For Infallible Reason

Author's Note :: I needed to rewrite this story. It's better now, loves - I promise. Still angsty but definitely better. Also, I don't think this one is over - but I'm not sure where I'd take it next. What do you think?

Disclaimer :: Destiny isn't mine. But you'd better believe this story would be canon if it was. Characters are mine but the stuff that'd make me money is not.

Leif studied her with a careful eye; desiring to memorize each curve, each rise and slope of her body. From the way she was laying on her stomach with one arm tucked beneath her head, just underneath a pillow stained dark mascara, to the way auburn hair spilled around her like a liquid fire of golden amber. He was enraptured; unable to bring himself to look away from her. In considering the way a tanned length of one of her legs was thrust out from beneath her crisp white sheets, he couldn't say how it was that he'd missed it – but at some time between when they'd been awoken to their Traveler's light, four years prior, and this moment that found him shameless in his admiration as she slept, she'd grown up.

She'd grown up to be downright beautiful in all those unintended, understated ways that left him unable to keep the thoughts of her from dancing with those of his most primitive desires.

And, sure, he'd always recognized hers to be a face that held a glimmer and a promise of what feature beauty she might one day come to exude, but he'd been far too proud, too headstrong, too… well, too much of everything that she was not to admit that he'd taken much notice before. What, with the way those fragile moonbeams brought a trickle of blue-amethyst light whispering across her angular features, almost crimson as the light washed through the tattered remains of a parachute she had salvaged from the Rusted Lands, he could no longer pretend he didn't notice.

He decided, then, that she must have been an angel – or the closest that he was ever going to get to one.

Sitting in the dark silence of her dormitory, he pondered that he had known her for as long as he could remember; throughout their training missions, despite the time that he would spend in the Crucible when she would retire to the library, when she became a mentor, a scholar, a lecturer, and then after. He only had one good eye by which to notice that her merits stacked higher than his own – with the other, taken from him in a training incident and since obscured behind a tattered gray eye patch, he'd held his secret fears in safety.

Because for all the years that he'd ignored himself watching her and had tried in vain to convince himself that she didn't matter, he didn't care, he didn't want her, the walls he'd been so careful to construct to protect his deepest, most sincere desires had shattered that night when he'd watched another Titan tangle his fingers through those luscious locks of her amber hair.

It had been the way that she'd laughed at the other Guardian, a soft flush over her cheeks…

In that moment, like lightning, he'd realized that regardless of whichever ways he tried to forget, to ignore, she had been to him like oxygen in his lungs. She had kept him alive; it had always been she who had given him purpose and the desire to live – that one day he might carve out a path in life that would make him worthy of even a moment of her attention.

And so what if he'd had a few too many drinks?

It wasn't like he had planned to take advantage of her or anything. She was completely sober. She had had the foresight to leave before the barkeep brought out the good tequila.

The only thing that Leif planned to take advantage of was the fact that she was asleep and unaware that he'd just broken in to her dormitory. What he'd intended after gaining entry even he wasn't sure; the plan had only gone so far as to satisfy his pressing need to see her, to be near her. Second thoughts and consequences were yet to cross his mind; he'd been just drunk enough to test his luck. Because he really wanted her right now – Emillie, this Warlock, someone that he knew wouldn't reject him. Someone Leif knew he could trust.

Maybe in his earlier days as a Guardian he would have been content to leave his worship to the wayward, admiring glances he'd paid her that evening at the bar.

But right now, tonight, he needed something more.

So he dropped to his knees at the edge of her bed, pulling rough gloves from trembling fingers. He dropped the gloves on the floor and extended a careful hand beneath her soft sheets to meet the warm skin of her back. But where he'd expected his calloused fingertips to find smooth, perfect skin Leif instead felt the raised marks of her scars – solar magic employed to cauterize a wound, a contusion where her ribs had broken but not been set to mend, an angry mark that could only speak of the improper administration of sutures.

