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

Pages: 135 – 138, 142 – 145, 167 – 169

Chapter 7: Reborn

Looking back, Holly still wasn't quite sure what had caused her to do it. But then, she couldn't deny she had always been cursed to be something of a being of impulse, even as an adult.

At the moment as she stood inside the cage, staring at the horrible scene before her, so many emotions were playing through her. But it was fear that she felt most tangibly in her chest. Fear submerged and drowned all the other feelings, and as her eyes fell on her gravely injured friend clutched in the arms of the gorilla, the powerful presence and thick muscled body, like a delicate glass sculpture in the hands of a troll, she felt like falling to her knees and crying, or getting as far away as she could. It could not be happening.

She watched her friend's blood trickle down his temple and seep into his jacket from the vicious break in his arm, consumed by an overriding feeling of helplessness, but then the steel buried beneath her soft exterior snapped into place, and she rushed forward, using her gift of tongues to speak to the animal and chasing it off with the mesmer.

The next thing she knew she was kneeling beside her friend, sparks of magic dancing around her fingers. But then she froze, as though struck with a bolt of lightening. Her magic was not safe. If, as Artemis seemed to think, she had given Angeline Spelltropy, then if she healed her friend, she may condemn the boy to the worst end imaginable.

Holly gazed down at her friend. He twisted limply with pain, his blood soaking the thick grass of the dark jungle habitat around him and his irises had rolled back so far only the whites of his eyes were visible beneath his sinking eyelids. There could be worse injuries still beneath the surface. The wounds from the attack were likely fatal, and even if they weren't there was no way she would be able to move him like this. Even if it was dirty, disease-ridden, her magic was his only hope of survival.

A darkness seemed to hang over her as Holly made her decision. At last she allowed the twisting, hissing sparks, snapping like the mouths of tiny rabid canines, to engulf her friend. When her work was done, she sat back, tears of painful desperation streaking down her face as she waited to see if the healing had worked. If she hadn't been too late.

The few seconds of dead silence seemed to last an age. A thousand thoughts were flying through her mind, and a terror of that piercing emptiness she still remembered so vividly from back right after Commander Root had been murdered, when she had believed Artemis and Butler also dead, coursed through her.

But then, finally, his eyes fluttered, and opened. His body spasmed as he coughed and trembled before he sank back into the grass, his tall form relaxed once more. He turned his head slightly to stare up at her, with a face that was strangely gentle, a rare moment of completely open emotion that the trance brought on by the magic made it impossible for him to conceal. "Holly. You saved me again," he said, smiling.

He was alive. The typical deceit and crookedness of his features was for once completely absent, replaced by what could only be described as sincere appreciation. It all seemed to swim together, making the relief that flooded through her that much more overpowering, intoxicating.

Almost delirious with emotion, tears continuing to flow in tiny streams over her cheeks and dripping down onto Artemis's tracksuit, Holly said, joking, but also in that moment completely serious, "Of course I saved you. I couldn't do without you."

Perhaps Artemis was still in a daze from the post-healing, because he did not react when Holly, magic still pumping through her and completely without thinking, leaned down and pressed her lips to his, and he did not seem fully aware when she pulled back again. The ribbons of mist-like sparks of magic floating all around them slowly disintegrated into the night air.

Now, no one would probably ever describe Artemis as 'graceful,' but, so long as he wasn't climbing out of a dwarf hole or trying to jump onto a moving train, his movements generally did have a certain sophistication, almost elegance about them.

So it was a bit out of the ordinary for him when, as soon as the magic was gone, he leaped to his feet so fast that he very nearly lost his balance and toppled over again.

"Eh, thanks," he said once he'd steadied himself, his speech unusually stilted and awkward. "That was unexpected."

Holly was smiling, a bit embarrassed, but the feeling overshadowed by a sort of exhilarated buzz of relief. He was alive.

"Artemis," she said. "You're okay. Any more healings and you'll be nothing but scar tissue held together by magic thread."

Artemis looked a bit disoriented for a moment, like a person just woken up from an incredibly strange dream. Finally he said slowly, "Very well. I see where we are..."

