The most curious thing about the odd relationship between the bodyguard and his charge was that it was an inversion of the process of parenting. For Artemis, ever the inventor, had slowly, perhaps even unconsciously, molded Butler into a paternal figure. Bucking the natural order of things, the child preceded the existence of the parent — indeed, one might go as far as to say that the son had delivered into the world the father.
Bonded by written contracts rather than kinship, the strength of their alliance had a way of affecting the way the duo was perceived by others. When Butler had gone a few extra days between buzz-cutting his hair to its usual military style, a well-meaning waiter had offhandedly remarked that: "It's always so interesting to see what traits are shared between family — I'll bet you had a head of hair something like that of your son when you were his age, ey, sir?" Likewise, when Artemis went without his aviator sunglasses in public, the cornflower blue of his irises seemed, somehow, as if they were diluted versions of the lagoon-like blackish-blues of his bodyguard's.
The professional code by which Butler lived shielded his ears from these whispers. The familial pareidolia that suffused his attentiveness — and it must be said, his similarity to — his charge could only be carried out in ignorance. Had he been made aware that the staff of Fowl manor perceived his conduct as a lonely man's lapse into fatherly doting, he would have doubtlessly been caught off-guard.
Furthermore, had Butler extended, even for a moment, a fraction of his affection for Artemis to Angeline, these whispers of similarity would have taken on a decidedly more accusatory note. The Major, before his death in Kola Bay, stumbled upon two of the maids gossiping. Their subject: the new Butler's not-wholly-detached way of attending to the new heir. However, Butler was a Butler, and as such, there was no concrete evidence of a betrayal of the Blue Diamond way — just inferences that could be made.
For example, as his training dictated, Butler would dutifully retreat to the kitchens to fetch Artemis' lunch when the Fowl parents were caught up in business. Artemis never trailed down to the kitchens, never watched him prepare the meal in the way a child watches their guardian fulfill the agreement of sustaining them, blessing each morsel of food with the following unspoken refrain: I love you, and I want you to grow strong. No, both charge and bodyguard played their respective roles dutifully.
And yet.
And yet, Butler, without ever being asked, would select the same cup for Artemis' earl grey tea each time.
And yet, before Butler ever reached the door of Artemis' study, the young boy would call out, "Come in!", for he'd long since memorized the way his bodyguard's footfalls sounded.
And yet, though he never stayed for the entire duration of the meal, Butler would linger while Artemis took his lunch.
And yet, Artemis thanked Butler each time with the same, vaguely surprised appreciation, as though this meal was a spontaneous largesse rather than a regular occurrence.
And yet, and yet, and yet.
"Mr. Fowl shouldn't be surprised," one of the maids said, clucking her tongue, "When he comes home one day, and finds his boy calling that bodyguard 'Da' instead of him."
Her companion smacked her upside the head. "Mary, why do you say these things, you foolish girl?"
It was these protestations alone that spared her from Mary's fate: immediate dismissal.
When Mr. Fowl's ship was sunk, slipping beneath the icy waters whilst in its bowels carrying the precious cargo of both halves of another, distinctly different Butler-Fowl duo, these titillating rumors of mixed-up parentage ceased. It would have been in bad taste to joke about the matter now that the boy's father was dead.
Years into the future farther still, Artemis lost a father again. In a seafood restaurant, ironically — a parody of the wealth of the ocean in the same way the job of bodyguarding apes the fervent protectiveness of fatherhood. Did the universe laugh, further, at the neatness of symbols in having the shot that pierced Butler's body-turned-shield graze his heart?
In that moment, babbling out assurances and talking over his bodyguard's moribund murmuring, Artemis could not have cared less about symbols, or irony, or cosmic neatness. The machinations of his mind were already set into motion; ways of restoring life back into his fallen friend bounced, frantically, about Artemis' skull even as his bodyguard expired. As he demanded no less than a miracle, Artemis briefly breathed life back into the folktales of the land. At the crossroads by a plastic surgery clinic, Artemis bartered with the fae: a good man is worth more alive than he is dead, Captain Short, and if Butler is to be forced into the land of the dead in my place, then a grave injustice will have occurred.
Holly Short acquiesced. How could she have not?
There, her magic worked its chthonic prowess; she cast her line into the afterlife, hooked Domovoi Butler — for he was Domovoi Butler now, rather than just Butler — and reeled him back into the land of the living. At Artemis' behest, Butler had been granted a second chance at life; he had been, in a curious way, been born again. Now, the aforementioned absurdity emerges: the inverted parental relationship. And indeed, in the light of such ontological ridiculousness, there was to be no more of that carefully cultivated ignorance, that polite denial of the nature of things. Of course, propriety was not wholly to be abandoned; there would be no teary-eyed declarations of, "In truth, you have always been as a son to me" "And you, like my father". That would have been undignified, which was a style of comportment that suited neither Butler nor Artemis.
They were quite similar, as noted before.