Okay, so this chapter is still massive, despite my splitting it in two. Apologies for that. There was no really good place to end it and I felt like putting all the filler-but-not-really-type stuff into one chapter would just make it better in the long run. There's also a lot of Arty and Holly talking and not so much of the action, but that is coming in the next chapter, I promise. In the meantime, enjoy! :)
He took her into a bedroom, laying her down on the bed gently. By now her limbs had started to tingle faintly from being jostled and shifted as he carried her, and Holly whimpered softly as the shudders started to wrack her small form as her limbs came back to life.
Artemis stepped away, looking down at her with something like pity in his eyes. "It'll go away soon. I think, in the meantime, I can leave you here while I get supplies." He offered her a small smile and went into the next room.
Holly sighed, watching him go. Her whole body was shuddering violently - her arms had been drawn above her, her legs folded under her butt, and her body stretched up enough to be able to be bound to a handle on the cabinet, thus rendering her completely numb after several hours. As her limbs regained feeling, pain set in. She could feel something that felt like cold water trickling down her back - a muscle pain, or fresh blood she couldn't feel entirely?
Artemis returned just as her shuddering began to teeter to a stop. Holly lifted her hand, looking at it and flexing her fingers experimentally as Artemis reappeared. He grasped her hand, squeezing it lightly and quirking a brow. "Are we going to have an issue now that you can feel your limbs again?"
She thought about it, looking at him and then back at their conjoined hands. He had surprisingly warm, smooth fingers for someone who still looked like a walking corpse. She sighed. "No. I promised."
"Good." He released her hand, setting a small tub of water on the nightstand beside the bag and tossing a rag in it. "Arms up."
"What?"
"You heard me. I can't clean the wounds on your back with your clothes over them." He held up a hand to stop her when she opened her mouth again. "It's nothing I haven't seen before, Holly," he interrupted. "If you'd take the damn thing off you'd see I already bandaged you once while you were unconscious, and at any rate, I'm hardly a stranger to seeing breasts as a twenty year old man." He flashed her a dangerous smile when she blushed and gaped at him. "Off."
Still flushing, Holly sat up - with considerable discomfort now that she could feel where the gears had cut into her back - and lifted her arms weakly. Artemis smirked at her, grabbing the hem of her shirt and pulling it up and off. He tossed it aside, and she didn't even get the chance to protest before he'd unsnapped her bra and pulled it off too. "There. That wasn't so bad, was it?"
Holly covered herself with her arms instinctively. Somehow, despite feeling uncomfortable undressed in front of him, seeing his cockiness was also soothing. It just seemed more….well, Artemis than the odd kindness he'd been treating her with. She decided not to answer but for shaking her head, and didn't resist as the human took her shoulder and pushed her down gently onto her front.
There was a soft hissing sound of metal coming free, but before Holly could even react the knife was at her back, slicing off the bandages. Holly hissed softly as he peeled the bandages away from her wounds. It suddenly occurred to her that the gears staying in her back and running her out of magic was probably a good thing - how would she have explained the broken wings and the absence of wounds after the fact? Which reminded her…
"What happened to my-"
"The mechanical wings?" Artemis shrugged, picking up the rag and wringing it out. "Destroyed. I kept them, but they were in pieces anyway."
"What about the rest of my things?" She'd expected it, but she couldn't help the hiss of pain that escaped through her teeth as he started cleaning the wounds on her back.
He put a hand on her shoulder to pin her down and dabbed at the wounds gently. She had two particularly long, deep cuts on her back from gears that had cracked through the wings and gotten buried in her back, and dozens of smaller scratches from other, smaller ones that just hadn't lodged in her back. He was trying to be gentle, but that didn't make it hurt any less. "I have it all, Holly. Locked away until I hear back from my employers about what to do with you permanently."
Holly sighed at the mention of his mysterious employers again. It occurred to her that he'd never actually said their names or what he did; he just kept calling them that. His employers. She rested her head on her arms, closing her eyes. "Why do you call them that?"
"What? My employers?" He sounded surprised. "Why do you ask?"
"That's just… literally all you've said." She bit her lip. "No real names, no company name... you haven't even told me what it is you do, except for threatening to torture me."
Artemis sighed from above her, dipping the bloody rag into the tub and wringing it out again. "Holly…" He sounded distinctly uncomfortable for the first time. "I see no need to put a name on what I do, that's all. And I couldn't tell you anything about my employers even if I wanted to."
"Can't or actually don't want to?"
"Both," he admitted.
"Why? Don't trust me?" she murmured, almost teasingly.
