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A little piece of each person makes its way into Albedo’s art:
For Sucrose, the lines upon the canvas which outline her face are as clean yet rigid as she is, true to life and beautiful in their simplicity. For Klee, it is the bright sunshine imbued in the colors he picks, lively reds of her clothes and laughing yellows of her hair. For Kaeya, the smirk upon his face is expertly drawn in one stroke, and the way it curves carries such teasing bluster that one can almost imagine the Cavalry Captain himself emerging from the pages, coming to life just to rib any observers for admiring his handsome portrait.
For Aether--
“Albedo, can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” Albedo responds, tearing his eyes off the sketchpad. Aether doesn’t respond immediately, instead sheepishly uhm-ing and ahh-ing as he tries to find the words, but Albedo doesn’t mind. He is a polite man, willing to lend an ear to anyone who seeks him, though whether Albedo actually listens or they only get his physical presence is another matter entirely. For all the politeness in the world, Albedo simply cannot bring himself to care for things which he considers boring.
Aether will never have to worry about that, however. There are times when Albedo feels somewhat impatient for an answer, but right now, every particle in his body lies in wait for Aether’s response. The reason is simple; Aether is utterly fascinating, in how he is both not of this world and yet filled with all the humanity one would expect from those who occupy it.
“It’s about my missing sister,” Aether finally sighs, and Albedo is glad that he can control every separate muscle in his face. Many have told him that he has the perfect pokerface, as if he would ever find a reason to try gambling at all-- because this is the real utility of being constructed and not born, Albedo thinks. The ability to hide the humanity that has somehow blossomed within his artificial body, despite it all. “I can’t help but wonder if someone’s passed by her, somewhere out there, but didn’t realize she was the missing woman mentioned in my posters. I tell people she looks like me, because we’re twins, but... there are still differences.”
Albedo nods, suspecting that he already takes Aether’s meaning. “Perhaps an artist’s rendition of her on the posters would yield better results,” Albedo says, and Aether looks up in surprise. “Is that what you mean to ask?”
“You’re so smart,” Aether laughs, and his laughter is brighter than even the yellows of his hair, the gold in his eyes, the beauty of the rising dawn. “Guessing what I’m going to say before I even say it.”
“Call it an alchemist’s intuition,” Albedo quips back, and something possesses him to smile. He remembers the days when he had to remind himself, stand in front of a mirror and consciously pull the muscles on the sides of his mouth upwards. Back then, it was so he would come off as a little less severe; now, it almost feels involuntary, as if the light from Aether’s laughs are pulling on his cheeks and curving his mouth to look like the smiling crescents of the waning moon. “I am more than happy to help you.”
And Aether beams back, before finding a nearby rock to sit on. It is still early in Liyue, with Venti and Zhongli still asleep in their tents, old men that they are-- so it is just the two of them, accompanied by the laughing yellows of the morning sun. “Well, she’s got my face,” Aether begins, folding his hands neatly on his lap and trying to stay as still as possible. “But with shorter hair. Same length as Sucrose, but with short twintails that end just below her shoulders.”
For Aether, Albedo draws the beauty of the rising dawn into his hair, the humanity of the world into his eyes and, dredged from the deeps of Albedo’s own treacherous foreign heart, the distilled concentration of the alchemist’s quiet love weaves its way into Aether’s smile.
It is very, very different from how he would actually draw Lumine.
For Lumine--
(“We will be reunited,” Lumine said once, her face illuminated by the cruel lights of their underground kingdom. The harsh, artificial glow of the corridor contrasted with the soft melancholy of her words, but Lumine does not display emotional vulnerability in front of her subjects in some sort of vain attempt to garner their sympathies; no, it’s just that she is simply too powerful to care about appearances. “My dear brother.”)
For Lumine, Albedo would draw the lifelessness of dusty chalk into her skin, the sharpened knifepoint of bloodied blades into the hems of her dress and, lulled from the haze of Albedo’s whispering memories, the burning catalyst of the alchemist’s vociferous fear would force its way into Lumine’s hands.
But Aether doesn’t need to see any of that.
“She wears this white dress with gold, black and blue details that go like this and here... sorry, I’m probably not doing a good job of explaining,” Aether laughs nervously once again, and his chuckle alone is enough to dull the dagger’s edge of Lumine’s skirt. “It’s open-shoulder, but with a choker around her neck. Actually... no, choker is too tight. A white necklace? But that’s too loose...”
