AN: So I changed this to an Ithal/Felicity pairing, and I think it works much better. Before it was just... blegh. We will not speak of it. It's set in the spring after Rebel Angels and could be considered a sequel to Don't Call Me Beautiful, but it's mostly a stand alone.

Disclaimer: I own not, you sue not.

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He wasn't trying to sleep, but it's still just like waking from a dream when she bursts into his tent. For a moment, all there is to see is a white and blue figure, with the forest behind her, and then she closes the tent flap.

Felicity approaches him without saying anything. Her pupils are overlarge, leaving only a small amount of gray. She's been drinking or perhaps smoking something. That much is obvious even before she presses her lips to his with expert authority.

"What are you doing?" He asks as he pushes her away. The small blond girl doesn't stumble despite the accidental force behind the motion.

"I'm forgetting," she says. "It's not worth making a fuss over." She walks forwards again, places her hands on his chest. He feels a chill through his shirt and it's just like last year before she broke his heart and handed it back to him.

"I love you," he murmurs. She laughs cruelly.

"No you don't. And I don't love you. No feelings, no strings. This doesn't mean anything." She tugs his shirt off, but he bloody well loves this girl, and she's only playing with him. Kartik warned him about her, said she was insane. And he doesn't know if he can handle being hurt like he was last year, not again.

He is trying to remain calm and levelheaded, but she's trailing kisses down his neck and across his shoulders. It is very distracting.

"Any other girl like me… well, you'd have to pay for her. Just let me forget, Ithal." Her breath is soft against his ear, and she nibbles the lobe before returning her attention to his neck. She's the most amazing thing in the world. Does he really have enough pride to reject her?

She rests her forehead against his bare chest now. Her skin is cold against his, an ivory icicle. He wonders absently if she's ever been warm and innocent, or if she was born jaded. Someone probably made her this way.

He'd very much like to punch whoever did it. Someone this wonderful, this beautiful, shouldn't be so damaged.

He likes to think of himself as an honorable man. But there is a beautiful girl in his tent, and she's very insistent, and he's been in love with her since the first moment he saw her, when he tried to sell her a flower and she smiled at him and told him to meet her in the woods.

So he gives up. She smiles as if she knew he would. And come to think of it, she most likely did.

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He helps her lace her corset later. "Does this make you my whore?" he asks. She did say he'd have to pay for another girl like her. She put the idea in his mind. It's really not his fault that he's trying to hurt her. She probably has a bet with her little friends about how soon he will profess his love.

She will have already won the bet. He wants to build a temple and worship her, sometimes. He watches her from the trees and sees her teaching little girls how to hunt. She's like the Greek goddess Artemis, belonging to no man. That doesn't mean he doesn't want her.

She looks at him coldly. "A whore, maybe. But not yours, Ithal. Never yours." She pulls on her blouse and cape and is gone in a swirl of rose scent. And suddenly he can't tell if she'd ever been there at all.

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