Chapter Text
The rest of Albedo’s trip back to Mondstadt was, all in all, wholly uneventful. He had already meandered and sketched almost every possible life form on the path to Liyue a week prior, and his, albeit brief, conversation with Xiao left him feeling… distracted. Out of sorts. Like being pushed while standing on the highest point of a cliff face, or missing the second topmost step on a very long winding set of stairs while descending them, only not at all like those two, because it wasn’t unpleasant, though it would also be wrong to call it its opposite.
Not for the first time while pondering another’s actions towards him, Albedo was left baffled and thrown off-kilter by what all means should have been a normal social interaction.
Grass and dirt crunched under his boots as he passed the threshold that divided Stone Gate and Mondstadt, the wind that blew over the nation of freedom the slightest bit sweeter than that of Liyue’s. He breathed in a lungful, let it out. The approximation of a heart in his chest settled the moment Dragonspine came into full view. It didn’t take everything in him to take the road to Mondstadt City instead of the one that led to the snowy mountain. Still, it was a considerable amount of willpower that he exerted the moment he made the decision to go to civilization first.
At the very least, the reminder that no harm would befall (or rather, originate from) the remains the mountain was presently named after was a net positive. That didn’t mean that he wouldn’t fret over it, though.
It was late evening by the time he reached the city of freedom’s walls. He didn’t have to feign exhaustion when he shot a small, tired wave at the Knights of Favonius on duty at the grand doors to the city, and all but dragged himself the whole way to Jean’s office.
He shouldn’t have been surprised at the dim light that illuminated the floor from within the room despite the late hour. His bare knuckles rapped against the door gently. Jean cleared her throat before saying, “Come in” from within. Her voice had a raspy quality to it that was apparent even as it was muffled by the walls and door surrounding its source.
Albedo let himself inside the office, closing the door behind him before aiming his attention at the Acting Grandmaster. As usual, there was a stack of official-looking paperwork on top of the desk, a much smaller amount of papers set off to a corner, and a cup of pitch-black coffee. No steam rose from it, the beverage no doubt already cold. Jean picked up the smaller stack of papers off her desk as she got up and handed them to him, meeting him in the middle of the room as he approached.
“Reports,” she explained as he leafed through them, skimming the pages’ contents. “It was a slow week, there’s not much to report on. When did you get back?”
“Just now,” Albedo supplied, stashing the papers away in his bag. The kite he’d bought for Klee rustled as he jostled it. She was probably fast asleep by now. He filed that away; something to act on later. “I left the inn this morning— at least a week’s worth of rest completed, as per your orders. I’ll be getting back to work tomorrow.”
Jean studied him for a moment. The yet-to-be-identified and categorized feeling regarding the events of that morning that had settled itself somewhere in his chest, clumsily crammed in the space between two of his leftmost ribs subsided some, if only to be replaced by one that he was far more familiar with: anxiety. He met her scrutiny with a questioning tilt of his head, not quite trusting his words when ignorant of exactly what about this situation (or him) was causing Jean to regard him as she was. “I don’t know what I was expecting,” she admitted at his wordless prompting, her tone… sheepish? “I suppose I’m glad for you having listened, though.”
Paradoxically, her answer didn’t actually answer much of anything.
“You expected me to go against your orders?” He asked, trying very hard to convey ‘I wouldn’t unless something was very wrong’ in his gaze, and yet feeling like he had fallen ridiculously short in doing so.
“Not… particularly? I didn’t expect you to go along so readily with it. Or last the full week before reporting back. How was Liyue Harbor?” She asked.
He opened his mouth, then closed it again as he thought about his answer. Apparently, the pause of less than a second was enough to convey something to Jean, though he wasn’t sure of what exactly until she added:
“You know what? You can tell me tomorrow if you want to. You should get some rest.”
Oh. His sluggishness in responding made her assume he was more tired than he actually was. Bummer. He would have liked to talk about his trip. Or Xiao. The uncategorized feeling in his chest jolted. He promptly ignored it in favor of giving her a curt nod and bidding his farewell.
… Much to his surprise, the woman followed him out of the room, pointedly not bringing any of her work with her as she locked the room behind her. She shot him a small smile as their paths diverged, and she disappeared down the hallway where he knew her lodgings resided.
He belatedly realized that it was likely she had taken her own advice as he made his way to his next destination. He found himself smiling faintly at the notion while he penned a short note for Klee, fast asleep in her bed.
He left the kite and the note on the girl’s desk and closed the door as quietly as he could manage before retreating to his room and turning in for the night.
He was asleep shortly after his head hit the pillow.
He woke up before the sun did, as was his usual. Unlike his usual, however, he lingered in bed for a few minutes after. He pried himself from the comfort of the covers with a sigh the moment he heard the distant sound of chirping birds. He slipped on his clothes, braided his hair, and sent a furtive glance at his desk, where he had set down his things before collapsing the night prior. The reports Jean had given him were spilling from the depths of his bag, along with his sketchbook, loose pages, blank and filled with notes and drawings alike. There were a few blank pieces of paper on a corner of the desk, yet untouched by the chaos that flowed out from his bag, right next to an inkwell and one of his pens.
He considered his options.
…The sun was still not up, and time-wise, it was nowhere close to either when his shift officially started, or the time he usually showed up to work anyway. The sky wasn’t even light yet. Logically, it shouldn’t take him very long to pen the very start of a letter; a heading, and a single paragraph at most.
