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Albedo was dying.
For months now, his body has been slowly but surely breaking down from erosion, the alchemist getting weaker and weaker as the days went by.
Knowing that he didn’t have much time left, Albedo soon came to tell his partner, Aether, that in his last moments he wanted nothing more than to see the stars up close.
Not fully understanding why, but wanting to honour his last wishes, Aether agreed before picking the other blonde up and spreading his wings, the two taking flight not long after.
They both soared high up into the sky, eventually breaking through the atmosphere, with Aether continuing to go higher and higher. The traveller taking a moment to use some of the magic he had learnt throughout his long life to allow the both of them to breathe without issue.
The surrounding sights of the planet soon started to give way and be left behind, the blue of the sky being replaced by mostly black, the clouds being changed out for many different balls of bright light.
Stopping his movements, Aether looked around at where they both were. They had finally done it, they were floating together amongst the stars.
Moving his gaze down to the body in his arms, Aether was met with the sight of Albedo looking around with an expression of wonderment on his face, the male in complete awe at everything that he was seeing. A feeling of contentment also washing over him.
Because at that moment, while he was floating amongst the stars, but more importantly, also being cradled in the arms of the one he loved.
Albedo felt at peace.
Despite this, the alchemist soon started to feel his energy leave him more and more, his eyes slowly beginning to feel heavy.
Glancing towards Aether, Albedo let a small smile come onto his lips before he shakily lifted his right hand to put it on Aether’s left cheek. The male then turned the other’s face so that Aether’s golden eyes were looking into his teal gaze.
Feeling that it was his last opportunity, Albedo gently stroked Aether’s cheek a few times with his thumb before he opened his mouth and said no more than three simple, but heartfelt words.
“I love you.”
Hearing this caused Aether to feel tears beginning to prick the corners of his eyes.
Holding them back the best that he could, the traveller looked at the love of his life for a moment before choking out a response, voice raw with emotion.
“I love you too, Bedo, you’ve always been my beautiful, shining star.”
Hearing this caused the alchemist to feel a flutter in his stomach before he dropped his arm back down and then tried to snuggle further into the other’s body, burying his face into Aether’s chest.
Feeling safe and content in his arms, Albedo found himself becoming more and more tired, he was barely able to keep his eyes open at this point.
“Why the stars?”
Hearing Aether’s voice caused Albedo to try and muster up as much energy as he could to lift his head and look him in the eyes before trying to respond.
“It makes me feel closer to you.”
The alchemist’s voice was weak, each word coming out quieter than the last.
Unable to come up with anything to say, Aether brought Albedo closer to him, tightening his grip on the other.
The two spent the next couple of moments in silence, with Aether focusing on the motions of Albedo’s chest as he was breathing.
One breath in, one breath out.
Not wanting to let the silence last, Aether took some time to try and think of something to say before he began to speak up.
“Remember when we first met?”
The only response that Aether got was a small barely noticeable nod of the other’s head, Albedo having returned to snuggling against him.
One breath in, one breath out.
A small smile started to appear on Aether’s face as he reminisced.
“From the very first moment that I saw you, I knew that you were special.”
One breath in, one breath out
“I also thought that you were crazy for painting in such dangerous conditions.”
Aether let out a breathy chuckle, his voice underlined with pain.
“I thought that you were pretty from second one, but I really didn’t know what to think of you as a person because of the experiments you had me do.”
One breath in, one breath out.
“It took me a while to drop my guard around you because of that.”
Aether felt his smile start to waver a little, sadness once more welling up as he kept reminiscing.
“But as I did, I began to notice so many little things about you, with each one making me fall for you more and more.”
One breath in, one breath out.
Aether felt Albedo tighten his grip on him, the alchemist was attempting to bury his face even deeper into his chest, likely from embarrassment at his words.
One breath in, one breath out.
“You’ve grown to mean so much to me, Albedo.”
Aether let out a stuttering exhale, he knew that if he kept going he would just break down.
One breath in, one breath out.
But he wanted to continue, he wanted the other to know about just how much he truly means to him.
Taking another shaky breath, Aether began to speak once again, pain seeping more and more into his voice.
“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Albedo, I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything else.”
One hitched breath in, one shaky breath out.
The tears were becoming harder and harder to fight by this point, a couple had even managed to break free, running down Aether’s cheeks.
“You’re my beautiful prince, my shining star, my soulmate, the love of my life.”
One shaky breath in, one shaky breath out.
A couple of tears that had left Aether’s cheeks were now dropping down onto the top of Albedo’s head, wetting parts of his hair.
“My only regret with having met you is that we won’t be able to be together forever.”
One weak breath in, one weak breath out.
