Title: Jezebel
Pairing: A/H
Status: Never complete
Type: Series of one-shots, all centering on Ms. Jezebel Williams (AKA Holly Short)
Warnings: AU. Swearing. References to insanity, death, drugs and sex that can be seen as prostitution.
A/N: Okay- something happened, and I’m noit quite sure what, but my last posting of this tanked. So, I’m re-posting. All previous racoon-realted comments are, sadly, gone. Please revment? It’s not as editted as it was before, so tell me if I missed anything.
Disclaimer: I don’t own AF, but I do own this general idea, and will be toying with it more.

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Curled into a little ball under her covers, she hums and the noon light makes shapes of joy and heartbreak on the covers. She starts to sing and watch. They remind her of something . . . Someone?
 
“Mary had a little lamb . . .”
 
She starts to smile.
“Whose fleece was white as snow . . .”
 
She starts to rock and the covers move, throw shadows and she squeals. The magic is ruined, but she tries again. Someone is whiteness and pale and cold, like snow, but they make her feel warm like fleece.
“And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go . . .”
 
She tries rocking again, her hazel eyes clenched tight in the dimness. Slowly, she lets them go and everything is okay. She smiles into her song.
 
“It followed her to school one day . . .”
 
She remembers school. It was tough. She can remember falling so many times . . .
 
“School one day . . .”
 
More than one day, she knows.
 
“School one day . . .”
 
It felt like a decade. I decade of school time, she remembers. Her mind is still groggy from sleep, and doesn’t remember even her dream yet. Any of them. There was Something. Or, maybe it was Someone.
“Which was against the rules . . .”
 
She’s smiling now, because of all the rules she broke in following that dream . . . that dream of Something.
 
“It made the children laugh and play . . .”
 
She made no one laugh and play, she knows, but it was all her fault .  . . Something was her fault. Or Something was Someone’s . . . she couldn’t remember . . . She needed a nap . . .
 
She stopped rocking and lay down, still under the covers. She laid the pillow over her face and managed to fall asleep.

____________________________
 
“Jezebel,” a soft voice asked, “Jezebel, wake up.” 

She stirs a bit, and her body trembles. “No,” she whimpers, “I almost knew . . .” 

The nurse sighs, “Jezebel. Not another one of those dreams. I told you, dear, he’s not real.” 

“Yes, he is,” Holly licked her lips, “he is and I know it. I need him.” She turned her oversized eyes from the floor to the nurse. “If you don’t believe me, it’s okay. I don’t expect a Mud Woman to. By the way, I’m Holly Short. Not Jezebel Williams.”
 
The nurse sighs again and sits by Holly’s side, wrapping an arm around the teenager. “Jez- Holly, sweetie, you’re not a fairy. You’re a human, just like me.”
 
“Just like Artemis?” Holly asks, before it all snaps into place. “No, no! I’m no Mud Girl, I’m a part of Recon! Look at me. Do I look like a human, look at my ears!”
Holly pushes her head to the nurse, who holds onto the smooth, round human ear.
 
“Baby,” the nurse whispered, hanging her head down. She loved the patients, but whenever they had episodes, it was just too much, “this is a human ear.”
 
Holly covered her ears and jumped up. “No! I don’t believe you, who ever you are. I’m . . . I’m going to wait for Foaly and Artemis. They’ll save me.”
 
She sat down defiantly in a corner of the graying white walls with her knees to her chest.
 
The nurse sighs again, her eyes pained. “Yes . . . Holly.”
 
“Major Short!” She screams at the closed door.
 
“I just have to wait . . . Be patient, Short. That’s what Root would want,” The girl, Jezebel, mutters to herself. She continues, until the world drifts.
 
She just sits there, her eyes glazed and half closed. She sees Artemis.
 

‘Holly!’ He yells.

‘Yes?’ She answers.
 
‘Holly!’ He’s so far away . . .
 