It took him less than ten seconds to compose himself and turn back to the task at hand, namely stopping his younger self from getting the lemur, which at the moment Holly had all but forgotten.

Ten seconds – now that was quite a lapse for Artemis.

So they moved into action. To stop the younger Artemis from getting his hands on the lemur, Holly used her gift of tongues to stir up the animals in the park, just as they had planned earlier even before things had gone so disastrously wrong. It was enough to scare off the silky sifika from the diminutive monster of a boy just in time, though the distraction didn't last long as Butler unloaded another hypodermic dart into her, and Holly barely had time to register what had happened before the world tilted before her and she was out like a light yet again.

Holly could not say the exact moment when she awoke. Even with her eyes closed, it felt for a long time like everything was spinning dizzily around her, and even when she opened her eyes the real world was little more than a sea of blended pulsing color and darkness. Whenever she tried to move, her arms and legs felt as heavy as bars of lead.

Her brain, too, felt fogged and sluggish. She could not think clearly, a jumble of memories and images from the last twenty minutes or so flickering through her head, some repeating themselves again and again, as though she couldn't quite get a grasp on their meaning yet and this would help her understand them better.

The continued thoughts about her mother and how she had died were there, the vaguest sense of loss and regret woven inseparably with them. Holly also recalled the feelings of loneliness and something like abandonment after the Hybras landing.

Though she tried to fight against these thoughts, to drag her eyes open again, she could not seem to pull away, as though her mind itself were an enormous weight that could not be easily moved.

But for the most part, these visions, which hung teetering somewhere between pure illusory dreams and a reality she knew and could understand, continued to draw her thoughts toward a certain Mud Boy.

He was somewhere. She needed to find him so they could continue... continue something. But the most her semiconscious brain could supply her with at the moment was a series of disjointed images.

A picture of a giant gorilla lunging at the intruder into its territory, and of the tall human laying spread out on the ground, his eyes almost closed as though on the verge of death, flitted before her eyes. She saw a rocky barren land, and she stared at a boy as he turned away from her. She could hear a voice in her ear, sobbing, as she stood on a sheet of ice leaning over a tall man with dark hair and a missing leg. The next moment the young human boy was sitting in front of her, murmuring how he would keep his memories because he had outwitted the fairies, as she placed a mask over his eyes.

All of it was at once both so strange and so familiar that she could not be sure what was happening right now before her, what was memory, and what was only an imaginary, transitory dream.

The images flickered back to the cage and the gorilla, the thoughts more urgent now. She saw over and over the tall teenager dangling like a broken rag doll in the giant beast's clutches, blood soaking the sleeve of the human boy's tracksuit, dripping both from his closed left eye and mouth, that same pale youth smiling up at her with mismatched eyes full of gratitude...

It felt like a long time before she could register anything much outside the vertigo and swirl of random thoughts, but even then, her surroundings still felt somehow distant and dim. Even with the voices she heard, her clouded brain did not fully grasp any meaning at first.

"...buried the captain," a deep guttural voice was saying. "She was moaning quite loudly. Arty this and Arty that, with a few Mothers thrown in."

Had Holly been in her right mind, she probably would have been rather irritated with the dwarf for sharing this bit of information.

She heard the guttural voice still speaking and felt something like a coat of a powdery substance fall on her. Her senses were unable to place what the substance was exactly without further sensory stimuli, and so images of an endless white snowfield and snowflakes drifting softly down, and laying in the sun on a sandy beach flickered dully in the back of her mind.

She vaguely felt a pair of hands on her shoulders, shaking her softly, and the sound of someone speaking drifted down to her, as though from a long distance away. Not the dwarf voice like gravel of before, but a human voice, almost gentle, with a tone of something like concern. A familiar voice.

"Holly, can you hear me?"

The words strangely invigorated her, and she finally had the strength to force her eyes open, despite the weight of her eyelids, which at the moment felt like iron casings. For a moment, everything was blurred and out of focus, and she couldn't make sense of her surroundings.

Then the image cleared and the dark shape she saw leaning over her resolved itself into the face of a teenage human boy with long dark hair and a pale complexion. There was the same concern she'd detected in his voice in his face, though as with all Artemis's expressions of emotion, it would have appeared understated and mild on anyone else.