Too upset to say anything more, Aether buried his head into Albedo’s hair, uncaring of the wet patches from his tears.
He wanted nothing more than to take in the other’s scent in that moment.
One breath in, one breath out.
Aether squeezed his eyes shut, tightening his grip on the other as he started to rock them back and forth.
One breath in.
The traveller brought his wings forward to also wrap them around his alchemist.
One breath out.
In that moment, the only thing that he could do was wait for the one thing that he wanted the least.
One breath in.
One breath out.
One breath in.
One breath out.
One breath in…
Silence.
At that time, Aether found himself unable to breathe for a few seconds, his mind struggling to process the silence.
As soon as his mind started to comprehend what it meant, Aether quickly moved out of the tight embrace, distancing himself enough to be able to look down at the man lying in his arms.
The sight that he was greeted with caused his heart to shatter, Albedo’s eyes were closed, a peaceful expression on his face as he lay motionless.
As he lay lifeless.
Aether could do nothing but look on in shock, grief beginning to well up inside of him.
The grief continued to get stronger and stronger until Aether let out a strangled noise, tears finally starting to freely fall from his eyes.
The traveller quickly brought the other closer again, tightly holding onto him as he buried his face into his hair, the tears continuing to fall.
For the next few minutes, Aether was unable to bring himself to do anything other than this, the male completely consumed by grief, the tears constantly falling as Albedo’s hair became wetter and wetter.
Aether eventually began to feel his hold on the other beginning to slip a little. This prompted him to move his hands to grip the other’s arms, the blonde grabbing onto the patches of skin that weren’t covered by his clothing.
As soon as he fixed his hold, Aether started to go back to tightly embracing the other, but stopped when he felt something strange.
Some kind of grainy substance could be felt beneath his palms.
Confused, Aether began to move away from Albedo again before bringing his right hand up to examine it.
His hand was covered in a light coating of what appeared to be white powder.
Rubbing his fingers together, Aether felt the same grainy sensation.
‘What…?’
Given that the powder had come from touching the other’s skin, Aether manoeuvred himself so that he could look down into Albedo’s face and see if it was also affected.
What he saw made concern start to well up inside of him, his confusion also continuing to grow.
Albedo’s face had become incredibly pale, a thin layer of powder was covering it, with some of his skin beginning to flake.
‘I-I don’t…’
Focusing his gaze on Albedo’s right cheek, Aether began to shakily reach his hand out as he noticed that the flaking was particularly bad there.
Touching his hand against the other’s cheek, Aether briefly let it linger before bringing it back.
As he did so, multiple plumes of powder began to rise up from different parts of Albedo’s body, each one beginning to slowly drift off into the vast expanse surrounding them.
Seeing this caused Aether to pause for a moment, his mind going a mile a minute as the powder was the only thing that he could focus on.
‘It looks so familiar.’
Aether kept racking his brain, trying to come up with an answer.
‘The consistency, the feel, the look, I know that I’ve seen something like this before.’
The traveller let out a small hum of concentration.
‘It's almost like...’
Aether's eyes widened, dread pooling in his stomach as realisation dawned on him.
‘Chalk.’
Albedo had told him not too long before they had gotten together that he was made of chalk.
Aether had never asked too much about it for fear of causing the other pain, but he knew enough to understand what was happening.
Albedo’s body was returning to its original chalk form, this knowledge caused Aether’s already fragile emotional state to crumble even more.
Aether’s breathing began to increase in frequency as he started shaking his head back and forth.
“Please.”
It was faint, a small watery whisper being all that Aether was able to utter in that moment.
The tears were coming down at a much heavier rate, Aether’s vision becoming blurry because of the sheer volume of them.
“Please don’t…”
Aether tried his best to take in a deep slow breath, but this only caused him to break down even more, the traveller choking out a few words, his tone loud yet completely broken.
“Please don’t leave me!”
Aether kept repeating those four words as he rocked back and forth with the other, begging over and over again.
Hoping that it would do something, that someone out there was listening to him.
But no matter what he did, the chalk just continued to rise up and away from the alchemist.
Albedo’s form was slowly fading away from him with each passing second. This fact brought out a sense of desperation in the traveller.
‘Not here, not out in space where the chalk would just float around forever.’
Aether thought about trying to quickly fly his body back down to Teyvat, but he knew that the movement would do nothing but cause all of the grains of chalk to float even further away from each other.
Aether looked all around the area, hoping that a solution would come to him before his eyes caught onto one of the many stars that Albedo had wanted to see.
“It makes me feel closer to you.”
Remembering what the other had said to him started to make an idea form in his head.
His powers, it was a long shot, but he could use them to try and turn Albedo into his very own star.
