Soundtrack: Perfect Day by Lou Reed, Bon Ivor in general, Never Say Never by The Fray.
And a fuck load of others, tbh, but these stick out.
Inspired HEAVILY by 'Alone On the Water' by MadLori (go read it if you want champion of champion fanfiction heartbreak); I'd say almost an adaptation actually.
PS. Sorry to those who all got alerts that I'd updated RA! I accidentally just posted this as a chapter of that and had to rapidly delete it! Sorry!
Eight Days
He remembered me on the fifth day after four days of laughing, screaming and stubborn nudism.
"Artemis," she sighed, clearly exasperated. "Pants? Yeah? Remember those? Things that go about your backside to cover it up along with other dangly bits you're not supposed to have on show?"
The teenager's nose wrinkled. He was sat cross-legged on a long deckchair, one hand in the pot of blueberries sat in front of him, the other winding through the music options of a bulky MP3 player. He clicked the play button and reached up to adjust his headphones.
"No, thank you," he said loudly.
"Artemis, seriously–"
He lay back and her eyes snapped shut.
Things moved so quickly in those first few days. He was alive, and so were we. Butler most of all. As Artemis took to life as a starving man would take to a banquet, he took the most joy out of all of us in watching him devour his new reign of being: colours, sounds, feelings, textures spilled from the corners of his mouth like the juices of some over-ripe fruit.
He padded slowly to the window, three pairs of eyes following his every step. He was unsteady, and three pairs of hands were ready to catch him should he stumble and fall.
He placed shaking fingers onto the surface of the sill. Their gazes twitched, adjusted, ready for the snap.
He stroked his thumb, the lightest of touches, along the line of the grain before moving his hands up to the window. He hesitated. His gown had risen with the raising of his arms exposing a few more inches of pale, sparsely muscled leg, blue, thread-thin veins snaking and pulsing in the hollow behind his kneecap.
His hands connected and he gasped.
"Artemis?" snapped Butler.
The teenager flattened his bare forearms against the cold surface, pressed his forehead to it, his breath unsteady, misting the view beyond it.
"Glass," he whispered.
His palms slapped back to the sill.
"Wood."
Butler jerked as if to step forward but Holly put a hand on his arm.
"Hair, skin."
His fingers slipped atop his head.
"Cotton, heat, air–"
His chest began to heave. Holly shifted and Butler was across the room in an instant.
"Carpet," whispered Artemis, as his new knees hit the parting fibres, his hands gripped about his bodyguard's forearms. "Grit, dust, shadow, colour."
"I've got you," muttered Butler. "I've got you."
"Nails, gilt, paint, Teflon."
Holly's heart expanded to fill her whole chest cavity.
"Sound, light, salt."
He was crying then, his breath coming in gasps.
"Breath, iron, blood, rubber."
Butler enveloped him in his mammoth arms.
"Tungsten, fur, coal, silk, spit, earth, acid, bark, marble, soap..."
On the third day he did nothing but sing. He liked to feel the thrum in his new throat. Just liked the way he sounded, sat in a chair, yodelling nonsense, grinning like a baby that's just discovered he can clap. I sang right back to him, as did Butler. Foaly just wouldn't shut up, glad to have an opportunity to show off his vocal 'prowess'. I went to bed that night with ribs bruised from laughing.
Butler coaxed him into clothes every morning and eked out reluctant promises that he at least keep the underwear on if not the T-shirts, the trousers, the socks, his shoes. The estate was strewn with the things he would inevitably discard later, his new found eagerness for nakedness only intensifying as he found newer things to feel and be felt. He preferred grass to cotton, wind and rain to denim, to wool, to silk. His body would have been covered with bruises, slashed with a thousand cuts, if it hadn't been for me healing him once every ten minutes. He liked to feel the world on his skin and knew nothing yet of modesty, shame or propriety. And why should they have mattered to him? Really? Death gave brutal perspective.
I would pull his overgrown hair back into a ponytail and long, black strands would escape the elastic at every opportunity until there was almost more hair out of the band than in it. Bramble thorns and sticky weed buds stuck about it in a child's collage of nature and rebellion. He wasn't the one who cared so much about it. It was Butler and I who would sit behind him after a day of chasing, yelling, warning him, grabbing him as he reacquainted himself, intimately and with reckless abandon, with the wilds of the manor grounds, to pick the resulting debris from his head.
