Work Text:
When the world began to die, the realists stopped trying to save the future and turned to changing the past. They sent scientists and artists, makers and poets. Small changes, hints and ideas in the right places to steer the world in a better direction.
To be chosen to Leave for the past was an honoured burden, carried on the shoulders of a matched pair.
Regulus and James could not have been a worse match, until suddenly everything made sense, and just in time, really.
On the day that they Left James had a heaviness in his stomach that wouldn’t shake. He’d kissed Regulus hard, and promised to see him on the other side. The pit in his stomach hadn’t gone away.
James had Arrived in a field in the south of England in the year 2024 and caught a lift to the city of London. It was standard protocol, the predetermined city: he would find the hostel and Regulus, or wait for Regulus to find his way to him.
Time travel was finnicky like that, there was always a little leeway for Arrival times, so the meeting point was set.
James waited three months in the hostel in London. I’m waiting for someone, he’d say, when people asked if he was travelling or if he fancied a trip out. I’m waiting, he’d say, and sit by the fire with a book.
“Who is it?” Lily from the front desk was the first to ask particulars.
“A friend.” Lily smiled. “I’m not sure where he is, or when he’ll get here.”
“And you can’t contact him? Have you looked him up?”
It was unlikely, James thought, but so had time travel been, once upon a time.
The first result under Regulus Black was for an art gallery in London, which of course it was. If James was a little confused that Regulus hadn’t waited for him, he didn’t let it slow his progress. He swept Lily up in a hug and a forehead kiss and he was in front of the gallery before lunchtime.
A gallery with Regulus’s name on a banner. How long had he been here?
When he asked for Regulus at the desk, James was disgruntled at having to pay entry to the exhibition to be allowed in (I’m here to see a friend gained him nothing) but paid anyway. He was buzzing, but his anticipation mixed with that same dread he couldn’t yet place.
He began to approach a member of staff, a docent maybe, to ask, when a landscape caught his eye. It was familiar, as if from a dream. Impossible to place but unmistakable.
The Hollow at Dawn, 1903
Oil on canvas
The feeling followed James around the exhibition, even as he made his way to ask his question.
Our Time, 1912
Oil on canvas
The horizons were an old reflexive memory and yet unfamiliar.
Arrival, 1920
Oil on canvas
Two soldiers returned from war, seconds from embracing the love they’d been kept from.
Something was there, right there, like James was a fool for not working it out.
At the next painting, that something clicked.
Soleil No. 4, 1880
Oil on canvas
He stopped and stared, not forgetting his mission; quite the opposite. The painting was his answer, but he was not ready to hear it.
“You look like him.” James started at the voice, though the speaker stood a respectable metre-or-more away. They were a docent, striking a tall, imposing sort of figure. They looked only at the portrait, gaze never wavering.
“Who is he?” James’s voice tasted like gravel.
“He’s widely regarded as Black’s muse, although the Soleil portrait series appears to be the only record of his existence. There doesn’t seem to be any contemporary record of him, and you’d think the strength of feeling Black clearly had for Soleil might have drawn some speculation.”
“For which prejudice?” It was a strange question, but James felt half awake, half dreaming.
“Does it matter?” They looked at James then, quietly delighted to have an audience with real interest. “If anything, the combination of homophobic and racist attitudes of the time should have guaranteed Soleil a feature in at least a bigoted aristocrat’s personal diary.”
“Perhaps he is, somewhere.”
The docent smiled. “Perhaps.”
“What else?” He was suddenly desperate, in denial and yet gasping for scraps to cling to. If his companion was curious, they said nothing.
“Black first appears on record in 1874 in London, where he skittered between temporary residences for just over two years before joining society as a member of the Noble House of Black. A remarkably old and remarkably wealthy family, with no small amount of royal blood, vocal about their extreme conservatism.” James frowned but found some relief in this. This wasn’t his Regulus, with his quiet passion for social change, his secret idealism covered in cynical snark.
