This is considerably longer than my usual dribbles - more like a splurge than a dribble... but RA is being a bitch so... Oh de well. And it's Winter again! So this is one to put your slippers on for and get cosy!

Hopefully enjoy :)

In Another Time (a one shot)

"And how does the jury find the accused?"

The bespectacled gnome sniffed and stood a little straighter. "Guilty, your honour, on all three accounts."

Artemis closed his eyes.

A wave of murmurs and mutterings broke out immediately amongst the crowd seated above.

"You can't do this!" yelled a voice from the gallery. "You can't do this!"

"Silence!" bellowed the sprite, thumping his gavel repeatedly against the block. "Silence in my court!"

"This is wrong," insisted the shouter as she was yanked down into her seat. "You've got it all wrong!"

"Artemis Fowl the Second," bellowed the sprite above the clamour, "you have hereby been found guilty of all three accounts of mass homicide. On the basis of this judgement I have no choice but to sentence you to the maximum term of eight hundred years imprisonment. May the gods have mercy on your soul."

And the gavel was brought down for a final time.

"Artemis!" screamed the elf. "Artemis!"

But the human did not look up as his arms were seized roughly by the guards at his sides and he was dragged down from the dock.

Holly fought her way by with her elbows and fists. Foaly followed her, wincing and mouthing apologies to the disgruntled guards.

"You've got five minutes," grunted one, clicking his key card into the door release.

"Holly," breathed Artemis as the elf burst into his cell.

"No way," she spat, her eyes blazing. "No way is this happening."

"Holly–"

"They should be given you a medal, not a death sentence."

"Hello, Mud Boy," said Foaly warily, closing the door behind him. "How are you?"

The eighteen-year-old smiled wanly. "I've been better."

Holly was not amused. She started forward, whether to punch him or embrace him it wasn't exactly sure, when the invisible force which divided Artemis's side of the room from hers flared purple. She cried out and slammed her fists against it.

"Don't," said Artemis, holding up his own hand. "Holly, don't, you'll only hurt yourself."

"I should be hurting you!" she half screamed. "How dare you let this happen to you?"

Artemis frowned, clearly pained, and Foaly trotted forward.

"Your family are all above ground now, Artemis. Including Butler. And I did the mind wipes personally so… so they are certain not to remember you. Not if all my team has swept the house properly anyway, and they doubtless will have."

Holly's jaw dropped. "What?" She rounded on the human. "You've wiped your own family?"

Artemis met her gaze. "I have been sentenced to eight hundred years imprisonment, Holly. I shall never see them again. What would be the point of letting them share in that pain?"

She beat her hand against the divide again. "No! No! You are not just accepting this! You can't just give up!" And then she realised. "You knew hours ago." Her arms dropped. "You knew you'd be found guilty. You've known all along. If your family are on the surface now then they must have been wiped days ago."

Artemis nodded. "I said all my goodbyes in the shuttle from Atlantis."

Holly's mouth gaped.

The door slid open.

"Time," grunted the security elf.

Foaly rounded on her. "Just two more minutes for pity's sake–"

"Rules is rules, Mister. We got to take the human down."

Holly's palms flattened themselves against the divider.

"I'll get you out," she promised. "Artemis, I mean it. I'll get you out of here."

Artemis raised a single palm up to hers, and then the guards dragged her backwards. She fought tooth and nail, Foaly braying, the teenager staring after her.

"In another time!" he yelled. "I'll see you again, Holly! I will!"

The cell door slammed shut.

The weeks passed slowly. Holly attended council meetings, lobbied newspapers and media stations. She even tried a spot of public protest. Nothing worked. And she couldn't get to sleep at night for the nightmare image of Artemis, alone and stripped of all comfort, stuck in some dark depression of a cell fifty miles below her.

Dear Holly,

His last email to her read.

Please do not worry about me. I am fine. More than fine in fact. I have suddenly found all responsibility and autonomy to be stripped out of my life and truly I am relishing their absence! I read what books they allow me, write only on the machines they provide for my use. I am undisturbed by calls to save the world, pages from my multiple, useless stock agents, emails from Mulch about the size of his latest excretion. My guards decide what I eat, when I eat, in what I dress – you would not believe what a relief it is to have no choice in what to wear: it saves so much time in the morning! My hair has even been cut according to their ideals of fashion. It requires no need for styling now, short as it is. Complete bliss!

