Disclaimer: The characters, much of the dialogue, and sadly, even the plot are not mine; they all belong to Eoin Colfer.

Pages: 103 – 106, 109 – 132, 133 – 134

Chapter 6: Adequate Familiarity

Holly had faced Butler as an enemy only once before. Describing her feelings the second time around would probably have been unnecessary, given that the response to being stared down by a seven-foot-tall Eurasian with the build of Olympic heavyweight champion was most likely universal.

At first the most Holly could do was stare, unable to believe that Artemis's memory could have been flawed and that the Butler of the past had entered the study after all, but she quickly collected herself. That was harder than it sounds, as Butler was now glaring ferociously at the two intruders and giving Holly unpalatable flashbacks to several years ago when she had been held prison in this very manor. Fowl Manor was suddenly a place of danger and hostility once again.

Holly had only one weapon available to her at the moment: the mesmer. But her attempt to spellbind the massive bodyguard failed abysmally and rather than fall asleep as she commanded, he managed to plug her with a tranquilizer dart.

All in all, not a surprising development considering their luck so far.

So, for the second in her life, Holly sank to the ground with a drug from Butler's gun coursing through her system. The sedative acted quickly on her small frame and in less than a second, the world had gone black.

When Holly next became aware, her mind at first remained trapped in the uneasy, shifting reality between sleep and consciousness.

Something was closing in all around her; she thought she might suffocate. The smell of brine filled her lungs with each breath. Cold radiated off the steel inches from her face, pushing in so close that she had to bend her spine and bring up her knees to fit. There was the pressure of a thousand tons of water weighing down on the ceiling she felt against the top of her head.

Her hands were at the controls of the vehicle, exactly where she had been born to have them, but the fairy craft would barely move. This was wrong, this was not how piloting was supposed to be. Flying should mean freedom, openness on every side of her, but this tiny box was no more than a prison. A prison that would be her tomb.

Heart still beating in her ears, Holly slowly opened her eyes only to find herself in absolute darkness. The smell of the ocean was gone, but instinctively she knew that she had not escaped the small, cramped space from the nightmare. Her limbs ached from where they had lashed out uselessly at the walls that caged her, and her rapid breathing seemed unusually loud in the all-consuming silence.

The sensation at first threatened to throw her into a panic. The dreams of being caught in the small submarine cabin deep down below the ocean's surface like her mother still played at the edge of her mind, and she sucked in breath after breath as she tried to get control.

After her mother's death, for a while Holly had been susceptible to claustrophobic attacks. There had been at least one instances in particular she could remember when her mother had been dead for less than a year that, during a lesson when she was still a LEP trainee, when she'd had to crawl through a four-hundred-meter pipe no wider than the width of her shoulders and she had flipped out. Fortunately Holly had managed to get a hold of herself and get through the assignment before they had to come in a cut her out, and after that, over time and with her training she'd managed to pretty much overcome it.

However, it seemed now she was having something of a brief relapse. Perhaps because she had been thinking about her mother so much today.

But as Holly blinked and swallowed, shivering slightly as she curled in on herself, as though by increasing the margin between herself and the walls the space would not be so small, another image of her mother came to Holly's mind.

She could see her mother the way she had looked standing by the LEP submarine doorway, all those times Holly had been allowed to see her go. She would stand looking calm and official, in total command of things. As she glanced back a moment, she often caught sight of Holly's slightly glum expression, and she would suddenly grin, shooting Holly a sassy wink. "Well, I'm off to save the planet from the Mud Men again. Wish me luck, sweetheart."

At the thought, Holly slowly relaxed, allowing herself to stretch out even in the small confines. She felt her usual reserve of mental strength begin to return to her, though a touch of nausea still churned in the base of her stomach, her lungs seeming to unable to take in enough oxygen.

Breathing slowly and deeply, Holly concentrated on running her hands along the hard surfaces on every side of her, finding precisely how close the walls that enclosed her were. She could not feel a surface beneath her feet, but there was a ceiling above, so close that when she touched them her elbows were still at right angles. However, her search yielded one small blessing as her roving hand happened upon a bubble light, and she flicked it on.

When the dim, white light illuminated the small space, the first thing Holly noticed was Artemis next to her, looking even more cramped than she was with his taller-than-usual frame, legs bent in against the wall.

It didn't take much looking around, seeing the downward curve of the ceiling on Artemis's side and the inward-bulging half-cylinder at their feet for her to realize they were laid out sideways inside the trunk of a vehicle.