“He lived in the Black London home for several years, insinuating himself in both the London high society and the Black family business ventures. But here’s where it gets interesting.
“A look at the Black family accounts shows that Regulus had been syphoning money out of the less-than-savoury enterprises he now had access to. Embezzling, essentially. But crucially, this money had been moving directly into his own businesses: social enterprises, humanitarian work, conservation of the arts. He was known for his callous and haughty demeanour, but for all of that, there wasn’t a social cause he didn’t champion. He was a true Victorian Robin Hood, and that really set the tone for the rest of his life.”
James was falling below the roiling waves, heart sinking far, far. “I don’t imagine the Family ever caught him?”
“No, they didn’t.” The docent raised an eyebrow at James’s terrible fondness, but still said nothing. “For many years it was actually something of a mystery, where Regulus Black got the money to do the work that the Family would never have supported. It’s only within the last ten years or so that the accounts have been accessible to historians.”
When James looked back expectantly, they continued bemusedly.
“He never married.” Something in James settled at that, but it was a bittersweet thing, possessive pleasure and the ache of loneliness. “The Pandora Rosier journals famously said that when asked when he might take a wife, Black would dismiss the notion with I’m waiting for someone. A romantic at heart, perhaps.”
James’s heart burned with it, his own words echoing through time.
“As far as historians are aware he never even took a lover. He was relatively active in high society during his time with the Family, and still appeared in circles of lower social standing as his social and activist work became more prominent.
“In terms of painting, his landscapes, although the better known of his works, actually only appeared later in his life, after he moved out of London to a home in the country. The first Soleil sketches, on the other hand, are dated 1874, the very year he first appeared.
“This man was a matter of fascination to Black. Some historians believe that Black wasn’t waiting for the one so much as waiting for the return of a lost love. If that is true, that love can only be Soleil.
“I couldn’t show you a better example of love expressed through light than you see here. Black captures the moodiness of Turner’s Romanticism but the personal intimacy of the aesthetic movement to come. It’s what ties the Soleil series together, even more than the common subject. The way the sunlight on his face seems to be coming from within.
“And if he was far away, and Black didn’t appear to have a photograph or such a record of him- the most extraordinary thing, in my opinion, is that the entire series must have been done from memory. It’s fascinating to wonder what the muse would have really looked like, but all we will ever see is the way Regulus Black remembered him. It’s the most romantic thing I can imagine.”
James was trembling, aching. His fingers were hot and cold and numb. “Are there self-portraits?” His voice was as unsteady as his hands.
“Unfortunately not, but if you turn to your left-”
James did, and the sight wrenched out a gasp-sob that threatened to break the dam of his emotions. It was a photograph, and finally, finally, instead of his own eyes, he was looking into Regulus’s. A sepia-toned Regulus in a stiff high collar and a three-piece suit, older than when James had known him. The hard line of his mouth and dark mirth of his eyes. James thought he might see the lavender grey of them, if he looked a little longer.
His eyes flicked to those narrow shoulders, his fine hands. And to the side, the photograph’s label.
Regulus Black (~1849-1924)
Landscape and portrait artist
He’d known, of course he’d known. He wouldn’t have this, this exhibition and this story, he wouldn’t still be- But to see it. The date.
They’d missed each other by a century.
His heart was thundering, but also still.
“Do you-” James cleared his throat thickly. “Do you know where he- is. Now. Where he’s- buried?”
“That’s another curious story. The Noble House of Black had a mausoleum at their ancestral home that still exists today, but Regulus Black isn’t there. It’s unclear whether the Family would have allowed his interment there, after cutting him off for his political views, but he never seemed to care. Black’s will stated he should be buried in the unremarkable little cemetery in the village of Godric’s Hollow, near the country home of his later years. He insisted he face south.”
“He never stopped chasing the sun.” It was a whispered prayer, reverent.
