it's late at night when albedo seeks kaeya out, waiting until he's certain the rest of the knights have vacated the premises before slipping out of his lab and making for kaeya's office. knuckles rap lightly against the door, and then albedo enters, head bowed ever so slightly --- a deferential posture, if one knows to look for it. the light in his eyes is soft, the look on his face one of gentle concern.
some conversations are best to have in private (a notion albedo is all too keenly aware of in his own right) --- not because of the nature of the subject matter itself, but because of --------
in khaenri'ahn: ❝ don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t quite look well. ❞
(he has been watching, of course.)
there is an ease in hearing his mother tongue that could lull him into a state of lowered guard. he’d had his initial apprehensiveness concerning albedo, of his state, a not - quite - human, a creation of khemia that was just breaching the point of possibility by the time of khaenri’ah’s downfall, but even so he knew that there was still comfort in someone understanding parts of you that no one else could come close to. fragments of kaeya had been destroyed in the cataclysm, parts of him that would never see the light of day once more because there was simply no one else who relive those emotions with him, not in earnest.
too much of his situation was unique, so much of it ... alienating, lonely.
that ever - present ache though, lessens upon hearing it - makes kaeya feel stupid that he couldn’t discern the accent in albedo’s voice sooner. had it really been so long since he’d last heard another khaenri’ahn speak ?
it was instinct then to laugh off the comment, perpetual mask remained stubborn despite the wear in kaeya’s expression, despite the knowing way kaeya knew, as a student of gold, albedo was nothing if not observant. and he did, some eerie, melancholy notes to a sound that should have been joyous and filled with light. such tire reflected in the slow and heavy movements as kaeya moved to remove his eyepatch, the slight glow of his one amber eye a little too light, a little too reflective in the evening darkness. another relief, tension from the covering easing the strain upon temples. he replied in the same mother tongue.
‘ i was ... spared for some reason, the heaviest effects of the curse. ’ he knows not why he received this second chance, only to be cursed with a vision at the apex of his grace period. at the very least he’d had a glimpse of what it was like to be an ordinary child. ‘ i thought that perhaps the effects of it had simply ... frozen in time. but, alas, the symptoms are getting worse. ’
a craving for chaos, for discord ... for violence and melancholy, for unimaginable power the likes of which might have driven their kind to ruin in the first place. the abyss transformed kaeya’s homesickness into something dastardly, something hideous and greedy. it might soon break the shell of his human appearance. had the alchemist ever witnessed gold in the throes of the curse ?
