Chapter Text
The next few years were...disturbingly pleasant for Butler. After losing Artemis, he had expected to spend every moment until the boy's return blaming himself and developing his skills so such an event would never happen again. Instead, his time seemed split in half. Yes, he trained, and trained hard, always going to bed exhausted and waking up aching. Yet he also found himself able to play host for the Fowls, and particularly their newborn twins, Miles and Beckett, whom he had briefly been tempted to take on as his new principals. Whenever he began to see the appeal of the idea, Artemis's final words would ring in his ears: If something goes wrong, wait for me. No matter how it looks, I will return. I will bring them all back.Then there would be shame for his weakness, and Butler would steel himself, knowing that Mr. Fowl would offer to bring him back to the Manor as they were preparing to leave the cottage by the sea. Just for dinner, perhaps a stay overnight?
He never accepted. Butler never went further than ten miles from his cottage.
Except when he picked up or dropped Minerva off at the Dublin airport. She visited for at least a few nights on every school break, and she always came with a new box of books, and frequently mailed more whole she was away. Butler had several free hours open every day, as there is only so much exercise a body can take before it tears itself apart. He spent this time reading. On occasion, he tried to pick out his own selections from the village's used book shop, but they were never as good as the ones the French girl picked out for him.
While she visited, they discussed one or two of the books a day. It wasn't always an intense debate, as had taken place after reading Sun Tzu, but they often had different opinions, Butler drawn to one character while Minerva favored another, or coming to different conclusions about the greater theme of the work.
When they did get into full debates, Butler found that he was not always the losing party, and not simply because of the highly subjective nature of literature. Minerva was clever, a genius, yes, but she was undoubtedly a bit naïve. Butler had spent the large majority of his life traveling to some of the most dangerous parts of the world, putting his life on the line for things as noble as a friend or as base as a paycheck. Minerva, for all her cleverness and aspirations, was still essentially ignorant of the worst parts of humanity, and thus fell to his insights. After thirteen years being essentially bullied into matching his opinions with Artermis, it was...refreshing to explore his own mind.
While she wasn't deep into the dangerous underbelly of the criminal world, Minerva wasn't entirely ignorant of its presence. After finishing Catch Me If You Can, one of her earliest recommendations, Butler made her vow to never show the book to Artemis. "He doesn't need any more ideas." She had been intrigued, and was finally told the full story about his first encounter with the People. Minerva was torn between disapproval and being impressed by his ingenious plan. Butler was not encouraged by the young woman's reaction, but it at least showed some moral base in her upbringing. Kudos to the nuns.
Perhaps to allay his fears about her morals, Minerva followed up that selection with a detective novel. Of a kind. Butler knew he was fictional, but he hoped Mr. Moon would never set his sights on Artemis Fowl.
He read Ian Flemings works and called 007 "an idiot, an misogynist, and a pansy," which led to an evening full of tales of his own bravado, with Minerva's jaw slowly dropping lower and lower with each scar he revealed. By the end, she entirely agreed.
It wasn't long before just talking during visits wasn't enough. The first phone call actually came from Butler, far too long past midnight, just days after her third visit. Minerva reflexively answered her phone, a panic rising in her at the unknown number, waiting to hear those terrible words: "It's about your father."
At Butler's voice, Minerva's adrenaline doubled, thinking that Artemis had finally returned, but, when the bodyguard began to go into some reflections on his latest bit of reading, the energy drained off and Minerva sagged face-down into her pillow. She kept the phone to her ear, though, responding with a goose down-muffled "uh huh" when it seemed necessary. Minerva didn't quite remember which book Butler said he'd finished, but her dreams were about being stuck in a water tower until God saved her.
As it turned out, God had stubble and a lot of muscles.
She'd been too distracted by the remembrance of the dream to do any classwork, but none of Minerva's teachers had the courage to reprimand her. Butler had told a few stories about Artemis's reign of terror at St. Bartleby's, but Minerva didn't have the malice necessary to ruin her own school. She might not have been religious, like her mother (claimed to be), but there wassomething shameful about the idea of tormenting a nun.
When classes were done, Minerva had gone back to her dorm and called Butler back. He answered the call with a proud "I won."
