look up, here I am.

“Don’t mind the door-” He says dismissively of the barring mechanism, “I think I may have seen something passing by at night. I wrote a note to myself to remind me to get it done.”

Orlov is able to locate the tea- meager packets of black leaves that were tucked away on a top shelf near the stove. He brings them down to sit on a table, and unpacks two mugs.

The state of the house is that organized disarray of packing and moving. Everything except the barest necessities for living had been stowed away, but even with the amount of boxes and containers, it looks nowhere near the correct amount of stuff Orlov had, habitual collector and semi-hoarder that he was.

“Telman… ugh. He’s up and gone quiet after all that. May be looking to cozy his way into this new provisional government as well.”

Orlov sighs, “I’m afraid you are right, my boy. World’s getting a dangerous line of thought. No longer letting nature and chance decide who is or isn’t fit to survive it- now all are seeking a means to control who and what survives. Control the outcomes…eugenics is…”

He waves his hand, blanching at the thought of it, “I’ve no need to explain it to you.”

The kettle begins to warm, not quite steamy enough. He rests his hand atop the lid briefly to measure the temperature.

“The Stamatins, you say? Alive as well? Now, that doesn’t surprise me. The three of you were nigh inseparable. Anything you did, they weren’t far behind, and vice versa. You may as well have been their triplet… So they were in that plague place too? And you are saying that it was worse than Yersinia Pestis?”

“And you are not going to be traitors anymore- now that is something,” he muses, “So I suppose this get up you have is part of the equation for you and your companions’ absolution?”

"The dogs? Oh, God.”

The house is in a state of chaos. He can recognize the hurried-ness of a man willing to cut and run for the escape. He’d never even considered that Orlov would have been pursued by the new Power... but he had always been a man who spoke out instead of kept his mouth shut. His class had taught generations of thinkers who historically were problems in their success and perspectives.

“I assume as such... but the man’s disappeared. Telman’s... just gone. I’ve gone looking for him and neither head nor hide. I can’t find him. I’ve looked in all of his haunts and asked about his address. No one has seen him and he hadn’t returned after the Thanatica fire. My next guess is the Central Hospital to see if he injured himself.”

Orlov reminisces, and it makes his chest ache and has him reaching to thumb the ring on its leather cord again. 

“The three of us were going to take on the perceptions of the world, and succeed where others would fail. They did just that where they are now, nearly killing themselves in the process. I don’t think it’s worth it, anymore. Being extraordinary at the cost of ones’ everything else historically has only left abject misery. So. Enough of extraordinary for the sake of challenging the world. The world wouldn’t be able to use what we create kindly.”

It’s a far cry from his former thesis. He settles into an old kitchen chair with a creak.

The voice is what alerts him first, truly.

As the man speaks, and pulls bangs down- it hits him like a cannonball to the chest.

“My word?”

Orlov takes his glasses off his face and wipes them down with a corner of his shirt, placing them back on his hawkish nose to squint through the lenses.

“Aha! So it is you!”

Hurriedly, he brushes past Daniil to close the door- revealing that some time in Daniil’s absence, the professor had installed a wooden bar behind the door. He snaps it into place and tugs on it a few times to ensure its security, before turning back to his former student.

In much quieter, but excited tones, he speaks, “My boy, you were declared a traitor first and dead second-”

Orlov places his hands on Daniil’s shoulders- to test if he were truly there or not, and when his physical senses confirm the visual and auditory, he pulls the Bachelor in for a quick and firm hug.

“I’m so, very glad to see that you are not dead. I know the real traitor- that Telman!”

He shakes his head and releases Daniil, pacing slowly about the barren room, hands creeping into his pockets.

“I’m sorry about what happened, my boy. The world wasn’t ready for your Thanatica, it seems. I was devastated to hear about it, and… well, made a scene that made me rather unpopular with the Powers That Be- or rather, the Powers that Were.”

He sighs, “But… what happened, my boy? You look like you’ve seen Hell, swam the River Phlegethon, and fought your way past Cerberus to make it back to the living…”

An expression of concern washes over his entire being, before he hurriedly scrambles to the kitchen, murmuring, “Tea… tea… we can sit and chat- ah, where’s that blasted kettle…?”

