Ch 3.9: Chat

Fireguard’s “friends” gave her a look as Tira stared on before nodding to each other and slinking away as Prisma herself looked back to the the ground.

“What do you want?” she asked.

Tira bit her lip, still honestly unsure of what to say. She’d had to get the girl out of that situation, no alternative when her eyes were that dead inside, but they weren’t lighting up now that her companions were gone either.

“The other morning, you were gone before I got up.”

“Yeah,” Prisma said, pushing herself off the wall and meandering down the hallway.

Tira had to recollect her thoughts before running off after the girl. “Hey, wait!” she said, still trying to get over the fact that another student had actually just walked away from her while they were talking.

“I’m tired, so I’m heading to bed. You can walk with me till I get to my dorm.”

It didn’t take Tira long to catch up, but she was still stunned by the fact that Prisma was all but ignoring her. “Don’t you know who I am?”

“Yeah, but you’re not stopping me for that stuff.”

Tira bit her lip again, glaring at Prisma from the side. She was right of course, that Tira didn’t have an actual official reason to stop her. Still, that wouldn’t have crossed the minds of most students in the school. “You hurt her.”

A slight glance at Tira from that, but nothing more. “I know.”

That pissed Tira off. No regard for decorum, she grabbed Prisma’s arm and pulled her towards the first door she saw.

“What are you—”

Tira was already through the door, dragging Prisma through and slamming it shut. It was a classroom, empty, blessedly. “What is your problem? Elaina is hopeless, but she’s not an idiot, so I know there has to be some crumb of decency inside of you. Then you go and pull this ‘I know’ shit when I’m talking about how you hurt her?”

Tira walked up to Prisma, looking down at the girl with teeth clenched hard enough to hurt her jaw. “It’s not a rhetorical question; what is your problem?”

Prisma stood up against the door, hands pressed against it as she shook slightly. Her eyes were wide with fear, and Tira counted them having at least some emotion as a win for the time being. “I don’t… I’m not the person she thinks I am. I’m selfish, but I can’t even decide what I want, so I end up fucking everything up for everyone. I wanted to be her friend, but I still did those horrible things to her, and I want to help her now but can’t convince myself to go against the crown…

“I did that stupid game on stage, and I actually liked it, and then I started to understand her a bit more with that too, but I fucked that up too because I hated that I liked it, even though I wasn’t the only one. I’m just so done. I’ve messed up everything so bad, and now I don’t even know why I’m bothering with living anymore.”

Tira was the one frozen now, suddenly finding herself trapped in the empty classroom with Prisma in between her and the door, the girl scrunching her face in every effort not to cry, failing to stop the tears that were leaking out. Gods, I do not know how to handle this. It was almost an actual prayer, and religious or not she would’ve welcomed a divine intervention, but no such things came for Tira.

“Don’t say stuff like that,” she eventually settled on, stepping back to sit on one of the classroom desks.

“You asked what my problem was,” Prisma replied, slinking to the ground as she wiped her face with her sleeve.

“Yeah, guess I did…”

It was painful, watching Miss Perfect try and compose herself, failing to stop the tears as she sniffled and sighed before eventually pulling out a small hand mirror from her pocket and holding it up to her face.

“Are you seriously worried about how you look right now?”

“I’ve already embarrassed my family enough this week.”

Family. Tira cursed herself for not considering that. It wasn’t a concern for Elaina obviously, but word of a noble daughter getting naked on stage would spread far. “It won’t be that bad… You can always just say it was an exaggeration.”

“There are exaggerations, and some people are believing them.”

“Right…”

Prisma huffed and put her mirror away, pulling her knees up to her chest and planting her face in them. Tira was still trapped, effectively, despite not knowing how to handle something like this.

“I don’t like you,” she eventually said.

Prisma looked up, pure confusion on her red, puffy face. “What?”

“I don’t like you, you don’t like you. I honestly don’t think anyone should like you, but Elaina does anyway. She sees something in you that I don’t, that you don’t, maybe that no one else sees in you, but she sees it anyway.

“Be that person. If you want to be better, start by being the person she thinks you are. You do that, you might find a way to convince me to forgive you. And maybe you’ll forgive yourself too.”

Tira walked forward, hand reaching out for the doorknob, hoping Prisma would move over. The girl stared up with those bewildered eyes. “I’ll try,” she whispered, scooting over on the tile floor and leaving Tira enough room to leave.

Tira opened the door to the hallway, happy to see they hadn’t somehow amassed a crowd of eavesdroppers. “The company you keep isn’t going to help you with that. You’d be better off partied up with us.”

Tira didn’t wait for a response before leaving and letting the door close. Just saying it had been hard enough on its own.