Chapter Text
“I hear that you were on a date with Trouble Kelp. Are you two planning on building a bivouac any time soon?”
~<>~
Holly cringed. The act was full-body, visible. She knew he was only trying to lighten the mood, but the effect was somewhat the opposite.
“Bivouac,” she repeated weakly. “Haha.”
She glanced over at the room’s exit, which was wide open, inviting.
Come on, Holly. Don’t run.
The adventure was over. Artemis was sick. This shouldn’t be as hard as it was. It should be calm, fun, the end. There had to be some fancy literary term for it that Artemis knew. The…something.
“Jealous?” Holly tried weakly. She regretted it immediately, because now cringes rippled through both of them. That single part-joke, part-not-joke word accomplished what Orion’s hours of concentrated stabbing had not: heaving up the scab that had crusted between them sometime in the past months since their return from from the past, an impermeable wall that stood in the kilometers of clay, stone, and magma between Haven and Fowl manor, a distance that once had been no issue.
“Not jealous,” Artemis said, after a moment. “You just never mentioned it.”
“You didn’t mention that you’ve been falling deeper into some literal psychosis either,” Holly pointed out archly. “Anyway, when have I ever had to tell you anything?”
Not so long ago (and yet, years ago) he had known her as well as the back of his hand. But after he had burned the bridge between them, Artemis had found himself in the unique position of being unable to think of anything to say. A situation not so unique, actually, because it was happening again, right now.
The silence bloated. Holly watched him twist his ring. The jewel flashed at every rotation: red, blue, green, red, blue.
Gods, she thought. This is so uncomfortable.
“This is uncomfortable,” Artemis announced. “It’s fine. We don’t need to continue this conversation topic. I only mentioned Commander Kelp and bivouacs to lighten the mood. A little joke.
“A terrible joke,” he corrected himself, removing his hand from hers and rubbing his chest. Holly frowned. Gods, was something wrong with his heart now, too? “Add it to my list of things I need redemption for.”
“It’s fine, Artemis,” Holly said. She sat beside him on the bed, looking for some opening she could use to shoot a wad of magic at him, to get anything the healers might have missed in their general pass. “It’s nothing. Honestly, it’s just that I’ve had enough hypothetical bivouacs for a lifetime. If I never hear that word again it’ll be too soon.”
She touched him, slightly—squeaked a bit of magic through, with a wordless urge, Heal—but it did nothing. Artemis was still rubbing his chest.
“I’ll try to file that deep into my subconscious,” he said. “In the case of the re-emergence of my alter-ego. So he doesn’t mention it again.”
“Even if you did, I don’t think it’d catch. Not unless you put some heroic spin on it.”
“Heroic spin.” The words came out as close to a moan as his mouth had ever muttered. “He was close to ruining everything.”
The instant he stopped talking, he felt his heart crease. Four words, twice. His whole body stiffened, chilled; he dropped his hands to his knees, tapped one by one the thumb and fingertips of both hands, five times two, for extra measure. The sedative that the healers had given him was wearing; his breath was short. Holly grabbed the hand closest to her, stilling it, and for her, he made some effort to stop the motion of the other hand as well. He almost managed it. He could see the bones beneath the surface of his skin twitch.
“Holly,” Artemis blurted. Put forth like a stab, like a flail for solid ground. “I’m sorry.”
Holly smiled gently. “Orion wasn’t that bad. An idealist and an idiot, sure. But I’ve had worse.”
Artemis’s voice was pained. “No, not just Orion. I mean I’m sorry for—everything. Everything—everything in the past. In all pasts. The kidnapping. The theft. The lie—all of the lying—though it’s evident to me now there’s nothing I’ll ever be able to do to make up for any of it—”
“Artemis. Listen to me. I’m telling you I forgive you.” Holly placed another hand over Artemis’s, and, when he didn’t respond, shook him. “Artemis. You’re going to make your condition worse if you cling to this.”
His only answer was his continuing failed attempts to control his breathing. And, his repeated glances at the door. Not because he wanted to escape, as was her instinct.
He never looks for Butler.
“It was awful,” Holly found herself saying. Trying to distract him, even a little. “The date.”
“Was it?” Artemis said, putting visible effort into it.
“I don’t know what it is. It’s not that he’s a bad fairy. I don’t think there’s anyone at the LEP I trust more—other than Foaly, I mean.”
The more she spoke, the more she felt the atmosphere deflate, just a little. She continued. “We went to this nice place in Haven—I’m sure it’d even be good enough for your palate—and suddenly he was a huge...stereotype. Ordering for me, putting out all these fake insulting compliments, trying to get the whole bill, all that. But you know, if we were in a situation with a biv…one of those involved, there’s almost no one I’d want on the field with me.”
“He wouldn’t shoot you, at least,” Artemis said dryly.
“For what it’s worth, at the time you shot me, I really needed to be shot.”