It was a sobering realization – for weren't angels meant to be without scars and unbroken?

She sighed a quiet, content sound and the Titan recoiled, pulling his hand away as though she'd burned him. He frowned for the realization of what he'd been about to do. Disgraceful. She deserved so much more than to find a man such as himself pawing at her. She deserved someone who sought to mend, to protect her – a man who did not possess hands which had only ever known how to destroy and break. The Traveler knew Leif didn't understand his own strength; he was as likely to leave her bruised as he was to please her.

"Fuck," he muttered, falling backwards to sit on his heels, still at her bedside. Leif ran trembling fingers through his sandy-brown bangs, drawing a deep breath to calm the rapid pace his heart was hammering against his ribs. What was he doing, anyway? This was Emillie – she was so different from the other women of Tower he'd chased and had. She was untouchable, better than anyone he should even so much as wish for.

He let his breath leave his lungs in a long sigh, taking with it whatever drunken inclination had brought him to her bedside in the first place. He couldn't just slide into her bed and make love to her as if he had the right to do so.

It had been selfish of him to come to her tonight.

But even as he made up his mind to leave, to turn around and run like hell away from this ill-fated decision, her breath sighed out from between parted lips. And he imagined that she might have edged closer to him in her sleep; that her brow might have furrowed for what displeasure she felt at having been ripped of his touch.

He brushed her shoulder blade with the back of his knuckles, watching her relax into her linen sheets.

Leif couldn't take his hands away from her, then. He couldn't keep shaky fingers from creeping over her bare shoulder, perfect and unmarred for all her labors as a Guardian. He traced the delicate lines of her throat, slid his knuckles over her jawbone as he eased closer to find that her face was as perfect in sleep as when she laughed, when she smiled. He wiped away the traces of mascara that had trailed ugly lines down her high cheekbones. With his thumb he touched her lips, so warm and the color of dying sunlight. He closed his eye, ashamed of himself, when her lips parted once more, accidentally seductive.

He bit his lower lip; desperate, so desperate for more…

When he returned his gaze to her, Leif found that her eyes were open, sleep-lidded and glazed; she didn't seem surprised to find him there, kneeling beside her bed and halfway leaning over her, still caressing her cheek. He had his own suspicions about what he must have looked like – still wearing his armor, eye patch, and smelling of tequila or worse. But she'd seemed not at all concerned with his appearance or the motivation that brought him there.

She said nothing, just sighed with a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

And she turned her cheek into the palm of his hand.

When she closed her sea-green eyes, failing to demand that he absent himself from her room, she'd sealed her fate.

Nothing short of another Collapse could get him out of there now that she'd given her tacit, if not hesitant, permission. And if she was ever to be made to understand how much she had endeared herself to him in that simple gesture… the Traveler knew that Leif would never possess the words to tell her so.

Edging aside the sheet to expose all of her back, he eased onto the bed beside her and tangled his fingers through the thick locks of her amber-gold hair. Strong hands, timid at first, slid through the silky strands to find her scalp in a gentle massage. He closed his eye when he heard her soft coo of approval and replied by bringing his lips to her temple.

He wondered if she was aware of what she was asking and of whom she was asking it from.

If she would be angry with him when it was over.

If she would ever forgive him.

But when one of her delicate hands found the side of his face to caress the stubble that had formed there and she whispered his name in a doubtful, longing tone – it was all he could do to keep himself from smiling down at her.

She didn't ask why he'd come – instead, her left hand trailed from his cheek to the place at the back of his neck where she could release the armor from his strong figure. Her right hand came to rest on his bicep, breaking loose the arm guard from the chest plate. Leif didn't ask her when she'd come to understand how to remove Titan armor half asleep and with her eyes closed. He was almost bitter about having made the realization. How easy it all seemed to her.

And he decided that he didn't want to ponder over how long the list of her lovers might span. If her sum were anything close to his own, this – whatever this was about to become – would mean little to her the next morning. He tried to tell himself that he hadn't come to her because he'd wanted to make himself mean something to her but he knew as soon as the thought had formed in his mind that he was only telling himself another lie.

