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

Pages: 169 – 171, 176

Chapter 8: Moonlight Whispers

Holly made sure to sock Mulch one for that horrendously embarrassing and, in her opinion, highly unnecessary 'Arty this, Arty that' comment from earlier; although, she supposed her very valid excuse of annoyance over the dwarf's choice to bury her alive to shut her up when there had to have been countless other less uncomfortable ways to accomplish the same goal would have been reason enough as well. Once that was out of the way, she told them her idea.

The moment they heard what she was thinking, a slow grin spread across Mulch's face, his eyes shining with greed. Artemis, though his face didn't betray any special enthusiasm, was nevertheless probably relieved to be free of the task of negotiating the terms of the payment in exchange for the dwarf's continued assistance: Mulch had been showing every sign of bailing on them early while he still could, but this new incentive of Holly's appeared to have revived his interest in the strange pairs' exploits.

In an unusual bout of adolescent immaturity, she and Artemis argued for a bit over who would shake Mulch's spit-sodden hand to make the agreement official. Holly was happy to say that Artemis lost.

She did wonder for a moment though if she had gone too far, pointing out that it was his mother they were here to save, but Artemis did not seem to resent it. In fact, his only response was to give a slight, almost sheepish smile – like a parent with an assortment of bad habits, who inevitably had those same habits turned against him by his own precocious child.

He said as he turned to Mulch, reluctantly offering his delicate hand for the unpleasant business, "You, Captain Short, are getting as bad as me."

And so, they were going to Tara.

Now that Holly was going all out on this changing-the-past business, hang the consequences, it had occurred to her that having access to fairy technology might give them an edge over little Artemis. And since she had access to all the fairy equipment at all the various fairy surface sites because of her status as an LEP officer, albeit an LEP officer from almost eight years into the future, they could get a hold of some with relative ease.

The technology also of course came in handy in satisfying Mulch enough to continue to work with them, which was almost as important. After all, when it came to stealing things and breaking into secure facilities, Mulch Diggums was indispensable, not that she would ever tell him so.

Artemis immediately pointed out that they would need a means to get to Tara, and suggested that they 'secure a vehicle from the residential sector' for the trip. In laymen's terms, they needed to steal a car.

Mulch had no problem with the plan of course, but Artemis seemed a bit taken aback when Holly raised no objection either. First the Tara shuttleport equipment, now this, or so she imagined he was thinking. She even volunteered to be the one to retrieve the keys from the house of the car they selected, a moderately worn Mini Cooper, leaving Artemis to merely raise an eyebrow slightly at her enthusiasm.

Mulch's response wasn't quite so polite. Rolling his eyes at this last suggestion, the career criminal just said in a very patronizing tone, "Uh, no offense, Officer, but why don't you leave this sort of work to the professionals, eh?"

Holly's scowl didn't appear to faze the dwarf in the least as he skipped around the corner of the house to do his work and disappeared from sight.

Holly shook her head, deciding to let it go, and instead moved toward the car, automatically heading for the driver's door.

"Actually," said Artemis quietly as he came up behind her, "I think I will do the driving for this trip."

Though it was the middle of the night and everyone in the neighborhood was probably fast asleep, Holly followed Artemis's lead and kept her voice low even as she said incredulously, "You?"

"Yes," said Artemis, and Holly could see something like amusement glittering in his eyes in the dim light from the street lamp a few meters away. "Believe it or not, I'm more than qualified to pilot a number of different vehicles including a helicopter, a jet, and a variety of small aircraft. Trust me when I say I will have no trouble handling a simple car with an automatic shift."

Holly was not convinced. She had some experience with Artemis's coordination and basic motor skills; to say she had been unimpressed would probably be the understatement of the century. In fact, Holly guessed that if the teen was ever tied up and forced to enter an arcade, he might have a shot at setting a record for all-time low score, as long as it wasn't some kind of puzzle or quiz game.

"I can drive, Artemis, it's no trouble," she said in what she hoped was a non-challenging way. If he thought it was a challenge, there'd be no hope of convincing him to step aside, even for the sake of the good of all.

