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.
“Qingxing 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.
Notes:
A first, tentative step is taken!
The second chapter is written out, I just gotta transcribe it and then edit it as this one had to be, and that's going to take a while ^^
(In all actuality, this one might get edited sometime in the next day or two, as I wanted to get this out ASAP as I've lost a fair bit amount of progress to setting up the fic because of the recent ao3,,,, errors? random logouts? those.)
If you've read this far, thank you! I hope you have a lovely day wherever it takes you!
Chapter 2
Summary:
Xiao meets a trespasser out in Jueyun Karst, and is told to keep an eye on him. A most unnecessary order, but one that he heeds anyway. Not simply because of an appropriate amount of respect for the person that doled out the command in the first place, but because he can't quite bring himself to be as distant as he knows he could be.
At the end of the trespasser's sojourn, a hand is offered to him.
Could anyone consider him lesser than for the act of taking it?
...Could he?
Notes:
SURPRISE XIAO POV ! More specifically, quick speedrun of Case Study , but from Xiao's perspective :]
I love jumping back and forth with povs and non-linear storytelling - mainly bc I find the dripfeed of information from different characters' point of views really interesting to play around with- and I decided to get into it for this next bit! Ch2 was supposed to be an Albedo pov continuation of the first chapter, but y'all get Xiao being a mess that does not understand anyone's emotions, much less his own, first, and also a healthy amount of headcanons.I hope this is as enjoyable to read as it was for me to write :]
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Xiao of Liyue was tired. This was something that he was not afforded, either by his duty or by his conscience. There were respites, of course. It wouldn’t make sense nor do anybody any good if his ordeal was as wholly unrelenting as the poems and adages written about him claimed it to be. It had been some time since one of said respites had lasted more than a day, an afternoon, or early morning—an hour.
Could it be considered a reprieve at all if he had been given a task to see to? Even if that task was seeing that a spacy alchemist from Mondstadt ‘didn’t cause any trouble’? It hadn’t felt like a task at all. Should it have? He didn’t see it as necessary for him to further busy himself with the safety of the alchemist— Albedo, he had introduced himself as. He was not human, but his constitution was close enough to one that while he seemed to be able to withstand the aftereffects of Xiao’s eternal battle (unlike a human), said effects still left him unsteady on his feet, even if he had made a valiant effort at hiding this weakness. Not to such a degree that posed any lasting harm to him (thankfully), as he had returned to the Karst again and again.
Just from surveying him from afar, Xiao could tell he was skilled at navigating even the steep-cliffed environment of Jueyun Karst. It was only after being a target of Albedo’s near-constant chatter that he inadvertently confirmed Xiao’s doubts— he was used to trekking along the snowy mountain visible in the distance, further east.
Outside of Albedo’s nonhuman status, there really wasn’t anything to him that warranted close surveillance. Xiao had tried a slightly antagonizing approach in an attempt to get a read on him, but all that had done was get the man annoyed with him and further solidify his stated unwillingness to bring any harm to Liyue. As long as Xiao kept his distance relative to Albedo while carrying out his duty, lasting harm would not come to him. Moreover, his experience meant that the chances of him, say, falling off a cliff were low.
Xiao could not overstate nor stress how unnecessary it was for him to keep Albedo under his vigil, and he found it unlikely for Cloud Retainer to not be as aware of this as he was.
Her probable involvement in mind games aside, Xiao was all the more irritated by the fact that, despite the exercise in superfluousness that was his keeping an eye on Albedo, he couldn’t find it in him to simply… not.
Albedo was smart, mindful. This had been apparent in his first course of action when noticing danger— correctly assessing it as something outside of his realm of control or management, and moving to get both himself and someone who he thought was a similarly vulnerable party (but was in actuality Cloud retainer) outside of harm’s way.
Xiao’s subsequent conversations with him continued to prove his intellect. Had he wanted to, Xiao could have simply told Albedo outright that he was not to step a toe out of line while in Liyue, been sure that he would do as he said, and kept his contact with him as short and brief as possible.
Only he had not wanted to do that.
