Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Albedo remembers once asking his creator a multitude of questions on human emotion. 

He remembers looking in the mirror; at his porcelain skin and extraordinarily fluffy hair, the intricate braids his creator weaved together, and the too-big lab coat she told him to wear whenever he was around her. He looked into his shimmering blue eyes, quivering azure orbs that were too big and too dull to properly replicate a child’s, and then he looked at the opalescent golden star that marked him by the gods. 

He remembers tracing the outline of the star, feeling small bumps form on his skin, and looking up at his creator. 

“What is this?” She’d glanced at him, unable to take her eyes off her crafting table, hands continuing to pour and mix and scribble and shake, with an unreadable expression flickering in her iris. 

“It’s a star.” He blinked, his eyebrows furrowing as he adjusted the too-long sleeves of his too-big lab coat. 

“Do all humans have stars?” She let out a sound similar to laughter but worlds away from it. One of the first things Albedo learned was that his creator never laughed. 

“No, Albedo. Only you do.” The unspoken words of ‘ it's what sets you apart. Makes you inhuman. It’s what shows you that you’ll never truly be who you were supposed to be.’ is left unsaid. Something about how she said it, how it landed in his ears made his skin crawl. 

“Can you get rid of it?” 

“No, Albedo.” The boy shivered, wrapping the too-big lab coat tighter around himself, and for once in his short life, he’d appreciated how the collar reached his ears. 

 ✩₊˚.

Albedo had once asked his creator what drove humans to exist as they do. 

He had multiple hypotheses scribbled down in a Moleskine notebook, crammed in between measurements for growth potions (a failed attempt) and diagrams of crystal flies, and none came close to what she had said. 

His creator had looked at him, in the careless, disinterested way she looked at him when he asked something that he should’ve already known and answered; 

“Regret is the basis of humanity. 

It is one of the fundamental principles of society and evolution, alongside trust, envy, and love. Some even say trust and regret share a similar sort of taste in prey.” 

He stood there, in a lab coat with sleeves only rolled up once, and crossed off all his previous hypotheses. His eyebrows furrowed, and he tapped his pen to his lip. 

“Do I have love?” His creator never mentioned him having human emotions, always saying that it was his exoskeleton that resembled a human, not the internal machinations of his heart. 

Albedo surmised it was a good question, for his creator paused her movements, setting down her beaker and turning towards him. She didn’t say anything, but her eyes seemed troubled. Her lips turned downwards at the corners, and he waited patiently for her to reply. She didn’t— not until days later, as she tucked the blanket up to his chin with the fire crackling beside him, brushed back his permanently unruly hair, and said that you learn to love someone. 

He never understood, as he mostly never did with the answers his mother gave him under the fake stars of Teyvat, but he nodded anyway, in the self-assured way he saw his mother nod when she explained something to him and expected him to understand and be awed at once. 

Albedo closed his eyes, thinking about her answers and everything he could’ve possibly regretted in his almost-a-decade of living, as sleep overtook his artificial body. 

      And while Albedo Keindepriez may have many regrets born of such a human principle, this isn’t one of them— and will never be one of them. 

It begins with shimmering galaxies and scars more beautiful than the setting sun, with the brush of fingertips and the glint of a smile. 

He breathes in, brushes back the loose strands of his hair, exhales shakily, and fixes the grip on the dagger resting precariously in his hand. His fingers seemed to form a mind of their own, flexing and maneuvering the weapon with slender fingers and a practiced ease and grace that seemed entirely like him. 

He hears a knock on the door and twirls the dagger in a daze. 

"Come in." 

The door opens; a familiar creak of wood shifting on rusting metal hinges swinging open with exaggerated exuberance. 

It hits the door stopper— a rickety thing that dug into the point of the door that now had a slight indent in it, courtesy of unused energy thrumming under skin— the point of his weapon grazes the air just beside the shimmering skin of his companion's face. To his credit, his face remains impassive. 

Uncharacteristically faux laughter ripples through the stasis of his room, the gently falling dust particles that shone especially bright in the sun's rays seeming to get increasingly disturbed as their flurry grew erratic. 

"Please, have a seat." 

Albedo’s eye twitches in the slightest as he sees the other trace his finger — spindly and covered in onyx black gloves with the most peculiar of cuts— down the edge of his blade, now embedded in the wall before pushing it down and watching in unconcealed joy as it seemed to spring back like an elastic band. He hears laughter barely attempted to be concealed but quieted down as though the other seemed to remember proper etiquette and the other makes themself comfortable on his office chair. His finger spasmed before returning to its place on his pen. 

The other seems to deem his chair unsatisfactory and hops onto his desk, sprawling across the desk like a cat and stretching out his muscles with a satisfied hum. He looks up, eyes lidded and mirth shining bright against his uncomfortably wide smile. 

Albedo blinked inquisitively at the other, head in one arm, and a gentle upturn of his lips, which he tried desperately to hide, made its way onto his face. 

"To what do I owe the pleasure of meeting the most bewitching assassin of the century?" 

“The cushioning of your chair seems to need reupholstery, it is almost as flat as my hair on the worst days.” Albedo’s eye twitched, the action as clear as the morning dew after the most unpleasant of rainfalls. 

“Mr. Alberich, may I be as—” 

"Please do skip the formalities, just Kaeya will do…" The assassin blinked, head tilting in the slightest as a lock of hair the shade of shimmering galaxies fell to expose collarbone. Upon further inspection, it seemed as though there was a glittering substance consciously applied to his skin—the hollows seeming like an especially sugary dessert. 

Albedo’s mouth felt dry, as though it were a sweltering afternoon. He swallowed and looked back up at Kaeya’s face, ignoring the similar shimmer around the corners of his eyes. 

“Albedo Keindepriez, most delighted to meet you, Sir Alberich.” 

Kaeya laughed, eyes crinkling at the corners with genuine humor, and the constellations in his eye seemed to bounce right off the slightest point of a dark wing tracing crystalline orbs. 

“No, no, the pleasure is all mine, Monsieur Albedo.” 

Distantly, Albedo noted that the way Kaeya let his name tumble loose from the confines of his lips made it seem like his name was a word that meant something truly sacrilegious. The way his accent made the ends of all his sentences trail off in a seemingly captivating drawl. 

He replied with an ‘hm’, turning to his chair and taking a seat. His head seemed to ache with a foreign pulse, and he slumped forward, chin coming to rest in his palm and hair falling forward. Albedo closes his eyes and prods at his temples fruitlessly. 

“My, how forward of you, Monsieur Albedo,.” He blinked his eyes open and saw how he’d gotten a bit too close to the other’s face, his hair framing the other's face just slightly. 

“And here I thought you were the quiet type….let’s say, save it until date number two?” Kaeya looked to the side, putting a finger to his lips and seemingly pouting in thought. The mischief in his eyes and the sly upturn of his smile overruled the sultry look. 

The smile broke free from its shackles. 

"Say, Kaeya ," The name was familiar in the rasp of certain vowels, but entirely unfamiliar with the weight it carried in the world, and yet spilled like silk from his lips. He decided he liked the feeling of it. "I presume you know how to handle weapons. Care to help me improve my skills?" 

Kaeya laughed in a delighted sort of shock before nodding. "With the dagger you threw at me not five minutes ago, I'd say your control is exemplary for being a office worker with absurd hours." Albedo stifled a scoff before sitting up and turning to grab his document when he felt the frigid edge of a blade rest lightly on the skin of his throat, exactly in the middle of the star. His grin grew wider. 

“Why don’t we leave this for date number three, Kaeya Alberich?” 

The laughter he heard then seemed to be sourced from the heart, borne of delighted shock and budding excitement. 

“My, my, Albedo, you are an interesting one, aren’t you?” 

“I like to think I am, though most would disagree at first glance.” A coy grin he was sure sent in his direction. 

“I don’t like to mingle with people I don’t find to be intriguing.” A puff of laughter tumbled onto his neck and down his spine. “Should I be flattered then?” 

He turned impulsively, sensing the loosening of the grip on the blade before grabbing it from Kaeya’s hand and pressing it against an absurdly glittery spot of skin. Albedo’s breathing, gentle and measured, blew thickly against Kaeya’s tied-up hair, making it flutter about in the wind. He didn’t answer, just flashed the other one of his rarely shared coy grins before backing up completely and handing Kaeya paper and a pen. 

“Sign here for the contract to be finalized.” 

He could hear the slight exhale from Kaeya before he spoke. 

“I guess I should be.” 

 ✩₊˚.

“Your handwriting looks so royal. Are you sure you aren’t a prince of some sort? One who had handwriting lessons from a young age. I promise I won’t tell anyone if you are! My lips are sealed.” 

Kaeya’s eye sparkles mischievously; the kaleidoscope of stars shimmering under the soft honey glare of the sun, his brow raising to kiss his forehead, disappearing behind a ruggedly unruly lock of hair falling like an especially rebellious waterfall, as he tucks another loose piece of his hair behind his ear.  

He lays draped across the plush couch at the foot of his study, hand over his face up until he deems it too boring and imitates a particularly annoying leech; plastering himself onto the back of Albedo’s chair (which he thought was perfectly upholstered with no need to fixing) and looking over his shoulder. 

He presumed his face contorted into something unpleasant as Kaeya's lips parted in laughter. Genuine laughter, not perfectly crafted to float across the waves of stuffy air in a melody similar to a mermaid’s. This laughter was a hoarse thing, quiet and scratching with disuse. Albedo found it to be the most beautiful thing he's ever heard.

“Getting a reaction out of the most impassive of them all! I must be truly special.” He coughs and resumes his expression of nonchalance, and looks back at his papers. 

“Hardly.” 

“Ouch.” Kaeya slumped even farther forward, chin resting on Albedo’s shoulder instead of his head, muttering low and soft against his ear. “And here I thought we were about to get past the talking stage.” His chin was pointed, digging into the meat of his shoulder uncomfortably, yet Albedo didn’t want to shake him off. 

He knew Kaeya could sense his defeat, and Albedo could sense his smile. Albedo couldn’t see it, but he could feel its brilliance. 

There were parts of Kaeya Alberich that Albedo felt nobody knew about. Like how his nose was slightly crooked from a scuffle as a child that never quite healed properly, how his canines were slightly pointed, how his knees would crack during his stretches at the start of every day, and how underneath the overly sweet scent of his champagne perfume, there were hints of lilies and cedarwood. It overwhelmed him, made him dizzy, fogged up his mind, and all rationality seemed to shatter and leave a whirlwind of emotions he couldn’t quite grasp. 

“I’ve heard that all relationships and trust are built on communication, are they not? It would be truly unfortunate if we were to skip past that and jump into an unstable relationship. We should at least make it to the first date before you start calling it quits.” He swallowed, slow and unsteady as he desperately tried salvaging what was left of his papers.  

Kaeya’s eye widened slightly, sunlight bouncing off the glitter on his eyelid before he masked his momentary surprise with a cheshire grin. "Oh? So, there’s hope for me still? For us?” 

Albedo glanced up, eyes locking with Kaeya’s in time to see the momentary waggle of eyebrows underneath a wave of night sky. "Hope, yes. But you'll need more than witty remarks and dashing looks to keep up."

The assassin chuckled softly, his breath warm against Albedo’s ear. "You think I’m dashing?” 

He paused, wondering what heavenly being was causing such grief to enter his life, hopelessly picking at loose threads to salvage the situation. Albedo presumed he paused for a beat too long, for Kaeya’s grin grew wide and smug.

“Dear me, Albedo, I didn’t take you to be such a... slacker. Shouldn’t you be working instead of ogling your work partner?” 

The audacity. He moves to speak and finds his jaw snapped shut, an invisible sort of thread stitching his lips together as molasses slowly fills his mouth and lungs. He breathes in sharply through his nose.

“Shouldn’t you be doing something worthwhile instead of disrupting your work partner's work ?” At this, Kaeya lets out a breath of faux exhaustion, slumping onto Albedo’s chair even more than he had previously. His hair fell from its perch behind his ears, tumbling loose and blocking the sun from the window at his side. “But it's unbearable!! Paperwork has got to be one of the most annoying parts of the job.” 

“Mind you, paperwork is the main part of my job, therefore meaning I do the majority of your work alongside mine. I’m sure the esteemed Kaeya Alberich won’t fall prey to a mere file now, would he?” 

“Pfft, as if. I plan to retire and live on a beachside manor in the tropics.” 

“Your assignment sheet awaits you, then.” Beside him, there was a loud groan and a thud. Albedo hid a smile behind his hand.

“Is this part of the job really necessary for me to do? Can’t I just kick butt on the field?” The sun’s rays hit his window at an angle, shining straight into his eyes, and he squinted slightly. 

“That is merely half of your job description. I’ll have to file for another partner then, Kaeya Alberich. I appreciate a partner who can complete their work efficiently.” The assassin stiffened, his eye widening as all semblance of amusement left his expression. 

“Now, now, is that necessary, beloved partner? I’m sure we were paired together for a reason, and besides, I’m such a hard worker! Possibly the hardest worker in the whole of Teyvat!”  

“Hardly the case.” 

“You wound me with such doubt about my prowess in the art of paperwork, dearest Albedo. It is a skill I keep hidden unless it is a dire situation.” Kaeya smiled, a lopsided thing akin to a predatory smile, and a conniving smirk merged together, the point of his tooth peeking out between two rosy lips, and he reached for a pen from Albedo’s pen holder. 

“Is that so? And keeping me as your partner is a dire situation?” There was no verbal response to his question, just the heat of Kaeya’s arm against his and the stiffness of his posture that answered enough. Albedo turned his focus to his papers, flexing his hand before resetting his grip on his pen. He lets out a breath, a smile playing on his lips and something warm settling in his gut.

Beside him, Kaeya’s eyes burn hot like the darkest coal in a fire as his pen loops across the page in lazy swirls.

 ✩₊˚.

“You’re making your thinking face,”  Kaeya’s breath tickles at the juncture where it hits Albedo’s spine, hot and ever-present even as his body backs up slightly when he begins to read his latest file over his shoulder. “What’re you thinking about, dearest Albedo?”

Albedo huffs, flipping the page when Kaeya lets out a sound signifying he finished reading that page as well. “What do you think, Kaeya?”

“I think you’re dreadfully bored with such menial tasks and are thinking of your latest success in the laboratory.”

Kaeya grins against Albedo’s crown, and Albedo resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Close. I was thinking about you.”

“Oh.” A pause. Raw with his genuine surprise and unwanted honesty. “Well then. Ahem, thank you, dearest.”

Albedo sighs. Kaeya is worse than an emotionally repressed teenager when it comes to honesty. It would’ve been endearing if he weren’t draped over Albedo and his chair like a gaudy imitation of an octopus.

“Get back to work, Kaeya.”

“You hate me. Why do you hate me, Albedo? I thought what we had was special…Something worthwhile, y’know, where we considered each other’s happiness before anything else.”

“You not working is making me unhappy, Kaeya. What do you have to say about that?”

“I say that I am a terrible partner and will continue to make you unhappy. Over there, lying on your couch. Without files.”

“Get back to work.”

“...I suppose there must be sacrifices made to achieve asylum…”

“Thank you. This conversation is making me very happy, by the way.” 

“I hope your beloved files give you a papercut.” 

“That’s making me very unhappy, Kaeya.”

“I do not wish to speak of you anymore.” 

“That’s also making me very unhappy, Kaeya.” 

“Why you–” 

Scattered laughter. A flutter in his ribcage. Smiles hidden but heard through poorly disguised amusement. 

 ✩₊˚.

“You know, this device is quite innovative.” 

“How so?” 

“Now I can hear your voice so close to my ear even when you’re so far away from me.” 

“To your left.” 

Silence, and then a surprised grunt and the swish of a blade escaping its sheath.

“I feel as though I am a husband going out to war, with my blushing wife dutifully waiting for my return. Don’t you feel like that resembles us, dearest Albedo?” 

“Four doors down, I’ve disabled all of the cameras, you should be in the clear as long as you don’t attempt something ridiculous.” 

“Ah, I can almost picture your voice welcoming me home “ Welcome home, my dearest. I’ve made you your favorite meal in the excitement of your arrival! Oh…where are my manners, you look to the side, blushing, would you like dinner first, for me to draw you a bath, or…would you like m—” 

“Behind you, 3 o’clock.” 

Here is the uncalculated; Kaeya’s words are tearing into his flesh. 

Always have, always will. 

And as gunshots echo within his earpiece, as his eyes are wide and unblinking, stinging as he stares at the silhouette of someone burned into his very being through a screen, he feels himself get dismembered and mauled by sugary-sweet words and silk-spun smiles.

As shadows bend and twirl around the contours of Kaeya’s body, Albedo watches, as a dying man would, the almost cat-like grin Kaeya sends his way while effortlessly getting rid of all the ambushers. 

Here is the uncalculated; Albedo is a soul lost at sea, and Kaeya is the mermaid luring him in. 

Always has. Always will be. 

And to get back at him for his sugary-sweet words, Albedo waited until the perfect moment to speak; 

“Ahem, as I was saying, or would you like me–” There was a pause, one where Kaeya resumed his dramatic walk towards the door at the end of the hallway,  hands behind his head as his lash fluttered shut. He flashed a smile, his usual sultry and mirth-filled grin. “Ah, enjoying the view, are we, partner? Not that I’m complaining, of course. Wow, my dearest partner, the apple of my eye, is finally accepting my meaningful and devoted advances! Oh, how I could cry with happiness!”

“And so what if I am? Will you strike a pose for me? Make sure it’s pleasant to the eyes, I’ve been staring at the screen because of you for far too long. Though the reason I am staring at the screen isn’t too bad, don’t you think, dearest partner?” It was whispered, low and soft into the microphone, Albedo’s lips curling into a slight smile by the end of his lazily spoken phrase.

He relished in the unintelligible noises coming from Kaeya as he stumbled and bumped into the wall beside the door he was supposed to enter. 

“Come now, Kaeya, I told you not to do anything stupid, didn’t I?” Kaeya cleared his throat, straightening himself up and dusting off his impeccable clothes. Albedo bit his tongue to suppress the laughter bubbling up inside him. 

Victory was close. He could almost taste it. 

“Ahem, of course! Who do you take me for, dear Albedo? I’m the best at my work, nothing could mess me up!” Kaeya stuttered through his sentence, and Albedo saw his slinger fingers curls around the door handle and pull through his green-tinted screen. 

The door didn’t budge. “Albedo…Didn’t you say you unlocked all the doors? Dear me, is my dearest partner that bad at his j–” 

“It is unlocked, Kaeya.” 

He watched, entranced, as Kaeya’s deft fingers curled around the handle once more and pushed. 

The door swung open soundlessly, and Albedo’s jaw ached with the pressure of keeping his mouth shut. 

“Oh. It was a push door. I knew that. Dearest Albedo, did you think I fell for that?” 

Victory was within his grasp. He just needed to persevere. 

“Of course. My favorite partner couldn’t be felled by a push door, could he? Maybe this partner of mine could even perform the rest of the mission without a hitch, and I’ll consider rewarding this partner in some way. What do you think, Kaeya, would my partner like that?” 

“I think he’d love that. What might the reward be, Dearest Albedo?” 

“Perhaps, I might take him up on the offer of dinner. Do you think he’d like that?” Albedo heard a contemplative hum from his earpiece before Kaeya let out a noise of approval.

“Good, good. Then maybe I’ll humour him if he does the job well, no?” 

“I’m sure this partner of yours will do the job splendidly, as usual.” 

“Mmm, I think so too.” 

As Kaeya’s shoulders stiffened, and he quickly made his way across the empty room to the hidden passageway, completing his moves with renewed vigor, Albedo let the laughter finally break free. 

Victory was his. A job well done with minimal work was within his grasp. 

And maybe an evening spent with Kaeya wouldn’t be so bad either.

 ✩₊˚.

The stars twinkle above him, sprinkled across a sky composed of vibrant hues of orange and blue. The pair had made their way down the bustling streets of the market; a small but homey place on the outskirts of the city, with giggling teenagers, old ladies haggling over prices, their coughing husbands, excitable young kids running after each other, and the most feared duo of assassin and hacker. 

Albedo bumps into a burly man and momentarily loses himself in the crowd, the hairs on his neck rising the longer he isn’t with his unbearable partner. He blinks, fiddles with his hair, picks at his nails, and makes his way toward a stall with Inazuman Tri-colour Dango. Albedo had just handed over the money when he felt a gentle press of fingers on his lower back. 

It seems the cause of his problems has found him. And for a startling reason, Albedo found himself smiling at the thought. 

He turned abruptly and shoved one of the sticks towards Kaeya. “For you.” He stated bluntly. 

For an awkward moment, nothing happens. 

Then, Kaeya smiles. 

His creator once told him that empires rise and empires fall, burning crimson cities and mottled green remains mixing and merging with the chrysanthemum of ephemeral reign. Civilizations rise with a single ideal and are brought to ruin because of a dream born of desire. It burns and aches, simmering under the shining sun and boiling under the rising moon, and festering deep within under the press of your ribcage. Even the greatest of philosophers and the strongest of warriors fall prey to desire. Albedo realizes that he, too, would fall for that desire. If that desire was seeing that smile once more. 

Twinkling faux stars merge with shimmering blue galaxies, and suddenly, Albedo is dizzy with an unfamiliar feeling. There’s a hollow, fluttery feeling behind his bones, and he vaguely wondered if the water he’d drunk earlier today contained slow-acting poison. 

He sees the intent of that smile, meant not just to show Kaeya’s interest, but filled with a sort of startled gratitude. He recalls past moments; evenings spent doing everything and nothing besides the crackling fire of his office, and his contented smile shared like a secret between them. Kaeya would ramble, and Albedo would delightfully smile and ask questions, trying his best to make them difficult enough to get Kaeya to scrunch up his nose in a way that always reminded him of a small animal. And regardless of it all, Albedo’s hand would settle on Kaeya’s head and ruffle his hair. 

“Thank you, Albedo.” The blonde sees the slight tremble of the other’s hand, the unruly cowlick that Kaeya spends hours trying to tame before the sun rises peeking out, and knows that Kaeya needs the sugary delicacy more than he did.  

“It’s very sweet.” 

“Like you.” He flushes and looks to the side to avoid Kaeya’s perceptive gaze. 

