Warning: Angst like whoa! But first, Arty at the beach :)

Cora 0.3

Artemis, as per usual, was doing an excellent job of sulking.

"Really?" said Butler, dropping the Fowl beach-bag-come-general-life-supplies-sack onto his chosen patch of sand. "You're really going to keep that face up all day?"

"It is thirty-five degrees centigrade," snapped Artemis, pulling open a deck chair. "I am slathered in when I can only describe as scented snake milk–"

"You know it's the only sun cream that works."

"–and am about to spend the day saton a rural beach without the faintest hint of nearby plumbing or refreshment facilities. What is there about this situation to possibly merit a change in facial expression?"

The four-year-old Corawas stood on the picnic blanket, rubbing an additional layer of sun-cream onto her freckled arms. She had already kicked off her sandals to some place Artemis knew not and stripped down to her scarlet bathing suit. Plucking a pair of plastic, heart-shaped sunglasses from the front of her costume she gave a faint sigh, pushed them up onto her nose, and turned to her father.

"Which way to the bar?"

Butler forced down a grin.

"There is no bar," replied Artemis. "This is Cork, not St Lucia."

"There is no bar?"

"Tell me about it."

"I've got juice in here if you want it," said Butler, pulling The Bag towards him. "What do you fancy? I've got pineapple, orange, mango, grape, pear, lychee, banana, grapefruit, plum, apricot, melon, cherry, raspberry, gooseberry, blackberry, coconut or fig."

"Do you have pomegranate?"

"No."

The four-year-old's nose wrinkled.

"I think I'll leave it then."

Butler re-zipped the bag.

"I'll take a banana," said Artemis, pulling out his own sunglasses.

Butler unzipped the bag again.

"What a nice spot!" called a voice to Artemis's left and suddenly there was another deckchair plopped down on the blanket next to his. "You've got good taste in beach settlements, right enough!"

Artemis looked distastefully up at the large woman now beaming down at him.

"I'm Agatha," she said, throwing herself into the new chair and sticking out a podgy hand for him to shake, "Tilly's mum. I think your Cora is one of her best friends at school!"

This seemed to be correct as Cora was now being merrily assaulted by a mass of blonde curls in pink and purple lycra and didn't seem to be getting too upset about it. Butler leant over his ex-charge and took the hand that looked likely not to be taken.

"Nice to meet you, Agatha," he said. "I'm Domovoi."

"Domovoi! That's such a lovely name."

"Thank you."

"I've always hated mine," she babbled. "Always makes me think of grannies and old crime novels! I always said to my mam, why couldn't you have called me Susan or something normal? People constantly make jokes to me about murder on the Orient Express!" She sighed and wriggled deeper into her chair before taking another deep breath. "Though I suppose you can't have had an easy childhood, Mister Fowl. Artemis. My, my. Now why would your Da have done that to you after a lifetime of trouble himself? My mam was telling me all about it just the other day, about how they used to call him–"

"Cora!" yelled Artemis. "Do not go in that sea!"

"I haven't!" screamed the five-year-old from forty metres off.

Butler winced.

Agatha straightened her sun hat and adjusted the skirt of her maxi dress to better cover her thick, freckled shins.

"Don't they grow up fast?" she said fondly, watching her daughter being dragged across the sand by her red-headed companion. "One minute they're on the tit, and the next!" She gave an exhausted laugh. "Though I suppose you wouldn't know much about the tit part, would you, eh?" She knocked Artemis genially with her elbow.

"No," replied the twenty-six-year old, "I indeed did not breastfeed my daughter."

Butler forced a laugh and gave Artemis a sharp elbow of his own. Needless to say, it left a bit more of an impression than Agatha's had.

"Aw, look at them," said Agatha as the Fowl heir wheezed and hugged his side, "they're playing together so nicely."

Tilly was now on her knees, digging into the beach with a little pink shovel the size of her forearm. Cora was stood a little way off, gesticulating widely and drawing construction patterns with her own purple spade.

"They'll be hungry in a bit," observed Agatha, "Tilly will want to come and get her mid-morning bic-bic."

"Her what?" gasped Artemis despite the pain in his ribs.

Here we go, thought Butler.

"Her bic-bic," repeated Agatha brightly. "Tilly always has a bic-bic, every day, ten o'clock sharp."

"A biscuit?"

"Hmm, a bic-bic."

"There is no such thing as a bic-bic."