And so you should envy me, Holly, not fret about me. I am settled, established. I am Lord in my cell, the King of my cubicle. And the night time screams of my fellow inmates have long since turned to choral evensongs, lulling me in my slumbers. I doubt I shall ever be able to rest without them now.

Yours, with a smile,

Artemis

P.S. I wish I could see your face again.

And so, disturbed by this, the obvious edge of something not such a leap from lunacy in his writing, when she wasn't working for his release she was petitioning for a visiting permit. High security visitations were rare and usually only permitted for the next of kin, but since all of Artemis's kin were unaware of his very existence Holly felt she had a strong case. And so she was beyond anger, beyond belief, when, four months after Artemis's incarceration had begun, someone else was granted permission over her.

"Holly," said No.1, wincing. "I really am very sorry."

"Give me your pass," she demanded. "I mean it, No.1. I need to see him."

"I'm sorry, Holly, but I can't. It doesn't work that way."

"Then make it work!"

Foaly had frowned. "Holly, lay off. It's not his fault. You'll get a pass next time. Frond knows he's not going anywhere…"

But she still couldn't keep the glare from her face as the trainee warlock trotted off with his escort to The Deeps. Because she knew full well that it was really her fault. That after years of flouting regulations and orders, on most occasions when in the company of Artemis Fowl, she of course could never be trusted to visit him. She knew it, and she felt it like a kick in the chest.

And the next day, when the early-morning headlines told her of the not-so-tragic suicide of the People murderer, Artemis Fowl the Second, she knew why No.1 had been allowed to visit instead of her and what he must have helped their friend to do.

"Holly?"

It was the five week anniversary of Artemis's death.

"Holly? Buzz me in would you?"

She grunted something from inside the cocoon of her duvet and the door slid aside.

There was a sharp intake of breath. "Frond, Holly, this place is uninhabitable."

The elf just grunted again. Foaly picked his way across a sea of discarded clothes and take away cartons to reach the futon at the centre.

"I've got something for you."

"What?"

"You'll have to sit up to get it."

She buried her face in the musty pillow.

"Holly, seriously. You'll want to have this."

The elf didn't move and the centaur sighed.

"Alright, have it your own way. But I'll leave it there for you. Look at it when you've got a grip of yourself. And I've put No.1's new home contact details in with it too – I've a feeling you'll want to call him when you're done. Maybe apologise."

She heard him wade his way back across the room and seal the door behind him.

A short while later she sat up, her overgrown hair all stuck up on one side, sleep sticking in the corners of her eyes. She rubbed at them with a knuckle before reaching for the package Foaly had left on the only free space on her coffee table. It was a Mud Man envelope, paper, with a handwritten inscription. Her heart recognised the writing before her brain had even had a chance to tell it was English and immediately began to attempt to leap out of her chest. She ripped it open.

It was an old piece of parchment, faded, written in scratchy ink.

Dearest Holly,

It read:

First, I must apologise for the guise which you have necessarily been labouring under in order that I could live to freely pen you this first letter. I know that No.1 must have agonised these past few weeks in deceiving you and for that I am truly sorry. Believe me when I say that it was for the greater good because, as I am sure you must by now have realised, I am now neither imprisoned nor dead. I am, as I promised you, in another time. I shall not tell you the exact period but needless to say a safe few centuries have now been placed between myself and those who would otherwise seek to keep me in that unendurable segment of Hell. No.1 assisted my 'suicide' so that I may live the rest of my life outside of the confines of The Deeps, through the use of a clone that will by now have turned into so much magic dust if it hasn't already been given to the recycling chamber. Please forgive him. He lied to you under my orders and thus deserves no scorn. I shall, of course, not ask you to forgive me – it is a request I have had to make far too often of you and I am sure you have grown weary of it.

Yours, still and always,

Artemis Fowl the Second

P.S. Would you please forgive me?

Holly was gripping the paper so hard it was in danger of ripping. She read the letter twice, three times, five times, the words blurring into one, impassable, blur. Then she snatched up her communicator.

"Hello?" she croaked, as a voice answered on the second trill. "No.1?"

