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Chapter Text

Albedo is thirteen when he meets the king of Khaenri’ah.

Of course, he is not truly thirteen. He does not know how long he and his master have spent traveling. It could have been a year, or two. It could have been decades. Logically, Albedo knows that it cannot have been more than a few years; even if he is not, his master is only human, and she hasn’t aged considerably over the course of their travels.

Albedo does not remember anything before the traveling. He remembers the early days of their journey; the newness of it all, the wonder he had felt as he watched a butterfly spread its wings or a sunflower chase the sun’s golden warmth. He remembers trying to catch a butterfly, once, the pale palms of his hands bared to the skies, fingers straining towards the creature’s cerulean wings.

(He remembers how his master reprimanded him for acting without her command once he’d caught the butterfly. He remembers the cold sting of her ring – emblazoned with the four pointed star of Khaenri’ah – cutting into his cheek.)

Once, Albedo dared to ask his master his age. He had tensed, waiting for the inevitable pain, the sting of hand on cheek or worse, lash, but none came. When he hesitantly met his master’s eyes, she was smiling a little.

“Physically, you are thirteen,” she told him. “But you have not existed for long.”

Her words did not clarify much, but they were something, and by that point Albedo knew better than to ask for more. Thirteen, thirteen, he repeated to himself like a mantra, and whenever he caught his reflection in puddles or ponds as they traveled, he wondered at the number. Thirteen, he would think, as he studied his own face. He wondered if he looked his age. He didn’t have any way of telling. The only human he knew – the only human he needed, was his master.

And the days crept by, and Albedo stopped questioning the when of their travels, and focused more on the now. It was easier once he and his master turned north. There, it was hard to think of anything but the stinging cold and its bitter, biting touch on his face, his arms, his legs. Days and nights blended together. It was always dark, and always snowy, and it was always so cold that it hurt. Time did not matter in Snezhnaya.

In the end, this is what Albedo knows, and this is what is important: his master created him, however long ago it was, and he has followed her since. Albedo was built to serve; he is her perfect creation. He follows her command, and learns alchemy under her, even if he can only conduct experiments or formulate hypotheses with his master’s permission. He tells himself he does not mind.

He would not exist without his master, after all. He is hers, and she is his purpose, and he will follow her to the ends of Teyvat.

(Nevermind the fact that the last prototype his master built was fed to Durin for his disobedience. Nevermind the fear that creeps into Albedo’s heart whenever his master threatens to do the same to him.)

The traveling comes to an end, as all things do. This is what Albedo’s master tells him when they arrive at Khaenri’ah’s golden gates. There is a ‘good’ somewhere in her sentence too, but privately Albedo doesn’t think that the traveling was very good at all, by the end. Not when they trekked through Snezhnaya and Albedo’s master refused to grant him anything more than his short sleeved lab coat to wear in the subzero temperatures. His fingers turned blue and his skin dimpled with goosebumps, but any protest or sign of weakness would be evidence of his imperfection, so Albedo bore it.

Uncomplainingly, he bore it, but it was not good.

It is for this reason that, upon their arrival at Khaenri’ah’s gates, Albedo cannot help but feel a little glad. His master takes him by the wrist and leads him to a carriage. Horses draw them through cobblestone streets, and the vibrations of the carriage over the uneven stones run through Albedo’s body. It feels funny. Albedo might laugh at the ticklish feeling were his master not watching him so closely. Her eyes are cold and scrutinizing as they watch Albedo. He stays quiet.

They arrive at the palace after a little while, and are immediately escorted through winding, tall ceilinged corridors by a maid a few years older than Albedo. She smiles kindly at him, and Albedo does not know how to react. His eyes dart to his master, quickly, but she is focused on studying the castle’s buttresses.

Still, his master could turn at any minute, so Albedo does not dare return the maid’s smile. The maid’s own grin falters and drops after a moment as Albedo stares impassively back at her. He feels a little bad, but he prefers this stilted awkwardness to anything his master might do if she saw him smiling out of turn. She is not in a particularly lenient mood today.

They continue to walk. At one point, Albedo’s gaze meets that of a boy a little taller than him. The boy leans around a doorway, eyes wide and curious, his midnight blue hair fastened in a plait that falls over his left shoulder. Albedo takes in his outfit, with its Khaenri’ahn colors and gold trim and drapings of silk and furs, and deduces that the boy must be a noble.

Abruptly, Albedo’s master pulls him away from the hallway and towards the throne room, and Albedo is forced to tear his eyes from the boy. His master says nothing, but he can feel her disapproval from the way her hand is clamped around Albedo’s wrist, her fingers pressing into his skin hard enough that Albedo knows it will bruise later.

He bruises easily and often under his master’s care. Some days, when Albedo is very good, his skin stays unblemished. Most days, dark bruises and cuts blossom across his body like Mist Flowers.

Albedo heals faster than a human, but not fast enough that the bruises don’t linger. He knows that this fact frustrates his master from the way she snapped and screamed at him in the days before they arrived at the Khaenri’ahn capital, brewing up healing draughts that could never fully get rid of the discoloration that adorned Albedo’s skin.