"Artemis," warned Butler.

"We just say it for her sake," said Agatha dismissively, waving a hand. "She struggled with her words as a baby so we just simplified a few."

Artemis snorted. "Meaning that she shall now have to learn twice as many terms as she would have had to anyway thus exacerbating her problem, and has had to spend the first five years of her life speaking like a cretin!"

Butler resisted the urge to slap his hand to his forehead. Agatha, on the other hand, seemed unfazed.

"She knows a moo-moo moos, that an oink-oink oinks."

"What?"

"It's teaching her."

"No," said Artemis, actually sitting up in his deckchair. "It is mentally delaying her. A child should be taught the proper names for things from day one – there is no logical reason not to."

"No logical reason?" repeated Agatha.

"No."

"I can think of a fair few, myself."

"Oh, really?"

Butler was about to interrupt what was clearly turning into a verbal fist-fight when Cora's shrill voice rang out across the beach.

"Daddy!" she was screaming. "Daddy!"

Artemis's attention was instantly diverted.

"Cora?" he yelled, already half-way out of his chair. "What is it? Are you alright?"

"Tilly has sand in her vagina!"

"You see," said Agatha smartly. "We call it a 'twinky' in our house. Much nicer..."

Artemis stared straight ahead at the doors of the elevator. Cora was squirming, fussing in his arms, babbling nonsense and playing with her fingers. He paid her no heed. Butler was stood directly behind him, his expression serious, a pastel carry-all hanging off one shoulder and Cora's folded pram gripped in his fist.

"Floor twenty-nine," said a flat, mechanical voice as the lift came to a halt.

Both humans stepped out, accompanied by their armed escort of LEP officers. Artemis switched the toddler from his right shoulder to his left. The corridor was short, strip-lighted, and they didn't have to walk far too reach the meeting room.

"Cora," gasped a voice as they entered.

Then the two-year-old was snatched out of Artemis's arms and wrapped in her mother's.

"Oh my gods," whispered Holly, closing her eyes and clutching her daughter to her chest. "Oh my gods. Oh my gods."

"Mama," gasped Cora, burying her face in the groove at her mother's bony collarbone.

Holly rocked her still.

"She's so much bigger," she said to Artemis, opening wide hazel eyes to stare up at her husband.

Artemis met her gaze steadily. "She has grown."

Holly closed her eyes again.

Then there was a pointed cough from the far corner of the room and both husband and wife were reminded that they weren't alone.

At least a dozen fairies were sat at the long, thin table that dominated the majority of the room. All were wearing official robes and all were poe-faced. Grim. A few random others were sat, scattered around the outside of the room, more casually dressed that the council people but equally serious. Some of them Artemis recognised; some of them he did not.

"If you wouldn't mind taking a seat," said a grey-haired pixie from the very far end of the table, "we would all like to make a start."

Butler stepped forward. Holly swallowed, and passed her child slowly, carefully, into the arms of her Godfather.

"I'm sorry," she whispered as he baby was lifted away from her, "I'm so sorry."

Cora grumbled. "No! I don't want you Dommy! I want Mama. No!"

"Hush now..."

Artemis watched her as she unsteadily took the seat opposite him, hiding her shaking hands beneath the back glass of the surface top. She did not look at him.

The head pixie heaved a sigh. "Right. Well. We all know why we are here today. We are here to discuss the fate of that young Mud Lady over there, who, I must admit, I did not know would be present in this meeting room."

"I am currently a single parent," said Artemis, "day care is hard to organise at such short notice."

"Hmm. Apparently so."

"Mama!"

Butler ducked his head and hushed Cora whilst still trying to look threatening and offensive. Somehow he made it work.

"You must all be aware," continued the pixie grimly, "that whatever goes on in this room is in place of an official, public hearing. The discussion here has legal weighting, and the decision made as a result of it will be legally binding. Do all present understand?"

There was a brief murmuring of 'aye's.

"Aye," said Holly.

"Aye," said Artemis.

"Good. Then we may proceed."

"I want Mama!" cried Cora.

Butler turned his back on the table, crouching down to open the carry bag. He found a sippy cup and coaxed it between her teeth.

"This council's worries have already been made clear in the opening hearings. We believe that the present situation of the child growing up on the surface in possession of magic is a risky one. It risks the almost certain exposure of our people. All that we have strived to keep hidden from the humans for over two millennia could be laid bare at any moment."

