Hello, and I am here today to welcome you with a new oneshot... of Arty! It's of Artemis and what he was like from age one to nine, and I tried to make it so that he was still an amazing braniac but still a kid. So, like, he's not walking at six months because the human body at that stage can't do that. He's still human... mostly. *grins at remembrance of The Lost Colony*
Disclaimer: I'm not Eoin, and thus I do not own the amazing Artemis Fowl.
EDIT: I edited this. So a few words will be different, but not much.
One year old
Baby Artemis sat on the Russian ten thousand dollar carpet and gazed up curiously at his mother, waiting for her to finish paying the taxes so that he could follow her around the manor like a cute, but terribly annoying little dog.
Angeline tried to ignore her adorable son, but he was giving her a look. The look. She sighed and shut the lid on her laptop, peering over the table at Artemis. "Hi, Arty!" she addressed him in a baby voice.
Artemis kicked his feet excitedly and smiled, showing off a few baby teeth. Angeline felt her heart melt.
"Come here, you," she said, leaning down and picking him up. He grabbed at her hair and toyed with it, which made her smile. "You're a cute little baby, aren't you?" she asked him, pacing up and down the kitchen with him in her arms. "Aren't you?"
Artemis kicked his feet again, and Angeline realized that he wanted something. "What is it?" she asked him. "What does my baby Arty need?"
Artemis kicked his legs once more, and his mother realized that he was looking past her shoulder at a book left on the counter—something Artemis Fowl Senior had been reading in his free time.
"Politics for dummies," Angeline read, walking over to it. She turned to her baby son. "Are you sure that's what you want?"
As if actually being able to understand her, Artemis smiled with a gurgle, stretching out his hands toward the book and flexing his fingers in a way that could be translated as gimme-gimme-I-want-it-now.
Angeline reluctantly took the book and walked over to the room next door, sitting down on the floor. She rested her son in her lap and opened the book on the first page. Artemis couldn't read yet, but he flipped through the sheets, staring at the black-and-white illustrations with interest. Angeline wondered what he'd say when interviewed if he ever became a famous politician.
Where my love of politics began? Hmm... I'd have to say that my longing began when I was about a year old. My mother used to hold me in her lap and read me a book my father had about it. We spent hours doing that, cuddled near the fireplace and reading things she probably didn't care about.
Then he and the interviewers would chuckle lightly, and Artemis would be asked the next question.
The thought of this disturbed Angeline slightly, so she proceeded to close the book and move it away. "That's enough, Arty," she said, picking up her son and walking out of the room. "It's time for your nap."
Two years old
"Mommy, mommy!" Artemis cried out, holding up a smudged finger-painting for her mother. "Look at what I made for you!"
Angeline looked down from her novel and smiled at her son's present for her. "Thank you, Arty," she said, setting her book aside and reaching out for him. "Come here."
Artemis hobbled over on his toddler legs, and Angeline picked him up and set him on her lap where she could see his painting better. "That's a lovely picture," she commented.
"It's not a picture," Artemis explained in a way that most probably equaled weariness in the context of a two-year-old. "It's a Wassily Kandinsky. He was thought to create the first abstract painting of all time, though I believe Hilma af Klint was earlier. But you've got to admit Kandinsky's paintings are really good." He grinned.
How does a small boy his age know how to pronounce 'Kandinsky'? Angeline wondered, but instead she replied, "That is truly fascinating, Artemis."
"This one is a replica of his Composition VIII, made in 1932," Artemis explained, holding out his painting so that his mother could see. "It's not perfect, but I did a better job than when I tried to copy it a week ago."
"Well, I'm glad you tried again," Angeline said, tugging on her son's nose playfully, which made him laugh. Artemis's picture looked more like messed up paint scribbles, but she was just glad her son was taking up an interest in something else other than wars in Afghanistan and ancient Mayan sacrifices.
Artemis kicked his feet happily for a moment when he remembered something. "Ooh!" he cried out, jumping down from Angeline's lap. "I want to show you some other paintings I drew!" He ran out of the room, and Angeline returned to her novel.
She had just gotten to the part where Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn started digging for treasure when Arty returned with his tiny arms overflowing with sheets of splattered paper. He dropped them on the floor and began to sort them out.
