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"I do not understand," Albedo says. "You aren't going anywhere, are you?"
Its master simply laughs, and it is not one of her usual laughs; not the wicked one that makes Albedo's blood runs cold, not the faux one she uses on the rare occasion that she speaks to people that neither of them know, and not the genuine one that it's only heard from her a couple times in all the years of being in her care. This one sounds… softer, calmer, if Albedo is correctly deciphering the emotion. It doesn't suit her, so perhaps it's wrong. Not that it is often wrong, but its master rarely shows it any signs of feeling, either, and right now there is something dark in her eyes that gives it pause.
"Cretaceus," she murmurs, too quietly to be in character. A dark hand rises to the creation's face, and its breath hitches unnaturally as she drags it down its cheek. It is not used to fear this palpable. "You are my first success. Nothing I have brought into being has come as far into life as you have, no… you are unique. Divine. As divine as a thing that is not truly real can be." Her hand leaves its cheek as quickly as it arrived, and something colder dims her expression. "So fascinating. I could spend years longer studying you."
Its breath hitches in a way that it should not. "Master?"
She doesn't reply for a moment, but turns and stares out across the rolling hills into the sun that is setting on the golden horizon, rays dancing across water that shimmers far below them in rippling waves. Albedo stares at her face, at the stars in her heavily lidded eyes and the streaks of gold in her cloudy black hair, held back with a shimmering headband. It has long memorized her features - it has spent its entire life by her side, never away from it. Something hot bubbles in its chest in such a way that it makes it want to claw itself apart. "Master, you are worrying me a little… you're speaking as if you are planning to leave and not take me with you. You would tell me if you were going to do such a thing, right?"
"Albedo," she says softly, and this time, when she laughs, it's the one it doesn't like, the one that never means good things, the one it knows better than to flinch away from when she gets in one of her moods. "Do not concern yourself with my business."
-
"Mr Albedo!"
He swims back to reality, head pounding, and takes in his surroundings through cracked eyelids before remembering himself. "Klee?" he says hoarsely, propping himself up on his elbows, for the child has crawled into his bed next to him in her butterfly patterned pajamas, her blue eyes wide and lips pouty. "Is something wrong, are you hurt?"
She whimpers, hugging her little toy close to her chest - Dodoco, she called it, a gift from Miss Alice. "Klee heard you talking in your sleep. You scared Klee."
Albedo properly sits up, wincing at how dizzy he suddenly feels. "I apologize, I did not even know I did such a thing. I would never intentionally scare you."
If he squints, he can read the clock on the other side of the room and can see that it is four thirty in the morning. This makes it almost exactly… seventeen days, two hours and forty five minutes since his master left. Not that this is something Albedo is obsessively keeping track of while also settling into the home of a woman he barely knows, and assisting in looking after a child he barely knows, in a country he's never been in, all the while preparing for Klee's mother to leave on a long trip outside of Mondstadt and for her daughter to be fully in his care. He isn't stressing about anything. And he isn't supposed to outwardly show emotion unless it is needed of him.
Klee's doe eyed gaze is still fixed firmly on him in a way that makes him feel rather like he is under a microscope. Albedo has to remind himself that he doesn't need to sit stock still until he is told he can move - just another thing that he will have to unlearn if he wants to fit into human society as one of their own, as his master had put it in that letter she left behind. None of that still feels real. He doesn't feel real. "Are you alright, Klee?"
She nods furiously, then stretches her legs out and climbs under the blanket covers next to him. The soft ends of her pajama bottoms brush against the bare skin of his leg, and he does his best not to jolt at the unpleasant sensation. Klee stills, then leans in close to Albedo like she is speaking a secret. "You were saying weird things in your sleep. You were saying, "master, master!" Klee got worried that you were having a bad dream, so she woke you up." She sticks her bottom lip out, clinging to the blanket with her chubby hands. "Did Klee do the right thing?"
