Chapter Text
Holly Short was no stranger to nightmares; they came with saving the world, after all.
Megalomaniac pixies, collapsing underground cities, half-rotted mentors clawing their way from soft earth in mirrored sunglasses. These were some of the saner terrors produced by her traitorous mind while she slept.
They were incredibly vivid - a symptom of her heightened elven emotions, if Artemis were to be believed. Holly wasn’t a fairy prone to crippling fear in her waking moments, but often found herself at its mercy in the sweat-soaked, choking hours of the early morning.
While she wouldn’t admit it, the Irishman’s presence at the end of a communicator made the breathless release into consciousness far easier to bear. She didn’t need to, of course; they both knew, and Artemis kept it to himself.
She was quietly grateful about that, for her pride’s sake. Especially after the last time, christening her first overnight stay at Villa Éco with demons in the dark. The man's slim arms around her had been a surprise, but she’d pressed her tear-stained face into his cotton nightshirt all the same.
D’arvit, she’d thought about that particular sensation more than she was comfortable admitting. Something Artemis didn’t know, thankfully. Big brains didn’t count for everything.
It was a particularly potent dream that had troubled Holly’s rest in more recent years, as the Interstellar carried its intrepid explorers out beyond where she could follow. Artemis’s return had subdued the intensity, but she suspected it would take time before something more bearable took its place.
This dream always starts the same, perched on the shuddering precipice of Hybras’s volcanic crater against an approaching army of demons. The dawn-burnt sky overhead, blackened ground beneath her boots. For now at least.
She is backpedalling, firing blast after blast from her weapon with steely determination. Her closest friend struggles with the weight of a silver-cased bomb, something that had, until recently, been attached to her own wrist. Qwan and N°1, their newfound warlock allies, move towards a flattened area nearby, intending to use the lethal device’s energy to catapult them through time, back home.
Leon Abbot, self-proclaimed leader of the eighth fairy family, shoulders through his hellish wave of advancing soldiers, sword grasped in a taloned hand. Holly hits him every time, his plated body throwing up grey clouds as he crashes down into the now-nomadic earth. Somehow, she is terribly aware that all is lost if he reaches them. Nightmares care little for defiance, however.
Despite her best efforts, her howling adversaries close in, forcing a fighting retreat down the crater wall as the others stumble on. Abbot gains ground with them, emerging from the battle line with whispered taunts. The sulphuric wind carries them readily, as though he were mere inches away.
“I’m coming for you, elf. You can watch your friends die, then it’s your turn.”
She flashes him a sardonic grin, white teeth bright upon ashen skin, “You’ll have to stop tumbling first.” Holly flicks the power level up before burying another bolt of energy into his chest, moving on to the next threat.
She sounds braver than she feels; he always comes back. No matter how many backflips she puts him through.
The group were now positioned around the bomb’s new resting place on the plateau, rings of pulsing blue fire obscuring it periodically from her view. The warlock’s crimson markings glimmer in the half-gloom, racing wildly across their slate-coloured bodies as the spell’s intensity increases. Together, they are surrounded by a rope of snarling monstrosities, and all Holly can do is delay the tightening of the noose.
Artemis has a plan, it’ll work, Holly thinks, railing against her fading bravado. I just have to give them time. Again and again she fires, throwing demons into the air as the landscape breaks apart to a soundscape of echoing booms.
“Holly, I’m sorry.” Artemis’s broken voice pierces the din, full of failure.
She spins to face him, instinct drawing her weapon around to rest on the obvious danger. Her world turns to stone in an instant. Silence descends, but for the blood pounding away in her pointed ears. Dust motes hang suspended, and the oncoming horde are frozen witnesses to the massacre.
Qwan and N°1 lay unmoving around the bomb, their glowing red runes now darkened in death. Leon Abbot stands behind a kneeling Artemis, a hand resting amicably on his shoulder. The other is hidden from view, forcing the captive to arch away from the wicked tip pressed into his back.
His forlorn blue eyes bore into her own for an eternity, shame mingled with a deep affection. He is silent as his executioner drives the blade forward.
Holly’s dearest friend holds her gaze as he slips into the soot-stained surface, his essence pulsing out to moisten the parched ground. A slow, warm smile spreads across his face, and the Neutrino’s trigger finally breaks under the impossible pressure as she jolts awake.
