Chapter Text
"Is that your son?"
Albedo hasn't turned his head yet, eyes still fully trained on Durin's figure speeding in the ice, his worry turns the inquiry ghastly and disembodied. His shoes and toes are planted square into the floors.
He says, "no. Brother."
Well, technically cousin, and technically also his son given his status as a legal guardian.
The voice pips. It snorts, and from the peripheries Albedo can see the outline of a crunching nose. "He's pretty good. I watched him a few times — the other kids are only ever here to play, which is a nuisance to those who's actually serious about the sport. I let yours stay. He's got something in there."
"He is, he is good. That's why I take him here," Albedo says, "wait. 'A few times'?"
"Seeya."
"Hey!"
For a moment, he's able to let Durin off his eyes. Because there is a bigger issue in hand. What does it mean by 'a few times'? This is only the third time Albedo has taken Durin here. Twice last month, first time this month. He remembers, he has vivid memories.
Dark midnight hair, cropped at the back. His posture is straight, shoulders taut even when he's walking back to his satchel waiting on the benches. The guy still wears his skates on, somehow nonchalantly able to saunter on the tiles, balanced and steady. Albedo has never seen that jacket before — but anyone could have worn different jackets. This guy is different, he should have remembered him if he's seen him; and yet he's seen Durin before? Something isn't adding up.
"Hey," he shouts, "wait, wait, what do you mean 'a few times'?"
The guy turns around. His jacket looks like a sponsor, a name embroidered on his chest: Kazehaya. It's too big on him. "A few times. He's here a lot."
"Can't be, today is supposed to be his third time here — I always take him. Sorry, but I've never seen you around during. This is our first …encounter."
The guy furrows his brows in disbelief. He sits down, Albedo assumes to take off his skates, and crosses his arms. "Yes because I'm normally only here on Wednesdays. I got my schedule moved this week."
"So you've seen my brother… on a Wednesday?" But he's never taken Durin on a weekday.
"Saw him last week. Now can you excuse me, I have shoes to take off."
Albedo concedes. He steps back, allowing some space for the man to lift his legs on the benches. His arms are raised in defeat, already feeling the heavy amalgamation of disappointment and guilt in his chest as he scolds Durin later. A sigh leaves his mouth. Messing his own hair, he turns around to the direction of the rink.
Really, he's not handling this whole guardianship well. It's new to him, as new as the grief of Durin's mother's passing. When even will grief pass, Albedo isn't sure, he's been in this boat for many, many years and there are still things to discover, things that prick his heart back wounded. Keeping Durin occupied is the least he can do. Activities will teach him the act of staving away the ache, and exert his growing boy's energy to something else more productive than linger in the feeling.
Just two years ago, Albedo's own mother died in a lab accident. A gas leak happened, and she had asphyxiated to death with poison, tragically still holding test tubes in her hands. Albedo didn't mourn her the way other people would to their mother, but Madame Rhine was his birthgiver all the same. It had stung, even so, knowing that even in her last moments he never eclipsed through her mind.
For the local news, it was a big scandal. A renowned scientist of Rhine's calibre dying from something as measly as lack of maintenance was egregiously unbelievable for the populace. The people joined by journalists all shared the opinion that Rhine's death was a set-up. That someone in power didn't like what she was looking into. Albedo was victim to countless papparazzi assaults, asking him what he knew of his mother's affairs, just as if they were some celebrity whom the public cared about.
Durin's mother, Marie Andersdotter, was a colleague of Rhine's. She belonged to the same science facility, sitting an adjacent chair as another board member as Rhine's. She died in her office table, keyboard still inputting the keys she fell onto while writing her novella. Marie was aiming to become a novelist at the side, Durin loved listening to her stories and she wanted to archive them for her son.
First, almost every single soul in Teyvat felt immense sadness knowing the tale of her death. How tragic, to die in the act of love, for a son that ran through her mind all the time. They might have suggested the contrast of the two acclaimed sons of Hexenzirkel Labs, one known as a prodigy and the other known to be adored.
Yes there was a sliver of envy in it, but Albedo saw all the same the way cameras started to shove its lenses closer and closer to Durin's proximity. What was once empathy can turn easily to surveillance, and Albedo decided to step up before it can ruin him too. So he took away the teenager, moving afar, to somewhere the press wouldn't find them.
In his conflicted envy, he shelters Durin's bereavement from neglect. Selfishly enough to prove of his worth still, to a dead woman's urn in his living room. He didn't want Durin to end up the way he did.
The stranger's voice breaks his reverie, "don't sweat it. Boys his age needs their freedom."
"Yeah, well. Durin's a special case."
Guy stands firmly now in his sneakers. "No kid's a special case. A kid is a kid, you're just controlling him if you think he's different."
Albedo watches him sling a duffle bag around the shoulders.
This 'Kazehaya' person, the more Albedo stares at him, the less he looks like a nobody. He has this air about him that quietly screams of his aptitude, this nonchalance that he wields in and against the equipments to the sport. The way he wears his too-big jacket, how it sits lightly on his posture, and the small, subtle, but otherwise still noticeable for Albedo, way he ties the laces of his shoes.
His curiosity peaks. Why hasn't he left him anyway? Albedo cuts off the topic. "Are you an athlete?"
Kazehaya goes quiet. Rigid, even, like the word 'athlete' triggered something in him. His brows furrow. He did look fierce before, but his countenance turns murkier than that. Obvious in the creases of his face, this irritation that Albedo just realised he had induced.
Incuring wrath from a stranger. Great.
"Got a problem with that?"