He brushed past her, stroking his hand against her arm as he was so lately prone to do. She looked up from her book.
"Oh. Hey. Are you going to have–"
He hooked his thumbs into the elastic of his boxers and she snapped her eyes closed.
"–a shower?"
She heard cloth drop to the floor.
"Yes."
"Right, well, just remember to close the door this time..."
And the door to the en suite did indeed snap shut. Five seconds later and the sound of powered water hitting expensive tile drilled into the main bedroom. It was another five seconds before she heard the singing.
"What a perfect day…" he sang above the water noise. "Drink sangria in the park…"
She smirked, her eyes flicking up from her book to focus on the bathroom door. It was the same song that had played on the radio yesterday. She knew it from the Gnommish cover that had been popular in Holly's college days. He, of course, had memorised it after one hearing.
"Later, when it gets dark… we go home…"
"Oh, such a perfect day," she murmured to herself, still smiling, "feed animals in the park..."
"Then later a movie too… and then home..." She heard him take a breath. "It's such a perfect day!"
She raised her voice. "I'm glad I spent it with you!"
There was laughter and the slap of wet palms against wet room walls.
"Oh, such a perfect day!" he called.
She shouted back. "You just keep me hanging on!"
"You just keep me hanging on!"
She snapped her book closed and pushed herself out of her chair. It was past lunchtime and she'd rushed breakfast that morning due to Artemis's whim of a dawn-light run. From those first lurching steps two days ago he had quickly found his balance – mostly due to the sheer amount of stimulants Foaly was pumping into the clone every few hours. It gave him almost limitless energy, and Holly and Butler were having a little trouble keeping up with him. One moment he would be lying on his stomach on his bed, listening to Puccini at full volume, with a large bag of cinder toffee at his side (which Holly had learnt that Artemis was practically addicted to), fully dressed, and the next he would be climbing the West Wing wall wearing only a dusting of chalk on each palm.
She sauntered into the Fowl kitchen, heading straight for the fridge.
"Oh, such a perfect day," she sang under her breath, "weekenders on our own… it's such fun."
She wrenched open the door and was immediately met with a host of fresh produce at eye level. Her smile widened.
"Such a perfect day…"
She pulled out a pack of cherry tomatoes.
"You made me forget myself…"
And a cucumber.
"I thought I was someone else…"
And, after a brief moment of consideration, a bag of rocket.
"Someone good…"
She ditched everything on a worktop, which she could just about reach comfortably with the aid of a stool Butler had found for her, and grabbed a chopping board.
"Oh, it's such a perfect day!" she sang. "I'm glad I spent it with you! Such a perfect day–"
"You just kept me hanging on..."
She dropped the knife she had just slid from a nearby block and swivelled towards the door.
"Frond," she breathed, her pique falling. "Artemis! Don't do that."
He just looked at her, long hair dripping on the carpet, pale hands hanging loose at his sides. For once, he was decent. He'd thrown on a T-shirt and a pair of khaki shorts, though obviously not bothered to dry himself properly before putting them on as dark patches were beginning to spread across the blue and brown.
"Are you hungry?" she asked, pointing to the cucumber on her board. "Do you want any of this?"
He stepped forward and Holly immediately knew that something was wrong. It was something in the charge of his face, the hurried, determined movements of his body as he strode towards her, around the breakfast island, around the work top, as if he hadn't a second to spare.
"Artemis, what's–?"
His palm brushed against her cheek, his other hand clutching in her hair.
"Holly," he whispered.
And her eyes had barely time to widen before he had ducked down his head and pressed his lips to hers. She gripped the worktop behind her, her eyes widening still.
"You… you remember?" she stuttered after he had pulled back, her eyes darting over his face. "Is that what this is?"
He nodded, wiping roughly at his cheek. She gave a cry that was halfway between a laugh and a sob before pulling him back to her again. They kissed with all their considerable strength, Artemis actually bending her back against the worktop. The stool skidded from under her feet and she wrapped her legs around his hips, keeping them connected.
