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There’s a reason why Tighnari’s banned from the Spantamad laboratories.
(He doesn’t think the reason’s fair, but it’s certainly understandable.)
All students of the Akademiya are obligated to take at least a half-year’s worth of courses in every Darshan, regardless of their actual specialization. Thus, as a former Amurta-affiliated researcher, he’s had to learn everything from Mondstadtian phonotactics in the Haravatat to the socioeconomic impact of the Archon Wars in the Vahumana.
Safe to say, he’s forgotten pretty much all of that after graduating and becoming a Forest Watcher. There is one memory that’s stuck with him all this while, though, through everything from close encounters with Rishboland Tigers in the Avidya Forest to the upturning of the Akasha and the Akademiya itself alongside the freeing of the Dendro Archon — the memory of the one time he managed to reduce an entire laboratory to rubble when he was finishing off his studies in the Spantamad Darshan.
(“What were you studying that even made that possible?” Albedo marvels in a hushed whisper.)
(“Something about Dendro Slime extract flammability, I think...” Tighnari trails off, looking thoughtful, before noticing the knowing smirk on Albedo’s face. “Hey! It wasn’t completely my fault, okay? Let me finish the story!”)
(“Sure,” Albedo chuckles, burrowing deeper under the blankets, closer to Tighnari.)
The other students at the Akademiya, he remembers, weren’t all particularly studious. The lazier ones tended to get filtered out as their workload mounted, but some, probably by buying off others to do their work for them, managed to stay afloat, at least for a while.
There were others, though. Less lazy, more... absent-minded, so to speak. He noticed early on that this, interestingly enough, varied quite a lot based on the Darshan. The Kshahrewar machinists tended to be quite observant, even managing to commit blueprints to mind and flawlessly reproduce them upon request. On the other hand, the Rtahwist star-watcher students, and even some of their lecturers, seemed to walk around in a dream-like trance half the time, forgetting important documents on the tables in the Puspa Café and getting chewed out by their superiors seemingly on a daily basis.
And, to that — he’s not really one to draw hasty conclusions purely based on someone’s studies in the Akademiya, but he has a sneaking suspicion that it was one of the Rtahwists who’d forgotten about a highly flammable mixture on the lab bench on the place next to his setup. He was told later that the compound was dangerous enough that only senior Spantamad researchers should have been able to get their hands on it, and that it shouldn’t have been possible for it to left outside like that, and that it was completely inexcusable for something like that to occur, but to be honest, those were little comfort to him and his ringing ears, waking up in the hospital the next day.
He remembers it as clear as day. The beaker containing the Dendro Slime extract was being kept at about 95°C. He’d noticed that, occasionally, some of the liquid in the beaker would sputter and a few droplets would fly out and splatter onto the laboratory worktop. To prevent that, he’d thought it’d suffice to simply place a watch glass on the top of the beaker. Typically, this would permit any gases being evolved to escape through the small hole left on the edge of the beaker, while preventing most of the droplets from escaping.
And on that rainy afternoon, it did work — at first. He wasn’t a Spantamad specialist by any stretch, but he did at least think of himself as fairly competent with stock laboratory equipment. Feeling that he’d solved the problem, and with about half an hour left before the mixture would finish boiling off the excess solvent, he’d decided to stretch his legs some and mill about the laboratory for a bit. He’d reasoned that he could keep an eye on the progress from afar, so if anything did go awry, he’d rush over immediately.
(“That seems pretty irresponsible, to be honest.” Albedo says, voice muffled in Tighnari’s cotton sweater.)
(Tighnari huffs out at the indignity of the jab. “I know, but come on, it wasn’t anything dangerous. Just some routine preparations — which I’d done like ten times before, at that point.”)
(“Besides,” he adds, “you can’t tell me you’ve never gotten bored just watching a beaker on a hot plate. You expect me to sit through half an hour of that and not nod off right there?”)
(“Yup,” deadpans Albedo right back, “in fact, I’ve once sat in front of a solution I was boiling off for five hours without even blinking. That’s the dedication of an alchemist to his craft. Clearly, you botanists have no idea what it’s like.”)
(Tighnari swats him on the back of his head — or rather, his neck; his accuracy decreased by the awkward angle, what with Albedo curled up beside him — with his tail for that. “Anyway, as I was saying...”)
That afternoon, the laboratory was deserted. Even the Akademiya scholars did occasionally get holidays — one day off per week. Most of his fellow students were off in the cafés of Sumeru City, playing cards, or otherwise simply sleeping in. For him, though, there was no such luxury; he’d found out last-minute that one of his group's teammates had forgotten to do his share of the work, and so, unless one of the others would take the time to finish the preparations of the extracts, they wouldn’t have anything to show on the next day. And, of course, Tighnari managed to draw the short end of the stick.
