Ok, weeeellll...I kinda edited the last chapter, and am working on the others to give more detail *glares at a certain someone* so I don't know whether or not if I should take this story down! What do you think?

Artemis returned to the elf's room after putting the plate in the sink. He was careful to avoid Butler, not wanting to get caught in conversation with the manservant and not make it back to Holly's room before she woke up.

He watched her sleep for a minute. She looked so peaceful when she was sleeping, peaceful and quiet and something else her didn't recognize for a moment.

Vulnerable. She looked vulnerable.

Peaceful, quiet, and vulnerable. Three words not often used to describe Holly.

Artemis sighed and pulled a brown quilt up over Holly, tucking it around her shoulders and the rest of her small body. She shivered in her sleep, instinctively trying to pull it closer to her, but couldn't as her hands were still bound to the head board. Still sound asleep, she struggled against the bonds, trying to move.

"Now, now," Artemis said quietly, his voice low and soothing. He pushed her back down on the bed, trying to halt her struggling. "Don't struggle. Its just a waste of your time and energy." He stroked her face, then he sighed. "And she can't hear me..."

Suddenly, her voice thick with sleep, Holly opened her eyes and spoke. "No, I can hear you. Now, at any rate." She yawned, trying to sit up and laying the quilt fall off her in the process.

"I'm sorry, I hope I didn't wake you," Artemis said.

"Ah, its okay. I'm not even sure if it was you or the dream..." she trailed off. Then she seemed to realize what she did, and she froze.

"What dream?" She didn't respond. "Holly?"

"Nothing," she said, though she sounded more like she was trying to convince herself than him. "It was nothing. Just a nightmare."

"What kind of nightmare?" Artemis studied her face. "Holly. Tell me."

"No."

"Holly, come on. I can't help you get over it if you don't tell me."

"I don't want to tell you," she said stubbornly.

"Why not?" he pressed.

"Because." She turned her head away, looking at the brown door, the light green walls, or even the brown framed window.

"Because isn't an answer, Holly," the boy said, starting to get irritated, grabbing her chin so she would actually look at him. "Why not?"

"Because I don't want to!" she yelled at him, pulling away from his grasp. "I don't want to talk about it! Not with you, not with Butler, not with anybody here! It's just..." her voice dropped a little here, "it's just too painful."

She rolled over, facing away from him. Her next words, when she spoke again, were so quiet Artemis could barely hear them.

"I- I can't, okay? And you can't make me. This is the only time I'm going to say anything about it, so if you're going to keep bothering me about it, you might as well just leave. I'm not talking. And I don't really feel like being interrogated right now anyhow, and I really don't want to deal with you if you keep acting like this."

"Acting like what?" the boy demanded, his voice cold and harsh.

"Like that!" she exclaimed. "That attitude! You always do that! One minute we'll be talking and you'll be fine, then the next you get all mad and mean and start interoggating me relentlessly again! I mean, I know I'm still a prisoner, and thats all I'll ever be here, but Frond! I just don't understand why you, even when everyone else goes out of the way not to, insist you have to treat me that way."

"I don't quite understand what you mean," Artemis said. "I see no difference in the way I treat you and the way I treat everybody else."

"Oh really?"

"Yes."

"So you're saying that you kidnap everybody else? Ad lock them in the basement and torture them?"

He clenched his jaw. "All things I've done in the past, not to mention things I did when I didn't know you that well."

"You still don't know me that well," Holly muttered. "But fine. How about this little arrangment?" She nodded to her bound wrists. "Do you tie everybody else to their headboard's?"

"No but," he added, "everyone else isn't suicidal."

She didn't respond to that. She didn't have an answer.

"Exactly," the boy said sharply. "No witty response to that, is there?"

She shook her head. "No," she whispered brokenly.

"Exactly, because its true. You can't argue with the truth, especially when its cold, hard, logical facts. Though I can't say logical lately." Then he stopped and took in the dejected look on her face and sighed. He perched on the edge of the bed beside her, sitting on the dark green covers, laying a hand on her knee.

Holly yelped as if he'd slapped her again when he touched her. "Forget it, I'll stop arguing," she whimpered, pulling away, moving over as far from him as she could in her state.

"Holly," Artemis said softly, "breathe." He paused and waited until she complied a few times, taking deep breaths in and out, before continuing. "I'm not going to hurt you. Truthfully, you do have a point. But that's only part of what I came in to discuss."

She gave him a confused look, uncringing slightly and rolling back over towards him. "Why did you come back up here so soon?"