"She is a child," said Artemis levelly. "At the moment she lacks self-control, obviously. But do not forget that she is human. She shall be fully grown in less than two decades and mentally matured in far less than that, if my genes have any say in the matter. She shall keep her and your secret safe, just as I have for the last fifteen years."

"We have no sure guarantee of that," rasped a wrinkled elf three seats to his left.

"You have no guarantee that I or Butler shall forever keep your secrets, and yet here I am."

The head pixie sighed. "That situation could be remedied at any time. We could wipe you both now and drop you in the deepest Sahara with nothing in your heads but the urge to join the Bedouin, but she, however, has magic."

"Which you cannot remove," said Artemis sharply. "There is no method you could set upon that would not conflict directly with Book law. You cannot injure her, even slightly, to drain her magic as that would be violence against an innocent. And since, as a magically-born human, she is not subject to the constraints of your religion, you cannot simply ask me to assist her in breaking enough of your tenets to have her magic removed in that way. The only way is for Cora to ask for her magic to be removed at a formal ritual ceremony, and that must be done willingly and with full, mature, grasp of the senses."

A fat pixie to Holly's left smirked. "Which is why we think we've come up with the best alternative."

Artemis sighed. "Do tell."

"We keep her underground, in a secure facility, until expiration."

"Expiration?"

"She'll be looked after here in Haven. She'll be educated here, live as full a life as possible, but be kept from society at large. Visitations from Major Short would be permitted."

"And from myself?"

"We have proposed that you undergo another mind wipe," said a pinch-faced gnome sat to the right of the head pixie, "drop you in that aforementioned desert and be done with it."

There was a low grumble from the corner and several of the LEP guards turned their neutrino barrels to point at Butler.

"I had expected you to suggest her underground confinement," said Artemis quietly, "for a time. But not something as inhumane as separating her almost completely from her family."

The head pixie gave him a sad smile. "But we are not human, Artemis Fowl."

Cora wriggled in Butler's tautened grip.

"Mama!"

"No."

All eyes shot towards Holly. She had lifted her head from staring at the table top.

"Major Short?"

"I said no. She must stay on the surface."

"Major Short, she is a risk to–"

"We are all a risk," snapped the elf. "Every one of us could expose the People at any moment. Every moon-seeker that Recon has to chase down on a Friday night, every few trolls that makes it loose up a chute, every back-street curry smuggler that takes a quick hop up to Pakistan, any Tara tourist or casual ritual maker, anyone. You are not keeping her down here because of a risk. She is human. She belongs with her people."

Artemis's eyes narrowed at his wife

A thickly-built elf two seats up from her cleared his throat.

"I agree," said Commander Trouble Kelp. "If she's in… in Fowl's care then she'll be safe and sound. We'll be safe. As much as I… Well, the Mud Man's turned it around. He wouldn't expose us now, and neither would he allow any of his family to do so. I believe in that."

Artemis watched the Commander glance at Holly, give her the smallest, most undetectable of nods, before looking away again.

"And as for wiping Artemis." The LEP's head technical advisor snorted, speaking up from his seat around the outskirts of the room. "I doubt you could do it. If he's broken it once, he'll do it again. And he'll just come back with a vengeance. Believe me, you do not want that."

Artemis turned his head towards Foaly, but, once again, found himself staring at a turned cheek.

"Then what would you suggest?" asked the council leader.

"A continuation of the status quo," said Holly. "The child stays on the surface with her father and grows up there. When she's old enough, she'll… she'll be told about her magic–"

"But what about where it comes from?" demanded the pinch-faced gnome. "What will it know of its heritage?"

"It can know nothing!" trilled an incredulous sprite near the head of the table. "Dear gods! The child, if allowed to remain on the surface, can never be allowed to know what its mother was!"

It was Artemis's turn to appear incredulous. "But of course she must," he said. "Holly is her mother. Cora is half fairy. How could I ever explain to her what she is without the People? Haven't we just agreed that we will keep the secret between us? Are you suggesting that Cora and Holly be separated indefinitely?"

There was silence around the table.

He looked at his wife.

"Holly?"

She still would not look at him.

"It is enough that we are considering allowing the Mud Child to grow up free on the surface," grumbled a squat pixie. "Continued access to the People would be far too much of a risk."

"Aye."

"Aye."

"Insult to injury!"

"I have had continued access to the People for years," spat Artemis. "Have I ever exposed you? Ever posed a threat?"