“Maybe I can make that part stay, then.”
Holly frowned. “‘That part?’”
“Of Orion. It wouldn’t hurt to surface more of the physical techniques Butler has been trying to teach me—which, by the way, I am still astonished to learn have actually been embedding themselves somewhere in my subconscious. But if there’s some way that I can utilize therapy to form some kind of—more advanced, appropriate self—without any of my current flaws—”
“Advanced?” Holly echoed. “Appropriate?”
“He would wear that shirt happily,” Artemis muttered. “‘Randomosity.’ It would be just his thing. Well, perhaps not, since it isn’t quite my thing. But he would find some way to enjoy it nevertheless.
“I’m sure,” he added, with panic.
“I’d rather have the usual Artemis back,” Holly said gently. “Flaws and all.”
“You and no one else,” Artemis said. His voice had descended into an uncharacteristic mumble, rather than his usual, with words chosen and marched out precisely. Holly stared. It didn’t look as if he even recognized that he had said anything. His hand was to his chest again, the tip of one finger rubbing feverish circles.
This was terrible. Even more terrible than she’d thought. What had happened to him? What was happening? Her throat was tight.
“Artemis,” she started, and Artemis looked at her, but then there were footsteps down the hall, of an individual much larger than any fairy, and most humans besides. Holly stopped talking, but Artemis was still looking at her, and she sighed.
“I’m…just…worried about you.”
“As is your mother, Artemis,” Butler said briskly as he entered the room. “Holly, I’ll need a favor.”
“Oh? Of course, Butler. Anything.”
Butler smiled. “Remember that you just said that. Anything.”
~<>~
Anything, Holly found, now included securing travel visas for the most notorious human family on the Surface.
Haven had never had so many humans. Later, Holly would be ashamed to say that aside from filing the visa forms and warning Trouble what was about to happen, she really had taken no part in any of it; she was too tired, physically, emotionally, psychologically, and magically. The near-nonstop mission had taken a toll on her body which Holly was not impressed to discover was quite visible; Caballine gasped when she met her the next day.
“Holly, your face—your shoulder—”
“It’s not that bad,” Holly grumbled. She’d taken inventory just that morning, and most of her wounds were already just little slivers and knits across her arms, back, and knees that magic would fade over the next century of so, probably. The most prominent of the set, admittedly, was on her face—a thin, jagged line across the bow of her upper lip—and there was a star-shaped splatter of gleaming scar tissue stretching from her shoulder to her collarbone, too. She tugged her shirt collar over, covering it a little further. It was probably thanks to her new amber magic that she was still capable of standing up so soon after at all after her many injuries, even if it wasn’t quite as good at preserving her aesthetically. Aesthetics had never mattered much to her anyway.
“We have more important things to worry about,” Holly said, swiping Caballine’s hands off her, “like Artemis’s recovery,” but neither Caballine or Foaly would hear any of it.
“Artemis is taken care of,” Caballine was saying, and before Holly could ask, By who? Foaly continued on.
“You need rest, Holly.” His voice was ragged with exasperation. “I never knew how physically demanding these missions were, but now that I see what you actually get up to during all those times your equipment is out of range—”
“Gods, Foaly, this wasn’t even half as ‘demanding’ as the things we’ve been up to before.”
“Is that so? I guess I wouldn’t know,” Foaly said. “You do leave so much out of your reports.”
Holly froze. Then, quickly, she was infuriated.
“Foaly,” she growled. “That is low.”
“What is low?” Caballine asked. She looked to Foaly, bewildered.
“Nothing,” Holly said, as steadily as possible.
“Right! Nothing,” Foaly said lightly. “After all, most of what Orion talked about was nonsense. Who’s to say what was real and what was a mere figment of a demented, guilt-ridden Mud Man’s temporarily unleashed subconscious? There’s only one thing we can really be certain of. And that’s that you”—Foaly poked Holly’s chest—“need a rest. A nice, relaxing weekend at a healing spa. Free of Mud Men, geniuses, and old nemeses.”
Holly snatched Foaly’s hand as it was withdrawing.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll go. But listen to me, centaur. If you pull this again, you’re not going to have a hand to pull anything with.”
Foaly used his other hand to poke Holly’s shoulder, right in the center of her new scar.
“Honestly,” he said flatly, “I could say the same for you.”
~<>~
Foaly and Caballine had a free weekend saved up at a spa they had a membership to, an expensive one, with some dozen assorted baths of mud and springwater that supposedly bubbled up over subterranean ley-lines of magic and had incredible restorative properties. The whole place was prickly with quartz crystals, illuminated by LEDs and clotted onto every surface.
Well, it’s better than a happy shot, Holly thought, sinking in up to her eyes in mud that had somehow been scented lavender. The idea was that the staff would haul the bathers out, let the mud harden, and after some point one could break out of the shell and reborn cathartically into a new self; but the feeling of the mud settling around her was suffocating, and Holly shuddered so much that the shell cracked and the experience of breaking free was little more than brushing off clods of hard dirt.
