Notes: This takes place before the first book. It's pretty much a detailed account of how Artemis ended up the way he did. It always really annoyed me that the books never truly explained the relationship he had with his parents, it was mostly just implied. They explained a little bit in the first two books and then all of the sudden Artemis Senior comes back and he's all valiant yadda yadda, and his mother gets better and it just doesn't matter anymore that they basically neglected him emotionally. I mean, for a twelve year old kid to become disturbed enough to kidnap someone, a lot more had to happen to get him to that point. And now that I'm ranting I'd also like to point out that for the rest of the books all his mother does is whine at him about how he's not normal...well he was raised by insane people so of course he's not normal. DUH. Anyway thanks for sticking with me through that, here's the story.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters is there any point in me finishing this sentence?
The sky was gray, the grayness spread out like spilled water color across paper, collecting in angry looking blotches. They stretched themselves into a shadowy white band that hovered just above the hem of the mountains. It barley rained and still the entirety of the grounds seemed drenched, water logged. The wind pushed mist across the lake and up over the hills where it collected in droplets against the manors many amber glowing windows. Everything was warm, secure against the chilled winds of November.
The boy gazed out of his home, out past the glass and the amber glow, out past his own reflection. Huddled close to the window, the gray clouds seemed to move somberly across his forehead, behind his eyes. He shifted in the antique wooden bench seat, one knee pulled close to his chest, the other knee propped against a table. His breath caught and fogged against the glass, blurring the reflection of the figure behind him whom he ignored with expertise. She was a shadow strewn behind him briefly as the sun emerged and then dissipated, a mere suggestion of the life before her. She was an anomaly that can only ever be a shade of comparative darkness, a feint semblance of a real living thing intercepting light. The shadow swayed nervously and crossed her arms over her chest and sighed. She stalked to the other side of the room, stopped and slowly meandered back into the boy's view.
"Good morning Arty" said the reflection of the shadow of his mother.
Just go away.
"Hello" the boy answered, barley audible.
He didn't turn his gaze from the glass but began to tap his knuckle against the table top, he knew he was coming across as impatient and for once didn't care. He was so often gentle with her, handling her as if she were a delicate yet beautiful spider web that he wished to preserve. Too often afraid to breath incorrectly lest she unravel, detach from her bearings and float away in the wind.
She took a few steps closer to her son, letting her arms drop suddenly. She straightened her back and titled her head to the side as if she were trying to remember something, like it was the most important thing and it was just at the tip of her tongue but she couldn't quite wretch it back from the clouded space of her mind. She reached out her hand toward him but seemed to think better of it and recoiled gently.
"Arty, we need to talk dear...I just can't remember what it was I..." she trailed off and stepped closer. "Arty, look at me...look at your mother."
The boy stiffened and slowly turned to face her, unbending his knees and placing his feet on the stone floor. At nearly 7 in the morning, what little of the sun that was rising over the cresting hills beyond the manor was quickly being smothered by the immense clouds, dark and looming. The room was unlit if not for the stray light spilling in from the hallway behind Angeline Fowl. The boy looked at her, his eyes were startling in the dimness of the room, they glinted an almost other worldly blue. The blue of the immense, untouched ice of the arctic, the blue of the deepest ocean. Cold, distant yet so...so familiar.
"Yes Mother?" the boy says the words but they are not his.
She had asked him to look at her, he did. Her light brown hair is wispy, knotted. She's wearing the same lilac colored silk bath robe that she's had on for nearly two weeks. She smells of sleep, of sickness. Her skin is so pale it's almost gray. He hesitates before meeting her eyes, they are glassy, distant. She's not really here, he knows that. She's looking at him and past him. Her eyes are ringed with smudged eyeliner that she has cried through again and again, never bothering to wash off.
He was beginning to think she wasn't going to answer, which is the way many of their conversations end, fragmented. But she seemed suddenly aware of her surroundings, her hands patted at her torn torn pajama bottoms and filthy robe. She looked down and seemed to be seeing the glass she sent crashing to the floor only hours ago, as if for the first time. To her left she noticed the curtains she ripped from their rungs, the books she'd hurled in anger. She'd even smashed an antique clock against the wall, sending splintered wood and small working mechanisms flying across the room. She looked worriedly at the mantle above the fire place where she kept her carefully arranged porcelain statuettes, they too were smashed to bits, mixed in with the remains of a very expensive french mirror. She whirled around in horror. The heavy oak table across the room had been upended and the vase of lillies it had held was smashed beneath it. A puddle of water spread slowly across the floor, leaking into the area rug in the center of the room.
She opened her mouth and said nothing. Then:
"What has...happened here? All of these things...who?" she looked at her son with wide eyes, innocent and confused. Her hands flitted about her frame like startled birds.
"Mother, just go back upstairs, go to bed, you have been up all night. When you wake up everything will be better, I promise." He said this without much conviction, his voice flat.
Angeline reached out, placing a hand on each side of her sons pale face. Her fingers traced the bruise that arced across the high of his cheek bone, beneath his left eye. A look of concern and confusion passed over her features, and then something else. She pulled his head to her chest, breathing into his hair. Artemis clenched his jaw.
