Chapter Text
1832
But that’s just the thing-
Adrian is not in Romania, nor is he in Germany, Luxembourg, Austria, France…
Lyudmil does not find him in Britain, Poland, Belgium, Spain, Portugal- God only knows he even searched through Russia. He does not stop looking, only pauses to go back and start from the beginning, dig a little deeper.
Adrian is not in Bucharest, Berlin, Vienna, Paris- any of the major cities they once promised to see together. Lyudmil passes capital after capital riding every train line he can for as long as he can, coming up empty every time. He spends a simply asinine amount of time plotting out courses and crossing off every place he has looked on maps stuffed into the pockets of a stolen jacket. He goes through dozens of those- hundreds maybe, though by his third trip through Warsaw or perhaps Brussels he has completely lost count.
Lyudmil searches and searches; he concludes that Adrian simply is not in Europe.
He tries elsewhere.
The globe is very different now, divided into shapes so strange and unlike the ones from his past that it makes his head spin. Since when did Europe have so many countries to begin with? Since when did Russia get so big? Had the western hemisphere always looked like that?
Lyudmil refrains from dwelling on these things. He no longer has anyone around to answer such questions; if he can not find Adrian, if Magnus does not find him, he may very well never again.
He is not sure how to feel about that for a long time. He’s even less sure about his sudden jump to Asia, starting from Russia and working his way down.
He goes perhaps in a spiral, a zig zag, a never ending mandala of more trains and trips. The order does not matter, because before long he has looked all over Asia and back again too.
Adrian is not in Beijing, Bangkok, Seoul, Manila-
Lyudmil feels hopeless and he’s only gone through two continents.
1842
It has been maybe twelve years since the start of his search.
After all that time, all that traveling and searching, Lyudmil admits defeat on his third trip through Bucharest.
The emptiness of having no one is what finally cracks across his thoughts and brings him to a halt. The crippling, debilitating, nothingness to having spent so long looking with no success is what keeps his travels paused for months. It is only when he thinks of all the places he has been- all the time he has wasted with no one, looking for no one who should matter to him anymore, that he feels rage claw its way out of his chest and to the surface of his skin.
These feelings come together; they bite at him, snapping at his neck with the same force he would any of his human victims.
They are what make him stop looking, these feelings he’d had in him but refused to acknowledge. His doubts, his regrets- his thoughts of all the time he wasted killing and searching and killing and searching and looking at the new world like some kind of morbid puzzle he could solve.
He gives up, there is not much else to it.
1844
He settles on Britain for a while, one of the most intriguing places thus far, one of the only places he could fit into comfortably.
In his travels before, he had been none but a shadow, an unnoticeable glimmer in the edge of the human gaze. He had never sought to walk among them, never made himself clear to any except those he drank from in passing.
Now it is different, now he sits and rides a train in the dead of night among humans, with humans, as if he is one of them.
He smiles and talks and laughs and pretends to be interested in the business of strangers and he charms so many and eats better than he ever has before.
It is very different, and Lyudmil finds he rather likes life without pressuring himself to look for Adrian.
Surely if they are meant to meet again, fate will make it so.
1850
Britain starts to bore him after too long, the fashion and people and scenery are not enough to keep his attention anymore.
He tries France next, looks at the architecture at night, scales churches and tries to thrill himself with the idea of jumping back off them. He observes humans more, he rather likes the attitudes of them now, he drinks from them regardless.
There was a pullback from killing anyone a while ago on his end, this just means he travels more to avoid suspicion.
And what a suspicious man he must make to those who can see through his glamour and charm! He has no legal citizenship, no relatives, finery too lush for someone just backpacking across the continent with no job.
His eyes are too glossy, teeth too sharp; he possesses a faint smell of iron he can never quite wipe from his skin. Only those who know what to look for can see what he is, and he hasn’t run into someone like that in a very, very long time.
Still, it does not hurt to be careful. He still skips through towns quickly when he drinks too much.
1870
He goes to America, at some point.
From his first visit, he doesn’t recall anything worthwhile about the country. All he knows about it now is that the sounds and sights of Maine’s beaches make for the loveliest nights he has ever had.
The water over the rocks, the light of the moon, and the bitter cold to which he is immune all give him peace for a while. He does not think about Adrian, even as he shacks up in some abandoned town house and grows his own greenhouse full of white flowers. It thrives despite the fact that he is never there while the sun is.
It takes him maybe ten years to avoid being caught, or at least until people begin to ask too many questions
Where is he from? Why is he alone? Did he fix that house all by himself? How does he survive the winter with merely a simple glass shed and no farm land? Does he have a job? Pay Taxes?
They get too annoying for him, and he’s forced to leave his home by the sea before the whole ordeal boils over.
Though maybe he's being paranoid.