"I have no reason to trust you, and unless you give me one, I won't. But that won't happen. You won't be around long enough." He almost sounded a little sad at the end.
Holly turned her head and looked up at him. "What does that mean?"
"It means exactly what I said." He shrugged, returning to cleaning her wounds. "I don't trust anyone, Holly. I can't afford to. And as for you… well, you have few options from here, let's just say. And none of them involve being around me long term."
"Can you tell me what they are?" she asked softly.
The human paused, then shook his head. "No." He hesitated for a moment. "Well, not with you unbound, anyway."
"Why not? I won't try anything." She looked up at him, biting her lip.
Artemis looked down, meeting her gaze for a moment and sighing. He reached down and tugged her lip out of her mouth gently. "Don't do that. And… I should hope not, considering the amount of pain this appears to be causing you. You'd probably discover that you can't walk, either, if you tried."
"What? Why?" She frowned, moving both of her legs slightly experimentally. To her surprise, she suddenly realized when she moved it that her ankle ached dully.
"I broke your ankle," Artemis admitted. "When I grabbed you and slammed you, it… well… snapped."
"Oh." She rolled it experimentally again and winced, realizing it really did hurt now that she had moved it. "Ouch."
"I would apologize, but I'm afraid I find it a necessary evil at this point in time." He sighed, putting the washrag back in the bucket of now bloody water and dabbing her back with a towel. "I will give you some pain meds, but I will not splint it."
Holly sighed. She did find that mildly irritating, especially because the last thing she intended to do was try to run - it was likely foolish, but it was true - but she also realized the logic in what he was doing, at least in his mind. In a human, it might easily lead to irreparable damage, but she was not human, and as soon as she refilled her magic she'd be fine, so she let it drop. "Fine. I understand."
"Good." He pulled her back into a sitting position gently and turned her, dabbing some medication on her wounds. Her arms automatically covered her chest again. Artemis didn't comment on it for a moment, although he did roll his eyes at her back. "You're going to have to put your arms down for me to wrap this, you know."
"I could wrap it," she murmured, looking down. She knew she was blushing, and she couldn't help feeling slightly sheepish, although why exactly she wasn't sure.
"I'm sure you could, but not without considerable discomfort to you which is not necessary." She didn't answer, and he sighed, squeezing her shoulder. "Come now. Don't be a prude."
"I am not a prude!" Holly hissed, flushing even deeper.
"Then let me bandage you up and quit acting like you are. Surely you've realized that if I was going to do something to you I'd have done it by now. You'd have woke up in my bed and not chained to a cabinet." He rolled his eyes.
Holly frowned, but she knew he was right. Slowly, she lowered her arms, folding them in her lap but held far enough away from her body he could wrap the bandage around her easily.
"Thank you." He sat behind her, lean in close and starting to wrap the bandages around her torso. Her breath caught slightly at the feeling of his breath brushing her sensitive ears - his head was hovering above her shoulder, his mouth just a few inches from the shell of her ear, allowing him to look back or down to see what he was doing easily. She could feel the heat radiating off his body and was struck again by the fact that he was so warm. For someone who looked like a walking corpse, he was a space heater.
The tips of his fingers pressed gently into her back above one of the wounds, just for a few seconds, to pin the bandages in place. She inhaled sharply as a tingle of both pain and something else ran down her spine at the feeling.
Artemis's nose brushed against the side of her head once, his warm breath millimeters from her ear. "There," he murmured. "All better?"
Holly exhaled slowly. "Not exactly, but… thank you."
"Of course." He stood up. "No need for you to be in more pain than absolutely necessary, right? Besides, I definitely don't want you getting an infection on me."
"Yes, it'd be terrible if I died from, say, blood poisoning and not on your employer's time table, right?" Holly muttered sarcastically. He hadn't directly said that, but then he didn't really have to, either. What else could come after the proposed torture?
Artemis flinched slightly, his face closing off quickly. "I…" he stopped, looking away.
"Don't. I'm not stupid, Artemis." Holly stood up, grabbing her clothes off the floor and slipping them back on. "I may not know entirely what's going on or why, but I know it won't end well for me."
He nodded, looking down. He looked almost pained. "Look, Holly… I don't like it anymore than you do, okay? I didn't exactly choose to do what I do. And I hate it. I hate them. But I don't have any choice but to do it."
