It had been made clear to her: Because she was a girl it was not okay to enjoy girly things. She didn’t want to betray her gender, so she took a job as an assassin. It allowed her to dress up provided she pretended to hate it. The friction between facade and true self stoked a burning resentment which she channeled into white-hot dagger-points of vicarious retribution.
On holiday, she daydreamed about another time when she could’ve happily managed a greeting card store. But pining was for Mary Sue’s, so she took to scrapbooking secretly and left delightful handcrafted notes on her marks: “It’s not me it’s you;” “I’m not sorry it had to end this way;” “No we can’t still be friends, obviously, winky-face.”
She found a way to make it work. She suspected that’s what heroes had always done. Villains too, perhaps – successful ones anyway.