She swallowed again, her mouth dry. She knew there was no way out from the inside of a trunk, and that alone made the space feel even smaller. But she had mastered the feeling, for now at least.

Holly's eyes went back to Artemis's face, lingering there for just a moment. When caught in a predicament like this, it was good not to be alone.

Holly mused vaguely how distant the missed three years seemed at the moment. Here, back in real action on another mission with Artemis Fowl, the dimly unsettled sensation, the humiliating feeling of a kind of loneliness of the past couple weeks seemed so far away as to be unimportant, separated from her by eight years. Instead she felt the old ghost of exhilaration revive in the back of her head, a weight of responsibility fall on her shoulders that made her shiver with nerves and stimulated her like a cup of sim double espresso.

Holly could have almost laughed at herself. Here they were, trapped by dangerous hostiles in a trunk with no obvious means of escape, in the most unfamiliar place imaginable, and yet she felt relieved. It was like she had just come home after spending the afternoon in a place she didn't know, surrounded by strangers. She felt better than she had in her own home in Haven for weeks. Here was where the excitement always was. Here was where she was vitally needed again.

The light had apparently disturbed Artemis because he stirred and groaned, then opened his eyes. "Sell the Phonetics shares," he muttered, dishing out orders even half-asleep.

Holly could have rolled her eyes. Of course, while she was having a nightmare about being imprisoned in an airless submarine, it was just typical Artemis Fowl would be dreaming about losing money in the stock market. She wouldn't be surprised if that one made him wake up screaming sometimes.

Artemis seemed to come to his senses then because he said suddenly, "Holly. Holly?"

Still feeling the flood of warmth for her human friend, she patted his leg to reassure him and said, speaking in Gnommish just to be on the safe side in case the trunk was wired, "It's okay, Artemis. I'm here. Where else could I be?"

It was at this precise moment that a strange thing occurred to Holly as she laid next to Artemis in the vehicle, especially considering they were basically in the middle of a crisis. The space suddenly felt even tighter, hot and cramped, despite the fact that there were controls keeping the air a reasonable temperature, and despite the fact that it was the middle of the night without the slightest bit of heat from the sun.

She felt strangely... nervous. Like all her senses were warning her there was danger of some kind, but she hadn't yet consciously worked out what it was. It certainly wasn't little Artemis or Butler she knew, though it would have made sense.

Less than a second had passed before she suddenly froze. Her eyes were still on Artemis as it slowly dawned on her what her instincts were telling her the problem was.

A sort of heat was spreading through her face, as she resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Please, no. It was so ridiculous. This particular thought could not be crossing her mind at this particular time.

Whatever this situation was, she told herself firmly, it certainly wasn't worse than being forced to hold hands in their underwear as Nº1 had forced them to do. What in the world was the matter with her? Professionals didn't stop to get embarrassed by what positions they were thrown into; they were far too busy staying alive. Being trapped and alone with a member of the opposite sex in the trunk of a vehicle was not enough to drive up a professional's blood pressure, and it certainly wasn't enough to suddenly give them to urge to press themselves against the far side of the trunk, as far from said member of opposite sex as they could get. Professionals didn't act like diffident hormonal adolescents.

Except maybe she wasn't a professional anymore. Maybe she really was just a kid teenager again, as the humans said, and the physical hormonal reaction was affecting her thoughts.

Holly thought about that. A physical, hormonal reaction to Artemis Fowl.

Okay, that does it, Holly thought, half-horrified, half-irritated. She seriously needed to get back to her own time and back into her adult body. Hopefully Artemis had been right about the changes being temporary.

...Which wasn't much consolation, considering the fact they were in this situation in the first place because Artemis had been mistaken already. The most nettlesome thing about the whole thing was that, considering it was Artemis, there wasn't even actually anything to worry about, hence the stress which she was fairly sure was taking minutes off the end of her life was a waste of energy. He was only interested in other genius criminal masterminds, and even then those would play second fiddle to a mountain of gold bars any day.

But one thing Holly knew for certain: if Artemis ever somehow guessed her current thoughts and sudden embarrassment, he would probably never let her hear the end of it.

Holly slowly withdrew her hand.

Artemis, the actual hormonal teenager in the equation, turned onto his side to face her and immediately went into business mode, taking note of the fact Holly had awoken first despite weighing less than he did and assessing their current strategic position, attempting to identify possible means of escape. The Mud Boy at least was apparently unperturbed by this position.