"There's some things we need to talk about, Holly. Among them is the reason for those little things there." He nodded at the ropes on her wrists. She flinched slightly, and the boy sighed. "Look, I know that you don't trust me, you might not even like me, and that's okay. But at some point or another we're going to have to start communicating this stuff. Since the fact that we haven't yet been seems to be causing issues, we're going to start now. Okay?"

Holly took a deep breath again, though it was shaky. "I suppose so. Do I have a choice?"

He shook his head. "Not really. It had to be done. The only options are we can do this the easy way, or the hard way. And I have no problem with doing it the hard way if you refuse to cooperate with me."

"What's the hard way?" she asked quietly.

His face darkened. "You don't want to know. It won't be pretty, that I can promise you." He looked at her face, searching for any signs of resistance. "We're not going to have to do it the hard way, are we, Holly?" His voice was dangerously low.

"No," she squeaked out. It came out sounding more like a question than an answer.

"Good," he said, voice becoming lighter, kinder, gentler. "This way, it will be a lot easier."

He took a deep breath. "I know what you were doing earlier, why you said what you said. That's why I wasn't as upset as you thought I would be. I realize now that you were instagating me, and I'm sure you figured out by my reaction that my father is a very sensitive subject for me."

Holly smirked wryly. "Yeah, I definitely noticed."

Artemis touched her shoulder gently. "Yes, I'm sure you did. Being suicidal and all, I bet that after finding my limit you would have noted it for future use. I will only ask you this once; please do not go down that road with me. You would not want to see where it would lead, with any of my family."

"I care for both my mother and father immensely, but my father is just a more touhy subject for me because I no longer have him with me as-"

"He's dead?" Holly gasped.

"No," Artemis said irritably, "I was getting to that. He, like me, was a criminal. He was trying to move our empire into legitimate enterpises when he was taken out by some people who were unhappy. He's not dead though, just gone."

"He's disappeared," Holly clarified.

"Yes."

"How long ago?"

"I was eight, Holly."

She nodded, then hesitated before speaking again. "Artemis... I don't know. That's a long time to be gone and still be-"

"No!" Artemis interrupted. "He's alive. I know it. After all, Mother is still alive, and she went into a depression just mere months after. And if my father returned tomorrow, she would be fine the next minute."

"T-that's what's wrong with her?" Holly asked, shocked.

"Yes."

"Oh," she gasped. "Artemis, I'm so sorry! I really... I wouldn't have said that if I knew..." He looked up at her, and she had to bit her lower lip to kep him from seeing it trembling.

He still noticed. He scooted closer to her, catching a falling tear and wiping it away. "Don't cry, Holly. It's okay, really. You didn't know." The elf's tears only continued to fall, and faster now. Artemis could tell he wasn't really helping. If he wanted her to stop... well, even for all his genius brains he couldn't think of a solution to that.

As it turned out, Holly was the one who did that. She turned her head and wiped her eyes on his shoulder, and that's when inspiration struck him. Quickly, before she could react, he wrapped one arm around her back, and placed the other against the back of her head, pressing her tearstained face into his shoulder.

"Artemis." She was trembling against him.

"Shh..." he soothed weakly. He knew he should say something, but he wasn't sure what would help and what would make it worse. I was never good at giving comfort, he thought, sighing inwardly.

"Its okay. I'm not going to hurt you, and I'm not mad at you anymore either. If I'm being honest, that whole mishap was my fault. I shouldn't have been so elusive aboutt this stuff, and you would have known the truth and not said any of that stuff."

"No offense, but you'e kind of already hurting me. This is a sort of awkward angle for my arms to be bent at..."

"Oh, sorry." He shifted slightly closer, then suddenly he got an idea. He leaned down and murmured softly in her ear.

"Artemis, I am crying so much I can't even see straight," Holly whispered. "How...?"

"Okay, okay. Sorry." He reached over and started unknotting the ropes on her hands, the promise he made if she complied she was not suicidal.

As they fell off, Holly fell to the right, and any of her weight Artemis was not supporting already fell onto him. He sagged under it for a minute, then righted himself and her against him.

For a moment they sat there silently. Artemis start to say, "Better now?" then he heard her light snoring. "Holly?"

There was no answer from the sleeping elf. He sighed. He pulled her down, trying to lay her down and then get away, but she had a death grip on his black suit jacket. Sighing, he laid down with her, deciding to wait it out until she woke up. He wrapped his arms around her for comfort.

But after a half an hour past an she didn't wake, he fell asleep too. And that's where Butler found them when he came to check on them. Smiling, the bodyguard shook his head and closed the door.

450 total!