Seeing him calmed her somewhat, soothing the indistinct feelings of anxiety that had been consuming her subconscious while she'd been out of it.

"Artemis," she began, feeling more awake but still slightly disoriented. "I..."

For whatever reason, whether the drug finished wearing off or at that moment she just happened to finally come to her senses, Holly's brain suddenly snapped back into full awareness and the flood of the most recent memories her subconscious had been mulling over in the form of fragmented snapshots were suddenly returned to her, this time in more perspective. She felt a massive headache coming on.

Now, Holly had never been drunk before. In fact, she had never even tasted alcohol as the stuff tended to poison fairy magic, at least when it came from the Mud People, which statistics stated that ninety percent of it did. However, she imagined now that a night of revelry and getting completely plastered only to wake up the next morning to a terrific hangover had to feel something like this.

Not because of the drug in Butler's dart. No, more accurately, this was like waking up to a hangover after a night of partying and realizing that you had done something incredibly stupid while you were drunk. Something stupid like, say, kissing someone who was until just a few years ago your sworn enemy.

"Oh gods," she muttered. She anticipated her headache would not be going away any time soon.

"It's okay," Artemis reassured her in a brisk, official tone that did not seem quite appropriate given the circumstances. This was soon explained as he continued, "I don't have the lemur..." He corrected himself. "Well, actually, I do. The other me, but don't worry, I know where I'm going." That was Artemis, mind always on the mission.

"I mean, Oh gods, I think I kissed you," she clarified in a grim tone, pulling at her cheeks with her fingers and pushing so hard she left momentary indents in the skin.

Artemis said nothing in reply, but she did seem to have his complete attention now. He shifted slightly so that his eyes locked with hers.

From the first time they had met, Holly had been struck by how piercing Artemis Fowl's gaze was, and now she found she could not look away. He stared with eyes half obscured by sheaves of long black hair, looking as though he could stare right through her.

He can tell, she thought, a little desperately. He can tell what I'm thinking, right at this moment.

The same could not be said for her and Artemis's thoughts. As she stared back into his eyes, for a moment almost transfixed by them, she saw a face unreadable as always. Her magic was so depleted not even her fairy empathy could help her. However, she could still feel enough to sense that he was not hostile. Perhaps even... open?

Another thought rose unbidden in her mind. Perhaps he is contemplating how he can use this to his advantage in the future.

But the moment the thought came, she was immediately disgusted with herself. How could she think that about her own friend? Artemis was a changed individual, he showed it more all the time.

And so, Holly didn't look away, and found she couldn't look away, didn't want to. It was so warm and comfortable here, like this.

We've come through so many things together, she thought, dazed, seeing his hazel eye and the ghost trail of dried blood running from the corner. Would it be so wrong...?

A sharp voice in the back of her mind, her calm, professional side, cut in vehemently, Wrong? Of course it's wrong, for about a million reasons. Even if he wasn't a human, think of everything he's done. To you, to the People. He always has an ulterior motive for all he does. You can never take any part of him at face value.

He's changed, Holly answered vaguely, thoughts clouded and muddled as her senses were for a moment overpowered by the memory of the taste of blood mixed with salty tears on her lips...

You're not thinking, said the voice, but now as though from a distance, as it was slowly drowned out by the strength of the emotions churning inside her. It continued to whisper, You may look like an adolescent, but you're not. You're LEP, you're a professional.

The voice was reasonable, sensible. Cautious, focused, as one should be as an LEP captain. But she found she was having trouble concentrating on the voice. She could not bring herself to pay attention to it, in this moment.

Before it faded entirely, the voice had one last reminder, one last piece of advice, the words as soft as a breath of wind. You know you can't trust him.

But Holly was beyond listening to her own advice, even if she had believed it. It was good to be cynical at times, but surely that didn't apply to one's friends.

Holly wouldn't have minded if the moment had continued to go on. She wouldn't have minded continuing to bask indefinitely in the warmth of those threads of emotion she felt with her muted fairy empathy, this connection between them.

