She was always going to break his heart.
He had known that, really he had, from the very first moment he saw her. A dirty, tangled mess of knotted hair and matted fur, round cat-like eyes the soft color of a harvest moon wide with confusion and fear, arms thrown up defensively as she backed herself further into a corner as if having her back against the wall was still preferable to being any closer to him.
But at the same time she was beautiful to him, slit pupils wide in the low light, a tangled mane of copper waves that tumbled down to her waist…wild but tamed and soft, so very soft, so fragile beneath that veil of terror and disgust.
And he had wanted, oh how desperately he had wanted. He had never gotten the chance to determine what exactly he had wanted, but in the end it hadn't mattered because always, always, always he had wanted to help her more than he had wanted to keep her.
And that would be his ultimate undoing because it meant that his feelings were real. This constant, heavy presence that settled like stone in his chest, thick and solid it weighed down his heart like chains, constricting tightly with every frightened glance and biting word.
But she came to him when she had no one else to turn to, trusted him, finally, to set her world right again. And that smile, the first one she had shown him, wide and thankful and full of admiring trust through grateful tears, loosened those chains just a little and was certainly worth every moment of agony he knew he would feel later.
She looked happy, euphoric in fact, as she crashed into the arms of another male like a wave reuniting with the shore. That made his heartache just a bit easier, that much less of a burden. It soothed the raw, burning pieces and smoothed the rough, jagged edges, easing everything back into place. The heavy mass of his love, unrequited, unneeded, dropped over his crushed heart, dragging it down to the very floor of his soul.
But Talon really did seem equally consumed and devoted to her, and she was happy. And that made him happy. Happy enough to carry a burden that would crumble a mountain, that no one could help him shoulder, that no one could see.
Because despite his youth and inexperience, despite how little he really knew her, his love was real; its most basic, purest form. And love, real love, can be a beautiful punishment indeed.