A/N: Italicized font indicate quotes from the books in this chapter instead of something thought by a character, but technically it also indicates Artemis' thoughts. This is the first taste of Artemis in this fic! I wish I owned Artemis, I really do, Irish accents are beautiful.
Temporal
Chapter Two:
The Temperament of Time
Lofty evergreen trees swayed in the gentle breeze, rustling with life. Like Tolkien's creatures.
Artemis watched Holly stride toward the main doors.
If only, he thought. If only.
If only they did live in Middle Earth. In Middle Earth, a human had once married an Elf.
"In another time," she said, and kissed him on the cheek.
His heart wrenched at the thought. "In another time" had existed too many times for him and Holly. In another time, he, Butler, and Juliet would have been dead by blue rinse.
"Stay back. You don't know what you are dealing with."
Oh, the irony.
In another time, she would have been dead by Abbot's hand.
"I remember—you saved me."
"It never happened." (But it had—he had saved her.)
In another time, they could have easily been in love.
Holly leaned down and kissed Artemis, magic sparking around the contact like tiny fireworks.
In another time, neither of them would have been magical, or both of them, or just Artemis and not Holly.
"Stole a little magic, did you?"
"It was floating around. I wondered what would happen if I embraced it."
In another time, both of their ages would have been correct.
"You've been gone for nearly three years."
In another time, their worlds could have been destroyed, each several times over.
"I will be Queen of the world!"
There was too much to say about the possibilities and the realities of "another time." Artemis wished that they could focus on this time, and make a possibility of another time part of this one. He wished that something that was true once could be true again.
He wanted her to trust him again, as love was not possible without trust. He wanted her to understand. He didn't want that to be just in "another time." He didn't want to have to think about the possibilities of "another time" wistfully or fearfully. He wanted what was true to transcend time.
He realized that love was not temporal, and that it wasn't fair to rule it out into "another time." He realized that life itself was not temporal, and that if you ruled love into the "another time" category, then Holly's life could just as easily be ruled into the "another time" category.
Was she going to start treating her life like it was supposed to belong to a different temporal reality? No. Was she going to treat what she and Artemis had shared as something that belonged to a different temporal reality?
Yes.