She did not hit him, though, even as she raged, and Albedo’s skin stayed pale and perfect. His master wants him to be the best specimen possible for the king, and he will not disappoint.

He wonders if the finger shaped bruises slowly forming under his skin are a mark of his own imperfection, or his master’s. He pushes the thought away as quickly as it comes, because it is ridiculous and wrong and if his master knew he was even questioning such things, Albedo would be covered in imperfect, ugly bruises by the next day.

“Cover your wrist before the king,” his master hisses at him under her breath. She releases Albedo’s wrist, though, letting him rub it gingerly for a second before motioning for him to follow him again.

Albedo’s sleeves are too short to cover his wrist, so he clasps his hand over the injury instead and prays that his master will not mind.

They walk. Albedo’s master has a long, heavy stride, and her footsteps echo in the stone corridors. Even walking, she demands to be noticed. Albedo and the maid follow, and their feet make no noise at all.

It takes six minutes to get to the throne room. Albedo knows because he counts in his head, each steadying breath marking two seconds’ time.

It is an eternity and no time at all.

Albedo’s master puts her hand on his shoulder and squeezes a little, but not hard enough for it to hurt. Then they are walking through the double doors and taking in the room; the arching stained glass windows that shower the floor in a million different hues, the stone-carved embellishments upon the ceiling, the velvet canopy stretched over the golden, cushioned throne, and finally the king himself, relaxed upon the throne with a lazy confidence that is so different from Albedo’s master’s.

The king does not sit on the throne; he dominates it. He is splayed across it, leaned back, his feet planted on the ground and arms lazily thrown across its seatrests. The man does not move as Albedo and his master enter, but his eyes sweep over them.

Albedo’s master is all rigid lines and practiced movements. In front of the king, the tense way she holds herself; her squared shoulders and raised chin, look almost comically stiff. She sweeps into a bow, and Albedo hastily mimics her.

“Your Majesty,” she says.

“Rhinedottir,” the king acknowledges. “I see you have brought the prototype.”

The king is referring to him, so Albedo bows even lower. He tries to pinpoint the material the plush carpet is made from. It looks like velvet, and Albedo wonders how it would feel against his fingers.

Albedo’s master and the king begin speaking, and Albedo tries to listen at first, but his eyes catch almost unwittingly on a shape in the corner of the room. With a start, Albedo recognizes it as the blue-haired boy from earlier. Now, the boy cranes his head around a pillar, staring straight at Albedo.

Albedo stares back, a little blankly. The boy smiles and holds a finger to his lips.

Albedo stays silent, because nobody but the King and Queen are allowed in the throne room, and he doesn’t wish to be the reason the boy is punished. He also doesn’t wish to find out what his master would do if he interrupted her in front of the king.

Albedo’s master and the king speak for a few minutes. Albedo isn’t counting the seconds this time. He is too distracted by the boy behind the pillar, ultra aware of the boy’s eyes on him. The back of Albedo’s neck prickles. He does not listen to what his master or the king are saying.

Eventually, his master and the king finish their discussion, and Albedo is led out of the room. He does not dare ask what they spoke about. Albedo can feel the blue haired boy’s eyes lingering on his back, but he does not turn.

His master drops him off in a room that Albedo assumes is their chambers. She tells him to wait there, and that food will be sent for him. She tells him that the king wishes to speak to him alone, and that Albedo should make sure not to embarrass himself in front of His Majesty. She tells him not to disappoint her.

The food his master does not show up. The king does, a few hours later, once evening has fallen.

He and Albedo exchange pleasantries. Albedo’s mind races the whole time, trying desperately not to slip up or say anything that his master would be displeased with. He is unused to conversing with anyone other than his master. He is unused to being out of her supervision for more than a few minutes at a time.

As nerve racking as it is, there is something thrilling about her absence.

Then the king calls Albedo “doll,” and objectively Albedo is just an animated chalk doll, but something about the way the king says it makes Albedo’s skin crawl. Suddenly, his master’s absence feels a little less exhilarating and a little more frightening.

Albedo does not know how to respond, so he says nothing.

The king grabs him by the wrist – the same wrist that Albedo’s master had bruised a few hours earlier, and Albedo tries desperately not to flinch because he does not want to disappoint his master – and pulls him in, and tells him, “Come here.”

Then the king shoves his face against Albedo’s and it feels wrong wrong wrong but he can do nothing because his master said to listen to the king, and Albedo is just a doll and dolls are meant to be used and played with and Albedo is perfect and obedient because he has to be, because otherwise his master would hurt him hurt him or maybe feed him to Durin, and this hurts too and maybe Albedo would prefer the hurt over this, maybe he should push and shove and scream –

He thinks of his master’s face, of her words. He thinks of the way she created him and the way he needs her and is her, or at least a part of her, and the way she called him perfect and smoothed his hair back from his forehead, and the way she hit him hit him hit him when he was bad. Albedo thinks of the contempt in her eyes whenever Albedo was imperfect and weak and disappointing, and he does nothing at all.

Albedo is just a doll, and he is incapable of tears. He thinks he might cry now, if he could.

