I R E L A N D

- Dim Aldebaran -

:i:

Here is a story
of hope and of glory.
He's eighteen years old
and well I fell in love.

Funny, the way things really work. It's not quite the way they have it in stories, but not quite the way mummy and daddy explain it either. I'll give it my best shot.

Love at first sight really does happen. It happens all the time; in the backseat of cars, in the darkness of movie theaters, in empty stairwells, in stalled elevators. Lily can give you some examples, if you dare ask.

It just didn't happen to me.

I almost wish it did; I'd have an excuse to hate him then.

It was one of those strange, creeping things. I suppose you could say he grew on me; but he isn't always such a parasite. Mulch and I used Arty—may I call him that?—as a resource. After a while, so did the LEP, using us as the negotiators. It was actually a fine arrangement. Gold is valued much higher in the Lower Elements than it is Up There, so it was actually cheaper for the LEP to use Arty, who was better for the more tedious arrangements anyway.

I saw him almost every day; if not in person, then via videophone. 'Chatting' was the natural consequence. Despite his shameful ego, he was actually quite charming once we warmed up to each other. We would often start breakfast together at Fowl Manor, discussing the latest Recon over marmalade toast and Darjeeling. The Council preferred us working together in person; fewer vids of their use of Mud Men.

But after that,
where have you gone, from me?
The one that I loved endlessly.

Things weren't so peachy after a while. Arty had largely gone legit, but Arty had a past. Arty had enemies.

Dom couldn't stop the kidnapping—he was shot with a tranquilizer while preparing our morning toast. 'Jade Princess' was on tour, oblivious. Angeline was sleeping, hidden under her thick duvet. Her husband barricaded himself inside his study, too cowardly to hold up to his own ideals.

They shot me twice and left me for dead, not counting on my Kevlar turtleneck, Arty's gift to me on his eighteenth birthday. I didn't even get to see Artemis go.

My magic woke me up at dusk, healed. I wasn't in the habit of using iris cams, so no one Below knew. Angeline had convinced her husband not to call the police, fearful of the questions they'd ask.

Elves are emotional creatures. I strapped on a pair of wings and flew; they were a civilian pair, perhaps not the sweet prototypes Foaly had lent me before, but still excellent.

Foaly had taken Arty's mindwipe as an opportunity to have a sort of locating device implanted in him. I tracked it to a wharf in Dublin Harbor, on board a small fishing ship bound to Russia. Someone, evidently, wasn't too pleased with the last attempt to ransom a Fowl.

I stole a gun from one of the guards. I had never used one before; it felt sloppy and uncivilized compared to the liquid fire of the Neutrinos, but I was hardly in a state to care.

Have you ever been in an emotional daze? Perhaps when you heard news of your grandmother dying, or a car accident, or getting dumped. Remember that strange numbness, that fever that followed—remembered how you couldn't think, couldn't feel, could only… react?

Now, imagine that extended for a half hour.

All I remember is the final shot.

In retrospect, Dublin's reaction to the crime is a riot. They couldn't figure out who stormed in and killed thirty men, all Interpol nightmares. No one traced the spiel to Arty and his daddy-dear; no one traced those deaths to me.

I saved Arty that day.

But I lost him too.

He had seen me kill.

We used to have a life,
but now it's all gone.

Things weren't so innocent after that. When I tried to throw the gun away, Arty took it. He keeps it under his pillow now. I told him to throw it away, I told him it was filthy, I told him I wanted to forget—

He told me that no one should want to forget something. He told me—he told me!—that memories were precious, that memories should be preserved.

His father learned. Angeline learned. They wanted him to stop the Recons. They told him that it was unneeded. Save the world another way, his father had said. You are a wonderful son, but you cannot do this.

Arty had grown a little idealistic under my influence. He didn't want to continue undercover; he hated outright deception. He didn't want to lie.

He wanted to mind wipe them.

I can't love a hypocrite.

Does it have to be so cold in Ireland?
Does it have to be so cold in Ireland, for me?

Things deteriorated from there. I know his real reason for wanting to continue our meetings, but I didn't give a damn. Pride, arrogance, blah blah bah. Fucking stupid reasons. Aren't they always? It's my fault as much as his. Perhaps we'll go to Hell together. Pride is, after all, the greatest of all sins.

I rejoined Recon. I'm not sure how, but Trouble got me back in again. The Council was rather fond of the new Commander, granted, but it must have been a pain. I'm very thankful.

