Chapter Text
Durin looked down from the tree at his brother, who had decided to start writing notes on… something, something Nod-Krai-y probably, in the windiest place possible. It was so, oh so cold here. And no, this was not being unprepared for a harsher climate, because Durin was wearing more than everyone else all the while he seemed to freeze over a little every second he spent outside.
Back when they had first arrived and Albedo had gone to “currency exchange”, some child had come up to him and handed him a pair of knitted socks with a pattern depicting the Jester of the Fatui Harbingers, which Hat Guy had found particularly funny. The child was with what was apparently her grandfather, who had accompanied her to some small travelling festival where she had won these socks from a game, and seeing Durin freezing, wanted to give them. Durin though, had been completely excluded from the conversation, and Hat Guy had to relay this information to him.
“It’s kind of difficult to talk to the people who don’t speak the common tongue. Maybe I should start learning Snezhnayan too,” Durin commented after a minutes long silence.
“Focus on learning Mond first,” Albedo said. “It’s better to not start too many languages at once. And either way, the Nod-Kraian dialect is hard for even me to parse a lot of the time. Partly that may be due to my vocabulary being outdated, but…” he added before writing another sentence in tiny Khaenri’ahn letters.
Really tiny — how could he even read that? Albedo was running out of space in his notebook. It had been a long day and Durin’s mind had run out of things to distract himself from the many feelings that had been stacking up in all these months since waking up in that office room with a human body. But he still didn’t have the words for them, so he didn’t even try.
There was one thing he could articulate. It was more of a question than anything. Should he?
“Albedo, am I a person?” he asked, probably too out-of-nowhere, now that he thought about it. “Am I human?”
Albedo stopped writing mid-sentence, but didn’t look Durin’s way. His pen he plopped between the pages so it wouldn’t accidentally make marks on the pages while he talked.
“You are a person, by most definitions,” he started, looking at the sealine. “Human? I’m not sure. It’s all a game of words, really. A simple bench and a living room table are almost identical in form, and they may be used interchangeably. Whether to call such a thing a table or a chair depends largely on individual persons and their ways of perceiving the world.”
At this point, Durin probably should’ve made a face expressing disappointment in the vague answer, but his muscles didn’t even twitch. Albedo looked at him, finding something in the way Durin held himself, breathed and moved his eyes.
“Not a good answer?” he said with a smile. “It has never satisfied me either. Logically, I see that all these categories are somewhat arbitrary and only useful for communication’s sake. The lines between species are not real in any ontological sense, but we choose to use them in order to understand each other. And still, I find myself wondering whether I am human, whether I should be, and what it means to be human at all.”
That was news to Durin. So far, everyone had seemed to operate under the assumption that everything was something, but Albedo seemed to think that nobody was anything? Also, what’s “ontological” mean? He dropped down from the tree and sat beside Albedo, curling in to stay warm.
“In truth,” Albedo said while breathing in, “the question of what it means to be human is as old as time. You can ask Ms. Lisa to show you some books about that in the library, if you want.”
“So you don’t see yourself as human?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“So you are. Then, the other you is human as well?”
It was just another question that had popped into a curious Durin’s mind. He sometimes wondered about that doppelgänger of Albedo’s that had caused trouble, but never had the chance to ask about, so now he did. Yet, when Albedo turned to look at him, he started to feel a little wrong. Was it the question, or was it something else? Durin looked around, but didn’t see anything. Albedo was staring at him. His tail was no longer leisurely swinging up and down, it was awkwardly imitating its usual movement. This always happened when people stared.
“What are you saying?” Albedo tried the waters.
“Huh? You told me there was another you that your teacher created. He was thrown inside… the Dragon’s belly… and tried to replace you, but you took care of it.”
These were Albedo’s words, yet he was still looking like Durin had said something disturbing. Still without response, Albedo’s gaze drifted off and he got lost in thought.
“Oh. I see,” he finally said.
In most ways his usual calmness returned, but it wasn’t perfect. With none of his senses could Durin point to anything out of the ordinary, but there was some sort of difference between the usual Albedo and what was sitting in front of him. Maybe it was the fact that the sun had been covered by clouds, which Albedo was also taking note of.
“It’s going to rain. We should head back.”
As he stood and helped Durin up, the coldness of his chalk hands hit the boy differently. In Mondstadt it was warmer in the summer, and Albedo’s hands felt nice and cool. Here and now though, Durin had already gotten a bit cold, and Albedo’s touch sent a chill down his spine.
They walked through some grass and ended up on the path they’d taken. It was all muddy, so Albedo walked on the thin line of grass running in the middle of the road. Durin instead trampled through the mud, glancing at Albedo’s back.