***

Albedo studies with his master during the day – she is the Court Alchemist now, and her office is in the palace’s left wing – and is paraded around to the nobility at balls and functions at night. His master brags of his creation to faceless men and women with perfectly coiffed hair and gloved hands.

On good nights, Albedo falls asleep alone and dreams of blue butterflies and the sun on his skin. It is always cloudy and dark out, in Khaenri’ah. He misses the golden sun of Mondstadt and the blue skies of Liyue and even the incessant thunder of Inazuma. Anything to break the dull monotony of constant gray skies.

On bad nights, the king visits Albedo in his chambers. Afterwards, Albedo draws himself a bath and scrubs his skin raw, but he still feels too dirty to sleep.

And the days pass by until Albedo realizes it has been six months since he and his master first arrived at the palace. He wishes they’d never came. He never thought he’d miss the painful, biting cold of Snezhnaya, but he finds himself longing for it all the same.

Anything but this, Albedo thinks, and tells himself that it will be over soon, and he and his master will leave. He can’t find it in himself to believe it.

***

Two more months pass, and war breaks out. The Archons have attacked Khaenri’ah, bitter at the nation’s lack of a deity. Albedo’s master makes weapons and technology for the Khaenri’ahn troops. The king calls her to war meetings every day, and she functions as one of his advisors as days turn into weeks and victory seems farther and farther out of reach.

The king no longer has time to visit Albedo’s quarters. It is a small mercy. Albedo knows he is a terrible person for feeling grateful for the war, even as it kills thousands of soldiers, but he cannot help the relief that bubbles up in his chest as the Khaenri’ahn borders are pushed back and the king locks himself in the throne room all day with his generals and Albedo’s master.

Then, there is news; monsters and machines alike turning against the army, killing soldiers regardless of their colors. Something has happened, and they have gone feral. Under the palace, in Albedo and his master’s lab, the war machines they were working on developing – Ruin Guards, his master called them – stand up and begin to move.

The capital is stormed in days. Albedo locks himself in his room and shakes as his master argues with the king and tries desperately to stop her own creations from tearing the country to shreds, but there is nothing to be done.

The monsters reach the capital, and everyone they slaughter, peasants and nobles alike, are changed. They do not die, but their eyes glow, and they become monsters in their own right, with glowing eyes and faces made of void.

The castle goes into lockdown the next morning. Albedo goes to find his master, but she is gone. She is not in the throne room, or her quarters, or the laboratory that once held her most prized creations and is now only a grim reminder of Khaenri’ah’s fate.

His master left a note on her bed. It tells Albedo to go to Mondstadt and find a woman named Alice. There is a sealed letter to give to Alice once he arrives, and a “Final Mission”; to ‘show [his master] the truth of this world.”

Albedo does not know why his master left, or why she did not bring him with her. He did nothing to disappoint her. He has been perfect, for so long, and he never disobeyed a single one of her commands.

This will be no different, he decides. He will find Alice of Mondstadt, and complete the mission his master has left with him.

Albedo leaves the castle, silently, and the servants make no move to stop him. He walks away from the crumbling country that was never truly home, and towards Mondstadt. Towards a new beginning.

The sun peeks over the mountains, and as Albedo is bathed in its glow, he feels a sudden weight in his hand.

It is a vision, as gold as his master’s eyes. As gold as the star of the nation he left behind. As gold as the rising sun, silhouetting him against the horizon.

Albedo walks.

Chapter Text

Jean Gunnhildr does not believe in God.

She has watched the pursuit of enlightenment tear apart too many of her loved ones for that; first her father, spending his evenings helplessly downing bottles upon bottles of Angel’s Share wine and his nights begging for atonement. He always came back for more, fingers itching for smooth glass and that fiery burn in the back of his throat until he couldn’t help himself, slurring out hate and spittle at Jean’s mother when she handed him a glass of water and told him to sleep on the couch.

Jean’s bedroom was right next to the living room, and the walls were thin. She listened to his choked Hail Mary’s all night, watched as the next day he returned to Angel’s Share, convinced that no muttered prayers or confessions could absolve him of this sin. Convinced that self destruction could be his only penance.

Barbara is three years younger than Jean, and so much like their father that it hurts to look at her. She was the peacemaker; the one who would hug their mother when she cried and tuck their father into bed when he was too drunk to tell left from right. She was always trying to get their father to quit, always trying to get their mother to make up with him.

Jean was like that, once, before she realized that some things are too broken to be fixed.

But maybe Barbara is a better woman than Jean, because she never stops trying.

Jean always resented her for it, a little bit. For her unwavering optimism and unwavering faith. For her sky blue eyes that always looked a little too much like their father’s.

When their parents divorced, Jean left with their mother, and Barbara stayed.

“He needs me,” she told Jean quietly that night, barely eleven but with an adult’s understanding of the world’s cruelties. Barbara carried the weight of the world on her shoulders, even then. She didn’t know how to let it go. How to let him go.

Maybe that is the irrevocable difference between them, the two estranged sisters; Jean knows how to give up on people. It’s a talent she’s perfected over the years.

Barbara would gladly let the drowning man pull her under if it meant he could take a single breath of air.