"I'm so sorry, what have I done?"
She was kneeling now, rocking him in her lap.
"What have I done?...I never meant to be this way Arty I just, everything just got out of hand. I came downstairs and I saw all of his things, sitting just where he left them. I just got so angry, not even his ghost is left...not a word just gone..." She was speaking so quietly now, mostly to herself.
"I begged him not to go" she sobbed suddenly, running her hands frantically through the boys dark hair.
"I pleaded with him not to go...he promised me...this would be the last run" her grip grew tighter, she dug her nails into the skin of his neck where she held him to her chest.
Let go.
He was so sick of this, chasing his mother about the house as if she were a wild animal, unpredictable and violent. Cleaning up the messes in her wake, being kind to her. He didn't want to be kind anymore, he wanted to hit her, to fight back. To stalk up to her dark, disgusting room and tear down the drapes, smash all of her things.
He was trembling in her arms now, he wanted to scream at her. To make her see, finally see. She had left him behind, she had saved herself and left him here to rot in the silence. In the deafening wake of her screams and his vast loneliness that they had so painstakingly carved out for him, in this monster of a house. He pushed away from her, suddenly. Violently. She was thrown backwards onto the rough area rug, she sat up slowly and looked at him with an incredulous expression that quickly soured to rage.
She narrowed her eyes at him, he knew she was seeing a stranger.
"Where is he?! Where is my husband, where have you taken him?!" she was howling, her voice cracked and desperate sounded alien in her son's ears.
He stood, looking down at her, a look of disgust twisting his young features. So often he spoke gently, pretended to be her little boy, protected her against the things that kept him awake at night. Now it seemed he was unable to hide his contempt...or perhaps no longer wanted to.
Still in her crumpled position on the floor, she leaned forward and screamed at this familiar stranger in her home. Familiar yet cold and somehow she knew, knew without a doubt in her mind that this stranger had taken her husband, this person that was a living, breathing memory before her had seized her life and ripped it apart. And she wailed against her better judgment and her sanity and her pride through the tears she thought she no longer possessed, having spent them all.
"Tell me where he is!" her voice was raw, shaking.
Artemis' mouth twitched.
"At the bottom on the arctic ocean".
There was silence. Angeline's frame tensed as if she had been struck. The air was thick, threatening, as if her son had in fact, hit her. Artemis continued despite his better judgment.
"It's been two years Angeline, two years and not one shred of believable evidence. I have been searching, against all the impossible odds. Do you know how grim our chances of even finding his dead body are, let alone finding him alive?"
Angeline didn't answer, she just stared up at her son's pale face, she seemed startled but not fully aware. Artemis' gaze was cold, hard. He could feel himself losing control, anger blossomed in his chest. He knew he would regret this but he couldn't stop now.
"Nil, next to nothing." He stated angrily, answering his own question.
He knew she probably wasn't comprehending any of this and even if she was it wasn't going to change her mental state or their situation. It wasn't going to miraculously fix anything but his outburst felt good. And he hadn't felt much of that in about two years. He wondered what it said about his character that making his own mother suffer when she was ill actually eased his own pain. He filed this information away to be analyzed later and continued, his mouth moving of it's own accord.
"There is almost no chance of us ever finding him, even if he wasn't killed in the explosion or when the ship went down he would have soon suffered hypothermia. But let's just say that he did, somehow, make it to shore. The Russian mafia wouldn't let his vulnerable predicament slip through their fingers. No, an adversary as powerful as Artemis Fowl, weak and without resources, they would be stupid not to take the opportunity to gain an upper hand."
Angeline was trembling now, she hadn't attempted to rise from her place on the rug and she looked like a small girl, fragile and scared. Artemis knew he was being cruel but something that he had not allowed himself to feel for so long was rising in the back of his throat, acrid. He tried to quell the outburst but heat rose in his face, tears threatened to prick in the corners of his eyes. He felt unstable, a white hot pain pooled in his stomach.
"Don't you see Mother?" His eyes glinted and something dangerous was there beneath the surface. "That is our very last hope. That he somehow survived and washed up on shore in time for those thugs to take him hostage. His life is in the hands of the mafia and if they do not have him then he is surely dead." His voice was shaking, feeling foreign in his throat.
Angeline rose slowly, seeming to have found some sense of composure yet still flinching at his words.
"I don't want to hear anymore of this, I don't know who you are but you certainly are not my little Arty. He would never be so cold towards me. Leave now before I call my son's body guard to remove you." The conviction in her voice was unmistakable, had she not looked the way she currently did and if not for the glassiness of her eyes, Artemis would have believed this was really his mother. She was even staring down her nose at him as if she were in complete control of her faculties and offended beyond reason that this strange boy was in her home, spewing nonsense.
The insane do not know they are insane, Thought Artemis.
At this point Artemis didn't even try to correct her, he knew that this delusion she was immersed in was a sort of shield against the things he had just said. It was easier for her to think that Artemis was not her son than to admit that he was and that he could possibly be so cold and so unlike the child Angeline had always wanted. His emotions were deeply conflicted. He pitied her, sympathized with her and resented her immensely all at once. He looked into his mother's eyes briefly, suddenly feeling exhausted and turned from her to face the window.
