mirror, mirror.
I introduce to you my newest AU creation -- FTM!Mordred! The idea was planted in my brain by the lovely darkseraphim21 and fostered into being by my dear ruins_of_sodom . I worship them both forever. I actually wrote this today during the weekend Word War with liralen , incandescens , and darkprism . (Cross-posted to my y!Gal journal, with the usernames changed appropriately to their respective y!Gal names.)
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I'm standing in front of my mother's antique full-length mirror - the one she gave me as a gift when I moved out, that I never really wanted in the first place. I see myself as I am, a skinny, pale creature of twenty-one; the envy of no one. I'm narrow in every sense, and I have no shape to speak of. My eyes focus on my breasts, small and almost invisible under clothes. Under clothes, I can handle them, but naked as I am, they are an abomination. In high school, girls would tease me about them, especially in the locker room: "Your tits are so small, you might as well be a boy!"
If only that were so.
Inside my head, I see the man I am - the man I should have been - but my eyes tell a different story. Well, I sigh to myself, it's time to change the ending. I hold the scissors in my left hand, and they tremble slightly. I've never done this before, and my breath comes quickly as I open the scissors and bring them closer to my body. It's a release as the blades make the first cut, and I lose my fear. I hold my own gaze, hard and grey, in the mirror as I feel my anxiety and shame melting away.
The black locks of hair tickle as they fall to my feet. I had let it grow long for my mother's sake; she so loved my hair, loved to stroke and braid and brush it whenever I went to visit her. But I cannot bear it any longer, and so I cut and cut and cut until there's nothing left but a soft, inky halo barely an inch long. If I cover my chest, I look every bit the boy I am. It's beautiful, and I'm able to really smile at my reflection for the first time. I sweep up the clippings and throw them away, then rinse away the last remainders of my former self. My sweater is bulky enough to hide my traitorous chest, and my jeans hang almost a size too large on my skinny hips, but when I pass the mirror again, I silently thank my mother for her gift.
When I visit her next, her face falls at the loss of my hair, but when she sees me - really and truly me, I think - she smiles and pulls me close to her. It strikes me, because she's never been one to initiate such contact. We spent the whole night talking and laughing as we haven't in so many years, and I feel like I've become myself for the first time.
I leave the next morning, and I stop in at the grocery before reaching home. The clerk calls me sir, but then squints and apologizes profusely for her "mistake". No, I tell her, you weren't wrong. I leave before she can finish working through her confusion. When I get home, I pass the mirror by once more on my way to the kitchen, and my reflection smiles back at me, so vastly and wonderfully different from the monster I saw just this morning. I grin back, and I fancy I hear him speak.
Hello, young man. Welcome to the world.