As the last surviving Yaksha of Liyue, it would be the ultimate act of selfishness for him to admit his exhaustion— not even speaking on how it would be an insult to the memories of his fallen comrades.
And yet— accepting an offered cup of bitter Qingxin tea made by a foreign alchemist’s hands and cupping it in his own until it warmed his fingers through his gloves felt like an admission all on its own. One that he didn’t feel guilt over, and that, in said lack of guilt, only brought with it a different brand of remorse.
Carrying the alchemist on his back after his collapse felt like another admission, as did his brief conversation with Smiley Yanxiao where he had asked the man for a dish that was not almond tofu— not for himself, Xiao had assured him. Smiley Yanxiao’s wide-eyed stare as he set aside the ingredients for bamboo shoot soup after Xiao had given him more details on who it was for, and why Xiao was fetching it for them instead of the alternative felt like a confirmation— though of what, he did not know.
“It’s best he eats it warm— run along now,” he had said as he pushed the bowl into his hands and all but kicked him out of his kitchen.
He had to walk slowly so as not to spill the soup on the way back to Albedo’s room. It was getting late, so there weren’t any people for him to run into—
Outside of Verr Goldet, dutifully working the reception desk, who perked up the moment Xiao came into her view. Xiao made a point of looking straight ahead as he walked past her. She, on the other hand, similarly made a point of talking to him anyway. “Expanding your culinary horizons, are we?”
Xiao walked as quickly as he could without outright spilling the food. “Not for me,” he said curtly.
“For who, then?” She asked, but by then, he had already disappeared down the hall and into Albedo’s room and was under no obligation to answer her.
Staying with Albedo until he fell asleep was yet another unnecessary action, and another that he didn’t so much as think twice about offering. Albedo’s breathing evened out only a few minutes after he stopped talking; Xiao stayed for far longer, until the sun had long since dipped low in the horizon and the moon replaced it in the sky. Its light ghosted over Albedo’s placidly sleeping form. At some point, his already loosely done braids had come undone, framing his face.
Xiao spared the scene one last lingering glance before leaving with the empty bowl in his hand, dropping it off at the kitchen’s sink, and retreating to his own chambers in a sequestered corner of the inn.
He seldom used the bed set out in the room for its intended purpose, and the room itself was at most a neutral space for him to exist for a few minutes at a time before leaving again. This time, however, he let himself fall face-first on its plush surface. He did not sleep— but he did leave his mind to wander to the dreams of the alchemist on the floor below, who was closer in essence to a leyline than a human, and wondered on what, if any, such a being’s dreams were like.
Because all things eventually had to end, Albedo’s stay in Liyue came to a close rather abruptly— though not one that Xiao had not been prepared for on some level.
Xiao lingered in Wangshu Inn for longer than he usually did the morning of Albedo’s departure, sat on top of the roof, partly hidden by the foliage.
He first told himself that he was simply watching the sunrise. He hadn’t appreciated them in a long time, not until he had seen one lovingly and meticulously rendered in pencil with just as much care as the other five sunrises on the same page, all surrounded by different landscapes.
He next reasoned that Wangshu Inn simply had a better vantage point to Jueyun Karst in the distance than most other places that weren’t directly a part of it, should he need to jump into action.
A full half hour after he had first ascended to the roof of the inn, and as he watched the silhouette of a meandering white coat in the distance, never quite fully heading in the direction of Stone Gate and Mondstadt, he admitted, if only to himself, that the previous two excuses were lies,
He was not called by name. He still came to Albedo upon being addressed, even if indirectly. Albedo had his back turned to him, and over his shoulder, Xiao could see a page corner of his sketchbook before he moved to put it away in his bag.
Xiao assessed Albedo as he got up and turned to face him. His movements were not hindered in any way, as they had been on the evening of his collapse. There was some color to his cheeks, and the expression he regarded Xiao with was one he had grown familiar to— neutral, and not quite a full smile, but purposeful in its subtlety, the corners of his eyes creasing ever so slightly.
