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Every decision he made from the moment he abandoned his voyage home was made with increasing discomfort. His head was fully aware that he shouldn't have remained a single day longer in France. His boss had been very particular about Arthur completing surveillance and surveillance only between arrival and returning home - doing only what was asked of him, staying no longer than necessary. Yet here he was, standing in a lopsided, rotting doorway on the third floor of a dilapidated Parisian townhouse, wishing he had never agreed to scout Paris in the first place. If he were given another chance, he would have refused his prime minister- regardless of the resulting headaches and arguments, he would have stood his ground against the head of his intelligence service, he would have even scoffed in the face of his majesty, suffered the guilt and disciplinaries of his disobedience. He should have stayed home and continued to read about the revolution through the words of others, would've rather stomached the battlefield over this, even if Francis wasn't roaming, his sword awaiting Arthurs. To lay eyes on this France - both the land and the man, it chilled him tot he bone.
"Avoid your familiar Francis Bonnefoy at all costs. Don't seek him out. Don't jeopardise yourself or your mission." had been one of his many directives to follow, the most important directive in Arthur's case - at which Arthur barely managed to swallow his scoff. Back then, during his debrief, he couldn't have imagined wanting to seek the bastard out, not when he was still reeling at Francis for conspiring with Alfred and emboldening Oisin in recent years. Of course, king George and Pitt's government were more worried about the integrity of their operation rather than the fragility and volatility of all of Arthur's interpersonal relationships with his own kind.
Now he stands in the arch of a doorway with bated breath, the rain battering the roof in crescendos and diminuendos, unrelenting. It was as if the heavens above were trying their damnedest to wash clean the ghosts of terror in these streets. What would've been an unnerving silence was soothed into something of an unsettling disquiet by both the rain and a leak in the ceiling at the centre of the room, dripping rapidly into the rotting floor. After a century of neglect - with Francis living elsewhere, likely forced to remain outside Paris in the vicinity of royalty that had long been out of touch with the very roots of France - paired with the consequential years of raids and rebellions of the peasanty bled dry of their money, it had left the building Arthur once associated with a pompous à la mode eerily decaying and skeletal.
The repetitive Latin murmurs are a whisper, smothered in desperation and almost drowned out by the backdrop of rain, Arthur eyes burned into Francis' hunched back for another painfully long moment before he gathered the courage to dare step into the room.
"-Salve me, fons pietatis. Salve me, fons pietatis. Salve me-"
In a room of complete darkness, Francis knelt before the cracked, murky window with his hands clasped before his mouth. Arthur had called out to him once already, made himself known to the Frenchman quite starkly, only to receive no response. Something so small triggered such a unwelcome nauseous feeling in Arthur - because Francis was incapable of ignoring Arthur, just as Arthur was as incapable of ignoring Francis. It was their biggest shared weakness.
"-Salve me, libera me de ignem, fons pietatis. Libera me de ignem, fons pietatis-"
It hadn't been hard for Arthur to find him. They spoke freely of a man ailed with a delirium not even the guillotine could rid him of, stories of simultaneous fascination, repulsion and fear in those who had not known of their kind's existence hitherto. The narrative had both fed and starved Arthur's solicitude, resulting in a strange juxtaposition of emotions he refused to analyse - emotions unwanted, undesired, but strong enough to hijack his mind and influence his actions. Francis and his nation had enough identity to ensure he remained immortal - a relief that was short lived when Arthur started to ponder just how fragile that immortality had become.
As he saw more of Paris with his own two eyes - and the countryside rumoured to be in the throes of more upheaval - the ways in which immortality could be taken from their kind persisted in plaguing him as he and his agents infiltrated the social and political networks of those in and around the Committee of Public safety, his increasingly overwrought deliberations plagued him so much that by the time it came to depart across the gangway and start the voyage home, he froze.
Where was Francis? he had wondered as passengers shoved past his idle being to board the ship. If not on some battlefield somewhere or with his government, where was he? Was he with his people? Did they trust him? Did they despise his association with the old monarchy or the new terrifying regime? What had they done with him? Or what had be done with himself?
Who had Francis become? Was he even still the same Francis that Arthur had always known?