Three months passed before she received the second letter. It was left in her apartment pigeon hole, once more in human packaging. She opened it in such haste that she actually tore the contents in half and was forced to tape them, clumsily, back together before she could read them.

Dearest Holly,

Greetings from the past! It has been seven months since I wrote you last and I now find myself in quite different circumstances from the ones I first found myself in then. I did not get off to the best of starts, Holly, I shall not lie to you. More than once my mind drifted back to the cell I considered so impossible a place to spend the rest of my days and almost pined to see it again. No.1 was so kind as to increase my physical age before I made the leap into the time tunnel and without access to a bathroom or a razor I quickly became quite the passable beggar. The me I became when we journeyed eight years into the past was a veritable princeling compared to the man you would have observed then and I found myself soon arrested and locked in another cell for vagrancy, perhaps a few circles deeper in Hell than I had been in The Deeps. But I escaped, not quite intact, but alive. And of course I live to write to you again.

I have since taken up work with a union of witch hunters, you may be amused to know. It is a temporary thing, a necessity in order to keep a roof over my head. I write up their accounts, answer the letters of certain organisations and villages who call for their services and in return I am fed and thoroughly watered. It is drudge work and the men themselves disgust me… but needs must. I travel soon for Ireland, however, and there I hope to get in with a better crowd. I realise already that I shall not make it very far in this new, brutal world alone. I do so wish you were here to face it with me.

Yours, forever and always,

Artemis (AKA. Tomas the witch clerk)

P.S. Please keep an eye on Butler for me – he has appeared often in my mind of late.

Holly used her Major's card to override the first door of Foaly's sanctum and simply beat on the second until it opened.

"Alright, alright!" shouted her friend as the panels slid apart. "Keep your knickers on! Frond..."

The elf strode past him into the room just as he shifted his tech-goggles to the top of his head. There were wide, tanned rings around his eyes.

"Where are the letters coming from?"

"What?"

"Artemis's letters." Holly slapped the two envelopes down on a bench. "Who's delivering them?"

"Er… well," Foaly scratched his head. "Artemis himself just handed me the first envelope right after he said goodbye to his family. Told me not to open it until January… and then to pass it to you after."

"I had the second letter yesterday. It arrived in the post this time, stuck in with all my ordinary stuff, but I haven't been able to trace the sender."

The centaur picked up the thin, well-thumbed, package.

"Well it's Mud Man posted, that's for sure." He turned it over. "Look at the stamps! Singapore, South Africa, Italy, Kentucky… Frond."

Holly leant forward, her mis-matched eyes fixed intently to his grey ones.

"So how did it get down here?"

Foaly sighed and tossed the envelope down.

"I really don't have time to care, Holly. And anyway, don't look a horse in its mouth to see its teeth as presents or however that Mud Man saying goes. Artemis clearly has it sorted. Besides, when have we ever been able to get to the bottom of his plans until his last hand has been played?"

Holly frowned and Foaly quickly buried his head back inside his newest, complex contraption.

The third letter almost brought Holly to tears.

It had come after an emotional day anyway, with poor No.1 coming under yet more strain. She had argued with him for over an hour, wanting to be sent to Artemis, wherever it was that he was. But the little warlock had had to shake his head. He had sealed Artemis's way in the time tunnel as an extra precaution against any future forces who would want to find the teenager. It was impossible to reach him now without being consumed by quantum zombies the size of African elephants.

Holly had arrived home dejected and bitter. And found the third letter waiting on her coffee table.

Dearest Holly,

My luck has finally begun to change. I write to you now almost two years to the day that I arrived in this God-forsaken period and finally my fortunes seem to be on the rise. I have found work for a Lord. You may have heard of the family – old Irish stock, not altogether orthodox in their dealings. Well, at any rate, it is a much better post than I held with the witch hunters who have since been exposed as the gang of murderous, anti-female half-wits they truly are! (And not without a little home-brewed justice might I add.) I am a clerk once more, but of a higher status, dealing with the smaller accounts of the manor.

It is strange to walk halls that are at once both so familiar and yet so alien. My distant forefathers are unpleasant company, it is undeniable, and yet I still find a certain comfort in their proximity, however distant our relationship may be. Perhaps it is unwise of me to be here, and to tell you of my being here, however… an eternity is a long time to stay away from one's own family and I felt the need to tell you that I had at least, at last, found some approbation of home. I am happy to live in it, if only as a servant, and could not begin to think of a more appropriate master. And on reading that statement, I think you should begin not to know me. I quite begin not to know myself.

