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

Pages: 176 – 180

Chapter 9: Back to Reality

True to Artemis's prediction, they arrived at the McGraney farm which lay above the underground shuttleport less than ten minutes later. Artemis deftly parked the car where it would be most convenient for the dwarf to utilize his clandestine entrance method which would let them get around all the tight security set up by LEP.

Mulch for one seemed dismayed to learn that Holly and Artemis already knew about it, but really, with people from the future he should have learned to expect it by now – A fact Holly and Artemis were sure to point out by silently staring at him like he was a moron. However, Mulch's spirits couldn't be dampened for long as he eagerly anticipated the unbelievable amount of booty he would be getting his dirt-encrusted hands on.

"Nice clay," he commented, putting his abnormally large mouth to the ground. "Tastes like profit."

Holly got out of the car after her two friends, and was hit with a blast of intoxicatingly clear, fresh air. She breathed deeply, taking in the smell of grass and morning dew. Sometimes she forgot just how wonderful the world was aboveground.

Holly pushed thoughts of the country out of her mind for the moment however, and remembered Mulch pawing the ground, his greedy face bright with excitement. She recalled again then that this was not the Mulch she knew from their time, so she would have to deal with the dwarf the way she had before they had become friends – that meant threats, generally. The bribery part had always been secondary.

Striding over to where Much was crouching, she kicked him with the side of Artemis's expensive shoe. Not hard enough to really hurt him, but enough to get his attention and knock him over. "There will be no profit for you if we can't get into the terminal unseen," she reminded him irritably.

"I thought we were supposed to be friends," the dwarf sulked, getting to his feet. "Easy with the kicking and punching. Are you always this aggressive?"

True, she had just barely punched him without the least bit of hesitation when they had been back by Rathdown Park, too. Sad as it was, she found abusing the kleptomaniac dwarf made her feel a bit more like her old self. Not to mention, she still hadn't quite forgotten the 'Arty this, Arty that' thing, and she was not feeling particularly charitable toward her and Artemis's mutual partner at the moment.

Holly chose to ignore the question and kept pressing him for reassurance that he could do what he claimed, even though she knew very well what Mulch was capable of. Better to take a leaf out of Commander Root's book and keep rather on the bullying side to make it clear where the relationship stood – Of course, she didn't have quite the experience her old commander had wracked up over the years, so her threats didn't have quite the same effect, but she was working on it.

Holly started a little when she learned that Mulch would have to leave them behind for a short while, as, unlike at Rathdown Park, this tunnel would be too long to allow anyone to follow right behind him – or at least too long for anyone who didn't particularly want their clothing covered in tunnel recyclings. With one last parting jab at Artemis after Artemis informed him they would give him fifteen minutes before they would follow suit, Mulch dove into the ground, disappearing from view in a matter of seconds. She and Artemis were alone.

Holly felt her mouth go dry as all the things she had been planning to say promptly deserted her.

Artemis, on the other hand, was looking at the place where Mulch had been a moment before, a look of something like admiration on his face. "What a species," he said in wonder. "If they could take their minds off their stomachs for a few minutes, they could rule the world."

This comment was enough to snap the imaginary tension like a dry twig, and Holly came out of her temporary state of paralysis. She almost laughed. Now there was the Artemis she knew.

Holly turned and alighted easily onto the car's hood, where she laid back against the windshield glass. She closed her eyes and felt the gentle warmth of the rising sun on her face. It was so pleasant she thought she might have been able to go to sleep there if circumstances had allowed.

"Maybe they don't want to rule the world," she suggested, the hint of a smile on her lips. "Maybe that's just you, Arty."

Artemis said nothing in reply and a short silence followed.

Now's your chance, she thought, and her moment of relaxation slowly began to give way to a mounting sense of dread. Just come out and say it. Instead, she heard herself saying conversationally, "It's a pity we had to steal this car. But the note we left was clear enough. The owner should find it without a problem."

"Yes, the car," Artemis repeated distractedly, sounding as though his thoughts were elsewhere.

Say it, she urged herself, a silent desperation twisting at her insides now. Just say it.

She felt the weight of the car dip as Artemis came to sit beside her.

The pressure was building in her chest and pressing against her jaw, but still she couldn't get her mouth to open. She needed more time; she still hadn't a clue what she wanted to say.

Holly remained silent. However, she kept expecting Artemis to start the conversation. Perhaps he would make a comment about how the mission was going, or ask her a technical question about the equipment they may get or something similar in order to gather information, as he was forever doing, but he said nothing.

Minutes passed. The silence weighed on her, and the time seemed to lengthen and stretch taut, as she tried to scrounge enough courage to just pry her lips apart. Yet anxiety seemed to sweep away whatever nerve she worked up, because she found herself also not wanting to put an end to this time just yet.

But still Artemis didn't speak and it occurred to her that Artemis already knew exactly what she wanted to say, only now he was intentionally granting her that chance to say it. Perhaps he was thinking, like she was, how his may be the last and best opportunity before the two of them returned to their own time. After all, this would be an uncomfortable topic for both of them, and once they went back and got reconnected to their own separate worlds once more, it would be hard to find a place or time where they could be this certain of privacy.

Right now they were sitting side by side, as isolated from everyone else they knew as they would ever be – who knew if they would ever stumble across a situation as suitable for this purpose as this one again.