Claustrophobia. Her old paranoia, resurfacing, after so long away. The last time she’d had an episode of this was…well. How to classify how long exactly her last time traveling adventure had been? Months, or years?
She contemplated this in the meditation room that she had been ushered into, but could only hem and haw for so long on the technicalities before she got bored and wanted to leave for some room that had more to offer than infrared lights and river stones. Mentioning her boredom to an attendant, however, only earned her a slow, airy-voiced lecture about the benefits of boredom to reaching a new state of mind, and Holly found quickly that it was possible for her to be more bored, and it was while listening to this.
They better not be making Artemis do junk like this, she thought, tossing and turning fitfully in a leaf-shaped hammock and wishing the white noise machine was just a little quieter. They better be making him do something that’ll actually help him.
How had he gotten so bad? They hadn’t spoken in a while, but she’d assumed it was because they just—needed some space—or something—after everything that had happened. But maybe the radio silence this whole time had meant something was amiss. He’d been falling apart, and she hadn’t even noticed.
Holly stewed moodily in a cube-shaped cypress bath, marinating alongside slices of lemon and chamomile flowers that a pixie sprinkled over her while humming what he called healing intentions.
What was it that Artemis had said?
You and no one else.
She wrapped her arms around her bent legs, pressed her forehead to her knees. When Foaly and Caballine returned to pick her up, they swore she was emanating a literal glow.
Holly looked down at her hand. “Well, I hope it’s not because that place is radioactive.”
“It’s rejuvenation,” Caballine insisted. “How did you like it?”
“Do you feel more centered?” Foaly asked.
“Whole?”
Focused?”
“Yeah,” Holly answered. “All those things.” She continued, dutifully summarizing the various spa treatments, and heaved a sigh of relief when she was finally back in her own house, having satisfied both Foaly and Caballine about her well-being.
The healing spa didn’t have any newsfeeds—something about how electricity disturbed healing energies—so the first thing she did was turn her television on, brushing back the ferns that were starting to grow over the screen. The only thing remained from Angeline Fowl’s weekend in Haven were shaky, distant paparazzi videos of her entering Dr. J. Argon’s therapeutic facility, and the family’s subsequent departure back to the surface at the end of the weekend. Whoever was piloting their shuttle had no idea how to balance the craft for Butler’s weight, much less that of two other humans; Holly winced as she watched it wobble and scrape against more than a few walls.
None of the feeds stated whether whatever initial therapies Artemis had undergone had been effective in any way.
You and no one else.
Her communicator was still nestled in her luggage, wrapped neatly in paper and twine and smelly herbs. She tore it free, punched a couple buttons.
“Holly,” came a voice. It was tired. “What now?”
“Sorry, Troubs,” Holly said. She faced her mirror, looking at her blue eye. “One more favor. Please.”
~<>~
For once, all the complicated arrangements were made without input from the usual mastermind—though it helped that there was really no more qualified individual than the one already volunteering for the assignment. So it was that Holly touched down on the grounds of Fowl Manor, perching a shuttlecraft as neatly as a hummingbird on the end of the runway Butler directed her to use.
“Therapy Express, at your service,” she announced as the doors lifted. Artemis and Butler boarded, both waving back to the remaining Fowls on the turf. Butler carried under one arm a pair of duffel bags for the weekend, and Artemis buckled himself into a seat silently, hands fisted, eyes closed.
“Not that you need to greet me or anything,” Holly grumbled. “I am, after all, just a chauffeur.”
“Hello, Holly,” Artemis said, eyes still closed. And then he blurted: “Fairy shuttlecraft typically has three landing gears, but this one has two pairs. Really?”
“It’s newly retrofitted,” Holly said, miffed, as if it had been her own work. “Four landing gears provides more stabilization for the weight of both of you Mud Men. Probably.”
“I’ll have a talk with Foaly about that,” Artemis mumbled. “This shuttle could do with a good number of upgrades anyway.”
Holly exchanged a troubled glance with Butler, and then started the shuttle up, not missing Artemis’s knuckles going pale on the armrests.
That’s how the next month went: ferrying Artemis and Butler to Haven at the end of every week, then returning them topside for the start of the next.
She wanted to try and open up some kind of channel between her and Artemis again, but every possible conversation topic felt uneasy and heavy, and besides that she couldn’t quite get over the fact he was obviously counting every word she said. However, the slow pace of Artemis’s recovery, while distressing, at least allowed her an amount of surface time that she hadn’t been allowed even during her Kraken Watch days.
Sometimes she brought the shuttle up an hour early just to relax beside the imp perched on the shuttle’s prow, reclining and enjoying the cool dawnlight. It was so much bluer, somehow, up here, than Haven’s bulbs—and it was pleasant too, to listen to the orchestra of unseen frogs, whose voices were decidedly more acceptable for general company than the sweartoads that cussed lasciviously in the Lower Elements. One day, Artemis came to join her.