“I understand,” Albedo reassures, because the image of Lumine has existed for far longer than Aether ever has. But somehow, the fond tones of Aether’s voice find their way into Albedo’s recollection, smoothing out rough edges that make up the little pieces of Lumine. “Please, keep going.”
Aether suddenly looks up. “Ah, I think... you should give her a warm smile. My sister’s always been the kind, heroic type. She’ll stop to help anyone in trouble, even if they’re a stranger. Her smile is an... important part of identifying her. I can’t imagine her without it.”
The cruel lights that spill onto Lumine’s commanding gaze rises to the forefront of Albedo’s mind, and so,
he instead paints a portrait of the laughing sun, putting Aether’s smile onto Lumine’s face.
“...Hmm,” Albedo sighs, and if he breathed, the mist of his morning breath would flit against the atrocious cacophony on the page. It’s all over the place, Lumine’s eyes and Aether’s hair, her hands and his smile, mismatched pieces of the sun and the shadow of Khaenri’ahn legacy.
But, for the purposes of a missing person poster, it will do. “Let me see,” Aether suddenly says, and he steps forward from the stone to see what Albedo has painted.
A small part of Albedo wants to pull the canvas away, suddenly-- tuck it to his chest and conceal the stitched-up Frankenstein monster of love and fear from the only one in the world whose gaze Albedo desires. But his hands stay rooted in place, putting his human emotions aside, and maybe he’s a gambling man after all, in the end, because there are far too many minute details on the page that only one who has actually seen Lumine could reproduce.
Aether’s jaw drops almost instantly when he sees what Albedo has made, and for a moment, all the love in his treacherous foreign heart makes way for fear of a whole new kind. “Albedo, this is...!”
Then, the traveler reaches out, almost tentatively. Like a man waiting for a fox to give him permission before petting it. Albedo raises the canvas up and into Aether’s hands, and he takes it, eyes scrying the details. “I apologize if there are some inaccuracies,” Albedo says coolly, even though he knows,
“No. You got everything right,” Aether gasps in awe, and he hugs it to his chest with a fervor Albedo has never seen from him before. His smile is more radiant than Albedo’s first sunrise, breaking out over the false sky as he crawled out of the underground kingdom and its cruel lights.
And then, in a swift movement that almost blinds Albedo in light, Aether reaches out to cup the side of Albedo’s face. “Thank you,” he breathes, and every muscle in Aether’s face is naturally bonded in the most genuine expression of gratitude. There is nary a hint of suspicion in his golden eyes.
For one who can control every muscle in his face, Albedo doesn’t know what expression he’s making back. But the brightness of Aether’s grin is titrating onto his own countenance, and it is involuntary, he realizes, the smile that graces Albedo’s own artificial face.
Aether, the outsider who has all the humanity of the world, whose twin sister is steeped in the serrated edge of destruction-- when Aether gazes at Albedo, the alchemist can fool himself into thinking, for a moment, that if this alien can be human, then,
he can be, too.
“I am glad it is to your liking,” Albedo finally responds, and Aether’s face is the perfect portrait of the laughing sun.
But Albedo was never meant for the land where the sky shines.
Still, he basks in it all the same. Perhaps there will be a day when Aether looks back on this moment and realizes that it was obvious, in hindsight, that Albedo knew more than he let on. He will study the rough edges of the portrait’s hands juxtaposed with soft shades of flowing hair and realize that Albedo had known Lumine all along, kept her a secret even when he knew she was the most important person in all the galaxies to Aether-- but maybe that’s why, Albedo hopes he’ll realize. That Albedo is keeping all these secrets because he knows Aether would not want to meet this Lumine, basked in cruel light, decorated in daggerpoints.
A foolish hope, for the fool who thinks he can even dare to pretend he’s even somewhat human. But, in the end, maybe foolishness is the most human part of him, after all:
And what a fool he is, to risk exposing all his secrets just to paint a portrait that will draw a smile onto Aether’s face.
“When we find Lumine, I’m definitely showing this to her,” Aether says. “I’ll say, ‘look, your brother remembers you so well, even a stranger can draw you based on my description!’”
“...Haha,” Albedo laughs, and if enjoying Aether’s smile is akin to the people of Teyvat basking under the hoax of the false sky, then, well, Albedo is more similar to them than he’d ever dared hope. “You truly love your sister.”
“More than anything,” Aether confirms. The love and fear mixes inside Albedo like a cauldron, and the only thing that holds them together is the shared dread of the day when he has to become Aether’s sunset.