He still offered to accompany him as far as he was willing to go from his post, just to be sure. He was fully aware that he was willing to go further than Wangshu Inn, as opposed to what he had told the alchemist. He idly wondered if Albedo would point that out as they walked past and away from the establishment and through Dihua Marsh.
He didn’t.
Albedo’s proposal came as a surprise, though he tried (and likely failed) to hide just how much of one it was to him.
Some time before then, Xiao would have likely said that the Traveler had somehow poisoned him with their sentimentality, nudged him from being the stark protector of Liyue who had neither want nor need for anybody other than the satisfaction that carrying out his duty brought, to someone who perhaps even dared to yearn for companionship when hands as stained as his should not even think of it. “You should meet up with your friends more often, Xiao”, “Try to enjoy the festivities, Xiao”, “You need to lighten up, Xiao”… Of course, most of the platitudes had been shrilly delivered by Paimon, but the Traveler themself had agreed with her repeatedly. Perhaps their influence had corrupted him, in some sense— but then again, if all he needed was a mere nudge to fall to where he had landed, they could not shoulder all the blame for his folly.
Had he never met them, then perhaps he would not have agreed to it at all, even if it took him all the way to Stone Gate to force the words out— finally verbalizing a hint of an admission that he had yet to fully figure the meaning of himself.
It only dawned on him that he had little to no clue how he was going to approach correspondence with Albedo after he left the other man at Stone Gate.
… A problem for another day, he supposed.
Notes:
Surprise surprise Xiao doesn't know why Cloud Retainer/Xianyun did what she did but it's Working, and Xiao is as much of a mess as Albedo is, but on a different axis.
Xiao is a very..... pensive character for me, and I hope I was able to get that across well, kind of focusing more on his inner world and his feelings regarding events rather than the events themselves - though that's mostly because! These events have already been described before, and what's the point of rewriting all that if I'm not going to add on to it significantly, huh? Consider this a New Game+ of sorts :>
I already have the next few chapters written, just need to transcribe 'em - the rest of this thing has already mostly taken shape in my mind, and it's mostly guided by my creative impulse to go towards what I find the most amusing out of the options I come up with. Then again, all bets are off as to how long this'll end up being.
Thank you so much for reading if you've made it this far! Sincerely hope you have a lovely day <3
Chapter 3
Summary:
Albedo runs into an acquaintance, and parts with them a friend.
He also gets invited to 'girls' night'.
Those two things may be related. Not that he is too sure about how either of those came to be, regardless.
Notes:
Albedo pov!
To be completely honest, I'm not too confident about this chapter, but 1. it was fun to write in the moment, as well as read while I was transcribing it, and 2. I got peer pressured by a friend to post this because they wanted to read it ASAP, so/j. here it is!
This features a bit of a timeskip :) some of the events that happen During said timeskip will be covered. but that's not now. I hope it's fun to read.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
For some reason that Albedo was unsure of, he had started using his letter to Xiao as a log of sorts during his three-day-long excursion at Dragonspine.
Well. That was a lie. He knew how it had started— he had reached out for a piece of paper on which to write some notes, had done just that, and only after finishing the passage did he realize that the paper he had written on had been the very same he had written the very beginning of his letter to Xiao on. What he was not sure of was why he didn’t do anything to correct that initial mistake, like rewriting that first part of the letter on a blank piece of paper, or something to that account. The next time he wrote on its surface, it wasn’t by mistake, and neither was the time after that.
He ended up keeping two different sets of notes; one for his records, and another for Xiao’s eyes, explaining what he was doing, and giving proper definitions for the jargon he was using if he did not avoid it entirely. He was light on his descriptions of Durin’s heart, referencing it as little as he could get away with.
On the last day of his brief pilgrimage, he found himself walking through Wyrmrest Valley, his feet carrying him to the mouth of cave he had tread numerous times before, and gazing up at the scarlet tissue that made up Durin’s heart. His brother’s blood was not stagnant. Ever so slightly, the mass of vascular muscle twitched, pulsed. Not alive. Not yet. His brother was not dead, though he could not very well be called alive, either. He did not write of this anywhere.
