Well, here we are again. Thanks, as ever, to everyone who reads and reviews this odd little fic, you all rock my world.

Disclaimer: I own neither Phantom nor Artemis Fowl. If I find out, though, that by some miracle I do own both of them, I will immediately retire somewhere far away and warm and enjoy the spoils of my conquest.

Chapter Sixteen: Silent And Resigned

Was there a word for how he felt? A phrase, a note, anything, a magic talisman that he could speak aloud and there would be no more pain, no more doubt, no more betrayal. Just ice, and lack of feeling, and peace. The absence of anything else. Wasn't that peace?

Artemis had never wanted to eviscerate himself more. The great fool, to believe that a young and beautiful creature such as Holly could want him! She was beauty and light and grace, and he was a shrivelled and loathsome old monster cowering beneath an opera house, writing his dreadful music and sickening at heart. Well, not anymore. Now he would reinvent himself anew, transforming from a hulking wreck of a man into the Angel of Doom. It was not such as stretch. He had been Holly's Angel of Music, after all, for such a brief time... why not the Angel of Doom as well?

It had been torture, to be in her presence and not speak to her. Not kiss away the lines of pain on her lovely face, to not draw her tightly knotted hands from her lap and wrap them in his own. The sting of her betrayal had not erased his great love for her; he was not sure even death could do that. Perhaps after he died that love would remain, spiriting him on to become a true ghost, haunting these terrible vaults to eternity in search of the woman he loved. Such morbid ruminations his mind fell into these days, and yet it was fitting. He had finished his opera, his love song to his monstrous and repugnant love and lust, and now it would be performed in all great state of occasion, in the above world. His music would bleed into their minds and hearts, splendour and horror mixing into one lethal fusion, until they would finally know what it felt like to be him. He would finally be part of the world, as his became theirs, altered beyond imagination by the terrible beauty of his music.

Completing his opera had been exhausting and yet uplifting, every note giving him some small release from himself. The agony that had imbued every corner of his twisted soul had been transferred to the pages and he was left empty. Empty, but for every time he looked at her face and heard her voice, when all his forgotten humanity would come hurtling back and he would have to escape into his chambers, lean against the locked door and shake from the pain and the wonder and the sheer mortality with which he pined for her. Damn her, he wanted her still. Loved her and adored her, needed her and longed for her, all of her, every inch of her tiny frame and every note of her exquisite voice. It was a torment and a salvation wrapped all in one, and the way his hands ached to touch her made him swath his skeletal fingers in glove to avoid the madness he knew would awake if he were ever to touch her bare skin.

The opera would be his master's piece, his final ploy for entrance to that great hall of masters. He would sweep away all his previous pathetic attempts for greatness with this final, magnificent leap. His fledgling beginnings in the carnival, frightening foolish children and over-excitable adults? Nonsense. The horrors he had wreaked in the Middle East, the monstrosities born of a mind soaked in drugs and liquid lunacy? Child's play. Terrorizing the managers and horrifying the ballet rats and murdering stagehands? Like taking candy from a baby... not that he ever would, of course, that would be cruel. Children and animals, the only innocents left in this world, and never for long. Eventually the world would claim their innocence as it claimed everything else.

Don Juan Triumphant.

The title had come from a few scraps of parchment he had found as he explored his new home beneath the Opera, shortly after arriving so many years ago. The bare handful of notes and words he had been able to decipher from the ancient paper had been beautiful, exquisite and yet frightening, even for him. It was a gateway to what his own music could be, those brief lines, written in a spiky crimson hand by some long dead composer. No matter. His would be different, better, an inferno of an opera that raped the senses and soothed them all in one. It would stand as a monument to his genius and his loneliness, his power and his possession, and it would be played. He would ensure it, by any means necessary, and indeed by the only means he knew worked without fail, every time. Blackmail and extortion, coercion and duress, the ways of the Opera Ghost.

Gentlemen,

I do apologise, my dear messieurs, in advance for disabusing you of your previously held notion that I had left you for good. Rest assured that your Opera Ghost is as alive as ever, so to speak, and watching. Your bumbling management of my Opera has been a source of contention for me these past months but I have kept silent, focussed on a far greater distraction than anything you meddling little fools could conjure. In that spirit, I have written you an opera. Here, I leave the finished score, Don Juan Triumphant!

Please extend my fondest greetings to the company, along with this: although La Carlotta's legs seems to have healed, her performance skills sadly have not improved from her time away from us. She must learn to act, not her usual trick of strutting around the stage. As for our star, Mademoiselle Holly Short, she will soon return to you to play the role of Aminta in my opus.

Gentlemen, this ghost can only hope to impress upon you that your place is in an office, not the arts. However, if you insist in this foolish endeavour of continuing to keep my Opera from me, I can assure you; I will play for keeps.

Your obedient servant,

O.G.

