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Snow fell heavy when the chase had finally reached its end, on an otherwise usual day if one didn’t speak of the weather. On that day, within the snow-tombed wilderness, on a path forgotten by the divine and mortal alike stood two figures - in every way imaginable, they couldn’t be any more different from one another. One of them being a man no older than twenty in a heavy white coat with a black hood, a deep blue shawl draped over his shoulders, in turn concealing a pair of pristine plated pauldrons that seemed quite out of place on his attire, more suited for performing experiments than engaging in combat. Further in spite of that, the man firmly held a sword with one hand, with the other grasping crystal-like sparks of gold, crackling like dried petals of flowers. Should one get close enough to peer under the heavy hood, his eyes might have as well been carved out from the ice surrounding them, cold and unmoving.
Before him with his back pressed against the steep slopes of the mountain stood what at first appeared to be a pitiful caricature of the man. Yet, under scrutiny, the more differences would have been made known to them. While the swordsman bore paleness of someone who dedicated most of their time to staying indoors and evading the sun’s gaze at all costs, the cornered figure appeared merely sickly, dark circles surrounding his deep red eyes, bruises tainting his skin almost black in appearance, as opposed to vivid purples, reds and yellows. Life has many miracles, the lad not yet keeling over from exhaustion and malnutrition certainly being among them.
As if that wasn’t enough, though they wore the same clothes and kept their ashy blonde hair in a nearly identical manner, the first young man was as pristine as could be: hair thick and combed into place, clothes still faintly smelling of clean laundry, almost as white as the snow surrounding them. What of the other one, then? To put it quite bluntly, filthy and disheveled from head to toe. Hair tangled, falling out of its imitated half-ponytail, the stolen uniform ragged from many falls and ripped up, particularly at the knees and elbows, as he long since abandoned the stolen laboratory gloves. His shoes, in spite of being made for surviving the worst, appeared as if they had witnessed adventures of at least three different generations after only two weeks of usage.
The final and most important difference was quite simple:
The scholar-knight had a name, that being Albedo, while the man before him had no name at all.
“I still can’t help but wonder about what had gone through your head when you decided to run from me, yet refused to leave the mountain.” Began Albedo, readjusting his grip on the sword as he took one, two, three steps closer towards the frightened man-thing. “I’ve been stationed here for longer than you’ve ever lived. There is no crevice of this place that withholds its secrets from me.”
Back and forth the other man’s eyes darted between Albedo’s watchful gaze and the sharp, cold edge of his sword, his face further drained of what little color it had. Swiftly and in panic he looked around, seeking any way out. To his left, there was a wall belonging to a city long gone. To his right, the cold maws of the ocean, waiting for him to slip and fall in between its ice teeth;doing so was not entirely out of question, as he had trouble standing on his right foot, holding it ever so slightly elevated, instead relaying his body’s weight upon the slope behind him. Albedo concluded that somewhere during the chase, he had fallen and sprained his ankle, if the loosened laces on his right shoe were anything to guess by - it would also explain how he finally managed to catch up to him. For someone who had likely never had any real food in his mouth, he traversed the mountain as swiftly and as discreetly as a pack of wolves, always three, if not five, steps ahead of Albedo.
“Gh- Just- just leave me alone and go screw yourself!” stammered out the young man, quickly reaching down for a rock - only for it to come flying straight in Albedo’s face. “Don’t you have enough already?!”
His aim was off, though not by much, it still was enough for Albedo to simply tilt his head to the side as the rock flew past him and into the snow. He paid the attack no mind, focused entirely on the man before him. One could practically feel his fear in the air, but even more so, one could feel his anger, raw and burning, like an open wound that refused to heal, only festering the more one looked at it.
“...You’re here to kill me, aren’t you? …What would you even get out of it?” he spat out, his trembling voice bleeding with venom and pus alike, his filthy fingernails digging into the mountainside. “I didn’t even do anything!”
“The Whopperflower you raised used my image to sway a child into following him somewhere secluded,” said Albedo in a stern tone. “Anyone who spent at least a week anywhere within Teyvat would know that Whopperflowers routinely hunt humans for food. That, and you yourself tried to impersonate me at least twice, on top of stealing my research. I think those reasons are sufficient enough to justify disposing of you.”
Most people would have begun to start begging for their life, believing themselves innocent still, further sinking into fear and despair as they were about to truly lose everything. Of course, the impostor was not among them - for he had nothing else to lose but his life, as there wasn’t anything in the world that truly belonged to him, material or not. So, to Albedo’s well concealed surprise, instead the anger within boiled hotter and hotter - so much, that Albedo almost began to feel the steam grazing his cheeks.