That evening, bundled close to the fire to keep warm, he penned the last few paragraphs of his letter to Xiao, folded the pages as neatly as he could manage, and turned in for a night of dreamless sleep.
First thing in the morning, before the sun had graced the hills of Mondstadt with its light, he packed up shop in his camp and left for the city. He made a beeline for the mailroom the moment he entered Favonius headquarters, still heavily weighed down by his bags as he posted up against a wall of the small office and leaned into the table mounted onto the one perpendicular to it, sliding the folded pages in an envelope, sealing it, and placing a stamp on the upper corner of the back of the paper. It was in the middle of writing down the address to Wangshu Inn as neatly as he could that he heard the door to the room creak open, closely followed by heeled footsteps, light, almost skipping. He recognized Amber before she bounded up to his side where he stood leaning over the slip of paper.
“Morning, Albedo!” She said, ever lively. He didn’t know her well enough to have a proper opinion of her character. She didn’t seem to know him very well either, which easily explained why she mispronounced his name as she did. He turned only slightly to better look at her. She held a letter in her hands, already sealed in an envelope, signed, and stamped; ready to be dropped off, unlike his. She approached him for small talk anyway.
“Good morning,” he said, only slightly turning his attention back to his work, now writing out his name, the return address…
“Didn’t think I’d ever see you here!” She chirped. Even though he was wide awake, as he had woken up more than an hour prior, he still felt like she was being too loud for how early it was. He didn’t point out how he frequented the mailroom to drop off far more formal letters to emergent author Xingqiu to discuss future illustration projects, or with Yae Publishing House to turn down their attempts to set him up to cooperate with different authors. “Who’s that for?”
“A friend,” he tried, found the term well-suited, forged on, “from Liyue.”
Amber ooh’ed and aah’ed. “Right, that’s where you were at last week! You made a friend, then?”
“Yes,” he said, just about done with his handiwork and straightening up again to better appraise it, double-checking that the information printed on it was correct.
“That’s good to hear! I’m glad,” she paused, long enough for Albedo to consider asking about it. She beat him to it. “That’s, uh, not how you address a letter.”
“...Is it not?”
“Not really, no,” she pointed at the corner opposite to where he had placed the stamp and written the return address instead. “Stamp goes here, return address goes where you put the stamp, and the address you’re sending it to doesn’t go on the front of the envelope, it goes on the back, smack dab in the middle.”
“Oh.” He suddenly felt exceedingly foolish. At least he had procured a surplus of stamps and envelopes, but those were in his lodgings and not on his person.
He was just in the middle of wondering how to best extricate from the conversation without coming off as rude to go fetch said spare materials when he caught Amber taking out an envelope from one of the bags attached to her belt, and placing it on the table, next to his. “Here! Don’t worry, I have spares,” she said, and he hazarded what he hoped came across as a grateful nod to her before breaking open the envelope and filing the pages of text into the one Amber had provided for him.
She took the discarded envelope and began the careful work of peeling the stamp from the paper so it could be reused. “You get to work on that, I’ll get this off so it doesn’t go to waste.”
“Thank you,” he said, in the absence of anything else to say.
She handed him the stamp after taking it off the utterly unsalvageable envelope. “No problem! I ended up wasting so many stamps when I first started sending out letters outside of Mondstadt; didn’t want you to waste any more where it’s not necessary.”
“I have sent out letters before,” he said. “The people I’ve been in correspondence with tend to provide pre-stamped and addressed envelopes with their letters, and I suppose I didn’t quite pay as close attention to the details as I should’ve.” The stamp was barely creased as he pressed it on the new envelope. He distantly hoped that Xiao didn’t have it in him to mind the small imperfection. Albedo smoothed out the small adhesive, saw an opportunity to ask a question, and, like he often did, took it, eyeing the other envelope she had laid down on the table, bearing a small drawing penned in red ink on one of the lower corners of the cream colored paper. He couldn’t quite make out the address from where he was standing, though it was neatly printed in rounded script. “Where to?” he asked, nodding towards her charge.
“Sumeru! You remember Collei?” He didn’t. She did not wait for either a confirmation or denial and bounded on regardless. “After she left Mondstadt, we ended up becoming pen pals!”
