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The Church of Favonious is filled with paintings.
When Rosaria first arrived to the city, she would stay hours inside the cathedral, staring at them while she pretended to pray.
There are intricate frescos on the wall depicting moments in the history of Mondsadt. The windows are covered by glass paintings, of illustrations of saints and Gods, of the almighty Barbatos. Even in the quarters where the nuns sleep, small illustrations hang on the walls. After all, this is the city of Freedom, and with freedom comes art.
Even Rosaria’s room in the Cathedral has its own painting. It’s tiny, barely any bigger than an apple. A portrait. The woman in the picture has the clothes of a nun from the past, dark hair almost fully hidden by the long veils that were worn at her time. Her eyes seem to follow Rosaria through the place, painted with a strange skill, uncommon to be seen on a small, old oil portrait. She likes it, though. It feels nice to have something in her room that welcomes her fully.
The room is rather small, with only enough space for her bed, a small desk, and a vault for her things, but at least Rosaria doesn’t have to share it with another sister. That would complicate her late night outings.
Tonight, she carefully leaves when she knows the other sisters have gone to bed. The moon is high up on the sky, looking at her as the nun makes her way through the atrium.
Her stroll ends at Angel’s Share, sharing a round of wine with the tavern’s customers. A bard with braids in his hair sits on the corner, offering poems and songs in exchange for cider.
So many different people, all have come here to drink, and Rosaria would gladly stay until dawn, watching them be.
Rosaria has learnt to know people with only a couple glances. It’s nothing less than useful, considering her peculiar line of work. She knew Kaeya was hiding something since the first time they went out to drink together. She knows how Grandmaster Jean feels about her work, and how hopelessly she gazes at Lisa, the longing of a lifetime set in the eyes of the Dandelion Knight.
Despite being so estranged from the city, Rosaria is glad she knows its people. It’s fine that the people may not want to know her .
Master Diluc is bartending today. The man sure is a vault of secrets, with that personality of his. Rosaria has a vague guess of most of them.
Later into the night, she ends up buying a bottle of wine for the bard, because he played a song Rosaria recognizes from long ago. It’s an old folk tale, of two lovers meeting across the cold mountain, and meeting their demise in a snowstorm. A woman that shines in her memories would sing it when Rosaria was very little. Maybe that was her grandmother, or her mom. She doesn’t want to know. It would be of no use.
Yet a pair of unwanted tears burn at her eyes.
So she remains sitting on her spot at the tavern, listening to the bard’s song.
It’s the ungodly hours of the morning when Rosaria finally leaves Angel’s Share. She leans on the wall at the alley next to it, smoking one of her cigarettes and watching the spirals of smoke mix up with the dust that covers the air.
Then, she spots a familiar face crossing the street. She’d never thought to see Albedo here or now. Interesting.
The man looks at her for a second, then continues his way to the Knight’s headquarters. What could make the alchemist leave his research at this time? Rosaria ought to find out.
But tonight, the memories of her home seem insistent, reaching back at her through a nearly forgotten song. She should go back to the Cathedral now.
That night, Rosaria tries to recall the song from the tavern. Barbara insists she has a pretty voice, but she’s never really tried singing before. Not with passion, at least.
The painting on the wall stares intently when she whispers the old tune once and again.
On a cold Tuesday afternoon, Rosaria finds herself in Dragonspine, wishing to investigate Albedo. She’d been following the trail of a group of treasure hoarders and ended up here.
Maybe Rosaria kills hoarders more viciously than she kills others. If someone were to ask, she’d answer it’s her little personal revenge. But to the eyes of Mondstadt, Rosaria is nothing more than a lazy nun with no belief in the gods, so nobody would ever ask that. It’s for the better, really.
When the woman makes her way to Albedo’s camp, it’s mid afternoon, the sun drawing out shapes with mysterious shadows from every object in the snowy ground.
Albedo is sitting outside of his camp, with a sketchbook in hand. He raises his head quickly to meet Rosaria’s gaze. There are a thousand questions in his clear eyes when he speaks.
“Rosaria, I am aware you don’t trust me, but what brings you here today?”
She doesn’t know what to answer. It’s not like she has a lead to suspect Albedo or anything.
“Nothing has brought me here. I just walked up to see how you were doing.”
“That must have been quite the effort, coming all the way up to see me without a purpose.”