"Butler!" she yelled eventually, breaking away again but keeping her hands about his neck. "Foaly! Quickly!"
There was the unmistakable sound of pounding, bodyguard footsteps, before Butler skidded into the doorway.
"What?" he demanded, Sig Sauer raised. "What's wrong?"
"He remembers!" laughed Holly, getting down from his charge and wiping at her face with the heel of her hand.
Butler's gaze snapped to the young man. "Artemis?"
"Hello, old friend," said the teenager hoarsely.
Butler actually threw aside his weapon to accept the young man into his arms. Artemis held him tight, not caring about the ominous pressure threatening to shatter his new ribcage.
"Jesus, Artemis–"
"I know, I'm–"
"Don't you ever, ever do–"
"I know–"
"I thought I'd lost you–"
"So did–"
"You were just lying there–"
"What's going on?" interrupted Foaly, a pair of plastic safety goggles shoved onto the top of his head, the edges of his specially-tailored lab coat smouldering slightly. "Why are you hugging? Why are you crying? Should I be hugging and crying?"
Artemis laughed and leant back out of his bodyguard's embrace.
"Only if you really feel the need, centaur."
And Holly was still rubbing at her eyes in the corner, giggling hysterically and feeling the happiest she had in a long, long time.
We took things slowly for the next two days. Well, as slow as you could get with Artemis. He started keeping his clothes on and lost some of his enthusiasm for climbing things and diving into random patches of foliage. He was cleaner, calmer. He read a lot, could stare for hours at pictures, paintings, rediscovered the piano and indulged Butler in playing all his favourite sonatas. He laughed a lot, and touched a lot, stayed free with his emotions, never hiding what he felt. He was agonisingly, unbearably happy. We all were.
"My father proposed here," he told her.
They were stood on a small hillock over-looking the western meadows, the sun just retiring below the far horizon, a spray of pink cirrus cloud scattered across its blazing brow.
"It took him three tries to finally ask her. For some odd reason, he thought she might refuse him."
Holly raised an eyebrow. "What a shocking lack in Fowl confidence."
"I thought so. I have seen the pictures. She was clearly very much in love with him."
He pulled on her hand and she turned, allowing him to lead her away.
"Would you propose here, then?" she asked, trailing her free fingers idly against the tops of the wild grasses.
"Probably not. See there?"
"Ah."
"Yes, the romance is somewhat diminished when you are in sight of your own tombstone."
"Are you going to do anything about that by the way?"
"No." He gave her a soft smile. "Let him rest in peace."
She smiled sadly back and tugged at his hand. He turned and allowed her to lead him away.
They ambled down the hill, back towards the picnic blanket they had left out beneath the shade of a towering ash. She sat down amongst the fading tartan and he, of course, sat with her.
"So what's the plan now?" she asked.
"I think I shall lay you down for a kiss."
She looked at him, heart careening about the inside of her chest.
"But first…" He reached forward for the picnic basket. "I wish to have a Scotch egg…"
She interrupted the movement of his arm, gently pushing him back and kissing him before his head had even made contact with the blanket. Her fingers trailed against his newly cropped hair and she felt him smile against his lips. They had cut it only the previous day, almost exactly re-enacting a misspent afternoon in a mental institute so long ago except with far more laughter and a less shocking conclusion – Butler had fetched the clippers whilst he still had more than an inch to work with.
"Well," whispered Artemis. "That wasn't exactly according to plan."
"I improvised."
"I know. I am a great fan of improvisation…"
He grinned and they rolled, shirts rucking, bare legs brushing together. Ireland had been so warm to them for the past week. It was a glorious heat wave, strange but welcome, as if nature knew how much they needed it.
"And the next plan?"
"I will dance with you."
"But we don't have any music."
"I shall hum for us."
"Genius."
He played with the ends of her fingers, her neck curved back against his bicep, her head turned so she could see his face.
"And then?"
"And then I shall spend the rest of my new life with you."
She watched his expression. He seemed perfectly at ease, as if he had merely suggested going for a walk, or making her a cup of tea. His chest was rising and falling steadily, a slight smile playing about his lips.
Then his brow twitched.
"But first," he said, sitting up and putting a hand up to his head. "I think… ah…"
"Artemis?"
