Chapter Text
One hundred and seventy years.
For an ordinary mortal, an almost unimaginable span of time.
For Adam, it was his entire life, a life that was far from over. Quite the opposite.
Over all those years he hadn’t aged a single day physically, yet his body had changed. His scars had grown less pronounced, and his skin had slowly taken on a somewhat healthier tone.
Still, he knew he wasn’t like the others. No matter how much he wished it, he would never fully belong among ordinary people. But with time, it had become a little easier.
At first, he had taken his immortality as a punishment. But the longer he lived, the more he learned, the more he slowly grew to taste something like life.
Who else could say they had lived through both world wars, witnessed a technological rise so vast it sometimes felt unreal? Who else had begun as a creation chained in a dark cellar, unable to speak, and ended up living, at least to the extent he could, as a free man?
Victor, his creator, had never given him a name; he had chosen it himself. Just as he had learned, on his own, how to be human.
He owed much to his long-ago friend from the forest cabin who had taught him to read, but the world kept moving forward, and that had been only the foundation. There was always something new to learn, history, technology, art, religion, new lands and new languages. Endless roads, no place he could call home, only the never-ending journey onward.
He could not say when the turning point had come, the first time he had settled somewhere, the first time he had found a place that could be called a refuge. Close enough to others not to be completely alone, yet far enough not to be noticed.
The first time he invented the story about a terrible car accident to explain his scars.
The first time he found a proper paid job, the first time he bought food in a store like any other person.
But he always knew it would never last. When he saw people around him begin to change, children growing up, adults aging, he knew it was time to move on again, somewhere no one knew him.
The year 2025 was so very different from the time he had come from.
And yet he had grown to like it. His wide span of knowledge and the conveniences of modern life, especially working from home on a computer, suited him well.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t grown used to the stares of strangers long ago, but he still preferred his peace. His small house on the edge of the city, the animals he cared for. He would never call himself their owner, but he always had food, medicine, or a gentle touch ready for any creature that came to him.
He suspected that every stray cat in the neighborhood visited his door. He always had something for them to eat. He had even noticed how they hissed or ran from other people, something he understood all too well.
It seemed like an ordinary autumn day. He picked up the newspaper lying at his door, spread it out on the kitchen table beside his breakfast and coffee.
He flipped through the pages until he reached the arts section.
If there had been anything in recent years that came close to stopping his heart, it was the moment he saw that black-and-white photograph. And on it, her.
A young woman who looked like an exact reflection of Elizabeth.
His Elizabeth. The first woman he had ever seen, the first who had looked at him and seen something more than a scientific experiment, more than a monster.
Even the passing years had never erased her memory.
The memory of carrying her through the frozen wasteland in her wedding gown, of their final moments together, just before she died.
He never knew whether his perfect memory was a gift or a curse, but her face remained as vivid as if not decades but mere days had passed since he last saw her.
And now he was looking at that face again.
The headline read: A Woman Who Finds Beauty Where Others Don’t See It.
Below the photo, in small print: Artist Ellie Torres at the opening of her first exhibition in a New York art gallery.
The article described Ellie as an artist who combined painting and photography and often sought beauty in overlooked places. The works on display were pieces she had created over the past six years.
In the photo she stood beside a painting that, in the black-and-white print, was hard to distinguish, but it appeared to show a child on a rainy street, floating a paper boat along the curb where the rainwater streamed.
A memory flared in Adam’s mind, of himself, long ago, setting fallen leaves into the current and watching them drift away.
It felt impossible.
He ran his fingers over the photograph of her face. She looked so much like her.
Finally he rose and went to the next room, needing to find her online.
And as he typed her name into the search bar, an idea began taking shape, perhaps he could book a flight to New York.