UGH, thank GOD I finally got this done. Sorry it took so long guys, but I managed to get back in the swing of things at least! Hopefully I'll be able to stay in the swing of things this time, and not get distracted by another fandom and start a new fanfic series again *flails pointedly at my new fanfic Ignition*
Later, safe in their hotel room once again and pulling off their shawl, Frisk couldn't help but think that every second after Toriel's statement had just seemed to drag on and on and on. Like the timestream had decided to crawl through thick molasses and slow everything down to a painfully long eternity.
It wasn't the rest of the parley to blame for that. They knew that. The fairies had been agonizingly sincere in their eagerness to get the pending negotiations (as much as they were able to negotiate without their government being directly involved) over and done with, some still trembling with nerves in the aftermath of Sans's demonstration with the blaster. The monsters, too, were clearly intent on finishing negotiations as quickly as possible, no longer feeling safe on the Fowl grounds, and so they were quick to get to the point, easily getting the fairies to agree to stop spying on Frisk and their friends in private ("private" including political meetings, their hotel rooms and homes, and any rooms that they might want to use to discuss more delicate things), in exchange for keeping the existence of the fairies a secret from any other monsters not in their little group and no more monsters attacking fairies so long as they kept to their side of the bargain.
Flowey was still grumbling about that last bit. Probably because he had been one of the two monsters that the fairies had very definitely been eyeing when Captain Short had made that request. Still, it had been a fair point, and no amount of grumbling from anybody was going to change that.
Frisk took several deep breaths, clasping their hands together in an attempt to stop them shaking, and gallantly tried to ignore the worried stares boring into their back.
By all rights, they shouldn't still be feeling so nervous. They'd dealt with stressful situations like this before, and compared to the political maneuvering that they were used to, the compromise made between the fairies and the monsters had been easy. They knew that, and they knew that Toriel knew that as well, since she had been there for many previous situations that Frisk had handled better than this one. But they couldn't really help themselves, because this was the first time in a very, very long time that something new had been thrown down on the table for them to deal with without them having some idea how to deal with it.
Up until now, no one else apart from Flowey, Sans, and maybe Asgore* (they'd never found the courage to ask him) had ever known about the Resets. It was a secret strictly for them and them alone, because neither Frisk nor Chara had any illusions as to everyone else's reactions if they did find out about it. The other monsters would be horrified and guilty about having killed them in previous timelines, especially Toriel, who would probably take it harder than everyone else, or angry and hurt if they ever learned of Frisk's less moral runs. And humans… well. If human governments were willing to lock monsters underground claiming them to be a threat just because they didn't understand them, then finding out about a child who had lived through more than a decade's worth of Groundhog's Day time-loops would probably get Frisk locked up in a lab to be experimented on, or used against the monsters until the next Reset came… at the very least (and they really really didn't want to know what the most might be).
But now someone knew. Artemis Fowl and the fairies knew one of their deepest, darkest secrets, without even having to be told about the different timelines. They probably hadn't had enough time to go through all their memories by now, because a decade's worth of memories was a huge amount of memories to browse through, but they'd probably still seen enough to understand what was happening and understand why Frisk had been keeping it all a secret. And Frisk had no idea how they were going to use the information.
Would they blackmail Frisk into doing favors for them, in exchange for keeping the info to themselves? Would they try to have Frisk killed, to get rid of the threat they posed? Would they try to wheedle Frisk into using the Resets to their advantage? Would they tell the government? Would they tell anyone else at all?
*Would they tell the monsters?
Frisk shuddered as Chara quietly added their piece to the silent monologue, and wrapped their arms around themselves for comfort.
"Frisk…?"
Toriel. Her voice seemed awfully loud, in the quiet that the monsters had fallen into after shortcutting back. Frisk took a deep breath to steady themselves and then turned around to give the monsters a watery smile.
"I'm fine, Mom." They said, quietly. "Just… just a little shaken still, I guess."
Flowey, whose pot had been put down on their bedside table, snorted, not fooled one bit, and everyone else looked just as skeptical.
"YOU LOOK VERY SHAKEN, NOT JUST A LITTLE!" Papyrus pointed out, wringing his hands.
"Yeah, you look like someone walked over your dust," Undyne said, bluntly.
Frisk winced, and carefully put aside the memories that phrase brought up, to hopefully never ever think about again.
"I'm fine," they repeated, more softly. "I just… I'm fine. You don't need to worry about me."
Toriel studied them for a moment, warm red eyes worried. Then, she stood up from where she had sat down on the bed and moved forward, kneeling and reaching out to put warm, gentle hands on Frisk's shoulders.
"Is this about what young Mr. Fowl said?" she asked, just as softly. "The memories he saw?"
They gulped, mind whirring frantically to come up with some response that wasn't a big fat yes, and came up with nothing. Their nervousness must have shown, because Toriel gave them a faint smile, and drew them into a hug.
"It's alright, my child," she murmured. "I won't ask. I won't be like those fairies and insist upon knowing your thoughts when you are not ready to tell me about them. Just know that if you ever do need to talk, I am here for you."
