Title: Love Is...
Fandom: Artemis Fowl
Challenge: Fight (Also for Stages and Fast Forward)
Rating: PG
Length: 2000 words (12 x 150 word drabbles + titles)
Characters: Minerva Paradizo, Artemis Fowl II
Note: The bible verse I’ve used for titles is 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. The other titles are my... improvements on the verse.
Summary: Minerva builds a life with Artemis. Love, as it turns out, isn't precisely what she's always been told.

Love is patient,

(it’s something that starts as obsession)

He wasn’t late—not unless you counted the previous three years—but she’d been primping and preening since dawn, trying to get the gentle spill of blonde curls over her shoulders to look natural.

It wasn’t irrational to want to look her best. At least, it wasn’t any more irrational than frantically rechecking the notes and scientific breakthroughs she knew were worthy of his acknowledgement.

A shuffle of movement in the corridor brought her back to herself: the head of security had orders to show him directly in.

She hadn’t realised that when the moment came, after all this time, she’d need a warning.

“Artemis!” she blurted in a panic, shuffling the sheets of graph paper in front of her to send the one with the X axis labelled Mrs. Minerva Fowl to the bottom. “I’ll be with you in just a moment.”

Surely he hadn’t been so short before.
 

---

Love is kind,

(something that grows into dependence)

There was a knock on the door, then it opened on noiseless hinges.

“You need to eat something.”

“In a minute.”

“Which you told me for the third time an hour ago.”

“Well, this time I mean it.”

“Juliet’s made you a sandwich. You know these things were designed to be eaten with one hand?”

A shake of the head. “I can’t risk contamination. I just need to finish this set of measu—”

“Minerva!”

Blonde curls bobbed as her attention came up from state-of-the-art hydroponic bay, where her new drought-resistant strain of rice sagged under the weight of its golden plumes. “What?”

“I thought you were coming here to visit me.”

The statement hung in the air for a moment, bare and vulnerable, and it felt like the first truth that had ever been spoken between them.

“Hand me that sandwich. You can finish up the measurements for me.”

---

It does not envy, it does not boast,

(it’s never having to use your blackmail material)

The intention to make polite conversation at the dinner table had been long forgotten, his parents’ bemused gazes bouncing between them.

“That’s rich, what about—”

“And you just happened to be—”

“No, you don’t! You’ve forgotten you—”

He hadn’t, but he’d finally run out of trumps. Artemis didn’t flush—he never did—but his finger twitched to cut her off from saying it out loud. 

Minerva crowed in victory, seeing the capitulation for what it was.

When they were alone, Artemis leaned forward in his chair, eyes dancing blue and merry in the flickering candlelight.

“It seems we both have an investment in keeping this just between us, then.”

“Yes. Yes, it does.”

They circled each other like prize-fighters, eyes gleaming, watching for an opening, and when their mouths met it wasn’t the end of the battle—oh, no—it was only the beginning of the war.

---

It is not proud,

(it’s discovering that the embarrassment of being wrong doesn’t apply)

“Mon dieu!” She clenched and deliberately unclenched her fists. Emotional reaction overcome, she strode ahead of Butler to open the door to their bedroom and wrench down the sheets. “Have you called a doctor?”

“It isn’t serious, and my standing orders are…”

“I don’t care about your orders,” she whirled on him. “Artemis is injured, and you’re still letting him decide for himself?”

Butler conceded the point with a nod, laid his charge down, and left to call a doctor who owed him a favour.

Artemis cracked his eyes open as she tucked the covers over his legs, smirking at her through the pale pain. “Thanks,” he said. “It hurts more than I’d thought it would.”

“Call yourself a genius,” Minerva mocked, fingers trembling on the blood-slick buttons of his shirt. “You can’t even remember you’re paying Butler for the heroics, can you?”

Safe at home, Artemis drifted into sleep.

---

It does not dishonour others,

(it’s never needing to hold back for fear they’ll stop loving you)

“You idiot! You’re not going back in! God, they shot you, and you still haven’t properly healed.”

“There’s no real danger, and the bullet only grazed—”

“Like hell it did!” She poked him in the centre of the chest, inches away from the bandaged wound, and he winced before he could stifle it.

“Minerva.”

There was a long pause, in which Minerva glared and Artemis simply met her gaze.

“Fine,” she said finally. “Fine. But I’m coming with you, and I’ll play your part. I know you’ve still got that iris-cam from Holly—you can walk me through it over an earpiece.”

Artemis’s eyes, which had just begun brightening with triumph, widened in horror. “No! It’s too dangerous!”

“But not too dangerous for you?” Her small, white teeth bit off the syllables in mid air, forcing even Artemis to concede the point.

“Fine,” he echoed her. “We’ll leave tomorrow.”

---

It is not self-seeking,

(it’s wounding knowingly, because above all, love is selfish)

A sudden, sick certainty swelled in her chest when she saw the vase of fifteen purple hyacinths, dotted between with sweet-smelling stephanotis.

“No, you’re not,” she murmured.

She considered doing something pointlessly vindictive, like smashing the water-filled vase over the keyboard of his laptop and leaving the apology to die on his desk. In the end she gathered them up, arranged them attractively on her dresser, and left for the university.

A dark-haired boy in the front row smiled shyly at his girlfriend, holding her left hand with his right as they took notes unimpeded. When it came time for questions, she looked straight past his eager arm into the rest of the crowd of students.

