Chapter Text
The bird building her home on your windowsill
has had every nest destroyed before.
The spider that is delicately weaving a silken masterpiece has had every single thread broken before.
And despite it all, they try again.
- A Reminder from Smaller Beings, Nikita Gill
The moment Albedo opened his eyes, he knew it was going to be a Bad Day.
He'd had a lot of those recently, he thought uneasily as he sat up, staring at his artificial hands as they shook.
Fire coursed through his limbs, and he blinked hard, trying to distract himself from the impending urge to move, to run, to hide hide hide you’re in danger run –
He breathed in deeply through his nose. After a moment of heavy inhales and exhales, he shakily climbed out of bed to get ready for the day. He couldn't let this weakness, as familiar and utterly distressing it was, deter him from completing his tasks. He had promised Kaeya to stop by Mondstadt today. He couldn’t let his artificial feelings – feelings he shouldn’t even have (He was a failure. He had failed Rhinedottir and he would fail again.) – make him fail yet again.
A violent tremor suddenly wracked his body, and he flinched, stumbling forward and just only catching himself, arms pushing against the camp’s wall. He itched.
The fire burned hotter.
“Fuck it,” he whispered.
He had been trying to get better. He really had. But it was so hard.
He lifted his arm to his mouth and bit. Hard.
You need to think it through before you do these things, Albedo, Kaeya had told him gently, one night.
Fuck thinking things through, Albedo thought bitterly. He stumbled to the cabinet and drew out his sharpest blade. He winced as he recalled promising Kaeya, no, blatantly lying to Kaeya’s face, saying that he had thrown out the scarlet-rimmed pieces of metal. It wasn't like throwing them away could have stopped him from mutilating his body, anyway. Glass was commonplace in an alchemist’s laboratory.
I’m proud of you, Albedo, the man had said.
How fucking pathetic.
He winced as cold metal sank into pale flesh before drawing the blade into a horizontal line. He grinned wryly as scarlet liquid slowly ebbed out, trailing down his arms and dripping down to his feet. (It had always been strange to him that he bled. A machine should not bleed.)
The fire kept burning. It flickered, on and off, like an ember in some abandoned fireplace, and Albedo itched, and everything was wrong and wrong and wrong.
He should be dead, shouldn’t he? He should probably be dead.
He frowned and forced the thought out of his head. Killing himself was not priority right now.
He drew the blade across his skin, again and again and again until his arms were a mangled mess of scarlet and tissue. His eyes burned, and with a horrible sensation budding in his chest, he realized that he was crying. With shaking hands, he slowly placed the blade on the top of the cabinet.
I, he thought, slumping down against the bed and bringing his knees to his chest, have fucked up. He stared at the mess his arms were, watched as tears fell and mixed with blood.
It only hit him then that he had relapsed.
I was doing so well. It had been a month since he had last cut into his skin like this. He stared at the white scars littering his arms. They had been healing so well.
He sniffled and brought his hand up to rub furiously at his eyes. Stop crying.
It was time to clean up.
Even after the… incident, Albedo still bristled with a grim, skittish kind of energy. He was walking to Mondstadt, now. The cold bit pleasantly at his skin. It snuck through his layers and brushed against the still open cuts going up and down his arms (after cleaning them up, he had hauled over his shoulders the thickest overcoat he owned and prayed no blood would bleed through). He hoped Kaeya wouldn’t question his clothing choice. Despite Dragonspine’s cold temperatures, in Mondstadt it was still spring.
He arrived at the city’s gates. The fire had lessened, now, but it still flickered and lapped at his insides.
“Good afternoon, Chief Alchemist Albedo!” He jolted at the unexpected voice. Oh. It was just Lawrence.
He offered the man a timid nod before–-
He drew in a breath and walked through.
Anxiety prickled at his skin as he went. He tried to return a greeting to each civilian, but everything was becoming wrong and too much–
“Albedo!”
He whirled around, his lips curving into a gentle, albeit shaky smile as he heard Kaeya’s voice. The taller man was approaching him rapidly, a grin plastered across his face.
“Good morning, Kaeya.”
He suppressed a flinch when Kaeya’s eyes narrowed, no doubt eyeing the appropriate-for-the-weather and even-more-strange for Albedo overcoat. Thankfully, the man didn’t comment on it. Albedo prayed he wouldn’t bring it up later. He drew in another breath, trying to calm his racing heart.
“Ready to go?” Kaeya outstretched an arm, waiting for Albedo to take his hand.
He forced a chuckle and interlaced his own fingers with Kaeya’s. “Yeah.