Yours,

Artemis Fowl

And so the years passed in work and letters. Holly's heart leapt whenever she came home to find one of those brown, mystery envelopes lying inside the door and despite promotion and increases in pay she kept to living in her old apartment, fearful that a change of address would mean she would lose them.

The time between each one-way correspondence gradually lengthened and soon Holly was only being updated of Artemis's new life once a year. The time between his writings also varied, as did the material they were written on: mostly parchment, sometimes roughened cloth, once on beaten silk. The human was travelling, moving to as of yet uncharted continents as he followed his new, ancestral masters and mistresses on their business. He was enjoying it, from what Holly could tell. She would attempt to picture his face as she read his words but it was a shifting image, lost between the boy she had once known so well and the man she knew he must have by now grown to be.

It was a surprise, therefore, when instead of the seventh letter she had been expecting, Holly found an email waiting inside the old, still protected programme she and Artemis had used long ago in the time after their return from Hybras. The service had lain dormant for years and yet there it was, glowing a faint green in the left-hand side of her helmet panel.

Dearest Holly,

I know that this is short notice, but if you could make yourself present at my home on Tuesday 4th at approximately 10:45pm, I would be much obliged.

Yours, as ever,

Arty

P.S. I shall ask you in advance to forgive me.

And so Holly had made herself present on Tuesday 4th at 10:45pm and found herself face to face with an anachronistically dressed, veritable beanstalk of a man, his long, dark hair pulled back and tied neatly away from a young, yet cruelly scarred face. He was smiling when he saw her, the edges of his lips pulling at the white, criss-cross marks across his cheeks, but was soon crying out in protest and pain as the elf's fists slammed again and again into his stomach and legs. After a brief moment of struggle he managed to get a grip on her wrists and pull them about his shoulders. And then they were knelt on the rug, shaking and clutching each other for dear life.

But of course he had to go back again. His visit had been temporary and he had not had much time to explain the exact physics of the arrangement before he was once more whisked away from her. The LEP had come investigating soon after, curious of the high spike in magic levels about the manor. Holly had dully explained that she had healed an aged Butler from a fatal wound, and combined with the residual magic already known to be drifting about the manor, this served as a believable enough explanation.

Dearest Holly,

Read the elf through stinging eyes, upon finding a fresh letter on her return to her flat,

I believe that you have just returned from seeing me, strong and young, back in the place where we first began to become acquainted. (If time has passed enough that I can use so light a euphemism without causing offence.) For me that visit was eleven years ago, but I can remember it as clearly now as I can our first meeting, our second, third, fourth... I still dream of chemical trains and blood-stained gorilla cages, Holly, and I believe I always shall. Our every moment together is tattooed eternally on my mind, ingrained as deeply as the scars you had the depth of kindness and compassion not to let disgust you in those stolen hours, though I know, indeed, how much of a monster I am now to behold.

Butler shall die tonight, Holly. He shall pass peacefully, deep in his slumber, and I made that visit to your time in order that I would be present for one, last goodbye. I always knew that the mind wipe would not work on him; our ties have always been too strong for such things. And so I needed to show him, at the end, that I truly was happy and well. I know you have told him of the letters, that he always knew that I was always alive at least but… I felt our bond deserved more than that. And so I saw him, using the last, emergency reserves that No.1 had granted me long ago, and shall consequently not be able to return to your timeline for a very long time. Do not misunderstand me, I also visited for your sake, of course, but it was for Butler that that last visit was meant. Our time shall come.

Yours, in another time,

Artemis Fowl

P.S. I never had a chance to say to you, but I did so love what you had done with your hair.

Centuries passed. Holly aged in decades whilst Artemis aged in months, sometimes only days. She laughed and cried her way through the letters, sometimes barely memos, at other times veritable essays on life and living, people, animals, philosophy, food. He would rant about unserious matters and she would cackle as the voice of that surly twelve-year-old would travel to her from across the temporal divide ever lecturing, ever correct. Where he got the writing supplies from, she would never know – did not want to know – when he was always telling her of how jealous his masters were of their stores. But Artemis was a criminal, he had always been one, and for not the first time she was glad and happy for it.