“I have tea,” he offered quietly. She opened an eye to look down at him. Sun was barely up and already he was in his suit.
“Thanks,” Holly said. “That’s kind of you.”
“Not as kind as you taking us back and forth every weekend,” Artemis said, and then pursed his lips, to keep himself from adding any further words.
“You know me,” Holly said, stretching. “Any excuse I can take to get topside.”
“I do know you,” Artemis said. “You’re worried. But I wanted to tell you I’m fine, Holly. I’ll get better.”
“I hope so,” Holly said after a moment. “You deserve it.”
He frowned, but let it go. After that, Artemis joined her in the mornings as a routine, though he needed a hand up onto the shuttle, and another to keep him from slipping off while he settled. He brought along thermoses of tea that they drank, mostly wordlessly. It seemed like the start of a bridge between them again, and neither dared ruining it to make the obvious comment.
Just think, the last time we relaxed like this on the hood of a large vehicle—
A few weeks in, she finally ventured some conversation.
“How’s it going, anyway?” she asked, carefully counting, and was somewhat soothed to see that Artemis’s brow furrowed only a little, and even that wrinkle he shook off. He glanced at her, and she shrugged, as if to say, You can’t blame me for trying.
“It’s going very well,” he answered slowly. Holly smiled, and after a steadying breath, Artemis continued.
“I have finished reading the books that Dr. Argon has recommended to me, as well as half a dozen workbooks, and several textbooks that were listed as part of his graduate school’s recommended reading list. I imagine that within another month I’ll have hit every recovery milestone.”
“A month? I didn’t know it was that quick.”
“Not typically, no.”
Holly made a face at him over her thermos. “You’re not Artemis Fowling therapy, are you?”
He had the decency to look somewhat bewildered. “What better way to prove I’m restored to my original faculties?”
“It was your original faculties that got you into this, remember?”
“Into my diagnosis of Atlantic Complex? No. That was the fault of magic, alongside the weight of…of my many mistakes.” He paused. “Don’t look at me like that, Holly. I know what I’m doing.”
“I’m sure you do,” Holly said, more out of hope than anything else. It wasn’t like she had read any of these fancy textbooks herself. But…
But…
Something was wrong.
Even if Artemis was sounding more and more like the one she had once known so well. Even if Dr. Argon himself apparently was so impressed with Artemis’s progress in therapy that he added a little regimen of exercise between sessions of whatever—though Holly somewhat suspected this was less strictly for Artemis’s physiological health, and more for increasing Artemis’s visibility as Argon’s client. After healing a few stalagmite-induced scrapes on Butler’s scalp for the sixth time, Holly finally took pity and took up escorting Artemis herself. She brought him to what she was sure was a mild, flat trail near the clinic, but he didn’t make it three meters before tripping over nothing, and Holly didn’t need magic to foresee the damage she’d suffer returning Artemis to Butler covered in bruises and dirt. She sighed, packed him back into the shuttle, and headed for Old Town Haven.
The ground was an old human style here, rocks and mortar, which she assumed Artemis could handle. It, and the buildings, were constructed when fairies had first fled underground; the architecture was desperately nostalgic, copies of human architecture interspersed with painted statues in the shape of assorted foliage. She had once heard Foaly’s nephew describe it as a grade-B Disneyland, whatever that meant. She’d never been the type to beg her parents to go to Paris.
In this part of Haven, the weather varied somewhat, to provide a simulacrum of topside life; and today, it was pleasant, almost overly warm. Holly unzipped her uniform jacket, and slung it over her arm; underneath she wore a sleeveless top, and the light felt nice on her bare shoulders. Beside her, she saw Artemis stop walking.
“I already know it’s all inaccurate,” Holly said. He had stopped beside one of Old Town’s most egregious mismatched constructions, where Germanic brick gothic had been roofed with scalloped Japanese tiles.
“…I was only going to remark that it’s a fascinating study of fairy history,” Artemis said lightly. “And also point out that we are being observed.”
Though Old Town Haven nowadays functioned mostly as a quaint historical tourist attraction, no one was sparing any attention to the buildings now. One pixie’s head craned so far off course that they careened straight into a street sign, which bent on impact. Holly flinched. From experience she knew that that would hurt tomorrow, magic or not.
“Well…you’ll have to deal with it. It’s less populated here than downtown, and still mostly flat.”
“Thank you, Holly, I do happen to be fully capable of walking on cobblestone. It only irks me to give Dr. Argon exactly what he wants.”
