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“Do you regret it?”
The question comes when you’ve just stopped to make camp for the night. You’re almost startled to hear Arthur’s voice; he had been morose - in a way he never was with you - since you had started on your long journey West, trying to put as much distance as possible between the two of you and the tattered remains of the Van Der Linde gang. You could hardly fault him for it; after all, he had left behind the only life he had known for the last twenty years. With you. For you.
“Afraid you’re gonna have to be more specific,” you say gently, unsaddling your horse. Lord knows you had regrets enough to fill an ocean - but when it came to him, you had none .
He’s silent for a long while as he helps you brush and feed the horses, his eyes fixed obstinately on his hands. You simply wait for him to speak.
“All we done to get here,” he finally mumbles, so low that you almost can’t hear him. “Bad things. All of ‘em. And leavin’ Dutch like that - “
He silences himself when you put your hand on his, lowering his head and exhaling shakily.
“If we hadn’t done those things, we’d be dead,” you say simply. You both knew that. Had you stayed but a few more days, you’re sure that things would have gone from bad to worse.
He’s still not looking at you, one hand idly stroking his mare’s neck while he holds the other still under your touch.
“We’d be dead ,” you say again, and his entire body stiffens. He knows that; he knows , and yet, when he finally looks at you, you see it plain on his face - all the guilt and doubts and sadness and grief, threatening to overtake him. To anyone else, he might have seemed his usual calm, collected self - but he had no secrets for you anymore.
You step closer and draw him into a hug, his arms immediately surrounding your shoulders to draw you closer. He buries his face in your hair, and you hear his shuddering breaths against your ear. You close your eyes and press a soothing kiss to his cheek. You stand there together for a long while, holding each other, as the night becomes darker.
“And you?” you were loathe to break the silence, but you needed to know. “Do you regret it?”
He looks down at you, and smiles, if a bit sadly; it’ll take him a while to heal, you know that - but his answer brings you nothing but hope.
“If it means I’m with you, I don’t regret nothin’.”