The world moved on, humanity moved on, and the People's tenuous concealment was becoming a greater and more difficult mission with every passing day. Holly worked overtime, triple overtime, sometimes collapsing into her flat after seventy-two hours straight. And she could feel the strain. She was no spring octogenarian any more: she was past middle age, she was older than Vinyaya was when she had passed, that lifetime ago in Iceland...

Dearest Holly,

It is my forty-fifth birthday today. Can you believe that? I am forty-five years of age. It is horrifying. I ache as if I was a growing boy again and my eyesight has become so shoddy that I shall soon be forced to find my way about on my hands and knees! I shall have to fashion myself some spectacles soon or else die in some discreditable way involving me mistakenly taking a bullock for my horse … But I digress.

I hope you are well, Holly, and are not working yourself too hard. I can only imagine the strain you will now be under with all the advancements in technology that my species has undoubtedly made. I am sure Foaly will be back in his old tin hats and Mulch will still be eating chicken, unconcerned. That is all as I imagine it anyway.

But I suppose I have procrastinated enough. Holly, I have news, which I hope does not cause you any undue pain. I have married. Her name is Afa and I love her very dearly. I never thought such an event would occur, not whilst I, for so many years, have felt like a foreign trespasser in these times. I have always thought the people here also to be invariably simple and unenlightened. That is not the case. You would like Afa, I should think. She is clever, more intelligent than I in many ways, and has made my life here more comfortable and more home-like than I would have dared to have ever wished for. Not since the day I was first thrown from the time stream into that London alleyway, before I was struck by my reality, sickened with dread and regret, have I felt such a sense of rightness in my being here. I have fooled myself for years; a man trapped since birth in the darkness believing a matchstick to be his sun. She has opened my skies. And I love her, Holly. And I hope, with all my heart, that if it were possible for you to send me a reply that you would write to me to tell me tales of your own current and similar happiness.

Yours, as ever,

Artemis

P.S. Dear God, let it not be Trouble.

And so Holly read of his children, of their lives, their trials and tribulations. She read of his pain when they hurt themselves, of his mirth when they occasionally did or said something… modern. They are forward thinking and Holly wonders why he is still constantly surprised.

Dearest Holly,

Today I became a grandfather. Angeline has given birth to a healthy baby boy, much in spite of the efforts of the local midwife who wanted to deal with the breech birth by waving a variety of moon-picked grasses at my daughter's vagina. Thankfully I was on hand to help, though I doubt any of the women present will ever get over the shock of having a male, let alone their master of the coin, active in the birthing room. But mother and sob are both well and alive, and that is what matters. She has named the baby after me. Or so she believes. It does not matter unduly as the name I adopted forty years ago was the name of another close family member she shall just never live to know and so it is still, in my eyes, a highly appropriate choice.

But I am old now, Holly. The winters grow ever harder and my life has been more of a strain here that it ever would have been if I had remained Artemis Fowl the Second and lived my days out as lord of this manor instead of one of its many retainers. Sometimes I think of that day in court (as I imagine, perhaps falsely, that you do also) and wish that I had perhaps thought harder, found some way to stay free in my own time… But of course it would have been a futile effort. I was destined for this life, Holly, and now, having seen the baby Domovic, well… I do not so much regret it.

Yours, in a truly distant time,

Artemis

P.S. Isn't age such a melancholy thing?

The last letter arrived on the day Holly knew she was going to die. It was a sense in her bones, some deep magic that allowed her both to feel and not to fear the knowledge of death, just to accept it, know it was her time to go. And so she still managed to hobble her way to the door when it was opened, using the pneumatic struts which had long since been attached to her legs to aid her movement.

The elf at the door was fresh-faced and smiling, not a day over eighty years old.

"Ms Short?" he inquired. "I have a letter here for you, ma'am. And after you've read it, if you consent, I am here to escort you to the surface."

If Holly was surprised, she didn't show it. Her dried and wrinkled hands only quivered as they always did as she took the outstretched paper. She unravelled it with years of practiced ease and with her last sparks of magic began to translate the letters on the page.

Dearest Holly,

This is my final letter. I know I shall die soon and so shall you. Our times, at long last, have come to a matching point.