“I see,” he said, wagered his options, then admitted, “I have never handled non-business-related correspondence that wasn't pre-addressed in some form or couldn’t otherwise be delivered in person. So. Thank you. For the help.”
She was a good sport over it all, even going so far as to offer up ideas and aid should he need it in the future. He caught her gaze lingering on his attempt at neat handwriting as he deposited the letter at the dropoff box alongside hers, and belatedly remembered her having mentioned in past conversation, likely not with him, that she had family from Liyue.
She didn’t ask; Albedo respected her all the more for it.
This occurrence was not a one-off.
Over the coming weeks, like clockwork, whenever he turned up to the mailroom, Amber would coincidentally also come bounding in just before he left, and he would get pulled into brief, but pleasant conversation with her.
She had a talent for getting information out of people without so much as asking a singular question— a talent that she made use of nearly constantly during their chats. Were she not already an outrider (and a damn good one at that, from had he had heard from others), she would have been an exemplary member of the investigation team; unassuming enough to get people comfortable in idle conversation, but perceptive in her indirect line of questioning and information gathering.
“Sometimes, I send Collei stuff with the letters I send her— like flowers or cutout drawings. There’s this one store that sells stationery— I’m not very good with setting letters up all pretty, but Collei is, so sometimes I send her samples of the few things I do have, and she’ll set up something and send it back,” she said in one of such conversations while doodling simple flowers on the edges of her envelope. “Her Eleazar is cured now, but before it was, she mentioned she liked decorating her letters, and I wanted to encourage that.”
“I will keep that in mind,” he said, lingering despite having already dropped off his charge. “Though I don’t know if Xiao would be the sort to appreciate frivolities of that kind.”
The scritching of Amber’s pen halted for no more than half a second. “How so?”
“He’s very,” Albedo thought over his words for a moment, “practical,” he decided on. “Though perhaps… the flowers I brought from Liyue are close to blooming. I could press some and send them over.”
“The ones you’re growing with Klee? On the roof?”
“Yes.”
“That’d be nice. You could also, like, try to match how his letters are written, if you don’t know what he likes for sure. You’ve sent him a few by now. What are his responses like?”
The floor drew his undivided attention. It was a lovely shade of slate gray.
Amber set her pen down on the table; it clicked sharply. “Has he not sent you any,” she said, phrasing it like a question, intonating it like a statement. “Albedo…”
She had long since stopped mispronouncing his name. The realization heartened him a little. “He’s a busy person. From my time in Liyue, I got the impression he does not drop by the place where he lives all that often.”
He gambled a glance at her. The woman was practically squinting at him with the most serious expression he had ever seen on her face. “If you say so,” she relented. Albedo was not fully sure what she was even relenting from. “Still! Important busy person or not, he better step up when he does send you something! That first envelope you get from him better be at least half as heavy as one of your super long letters usually is! What do you even write to him about?”
Albedo blinked, reeling from how quickly she moved on from topic to topic, but used to it enough to respond, “What I’ve been studying, mostly. Experiments. The view from Dragonspine. Sketches and the like. Not more than I usually do for my notes.”
“But you’ve been sending them to him?” He hummed. “Why?”
“He’s,” Albedo weighed whether or not this would count as overstepping either Xiao’s privacy or strain his acquaintance with Amber, “a curious person. During our time together, I filled most of the silence explaining my job, my studies, the sights I’ve seen that he hasn’t, and vice versa.”
“So you just got the vibe that he, what, likes to hear you talk?”
Close enough. “Good listeners tend to also be quiet,” he reasoned— present company and notable exceptions excluded.
Amber deposited her letter on the bin, faced him once again, and placed her hands firmly on her hips. “You’ll be telling me more of this Xiao guy later. What say you to a girls' night? I can invite you to one. Me and Eula can counsel you, ‘cause to me it seems like you need it.”
What.
“What?”
“Are you free this evening? You’re not leaving for Dragonspine for a while yet, right? Since you just got back?”
“I suppose not, no.”
