Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“To reproduce oneself is to disappear... Those who reproduce themselves do not die if, by death, we understand the passage from life to decomposition, but he who was, by reproducing himself, ceases to be what he was – because he doubles himself.”

“Literature and Evil” Georges Bataille

There was a certain defensiveness that seemed to pervade Mother’s demeanour when something bothered her — Artemis had seen her act like this before she’d asked Father to abandon his less-than-legal business pursuits. Whatever had been weighing on her had put her on edge for the past week, and Artemis, likewise, had felt a similar unease seep into his being. When he’d first asked what was bothering her, she’d waved him off, assuring him she was merely tired. To Artemis, this only confirmed that her agitation was connected to him, and although he was loath to do so, he knew the only option that remained was to bide his time until she revealed her feelings.

It took nearly a week — a tortuously slow week — before she cracked.

The living room was quiet. The twins were off with their father, and Butler was occupied with phoning Juliet for their weekly chat. When Artemis had wandered downstairs to put on the kettle, he’d spied his mother sitting on the chaise longue, contemplative. Though he wouldn’t have been able to identify exactly what he’d glimpsed in her mien, Artemis suspected that whatever had been troubling her would make itself known today.   

Angeline spotted him and beckoned for him to join her. Wordlessly, he entered the living room. The afternoon light filtered in through the windows, giving her hair the appearance of being spun from gold. 

Briefly, he wondered if he ought to tell her this. Perhaps it would pull whatever sadness he’d caused her from her grasp, leaving her unhappiness nothing more than a distant memory.

Angeline pursed her lips, the silence stretching on as she mulled over how to phrase her thoughts.

“Could we talk, Arty?” she finally asked.

He nodded, and she clasped her hands together in her lap. 

“I do not want to offend you,” she began, speaking slowly. “But it is my responsibility as your mother to let you know when I see certain things that… worry me.”

Forcing his expression to remain stoic, Artemis listened.

Angeline sighed. “I see so much cynicism in you. When I watch you look at the world around you, I cannot help but see that. And I — I do not know if I taught you that, or if that cynicism made its home within you when I wasn’t looking. But once I noticed it, Artemis, it’s like I couldn’t stop seeing it.”

Her eyes shone, and she looked away.

“It’s such a silly thing, I know,” she exhaled noisily, the release somewhere between a breath and a nervous laugh. “I just want us to be happy. We’ve been through so much, and it’s more than overdue.

“I just want you to be happy,” she amended. “I know I can’t force you to, but God, do I wish I could.”

The surprise that washed over Artemis was enough to delay, if only momentarily, the discontentment that rose to replace it.

Were this anybody else, perhaps he would have asked: How can you not see all the love I have let flow freely to you like water? 

Or perhaps he would have asked: How can you mistake the infinite tenderness reserved only for you as hardness? 

In a different life, he could have asked: How can you see the fields I have sowed out of a desire to provide for you and see only salted earth? 

Forcing the tremor from his voice, Artemis’ tone was controlled when he finally brought himself to reply. “I apologize for worrying you.”

Angeline studied his face. Reaching for his hand, she clasped it, letting her thumb rub circles into the curve of his wrist. Artemis tensed, toying with the idea of wresting free from her grasp. Ultimately, he let the tension fade from his posture. Anger was all too quick to make its home in his heart when he was wounded, of this he was aware. 

Carefully so as not to reveal anything in his movements, he pulled away. 

“Thank you for letting me know, Mother,” he stressed. “I know it mustn’t have been easy.”

She hesitated, unsure of the sincerity of his words. Smiling weakly, Angeline nodded, and Artemis felt the monstrous petulance that resided in his heart crow, victorious. 

He swallowed thickly, disgusted with himself.

“I am afraid I have work to which I must attend,” he said, moving to leave.

“Will I see you at dinner?” she called after him, and Artemis paused in the doorway.

“Yes,” he promised, shooting her a strained smile.

Chapter Text

From the author Myles na gCopaleen and the playwright Samuel Beckett, Artemis Fowl I had taken the names he would give to his twin sons. By naming them in this fashion, the Fowl patriarch borrowed from the wit and prosperity the writers had blessed their home country with.

And what beauty there was in those writers’ success — to be beloved for the words one scratches onto a page. That was the purest milk and honey; a writer can claim better than most that his success is the result of the magic within his mind, rather than the tools lent to him by another man or the work appropriated from another. 

Years before the twins were born, Artemis Fowl I would bestow his name upon his firstborn. To give someone your name is a gift that can only be given once, and once it has been passed down, it cannot be revoked. In this sense, the process of name-giving is like cell division; where there once was only the one, now stood Artemis Fowl I and Artemis Fowl II. The creation of an heir is a second act of reproduction that produces the child — although Artemis was first born as a son, the gift of his name brought him forth into the world as the heir. 

Perhaps Artemis’ own intelligence reinforced this fate. From the moment Artemis could speak, he effortlessly adopted the mien of his father. And how could he not? His was a mind, ravenous, whose desire to consume the world around him would always be whet, never cloyed. When the stream of cruelty refuses to be struck by drought, it is no wonder when a carnivorous lamb is produced.

Did this mean Artemis was wicked at his core?

No — though what he was at his core, not even he knew. The only thing that could be said with any certainty was that he was not enough his father for either of their tastes. When Artemis was a child, he’d not yet learned to treat the world as his thing to plunder, and when the water of the Murmansk Fjord rebaptized Fowl Sr.’s heart, Artemis had grown too cunning and cruel to ever fully kill the vampire he’d become. He was both too little and too much, both too early and too late to match the pace of his father’s moral waltzing. 