He dedicated the next few minutes to acting on that initial impulse, it was, just as he had foreseen it, mostly platitudes. A greeting; a summary of his day after he had last seen Xiao. A quick reassurance that he had gotten home safe if that was even something that the Yaksha was concerned with, which Albedo could only assume (if with a significant margin of error) he was from how he had insisted on chaperoning him past where it was reasonably necessary for him to.
…Then again, that could very well be him misreading his intentions for concern rather than mistrust. At least he had accounted for that (read: significant margin of error).
He stopped writing the moment he realized he did not have much else to write to Xiao. Unwilling to pay for the postage to send a less than half-filled piece of paper across a nation and a half, he set the letter face-down on his desk, deciding to go about the rest of his day before writing more.
He still reported for duty fifteen minutes before his usual.
Just as Jean had told him, there really wasn’t much for him to catch up on, Dragonspine was still standing, and Mondstadt had been just fine in his absence.
He tried not to think about the second point too much as he brought a Glaze Lily to life before Sucrose with Art of Khemia.
Small mercies, he figured. If he were to one day fall to the same affliction that ultimately did Durin in, there was at least no blood in him to poison the earth from which he was born. Small mercies, no doubt delivered by the only one he would call mother, if never to her face. Or aloud, for that matter. Some things were just never meant to be said by one like him to one like her. It wasn’t like having called her mother rather than master would have changed anything.
Klee liked his gifts; both the kite and the plant seeds he had procured for her, though he had to split some between her and Sucrose, who was all too eager to start raising and studying the samples.
During his noon break, he led her by the hand to the roof of the Knights of Favonius headquarters and helped her set up a few plant pots around the area where each plant would thrive the most based on how much sun they would receive throughout the day. The Cecilia and Qingxin seeds were placed where they could get full sun, at the highest point in the roof that was still safe for Klee to reach. He showed her his sketches of each and every flower and plant they had set out so she could get an idea of what they would look like when fully grown.
The smile she shot him as she proclaimed she would make them look just like his drawings was as bright as the midday sun that bore down over them.
…Even if it was somewhat dampened when he asked her if she could promise to keep the explosives as far away from Favonius Headquarters as possible. For the sake of the flowers. Of course.
She promised anyway, though he wasn’t sure how likely she was to keep it.
“Qingxin are delicate; more so than Cecilias. They’re used to the unshakeable peaks of Liyue. I don’t know if they would take the building shaking from explosions well,” he added and hoped was enough of a deterrent.
He returned to his room, ears abuzz with something between discomfort and gratitude at the end of the day. He had not been the only one to consider the notion of gifts upon his return to Mondstadt, and he had to juggle an armful of new possessions he had been given by his colleagues, including, but not limited to tea, a special ink imported from Fontaine in collaboration with a Snezhnayan native with a formulation that kept it from freezing in subzero conditions, graphite and carbon pencils, a box of fancy chalk from Inazuma, and others.
He felt awfully bad over not having made a bigger attempt to buy more souvenirs during the past week.
He set his room to right over a cup of tea made from the tea leaves Sucrose had gifted him. It had a bitter aftertaste that lingered long after he was done with his cup. It was still less bitter than Qingxin tea. He drank it with three cubes of sugar to start with, then added a fourth the moment the aftertaste hit. He idly wondered what he would do with himself, should he have another opportunity to ‘rest’. Travel again? Idleness didn't agree with him, and he would be lying if he said he hadn’t grown fond of it, of seeing and immortalizing new sights with paper and pen, gathering new knowledge, pressing flowers and plants in his sketchbook until it resembled a journal. Of course, he would have to work more before another opportunity presented itself, and, should he leave Mondstadt once more, it would be counter-intuitive to the spirit of the activity to visit the same place more than once.
Albedo considered the Traveler. Was there a reason they lingered as they did? Seemingly acquainted themselves with each and every person, nook, cranny, and wonder of the world within a nation before moving on to the next on their itinerary? He wondered. Was their meeting with their sibling not one with a time limit attached to it? For what other reason would they be as unhurried as they were if it wasn’t?
Albedo could not be like them; this, he was aware of. He could travel, he could wander the wildernesses of Teyvat, document his findings, enjoy each added mile his boots tread upon, but he could not imagine making a habit out of meeting and befriending everyone in his path— not because he didn’t believe there were good people to meet out there, as there very obviously were, but because it sounded, quite honestly, exhausting. Were he in their shoes, he supposed he would not be much of a traveler at all, too single-minded in the goal of reunion to properly savor the journey as they were.
He ought to send them a letter, try to strike up a conversation with them that didn’t have anything to do with his research, and their ever-growing interest in that of the abyss and anything adjacent to it. They had to have been to the peaks of Liyue. He couldn’t imagine them not weaseling themself up to Cloud Retainer’s dwelling above the clouds.
He set up his supplies to go up to Dragonspine for a few days. He was due for a visit to Durin, or what was left of him, anyway. The fell dragon’s heart was not beating still, in the standard sense of the word, but it was not dead. His brother, if not by blood (because he notoriously lacked any), then by maker, was alive, if only in the same way mushrooms (and how Sucrose would despise that comparison) are. An active organ, even if said heart was not truly pumping any blood through any veins. Not for the first time, he wordlessly asked a maker that would not answer in a manner not unlike a prayer, how much longer before the healing, if glacial in its pace, would lead to Durin’s blood circulating anew.
He glanced at the face-down unfinished letter on his desk.
He packed it along with his notes, and a handful of blank sheets of paper.
He left for Dragonspine early the next morning, and decided, not without some great amount of deliberation, that should he be given another week-long break, he would not be opposed to going to Liyue again.