Aether felt himself become even more determined, because of his own connection to the stars he knew that he had a chance of pulling this off.
He needed to get this right, for Albedo.
Reluctantly, the traveller loosened his hold on the other before moving away from him.
Albedo was now floating in front of him, the chalk continuing to rise off of his body in multiple plumes.
The sight caused Aether to let out a shaky breath before he raised his hands towards the other and began to concentrate.
For a moment, nothing seemed to happen, but then Albedo began to glow, his body becoming enveloped in a golden light.
The light soon began to dim, revealing that in place of Albedo’s body was now a bunch of chalk, each grain floating closely together.
Much like the glow, the chalk was also a beautiful golden colour.
Soon enough, the chalk began to move about on its own, elegantly swirling around the place in a way that Aether could only compare to dancing.
The blonde found himself to be completely captivated by what he was seeing.
‘It’s beautiful.’
The chalk kept dancing around for a couple more seconds before it started to move closer to Aether.
The traveller could only look on in awe as the chalk started to come together, taking on the shape of a person.
They had no specific details that he could make out, being nothing more than a blank shape with chalk swirling throughout their form, but Aether didn’t care, he felt happy.
“Albe-.”
Before Aether could finish saying his name, the other reached his hand up and gently cupped the traveller’s right cheek, his thumb stroking the skin in a soothing motion.
Aether let out another strangled sound before hastily bringing his right hand up and making an attempt to place it on top of the other’s.
The hand had a firmness and solidity to it, allowing Aether to easily rest his own on it.
Looking at the other, Aether opened and closed his mouth, constantly trying and failing to come up with something.
He also felt slight disbelief at what he was seeing, that it wasn’t real, but the hand against his cheek kept him grounded, a constant beautiful reminder that it was.
Despite the uptick in his mood, tears were still falling down Aether’s cheeks.
It seemed that Albedo had taken notice of this, his head tilting to the side.
The hand against Aether’s cheek soon began to wriggle around, signalling to the traveller to let go, which he reluctantly did.
Now that his hand was free, Albedo brought one of the fingers up to wipe away one of the stray tears.
Then bringing the finger closer to his own face, Albedo looked at it for a moment, Aether unable to tell what he was thinking.
Moving his gaze away from the tear, Albedo immediately turned his attention to Aether before shaking his head.
Despite no words being said, Aether knew what the other was getting at.
“It’ll be hard, but I’ll try.”
Aether let out a small sniffle before bringing his hands up and wiping the tears from his eyes.
Once he was done, he looked at the other and nodded his head, a small smile on his lips.
“For you, Albedo.”
Seemingly content with his answer, Albedo moved forward and embraced the other in a hug, which Aether eagerly returned.
The hug lasted for only a few minutes and Aether savoured each and every second.
But this soon came to an end.
Albedo loosened his hold on the other and started to step back once Aether did the same.
The two could do nothing more than stare at each other, neither of them wanting this moment to end.
Yet, deep down, Aether knew that it had to, despite it being the very last thing that he wanted.
Aether found his emotions beginning to get the better of him again, his lips wobbling as he blurted out a few final words to the love of his life.
“I love you, always.”
Albedo just continued to stare at him for a few seconds before he brought his right hand up and placed it over where his own heart would have usually been.
A second later he took that same hand and pointed it towards Aether.
As he kept his finger pointed at him, his form began to lose shape, the chalk swirling around once more.
But the chalk stayed in the same place this time, all of the grains coming closer and closer together.
The swirling kept getting faster and faster, a golden glow emitting from it which was only getting brighter by the second.
Aether soon had to look away, covering his eyes with his right arm because of how intense the glow had become.
After a while, the light began to fade, allowing Aether to move his gaze back over to the other once more, a sense of immense relief washing over him at the sight he was greeted with.
Using his powers had paid off, and directly in front of him was a bright ball of light, its brilliant glow illuminating the front of his body.
Seeing this caused tears to begin falling once more, the sadness that he felt was still strong, but this time he was also crying from joy.
He had done it.
Aether continued to stare at the star for a couple more minutes before he brought his hands up to grip both of his arms.
Despite not wanting to, he knew that he would have to leave eventually.
Casting the star one last loving look, Aether began to speak, tone watery, but also with an immense fondness to it.
“Now you’ll forever be the bright, beautiful star I always said you were, love.”
Ever since that day, whenever Aether found himself missing Albedo, he would look up into the night sky.
Staring, longing for the days when they were together as he sees his star, his Albedo, shining much brighter than any other.
Aether was from the stars, but Albedo and his love for him had very easily become his own beautiful, brightly shining star,
And in death, it had become truer than ever before.