At first, the furthest thing from Mulan's mind had been enjoyment of her time in the army, or fitting in. She was a woman in the army; she would never fit in. And as for enjoyment, she hadn't joined out of choice, she had joined because it was the only option she had. Her father couldn't have served again, she'd known it then and her opinion didn't change once she was actually in the army. But somewhere along the way, she'd started to fit in. And once she'd started to get better, along with the rest of the new recruits, it was like something had snapped into place in her, like something broken had been made right.
She'd always been the failure, the girl who wasn't girlish enough, who couldn't manage to do anything right. When she'd joined the army, it had been the same: she'd been a failure at being a man. She hadn't been able to do anything right, but that was how it had been for her entire life, nothing out of the ordinary. She'd had her whole life to practice being a woman and she'd failed at that; why shouldn't she have failed at being a man when she'd started with only a few minutes' practice under her belt? But then she'd gotten it right. Somehow. And it was like the sun breaking through the clouds, her whole life being wrong suddenly set right.
She wanted to do this for the rest of her life.
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