Not trusting themselves to speak, Frisk nodded, burying their face in her robes and holding onto the fabric with shaky fingers.
They didn't think they'd ever be able to tell Toriel, for all her motherly support. Because of it, even. How were you supposed to tell your adopted mother that you'd lived far too long to really be called a child anymore and that one of the worst things you could ever imagine happening had just happened?
*… I can't believe I'm saying this now, but Frisk? It could have gone much, much worse.
"Well," Holly muttered under her breath, "I guess things could have gone worse."
Around her, the rest of the little squad of fairies Artemis had called in for negotiations muttered their agreement.
The fairies, and their human allies had sequestered themselves away in Artemis's former office in the Manor shortly after the monsters had blipped off to wherever they had come to the meeting from. Section Eight and Recon personnel alike had made themselves as comfortable as they could on various armchairs and the rug-covered floor, all looking incredibly, impossibly grateful to be alive, and for the first time in months Holly couldn't help but feel sympathetic. After all, most fairies didn't get themselves up to the ears in Fowl-level complications every few months. This had to have been jarring to them.
Holly felt more exhausted and resigned than jarred. Parley with monsters was far less stressful than dealing with hordes of trolls or demons**, even with all the implications of inter-species warfare if they failed.
And time travel. Couldn't forget the time travel. D'Arvit, she did not get paid enough for this.
Thoroughly and unfortunately distracted from her moment of respite, Holly turned her head to look at Artemis, who had immediately beelined for the desk with his laptop upon entering the room and now sat tapping away at his keyboard, brows furrowed. He'd been there for several minutes, not saying a word, just typing, and though Holly would really much rather stay where she was in her comfy armchair, she knew that expression. That was Artemis's data analysis expression, which meant he'd have some sort of insight on this situation that would probably make things needlessly complicated and would need to be included in a report later.
With a groan, the fairy captain hoisted herself up out of the chair, stretched, and turned to the other fairies still resting nearby.
"Alright, unless you all want to get involved in Artemis's latest scheme, I'd recommend you get out. Now."
They didn't need to be told twice. Within thirty seconds she was the only fairy left in the room and, once she'd checked the hall outside for eavesdroppers, she strode over to the Mud Boy, fully prepared to hear the worst.
"So," she said, flatly, "I don't suppose there are any doomsday scenarios this whole disaster brought onto the table?"
Artemis snorted, reluctantly amused at this, and sat back in his chair. "No, fortunately enough. No apocalypses in the making, and certainly no megalomaniacs to deal with."
"Oh good." The elf pulled herself up onto the desk and sat down with her feet hanging over the edge. "But there is something going on?"
The Irishman's eyes narrowed in thought at his computer screen. "… Possibly. I'm not entirely certain." He sighed and reached out to save the word document he'd been typing in. Holly waited patiently, knowing that Artemis would elaborate once he'd gotten his thoughts together, and, sure enough, he continued only a few moments later.
"I think, even knowing what we do already, that we don't have all the puzzle pieces yet."
Holly scoffed. Loudly. "Even I know that much, Mud Boy. You were at the same meeting as me, right? I know you saw that giant dragon skull. There's a lot we don't know."
"Yes, the 'giant dragon skull' was not expected in the slightest," he agreed with a frown, beginning to type again, "and I will be analyzing that once I have everything I noticed written down. But I was thinking more along the lines of the fact that we apparently do not have all the facts about Frisk."
"What?"
Blue eyes rose to meet hers. "Think about it, Holly. I might be the most intelligent person in the room, but you are no idiot."
The fairy rolled her eyes at him, but did as she was told, going over the whole mess that was the parley in her mind. Once the actual terms of their budding alliance had been being set, things had calmed down, but the beginning had been almost nothing but chaos. Angry fish monsters, the skull blaster, all started by Frisk's panic at Artemis telling them about having –
That was when the penny dropped.
"Frisk was scared," she realized. "In the beginning, when you told them that you'd seen their memories. They weren't angry or even indignant, they were just scared."
Artemis nodded tiredly. "Precisely. I was honestly expecting them to be infuriated at worst and indignant at best when I admitted to having seen their memories, but instead, they reacted with fear. Now, why would a child with multiple concrete memories of dying be frightened of someone knowing about that?"
Holly's brows furrowed as she tried to follow the human's train of thought. "… maybe they don't want people to worry about them? We've already seen how self-sacrificial they are, what with being shot and worrying more about the monsters than themselves." She scowled. "Which, now that I think about it, might have something to do with those powers of theirs. Why worry about dying when you're just going to get a chance to do everything over again afterward?"
"A worrying thing to think about for sure, but that is not the only thing that worries me." Artemis steepled his fingers, the furrow between his brows growing deeper. "That alone would not warrant Frisk being frightened by someone else knowing their big secret."
Finally, finally, Holly got it. "There's something else we're missing, isn't there? Something else we haven't found out about yet that Frisk doesn't want anyone not already in the know to know about. And if they're scared of someone finding out about it…"
Artemis nodded. "Precisely."
Holly uttered several curses, loudly and not even bothering to lower her volume. "D'Arvit, this just keeps getting worse and worse… what did we miss the first time around?"