While his right hand remained laced through her amber hair, his left whispered down her bare shoulder, her bicep, to rest at her hip where smooth lace separated her skin from his touch; she was so delicate with feminine curves despite the years of physical toil she'd weathered as a Guardian. She felt frail and slight under his hands – but Leif knew better than to think her weak, even for a moment. He'd heard the quiet mutterings of all that she was capable; even still, he hadn't prepared himself to expect such subtle femininity from her.

Leif pressed his lips to her collarbone, unlacing his opposite hand from where it was still tangled in her amber hair to bring it to rest upon the curve where her neck met her shoulder. He heard her breath catch in the back of her throat, sleepy and low but beholden, imploring him to continue. Where only a few moments before, she had been fast asleep, Emillie was beginning to wake under his touch and respond with fervency. She had managed to relieve the Titan of his arm guards and seemed to struggle within herself whether or not she ought to appreciate the strong muscles of his arms she'd left exposed or free the rest of him.

In response to her unspoken hesitation, Leif removed his own chest plate, pulling away from the Warlock only long enough to complete the task. And when he returned to her, he slid his left hand beneath her side, running a strong hand over the scar on her back, just beneath her ribcage – the same one he'd earlier considered to be the result of incautious stitches. Emillie shivered, her hands finding his neck to trail across the taut muscles of his shoulders and then glide over his chest. Then she shifted, settling into his bare arms and he pulled her closer still as his lips found the delicate curve of one of her breasts.

Her body stiffened for an instant before she relaxed. And Leif decided that he liked the way her breath would fall from her lips in soft pants, the way that her skin shimmered in the dawning light of morning, hypnotizing and aglow for the faintest hint of perspiration beginning to collect there. He closed his good eye to the feeling of her nails scraping over the broad expanse of his back and smiled at the way those soft fingers clutched helplessly at his sandy-brown hair, his shoulders, anything she could find to make an anchor. Leif was careful where he held her for the pressure of his left hand against her back and how tight his grip became on her hip with his right.

But he couldn't let her go.

He wouldn't allow himself for fear she might realize who he was, what they were doing together…

And then there was the sound she made when he slid his fingers inside of her – a soft pant, a pained sound in the back of her throat as though the caress hadn't brought her the relief she'd desired but had wound her up even tighter.

He knew what he was doing. He might have lifted her up to let her fall, taken her from one climax to the next in a matter of moments. But he was a selfish, selfish man when he held her in his arms. He wanted to be inside of her when she came. He wanted to feel her around him, holding him, adoring him, and breathing those soft, husky breaths in his ear.

Without hesitation, Leif tore the lace fabric from her hips and tossed the tattered garment to the floor atop his armor.

She'd pulled away from his embrace to look up at him, her green eyes glazed over in lust and adoration as she set to the task of working free the remaining closures of his armor. The Titan caught her fingers to still them, moving his left hand to gently tilt her face up to press his lips against hers.

And he felt her tense.

He watched her turn her face away – and when his lips met her skin, it was her cheek he found instead of those warm lips he'd had his mind set on since the moment she had invited him into her bed.

The Titan let her struggle with the task of his pants for a moment or two longer than he'd intended… even as her persistence paid off and she'd managed to work free the closure. She was focused on tugging the armor down his hips; so he helped her by kicking the garment the rest of the way to the ground.

Then he pressed his lips to her pulse, holding her bare skin to bare skin.

And she sighed like she had dreamed of this for all her life.

He couldn't keep himself from kissing her after that; the tender skin of her neck, her jawbone, her shoulders, her collarbone. In the morning, she would wear all the marks of his affections and the Titan took silent pleasure in this realization. Even as he was pulling her leg over his waist, fitting their hips together so he could ease himself inside of her, she'd never once pressed her lips against his skin. But he was too preoccupied with everything else; her taste, the warmth of her skin against his, the way it felt to have her hair brush against his cheek, his neck, his chest. He was lost, entranced by the sweet noises she made in the back of her throat and the way that her slender figure writhed in pleasure within his arms.