"This one is The Scream," he told his mother, pointing at a picture of a man screaming on a bridge. "And this one is the Girl with the Pearl Earrings." Now a mugshot of some lady with giant white earrings. "And the Mona Lisa, and Starry Night, and the Birth of Venus, et quelque d'autres… je ne me rappelle pas de quel ceci etait, pero este es una otra de Leonoardo da Vinci." He looked up at Angeline expectantly.
She blinked, trying to grasp at what she had just heard. "Was that French?" she demanded. "And then Spanish?"
"Yep!" Arty sounded extremely excited. "I'm teaching it to myself. I'm going to go for Latin next. Daddy told me it's the root of all languages, and after I know it any other language will be easy-breezy. Like this!" Artemis began to spin around in circles across the room, stepping on his paintings and messing them up even more. "WEE!" he sang.
Angeline sighed. Artemis was already speaking like a normal ten-year-old child. By three a kid was only supposed to know five hundred words. And now French and Spanish and Latin?
There was only one thing to do. Angeline picked up her novel and began to read again, leaving Artemis to his spinning.
Three years old
Knock knock knock.
"Come in!" Artemis sang from inside his bedroom, hurriedly jumping on his bed and pretending that he had been reading.
Angeline poked her head in the doorway. "Arty, may I come in?" she asked. Artemis nodded, and his mother took a few tentative steps forward.
She stopped in the center of the room, looking around. "Artemis," she said slowly as if restricting herself from breaking down in horror, "where are all your toys?"
"Some place," Artemis replied easily. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to learn what happens in this dreadful story you gave me of an old lady eating a fly."
Angeline waited a few moments. "Honey, you're reading it upside down."
"It's not like it matters," Artemis replied, closing the book and throwing it to the floor. It landed face-open on a page where a fat lady is stuffing a horse in her mouth. "The thing is all pictures anyway."
Angeline sighed and sat down on the edge of Artemis's bed. "Arty, would you mind telling me where you hid all your toys?" she asked.
"I'm too old for that stuff," Artemis explained. "So I got Butler to throw it all out."
"Arty, you did what?" Angeline wondered if she'd heard that wrong. "Sweetie, why did you do that?"
"I already told you, I'm too old—"
"No, you're not," Angeline said. "Arty, baby, I looked it up. Imaginary characters and toys are supposed to be your best friends at this age of life."
"They were toys," Artemis countered crossly, averting the gaze of his mother. "I hardly assume that's imaginary."
Angeline paused. "Arty, has someone at preschool said mean things to you about your toys?"
"No," Artemis replied, but Angeline caught the hesitation.
"Oh, Arty," she said sweetly, bringing him in to a hug. "You don't need to do that. You loved your model of the solar system, as well as your chemistry kit and your collection of medieval children torture devices. And Mr. History and Dr. Dictionary were your favourite imaginary friends! Why are you letting them go?"
"Apparently I'm a big-brain," Artemis responded miserably, his eyes welling up with tears. "They think my friends are lazy-butts, and they say that I work too much." He began to sob in his mother's shirt. "Harry Potter isn't weird either!"
Angeline scooped up her son and held him, letting him cry for a minute. "Oh, Arty," she said, wondering what the world would be like if preschool profanity was the worst thing you could say to a person. "Just because someone doesn't like you for who you are doesn't mean you have to change to match their ideals."
"I know," Artemis replied, wiping his snotty nose on his 100% cotton sky blue sweater's sleeve. "I know that I have to ignore them, or tell a teacher, or not make eye contact, but they don't listen! I once told them they were acting like a bunch of rude medieval peasants, but they just laughed and asked what a peasant was!"
Angeline stroked back her son's hair. "You know what we'll do?" she told him. "I'm going to call the principal and tell him to tell your mean classmates to stop. If they don't we'll switch schools. In return you have to agree to me taking you on a shopping trip to replace all your trashed toys. Okay?"
Artemis nodded once, and Angeline helped her son stand again. Holding her hand, she led him out of the room.
"By the way, you've read Harry Potter?"
"Yes. It was amazing to read but an absolutely ridiculous concept. If in book three Hermione has a time-turner, then why didn't the Ministry of Magic just use one of theirs to go back in time to defeat Voldemort before the war even start—"
"No spoilers, Arty! Harry Potter's on my summer-reading list."
