YW/Artemis Fowl crossover: Crossroads (Chapter 2)
Title: Crossroads
Pairing: throughout the fic expect to see variations on Dairine/Roshaun, Dairine/Artemis, and implied Artemis/Holly
Rating: PG
Summary: When things fall apart, sometimes they get put back together again in strange configurations. What else could explain Dairine getting caught up in the life of teen genius Artemis Fowl? This chapter: Dairine and Artemis meet!
Author's Note: First chapter of this can be found here.
Chapter 2: Meetings
i.
Dairine hears about him before she sees him. Not from anyone in particular, and not by name, but talk about the whip-thin Irish student who shows up to class in suits and has yet to miss a point on a problem set permeates through MIT’s computer science department. She doesn’t take too much notice of it; after all, she’s overheard people talking about her, too, when they think she’s out of earshot, and word on the street is that upperclassmen (and even some graduate students) are wary of the feisty redhead who’s already started to compete with them for research funding.
The university absolutely refuses to allow her to take advanced classes as a first semester freshman. They also absolutely refuse to let her take more than five classes at a time. Dairine’s angry at them for a while, but eventually she’s thankful for the lighter course load; it makes it much easier for her to balance errantry and education. By December, she’s set all the curves and more than a few records in the required introductory courses while simultaneously negotiating a compromise between emerging machine intelligence and native organic lifeforms in a neighboring galactic arm. Not bad, even for her.
Second semester, the university relents and allows her into the advanced classes she wanted to take in the first place. She shows up to the first of these right on time, ignores the stares of her classmates who’ve obviously heard all the rumors, and picks a seat, setting Spot down on the table before her. Now, all eyes are on him instead of on her, and she allows herself a small smile. Even disguised as a computer that she could in all probability have built for herself, he draws admiring gazes. She’d love to see the looks on their faces if they saw him in one of his stranger forms. Even the professor is eyeing Spot with wonder.
Dairine wouldn’t have noticed the boy walk in, but she sees the professor’s gaze slip away from Spot and toward the door, and hers shifts involuntarily in the same direction just in time to catch the entrance of a slim, dark-haired boy in an impeccably tailored suit.
ii.
At first glance, Artemis is not impressed. He’s heard stories about this girl, even done the requisite internet searches to find out what he can about the competition, but from everything he’s learned, he wouldn’t have thought she’d look like this: short, freckled, glasses-wearing, wild red hair tied up in a ponytail, and wearing a black t-shirt with the Star Wars logo emblazoned across it. He raises an eyebrow, just a hair, and sighs to himself. He’d expected more of her.
But then his gaze shifts to the laptop she’s set on the desk in front of her and he realizes that behind this devil-may-care façade there’s an intelligence that might even be worth the challenge.
Pairing: throughout the fic expect to see variations on Dairine/Roshaun, Dairine/Artemis, and implied Artemis/Holly
Rating: PG
Summary: When things fall apart, sometimes they get put back together again in strange configurations. What else could explain Dairine getting caught up in the life of teen genius Artemis Fowl? This chapter: Dairine and Artemis meet!
Author's Note: First chapter of this can be found here.
Chapter 2: Meetings
i.
Dairine hears about him before she sees him. Not from anyone in particular, and not by name, but talk about the whip-thin Irish student who shows up to class in suits and has yet to miss a point on a problem set permeates through MIT’s computer science department. She doesn’t take too much notice of it; after all, she’s overheard people talking about her, too, when they think she’s out of earshot, and word on the street is that upperclassmen (and even some graduate students) are wary of the feisty redhead who’s already started to compete with them for research funding.
The university absolutely refuses to allow her to take advanced classes as a first semester freshman. They also absolutely refuse to let her take more than five classes at a time. Dairine’s angry at them for a while, but eventually she’s thankful for the lighter course load; it makes it much easier for her to balance errantry and education. By December, she’s set all the curves and more than a few records in the required introductory courses while simultaneously negotiating a compromise between emerging machine intelligence and native organic lifeforms in a neighboring galactic arm. Not bad, even for her.
Second semester, the university relents and allows her into the advanced classes she wanted to take in the first place. She shows up to the first of these right on time, ignores the stares of her classmates who’ve obviously heard all the rumors, and picks a seat, setting Spot down on the table before her. Now, all eyes are on him instead of on her, and she allows herself a small smile. Even disguised as a computer that she could in all probability have built for herself, he draws admiring gazes. She’d love to see the looks on their faces if they saw him in one of his stranger forms. Even the professor is eyeing Spot with wonder.
Dairine wouldn’t have noticed the boy walk in, but she sees the professor’s gaze slip away from Spot and toward the door, and hers shifts involuntarily in the same direction just in time to catch the entrance of a slim, dark-haired boy in an impeccably tailored suit.
ii.
At first glance, Artemis is not impressed. He’s heard stories about this girl, even done the requisite internet searches to find out what he can about the competition, but from everything he’s learned, he wouldn’t have thought she’d look like this: short, freckled, glasses-wearing, wild red hair tied up in a ponytail, and wearing a black t-shirt with the Star Wars logo emblazoned across it. He raises an eyebrow, just a hair, and sighs to himself. He’d expected more of her.
But then his gaze shifts to the laptop she’s set on the desk in front of her and he realizes that behind this devil-may-care façade there’s an intelligence that might even be worth the challenge.