My prompt response, finally! I'm working on a longer one for this week, but I finished this in the meantime. So hopefully I'll have two done!
This response is from a story that I haven't introduced to this world yet, called Catalyst. I haven't posted any of it here yet because I'm taking a break while I revise it, but the characters just begged to be used for this prompt.
And the prompt is: A letter you'll never send.
***
To my knight in shining armor,
I’ll say this again: I am not a princess.
Seriously, I mean it this time. I will not scream, cry, beg, or otherwise engage in behavior one would attribute to a damsel in distress. I am not a secret weapon, or a trump card, or a panacea, and if I find myself dangling over a pit of proverbial pit of flames while some mustachioed villain yells, “Cooperate, or the girl dies!” I will be very cross. Just because I’m an optimist doesn’t mean I won’t end you.
Though I can’t blame this entirely on you. I’m the one who always indulged you, telling you all those stories about the brave knight and the exiled princess when we were kids, letting you clasp my clammy five-year-old hands in yours and swear that you’d protect me until death. And when I really should have been putting my foot down more vehemently and saying, “You know what, I think I’m going to be the knight today,” I just thought that it was fine. That I’d pick the game tomorrow.
I kind of underestimated your ability to play the same game for years.
But even when you stretch them, the archetypes just won’t fit. Our wise old mentor is a manipulative bastard. The fearsome dragon wears a different face for everyone he talks to. The little squire is seven years older than me and a couple dozen centimeters shorter. There are no kindly wizards, just a too-nice-for-his-own-good security guard and his cranky engineer boyfriend. And the Evil Queen? I think she’s kind of trying to seduce me.
And then there’s the body count. I know a lot of fairy tales, and I don’t ever remember the good guys leaving a body count.
But I can’t exactly say that those archetypes mean nothing, either. I delivered my own knight’s oath of loyalty a long time ago, even though it wasn’t as grand as yours. Sure, it was wedged between threats that if you ever ran away again, I’d hunt you down myself, but just like the knight in the fairy tale, I promised to be in this for the long run.
Once upon a time, in a land far far away, you thought I was stronger than anyone. When something, anything went wrong, you’d always expect me to be the one to handle it. And this pathological need to protect me? It was nonexistent. So out of respect for that, please don’t take this as an insult to your ego:
I think I’m going to be the knight today.
Love,
Tuyen