It was unsurprising, seeing as how they had more important things to worry about at the moment. Still, it was at times likes this she found Artemis's detached calm and practical disposition a little on the annoying side.

However, in the end, discussing their options and answering Artemis's questions turned out to be just what Holly needed to drag her back into her normal, less moronic – er, distracted – frame of mind, concentration shifting to their quandary. After all, there was no time for patent idiocy.

Holly found that she could actually hear beyond the metal walls of the trunk if she placed her ear right up against its surface and concentrated, and when she informed Artemis of the vague muttering of animals she heard, he realized that they were at Rathdown Park, the place from which he had retrieved the lemur all those years ago. Or, more accurately, was about to retrieve it right now.

Artemis, who had already seemed confused by what had happened, how they had been taken so off-guard, seemed yet even more confounded by this development. Which was in and of itself disconcerting.

For some reason, things were happening differently from everything he remembered, and if even Artemis didn't know what he was doing, or even able to pretend he knew what he was doing, that was a sure sign to Holly that they were in a little too deep. They had already gone outside the parameters they had set for themselves for this mission by being seen and taken captive, and now they were a long way away from the take-off point. Who knew what could happen to the future if they continued to interfere.

Holly's eyes focused on the boy's face for a moment, his skin looking even paler in the cool, feeble lighting. One thing Artemis's various associates learned in getting to know the boy was that he was pragmatic and calculating by nature, always. Artemis Fowl would pinpoint the most intelligent path and then follow it to the letter, even if his every emotion and instinct went against it. But those who really knew him knew that all that was true only most of the time. Because for Artemis, it was a different matter when it came to his parents.

Holly found herself thinking back to the mission in the Arctic, when Artemis had agreed to help the fairies deal with the Goblin rebellion in exchange for aid in rescuing his father. He had so wanted to push through to save Artemis Fowl the First anyway, even when it was no longer even a rational course of action. That time, Butler had had to step in to tell Artemis what needed to be said, that they had no choice but to turn back and regroup, to essentially give up for the moment.

Now, in this time and place, Butler wasn't here. So that meant it looked like it was going to fall to her to say it this time.

"I'm off to save the world again. Wish me luck."

Holly's stomach twisted. She herself had already suffered the absolute pain and despair of watching her own mother die, helpless to do anything to stop it. And that memory made the weight of this responsibility all the heavier.

However, Holly told him plainly, "We are not in control of this situation anymore, Artemis. Perhaps it's time to admit defeat and return home, when your younger self brings us back to the manor." After all, they didn't want to press their luck and wind up stuck in the past, or it really would be Hybras all over again. She added as an afterthought, "Perhaps you can discover a cure in the future."

As unlikely as this seemed, especially in time to do Angeline Fowl any good, Holly knew if anyone could do it, it was probably Artemis.

Her sympathy for him flickered though as the teen, rather than getting riled up as he had earlier, angry or desperate, he simply answered smoothly, ever the patronizing analyst, "I considered that. The lemur is still our best option, and we are just a few feet away from it." He even had the nerve to tack on a 'Give me five minutes' at the end.

There were times when Artemis's calm resolve and confidence were reassuring, inspiring even. The other ninety percent of the time, it just grated on her nerves.

Holly shouldn't have been surprised, really. After all, Artemis's genius had often seemed to be a kind of magic all on its own. Artemis's expression was so smug she had to resist the urge to reach over and hit him, though inwardly she had to be desperately glad to escape the little metal box that reminded her so much of her mother's untimely end.

As a result of Artemis's trifling, they seemed to have gained an unlikely ally in their old friend Mulch Diggums, who was not yet their friend in this time. Despite how secure the lock on the trunk supposedly was, the kleptomaniac dwarf had no trouble freeing them from their prison, though he only seemed interested in the 'stupendous amount of gold' promised him in the note Artemis had somehow contrived to have sent back in time to him.

With the assistance of the talented, albeit unpleasant-smelling dwarf, their prospects improved considerably. Stealing some of the equipment from his younger self's vehicle, Artemis quickly formed a plan to get to the lemur before the younger Artemis, and they all split up to go into action.

It was quite a stroke of luck to get Mulch to agree to cooperate, and even better, it felt good to have regained her mother's old familiar omnitool from Mulch's stash of stolen equipment.