Still, it must have irked Artemis less to be out in Haven than to be with Dr. Argon himself, because he returned more or less willingly the next weekend, and the next. Even at a fraction of Butler’s height, he still had to stoop here and there, such as when entering the coffee shop that was Holly and N°1’s favorite, outside of which N°1 met them both, hopping and hugging exuberantly. Holly thought Artemis might enjoy a literal taste of urban fairy life, but his expression, looking down at his mug of black sim-coffee, was skeptical.
“It’s good!” N°1 insisted. Artemis sipped.
“It’s good,” Artemis agreed, in a way that made N°1 beam and made Holly snicker. On the way back to the clinic, Artemis was quiet, calculating.
“Holly,” he said finally, and she said, “No, Artemis. You are not going to destroy the Lower Elements sim-coffee industry.”
He looked wounded. “It’s clear the fairy version of coffee is missing several acidic compounds that are fundamental—apologies, definitive of the original.”
“And? We like non-acidic coffee down here, thank you very much.”
“Do you?”
The next weekend, her thermos contained coffee. She shot him a look that he completely avoided as he jumped up onto the hood of the shuttle and even managed not to slide back off.
“Drink it,” he said. His arms shook slightly as he balanced himself, precarious. “It’s Ethiopian Harrar, a short berry. Of the Ethiopian varieties, it has a more floral and berry-like quality, and with the least acidity, though enough to keep the brew full-bodied and complex.”
She didn’t know what any of those meant. She looked at him flatly. He was firm.
“Drink it.”
She made a face—but there was no way she wasn’t going to try it, and he knew it. She sipped. Considered, for several long minutes.
“D’Arvit,” Holly sighed, and, to his credit, Artemis said nothing; only continued to bring her more each visit. After some time, she stopped ordering sim-coffee altogether.
~<>~
That was always how it was, with him, and she had to admit that she’d missed it. Somehow one human was capable of packing into a handful of years more adventures than the typical fairy encountered in their entire lifetime, even if those adventures were just figuring out how to smuggle coffee down to Haven for N°1 to try for their first in-person drama night; or, Artemis attempting and failing to drag Holly away from punching someone who went out of their way to make a jab at her new haircut; or, hanging around with Nopal, reading aloud or else just sitting near her, keeping her company.
Things were relaxing. Slowly, steadily.
“Did you know they’re calling her that because she’s never had a friend?” she asked.
“They’ll have to call her Onepal now,” Artemis remarked. He’d dragged a chair over from an adjacent clinic room, which much rattling and a cringe when he misjudged the length of it and banged it against the doorframe. He unfolded it beside her.
“Not Twopal?”
“I’d prefer to have something a little more resembling a two-way street for that,” Artemis said. Then he looked thoughtful. “But maybe there’s something that can be done about that.”
Holly smiled. “You’re sounding just like your old self already.”
“Am I? Not completely, I hope. I’ve planned out at least one more weekend of rehabilitation before I face the world once more.”
“One more? Why?”
Because I can’t have it look too unrealistic, he thought. Aloud he said, “There’s one last matter I’d like some time to work through,” which after all was not entirely incorrect.
She was looking at him, hard. He saw it in the reflection off Nopal’s tank. All the time he had spent sloughing off various cognitive dissonances in therapy, and still he had yet to address the one thing that he was beginning to suspect had triggered the entire miserable episode.
If his acquisition of the Atlantis Complex was purely due to guilt about his past crimes, after all, he had been shouldering that already for some time without issue. And if it was purely a question of magic’s effect on his body, well, he had harbored magic too, for some agonizing but nonetheless Orion-less months. The straw on the camel’s back had fallen from elsewhere.
His hand raised to his chest. Rubbed a circle there, five times.
Holly had not mentioned it, but she had been scarred not insignificantly by their last adventure. The star-shaped scar left by Orion’s shooting her shoulder, which he had first spotted when she’d unzipped her uniform top at Old Town Haven, gleamed at him wickedly whenever he closed his eyes. In addition, he noted from the few times she had attempted healing him recently that her magic had transitioned from the usual fairy blue to an amber color, a phenomenon which he recalled from the Fairy Bible should have occurred over many centuries of magic use, not over the course of Holly’s decades of youth, even given the occupational hazard that was the LEP.
She was getting hurt, an inordinate amount, because of him. And that wasn’t counting the number of times that he had betrayed her trust, including the worst time. Every time he’d twisted his ring green in the past months, to try to reach out to her again, he’d felt a knot in his throat, too large for any therapy session to expel. And then when he actually had some opportunity to talk, the one that had taken it was—Orion. Who had almost ruined everything.
The fact that things weren’t ruined already was only thanks to Holly’s bottomless generosity. There was simply no way he’d ever really make up for any of this. He’d tried with the nano-wafers. He’d failed. His own desperation for heroics had practically become sentient. As if mutually exclusive with his usual self.
He looked down at his hands.
You’re not Artemis Fowling therapy, are you?