“I’d advise you to keep your thoughts within your mind.” A pause, one where Albedo’s hand found home in Kaeya’s, and gentle tugging parted them through the crowd. His rationale provides him with his actions being so that they do not get separated again. Nothing else. Of course. “Will you have rice?” 

More silence, though this time Albedo felt that the streetlights shone just a little bit brighter, a little bit warmer. 

“Whatever you say, dearest Albedo.” 

         Albedo is looking at the unnervingly gentle smile Kaeya is sending in his direction when he realizes he never wants to look at anything else for the rest of his life. There are bits of rice stuck to the corner of the other’s mouth, and Albedo cannot help but smile, cannot help but tease him as he would, and then carefully pick it off. 

Nothing changes, the world keeps spinning on its axis, the food vendors continue luring customers with their booming voices and aromatic delicacies, and Albedo and Kaeya continue to be Albedo and Kaeya. 

It is simply a fact– that the skewers in his hand are sticky, the stars are shining, the sky is blue, and Albedo is terribly, unfathomably, in love with Kaeya Alberich. 

Chapter Text

Albedo remembers being young when his creator had first smiled at him.

Not the gentle, open smiles he’d read about in books, nor was it the kind that curved with warmth or softened the lines of her face. No, this one was sharper, too precise. Like satisfaction—  awe. Like the thrill of watching a long-calculated equation resolve into itself.

He’d just finished mapping out his sketch of a newly introduced alchemical compound on the blackboard fixed into the wall, chalk dust clinging to his sleeves and fingers stained white. She had turned around from her own desk, her gaze catching on the spiral lattices and recombinant bonds with a flicker of something rare: recognition.

“You really did understand,” she’d murmured, more to herself than to him. Her voice was light with wonder. “I didn’t think... not this quickly.”

Albedo had smiled, small and uncertain, the way he did when he thought he was supposed to be proud of something. “I paid attention,” he said, hoping it was the correct response. “Your lessons proved valuable.” 

Her eyes drifted over him—not to him. Across the angles of his face, the line of his jaw, the way his hands fit around a piece of chalk with such dexterity. There was no affection in her eyes, not in the way humans described it. But there was something else.

Admiration. Triumph.

“My beautiful boy,” she’d said then, but the words held no weight of motherhood. They sounded more like a craftsman admiring a masterpiece. Like a god whispering to the first heartbeat of a creature made in her image.

And perhaps that was all he was to her—image, reflection, confirmation of success.

“Are you capable of love?”

“Of course I am. Silly boy.” 

“Do you love me?” he asked once, weeks later, while she adjusted the clasps on his coat. 

She didn’t look at him. “Love,” she repeated. “What would that mean, coming from me?”

He waited for her to answer, to define it, to tell him whether or not he had it. But she never did. Instead, she brushed a strand of his hair behind his ear with a kind of distant care. Not tenderness-no—, something soft but flickering, like a candle with a flame that was about to fade.

“You are perfect,” she said simply, and he knew, somehow, that was all he would ever get.

He often wondered, in the years that followed, if the warmth he sometimes imagined in her voice had ever truly existed, or if it was a memory grafted together by longing. Like constellations humans charted in the night sky, drawing stories out of scattered light. A fiction. A pattern forced onto the infinite.

Albedo likes to think that he loved her. Oftentimes, he lulled himself to sleep with the thought of loving her enough for both of them. (Now, he knows better.)

 ✩₊˚.

Constellations, Albedo thinks, are nothing more than arbitrary lines traced between mortal wounds in the sky— a human invention born from the desire to find meaning where there is none. 

(“Mortal wounds in the sky, could those be related to potential faultlines within human creation? ” 

Albedo begins to whisper, more to himself than another, when Kaeya suddenly interferes with another peal of jarringly false laughter. “Now that,” He says, poking him with the sharper edge of a stained skewer stick, “Sounds suspiciously like brooding.” 

He blinks, eyes wide and startled, lowering his gaze from the stars to meet Kaeya’s teasing grin with his own poorly concealed expression of confusion. “Does it?” He replies, curious. 

Kaeya tilts his head in response, grin sharpening and eye curving into a crescent, unintentionally hiding the constellations Albedo is drawn to, an expression like the glint of a dagger disguised as sunlight. 

How strange, Albedo thinks, for he has never met someone with as much sunlight in their veins. 

“You have that look in your eyes, the one where I’d bet my dashing looks you’re either solving a problem nobody’s asking you to or inventing an entirely new one for yourself.” 

The faintest curve of Albedo’s lips formed—an automatic, practiced response he didn’t think Kaeya would question. “Maybe both,” he murmured. It was soft, softer than any of his replies, and his treacherous false heart shudders and seizes in barely disguised uncertainty. 

It is a comforting lie, one he has always been able to tell without guilt. Yet tonight, it unsettles him. Perhaps these connections he cannot help drawing are connections of his own, and for once, he does not know if they are real.

But, throughout the persistent haze of thought, the stars above still pull at his focus, their fractured lights prickling at something deep within him. “Do you think,” he says after a pause, his voice thin and distant, “it’s human to try to force patterns onto things? Stars into constellations. Lives into stories. People into... something more, something else.” He trails off, and for a moment, Kaeya is quiet, too still and too closed off before his usual suave-ness returns so quickly that Albedo thinks he imagined it all. 

“I think we all want things to make sense,” he says smoothly. “Besides, maybe the act of connecting the dots is the point. Chaos has its charm, but a beautiful lie is hard to turn away from.” Albedo studies Kaeya, the set of his shoulders, and the almost unwanted sincerity in his tone, but feels a deep weighted dread settle in his gut.) 

And maybe Kaeya is right. Maybe meaning is born in the act of creation, or maybe it is yet another mystery, another empty fiction no different than the ones woven into the essence of his creation, the algorithms of his being. 

Then there is Kaeya, the man whom he loves that he can neither place nor ignore, whose every word feels like a warm hand held out to him and a thinly veiled threat of a challenge. He isn’t sure which fills him with more fear, but the Kaeya of the present and not his thoughts laughs softly at something Albedo didn’t intend to be a joke, but landed as one, and finds himself desperate to impose a pattern on this moment, too. 

 ✩₊˚.

The innate juxtaposition, so acutely timed, stabs into Albedo like the gentle caress of a blade. 

Kaeya’s laughter— a sound that has begun to increase in frequency and plague Albedo’s thoughts— rings bright and true, light and teasing over the gentle whirring of his computer’s fan and the dull throbbing of his headache. There’s a smile playing on his lips and absolutely nothing that betrays a sense of tension bubbling under the surface of his carefully put-together expression. 

Albedo notices, of course. 

It wasn’t intentional, in the beginning, at least. He was interested in answering the question ‘Who is Kaeya Alberich?’ and eventually, that turned into understanding the microexpressions that would flutter over Kaeya’s face like the most shackled birds. At this moment, it was a moment of stillness and imperceptible crease of an eyebrow that shone brighter in the darkness of his room. Albedo knows what that expression means. He always does, doesn’t miss it, but decides against letting it show. 

“With how much grief this new problem of yours is causing you, I’d be compelled to think I’m the cause of it,” He smiles, something equal parts mischievous and unreadable, “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you’re hopelessly infatuated with me, Albedo Keindepriez.” 

Silence. 

His pen snaps in half, and he startles, hair escaping from its elastic and falling into his face as he scrambles desperately to save the situation. Albedo’s halfway to reaching down to pick up the remnants of his pen and clean up the ink spill when he feels the gentle warmth of fingertips pressed right under his jaw. 

Kaeya’s hands are hands that have slaughtered many. 

And, 

Kaeya's hands are the hands that brush Albedo’s hair back from where it had fallen to cover his eyes. (Albedo’s are the hands that plot out the safety of his begrudging partner, and Kaeya’s are the hands that execute his carefully thought-out plans, if only with a flourish of added heart palpitations for Albedo as he watches the subservient fanfare Kaeya has in every step he takes. Every action he makes.) 

His breath caught in his throat, steadfast in its attempts to restrict airflow until he passed as his eyes meet Kaeya’s. There was a hand against his cheek, unwavering in its support, and Albedo knew he should’ve been wary. Kaeya was the most well-known assassin of the century. 

And yet, 

He can’t help but lean closer into the newly arrived tension that permeates the air around them as he waits anxiously for Kaeya to speak. 

“I’m not a scholar, but judging from your reaction, I assume my hypothesis was correct?” 

“Perhaps…” Albedo trails off, the flicker of something in Kaeya’s eye causing an unwelcome churning in his gut. “I was just considering how much of this is real.” He smiled at the way Kaeya’s features suddenly went blank, brushing his fingers against the edge of the ink-stained table and looking back up in time to see the subtle hint of confusion on Kaeya’s face.  

The something is back in his expression, and Albedo feels himself fracture even more, the growing imperfections of his body digging deeper and deeper with every passing second. The small flash in Kaeya’s eyes stirs something in Albedo, something sharper than the knife edge of a star. He knows Kaeya better than that— too well, in fact. It’s all a twisted game of fate, an illusion they both wear so effortlessly and yet neither of them can escape it.

Kaeya raises an eyebrow and winks, but Albedo can’t tell if Kaeya’s just letting out an extraordinarily long blink in his general direction. 

“Are my advances on the esteemed Albedo, renowned former Alchemist, and prodigy behind the screen really working?! Dear me, it seems my elaborate ploy and all the romantic outings have worked their magic!” The teasing tone of voice is back, and Kaeya removes both his hands to create more dramatics. Albedo pretends he doesn’t miss the feeling of them. 

 Kaeya’s grin softens into something sly. "Did I hit a nerve, or are you once again marveling at my devilishly good looks?"

Albedo exhales quietly, trying to compose himself, fixing his hair and brushing through the unruly texture.  

“If marveling means wondering how you managed to live this long with such unfounded confidence, then perhaps that is the case.” He retorts, tone sharp and calculating, while his expression is anything but.

Kaeya let out an exaggerated laugh, leaning casually against Albedo’s side. "Unfounded? You wound me, truly. But I’ll accept the compliment," he says, his voice honeyed and teasing.

“As if you don’t already get enough of those.” He hears laughter and cannot help but smile. 

Kaeya watches him for a moment, his grin unfaltering, though his gaze softens in that way Albedo has come to recognize—not pitying, not mocking, but something far more inscrutable. "Careful, Albedo. One day, you might find that sharp wit of yours turning on yourself."

Albedo glances at him, adjusting the elastic in his hair with measured precision. "I could say the same for you." 

Kaeya’s laughter is low and rich and undeniably real, and Albedo finds it to be the most beautiful thing he’s ever heard. A sound that sends warmth through the cool, almost sterile room. 

"Touché," he replies, straightening. His movements are casual, almost lazy, yet too precise to be careless.

"I suppose I'll leave you to your musings for now. Though" he leans in just enough to make Albedo’s breath hitch again, "I’ll take this as another step in the right direction for our blossoming relationship."

Before Albedo can reply, Kaeya steps away, his back already turned as he offers an inherently warm smile accompanied by a wave over his shoulder. "Good night, my dearest Albedo."

The door shuts behind him with a soft click.

For a moment, silence stretches through the room, interrupted only by the faint hum of machinery. Albedo’s gaze shifts to the shattered pen, the ink staining his desk, and then to the door Kaeya had just disappeared through. There’s an invisible weight lingering in the air as Albedo looks back at his screen— vast, cold, unreachable— and that discomfort churns somewhere deep within his chest. He doesn’t want to look at Kaeya ever again and doesn’t know how to do anything but look at Kaeya. Doesn’t know how much longer he can hang onto this illusion of normality before it all comes crumbling to his feet. 

(Despite it all, throughout the sharp and unyielding something stabbing into him, his fingers brush over the edge of the ink-stained table, his lips curve into the faintest hint of a smile despite himself.)

 ✩₊˚.

“Do you ever feel thirsty?” 

He does not need to explain who he is referring to, nor does he need to elaborate on the vague phrase. Albedo knows what he intends to convey with those few words, and he knows Kaeya knows, too. 

“Albedo,” A shadow falls over him, obscuring the view of the sun and he squints open his eyes— slowly and letting himself adjust to the light— to see Kaeya leaning over him. He shivers and all too suddenly, he craves the sun’s warmth and wishes for Kaeya to remove himself from his position for the sun to warm him up. He wishes for Kaeya to come closer to wrap his arms around him and never let him go. “That sounds extraordinarily ominous, even for someone as brooding as you, dearest Albedo. What’s the matter?” 

Kaeya is glowing with the afternoon sun shining behind him, an illusion of wings and a halo forming in the darker corners of his eyesight. A strand of ebony hair tumbles loose from his ponytail and tickles Albedo’s cheek, and Albedo is once again, feeling so strongly, the traitorous, selfish desire to be closer. It would be so easy; to raise himself, perched on his elbow, place a tentative hand at the back of Kaeya’s head, fingers curling into the stray pieces of hair at the nape of Kaeya’s neck, and lean in. As though they were in love. As though Kaeya could want him in the devouring way Albedo wanted Kaeya. 

He stares up at Kaeya, lost. 

“Albedo,” Kaeya’s voice is so gentle it hurts, squeezing him. Albedo cannot help but feel as though his name was nothing special. But when whispered so intimately from Kaeya’s lips, he thinks it's the prettiest it could ever sound, the prettiest name in the entirety of Teyvat. “What’s the matter?” 

Albedo pulls away. 

He turns his head away, to the opposite direction of his sun, and looks up at the false sun that seems so much colder than it did two seconds ago. Stares so hard at the spinning ball of light that the edges of it fade in and out of focus. Kaeya’s voice echoes harshly in his ears. It murmurs against his heart. He cannot look at Kaeya. He cannot look at anything but Kaeya. 

Albedo wonders when Kaeya was as necessary to his existence as food, and he cannot let it go. 

The black of his vision swirls and morphs into a particularly cruel mockery of the man beside him. The Kaeya of his imagination whispers to him. 

‘You could have lived if you’d just let me go.’ He stares at the false Kaeya. Takes a breath in, imagining a life where he didn’t encounter at all a Kaeya Alberich, and finds that he can’t let that air go. That his lungs forget how to function at the mere thought of living a life without Kaeya Alberich. 

‘If I let you go, I would die a slow death. Living without you wouldn’t be living at all because it’s only with you that I truly feel alive.’ 

Albedo feels himself become whole with Kaeya Alberich beside him. Albedo felt something inside him fracture and split into a million pieces at the thought of being with Kaeya Alberich. 

He blinks and false Kaeya vanishes, instead replaced with a too-wide smile that shone with worry and a Kaeya Alberich that was entirely too real for his liking. He exhales, and it’s the clearest, crispest breath he’s taken in his entire life. 

       Later, though, Albedo feels the night air loosen his tongue. Watching the warm orange and red hues of the sunset make Kaeya look more ethereal than usual and confesses, “I feel parched, increasingly so as of late. Like I could drink all of the water in Teyvat and still end up thirsty.” 

 ✩₊˚.

The grass was soft under Albedo’s skin, a soft tickling sensation that he was hyper-aware of pressing against his clothing and bare skin as he stared up at the clouds. It seemed as though the Gods found his existence to be a cruel mockery of human life created by their divine hand, and cursed his lifetime with moments that made him crave death. 

The both of them, Albedo and Kaeya, as many have come to address them (Albedo doesn’t know when exactly they were associated as a package deal, but he remembers twinkling laughter merging with equally bright lights and countless sunsets witnessed through a window of a room he’s slowly begun to identify with as theirs and comes to the conclusion that he doesn’t quite want to know what made everyone else view them as such), are sprawled under a canopy of clouds, submerged in a moment that froze time entirely. 

He found it funny how this was the spot he would escape to so he could avoid the man lying beside him and found himself bringing a picnic blanket just large enough to fit the Abyss incarnate called Kaeya Alberich because of his hatred of the outdoors. 

How spoiled, Albedo thinks before realizing who the culprit was for making him this way. He coughs. 

They're lying under the stars, as they've often found themselves doing when he lets the question tumble from his pitiful attempt at existing in secrecy.

“What qualifies someone as human?” Regret fills his being, his skin thrumming with nerves and imaginary bugs crawling down his spine. He inhales, but his lungs contract midway, and he wheezes out a poorly concealed cough. 

The silence continues, stifling in its weight and oppressing in its continuance. Humiliation colours his face, and he opens his mouth to retract his statement. Correct an error before it defines him. 

“Hm. I would say love. All humans have hearts and, in turn, the ability to feel. That must be the qualifying factor, don't you think?” The quiet of his voice was interrupted by laughter between sentences, but Albedo heard the undercurrent of finality and honesty amidst the securing laughter. 

He rolled over gently to his side, staring at the slope of Kaeya’s face, heart fluttering in a devilish mockery of genuine emotion.

“You're the only person who's said that. I suppose it adds to your…personality?”

Startled laughter, inherently genuine compared to before, punched out of him in a way that surprised the owner. 

“Well, you have a heart, don't you?”

Yes , Albedo thinks, I’m looking right at it. 

He doesn't answer, uncertain as to how much he could spill without flaying himself open and leaving himself bare in front of the one person who truly ever saw him in his entirety. 

At that moment, rain begins to fall. Distantly, Albedo wonders if this is God’s way of apologizing for all the unfortunate experiences he's been put through. He vows to pray before bed once he gets home. 

His partner sits up, staring at the raindrops in the way a child would gaze at the first snowfall of the year, barely restrained wonder shining from their soul. 

He remembers the expression of distaste that would mar Kaeya’s features whenever the sound of rainfall would hit his office’s windows shortly after their first encounter. He also remembers the sight of his hand in Kaeya’s six moons ago after a conversation consisting of far too much honesty than he'd ever wanted to show another person. 

While Kaeya stares up at the stars, childlike glee splitting his face in an almost manic smile, Albedo watches the way the raindrops gather on the ends of Kaeya’s hair, slide to the end of his nose, to eventually make their way to the ground, and finds himself irrationally upset and jealous of the seemingly easy way the rain touches Kaeya’s skin. 

Perhaps it was the dark of the night— resembling the exact shade of starlight he'd recently grown immensely fond of— that emboldened him and quieted the constant churning of his thoughts. 

He pushes himself up by his elbows, clothes plastered uncomfortably against his skin, and leans slightly to his left. He keeps leaning until he feels ice-cold skin growing impossibly colder with the sudden downfall and feels the uncanny tensing of muscles as he makes contact with the other. 

It's far too late to take everything back, and he feels his mind clear completely when Kaeya relaxes under his weight. 

Idly, Albedo wonders which is farther: the distance from Teyvat to the false stars or the 5 centimeters between the tips of their fingers before frowning at himself. 

He closes his eyes, slowing his breathing in an imitation of slumber, and lets himself indulge in this moment, albeit selfishly. 

When the throes of darkness begin to creep into his bones and the relentless downpour of Celestia’s tears begins to lessen, he feels something brush against his cheek and hover uncertainly near his lips. He concludes that his selfish indulgence has caused hallucinations and finally lets sleep embrace him fully.

 ✩₊˚.

He’s walking down the streets of a crowded market one evening when he sees it. 

A couple, hunched over and crowded close in a booth of the closest restaurant, smiles soft and eyes alight with love and everything warm. The girl on the left, hair braided and messy, smiled, reached out, and pushed back the stray hair falling from the other’s forehead. The boy smiles, slow and unguarded, eyes falling shut like the gesture is familiar and welcome, as if the whole world had narrowed to that one point of contact. No spectacle. Just something small, and warm, and terribly alive.

Albedo slows; not enough to draw attention, but just enough to watch. 

He’s not sure why it catches him—why, of all the things he’s seen, this holds him in place like a hook beneath the ribs. It's ordinary. It’s nothing. Yet, there’s no performance in the way they look at each other. No spectacle. Just a quiet certainty that doesn’t need to announce itself. That, he thinks, is what strikes him. Not the affection, but the ease of it.

But then, most things worth remembering are.

There’s safety in how they look at each other. Something without rehearsal, without performance. Just the natural gravity of two people who have already decided there’s nowhere else they’d rather be. 

He wonders, absently, what that feels like—to be held in someone’s gaze without armor, without calculation. To be met with something simple and human, and not feel the need to prove his place inside it. To be wanted without contingency. To be chosen, not because of utility or consequence, but simply because.

There are moments with Kaeya.

Small ones. Unnamed. When Kaeya smiles like that.

Not at Albedo, but near him, looking at his shoulder and lips, but never directly into his eyes. When his voice loses its precision, his words no longer trace carefully against the air, but halting and rushed simultaneously, like he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to say everything he wanted. When the weight Kaeya wears perpetually like a second skin slips off his shoulders, even slightly, and something real and fractured shines through the kaleidoscope in his eyes. A word spoken softly when no one else is listening. The way his hand sometimes rests near Albedo’s, as if by accident, but stays longer than habit would suggest. The edge of something unspoken, something neither of them names, because names make things real, and reality has never been kind to either of them.

(Kaeya carries a name with too much weight behind it. Albedo was never given one that truly belonged to him.)

Albedo never says anything when it happens. He just listens. Memorizes. Stores it somewhere behind the silence.

He’s never been especially good at wanting things. Wanting implies you believe something could be yours.

Still, he thinks—if he could want anything, it might be that: to see Kaeya unshadowed. To know that the brief warmth he glimpses isn’t a trick of the light, but something that could survive beyond him. In those rare hours when the world forgets to look, Kaeya moves differently. Lighter. Realer. Like someone who might exist for his own sake and not someone else’s design. Like someone Albedo could—

He stops the thought before it finishes. Not because it’s dangerous, but because it’s tender.

He isn't made for that kind of tenderness.

The couple laughs again, heads tipped together. It’s nothing special—quiet, private—but it echoes in a place inside him that doesn’t have a name. The market is full of noise and motion. The smell of spices, the hum of lanterns warming to life. Behind him, the couple laughs again—low and private—and the world goes on.

But something about the way the boy leaned into that touch won’t leave him.

And when Albedo gets back home, he picks up a pen and begins to write.

 ✩₊˚.

Albedo has realized that love is a salve, not a cure. It isn’t a miraculous cure for a desolate equation or the only answer meant to be sought in life. It is a salve, a soothing balm to lessen the scorching burn that plagues you, a reprieve from an endless ache, a fleeting comfort against the unbearable weight of existing

Albedo is beginning to understand that and finds he doesn’t mind this alternative. 