"No. You just… look the part." Look the part.
Kazehaya raises a vexed brow. "Which of my looks you think is 'the part'?"
From far behind him, Albedo can hear the sound of Durin's laughter erupting in the rink. He's chattering with someone, and the voices seem to echo on the ice.
This is the first time he's heard his adopted laugh this openly. At least, the first time after Marie's death. He desperately wants to turn himself around and watch the smile unfolding from Durin's usually-pursed lips, but he's preoccupied with tip-toeing around a man's offense this very second. A hole he dug himself.
"Um. Wrong thing to ask?"
"Depends on what you'll say next."
It's a girl's voice. Perhaps slightly older than Durin. He catches Kazehaya looking to the direction of the rink, but before Albedo can follow his gaze, he blinks back into holding him down. All by a single stare.
He doesn't understand why this particular question is so offensive to him. Kazehaya does look like one, it isn't difficult to put two and two together the way that he carries himself. "Your… balance?"
What silly. Cringe crawls in and under his skin hearing the uncertain words escape his mouth. Out of every possible answer, he astonishes himself for saying something so inexplicably asinine. His 'balance'.
However, at the very least, it manages to ease the stranger quite a bit. No longer are the rigid creases across his face. The tension sitting in his jawlines dissipating, leaving only a slacken expression.
Kazehaya sighs. "I am. Was."
Almost reluctantly, he begins explaining that he is indeed an athlete, though retired. Somewhere in between the sentences is an insult to Albedo's very intelligent deduction, like he's still quite offended that he found out a secret he's painstakingly hidden.
Durin is still happily playing in the background.
He continues, almost investigatively, "why did you ask?"
Now it's Albedo's turn to shrug. He doesn't know. He just has a hunch, and it felt right to say it in that moment. He finally turns to Durin's direction. It is a girl he's talking to, a young girl with green hair. For months Durin hadn't been looking like himself, and yet now he is able to return to that cheerful self that Albedo knew most closely, in the hand of someone his age. Perhaps it felt right for him too.
"Hm. Your brother is talented, by the way. Don't waste that if you can."
Just like that, Albedo is left watching Durin alone, sitting on a bench and contemplating on the praise.
*
"I heard you come here on Wednesdays."
The car door clicks shut. The air is tense. Durin is avoiding his gaze. "Um. Who told you that?"
"So it's true?"
Albedo keeps the car in parking. Heating is on, and comfortably warm. They've both shed their outer layers and discarded them in the back seat. He can see clearly the way Durin plays with his fingers when he's nervous now that he's taken off his gloves.
Bits and pieces of snow fall upon the windshield. He had to gear up for this conversation with the boy, Albedo wonders how do parents do it all the time. He understands that teenagers are latently sensitive. Reprimands might not fall in the right direction — and yet it's still important to have them.
The stranger's words repeat in Albedo's ears: 'you're just controlling him.' He's controlling the outcome, actually.
As the boy grow quieter, Albedo takes it upon himself to fill the silence. "Don't lie, Durin. You're in less trouble if you're honest." His fingers tap on the steering in a rhythmic pulse, waiting, at least until he's brave enough to make and voice excuses.
Durin finally fidgets. "…Only sometimes."
So this stranger that he'd only just met in passing is somehow right, about this teenage boy he's raising, the state of his discipline. Celestia, Albedo should laugh. He puts his forehead on the wheel.
What do fathers say to their son getting caught sneaking out? He doesn't have any experience with one, but Albedo imagines they'd be lenient about it, after all, they were once also sons. Going with the logic, that would mean he's raising Durin as a 'daughter'. And he frowns; gender roles shouldn't be anywhere around conversations about parenting.
Albedo relents, and there's nothing else to do anymore than to drive. "Durin, I told you to not go anywhere without me. We just moved here. I'm trying to keep you safe."
The road is quiet. The car's windshield is white, misty. Clumps of snowfall accumulate upon the scrape of its wipers. If this were every other day, Albedo would call it serene, and he's sure it would've excited Durin as well.
The boy is as quiet as the highway, this old road by a forgotten mountainside valley. At this hour, very few other cars pass by, and the only other luminaries being the refraction from wildlife in between pine trees before someone commit them into roadkill. Their own headlights cut through the descending fog in its lonesome.
Isolation is high in the tips of Albedo's mind, for he was the one who chose to buy a home outside of town, in a gated residence whose tenants have been slowly moving out of the area in favour of anywhere closer to people. Locals avoid his chosen path home, fearing an avalanche that could befall them anytime. The flaw of his own argument—trying to keep Durin safe—glaringly apparent, after all he's the one making all these choices for Durin, making him lonely as well. He chews his lip to stop himself from being a bigger hypocrite.
They don't speak for the remaining hour.
When the car finally stops on the curb, Durin whispers, "I just like skating. That's all."
"Have I not been taking you skating?" He twists his body around to look at his adoptive brother. Son. Anything that Durin is supposed to be, to him.
"I want… to do it more often."
Albedo sighs. "Durin. My schedule—"
"Exactly, that's why I went by myself! I know you're busy. I don't want to bother you."
The boy stares back at him with fervour burning in his irises. Opalescent red almost seems like it'd swallow Albedo whole, if his determination is met with refusal.
And again, Albedo relents. Maybe this makes him a bad parent, or brother. He's not quite good at this discipline thing. So much of time and energy churned just to balance between everything that would impact the child one fosters.
Rhinedottir's face flashes in the back of Albedo's mind. Bitterly enough.
"Okay. We'll work through it."