Albedo lets out of a soft breath, turning thoughts over in his head and trying to figure out what the best thing to say to a child in this situation would be. He is suddenly grateful for all the seemingly unnecessary human knowledge he's learned over the years, back before he thought he'd ever be stuck living with humans other than… He swallows hard and nods. "Yes, Klee. You did, and I thank you."
Klee brightens at this, showing gap teeth in her cheesy grin. "Oh, goodie! Klee did a good thing for Mr Albedo, Klee is so happy!" She giggles. "Mommy told me I need to treat you as though you're my big brother. Klee asked the owl that sits outside her window if he had any big brothers and he said he did. He told me that I need to be very nice to you, and make you feel welcome in Mondstadt because you won't be used to being around so many people! Klee is glad that she has succeeded at making you feel better!"
Albedo is not sure what to say to this, and so simply nods. He wonders who actually told Klee that. Maybe it was just Miss Alice herself, playing games.
Miss Alice, the woman that his master directed him to in the note she left behind the day she abandoned him… the day she left, Albedo corrects himself. He needs not to speak of his master in such petty ways, even in his head. She didn't abandon him. She will be back. Once Albedo has completed his final task.
The impossible final task, the one that fills his counterfeit heart with such despair every time he thinks of the futility of attempting to complete it. Find me the truth of this world.
Albedo bites down on his bottom lip, a habit he has recently found himself forming whenever he goes too deeply into the parts of his thoughts that he wishes not to dwell in. The physical pain distracts him from the emotional pain. He knows this because of his various studies on the human body, which he had never admitted were some of the most fascinating pieces of research he'd done; the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex of the brain both register either type of pain, meaning that, with how intertwined they both are due to neural overlaps…
He suddenly remembers Klee is still here.
"Why are you in my room?" he asks, politely.
Klee frowns and rocks back and forth, one of her thumbs making its way to her mouth absently. "Klee didn't want to be all alone in her room. Usually Klee goes to her Mommy when she's scared, but Klee wanted to go see Mr Albedo, and then she heard you talking."
Albedo isn't sure what to make of this. "What made you want to come see me?" Then, without thinking: "You shouldn't suck on your thumb, either. It can affect the palate of your mouth and can lead to dental problems in the future such as misaligned teeth and overbites."
Klee doesn't remove her thumb from her mouth. "Klee doesn't know what that means."
That was to be expected. The child then goes on to answer his first question. "Klee wanted to come see you because she doesn't get to see you much during the day because you're always working in your room. Mommy says you have a very big project you need to do - is that true? Is it for school?" Her eyes are wide with excitement. "Klee had to do a pres-en-ta-tion on bugs in her science class last week! Is it like that?"
Oh, how he wishes life were that easy. "Unfortunately not. I have to complete something for my master so that she will come back to get me. It is very difficult, though, so I am devoting as much time to it as possible."
It suddenly feels too hot in this room - he usually has no problem with temperature, but he does now - so he removes the blanket from him and turns so his legs hang off the bed. He feels strange in these clothes that are not his - a slightly oversized shirt and pair of plain blue shorts that Miss Alice had went and got him a couple days after his arrival, along with a few other outfits of varying designs. Klee sits up properly and mimics his movements. Her legs are very short next to his.
"Is your master like your mommy?" she asks, so innocent and unknowing.
Albedo hesitates. "Yes," he says, an acceptable answer for a human child so young. "She is."
Klee makes a soft noise and frowns deeply. "Then why did she leave you here?"
A lump forms in the back of Albedo's throat.
"I am not sure," he whispers. There is a sudden irrational fear that his master can hear him; that she knows his every thought, that she can see inside his mind without even being here. He has had these concerns before. After a while he came to the simple conclusion that she just knew him well enough to understand how he thinks, which made sense, given that he was a thing she created, whose capability for thought she programmed into him. "I think I may have done something wrong, and she is perhaps testing me. If I can complete the task she left me, she will come back."
