdom of sharing more. "My aunt told me once," said Aiedale, her voice tightening, "that the only thing more dangerous than ignoring the laws of the Clave was trying to change them."
"What are the laws of the Clave?" asked Legolas.
"One of the first oaths," said Aiedale, "is about being a shield for the weak, a light in the dark, a truth among falsehoods…" She met the elf's gaze, willing him to understand, "At their most basic level the Oaths of the Clave are about service and duty."
But then she plunged forward, once more reckless as she sought to explain a complicated truth she had held within herself for so long. "But there are other Oaths. Those we make to Heaven and Heaven alone. The Oaths made in the name of the Angel Raziel. To the Angel we swear our life, our service, our word. To the Angel we swear the most solemn of our vows."
The elf's bright eyes flashed with some realization, looking at her as if seeing some new aspect of her identity, "You have taken these Oaths?"
"Yes," said Aiedale, quietly but steadily. "They are the last set of Oaths we take before our pre-field training is declared complete. You take them alone. They are between you and Raziel. Between you and Heaven. It is because of those Oaths that when a Shadowhunter swears an Oath in the name of Raziel that we can never break our word. Like when I swore my service to Frodo. He had to release me."
All of them were silent for a long moment. Aiedale's thoughts began to wander as her eyes drifted from the faces of her quiet companions to the shadowy walls of Medusled.
How was it that one day her life had been as orderly as it ever could be as a Shadowhunter, and then without warning she had found the solid floor was actually a trapdoor and she was now in another place whose geography was uncertain and whose customs were so strange?
She was the unwilling traveller. Travellers had a choice. Those who chose to travel knew that things would be different. Explorers were prepared. But she, who had travelled not by her own will, was not prepared. She was here now; somewhere between the grasslands and the mountains; somewhere between duty and friendship. Somewhere between….
She had wanted the world to be divided evenly. Good and bad, a side of light and a side of darkness. Angel versus demon. It had never been that simple — not even on Earth. She had seen evil, too much evil. She had seen evil masquerade as good, darkness been concealed by a thin veneer of kindness, and heard lies told in order to save and protect what was good. She had seen the sheer desire for power corrupt and taint things that had once been beautiful even as she had seen things that had been corrupted be reclaimed, restored.
Her best efforts to be just and to be fair had not always been successful. She knew that virtue — especially Shadowhunter claims to virtue — could cut like a knife. Runes burned. The truth hurt.
Change was freedom, change was life.
The curl of a vampire's razor sharp smile. How lucky you are, Nephilim, to be able to change.
But it was also a responsibility, thought Aiedale. The ability to change one's ways, to acknowledge and rectify a mistake was a heady responsibility on top of a great many responsibilities which cluttered the average Shadowhunter's life and death. How many Oaths had she sworn before she turned sixteen?
Too many, thought the Shadowhunter, or too few depending on how you looked at it.
She rose, "I think I am going to go to retire for the evening." She nodded towards the Range, the wizard and the King, "Let me know what they decide."
With that she turned and walked away, back straight and chin lifted — like always — out of the Hall and onto one of the wide daises that had steps down toward the city of Edoras.
Sitting down on the step, Aiedale leaned her back against one of the carved wooden columns, hidden by the deepening shadows. She could make out the distant funeral mound with its covering of white flowers some distance away in the dusk. The wind seemed to echo with the laments of the women from earlier that afternoon. Their grief and pain carried by the soft, cool breeze which toyed with a few loose strands of the Shadowhunter's hair.
Aiedale had lost and mourned. She had buried friends and comrades and family members. Overtime she had grown used to it, known that her own funeral pyre was not long away. She had compartmentalized it all and kept the spaces between loss and duty, the space between potentially paralyzing knowledge and the swift action of the seraph blade. For that was how she and others like her had lived their lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the things that were stolen…even if one was left completely changed, with only the outer later of skin from before, one continued to play out one's life, in silence and in service of the Clave. One drew closer to the end of one's allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trailed off behind. Repeating the endless deeds of the everyday and taking the unexpected events in stride. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness…
She shifted, the seraph blade digging into her hip as she moved a more comfortable position. It didn't seem right. She couldn't say why it felt so odd…perhaps it was how it had come to her and her mother's intentions leaving it behind.
But she was grateful for it. It wasn't just a seraph blade. It didn't matter if it was an ill-fated, antiquated blade her comrades back home would have scoffed at. It was a connection with her brother. It was the endless hours spent in the Paris Institute's training room and the fire in her blood that called to the demon hunt even here, even now when there wasn't a demon to hunt….
It was her. Honed to a deadly point, ready to burn out in a blaze of Heavenly Fire at a single moment's notice…
She closed her eyes.
Everyone loves a hero.
But we are not heroes.
How can a Shadowhunter be both a murderer and a saviour? How can a person be both wrong-thinking and good-hearted? How can…
She didn't know. She didn't know what to think and maybe that was the point — a person's mind was a contradictory thing. She wanted to believe the Clave's truths while also knowing there were painful lies woven into them. And she would be punished for believing in both.
