Consolation Prize

Briar's eyes squeezed shut and she bit her lip as she struggled against the desire to lean into his touch, forcing herself to sit still while he wiped away her tears instead of falling into his embrace like she most certainly wanted to. Everything hurt and everything was hard and she hated it all. None of it was fair. She knew he wouldn't just leave her when she asked, but she needed him to. She couldn't think straight while he was around, she couldn't untangle her love from logic when she was looking at him. She needed him to leave her. He deserved so much better than her and nothing was going to convince her otherwise right now. He wasn't going to walk away willingly so she was going to have to be the one to make that final blow to make him leave her and that thought hurt and broke her more than anything else had. Not even losing her mother and brother or getting injured by her father had hurt this much.

Gritting her teeth, she shoved a paw into his chest, pushing him away, unknowingly trembling lightly as she barely held it together. "Get out of here, Artorias!" she yelled as she got to her paws, unable to look at him. "We... We can't be together! So just get out of here! Go... Go find someone better than me." She wanted to say something like how she didn't care about him or something that might drive the final dagger in to make him give up on him, but she couldn't manage to get the words past her lips. She knew those things would be lies, but she couldn't even force herself to lie to him even if it was to save him from being with her. She shoved past him and took off at a hard run back toward home, leaving her heart behind with him and her vision blurring with angry tears, not stopping until she reached the star den well within the Armada territory, falling into it and crumpling in the corner in a mess of furious, angry, heartbroken sobs.

"Briar Fatalis"