Regardless of it that were true, another debate commenced, only ending when the dorm supervisor knocked and confiscated Minerva's phone. Luckily, she had the forethought to very thoroughly password-protect it, so the school was unable to inform her father whom, exactly, she had been calling. All they got out of her had been "a boy." Which, oddly enough, thrilled her father to no end.
When Butler finished a rather unique fantasy trilogy by a Mister Pullman, he grumbled for an hour, chopping deep into his best cutting board before telling Minerva that any author that thought it was a good idea to end a series by having two people confess their love for one another, and then separatethem for the rest of their lives deserved to be shot. Repeatedly. In the kneecaps. Minerva was a bit surprised at his vehemence, but privately agreed.
One visit, Minerva had barely managed to wait until her luggage was inside before she unzipped the largest bag and shoved a box of ten books into her friends chest, with undeniable orders to read. The chef wasn't even able to protest that their dinner had not been finished. Minerva took over the final preparations and, by the time the soup was laid before him, he was so drawn into the drama of Battle School that he didn't care that she'd added far too much salt.
That series led to a conversation full of misunderstandings and furious blushes as both agreed that the author was a complete moron in regards to sexuality. It took some time to realize that, despite Butler's lifetime dedication to a lithe boy and Minerva's residence at an all-girl's Catholic school (where we all knows what goes on behind closed doors), neither of the debaters had any directreason to be offended. There was a somewhat longer lag between phone calls as they both tried to forget what they had been caught thinking about the other.
But, again: the author, a moron.
There was only one occasion where Butler couldn't finish a book that Minerva recommended. She was certain that her latest care package hadn't been in Ireland for five minutes when her cell phone rang. In retrospect, she thought the ring had sounded...indignant.
Minerva hit "accept" and Butler promptly informed her that Finnegan's Wakewas "utter bullshit." She had been jolted into attention, as that was said in place of a "hello." Also, because she could not remember ever hearing Butler curse before. It was remarkably ungentlemanly behavior for the man. She had pointed out that the difficulty of the text was one of the reasons it was considered such a classic. Butler could not be convinced, and Minerva did not see the book in his cottage on her next trip. She rather thought he threw it away. Or used it as target practice. Or kindling.
On the next trip, as Minerva was handing over her selections, Butler traded back a few thin, well-worn volumes, with orders to notlose them. On pain of death. She was rather offended, though in no way intimidated, and, upon reading, couldn't figure out what the man saw in this sub-par author. In her opinion, Miss Tsirblou didn't belong on anyone'sbookshelf. "Heavenly opening" indeed!
She responded with what she considered a far better type of romance, giving him six enormousbooks on a rebellious Scotsman and his-it sounded ridiculous, bit it worked-time-traveling wife. Butler had looked at them in trepidation, but she inspected each of them upon her next trip and saw little dog-ears on favorite pages, right up to the very end. Quite a few were for "the good bits," but Butler had refused to speak about any of the sexual aspects of the novels. Minerva had, very gently, reminded him that she would be turning fifteen in March, just a few months off, and fifteen was the age of consent in France. And she knew that many, manyof her classmates had not waited to comply with law, whether it be civil or religious.
Butler had looked at her, face expressionless, for about thirty seconds before he changed the topic.
Butler cleaned all of his guns that evening.
He was fascinated by the honor of the Vorkosigan, and commented on some of the similarities in his life and that of the old soldier Bothari. Minerva was there when Butler suddenly stopped midway through the third book and brought his hand up to massage his chest, looking off into the distance for some time. Minerva asked him what the matter was, and he continued the long tale of his young charge, and of his reaching for some final, petty victory in the business world. And of what lead feels like as it digs into your chest.
Minerva thought of her own aspirations regarding the fairies. She wondered how this man could nearly lose his life and still love Artemis. Her father had looked down the blade of a knife heading for his skull and only been saved by a half-revolution, and Papa had still been furious. What must Butler secretly think of her, who had put her family in such danger for her own vanity. She, who had made Butler lose someone for whom he would have so happily given up his life.
When Minerva's visit was done and she returned to the villa, she burned her time tunnel notes. She planned to apologize to Butler on the next visit, but never did.
"I could have destroyed my parents' marriage nine years ago," Minerva said, rolling a dark blade of seagrass in her fingers, looking out at the low waves or a receding tide.
