#they‘re tethered TO ME

[kaheifiles]

i am dead, yet i live

[idontliketomatoesleavemealone]

[the Fa-Li kids walking around campus] Herkie: hey bro! Shang Jr.: hey Jordan: Are Lonnie and Ping wearing leashes? Shang Jr.: they‘re child safety tethers Herkie: Jordan: Shang Jr.: please don't judge me

[dai-ou-sama]

Wrote a thing for AlbetherWeek2021!! Has themes of Day 1 and 3 (warmth and dreams), but it’s mostly just Albedo detailing how (and how much) he loves Aether.

—Please they‘re the epitome of a comfort ship I MEAN, WHICH OTHER SHIP HAS A STRING OF REPRESENTATIVE EMOJIS LIKE THIS: ☀️💫✨

Read on AO3 or down below!

Albedo woke to the sight of Aether curled against his chest, what, he decided, must have been his favourite sight in the world.

He was breathing in soft, gentle puffs, his shoulders rising and falling feather-like, nearly imperceptible. The sun had just barely risen. Its rays filtered through the curtains and set the room aglow with a soft golden light.

A draft of wind rustled past the curtains, parted them, stirred the dust in the air and illuminated them so they resembled snowflakes falling from the sky of their ceiling. Stray petals, all in different shades of yellow, drifted from the bundle of flowers hanging by their window onto their bed. They landed around Aether’s sleeping figure. Albedo laughed quietly to himself. It looked like a scene straight out of a fairytale.

For a while, he simply watched. Being in a sleep-tinged daze did not keep him from marveling at the sight of Aether; at his presence. It didn’t matter that this was a scene he woke to everyday. It hadn’t yet failed to steal his breath away and fill his heart with so much pure, unadulterated joy, that he thought it might burst.

Albedo watched him breathe; counted the seconds between each inhale and exhale. He mapped out the freckled constellations dusted over his cheeks and nose. Memorised them. He started combing through his hair, gingerly smoothing out the long locks with his fingers so Aether wouldn’t stir. He wondered at the way mornings casted Aether’s hair in light. Transformed them into strands of liquid gold solidified.

When all the knots in his hair were untangled, and all the stars across his face were found, he settled back into watching Aether breathe once more. It was a simple routine he repeated daily; one he fell more and more in love with with each passing day.

He reveled in the way warmth bloomed where their skin met skin. The way he could feel the soft thumps of Aether’s heart against his own even through the layers of fabric that lay between them. Thump, thump, thump. A steady, constant beat of life, heart to heart, that made him feel, more than anything, alive and corporeal and human.

There had been a time when Albedo had believed that he was an outsider living in a realm that he didn’t belong to. He was a hoax, an imposter, playing at human life in a masquerade.

He had doubted the very basis of his existence. Had questioned if his death would have amounted to anything more than an insignificant end to an artificial life. Like a porcelain doll falling to the ground, shattering out of existence.

From the faded memories of his youth, the written words of his old master had haunted him: Show me the true meaning of life and this world. Her final task to him before she had vanished into thin air.

Albedo hadn’t had an answer then. All he’d known were the laws of alchemy, the art of creation. Earth was the cumulative memory of time and being; soil was the origin of alchemy, the basis of all life; and chalk was the substance from which primal life was molded. There, written in words of fact. Simple, scientific. This he had understood. But what true meaning could have possibly been referring to had been lost on him.

No, he hadn’t had an answer. Not even then, when he would have given everything to see his master once more. When he’d been standing in the suddenly-too-empty halls of his old home, and wondering what the gnawing sense of absence inside him was. When he’d sat at the dining table that used to feed two people and eaten a dinner he hadn’t realised had long turned cold.

His master’s disappearance severed the only tether he’d had to the human world. The concept of meaning given to life and earthly existence became entirely foreign to him. He had found it laughably ironic that his talents lay in fabricating life.

Suddenly, it had felt like he was living in the margins of life. He was barred behind an invisible line, separated from everyone else around him. The depth of loss that had affected him had surprised him. He wondered if his master had somehow carved a part of him out and taken it with her when she’d left. Or perhaps, that that had been an entirely false hypothesis, and it was simply that he’d always been hollow. An empty shell, a facade of life — now simply made aware of it.

The more time passed, the more Albedo had been inclined to believe in the latter.