But Angeline had had enough of this intruder, she reached out and grabbed the boy's arm and yanked him around to face her. Her grip was hard and she began to shake him, screaming into his face. Artemis squeezed his eyes shut against the spray of spittle.
"How dare you disrespect me!" She screamed, outraged. "Don't you know who I am? Who my husband is? He could have you killed!" Her face was red and pinched looking. She was blatantly frustrated with the boy's refusal to do as she had commanded, her fear quickly transforming into an animal like aggression. Artemis opened his eyes, ignoring the pain of her grip, looking at her with not a trace of emotion. He said nothing. Angeline took further offensive at his silence and nonchalant attitude.
"We'll see how smug you look when Butler gets a hold of you" she said sharply, she dragged him over to the door way and began shouting.
"Butler!" she leaned out of the door and shouted down the long hallway, cupping her hand around her mouth for better projection. "Butler, we have an intruder! Come quickly!" she sounded desperate and her voice was hoarse.
"He's not going to hurt me" said Artemis coolly.
She looked back at him in a stunned silence. His air of confidence frightened her.
Here was this small boy, breaking into her home, which she knew to be a veritable fortress, and he was in no way worried that he'd been caught nor reacting to her threats.
How had he even gotten inside?
"Who are you?" she asked warily, a cloud of apprehension behind her eyes.
"Your son" answered the boy, looking unconcerned.
"Stop saying that!" she pushed him away from her. "You are not my son, why are you doing this to me?" her voice broke.
"Your doing this to yourself, Mother" there was a hint of venom in his words.
"Don't say that to me! You're just trying to confuse me!" She swatted at him but Artemis side stepped her clumsy attempt.
"No, you see, I'm not trying to confuse you. I'm merely telling you the truth." His voice was unkind, his eyes threatening. "Your husband is gone. And I am, in fact, your only son." With every word Artemis could see his mother shrink away from him, hands clasping her head. A coldness seized him, the coldness that would protect him from that moment on emerged, eating away at him like acid, stifling the ache he felt when his mother wouldn't look at him. Or when she refused to say his name, when she denied he was her son. This was his shield and armor, like mother like son. "You can go back to your attic and close the blinds, shut out the whole world and sleep for another year but unfortunately for you that isn't going to make me any less your son, and when you wake up he's still going to be dead".
He had gone too far. Angeline reached out and smacked him across the mouth with the back of her hand, hard. The boy stumbled backward a few steps, but his expression never wavered. He looked up at her smugly, his bottom lip had busted open on his teeth, blood blossomed across his lips and onto his chin.
"You're pathetic" he laughed quietly and shook his head, attempting to step around her towards the door. She grabbed his arm again, exasperated and enraged, she began pummeling him with her fists. He didn't even cringe, he just stood there and absorbed the blows. She was screaming at him to get out, to leave as she sobbed.
Butler, who had been on the first floor of the manor preparing breakfast when he heard Angeline's cries, skidded to a halt in the door way brandishing his sig sauer. His eyes widened as he realized what was happening and he pocketed the fire arm. He was shocked, Mrs. Fowl had never hit Artemis in the past. She was a pacifist by nature and her son hardly ever got the chance to "act out" as a normal child would. Because of the way his father had raised him she hardly ever even had to correct him, especially this violently. He was torn between his duty to protect Artemis and not overstepping Angeline in her parental authority. After a moment it became obvious that she was in the grips of another episode, the room was completely destroyed, Angeline's signature.
He swiftly stepped forward and caught her fist mid strike. He wrapped one massive arm around her, securing her arms to her sides. The small women flailed against him, kicking and screaming. This type of behavior was getting to be quite typical of Angeline and so Butler made sure he had a mild sedative on him at all times, just in case she became unreasonable. He hated to do this to the poor woman but if he simply carried her back to her room and locked the door she was likely to hurt herself attempting to get out. The sedative was only effective for 15 minutes and upon waking it acted as an anti anxiety medication, soothing her enough for her to fall asleep naturally.
He pulled a hypodermic needle out of a small black case in his jacket pocket and injected her, she went limp almost immediately. He carried the woman back to her room in the attic and put her to bed before returning to Artemis Senior's study, where he left his principle.
He returned to find the study empty. He took a moment to survey the damage before going to check on Artemis. He heard Angeline in here late last night, she had been throwing things, smashing her late husband's personal items and talking to herself. He knew that if he let her tire herself out she would go back to bed after a few hours. He didn't know that Artemis had left his room to confront his mother, the boy never made a sound. He must have just sat there and watched in silence as she destroyed the only things that he had left of his father's.
Butler sprinted down the hallway to Artemis' room, only to find it empty as well. He wasn't in his own study either. Butler quickly called Juliet on his cell phone, she was currently in the dojo completing her morning routine, he interrupted her and asked her to check the grounds for Artemis while he took the rest of the manor. It took them both a good 30 minutes to exhaust every option before they realized the boy was gone.
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Review, critique, this is my very first fanfic so I'm open to suggestions.
If you guys like it i'll post chapter 2