With a whisper of paper, Butler put his latest novel down on the blanket. What had begun as a stakeout impersonating a day of seaside sunning had stretched into an afternoon of silence, only now turned uncomfortable as the night approached and began to chill the girl next to him. She had buried her toes in the coarse, half-damp sand, pushing deeper and deeper to get at the last warmth given by the sun even as her shoulders trembled. She wore a thin, long-sleeved shirt, but the cold was making adequate progress through her long, legs, which were mostly bared by short swim trunks.
When Butler just looked at her, attentive, Minerva made herself continue. "One day, I needed Leanna for...I don't know, maybe to get something off a high shelf. Something out of a locked cabinet. It doesn't matter; I entirely forgot what after..." She snapped the grass in half and tossed it aside, grasping at another blade from the tuft at her side, pulling slowly so it more slid from a sheath than being torn free of earth. "I walked into my parent's bedroom without knocking. She was with...some man I'd never seen before. She tried to make up an excuse about him being a masseuse, but...well, I don't think even a normal six year old would believe you get a massage while shoved up against a wall."
Butler coughed and looked away. She's always been shockingly blunt in regards to sex, and in an entirely different manner than Artemis could be blunt. Artemis bothered using scientific terms, at least.
"I don't think she knew I had the vocabulary to explain it at the time, but when I yelled at her...she begged me not to tell Papa." This next bit of grass Minerva flung at the surf, but scowled as it floated back to her on the breeze, landing on her ankle. "She said it was the first time." She kicked her foot free, the grass becoming lost somewhere in the cascade of sand.
Butler watched her feet and the furrow her efforts had made on the beach, marring the smooth surface. She'd been so still all through this round of waiting. How long has thisbeen on her mind, instead of the possible return of Artemis? Perhaps since they sat down.
"I believed her," Minerva whispered. "I...believedher, then...and the next time, when she said the man was blackmailing her. And the third time, when she said she was pregnant, and it was Papa's, and I couldn't split up the family."
Butler studied her face, which was twisting, fighting her emotions. "No," he said. "You never believed. Any of it."
Her shoulders tensed and her fists bunched on the blanket. "I...what was I supposedto do!? He wouldn't have believed me! It was his wife!I was six!The only time he might have believed me was when I was ten, and I only decided...I had to tell him because..." She closed her eyes, shaking her head, hair brushing off a few grains of sand that had gathered on her bare shoulders while she lay back on the towel not too long ago.
Butler waited for Minerva's ragged breath to return to normal, and then he prompted her. "Because..."
"Because..." She opened her eyes and locked them to Butler's. "Because she said it was revenge. Because Papa was having an affair, too. I couldn't take her sayingthat. I knewit was a lie, and I wouldn't let her say it to anyone else. I gave her a day to tell him." Her eyes continued to burn with the echoed fierceness of that encounter. "She ran off that night. She didn't tell anyone. She just...left."
"She's a messed-up woman, Minerva." He was going to continue—say that she was insane for leaving a daughter like Minerva behind—but the young woman just snorted.
"My entire family is 'messed up.'"
"No," Butler protested, an unaccustomed flash of anger coming with the words.
"Yes."
"Minerva!" Butler yelled. The young woman's eyes widened as she recognized his perturbation. Moreso when Butler shrugged off his jacket, pulling back his shirt sleeves to show his left bicep. He traced a thick pink line on the inner arm. "See this?"
Minerva had seen it—and a thousand other scars—before. It was one of the more noticeable, but just as much of a mystery as many others. She nodded.
"My father." At Minerva's widening eyes, he nodded back, slow, giving her mind—genius, perhaps, but still quite innocent—time to comprehend what he must mean. "He wasn't a Butler. That was my mother. In my business, most male bodyguards are willing to take the last name 'Butler' even if it isn't exactly traditional. Having that name, even by marriage, makes you ten times as valuable. And my father hatedmy mother for making his career." He paused. Then shrugged, putting his arm down again. "Or maybe he was just 'messed up' to begin with. But he mostly ignored me and my older brothers, and just focused on 'keeping her in her place'."
Minerva continued staring at the arm, even if she couldn't see the injury any more. Tentatively, she shifted her weight until her thigh rested against Butler's and she leaned over his lap, taking a loose grip on his wrist. He could have easily resisted, but the man allowed her to pull the arm back out until she could look closely at the pink puckers and twists of skin and an eye-shaped spot that still seemed raw, as if the muscle was just below the surface.