Artemis chuckled slightly. "Thank you for your vote of confidence. But no, that is not a good idea. First, we would have to find something to stack on the seat in order for you to be able to see over the dashboard. Inconvenient, you would have to agree, and possibly time-consuming. Even then, there is no guarantee you would be able to reach the pedals anyway. Also, though it's unlikely at this time of night, we may have the misfortune to pass a patrol car. It may be a bit conspicuous to have a figure that appears no bigger than a child sitting at the steering wheel. I would say the fewer humans you are forced to mermerize on this trip, the better."

Holly didn't have a good comeback for either of these of course, so instead she asked, "Have you ever driven a car before?"

"...Irrelevant," Artemis said airily, though his lips were still curled slightly with amusement. "No need to look so grim. I am at a legal driving age, remember? Unlike you, Captain Short. What are you in human terms – fifteen at the most?"

Holly pretended to be annoyed, but was actually finding this exchange rather enjoyable. "That's still at least forty years older than you in actual years."

"Hey, I thought we were on a tight schedule," said Mulch, who had appeared beside them seemingly out of nowhere. "Are you two going to stand around whispering in the moonlight all night?"

Embarrassed, Holly stepped quickly away from Artemis.

"You're right," said Artemis, his demeanor growing serious once again, though he was rubbing his temples as though something was bothering him. "We need to go immediately. Did you leave the message?"

"Yes," sighed Mulch, though sounding as though he'd been severely put upon to do so. "Don't see the point much though."

"The owners will likely not even notice the car's absence until we are out of Tara and well on our way to the trade-off point, where the younger me is currently taking the lemur," said Artemis as he carefully opened the door and slid inside, while Holly went around to the front passenger side, and Mulch took the center back seat. "However, we are only borrowing this vehicle, and I believe it is safe to assume the owners will want it back at some point."

"Unfortunately, we won't be able to do much about the smell," Holly put in, giving Mulch a wink.

"Very funny," muttered the dwarf, while Artemis concentrated on backing the car out of the driveway.

As it turned out, Artemis wasn't so bad a driver as Holly had feared. Which, admittedly, wasn't saying too much, but Artemis seemed to possess enough dexterity to keep the car on the road going in a mostly straight line through a deserted countryside at least.

The next few hours of driving alternately down the highway and along back winding country roads at last gave Holly some time to think – and if she was being perfectly honest, she had to say that she perfectly loathed it.

Though Holly's eyes stayed focused on the shadowy scenery outside for the most part, from time to time her eyes would inevitably drift to her friend sitting in the driver's seat. His hair was apparently bothering him as every once in a while he reached up to brush it out of his line of vision, only to have the black, tangled mess promptly fall right back into place.

Though his eyes carefully scanned the dark road ahead, his mind seemed to be elsewhere, withdrawn and distant. If she really concentrated she could sense a vague melancholy radiating from him.

They probably would have gone along in total silence if not for Mulch's incessant chatter, a near-continuous stream of complaints about there not being any food in the vehicle and exultation over the huge haul that awaited him at the Tara shuttleport. Holly knew the dwarf probably only talked because he liked the sound of his own voice, so he was easy to tune out and soon her thoughts had so engrossed her that they shut out all else.

I kissed Artemis, she remembered, though the thought felt as though it had never left her mind. How was she supposed to feel about that?

Disgusted? suggested her ever-reliable professional side. Sick to your stomach?

Holly found she did feel disgusted with herself, but not because of it. How could she keep dwelling on these things when they were in the middle of a mission? Why in the world was she allowing herself to become so distracted?

She was certain Artemis had detected the truth of what she was feeling back at Rathdown Park, when she had first awoken from the tranquilizer and had been for a moment so unguarded.

It was just as Juliet had said all those years ago, back when Artemis was still the People's enemy. "Oh, he'd find out. Artemis finds out about everything. Sometimes I think he can see inside my head, too." Artemis's eyes indeed seemed able to penetrate Holly's skull, to see straight into the inner workings of her mind and read what her thoughts were. That keen perceptiveness was one of the talents she had always had to admire, however grudgingly.

What must he be thinking about her now? This lapse of focus, this childishness could have negative repercussions in terms of their mission if she fell apart again as she nearly had in the gorilla cage. After seeing her act like this and knowing what she was thinking, would he ever be able to respect her again?

Holly stared out into the deep night sky on the horizon, at the tiny gleaming stars that dotted the expanse and at the moment seemed so far away. The vehicle rocked and jarred her as they went down along the rural country road, the soft growl of the engine in her ears like the distant, unavoidable approach of a prowling predatory animal.