And maybe in some distant place, she thought, everything was fine and there were no complications…no conflicting pulls on your soul. Or maybe there was a silent place where everything just disappeared, melted together and there was a sense of wholeness. She closed her eyes.
In the moment of silence, Aiedale caught, echoing through the walls of the great Hall the strong voice of the King of Rohan: Arise now, arise, Riders of Théoden! Dire deeds awake, dark is it eastward. Let horse be bridled, horn be sounded! Forth Eorlingas!
A call to war, she thought grimly. Despite the late hour and the events that had shaken Edoras, guards responded to the call. They moved out into the town and in the distance she heard war horns blow sharp, warning notes.
The werewolf's grin was bitter. But with love comes loss. It is part of the deal. In the end it is worth it. Let it hurt.
She had scoffed.
The werewolf had sighed at her teenage attitude. There are scars that makes us who we are, but without them we cease to exist.
Aiedale was awake before dawn, dressed and armed. Her hair braided back, her elvish cloak securely fastened and her runes freshly inked, she felt about as ready as she could be. The House of the King of Rohan was a flurry of men and women, packing and preparing to move to some other stronghold. From what she could tell, riders had been sent out the previous evening, calling men to arms and urging those who could not fight to gather.
Unsure of where her companions had gotten to, Aiedale wove her way through the bustling crowds and into the early dawn light that was beginning to shine on the eastern horizon. She made for the stables, thinking that waiting with the horses would be the most logical place to wait for her companions as well as out of the way of anyone who might enlist her in helping pack or corral children.
The stables were also busy but it was quieter, the men of Rohan moving with smooth efficiency. The horses that they had been lent by Eomer were there, but Shadowfax was gone. When she questioned a boy where the white stallion had gone, he shrugged and said the wizard had left before dawn on an errand of the King.
To get Eomer, thought Aiedale. How many days of riding was the heir-apparent and his men from here? More importantly, how far from the fortress that the King intended to use as a defence against the orcs mustered by the traitor wizard?
She was running her fingers through the mane of the mount she had shared with Aragorn, her thoughts spinning in circles, when she head a defiant, shrill neigh. It echoed through the stables, cutting over the sounds of leather being fastened and nervous hooves stamping. Leaving the narrow stall, Aiedale glanced deeper into stables.
In the inner dark of the stable she saw a handsome bay horse with his clean ears pricked. The door to the stall was open, but the horse was not moving towards it. He had big, black, brilliant eyes with a questioning glint, and that air of tense, alert quietness which betrays an animal which could be dangerous. Standing in the open stable door was a familiar figure: the Ranger. Aragorn was looking at him sideways, examining the glowing bay horse which stood with his ears back, his face averted, but attending.
"He's beautiful," Aiedale said admiringly.
"And wild," said a grim faced Rohirrim man to her left. "He's gone half mad after the loss of his rider, the Prince."
Aragorn moved forward slowly.
"Is he trying to get himself killed?" asked the man out loud.
"Probably," said Aiedale, "but isn't that what men do most of the time? Do their damned best to get themselves killed?"
The man sent her a wide-eyed look.
They were distracted by another loud whinny from the crazed eyed horse. Aragorn began to speak quietly, too soft to be heard, his hands lifted toward the horse that was standing, every muscle taut in the stall. Not afraid, thought Aiedale, but defiant, angry in the face of Aragorn's calm presence. She empathized with the horse.
She wasn't surprised in the least when half an hour later Aragorn had the horse walking out of the dark stall behind him, no halter or bridle to be seen. She did see the looks of respect on the faces of them men standing with their own mounts, the quiet murmurs that spread out through the crowd. In a culture based around story-telling this would be a good tale — the man from the North who tamed the grieving stallion, a horse meant for a Prince to ride to war in defence of his people.
And so it begins, she thought. The steps toward making the man before her a King were already well underway.
How to fan these flames? She smiled at the thought of getting to use a skill set she had had no chance to utilize in the wilds of Middle Earth, stepping into the shadows of the stable as the man and bright bay horse walked past her. The man's hand was resting lightly on the muscled neck of the stallion as the horse pranced down the aisle, sleek coat over taut muscles. Shadowhunters never got to be a part of the stories, but that didn't mean they didn't often write them, shape them, whisper things to the right ears and watch as stories became myths…and then legends.
Not Boromir's father, she thought, stiffened in his ambition, grimly scheming for a throne that was not his. It was this man, who seemed capable of whistling up the best that people had in them, as a huntsman calls up the following pack, or a faerie whistles up the wind.
You think you aren't worthy?
I'm not.
The judging look on the flawlessly perfect vampire's face.. You are all we have. The only one who has dared to listen.
I cannot be your hero. I'm not good. I'm not kind or brave. I kill. I lie.
We don't need a hero. All that matters is you are here and you are willing to try.