Trust the fellow in front of you, Holly, he has been centuries in the planning. And please, grab your helmet and neutrino one last time and head towards the surface. Our last adventure awaits.

Yours, eternally,

Artemis Fowl.

Holly took the arm that was offered to her by the still-smiling young elf and left her flat and the last letter behind.

"We're nearly there," he murmured. "Nearly there."

Holly's feet shuffled through the grass, her hand still looped about his strong forearm. He had done a good job of guiding her from the shuttle, across the low land grounds of the manor which were still so familiar to her, changed as they were by the tests of time. He was dark haired and paler than usual for an elf, a little taller too. And Holly couldn't throw the feeling that she'd somehow met him before…

Soon she spied another strange figure stood ahead of them through the trees. It was a human, straight backed and blonde, with clear blue eyes and an open, easy smile.

"Ms Short," said the young man, his bright eyes crinkling. "I am so glad you could come."

"Are you?" she croaked. "I'm not quite so sure myself yet."

The human laughed and nodded at the elf Holly was using for support.

"It's alright, Beck, I can take over from here."

"Right you are. Goodbye, Ms Short."

Holly watched the mystery elf leave and allowed this new comer to guide her to a pair of chairs, set low in the grass a short distance away. She sank into one with a sigh.

"I'm Jules, by the way," said the man, crouching down so he could be at her height. "Jules Fowl. I am Artemis's great, great, great, great… well, a lot of greats anyway, nephew."

"Oh," said Holly, who could feel herself growing overwhelming weary. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Jules. I once knew a Butler called Jules."

"Yes, she was my great, great… well, I won't get into that again. Artemis's third brother, he never met him, married her daughter and they started the line my father eventually became a descendant of."

Holly nodded. She had stopped keeping a track of things once Butler had died.

"And so why am I here today, Jules?" she rasped. "If you're looking to repeat a little family history, I should tell you that I won't fetch much of a ransom nowadays."

Jules laughed. "No! No, nothing like that. I'm here to tell you where the letters came from."

Holly was immediately jerked to attention. "What?"

"I have images… Some are only 2D, obviously primitive, but they'll do the job."

He handed her a small photograph from a folder he had slipped onto the grass and Holly took it.

It was a colour printout of a darkened room, whether an attic or a basement Holly couldn't tell, but she could see the dozen chests piled about it, a few of them opened to reveal the yellowing contents within.

"The letters," she croaked. "All of them."

Jules tapped the image in her hand. "That's the first photo we have. It was taken by Artemis almost fourteen hundred years ago and dated..."

Holly turned it over. "A week before the incident."

She closed her eyes, suddenly overwhelmed.

Their last adventure had been their worst. A maniac gnome had stepped up to fill Opal's murderous, Hell-bent-on-world-domination shoes, eager to take advantage of the damage that the Techno Crash had done to the human world. A million, innocent people had died in the first wave of bio bombs. Fairy systems were revealed to the few, reeling human organisations that would have a chance of doing anything about them, and chaos had accordingly ensued. Artemis, Holly, Butler, Mulch, No.1 and Foaly had of course spent the next few days battling to bring the situation under control and stop this new villain from committing any more atrocities. But on the final day, desperate and fearful of another mass attack on humanity, Artemis had made the decision to launch three bio bombs into Haven city itself, into the three locations which he believed could be the only places that their enemy could be holed up. Many fairy lives were lost, including that of the malignant gnome, but ultimately twenty million more human lives were saved.

And Artemis had been sentenced three days later.

"He read them," whispered Holly. "He found them before the attacks started."

Jules nodded. "We believe so. And that's… that's why he did not fight the verdict, why he chose for the demon send him back instead. His fate had already been decided. The room is well hidden in the manor, it would have been easy enough for him to visit in the past and stockpile his letters. In his 'present', he left us, his family, instructions–"

"His family were mind wiped."

"Not all."

"Yes, they– Oh my Gods. Butler."

"Who then told his niece, who told her sons, daughters, their children until…"

"You."

"I have made sure the last four have reached you. Beckett has been watching you for longer, putting them under your door, and his mother before him."

"But he's an elf–"

"Myles, Artemis's brother's kin."

This was too much. Holly's fists clenched in her lap. Jules showed her another photograph of the room of letters. One trunk was now a quarter emptied.