He clenched his eyes shut.
"Artemis? What is it?"
She sat up too. His breathing was no longer steady but laboured and obviously drawn with pain.
"Have you got a headache? Do you need magic?"
He gave a sharp hiss and clutched his other hand over his brow. She placed her forehead on the backs of his fingers and cradled his skull.
"Heal," she breathed.
The amount of magic that responded, that erupted from her body, took her by surprise. Sparks immediately targeted his head, sinking between his fingers and into his sheared scalp… but they also flittered to his chest. They sunk into his stomach, wound in a stream about his entire torso. Artemis shuddered and moaned.
"Artemis," blurted Holly as he began to tilt sideways. "Artemis!"
His arms fell away and she noticed the blood trailing slowly down from his nostrils.
That day, day six, was the longest. Foaly worked over him with various chrysalis-related machines as Butler kept watch by his bedside. I went away and completed the ritual, having used all my magic in the meadow, just in case he would need healing again. Artemis swam in and out of consciousness, his breath still laboured, blood still occasionally leaking from his nose or mouth.
His lips were so red.
"How long?" asked Butler.
"Five days," replied Foaly, "at the outside."
He cupped both hands behind his bald head, tilting his head back and raising bloodshot eyes to the ceiling.
"Right," he said after a silent minute. "Excuse me."
He got up, passing the newly stunned Artemis and Holly who were sat side-by-side, hand-in-hand, on the chintz sofa. The teenager looked up.
"Butler?" he asked faintly.
Paintings and decorative urns passed in a blur as the bodyguard stalked down the corridors. When he reached his own room, he wrenched open the handle. Artemis hurried after him.
"Butler–!"
The door slammed shut in his face. He lurched forced, undeterred, and banged a weak fist against the reinforced mahogany.
"Butler!"
There was a crash from inside and a noise like an animal, a bear or a puma, being speared through the chest.
Artemis thumped the door again. "Butler!"
There were several more crashes, a shattering, a terrible, ripping, scream. Artemis rested his head against the door. There was another crunch, a broken clatter.
"Butler."
The bodyguard strew his life against all four walls, destroying his furniture, his bedding. Outside, Artemis slid down the wood coming to rest on his knees against the door. There was another scream from inside as some other trinket, some other prized possession, met its demise, violently, furiously, against a plastered wall.
Artemis pushed his hands back over his head.
"Butler, please!" he screamed.
Holly was stood at the other end of the corridor. Her whole world was shot open, gaping, filled only with rushing air, deafening, heartless, air. She listened to the carnage, to the fall out of another person's despair, and let it fill her up and drain her out again. She closed her eyes, closed her throat, and floated away.
He made the executive decision not to tell his family. He hadn't contacted them up to that point anyway, waiting to make sure that the danger of what then had happened had passed. They were away in Cuba, with his brothers, with Juliet, and they still don't know to this day about his second lease of life.
I'm never going to tell them.
He was relatively calm the next day, possibly because of the analgesics Foaly pumped into him in exchange for his usual nutrients. He set up his vigil outside, on a long cushioned chair, and Butler and I stayed beside him, deafened by the sound of all that we weren't saying.
Butler held out the pyjama bottoms, Artemis's long fingers wrapped once more about his bulky forearms.
"Thank you," murmured the boy as he stepped shakily into them.
Butler grunted.
He helped him over to the bed and sat him on the exposed sheet. He did not move to lie down. The older man walked away and picked up his discarded trousers, folding them carefully and laying them on the back of an armchair. He did the same with the shirt.
"Butler."
"Yes?"
"I am going to take the solution tomorrow evening."
His bodyguard nodded. He understood. The clone was shutting down rapidly, but not rapidly enough. Soon, Artemis would lose all control of his new body, he wouldn't be able to think properly, speak, eat, drink...
"I want to go before this all gets unmanageable."
Butler collected his shoes, put them neatly side-by-side beside the hearth.
"Holly is going to help me. I want you to start making arrangements for the disposal of my body. Just have it cremated somewhere and scatter the ashes. Anywhere. I don't care."
Butler coiled a belt around his massive fist.
"Or I suppose Foaly could do it," said Artemis, thinking of other options, "dispose of it underground somewhere. I have told him to incinerate the chrysalis."
