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Arthur's vision is blurry when he opens his eyes, staring down at his journal, the tip of his pen resting on the page. It takes him longer than it should to lift his head to look at his surroundings, the ink of his pen smudging whichever words he had just written. He's cold. Disoriented. He knows for a fact that something isn't right, that he isn't supposed to be here. Or is he? It's too dark in the room to see clearly and he almost knocks over his glass of wine when he stands up. He can hear the rain outside, hear the crackling of the fireplace in the corner, feel the chill in the room. He feels sick as his gaze turns to the bed and he sees who is laying there.
Paul.
He isn't Paul yet. Well, he is. Even if he doesn't go by the name Paul Verlaine in this exact second, he is still his Paul. As of the current moment, the man laying unconscious on the bed is Black No. 12 more so than he is his partner. Arthur wonders for a moment if this is karma for everything he has done. To be in a time where his partner doesn't remember him, where they aren't even partners yet, is it a blessing or a curse? It feels like a sick joke. Perhaps it was, perhaps God was laughing at him from above. Is he going to have to do everything over again? Is he even able to do something such as that?
Yes he had done it once before, but to have to do it all over again seems horrible. To go through everything again while he's the only one who knows what happens to the two of them? This isn't even the same Paul, isn't even his Paul. That's not true, Arthur reminds himself, of course this is still the same person. Just a past version of him. Even if they were in a completely different universe they would still be partners.
He'll have to explain everything. No..no that wasn't a good idea. He doubts Paul would believe him. It's not as if there's any trust between the two of them to go off of. If Arthur was in Paul's shoes, he wouldn't believe him either. A big part of him still believes this is some sort of hallucination. Why is he back at this point in time? Why now? He has regrets, yes, but this was not one of them. Arthur doesn't regret helping him, he doesn't regret Paul at all. No, there were some moments that he does wish could've gone different.
"I'm not giving this child to France."
That night..Arthur wishes it could have gone different. If he had agreed with him, if they had taken Chuuya to the countryside and raised him there, then maybe..
No, he thinks as he sits back down. He doubts they would have been able to do something like that. He can barely remember what he had been thinking that night. He hadn't been taking Paul seriously. To abandon everything to raise a child by the countryside? Even now he isn't sure what to think of the idea. Things would've been different but would they have been good? What's to say he and Paul wouldn't have gotten into an argument like that night again? That they would've been able to give Chuuya what he needed? Well, what's to say Paul had any intention of Arthur raising Chuuya alongside him anyway.
He looks at the open pages of his journal, what he had written at the time almost illegible. He traces his finger over the last sentence, the ink smudging against the fabric of his glove.
Can a person like me truly guide someone?
He did. He had. He had been able to help Paul, what's to say Chuuya would have been so different? Maybe he could've been easier to help, easier to guide. If he even did a good job at teaching Paul in the first place. He thought he had done it, that things were well, but he was wrong wasn't he? Trying to prove to someone that they were human after being used as a weapon for so long wasn't easy. Now he wonders if it was ever a possibility in the first place.
"'You're human.' I've heard that countless times. There's nothing I hate more in this world than hearing you say that."
The room feels just as cold as it had been all those years ago.