Not that he really minded, to be fair. He could get quite a lot of reading done in the Spantamad labs, as he didn’t really have much else to do on that particular week, Cyno apparently still being tied up in some family business out in Upper Setekh. The labs were a nice enough place for him to hang around without anyone intruding.
He remembers circling the room a few times, flipping through the pages of a few new articles borrowed from his friends beforehand, before he noticed something off. Aside from his setup on a corner desk, which pretty much consisted of a water bath and a few sealed vials of concentrated Dendro solution he'd finished processing already, the rest of the workbenches were completely empty, surfaces wiped spotless. Even the little swivel chairs had been put back into place, except for one spot — the one next to his.
The work surfaces themselves were completely white. Usually, this made spills easier to see and clean up, but in this case, the liquid in and spilled around the beaker on the spot next to his was nearly clear. Looking around again more carefully, he still found no trace of any other equipment of the sort out on the benches.
Frowning a bit, he’d peered at the clear solution from afar again, this time more closely. Perhaps the color could be the reason why I didn’t spot it at first, he’d thought to himself, returning to his working space to see if any of the leaking liquid had contaminated his final product — the crystallizing Dendro extracts. He’d noticed a strange, acrid smell earlier, not from the boiling Dendro solution. Perhaps the clear substance was volatile?
Circling the room a bit more, rather aimlessly, he'd mulled it over. It was highly unlikely in the first place that whoever had been using the area last would have left anything particularly dangerous out in the open like that — for one, were it actually a student like he who had left the sample there, it would be all the less likely then that the contents of the broken beaker would turn out to be anything more interesting than some discarded leftover diluted acid, given the Darshan's insistence on the following of proper disposal protocol for everyone.
On the other hand, were it a careless member of faculty, it would make the off-chance that the clear substance was in fact something to be wary of somewhat less unlikely. And given that he was purifying a highly concentrated solution of Dendro elemental energy next to the spill, he didn't feel like taking chances. He'd decided that he would move his apparatus a bit to the side, away from the spill. But first, he'd have to figure out what this stuff could be up close — to that end, he'd approached the bench to investigate.
And as he did so, stepping back to his setup, the muffled echoes of his shoes against the laboratory floor filling the deserted room — a singular stray drop of boiling Dendro solution flew out of the beaker, evidently out the side where the indentation bent out from under the watch glass, and, right in front of his eyes, landed right on the clear liquid leaking from the cracked beaker on the workbench next to his. Alarmed, he’d drawn back, his legs hitting the chair behind him as a sharp hissing sound was produced where the droplet of nearly-pure Dendro had landed on the fluid.
The hissing was almost immediately followed by a rapid whoosh of air rushing in as the trail of clear fluid on the desk caught fire. And, most disconcertingly of all, the flames were rapidly creeping up the leak to its source, that broken — yet still half-full — beaker of liquid that wasn’t his and of which he had no idea of the contents.
Tighnari generally prides himself on working pretty well under time pressure — cognitive efficiency is a source of pride in the Akademiya. And when it comes to situations like these, he has to think fast:
- The clear solution was almost certainly highly flammable, and it seemed to react violently with Dendro.
- There was a significant amount of it still left in the beaker, where it could potentially explode violently.
- This explosion would cause this fluid to come into contact with pure, crystalline Dendro samples, which would in turn generate multiple secondary explosions.
Instantly, he books it for the sole fire extinguisher in the lab, hanging next to the window. As he’s trying to figure out how to use it, the fire roars higher and an acrid smell fills his nostrils. As he tries to pull out the safety pin, a small explosion alerts him enough for him to grab his Vision and—
Oh. Right. He can’t generate a shield with his Dendro Vision.
At that point, he does the only thing that’s left in his mind: he flings the window open, leaps out onto the courtyard garden outside, and presses his ears against his skull in wait for the impending blast.
But even that can’t prepare him for the sheer enormity of the sound that surrounds him completely just a few seconds — though he’d be damned if those few seconds didn’t feel like a few lifetimes — later.
(Albedo hugs Tighnari’s chest close to his. His arms enwrap him tightly and his fingers twirl some strands of hair drifting about his nape. “It's a bit late to say this, but… really, you don’t have to go into detail if you don’t feel like you can do it,” he murmurs softly, “I’m just happy that you’ve trusted me with all this already.”)
(Tighnari deflates a bit, his bravado seeping away. “I— thanks, I guess. It’s nothing compared to you, really, but—”)
(“Hey. No. Don’t say that,” Albedo chides, flicking him on his back lightly and nuzzling into his hair, between his ears. “What you've gone through can't be compared to what anyone else's gone through — and don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise. Don't diminish yourself.”)