He laughs out of a stressed excitement that there was still something so familiar as Orlov cleaning his glasses to lean on in times of true darkness. Orlov grabs his shoulders and pulls him into a hug. It’s returned. He takes that moment to bury his face into the old man’s lapel and sigh. Yes, of course it’s him, disgraced academic, and enemy of the state itself. 

“I was.”

Orlov lets him go to balance back on his feet with a gentle pat to both arms. 

“What on Earth is on your door... No. The world wasn’t ready for Thanatica, but I claim that it won’t ever be ready for Thanatica, damn it all. No matter what I do, if I would not be at the head of Thanatica, her research would be justification for the eugenics movements of each decade... Telman just proved that.”

He shakes his head, moving after him to the kitchen and searching for the kettle in its usual place, finding it on its hook and more weathered over the years. He misses Andrey, as he often does when memories crop up.

“It’s a long story. A shorter version of it, there is a bacterial plague I have been fighting in the Steppe, more deadly and ruthless than any Yersina bug. It’s a consequence of valiant effort. God, I tried, but it spread anyways.”

He opens the tap of Orlov’s waterline and fills the kettle for him, minding placing it on the stove himself.

The door is answered by the stout figure of Professor Timur Orlov- but with decidedly more gray in his formerly russet hair, thicker lenses on his spectacles, and the crevices and crinkles of natural age, undisguised liver spots…

But none of the energy has diminished at all, which Daniil is subjected too, as the former professor sighs with exasperation.

“What, another officer?!”

He throws his hands up, “I’ve told you people before, time and time again- I’m not going back. I don’t care for any position at University that this New, New Provisional Government offers. It’s not my class! I’m a philosopher- not a propagandist!”

Pacing back from the doorway in agitation, he leaves it open for his visitor to pass, as if expecting a new round of persuasions to come. The space is… tidier than it had been before. Orlov typically liked to display his possessions and gifts, but nothing of value was out in the open. Even all of his books were out of sight.

“My entire life’s purpose was to teach people how to think, not what to think!” The man continues with his tirade, “Hell will freeze over before I step back into those halls, knowing that the curriculum will be a sham. You can bribe me, threaten me, it won’t work.”

“I’d literally rather drink hemlock than compromise on that, and you can tell your superiors, too.”

He spins around on his heels and cocks his head to the side, resting his hands on his hips.

“Well? Any arguments, persuasions, threats? I’ve heard them all.”

“Wh- No- Wa-”

He stops the door from closing with his elbow as Orlov throws his hands up and slinks back into his space. 

“Professor-” He’s cut off again by how different the space is. The mementos are gone. His head places them where they should be, and their absence is so terribly striking and dismal. Propaganda teaching. The cyclical nature of the state’s politics had him blanching in Orlov’s hallway before closing it like a guest with some sense, dripping on his front carpet.

Orlov asks him for any arguments and he runs a weary hand through his threadbare grey hair and shakes his head ‘no’. Of course not. They were birds of a feather in that respect. The sudden lambasting is ironically, comforting. The last time he’d come here, it was with the issue of potential matrimony and an extremely sullen attitude. 

It had been a long time. A very long time. He can’t help but grinning and then mussing his bangs back into his face.

“Drinking hemlock is extremely unnecessary, and requires excessive steps to take, Daniil Dankovsky, an old friend, not a Blank revolutionary. Hell certainly take you if you ever lose your spirit.”

He hangs his coat up then, without further ado, shivering in the dim light.

As usual, it rained. With the rain, came memories of an era he’d pushed aside too. These were the proving grounds where Andrey had started a riot, these were the buildings they broke into together. These were halls he used to attend regularly. These were places where he gave speeches and spent hours investing his time into. 

It leads him through buildings and registries, on a whim if anything, to discover classes in session and Professor Orlov’s name not on any sort of plaque and record. Further digging uncovered that his dismissal was... even more spectacular than Daniil’s back in his youth. God, was that only nine years ago?

Orlov was, without question, a revolutionary. A brilliant man in all senses of the word that could make one believe that Utopia was possible. Perhaps that was why he was ousted. It doesn’t take much for Daniil’s brisk walking pace to turn to a run through the busy streets and blocks, nearly getting hit in a scramble to find the address he hadn’t been to in ages.

And it hadn’t changed. University square brick and runoff awnings.

He hadn’t sent notice he was coming. It crosses his mind when Daniil raps the door three times with his knuckles, hanging on a shy hope that he would be there.

“Professor Orlov? Are you in?”