Four years old
The psychologist looked up from his notes. "Artemis Fowl, isn't it?" he asked the child sitting before him.
"The Second, in person and in presence," Artemis finished for him, bowing his head slightly.
"Mmhmm," the psychologist—who's real name was Dr. McGowney—said thoughtfully. "Yes, it's been brought to our attention that for a four-year-old you have quite the IQ. I just want to take a few tests."
He took some cutout pictures of two girls, two baskets and a cookie, and slid them across the table to Artemis. "The first girl is called Sally, the second Lucy. Sally has a cookie"—here McGowney took the cookie picture and gave it to the first girl—"which she puts in the first basket." He made it as so.
"Then Sally leaves the room. Lucy, who was there the whole time, takes the cookie out of the basket and puts it in the second one." Dr McGowney slid the cookie over to the second cutout. "Then Sally returns. Where will she look for the cookie?"
"The first basket, obviously," Artemis replied. "That's where she left it. I know this trick, Doctor. Supposedly, a child under the age of five believes that one's mind is everyone's mind. If Lucy knows something, why can't Sally know it too? Unless, of course, she and Lucy are twins, which is quite possible. Twins share the same DNA, which thus—"
"That's enough, Artemis," interrupted Dr. McGowney, a bit irritated. "Now, for your next test you will need to tell me what you see on these inkblots…"
-o-O-o-
"How did it go?" Angeline asked her son as he skipped out of the psychologist's room. He shrugged and took off his knapsack, pulling out a piece of paper and handing it to her.
"Your son is a prodigy for his age," Angeline read proudly. "You could be very proud of him had his manners not been so atrocious. I refuse to conference with the person teaching this child. You are clearly a bold mastermind but also a terrible parent; I recommend St. Claire's Home of the Abandoned if you feel the need to relieve yourself of this obvious burden…" Angeline crumpled the sheet into a ball and tossed it in the nearest trashcan.
"Arty, did you rig the air vents to steam out a toxic gas again?" Angeline scolded.
Artemis smothered a smile and didn't reply.
-o-O-o-
"Mother!" Artemis yelled out. "Look at what I learned!"
Angeline set down The Deathly Hallows to look at her son. "Yes?" she asked.
Artemis held up a sheet of paper. Angeline leaned forward to read what was written on it in four-year-old chicken-scratch.
Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium. Boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and fluorine, neon and sodium—
"What is this, may I ask?" Angeline interrupted with a small cough.
"It's the elements of the periodic table," Artemis replied happily. "I found a chart in Father's room, memorized it, and copied it!"
"And how long did that take you, sweetie?" Angeline asked politely.
Artemis thought about it. "About five minutes," he replied.
"Arty, why don't you show your father?" Angeline offered instead. Artemis nodded, deciding that this was a great idea, and skipped off, singing loudly, "Iron, cobalt, nickel! Copper, zink, gallium, germanium, arsenic…!"
Angeline sighed and rubbed her temples. Something was wrong with her child.
Five years old
Artemis Fowl the First entered his bedroom to find his wife sitting on the bed with a laptop resting on her thighs. He walked over and gave her a quick kiss on the head.
"Watcha looking at?" he asked, trying to see what was on the screen.
"Arty, I'm worried about Arty," Angeline replied. "He's not a normal boy."
"Of course he's not," Artemis replied. "He's a smartie—as intelligent as I am. Maybe one day he'll take over the family business when I retire."
"Oh, honey, I don't like the family business," Angeline told him, closing the lid on her laptop. "Could you please—?"
Artemis sighed. "It's more complicated than that," he replied, walking over to the closet and pulling out a clean business suit. "I can't just quit all of a sudden. I'm the head. The top boss."
Angeline pouted slightly, but gave in. "All right," she decided. "Where are you going?"
"Business meeting," Artemis Senior replied, walking over to the washroom to get changed.
"But this is your fourth one this week!" she complained. "And it's Wednesday!"
"Not like I have a choice," he replied, yelling to be heard through the door. Angeline heard the shower water running.
"Fine. If you have to," she relented. "Just don't get home too late!"
"It's in New York."
"Dang it, why is everything so far away?"
"That's just how the natural order of things go, Angel. I should be here by breakfast."