***

The first time Jean meets Albedo, he is fourteen, a refugee from a crumbling country and abandoned by his mother – not mother, he corrects her, master, and Jean tries not to react to that because the kid looks jumpy enough already, and she doubts he’d be able to tell that she's upset for him, not at him.

Albedo is a year older than Jean’s sister, and he is still hurting from whatever his master did to him over all their years of travel. Looking at him, Jean can’t help but think of Barbara, alone with their father, younger than Albedo is but going through the same things.

Albedo is nothing like Barbara, and Jean finds solace in this fact. What the two kids went through is not the same thing, she tells herself, because her father loved Barbara and was better to her than anyone else, and because Barbara asked – begged, really – to stay with him, and because her father died over a year ago and Barbara is living with the nuns now and she’s fine. She’s Mondstadt’s golden child, and she’s fine.

Albedo is decidedly not fine. He shakes when Jean touches him, and when Alice enters the room; only Klee can coax a smile out of him, and whenever he makes a mistake he flinches back like he is afraid of what Alice will do to him.

Varka says they can’t do anything but give it time, so Jean doesn’t mention the shaking or the quiet crying or panic attacks. She just stays by his side.

It takes two weeks for Albedo to ask for something without it first being offered. Jean has been by his side for almost all of that time; Alice is constantly working, Jean is close to Albedo’s age, and she knows Mondstadt like the back of her hand. The rest of the Knight are far too busy to help a traumatized teenager acclimate to the city, so Varka lets Jean take a few weeks off from her semi-official position as a member of the Knights to spend time with Albedo.

They’re sitting by the fountain, watching the patterns of the water, when it happens. “Jean,” Albedo says, quietly. He sounds unsure, but there is a steely resolve in his eyes.

“Yes?”

“Could we go to the church?”

Of all the things to ask for, this is not something she expected. Jean freezes for a second, mind immediately flashing to Barbara, and even though she knows Albedo didn’t mean it; knows he has no clue who Barbara even is, it feels like a betrayal.

Albedo must see something in her face, because he shrinks back a little, once again closed off. “Apologies,” he tells her, stiltedly, and Jean is quick to school her expression back into a smile and reassure him that of course they can go.

“I’ve never been to one before,” Albedo tells Jean on the way, fiddling with the sleeve of his coat. “Where I’m from, they don’t believe in God. They don’t believe in much of anything.”

“If I’m being honest,” Jean says conspiratorially, “I don’t believe in Him either. But my sister does, and my father did, so I used to go to church all the time.”

“Did it help?” Albedo asks, voice barely above a whisper.

“Help?”

“Alice told me it might…” Albedo trails off. “Help. With my…” he gestures, helplessly, and Jean understands.

“I don’t know,” she tells him as gently as she can, and pretends not to see the way his face falls. “It never did, with me, but maybe that was just because of my father. My sister, though, Barbara, used to look forward to Sunday mass. I think… I think it made her a better person. Kinder, if that’s possible.”

“Ah.”

“It’s a beautiful thing, to believe,” Jean tells him, and he barely even flinches this time when she takes his hand. “I hope it helps you, too.”

***

Albedo is wide eyed as they enter the church, captivated by stained glass windows and arching wooden beams. It’s empty this time of day, and the two of them take a seat in one of the pews near the entrance

Jean explains to him the basic structure of Christianity – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost – and Albedo asks more questions than she’s ever heard him ask before.

“I don’t understand,” he says, when Jean gets to Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, about the creation of man. “Why did they eat the apple?”

“The snake convinced Eve. She gave into her temptation.”

“But God created them. Shouldn’t they have followed His orders? Isn’t it their duty to be perfect and loyal to their creator? It was… it was wrong of them to do that, to disobey. They ruined everything, they ruined their lives and their mas– their creator’s reputation. He should have killed them.”

He’s visibly upset, now, fingers curled so tightly around the edge of the wooden seat that his knuckles are turning white.

Jean aims for lightheartedness in the face of his distress. “Well, if they were bored enough to eat the apple, maybe the garden wasn’t all too great anyways.”

Albedo grips the pew even tighter. “If the garden… if it hurt Adam and Eve, and if it made them do evil and shameful things before they even ate the apple, do you think they should have left? Even if it meant they disappointed God and ruined His perfect paradise?”

He looks so painfully young, pressed into the corner of the pew, and Jean’s heart aches.

“Albedo,” Jean says gently, because she doesn’t know why he’s reacting so strongly to the story, but his eyes are wide and unfocused, and he’s shaking so hard that Jean has to stop herself from putting her hand on his shoulder. Albedo never likes being touched when he’s like this. “If the garden was hurting Adam and Eve, then maybe it wasn’t perfect in the first place.”

Albedo hangs his head between his knees and cries.

***

After that, Jean notices that he’s a little more willing to smile and frown around her, or generally show emotion beyond blank complacency. She doesn’t pry, but she can tell it has something to do with what happened in the church, and when Albedo asks to go to Saturday afternoon confession with her, she agrees.

Jean waits outside for him, apple in hand and face turned towards the sun as she leans against the gray stone walls of the Church of Favonius, hoping that her sister doesn’t show up, and hoping against hope that she does. Jean is torn in a million different directions, and maybe she shouldn’t have waited in a spot that Barbara walks past every day, and she already wants to back out, but –

There she is.

