Chapter Text
It was a thursday afternoon. It was a thursday afternoon, when Artemis Fowl got the call, and nobody could really explain why he did get it, in the end.
It’s 16:00, when he picks up the damned phone, his personal one, not his work, which is even why he’s answering in the first place.
It’s 16:30 by the time he’s out of the building and the business deal he was supposed to make was cancelled.
By 17:00, Artemis has pulled up to where he stores his private jet at a local aeroport, and is demanding authorization to fly.
By 17:14, news articles get the news.
Grayson Hawthorne, second grand-son of billionaire Tobias Hawthorne, has been hit in a car wreck. The driver is already dead. He’s in unstable condition.
He can’t explain why he’s running to fly, to get over there. This is a lie. He can. But he won’t admit it. He can’t, hells be damned.
His team is working non-stop to keep the press from hearing about Artemis’ reaction to the news of his rival’s near fatal accident, to prevent Artemis’ rush to get to him from being leaked.
The personal phone is buzzing non-stop, calls from Juliet and Gigi Grayson who had gotten his number from the first, and likely his mother and Butler too, but he wasn’t stopping to look at them, or check. There was no time. He had to get there.
Artemis’ heart pounded in his chest, an abnormal resting rate as he ignored texts and calls to refresh on the coding that had the keywords related to Grayson and the crash. If Grayson Hawthorne died, if he died before Artemis got there, Artemis needed to know.
But he wouldn’t die.
Grayson Hawthorne was the most stubborn, infuriating bastard Artemis had ever had the misfortune to meet, and all the genius could do was hope and pray he kept that stubborness with him, even now.
The clearance to leave the country came in 5 seconds and 5 years all at once, Artemis’ foot tapping impatiently as he debated whether or not to just leave before they cleared him, but it would do no good if he died trying to get there.
Clouds of gray and slight rain fell on the ground as Artemis pushed into the small jet, gulping down the rest of the toxic black coffee the airport kept, knowing he was going to have to be awake for the next ten or so hours to get there.
He strapped himself in, putting on the headset. No passengers were on board to take care of, so he was slightly reckless in getting out.
Air control gave him permission to take off.
~~~
When Artemis Fowl lands, it’s only been 8 hours. It’s 7 pm in Dallas, and Artemis’ body is shaking with lack of sleep and overconsumption of caffeine, but he’s so close.
He’s shaved off an hour and a half of his flight time, some sort of miracle that could only ever be performed by the great Artemis Fowl, landing and docking at one of the temporary stations. He doesn’t own one in Dallas, because he never comes here.
There’s always been some sort of agreement, between Artemis and Grayson, to not go to each other’s home cities. They’d follow each other anywhere else to fight and argue and debate, but Dallas and Dublin were off limits.
It was unspoken, but it was there, and Artemis had thrown it out of the window with such a velocity there was no way he could have managed it with the frame he consisted of.
Artemis still couldn’t bring himself to care.
He was off the tarmac before they even told him to be, in the fastest car he could rent with money in less than 30 minutes. Hundreds of protocols, legal laws, were being broken, but Artemis had never been a friend of the law, and he wasn’t about to start.
The backroads were dusted as Artemis pushed 185 kilometers an hour, local police stations being told of someone going unbelievably over. When they checked the license plate and called the rental company and the name Fowl was brought up, it was dropped.
This was America. You could get away with anything if you had enough money.
Juliet called him halfway through his drive into downtown Dallas.
“What is it?” He asked, voice much farther strained than he would admit. It was coarse and rough, unlike him.
“The news outlets are being fed misinformation, so that Grayson’s not being swarmed by Team Grayson fans.” She told him, and Artemis scowled, although she couldn’t see it, at the mention of the teams. It was a stupid thing, and Artemis had hated it from the start.
He had never asked Grayson what he thought.
“Send me the location then.” He demanded, too exhausted to use please, too scared to use his manners. He could blame it on the flight later.
“I already have. You’re not too far from it now, though you should be warned that Gigi said-”
Artemis ends the call before she can finish. He doesn’t need to know what Juliet’s ‘name sister’ (as she calls it) says. Gigi Grayson is as annoying to him as her brother, but without the charm or beauty, and Artemis is wholly uninterested.
She hadn’t been lying when she had said it had been close, cutting another ten minutes off.
The hospital was private, and likely privately owned by Avery Grambs, now that Tobias Hawthorne was dead, if Artemis had to guess. Made sense to hold him at a hospital where they had the most jurisdiction.
His parking job was shoddy at best, and the quickened steps into the hospital were followed by flickering streetlights as it got dark, another rainstorm coming into texas, like it had in Dublin.
Well-groomed jet black hair that had been pulled up perfectly just hours earlier was splattered with rain, wet with the water and liquid gel reactivating, strands falling into his face.
Nobody was inside the lobby, except for a nurse who took a look at him and nodded with something he didn’t understand in her eyes.
His phone buzzed with the tone attributed to Juliet Butler, a forwarded text message from Gigi Grayson stating “3406. Why?”
The elevators couldn’t come fast enough, as Artemis walked back and forth. There were six of them, and not a single one came to the first floor.
A ping from one, and a run into it, spamming the third floor button and the close doors.
It was almost a maze, trying to find room 406. He went down hallway after hallway, numbers going up and down in search, finding nothing. One of the last he went into ranged from 390 and continued up, and so he jogged down it, sure he looked a mess.
406.
406.
406.
He found it, halfway down the hall to the east side. The door slammed open with a bang, a continued strength for adrenaline that he couldn’t explain where it had come from.
Oh.
He maybe should have listened to Juliet on the call, about what Gigi had to say.
Juliet Grayson and Savannah Grayson seemed to be the only family members of Grayson Hawthorne missing from the room, as his three brothers, Avery Grambs and a large man Artemis subconciously recognized to be John Oren stood around.