"I don't know, Artemis. I'm trying not to think about it."
"I know it is... difficult to think about these things, but we must be practical."
"Hmm."
"I do not wish to leave you, Butler. But… but if I am then I am certainly not going to leave trouble for you."
"No, you're not," the manservant plucked up a pair of loose socks, "because this time I'm coming with you."
There was a brief silence.
"What?" whispered Artemis.
"You heard me."
"No. No, that is unacceptable."
The older man turned to coolly stare at his charge, rolling the two socks into a ball in his hand.
"I was born to protect you. You are my purpose in life. What on earth would be the point of my living after you?"
Artemis flushed with anger.
"How dare you?" he hissed. "How dare you even suggest such a thing?"
"It is not a suggestion, Artemis."
"You ungrateful oaf!"
Butler blinked. "Excuse–?"
"You heard," he spat, fists bunching. "How dare you, when I would give everything for just a few more healthy seconds on this earth, even talk about giving it all up?" He moved forward until he was perched precariously on the very edge of the mattress. "You must live on after me. You must. Otherwise, what exactly was the point of all this?"
Butler moved forward, to put his charge's shaking body back on the bed, but Artemis flung up a hand.
"No!" he ordered, fingers trembling. "Do not touch me!"
"Artemis–"
"I didn't kill myself to save humanity, Butler, I killed myself to save precisely six people. If you just go ahead and kill yourself anyway then that makes my sacrifice only 83.8% valid! And that, my dear man, is unacceptable!"
The bodyguard's expression creased.
"You would dare," rasped Artemis, his voice fading, head shaking from side to side. "You would even dare…"
And then he began to cough, lung-shifting, throat-choked coughs that caused his whole spine to curve and his blue eyes to clench shut with pain. Butler pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket, knelt, and pressed it up to the boy's mouth. Blood transferred from stained lips and whitened knuckles to soft, bleached cotton and, after an impossibly long time, the room finally fell back to silence. Butler wiped around his chin.
"Lie back."
The boy did as he was told. Shovel-like palms pushed against his back and the mattress sank as Butler climbed in in his wake.
"No," croaked Artemis as a trunk-like arm moved over him and came to rest around his stomach. "You… won't. You won't… dare."
Butler pulled him close.
"You… won't."
"Hush now."
"Promise… me."
"Hush, Arty."
On the last day it rained, typically. He was very still all morning, and then again all afternoon; he was quiet, contemplative. He seemed to be at peace, and Butler too. He orbited him like a tuxedo-clad, overgrown moon, bringing him blankets, tending to the fire before him, generally meeting his every whim. I just watched and sat, feeling time steadily dragging something out of me, teasing something apart from my skin, from my heart. Foaly could barely stand it.
"Well," said Artemis, breaking a silence that was several hours old. "I believe it is… about time… I went to bed…Butler?"
Holly and Foaly glanced at each other, a dead weight dropping into both of their stomachs.
"Now?" croaked Foaly. "But… but it's only just turned nine o'clock. We could watch a film or something, play a board game? Anything."
The bodyguard picked Artemis up under his arms and knees, pulling him free from the nest of cushions and comforters.
"No," said the teenager lightly, casually, with some of his old authority. "I am… tired now. Goodnight, Foaly."
The centaur struggled to keep his composure.
"Goodnight, Mud Boy."
Artemis smiled.
Holly looked back at Foaly before she followed them and saw the quiver in his chin.
"Just stay there," she told him.
He nodded, unable to speak, and rubbed a hand over his mouth.
Holly heard Butler and Artemis talking in murmurs as they climbed the stairs ahead of her. She heard soft laughter, the rumble of the elder man's bass guffaw. Artemis was still smiling, his thin, stained fingers gripping to his bodyguard's shoulders.
As they stopped at Artemis's door, the teenager reached down a shaking hand and turned the knob. Butler kicked the wood open.
"On the bed?"
"I… think so."
He lowered his charge gently into the sheets.
"Comfortable?"
Artemis winced and pushed himself up, bracing himself against the cushions already piled up ready to support him.
"Yes…" he replied. "Thank you..."
"My pleasure," said the older man quietly.