“Don’t go getting the wrong ideas, Chief Alchemist. Is a nun no longer allowed to visit the people of the God she serves?”
“I doubt you’d do anything for your God, sister Rosaria.” She can’t really answer to that.
“What are you doing, anyway?”
Albedo moves her sketchpad so she can see it. The page is nearly blank, except for a couple of rough sketches made in charcoal. Schemes of the plants growing near the camp.
“Just drawing.” So he draws. Interesting.
“I see.” Rosaria was almost hoping to catch the guy in deep shit, doing gruesome experiments to a hilichurl, or something. Her suspicions are rarely wrong yet this time she has been embarrassed. The nun turns around, ready to leave the way she came up.
“Don’t leave so soon, if you may. I rarely have visitors that aren’t Klee or Kaeya, and they can only talk to me about so much. Would you care to chat for some time, if only to entertain ourselves?”
“Fine.” She agrees, only to add “Do you have anything to drink?”
So Albedo brings her a bottle of cheap beer he kept stashed away next to his research vials. Rosaria eyes it suspiciously, but what’s there to lose?
They sit at the entrance of the camp, talking about nothing: The weather, the upcoming choir concert of the Church, the rising prices of wine, the most recent scandal between the old aristocrats… Rosaria doesn’t recall small talk being this enjoyable since she first came to the city.
Eventually, the conversation drives back to religion, as it tends to happen in Mondstadt. The Knights have made it so every kid in there learns how to read and pray to Barbatos before they learn the cost of Mora.
“And tell me, Rosaria, why are you a nun for the Church if you don’t respect the Gods?”
She has never answered this to anyone but maybe Kaeya, one time they were seriously wasted at Cat’s Tail. But it’s easy talking to Albedo. Maybe it’s because they’re both outsiders; inherently different to those who were born or raised under the wing of the WInd God.
“Coming here was like receiving a second chance, for me. I must repay it to the city in the way I was taught to.”
“And that way wasn’t praying, was it? Is this why you’re always up late, searching through the alleys?” Albedo looks like he understands. Maybe he does.
“And you, Chief Alchemist? Why do you serve the Knights if Barbatos doesn’t seem to have you under his wing? Do you perhaps pray to him, by any chance?”
“I don’t pray, no. I was raised under old manuscripts and burdens of the past. My mission here is not about believing in any God. that’s not what I seek for.” So he has a mission, huh?
They remain silent, lost in thought. Maybe they dream about their respective pasts.
“Well, Albedo. I must take my leave. If I don’t report back to Barbara she will believe I ditched the church and I’ll be lectured on the mercy of the Great Lord Barbatos. Barbatos could be some drunkard guy who sleeps in an alley for all I care.”
“Goodbye, then, sister Rosaria. Come up here some other day, if you will. It was nice talking to you.”
She makes her way back to the Church, and while Barbara, indeed, lectures her, Rosaria can’t help but try to imagine what kind of path brought Albedo to Mondstadt. Was it a trail of blood and ruin, like hers?
In the end, they don’t meet again at Dragonspine, but during Sunday mass at the Church. Rosaria arrives late, as always, but she does take her place at the altar. Barbara made sure she was present, since today’s an important ceremony. They celebrate the death of one of Mondstadt’s Saints. Each of the attendees is in their church attire, way more formal than what everybody wears on the daily. They like to do that here, to commemorate people’s deaths. Bullshit.
When the mass ends, Rosaria spots Albedo next to Klee and a tall woman dressed all in red. She approaches them, earning curious gazes from the other sisters.
“Sister Rosaria, hello.This is Alice, Klee’s mother. She’s visiting for the weekend and I offered to show her around. You may know her as the author of Teyvat’s Travel Guide. ”
“Hello, Miss Alice. Nice to meet you.” This is awkward. Rosaria is already wishing for the conversation to end. She shouldn’t have approached them. Yet she can’t help but wish to know more about Albedo. It’s strange to her, seeing someone she can’t understand easily. Whatever he’s hiding, whatever he is.
“Nice to meet you, dear!” Looking more closely, she’s probably a witch. An unmistakable aura of magic follows the woman. Interesting.
“Well, I’ll get going. Looks like you have words to exchange with Albedo. Goodbye!”
Alice leaves, with Klee holding her hand. Now Rosaria has to speak to Albedo alone. Oh well.
“Is Alice your relative, too?”