When she gasped, tense and sharp, Leif pulled away in time to catch her wince.

"Fuck, Emillie," he frowned, brushing her soft bangs away from her eyes with the back of his hand. "I'm sorry, I never meant to-"

"It's alright," she whispered, pressing her cheek to his. "If I'm to be broken, I want it to be you, Leif."

And she turned to bury her face in his neck, her hands running over his abdomen before finding his biceps, his shoulders, and then coming to wrap around his neck.

"Ruin me. Pull me apart that when you're finished I won't remember his hands weren't always yours."

And he trembled for the tone of her voice, the feeling of moisture against his shoulder from her tears. He wasn't sure if it was regret or guilt that he felt first; even as her fingers raked through his sandy-brown locks of hair, even when her foot grazed against his calf. Leif's voice was hesitant as he wrapped his arms around her lithe frame, "Is that why you think I'm here?"

"Why are you here?"

But he had no answer.

He was shamed to silence that she should think such things of his intentions. But he was too afraid to tell her that this was about more than just that, whatever it was she thought. If it would have been a lie that he would tell her, Leif was uncertain – he hadn't really thought his intentions through. To that point, he'd been acting on his own selfish inclinations.

But if she was at all irritated by his silence, she made no indication as she experimented with raking her hips over his. Leif hissed, gripping her body where his hands fell to rest over her hips. He fought to maintain his sense of self-control, to remain still while she adjusted to him. If he hurt her… fuck, she'd already said as much herself – when he hurt her, he didn't want to later wind up just another name on her list of regrets. He couldn't live with himself…

So when he kissed her, claiming her mouth with his own, it was to comfort her. And he only hoped that it could impart all the emotion he was, himself, still struggling to wade through – regret, sorrow, passion… when he kissed her, he'd done so like it would be his last.

And she didn't pull away.

She just drew her body closer to his and kissed him back.

Leif slid one hand down to where their bodies were joined and he stroked her. It was only a matter of seconds before she caught fire; sighing her content into the place where his neck met his shoulder, biting down on his collarbone to keep from crying out. Her back arched, her chest pressed tight against his own… and he began to move a tender rhythm, slow and gentle. He'd never imagined that she would be a virgin; though he knew he'd never be able to convince himself that he wasn't glad that she'd have no other example by which to measure him. He was going to make sure that it was his hand, his touch that she would long for; it would be his name she would remember to cry out, his body that she would cling to when all other sense of purpose was lost to her.

He'd do just as she had asked. He would ruin her; help her to forget that she was still in love with someone else… someone that wasn't him.

As all the sounds he'd desired to hear began to pour from her throat, her legs wrapped around his waist and brought their bodies closer still. Her body trembled in his arms as she convulsed and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to resist the urge to thrust hard and fast as he edged closer to his own climax. Next time, when she wasn't so sore, he'd show her a dozen different ways to make love. And he wouldn't feel so compelled to be careful with her then.

If there was a next time…

But he banished the fear as soon as it arose; a tight and uncomfortable knot in the pit of his stomach. Leif smiled something bittersweet into the soft auburn hair at her temple as she curled, exhausted, into his arms. He collected her into the protective warmth of his embrace, unsure if he'd held her with such tenderness because it was what she needed or if it had been because he'd needed it himself. Her head came to rest beneath his chin as her heart hammered an erratic, uneven pace against his chest. He was silent as her breathing evened out and she drifted to sleep.

Leif decided it was for the best.

Because it left ample time that he might consider the guilt which was just beginning to set in. Emillie didn't belong to him. He'd had no business in the world climbing into bed with her. And he'd definitely had no business being there when she'd never been to bed with anyone else before him. His interests weren't inclined to make a habit of deflowering virgins. It was a gift she'd given him – one he knew that he didn't earn and would never deserve.