“...You, you of all people, are the last person to call me a thief! Just look at yourself!” Hot tears began forming in the corners of his red eyes as he raised his finger and pointed it accusingly at Albedo. “You don’t deserve the things you have any more than I do! Only reason you made it this far is because Mother couldn’t afford to throw you away as well! You just– Happened to be lucky enough to come after me! That’s all there is to it!”
With all the pointing, his balance shifted and forced him to stumble forward - in result eliciting a pained yelp out of him as he briefly stood on his right leg, shortly after jerking it upwards which only worsened his balance problem. At this point Albedo could barely take bearing witness to the scene, feeling its patheticness deep within his artificial bones. Similarly enough, anyone else would have long since departed, leaving behind naught but snow dyed red and a finished deed - Amber for instance. Knowing her, it would take her one arrow and two minutes before she’d be off and marching back into the city with a report of a job well done.
Fortunately for both of them, Albedo was not Amber or anyone else for that matter - merely himself, with all his, perhaps misplaced, empathy and understanding. With a heavy sigh he concealed his blade back in its scabbard hanging on his hip, much to the impostor’s shock and confusion, who was fully prepared to fight for all worth of his last breaths.
“I know.” Albedo said, quite plainly as he began approaching him once more. “She made sure that I’d never forget what I owe my life to : a long line of failures before me.”
“Now, sit down and try to take off your shoe, so I can have a look at your ankle.” Albedo instructed him with the confidence and sternness of an experienced physician, further deepening the man’s confusion at this sudden display of decency. Begrudgingly, he did just as instructed, wobbling and hopping onto the nearest rock, as uncomfortable as it was to sit on, even if the daggers he glared at Albedo hadn’t become any duller, to which the scholar heeded no mind to as he kneeled in front of him. For he had trouble pulling the heavy, thick shoe off himself Albedo helped him, which resulted in the imposter flinching in pain once more. Fully justified, as Albedo came to see two seconds later : his ankle had swollen to the size of a large bulle fruit on both sides, the rest of his foot following the same trend and almost appearing too large for the bones beneath. If that wasn’t enough, it was covered in bruises resulting from blood vessels breaking under the sudden pressure, much like how a sack would burst from having too much fluid in one place. A rather ugly sight, to summarize it all.
“It could have been worse, but since you inadvertently kept this injury cold by wandering around Dragonspine, you kept it in somewhat stable condition,” Albedo declared, shortly after reaching into his satchel where he kept emergency supplies, both those he crafted himself and those provided by the Ordo. Mainly, bandages and a clip. While his knowledge of medicine still left much to desire, as healing was never a part of his education growing up under his Mother’s wing, nor was it during his brief stay in Alice’s custody (or even during his even shorter training period within the Ordo,) he still knew how to treat a sprained ankle. Thus, with enough trial and error he managed to compress the ankle so as to prevent it from further slipping around.
“...So, are you going to drag me to the city to stand before the court?” hissed out the other man as he moved his foot around, testing out his range of motions within the new circumstances. As one ought to have expected, it still hurt to merely move it up and down. “...Does the City of Freedom have a prison? That would be kinda funny.”
“Be lucky we don’t live in Fontaine.” Albedo then, as carefully as he could at the minimum, began pulling a sock over the bandage. Granted, he didn’t know that much about the imposter’s biology, aside from it being rather different from his own - his body more akin to that of a tree wrapped around a skeleton and morphing into a human frame, while Albedo’s own held the brittleness of minerals carved into a human visage. So, for all he knew, he could lose his toes to frostbite. “If you are accused of committing a crime, you are stripped off of any laws of secrecy, so when you are inevitably put on trial, anyone can come in and point fingers at you, finding amusement in your shame.”
“...Is this supposed to make me feel better? If so, it doesn’t change a thing. You still ruined everything and I still hate you.”
“More so, it’s to remind you that you could have been in far worse circumstances.”
“I- Are you serious?! My mother fed me alive to my own brother! Ever since I crawled out of his carcass, I’ve been living in a hole with no clothes, no food, no nothing! Not even a name! And because of you, now I can’t even walk!” Next thing that followed was a kick coming from his unaffected foot - the hit landing this time, right in between Albedo’s ribs, who let out a pained grunt. “And you’re still expecting me to be grateful?! Get your head out of your ass!”
Evidently, this was going to be far more difficult than what he anticipated, based on the blonde outlander’s description of her brief encounter with the impostor : melancholic, cynical and overall quiet, mostly repeating what she and her companion said during the conversation. As such, when he first decided to pursue the impostor, he was prepared to escort a coward with little more than nothing to say or do, incapable of participating in direct combat himself. There was some truth to that, he supposed as the impostor was armed neither with a weapon or experience - instead making up for both of those with fiery stubbornness and spite, akin to a toddler who screams and throws tantrums as it is yet incapable of doing things on its own.