But then Artemis suddenly blinked and looked away, breaking the moment. She felt immediately a distance building itself up between them again. Artemis was upset, troubled – or so the vague sense she got from her magical empathy told her so.

A little let down, she looked away as well. Perhaps in having this expression on her face she had crossed some line. Perhaps it bothered him that she was evidently so distracted while his mother lay gravely ill in her bed back in their own time.

Holly felt a block of ice drop into her stomach as another thought struck her.

Or perhaps he remembered who it was who may end up being responsible for his mother's death.

He had told her it wasn't her fault, that he didn't hate her. And maybe he really felt that way. But still, the simple fact couldn't not bother him. It would always be lurking in the back of his mind, a wrenching truth that may never go away. If Angeline passed on, would he forever associate Holly with that pain, the way she associated those contemptible Mud Men that she still despised to this very day with the loss of her own mother?

Holly's head spun, she felt suddenly sick. But then, to her surprise, a hand lightly touched her elbow and she felt Artemis at her side, gently helping her to her feet.

The close proximity slightly heightened her magical empathy and she felt again his underlying tension and anxiety. However, she sensed vaguely mixed in with those a sort of tenderness as well. Whether it was a feeling like she was feeling right now, or that he felt sorry for her, she couldn't say. But it wasn't complete animosity at least. Perhaps not even Artemis knew what to feel.

And, as quickly as the despair had set in, it receded. In its place, renewed vigor flowed through her, along with a new determination that chased away the rest of her doubt.

She had been waffling up to now, uncertain of how wise attempting this mission was, uncertain if success was even possible. But there was no backing out now. If they didn't get the lemur, Angeline and possibly many others would die, and Holly may have been the root cause. And now Artemis may die as well, thanks to her healing.

But that wouldn't happen. Not if Holly had anything to say about it. She would do everything she could to give this mission every chance of success, and she could already feel forming in her mind the beginnings of a plan.

"Reborn," said Holly, as she stepped out of the grave Mulch had made for her. She doubted even Artemis could know just how appropriate that word was.

A/N: I wouldn't consider romance my strong suit, but... it certainly is fun to write. (; (If sort of taxing, lol.)

(Sorry for the long author's note, feel free to skip it if you like. X3)

Ah, so many things I'm questioning about how this chapter came out now... I'm still wondering even now whether I should have opted to include a little more of the cage scene from the book. The dramatic buildup in the original scene was just so epic (or so I thought), I didn't know what I could do with it besides just copy and paste it into here, and for obvious reasons I didn't want to do that, lol. I keep feeling like it came across sort of clipped here and not quite adequate though, so I kept trying to add more to it to better transition from the last chapter... Sigh, oh well.

Also, some of you may be questioning the 'sudden' transition from 'Ew, gross' mentality of Holly's to something, uh, totally different, lol. I guess that's also been a criticism of the original TTP that I've heard from time to time. Hmm, well, to explain it properly would probably end up going into something long and convoluted, not to mention lame to talk about at this point when there's still a lot left to the story, heh. So, suffice it to say, I wanted to keep the abruptness of the original TTP because it seemed like to me that it was indeed meant to be sudden, in a way.

That is, feelings about something may build up in a person over time, but the realization or actual expression of those feelings may happen abruptly (in books, usually it's triggered by some particular event). Resentment, infatuation, pain, etc. are things I think that can be sort of subconsciously suppressed, and so the character may not even be aware of them until something happens to force them to acknowledge them. But even then, the character themselves may not be able to immediately pinpoint absolutely the cause of their acting the way they are. So I have to admit, for a variety of reasons I found the way things happened in TTP perfectly reasonable and believable. Though that's just my opinion. (;

Heh, a lot of you may be thinking that that much was sort of obvious... But I always feel the need to explain these things. (; I'll try hard to hold back most of the time though, since I think I'll just give too much away if I explain too much, and the plot of this fanfic's predictable enough as it, lol.

But anyway, thank you so, so much for all the reviews last chapter! I really appreciate all the responses, I'm glad there are some people who've been able to enjoy this so far. For anyone who's reading this, hope to hear from you too! (:

Posted 10/15/11