The Third Hostage

“Please, Broon, stop this nonsense!” Dina screamed as the second shot was fired from the handgun that the faerie had so deftly retrieved from the waistband of the female officer waiting with Dina and taking her account of her kidnapping experience.

“I will not have you taken away from me!” The little fairy screamed, his voice straining to be heard over the rustle of chairs and screaming caused by the gunshot.

The worst part of the predicament was not that it was early in the morning, or that Dina was now a hostage yet again. It was instead the fact that she had retired home after a brief summary to police officers, and had to have her father drop her off after a few hours of rest in her own bed to finish up the small details of the report. It was then, after she had thought it was all over, and the fairy had calmed down enough to have his heart broken, that the little blue cockroach had decided to steal the police woman’s gun.

“I’m not being taken away from you. Please stop this nonsense – you’re going to get us all killed!” Dina sighed, resisting the urge to tear off the wings of the blue man with the firearm. It had been a very long ordeal, and all she wanted to do was go home and try to make sense of what was happening.

“You will. You will finish this report and then you will toss me away like a piece of used garbage. I know what you think I am. But I am a man, regardless of our anatomical difference. Don’t you see?” What Dina saw was her little stalker struggling to keep the gun leveled at the police officer he was pointing it at.

“Broon. What will it take for you to let this woman go?” Dina asked as the fairy maintained his grip. “What do you want? Do you want me to tell you that I love you? Fine. I can tell you these things all you want me to, but the truth is, I’m too young to decide something as important as that. How long have you been alive?”

“Many years.” Broon admitted. “And many more will come. I will wait, my darling. And so will she.” The fairy motioned with the gun for the police woman to sit down. For a new captor, it seemed he was pretty good at the whole handling of the gun thing.

“Um…Broon, is it?” The police woman asked hesitantly as she slowly and fluidly sat down. “I’m sure you can see the sense that this girl is speaking. She was just captured and left in a dark room for a long time by a crazy man. You rescued her – and how noble was that? I mean, that was amazing. It must have taken so much for you to do that. And she’s grateful – aren’t you, Dina?”

“Yes. Absolutely.” Dina said, smiling through her teeth as if it was the best thing she could possibly do. “I am so, so very grateful for what you did for me. That man was going to kill me.”

“He just wanted to sacrifice you to a bunch of centaurs. They would have treated you right.” The fairy admitted, but kept the gun level. “But I released you – so you are mine.”

“To be truly free, doesn’t she have to be able to make a choice?”

“She can make a choice.” The fairy argued. “She can turn me down, and let you die. She hasn’t known you for very long – I’m sure she’ll forget soon enough.”

Dina could see the SWAT team practically itching to break down the doors outside. They had not even locked them – they didn’t need to. Their supposed target was a five inch tall fairy brandishing a firearm much bigger than himself. If they risked taking a shot, and it hit the gun, the result could be lethal to all involved. If they did hit the fairy, the gun could drop and risk going off, anyway. There was also the possibility of them missing completely and hitting Dina or their fellow officer.

“What do you want?” Dina asked the fairy. “I’ve asked several times now, and all you do is keep going on about killing her. If you’re going to do it, why haven’t you? It doesn’t seem that my input matters to you, anyway. Where are we going to live? A fairy kingdom? A hole in a tree? Do you want love? I can’t force love. Do you want marriage? Help me understand.”

“I want marriage. To me, once and forever. I want you to be mine.” Broon-dy-kao told her.

“So if I marry you, you’ll put the gun down?” Dina asked him, and he nodded. “Then fine. Now, let her go.”

“We aren’t married yet.”

“You know, Broon – do you prefer your full name, or just Broon? Anyway – what I was going to say. If we’re going to be married and all, you have to be able to accept my word as truth.”

The fairy tilted his head to ponder that innovative statement coming from his beautiful bride to be’s mouth.

“Trust is the most important aspect to every marriage.” The police woman offered helpfully to the utterly confused fairy. “Surely you know that – especially if you’re ready to propose.”

“Yes, yes, of course. But you understand why I can’t let you go. I’m not quite sure I can trust her yet, if you know what I mean.”

“If anything, I don’t see why she should trust you. You disappeared on her, and then you came back and stole my firearm while I was trying to get justice for the woman you seem to love? And now you’re holding me, the person who was just trying to help, hostage to get her to do something that she doesn’t want to do right away.”

“I know it looks bad, but you haven’t done anything that hasn’t already been accomplished, ma’am. I took care of the problem myself.”

“Broon…” Dina’s voice lowered. “What did you do?”

“I disposed of the problem at hand. It was simple: he hurt you, so I hurt him.”

“Broon…” Dina’s heart almost felt a strain of sympathy for the man who had been her first captor. He hadn’t been exceptionally mentally deranged, or even particularly dangerous. All in all, though frustrating, it hadn’t been a life threatening experience, in review. He had always fed her. And he could have kept her tied up – or held at gunpoint, like this asshole.

“Don’t worry, my love.” The fairy cooed. “That bastard that tried to harm you is no more.”

“Broon, did you kill that man?”

The fairy said nothing, and the officer’s eyes met briefly with Dina’s. Dina, understanding, repeated the question.

“Broon... did you kill that man for me?” Dina asked. Her entire fifteen year old world was crashing down around her. Who would do something like that?

“Not exactly.” Broon-dy-kao offered up to the otherwise silent room. “I removed the problem. Now, you!” The fairy nodded towards the door where he knew the people with bigger guns were located. “Fetch us a priest or a judge or something. We need to make this official by your standards, in the very least.”

“Pre-nuptial agreements take time. Everyone knows that.” Dina said, unsure of what pre-nuptial agreements even were.

“We don’t need a pre-nuptial agreement.” The fairy said, turning his attention back to the police woman and his fiancée. “You love me. I love you. We shall be married, and we shall live happily ever after.”

“Broon, I want children.” Dina said, pushing even harder for her own freedom. She wasn’t sure if it was possible to cross breed with fairies, but she was hoping that the answer was no.

“You’re fifteen. You don’t know what you want.” The fairy said. Dina realized she was dealing with some entity that was far, far crazier than she would ever understand.

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