If You Love Me Won't You Let Me Know
Violet Hill - Coldplay
Holly sat alone in her office late at night. She was bogged down at work more often than not nowadays since Trouble layered so much paperwork on her. Not that she minded, in fact she relished the time spent doing meaningless work. Every minute her mind was occupied on insignificant details of who committed what violation was time she didn't spend reliving every awful detail of Artemis Fowl's death.
Odd, she thought, looking up. Holly thought she heard footsteps down the hall. Or, more accurately, hoof steps. As she bent her head back over the paperwork before her mind began to wander the door opened with a bang. "Holly," a breathless centaur gasped, announcing his arrival.
Holly rolled her eyes. "Yes Foaly, what do you want at-" she checked her clock, "1:30 in the morning?"
The centaur took a moment to get his breath back, reminding him why he didn't run in the first place. Once he was no longer keeled over and gasping for air he regained enough composure to choke out, "Think...I found...something from..." he collapsed into a fit of coughing. But Holly was no longer listening to him, her mind on overdrive, forcing her to relive every second of the mud boy's death. Finally, the centaur regained himself.
"Holly, HOLLY!" Shaking her head, the elf shook off her hallucinations and tried to focus her brain on the centaur. "Holly, I think I found something from Artemis."
Stunned, the elf looked on at her hoofed companion. Without waiting for her to react, the centaur pulled out a mini computer and opened it up. The screen lit up to reveal a password window. Holly pointed a finger at the screen, "What's that?" she asked.
For a moment, the centaur forgot the gravity of the situation. "That's a computer," he said, going so far as to smile a bit at his own obnoxious wit. The look in Holly's eyes was enough to shut him up. "That's a password bar," he amended. "I was sweeping my computer the other day when it came up with a file that didn't seem to be on the harddrive or any other internal or external drive for that matter. It's just sort of there," he finished lamely.
"How do you know it's from Artemis?" she asked.
"Well, I ran a simple trace program on it and it traced it back to Fowl Manner. It was rather easy, so either he wanted us to find it or..."
"Or it's a trap," finished Holly.
"Exactly," replied the centaur.
"So why can't you just hack it?" the elf asked. Foaly chuckled.
"I could hack it, and I might break the security system, or I might not. I don't know if my software is better than Fowl's at this point," he admitted sheepishly. "The problem is my sweepers detected a virus that will permanently delete everything on this harddrive if the password fails. Not that that's a big deal," he added quickly. "I have this drive backed up at eleven different locations including a hard copy stuffed under my mattress. But the file seems to be exclusive this device so if you lose this harddrive you lose the file forever."
The centaur looked around nervously. "Incidentally, is this room soundproofed?"
Holly ignored Foaly's ramblings. She snatched the computer from his grasp and poured over it. She brought her mouse down and clicked a small link at the bottom. A box popped up that said Password Hint.
Foaly scratched his head awkwardly. "Ah yes and then there's that...ah...password hint box. Um, where did you find that."
Holly shook her head. "Honestly Foaly if you didn't have us normal people to help you solve all your problems I doubt you'd be able to run all your fancy programs."
The centaur had no answer to that. Inside the Password Hint box were two words: ultimae voces, last words.
Holly didn't even have to think to remember Artemis' last words to her, but they were pretty insignificant, just asking if she'd remembered his instructions. He couldn't have meant those last words. She thought back further. Finally her mind lighted on a phrase that was hazy in her mind, as if she had been drugged.
I was a broken boy and you fixed me.
Slowly she typed the words into the box. They appeared as dots. Just to confirm, she whispered the same words into her mike. The dots didn't change. Her finger hovered over the enter key, knowing full well it was very possible Opal was about to get her post-mortem revenge.
She pressed the enter key.
"Holly!" the centaur shrieked. "What are you doing?"
The two clung to each other as the tell tale hourglass appeared on screen. Below the password bar the checking password message appeared. The elf and the centaur held their breath. Finally the hourglass disappeared and password confirmed appeared on the screen.
The centaur released his breath but Holly's was still pent up in her chest. She was about to get a message from Artemis. And judging by the password it was for her. Sure enough, the file executed a program and dropped a file on the desktop named "For Holly".
Foaly fidgeted. "Well I suppose you don't really need me any more, so I should get going." He didn't move.
Holly rolled her eyes again. "I'm not going to open it until you leave." Foaly sighed and trotted outside the room. The door slid closed behind him. No doubt the centaur was standing ear to the door right outside. She smiled, too bad these walls were in fact soundproof.
Her attention returned to the file. With shaking hands she maneuvered the cursor over the file and clicked it. It opened to reveal a sound file. She held her breath and pressed the play triangle.
At first there was nothing. She strained her ears to hear, turning the volume all the way up on the little computer, but there was only silence. Maybe the file had been damaged in the transfer. Maybe he had exported it improperly. Maybe...wait, was that a sound? A slight hum grew to fill the speakers of the computer and evolved into a heightening wall of sound. The raw music was much rougher than the Bach and Mozart that Artemis usually listened to. Then, something incredible happened.