For some reason, despite how much she missed all their friends and looked forward to seeing them when they got back, that thought made her feel a bit depressed.

Holly's eyelids flickered, and she quickly forced herself to snap out of it. That wasn't the point. The point was, she reminded herself, that this could be her final real chance to explain things, to alleviate this awkwardness between them they were both at the moment pretending not to notice. If Holly knew one thing about this whole event, it was that she did not want to leave Artemis's impression of her so unresolved, to let him think she was the kind of person who could be so distracted, made so unreliable because of some silly adolescent fantasy.

Holly opened her eyes, allowing them to shift toward Artemis sitting on the car hood beside her. She forced herself to speak at last.

"Sorry about earlier," she blurted, wishing she could sound as casual as if this just happened to be a passing thought, and not the very subject she'd been going over and over in her mind practically the entire car ride over. She continued hesitantly. "You know, the thing."

"The kiss?" asked Artemis, showing little sign of discomfort at actually saying the dreaded word.

Holly found she could not look at him. She felt hot embarrassment creeping up her face and she had to close her eyes again to keep her voice steady. As she went on, Holly forced herself to pace the words, keeping them even and natural, despite the fact her every instinct was screaming at her to say everything in a rush and get it all out and over with a soon as possible.

"Yes," she answered, then added honestly, unable to stop herself, "I don't know what's happening to me. We're not even the same species. And when we go back, we will be ourselves again."

She could have grimaced. This wasn't what she wanted to say – These things that only made what was going through her time-regressed mind even more sadly obvious.

Holly pressed a hand to her face, fingers extended to cover both her eyes, a burning feeling a little like shame starting at the front of her forehead and slowly spreading through her like the heating of an iron.

"Listen to me," she said, lips half-twitching into a self-mocking smile. "Babbling. The LEP's first female captain."

And now she was prattling on even more. Artemis was almost always so efficient with his words, perhaps he would soon start to get impatient. She needed to hurry up and get to the point.

"That time stream has turned me into what you would call a teenager again," she finished. Yes, that would explain it to him. That was the real excuse for why she was acting this way.

Holly pulled her hand away from her face and slowly opened her eyes to see Artemis's reaction, and found he was watching her intently from behind a curtain of dark hair.

As usual, she could not tell what he was thinking behind those sharp, mismatched eyes. Even her magical empathy was so weak at the moment she could only get the vaguest sense of a sort of confusion of conflicting emotions. But once again, she didn't see hostility or annoyance in those eyes.

Now she would say it. Give them both the resolution they needed to this little episode, and make things the same as they had always been between them.

Oh well, it's like you said. This is all temporary, like dress-up. We'll be ourselves again soon enough. I'll be myself again.

If she could just say that, this would all be over, and they could both breathe a sigh of relief as their easy, relatively straight-forward friendship went back to normal.

The words were already on her tongue as she stared back into Artemis's mismatched eyes, the light from the rising sun illuminating his pale face.

But Holly Short had never been much good at lying, especially to herself. And so she said instead, smiling softly, despite all the worries that ate away inside her, despite her lack of confidence, "What if I'm stuck like this? That wouldn't be so bad, would it?"

Silence filled the space between them as she waited for a response. It was not the dark, oppressive silence of before that had seemed to hang over her head and weigh on her mind. Her words seemed to linger in the air like the ringing of a bell, the light sound humming in time to the building sense of fear and relief and anticipation all mingling together in her stomach.

Holly had no clear expectation for what she thought he would say; never before had she found herself able to tell for certain what Artemis Fowl was thinking or feeling. She would not have been surprised if, pragmatic and focused as always, his answer was something like, 'We can talk about that once we rescue the lemur and my mother is well again, Captain' or maybe, 'It is highly unlikely that you will remain in that state once we return, so further discussion of it would be immaterial.' She would be able to live with those. She could shrug, smiling, and say, 'Okay, you're the genius.' Even if it hurt, even if it was hard, it was only to be expected.

And yet, deep down she felt there was a small part of her that could almost dare to believe, that could consider the possibility that he might after all be favorably disposed...

Artemis rarely showed much in the way of emotion, save when it came to the well-being of his parents. He always kept himself calm and in control, so that his emotions could not cloud his judgment, or be used against him on the mental battlefield.

As the two of them sat there on the hood of the stolen Mini Cooper, continuing to hold one another's gazes, he appeared the same as he usually did, face smooth, thoughts concealed behind an unyielding composure.

But then, his careful mask of calm and absolute emotional restraint flickered, then split. His face twisted as though he was in pain, eyes stricken, haunted, just as they had been when he had admitted what he had done to the lemur.

He spoke suddenly, as though the words had been punched out of his mouth, words that brought the adolescent Holly Short crashing back to reality.

"It wasn't you, Holly."

A/N: Well, I guess that effectively puts an end to the most romantic section of the book. (Well, okay, there will still be romance as Artemis and Holly's relationship is the main point of this fanfiction, but it seems like the sappiest parts are over... maybe? (; )

Anyway, thank you so much for all the reviews last chapter! I was worried about how it came out, I admit... But I didn't want to wait too long between posts, like I do with my other fanfictions. (I know, I need to work on EoD again)

Speaking of which, I was hoping to post this a bit sooner, but it turned out to be an unusually busy week for me and I couldn't get to it before now. (Even now, I have to get back to my homework XD)

So yeah, please review and tell me what you think.

Posted 10/29/11