"Why not?" She pulled her shirt back on, sitting in front of him on the bed. It pained her to see him like this. The great Artemis Fowl II, practically enslaved by someone else by… fear? It had to be. To see the formerly independent, fearless, cold, calculating genius reduced to this…
Well, it wasn't even fair to say that. Not all the changes were bad. His personality, for instance. She was certain she wasn't seeing anything that he hadn't felt before; it was just formerly buried behind his cold, calculating exterior, carefully hidden from view. Now he had no problem showing it. And physically, the changes were huge. He obviously didn't have the strength or coordination of a toddler anymore, and that was good. But how had he gotten that way?
Training. He'd mentioned training. That had to be it. But any training that he was going to describe as a living hell definitely wasn't the kind that he had deserved or volunteered to be in.
Artemis sighed, shaking his head and grabbing the tub of water. "I can't tell you that."
"Why not?" she repeated again. He didn't answer, walking around the bed and disappearing into the door again. This time he left it open enough for her to see that it was clearly a bathroom, and he walked to the sink and dumped the bloody water down the drain. She wrinkled her nose. "Seriously, Artemis," she called to him, flopping back on the bed and looking at the ceiling. "I told you I'm not stupid. You're going to kill me, and I get that. But I see no reason why you can't tell me when we both know I'm not leaving here alive."
Artemis came back out a minute later, closing the door behind him. He leaned against it for a moment, looking at her contemplatively again. "If that's really what you think, why aren't you panicking?" he asked, looking honestly curious.
In truth, she wasn't sure. She probably should be. It wasn't as if she didn't know the likelihood of her escaping him was low - she only had during the Fowl Siege because he'd decided to let her go, after all - or what he was going to do to her. No, he'd made it blatantly obvious. And it wasn't like she wasn't scared at all. She certainly was. But the idea of trying to escape just seemed foolish, and honestly… well, if one of them had to actually be dead, she would gladly let it be her. Her only regrets would be not getting to say goodbye to her friends or let them know that he was actually alive.
She looked up, meeting his eyes, watching him search her face with open curiosity. The urge to tell him everything rose in her throat, but she quashed it. If he wasn't reporting everything to these mysterious employers of his, but… she couldn't risk her people like that.
She just shrugged, turning her gaze back to the ceiling. "I… just… don't see the point," she said at last.
From her peripheral vision she could see that he didn't look convinced, but he didn't push. Instead, he walked over and scooped her up again.
Holly blinked, wrapping her arms around his shoulders instinctively. "What are you-"
"You can't walk, remember?" He shot her an amused look.
"Okay…. But where are we going?"
"To the kitchen. You've got to be hungry by now." Artemis looked down at her and mirrored her expression when she raised an eyebrow at him. "What?"
She shrugged. Honestly, she hadn't really thought about it. She should feel hungry, by all rights - she had been starving when she left for the shuttle port, after all - but she'd just had more important things on her mind, she supposed. Besides, her appetite was pitiful at best of late. Even if she felt like she was starving, she wouldn't be able to eat more than a few bites. "I'm just… not that hungry."
Artemis frowned. "You will eat," he told her, his voice somewhere between scolding and warning. It softened slightly as he spoke again. "Who knows when I'll feed you again?"
She could tell he was trying to lighten the mood with a joke, but the question was all too close to being serious to actually have the desired effect. She frowned too, looking away.
The human sighed, shaking his head. "Sorry. That was… probably uncalled for," he muttered. He set her down on a stool in the kitchen, walking over and opening the fridge. "Anyway, since you're not very hungry, I'll keep it light. Chicken noodle soup?"
"Er…" Holly looked at him and fidgeted. "Do I get the choice to tell you I'm vegetarian as a hostage?"
Artemis laughed. "Well, since I'm being a very accommodating captor… I suppose we can have vegetable soup instead." He smiled softly at her.
She flushed slightly but smiled back. "Thanks," she murmured, looking down, her mind spinning. Vegetables. He'd told Juliet to give her vegetables during the siege, too… Was it possible it was residual, or just him actually being considerate? Was she seeing connections where they weren't any, desperate to connect the man in front of her with the boy she hadn't been able to save?
He didn't reply, turning to the cabinet and grabbing two cans of premade vegetable soup and cracking them open. Holly made a face, but didn't comment. Real vegetable soup would have taken hours, and she didn't want to wait that long anyway.
It was silent as Artemis put the soup in bowls and stuck them in the microwave. Holly stared silently down at her hands, fidgeting with her ring unconsciously and biting her lip. Suddenly Artemis sighed, and she looked up to see him push off the counter and walk over to her.
He came to a stop in front of her and shook his head, looking exasperated. "Stop that," he scolded, tugging her lip from between her teeth again.