What else could he do? What other way could he possibly do anything, except as himself, criminal genius, fairy bogeyman? He saw the way the fairies stared as he wandered under Haven’s florescent daytime, strolling carelessly in the last place left to fairies after fleeing the terror of mankind on the surface. Holly could say she forgave him how ever many times she wanted—it wouldn’t stop the fact that wherever he went, pain and tragedy followed. None of the most recent devastation would have happened if he had only stayed out of it. None of anything would have happened, if he’d only stayed out of it. What new horrors would the existence of Artemis Fowl II do to the earth in the future?
Even this whole charade of therapy sought only to rewind him, as if there might be some purer or cleaner slate from which to start from, but there wasn’t: for anyone to have that Artemis Fowl they’d need a brand new one entirely.
He stared into Nopal’s tank and saw himself, one eye blue and one eye hazel. His grip stiffened, one nail now tapping a frantic rhythm on the ring. Holly reached over and rested a hand on his, stilling it.
“Artemis. What are you thinking about?”
Artemis opened his mouth.
But the knot was too large.
In the silence, both of them were quieter than Nopal, who even in her abyssal slumber occasionally pursed out a bubble or two from her mouth, and did so now, a pair of shimmering spheres that popped as soon as they encountered the cruel abrasion of the air outside her tank.
“I was just thinking that it’s been…enjoyable,” Artemis managed finally.
“Enjoyable?”
“Fun, I mean.”
“I know what enjoyable means, Mud Boy. I meant, what was enjoyable? You ruining my taste for sim-coffee?”
“That, and…everything else.” He set his hands on his knees, endeavoring to keep them still. “I imagine that if I had never met you—or anyone else—I’d be no better than Nopal. Just…floating. Bathed in a world that offered me existence and nothing else. So, I’m—grateful for it. Even if there’s little I can do to make up for the things I’ve done along the way.”
“That again.” Holly’s expression in the tank reflection was now exasperated. “I told you, Artemis—you’re you, flaws and all. When did this happen to you? Why? I miss what we used to—”
That last bit came out unexpectedly; she bit her lip, and then, seeing that she could not take back her words from the air, simply plowed forth.
“I miss what it used to be like between us. You know.”
“Do I?” he asked. “Between us from five years ago? Or four? Or three? Or one? Choose carefully.”
“They’re all you,” Holly snapped. “Trying to make them different is what got you into this Complex in the first place. Please listen to me, Artemis. Please try to hear what I’m saying!”
That was Holly—infuriated, even as she proved the strength of her heart. In the end Artemis and Nopal were the same: soulless creatures who had the benefit of her by their bedside, against all odds, against all reason.
Unlike Nopal, however, he was a genius. He knew when he encountered a problem that he was not going to solve with the time and resources presently available.
“You asked me what I was thinking of,” Artemis said simply. “I told you. It’s been fun. And much of it thanks to you. So, thank you, Holly.”
He stood, folding up the chair. Not finished, Holly said, “Artemis,” and then stopped. He waited, but in the end, she didn’t continue. He folded up the chair, and even managed to get it through the door without banging it again.
~<>~
The next weekend, Holly accepted the thermos Artemis brought her. She didn’t drink it immediately, but did sip it discreetly after they got through customs, and Artemis sighed, silently, and with some immense private relief. Still, their interactions remained somewhat cool, even as they maintained the appropriate mood during what Holly described as their last cafe outing with N°1.
“The last one?” N°1 echoed with dismay. “But…but…”
“Next weekend I’m processing out of the clinic, but I’m still here tomorrow,” Artemis pointed out.
“I have plans,” Holly said curtly. No LEP escort services, then; and Artemis felt too much for Butler to force him to endure the alleys of Haven, most of which weren’t wide enough to admit passage without apologizing for broken window boxes and torn-down drying lines. Artemis looked back at N°1, whose dismay was evident. The words I’ll be back were on the tip of his tongue, but uneasily he realized that the only way this would be true was if he had another Complex resurgence.
“I’ll still watch A-cute with you,” Artemis reassured instead. “I’ve even made updates to the hologram, to perform more reactions.” But N°1 remained uncharacteristically droopy, and demurred glumly when asked to explain why.
The end of therapy. Artemis had no doubt that Dr. Jargon would have preferred some persistent rehabilitation model, or perhaps simply to keep Artemis in an own exhibition tank alongside the framed diplomas, but Artemis had planned his exit exactly for when he knew he would not be able to tolerate another instant of this nonsense. The only thing he regretted was that he still hadn’t quite managed to get to the bottom of his trigger.
And…and maybe he also regretted…that it had been fun, really, all of this downtime. He had no real recollection of activities like visiting a cafe with friends (even if that cafe’s menu was sub-par at best). In the mundanity of their Haven explorations he saw a glimpse of what it must be like to have the generous lifespan of a fairy, where the flaws and mistakes of individual days, and maybe even years, were small in the grand scheme of things.
