Mermaids weren't supposed to fall in love for very good reasons. The reasons weren't unspoken secrets; every mermaid knew what they were.

Don't love, they were warned when they were young; find a mate and bear young if you choose, but don't love. And especially…don't ever love a human.

It only ended badly and with heartbreak; mermaids with broken hearts rising to the surface so they could have the release of feeling their tears slide down their face.

Don't love.

There were several things that young mermaids were warned about: teasing sharks when they were tired, becoming stranded in tidepools that could not support a mermaid when the tide went out, the nets of humans…but the most dangerous of these was always said to be love.

Which was why she had been so angry when the first tiny threads of feeling for this human had slipped in and begun to coil around her heart.

She had hated all of them when she was captured; all of them, no exceptions.

And then he saved her from the box they trapped her in—a coffin holding only enough water to make her death painful as she slowly suffocated within it.

She had hated all of them afterwards…except him. She only despised him.

Until he picked her up and carried her, ignoring her angry protests.

Now she disliked him and was angry at him. It made him harder to ignore; it had been so much easier to ignore him when she hated him. She could ignore the others. She still hated them.

He kept doing things…saving her, giving her his covering, carrying her. Now he had given her a name (not a true name; this meaningless group of sounds had nothing to do with who she was)—forcing some of the others in his group to acknowledge that she was not a mindless thing that they dragged across the dry land, far from the water that she could still sense.

It was frightening to realize that he cared for her and she was beginning to care for him. The tiny threads of feeling had wrapped around her heart with everything he did—all the small things he did to help without her asking, the bits of his life that he told her about (they didn't all make sense; however, she didn't expect someone who had been trapped and living on land his entire life to do so)—and now they were twisting and tightening like the net that had captured her body.

When she realized that she was beginning to love him she fought it even harder than she had the net. It was terrifying. She thought nothing could ever be as terrifying…

Until he was killed in front of her and his body dragged away.

Was this why the older mermaids had always warned against love? It hurt, but it was partially soothed by the thought that soon she would be dead and no longer feeling the ache of his loss.

And then he came back to the pool and the ache she had felt earlier was nothing compared to the pain of betrayal as the pirate gleefully took her tear.

Maybe this was why the other mermaids warned of love…betrayal hurt so much more than even the jaws of a shark.

The pirates left her to die in the sun; and as she watched bitterly as he was taken away, she wanted the sun hurry and do its job. If she could have pulled more of herself out of the water to hasten her death, she would have.

But then he returned again and set her free.

Angry and injured, she flung herself into the depths of the pool; the water healing and restoring her. From beneath the surface of the pool she could see him still. He waited above—injured and alone, a lost expression on his face—as though hoping but not truly believing the she would return.

The net of threads wrapped around her heart pulled tighter at the sight of his pain, and she slowly swam back up to the surface of the pool.

She still loved him; still wanted to ease his pain. When she looked into his wide eyes and asked him what he wanted, the last bit of her anger towards him melted away.

"Forgive me," he pleaded, his lips chapped and cracked. Not "save me" but "forgive me"; a sign that he loved her as well.

She gave him a small smile as her arms went around his neck and her lips met his. With a powerful flick of her tail, she pulled them both down into the pool.

It was a long swim to where the tunnel connecting the pool to the sea opened up to the surface.

He had stopped struggling in her arms not long after she pulled him down into the pool and now let her take them where she pleased, his fingers tangled in her hair and his lips still pressed to hers. Her strength returned to her from the water, it was easy for her to pull them both up onto the flat boulder near her favorite tidepool. She had often come here alone in the past, to watch the small fish and other sea creatures that lived in the pool. There had never been a need to concern herself with worry of the tide as the pool was large enough to sustain her comfortably as long as she desired.

Now she looked down on him fondly as he lay on the rock next to her. She smiled, knowing that he loved her and had made his choice. They would be always be together; he would never leave her again. She bent down to press her lips to him again, feeling him move slightly in her arms.

A short time later, she raised her head so she could feel the wind cooling the tears that slid down her face. He (Philip, he had called himself…as though it had been a true name) was dead. He had been dead since the moment that he stopped struggling to free himself from her grasp, fingers tangled in her hair as he tried desperately to pull her mouth off of him.

Even as she cried, though, she could not keep herself from licking the sticky blood from her fingers.

"Forgive me," he had begged, giving her his heart…that heart which had proven to be so tasty.

'Don't love', the older and wiser mermaids had told her, 'especially, don't love a human. It only ends in heartbreak and a mermaid on the surface of the sea so she can feel her tears…"

Don't love.

A/N- the Little Mermaid she ain't, ya'll.