At least, meeting Alice and Klee in Mondstadt had helped quieten the clamouring in his head. Living with them was chaotic. It was a flurry of action and noise and laughter and warmth – so completely different from the efficient, systematic way he had lived with his master. Yet, somehow, their presence had still managed to feel familiar.

Their presence kept his anxiety at bay. Or at least, it kept his mind off of it. Klee’s hopeless antics and explosions staved him off from falling too far into a pit of wondering, wondering, wondering what having no answer suggested. No answer. No particular purpose or hope harboured in his being. What did that make of him?

It was a question that clung to him like a shadow that matched his every step and turn. Black matter, uncontrollable, that widened and stretched and grew at the back of his mind, eating away at more and more of him until it threatened to swallow him whole.

Life became a blur of passing interests before he had even realised it. A process of finding new creations and lifeforms that piqued his interest, before getting bored and moving on to find another. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

And then came word of the Honorary Knight. The rumoured traveler who didn’t seem to have come from Mondstadt — or anywhere in Teyvat for that matter. Who had been bestowed his title from the Knights of Favonius because of his contributions to the crisis with Stormterror. Whose name continued to be whispered around town because he, despite his grand title, continued to help with the average Mondstadtian’s most mundane of worries.

‘Aether’, they called him.

Aether. Albedo knew that word, he’d seen it in his alchemical texts before. The fifth element of alchemy; the purest form of air that the gods breathed. The personification of the upper sky, and the primordial god of light.

The boy who wore strange clothes and did kind things.

Albedo had been intrigued. Questions began wandering through his mind before he’d even become fully aware of them.

Where did this stranger come from? How did he control the elements? Why was he helping all those people? Wasn’t he tired? What did he look like? Was his hair as golden as the rumours said they were? Were his smiles truly as sweet as honey? Who was this mysterious person he was looking for?

...Is he like me?

And, somehow, just as his curiosity had reached its peak, they’d ended up meeting in his camp in Dragonspine. The traveler himself had come to find him.

Even now, Albedo still wasn’t sure if it had been this fact that had made his stomach flip in a peculiar way he hadn’t ever experienced before, or if it had simply been the sight of him.

The rumours had been true. Of his hair. His sunshine smiles.

More than that. How had the rumours managed to neglect how long his eyelashes were? Or how his skin resembled warmed marble? His lips to the soft curve of a waning moon?

And before Albedo had even had the chance to try and stop himself, he’d already thrown out a wild request for Aether to assist him with his experiments regarding the peculiar seed from another world. It had been made up on the spot and haphazardly hidden behind the excuse of ‘research’. Albedo still hardly believed that Aether had agreed.

In retrospect, Albedo often reflected on that moment. The same conclusion was always reached: he must have simply lost his mind in that moment. He was just glad that Aether never noticed a thing.

They spent the following weeks together, conducting experiments that confirmed Aether’s origins from a world beyond this one; that tested which laws of the Teyvat applied to him and which didn’t. Albedo’s initial questions about Aether were answered one by one. He easily formed more at a speed that far outpaced his answers. Questioning was, after all, in his nature as a scientist.

Questions like: What does he like to eat? Does he get cold easily? What would make him laugh? If I brought him flowers, would he smile? Is he as happy as I am when we are together?

Utterly scientific.

It had been weeks into their friendship by the time Albedo had noticed just how comfortable he felt around Aether. He was surprised by how often smiles broke onto his face, how at peace he felt. The worries that seemed to have plagued his mind permanently had been dimmed down, momentarily muted, and in their place was the thought of Aether.

They had found out early on that Aether was immune to poison and corruption. Evil did not affect his soul. He had the ability to purify corrupted objects with his touch. Albedo often wondered if that magic applied to him too.

But then, of course, that was impossible. Because, as much as Albedo wanted to believe in magic, he knew that problems did not go away by themselves, unaddressed. Problems demanded responsive action. This was so in experiments, and just as much in himself.

And so, one night in Dragonspine, when the snowstorm had been especially harsh, and the biting cold of winter seemed to seep deeper into him than usual, he’d confessed to Aether, in a fleeting whisper, all the thoughts and fears that clamoured in his head.

About the fact that he wasn’t, and wouldn’t ever be, truly human; that there was nobody else in this world quite like him; that it created an inexplicably jarring sense of isolation that he didn’t think anyone would ever understand. He confessed that he could not see purpose in his own existence.

He knew everything about the creation of life, but nothing about life itself.

