His assumption was spot on: as soon as the wheels of the plane descended and struck against the asphalt, Mary awoke beside him as if roused from the most terrifying of nightmares. Hell, she even had the pallor of someone sickly as she stirred, as if she’d been deprived of sunlight for the last three months. “Are… are we there?” She murmured, her voice hushed as she quickly realised that she was not the only person on the plane; and some of the others still adrift in their respective slumbers. Arthur turned to face her, his lips curling into an appreciative smile. Even though they’d be fighting more, he still found her remarkably attractive. His eyes flickered upwards to her frazzled hair, snorting a moment before responding. “You’d best hope so,” he reaches across, pressing his forefinger to her nose. “I’d not like to be landing somewhere<i>other</i>than Paris,” he remarks, snickering at his own attempt at humour. Of course they were there. Where else would they be?<br/><br/>Charles de Gaulle airport didn’t have a good reputation, but in the middle of the night, any airport ran smoothly. Ten minutes of idle standing in line to disembark was nothing; and he could have sworn the passport control officers in French Immigration uniforms didn’t even<i>look</i>at his passport. He slipped both hands into the pockets of his trousers as he waited with Mary at the baggage carousel; woollen pants that he was glad he’d chosen to wear. They were cropped just above his ankle, the hem sitting perfectly against the black Dr. Martens boots he’d worn on the plane. Announcements over the speaker rang out at sporadic intervals, the automated French drawl a reality check: with no more than ten words in his French repertoire, it was going to be a difficult week here. He looked back to Mary, who was staring off absently at the now-moving conveyor; waiting for their bags to appear out of nowhere, like a bolt from the blue. If only she had the same appreciation for spontaneity when it came to anything else<i>but</i>a baggage claim.<br/><br/>“Do you know where the hotel is?” Mary’s voice snapped him out of his reverie. He whipped his hands from his pockets, pointing to their bags which passed through the plastic flaps at the end of the conveyor belt, making their way across the whirring machinery. “It’s not a hotel, remember,” Arthur reminded her; something he’d been doing a lot more of lately. It was like she blanked on conversations they’d had, her mind elsewhere when they were speaking. “We’re staying at one of those AirBnB type flats,” he said, stepping out past the<b>do not pass</b>line to retrieve her bag first, and then his own. “Just near Saint-Augustin and the Champs-Élysées”, he wheeled her bag over to her, relinquishing it from his responsibility. The sound of the wheels dragging over the vinyl floor filled his ears. They'd need new suitcases, soon enough. “Probably about an hour on the high speed, and we have to switch to the Metro.” He was speaking like he new Paris. He didn’t, not truthfully, but he’d read enough about it from Ryan and the Lonely Planet book he’d bought years ago to know the terminology for the local transport system. Just like in New York, you’d call it the Subway. That wasn’t so farfetched, was it?<br/><br/>Arthur had wanted to bring Camilla here. To Paris. He knew she’d love a city like this: a sprawling metropolis that never stopped; a place with endless opportunity for… anything. It didn’t surprise him to hear Ryan’s voice on the end of the line telling him he’d seen her. He wondered if they’d talked. What would they even talk about now? It made sense that even if they<i>had</i>chatted, Ryan hadn’t told him. Probably thinking about Arthur’s feelings. Some soppy bullshit. He’d loved Camilla beyond anything he could have imagined: you know, the kind of love you see on-screen between paid professionals, like Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal. Tom Hanks. Seasoned masters of<i>love</i>. Arthur definitely wasn’t one of them. He looked back to Mary, gave a nod in her direction towards the arrival’s terminal exit, and began to wheel his suitcase towards the sign that read<b>RER</b>.<br/><br/>He’d seen the blanket of snow from the plane’s window, but snow was nothing he hadn’t seen before. Granted, Tokyo’s winter was nowhere near as cold and miserable as Paris’, but it snowed there too, in the winter months. Outside of the major cities, in the rural prefectures, it would come down hard and thick. As the RER train pulled out from the airport train station’s tunnel, he ushered Mary to a seat. His eyes flicked down at the garish pattern that covered the padding; an art-deco mish-mash of polygons, spheres and cubes. All the artistic talent in the world had been through Paris at one point, and<i>this</i>was the first taste as a tourist on their train system? Someone ought to do something about that. “You’re exhausted,” Arthur murmured, draping an arm over Mary’s shoulder as she slumped into his side. “Those anti-histamines are too strong for you,” he advised, knowing that regardless, she wouldn’t listen anyway. He chuckled, his fingers walking down the back of her neck. No words returned from her mouth, just a subtle nod and a nuzzling of her face into the stubble of his own. Arthur’s eyes drifted from her to the train’s window where he saw the flush of white snow close-up, plowed in piles to the side of the train tracks. Something about the endless expanse of white snow there made him feel uncomfortable. Here he was, thirteen hours away from home, in the city of love. His girlfriend, who he was supposed to be infatuated with, rested on his shoulder; perched there like a turtle dove. A winter wonderland greeted the two of them… and instead, he was thinking about a funeral, and for some reason, his ex-girlfriend. Why did life have to be so cruel? He ran his fingers, slowly, through his hair, combing them through the mussed strands. They had an hour on the train… and a week in Paris, potentially longer if something came up. “I just have to stop thinking about it,” he whispered aloud, trying to convince himself of it. Like that’d happen. Even just thinking about that Lonely Planet travel guide was going to make him think about Camilla, let alone reading it! He had to hope that if all the talk of determinism was true, that fate had determined their paths wouldn’t cross. Would they?