He sighed, running a hand through his tangled hair as he felt the steady rise and fall of her breath. Her skin seemed to glow in the pre-dawn sunlight, casting a delicate shadow over her fragile features.

She shifted in her sleep, turning her back to him. And the Titan made no attempt to keep her close. He'd wanted to look at her, sure – to see her face when she wasn't looking back at him and remember all those things he'd come to admire about her. Because he expected the next time she looked at him it would not be with an emotion he desired. Would it be pain? Regret? Anger? Because he'd never dreamed of stirring within her any of those emotions.

He didn't know anymore what all of his feelings meant.

The one thing he knew for sure – he had to leave.

She couldn't rely on him to provide the sort of stability and protection that she needed. With his heavy hands he had, before, broken so much else – and he'd destroy himself before he'd cause her more pain than he already had. So Leif would give her the next best thing he could think of – privacy and a little bit of time that she might be allowed to collect herself in secret, away from his gaze and all the disappointment-frustration-regret that his image was sure to rouse within her soul.

He wanted that she wouldn't see him go. If she gave him even a glimmer of hope that she wished for him to stay, he knew that he would never, could never pull himself away. Not after what he'd just taken from her.

So he shifted towards the edge of the bed, trying not to wake her as he began the quiet task of putting his armor back on. And he might have walked out the door just as easily as he'd entered – but something stopped his feet where they fell, called to him that he should turn around to look at her just once more.

Leif bit his lower lip, rubbing absent-minded circles over his armor above the place where his heart hammered fierce in his chest.

She was hauntingly beautiful, innocent-looking awash in the soft light of morning. And he could swear the shadows cast a whisper of wings over her fragile silhouette… an angel, the closest he would ever have, all wrapped up in white sheets.

But she wasn't asleep.

Though she had her back turned to him, he could tell she was staring out of the floor to ceiling windows to watch the sun climb out from behind the mountains that surrounded the Last City. Her hands had taken up the task of wringing the sheets around her, surveying their softness like it might compare to how it had felt to have his skin pressed against hers.

"It's okay, Leif," she murmured with no hint of sadness or remorse in her voice. The sound that met his ears was only the delicate, smooth tenor with which she always addressed him. And even though he knew she hadn't intended it, her words scorched his soul not entirely unlike how he imagined her solar magic might have felt, "I knew you would have to go; that you would be nothing more than a wraith, a shadow by sunrise."

His stomach dropped.

His palms grew sweaty.

And he hesitated.

Regretted.

Leif broke like he'd never dreamed possible.

It marked the first time that a woman – a lover – had given him permission to leave. Every time before, he'd slipped away unnoticed. He'd never once stayed over. He'd never even wanted to.

But this time… with her, everything felt different.

She was the first woman he'd ever made love to, where it hadn't been just for the mutual satisfaction of two over-amorous Guardians. And she'd been the first to extend to him salvation in her tiny arms… absolution from his sins and forgiveness that she'd come to find her hands stained by his collar, woven in depravity and dyed in blood.

Emillie had welcomed, had encouraged his hands – that they might save her from her loneliness and take away the pain. He had failed. Leif knew as much, even if Emillie hadn't realized it yet. But in turn, he realized that he'd lost a part of himself in her – somewhere between an open invitation into her bed like he might have been medicine for her ailments and the tender, delicate way that her body had trembled in his arms when he'd made love to her… he'd left a piece of his heart with hers.

Leif could only hope it was the best part as he knelt down beside her bed and placed a strong hand on her shoulder, kissing the back of her neck while the fingers of his left hand laced through the strands of auburn hair spilling out across her pillow.

"Goodbye, Emillie."

It was far more than he'd ever done for anyone before her – but he left ill at ease all the same.

Because for the first time in his life, he'd wanted more than anything that she would ask for him to stay…