Holly flushed. "Sorry. Nervous habit."
"I know. And unfortunately you're right to be nervous." He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "After we eat, I'm going to have to lock you up again."
"Why?" She frowned. Logically she knew why, but she felt she hadn't done anything wrong to merit being bound up again. Her back ached at just the thought.
"Because. I have things I have to do tonight and in the morning and I can't leave you unbound."
The microwave beeped, and Artemis went over to it, getting out their bowls and setting them on the table. He grabbed them both spoons before settling down beside her.
Holly took the proffered utensil and sighed, stirring her soup absentmindedly. She could only imagine what he had to do when he was supposed to be on vacation. Was it because of her that he had to do stuff? Or would he had to of anyway? She found herself wondering again what exactly he did and who he worked for. "So," she said suddenly. "You managed to effectively distract me earlier with talk of food. Will you answer my questions now?"
Artemis had just taken a bite of his soup. He shot her a look, then wiped his mouth with a napkin and sighed. "Holly, I don't want to discuss this with you. I don't like talking about what I do, and I honestly couldn't tell you anything about the people I work for anyway. Can't you just let it drop?"
Holly met his pleading gaze and sighed. "Fine. If you at least tell me what's going to happen to me."
"I can't tell you something I don't know."
"Fine, you don't know for sure. Earlier you said there were a few different options. Tell me what they are." She crossed her arms, watching him and waiting.
Artemis frowned, looking down at his soup. "You really want to know?" he asked quietly.
"Yes."
"Fine." He sighed, sitting up and turning to look at her. "Okay. So what happened in your case is this. I captured you, for whatever reason, and then I tried to get you to tell me what I needed to know, and you wouldn't. So I had to tell my employers about you and have them use their resources to find out who you really are and why you were following me. Best case scenario, you come back clean. I erase your memories, and depending on what comes back on where you're from and who knows you're missing… you might get to leave, or you might get sent into training." He met her gaze, his blue eyes dark and serious. "Worst case scenario, you don't come back clean. I torture you for information, and when you've been wrung dry, you'll either be sent into retraining, or I will kill you."
Holly gulped thickly. Her throat and mouth suddenly felt dry as sandpaper again, and she searched his face, looking for any sign that the human could just be messing with her. She found none. "So this training…" She stopped, hearing her voice shudder and clearing her throat. "That's the literal living hell we talked about earlier, right?"
Artemis pressed his lips together in a thin line and nodded, watching her closely. She took a shuddering breath, holding it for a moment before releasing it. "I… see," she breathed at last.
He nodded again, turning back to his soup. "That's all that can happen, Holly," he muttered. "And that's why I wasn't going to tell you. Now eat your soup."
Holly licked her lips, looking down at her soup. She stirred it slowly, feeling her already low appetite shrinking even more. There was no way she was eating any of it without being sick. "I can't."
"Fine." He stood up suddenly, grabbing her arm and hauling her off the stool. He dragged her back in to his office, pushing her onto her knees in front of the filing cabinet. Holly was too stunned by the sudden actions to resist. She fell heavily onto her knees in front of him, looking up at him as he chained her back to the cabinet again with a pair of handcuffs.
"Artemis-" Holly started, but he stopped her.
"Don't, Holly." He tied the blindfold around her eyes again, and she frowned, but didn't resist. There wasn't much point in it now. She felt him step back, felt his eyes sweep over her again, sending a tingle through her body. He sighed. "I'll see you in the morning," he muttered, his tone suddenly more gentle again and laced with exhaustion. She opened her mouth to try to speak, but before she could find words his footsteps start moving away, and the door slammed closed behind him.
Holly closed her mouth abruptly, stunned. That had taken a turn mighty quickly. But why? Did the idea of hurting her really upset him that much? Or was it just something else?
She tried to quash the spark of hope in her chest before it could get out of hand. But it was already there. Perhaps it was foolish to think that his demeanor or his being upset had anything to do with her, but the hope that it did refused to go away.
Holly sighed and sat back. There wasn't anything to do now but wait until morning and see.
Whew! That was kind of massive, wasn't it? What did you guys think? I know it was kind of a mix of dark and light, with some fluffy/funny moments and then some darker parts of their talk too. That's basically the path this story is on, so fair warning. Also, the next few chapters will likely get dark and gut-wrenching, so... you've been warned.
On that note, any guesses on what's going to happen to Holly? Can Arty go through with... well, any of the options? Take a wild guess and see! (Or if you've read Kellycat's version, it might be more educated than wild, but... It's not the same, I'll tell you that much!) ;)