The reason I rejoined was simple: in Recon, I didn't have time to think. Action, reaction. A blur. A waste of life, perhaps, if the meaning of life is to feel, but it was something to do. Lucky me: I was damn good at it.

The Council likes to pretend that Artemis Fowl never existed. I like it that way. Trouble likes to pretend he never exists too. He'd rather that our relationship was a little… closer. I just wish I could pretend that he never existed as well.

There's two types of Recons I refuse to do. The first is mind wipes. The second is anything to do with Ireland.

I can't go back there.

I don't know if I'd ever come back.

Are they ready for me?

Where have you gone, from me?
The one that I loved endlessly.

I suppose I'm considered a catch nowadays. I'm a Recon superstar again: I hold most of the records, from corediving to speed. I have a new apartment with its own conservatory. I get fanmail—fanmail!—from little girls who want to grow up to be just like me.

Life's alright, I suppose. There's nothing wrong with it. No reason to commit suicide. It's just that there's nothing particularly good about it either.

I can hold it in, most times, this odd little feeling of despair. It wriggles up like a worm after the rain, blind, pitiful, ugly, but I can't bring myself to squish it. It's there, alive, like Hope and Pride.

Despair, I can live with. Recon helps me through it. It's Love I can't cope with—it's not a little worm, it's a wind, changeable. Sometimes it's not even there at all. Other times, it's even a little cool, comforting.

But Love is also a storm wind.

I hate storms.

I prefer it when there's no wind at all.

We were to have a child.
Yesterday's gone.
Well I knew the time would come.
When I'd have to leave.
Go on.

If I went back to Arty today, things might work out. We'd talk. Make up. He might kiss me. I'd be his first. It might go further, though I can't imagine how. Perhaps we'd have the first Elf-Human child since the days of the Roman Empire.

I actually liked the idea of having kids someday. Black-haired, blue-eyed kids. I'd dream about it, about living with Arty. I'm not ashamed of it. I also used to have a huge whopper of a crush on Root, which made working quite an ordeal. I never acted on either. Haven't you ever thought of the boy next to you in math, haven't you watched him beneath your lashes, out of the corner of your eyes, haven't traced the lines of his body, wondering?

Arty will pass in time. Part of me wishes we could go back to how we were before, locked in those golden moments with toast and marmalade and a cup of hot tea. Friendship is so much simpler.

Well, it's gone now. Maybe I'll have those moments again with someone else. Trouble. Grub. Chix. Doesn't matter. I do know, however, that I want those little silences of contentedness, those little concertos of peace. Perhaps not with Arty. Perhaps not with the local Casanova.

D'Arvit, I want those.

I never wanted those before Arty came along.

Why we can't clean up the messes we leave behind, I'll never know. The psyche is strange and terrible thing.

Look what they've done to me.
They've taken my hand...
And it's killing me.
Killing me, killing me, killing me!

It's not always this bad. I don't fantasize about his blue eyes while taking down rampant trolls, I don't imagine how his skin might feel while under fire. Love is never like that. It's at times like this that I can scarce bear to stand, when I lose control of my thoughts and they spiral into the what-if dimensions, when I don't even know whether I'm crying or not, when all I can feel is the slow tick of my life passing by.

I have a special pillow at home. Genuine cashmere. It's my crying pillow. I hold it and cry and cry and cry until my cheeks itch from the salt and my throat is hoarse. Then, I take a cold shower, and go to the Police Plaza to forget for a time.

I only use the pillow once or twice a year. Considering how often most females cry in comparison, I think I'm doing pretty well.

Does it have to be so cold in Ireland?
Does it have to be so cold in Ireland, for me?
Are they ready for me?

To be honest, I don't know if this is ever going to end. He's not going to die for another hundred years, at the rate human medicines are advancing. That's a tenth of my life, right there, wasted away, pining for a Mud Boy with pretty eyes.

Most Recons are in Ireland. Trouble wants me to work there instead, to handle the most difficult assignments of them all, to take on the media spotlights at Tara and Limerick and all those other touristy places.

He knows I don't want to go to Ireland.

Maybe he doesn't care.

Maybe he's like Arty.

Sounds like my type.

I still don't want to go to Ireland.

But I'm afraid I'm returning to Ireland.
I'm afraid I'm returning to Ireland.
I see, that there is nothing for me.
There is nothing for me.

:i:

O.o.That was weird. Well, I hope you like it anyways... the lyrics are from "So Cold in Ireland," by an appropriately Irish band called the Cranberries. They're way cool. And theirlead singer looks like Holly.

Please review! This is my first songfic, and I want toknow whether I did it right or not.

Thanks for reading!