It was a long and dark december
From the rooftops I remember
There was snow, white snow
A strong voice rang through the shattering chords and Holly was truly at a loss for words. Artemis listening to music with lyrics? Unheard of. She focused on the words of the song.
Clearly I remember
From the windows they were watching
While we froze, down below
She tried to find the message in the words. The theme seemed to be the cold. The first thing that came to her mind was the arctic. They had trudged through miles of snow and ice to find his father only to have him forced to turn around to save fairy civilization. It was one of the first glimpses of the truly good heart the mud boy possessed under his cold and uncaring facade.
She smiled, fingering the gold amulet strung around her neck.
When the future's architectured
By a carnival of idiots on show
You better lie low
But they couldn't lay low. Time and time again, it was up to her and the mud boy to prevent civilizations from clashing and save the world from the brink of disaster. They never got a break. Not once she called him, or vice versa, and asked to see a movie or go get some coffee. Maybe if there were less of these idiots in the world she could actually have had a chance to just hang out. And in the end, it had been the these fools that had killed him.
The memories enclosed her mind, pounding at the gates and placing her consciousness under siege. But with a willpower she didn't know she had, she pushed them back and focused on the song once more.
If you love me won't you let me know
She wondered why Artemis was choosing to communicate this way. Generally speaking, it was not his style. When you were in trouble and needed a plan, he was the guy to go to. But when it came to the touchy-feely emotional things, he generally stumbled through them. Maybe he thought he wasn't able to trust himself to say the right things and had to plagiarize someone else's words.
It was a long and dark december
When the banks became cathedrals
And the fog became God
Priests clutched onto bibles
Hollowed out to fit their rifles
And the cross was held aloft
The world Opal Koboi had created with her malice and greed had turned to ash. The remains of the new world were in ruins and technology around the Earth had been set back decades. But the foundations were in place and humanity would rebuild itself. That was one place where you could count on Mud Men, self-preservation.
But what would never heal were the wounds, not to the land, but to the people that had been affected by the crisis.
Bury me in armor
When I'm dead and hit the ground
A love back home unfolds
Holly shivered, memories of his pallid body encased eternal in wood were forever ingrained in her mind. The blank look in his eyes hurt more than anything. The eyes that when she had first known him glowed bright with ice and cold and had grown warm and reassuring as he had become a new person. She would never see the bright light behind those eyes again.
If you love me won't you let me know
The crashing chords and harsh discourses mounted to a rage of sound.
I don't wanna be a soldier
Holly pulled the acorns from her uniform and hurled her Neutrino across the room. She fell into her chair and stared at the ceiling of the room. All of her training, all of her experience, and she couldn't save one damn mud boy's life.
That the captain of some sinking ship
Would stow, far below
That was where she had recognized his face from. A few years ago, fairy civilization had picked up on the craze that had been sweeping through the human world: Titanic. Little fairy girls had bought posters of Leonardo di What's-his-face and some director had even funded the creation of a fairy remake. They had shown the movie at work during a break. Holly had only been half paying attention and didn't find it that interesting anyway, but now one scene stuck in her mind: the face of the captain staring up at the clock as the ship sank slowly into the black waters.
It was the same look Artemis had as the fairy ended his life.
He had known all along he was never going to make it out of that sphere. He had prepared himself for it, tipped his skipper's hat and went down with his ship. But unknowingly, he had dragged so many people down with him. Now her, Butler, Juliet, Angeline, and Artemis Fowl Sr. were struggling to free themselves from the chain that was attached to his vessel as it sunk into the abyss.
If you love me won't you let me go
The music continued to raise in volume and intensity until it reached a crescendo. Finally it broke, and backed by none of the rough chords that had defined the rest of the song, framed only by eery silence, Artemis' parting thoughts hung in her mind for months.
I took my love down to Violet Hill
There we sat in the snow
All the the time she was silent still
They had sat on that goddamn hill, miles away from anything else, as the coffin was lowered into the hole and orange roses grew over the grave. The setting sun had turned the entire landscape a deep purple and the whole thing had seemed utterly surreal. Holly had been there invisible as the family members had, one-by-one, dropped a handful of dirt into the grave. Unseen, after everyone else had left, Holly flew over to the hole and reached into her suit. From around her neck she reached out and held the pendant that contained an acorn and a handful of dirt along side the gold amulet Artemis had returned to her. She crushed the glass in her hand, wincing as it cut her fingers, and let the whole thing fall into the grave.
A large oak would grow over the grave of Artemis Fowl II. Down the hill, a slow river snaked by, bending to accomodate the rise in the land. Hundreds of years from now, fairies would visit this place and wonder in awe of the strength of the magic that flowed through the hallowed ground.
She said, if you love me won't you let me know
"I loved you, Artemis," she whispered into the empty room. "I loved you, and I'm sorry that I couldn't save you."
If you love me won't you let me know
Colplay owns Violet Hill and Colfer own Artemis Fowl.
[ /watch?v=ccsWumaqjkU ]
One note: in the line If you love me won't you let me go some sites have interpreted it as If you love me why'd you let me go. I chose the former version because it sounds less accusative and more melancholy. I couldn't see Artemis blaming Holly for his death.