So, when Kaeya waltzes into his office, a manila folder in hand and a far-too-guilty expression, Albedo feels the constant buzzing under his skin settle into a soft and erratic thump. 

When Albedo sees the folder's contents and spits out his coffee at the nearest object (Kaeya Alberich), he reads through it again and sees the bolded words on his sheet. 

“Joint Mission: Kaeya Alberich and Albedo Keindepriez — Ballroom Dance.” 

Denial is on the tip of his tongue, the seat behind his screen a gentle beckoning towards familiarity and he looks at Kaeya. 

He looks at Kaeya. When does he not? Sees the flicker of hope glimmer sporadically through his twinkling iris. 

And Albedo agrees. 

(Because when does he not?) 

 ✩₊˚.

The first thing Albedo notices upon entering the extravagantly decorated ballroom is the distinct feeling of being watched, which raises the hairs on the back of his neck. He looks around in intense nonchalance before feeling an arm wrap around his waist. 

He sighs. 

“Good evening, Kaeya.” The arm around his waist loosens before another joins it, and both tighten slightly, leading him towards the back table near the entrance. 

“How’d you know it was me?” 

“Only you would dare to do something this problematic in public, dear partner.” Kaeya laughs and it’s full-bodied; rich like the imported coffee’s worth half his paycheck, he insists on buying, and if Albedo listens close enough (when isn’t he?), he can hear the rippling undercurrent of bygone screams and intentional charm. His uncovered eye glitters like an expanse of stars, and Albedo is reduced to nothing but a stumbling astrologist full of endless affection towards constellations. 

“Come now, this is your first in-person mission, isn’t it?” Dumbly, Albedo nods and lets himself get ushered towards the pulled-back chair, barely sitting down before it was being pushed back to its spot and he was magically given a drink menu. “I’d recommend my personal favourites, but I’m sure you’d rather want to stay sober…but then again, it doesn’t hurt to soothe the nerves, does it?” 

Albedo wants to smack himself upside the head for bobbing his head like a chicken. He listens to Kaeya ramble on, concernedly intent on picking out his first drink of the night, until his fingers are being maneuvered to hold the cold press of a glass, and he blinks up at Kaeya’s unreasonably proud expression. 

“Thank you.” He pauses. Studies Kaeya. “What is it?” 

“Juice! Don’t worry, it’s not grape! I wouldn’t bestow that terrible fate upon you, my dear.” He shivers and lifts the glass to his mouth. Ice cubes bumped against the tip of his nose, and he put it down, swallowing the taste of mint. Was that lemon? The assassin sat next to him, nursing a tall glass of wine— presumably the most expensive one on the menu. 

“Would you like to accompany me on a walk, dearest Albedo?” 

Ornate chandeliers twinkled above the mass of people below, all sharp cuts of fabric and sweeping dresses. The ballroom exuded an extravagant warmth, one not meant to comfort but to lull its guests into the haze of disarming pleasantries and expensive wine. In one corner, a quartet hummed through an orchestrated lullaby. Albedo was going to compliment their playing until he looked past the disguise of the main cellist and saw the glittering green of Lisa’s eyes twinkling under the lights. Even though they worked under the same organization, Lisa was always someone he tried to avoid— her eccentric personality was too much for him to handle— but it brought slight comfort at this moment. That didn’t mean he’d complement her just yet. 

He sipped at his drink, soothing the phantom feeling of a headset on his head and a keyboard under his fingers when Albedo felt the weight of Kaeya’s arm resting against the curve of his waist, firm enough to dissuade any stray thoughts of detachment. 

The assassin guided him through the crowd, each step deliberate and composed, their pace leisurely. 

“That man over there, yes, the one with the wrinkles…”  Kaeya’s voice carried a playful lilt as he murmured inconsequential musings about the other attendees— “And that one right there, the woman in the ruby dress, yes her, she won and broke the hearts of three men in the past year! I’ve been invited to all her weddings!” — Albedo, simultaneously captivated and resisting the urge to throttle Kaeya in front of everyone, attempted to catalog every expression, every calculation subtly passing through Kaeya’s eye. 

His ease was carefully curated, and even during the slow-paced walk, Albedo could glimpse the flickers of analysis coated beneath the captivating charm. He wonders if this familiar understanding was something other people had learned or if their companionship was unattainable to anyone else. 

A glass clinks against another, and Albedo turns to look at the source of the noise. A man and a woman, draped in silks and luxury dripping from their fingertips, were no different from any other people attending this party. To the casual observer, the evening was a seamless display of opulence, all sparkling gowns and tailored suits gliding between gilded tables draped in silk.

But Albedo wasn’t a casual observer.

His eyes moved methodically across the room, cataloging every entrance, every guard stationed discreetly in the shadows, and every guest who lingered too long near potential exits. These were habits honed by years of working behind a screen, monitoring the movements of whoever he was paired up with from a safe, detached vantage point. 

Tonight, however, he wasn’t detached from the moment.

Tonight, he was here.

“Smile,” Kaeya urged under his breath. “Pretend you’re enjoying yourself. People are watching.”

“I am smiling,” Albedo countered, voice measured. He pointedly added a crease between his brows and turned down his lips.

Kaeya finally turned his head, a sly grin tugging at his lips. “I must be losing my touch, then,” Kaeya quipped, his voice dipped in faux melancholy. “I could have sworn that was a grimace.”

Albedo’s forced smile returned— this time with exaggerated happiness dripping from his teeth— and he inclined his head towards a passing guest looking curiously in their way. They frowned, miffed at the wink Kaeya shot in their direction, and internally, Albedo groaned. 

If he had just rejected the mission, his grimace didn’t need to masquerade as cordiality.

“See? That wasn’t so hard,” Kaeya teased, nudging Albedo lightly with his elbow. “Besides, we make a convincing couple, don’t we?”

Albedo side-eyed him, about to retort, when a heavy-breathing man approached. Kaeya grinned, unabashed, but any attempt at retort was preemptively halted as their target appeared—the “old boss man”, as Kaeya had irreverently dubbed him. Clad in a bespoke suit and trailing whispers of menace with each calculated step, he exuded the aura of someone accustomed to orchestrating horrors beneath polished civility. Albedo turned away deliberately, letting Kaeya initiate his charade.

From his periphery, Albedo caught sight of Kaeya’s deliberate posturing, now mid-conversation with the “boss man.” The distinction in Kaeya’s mannerisms was unsettling: his disarmingly open demeanor was now tinged with a gentle reverence he knew to be entirely counterfeit. Yet Kaeya’s fluidity served its purpose, as did Albedo’s comparative lack of consequence. Albedo sipped the juice Kaeya had insisted on earlier, unnoticed as he remained. His anonymity was both his shield and Kaeya’s strength—another calculated asset in this hazardous arena.

It was a glimmer of burgundy silk that drew his gaze anew, the boss man’s “unassuming” daughter slipping deftly across the dance floor. She approached with a level of poise that hinted she was unlike any assumptions her father might have woven about her compliance or ignorance. Her dress gleamed like lacquer under the chandeliers, and her hair was pinned back to reveal delicate features and sharp green eyes that seemed to cut through every layer of pretense. Albedo noted her sharp gaze, pinpointing his disguise almost immediately before angling herself towards him as though intending to engage him alone.

“Good evening,” she greeted, her tone both pleasant and guarded. “I’m so glad you could join us tonight.” She turned her smile on Albedo, a hint of something playful lurking beneath it. “And you must be the illustrious Kaeya Alberich’s partner.”

It took Albedo a fraction of a second to recall his communicative skills.. “It’s a pleasure to be here, the name’s Albedo. To whom do I owe the honour of meeting Miss..” 

“Vivienne,” she supplied smoothly, extending a hand. Albedo shook it carefully, her grip firm and businesslike. Her eyes briefly flicked toward Kaeya. 

“Well,” she said, her lips curving into a smile that was as polished as it was practiced. “I must’ve done something particularly wonderful in my past life since I was granted the opportunity to catch the couple everyone’s curious about on their own. You’ve stirred up quite the intrigue.”

Kaeya turned on her the full force of his charm, his posture relaxed yet deliberate. “Curious? We’re just two humble men looking for good company and fine wine. Surely we don’t stand out that much.”

“I disagree.” Vivienne’s eyes gleamed as she glanced between him and Kaeya. “But I suppose we can leave the storytelling for later. In the meantime, might I borrow Albedo for a moment? Just a little dance. I’m sure you wouldn’t mind?”

Kaeya’s polite smile remained intact, though Albedo caught the faint tension in his jaw, the flicker of something unreadable in his eye. “Of course. I suppose I can survive one dance without my dearest Albedo. Besides, he would be delighted, wouldn’t he?”

Before Albedo could respond, Vivienne looped her arm through his and began leading him toward the center of the ballroom. Kaeya’s gaze burned into his back as they moved away, a tangible weight that made Albedo glance over his shoulder. Kaeya raised his glass in a mock toast, his expression one of faux ease that fooled no one.

As the music swelled, Vivienne guided Albedo into position, her movements fluid and precise. “He’s possessive, isn’t he?” she remarked, her tone light but edged with knowing.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Albedo replied, carefully keeping pace with her steps.

Vivienne laughed softly, twirling once before returning to his arms. “Oh, you know exactly what I mean. Never, during my entire life of attending parties such as these, have I seen a man look at his lover in such a way.” 

Albedo’s lips pressed into a thin line, but he didn’t respond. He focused instead on the steps of the dance, counting the beats and scanning the room out of the corner of his eye. Vivienne followed his gaze, her smile softening.

“You’re not like the others here,” she said after a moment. 

“I’m flattered by the observation,” he said carefully.

She laughed again, though this time there was an undercurrent of something raw. “It wasn’t meant to flatter. Just the truth. People like you...I envy you.”

Albedo’s brow furrowed, but before he could ask what she meant, Vivienne leaned in slightly, her tone dropping. “I know why you’re really here.”

His heart skipped a beat, though he kept his expression carefully blank. “I’m afraid I don’t follow” 

“Don’t worry,” she said, her gaze flicking past his shoulder toward the far end of the room. “I’m not going to expose you. I’m certain I have something that would aid you.” 

The tension in Albedo’s chest eased slightly, though he didn’t let his guard down entirely. “Help with what?”

She hesitated for the briefest moment before replying. “Come with me. It is not something I can just say.” 

His pulse quickened, but he forced himself to remain calm. “Why would you tell me this?”

Vivienne’s smile wavered, and for the first time, her polished mask cracked, revealing a flicker of vulnerability. “Because what I’m about to show you doesn’t belong in this world. Here, under the extravagant chandeliers bought at the price of others' suffering. Just as I don’t. And maybe, if you take what it is I’m about to show you away from here, it’ll make up for the part of me that’s much too cowardly to leave.” 

Albedo clears his throat and speaks in a voice too loud for the moment. 

“I’d love to join you on a tour of the establishment. How courteous of you, Miss Vivienne.” 

Vivienne gave him a satisfied smile and motioned toward a smaller door at the far end of the ballroom. “Follow me.”

They glance back at Kaeya, see the question hidden behind mirth in his gaze and Albedo tilts his head in the direction of the staircase and taps the hidden earpiece behind his hair innocently. Albedo sees the way Kaeya’s shoulders fall slightly in what he labels to be relief.  

The moment they were out of the main room, the atmosphere shifted drastically. The air grew cooler, and the distant noise of the ballroom faded into muffled echoes. Vivienne let them walk with quick, purposeful steps through the winding hallway. Her heels were near-silent in a feat that left Albedo momentarily in awe. They walked in silence until she stopped abruptly in front of an unassuming bookcase. 

She traces her finger along the ebony wood of the second shelf from the top, and slowly the case shifted over to the left, and she breathed in shakily. 

“I don’t trust people easily,” she murmured, her tone stripped of the polish she wore in public. “But what my father’s done is unforgivable. This way.”

When they walked through the dark corridor and he heard the quiet shift of the bookcase returning back to its original spot, Albedo wasn’t sure what to expect, but the small figure huddled in the corner of the room sent a pang straight through his chest. A young girl, barely five years old, her hair a wild mess of bright blond strands, looked up at them, her bright red eyes filled with fear.

“This is Klee,” Vivienne said quietly. “She’s my father’s leverage, and she deserves a chance to live outside his reach.”

Albedo knelt cautiously, offering a small smile. The words slipped past his lips almost instinctively. “Hey there, Klee. You’re safe now.”

The girl stared at him wide-eyed, but as Kaeya stepped protectively to block the door behind them, she reached out tentatively, her tiny hands clutching Albedo’s as though they were her lifeline. 

He taps on the earpiece again and hears the crinkle of static shift and rumble until Kaeya’s voice peaks through. “We move now, don’t we?” he murmured, the chatter of the crowd around him drowning out his unnoticeable whisper. 

Vivienne speaks for Albedo, tells Kaeya she’ll bring him to the other two, and to be quick with whatever business he has left. 

The girl is shaking in his arms and takes off his coat to drape over her as they wait in trepid silence for Miss Vivienne to return with Kaeya. 

When they do arrive, it’s with both of them looking unnaturally grim. “They’re suspicious of us. We need to move quickly.” He nods, shoulders tensing briefly in concern when Vivienne approaches him again. 

He was uncertain what to expect—but it was certainly not for her to smirk slyly, close enough to murmur, “Your boyfriend doesn’t like me holding your hand.”

Albedo stiffened in an almost comical wave of disbelief. “I don’t…”

“Oh?” she interjected smoothly, arching a brow as she purposefully dragged a finger across his wrist in a painfully suggestive pantomime. “Then why does his glare seem sharper than the blade in his hands?”

Despite himself, Albedo glanced instinctively. Kaeya’s attention, while seamlessly divided among several voices outside their location and all possible escape routes, was unmistakably hooked on this encounter. His brow, ever poised, appeared taut with restrained irritation. Albedo sighed audibly.

“He’s…”

Albedo’s throat worked as if to reply, but her departing figure offered no opportunity. The distance back to Kaeya felt insurmountable under the weight of the moment. Yet he wasted no time, seizing the erratic pulse surging beneath his surface and transforming it into icy precision.

The girl was small. Her wide eyes blinked up at Albedo, her bravery more pointed and cutting than any blade. Instinct took over, pulling her into his arms. Kaeya’s expression flickered, a thread of something tender unraveling for an instant before his features set into a far darker edge. 

“Vivenne, how would you feel taking up a position in our small club of ragtag heroes?” 

“My, it would be my honour.” 

“Very good. Now, your initiation ceremony’s task will be to help me remove the obstacles your father is sending this way. 

“Of course! A quick question before we start?” 

“Come at me, darling.” 

“Can I steal your boyfriend if I pass?

“Absolutely not.” 

“Worth a try.” 

“Albedo dearest, do stay with the child.” 

“Yes, Albedo dearest, please do stay with the child.” 

“You sly… stop copying me.”

“Stop copying me, Sir Alberich.” 

“Thievery. Dearest Albedo told me identity theft is considered a terrible crime.” 

“You dare insinuate a lady to stoop as low as mockery? How cruel, Sir Alberich,” She fastened the draping sash of her dress up with a pin. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say what we’re planning to do to the obstacles is a worse crime that stealing a gaudy personality.”  

“If I weren’t fighting the urge to take back my offer, I would’ve said I quite like your spirit, Vivienne.” 

“So charitable of you.” 

They take their positions around Albedo as he hoists Klee up in his arms and they make their way out of the secret passage and to the nearest window. The glass is removed from the pane when the first dagger digs into the wall right by Albedo’s face. 

“Oh and Vivienne, one last thing before we fight to our hopefully not doom,” She looks questioningly at Kaeya who broke the silence. “I may have drugged your father and he may possibly die in the next 3 hours.” 

“How joyful. No more dinner parties, I suppose.” 

And then the fight begins. 

     Albedo had never seen Kaeya fulfill his duties without the barrier of a screen. He would see the twirling of his blade through a green haze, with burning eyes too focused to blink, and his heart would stutter erratically in his chest. When the blade would strike heart, he would close his eyes, take his earpiece off, and wait the routine count of three before resuming his position, continuing to watch Kaeya Alberich work in a state of intense reverie. 

Now, though, pressed against the ballroom walls, a child huddled in his arms and the palms of his hands pressed against her ears, Albedo couldn't do any of that.

He's used to death, working in his line of profession far too long to be squeamish at the sight of blood and death. It was the cold and calculated indifference in Kaeya's expression that made Albedo tremble. 

He knew then that there was a stark difference in how Kaeya looked at him and how he looked at others. It made his heart flutter with a violent hope that seemed to churn and boil and rise until it lodged itself in his throat. Kaeya looked at him like he was a person worth his attention, and Albedo flinched at the realization that he couldn't remember when Kaeya ever looked at him with anything but. 

He knew then that he wanted Kaeya, without the Alberich. —Kaeya Alberich was the bewitching assassin with a cruel heart, and Kaeya Alberich was too distant for Albedo to love. Kaeya was simply another casualty caught up in the throes of battle, a young, fearful boy wearing the clothes of a withering man, just as Albedo had.— 

He knew then that Kaeya Alberich was never someone he would be able to have at all. 

Albedo remembers the last time he ever indulged in hope. 

(It had hurt. So much so that he never wanted to go through that again.) 

It was beautiful in its prime, warm and wondrous, and Albedo clung to it; it was something that he used to desperately attempt to climb to return to the surface above the restless waves that constantly submerged him. 

As most things are crafted by human hands, there are faults. He didn’t realize how hard he’d clung to that rope until it snapped. 

(He felt the ache, residual and all-encompassing, and thought he knew better. Knew not to hope again.) 

He doesn’t want to hope anymore. Albedo knows it’s just going to hurt more, that the rope will snap once more, and he’d never recover, fall too deep into the waves until he could no longer find a way back up. 

But the safehouse was quiet. 

Steeped in the kind of quiet that only existed in the absence of adrenaline, soggy like tea leaves left to soak for too long. Everything from outside the safehouse was muffled, filtered into white noise through the reinforced walls, and the only remnants of the extravagant party they’d escaped from were their attire and the gash on Kaeya’s arm that steadily let drops of blood fall onto the carpet. 

Albedo sat on the edge of the worn sofa, shakily disinfecting the wound (desperately trying to move past the subtle flinch from the press of disinfectant against Kaeya’s arm) and carefully wrapping a bandage around Kaeya’s forearm, and eventually the tremor subsided with the methodical wrapping of the startlingly white bandage.

The air was fragile around the pair, like it would shatter and pierce them both with one wrong move. Albedo looks over at Klee in worry and smiles. She was curled up in the pile of blankets, her small form rising and falling in steady breaths, at peace for the first time, and the discomfort in his chest lightens as he looks back in Kaeya’s direction. 

He seemed haggard, more disoriented than Albedo’s ever seen him, and it puzzled him as to why. 

“You’re staring.” 

“I am not.” But he doesn’t stop looking at Kaeya— takes in the more prominent wince as Albedo pulls the bandage taut and watches the way Kaeya watched him throughout it all. It's stifling, the tension between them, and he does everything within his power not to look away.

There was a look in Kaeya’s eyes— devouring and fervent in its need, and Albedo wanted so badly to ask what made Kaeya look at him like that. He opens his mouth to ask, eyes wide and stinging, and hands trembling in his lap. 

“You should’ve been more careful,” Is all he ends up saying.

“And miss out on leaving an impression? Perish the thought.” Kaeya replied, the teasing lilt of his voice weaker than usual. His uncovered eye flashed with a mix of amusement and disappointment, but his shoulders started to tremble with exhaustion.

“It’s within reason to assume you can impress people without getting stabbed,” Albedo said, voice quiet as he adjusted the loosening bandage. 

“Oh? Are you trying to hint at me that I’ve won over your approval?” He didn’t answer, choosing to poke and prod at the bruise on Kaeya’s wrist until he made a noise of protest. Once he checked the bandage for the nth time and ended up satisfied with his work— able to remove his hands without the ever-present tremble—,  Albedo reached past Kaeya for a damp cloth to clean any remnants of blood off the assassin. His fingers ghosted over Kaeya’s palm, careful and deliberate. Trail up until they hover over the maroon streak under Kaeya’s uncovered eye. He inhales sharply, cleaning the blood with achingly gentle movements and reverently thumbing at the skin under his fingers. The proximity felt heavier than it should, and their breaths nearly synchronized until Kaeya finally broke the silence.

“You care too much,” Kaeya said, the words hanging between them like an accusation and a compliment all at once.

Albedo exhales. Takes in a gasp of air and smiles. “Someone has to.”

Across the room, Klee stirs in her sleep, face scrunched up with discomfort as she shifts restlessly in her blanket-tower. To his surprise, Kaeya reached over and rhythmically pats her head— occasionally brushing her bangs back— until her expression smoothed out. Kaeya turns back to him, her face beginning to flush in embarrassment as the silence stretches. 

“I’ve realized that I don’t like babysitting.” Albedo laughs, standing up and beginning to clean up all the supplies on the table. Putting them back into the cupboard and looking back to make sure Klee was still sleeping soundly, he made his way back to the sofa, stopping at Kaeya’s feet. 

“Would you like to accompany me on a walk, Kaeya?’ He threw the other’s words back at him, reveling in the irony of the phrase and holding back his smile at the quiet acceptance that came with Kaeya standing up. They made it to the balcony— one he had frowned at before being told it was surrounded by a material that camouflaged them— when Albedo felt the words climbing up his throat. 

“I used to watch you.”

He coughs. 

There was a cracking noise, and Albedo looked up to see Kaeya staring at him, neck turned in his direction. 

“I do hope there’s an explanation waiting for me, dearest Albedo.”

Albedo decides to look at the greenery. It’s quite green, those…what even were they? A botanical experiment gone wrong and thrown here to be forgotten? 

“I wanted to figure you out.” It was unbearably vulnerable, the way he answered. 

“Did you?” Kaeya’s voice broke the quiet, hesitant but tinged with something deeper, something fragile. “Did you ever figure me out?”

Albedo leaned against the railing, looking out at the stars, and traced the wood grain with slow, deliberate movements. He smiled—small, but more genuine than anything else. “Not at all.”

Kaeya let out a breath, soft and barely audible over the distant noises of the world outside their bubble. 