But all things must come to an end. On the way back to the lobby he detoured to Nopal’s room, hoping, selfishly—
But Holly was not there. He paused at the tank, tapping on the glass—not his compulsive tapping this time, but the new kind that he had been developing with with her—and was satisfied to see her tap back. Well, she was the clone of a reasonably intelligent fairy, after all.
Back in his room, he found his duffel bag absent. He went out to the shuttle, where he found Holly, leaning back against the door, arms crossed, looking impatient. When Artemis glanced around, she said, “I took Butler back already. He won’t fit where we’re going.”
“‘We?’” Artemis echoed. “I thought you had plans.”
“I do. They’re with you. Get in.”
They boarded. As Butler was not present to sit beside in the passenger area, Artemis took liberties and buckled himself into the copilot seat. The shuttle lifted off, orienting its nose opposite direction of the Tara exit, and silently Artemis mapped the landmarks they passed to the map of Haven in his brain, trying to deduce their destination.
“Outside of Haven?” he said in surprise, after they entered a particular lava tunnel that he knew had no other exit.
“Kind of,” Holly answered. “More like right on the edge.” Artemis considered, and with a grin Holly said, “It’s new construction, actually. Not on any maps you’ve seen yet, unless you’ve been keeping track of plat transfers and architecture bids.”
Artemis frowned. “I do keep track of those.”
“Well, I won’t tell anyone you’ve been too busy with therapy to keep up-to-date. Or that for once I knew something before you did.”
The teasing seemed good-natured. Perhaps she wasn’t angry anymore? Artemis allowed himself to relax, a fraction. The tunnel angled low, at such a sharp gradient that Artemis’s ears popped as they dove. The shuttle ended up leveling over a jug of jagged stone, and Holly held on to Artemis’s arm firmly as they disembarked, to prevent him to tripping into the abyss below.
New construction indeed: Haven’s well-traversed areas were hollowed out into chambers vast enough for pixies to fly in, but the tunnel they entered now was narrow and obviously still under construction, with sandy debris and scraps of metal and spray-painted arrows and Gnommish labels that Artemis read as they passed: water, magic, gas, and so on. At points the tunnel narrowed such that they had to walk one after the other, while the stone scratched against their shoulders and scalps, and ahead of him Artemis saw Holly’s gait stiffen, ever so slightly, and he rested a hand on her shoulder, lightly, as if his usual clumsiness needed some stabilizing in the dimness.
The tunnel eventually terminated in a pristinely lit sign that read New Haven Zoological Research Lab, and then he understood.
He hadn’t checked on the progress of research—he had not wanted to linger over the events of the past, even for the purposes of satisfying some intellectual curiosity. But as Holly spoke to an elf that escorted them into the newly-hewn stone-and-glass facility, as the air turned humid and sweet with the scent of fresh soil and magic-bolstered tropical flora, Artemis found himself looking up. Holly called out, in Tongues, and overhead the monstera and pothos leaves jittered, and then expelled into Artemis’s arms a pale creature, heavy enough that he stumbled back and would have fallen had Holly not been ready to push against his back and shove him upright.
“Jayjay,” Artemis greeted. He found himself smiling. “You’ve grown.”
Jayjay was heavier, for one—and his soft white fur was stained in the front with brown from marking trees, a feature Artemis knew was the distinguishing feature of adult males of his species. Despite the time that had passed, Jayjay clearly recognized him—he held Artemis’s face and made excited, loud high-pitched chitters. When Jayjay’s squirming began to threaten Artemis’s ability to hold on to him, Jayjay kicked himself up onto Artemis’s shoulder, tail curling around Artemis’s neck.
“He’s a great eater,” said their escort. They had an apple, but hesitated.
“It’s fine,” Holly said, “you can give it to him. Don’t throw it, though,” and the elf swallowed, and then presented the apple to Artemis. As casually as possible, Artemis took it, expressed his thanks, and passed the apple to Jayjay, who ate roughly half of it. Then Jayjay gazed up and began emitting another type of noise, a humming chirp that summoned even more rustling in the canopies above. Steadily, another lemur descended on a vine: this one even larger than Jayjay.
No, Artemis realized. Not larger.
This lemur had others clinging to it, little fist-sized bundles of fuzz clinging to its—to her front and back.
Clone or not, this lemur looked wary of Artemis, who was likely the biggest creature she had ever encountered. She looked exactly like Jayjay, save her lack of brown chest. Holly called to it comfortingly, in Tongues, and Jayjay held up the remaining fruit encouragingly.
“Wait,” Artemis said, seeing the female lemur’s eyes fix on him, “don’t—“
But it was too late. She sprang, and Artemis coughed as she collided against him straight-on, gripping his tie, scrabbling up his suit. Jayjay shifted, allowing the female lemur to take Artemis’s right shoulder, onto which she maneuvered with scolding chitters as she slipped and clawed at his suit. In Artemis’s ear, the babies began to cheep demands that were quickly quieted by bitefuls of apple.