“Even in death,” the docent agreed.
James took a slow, stretching moment to breathe. The gallery air in his lungs belonged to Regulus alone. “Have you been?”
The docent’s look was long, this time. “I have. It’s peaceful.”
James nodded and turned away, surveying the room so filled with Regulus Black.
“Thank you,” he said finally. There was nothing else to say.
“Thank you. It’s rare that a visitor feels so strong a connection with an exhibition, and Black is a particular favourite of mine. It’s been my pleasure to introduce you.”
James smiled a little, nodded, and with one last wistful look, tumbled out of the gallery and into the blinding street.
-
The train-then-bus journey to Godric’s Hollow was a revelation of distantly familiar scenery. It was unmistakably here that Regulus had been painting. James could feel himself getting closer, that Regulus was here.
But it wasn’t just the paintings that made the land echo in James’s mind.
It was only at the gate of that unremarkable little cemetery that it came to him.
It had been called Hollow Graves in their time. Their time was one of little green space, so this scrap of pale grass had been a haven in the grey. The headstones had disappeared somewhere in between, but there was a bench in about the same place that there was one now. In this now.
He wandered the rows of rough stone with a shaky determination until he found him. An unremarkable stone in an unremarkable cemetery. James held up the bouquet of wildflowers he’d collected on the walk from the bus stop.
“I brought these for you.” He took a breath and could almost hear Regulus’s snarky response. “Yes, they were free. That’s why I said brought not bought.” He sighed.
“I waited for you, in that hostel like we planned. I swear I did. I waited.” He paused. When he spoke again, his voice was brittle and cracking. “Not as long as you did though, I suppose.”
It was all catching up to him now. On an autumnal afternoon in the town of Godric’s Hollow that would one day be Hollow Graves. In the future, James and Regulus would sit on a bench in about that spot and argue until they fell in love.
In this time, James wondered if Regulus’s body had been below their feet, inevitable, all along.
James wept. With his back against the headstone behind Regulus’s and his feet on Regulus’s patch of grass, James wept for the man he loved. For the life they hadn’t had. For the life Regulus had had.
“I learned about you today,” he said between wretched breaths. “You made so many beautiful things. You made me beautiful.”
You were always beautiful, Regulus would say, before denying he’d said it and pretending to resist James’s arms as he was held.
“I’m going to learn everything, Reg. Please let me learn that you were happy. I’ll be an expert in Regulus Black, like I would have been in our time.” James’s chest shuddered. “Regulus. Reg, love. This was meant to be our time.” They’d hardly had any time before they Left, and now-
It burned, like icy fire. He was burning from the inside out.
Perhaps Regulus’s painting was right, but this wasn’t sunshine. It was hotter and harsher and more destructive. James sat quietly as he burned.
He was so quiet that the time-hardened cemetery caretaker jumped a foot in the air at the silently staring man, tucked behind a gravestone.
James, who would have sat on that patch of grass until frost grew in his hair, was fed and watered and put to bed that night, and for several nights after.
When he returned to London and Lily, she held him while her girlfriend kept the supply of tea steady and posted biscuits and real food into his unwilling mouth.
“What will you do now?” Lily asked when he surfaced from the stupor of his grief.
“What I came here to do,” he said simply. It meant nothing to Lily, but he didn’t care.
Regulus had Left their time to change minds, to champion causes. To protect art, and humanity’s soul.
He’d done his job.
James was a scientist. He had Left to introduce ideas, to suggest solutions. To protect the earth, and the bodies it held.
He would do his job and honour the man he loved.
You’d bloody better, Regulus would have said.
-
The night that James was being tucked under thick quilts in a little house in Godric’s Hollow, a tall, imposing docent climbed into bed beside their partner.
Under the cover of darkness, it felt less ridiculous to say. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say I met Soleil today.”
The partner tucked their head into the crook of the docent’s neck and hummed. “And do you? Know better?”