"We may not have missed it at all. After all, Foaly and No. 1 both are still trawling through their memories as we speak." He pursed his lips. "But, if I were to hazard a guess… for all their genius and time-traveling ability, Frisk can still make mistakes. And with this sort of power at their fingertips, it's entirely possible they've made some truly disastrous ones."
Before the elfin captain could think too hard about that sinister statement, a notification blipped gently on Artemis's computer screen, which he glanced at before opening a window. In the window, Foaly's face appeared, and Holly immediately went on high alert. The centaur looked awful, most of the blood having rushed out of his face and leaving him as pale as a ghost. No. 1 was nowhere to be seen.
"Foaly?" She asked, worriedly. "What's wrong? And where's No. 1?"
"Barfing in the outhouse, I think," Foaly said, weakly. "He ran out a minute ago. I might just join him in a second."
Artemis leaned forward, frowning. "What did you find?"
Onscreen, the centaur turned bleary eyes on the Irishman. "Nothing good, Mud Boy. Nothing good." He grimaced, looking distinctly green as he did so, and then his fingers moved offscreen and several video files popped up on Artemis's monitor. "See for yourself. And, well... remember what I said last time about something not being pretty? That applies here too."
Artemis clicked on one of the video files and then hit play.
It didn't take long for Holly to feel queasy as she watched the video. Barely a few minutes later, she couldn't handle it anymore, and made a beeline for the nearest restroom, for once glad that humans built their toilets indoors***. She wouldn't have been able to make it outside to barf.
And when she came back? Artemis looked like he was seconds away from throwing up as well, almost as green as a sprite as he paused the video and then let his face fall into his hands as he struggled to regain his composure.
"I think" he muttered, sounding nauseous, "this is information I could have very much done without."
… You know something's bad when ARTEMIS of the ice-cold emotionless face starts looking like he wants to barf. I'm sure you guys can make some educated guesses as to exactly what they started watching.
*Asgore possibly knowing about the Resets: In the game, during the boss fights with Asgore, if you die and then come back to fight him again, Frisk will sometimes tell him that he's killed them before, and his only reaction is a sad nod. So either he's run across humans that can SAVE and LOAD like your character can, or you were only confirming something he already knew.
**Hordes of trolls or demons: In book 4, Artemis and Holly were dumped by Opal Koboi into an abandoned fairy amusement park exhibit right smack in the middle of a horde of hungry trolls. In book 5, when Artemis, Holly, No. 1 and Qwan arrived in Hybras, they were greeted by a horde of aggressive demons who were none to happy to see any of them there, lead by an egomaniac demon called Abott. Fun times.
***Toilets indoors: Apparently fairies think that having a toilet inside your house is disgusting. (Presumably they have outhouses or something.) If you don't believe me, go read book 1, it's mentioned during the same chapter Holly is introduced.
And here's a little tidbit for you guys that's not EXACTLY worldbuilding, but something I was still interested in sharing with you guys. LiliaNox on A03 asked in the comments of the last chapter why the monsters were overreacting to the mind-wipe, pointing out that it was a relatively peaceful solution for the fairies' secrecy problem. This was my answer:
I agree with you that the mind-wipe is a pretty peaceful solution to the fairies' human problems, but, peaceful though it may be, it's not precisely moral, is it? Not by our standards, at least. I mean, think about it, would YOU be happy if you found out that someone had poked around in your head, erased a few memories and then recorded the ones they didn't erase to watch later? I certainly wouldn't be.
That being said, the reasons why the monsters are "over-reacting," well...
The monsters never considered hiding from humans when they reached the surface, even before Frisk fell, and are an inherently honest people. They see no reason to keep secrets, for the most part, from their new human neighbors (the exception to this obviously being them hiding how weak their souls are from the public, and Frisk was the one who insisted on that.) They do not consider themselves above humanity, either. They consider themselves to be equals and want to prove as such. On top of that, monster memories are stored in their soul, and while they know that humans and monsters store magic very differently, they can't help but be indignant for Frisk's sake, after the mind-wipe, because messing with someone's sense of self (aka their soul) is a big NO-NO to them.
The fairies on the other hand? They've spent centuries lying to everybody who isn't a fairy by hiding their existence from the world. They spy on everyone who isn't a fairy, and do so without regret. They think of themselves as above humans (calling humanity a race of barbarians really doesn't imply they think of humans as their equals), even while they fear discovery by humans. On top of that, they have no qualms altering the memories of people who have seen them, sometimes even doing complete personality transplants (see Loafers, book 3) to keep them from blabbing about the People. And anybody they don't wipe the memories of that they don't want to know about the People is bio-bombed.
The monsters and the fairies, morally speaking, are very, very different. So different that I'd ALMOST consider this a case of Blue and Orange Morality (see TVTropes). Their morals and motivations are completely different from one another, and could, in fact, could be called opposites of one another. And while they're not completely incompatible, these conflicting mindsets are different enough that, when they meet, they are going to clash something awful. THIS, plus the fact that monsters store memories in their souls, is why the monsters are "over-reacting" to the mind-wipe in the way that they are.