Holly was delighted. “Look at that. She likes you!”
She offered up another apple, which Jayjay took and distributed benevolently, rocking back and forth on Artemis’s narrow, shaky shoulders as he made his handouts. Out of the corner of his eye Artemis spotted one of the infants losing their hold, and by some absolute miracle of panicked hand-eye coordination, he caught it as it slipped. It was an adult in miniature, a dark-bodied and long-limbed creature haloed in fine pale hair. He lifted it back up to its mother, and as she smacked it back onto her shoulder, Artemis counted the rest of the young ones.
“There are four,” he realized, with no other emotion save some warmth.
“She’s a clone, but with the genes slightly adjusted to start introducing more variety to the gene pool,” the escort explained—unnecessarily, frankly, but they seemed excited to speak of their work to a new person, even if that person was Artemis Fowl II.
“I imagine you’ll likely generate further modified clones on the children as well, until you can create a full colony,” Artemis said. The assistant opened their mouth, then closed it, then said, “Well…yes. Silky sifaka used to live in communal groups.”
Artemis’s mouth opened again.
“So interesting. Thanks for explaining that,” Holly said, in a way that meant, Artemis, shut up and let them talk.
So he did. They stayed sometime longer, offering up more fruits and leaves for the family to eat, until the mother had her fill and, without ceremony, leaped back onto a tree and retreated back into the canopy. Jayjay made one last round of the visitors, hopping to each to investigate and make sure there was nothing left before departing as well. Artemis watched him go, until he could no longer see any leaves shaking or drizzling water.
“He seems to be thriving,” Artemis remarked back in the shuttle.
“He’s happy,” Holly agreed. “No longer the last of his kind. And he’s got plenty to eat. I think that’s all a lemur could want, really. And that’s thanks to you, Artemis.
“Stop,” she said. Her eyes were fixed on the lava tunnel, but somehow she knew his mouth was opening to protest. “You’re going to say something stupid like how it’s your fault that he was in trouble in the first place. But it wasn’t because of you that JayJay was the last lemur on earth, Artemis. And even if you made a mistake in the past, you took pains to correct it. If you’re going to claim your mistake, you have to claim your heroic actions too. And now look! Little Jayjay is happy. That’s on you.”
Artemis was quiet.
“And you,” he said finally, and Holly smiled.
“Well, that goes without saying.”
She pointed the shuttle back into the Haven thoroughfares that would lead them back to Tara. While she flew, they didn’t speak—but the silence this time had a different quality than the one earlier. It was slack, easy. A little more like the times that Holly would call him up during her kraken surveys to share twenty minutes of sunset in Italy, or Japan, or the Caribbean.
They’d been through so much. And despite what Holly said, what little Jayjay owed him for his happy existence now was not so much thanks to Artemis himself, but in larger part to the one that had influenced him. The Artemis that had condemned Jayjay, and the one that had saved him, differed in one main respect, after all.
Perhaps he had been too stuck of the mire that was his own self. There were better things to strive for, to try and be.
“Holly,” Artemis said.
“Hm?”
“Thank you.”
He felt her look over at him.
“For what?” she asked.
“For everything,” Artemis clarified. He couldn’t quite bring himself to look at her, but when he finally made himself do it, she was smiling at him warmly.
“Anytime, Mud Boy.”
He twisted his ring. The jewel on it flickered: red, blue, green. Red, blue, green. He stopped.
“This whole time, I was…worried,” he said finally. “I was worried that Orion ruined my relationship with you.”
“Orion is you.”
“That I ruined it, then.”
“And,” Holly said, “what relationship is that exactly?”
Her voice was casual. Her eyes were fixed forward, at the tunnels. Artemis took a breath. Resisted the urge to raise his hand to his chest, to trace the coin on the chain that rested there. To his surprise, the knot in his throat loosened, all at once. With the same bright revelation as any time he’d attempted to assemble some mastermind plan, only to find all the pieces present, and each perfectly in place, as if there was never any other way they could have been.
“You’re my best friend, Holly.” Each word chosen and marched out precisely.
Outside the shuttle, the tunnels rushed by. They were nearing a magma chamber; the stone walls were flushed red with light.
“Well,” Holly said, “no chance of anyone ruining that. Bonds of trauma can’t be broken that easily.”
Artemis let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding, for months.
Silence bloomed once more. Stretched between them as lazily as a cat in the sunshine. The adventure was over. Cue the denouement.
“By the way, Arty,” Holly said. “How am I supposed to get coffee after I stop ferrying you around on the Silver Cupid?”
Artemis grimaced. “You mean the Therapy Express?”
“No, I mean the Silver Cupid.“ She was grinning. Artemis snorted. And then closed his eyes, and settled into his seat.
“Give me a moment. I’ll have a plan for your coffee by the time we get home.”