They looked at each other for a moment, exchanging something so vitally important, before the bodyguard straightened and walked across the room. He pulled a small canister out of his inside jacket pocket and poured the powdery contents into a cup of water already waiting on the desk. He stirred it with a silver cutty.
"I'll be downstairs if you need me," he said, walking back to the bed and placing the glass atop the locker.
"Yes," said Artemis. He looked at his manservant again. "Goodnight, Butler."
"Goodnight, Artemis."
And the bodyguard was gone.
Holly was left behind, stood beside his towering wardrobe, already almost in pieces.
"So what now?" she asked, one arm wrapped around her stomach, her voice strained, on the edge of losing all semblance of calm.
Artemis reached out a hand.
"We are going… to follow the plan," he said smoothly as she reached him, laced her fingers tightly, almost roughly in his.
He reached out his free hand and took the glass from his locker. His muscles shook with the effort but he managed to bring it to his lips.
"Artemis–"
He interrupted her.
"To your… good health."
He closed his eyes, took another steadying breath… and tipped the cup back.
Three floors below them, unbeknownst to Holly, a forty-something-year-old bodyguard did the same.
For a moment she considered smacking the glass out of his hands. She watched the slow, gulping movement of his Adam's apple, the clench of his eyelids as he fought the bitter taste that made him want to bring it all right back up again, and tried to imagine that she was watching a film, only a film. Then he coughed, struggling to swallow, and her hands suddenly became part of the mise-en-scène, holding his gently to help him consume the last few drops. Once he was done, she let the cup drop from their hands and thud to the carpet.
"You'll… stain the… weave," he said.
She ignored him, climbing up next to him, pressing as much of herself into his side as possible.
"What now?" she demanded, her heart beating a mile a minute. "What's the plan now, Artemis?"
He let his head fall against hers, too weak to shrug like last time.
"We are… going to… We are… just going to lie here."
She nestled closer, nodding.
"Okay, right. Okay, I can do that. What next?"
"You are… you're going… to kiss me."
She turned her head immediately, hitting him with a kiss just as full of desperation and agony as she was. When she pulled away, the bitterness was on her lips too.
"And now?" she spat. "What now?"
"And now…I am going… to do… as I originally proposed…"
"What? What are you going to do?"
"I am… going to spend… the rest of my life with you…"
And that was it. Like the single flick of a finger that breaks a cracked aquarium wall sending tonnes of frenzied water crashing to the earth. Holly was crashing. Holly was spilling all around him, soaking into their skin, smothering them, interrupting the flow of his last steady breaths.
"Tell me…" whispered Artemis, who was now crashing too, his resolve trembling, so terribly afraid all over again. "Tell me the story, Holly."
"It," she wiped angrily at her face (she would see him, she had to see him), "it all started in Ho Chi Minh city. It was… It was sweltering by anyone's standards…"
"Who's?" he demanded.
"Yours!" she snapped. "You… and… and you wouldn't have put up with it if… if it hadn't had been so important."
"Important? Why important?"
"Important to the plan!"
Over the next ten minutes he lost consciousness. Holly kept up the story. She told him about the drunken sprite, how Butler had helped him to photograph the book, to inject the sprite, how she, far below the earth, had been given her orders to go after the troll in Italy, how she'd made such a pig's ear of it all, been given such a bollocking from Root, flown all the way across Europe…
When his breathing stopped she paused, sniffed hard, gripped him tighter, before carrying on.
"So the fairy… she… banged the bed into the floor again and again until…. until a slither of earth could be seen through… through the concrete…"
Somewhere around Butler donning a suit of armour she heard the soft sound of hooves on carpet.
"And, to the amazement of everyone watching…"
"Holly."
"He picked up the mace…"
"Holly, he's gone."
"And faced the troll head on…"
"Holly...Holly."
We didn't cremate him. Two days after Butler's funeral, we broke into his grave and lay his master's body to rest with him. They became their last little secret. I think that's what Artemis, what they both, would have wanted.
He had remembered me on the fifth day, after four days of laughing, screaming and stubborn nudism.
And on the eighth he died, lying in my arms.
Right! Put on happy music people! Lots and lots of it!
Reviews, as ever, are muchly appreciated.