The first time she cut her hair, it felt like sawing her way out of a snare. Strand by strand, letting the full silken, suffocating weight fall at last to the floor around her feet. The cool air kissed her neck like a welcome home, a relief she hadn’t even known she was aching for.

When she was training with shields and a hard shove from her partner hit her square in the face, a crunch and burst of cartilage and stars across her vision, when blood filled her mouth and other people sighed in mourning for her broken beauty, she felt another shackle fall away from her.

Bruises chased their way across her face in the weeks after, a motley, swollen parade fading slowly to yellow and nothing, and when it passed, a different face greeted her in the mirror. One that looked as if it had been broken and healed by all the blows of a free life, shaped by the pain and pride of belonging to no one else.

She smiled at that face, and as it smiled back, she truly saw herself in the mirror for the first time.