"Yes!" chorused at least five fairies including Trouble Kelp who apparently could not help himself.

The twenty-four-year-old clenched his fists. "I have saved your kind more times that I have endangered them."

"You have also seduced one of us and created a mutant!" exploded the pinch-faced gnome, banging his own clenched hands atop the table. "We would not be sat here now, discussing the most serious threat to our people's well-being since Opal Koboi still lived and breathed, if it weren't for you and your continued access!"

"She is my wife," bellowed Artemis. "Cora is our child."

"And the buck stops here!" shrieked the gnome above the little girl's fresh wailing. "We cannot allow this to spread, for our society to ever be polluted in this way again! We cannot encourage it!"

Artemis's chair scraped back and suddenly a dozen guns were being hastily primed.

"Hold your fire!" ordered Trouble, his own chair bouncing to the floor. "Hold your fire!"

Butler had spread his legs, ready for an attack, having placed a very unhappy Cora down on a chair behind his back.

"Stop it!" screamed Holly. "All of you!"

And there was silence. Throbbing, injured silence.

"I'd say this meeting was adjourned," said the head pixie, popping the tension with another sigh, "we shall have a five minute break and then the council shall re-adjourn until we come to a final decision."

Artemis's chest was heaving. His daughter had started sobbing again. And his wife still wouldn't look him in the eye.

The door slammed shut behind them. Artemis immediately strode to the other end of the room, pacing, running his hands back through his hair, struggling to regain some semblance of composure. He had travelled down to Haven that morning determined, cool, and in control. It would be like old times, he had told himself. He would stun them with cold logic. He would get what he wanted with strict, refined arguments. He would not let emotion get in the way.

But how could it not?

He had marched to his own death at age fifteen and not felt even a tenth of the emotional turmoil he had when he had walked into that room. And now, having just walked out of it…

"Artemis–"

"What are you doing?" he demanded. "What are you planning?"

Holly blinked. "What? Planning–?"

"I saw you looking at them."

He glared at her, at her stunned, unguarded face, before swearing and turning back to the wall again, pressing his head against the cool plaster.

"Artemis… I… I really don't know what you're talking about."

He snorted.

Their world was quiet for a moment.

"It's just… it's just got to be a compromise," she murmured. "Either she's with you, or she's locked up down here."

"Would that be so bad?"

"Yes!"

"Why?" He reared away from the wall again. "Why would it be so bad?"

"Because you heard them!" she said, not meeting his gaze. "They want to keep her locked up until… extinction. She'd be locked up for her entire life!"

"Ninety years," said Artemis, "if that."

Holly closed her eyes.

And there it is, whispered a voice at the very back of his head.

"You won't fight for us," he said, his every syllable layered with disgust. "You won't… You won't… Why?"

She still won't look at him. He feels the strongest urge to just grab her by the shoulders, rattle her, hit her, like she had done so many times to him.

"Why won't you fight for us?"

For me. For her.

The door to the room opens and a sheepish-looking runner tells them that the council have made their decision.

The head pixie is sat up high, gripping his official sceptre.

"The magical human," he announces to the court at large, "Cora Evangeline Fowl, is hereby granted the right to a free life on the surface."

Butler released a thin breath of relief. Cora is cradled in his arms again. She is safe and relatively happy, her eyes fixed on the face of the short-haired elf stood in the eastern gallery.

"Mama!" she calls out. "I'm over here!"

"The conditions for this stated existence are as follows…"

She struggles, wondering why her mama has gone so far away again.

"Mama! Mama! Look!"

"Although knowledge of the People, following the age of twelve, is to be permitted…"

"Mama! Mama!"

"Personal contact, including purposefully being within one mile of any settlement, station, major city or dwelling etc. etc. of the People, any direct conversion or tactile, communicative interaction with any member of People, is strictly forbidden…"

"Mama!"

"These rules are also extended to the father of aforementioned subject, Artemis Fowl the Second…"

"Mama!" Cora was sobbing now. "Mama! Look at me!"

Holly clenched her eyes shut tight.

"Any breech of the conditions shall result in the imprisonment of the aforementioned subject, indefinitely, in this city of Haven. This decision was passed by a majority vote of ten to three votes by the court high council."

He brought the gavel sharply down.

"Mama!"

Artemis had been on the surface for approximately twenty-seven minutes before he had ordered Butler to bring the Bentley to a stop, got out of the car, and walked back to the fairy terminal.