With how many things Durin had been learning the past few months, he had never given this weird family situation much thought. He was both Andersdotter and Rhinedottir’s creation, but Albedo never spoke of the latter as an actual mother. She was brought up whenever it was necessary for the conversation, she was a teacher, creator, but she didn’t birth them. That was something Albedo had emphasized himself once, when Durin had met a pregnant woman for the first time. The woman had been so full of joy for her to-be-firstborn, a happiness that seemed a lot deeper and more unknown than, say, Klee getting to taste good food. It had started a conversation where Albedo had at some point stated plainly, that designing and birthing life are not comparable.
“A mother does not intricately pick out the attributes she wishes her child to have. She does not write multiple notebooks worth of corrections, equations, lists of ingredients and data to make a specimen that meets the current requirements.”
And yet, after such calculating, the project of the abyssal dragon had gone so wrong that it had started destroying things? Only his heart could be salvaged, it seemed. All this churned inside Durin, louder in the silence and quieter in noise. He wanted to ask Albedo about it all, but he didn’t have actual questions to ask — with words and a question mark at the end — nor did he want to bother his brother too much. Whenever Albedo talked about family matters, he started out the same as usual, but slowly became gloomier as the conversation stretched on. It wasn’t clear to Durin what that shift predicted, but a vague warning was warning enough for him.
This time, it had been stronger and quicker.
Yeah, actually, what did Albedo mean when he said that the other one was taken care of? Those words were a black void. They could mean anything, and Durin was too new to everything to even know the options.
~~~
Albedo and Durin arrived inside the humble courtyard of wooden buildings — the place of their stay in Nod-Krai. The knights of Favonius had some friends here, and Ms. Koskitar was kind enough to let them stay in a side building. It was starting to get dark already, which made the three silhouettes of people arguing under the lights pop out all the more. As it noticed Durin, the leashed dog at their feet started barking.
“Hey, Rapsu!” he called out, but didn’t approach out of fear of disturbing the angry people.
Out of everyone, Rapsu was Durin’s favourite host. Right now, her long multicolor fur was being thrown around in the wind and she was muddy. She had probably crawled through the trench again. Albedo stopped to listen to the argument, while Durin tuned out the foreign babble and listened to the owls and crickets instead. He looked around at the skyline and trees being torn by the wind for a while, then turned to ask Albedo:
“What are they talking about?”
“The dog,” Hat Guy responded from behind them.
Durin jumped and turned towards the dark doorway. Albedo didn’t react. He had probably been aware of Hat Guy’s ominous lurking the whole time.
“They’re gonna put it down,” he elaborated, and then elaborated even more as Durin didn’t seem to understand. “It bit someone, so they decided it can’t live.”
“What?!” Durin let out.
“What I just said. The neighbour has been voicing all sorts of other complaints too. I’d bet he has been harboring resentment for a good while already, and is just now letting it all out.”
Durin whipped around to look at the dog, and it looked at him back with uncertainty in its eyes.
“They can’t just kill her!” Durin insisted.
Hat Guy was silent.
“It’s not unusual for a dog to be put down if it’s dangerous. I’m sorry,” Albedo said, apparently having already processed his surprise at this turn of events.
“But she doesn’t understand what she’s doing! She’s just— She’s just…”
Durin turned to look at Rapsu again. She was laying on the ground, hiding her long snout with her paw. The argument dragged on.
Albedo’s cold hand settled on Durin’s shoulder.
“Let’s talk somewhere else,” he said quietly and… sternly.
~~~
Durin stood under the light, around the corner of one of the wooden houses, on the dark side of the building. The shadowy trees raged in the wind behind him and Albedo’s light figure was just in range to be illuminated. His white jacket was almost blinding.
“I don’t understand any of this,” Durin said. “Everyone always acts so strange. What do you all know that I don’t?”
Albedo avoided his gaze.
“I know you’re upset about Rapsu, and you’re not the only one. It was clear from their conversation that her owners don’t want this either. I’m sure the decision isn’t being made lightly.”
“You don’t seem too upset about it. It’s like it doesn’t even matter to you.”
“I would like to delay the deaths of many, but there will always come an end. Because some things simply cannot coexist, there is conflict, and that conflict only gets resolved when one of the conflicting factors is removed. Things die eventually.”
Well, that didn’t make any of this clearer for Durin. His hands were shaking, chest was tightening and confused tears were starting to form. Was Rapsu really going to die? Just like that? That can just happen? And nobody even objects to it?
“You can cry,” Albedo said.
That’s what he said, but he wasn’t crying himself. Nobody else was either.
“I’m sure you can go say goodbye to her. I don’t know when they’re going to take care of it, but it’ll probably take some ti—”
“Take care of it. What does that even mean? You said that about your brother as well. What does that mean?”
Albedo couldn’t recall a dictionary definition, so he used his own words, “It means a task is finished, a problem is resolved.”