Artemis dropped his opera and letter onto the managers from his usual secret hiding spot above their office, stifling a half hearted chuckle at their immediate flurries of activity. It was all the same, every time. They would check the room for possible entrance routes, swear, curse, perhaps throw things. Andre would whine and Firmin would intimidate his partner into doing as he said. It was all very routine, and over his fifteen year tenure as the Opera Ghost Artemis had tired of it. Poligny and Moncharmin had been far easier to manipulate, true, but the whole ritual of it was the same. The same screams at his silhouette in the corridors and the same murmurs as he created some bit of mischief or annoyance. It tired him. Artemis would be perfectly content to retire somewhere peaceful, perhaps return to his home country and settle in a cottage, a piano and Holly his only music - well. That would never happen. Not now.

It had been the dream of a fevered mind, an imagining that he had held with him all of his days. As a child with his mockery of a family and then as a boy locked in a cage, forced to display his monstrosity for all the world to see. He had dreamed of a kind mother and a strong father, brothers to play with and sisters to dote on. And as a young man in the Middle East, longing for all the pleasures of the body and yet craving the sweet familiarity of home and hearth, of a wife and children. And finally now, old enough to know better, still desiring a woman he could call his own, a companion to spend the rest of his life with, one lone individual that would atone for all the horror and fear and shame all the others had showered him with.

He was wiser now. It would never be his. Nothing would be his, save for music. But the managers agreed. They always did. As Artemis departed he heard them discussing the arrangements for the new opera, in resigned tones that told him once more he had got his way. Ironic, that he could bend these fools he cared not for to his will when he could not sway the woman he adored. But then again, what aspect of his long existence had not been ironic? An artist, magician, composer, architect, performer, angel... a man with so many gifts, born with the appearance of a monster. God's little experiment with humanity, his little joke, if indeed there was a God. Artemis fervently hoped not.

As he made his way to his home beneath the Opera, he reflected on Holly. Although they still sang together, her voice would need a great deal more work before she was sufficient to return to the company to rehearse for Don Juan. He would have to go over most of the opera with her, note by note, phrase by phrase, perfecting her so when she went above, there would be no question of who was the best choice to play Aminta. But, he realised with sudden horror, it would mean a great deal of time with her, in her company, having to suffer the dual pleasure and misery that being with her inspired in him.

Oh, no.

And, as he had anticipated, rehearsals with Holly were like a knife to the heart. Most of the time he could disassociate, go back to that state of mind he had inhabited when he was her teacher alone, cold and objective. But every so often, perhaps a satisfied smile on her part that she had got it right, or the delicate movement of her hands as she sang, and it would be as if a bolt of something angry and hot had been forced down his throat, tightening it, burning his heart. She drove him mad, and he was certain that if he had not crossed the fine line between brilliance and lunacy years ago, he would do so now, all because of her. The mystery of the blue sparks meant nothing to him now. Why would it? The greater mystery, of her sweetness to him, had been solved in one fell swoop, and there was little left in the world other than seeing his Opera performed.

For Artemis was reasonably sure he was dying.

It was the little things; the tightness in his chest, the occasional tingling of his left arm, the way he was so much more easily fatigued of late. He was not concerned about death, only that if he died suddenly Holly would have to find her own way to the surface, and there were many traps between his home and the Opera proper. But he was sure it was a way off yet, enough time to see Don Juan Triumphant performed and Holly be his enchanting, seductress Aminta, if only once.

Before, when he had still believed a life with her might be possible, he had contemplated going above to seek out advice regarding his symptoms. She had given him something to live for. Now, of course, that he knew she did not love him, there was no point to bothering. Perhaps in an ordinary person a summary visit to a doctor could put things right, but Artemis did not dare. His face was such a curiosity, if anyone saw it there would be an instant influx of attention. More than anything, Artemis did not want that. He knew there was no way to correct his maimed features, and he had accepted that long ago. Did it stop him from longing for a normal life, to be a normal man? No. But he had learned so very long ago that you can't always get what you want.

He didn't want to let Holly go above for rehearsals, knowing he had so little time left. But perhaps he would be able to think more clearly if he was not in her direct proximity so often. Oh, he would be watching, there was no doubt of that. And she would return with him after rehearsals above were completed each day. But at least he would be able to secret himself away in the flies, high above her, away from the intoxicating effect of her presence. And so he turned to her one day, after tweaking the last of her songs, to tell her.

"We're finished."

"Finished?" Holly echoed drearily. Her eyes were flat, her skin dull. He was destroying her, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

"I mean, you're ready. Ready to attend rehearsals with the rest of the company." A spark of something woke up in her eyes, and he turned away in disgust. "Don't look so excited!" he said crossly, straightening his music unnecessarily to avoid looking at her. "You won't be alone, Holly! I will attend with you to make sure you behave, and when rehearsals finish for the day you will return here, with me," he emphasised. "You cannot escape."

Unfortunately, he mused, neither could he.