I dislike Neyla, I'll admit that. But only cuz I like Arpeggio XD I mean, she's got a kind of interesting character...

Disclaimer: Don't own. Whee.

Neyla wasn't exactly sure of what was going on when she opened her eyes and saw only inky blackness. And then, she could feel pressure building in her chest and knew that she had to find air soon, or die. With tired, feeble strokes she swam towards what she hoped was the surface. Her body's nerves and muscles were in conflict; her arms and legs were tired, so tired, but her lungs felt ready to explode, and they were screaming at her to hurry up and find air. And her brain was slowing down, telling her to just give up.

So she did.

With one lavender-furred hand still reaching up towards the glimmer of light above, only centimeters from the surface, the tigress let herself drift downwards.

But perhaps it was luck, perhaps it was something else, but a wave caught her body and carried her and deposited her, coughing and gasping and weak, on the dirty shoreline of the Seine River.

But she was alive!

For a while, she just laid there, breathing in glorious air and staring up at the stars. Eventually, she began to shiver from the cool night air. "Where can I go? No one will take me in, not after all that's happened..." she croaked, her voice hoarse from all the riverwater she'd swallowed. The answer came to her in a flash of inspiration. Slowly, her aching muscles protesting every movement, the tigress stood up and staggered farther inland, towards a grove of trees that seemed safe, at least for now. By the time she reached an old bench on the path through the miniature forest, she was shaking all over, and not from the cold. After a few minutes of resting on the bench, she stood up again and resumed her trek farther into the city of Paris.

It was then that she slipped on a moss-covered rock and fell. Her arms, too weak to support her weight, gave out as she tried to break her fall. The tigress sucked in a breath sharply when she both heard and felt a crack. Gritting her teeth and holding her ribs with her arm, she rose shakily and began to walk again.

Two hours later and halfway across Paris, numb and footsore and crying from the pain of her cracked rib, she finally made it to her destination. She collapsed at the door, barely able to raise herself up on her knees to ring the doorbell. It was a few minutes before the only person left in the world she could trust came.

He stared down at her, wide-eyed, at her grimy fur and knotted hair, at her tear-streaked face and red-rimmed eyes, at the cuts and bruises covering her body from head to toe, and most of all at the look of - was it pleading? - in her eyes. "Neyla!" he exclaimed.

She raised one hand, reaching for him. "Dimitri, help..." she whispered, as though a whisper was all she could manage.

And then she collapsed at his feet, completely at his mercy.

Dimitri Lousteau was having a nice, relaxing evening. A bit of dancing and singing here, a sip of coffee there. It was a relaxing night.

But not anymore.

Now, he was carrying the unconscious Neyla inside and wondering whether or not he was doing the right thing by helping her.

He laid her down in front of the fireplace, brushing a grubby strand of black hair away from her face. Sighing, the iguana rose and brought a pillow and a few blankets from his room. Carefully, he slid the pillow underneath her head and was about to wrap the blankets around and underneath her svelte body, but a deep purple bruise, easily visible through her lavender fur and a tear in her shirt, stopped him. The tigress groaned in pain as he pushed the spot gently. With another sigh, he stood up again and went to look for something he could use for a bandage.

By the time he came back with some white strips of cloth, Neyla had woken. "Thank you." she whispered.

"Hey, no problemo, Kitty-kat." he replied, using his old nickname for her. He smiled, but it was forced. "Hey, um... Kit-kat, I, uh..."

"Go ahead. I'm not shy, you know that." gingerly, she lifted her arms so that the iguana could bandage her ribs.

Neyla was, indeed, not a shy person; she had grown up amongst poverty and was more than used to seeing parts of other people's bodies that most would consider private. Dimitri was, normally, not shy either, but right now he wished he were somewhere, anywhere, other than here, even back in his jail cell. Slowly, he lifted her dark blue shirt up, revealing more of her body than he wanted to see right now. Purposely keeping his yellow eyes locked with her emerald ones, he wound the cloth around her chest as fast as possible without touching her exposed body, blushing several times when he brushed her skin. When he was finished, he let out a relieved sigh and quickly pulled her shirt back down. Neyla raised an eyebrow sleepily. "Where's the Dimitri I knew who wasn't afraid to-" she never finished her sentence; the iguana was already out of the room, mumbling something about getting her a glass of water. Smiling softly, the tigress rolled onto her side with a wince as she tried to get more comfortable.

Dimitri returned faster than she'd expected. He stared at her for a while before setting the glass of water down. "Neyla." he said seriously.

"Yeah?"

"Dimitri needs to know that you're not gonna pull a fast one on him again."

The tigress rolled back over with another wince. She was silent for a while before she spoke. "I'm sorry about what I did before. I really am, Dimitri." she replied quietly. "But neither of us can change the past." she looked up into his eyes, and he could see real regret in hers. "We can still make it work out, though."

He was surprised, to say the least.

Tears - real tears, not fake ones just for show - began to well up in the tigress' eyes. "I should've worked harder to keep you out of jail, I know I should've. I shouldn't've even helped Cooper get you there." she shook her head sadly. "Even Arpeggio didn't deserve what happened to him... I think he fell in love with me, you know." she smiled softly, not daring to look up in into Dimitri's eyes again.

"'What happened to him...?' Spill da mushrooms, Kit-kat!" the iguana said sharply.

So she did. She told him everything, from the time several months ago that Arpeggio had first asked her to spy on the other members of the Klaww Gang, to only two and a half hours ago when the Cooper Gang had foiled her plans and destroyed the Clockwerk frame.

When she was done, he leaned back on the coffee table. "So it was you dat knocked da lasers and slicked da doors."

Neyla smiled again. "Yeah. I couldn't just leave you in jail. I rigged it to look like there was a power surge and everything malfunctioned."

He smiled back, and this time, it was genuine. "Thanks, Kit-kat." He leaned forward, his smile fading away. "You're right though; da little crackerbox didn't really deserve that."

The tigress looked down, saddened. "Can you ever forgive me, Dimitri?"

She was surprised when he reached forward with one purple-scaled hand and gently took hold of her chin, lifting it so that their eyes met. "Tu es pardonne." he replied in his native French.

Even though she knew very little French, Neyla nodded, albeit slowly. She was entranced by those yellow eyes... but because of the way the firelight shone, they appeared to glow a beautiful golden color.

Neither of them could tell who made the first move - perhaps it was both of them - but the next second, their lips were locked in a kiss. Neyla pulled away, just long enough for her to pull the blanket off of her legs and murmur, "I guess 'tu es pardonne' means I'm forgiven, huh?"

The man opposite her - the man she loved, and the only person in the world she trusted - gave a little smile. "Your accent, c'est terrible..."

"So?" the tigress muttered in reply, then pulled him close again. "Just be careful not to break any more of my ribs, okay?" she muttered in his ear with a grin.

...Things just sort of escalated after that.