It's a slow process. One that happens over days filled with sweat and blood and nights filled with clandestine secrets and forgotten names. It's like a tumor slowly growing, growing, growing silently til it becomes too big to handle.

He should have seen it coming, he who had watched his brothers fall into the same pattern over and over and over again, but Levi didn't and now he has to suffer the price for it.

Gently he plays with her copper hair. It's something to ground him in this world while the other one tries to pull him away.

She was only a traveling mage, a bright-eyed youth exploring the world for her first time. At least some of that was true. You don't capture a son of air or kill a man without hesitating unless you have experience.

She was strange indeed. She had the power to bind a son of air and keep him under her control yet marveled at the colors of the sunset. She didn't flinch when they came across a cavern slaughtered by bandits, but still cried that night in memory of people she had never met.

She must have seen horrible things, suffered so much to get to where she was today, yet hope still shone in her hazel eyes. The world had left it's mark on her, physically with scars and emotionally with nightmares she didn't know he knew about, still she wasn't jaded. She could still laugh and cry and try to live instead of just surviving.

And amid all their time together, he had fallen for her.

It wasn't just for her blinding smile or for her enchanting laugh, though he loved them dearly. But he had fallen for her dirty mouth and stubbornness. Both her kindness and ferocity and all the other contradicting traits that existed in one small body. She was motherly to children that they encountered, but also quick to anger. She wasn't an innocent fool despite what her attitude seemed to suggest, but she wasn't a battle-scarred veteran either.

That was certain. While Levi would have been content to not act on his affections, she was different.

"What is it, Levi?" She had snapped one night. "Why won't you look me in the eye anymore?" He couldn't have explained to her how his brain collapsed when he looked at her. How he dreamed of holding her and running his hands through her hair and leaving butterfly kisses down her neck.

In the end it was her who acted first. One night after a close brush with death, she had kissed him recklessly, dangerously.

"Do you want this?" She had breathed into his ear, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand. Every fiber if his being told him to say no, sons of air were supposed to only be devoted to Mother Nature. But she was overwhelming and so he answered with a quiet yes.

But now his mind is clear and he regrets his display of weakness. Levi sighs as he pulls away from her. What was he thinking? If any of his brothers found out, they'd hunt the both of them down. He should know, he had done the same whenever his brothers got too close to humans.

And yet here he is doing the same thing. He can't bear to leave her a fate like that, it'd be better if he just disappeared. So Levi gets up, leaving behind the little pocket of warmth they had made. He tries to stay strong, but he can't help but trace the side of her face one last time.

"Levi..." She says his name like it's a prayer, not a curse like it really is. He turns before he can give into weakness again. She had dropped the spell that kept him bound to her a long time ago. He can just leave and forget about her.

But as he walks away, Levi knows that is impossible.

No matter what he decided, Petra Ral has ruined him forever.


A.N. Now we get the angst *evil laughter* as much as I love writing two people being dorks, I seem to always drift back to wanting to rip out my own heart