His words had been uttered so quietly they had nearly been lost to the howling winds outside their tent. One could have pretended they were simply sounds of the storm imagined into words. The dwindling fire light between them could have been the only thing that heard him at all.

It was the first time Albedo had ever tried to vocalise the thoughts he rarely even let himself think. To speak into existence his emotions was to concretise them, and that had always been something he had instinctively turned away from.

That night, Albedo witnessed Aether’s smile drop from his face completely. For the first time since their meeting, he watched all familiar forms of joy and ease fade away from his expression and he immediately regretted ever saying a word because he could hardly bear with the fact that he was the reason why Aether looked like that.

A suffocating silence had settled over them like a blanket of snow. A sound too loud might have begun an avalanche. And then, like a shotgun, Aether had asked, “Do you love me?” His eyes had not left Albedo’s; his words had been steady. Albedo had failed to notice these things.

His breath escaped him in a heavy rush. Love? The question stumped him. The same way his master’s question had. What was the real meaning of life and this world? And suddenly, the same feelings of loss and confusion began welling up inside him again, amplified tenfold. A black hole ripped open beneath his feet, dragging him in, threatening to drown him.

His own silence crushed him. He fumbled for an answer, choked on his words. Looked away.

“...I don’t know,” he’d said. He had found himself incapable of explaining that he did not understand what being in love meant either.

Silence. It had been short, no longer than a few seconds, but Albedo had never experienced silence quite as loud. The world had begun caving in. He had been crumbling at his feet.

But Aether had not faltered. He’d gotten up and walked over to Albedo. He’d taken his face into his hands. His palms had been so, so warm against Albedo’s cheeks. So solid. “Then answer this instead: does your heart race when you see me?”

It was strange. Aether’s voice had been so quiet, so calm, yet it had managed to drown out the storms from the outside. He became an anchor. The world around them seemed to fall away. Suddenly, they were at the centre of the universe.

Albedo swallowed. Then nodded.

“Do you feel warm when I touch you?” Another nod.

“Do you fall asleep with thoughts of me? Wake from dreams about me?” And yet another nod.

“Good. Then you’re just like me,” Aether said. “Because when I see you, my heart races. When I’m by your side, I’m warm. I’m always thinking about you, and when I can think no longer, you visit me in my dreams.”

Aether’s voice had become fiercer and fiercer with every word he had spoken. There had been no joy reflected in his eyes in that moment, but there had been fire. A blazing flame that chased away – burned away – the shadows clinging onto Albedo.

“If you don’t know if you love me, that’s fine. You just need to know that I love you.” And then Aether had taken his hands and placed them over their hearts. One hand against each of their own. Albedo had felt two beats, identical, pound beneath his palms. “There, you see. Your heart is beating just the same as mine. Doesn’t that make you human enough?”

That was the night Albedo had found his answer to his master’s question. What was the true meaning of life and this world?

He hypothesised that the universal answer might have been love. The ability to love; the gift of being loved. But his personal truth could have only been one person.

That night had been years ago now. It nearly seemed like memories from another lifetime. Now, Albedo laughed when he thought about that night, because his present worries were so vastly different.

His present, most-pressing concern involved the fact that they had a list of a dozen-some chores that they needed to complete by the end of today, and Aether was still deeply asleep. And that was beside the fact that Albedo still had not figured out what flowers they were going to be using to decorate their home in preparation for this year's Windblume.

He’d decided that they would definitely be yellow flowers months ago, but he hadn’t settled on which ones he liked best. Marigolds, daffodils, dahlias, freesias, buttercups, primroses – each of them were a sentiment of his affection. Each unique in the type of love he felt for Aether.

There were so many things he needed to do…

Albedo watched Aether’s nose twitch. He felt him shift against his chest, then nuzzle closer to his neck.

…Later, Albedo decided.

Later, he would wake Aether up with a gentle flick against his nose so he could watch the way it scrunched in annoyance. Later, he would nag at him to get up so that they could go about finishing the chores they had listed out the day before. Later, he would indulge him with kisses all across his face when he began to complain.

Later, later, later. There were so many moments of the future waiting for them. An eternity’s worth, Albedo was sure. After all, they were beings that transcended time. Kreideprinz, the prince of chalk, birthed from soil, and the Honorary Knight, the boy made of sunlight and stars. It wouldn’t hurt to lay in bed for another hour longer.