She brushed her fingers over the scar. It felt...soft. Denser than the surrounding tissue, but very natural. "What...happened?"
"I told him to stop." His voice was even and he looked at his arm almost as avidly as Minerva, but she doubted he was actually seeing. "He broke my arm and went out to hit the pubs. I was eleven."
Minerva's grip tensed and she immediately tried to loosen it, worried over harming him, but it seemed to be too small a change for Butler to notice. When she looked up to discover his emotions, she found him looking back down at her with his dark blue eyes. Eyes just like the sea out on the horizon, where the sun was gone down, though it's distant light still kept the world from complete darkness.
"Do you know what my mother did?"
After several seconds, Minerva shook her head.
"She called Madame Ko and booked me a flight to her school. Then she pulled my arm until the bone was roughly back in place and dropped me off at the airport with just my passport. She hadn't even set the bone right. I needed surgery and months of recovery before I could really train. Thus the scar."
"That...that's terrible."
"No," Butler negated, his lips suddenly twisting up into a rather genuine smile. "That is a 'messed up' family." He leaned in close to the girls face until her breathing stopped and she couldn't escape his eyes as he whispered, "I win."
Minerva gaped.
Then...she laughed.
Then she flung her arms around Butler's chest and cried, sobs only rising further when he began to gently stroke her back, though the touch was truly some comfort.
Butler held Minerva for a half-hour as her crying slowed, then stopped, her breaths going even and her body limp. Leaning over carefully, he picked up his jacket, sweeping it around to cover the girl, protecting her. From the chill, from her family, from herself.
It was dark and the mist off the sea was just beginning to coat her lightly tanned, smooth skin. Butler gathered the girl up and carried her back to the cottage, only needing one arm to support her slight weight against his chest.
The next morning, Minerva's flight home landed near her school, but she bypassed the institution, hiring a taxi to take her back to Tourrettes sur Loop.
When she arrived, Minerva found her father sitting in the rose garden at the rear of the villa, on the edge of a wide fountain. He tried to rise as Minerva came through the back door, but she was at his side and pushing him back down before he was even halfway up. His legs—thin now after months of nausea and chemical bombardment—could not conquer her simple girl's strength
"Should you be in the sun, Papa?" Minerva asked, sitting next to him.
Gaspard's skin was thin and pale and bruised. His hair long gone. For a time, he'd sported ridiculous hats to amuse Beau, but now his skin was left bare, the joke long since run out, Beau grown up just enough to understand what was happening to his father, if not enough to accept what was to come. Beau's behavior was getting unmanageable. He'd been asked, politely, to leave his former school. His new tutor was more understanding, though thrice as expensive. Apparently, even three tantrums a day was acceptable behavior at the price the Paradizo's paid.
Gaspard waved his daughter's comment off. "It doesn't matter." He barely managed to look Minerva in the eye as he said this, trusting her to understand.
Minerva's mouth opened a little. It took some time for her to let out an "oh." She grasped her father's hand. It was warm. Uncomfortably warm. They sat there for some minutes, Minerva feeling the burn of sun on her spine where her shirt did not cover her skin. Gaspard was the one that could handle any level of sun, after his childhood in Brazil. She was tanned after her weekend on the beach with Butler, but she could still quite easily sunburn, while her father would go on happily for another day entire after she was toasted.
But she would sit here. With her father, in the sun, for hours. Because this was what she had, and she could only have this for so long, she realized.
"I'm going to take a break from the Academy," Minerva announced.
Gaspard looked up at his daughter, hairless brows drawn. "Minerva, no—"
"Just the classroom portions!" Minerva grasped her father's hand tighter. "I can home study. There are a few papers I have considered writing and submitting to journals. I'm sure my teachers would allow that. And it won't...it won't be long..." Her voice cracked and she added her other hand to hold her father's. "Until I can go back."
Gaspard raised a hand to rub at his stubbled face. "I have your word, Minerva? You will go back? I know you geniuses have a low opinion of school, and there are plenty of millionaires that have dropped out of college and founded...the entire Internet or what have you. But promise me you'll go back and at least get a...a DEUG."