The flowers were still bright and fresh when Artemis returned that evening, this time uninjured, and he smiled as he bent to smell them before climbing into bed beside her.

Minerva fumed in silence.

---

It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

(it’s having someone to take for granted)

He paused, a slight crease appearing between his eyebrows as he placed his cutlery back on the plate.

“… have you been listening to anything I’m saying?”

“Not really,” she returned flippantly, heart pounding as he finally, finally noticed that she’d been communicating in monosyllables for three days.

It had been hard to stop herself from asking questions when he told her about his enhanced particle drive, emphasising points in the air with his fork. Now the silver tines were still, curving to touch his knife at a precise right angle.

“Ah,” he said, dodging six perfectly honed retorts with a single syllable. “So, what are you upset about now?”

She gave him a blank stare, then shook her head. “Never mind. I’m going to bed.”

“Minerva…” he said warily, sensing the trap.

“Yes, Artemis?”

“… good night, then.”

As she fled, Minerva heard the scrape of silver on china.

---

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

(it means being able to communicate even though lies)

The click of her heels against marble echoed through the hall, sending the silence scurrying before her rage.

“I already said I was sorry!”

He thought he could stop her so easily? The realisation was so overwhelmingly insulting that she turned to look at him, as she’d promised herself she wouldn’t.

“So you did,” she said, holding his gaze contemptuously. “I’m not angry anymore.”

“Minerva.”

“Artemis,” she returned. “Don’t you trust me to tell you the truth?”

“You’re not being rational.”

And that was simply too much. Minerva swept off through the front hall, shaking with the injustice.

She found Angeline at the door. “We can call off the shopping trip, if…” Artemis’s mother started, glancing anxiously up at the balcony.

“Oh, no, Angeline, there’s no problem,” laughed Minerva, so convincingly surprised at the apparent misinterpretation that Angeline’s worried expression cleared. “This was all Artemis’s idea in the first place.”

---

It always trusts,

(it’s never having to say you’re sorry, because it’s clear you wouldn’t mean it)

“No, Artemis,” said Minerva coldly, lapsing into French that was beginning to develop the edge of an Irish accent. “You don’t respect me, you don’t listen to me, you don’t give a damn about what I think or feel. You don’t even have the decency to say it to my face. Somehow, ten seconds of research and a bunch of flowers doesn’t make me feel a whole lot better about that.” 

He made a wordless sound of frustration. “You know it’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?” she demanded. A monster had awoken in her chest; a violent, ugly thing, intent only on ripping and tearing and hurting. Whether it was him or her, it didn’t seem to care. “Give me an example. Just one example where my opinion outweighed yours on something that matters.”

Confusion didn’t suit Artemis.

“That’s absu–” he managed, before she slammed the door in his face.

---

Always protects,

(it’s being yourself and that being okay even when it isn’t)

“Minerva…” he sighed, leaning back against the ancient oak door and absently counting the hairline cracks in the hallway ceiling. “You know I have a global security override. It doesn’t actually achieve anything to lock yourself in there unless I let it.” 

He’d have to get a builder in here to repair the crumbling on the antique ceilings. Perhaps Butler knew someone–

Minerva wrenched open the door without warning, sending Artemis tumbling to the ground, as he’d expected.

“Thank you,” he said, calmly picking himself up and dusting off his trousers. “Now, I’ve explained why. I’ve apologised for worrying you. Apparently the flowers were a bad move, but I don’t know what else I can do to make this right.”

Deep lines creased her forehead as her mouth shrank to an angry little line. “You can be sorry for what you did.”

“Ah.” Artemis paused. “No, I’m afraid I can’t.”

---

Always hopes,

(it’s finding their annoying habits more aggravating every single day)

“Sometimes, I just don’t know what I’m doing here,” she muttered under her breath, stuffing random items of clothing into her suitcase. 

“Living, perhaps?” asked Artemis, appearing at her elbow with a bundle of toiletries. After a moment’s search, he found the perfect place for it in her bag, tucking in a dove-grey silk blouse that had haphazardly trailed over the edge onto the duvet.

Minerva glanced significantly at a pair of shoes, deciding on the fly that they were precisely what she’d been saving that spot for, and turned back to glare at him.

Artemis raised his hands. “All right, then, I won’t help. Have a good trip; I’ll see you when you get back.”

“Artemis, I’m not coming…” she said, but he sent her into silence again with a single finger.

“Don’t say it. Or when you change your mind again, you’ll feel you have to make it true.”

---

Always perseveres,

(it’s gazing with clear eyes on all you’re missing out on)

The view from the terrace was as spectacular as always. She had seen the sun set over the Cote d’Azur almost a thousand times waiting for him to return from Limbo. Another four thousand times before she’d even met him.

Sunsets weren’t the same in Ireland. Mist shrouded the brilliant green hills, filtering the lessening twilight through in blues and greys, lighting Artemis’s bone-white complexion with a luminescence that would have merely looked gauche in the yellow of the southern French sun.

“Is everything all right, mon cherie?” asked her father, sliding onto the bench beside her with a glass of Rosé in each hand. “Artemis, he makes you happy, non?”

Twining slim fingers around the fluted crystal stem, she sipped reflectively. She only had to force the corners of her mouth up for a moment before they tugged upwards on their own.

“Oui, Papa,” she smiled. “Oui, he does.”

(it’s going back to do it all over again)

Love never fails.