‘Artemis!’ She is screaming now, too.
 
‘Holly!’ His voice is farther.
 
‘Artemis!’ Drifting . . . so far away . . .
 
‘Jezebel!’
 
No! She. Is. Holly. She doesn’t know a Jezebel. Jezebels cheat, steal, and do drugs. They’ll do anything- oh, anything- for their drugs. She’s not a filthy Jezebel. She’s clean, white-hatted, clear-conscienced Holly Short, Recon extraordinaire and fairy elf- not a human, or stupid Mud Girl.
 
‘Jezebel!’
 
“Jezebel!” The same nurse says, and shakes her shoulder.
“Oh, Artemis!” Jezebel sobs. “He’s g-gone, ag-gain! So-so many g-g-gone!”
Real tears fall, and she hunches over too skinny, too pale legs. The nurse is flustered- she thought the girl was comatose.
“Jezebel, Jezebel, sweetie, it’s okay!” The nurse says, gathering her up in her arms, “Hush, now . . . Hush.”
Eventually, Jezebel stops sobbing, and is just sniffling. He was so close. She needed him back. He was all she had left. Since . . . Something. Something with her parents.

_________________________________
 

It’s the same day, not that she can tell, and she’s still there. Rotting away . . .

Another person, a fairly small man, comes in and sits on her bed. She is still in the corner, and the only other furniture is the door, a dresser and a small window that wasn’t good for anything but watching precipitation fall.

“Jeze-“

“Holly.”

“No, you’re-“

“Holly.”
The therapist sighs and rubs his hair, which he shouldn’t be losing at his age, but is because of her.
The therapist takes a breath. He hates to do this, but he knows that someone, not someone, has to douse her with the icy water of reality. “Jezebel- listen for once!-  you are not Holly Short. You are Jezebel Williams, sixteen-year-old daughter of Maria and Jacob Williams. You were an orphan. They died getting shot by the police. You are here because-“
“Because you took me!” She screams, standing up. “My parents had honor! They were LEP officers, fighting for the rights of the People, and a filthy Mud Man like you shouldn’t be staining their names!”
“You are a human!” He roars standing up. “Not an elf– a human. Stop dreaming, girl, and face it! You’re a human- you can’t be helped until you realize that.”
“I never will! I hate lies and mud! Don’t make me one of you-you-you-“
“Humans.”
“Yes; I’m not one of you. Stop trying to turn me into one.” Her breath is ragged and she’s glaring. Her hand drums her hip, surprised at the bone meeting her fingers. Her clothes are thin, and they make her look frail. She glances down, and sees her hand is the same color as the walls- white and greying. It’s skinny, and she can sees scars trailing their way from her wrist up her arm. She’s reeling; how did they get there? She drops her hand and the shirt’s long sleeve masks her hand in surplus. She looks up heartbroken. “I . . . am a fairy. I will not doubt.”
The therapist sighs and walks out.
“Is she any better?” The nurse asks, looking to the door. It has a one-way windowpane, and she can see her in there, just standing, looking at nothing. Red-brown hair shielded her face, going all the way down to her ribs, letting her drown in five-sizes-too-big-clothes and hair.
“No. And doubt she ever will be. Jezebel has to realize that there’s no such thing as Artemis Fowl or Holly Short.” The doctor says sadly.
“Never?”
“Not until she can accept it.”
“That has to be terrible for her.”
“I think that’s why she has him- to her existence better.”
The nurse licks her lips, and can’t help but notice the girl fell. She saw her mouth, maybe say, words like ‘real’, ‘fairy’, ‘lies’, and, a phrase keeps coming up. The nurse can read lips, and she shudders to think of the phrase she sees:
‘I can’t be who they say. I can’t be that. If I was, I’m not anymore.’

Some other stories by The Weird Shipper:

• Updating
• Why?
• There, Right There!
• The Map
• And They Will Call Me Pepe