“No, but she’s almost like one. She has taught me a lot and taken care of me when I was younger, although not as much as my master. I watch over Klee while she travels the world.”
“Interesting. So did your ‘master’ raise you?”
“You could say so. She taught me almost all I know and believe, and gave me a purpose to seek on this place. I couldn’t be more grateful to her, even if she gave me an impossible task, and eventually left me to my own devices when I no longer was of use.”
“Tough love, right?” Rosaria tries not to think of her ‘father’ now. He did raise her, in the end. Now the man is six feet under, life taken by the hand of her ‘daughter’.
“Tough love, indeed. I barely remember how she was, anyway.”
“What was her name?”
“Rhinedottir.” Daughter of Rhine. Of a river. Rosaria can’t remember her true father or mother’s names. She also chose to forget the name of the treasure hoarder she called such.
Albedo speaks fondly of her master, even if she left him. What could that ‘final task’ possibly be? “You seem to keep many secrets, Kreideprinz.”
The alchemist looks at her intensely, like he knows she wants to know them all. “Is that so?”
“I shall find them out.” It 's not a threat. Rosaria likes to think it’s a promise.
“Lights out!”
The next time she has a day off, Rosaria is in the woods under Starsnatch Cliff, covered in blood and surrounded by corpses. They kidnapped a woman, they raided her home. She’s been tracking them for two days now.
It’s Rosaria’s own little justice. Maybe, and only maybe, if Barbatos was real, he would approve. Could he perhaps be watching? If so, could he forgive Rosaria? Would he be okay with what she’s done?
Sister Victoria says that Barbatos has always been a God who wishes for freedom and freedom only. His Saints were men and women who did something for the city, to protect it. Most died horrible deaths under the rule of oppressors, fighting for some abstract freedom.
Barbara says that Barbatos loves everyone in Mondstadt, regardless of what they’ve done. If that was the case, does he love the kidnappers Rosaria just killed the very same as he loves her?
Whatever, today is her day off and she might as well go visit the Stormbearer Mountains. Her village was nearby. Now she likes going to pick valberries and stare at the cliffs and the sea beyond them.
So she washes up on a river the best she can and walks up Starsnatch Cliff, looking for someplace to sit and rest for a bit. Rosaria lights up a cigarettes, and contemplates the way the cecilias sway in the wind.
She’s on the third cigar when she hears somebody walking through the field. The last person she’d like to meet at this moment.
“What are you doing here?”
“Can someone no longer enjoy the fields and cliffs of Mondstadt?” Answers Albedo, who carries his sketchbook and a bag of supplies. Rosaria doesn’t answer. If anything, she’s the one who shouldn’t be here.
“Is it your day off?”
“Yes.”
They remain in silence. Rosaria takes a long drag of her cigarette and blows it in Albedo’s direction, who sits on the rock right next to her. The alchemist coughs, although he says nothing. The minute draws long, the only sound is the wind on the cliff.
“Can I draw you?”
“What?”
“I came to the cliff looking for some inspiration, that is. I wished to draw something beautiful, and I enjoy the cecilias that grow here. They only grow here, not in any other place in Mondstadt.”
“And what’s that got to do with me, huh?”
“You have blood in your shirt.” Oh shit.
“Doesn’t that scare you, Kreideprinz? Don’t you fear I will pull out my spear and chop that pretty face off?”
“Of course not, Rosaria. Do you think I don’t know what you do in your free time? Do you think corpses just disappear? You could be one of our Saints with how much good you’ve done to Mondstadt.”
“You’re wrong, Albedo, to think I would want to be a saint.”
“Yet I find it almost poetic. Do you regret what you do? Do you regret killing now?”
“No. I don’t.”
She doesn’t, not now. She regrets killing and stealing for the hoarders, but she’s happy she can help Mondstadt even if her ways are bloody and brutal. It’s what she can do and she will do it to ensure this city can live its days to the fullest.
“I don’t trust you, Albedo. I hope you don’t trust me either.”
“I trust you.”
Oh. Nobody has said they trust Rosaria. Back with the hoarders, you could not and should not trust anyone. The sisters say they trust her, but she knows they all are just waiting for her to slip up and make a scene.
“So, Rosaria, could you trust me and let me draw you?”
“Fine.” Nobody’s ever drawn Rosaria. One of the Deacons had studied art and would paint the nuns into little posters to promote the choir performances. Rosaria never shows up to the choir and never asked him for a portrait. He died two months ago, anyway.