Jean recognizes her sister the minute Barbara steps into her line of sight. Barbara hasn’t lost that funny skip-step she does whenever she’s in a good mood, and her hair is still pulled back into two neat coils at the sides of her head.

Jean remembers tying her sister’s hair every morning before their parents divorce. Barbara would beg and plead for Jean to help her, still too young and too clumsy to tie the pigtails on her own, and Jean would give in every time, because no matter how much she resented or envied Barbara, they were sisters.

They were sisters, and Jean left her, and she doesn’t deserve to feel the sadness that courses through her as she realizes that Barbara probably does her hair by herself, nowadays.

Blue eyes meet blue, and Barbara falters. Jean hesitates a moment too long, waves a little too awkwardly.

“Hey,” she says, and Barbara turns to walk towards Jean with a whispered word to the angry looking nun at her side. Excitement and anxiety war across Barbara’s face. She has always worn her heart on her sleeve.

“Jean! What are you doing here?”

“I’m just waiting for a friend.”

“Ah. The… um, the Khaenri’ahn boy?”

Word spreads quickly around Mondstadt, so it shouldn’t be as surprising as it is that Barbara’s heard of Albedo. “Yeah. Um, his name’s Albedo.”

There’s a beat of silence that stretches on too long, and Jean scrambles to compensate. “He’s around your age, actually. Maybe the three of us could have lunch sometime? Introduce you two?”

Barbara’s answering smile could light up all of Mondstadt.

***

Albedo walks out of the church a few minutes later, and Jean pretends not to notice his red rimmed eyes and shaky hands.

“How’d it go?” she asks.

“He said it wasn’t my fault,” says Albedo, shakily.

Jean tries not to think about what Albedo could be referring to. She stays up all night anyways.

***

Albedo has been in Mondstadt for over a month.

Jean would call him one of her best friends by now, alongside Lisa, Kaeya, and Diluc. The two of them still spend most of their days together, and Jean is proud to say that she’s managed, for the most part, to draw Albedo out of his shell.

Recovery is always difficult, and it isn’t always linear; Jean is familiar with this. But Albedo is doing well, so far, and he doesn’t flinch around Alice so much anymore, and he lights up whenever he sees Klee and dotes on her like the world’s sweetest big brother. He goes to church every Sunday and Saturday afternoon while Jean waits outside and pretends she’s not the world’s biggest coward using her friend’s newfound faith to have an excuse to talk to her sister.

***

Somewhere along the way, Albedo meets Jean’s friends.

It makes sense, with how much Jean and Albedo hang out. Lisa and Albedo get on like a house on fire, even if Lisa could be a little… invasive of personal space at times. When Jean doesn’t find Albedo at his house, she can find him at the library, chattering with Lisa about alchemy and all sorts of other things that make Jean’s head hurt.

Diluc and Albedo are tentative friends at best. It’s hard for them to connect when they’re both painfully socially awkward, but they’re always cordial to each other, and Jean is sure that, with time, a promising friendship will bloom between the two boys.

And Kaeya… well. He’s busy, nowadays, working for the Knights of Favonius as the assistant to the current Cavalry Captain, and his and Jean’s schedules never align, so he hasn’t met Albedo yet. He keeps asking, but it’s hard, scheduling and planning, and Jean keeps having to cancel for some reason or the other, and okay, Jean may be avoiding Kaeya a little bit, but only because she’s sure that he’d come on too strong and freak Albedo out.

Jean just wants to wait until Albedo is a bit more assimilated to Mondstadt to introduce them, she tells herself. She does her best to avoid the topic of Albedo around Kaeya, and come up with new and increasingly creative excuses as to why Albedo can’t meet Kaeya, but she can tell he’s catching on.

“It’s not a big deal. I really don’t think Kaeya will be as bad as you think,” Lisa tells her over dinner. They’re at Good Hunter, just the two of them, and Jean is hopelessly confused as to whether or not this is a date. Lisa is certainly making a lot of suggestive comments, but that’s not exactly new behavior for her, and Jean refuses to get her hopes too high. Her mother always used to say that expectations were a recipe for disappointment.

Simply ask her for clarification, says Albedo’s voice in her head. Jean makes a face. She would rather throw herself off of the Barbatos statue in Mondstadt’s square.

“Jean?”

She jumps a little at Lisa’s voice, flushing when she realizes the awkward silence that has stretched on.

“Oh! Sorry. I spaced out a little.”

“No problem, cutie,” Lisa replies with a slow wink, and Jean can feel the blush rising to her cheeks.

It’s a good night, even if it ends with Jean no less confused by her relationship with Lisa, and no surer that she should introduce Kaeya and Albedo.

***

It happens the next day. It’s a Sunday morning, and Jean and Albedo are having brunch outside of Mondstadt’s gates, looking over the water. It’s dandelion season, Jean notes. She’ll have to teach Albedo how to wish on one.

Kaeya should be on duty, but he must have asked for time off or finished all his tasks early, because he saunters up like he was invited. “Hey Jean,” he says with a nod, and then, to Albedo, “I’m Kaeya. What’s a pretty face like you doing around here?”