An iron weight seemed to be forming in her chest. A dark, oppressive fog that hung over her head and clung to her arms and neck, pressing down on her. For Artemis of all people to look at her, not as an officer of the LEP, a reliable and level-headed friend and ally, but as a 'girlie' who cried and went into hysterics at a critical moment during an operation, who even for a moment would entertain dangerously puerile ideas, it was simply...

There was a yelp and a curse from the back seat as Mulch, while rummaging through his pack again to look over his spoils from his earlier heist, accidentally hit the button on the flashlight and it flickered on.

Grumbling, the photosensitive dwarf quickly switched it off again a moment later, but for a brief moment the inside of the car was illuminated and Holly saw her own face reflected back at her in the car window. For an instant she saw a shockingly young woman, a girl really, dressed in a black suit and wearing a silver wig, her brow so furrowed with intensity of thought that she looked almost angry.

Holly reached up with her free hand to massage the spot between her eyebrows, to smooth the crease, though it was a mere superficial gesture.

Intolerable.

Just imagining his respect for her fading and falling away just like that, and so soon after the Hybras journey had left her feeling so strangely insecure as she wondered how much the world really needed or wanted her, was so intolerable, enough to leave her nearly paralyzed with the shame of it. Just for one thoughtless moment, one could lose so much.

As Holly's eyes stayed trained unseeing on the window, she felt her throat contract, burning with the effort of keeping her eyes dry.

She realized as she sat there that she would prefer any kind of reaction to one where his entire view of her would have completely changed, where he would start to look at her with distant, pitying eyes. She could take snide comments and hostility; even if he was disgusted by her sudden strange behavior, or she had to endure little smarts jokes about it from time to time, or if he flatly informed her he simply didn't find her very –

She stopped suddenly, distracted from her train of thought. Her brow furrowed further. No, she thought. No, that was wrong. That wasn't what she had meant to – It wasn't like she was actually hoping for some kind of –

Again she halted these incoherent thoughts right where they were. Because somehow she knew that completing them, even if for the purpose of denying them, was dangerous.

Instead, she shook her head slightly to clear it, forcing herself to switch gears, to try to get a handle on herself.

Okay, she told herself firmly, there wasn't any point obsessing over what she had done or may have done to their friendship. What she needed to do was back up and put this entire situation into perspective. With her adolescent dramatics, one would think the world was ending. But the solution to something of this level of insignificance couldn't be that much of a problem.

After just a minute of clear, focused thinking, it came to her. As expected, the way to repair this situation she'd somehow managed to get herself into was both simple and fairly obvious.

The fact was, the blame for why she was acting like this could all be rightly placed on their journey through the time stream. Adolescents were prone to behave in an overly emotional fashion, and the onset of hormonal developments were liable to make even the most practical and sound-thinking individuals act like trolls during mating season, with stupidly vacant, starstruck faces upturned to their object of choice. Even Artemis himself had gotten distracted at times during the events leading up to their disappearance to Hybras, when their opponent had been the pretty and intelligent, if a bit headstrong, Minerva Paradizo.

So all Holly really needed to do was explain herself properly. As long as she just let Artemis know how much the stream had altered her, casually assert that the way she was acting and feeling was all because of this childish adolescent body, things would work out. He had said himself that the effects wouldn't last beyond this trip, so they wouldn't even have to worry about it once they got back. All she had to do was tell him that, apologize for her outrageously abnormal behavior, and everything would be fine. She was sure he would understand.

Of course, naturally Holly didn't feel particularly comfortable approaching such a sensitive topic with Mulch sitting right behind them, listening in on every word they said, so she stayed silent and settled in to wait for an opportunity when she could speak with Artemis privately. But even so, as she made up her mind about a course of action, the burning tightness in Holly's throat eased, and she blinked as her shining eyes return to normal.

Instead, Holly turned her attention to busying herself in an attempt to bring some measure of organization to her thoughts, about what she would tell her human friend. However, the more she seemed to work to plan out ahead of time what to say, the more everything seemed to grow ever more confused and jumbled inside her head. She had always been better when it came to improvisation for this sort of thing, she supposed.

Holly eventually gave up and instead turned her eyes to really look at Artemis for the first time in the last half-hour.