Angeline sighed and opened her laptop again, reading the list of things a child should be able to do by five years of age.
Stand on one leg for ten seconds.
Like that was happening, Angeline thought with a sideways grin. Artemis was horrible at anything physical. He'd once tried to stand on a leg while Butler held his arms. Somehow he'd fallen anyway and broken two millennia-year-old vases in the process.
Draw a person with four body parts.
Although his drawings weren't exactly Van Gogh, Artemis could name every bone in the adult body and where it was located, the bodily functions of twelve necessary organs for both the female and male, as well as name any muscle or stream of nerves you'd like. He had once gone through this phase when he was fascinated by the brain and how it worked.
Interaction with other children.
The thought of Artemis willingly play with other kids his age was nearly laugh-out-loud hilarious. He'd dropped the imaginary friends at late four and now most of his toys had turned to black thick novels. Other kids were scared of him. Instead of the coodies, Artemis's school had the Arties. You got it whenever Artemis tried to explain some unknown scientific fact to someone you, and you could only rub it off by saying the stupidest and un-true thing you knew.
Angeline sighed, closing the laptop lid again. This was too depressing.
Artemis Senior exited the washroom looking clean and sharp in his suit. "Bye, honey," Angeline called to him.
"Bye, Angel," he replied, giving her a quick kiss on the forehead before leaving.
"And try not to blow up any more cities!" she remembered to tell him, but he didn't reply. She swore as he began to make his way toward the door nervously.
"Dang it, Artemis, no more nukes. Artemis? Artemis? Artemis!"
Six years old
Artemis had his nose buried in a seven hundred-plus book on the first day of big-kid school, but he couldn't concentrate on any of the words. He was too jittery, and he confessed this to his mother reluctantly.
"Don't worry," Angeline told him as the limo pulled into the school's front yard, squeezing his hand. She and Artemis Senior had decided that he wasn't going to go to a boarding school until at least ten years of age, so until then the chauffeur was driving him every day. Angeline had come with him for the first day. "You'll be fine. And if you ever feel uncomfortable, remember Newton's relativity law."
Artemis was too nervous to correct this.
There were several other limos parked up front. (This was a rich-boys-only school after all.) Artemis stepped out holding his mother's hand, and he allowed her to lead him inside.
They found his classroom and he sat down after a quick goodbye. Another boy came up to him. He appeared to be jumping for no reason.
"Hi my name is Fred I'm super excited to be here what's yours?"
Pause.
"Excuse me?" Artemis demanded formally.
"Hi my name is Fred I'm super excited—"
"Yes, I understand that," Artemis replied. "Please go away now."
Fred seemed hurt. "That wasn't nice," he said.
Artemis sighed. "Listen to me for a minute, boy. In World War II the Germans had all the Jewish locked up and sent away to concentration camps where they worked them to death. On 9/11 two commercial airplanes full of innocent Americans crashed into the Twin Towers, killing thousands. And in the future, we humans will probably wipe ourselves out after something known as the Oil Wars, Water Wars, and Land Wars. Millions will die before that. My guess? One country creates a poisonous tonic that makes gummy bears grow into vicious and savage beasts that eat everything in its path before the world is reduced to crumbles. But, of course, you're a First World princess. You wouldn't know any of that."
Fred began to cry. Artemis was sent to the principal's office, and Angeline received her email later that day. Offensive verbal abuse, she read. I wonder what Artemis was trying to explain this time.
Seven years old
Artemis walked over to a clump of desks in his classroom, and everyone immediately filed out and walked over to a different one, leaving Artemis to himself.
He neatly took out his PB&J sandwich and placed it on his folded napkin, delicately sipping from his juice box. He took out a pencil and a notepad and continued his soon-to-be-award-winning physics book about the fourth dimension.
A few kids glanced at him and snickered at his loser-ness. Artemis ignored them like he had since preschool and continued his novel.
Eight years old
Artemis sat hunched over the computers in his room, staring at the screens and typing faster than the eye could comprehend. Butler stood to the side, keeping his eyes away from the screen but by his charge's side.
Someone knocked on the door and Angeline poked her head in. "Hey, Arty," she greeted.
"Hello, mother," Artemis replied without looking up.
