The Precipice of Heroes

She walks alone. Blind. Numb. With one question fighting for sentience upon her quivering lips. One desperately searching, pinning, yearning thought on her mind…

“Where are the heroes?”

Eyes bounce around her skull. Destination does not matter. She will not stop, she cannot stop, until she gets some answers. Too often, people talk themselves out of emptiness. Quick to fill up the void of what has just been lost. Ripped out like the wiring entrails of some obsolete instrument once considered useful. Now, just the scattered remains of a moment's frustration.

Not this time. She will not slow her pace. Will not talk herself out of the truth of a reply left unspoken, but all too penetrating in the guttural sinking of its relevance.

“When the cause is lost. When all seems hopelessly tried. Where are the last-minute rescues we were sold on believing in?”

When the light has dimmed and all that surrounds, envelopes, and restrains in the cold emptiness of darkness…

“Where do all the heroes go?”

Scarred and battered by a battle that has already been fought… lost…

“When the war is over, who rescues what remains? Where is the savior for those who are left behind with nothing but the loss, on the fringe, teetering between anger and despair?”

The words give permanence to the things she’d rather not give voice to. The ache of their aftermath swells deep within her, wanting… ANYTHING! EVERYTHING! All at once. It allows what has only been an elusive existence to begin defining itself…

“Revenge? A Cause? A purpose…”

An out?

Her breath quickens in her breast. Still, her legs do not steady. On the winged feet of Mercury, she chases her fate, a Psychopomp between the worlds of life, death, and meaning.

“Yet, where is the spark? What’s to inspire?”

Violence has now carved itself into her gnarled flesh. She can’t outrun what all physicality betrays.

Victim.

“How long must one be lost before they are rescued?”

She is a victim…

“Dead before they are saved?”

She…

“Numb before they can feel…”

Was…

“Alive?”

A victim!

All at once, her feet come to a screeching halt at the sensation of a precipice.

She toes the line of its edge.

One more step…

No more heroes. No more last-minute rescues. The difference a word can make when it comes to the clarification of meaning. A conjunction? An explanation? A bridge?

Where are the heroes?

Who are the heroes?

What… is… a hero?

She walks alone. Her eyes now steady and penetrating as the night. With one satisfied snarl on the curve of her lip. One burning answer searing its focus into the forefront of her mind and being.

She was a victim.

She isn’t one now.

What was lost has now been defined. What was taken now has been fortified by the acknowledged blooming of a new truth.

A tranquil calm now envelops her soul. Peace providing piece of mind. Arms outstretched, eyes gently closed. This edge is not her own. This peak is not her ending.

There is no ever after because life keeps going.

She doesn’t need to be saved, cleansed, or taken back to before. Her path is forward, and so she leans, head over feet, and lets fall. The water meets her with the kind of enveloping softness that feels like velvet against her wounded flesh.

But this is not a baptism. This is not rebirth. This is life. Her life… saved by her worth.

Her head bobs to the surface. Her body drifting, but unlike Ophelia, whose sorrows drowned and doomed her, she is lifted up by the experience.

“Who needs heroes…” She smiles back up to the stars. “When I have me.”

And now, so might they.