Chapter Text
It was the explosion and shattering of glass that first alarmed him, quickly turning around to see dissipating smoke from his assistant's station.
The second thing that alarmed him was the fact that his assistant was nowhere in sight. "Sucrose!" He gasped as he scrambled to her workstation. But as the smoke funnelled into the makeshift fumehood Albedo invented, all he could see was material sprawled along an alchemy table.
Panic started to creep at him. Was she experimenting with mobile teleporters? She could be anywhere in Teyvat right now! He felt a tug on his jacket that startled his thoughts. He turned around and was nearly floored by what he saw.
Albedo gawked at the sight in front of him, his assistant, no, a toddler with his assistant's mint hair and teary golden eyes stared at him.
"Mis-mista Awbedo…" she spoke, tiny hands tugging on his coat, "H-help." She stumbled on her clothes which were now threatening to drown her.
"...Sucrose?" The usually unflustered, unbothered alchemist stared wide-eyed at the state his assistant was in, ears twitching and sniffling. He quickly took off his white coat and fastened it over her. Perfectly in time for the rest of her now oversized clothes to drop in a heap around her knees.
"What happened?" He gently lifts her up by her armpits as he would to Klee out of the pile and settled her down in front of him.
"I w-wanted to pwolong the life of my flowers by expewimenting with age weversal. But the alchemy blew up in my face and now I'm tiny again!" She sniffled.
"How old are you currently?" He wondered as he scans the chubby cheeks and short stature, inwardly brushing off the squeezing in his heart at the sight of something so adorable.
"I think younger than Klee. Appwoximately five."
"You de-aged 13 years?" Albedo felt his heart drop, from an experiment he did long ago to speed up the growth of a specimen so that he can investigate it, it would take quite a lot of materials to age something more than a decade. But first, he needed to know what exactly did she attempt, "Can I see the mixture you were concocting?"
Sucrose promptly waddled her way to her station, looking like a baby penguin with his coat, which was average in size but now looked gigantic on her. But not before she stopped by her pile of clothing and dug through to retrieve her vision from her wool-fleece collar.
But regardless, she led him to the table and climbed—yes, she had to climb the stool, in order to fetch her notes. She nearly slipped and Albedo rushed to her side, feeling that if something happened to small Sucrose he wouldn't be able to ever forgive himself.
"Heew" she handed over her barely legible scribbles to Albedo, fortunately for him, he too had handwriting just as illegible.
Albedo felt his heart settled down in his stomach with dread. "Did you use the last batch of silk flower powder?" His eyes scanned, unable to mistake the soft pink hue on the table, strange because she wrote that she used glaze lily powders. He glanced down at her, even when she was atop a stool she was shorter than he.
Her eyes widened as she floundered over her next words. "N-no I was using glaze—" her eyes settled on the pinkish smattering of powder. "Oh no…" It dawned on her why the experiment blew up. Unlike the soft glaze lilies, the silk flowers were more potent as a catalyst, inducing a more volatile reaction on top of the increased speed. He believes it's the very reason her flask exploded and coated her in the de-ageing reaction. Ironically, silk flowers are also used in ageing instead of de-ageing.
Albedo was concerned, although she was clumsy in handling her equipment she never made such a careless mistake. She was always calculative and precise. All 'mistakes' she made were errors from overestimating or underestimating the strength of the reactions.
He glanced down to see her stifling a yawn in the middle of crying, with tears bubbling down her cheeks and he knew it was the lack of sleep that did this. He had to reprimand her.
"Didn't I tell you to take a rest?" Sucrose hiccuped at his words, looking like a deer caught in the headlights.
"I-I was so close to completion." She started, doe-eyed and headstrong.
"And look at where it got you." Albedo sighed, rubbing his temple, but that wasn't the most concerning issue right now, "...the next shipment of silk flowers won't arrive until next month." He almost felt like someone was tearing his cardiovascular organ apart as Sucrose wept harder at his words.