This wasn't sentimentality nor an act of reassurance, Arthur lied to himself. Nor was it fretting, despite the knot in his chest. He almost convinced himself that this was a selfish act of intrigue - he was doing this for the good of his own country, despite the contrary orders he had heard loud and clear before he had left London, despite knowing full and well it was the conjured image of an unrecognisable Francis that didn't recognise him or their shared history that had pushed him to disobey those orders.
The meagre light that filtered in through the windows barely reflected off the candlesticks sitting atop a single table and the dusty, dull candelabras lining the mantle piece above the disused, crumbling fireplace. There was nothing else in the room with Francis aside from a rotting bookcase, it's books long since looted. Arthur decided to act on his anxiety and light the wicks, provide a bit of light to better deal with whatever he would be faced with if he ever managed to coax Francis out of the quiet chant - a prayer of some sort that was suspiciously devoid of any God's name - that he was breathing into his hands.
Finally, when the room is lit with a dim, flickering warmth that pronounced the shadows and deterioration, Arthur tried to engage Francis with one final call before he decided it was time enough to approach, regardless of how his heart thundered. The Latin that tumbled from Francis mouth stopped when Arthur's hand hovered cautiously over the Frenchman's shoulder, sensing, perhaps suspicious, of his proximity, then his shallow breathing seemed to stop when the Englishman gingerly rested a hand on his shoulder.
Arthur marvelled at how it was both an equally natural yet strange action to take. A gentle touch, yet they hadn't spoken face to face since the Treaty of Paris in the aftermath of the American Revolution - Arthur had called Francis a cocksucker with bloodshot eyes, threw a few punches. Francis had thrown a glass of wine over him and proclaimed that the dirty affair of politics were no territory for puritans and that Arthur was completely delusional to consider himself one. They had to be restrained and escorted from the room during the several occasions they were allowed to attend the negotiations. All this alongside their hostile back and forth in letter correspondence since - steeped in sour insults, jibes, 'without love's and 'insincerely's. Arthur shouldn't be gentle with him, shouldn't be cautionary, shouldn't even he here with him at all. He should be angry, seething, bitter, unforgiving and he is. He's a cold and callous reflection of the misery he's felt in the decade since Alfred had severed himself from him with Francis' help.
Just as Arthur is considering how foolish this is and prepared to retract his hand, Francis turns to to look at him slowly, twisting to him with his torso rather than his neck. Arthur swallows the lump in his throat at the blank stare which was contrasted by tears spilling from his eyes like rivers that have burst their banks, trickling down his face like streams, dripping from his chin onto his filthy breeches and floor.
They stare at one another, Arthur almost hesitant to breathe as he tried to gather what was going on behind Francis' flooded eyes. The silence dragged on and on, then,
"Your strings... where are your strings?" Francis breathed, eyes wide as they shift to stare at something at Arthur's wrist that Arthur cannot see, his hallowed, pale face contorting in confusion when he doesn't seem to find what he's looking for. The firelight did not bring warmth or presence to Francis' eyes as he lifted across a thin hand to clutch at the English hand squeezing his shoulder. Arthur breathed slow and deep, unflinching as Francis dug long overgrown nails painfully into his skin with twitching fingers.
"... What strings?" Arthur indulged, with a calm on his face that doesn't reach his widening eyes. There was an angry, deep, weeping wound encircling Francis' neck, a nauseating sight. The skin above and below is blistered and bubbling, blotchy and red with traces of fervent, frustrated scratching, small sections still bleeding, other sections scabbed or scabbing over - Arthur reached forward and confirmed his suspicions, placing the palm of his hand to Francis' blazing, waxy forehead. The fever was surely pronouncing the delirium. A strange feeling gripped him as he realised Francis had probably been fighting festering infection since 1793 - he suspects it's been half a year, he'd heard he'd been much too close to Marie Antoinette not to have faced the guillotine around the same time as her.
Francis tried to wet his cracked lips with a dry tongue and smiled aimlessly at him.
