prompt: everyone deserves a second chance

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So happy to get back to this! I don't know why it's crawled into my brain and died but I know better than to fight it.

Truth be told, Angus was angry at Sinead. Most people would understand his anger: her promise to that thing seemed like betrayal. Part of Angus understood though. It was in her nature, for one, and two, she said she had no intention of turning him over. But she still made the deal, a deal concerning him, his mortality, without even talking to him about it first.

She was unseelie through and through, he realized, and he had to be glad that she was human enough, the way she'd been raised and by whom, that she cared enough to work a loophole. Angus, though, wasn't sure he trusted her enough to really do it. There was a niggle of doubt that just grew bigger, stronger, louder, as they went on, burning in his chest as he thought about what it would mean for him to no longer be mortal. He knew that's the route she wanted to take, not to simply split up and no longer be traveling together, or even find some other hapless mortal to give to the guardian instead of him. She meant to make him ... like her.

He stared at the back of her head as she paused, leaning against the sharply curved grey rockface they'd been following for too long. He felt a pang of sympathy then, remembering that she was an air fey, that being trapped underground like this was taxing, certainly on her health and maybe on her judgement. Was that why she'd made the deal? She wasn't thinking straight? Or had she been planning it?

That, he realized, was the crux of his worry, his distrust. He didn't know if she'd planned this from the start and by how much. Had she intended to hand him over and then realized she had a loophole? Or had she formulated her words just so, intending from the beginning to weasel out of it? He prayed it was the latter, but was filled with just enough doubt to consider the former.

Ahead, Sinead sighed and slid downwards, settling against the wall for another break. That was three in the last two hours alone. They were getting more frequent and he'd yet to see even a glimmer of the outdoors or open air. Surely the entire Otherworld wasn't underground. She'd die before they got what they came fore, if that were the case. Despite himself, Angus knelt beside her, smoothing her dark blonder hair off of her face.

"I'm sorry Angus," she said quietly. "I didn't really plan this well."

Angus frowned. That statement lent weight to his worry and mistrust.

"A sylph, underground so long. Foolish," she muttered. "But I thought by now..."

"There is open air in the Otherworld, isn't there," Angus asked anxiously. "Otherwise..."

She nodded. "Otherwise I'll die," she said simply. "And if so, that's...well that's one more loophole so you can get back home." Because if she was dead. he wouldn't be traveling with her any longer.

Angus cursed. "I'm not letting you die, Sinead." He leaned forward and scooped her up, holding her close as he started walking again. Despite his fears, he couldn't let her die. He didn't know his way around for one, and two...he cared about her more deeply than he wanted to admit.

"Angus," Sinead said in a tired voice, holding onto him limply, "do you know why...why I brought you?"

"So I could carry you around?" He tried to inject some levity and was rewarded with a slight smile and a light tap on the back of his neck where her hand came to rest. "That's only part of it," she replied loftily. "You siad you wanted to be like me, didn't you? This was the first time you said it out loud, but I suspected... when you only started spending more time with me after I told you, I knew you wanted to know more. But that's not all. Don't you wonder why we were so drawn to each other? Why out of everyone I met since I came here, you were the one I always went to?"

"I just thought it was because I was so stunningly attractive."

"Shut up, that too," Sinead replied. "Seriously."

Angus hesitated, then kept walking. She was right. Yeah he found her attractive, more so than any of teh girls he'd seen before or since. Yeah he liked her capricious personality, which was why he couldn't stay as angry with her as he wanted. But there was something more than that, something that kept drawing him to her, and apparently, vice versa. "Yeah. I do wonder."

"You know mortals can become fey? Something called a changeover. If you've got fey blood, you can call it forth, cross fully over. My dad did. He was born mortal but feytouched. He worked a changeover."

Angus thought about Sinead's father, who seemed more down to earth - no pun intended - than either his wife or daughter. Maybe that was why. But then what Sinead said sank in and his heart dropped. Only if you were feytouched. "Oh."

"Angus you're so bloody obtuse sometimes, you know that?" Sinead scolded him. "You think I'd say that if you- The reason we're so drawn to each other, why I made that deal, all of this... You're feytouched, Angus. You can changeover, if you wanted to. You can be like me. And if you do it here, in the Otherworld, it'll be easier. You may even wind up more powerful than if you did it in the mortal world or in Faerie. I didn't bring you here just for me. I brought you here for you."

Angus was so stunned he very nearly dropped her. There was a glimmer of hope that grew brighter, doing its best to eradicate the burgeoning mistrust in him. She was doing this for him. He stared down at her in silence and made a decision. He was going to trust her. Suspicions be damned, he was going to trust her.

She sat up suddenly in his arms. "The air's changing. Getting fresher. Keep going straight ahead, Angus, I think we've found the way out or this cave."

Finally, he thought, his head still swimming with everything she'd just said. Finally they could get to what drew them down here. Finally, things were starting to go right.

Jeebus I have lost the ability to just write short snippets of this thing.