He wasn't sure what prompted him to do so, perhaps a mix of affection and the fact that she looked extremely cute, but he couldn't stop himself from patting her head in an attempt to reassure her.
She threw her arms over him in response to both of their surprise, and he was taken further aback by his own decision to carry her. He finally soothed her by feeding Sucrose her very own sweet flower candies, perhaps despite her mind being that of an 18-year-old, her biology had undeniable similarities with that of a young child. and an hour later they found themselves in Jean's office, Sucrose burying her head in his neck as he cradled her in his arms.
Jean looked as if she saw a ghost. Kaeya was doubling over in laughter at the sight and Lisa looked as if a tremendous headache was threatening to descend on her.
"So let me get this right. You accidentally used the last batch of silk flowers this month that made your experiment blow up and this happened to you. But we cannot reverse it in the meantime because that was the last batch of silk flowers available for import unless we travel all the way to Liyue to buy them?" Jean croaked out and Sucrose whimpered, hiding her face in the crook of Albedo's neck.
"Yes." Sucrose squeaked. Kaeya howled with laughter, shaking the desk unapologetically while Albedo shot him a scathing glare.
"What will happen next? Will Klee turn into a grandma? I swear there isn't a single boring day in the Favonius headquarters." Kaeya wheezed.
Sucrose started tearing up again in his arms, probably a buildup of frustrations at how uncontrollable her emotions and the way Kaeya teased her unintentional mistake.
At this point, the scathing glare Albedo shot him was withering with rage. "You just had to tease her did you?" He held her tighter, rubbing soothing circles on her back as she tries to force herself to stop tearing up.
A knock on their door startled the five as Aether, Paimon and Klee poked their heads into the office. "We're back to report on the recent abyss mage situat—”
Aether's jaw dropped at the sight of Sucrose carried by Albedo, "Is that your secret lovechild with Sucrose?"
Kaeya collapsed onto the floor in laughter as Klee dashed her way to Albedo's side, eyes shining at the prospect of a younger sibling.
Albedo felt his ears burn, "No. This IS Sucrose. De-ageing plant experiment failure." Sucrose whimpered, uncomfortable in his hold, the attention starting to get into her.
"Paimon thinks Sucrose looks smaller than Paimon." Obviously, she wasn't but the emergency food had always loved to exaggerate. She floated to squeeze and pinch Sucrose's chubby cheeks, accidentally trailing whatever dust she caught from her adventure in front of Sucrose. It happened too quickly for Sucrose to stop but she found herself sneezing on Paimon, ears fluttering quickly as she realised her mistake.
"I-I'm sorry—" Sucrose squealed.
"Don't be. She deserves it." Aether bit back his laughter as Paimon rushed to his head to start pulling on his hair, which honestly barely evoked a reaction from him.
"That's it! Paimon's leaving Aether!" The floating stomach huffed and proceeded to make her way out of the door, ranting a tirade on the way.
"Well...I just came here to safely bring back Klee and report that we cleared out the Abyss Mage hideout near the whispering woods. Now if you'll excuse me I gotta go catch up with her, lest she finds herself in Xiangling's soup." He looked at Albedo, still carrying Sucrose in his arms, "Good luck to you two I guess."
Albedo felt his ears burn again at his words. Aether has always tried to imply to him that he cared more about Sucrose than he thinks and although he believes that is most likely false he can't help the natural flushing reaction whenever he implies that.
Klee jumped up and down to try and get Sucrose to look into her eyes. "Big sister Sucrose, big sister Sucrose let's play together! Klee wants to take you fish—" she abruptly stopped only noticing Jean in the corner of her eyes, "fish-feeding." She reluctantly pouted.
"Well, you can take her and lend her your clothes at the moment, seeing that she won't be turning back anytime soon." Lisa sighed, placing the book she was holding back onto Jean's desk. "I reckon Albedo's getting cold without his coat and it's simply far too big for her."