“I–” 

An explosion split the night, drowning Kaeya’s words before they could land. Fireworks—brilliant streaks of crimson, violet, and gold—scattered across the sky in dazzling bursts, their sharp cracks and whistles swallowing the world. The display was an ostentatious showcase of wealth meant to dazzle the people gathered in the ballroom’s garden. 

For a moment, neither of them spoke. They simply watched, the flickering lights painting their faces in fleeting flashes. Kaeya turned toward him, the reflections of the fireworks catching in his irises—a swirl of vivid colors that made the shadows in his gaze even more profound.

When the final roar quieted and the night began to settle, Albedo remembered that  Kaeya had spoken.

“What did you say?” 

“Nothing important.” His tone was careful, expression shuttering before his smile returned. Albedo hated how it didn’t reach his eyes in the way it did just seconds ago. “Just,” Kaeya leaned in slightly, his voice quieter. “There’s blood on your cheek.”

Albedo wiped his cheek, glancing at his fingertips as they came back faintly stained red. 

A final firework, soft and golden, flickered across the night sky and washed Kaeya in gold. Its dim light lingered on Kaeya’s face just long enough for Albedo to notice the shadow in his smile


“Right,” he murmured, his voice even, distant. Kaeya didn’t move, his expression frozen in a careful calm that made the space between them feel impossibly vast. “Thank you.” 

 ✩₊˚.

Albedo wondered if this was what it felt like to be haunted by someone who was still alive. 

Wondered what his life had come to as he stared at the chips in the wood of a door that never opened around him. 

Wondered what exactly he did— didn’t do to make Kaeya ignore him. 

He pulled out the paper from his coat pocket and slid it under the door. Watched as the simple lines of a half circle and a geometric eyepatch with a tiny heart and question mark beside the grinning upside-down triangle of a smile disappeared. Smiled as he heard the gentle sound of paper being held and smoothed out. 

(Missed the thump of a body slumping against the door as he walked away. Resolute.)

 ✩₊˚.

After one of his creator’s adventures in Inazuma, she returned with a book called a light novel. She’d given it to him and told him it’d help him answer his questions. 

(In there, he’d read a phrase that he took a great liking to;  

Koi no yokan.

A sense of impending love, not at first sight, but still akin to a spontaneous hit of lightning that would shock your mind until only one thing was clear: that you would, one day, love that person more than anything else.)

It was still a book he kept dear to him, for reasons that remained unclear to everyone else, and he watched with rapt attention as Kaeya read the book to Klee, pointing out the pictures and explaining what all the words meant, and flipped each page with such reverent affection and care. 

Something Albedo realized was that Kaeya had a way of playing with Klee that nobody else had. When Miss Lisa came around with clothes and toys, her touches were natural, second-nature as she entertained Klee, when Sucrose— his newest apprentice— would come by with weekly progress reports of the newest faction, stumbling over her words and almost always accompanied with a new sweet or drink for Klee, it was all within their nature, something they didn't worry over and did and casually as breathing. 

With Kaeya, it was different. 

His actions were awkward and hesitant, where Miss Lisa’s were habitual, shaking, where Sucrose’s were still. He would draw dragons and princesses, heroes and villains, and carry her on his shoulders as they ran about his office, a paper-chain flower crown on Klee’s head and a scribbled blue flower taped onto Kaeya’s eyepatch– “Now we match!” — as they defeated his paper creatures. He would hand her objects of different sizes and shapes, rings and bouncy balls, blocks, and plastic chains to throw on the floor and into the air before picking them up and handing them back, repeating this over and over until she grew tired and started tracing the grooves of each object. They would sort the items by colour, stack them in an order that only made sense to them, and build houses with the blocks to knock over with the bouncy balls— “Bombs away!!” “Klee!” They would sleep under the same blanket and wear matching braids. And Kaeya was so earnest. 

And Albedo knew, watching Kaeya's stilted but undeniably careful touches to pull back and clip Klee's bangs, that he was going to love him so much someday. 

Devouringly so. 

That was

Koi no yokan.

 ✩₊˚.

(There’s an emptiness in him. He feels the wind whistling through it, chilling his veins, replacing the gap where his heart should be. He’s not sure if he can ever fill that gap, if he can ever love anything as much as he does Kaeya, or if he can move on from such a consuming desire when the time ultimately comes. 

On the days he feels himself crumble, he thinks of Klee— her smiling face, wide red eyes that were starting to sparkle under the sunlight— and builds himself up. He is her rock, her pillar in the ruthless waves of life. If he were to crumble in front of her, so would she. So would everything else. 

It was his creator’s love for knowledge that ultimately killed her, albeit metaphorically. Sometimes, he thinks his love for Kaeya will kill him too.)

 ✩₊˚.

They don’t talk about it. 

The silence that abruptly ended after a couple of days, the unruly state of Albedo’s hair that only returned to a semblance of propriety after that chipped wooden door’s lock unclicked. 

Albedo doesn’t think they’ll ever talk about it. It’s how they’ve always been; the normal for them that had been established in invisible ink right above their signatures written on that contract long ago. But in the safehouse, a week into sharing the same space, the same air, made everything collapse until he stood in the ruined remains of his preferred reality. 

He didn’t know if this new normal of theirs (the sleep-tinged grumbling in the mornings as he handed Kaeya coffee in a mug they had purchased during their latest grocery haul— Celestia forbid him having a normal day, you know, not doing something as ordinary and intimate as comparing the prices over salted and unsalted butter for their breakfast and instead, helping random trained murderers and law-breakers commit crimes for the sake of a fairer world. As one does. Or the softened looks and Celestia, the gentle touches that were so unlike the casual, flirtatious drags of his fingers against his clothed arms that make his heart lurch painfully in Kaeya’s direction. Like it was trying to get closer to the reason it continues to beat so strongly), there was an unspoken shift, a fragile floor of glass they challenged with every passing day their little fami--– ragtag group stayed in the safehouse. 

It was disorienting. He didn’t understand, didn’t know what to do and what not to, and it jumbled into a pile of something in his head that almost sounded like— 

—An unspoken confession. 

Worse, an invitation. One, he doesn’t know how to accept, doesn’t know what to do with, didn’t decline, and hasn’t acknowledged, like some cowardly Schrödinger’s cat of emotional honesty that he hopes never rears its head again. 

The thought looped again as Kaeya shifted next to him on the blanket, their shoulders brushing. No gloves. No excuse. Just warmth.

“Do you think ants have a concept of territory?” Kaeya murmured, watching Klee defend the sandwiches from a particularly determined trail of them. 

“Die foul being! You’re here-tie banister from my sandwiches and can no longer attack my big brothers on their wedding day! Stop, not the cake! They still have to cut that!!” She waves around her cardboard sword— one Kaeya fashioned out of their now-empty cereal box remains (some off-brand with distorted rainbow beings that Klee claims are unicorns and Kaeya calls donkey) — at the ants who’ve made their way to the desserts they’d brought and Albedo tries his hardest to block out the chime of weddings bells and the mental image of Kaeya walking up to him at the altar and Klee throwing bombs down the aisle instead of flowers. 

Albedo blinks. “Ants are territorial. Highly. They establish territories through marking and exploration. Primarily done by Scout ants who venture from the nest and explore the area around them. Once they find a suitable location, the marks are laid down in the form of pheromone trails to create boundaries for their newly established territory. These chemical markers serve as the guide for all the other ants in the colony to navigate towards the new environment, hence the approaching hoard—” 

Kaeya hums like that was exactly the answer he was hoping for, and he wanted to spend his afternoon on a hill listening to Albedo talk about ant pheromones, even though Albedo suspects the question was never about ants but can’t quite place the alternate option. 

And this —this gentle absurdity—they’re pretending it’s always been like this. That the soft gravity between them isn’t new. That he didn’t catch Kaeya watching him sleep three mornings ago, like he was afraid he might disappear.

He realizes it’d always been like this, just not to this extent. And he takes that realization as well as one can. (e.g. promptly launches himself toward the ant colony and pictures his wedding being crashed by dragon-sized Scout ants spraying pheromones at them and revels in the shriek of surprise from Klee at her big brother’s potential descent into madness and Kaeya’s more subdued, but still alarmed, grunt before he catches him and sets him back, blessedly more than a singular foot away from Kaeya Alberich.) 

“Albedo!” Klee chirps, crumbs in her hair. “Try the jelly sandwich! It’s the not-burnt one! And there’s no ants in it!” The man in question pointedly ignores the scrambling ants and the less unfortunate specks on his now ant-infested blanket that he, with equal parts guilt at raising such a violent creature, and morbid curiosity at whether or not ant-shaped stains can be washed out. 

He accepts the sandwich, his fingers sticky, his heart unguarded. He takes a bite, and it tastes too sweet. Doused in honey, powdered sugar, and the twinkling mirth in Kaeya’s eye. Everything seems too sweet these days. 

He watches Kaeya laugh when Klee insists the wind is playing favorites with the napkins. Watches the corner of his mouth twitch like he’s holding back something dangerous—maybe a smile, maybe a truth.

And Albedo wonders—not for the first time, not for the last—

If this is what falling in love feels like when you’re built from chalk, the ramblings of someone with too much intellectual capabilities, 3 exploded beakers, and bone-deep loneliness.

If maybe, just maybe,

you don’t have to understand it

to want it to keep happening.

     The stars have begun to twinkle, Klee’s excited squealing has quieted down to drool-laced snores, the cake— if you can call it that— they’d brung out for dessert had been conquered by the ants who’d previously retreated and executed a surprise attack, and his hair had fallen out of its braid so beautifully and naturally that Kaeya’s hands shook with the need to re-do it and Albedo was helpless to his whims. 

He feels a tug on his hair and looks up at the stars in an unspoken question. His hands ghost over Klee’s unruly hair as he waits for Kaeya to speak. Albedo sits between them, cross-legged, a pressed flower caught in the draft of something he can’t quite name. 

Kaeya doesn’t answer out loud. Just hums again, low in his throat, fingers gentle as they twist the strands back into some vague approximation of order. Albedo doesn’t move. The stars are too many tonight. Klee’s soft snoring is a lullaby, the grass damp beneath him, and Kaeya’s hands—

Kaeya should’ve pursued a career in a remote spa resort on the beaches of the tropics he’s always waxing poetic about. 

“You’re not going to fall asleep on me too, are you?” Kaeya says, teasing but quiet, as if louder words might tip the moment over and shatter it.

Albedo considers it. “Possibly. But I’m more concerned about your structural integrity. You are currently functioning as my pillow and are doing a poor job by talking.”

Kaeya chuckles, and it vibrates through him like a soft quake, like warmth soaking into stone.

“I shall work tirelessly to improve my service to you.”

He says it so easily. So simply. Like it means nothing at all.

Albedo doesn’t reply. Just lets the silence stretch, lets it wrap around them like another blanket. Lets Kaeya finish the braid and press his knuckles, accidentally-on-purpose, against the back of his neck.

And for the first time in weeks—maybe months—Albedo doesn’t feel like he needs to categorize the moment.

He can just exist in it.

Even if it’s fleeting. Even if it’s fragile.

Because for now, the stars are kind, the ants have retreated, and Kaeya’s fingers are still in his hair.

Then those fingers pause. Linger.

Soft. Thoughtful. Cautious in the way a trembling hand is before it sets down a blade. His palm brushes the nape of Albedo’s neck, then lingers like he doesn’t want to let go.

Albedo turns his head, just slightly, and finds Kaeya already watching him.

The space between them shrinks, almost imperceptibly. Like gravity forgot how to be impartial. Like the universe held its breath.

The stars blur around the edges of Kaeya’s face. His silhouette is all edges softened by moonlight, every detail drawn with the hesitance of someone who wants more than they’re allowed to have. His expression is unreadable in the starlight—half-lidded eyes, winged liner smudged in spots, and lips parted like he was about to say something and forgot how. Albedo thinks: Oh.

Oh no.

He doesn't move. He doesn't trust himself to.

And yet Kaeya does. Just a little.

Just enough that their foreheads almost touch, enough that Albedo can see the reflection of stars in his eyes, can taste the next words before they’re spoken.

Kaeya’s breath ghosts across his lips. Warm. Familiar. Devastating.

“Albedo,” he murmurs, like it’s a confession and a question all at once.

And Albedo—who's survived supernovas in his chest, who’s dissected the world and rebuilt it with steadier hands—feels himself tremble.

He tilts his chin up. Just barely.

Their noses brush.

And then—

“GUYS! BAD NEWS! THE ANTS TOOK KLEE!!”

Albedo jerks back like he’s been electrocuted. Kaeya chokes on a sound that might be laughter or despair or both, and somewhere downhill, Klee can be heard yelling, “KLEE HAS BECOME THE QUEEN OF ANTS!” 

A beat of silence.

Then Kaeya sighs. “We should probably go get her.”

Albedo nods, dazed. “Before she declares war on the squirrels again.”

They don't talk about what almost happened. Of course they don't.

Albedo doesn't move. Doesn’t breathe. Everything that was paused hangs between them like a wound.

Kaeya finally meets his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and it’s the first thing he’s said all night that sounds honest . It sounds unfinished, like he wants to continue but cannot bring himself to. 

Then he’s on his feet. Calling out to Klee, stuffing leftover sandwiches into a bag, scanning the dark like someone expecting it to rise up and devour them whole.

Albedo stays seated on the blanket for a moment longer. Feels the ghost of Kaeya’s hand still tangled in his hair. Hears all the things they didn’t say whisper through the silence like falling ash.

The stars watch, impassive.

And Albedo thinks:

I would’ve let you ruin me.

If we had just a little more time.

 ✩₊˚.

         Klee is asleep in her bed, ant-free, squirrel-free, and cleaned of any residual food traces when they get the alert. 

Kaeya was hovering beside Albedo as he tucked the blanket under Klee’s chin and pushed back her hair, when all of a sudden, the subtle buzz of his communication device broke the warmth of the situation. 

Albedo stands up straight, Kaeya jerks back, hand already on his communicator. His eyes flash—cold, alert, trained.

Albedo watches the transformation with something like grief in his throat.

Kaeya answers, voice clipped. “Alberich.”

A beat.

Then his expression darkens.

“We need to move— Get Lisa to watch Klee until we’re back. They want us both.” 

Silence.

And then an unsettling, unwarranted feeling of dread pools in his gut.

 ✩₊˚.

They enter the warehouse in silence. 

It’s cold inside—colder than it should be. The air smells of ozone, old oil, and stale paint. The building's steel bones groan under their own weight, and the silence feels like something watching. The footsteps echo like distant gunfire. Each step bounces off rusted beams and broken scaffolding, fading into the building's throat like it’s swallowing them whole.

Albedo’s voice is the first to break the stillness. “Well,” he says, stepping lightly over a collapsed support beam, “Either someone’s already been here or your source was wrong.” He walks a few paces ahead, light on his feet, scanning the room with that same sharp-eyed grace he always wears. He keeps one hand on the dagger in his pocket, the other trailing the wall like he’s trying to read it with his fingertips.

Kaeya follows a few paces behind. His footsteps are measured. Too careful. “Sources can be wrong,” he replies.

Albedo casts him a glance. “Yours are never wrong. Neither are the corp’s intel.” 

That earns him nothing but a vague shrug. Kaeya’s eyes drift along the ceiling, scanning rusted girders, shattered windows, anywhere but Albedo’s face.

They walk deeper in. The light from outside shrinks behind them.

“It’s abandoned,” he murmurs. “Or it may be that someone wants us to believe it is.”

Kaeya doesn’t answer.

He’s behind him, half in shadow, half in sunlight bleeding through the windows, beautiful in that distant, dangerous way that always felt more like prophecy than presence.

Albedo glances back. “You’re quiet.”

Kaeya’s gaze lifts. He smiles — or at least, pretends to — but it’s all teeth and none of the charm. “My, I think I’m capable of being quiet at times, don’t you think? From all those missions you assisted me with, where I was completely silent, it’s so hurtful to hear you say that like it’s something new.” 

Albedo doesn’t smile back. “It feels different this time.” 

Kaeya looks at him for a long time. Then, looks through him and says nothing.

They walk further into the heart of the place. 

The dust on the ground is undisturbed and the lights overhead flicker. Even this far in, where normal police and investigators wouldn’t go, there are no signs of life.

“Kaeya are you sure—” He stopped walking when he realized Kaeya wasn’t walking right behind him. 

“Kaeya..?” 

Kaeya stands still in the center of the room — motionless, unnatural, eyes shadowed beneath the edge of his fringe. His hand is at his side, fingers curling around something. 

Albedo’s breath catches in his throat. 

And before he can even blink, Albedo is on the floor.

The concrete slams into him like betrayal. The impact knocks the breath from his lungs. Before he can move, Kaeya is above him, one knee pressed to his chest, blade drawn, cold metal glinting, and resting against the side of his neck.

The warehouse is silent again.

Only Kaeya’s harsh, panicked breaths break it.

Albedo doesn’t move. His pupils are blown wide with surprise, mouth slightly parted as if caught mid-thought. A second ago, they were conversing. 

Now the blade is pressing against his throat.

“…Oh,” he breathes.

Kaeya is shaking. Not visibly. Not in the way anyone else would notice. But Albedo feels it — in the tremor of the hand holding the blade. In the tension in Kaeya’s shoulders, like he’s seconds away from shattering into jagged, bloody regret.

There’s blood on Kaeya’s lip where he’s bitten it. His free hand clenches into the fabric of Albedo’s coat, knuckles white.

“Kaeya?” 

Kaeya’s jaw clenches. His eyes won’t meet his. “Don’t—” His voice cracks and cuts off. “Don’t say anything.”

Albedo blinks once. Slowly. His body is still tense beneath Kaeya’s weight, but there’s no struggle in him. “So this is what it was,” he whispers. “I was the mission.”

Kaeya doesn’t answer. His hand trembles harder, and the edge of the blade presses a little closer, just enough to sting. Just enough to make Albedo flinch. Even then, Albedo lets go of his hold on the dagger in his pocket. 

Kaeya’s teeth grit like he’s holding back a scream. “Why aren’t you fighting me?”

Albedo exhales. Slow. Controlled. He looks up at him with something dangerously close to peace.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” 

That breaks something. Kaeya’s jaw tightens, and for the first time in a long time, he looks like someone cornered by himself .

“You were supposed to be easy,” Kaeya says, voice splintering. “Just a name. You were never supposed to look at me like I mattered.”

Albedo lifts a hand — slowly, cautiously — and brushes a lock of Kaeya’s hair behind his ear. His thumb lingers at the edge of Kaeya’s jaw.

“You do.”

Kaeya lets out a sound, low and raw, and closes his eyes like it physically hurts to be seen.

Albedo’s voice cracks now, too. “You mattered to me even when I knew what I felt for you was wrong. Even when we continued to play pretend for Klee. I chose to believe the version of you that stayed, that played evil dragon gets bombed by awesome spark knight late into the day, even when you had files and missed calls waiting to be attended to.” 

The knife presses closer. Kaeya’s hand is shaking now, openly.

Kaeya squeezes his eyes shut.

“I didn’t want to—” He chokes. “Albedo–” 

“I know,” Albedo says, and his voice breaks around the edges. “I know.”

The blade doesn’t move.

Neither does Kaeya.

The moment stretches, fragile and infinite, straining beneath the weight of everything that was never said.

Then, softly— intimate in the worst way:

“When you kill me, could you get back to Klee before she wakes up? And make her those pancakes she loves so much?” 

Kaeya’s breath shudders. He jerks his head in a hopeless echo of a nod. The blade rests against Albedo’s chest, just barely, not yet breaking skin, only creating a small divot in the fabric above Albedo’s heart. His hand won’t move. Can’t move. Blue eyes flicker, fractured by the storm behind them. Regret, fury, grief—none of it aimed at Albedo. All of it drowning him. Kaeya can’t look him in the eyes, and Albedo frowns. He reaches, pushes up Kaeya’s chin with the gentlest of touches, and waits for him to look. 

Those constellations looked down at him with the frosted gaze of shattered glass. Kaeya’s mouth opens. Closes. He blinks, swallows, and grimaces like something particularly sour was on his tongue and exhales shakily. 

Albedo only watches him. Calm. Steady. Patient. 

“It’s okay,” he says softly. “I’m glad it’s you, and I have a distinct assumption of you having no choice.”

Kaeya’s hands shook, and a sound ripped out of him that sounded more like a sob than the laugh he was aiming for. Albedo lifts one gloved hand and brushes Kaeya’s hair from his face, almost absentmindedly, like he’s memorizing the way it falls. Ages ago, in a moment of scrutiny and contracts, Albedo remembered being entranced by the shade of Kaeya’s hair, captivated by the way shimmering galaxies fell in front of exposed skin. Come to think of it, He hasn’t seen that artificial shimmer on Kaeya since the night of the party. Something about that revelation made everything feel more real. More memorable. Something achieved by the will of Kaeya without the weight of his burdens. 

Quieter, then; 

“My creator always told me to learn to love, and I, always believing I wasn’t human, didn’t feel I had the capacity to do so. I, they say, imitation is the sincerest form of emotion, and if that’s true, then I think I love you. I’m certain it’s not enough to be what you deserve, but I hope you’ll accept these shallow emotions of mine.” 

And for one second — one terrible , perfect second — he leans down. His forehead touches Albedo’s. Albedo reaches up, ignores the agonized, sharp inhale from Kaeya as he flinches back and tries to move the knife, and presses his lips against Kaeya’s. With it, the gentle, fleeting kiss, Albedo tastes Kaeya’s regret. It was cruel, forgettable, and nothing he imagined it to be. And something about all of that was perfect. 

Kaeya’s eye flies open. It’s glassy. Burning. Fractured galaxies.

But the knife is still there, and so is the mission.

And Kaeya was always going to lose.

Albedo’s will hardens. Before Kaeya can answer—before he can stop him—

(Albedo thinks its only fitting; the one to start his heart be the one to stop it. It’s gentle, soothing, in its own morbid way, something inherently them that it brings a smile to his face.)

He shifts forward, hand tightening just once over Kaeya’s, and drives the blade into his own heart.

Chapter Text

Kaeya Alberich had learned how to make himself become many things. 

A son. 

A brother. 

A traitor. 

A friend. 

A killer.

(Never a lover.) 

The thing about this was that nobody ever called him human, never called him by his name without the oppressive burden of his different roles attached at the end. He was, is, and could be many things within his one lifetime, but something peculiar always followed through within all of his different personas; 

Nobody trusted him. 