He had returned three days later.

"Daddy!"

Cora had tottered towards him, her little fingers outstretched and wiggling.

He had walked straight past her and his ex-manservant without a word, strode across the third parlour, wrenched opened the liquor cabinet, and retreated upstairs with four bottles of various spirits.

Three weeks later and it is eight o'clock in the morning. Not that he knows it. He stopped trying to keep track of the time around a week ago. He has just let himself sink, content to stare up at the waves of his flickering life and not bother to claw to the surface.

The door to his bedroom creaks open. It is dark inside, but his visitor still manages to wind their way around the discarded bottles and smashed glass, toppled furniture, ripped clothes, the occasional shattered photo-frame, in order to reach the bed.

He hears the snuffles.

"Daddy?" whispers a voice.

He keeps his eyes shut.

"Daddy?"

He feels the mattress shift, ever so slightly, as something clambers atop the covers. Then something is beside his ear. Someone's sweet breath is against his ear.

"Butler told me," says Cora, "to ask you to open the curtains."

"What?"

"He said that I should ask you to open the curtains. That I should tell you that this room is starting to look like… like an attic."

Stunning silence.

For an instant everything is still… and then he is rolling towards her. Wide eyes stare at her from darkened pits and then he is up, wrenching back the covers, striding across the room, glass cutting the bottom of unwashed feet. He grips the drapes with both hands and pulls. The whole pole cracks from the wall and falls, sending sweet, blinding daylight streaming into the room. For a moment, Artemis simply stands in it, the velvet pooled about his feet, and heat, the sweet heat of the sun, burning his sallow cheeks. Then he turns.

Cora stares at the shrunken, dishevelled mess her father has become. His hair is greasy and stuck up at all angles. His jaw was dark and wiry with beard growth. Rag-like pyjamas hang loose from bony shoulders and hips. As she hugs him, she feels and smells the dried sweat on his neck.

"I am so sorry," he whispers. "I know I haven't been… present, in more ways than one, recently, but I am here now. Do you understand?" He holds her back. "Cora?"

She nods, dragging a sleeve across her nose.

He notices that she is dressed in stout hiking boots and thick overalls with industrial gloves taped to the sleeves. A tall figure appears in the doorway and Artemis looks up.

"Cora," he murmurs. "Give me a moment to change my clothes. Go to the playroom and I shall join you there once I am less…"

"Smelly," she provided.

He smiled. "Exactly."

She toddled away, kicking some broken glass aside with a boot.

"I did it, Dommy," she whispered, conspiratorially, as she passed him. "I got him to open the curtains."

Butler had eyes only for his old charge. "You did indeed…"

And the two men were left alone.

"I want you to call Phillip," said Artemis. "Tell him to sell the Harper accounts."

Butler said nothing.

"I shall need to settle some of the American accounts myself. And the sale of Fowl Industries I should of course handle personally but otherwise… tell Phillip to liquidate it all. Only keep the businesses that are active in Ireland."

Butler still said nothing.

"If… If I am going to be doing this alone," said Artemis, quietly, "I want to do it properly… Give Tara her notice. Tell her that I shall write her references personally so she should have no trouble finding a position with another family."

"Cora will need a nanny."

"She shall have her father from now on."

The two men made eye contact.

"Has she had lunch?"

"Not yet."

"Would you please prepare something for us both whilst I take a shower?"

"Of course, Artemis."

The ex-bodyguard turned to go.

"Oh, and Butler."

"Hmm?"

"Thank you for… for opening the curtains."

Artemis stood there for a moment after the manservant had left. He simply rested with the sun on his back, the tingle of Cora's tiny fingers still tickling at his neck…Then he felt a sudden pain. He looked down and noticed his bleeding foot.

"Oh, Hell," he whispered, before bracing himself and hobbling across his bedroom floor to tend to his wounds.

Got so much more of this I could write... But shouldn't!

All reviews appreciated.

PS. MEGA MEGA THANK TO In Christ Alone FOR THE AWESOME COVER PIC! A/H gritty drama is in the pipeline... once I think of something that isn't /crazily/ clichéd...

PPS. The 'sand vagina' anecdote is actually based on a true story told to my mum by a work colleague (I was the kid calling fannies by the family pet-name for fannies ( a 'twinky') until a ridiculous age - thus my incredible mirth when I found out that they're like a cake bar thing in America? You all just love to eat twinkies... A-hmm.)