Disclaimer: Artemis Fowl, related characters and situations are © Eoin Colfer. This is an act of fanfiction and is no way affiliated with Eoin Colfer or Penguin Books/Miramax Books/Hyperion Books. All content, situations and original characters are property of the author and must be treated as such.
The Sphinx guards the secrets. The strange worlds that are too difficult for people to understand, are far too complex for anyone to know that they need guarding. They are innocent things, yet she is the catalyst that makes them become noticed. She likes that, and always has.
She likes being special, and since she's the only one who knows just how special she is, because she's the only one who understands her mission, she enjoys the world. She's there to prove things wrong, or to prove things right. She's in the background, a prop, a means to an end where a hero will be worshipped and given a kingdom for an hour. She doesn't mind that things always turn out that way. She doesn't mind that she's the background, a fixture in the narrative who comes and goes, but no one really notices. Because she knows she's special, and she's always known this, although sometimes the knowledge has been buried under the riddles and the games that she plays, the games that are her purpose. She comes and goes, guarding that which is most important, that which no one knows needs protection. And they think she is the villain, the one who must be defeated.
She knows better than them though, always knowing more, seeing more, than most would. But she can't let on that she knows, because that is not her place, not her purpose. She was protecting Thebes, she knows that! She knew what would happen once fate landed Oedipus in the city, she was trying to protect it from destruction!
But they didn't see what she was doing, her methods were too strange, too difficult for them to translate into the language of those who don't know. It made her special, that she could see things like this, do things in her own way... But who appreciates individuality in a world that is structured by stereotypes? They fear someone they can't place properly, and ignore the majority in order to make her fit into a mould where she doesn't really belong.
Sometimes, knowing this makes her angry. But other times, most of the time, she forgives them for their ignorance, their acceptance and place in the world she mostly hates, but sometimes protects. Because she knows that she herself was once ignorant as well.
Ignorance is an easy mask to hide behind. People like feeling smarter than others, better and more intelligent. It's their weakness. So she exploits it, because if the Gods give you a stupid enemy, rejoice.
She lives in a world of ignorance and pain; a world of realities being dreams and the place people walk upon being a foot above the ground. She doesn't mind it there, but she wishes it was a better place. That people were more fair to each other, respected one another more, lived and acted without thoughts of payment and reward. Even if they only lived for enjoyment, that would have been enough for her. She wished they could see the world properly, as she could see it.
Her brother had seen the world properly, but love and devotion got in the way. He was gentle, but in a harsh world. Emotional where no emotion is welcomed. Devoted to an idea, then a reality, then a person. Manipulated, and pulled along with chains made of the finest lies, a spider's web spun of false innocence at the end of the path.
He was happy like that though, tied up and lost in a world where lies are the only reality, and the scenery doesn't really matter, because it can all be made different by a decision that judges it inequal. She could never be happy like that, she knows it.
Yet she is stuck in her own world of lies and unappreciation; of dances and games where no one really knows the rules, but the game board never changes, the players take the same paths, yet they never know it's been done before.
She gave up on Ceberus. She vaguely wonders, sometimes, when she'll give up on her own world.
She still wonders it, yet now she's met another. Another stuck in the patterns, moving the motions again and again, like a clockwork toy with only three movements. They're in the same patterns, but different worlds. They know they will always be stuck where they are, stuck in their worlds so far apart, yet the difference is what they both crave.
But really, they are the same. They want the same freedom, yet they shall never get it. And she knows, but the Nymph does not, not yet.
The Sphinx moves through her motions forever. Even though she knows it all, and knows how much better she could exist, if only the world could change.