An uncanny ability to make everyone he talked to question his integrity, and in turn the authenticity of his every action seeped into every word he spoke, and bled into the whites of his teeth when he smiled. 

In the beginning, it hurt. 

He’d cry and scream, and beg and plead with his father to teach him how to be normal — fix him —, and to make people believe him. His father had told him this was the price to pay, the small thing you’d sacrifice to achieve a greater good. 

Kaeya had never understood.  

He’d wiped the tears from his eyes. He nodded in the way that seemed to cause the slightest of upturns to his father’s lips, and in that moment, he’d felt the flutter of hope in his heart that maybe being seen by his father was worth being mistaken as the grinning face of a dishonest being by everyone else. 

‘Run along now’ was all his father had to say before he stumbled over his feet to practice smiling in front of a mirror until everything genuine about his crinkled eyes was replaced by sleazy confidence and frigid animosity. 

 ✩₊˚.

Kaeya Alberich had learned to make himself many things. 

If you asked his butler, Dainsleif, how his young master had been faring in his acting classes, a fond smile would inhabit his features, and he would tell you about how much he was excelling and how soon enough, Kaeya would be good enough to be the next Alberich, the next heir. 

If you asked his father, he’d tell you how his eyes were the windows to his soul, how you’d always know what his heir was feeling as long as you looked into his eyes. It was his greatest flaw, the only flaw the determined young boy had, but glaringly obvious enough to overrule any progress. 

If you asked Kaeya, he’d tell you that his mother gave him an eyepatch and told him to ‘never take it off lest he wanted to anger his father’ with a pinch of his cheek. Her finger had hovered under his eye for a second too long, and the moment leather touched the softness of skin and rubbed uncomfortably against eyelashes, Kaeya knew that he would never again bare both his eyes to another. Years would pass, and eventually, on the night of his seventh birthday, his eyes were dull enough, clouded and unintelligible up to the point where his mother had started to look at him with uncertainty, and he knew that he wouldn’t need the eyepatch anymore.

If you asked Kaeya Alberich, he’d laugh— one eye covered and the one crinkled shut so only a sliver of blue was visible— head thrown back and tell you, ' It’s a process of life, right? Learning things. Now, that’s how I grew to be such a humble, honest, dashing man!’ 

 ✩₊˚.

Master Crepus was the type of person you only meet once in your life; with hair that shone brighter than his flickering lamp and eyes that spoke so much even in moments of silence. When he helped Kaeya up from his stumbling form in the rain, he hugged him so tight and warm that he felt it for the rest of the walk to Master Crepus’s manor. It was there that he met Diluc Ragnvindr; Master Crepus’s son with hair even brighter than his father’s, and crushed him in a hug while yelling in that overly-caring, much-too-loud voice of a child that ‘new brother is wet and gross and oh! Do you have a favorite animal? Mine is an owl!’ and as an assured, soft-smiled maid dutifully tended to the steadily forming puddle under his feet while wrapping one arm around his shoulders and nudging him gently towards the bathroom, the only semblance of clear thought Kaeya had was that the Rangvindr family were huggers. 

When Kaeya had awoken from a pitiful attempt at sleep two nights later, with Diluc’s wide, watery eyes staring at him worriedly and Master Crepus’s arms wrapped around him, the first cracks in his carefully crafted facade began to splinter. 

He remembers clearly the feeling of being thawed the longer he was held in the man’s arms, eyes wide and unblinking, hair messy, and body trembling. Hours later at the breakfast table, the nice maid— Miss Adelinde— had coincidentally made extras of his favorite dessert and let him eat that instead of the vegetables Diluc was grumbling and groaning about. It was the years of analyzing micro-expressions that let him see the poorly disguised fondness in Diluc’s gaze every time he glanced at Kaeya’s plate to understand that Diluc wasn’t really annoyed at having to eat his vegetables— that he was just trying to make Kaeya laugh. 

Something foreign clutched at his heart and then tugged even strongly as Master Crepus took his empty plate and asked, ‘Can you still feel my hug?’ 

Kaeya had responded with no, despite the residual warmth in his limbs that he clung onto, in fear of overstepping any invisible boundaries the generous man may have set. Arms wrapped around him once more as he heard the gentle whispers of ‘I guess I’ll just have to help you remember, then, Kaeya?’ 

He nodded stiffly and, over the years, learned that a ‘ yes ’ in response to that question was a hug, and a no in response to that question was still a hug, but one that lasted longer and understood more than Kaeya was willing to share. 

 ✩₊˚.

It was on Diluc’s tenth birthday that his perfectly curated expressions crumbled; stumbling over themselves as he and Diluc tried to catch the crystalflies that hovered around the manor, cupping them excitedly in their palms and shrieking in their barely concealed excitement whenever they stayed around them for a second longer than usual, Kaeya felt it slip from his grasp at the same time the crystalfly wriggled free. 

He’d shrieked, eyes wide and telling more things than he wanted them to, gasping and reeling back into the dirt while taking panicky, shuddering breaths as Diluc’s expression morphed from pure glee to unwavering concern. 

‘You look scared. What’s wrong, Kae?’ And the scariest part of it all was that Diluc could see how Kaeya felt, every flickering and passing thought expressed freely on his face. 

It was on Kaeya’s tenth birthday, six months after that incident, that he finally began to accept his failure, and it was four years after that, before his fourteenth birthday, that he hated accepting that part of him.

 ✩₊˚.

Kaeya Alberich is not someone to believe in love. 

He used to believe. So fiercely, so innocently, it poured out of him like liquid gold—radiant and unfiltered, gleaming in every smile he gave. His mother would praise him for his kindness, proudly nudging him to hand out small bouquets or still-warm cookies to castle staff, giggling when he darted behind her skirts the moment someone bent down to thank him. Back then, love was soft and obvious. It was safe. It lived in the easy rhythm of a heartbeat and in the warmth of a mother’s hand pressed against his back.

But things left out in the sun too long begin to rot.

Kaeya learned, in the quiet hours between expectations and exile, that love was not soft at all. Love had teeth. It bit, and gnawed, and wore you down until you mistook pain for purpose. Love made you lie. Love made you stay. Love left and did not look back. Somewhere along the line, the boy who believed in it was swallowed whole by the man who could not afford to.

Now, Kaeya only smiles with his teeth. He knows how to give just enough—enough charm to be loved, enough wit to be trusted, but never enough honesty to be known. And when someone asks, in passing, if he’s ever been in love, he tips his head to the side and says, “Wouldn’t that be dangerous?” in a tone so effortless it almost sounds like a joke.

There are exceptions, as there are to anything in existence. Kaeya had loved before. Many people, some lost in the violent waves of darkness, and some still with him but pushed so far away from him that they might as well have been unreachable from his impenetrable perch behind his carefully crafted expressions. 

He believed thoroughly in something that translated roughly into passion. 

He held passion in high regard, on a pedestal equally as high as monogamy and conniving. There was passion in him for achieving greatness, passion for honing his skill, passion for proving himself worthy, and passion for anything he deemed necessary to thrive in the flickering shadows created by the walls of facades. 

Most of these passions are things he wouldn’t ever admit to those around him unless his last breath was approaching unnaturally fast. If they were to find out, many would use it as leverage to cast him out into the ink-black waves of disappointment and be called ‘unworthy of being the next heir. ’ 

If you asked him if he believed in the human kind of love, the one where you let your walls down and fall into the waves knowing that there would be someone wanting to save you– catching you before you truly fell and bringing you into the light, the kind where someone else knew something as mundane about you as your prefered fold of clothing and brand of tea, he would smile and say no. 

It is something he threw into the depthless waters when the time was right. He’s been convincing himself that it isn’t something he needs, and he has been doing so for such a long time that he has started to forget what love even is. 

Conceptually, he remembers what love is supposed to feel like. The fluttering heartbeat. The warm flush of the face. The future tangled up in someone else's name. He remembers his mother curling herself into the windowsill hidden by heavy curtains in his childhood room, whispering secret stories about couples who defied fate just to be together. She’d say, “Isn’t it beautiful, my dear boy? How they love each other so much that they’ll do anything to stay together? I like to think your father and I are like that, that we’ve given you a good impression of happiness—filtered, and warm… but he’s been awfully busy lately—”

She never finished that sentence. She always smiled, just with her lips. Kaeya learned then that even the warmest stories carry their own kind of cold.

Eventually, he stopped feeling like a person at all. Somewhere, amid the shifting loyalties and splintered truths, he became something else. A role. A collection of habits and half-truths. A tool made to be useful, never held delicately. He doesn’t remember when it happened—only that one day he looked in the mirror and couldn’t quite find himself behind the reflection.

Laughter feels like mimicry now. Joy is something he rehearses. Even sorrow feels distant, like a sound underwater—muted and echoing, impossible to reach. He wonders, sometimes, if this numbness is what growing up is supposed to feel like, or if something was quietly stolen from him when he wasn’t paying attention.

Every now and then, someone looks at him with real concern—with the kind of softness that feels dangerous. It leaves a strange, hollow ache in his chest, like a wound trying to remember how to bleed. But he pushes it down. If he let it in—if he allowed himself to feel—he might fall apart in ways he wouldn’t know how to recover from.

So he stays distant. He stays sharp. He stays smiling.

Kaeya Alberich is not someone to believe in love. Not because he doesn’t want to, but because something in him froze over long ago, and he hasn’t quite figured out how to thaw.

There’s nothing left in his chest—no heart, no warmth; only a cold, empty space where something human used to be.

 ✩₊˚.

Master Crepus was found dead in Diluc’s arms two days after Kaeya had found it in himself to call him dad.

Two days. That was all it took for this fragile illusion of happiness to shatter. The word had slipped out beneath the vineyard’s twilight-stained veranda, where ivy curled around the beans like green fire and the air was warm with the hush of evening. He hadn’t meant to say it. He’d meant to offer a polite thank you, or maybe just a quiet good night, but somehow, from that hidden place inside him—so long shuttered, so long frozen—it emerged instead: a combination of both phrases, soft, almost unsure, a child’s voice lost in the throat of a boy who acted far older than he was. “Dad,” he had said. Just that. One word. And Crepus had turned to him, surprise colouring his features and blinking as if he hadn’t quite heard right, before his face folded into something so gentle it nearly broke Kaeya open on the spot. 

He smiled, warm and steady, like the world hadn’t already bled him dry, like there was still time to be forgiven, still time to belong.

Now that smile was gone. 

Burnt to ash. Replaced by bloodstained skin and frayed fabric beneath the blackened ribs of the tree-lined path leading up to the vineyard, where Kaeya and Diluc now stood. It wasn’t fire that had destroyed him—it was the weight. The burden of harboring Kaeya Alberich, of keeping him close, under his roof, tethered to a name never meant to rest easy in Mondstadt. Maybe Crepus had thought he could tame it, or wield it, or protect them from it. And maybe that belief had played a hand in his end.

Diluc had found him first, folded forward like he’d dropped into prayer. But there was no sanctity left in that place, only soot and silence and the slow death of embers. His cloak was scorched through, the edges frayed and soaked in blood. Kaeya hadn’t been able to move. He stood at the threshold, frozen, while Diluc knelt in the wreckage. The only sound was the whisper of dying coals and Diluc’s voice, low and broken, too soft to reach Kaeya fully. But he could feel it—something in the way his brother spoke, raw and torn from somewhere deep.

And in that moment, Kaeya understood. He knew why Crepus had died.

Because of him. Because of who he was. Because of the secrets he carried. The curse he never asked for but couldn’t abandon. Maybe Diluc was praying. Maybe begging. Maybe just repeating their father’s name like it was the last thing holding him together.

Kaeya wanted to go to him. Wanted to kneel beside his shaking body and say, He loved us. He did. Even when you set his cellar on fire when you first learned how to wield it properly. Even if he sometimes didn’t show it right. Even if everything fell apart anyway. But the words caught somewhere behind his teeth, drowning in guilt, in grief, in the sickening weight of shame, because he had only just said it. Only just called him dad. After all those years of distance and silence and pretending it didn’t matter. After all the walls he’d built to keep himself from needing what was never promised.

He’d waited too long. And now, there was no one left to hear it.

Too late. Always, always too late.

_ 

Later that night, after the ash had settled and silence returned to the bones of the vineyard, Kaeya stood alone in the scorched remnants of the tree. It still smelled faintly of smoke and iron, but the fire was long dead. He barely noticed the sudden chill in the air—how it seemed to slither in through the cracks, colder than wind, sharper than night.

“You’ve grown soft.”

The voice came from behind him, smooth and patient like venom drawn across glass. Kaeya didn’t turn. He didn’t need to. That voice had haunted his dreams since childhood.

“You killed him.” His voice was flat. Hollow.

A low chuckle echoed through the ruins. “Don’t look so surprised. The old man served his purpose. He took you in. Raised you like one of his own. Gave you something to lose. It was necessary.”

Kaeya turned then, slow and deliberate, his eyes burning. “He wasn’t part of this. He never should’ve been part of this.”

“No one is innocent, Kaeya. He harbored a traitor’s son under his roof. He thought love would be enough to contain the truth. That was his mistake. And now you’ve felt the cost of failure. That’s good. Pain is a teacher. Now you understand why this must end.”

“What did killing him have to do with joining the corporation?” Kaeya said, voice low and shaking. “You told me all I had to do was join them and infiltrate their headquarters long enough to help stage an attack.” 

Silence. Then footsteps—measured, slow. His father stepped into the dying firelight, wearing that same serene, empty smile, like he wasn’t walking through the grave of a man he’d murdered.

“Attachments make you weak, Kaeya, and we Alberich’s don’t tolerate weakness,” He paused, a sharp glint in his eye as he reached down to grasp Kaeya’s shoulder. “Though, I’m going to be lenient with the remaining one. I’ll keep him alive so long as you follow the plan exactly as I say. If not..” He trails off, glancing subtly at the charred remains around them. 

Kaeya’s heart stopped.

“You’ll join the Knights. You’ll rise through their ranks, gain their trust, and keep your enemies close. Or I’ll put your ‘brother’ in the ground beside the man who raised you. Do you understand me?”

Kaeya didn’t speak. He couldn’t. His throat was dry, his fists clenched so tightly his nails bit through skin. But eventually—because there was no other choice—he nodded once.

“That’s my boy,” his father said, with all the warmth of a dying ember. 

_ 

Morning came two days later, grey and brittle. Kaeya found Diluc at the vineyard gate, the sleeves of his coat dusted with ash and his eyes sunken with sleeplessness. He hadn’t cried—not in front of anyone—but the grief clung to him, rigid and unreadable.

“I need to talk to you,” Kaeya began, careful, his voice thinner than usual. “It’s about…About what I have to do next.”

Diluc didn’t turn. “Where were you last night?”

Kaeya faltered. “I—” How could he explain? How could he tell him he spent the last two days holed up in an inn four hours away from the winery because he couldn’t bear to attend the funeral he caused. How could he tell him that their father hadn’t died in an accident, but in a scheme Kaeya had been born into like a curse? “It’s complicated. I needed time.”

“Time?” Diluc turned then, and his expression was cold enough to burn. “Is that what you call disappearing while I was trying to figure out how to bury our father? You left me to send him off in front of almost half of the damned town by myself–” He voice cracked midway, and Diluc turned to the other side. 

Kaeya flinched. “That’s not fair.”

“No?” Diluc’s voice cracked at the edges, rage curling beneath it. “Then explain it to me. Explain why, after all of this, you’re talking about joining the damned corporation like nothing happened.”

“I’m not doing it for them,” Kaeya said quickly. “I’m doing it because I have to. Because it’s the only way to keep you safe—”

“Don’t,” Diluc interrupted sharply. “Don’t make this about me. Don’t twist this like you’re doing something noble.”

“I’m not lying!” Kaeya shouted before he could stop himself. The script his father gave him was unimportant in the heat of the moment. “I can’t tell you everything—I want to—but if I do, it’ll make things worse. You don’t understand what I’m up against.”

“Then make me understand,” Diluc hissed, stepping closer, his voice lowering. “Look me in the eye and tell me the truth. All of it.”

Kaeya opened his mouth. But the words— He killed him. He’ll kill you next —died in his throat. A silence stretched between them, thick as smoke.

“Right,” Diluc said quietly. “You can’t.”

Kaeya reached for him. “Diluc, please.”

But Diluc stepped back. “I don’t know what’s happening with you, Kaeya, and I want to understand. I really do. But you’re making it really hard to want to try.”

The gate groaned shut between them.

Kaeya stood there, alone in the cold morning light, his outstretched hand still trembling. He had wanted to explain. He had tried. But silence had betrayed him again.

Too late. Always, always too late.

_ 

The night was cold. It was one week after Master Crepus died, with torrents of rain pattering against the shingles on the winery, soaking the fringe of his hair and seeping into the fronts of his shoes. Diluc was inside, murmuring about the remaining funeral rites with Miss Adelinde with a voice so agonized it made Kaeya’s lungs seize. The wind tasted of iron, the vineyard blanketed in silence, the kind that comes only after something holy has died.

Kaeya looked up at the rain, the moon hanging low over Dawn Winery, a thin, sickle-shaped silver light glinting like a blade in the dark. The house stood still behind them—shuttered, grieving. It had not felt like home in a long time. Not since Kaeya watched Diluc stumble out of the firelight, soot and blood smeared across his skin, cradling what remained of their father’s body like it was something that could still be saved.

Kaeya waited in the courtyard, beneath the gnarled arms of the old grapevines that hadn’t borne fruit since Crepus died. His fingers trembled inside his gloves. His heartbeat was a war drum beneath his ribs.

He knew this would end things.

But it hurt more seeing the unaltered trust and adoration in Diluc’s eyes. So he rehearsed the story his father told him to sell to Diluc over and over until he barely remembered the truth. 

When Diluc finally came—quiet boots on stone, coat billowing—he looked like a shadow of the boy Kaeya remembered. Eyes hollowed by sleeplessness. Jaw clenched too tight, like he was holding back grief with nothing but teeth. He stopped a few feet away, arms folded, waiting. Watching.

Kaeya exhaled.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” he said, and his voice didn’t sound like his own. “I should’ve told you a long time ago.”

Diluc said nothing. The silence between them groaned.

“It wasn’t just an accident,” Kaeya said. “What happened to Crepus. To your father.”

Diluc’s eyes narrowed, confusion over Kaeya’s decision to call their father by his first name and sharpening with old hurt. “What are you talking about?” 

Kaeya’s voice was steady on the next breath. “It was a plan, from the beginning. My–” he faltered, jaw tightening, “— my father sent me here. It was part of his plan to kill your father.” 

Diluc stared at him like he was trying to see the lie inside the words. But Kaeya didn’t blink, didn’t look Diluc in the eye and continued staring forward because if he looked back, Diluc would see the tremble of his iris and the water pooling in his lashes. 

“Your father discovered something,” Kaeya continued, softer now. “Something dangerous. It was a threat. And so they marked him. And they sent me .”

He let the words hang there like a noose. 

“I was the sword hanging above his head.”

Something twisted in Diluc’s expression; grief, confusion, disbelief. But beneath it all, rage began to bloom. Not loud. Not fast. But slow and terrible, like oil catching fire.

“You knew,” Diluc said, not looking at him.

Kaeya’s jaw tensed. “Diluc…”

“You knew , didn’t you?” He turned now, red eyes blazing. “About the device. About him . About everything.”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

That did it.

Diluc crossed the room in three strides and slammed Kaeya against the stone wall. “Don’t say that. Don’t you dare .”

Kaeya shoved him off, teeth bared. “You think I wanted this? You think I wanted to live a lie every godsdamned day, watching him call me son?”

“Then why didn't you tell us?! Tell me ?! He died thinking he could trust you!”

And then Kaeya said it.

Quiet. Barely above a whisper. But it split the air open like lightning.

“Because I’m not who you think I am.”

The silence was worse than shouting.

Diluc stared at him like he didn’t know who stood before him.

“You’re lying,” he said, though his voice betrayed the part of him that already knew. “You wouldn’t—”

“I didn’t want to,” Kaeya whispered. “I chose him. I chose you . I tried to turn away from all of it. That’s why I didn’t say anything. I thought… maybe I could pretend. That if I pretended hard enough, maybe everything would be okay. Maybe I could be his son instead of a spy.”

Kaeya stepped forward. His voice was shaking now. “But it’s all crumbling. Khaenri’ah is moving. My father wants me back in position. And if I don’t—”

He swallowed.

“If I don’t do what he says… he’ll kill you.”

Diluc moved before Kaeya could finish.

He struck hard, grabbing Kaeya by the collar and slamming him into the stone wall behind them. Kaeya gasped as the air left his lungs. The moonlight turned silver in Diluc’s eyes. His breath came in ragged bursts.

“All this time,” Diluc growled. “All these years. You lied to me. To him.”

Kaeya didn’t struggle. Didn’t fight. “I was a child. I didn’t know what I was—what I’d been made into.”

“You let him die.” Diluc’s voice was breaking. “You let him die, not knowing the truth. Not knowing you were the reason.”

And Kaeya—he could have lied. Could have softened it. But he was done lying.

“I was the reason.”

Diluc’s fist connected before he even knew he was going to throw it.

Kaeya’s head jerked to the side, lip split, blood on his teeth. He didn’t cry out. Just looked back at him, that single remaining eye full of something that should’ve been defiance—but wasn’t. It was sorrow. Undressed. Raw.

Diluc stared into that eye—and flinched.

Because it looked too much like Crepus’.

Because it held the same unbearable warmth.

Because it begged for forgiveness the way Crepus used to, after long nights and broken promises.

And Diluc couldn’t stand it .

“You were my brother!” he roared, swinging hard enough to crack stone. Diluc fought like a man set on fire—desperate, grieving, wrathful.

Kaeya caught the edge of the claymore on his arm and hissed in pain. “And I still am ! Even if you hate me—”

"You’ll never be family again, Kaeya. ”

He drove Kaeya back, blow after blow, until Kaeya’s foot slipped and he fell to one knee. Diluc raised his blade.

Kaeya didn’t block.

“I didn’t want to lie to him,” Kaeya said. “But I didn’t know how to be anything else.”