Jean wants to roll her eyes or just punch Kaeya, because his aggressive style of flirting is exactly what Jean was trying to avoid. She doesn’t know the details of Albedo’s past, doesn’t want to pry, but she can imagine. There are… clues, and Jean’s eyes dart nervously to Albedo to see how he’ll react, because there’s no doubt in her mind that he will react, and badly.

Albedo is recovering, but Jean doubts he’ll ever be fully recovered, ever find himself in a place where he’ll never wake up screaming or flinch when someone reaches to touch him again.

Maybe, Jean thinks, he’s just learning to live with it. She’s a little surprised at the warmth that bubbles up in her at the thought, at the pride for how far Albedo’s come.

Jean knows Albedo well, or so she likes to think. She knows how he reacts to unfamiliar situations, so she is expecting the way Albedo stiffens, and even the way his eyes blow open. She is expecting the way he shakes.

What she is not expecting is for Albedo to scramble to his feet, paler than Jean has ever seen him and looking like he’s seen a ghost.

“You,” Albedo breathes, and his voice is shaking. “How – you – I – I left.”

“Albedo?” Jean asks, and takes a step towards him. Albedo almost trips in his haste to get away. Jean stops moving. She whirls towards Kaeya, a million accusations on her lips, a million different reasons why Albedo might be hyperventilating upon seeing the boy.

Albedo is still trembling, wide eyes unfocused. Abruptly, he turns and sprints away.

In the sunlight, his ashy locks look almost strawberry blonde. His unbound hair, wavy from the braids it had been tied in all morning, could be bouncing pigtails from the right angle. His white coat looks a little like a fluttering skirt.

Jean is on her feet before she can even think.

And she is running.

Behind her, a blue-haired boy stands silhouetted against the ocean, a half-eaten picnic spread at his feet. Under his eyepatch, a blue iris is marred by a golden star.

In front of her is a broken doll, unable to get enough air into his lungs, bent over on the cobblestone street.

Jean is already whispering sweet nothings into his ear and telling him to breathe until Albedo is finally present enough to lift his gaze to meet her own.

Jean will not let another loved one be alone. Not this time.

(At the Church of Favonius, a young nun waits for her sister to come. She stands outside until well after the service starts, eyes scanning the streets for a familiar golden ponytail and familiar blue eyes.

Barbara Gunnhildr sighs and enters the church.)

Chapter Text

It takes two weeks, three days, seven hours, and thirteen minutes for Albedo to make his way to Mondstadt’s stone walls. He has traveled the region before – experimenting and researching with his master in Starfell Valley, collecting wolfhooks and lampgrass in Wolvendom and braving the harsh winds of the Brightcrown Mountains – but his master never permitted him to enter the nation’s walled capital.

Albedo has heard tales of the great city of freedom, of course; windmills so high they brush the clouds, a people with no worries or cares, streets decorated with garlands and flowers.

Compared to the rumors, Mondstadt is somewhat underwhelming.

The day he arrives, he is delayed at the gate by an armor-clad guard whose sneer reminds Albedo of the King of Khaenri’ah. The thought makes his stomach churn just a little, his hairs standing on end, but he does not falter. He will not fail his master now. Any sign of imperfection is weakness, and as a representative of his master in a foreign nation, Albedo cannot be weak.

From the fragments of the guards’ whispered conversation that he can understand, the sneering one fears that Albedo may be a terrorist. The other, gesturing wildly, insists that Albedo is only a child. The thought almost makes him smile, before he remembers that he mustn’t dishonor his master and forces his face to stay devoid of emotion. Eventually, after several minutes of deliberation, they allow him to enter Mondstadt City.

He is initially surprised by how plain the city is in comparison to the gilded towers and high, arched windows of lore. The streets are decorated with taverns and establishments, many of which are filled with inebriated men and women, despite it being early afternoon. Towering over the city is a polished stone statue of a boy with cupped hands, his eyes closed and face tilted towards the sun. The boy’s hands are cupped and outstretched, as if giving or receiving a gift.

Vaguely, Albedo recalls something that his master had told him once, about the pagan-worship that the people of Mondstadt partake in. Snezhnaya and Inazuma have Archons, she had said, as do the other four nations. They rule with iron fists. But Mondstadt has no Archon. He has been gone for millennia, yet his people still worship him as a deity. It’s disgraceful.

Albedo watches the people around him, now, sitting on benches or walking from store to store. They do not look disgraceful or blasphemous. They look, simply, like people – selling flowers on street corners and playing in the fountain.

They are clad mostly in neutral tones, and Albedo feels out of place in his golden, star decorated attire. He keeps his head high and his back ramrod straight regardless, as is becoming of an ambassador of Khaenri’ah, and ignores the questioning looks of passerby, content to wander in search of Alice’s house.

After close to fifteen minutes of fruitless searching, Albedo determines that due to the similarities between the houses and his inability to decode the string of numbers, words, and letters that his master has written on the envelope, he will need to ask someone for assistance. He settles on a dark haired girl sitting at some sort of booth. She looks vaguely familiar; perhaps Albedo has met her in passing.