Albedo takes out a piece of charcoal and opens his sketchbook. He stares intensely at Rosaria for a minute. She almost feels herself blush. Come on. Rosaria is a grown woman. A murderer. How is she blushing just because someone looks at her with attention?
“Aren’t you scared I’ll kill you and take the sketch from you after you finish?
“Do you take me for a fool?”
“Not in my dreams. I do take you for someone naive, though.”
“And would my naivety stop me from appreciating what’s beautiful?”
Screw it. She’s definitely blushing now.
The corners of Albedo’s mouth quirk up. Little alchemist bitch.
“Speak to me while you draw. I’ll get bored otherwise.”
So Albedo talks about his research. Rosaria doesn’t understand much of it. Something about how flowers can grow and fully bloom even in Dragonspine under the right conditions. Something about how Alchemy could potentially be used in medicine, if there were the proper studies on healing magic and hydro visions.
Albedo studies the mystery of life. Rosaria, who once was an expert in taking it, wonders if she’ll ever be okay with hers.
After some time, Albedo stops talking to focus on the portrait, so she simply stares at him. The alchemist’s eyes are fixed on his sketchbook, he pouts every now and then as he perfects his drawing. Rosaria has always found it intriguing how people’s faces change when they do something they love. She looks at the nuns at choir and at the Deacon when he plays the piano. There is some kind of celestial glow in their inspiration, some sort of immortality in their art.
Maybe that’s the freedom Barbatos talked about.
“Done.” Albedo shows the drawing to her. Rosaria’s breath hitches.
Albedo’s sketch could hardly be called a sketch. It’s so carefully done, every detail accounted for. The shapes are smooth and shaded over, unlike most of the sketches she’s seen him do. It could easily be one of the many paintings in the cathedral.
The woman in the sketchbook stares back. She looks the same as Rosaria, when she looks at her reflection in the tiny mirror at the nun’s quarters.
Rosaria wishes she could create something as beautiful. Is this how Albedo sees her?
“You can keep it, if you want.”
“Thanks, Albedo.”
Rosaria wants to ask many things, she wants to know Albedo the way he seems to know her. But she is not fit for art. She has proved to be good at killing and good at drinking. That should be enough for herself.
“Goodbye.”
On the way back, the sky starts to pour. A typical Mondstadtian summer rain. A few heavy drops fall on the sketch, but Rosaria manages to salvage it.
Sister Victoria says nothing at the sight of the sketch on Rosaria’s hand, but her eyes tell the truth of what she must be thinking. To hell and back with the nun’s gossip.
Albedo’s sketch of Rosaria gets kept inside the frame of the portrait in her room. If the oil painting has lasted there many years just accumulating dust, the paper sketch should be safe in there.
The portrait’s eyes seem almost incriminating whenever Rosaria catches herself moving the frame and taking it out to stare at Albedo’s drawing again.
Who decided mass should be held this early in the morning? Rosaria is at the cathedral, pretending to pray with the other sisters. What she really does is wonder how much she’d get scolded if she pulled out a cigarette here and now. After she notices Barbara’s eyes piercing through her skull, she decides to instead stare at the markings made on the wood of the bench she kneels behind. Some idiot, probably a lovesick teenager, carved the letters “B+F” on it. The handwriting isn’t even pretty.
A few citizens of Monstadt go to morning mass, too. For some reason. After the endless lecture the Deacon gives, they take their leave while the nuns go to their church duties. It’s around this time when Rosaria ditches and goes to get herself a much needed breakfast, only to then track any criminal who may need her punishment.
Just as Rosaria carefully leaves through the door on the side of the cathedral, she notices someone enter. Albedo. What could he be doing here?
“Did you finally convert, Kreideprinz?” She says, approaching Albedo as he enters the Church.
“Sure thing, sister Rosaria.” He smiles almost sheepishly. “Actually, I came here to confess.”
“Eh?”
Albedo’s cheeks tint a light pink when he slowly processes the implications.
“Ehh- you know, the confession booth? Where you- confess, um.. sins?”
“Eh???”
Rosaria takes a deep breath. “All right, Albedo. You sure must have a bunch of sins in that mysterious life of yours. Good thing I’m on duty, right?”