The blade slashed downward—fast and instinctive and full of the kind of grief that makes people do irreversible things. Kaeya twisted, just enough to avoid the killing blow. But the edge of the blade caught his face—sharp, sudden, just under the eye. Pain bloomed white behind Kaeya’s eye. A scream caught in his throat as the vision in one side of the world went black. He collapsed to his knees, blood hot down his cheek, breath torn from his lungs.

Diluc stared down at what he’d done.

Diluc stumbled back, blade shaking. “No—Kaeya, I—”

Kaeya ripped a length of his coat, pressed it to his face. His vision swam red. He could already feel the damage. The deep split. The burn. The wetness pooling in his palm.

Kaeya’s eye—the one that had betrayed too much, held too much truth, too much of him —was ruined. Blood glistened on his blade. Kaeya hunched forward, hand pressed to his face, teeth gritted so tight it might have broken his jaw.

But he didn’t weep. He didn’t scream. He just whispered, through the agony:

“I’m sorry.”

And Diluc—he couldn’t take it. Couldn’t stay and see what he’d become. What they’d become.

So he ran. Vanished into the night like a shadow unmoored, leaving Kaeya broken on the stone floor beneath the vineyard.

_ 

Kaeya woke later to bandages. To the sterile smell of healing salves and ears ringing. 

Hours later, Kaeya sat in an abandoned chapel outside Mondstadt, breath shallow, his eye patched with whatever cloth he’d had left. His vision was half-dark now. He hadn’t stopped shaking.

His father’s voice again. Cold. Detached.

“You will join the Knights of Favonius. Gain their trust. Continue the mission. Or I will find him.”

Kaeya didn’t reply.

He donned the eyepatch. He stayed.

Not because he believed in the mission. Not because he had no choice.

But because he’d made a promise. To Crepus. To Diluc. To the boy he used to be, under that ivy-choked veranda, whispering Dad for the first time like it was a sin and a prayer.

He’d already lost everything. All he had left now was the chance to keep Diluc alive.

_ 

Kaeya joined the corporation two weeks after the funeral.

His eye wasn’t in excruciating pain and Diluc showed no signs of returning and his father deemed it best to strike now. 

No one questioned it. Not out loud, at least. After all, he was clever, well-trained, charismatic. The kind of recruit they wanted—the kind they could mold. And he played his part with surgical precision: all smooth charm and effortless ease, laughter like polished glass, a hand always outstretched in greeting. They called him dependable. Quick-witted. Brilliant. They sent him pitiful glances every anniversary spent working late hours in the office. 

None of them saw the rot beneath the surface.

At night, when the cathedral bells fell silent and the halls of the Favonious headquarters grew still, he returned to his dorm and locked the door. He’d peel the glove from his left hand and press a sigil into the small mirror hidden behind his dresser—black crystal on silver backing, warm to the touch with an unnatural hum.

Each time he did, a voice bloomed in his ear like smoke.

“You’re in. Good.”

It was always the same. No greeting. No warmth.

“You’ll maintain access to all internal records—rosters, patrols, classified files on the other vision holders. I want names. Weaknesses. Schedules. You are to send a full report every seven days. If I sense hesitation...”

Kaeya would close his eyes, jaw tight.

“I know.”

“And Kaeya? Smile for them. They should never know the difference.”

Then silence.

Always silence.

_ 

He sent the reports in code. Encrypted letters tucked between the lines of otherwise meaningless correspondence—fabricated intelligence laced with truth so fine it could pass undetected. He never gave everything. Never gave Diluc. But every week, he carved another sliver of himself away.

The worst part was how easy it became.

The rhythm. The lying. The cold mask he wore like second skin.

Four years later, he passed Diluc in the marketplace and ran into the nearest alley, chest heaving and eye wide. He kept seeing him after that, and the relief of his father actually keeping him alive was so overhwleming, it overruled the bone-crushing ache that came with seeing Diluc again. They wouldn’t speak to each other; cold defeat corrupting Diluc’s expression, and other times, Diluc would glance his way, eyes narrowing, equal parts grief and mistrust like an old bruise that wouldn’t fade.

Kaeya didn’t blame him.

He barely recognized himself anymore.

(He smiled when he was meant to, lied when it was required, and folded his real thoughts into corners of himself so deeply buried, they began to lose shape. The Knights never suspected. Not when he smiled like that.

Somewhere, he imagined his father nodding. Not with approval—he never earned that—but with recognition.

This is what he wanted, isn’t it? A weapon dressed as a son.)

 ✩₊˚.

Years pass quickly after that. Each one duller than the last, with missions merging into reports merging into late nights drinking at taverns and early mornings brushing through Lisa’s hair on days she stayed up too late researching. He gets moved to the assassination division and spends another few years forgetting the smell of daisies, dandelions and old books. 

That was, until his father notified him of a new mission. A long-term project ending in an assasination of Gold’s newest alchemical creation. 

Albedo Keindepriez. 

 ✩₊˚.

Kaeya never found beauty in battle. It horrified him at first, filled him with terror, and nausea in the beginning, and slowly numbed into a marginally unpleasant feeling similar to an itch in his throat. He never thought he’d ever be able to find beauty in the act of murder, but Albedo did. It was difficult, nearly impossible to most, but still with the possibility for Albedo. Beauty was always viewed through the eye of the beholder, but there’d never been anything beautiful about him, about the situation, or the swish of his blade as he unsheathes it and prepares for battle next to Vivienne, and yet… There Albedo was. He found beauty in everything, sketches upon sketches of proof immortalized in his Moleskine. 

To someone like Albedo, not finding beauty in something was impossible, preposterous, inefficient, unethical, and everything that made Albedo, Albedo. 

At that moment, Albedo had told him it was his strength that was beautiful. His mission before that was his grace and beauty that emanated with every step of his legs and swing of his arms. In the beginning, he wasn’t able to understand how something so inhuman and entirely Kaeya Alberich could every be considered beautiful when he found everything about Kaeya Alberich repulsive and ugly, so he grinned, lazy and saccharine, and asked him if Albedo was complimenting his physique, and how forward of you, dearest partner— Ouch! Don’t hit me, darling, we’re in public! What would that elderly couple think of me being abused by my sweet romantic interest– Ow! I get it! 

When it came to Albedo, though, Kaeya could agree wholeheartedly. 

Albedo was born during rainfall, under the watchful gaze of the wind, with thunder in his soul. Lightning in his veins, sunlight in his heart, and a terrifying sort of beauty in his bones. 

Kaeya didn’t think he’d ever seen something as beautiful before.

 ✩₊˚.

“Did you?” He winces at the blunt question. Hesitates to elaborate. “Did you ever figure me out?” Kaeya watched, entranced, as Albedo rested against the balcony, arms flexing taut against the wood. He smiles, small but incredibly fond, so much so that it hurts Kaeya to see.

“Not at all.” 

Well, that was clear, he thought, the belligerent fluttering of his heart lessening to a tolerable palpitation. 

If Albedo had truly figured him out, he would already know by now just how deeply he cared for him. Loved him. A foreign, inexplicable thing that disrupted the desperate logic he’d clung to for so long.

His eyes burn, an uncomfortable feeling against the leather of his eyepatch, and he forgets how to breathe, the sheer intensity of his emotions—emotions he’d once believed were an anomaly for him to experience swelling and yearning hopelessly to escape the confines of his ribcage.

He looks, truly looks at Albedo, and he remembers how to breathe. This was the person who had stayed and risked his life for a mission just because Kaeya had asked him to, even when it went against everything Albedo stood for. Kaeya wonders if he’d changed— if his younger self looked at him now and saw not an assassin but someone irrevocably changed by the presence of another.

Love was abstract, a concept reserved only for the novels his mother read to him or the fortunate few who stumbled headfirst into it, and never before had Kaeya felt as though he was drowning in it.

And, 

Oh. 

Love was this , wasn't it? 

The aching, unhealing wound that’s created from his orbit, his departure; the residual longing for something he simultaneously had and never considered. 

He surmised he'd be lying if he continued life pretending he didn't know what love was. (He realizes later, that In the depths of his heart, 'love' was always Albedo.) 

Finally, Kaeya understands. There's a puzzle piece in his hands that connects him to the rest of Teyvat— to Albedo. 

It was simultaneously the most important piece of his life and also the ugliest. Never could he fathom himself calling Albedo ugly, but the feelings associated with him were tainted and ugly, as human as it was disgusting and reasonable. It was unnatural and warm when all he'd ever known was cold. It meant looking at Albedo's delicate wrists and intrigued expression, and feeling his heart for the first time in his life.

Kaeya’s heart thundered in his chest as he finally let the words slip, barely more than a whisper;

"I love you."

Three words, an admittance of barely concealed sorrow. A firework. The largest he’d seen, lighting up the faintly shadowed balcony in vivid yellow and gold. 

He heaved, gasping for air and staring wide-eyed in mounting terror at the situation, and looked at Albedo. Terror enveloped him, stronger than any fear he’d felt in battle, and he wondered what was worse: Albedo hearing or missing it. 

Kaeya sees the abrupt turn of Albedo’s face, drawn towards the extravagant display, and he knows that he didn’t hear. 

Three words slipped past his lips.

Three words Albedo hadn’t heard. 

Three words he’d never say out loud again. 

Kaeya knew this was the optimal situation. So why did his heart feel so heavy? 

“What did you say?”


Why did it hurt? Feel like it was cracking under the weight of something infinitesimal. 

“Nothing important.” 

And Kaeya felt the first, unmistakable splinter of something giving way inside him. Not enough to collapse—but enough to ache. Enough to make him wonder how long he could keep holding it all together.

✩₊˚.

Turning his head, Kaeya reaches out hesitantly, thumbs at Albedo’s hand, plays with his fingers, and brushes back Albedo’s bangs.


Albedo lets him. Albedo looks at him like he loves him, with so much adoration in his eyes; it makes him sick, nausea building up between his eyes.

His chest aches and aches, and aches. 

Kaeya’s lips just barely brush against Albedo’s, filled with a tenderness that belies his fear of crossing an indiscernible precipice, a point of no return— a cut that doesn’t stop bleeding— as if their souls weren’t so entirely entwined with one another’s, heart bound and tied and presented on a silver platter to his care. (It was as though Kaeya’s heart hadn’t begun to feel, beat to the rhythm of another, thrum like his heartstrings were a harp playing a song—until it was taken from him.) 

His voice was low as he spoke, a trembling whisper occupying the air around him and created to be stolen by the greed of the winds. 

“You let me get away with too much.” It doesn’t deter Albedo, whose retorting scoff rings clear through the room. Kaeya barely hears it over the echoing thud of his heart resounding in his ears. 

“I wasn’t told of your sudden enlightenment of such a thing,” Albedo refutes, rough with his voice and unbearably fond with his eyes— the essential admission of love, coming from Albedo’s lips, is delicate as gossamer, bringing a displeasing flush to his face. He burns with shame as he turns to the side, hair falling, and air making the lashes of both his uncovered eyes flutter, and yearns to crumble to ash and be scattered across the sea.

“I do hope you don’t harm yourself irreparably in this newfound clarity.”

Kaeya cannot do this anymore.

His hands make their way up to rest in the unruly curls; he breathes in and pulls the other down harshly. Albedo’s nose digs into his cheek, their teeth clang together, and the metallic taste of a split lip is evanescence. It’s perfect.

Kaeya wakes up in a room too cold and under sheets too warm. For the first time since feeling what it was like to truly breathe, he felt himself drown. 

 ✩₊˚.

Kaeya had built himself into something unshatterable, chiseled charm, sharp wit, untouchable from every angle. An illusion, yes, but one so carefully constructed that even he had forgotten where the mask ended and the man began.

But slowly, imperceptibly, that illusion had begun to crack.

And Albedo—Albedo was the first to touch those fractures with kindness instead of force. As if Kaeya, beneath it all, was worth seeing.

He didn’t know if he could handle being seen. 

 ✩₊˚.

He wasn’t able to look himself in the eye anymore. He hadn’t been able for years, but the shame in this moment was too strong. 

The ache of guilt festered deep within the fractured pieces of his heart, and he knew he couldn’t experience Albedo’s kindness when he’d just imagined kissing him. 

There’s a knock on his door, and he flinches back, the backs of his knees hitting the edge of his bed and falling helplessly onto the mattress. 

A soft good morning, breakfast’s ready, has him reaching desperately towards the door, but stopping just above the door handle. Kaeya breathes in, waits until the sound of footsteps recedes, and makes a grab for the tray. The aroma is warm against his face, and there’s a small rendition of himself on the napkin next to the bomb Klee’d made earlier that week. Dodoco. 

He shuts the door and turns around with the tray in his hand to see Dainsleif standing unreasonably awkward by the foot of his bed. 

“Tell me it’s not about him ,” Kaeya says, already knowing the answer.

Dainsleif’s expression shifts. Not cruel. Not unkind. Just... resigned. “You were instructed to act soon. They’re growing impatient.”

Kaeya doesn’t flinch. Not outwardly. But Dainsleif sees the silence like he always does. He waits, as if expecting something—refusal, acceptance, rebellion. Anything.

“Does he suspect?”

“I don’t know,” Kaeya answers honestly.

“Do you want him to?”

That one, Kaeya doesn’t answer at all.

 ✩₊˚.

He shouldn’t have noticed the way Albedo’s hands cradled the carton of eggs like they were glass. Shouldn’t have noticed the exact angle Klee tilted her head when she called for him. Shouldn’t have felt this much for anything.

But he did.

Something quiet and sickening bloomed in his chest—warm and trembling, like humanity trying to crawl back into a body that never thought it deserved it.

 ✩₊˚.

Kaeya would happily walk into the battlefield, prepared— sometimes even elated— to risk his life all he wanted. But now, with a specific shade of powder blue bursts in short flashes within the deepest, most carnal part of his mind, and something within him changed. He couldn’t risk losing the one breathing person he truly cared about. Unexpectedly, that realization didn’t alter the path he walked on, and didn’t tilt the world on its axis, it seemed to write itself in invisible ink right above his heart and etched into his every breath like an everlasting cough. A selfish part of him realized that ever since he decided to live for a certain man, ironically enough, being sent to kill the man who kept his heart beating, the world seemed to align just right, and he could walk with footsteps that never seemed to be as steady as they’ve been. 

He pushes the shopping cart further down the aisle, the dark brown hair of his wig obscuring parts of his vision as he adjusts the cap on his head. Albedo is in front of him, neck bent over their list and figure obscured by a dark coat and an ebony wig. 

“What do you need for your pancake batter?” 

Kaeya startles, watches the way powder blue irises, masked by brown contacts but still as piercing as ever, slide up his frame and look at him questioningly. It’d become Kaeya’s job to make pancakes for breakfast every weekend since Klee would shriek in fear at the abominations Albedo would procure when he attempted to make them. 

He stutters out a squeaky rendition of butter and mentally hangs himself from the nearest ceiling fan.

“Alright.”

“Oh, and milk.” Albedo nods decisively and turns to the left.

“They’re both in the next aisle, let’s make haste.”

… 

Haste. Who even says haste anymore?

‘Let’s make haste.’

Oh, how he loves this ridiculously old-fashioned-in-most-ways man. In Kaeya’s monochromatic world, Albedo would forever be the most colourful thing he had ever seen. Even under countless layers of their disguises and the settling weight of the realization that no, Kaeya did not want to kill the man who made life feel like he was truly living. 

“Of course! Lead the way, dearest.” He pushes the cart behind Albedo, making heart eyes at his back and smiling cheekily at the giggling elderly women whispering to each other about how they wished their husbands looked at them like that. Kaeya turned the aisle and was greeted with Albedo calculating which type of milk to purchase with a focus sharper than Kaeya’s during missions. He sees Albedo put away the normal milk and add the soy milk into the cart. Kaeya pales in horror, and he discreetly switches out the soy for regular. 

He looks up when there’s another thud in the cart, and Albedo threw in a value-size sack of salt instead of powdered sugar, and switches that out too. Reaching the end of the aisle, Kaeya has successfully swapped out almost everything Albedo had put in the cart and reached the blonde who was weighing out the different types of butter— salted in one hand and unsalted in the other. 

“What is my dearest up to?” 

“I’m trying to gauge out the pure weight of the butter, not including packaging and air, to see which butter’s density is more valuable to your endeavors in the kitchen.” 

“Oh? And what has your intelligent mind come up with?” He murmurs indulgently, heart beating erratically at the small wrinkle in Albedo’s nose as he thinks through this complex situation of what butter works best in pancakes.

“I presume the lighter the butter, the lighter the pancakes. Therefore, unsalted butter is denser and not suitable for your delicacy.” 

“Dear me, my sweet sugary parfait is simply the smartest in the world! Aren’t I just the luckiest?” He swoons dramatically, ignoring the glare from Albedo and winking at the same elderly ladies who’ve begun to follow them around the store. 

“Quiet. It is merely that salt is a stabilizer and therefore prevents the butter from becoming too soft or runny by altering the density of the liquid. Salt also acts as a natural preservative that inhibits bacterial growth and preserves the overall quality of the butter. I quite like salt, it’s very innovative. We should get the salted butter.”

Kaeya nods, watching the salted butter land with a thump in the cart, and waits all of five seconds before switching it out with the unsalted butter Albedo had deemed unworthy.  When Albedo turns around and flashes him a smile, soft and arrogant in his assumption of choosing the right butter, Kaeya assumes something’s wrong with him because his cheeks tint pink at the flash of white in that smile. 

“Alright then, what’s next?” 

(“Kaeya?”

“Yes, dearest?” 

“The salted butter disappeared. Do you know how?” An awkward pause. 

“I haven’t a clue. Perhaps the contacts messed with the legibility of the label?” 

A sigh, despondent and grief-stricken. “Perhaps so.”)

 ✩₊˚.

The early dawn is a restless thing, even more so when the world seems to collapse under your feet. It is the type of morning where the sun seems sluggish in its actions, and only the swirling dew on sharp, viridescent blades of grass from early rainfall provides companionship. In the absence of the sun, moonlight reflects and refracts off the pointed edges of grass, and Kaeya stands under the back door’s awning, stumbling drunkenly towards the effervescent sheen of silver, seeking out every bit of warmth during this sunless day. 

His knees hit the ground, dig into the softened Earth, and he heaves in helpless breaths. Kaeya hadn’t left his room in days; disgusted with himself and agonizing over the stupidity of avoiding Albedo every day leading up to the moment where he’d never see him again. 

Today was the day. 

He couldn’t push it any longer, couldn’t stall with fabricated delays and sugarcoated half-truths. Kaeya will be damned if he doesn’t try his hardest to make today last. 

So tonight it will be. 

Tonight will be the end of the beginning. 

He hears the soft padding of socked feet in the house behind him and rushes back inside, onto his bed, and door locked because he’s a coward. A coward unable to look at the real face that has been occupying his every waking thought. 

He doesn’t want to talk about it. Not the prolonged silence. Not his cursed dream. Not the fact that Kaeya wakes every morning a little later, not because of sleep, but because he wants to remember the shape of Albedo’s breath before it stirs the day into motion.

And so, when he resurfaces from the confines of his room, spreads his arms open for Klee to launch herself into and bask in the warmth of Albedo’s small smile and whisper of ‘ See, Klee, he just needed a few days,’ they don’t talk about it.

In the same way you don’t talk about dying before it happens.

“Who wants to go on a picnic?” 

_ 

The safehouse was never meant to be anything more than a hiding place. This mission was never meant to be anything more than a compromise to keep Diluc safe. A pause between hatred and agony. A temporary stop before everything collapses. A week of borrowed normalcy, of replacing missing cereal boxes. A week of morning coffees passed with drowsy grumbles and fingers brushing too long. A week of watching Albedo’s defenses melt, of Kaeya letting himself pretend he wasn’t already ruined. Somewhere between comparing butter in the discount aisle and arguing over who gets the last piece of candy, something started unraveling inside Kaeya.

He tried pinpointing when everything went down. But it didn’t come undone all at once.

Just small things.

Morning coffee with Albedo's sleep-creased frown. The brush of hands reaching for the same cracked mug. The quiet. The way it stopped feeling heavy. The way he started looking forward to waking up.

And now Kaeya is drowning in it. This almost-domesticity. This softness he doesn’t deserve.

Because what kind of man falls in love with someone he’s been ordered to kill?

He shifts on the blanket, feeling Albedo’s shoulder brush his own. No gloves. No excuses. Just warmth, and Kaeya wonders how something so simple can hurt so much.

“Do you think ants have a concept of territory?” he asks. The question floats out of him like a lifeline, ridiculous and fragile.

It’s not about ants. It never was.

But Albedo answers anyway, his voice sure and bright with quiet brilliance. Like, he doesn’t realize Kaeya is memorizing the sound. Like he doesn’t know Kaeya’s recording every syllable, so he’ll still have pieces of him when this is over.

Kaeya hums. Watches Klee ward off a small battalion of ants with her cereal-box sword and declarations of war, staring as she wages holy war on their picnic like a tiny, sugar-fueled general.

And for a moment, he lets himself smile. Lets himself pretend that this could be real. Imagines what it would be like if the life he was pretending to live was real. 

He pictures the scene, feels his hands running through Albedo’s hair with the freedom he yearns for. It leaves a bittersweet feeling on his tongue. 

Then suddenly Albedo launches himself dramatically toward the ant colony, a flash of chalk-blond and existential terror, and Kaeya catches him without thinking. Like muscle memory. Like instinct. Like someone who doesn’t want to let go.

He holds him back. Just barely. Just far enough.

Because if he doesn't, he won't be able to do what he's been sent to do.

Klee chirps something about jelly sandwiches, and Kaeya lets the absurdity of it all wash over him. Let the sweetness of the moment distract from the sourness blooming in his chest.

Too sweet.

Everything is too sweet these days, and it makes his jaw ache. 

He watches Albedo take the sandwich—sticky fingers, unguarded smile—and Kaeya feels something twist violently in his gut. He shouldn't be here. Shouldn't be touching any of this. The sun in his hair, the way Kaeya’s chest aches every time he looks at him.

He should be gone.

But he stays. He always stays.

He braids Albedo’s hair in silence, fingers moving like they’re trying to memorize texture, weight, the quiet breath at the base of Albedo’s neck.

The silence between them is soft. Holy. It wraps around him like a second skin. He can feel the weight of the moment. The quiet, fragile intimacy of it. The way Albedo leans into the silence like it’s the only place he’s ever been safe.