"But Lisa it's clear she's about to—"
At Jean's bristling Lisa only sighed, taking her friend's hand. "I think we can let it slide for today. Meanwhile," she set her eyes on the Chief Alchemist, "we need to talk about how to proceed from here."
And so Albedo reluctantly set Sucrose down, enveloped in foreign feelings of wanting to continue holding her and his strangely protective wishes. Before Klee dragged her away in excitement, he gave her and Klee's head a small pat, a gesture that didn't go unnoticed by the librarian's keen eyes.
She noticed his soft eyes, affection that is seemingly foreign anytime otherwise. But she decided not to push the thought onto him, afraid that she would cause this meeting to clam up.
Jean however looked stricken and worried after the two young girls, still gazing at the door the two disappeared to.
Kaeya glanced at Jean, "If you're so worried I can come with them." Jean lingered at his words, before deciding that even though Kaeya will most likely cause more chaos to ensue, he would ensure none of them came to harm.
And so she gave him a curt nod and Kaeya left the office, leaving Lisa, Jean and Albedo alone.
"Well for starters can we all agree that Sucrose would need to live supervised this entire time?" Jean started, distress gone and hand up in the air as if asking for a vote.
Albedo nodded, adding, "She also shouldn't be allowed to work on any experiments. She couldn't even grip her conical flask properly."
Another hum of agreement from Lisa, tapping her slender fingers on the wood of Jean's desk, "I worry that she would turn her adorable eyes to us and we would cave in, much as we do to Klee most of the time."
"Well, we'll have to count on our Chief Alchemist to be stern with her right?" Jean questioned, a rare teasing tone emerging.
Lisa gave a wan smile, believing that the Chief Alchemist may be most susceptible to Sucrose’s precious charms. Especially with the way she suspected that something was brewing between them prior to the whole incident.
"I hope he'll be impartial." The librarian looked straight into Albedo's eyes, admiring the flickers of change from the adoration to a professional, somewhat emotionless gaze. “This won’t do.” she decided, there has to be some way she can push tjhem together without making him clam up.
"I think I can manage that." He said simply, "Now on a matter of living arrangements—"
"She can live with you and Klee!" Lisa cackled gleefully, finally allowing her inner Kaeya to slip through. Although she knows that no romantic progression would happen given Sucrose's current conditions, the time together would serve as a purpose to bring them closer.
"P-pardon?" Albedo was at loss for words, it was severely unprofessional of him to allow his assistant to live with him.
"I also think that would be the best course of action," Jean agreed, "while she would probably grow antsy from being banned from the laboratory, Klee can keep her company and entertain her."
"And as of the moment, since it is highly doubtful that we would purchase a whole set of wardrobe for just a month's duration, Sucrose would probably be best off continuing to borrow Klee's clothes too." Lisa grinned, thanking Barbatos that Jean agreed with her very unrealistic request.
"Of course since Albedo has experience taking care of Klee, so it would serve him no trouble to take care of an extra child-knight." Jean clapped as if the idea only seems to make better sense as they discussed it.
"Wait—" Albedo futilely tried to interject between the two close friends' relentless discussions.
"The Knights of Favonius can use Sucrose's salary this month to take care of her needs, so you don't have to worry about the extra costs." The acting Grandmaster reassured him. Albedo wanted to shrivel up, it wasn't about the cost he was worried about.
"Yes but…wouldn't Sucrose feel uncomfortable living with me?" Albedo questioned uncertainly, beyond his own evidential discomfort at the thought of the new living arrangement was the fact that Sucrose of all people wouldn't feel at ease.
"Nonsense Albedo," Lisa's lime green eyes bore right into his soul, "I can count the number of people Sucrose are comfortable within one hand, you are definitely on top of the list. I think even me and Jean didn't make the cut."
Albedo felt the fight against the idea leave him, as a certain warmth and silence envelope him at Lisa's words. How does the idea of Sucrose being at ease in his presence bring such comfort to him?
"So is it decided?" Jean questioned, looking at both the Librarian and the Chief Alchemist.
"Yes." Albedo breathed out.