She had been purposely avoiding doing this for a while, preferring to gaze out the side window with her chin resting on her palm as the darkness rushed by outside, while she shot worried sideways glances at him out of the corner of her eye. This was mainly because turning and just silently watching him was precisely the thing she moronically had the dangerous temptation to do, and that was definitely not happening.

But that was only because of this adolescent body, she had decided. So perhaps, as she would be going completely back to normal once they got back to their own time anyway, it wouldn't be such a very dreadful battle to allow herself to lose this once. To give in just a little, for the time being.

Her head still resting on her hand and her almost bored expression unchanging, her eyes flickered nonchalantly over the boy's worn features. Looking at him, she had to admit the urge was not because her human friend was anything particularly exciting to look at, dressed in the now seriously grunged-up tracksuit matted with dirt and blood, long tangled dark hair falling every which way over his face, and short, wiry stubble growing out of his chin like the spiky side of Velcro.

Rather, she thought, as she attempted to interpret her alien adolescent emotions and wants, she realized she was finding it very... reassuring, somehow. To just sit quietly next to the one who had become perhaps her closest ally, human though he was, this partner she relied on more than anyone, was oddly warm and comfortable.

Had Holly been here with anyone else, she had the feeling that she would have felt the necessity to take charge of things in order to make sure they got out alive, to make sure all the i's were dotted and the t's were crossed, except perhaps Commander Root.

But now, right here, she felt strangely relaxed, safe in the knowledge that this boy was taking responsibility for things, always scheming and planning to make certain things worked out in the end. Back when she had been an actual adolescent, Holly had still had the protection of her mother, so perhaps now she could not help but seek out that assurance from somewhere again. It was natural she would turn to someone she had known for so long, and even grown to respect.

However, in this sudden, short-lived feeling of peace, a sense of unease settled over her. She was disconcerted as it occurred to her that it was this adolescent form that allowed her to feel so much better now than she had as an adult, sitting alone in her apartment after her return from Hybras.

Even as the warmth in her chest remained tainted with that underlying anxiety of how Artemis was now judging how she had acted at Rathdown Park, she felt a sort of excitement that she hadn't had since she had first gotten involved in the affair with the demons, when she had finally gotten a break from her admittedly difficult, frustrating work at the detective agency to go find out what Fowl was up to this time.

'Excitement'... How ridiculous. But even so, she had to remind herself that this was only a temporary state of things. Once she stopped being an adolescent, this ephemeral sense of warmth would likewise die away.

And so, to enjoy this feeling, if just a little bit in this moment...

That was okay, wasn't it?

Holly was about to look away, definitely not wanting Mulch to notice her distraction, but then Artemis glanced her way and smiled slightly. "We should be approaching our destination now," he said.

Holly finally lifted her head from her palm. "Good thing," she answered. "Looks like the sun is going to be coming up soon." She glanced out the window at the barest hint of the red line just visible along the horizon.

Seeing the miles of empty fields devoid of buildings or the activity of the city gave her a good feeling. It made her feel purified somehow, closer to nature. Yet there were also those times occasionally when she was out flying above the empty landscapes for one of her Recon missions she found that it could also make her feel a bit lonely too.

She glanced back at Artemis, smiling. Not now, though.

The sun is coming up," Mulch cut in worriedly. "Uh, how much further is it? We dwarfs don't like sunlight. I may have some sunblock with me, but the supply's limited, you know."

"We're very close now, so there's no need to worry," Artemis reassured him. "You'll be underground again in no time."

"Okay, human," Mulch grumbled. "Let's just hope you're more right about this than you were with your 'great plan' to get the monkey."

Artemis sighed. "It's a lemur."

A/N: Ah yes, and still more romance. (Are you getting sick by now, or just getting warmed up? (; )

Anyway, sorry this took longer to post than the others have been so far. When I read over this, it felt like it needed a lot more work than I had expected it would... And I didn't want to post it until I was at least marginally satisfied with it, though I'm still worried I may have put this up too soon. Unfortunately, if all the chapters are this much work to complete, some of the later ones might take even longer. XD Not to mention changing it so much tends to result in more typos...

But in any case, thank you so much to everyone who reviewed last chapter! (: I love feedback, so I hope to hear anyone's thoughts on this fic so far, if you like.

Posted 10/21/11