She was not a stranger to heartbreak.

Indeed, if anything, she was much more familiar with it than any one person had a right being. She knew the sights and the sounds, and she knew the feelings, and she was well acquainted with the ache it left in her chest, like she'd been struck physically.

It made her want to shrink down and curl up against it, somehow protect the exposed parts of herself, even if that meant that the rest of her body took a beating. The rest of her could take it--but not her heart, not anymore.

It was worse because she had known it would be coming--it was worse because he was here now, asking for things, and she couldn't have them, and she couldn't have him. He had been all she had ever asked for, for so long, and then he was gone, just like that. Poof. Vanished. And for the first time in forty years, she was alone, and it hurt so bad, she wasn't sure she knew how to breathe for days.

And now he was back. In front of her. And they were tied together forever, for a stupid reason, and that wasn't what he had ever wanted. In fact, if anything, he had expressedly had feelings against it more than once. But she couldn't change that now. And he was in front of her, right now, and he was going to ask, and he wasn't going to understand why she was hurt.

Because he broke her heart.

He had been breaking her heart since they day they'd met--she couldn't ever trust him again, and that was the problem.