Work Text:
It was easy, she thought, to get lost in a daydream. Sucrose found that her mind was ever wandering, winding its way to undiscovered places. To a hand on the base of her back, and ash-blond hair and eyes that were the calmest point of the sea. A shiver slid down her spine, and she gripped her cup of coffee tighter in her hands, eyes focusing on the way the clouds broke in the sun to the east of Mondstadt. The day would be a pretty one if her calculations were accurate.
It had crept up on her, the realisation, that was. Albedo was ultimately her superior but they had grown close. Synchronised and accurate, painfully close but terrifyingly far. Things were never so easy though, and while she could predict the outcome of an alchemical reaction it was safe to say that she would never predict an outcome of their relationship to be more than an assistant and her master. There was always someone else to chase, a new thing to explore, and she was comfortable knowing it wasn’t her.
She turned her head from the window, from the sun breaking across the sky and popped another sweet into her mouth. Pleasant, familiar and easy. It would be easy, she thought, if she could compete but the reality was that there had never been a competition, to begin with. Mysterious travellers were much more interesting than girls with glasses, and she was resigned to watching her master from across the room when he wasn’t in the mountains.
There was simplicity in the pining, and while not wholly pleasant it gave her a chance to focus on the thrill of the chase for something to distract herself with. Her hands were always busy, her mind always in a flurry of furious motion. It reminded her she was allowed to feel, to process, to think on things beyond the next experiment. The next new thing.
She reached for the quill and began to analyse notes from the previous day’s escapades, delicately scratching out a note to ensure he was notified of a letter that had arrived for him upon his return. The care with which she wrote his name was unparalleled. She was used to being messy when she wrote, ink on her fingertips. Ears pricked for new sounds, eyes prepared for new experiences, notebook anxiously scratching down details but never for him. In the far-flung reaches of her mind, she dreamt once that she could have written him a letter, perhaps poetically and had subsequently decided to quash that idea when she had seen the way he looked at Aether.
She had never seen him look at anyone like that, especially not her. Not normal, easy, boring Sucrose, whose friends left her. Whose real companions were bones, and things no one else understood and flowers she had changed to something new.
For a moment she wished to be anyone else. To be Kaeya, or Lisa, or Rosaria, or Barbara, or Jean. To be anyone but herself. It was easier to maintain her composure when she was someone else. She could be a great, positive adventurer with bright eyes and a clever smile.
Sucrose steadied her breath and tilted her head to the window once more. Perhaps to daydream for a little while longer would be the kindest gift to give herself for now.
Just for now.