The last of the list is who moved first, towards Artemis with the look of “you shouldn’t be here.”
Artemis Fowl the Second would be damned if he was removed from this room.
“You!” Jameson Hawthorne said first, eyes wide with shock and confusion.
Artemis didn’t grace him with an answer.
“I’m afraid you can’t be in here, young man.” John Oren said, approaching with his hands up like he thought Artemis had the will or the strength to fight him.
Arttemis did not. He did, however have wit, and enough knowledge they could remove him without explicit permission from a family member while the patient was in a state of unconsciousness, or a doctorate in medicine.
Which Artemis, did in fact, happen to have.
“I am a licensed Doctor of Medicine. You can’t remove me from premises unless I do harm to the building, staff, or a patient.” Artemis countered, to which Oren frowned.
“Can he do that? I don’t want him here. Grayson won’t want him here. Grayson hates him, Oren.” Jameson started talking, rambling, and he looked halfway to insanity. Artemis hated Jameson in a different way than Grayson, but no less fastidiously, after the young bastard had poured juice in Artemis’ hair when he had been 5 and Jameson had been 3.
“Jamie, calm down-” Nash Hawthorne started at the same time the youngest, Xander, made a loud buzzing noise that sounded like a poor attempt at an ‘incorrect’ sound from a game show.
The attention turned to him all at once. He shrugged, nibbling on a scone, like he didn’t have enough appetite to eat it.
“Jamie’s wrong. That’s all I’m saying.” And Avery Grambs looked away, like she knew what Xander was talking about, but wasn’t willing to admit it.
“What do you mean, ‘wrong’? Wrong about what?” Jameson asked again, peering into his younger brother like he knew he was missing a piece of information.
“About Artemis being here…?” He spoke, and Artemis used the distraction in the room to take a look at Grayson.
He looked horrible. they had shaved part of his hair behind his left ear to stitch up a wound, and his right eye was almost so swollen that it looked like it had been covered with something else. There was a gash on his upper lip, the type that Minerva and Juliet gossiped about, though it looked different on a man than it did a woman when they talked about it, and there were so many cuts and bruises on his body you couldn’t count them all.
A respirator was attached to his face, an iv in his arm. The bottom of his right leg was held up, and Artemis could tell by looking at it they had to perform surgery. It looked like the type of wound that doctors would say “you’ll never walk again” to.
The beeping of the heart monitor was the only thing keeping Artemis grounded as he walked forward and examined the patients chart at the end of the bed, an outdated practice, but one he was grateful for.
A severe concussion, 3 inch wound on the side of the head, not deep enough to fracture the skull or cut any dangerous nerves. Black eye caused by airbag impact. Half an inch wound on the lip from debris. 4 breaks in the lower fibia, possible cut tendon in lower right calf due to crushed door.
The doctors notes said exactly what Artemis had expected them to say;
‘Unlikely to walk without assitance again. Large amounts of physical therapy after condition is stabilized.’
Artemis wouldn’t accept this. Not because Grayson would be fractured as someone who couldn’t walk on their own, but because Grayson wouldn’t accept this. Which meant that Artemis wouldn’t either.
He moved to draw a pen from his pocket, writing his own notes on the clipboard, before he dropped it out of startle as he was called out of his little world.
“You’re in love with my brother?” Jameson Hawthorne yelled, Avery and Xander cringing, the loud bang of the clipboard hitting the ground as they stared at each other.
Nash Hawthorne looked like someone had just turned on a light in a dark room, before nodding. John Oren remained completely neutral.
Artemis couldn’t think of anything to say. Yes? No? Sorry? None of those things were good enough, and he’d never apologize to Jameson Hawthorne.
Artemis took a deep shuddering breath, bending down to pick up the notes off the floor.
“They don’t think he’s going to be able to walk on his own again.” He says, steadying his voice even though his heart is pounding again. “He’s not going to accept that. There’s a preliminary drug, one that I haven’t really tested yet, that restores muscle fibers. I’m going to order more testing on it in the next two weeks, to see if it’s safe to give it to him.”
This was a lie. Artemis hadn’t invented a drug. But he would.
Avery moved from her spot.
“I’m going to get coffee. Get… some rest. Mr. Fowl.” She addressed him, and he gave her the smallest of nods, stifling a yawn. Sleep would come later.
Jameson still looked completely shocked. Xander didn’t look like he could care less, but was midly interested anyway. Nash looked at him sadly, like he was the one with an almost dead brother on the bed.
“Avery’s right, kid. Get some sleep. God knows how fast you got here, from across the sea.” Before he followed Avery out of the room, pushing his chair towards Artemis.
Xander finally took an actual bite of his scone.
“If it helps, I knew before either of you did. I’m not even sure if Grayson knows now.” Which was cryptic and odd, and Artemis barely understood it, but the adrenaline was finally wearing off.
He sent off a text to Minerva about his supposed drug, to which she gave him thumbs up accompanied by an image of her angry cat, which he interpreted as “you’re a bastard but i’ll do it anyway.”
Jameson’s gaze finally softened, still staring holes into Artemis.
“I still don’t like you.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to. I don’t like you either.” Artemis replied, stealing Nash’s chair. Oren remained in the corner of the room, silent but watching.
Jameson frowned.
“But if you can help Grayson…”
Artemis gave him a look, before leaning forward and putting his head on the end of the bed, so that his forehead just rested his arms, on the mattress. He didn’t look at Jameson as he spoke the next words.
“I swear to you, Hawthorne. If there’s anything in my power that I can do to help your brother, I will.”
There was no response, but he felt a hand on his back after some time, and heard the door click open and shut before he gave into the desperate exhaustion consuming him.