Holly felt a little bad for having flown off the handle as she had when she had discovered it among the dwarf's other stolen valuables; it was unlike her to lose control like that. Certainly, it had been a treasured gift from her mother she had especially cherished after her mother was gone, and having it stolen had resulted in one of the biggest botched-up missions of her career, and... Well, okay, maybe he did deserve it.

Still, she wouldn't ordinarily just explode as she had. Perhaps she was just imagining it, but she thought she really did feel a little less stable than usual. She hadn't been so moody in years, but perhaps the fear of Spelltropy and the guilt of what she may have done to Artemis's mother were having a negative effect on her military discipline she had developed through her training with the LEP.

However, another yet still more troubling possibility occurred to her.

At the LEP, Holly was well known for her self-confidence that often bordered on cockiness. She was a good officer, and she never wasted time pretending not to know it. Whatever disastrous situation she found herself in during an operation, she had always proven able to react instantly, intuitively able to make the most intelligent response available: a quality had often given her just the edge she needed to escape, or apprehend a suspect, or make a critical move that saved lives. To make those snap life-or-death decisions she had often had to make, one learned quickly there was simply no time to second-guess decisions or go back to check the guidebook, and so there was only one's instincts to rely on, and it took a serious amount of guts and mental toughness to pull it off. Even Commander Julius Root had had to grudgingly admit on rare occasions that his only female officer 'showed promise.' She had a natural talent, and that, combined with the two decades of experience she had under her belt, gave her even more assurance, and enhanced her ability to act correctly during an emergency.

But right now, all of those accomplishments and talents seemed very remote, hollow even. It was not the memories that had changed, but her emotions. She did not feel strong or experienced. All her confidence in what she had learned and done had slipped away somewhere and she couldn't seem to grab hold of it again.

It was just possible that more than her body had changed in the trip through the time stream. After all, she had not always been the dauntless officer she had grown to be as an adult after she had gritted her teeth and endured the LEP training. Before that she had been soft, untested. A child who was still living under the roof of a parent, sheltered from a hostile outside world, who hadn't yet had to fight and work incessantly to harden herself to get through hardship after hardship alone.

But whatever the cause, all Holly could say was that almost the very moment her two friends were no longer in sight she felt an unusually tense nervousness seize hold of her stomach. Even though she had been on the verge of entering situations many times more dangerous than this on countless occasions, an irrepressible apprehension like she hadn't felt in a long time came over her. Instead of pinpointing what she needed to do to make sure things worked, all she could think about was how the possibilities for the ways things could go wrong seemed endless, and even worse, for the first time she wasn't sure she would be able to think on her feet should something unexpected arise.

She found herself thinking about her human friend again. Ordinarily he would be hanging back somewhere while she or Butler were at the front lines, all guns blazing, while he obnoxiously threw out bits of advice from the background, making sure all his pieces were correctly arranged on the board. But this time it was just the two of them plus a reluctant Mulch, and now he was the one heading directly into the line of fire.

At the thought, Holly felt a flicker of foreboding.

But surely, little Artemis and Butler wouldn't actually kill him, even if he got in their way, she told herself.

However, Holly's mind drifted back to the first time she had met Artemis Fowl, the way he'd kept her trapped in his manor by force, playing mind games with her to make her a more docile prisoner. Those cold blue eyes, willing to risk so much, even his own life and those of his subordinates for the sake of victory.

Despite the balmy summer night air, a cold shiver sent a slight tremor down Holly's spine.

Well, that's why I'm here, she reasoned. Her role was to keep a lookout and prevent those two from hurting the Artemis from the future while he focused on getting the lemur.

A basically unarmed adolescent girl alone against giant, troll-taming Butler and criminal-mastermind-slash-tactical-genius Artemis Fowl. No problem. She could could handle it.

Right.

By the time Holly reached the lemur's cage and found a spot she determined as good as any to watch for their adversaries, her paranoia had gone up several notches and she was more eager than ever to be past this stage of the mission and headed back to the manor as soon as possible.

She was now certain having the form of an adolescent may pose more a problem than she had originally thought. She wouldn't feel perfectly easy again until they were back safely in their own time, and she was out of this kid's body.

The moment she'd acquainted herself a bit with the place behind one of the larger tree trunks in the lemur's habitat she'd chosen, she settled back into visibility and contacted Artemis through the primitive communicator in her ear, which they'd appropriated from Mulch's collection of stolen fairy technology.