“You’re not going to fall asleep on me, too, are you?” he asks, quietly, as if he’s too loud, the world will notice them and take this away.

It is a joke.

It’s always a joke.

Because if he lets himself speak plainly, he’ll say something he can’t take back. Something devastating.

“Possibly,” Albedo murmurs. “But I’m more concerned about your structural integrity. You are currently functioning as my pillow and are doing a poor job by talking.”

Kaeya chuckles. It comes out hollow. Gentle. It vibrates in his ribs like a breaking thing.

“I shall work tirelessly to improve my service to you.”

He says it lightly, because the truth of it is too heavy. Because if he said it how he means it, it would sound like begging. He means it. He always means it, and it’s so dangerous.

He presses his knuckles, deliberately, against the back of Albedo’s neck. And he lingers. Just a moment.

Albedo doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. The stars above stretch wide and uncaring, and Kaeya thinks: I wish we had more time. I wish I could stay.

He brushes the nape of Albedo’s neck again. Only to feel it. Just once more.

And Albedo turns. Slightly. Just enough.

Kaeya’s breath catches.

Their foreheads almost touch. Their noses brush. And Kaeya forgets every lie he’s ever told himself.

In the starlight, Albedo is all blurred gold and soft lines. The kind of beauty that doesn’t belong to this world. The kind that makes Kaeya ache to be something better.

“Albedo,” he says. Not a name. Not really. A question. A plea. A farewell. Everything he wished he could say and everything he’s already said mixed into a word. 

And Albedo tilts his chin up, and Kaeya can feel it; can feel the universe holding its breath—

“GUYS! BAD NEWS! THE ANTS TOOK KLEE!!”

The moment snaps. Kaeya jerks back, laughter catching painfully in his throat like a shard of glass.

“KLEE HAS BECOME THE QUEEN OF ANTS!”

The absurdity is unbearable. The loss is worse.

He swallows it. Buries it. Puts on a smile that doesn’t reach anything real and lets the reality of his mission drown him and his feelings. 

“We should probably go get her,” he says.

Albedo nods, dazed. “Before she declares war on the squirrels again.”

They don’t talk about what almost happened. Of course they don’t.

Because what’s there to say?

Kaeya already knows what comes next.

He stands. Calls to Klee. Packs sandwiches. Pretends his hands aren’t shaking.

And then, because he’s a coward,
because he’s a traitor,
because he’s already ruined ,

He doesn’t apologize. 

He wants to stay. Wants to scream. Wants to rewind time to just before he learned the truth about who Albedo is—what he is. Wants to burn the orders in his pocket and run.

But he won’t.

Because duty is cruel, and he’s made himself its servant.

Because this is the role he was born into.

Because if he doesn’t do it, someone else will. And someone else will hurt Diluc, and his life has never wanted to be kind to him. 

Kaeya turns away, heart bleeding quietly. 

He doesn’t see Albedo still seated on the blanket, doesn’t hear the unspoken things he left behind.

But he feels it.

The ghost of a hand in his hair. The ache of something unfinished. The stars blink above them like distant eyes.

And Kaeya cannot help but think: I would’ve let him love me. If we had the time. And I would’ve loved him back. But right now, in this lifetime, he was here to kill Albedo Keindepriez. (Not love him. Never love him.)

_ 

The safehouse is quiet now.

Too quiet.

Kaeya stands at the edge of the treeline, eyes fixed on the glint of moonlight off the metal in his glove. His hands won’t stop trembling.

He isn’t cold, and neither is he scared. He’s guilty, deep and raw and clawing at the back of his throat like smoke from a fire he started and can’t put out.

Kaeya looks back toward the dim light of the safehouse window. He can see Albedo’s silhouette through the curtain, slouched slightly, hunched over Klee’s bed, book in his hands and hair out of place. 

The last few weeks play in his head like a dream too good to be real: Albedo’s sleepy voice mumbling over coffee. His hair slipping loose from the clip, Kaeya fumbling with it too long just to keep touching him. The sound of his laughter, rare and quiet, like discovering a hidden room in a place you thought you knew.

Kaeya tips his head back, exhales. Stars above, he's damned.

He didn’t mean for it to get this far.

He wasn’t supposed to like him. Wasn’t supposed to care. Was supposed to stay detached, to do what must be done for the greater good, for the sake of the cause, for whatever twisted version of justice he’s been chasing since he forgot what it meant to stop running.

But here he is.

And he knows what tomorrow holds.

Knows what the letter tucked in his coat says, the one he’s memorized word for word despite never unfolding it more than once. Knows that the blade meant for Albedo is already sharpened. That there is no out. He was never going to make it out of this story clean.

But Albedo?

Albedo should’ve.

He leans a shoulder against the tree and closes his eyes. All he sees is gold. Chalkdust hair, too-soft eyes. Fingers that trembled at the nape of his neck. That moment— that moment—when everything paused. When gravity betrayed them. When Kaeya almost—

He almost kissed him.

And he would have. Gods, he would’ve. If Klee hadn’t screamed. If the ants hadn’t rallied. If the stars had just waited one more minute.

He presses the heel of his hand to his eyes until the stars behind his lids bloom red with pressure. Until the thoughts stop looking like Albedo smiling and start sounding like orders, like the hollow ringing of the word traitor in the back of his mind.

He doesn’t know when it started feeling like a betrayal to stay alive if Albedo has to die.

Kaeya lets out a laugh, brittle as frost. “You always ruin me without trying,” he murmurs to the quiet. “Even now.”

Even especially now.

He doesn’t go back inside. Not yet. Doesn’t trust himself not to break the last of the distance between them. Not to reach out and take something he knows he can’t keep. Not to beg for an out that doesn’t exist.

Instead, he whispers the words he didn’t have the courage to say earlier.

“I’m sorry.”

His voice catches.

“I’m so, so sorry.”

And this time, there’s no teasing in it. No smile. Just Kaeya, stripped of every mask, every game, everything that made him an Alberich. 

Just Kaeya, aching and afraid, and hopelessly in love with a man he’s been ordered to destroy.

He turns his back to the light of the safehouse window. Forces his feet to carry him farther from everything that ever felt like peace. Like home.

Because when the call comes as soon as he walks inside their home to Klee’s room where Albedo is reading her a bedtime story, and the stars are no longer kind, he will have to perform the role of executioner once again. 

And he knows, with a certainty that sickens him:

The world will not mourn what he cannot save.

But he will.

He already is.

Kaeya heads inside and opens the door to Klee’s room because all he can do in this moment is help her get to bed.

It’s not enough. Will never be enough, but  it’s all he can give without breaking.

Because soon, too soon—

He’ll have to betray them both.

He’ll have to kill Albedo.

And the worst part is—

He would’ve stayed.

He would’ve loved him.

He already does.

 ✩₊˚.

Albedo starts to go still in his arms.

But Kaeya feels the blood. It’s warm. Too much. Too fast. And the knife is still half-embedded — not deep enough to finish the job.

Not yet.

Albedo’s body jerks — a shallow gasp, a half-choked inhale. And something in Kaeya snaps like bone under pressure.

He tightens his grip and pushes the blade in the rest of the way.

Gently. Carefully. Like it’s the only thing he has left to offer.

Albedo exhales. Not a cry. Not a scream. Just, release.

Then nothing.

Just blood on Kaeya’s hands. Silence in his ears. And the warmth of someone who trusted him completely — still fading beneath him.

‘I’m sorry. For my hands have only ever touched you with violence on their fignertips.’ 

Kaeya stays there, hunched over Albedo’s body, face buried in his chest, stained with blood and salt and failure.

And the warehouse —that damned, empty place— finally breathes again.

It hurt. It burned and ached and hurt so bad he thought he was dying, make it stop— 

Until it didn’t. 

Until he felt nothing except the present weight of each star in the sky staring down at him, and felt the beginnings of rain pour onto his hair, soak into his clothes, and darken the concrete below them. Do everything but wash out Albedo’s blood from his skin and his clothes, and leave a bone-deep chill that made him numb. 

He used to know what survival looked like.

Until it started looking like someone else’s smile.

Someone else’s silence.

Someone else’s name.

For every year he’d been alive, he’d ask himself, ‘How do I survive this?’

And every year since was something insignificant— watering the plants, going drinking with Rosaria, Friday nights spent huddled under a blanket with tea, novels, and his mother beside him, his father’s approval, beating Diluc in their game of Crystalfly catching— until suddenly it wasn’t. Suddenly, it went from meeting his newest target to buying new clothes for Klee, to visiting Albedo, bothering Albedo, stealing Albedo’s files, Albedo, Albedo, Albedo— 

Survival is a decision carried through by the solemn and inevitable acceptance of a kind of death. Fighting to exist is falling apart. Just as letting yourself fall is existing to die. Dainsleif once told him that the clarity, the definitive answer, was something you cannot understand unless you live in the question you asked. Building knowledge and memorizing footwork and the 367 different ways to commit and get away with murder is the art of feeling slow-witted, waking up sore and unable to walk or lift his arms above his head after hours of bladework is the art of feeling weak and learning what it means to live is the act of experiencing death. 

All these years, he’d asked himself, ‘How do I survive this?’ and no answer fit except a six-letter word that took the shape of his heart. 

No answer clawed its way into an objective sense of correctness until his blade took hold within Albedo’s heart. 

Today, though, he asked himself a different question; 

‘How is this surviving when I feel like I am dying?’

This time, there is no answer, insubstantial or all-encompassing. 

There is no answer in the gruesome drag of his blade as he mechanically pulls it out of Albedo’s heart, no answer in the almost intimate drag of his fingers against Albedo’s cheek, and there’s no answer in the gentle flutter of his eyelashes as he wills himself not to gag. 

This was a moment he’d forever regret. It was the moment he knew he’d truly loved Albedo, a suffocating defiance of gravity that bore down on him, irrevocably— for the moment his knife went through Albedo’s heart, it may as well have gone through his. 

In the beginning, he vehemently denied this raw emotion, terrified of what would happen if he admitted to something as grandiose as loving Albedo. It haunted him. 

(In another life, he muses, he would’ve found it incredibly amusing, being haunted by someone who was still alive.) 

_ 

Eventually, Kaeya makes it back to his feet. 

He shook, knees knocking against one another and hands trembling beyond relief. Dainsleif had arrived, taken one look at him still clutching Albedo’s cooling body against himself, and something in his expression had wavered, rippling and cracking until something within him broke and he sent him off with a blanket around his shoulders and a whisper in his ear of “I’ll handle the rest.”

He gets to his feet, tampers with the surroundings to make to seem accidental, and suffocates in the silence of it all. 

The rain was their only witness. 

All the while, Kaeya doesn’t let himself cry. Falter. Not until he told Klee. She deserved to know. 

_ 

They’ve taken to living in the safehouse. Lisa and Sucrose, alongside Albedo (and by default, the minimal assistance and maximum commentary from Kaeya), had coordinated and convinced the acting CEO of the Favonious Corp. (AKA the woman Lisa pines over every time Kaeya opens the door to her, sighing wistfully over dandelion perfume and moaning and sighing during their scheduled tea-and-gossip-time over her “ beautiful blonde tresses ” and “ captivating gaze akin to that of a predatory animal ” Blegh. Women.) to let the three of them create a temporary home in the safehouse to help Klee build that stable connection in her developmental stages. 

It’s early morning when Kaeya finds Klee in the courtyard they’d built hidden in the shadows and being used exactly for the reason behind its creation (so Klee doesn’t get multiple charges against her name for attempted and successful arson before she turns seven), crouched in the dirt with a fistful of wildflowers.

She brightens when she sees him, holding the bouquet up like a trophy. “Look! Klee picked these for big brother Albedo! I also got some for you, but I put them in the funny-looking tall cup so they don’t crumple and die like the fishes in the lake!” 

Kaeya stops in his tracks. 

He needs to tell her. The truth. She needs to know how horrible Kaeya is. 

The world tilts just slightly—subtle enough no one else would notice, but enough that he has to pretend he’s just winded. He steadies his breath before responding.

“Albedo’s not here right now, dearest.”

Klee tilts her head. “Okay! Where’d he go?”

Kaeya opens his mouth. Closes it.

He didn’t know how to explain to a child that the brightest mind and kindest person she’s ever known was gone because of him.

Klee bounds up the stairs to where Kaeya is, all bright colors and bouncing steps, her oversized boots splashing through a puddle left by yesterday’s rain. The scent of wet stone and distant lavender clings to the wind. She finds Kaeya beneath the arbor, half-sitting, half-collapsing on the old bench that used to creak under their combined weight.

“Big brother Kaeya!” she chirps, though there's a flicker of hesitation.

Kaeya lifts his gaze. There’s a storm trapped behind his eye.

Klee smiles because she doesn't know how not to smile around him. “Where’s Albedo? I wanna show him the treasure I found! It’s super pretty flowers, and it looks like the ones he draws in his book sometimes.”

The question slices through the air like a blade.

Kaeya doesn’t respond. His throat tightens. He swallows.

The sun was barely peeking over the treetops when Klee tugged on Kaeya’s cloak, her small hand warm against his cold fingers.

“Big brother Kaeya,” she said, her voice bright in that way that only children can manage, even in the face of something neither of them could name. “Where is big brother Albedo?”

There was dew on the grass. A bird chirped too loudly. The air felt too thin.

He looked down at her—at her wide, expecting eyes, and the faint smudge of ash on her cheek, likely from one of her ‘harmless’ pranks.

His throat tightened. There was no safe answer. Only lies sharp enough to cut both of them.

“Oh,” he says eventually, voice stripped of its usual lilt. “He wasn’t feeling that good. So he went with Miss Lisa and Miss Sucrose to their work building, you know the tall building with the red curtains and the huge door you said is more than 50 Klee’s tall? The one in the pictures Miss Lisa and Sucrose bring with them. That one.”

Klee tilts her head, frowning. “But why didn’t he come home if he’s sick? Klee wasn’t feeling good last week and big brother Kaeya and big brother Albedo made her feel better right aways!”

Kaeya flinches. He needs to tell her. 

“I told him to,” he says softly. “But he said it was important.”

The wind picks up and brushes Klee’s curls across her face. She stares at him like she’s trying to puzzle out something much larger than herself. Something no child should have to.

“Will he come back?” she asks.

Kaeya closes his eye. Lies gather on his tongue like wine he doesn’t want to taste.

“I don’t think so,” Sees the water pooling in the corners of Klee’s wide eyes. “Maybe after a long time.” 

Klee doesn’t speak for a moment. She shuffles closer and offers him the shell. Her tiny hand, pink and trembling, places it on his knee.

“Can you give this to him when you see him again?”

Kaeya exhales. It sounds too much like a sob. He nods. 

She hugs him around the middle, clinging like she knows the truth already but hasn’t figured out how to say it. Kaeya doesn’t hug her back for a long time. He hadn’t touched her, hadn’t wanted to touch her with the hands that maimed her only family. When he finally does, his arms tremble.

He couldn’t tell her. 

He hates how much he missed having someone to call his family.

 ✩₊˚.

The following morning, Kaeya hears her before he sees her.

Small, hurried steps down the corridor, the soft scuff of her boots, the way she sometimes hums under her breath when she’s nervous. He’s pouring tea that he won’t drink when she bursts in.

“Big brother Kaeya!”

He turns, forces a smile that doesn’t reach anywhere near his eye. “You’re up early.”

Klee’s run slows just before she reaches him. Like she’s remembering she’s not supposed to be excited. Like someone told her what happened again this morning, and she’s trying to be brave for his sake. She shifts her weight on her feet.

“I brought you something,” she says, and holds out a crumpled piece of paper. It’s a drawing of three people—her, Albedo, and Kaeya, all holding hands, the sun blaring above them like it’s never set.

He takes it with hands that don’t quite stop shaking.

“…It’s us,” Klee explains, quieter. “From last summer. When you both took me to the beach.”

Kaeya doesn’t trust himself to speak, so he nods. He folds the paper carefully and tucks it in his coat like it’s the most important document he’s ever held.

Klee blinks at him.

“Miss Lisa says I should talk about my feelings. That it helps.”

Kaeya exhales through his nose, not quite a laugh. “That sounds like her.”

“I think I’m sad,” Klee announces, like it’s a diagnosis she’s only just come to terms with. “I didn’t get to say goodbye.”

He crouches down, eye-level with her now. “I didn’t either.”

There’s a pause. Klee’s voice drops to almost nothing.

“Did he know he was gonna die?”

And there it is . That small, sharp edge of curiosity that’s bled through almost entirely with honesty and the direct exemplification of Klee knowing things larger than her. 

Kaeya swallows, the guilt thick as blood in his throat. “No,” he says. A lie so clean he almost believes it.

“...Did it hurt?”

He stares at her for a long moment. “I don’t think it does anymore.”

Klee nods like she doesn’t quite believe him, but she lets it go. She hugs him tightly, arms barely reaching around his middle.

“I’m glad I still have you,” she says.

Kaeya closes his eye, rests his chin lightly atop her head. He doesn’t respond. 

(His heart aches with something sweet and fond, something that faintly resembles the swirl of blue and red iris’ and feels like tiny hands in his as they walk down the candy aisle of the market. The next time Dainsleif visits, Kaeya vowed to tell him he’d never let himself be separated from Klee. He couldn’t put her through losing all of her family.) 

 ✩₊˚.

Days later, Klee comes barging into the room— a red elf hat falling from her head onto her eyes and waving a letter in the air. “Big brother  Kaeya, big brother Kaeya, look!” He takes it from her, assuming it's another one of her drawing portfolios. Upon closer inspection, it smells faintly of the sea, thick with the musk of Cecelia—like Albedo, and Kaeya’s heart stops.

There’s no seal, but the words — To Kaeya — are written in a precise loopy scrawl on the back. His hands shake as he turns it back around and thumbs at the flap. “Where did you find this?” His voice trembles, cracking in places as he looks at Klee’s bright smile as she bounces on the balls of her feet. 

“I was looking through big brother Albedo’s desk for paper since he has sooo many, and I found this! It had your name on it and another word I don’t know yet, so I put it in my backpack, and I found it today when I was unpacking my suitcase so, so I was going to give it to you— here!”

Kaeya mumbled out a reply, smiling and leaning heavily against the table behind him until Klee bounded off towards the living room to finish playing Evil Princess fights Bad Guy. 

He can’t open it. He should burn it. Get rid of it. 

He keeps it. 

( What is he doing here? He should leave. It’s late. Klee calls him to play.) 

He shoves the letter into his drawer and hastily makes his way to Klee. Another day, he tells himself.

 ✩₊˚.

“Big brother Kaeya,” Klee begins, and Kaeya feels something vile churn in his gut at the love she still holds for him. “I have a question for you.” 

That unsavory feeling intensifies, and he struggles to diffuse the situation. “If I answer a question of yours,” He begins, “Will you answer one of mine, dear Klee?” 

She agrees, eyes wide and childlike and filled with so much curiosity that they remind him of Albedo. Kaeya remembers his smile, soft and inherently sad. Even in Kaeya’s memories, Albedo’s smile was still the same sad smile—he seemed to be cursed to only remember Albedo as a fragment of his grief and nothing more, nothing less. 

Kaeya’s father always told him that transactions are the safest way to express emotion. He said they remove the person and leave them with only feelings. He exhales and lets Klee go first. 

“Once, Klee was reading a book from Miss Lisa, and in the book, there were two people who loved each other very much, and they got married! Did you and big brother Albedo ever get married?” 

Kaeya feels sick. He looks at Klee, at her excited smile, and his stomach churns violently.  

“No, we didn’t.” He sees her frown and hates himself even more. 

“Why didn’t you? Miss Lisa always said you guys seemed to be in love, and then she always pretended to throw up so Klee thought you guys were together like Klee’s mom and dad used to be when Klee was little!” 

Kaeya wasn’t exactly sure what they were— had the potential of becoming—, but he knew that they’d forever be known as something that never happened. 

“If you and big brother Albedo weren’t who we are, would you have married him?” 

He struggles for a smile and replies, hoping his voice comes out suave and teasing. 

It comes out quiet and raw. “I already would have asked him.” 

She nods, and Kaeya can tell she doesn’t understand but is pretending she does anyway. It reminds him of someone, and he ruffles her hair. She looks up at him questioningly, waiting as patiently as a Klee can for his question, but it doesn’t come. His face is stiff, and for the second time since he was a child, he finds himself at a loss for words.

The silence makes her uneasy, Kaeya can tell. She needs the constant chatter if only to comfort. Like this, she looks younger, still carrying that child-like naivety someone her age should. Klee had Kaeya Alberich again. She barely had her big brother Kaeya. 

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Squeezes the tiny hand that found him and opens his mouth once more. 

“I think about asking him. All the time.” He looks back at the pathway leading to the crest of the hill. Stares like he’s waiting for a third shadow to join them. “I don’t think he would’ve accepted.” He says that, and the letter sears into his skin from its spot in the pocket above his heart. He shudders. 

Klee frowns at him, and he laughs. It doesn’t sound like him. Something Kaeya Alberich would produce. He wonders if this was the particular laugh Albedo cherished so deeply. 

“Big brother Albedo loved you very much, I saw it in his eyes! He only ever looked at you that way!” Klee says. 

Kaeya closes his eye and grimaces. There is no surprise in his features. Just the same devouring want. 

“Can I ask another question, big brother Kaeya?” He nodded, and she braced herself, hands fisted in her skirt. 

“What does it mean when people say they feel loved?” Klee’s eyes are wide, filled with so much curiousity, so similar to a specific shade of azure that his head pounds. 

Kaeya gently pried her fingers from the death grip she had on her skirt, holding her hand in his before answering. “It feels like coming home after being lost for eternity.” 

(It feels like waking from a slumber that chained you down, like water draining from your lungs and your ears, like your heart finally begins to beat. It feels like finally living after just existing for all your life. You try desperately to delude yourself into believing you don’t need it, but it’s impossible to hold your breath once you learn to take a breath. I cannot let go of it. ) 

His answer makes Klee frown, and something in him shifts unpleasantly. 

“What’s home?” Kaeya stared at her, expression shifting into equal parts distant and unaltered sorrow. He moves to speak and finds himself unable to. He realizes that he and Klee are alike in all the ways he never wanted her to be. She doesn’t know what ‘home’ is, or what it’s ever supposed to feel like, and she must’ve taken this lapse of silence unhappily, for she asks again, “What’s home?” 