(And to that he has no reply, blinking away tears, inexplicable yet very real, damp and cold against the skin on heated cheeks. After a while, though, with Albedo's calming fiddling with some loose strands of his hair and brushing of his fingers against his ears, he straightens out the thoughts whirling around in his head and steadies his wavering voice to speak. Finally answering Albedo's unasked question, he half-rasps out, "Ah — well, it's fine," he gives a small, tired smile, "the story's almost over, and the worst part's past us. I'll give it a proper ending.")
(Albedo smiles, gentle but earnest, right back down at him, combing his fingers through Tighnari's hair, "Well, if you're comfortable with doing so…")
The lights are blinding when he finally awakens and squints around blearily for a few minutes, wondering where he was and how he'd gotten into that situation, before his visitors — who'd apparently been there since the night before, waiting for him to wake up — returned to the room, with food, drinks, and shopping bags in tow.
Kaveh was the first to walk in. Though he and Al-Haitham’s bickering had been steadily rising in intensity as they rounded the hallway to his room, he’d dropped all of his paper bags and ran straight for his bedside — along with the coffee cups inside them — once he noticed that form shrouded in blankets on the hospital bed was rolling back and forth, looking around the room.
His sight was, at that point, still blurry, his senses dulled from having just awoken. But he thinks he remembers Al-Haitham looking up in surprise, cut off mid-sentence, before shaking his head and bending down to try to pick up the dropped and now sopping wet paper bags. He’d stayed there for quite some time, their contents apparently proving difficult to sort through, as he’d bent over further to squint into the bag, before giving up and simply half-squatting, half-sitting on his heels next to the fallen bags, trying to pick them up.
And, taking that as a cue, Cyno, evidently having pieced together the clues bodily provided by Kaveh leaving behind an argument for perhaps the first time in his life — and also by him being shaken awake by said architect as seen through the wide-open door — full-on leaps over Al-Haitham’s hunched-over figure and runs up to him, his shoes splashing a mixture of dirt and lukewarm coffee into Al-Haitham’s face as he lands in front of him.
(He would end up having the grimace from that stuck on his face for a week straight afterwards, according to Kaveh. All of them were the best he could possibly have asked for while he was stuck in the hospital recovering, standing their ground with him in his innocence as the Akademiya initially assumed his fault in the matter before rapidly reversing course upon discovering the residue from the explosion matching up with his story — Al-Haitham had additionally offered to kick in the face of whoever had been careless enough to leave the broken beaker on the table, an offer he’d had to politely decline.)
(That last bit manages to draw a giggle out of Albedo, at least.)
“To be honest,” Tighnari says, ending on a more musing, searching note, “for me, the worst part was the ringing in my ears. I couldn’t hear the quieter sounds around me, for the first time in my life. Before that, I’d used my hearing to carry me through most of my fieldwork in the Amurta Darshan.”
He tsks and winces slightly as the memories come back in full force. “This insufferable ringing — it’s gotten better, kind of, but it forced me out of fieldwork for months, while I adjusted to better make use of my other senses to survey the area around me. I was worse than some of the first-years for quite a while then.” He gives an empty chuckle. “So it was quite a relief when my hearing improved enough so that I could begin to use it properly again. Getting my Vision helped quite some, too.”
At that, he slumps back onto his back, exhausted from talking. He reaches over to the side table to grab his flask — after taking a swig and replacing the cap, he turns back to Albedo’s side. He could swear his pale blue eyes glow, almost, in the little moonlight that filters through the gaps in and around the silken curtains.
As both of them drift off to sleep, Tighnari says something under his breath, so quiet that it could very well have been that he only meant it as a passing thought, talking to himself some. But Albedo picks up on it.
“Thanks… for listening, by the way. A lot of the researchers in the Akademiya liked the sound of their own voices far too much. It’s nice to have someone who’ll hear you out, for once.”
Albedo, in turn, burrows further into the warmth of his partner’s chest, under the blankets. “Of course,” he murmurs, “I’ll always be there to listen. Anytime.”
~*~
“Oh, just one last thing.”
“Hmm?” Albedo replies sleepily, in a half-yawn.
In a small voice, Tighnari continues, “Could you— could you scratch my ears sometimes? I think helps with the ringing.”
Albedo chuckles. “And I thought you said before that you didn’t like it?” he shoots back, in a lightly teasing tone.
Before he can reply, though, Albedo goes on, “Nevertheless, I shall abide by your request.”
With a long-suffering sigh, Tighnari massages his temples with the palms of his hands. “Dear Kusanali, you’re insufferable.”
Albedo’s eyes twinkle with mirth, and he ruffles Tighnari’s hair. “And you love me for it.”
“Unfortunately.” Tighnari huffs back, a tired grin gracing his expression.