"Myles took this photograph when he found the room in his twenties. And when confronted, Butler told him the truth of it. But he didn't believe him for a long time, didn't want to think about the possibility of a forgotten brother, of fairies, and then he went to a ritual site and conducted his own stakeout…"

Holly felt tears well in her eyes.

Jules spoke softly. "I know it's a lot to take in."

"Why," she croaked, "why did he keep this all from me?"

"Because I made a mistake."

Holly looked up. There, leaning heavily against a gnarled walking stick, was an old man, white-haired and deeply wrinkled.

Jules stood to his full height. "Grandfa–"

"Go," ordered the old man. "Go and tell the family that it's finished. You have done well."

Jules hesitated, glanced once at Holly, before turning tail and walking swiftly away through the greenery. The old man watched him out of sight.

"Another mistake?" croaked Holly from the chair. "Surely you can't have many left to make now, Artemis."

The old man hobbled forward.

"I am a genius, Holly. Our mistakes tend to be rather more pioneering than the average."

He settled himself, slowly, into the chair besides her. She looked at him, taking in the scars now camouflaged amongst the deep lines of wrinkles, the bright irises peering from beneath a now weighted brow. For a moment they simply looked at each other, dusk descending around them.

"So you had read them all before."

"Yes."

"And you memorised them."

"No." He tipped his wrinkled face to petulantly peer into hers. "No, I wrote every word because I meant them. They were candid, honest. More earnest than I had ever believed I could bring myself to be."

Holly raised an eyebrow. "Well that's me told."

The sun was sinking, staining the sky a sombre shade of pink. After a while Artemis reached out a trembling hand and clasped it about Holly's, which had so far remained limp on her arm rest. He smiled at her and after a brief, hard stare, broke into a laugh.

"Well," he croaked. "Here we are!"

She pretended to look bemused. "In a wood?"

"In another time! Fourteen hundred years since we first met… Dear me."

"You're not going to try and kidnap me again are you?" she asked, with a hint of the smirk of her youth, "I've already warned your grandson–"

"Oh no. Don't have the energy or the Butler for it now. It is much too late for all that nonsense."

"Nonsense?"

"Well, what's the point? I should only get myself saddled with a person for another fourteen hundred years. I'm afraid that I simply haven't got that sort of time to bandy about any more."

Holly gave a croak of disbelief. "They were my fourteen hundred years, Artemis! You only had to do, what? Ninety? That's nothing! I'd done almost that many by the time I'd met you."

"A lifetime is a lifetime, Holly. It is all proportionate…"

Holly was glaring at him. And then she realised that she was glaring at him, and that he was looking back at her with the same smug yet self-satisfied-and-mildly-amused expression that he had always worn as a boy. And it was her turn to burst out laughing. He chuckled and squeezed her hand again.

Crickets had begun to sing somewhere in the fields beyond. Holly listened for a moment, before a young, long-forgotten memory knocked her head back into the chair a little.

"Oh Gods."

He gave her a wry glance. "Sentient insect flashbacks?"

"That was such a horrible day."

"We–" He had broken into a coughing fit, half mirth, half from the cancer creeping over his lungs. "We were always prone to having them. Yes, indeed." He patted her hand, then his chest and smiled. "Grass and citrus. That was your smell, Holly."

"What?" The elf was sinking in her chair, feeling heavier by the second. "Was… was that my soap or something?"

"No. No. That is not what I meant…"

The sun sank a little lower below the horizon, the lanterns shining that little bit brighter.

"You were always my mechanic, Holly." He chuckled. "I was a broken boy and you fixed me. My, my. And I couldn't do without you. We have both said it. Separately, but we have said it. I don't believe it ever really had to be said though. We both knew. Know. Perhaps? Holly?" He looked across at the chair that held his oldest friend. "Are you going, my dear?"

"Hmm," she murmured, her eyes closed.

"Well," he settled back, allowing his head to flop against the head rest just as hers was and squeezed her hand again. "I suppose I always have talked too much... You won't mind if I join you, Holly? We can always carry on this discussion later." He closed his eyes just as the sun finally sank beneath the horizon. "In... in another time perhaps."

Well - from eighteen to death in a brain dribble, there we are.

What did you guys think?