All of this was readily apparent to Myles.

It is a terrible thing to be born to replace another. However, Myles knew in his heart of hearts that such a statement wasn’t wholly applicable to his situation. When you replace something, you expect it to be gone forever. “Forever” was an absolute that could never apply to Artemis. Myles was nothing more than a temporary replacement, for his brother’s return had been expected. 

The problem at hand had nothing to do with love.

Of course Mother and Father loved Artemis, just as they loved Myles and Beckett. If anything, Myles could quietly revel in the small victory of love, for Father, despite his best efforts to appear neutral, loved Myles more than his older brother — or at the very least, was able to love him more openly, more easily. 

During the first few years of his life, Myles got to have a taste of the difference between love and a legacy. While Artemis was missing, Myles, unwittingly, played his role. It felt like the world’s most exhilarating inside joke; to know of the grand plan that was your future, unbeknownst to all the people around you who didn’t understand. Myles should have known this was never going to last, however. If Father truly believed that Artemis had died — if Father had believed in Myles — then Myles wouldn’t bear the name he currently bore. Rather than having the name of a decently respected author tacked onto him like an afterthought, he would bear the legacy of his father. He could have been, should have been, Artemis Fowl III.

(Was this an immature understanding of the depth of the grief felt over Artemis’ loss, or was it Myles’ left-over instincts from his days as the heir to be attuned to the water of his father’s crocodile tears?)

But Artemis returned.

Oh, how Myles hated him! How quickly this return relegated Myles to the role of merely being a son once more. Artemis, the prodigious-rather-than-prodigal son. Artemis, with his capacity for miracles and endless belief in his own abilities. Artemis, who when their Father talked about the past, was a figure that ambiguously represented both Artemis Fowl I and II. Artemis, who left for three years and came back with an eye that no longer resembled Father’s eyes.

Ever since Artemis returned, Myles dedicated himself to the cause of tearing down false idols — he disavowed the faulty flying machines of da Vinci just as he mocked the hypotheticals of Einstein’s Big Bang. These intellectual titans were frauds waiting to be unmasked by Myles — Myles, who held all the answers, and who wasn’t afraid to proclaim that he did.

What did the gift of getting to play with Father on uneventful Sunday mornings with Beckett matter when compared to the gift of being seen as an equal? 

Perhaps the real source of Myles’ petulant rage was the fact that even more than the recognition of Father, he craved the recognition of Artemis. His older brother, his dead-and-alive sibling, his kin who was both the father and the son — Myles wanted so dearly to belong to the world of magic made possible by some unknown, special quality that seemed to suffuse Artemis with a brightness noticeable to all.

When Myles had tentatively tried to explain these sentiments to Beckett, his twin had been mystified. Beckett, who had always been more like Angeline, found the tale of fathers-sons-and-brothers inscrutable. Mystified by his brother’s frustration, Beckett had countered Myles’ confession with the facts he had available: Artemis loved the twins, and Beckett knew that Myles loved Artemis in turn. They were family, Beckett had argued, and they all loved each other — Myles simply got confused because he overthought things so often.

It was the worst response Beckett could have given. The fact that Artemis got to slide neatly back into his old life, sending the family dynamic into free-fall, wasn’t fair — Artemis shouldn’t get to just win . Every moment Artemis spent back home was a moment he was cheating Myles out of what had been his. For Myles to care for his older brother all the same… it was the most humiliating defeat he could have been served. Maybe if Myles had been born first, if he’d gotten to be the second rather than merely Myles, things would be different.

If Myles had just been allowed a fair shot, perhaps brotherhood wouldn’t feel like rivalry.

From Ovid's "Metamorphoses"  trans. Charles Martin.

Daedalus and Icarus

[Daedalus warned:] “Listen to me: keep to the middle course, dear Icarus, for if you fly too low, the waves will weight your wings down with their moisture; and if you fly too high, flames will consume them; stay in the middle and don’t set your course by gazing at the stars”… 

And while [Daedalus] was instructing him in flight, he fit the untried wings to the boy’s shoulders.

…[When Icarus] audaciously began to play and driven by desire for the sky, deserts his leader and seeks altitude. The sun’s consuming rays, much nearer now, soften the fragrant wax that bound his wings until it melts. He agitates his arms, but without wings, they cannot grip the air, and with his father’s name on them, his lips are taken under by the deep blue sea that bears his name, even to the present.

 And his unlucky father, now no more a father, cries out, “Icarus, where are you, where, in what region, shall I look for you?” 

And then he saw the feathers on the waves and cursed his arts; he built his son a tomb in the land that takes its name from Icarus.

Daedalus and Perdix

As [Daedalus] entombs his child..., he is observed, from where a rank ditch drips, by a chatty partridge, who chirps cheerfully and makes his wing tips flutter in applause: A novel and unprecedented bird, and one who’d only lately been transformed, O Daedalus, because of a misdeed that, for a long time, will be held against you.

For, as it happened, the inventor’s sister, quite unaware of what the Fates intended, entrusted her own son[, Perdix] to Daedalus’ instruction, a likely lad of twelve, who had a mind with the capacity for principles and precepts; … Daedalus envied him, and headlong hurled this lad of precepts from a precipice, the steep acropolis Minerva loves, and lying, said the lad had slipped and fallen.

But Athena, who takes care of clever people, snatched him from harm, changed him to a bird, and covered him with feathers in midair. His former brilliance, like his former name, he kept, although the former was transformed into the swiftness of his wings and feet.

...

[note: Perdix is the word Greeks had for “partridge.”]