The child doesn't seem to be satisfied with this. "What would she be testing you for?" she asks, head tilted. She shuffles closer to Albedo, snuggling uncomfortably flush to his skin. He doesn't want to upset her by asking her to move, or by asking her to quit it with all the questions, because they're making his head spin and while Albedo's sleep schedule has never been very organized, it is still four in the morning and he's so tired.
"Obedience," he simply replies. "Intellect. Maybe just my survival skills."
Klee gnaws the tip of her thumb thoughtfully.
"My mommy wouldn't do that to me," she mumbles, sounding uncertain.
Albedo sighs and, after a brief pause for thought, gingerly wraps an arm around Klee's shoulders, the way humans do to comfort each other. He hates the way the contact makes his skin crawl, but whatever being human takes, he'll do it if he must. "That's right," he says, injecting confidence into his tired tone. "She wouldn't. It's not - it's a very difficult concept to explain to a child such as yourself. It's more… in your words, my "mommy" isn't exactly a normal mommy like yours is. She's something very different to me."
Klee furrows her eyebrows like she is deep in thought. "Your mas-ter," she sounds out. "There is a man that lives near us and he has a dog and he says he is the dog's "master." Is it like that?" Her eyes are wide with the purity of a being that knows almost nothing at all. "Are you like the dog, then?"
She's just a child. She doesn't know what she's saying. Just a child.
Albedo feels like throwing up anyway.
"...Sorry if that wasn't a nice thing to say," Klee whispers after a long moment in which Albedo neither moves nor says anything at all. "Mommy says I can't say the Knight that sometimes comes to bring us fresh fruit looks like a skunk, so I don't think I can say you're like a dog. You're not like a dog, anyway." She pauses. "You're like a cat."
Albedo finds himself laughing, just a little, if only at the ridiculous image of Klee telling a Knight of Favonius to their face that they look like a unpleasantly smelling furry mammal. "Thank you. I appreciate that."
This makes Klee smile, and Albedo's chest is filled with a gentle warmth he hasn't felt in a while. For a second he enjoys it, then is stabbed with a sensation of pure guilt - he can't be allowing himself to feel like this, not while his master is still missing, not while he isn't with her. He won't even be in Mondstadt long - there is no use getting attached to this child, this sweet, crafty girl who is so intent on calling him "big brother" and drawing things for him on giant sheets of paper and endlessly rambling about her favourite types of fireworks. He can't let himself be happy here. It will only distract himself from his work, and he cannot be distracted, he has to be on high alert always if he wants to be completely whole again at his master's side.
"Go back to bed, Klee," he says softly, removing his arm from her shoulders. She pouts, her face falling in upset, but he will not change his mind on this. "Go, it's late."
"Can I sleep in here with you?" she whispers, and if everything in Albedo doesn't want to say yes, please, I am unbelievably lonely and I need to fill the gap my creator has left behind, but he forces those thoughts away. No distractions. He has already slacked off enough.
"Not tonight." Or any other night. "Don't make me tell your mother, Klee, go."
Klee's bottom lip wobbles. "You're mean, Albedo," she mumbles, the venom of a scorned child in her voice.
"Indeed I am," Albedo agrees tiredly. "Now go to your room. There is no need for you to come in here during the night anymore, alright?"
She barely stays long enough to hear him finish speaking. Her head is held high as she swiftly makes her exit, stuffed toy clutched in her arms. She does not shut the door behind her. The warmth that the girl tends to bring everywhere she goes is gone, leaving only a cold emptiness that causes Albedo to shiver despite the lack of active thermoreceptors in his body.
He misses his master. He is not coping without her. His work is not enough - not enough space, not enough hours in the day. Miss Alice is assisting him in getting a working place in the Knights of Favonius, but it will still not be enough. He misses his master.
Are you like the dog, then?
Albedo will not be going back to sleep tonight.