Kaeya doesn’t meet her inquiring look; gaze lowers to stare at their joined hands. He squeezes and hopes Klee won’t notice how his habit of meeting her eyes has become increasingly rare.

 ✩₊˚.

Dainsleif pays his visit in true Dainsleif fashion; through the window, 3 hours before sunrise, and without a single shard of glass out of place. How he does it, Kaeya neither knows nor wants to question. It's always been that way. He simply accepts it, like the bitter tea Dainsleif used to serve him when nightmares made it impossible to sleep, or the letters signed with his family’s crest but sealed with Dainsleif’s more careful hand.

Tonight, he brings something else. A plastic bag, crinkling in the dim light, filled with various sweets— some from Teyvat, likely for Klee, and some unmistakably Khaenri’ahn. Kaeya recognizes them instantly. The packaging hasn’t changed in decades, and neither has the way his throat tightens at the sight of them. He used to sneak them from Dainsleif’s pockets when he thought he wasn’t looking, when things still felt like stories with happy endings. 

There’s a beat where nobody speaks, and an awkward jerk of his arms, which Kaeya realized a second too late was a hug. 

Kaeya blinked before he registered it— Dainsleif still and uncertain, arms hovering midair in something that was mechanical and not quite. He exhales, lets himself be pulled in for a second too long.

“Still hate doors?” he murmurs into Dainsleif’s shoulder, voice muffled.

“They’re inefficient,” Dainsleif replies, pulling back. “You look well.”

Kaeya lets the lie pass. “You look like you climbed three rooftops.”

Dainsleif hums.  Ghosts over the top of his head and smooths out the wrinkles in Kaeya’s shirt.  “I have news.”

Of course he does. There’s always news when Dainsleif comes in person, and it’s never the kind Kaeya wants to hear. His fingers tighten around the edge of the plastic bag. He doesn’t look up right away, just stares at his fingers, stained red with something long dried and scrubbed raw and tender from the temperature of the water. There was no blood, not anymore. Just the memory of it that came with the grief of agony. The bag crinkles, and he sees a small packet of cookies, ones that always stuck to the backs of his teeth. He would stack two on top of each other, saving the last in the pack for someone else. Someone who would take it with a quiet smile and wrap it in a tissue, already knowing it was his. 

There was quiet, a pause quieter and longer than any other.

Kaeya doesn’t look up. Stares at his hands.

Dainsleif watches him for a long time.

“I told you not to care,” Kaeya mutters, forehead pressed against Dainsleif’s shoulder.

“You did.” Dainsleif’s voice is low. Rough. “I never listened.”

Silence follows. It was awkward, and nothing like the stilted comfort radiated off Dainsleif back in his father’s home. Dainsleif says nothing else. He doesn't need to.

“I didn’t want to do it,” Kaeya says. His voice cracks. “But I did.”

“I know.”

“I think I loved him.” His hands are clenched so tightly they bleed.

Dainsleif closes his eyes. His hand finds the back of Kaeya’s head and stays there.

“I know.”

Kaeya trembles.

“I don’t want to go back.”

“I know.”

They stay like that. In silence. In shame. In something that has no name.

When Dainsleif pulls away, it’s only to say, “Get some rest. The girl will wake soon.”

He looks up at the stars and counts the same number of people he’s killed in his lifetime. 

Kaeya laughs.

It’s broken.

It sounds like grief and a hundred ghosts he cannot bury.

(“Don’t,” Kaeya says quietly. “Don’t pretend this wasn’t what they wanted.” “You followed orders .” “I buried him.” “You were given no choice.”

“I still buried him.” His hands curl on the table. “I touched his hair. I closed his eyes. I made sure Klee didn’t find out.”

Something twists in Dainsleif’s expression, but it passes quickly. He’s good at that. Being unreadable. Kaeya isn’t. “You weren’t supposed to care,” Dainsleif says, finally. Kaeya almost breaks something then. Instead, he closes his eyes. “I wasn’t supposed to love him either.”

Silence stretches again. This time, it doesn’t break. Dainsleif moves slowly and puts something else on the table. A sealed envelope. Familiar wax. Old ink. Kaeya doesn’t reach for it.

“They’re calling you back,” Dainsleif says, low. “Of course they are.” “You’ve done what they asked.” “And now look at me.” 

Kaeya looks at him sharply. Picks out the packet of cookies and takes out two to bite at once, and habitually hands one to Dainsleif. He takes it. “If I go back, I’m no longer Kaeya Alberich,” Dainsleif says nothing. Just leaves with a flourish of his hood and the flutter of a note that said ‘ Your worst sin is that you've betrayed and destroyed yourself for nothing. Do not continue to do this to yourself, Kaeya. It isn’t who you are.’ ) 

 ✩₊˚.

It’s raining again when Lisa finds him. He’s sitting at the edge of the cliff where Albedo used to sketch the mountain’s curvature, the wind dragging the coat Lisa drapes over his shoulders like it's trying to pull him back into memory, a pile of unfinished notes, sketches, and unfilled data logs held within his trembling hands like a corpse. He hasn’t moved in hours, barely blinking, the corners of a drawing peeking out of his coat pocket. He traced over the corner of the page that Albedo had half-sketched. A mechanical action he’d repeated multiple times before. In the corner of the page was a smiley face, a red blob with blond hair, and three lines made into an eyepatch and a smirk, hastily scribbled. 

“Still out here, handsome?” she says gently, her voice softer than usual, like the static around her has been dimmed. “That’s not like you.”

He didn’t respond immediately, tugging the jacket tighter when Lisa gently pried his numbing fingers from the stack of papers. Lisa doesn’t say anything at first. Just joins him, shoulder to shoulder, umbrella forgotten. She looks down at his hands—open, scarred, empty.

Lisa sighs. “Grief is different with everyone, and I know you’re not the type to wear your heart on your sleeve, but Klee’s getting worried. She asked me if she had done something wrong.”

Kaeya’s head jerks at that, but he doesn’t speak.

Sucrose joins quietly, hovering just behind Lisa. She wrings her hands. “I was hoping he’d still be in the lab. I—” Her voice wavers. “I didn’t even get to show him my latest draft. He always read everything, even when it didn’t make sense.”

Kaeya nods once. “He’s like that.”

“You haven’t come by the lab in days,” she murmurs, voice too gentle for how much she should be hating Kaeya. 

“I’ve been... tired,” he says, though the word doesn’t do the wreckage justice.

They sit in silence.

“I wish we could’ve done more,” Lisa says eventually.

Kaeya clenches his jaw. “There wasn’t anything we could do.”

Lisa’s eyes narrow a fraction, but it’s not suspicion—it’s concern. She doesn’t know the truth. None of them do. The idea of Albedo simply dying is already too much. To question the how and why would be unbearable. Neither of them had asked for details. Neither of them dared to. Lisa saw the grief on Kaeya’s face, like a storm cloud that he couldn’t shake. She assumed the mission had gone wrong. That something beyond any of their control had taken Albedo from them.

She doesn’t suspect Kaeya.

That makes it worse.

“You’re not alone in this, Kaeya,” Lisa says. “Don’t try to carry the whole thing on your back.”

But he already is. He’s carrying it in his spine, his lungs, the marrow of his bones. Every breath hurts like it’s borrowed.

Sucrose reaches into her bag and hesitantly offers a small jar of jam. “I know it’s not much,” she says, looking at the ground, “but… You always liked this one. So did he.” He chokes, feels the warmth of the tea Sucrose had left at his door a week ago, carefully brewed and sweetened with honey, with a note shaped like a cat that simply read: You don’t have to be strong all the time! It’s not your fault >:( 

He crumpled the note as soon as he’d read it, almost laughed but let out something closer to a sob, because that’s exactly what he was raised to be. Strong. Unshakable. Executioner. 

Kaeya takes it with a strange kind of reverence, like the glass is made of memory. He nods his thanks, unable to speak around the lump in his throat.

Lisa squeezes his shoulder, something motherly and firm. “Be kind to yourself, Kaeya.”

He bites his tongue.

“Thank you,” he replies.

Lisa doesn’t press. She just squeezes his arm and walks away, heels clicking like closure on a sentence too painful to finish. Sucrose pauses, opens her mouth, and her hands hover uncertainly by his shoulder before she turns on her heel and rushes after Lisa. 

Kaeya stays behind. He watches the mountains. The sky. The point where the stars should be, but aren’t.

He watches them leave. The jar sits in his hands, warm from her palms and humming with memories of laughter disguised by irritance. 

He doesn’t deserve their kindness.

(He walks into Klee’s room with a tray the next morning, carrying a small cup of juice, toast cut into silly faces and slathered with jam and feels himself smile for the first time since he ruined her life.)

 ✩₊˚.

There are files he has yet to complete—overdue by weeks now—that he has no intention of finishing.

He can feel blood beneath his nails, but when he looks down, they’re clean, raw from how hard he scrubbed them. The reports are easy, meaningless summaries of newly assigned subordinates, something he could complete in minutes if not for one thing.

Albedo’s letter is in the same drawer. And he cannot bring himself to open it.

He traces the edge of the wood and feels the scorching heat of the letter through the wood as his fingers ghost over the handle. The obvious thing would be reading it to know what was so important to Albedo that he had to leave it behind, but the moment he curls his fingers around the handle and pulls, it becomes real. Final. And he isn’t ready for that. 

Kaeya knows it's just paper. Just words. Nothing in it can change what’s already happened.

But—

But he’s sick with a combination of apprehension and a terrifying sense of relief at the prospect of the letter; the budding hope that something could change.

But—

In the end, it’s just paper. Just words. Nothing in it can change what has already happened. But what if it does?

What if it explains everything? What if it changes nothing? What if– 

His fingers tighten against the drawer, tension coiling in his shoulders. He could ignore it. Leave it shut and pretend it doesn’t exist. But.. he’s so tired.  

Before he can think better of it, he pulls the drawer open, yanks on the metal harder than he should, and the hinges groan. The reports are stacked neatly, slightly shaken yet untouched. Resting on top of them, folded with careful precision and wrinkled from the corners where Kaeya gripped it earlier, is the letter.

He exhales sharply. His pulse is loud in his ears. The weight of the paper feels heavier than it should.

He hesitates. Then, finally, he breaks open the envelope. 

The letter unfolds with a quiet rustle, the edges slightly creased from where Albedo’s hands must have smoothed them down. The ink is dark, precise, written in a careless scrawl with graceful legibility— every word is measured, calibrated for efficiency. 

 The ink is dark, precise—Albedo always wrote with an engineer’s steadiness, as if every word had been measured, calibrated. But here, at the very first line, the letters waver.

“(I am more coward than I am man, with words I’ve desperately wanted to tell you and thoughts I’ve not yet formulated all bubbling and churning and fighting ruthlessly amongst each other in the hopes of being spoken allowed. 

And I fear that by the time I’ve figured out the best way to explain these restless thoughts, it’ll have been too late. So, here is my rendition of all those unformulated notions from the very beginning. Putting pen to paper has always been so much easier than thoughts to words.)”

His throat tightens. He forces himself to continue.

“Kaeya Alberich.”

Here, for the first time, the letters wobble. Kaeya can feel the hesitance, picture the slight pause at the end of his name— long enough for the ink to drip from the pen. For a moment, he can’t read past his own name. It stares back at him, stark against the page, like he hadn’t known where to begin.

“When we first met, we signed a contract. Do you remember that? 

It was to finalize our partnership, our alliance to create an undefeatable duo. 

You'd asked me if you should've been flattered to be acknowledged by me. 

I'd never replied to you, then. 

I know the answer now. 

I realize now that it was I who should've been flattered to have been in your presence.”

His breath stutters.

“You are a supernova, Kaeya Alberich; a creation so brilliant that any person whose path you cross is forever burned with the memory of your very being, so brilliant that my mind was consumed with nothing but your existence until there was nothing left in my body except for Kaeya, Kaeya, Kaeya. You are the brightest star in the sky that I look up to on the darkest nights, and the exploding star that I can never tear away from, because even in ruin, you are nothing but beautiful. Your essence is forever etched into the foundations of the world.

Kaeya Alberich, I want to thank you for entering my life and making it shine brighter than it’s ever shone before. In the time we’ve spent together, however long those fleeting moments you spend with me remain important in your intangible life, I felt as though I was a star shining next to you. Shining brighter than ever before but never enough to rival the sheer radiance that emitted from you and in those moments— the moments spent under the setting sun where you lounged across my chair and I stared at you, impossibly fond— I felt unstoppable and entirely irrevocably human. 

It was a foreign feeling, something in my code that I’d never accounted for. 

Some dare to call you an enigma, Kaeya Alberich.” 

Kaeya swallows, his grip tightening around the paper. He can almost hear Albedo’s voice, steady but quiet, laced with that frustrating, knowing patience. He didn't think he'd ever feel sorrow over the word enigma, especially when directed towards him. 

“After meeting you, the hypothesis I had about my creation and purpose was proven false. My mother creator had told me once when I was young and had more questions than I did answers, that all of humanity was based upon four base fundamentals: trust, envy, and regret. 

She also told me that humans learn to love. 

I wasn’t created in the way a human is, so it would’ve been presumptuous of me to assume I could learn in the ways mankind could. 

That was, I believed, what had shaped my youth and created the principles I lived by for my entire lifetime. 

Now, though, after days of consideration and years of yearning, I'm starting to ask myself, ‘Am I allowed to be selfish? Would it be within my abilities to express genuine emotion towards you? Am I able to have these feelings and wants that a normal human feels?’

I don’t yet have answers to these questions, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to find a reasonable answer to give you or myself. There may be someone out there who knows. I wouldn’t put it past my creator to already have figured out the inner machinations of my body, and even then, I shall still go the rest of my life not knowing.” 

A laugh bubbles up, sharp and bitter. It drags against his throat and tastes like iron in his mouth.

"That's not fair," he mutters, his voice croaking and ugly. 

“Something about not knowing horrifies me more than death, did you know that? My creator always told me that it was an alchemist’s duty to uncover and solve. Perhaps it was failing at the very purpose I was made for that sent me on the path of assassination; aiding in killing those who knew more than others made it so I wouldn’t seem to be as alienated as I truly am. 

I never felt the way I had around anyone but you. And maybe that’s what scared me the most. I wanted desperately to tell you, confide in you, to seek out the rough pieces of the answer I’ve been looking for from the gaps between your teeth so that I could die without any regrets. 

At least, to die with only one regret. 

(Maybe that was the biggest issue at hand, the tallest wall I had no chance of climbing over. I don’t think I could ever bring myself to place that burden upon your shoulders, Kaeya Alberich. I don’t think I’d ever be able to tell you the truth. There is an unbridled fear that overcomes me and renders me useless and immobile when I come to face the possibility that you’d have already known— if not found out immediately after I blurted something to you without any previous thought. 

More than that, though, Kaeya Alberich, I am afraid of what could’ve been. I am afraid of what could’ve been if I hadn’t been so afraid of the unknown. You haven’t yet said anything about it but I’m sure you’ve had an inkling of an idea because nothing truly flies past your perceptive gaze– you’re quite intelligent, Kaeya Alberich, and not many people credit you for that–, I was afraid of the possibility that something could have been different if you had known.”

The ink smudges slightly where the pen must have lingered too long.

“In my restless dream, I see that hill. 

(The moon was beautiful that night, wasn't it?) 

You, with your slight smile and galaxies in your eye, and Klee, with her endless kindness and soft hands that fit so snugly within ours as we leisurely made our way up the gods-forsaken dirt trail and to the picnic spot you’d picked out. 

You, with your teasing laughter at my halting, exhausted breaths, and Klee with her poorly disguised giggles at the expense of her ‘Big Brother Albedo’ and I, with my erratically beating heart and the stupifying discovery that if this was an elaborate ploy to push me off the cliff and kill me, I wouldn’t have minded one bit. 

You, with your flickering expressions and I, struggling with the sudden and impossible urge to tell you what had weighed on my mind for days without understanding, that had suddenly dissipated along with the frigid chill of the evening and left me feeling light and unattached to the world in a way I had never felt before. 

You, overwhelmed with guilt, and I, realizing my disease for what it was.) 

I loved—no, love you Kaeya Alberich, even if it meant dying for you, and I would continue to love you even after I took my last breath. 

I just never expected that I’d be the one dying first. 

I don’t regret it, though. I’m not yet sure what situation that phrase is going to apply to, but I knew,regardless,that whatever it is, whatever happens, whatever moment arises, I will never truly regret something when it comes to your happiness, Kaeya Alberich.

I haven’t been sure of many things in my admittedly short life, but this was something I knew would never waver, never change. Permanent in the way my existence wasn’t. 

(I keep on dying. My veins collapse, opening like the small fists of sleeping children. I see your face, eyes haunted and expression wrecked in a way I never want to witness within the waking realm, and I startle to consciousness, gasping for breath with my perfect lungs seeming to fail at their only purpose of letting me breathe. (My lungs will continue to remember how I drowned in you.) It seems that even in slumber, you never leave my thoughts— You existed within the space behind my eyelids, and some selfish part of me never wanted to wake again if it meant being able to be with you a second longer. A foolish thought, though, since I’d see you lounging in my office, and yet the sight of you within reach of my cold fingers brought me much more grief than the images of me dying by your hands— and the thought of you always occupying my mind, didn’t irk me as much as it should’ve.

For some odd reason, writing that down made a fond smile creep up on my face, and I feel as though I’m not opposed to you being the one constant in my life.)

My creator had brought me into this world with the intention of answering her questions, and she had left me in this world with the intention of my figuring out the meaning of life. When I was young, surrounded by alchemy and questions and only the gentle heartbeat of a knowledge-hungry woman, I’d taken the question on a face level, my Moleskine notebook in my left hand and a pen in my right, wondering what exactly made life worth living. 

Many of my earlier hypotheses consisted of factual calculations, derived from the few novels my creator had from the ‘human world’, dreams, and idealistic goals pushing you forward, leaving you determined to accomplish something so large in your eyes. 

None of them ever seemed right to me, and my creator always had an odd look in her eyes when I showed her my theories.

I kept searching, though. Long after I had forsaken alchemy and the part of me that was connected to it, content to sit behind the tinted screen showing security camera footage from all across Teyvat and assisting in all ways but the most meaningful. A part of me knows the reluctance to part with my initial life purpose was a reluctance tied to abandoning the part of me that brought the glimmer of hope that one day, my creator would return, and I wouldn’t be empty-handed. 

My creator wasn’t a true human, and in turn, I wasn’t either. In a way, it’s what relates us and makes us family when we were anything but. Our lifespans were long, indefinite in the way that we knew there was an end, but maddening in the way that we never knew when the definitive end would be. I realized one day that humans tend to feel the need to chase after things they don’t have; a cruel, never-ending search for more, more, more until there was nothing left but an empty hollowness where their heart should be. That was the only thing that non-humans could relate to humans with. 

My more recent hypotheses had revolved around emotions, a feeble attempt to encapsulate and understand such a volatile and unique concept until the one scribbled in large letters; the second last hypothesis of mine took home in the bound pages of my worn notebook and led me on a search for something entirely different that I had originally thought. 

“To cravenly cling to life is to endure an endlessly prolonged life.’

‘The meaning of living is the fear that drives you to leave a mark, in the hopes that you won’t be forgotten.”

Clever, isn’t it? 

I sure do hope you think so, Kaeya Alberich. I imagine that you’d let out a fit of surprised laughter, punched out of you in the way it does when the body hasn’t ever been accustomed to feeling before. 

     When you first walked into my office, I knew I was going to die soon. For some odd reason I couldn’t place at the moment (which I now know is the devotion to you that has become as essential to me as breathing), that assumption of fear and hesitance never came. And I think that’s because I knew that you’d never truly hurt me— even in death. 

The reason why I felt no fear around you is because I love you. The reason for almost everything I do is because I love you. Honestly, I think I love you too much, and it’s one of the only things in my understandable world that I will never truly grasp because it was so enigmatic, a direct resemblance of you that I don’t even wish to understand the true complexities of it. 

Sometimes, I wish I had never loved you as much as I did. If that were the case, things would be much easier. On those days, the thought passes as quickly as it comes, but the sickening disgust that I feel overwhelms me. I’m not entirely certain of the way you feel for me, and I am certain that I will never be able to return whatever it is you feel for me to the extent that you deserve, but this letter, these hastily written, disorganized thoughts of mine, are the confirmation of your existence. (and in a way, my existence). I’ll burn it into my flesh, into the space behind my eyelids and the gap between my lips, the proof of the only man I’ve ever known who truly made life worth living. 

The love I feel for you will forever override the easy life we could’ve lived had those feelings not existed. I doubt that path in life would be any easier than the one we are on now, but I’ve learned in the months that I’ve known my small family (Klee, you, and begrudgingly that brother you claim you don’t have) that it’s in human nature to hope. 

And I’d like to think that when it comes to my family, I can feel a little human.

Then again, things between us were never normal enough to learn from or relate to. But, a small part of me is happy with the fact that the entirety of us will never be replaceable and, in turn, forgotten.

Forever yours, Albedo.

                Yearning to leave a mark. To be remembered.

Kaeya stared at the page, his vision blurring at the edges. The words don’t change, but they might as well be carved into him now, permanent as constellations.

He presses his thumb over the last line as if he could smudge it away. As if he could press it into his skin instead. As if it could burn into his flesh the way the letter burned into the wood of his drawer. 

Outside, the night is quiet. The stars are waiting.

He doesn’t look up even though everything in his body is telling him to. Not yet.

Kaeya feels a slow and steady realization pour over him like a particularly remorseful wave of agony. He didn’t think he’d ever fully recover from losing Albedo, the burn constant and omnipotent in its grief, but he thinks he’s begun to come to terms with that. Moving on from Albedo, forgetting the sheer radiance in which he burned, and continuing his existence pretending as though his heart was truly present with him would be the most cardinal of sins and something even worse than killing the one he loved. 

In another life, he’d have found it funny, being haunted by someone who seemed more corporeal in death than they ever did in life, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to laugh

“You’re ruining me, Albedo.” He murmured into the silence. A laugh bubbles out of him, hysterical and thick with emotion, wobbly and wet on consonants with the tears pricking the corners of his eyes, —he looks up at the stars. Sees one shining brighter than the rest— and finally, finally lets himself shatter completely.