Despite her tension, she was determined to sound as calm and professional as possible, even though she knew the subtle inflections in her voice would not carry over the old communicator as it only conveyed words, not voice patterns. One never could tell with Artemis what he would be able to discern and what he wouldn't, and she didn't want him to think her as unreliable as she was feeling at the moment.

"In position. Over."

"Received," came back Artemis's monotone voice, sounding like a talking computer program. It wasn't so different from his usual voice. "We are directly below the target's cage. Can you see the opposition?"

"Negative. No visual," she said, thinking maybe she was overdoing it on the 'professional' thing. She communicated like this all the time as a member of the LEP back in her own time, but for some reason right now she felt almost silly, like a kid playing spy. Maybe she should tone it down a bit. Strange, had she really been this self-conscious as an adolescent?

"But I do see the lemur," she added. "He seems to be asleep on a low branch. I can easily reach him." Then they could all get out of here and her friends would finally be out of danger.

"Negative, Holly. Hold your position," answered Artemis, still speaking in the emotionless voice of the communicator. "We will secure the target. You watch for my younger self."

"Understood," said Holly with a mental sigh. She could not suppress the anxious, almost urgent note in her voice this time as she continued, "Don't hang around, Arty. Get up, get down, and back to the car."

"Got it. Up, down, and back," responded Artemis, not commenting on Holly's use of the informal nickname. If it had offended him, she was fairly sure she would have heard about it, so she assumed that must mean he found it permissible. Or perhaps he was too focused on the task at hand at the moment and he would pass a snide remark about it later.

Arty. She liked that, she decided. After all these years and all they had been through, she felt like she'd earned the right to call him that. It was what she had heard his father had call him before. Though it felt strange coming out of her own mouth, it was also a bit exciting – it made him sound so much less threatening, and like perhaps they were finally getting to be closer friends. However, the real thrill came from her fervent hope that it might annoy him.

She tried not to grin as she imagined Artemis, ever the walking encyclopedia, observing offhandedly later, "You know, nicknames can serve to further the perception of comradeship or affection. Conversely, a nickname can also serve to insult or alienate the other individual, if the name was not welcome, or said without adequate familiarity." And of course, he would say it with a slightly condescending air that made the implication clear. Trading implied derogatory comments was one of their favorite pastimes after all.

As Holly surveyed the shadowy jungle habitat of the silky sifaka cage from her hiding place, she allowed herself a glimmer of hope for the first time.

Little Artemis wouldn't be expecting anyone to come up from the ground. No matter how smart he was, he wouldn't know about dwarf talents, and that gave the older Artemis the advantage. Maybe Artemis and Mulch would be able to grab the lemur and get back safely underground before little Artemis or Butler had time to react. Maybe everything would go according to plan after all, for once.

And that was when Mulch erupted out of the ground into the wrong cage – a cage that just happened to belong to a dangerous, gigantic mountain gorilla.

The gorilla was instantly awake and on its feet at the deafening noise. But Artemis, apparently unaware of the danger, promptly climbed right out of the hole, awkward as ever in any kind of physical exertion.

Attempts at stealth and the enemies she was supposed to look for forgotten, Holly shouted into the communicator for Artemis to get Mulch, who'd been injured by the metal bars that ran along the top of the cage when he'd come rocketing out the grassy undergrowth, and to get back down.

Artemis didn't even have a chance to look startled at the message as the gorilla charged, and Holly ran for the cage for all she was worth.

A/N: ...Yeah. And this has suddenly turned into a romantic comedy. (lol, not really) Sorry, I really wanted to write the scene near the beginning like that. Partially just because, but also because I thought it would be appropriate to include as a kind of additional foreshadowing to what happens later, besides what's already in the book. (; Because the characters' thoughts aren't really divulged after the submarine-nightmare thing in that scene, I actually thought it was reasonably believable to think either one of them would be sort of uncomfortable, or thinking things we aren't aware of. (Well, I guess that's what this whole fic is about.)

Uh, but if you don't care for that sort of thing, please just ignore it. But secretly, you're all probably desperate for romance by this point, right? (;

So... next chapter is 'that scene' that you've all no doubt been waiting for. Uh, well, a bit of forewarning, you might find my version sort of understated though. Mainly because it was so perfect in the original that I don't want to compete with it. (; But as with everything else so far, my goal will be to keep the important parts there, but written in a new way that focuses on different things though is still consistent with the original.

So anyway, thank you so much for the reviews last chapter! Anyone who's enjoyed this so far, I hope you'll leave a review and tell me what you think. (:

Posted 10/11/11