Minerva snorted at the idea, but, at her father's stern look, she put on a serious face and nodded. "Yes, of course. And Beau, as well."
Gaspard almost seemed to wince. "Er...encourage him to a bit higher. You won't really need the degree, but he...well, he found a box of cocoa powder today..."
Minerva laughed once and covered her mouth against further mirth, but the shine in her father's eyes told her that she was free to ridicule, so she let her shoulders shake until she could speak. "Mon dieu...was he ill?"
"Indignantly so," Gaspard confirmed, sending his daughter off again. "And the caffeine was enough to get his au pairto quit, so I'm afraid you'll need to call the next on the list after the last round of interviews."
"Oh, so our fifth choice, then?" Minerva's voice went high, almost cracking. She seemed to be working not just through hilarity, but also hysteria. Soon, though, she was gulping down air, her smile fading and spine straightening until she was looking at her father once more, lips twisting in the effort of keeping up a cheerful face.
Gaspard studied her and waited. He was no genius, but he was the girl's father. She came to him when she needed her daddy, which might not be often, but it was often enough that he knew when he should sit and wait.
She wound down. Was silent for a while, stroking his thin-skinned hand. Minerva built herself back up again until she blurted out, "Papa, I know we have...better things to talk about, considering...and perhaps it should all be over, after the court finalized things..."
Gaspard tilted his head, lips curving into a frown. 'The court' meant this could only be about one thing.
"I just...I knew about Leanna." She looked down; not at their joined hands, but away from him, a bit over her right shoulder, her hair falling to obscure her face. "For...for a long time. A long time before she left." Minerva looked down, avoiding her father's eyes. "I was scared to tell you. I knew you'd be mad that I knew."
Gaspard nodded and turned his head from Minerva, back towards the disappearing sun.
Minerva resisted the urge to let her father's hand go. It would be a reaction born from fear, and she had never feared this man before. Even when she'd managed to burn a hole through a rather old Persian rug and the Macassar ebony wood below during one of her experiments, and he'd actually yelled at her for one of the few times in her life, she hadn't flinched. A family was quite a different thing to ruin than a floor, however.
"I ran a paternity test," Gaspard finally said.
Minerva felt her heart stutter and she wished that it really would fail her so she wouldn't have to hear the rest of this.
"On you," the man went on, and this made Minerva's head shoot up, gaping at her father. "While Leanna slept after the Cesarean."
"I..." Minerva finally managed to close her mouth, lowering her gaze once more. "So you knew."
"For many years. I had all the paperwork ready to file for divorce, once she woke up."
Briefly, Minerva's mouth opened. Then, finding she had nothing to say, she closed it once more.
"You're mine, of course," Gaspard finally said, reaching up to rub his bare head. "Can you doubt it, with this gorgeous hair?"
All of Minerva's breath left in a single, inappropriately loud laugh.
"When I had a chance...to hold you...when all of the doctors had left and Leanna was asleep and it was just the two of us..." He looked far-off, the tiniest of smiles on his lips. He held one of his hands, cupped up towards the sky, remembering a time when the girl next to him could fit into his arms so neatly. "God, I regretted running that test within a minute. Because I wantedto keep you, Minerva. And if you weren't mine, I knew I would never win."
"But...you still looked at the results," Minerva whispered.
"I was young...or, younger than I am now. And foolish. And..full of pride. I told myself I could not tolerate being cuckolded by my wife."
Minerva frowned. Looked at her own hands. "But you...got...used to it? I mean...you stayed, even when you must have known she never stopped."
"God, no," Gaspard shook his head. "Never. What your mother did...it killed me a little every day."
There was a shimmer of tears in the corner of Minerva's eyes, and something faintly accusatory in her tone. "So why did you stay?Why did you let herstay?!"
He didn't respond immediately. Gaspard looked at his daughter, smile still there, but tinted by pain, from his own body and from her protesting spirit.
Reaching out, he put a hand to the back of his daughter's head, pulling her to his chest, letting her hide her face there as he slowly stroked her hair—so much like her mother's, just like almost every part of her—and gave her a chance to get control. Only a few tremors and sniffles remained when he could wait to tell her no longer.
"Minerva...mon trésor...I stayed because you and your brother...bring me to life a little every day."