“Hello,” he greets. The girl turns to face him immediately, her blue eyes fixed on his. She smiles. Albedo can’t pinpoint why, but he feels that she is inhuman. Perhaps she’s a homunculus like him. He looks at the base of her neck, where his own gold star lies, but her skin is smooth and unblemished.

A more perfect creation than him, then, Albedo decides bitterly, but she has not been created with Khemia. He can always recognize fellow creatures of Khemia – the life magic in his own body sings, and he can see the threads of the creatures’ creation; the strands of Khemia that hold them together.

The girl is something else, something eerily cold. Albedo cannot find any trace of Alchemy or life in her. He is a little perturbed by this discovery.

“Ad astra abyssosque,” the girl greets him, her smile not quite reaching her eyes.

“To the stars and the abyss,” Albedo translates almost automatically. Rhinedottir had taught him Latin at an early age, claiming that it would be important to understand the scientific and botanical texts they studied. It came easily to Albedo; much of the Khaenri’ahn language, the old tongue, was derived from Latin.

The girl looks a little surprised. Her gaze darts from Albedo’s face to the vision at his hip to his golden garments, decorated with the star of Khaenri’ah, and an indiscernible expression flits across her face. She looks like she is about to say something, but decides against it. “To the stars and the abyss,” she echoes, before plastering the same inauthentic smile across her face. “Do you need anything, Traveler?”

“I was hoping you might help me read this address,” Albedo tells her. “I am hoping to stay with the woman who lives there.” He holds out the worn scrap of paper for the girl to read.

“This is Alice’s house,” she tells him, and her smile widens a little, seems a little warmer. She tells him the directions to the house, and Albedo thanks her profusely.

“It’s no trouble,” she tells him, “no trouble at all.” Her blue eyes follow him, unblinking, as he leaves the town square and weaves through a maze of alleys.

***

Alice is unnerving.

She takes one look at him, face unreadable, taking in his distinctive clothes and the star at the hollow of his throat, and ushers him in. “You must be Albedo,” she says, and, “I’ve heard so much about you,” and Albedo thinks of all the things his master may have said about him, mainly imperfect creation. He wonders what his master’s relationship is to this strange woman. He wonders if Rhinedottir has sent him here because Alice is a fellow alchemist. He wonders if he will be her assistant, as he was Rhinedottir’s. He wonders if Alice will try to perfect him like Rhinedottir did.

It should be an appealing thought. Under his master’s tutelage, Albedo has spent his whole life in the pursuit of perfection. But looking into Alice’s red eyes, Albedo has never wanted anything less.

When Alice reaches out for him, Albedo stiffens instinctively. It is more instinct than anything to catalog the jewelry she is wearing (a locket around her neck, but no rings, it always hurts more with rings) and squeeze his eyes shut and try not to flinch.

When he feels arms around him instead of pain blooming across his face, his eyes fly open.

Alice is hugging him, and it is something his master has never done, and it doesn’t make sense.

Maybe his master never told Alice that Albedo is a homunculus – that he is a doll, the product of a skilled alchemist and far too much chalk, animated by Khemia and frustratingly, achingly imperfect. Maybe Alice believes that Albedo is human, which is why she hugs him like he is worth something.

Albedo has never been hugged before. He tries to ignore the aching in his chest as Alice holds him close.

***

After two weeks, Albedo is still wary of Alice.

She is the opposite of Albedo’s master in almost every way. Alice smiles freely and laughs with her whole body, throwing her head back with unrestrained glee. She hugs Klee often, and attempts to do the same to Albedo before noticing how he tenses whenever she approaches him. She goes off on long tangents about anything and everything in a voice so loud that she draws the attention of anyone near her. She is both known and beloved by the people of Mondstadt.

Not for the first time, Albedo wonders how she befriended his master. Rhinedottir is all harsh words and cold, clinical detachment. She does exactly what is necessary to achieve her goals, and nothing more.

Albedo thinks that, for as long as he has known her, she has never had a friend.

But here is Alice, brimming over with life, apparently so close with Rhinedottir that she would take in the woman’s abandoned protégé unquestioningly.

It doesn’t make sense. Rhinedottir does not waste time on frivolous pursuits such as friendship. Relationships, to her, serve a purpose (experiments on experiments, Albedo’s hands red and raw from carrying his master’s supplies through the barren landscape of the Chasm without rest, Rhinedottir presenting him to the King with a smile on her face.) She uses, and she takes, but she does not give.

If Rhinedottir and Alice were ever close, Albedo does not doubt there is a reason. Alice, for all her bluster, is intelligent. She is highly ranked and respected within the Knights of Favonius, and she looks at Albedo like she can dismantle him with her gaze. Like he is a mystery, an experiment to her.

Perhaps, Albedo hypothesizes, she is a fellow alchemist. Perhaps she and Rhinedottir were colleagues, bonded not by friendship, but by mutual respect. Perhaps Alice took Albedo in because of this respect. Or perhaps she wants something with Albedo. Khemia-made lifeforms are rare, especially since the fall of Khaenri’ah. Humanoid ones, and sentient ones at that, are rarer still. To Albedo’s knowledge, he is the only one of his kind – besides, perhaps, the prototypes that Rhinedottir had left to waste away in the icy wastelands of Dragonspine. Albedo is a rare resource – he knows this.