Unfortunately, Albedo wasn’t as good with children as taking care of his younger sister led him to believe, and his lack of experience promised a long night ahead of them.
With enough struggling, both verbal and physical, and a few more bruises here and there, the two managed to waddle and hop their way closer to the Guild’s camp within the ruined outpost of Sal Vind. While Albedo still had the stamina to keep walking for the rest of the evening, the same could not be said about his unwilling companion. On numerous occasions the pain proved to be a burden too heavy, causing him to trip and fall, constantly bordering on the verge of passing out - in turn forcing them to sit out the rest of the night on the mountain, sitting around a campfire that Albedo hastily put together. Results were far from ideal, but they provided temporary warmth and light, which was good enough for Albedo. By the time he was done, the impenetrable darkness of the night had cornered them with no moon to shed light of their nearest surroundings, trapping them until dawn.
Still, the impostor continued to don every emotion known to man, all except for happiness. With arms crossed over his chest he continued glaring a whole armory’s worth of blades at Albedo, the warm light of the campfire making him appear more intimidating than he could ever hope to be as it danced and flickered across his face. Ironically, in this lack of proper lighting, the differences between the two of them began melting away, the features he borrowed via alchemy morphing back into his own. Overall, he appeared older than Albedo, even if not by a lot: jaw more refined, chin prominent, eyes almond shaped, nose sharper and larger, hair long and wavy. In many of those features Albedo saw the spitting image of his own mother, something he couldn’t so easily say for himself, oddly enough.
“I hope one of us dies tonight.” Said the impostor, as casually as someone at the brink of losing consciousness from exhaustion could.
“And I have no intention of killing you, so you might have to get up to make it happen yourself, if you want to so badly.”
“Are you usually this condescending to other people?”
“Other people generally don’t try to steal my identity and everything that comes with it. Hopefully that answers all your questions.”
“Eat shit.”
Time passed at the pace of a dying, severed in half snail without anything to do to pass the time until sunrise saved them from having to be in each other's company for any longer. Fire between them didn’t provide enough light for Albedo to try and distract himself with the book he brought along, for some reason, which left them with two things: talking or spending the rest of the night in complete silence. The choice was rather obvious.
“...Since you mentioned that you don’t have a name, I think we should figure out what to call you.” He began with a sigh, poking at the fire a little to occupy his hands, somehow. “I can’t write Impostor on documents, and I don’t think you’d like to be called Subject Two either.”
If looks could kill, Albedo would have exploded to a thousand tiny chalk shards right then and there.
“It goes without saying, but you can’t have my name either.”
“I don’t want your stupid name anymore anyways. It sounds dumb anyways, regardless of how you pronounce it.”
So at least that was taken care of, Albedo supposed.
“In that case, I can offer only two options,” he said, raising two fingers. “One, after we arrive in Mondstadt and before we figure out what to do with you, we search through an archive of every recorded name in the history of the city - or, we select a name from alchemy terminology.”
“...You know what, screw it. I really don’t want to spend the next week shifting through books just to find a decent sounding name, only to share it with fifteen different people,” the impostor grumbled after a moment of consideration. “I might as well pick out something so stupid no one else will want it.”
A reason as good as any other. With that out of the way, the scholar began listing through various definitions he memorized early in his childhood, if it could be called that. Thus, with each word listed time continued to fly by a little faster.
For someone who spent most of their life living no better than a wild wolf, the impostor turned out to be as picky as a damsel hailing from a clan of grand renown, turning his nose up at just about every suggestion Albedo could come up with, which the scholar couldn’t exactly hold against him. A name carried meaning, and to select it with haste would be to disrespect its importance. And so hour after hour passed on bickering and complaining, largely from the still nameless young man, in spite of his exhaustion. Should one day an examination prove that he ran on anger and -of course- spite, Albedo wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest.
It was only when the cold darkness around them began to retreat in the face of the rising sun that they finally found the answer to their conundrum, much to Albedo’s utter delight and relief.
“...Then…” he yawned, barely concealing his mouth with the side of his hand. “...What about…Nigredo? It’s the first stage that comes before all the other processes, easily the most vital of them all despite being one of death and decay.”
Something lit up within the man upon hearing those words, pulling him upwards as if merely speaking them had blown life into him- his red, bloodshot eyes for once shining bright with something else other than rage. Why, had Albedo been any more delirious and sleep deprived, perhaps he’d interpret the pale sunlight washing over their makeshift camp as the light coming from within the man’s very being, now that it was finally, truly defined.
“...Hey, that sounds pretty good!” Nigredo chuckled, baring his filthy teeth in a gleeful grin that looked so out of place on his otherwise ghastly image. “I like it!”
“...In that case…Welcome to the world, Nigredo.”