"You must know the strings - sometimes they are so very fine and discrete like spider's silk, or rough and prickly like rope - or heavy and cold chains. Sometimes I see them and they are like the wool of a wheel..." Francis says, voice rasping painfully as if he hadn't drank water in months, and perhaps he hadn't. He lets go of Arthur's hand and his frantic eyes flit to study his own palms, detached but fascinated. Arthur also studied Francis' hands, thoughts apprehensive at the complete cold and empty in Francis' eyes, their colour too many shades darker than the usual indigo-viola that had always entranced Arthur, driven him batty. The Englishman would much rather look at those brittle hands, for fear of looking into the other's Irises too long and seeing a completely different man.
"Do you see them? Look, look, there," continued Francis, holding his hands up before the window for Arthur to observe clearer, he rotates his hands. A flash of lightning pronounces Francis' silhouette and makes Arthur flinch. Before Arthur can tell him he doesn't see what Francis sees, the Frenchman jerks forward, convulsing, hooking his fingertips on the peeling windowsill to prevent himself from completely crumbling to the floor.
Arthur isn't sure what to say or do, so he stands in a stupor and wait.
"I don't like these strings anymore, Albion- I keep getting tangled. They are strangling..." Folding over on himself in pain, Francis spluttered onto the floorboards, a hand flying to claw at his own throat. "I-I can't breathe," Francis gasped out, blood dripping from his mouth. There was an unspoken plea in that laboured voice, prompting Arthur to quickly kneel beside the Frenchman. He said nothing, instead rubbed a hand across his back as he futilely watched Francis press his forehead to the filthy floor, retching in vain. It felt liked hours, waiting for the calm, before Francis said anything coherent again.
"Do you k-know-" Another convulsion. "-if we are marionettes of someone above-" Arthur heard the rattle in Francis chest, felt the shake under his hand and craved to demand that Francis stop talking, for once, for the Frenchman's own good rather than Arthur's sanity. "Or are we puppets to be controlled from the ground upwards?"
Arthur suddenly understood - old musings festering cobwebs at the back of his mind coming forth, questions about who animated them and gave them purpose: did God or the human establishment of the millions pull on the strings, their hearts... would there ever be autonomy with their kind of immortality?
Arthur didn't have an answer.
When Francis chokes, somewhere between a cough and a sob, the last of Arthur's defiance cracks and he pulls Francis up and into his arms, letting Francis claw at his back as he trembles, trying to catch his breath as he hacks blood up and onto the shoulder of Arthur's favourite frockcoat, a goblet full, maybe two. The guillotine comes down once more, Arthur can only suspect.
"Hey, hey, now... you will persevere." Arthur murmurs, the hint of a command in his words. You have to, he thinks, although he refuses to think too deeply as to why he needs Francis to.
"I asked God-" Francis tensed at having said the word and Arthur held him fast, grip tightening, embrace encouraging as he listened to the rattling, short breaths in his ear, simply glad he was breathing. "I pray.... to whomever has the power over me now, to end it."
"Oi. Sssh. " Arthur hushed, hating those words. "This pain will not be forever." he murmured as Francis shakes transitions into the tremble of quiet tears. He hates this sight, this situation, more than he hates Francis - hates seeing his oldest, most familiar, persistent and proud enemy reduced to a writhing, bloody mess with the change and transition, a land tearing itself apart. He understood why this was happening, why it had to happen, who it was happening to, that it would happen again to another poor nation - perhaps even his own in the end, but he didn't understand why God though it was fair that their bodies should suffer such unbearable pain with it. The sensations of his own civil war brought on remained as clear as day, as if it was yesterday - the sporadic vomiting and pain, the nightmares, unsteady on his feat with dizzying exhaustion while being ushered into battle, being pulled in all directions by what felt like everyone he crossed path with.
"I prayed, mon enemmi." Francis whispers into his shoulder as Arthur cards his fingers through thinning yet beautiful hair, ignoring the occasional scab on his scalp in favour of remembering how the sun shone off it when they were younger and less burdened, less different. "It is strange that you are here, instead."
Arthur's fingers still. For all of the hatred Arthur claims to fester over Francis, he's always been irritatingly beautiful - in both body and soul. Silence interrupted by rain and thunder reigns, Arthur feels Francis' breathing evening out against him.
"Then... all I can say is that whoever holds the power over our lives, they have a strange, twisted sense of humour." he murmured, but it's too late. Francis' had settled into a dreamless slumber, his cheek pressed to Arthur's shoulder.
Arthur doesn't know what to do aside from hesitate from letting go.