And Albedo is useless to Alice; he does not do tasks or travel with her as he had with Rhinedottir, and he does not carry out experiments on her behalf. He is, simply, there. Purposeless.

Except that everyone and everything has a purpose. Albedo is not naive enough to believe that Alice has taken him in out of the kindness of her own heart. He only needs to determine why she did it.

So far, Alice has not experimented on him. She has not asked about his time with Rhinedottir, beyond vague allusions to it. She has provided him with shelter, and food, and she has been, by all accounts, kind.

Despite this, Albedo does not sleep for the first several weeks he lives in Mondstadt; he cannot afford to. Sleep engenders vulnerability, and Albedo will not be vulnerable in this strange city, in this strange woman’s house.

Albedo does not understand Alice, and thus he cannot trust her. He wishes he could read his master’s letter again, wishes he could comb the text for some sort of message or sign.

There is no doubt in his mind that this arrangement, and the shelter Alice has provided him, is temporary.

But Rhinedottir raised him as a scientist, and there are too many uncertain factors in the equation. Albedo will leave Mondstadt if necessary. He has spent almost all of his life on the road. He knows how to disappear.

He cannot help but think that this – the constant uncertainty, Alice’s unreadable expressions and indecipherable, confusing gestures towards him – feels like a sort of limbo.

And so his first two weeks in Mondstadt pass, and Albedo stays awake all night staring at the wooden rafters and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

***

When Albedo meets Jean, the first thing he pinpoints is the sword at her hip. He can tell by the lightness of her footsteps and the easy way she commands respect that she is a warrior, and a venerated one at that.

Albedo is no stranger to combat; after years traveling through the monster-ridden lands of Teyvat, he has grown proficient at using his vision to ward off attackers. Still, he has no doubt that Jean could take him out in a heartbeat.

The thought makes him uncomfortable around her, for the first few weeks of knowing her. But Jean is simpler, more easy to read than Alice. Albedo thinks that she has genuine intentions, in spending time with him. His master would tell him that it is a dangerous thing to trust so easily. Albedo thinks, privately, blasphemously, that it is a good thing his master is not there.

For he likes Jean; likes spending time with her. He thinks that she is the first friend he’s ever had. She shows him around the city, takes him to restaurants with her and teaches him Mondstadtian customs. She even introduces him to Lisa, who works at the library. Lisa, like Albedo, is a scientist and a scholar, and Albedo delights in sharing knowledge and hypotheses with her. She can be touchy and flirtatious at times, but Jean assures him that Lisa’s like that with everyone. Still, Albedo notices the way that Lisa leans extra far into Jean’s space when they talk, and the way that Jean flushes whenever Lisa touches her.

Next, Albedo meets Diluc. He’s a Knight like Jean, but where Jean is graceful and light on her feet, fighting with technique and precision, Diluc is all raw strength. He’s tall, with fiery red hair and a temper just as hot, and he wields a sword almost as tall as Albedo himself. He still makes Albedo a little nervous, but Jean reassures him that Diluc’s glaring and yelling is just bluster.

Albedo doesn’t have a problem with Diluc, really. But Diluc may be the only person in Mondstadt who’s as socially stunted as Albedo, so every time they interact they usually fall into a painful silence after a few minutes.

And then Albedo meets Kaeya.

It’s a warm day, and he and Jean are eating brunch on the grassy hills surrounding Mondstadt, overlooking Cider Lake. Jean is telling him about a recent expedition she and Diluc went on, when they had to clear out a whole hilichurl camp singlehandedly, when a boy’s voice greets Jean.

Albedo turns to face the stranger and freezes. He recognizes the boy’s blue hair, his brown skin. He recognizes the star in the boy’s iris – the same star that embossed every flag in Khaenri’ah.

Albedo has a near-perfect memory. So when he sees the boy, he remembers a day that feels like a lifetime ago – the day he and his master met the King. He remembers kneeling while the King appraised him, and remembers locking eyes with a blue haired, noble child who was hiding behind a pillar.

The boy standing before Albedo is, undoubtedly, the same one Albedo saw that day. The star in his eye all but confirms it, and Albedo trusts his own mind and memory above all else.

Albedo thinks of Khaenri’ah, and he thinks of the King, and he thinks of his master and an army of mechanical monsters, and he finds that he cannot breathe. He thinks, distantly, that he is dying.

“What’s a pretty face like you doing around here?” asks the boy, smirking, and it’s all too reminiscent of the King bringing his leering face too close to Albedo’s own, and all Albedo can think is that he needs to leave.

He thinks he might be saying something, but he can’t really think anything at all, he’s shaking too hard, and before he knows it he’s running towards Mondstadt’s gates.

He makes it onto a side alleyway before he’s crumpling to the ground and trying desperately to force air into his lungs.

Jean, somehow, is there, hugging him, and Albedo allows himself to melt into her embrace.

He tries, desperately, not to think of blue hair and golden stars.

He breathes. In, and out.