“Cool! You can drop by my place at seven— wait, you don’t know where that is. Hm. How about we meet up at Good Hunter, then?”
“I… sure?” He said, still not fully sure of what he was agreeing to even as he did so.
She bid him farewell as cheerfully as she always did, and after realizing that he had places to go, he snapped himself out of his daze and went on his way as Amber had.
“Master Albedo, the Qingxin seeds you brought me have been coming along nicely—” Sucrose started as she noticed he was within earshot and walking towards her spot in the laboratory. She paused when her eyes landed on him properly, and drew back some to better regard him. “Did something happen?”
“To be completely honest, I don’t know,” he admitted. “You were saying?”
Notes:
Albedo gains another friend :D and gets invited to girls' night. He does not know how he got from point A to point B but he's taking it in stride so that's good.
Amber was a really fun character to play around with, and when first coming up with the resolution for the previous story, I couldn't help but remember that she also holds correspondence with someone outside of Mondstadt :o! Her almost sisterly relationship with Collei was also something I really liked in canon, so I wanted to touch on that a little bit, since it further drives home what I feel is the core of this whole!! thing!! human connection, how it changes people, etc.
In her voice lines, she mentions that she can't really get a read of Albedo whenever their paths cross, which isn't that often, and I thought to myself— well, with time, she was able to figure out Eula and her sense of humor; who's to say that with a somewhat more humanizing interaction with Albedo, she wouldn't be able to get a slightly better read on one (1) autistic man?
With this, I have officially exhausted my current handwritten backlog, not counting a singular unfinished chapter, so. might be a bit before the next update :] hope the quick update was worth it, Mint/lh.
Anyway. Wonder what Xiao's up to? lmao.
Thank you so much for reading if you've made it this far :D I hope y'all have a nice day <3
Toki_Rosuaru on Chapter 1 Fri 27 Sep 2024 02:37AM UTC
Comment Actions
Toki_Rosuaru on Chapter 1 Fri 27 Sep 2024 03:13AM UTC
Comment Actions
t_mbourine on Chapter 1 Fri 27 Sep 2024 04:55AM UTC
Comment Actions
Toki_Rosuaru on Chapter 1 Fri 27 Sep 2024 07:12PM UTC
Comment Actions
(Previous comment deleted.)
t_mbourine on Chapter 1 Tue 22 Oct 2024 01:48PM UTC
Comment Actions
FeralCoffeeBug on Chapter 2 Tue 22 Oct 2024 03:59PM UTC
Comment Actions
t_mbourine on Chapter 2 Tue 22 Oct 2024 05:04PM UTC
Comment Actions
FeralCoffeeBug on Chapter 2 Tue 22 Oct 2024 06:57PM UTC
Comment Actions
Toki_Rosuaru on Chapter 2 Tue 22 Oct 2024 11:09PM UTC
Comment Actions
t_mbourine on Chapter 2 Thu 24 Oct 2024 04:38AM UTC
Comment Actions
Toki_Rosuaru on Chapter 2 Thu 24 Oct 2024 03:31PM UTC
Comment Actions
ghast6677 on Chapter 2 Fri 25 Jul 2025 12:41AM UTC
Comment Actions
ohmybatdragon on Chapter 3 Thu 24 Oct 2024 02:53PM UTC
Comment Actions
t_mbourine on Chapter 3 Fri 25 Oct 2024 03:56AM UTC
Comment Actions
Toki_Rosuaru on Chapter 3 Thu 24 Oct 2024 04:49PM UTC
Comment Actions
t_mbourine on Chapter 3 Thu 24 Oct 2024 06:14PM UTC
Comment Actions
Toki_Rosuaru on Chapter 3 Thu 24 Oct 2024 07:36PM UTC
Comment Actions
Asahi_Savage on Chapter 3 Thu 19 Dec 2024 07:39PM UTC
Comment Actions
t_mbourine on Chapter 3 Sun 12 Jan 2025 05:16AM UTC
Comment Actions
angiexz on Chapter 3 Mon 24 Feb 2025 08:53AM UTC
Comment Actions