So they walk into one of the confession booths. It 's awkward, yes. Now that they are sitting this close, side to side, closed off to the rest of the world, Rosaria notices the alchemist smells faintly of cecilias. Interesting, sure. She’s totally not nervous right now. What the hell is he even going to confess? Did he also take a liking for casual murder?
“Well, Albedo, shoot it.”
“Alright.”
A beat. Two beats. Thirty beats. A minute.
“I’m scared.”
Huh?
Albedo continues. “I’m scared this will all go as my master used to say, when we were underground and studying the Art of Khemia. It terrifies me what she may have done before raising me, and after leaving me. It scares me that I may have a purpose that brings doom to this place. It terrifies me and I know no one can understand that. What would Barbatos do if he knew I’m a remnant of the God's doings?”
Rosaria doesn’t answer. She doesn’t understand Albedo and she probably never will. She can’t comfort him on whatever hidden purpose he fears, just as he can’t understand and soothe the pain her past with the hoarders brings her. So the only thing she can do is quietly hold Albedo’s hand, here inside the small confession booth.
“I don’t understand you, Albedo. I can’t.”
Albedo takes a deep, shaky breath, his voice still quivering a bit as he answers. “I don’t understand you either, Rosaria. I’m sorry for saying all of this to you.”
“But I trust you.”
Rosaria continues speaking, seeing she might as well spit it out now.
“I trust you and I think you’re like a painting. Yes, you’re mysterious and something other than the people that live here. You may come from underground and come with some evil purpose brought to you by your master, but you can always do something else than what someone raised you for. Even if you end up bringing doom or whatever, trust me, Albedo. You are forgiven. I will personally forgive you.”
Albedo looks at her and smiles softly. His eyes are teary, but his gaze tells he understood Rosaria’s words.
“Thank you, Rosaria. Thank you.”
A moment of silence. They’re still holding hands.
“You’re also very nice.” Albedo continues. “You’re sharp and good at killing like an old blade.” A beat. “Maybe that’s not the best compliment.”
“No, no, go on.”
“And you’re smart and pretty and you seek for your own kind of justice, and you could be one of the Saints just by how much good you bring into Mondstadt even if nobody knows it and I like speaking to you. I would draw you a hundred times, on every canvas and with every pen and charcoal and paintbrush I’d ever own.”
They’re both blushing at this impromptu confession.
After a bit of comfortable silence, Albedo’s lips form a mischievous smile. “I have an idea.” The alchemist whispers.
Gods be damned, Rosaria would follow him to the end of Teyvat.
Turns out making out inside a confession booth is not the best idea. It certainly is fun, but there’s not much space to move around, and anybody could hear them. Still, Rosaria’s heart is doing somersaults and her head is spinning as she kisses Albedo like she doesn’t need breathing to survive.
“I need a drawing of you.” She whispers between kisses. Albedo is not the best kisser, but he surely is enthusiastic. “A self-portrait. Can you do it?”
“Sure.” Albedo says, voice low and breathy. “Why?”
“So I can put it with mine. On my wall at the quarters.” Rosaria peppers kisses on Albedo’s cheeks, on the tip of his nose. He chuckles, happy and lovesick and she swears she could believe in every God in Teyvat at this exact moment.
“ Archons, Kreideprinz, you’re beautiful.”
“Don’t go taking their name in vain. We’re at a church.” She kisses him more intensely
“I say it ten times over. You’re beautiful. Like a prince.”
They were in a church , after all. They get found out by poor Barbara (Rosaria feels genuinely sorry) and she almost calls the Deacon, and Jean, and Kaeya, and all the knights of Favonious, and it is by far the most embarrassing moment of Rosaria’s life.
In the end, she saves herself from being Mondstadt’s Hottest Gossip by promising Barbara to actually do her Church duties for a month, and to finally participate in the choir. Oh well.
That same night, Rosaria sneaks out, as she always does, and heads to Starsnatch Cliff. A bit of stargazing to process the events of the day can’t hurt anyone.
She makes sure to collect a handful of cecilias to give to the Kreideprinz tomorrow.
Rosaria nearly falls asleep under the stars, dreaming of paintings, sunsets and of Albedo.
She drags herself back to her small room with its small portrait hanging from the wall, the painting’s eyes looking at Rosaria smile and laugh like a lovesick kid.
If her ‘father’ were alive, would he be glad for her? Rosaria whispers her wish into the night.
And for once, she’s okay with the path that brought her to this moment.