Angeline frowned but didn't say anything against this. "Artemis, what are you doing?" she asked as politely as she could, stepping inside.
"Hacking," he replied.
"Hacking where?" she persisted, and Butler quietly snuck out of the room, knowing the two would need some time to talk alone.
"Hacking some place," Artemis replied. "Now please, Mother, I need to finish this—"
Angeline peered over his shoulder and gasped loudly. "Artemis!" she exclaimed in disbelief. "What are you doing on the Fort Knox's internet webpage!?"
Artemis sighed and turned the computer off. "I wasn't going to take any of it, if you were thinking that," he told her, spinning his chair around so that he could face her.
"Uh-huh," his mother replied with crossed arms. "Then what were you doing with your mouse hovered over the Deposit 100M Into Bank Account button?"
Her son hesitated. "Okay, maybe I was going to take it, but I was also going to give it back," he explained quickly. "I wanted to see if I was able to do this. You know; if the need ever appears."
Angeline sighed in frustration and began to pace the room. "So this is how I've brought you up?" she yelled. "To steal whenever you need to?"
"Actually, Father did that—"
"Artemis, not now!"
Angeline groaned loudly and fell backwards on her son's bed. "Artemis, you are hereby grounded," she ordered. "No computer or electronic hacking thingamajig for six months!"
"But mother—!"
"I don't want to hear it!" Angeline stormed over to the trays of computers and unplugged them all from the socket. "I'm getting your father to do something more permanent in the morning," she informed her son before marching out of the room.
That night, Artemis Senior noticed his wife was a bit more tense than usual. "What's wrong, Angel?" he asked her.
"Oh, just Artemis," she replied, sighing. "Our son." Angeline paused. "You know, most kids his age fight with their parents about play-dates and allowance. You know what I caught him doing today?"
"What?"
"Fort Knox! That kid doesn't know where to stick his nose and where not to."
Artemis Senior sighed. "You're too worried," he said. "Maybe you should let him go. Let a kid be a kid."
"What?" Angeline demanded, standing up straighter. "Easy for you to say! You run a criminal empire! I bet you're secretly proud that your son was about to steal a hundred million American dollars!"
"Angel, that's not what I was implying at all—!"
"This family sickens me," Angeline decided, storming out of the room and down the grand staircase to the main hall. Juliet was there, chatting innocently with some cleaning lady. When she saw Angeline she stood to attention.
"Angeline—" she began, but the other didn't let her finish.
"Just take me to the airport and fly me somewhere," Angeline ordered. "Where, I don't care. Anywhere but away from this family of thieves."
Nine years old
By the time Artemis Fowl Junior was nine years of age he had written five non-fiction bestsellers, a triology of historical-fiction novels for teens, an autobiography, and a total of fifteen books altogether. He had made a profit of three hundred thousand legal American dollars (apparently he was a huge hit over there), and about twice that much illegally.
He'd gone on two trips with his father in the family business, and was even in the room during a brutal interrogation on the ship. He secretly taught university classes online under the name of Dr. Newaya, and knew pretty much anything there was to know on almost any given subject.
In other words, Angeline hated it.
She hated seeing her son growing up so fast. Suddenly, she was looking back at Dr. Dictionary and the Elements of the Periodic Table as if it were a picnic. Twice more she'd caught him taking money from banks, and who knew how many times he'd done it before without anyone realizing it.
She wished Butler wasn't so free with Artemis. Maybe she had to put that in his contract the next time it was renewed. Don't let Artemis do anything illegal. Once she'd been awoken in the middle of the night to the sirens of cops, demanding to be let in to arrest the man who had stolen five hundred thousand dollars from the Harvard University's bank.
And, even worse, his stunts were becoming not only through the Web but out in the real world as well. Angeline was once reading the news to find that Wassily Kandinsky's first abstract painting had been stolen from its home in Paris and sold online to the highest bidder. They found the painting soon enough and returned it to Centre George, but they never found the stealer.
Angeline sighed. "I always knew Artemis had a thing for Kandinsky," she muttered, powering down her laptop and rubbing her temples with the pads of her fingertips.
Oh, Arty. My sweet, sweet, Arty. What have I done to you?
Oh, Angeline blames herself. It's a bit sad.
Please review. Much appreciated! (::) (::) (::)