“Rapsu is not a problem! What’s that thing you keep saying to Klee, violence is not the solution? Why can’t we solve this like you solved the thing with your brother? Just because she’s a dog?”
Durin stepped back, leaving Albedo to stand in the lamplight by himself. It was his play alone and the audience was leaving this miserable theatre. He’d forgotten the script, although it wasn’t good anyway, but his job was improvising, wasn’t it?
“It’s not about being a dog or a man. Sometimes there is no other solution.”
Durin mulled over the words. He wasn’t really understanding them, but he was backing away. No other solution… no other solution…
“But, your brother…” Durin said.
Albedo was fighting back the urge to step closer. It would only scare the boy away.
“If I hadn’t killed him,” Albedo said and almost stopped as Durin’s face morphed entirely, “I would be dead and everyone I love would be in danger. He had no life of his own, he only wanted mine.”
Durin’s lips moved to ask, to repeat, to confirm that he had just heard correctly, but he didn’t. Blood rushed to his face and he could only shrink back on himself. Was he supposed to know that? Did everyone else know that when Albedo said he’d “taken care of his brother” he had meant murder? That’s what murder meant, right?
“If I ever threatened Mondstadt, that would be my fate too,” Albedo added, as if to reassure Durin on the equality of it all.
The light was getting really bright already, Durin probably wouldn’t be able to keep track of up and down for much longer, Albedo’s voice was starting to sound unrecognizable in the wind, Durin’s fingers were probably frozen to the bone by now and he really needed to get inside right now. He took a shaky step towards their rooms, then another, and after the third he didn’t need to tell his body to move anymore.
~~~
Durin sat quietly on the bed. Albedo had quietly placed a bowl of soup on his night stand since he didn’t show up to eat, and was now reading away at some alchemy books he’d borrowed here in Nod-Krai behind the curtain that split the room. Beside the soup was his diary, but today’s entry remained empty. Durin had gone out once to see the dog, come back, and continued sitting in silence. He was supposed to be sleeping, but he was stuck hoping he wouldn’t have to and could just skip to next morning.
He secretly hoped Albedo would stay up all night reading, so Durin could sleep not in the lonely silence of the night, but with the presence of someone — be it literally anyone, just someone who was alive, who was aware of their surroundings, someone who wouldn’t leave Durin alone to face with whatever lurked in the darkest corners of his mind.
Honestly, he didn’t know if he would rather be thinking about Rapsu and Albedo’s… deeds… or the stuff he thought of usually. The nights where he didn’t have those thoughts were becoming rare. Images of dead bodies, claws and teeth in flesh, fire and suffocating smoke. As long as he was awake, he could reason with these thoughts, swear he didn’t want this, but when he started to fall asleep, everything became muddy and terrifying. He would no longer be able to fight back these thoughts, he could maybe even start agreeing with them.
Furthermore, if he spoke in his sleep, like Albedo did when fell asleep at his desk, people would know about the things he dreamed of. Dreams gave him no control, because he could believe all sorts of things, be all sorts of weird versions of himself he could never imagine really being, but that he could nonetheless live and speak and act as in his dreams. There was even that Liyuean story he’d been taught of the man who dreamed he was a butterfly, and never knew for sure whether he was man or butterfly, which just seemed to give weight to this fear. Durin wanted to be who he was now, even if he really was the things from his dreams, because right now he had control.
Albedo’s silhouette shone dimly through the curtain. There were bugs in the walls. The carpet wasn’t straight. His back was getting stiff. Durin had to keep awake for just a while longer, but his tail was already curling up around him whether he wanted it or not.
Would the dog still be alive tomorrow? Durin almost hoped not, because he was afraid he’d have to watch it die in broad daylight. How does one even kill a dog? Hopefully his dreams wouldn’t present him with ideas.
~~~
Albedo wandered into the kitchen over creaky floorboards. It was starting to get dark and Durin had been out all day with Hat Guy. Tomorrow he would have to go outside too, because all that staring at things close up and getting different steams in his eyes and not letting fresh air in the room was already starting to catch up to him.
He found himself looking for a tap, until he remembered that this building had none, and poured water from a bottle. He downed two glasses like nothing, which usually got comments from people who drank more times during the day, but right now he was alone.
Durin had been more troubled than usual, which was understandable. Nobody had really equipped Albedo to handle this sort of thing. Usually the people he tried to help were either more self-reliant in the first place, or had worries that weren’t quite this deep. Best case scenario, Hat Guy had helped the boy sort out his emotions. Although, Hat Guy wasn’t exactly the most reliable at that, but neither was Albedo.
Albedo’s eyes drifted across the room. Rug on the wall, benches at the edges of the rooms, cabinets for storage, what else was new around here? Actually, there was something new. The cabin table had a strange fabric-covered rectangle. Albedo stepped closer and lifted the fabric. There was… a box of some brown sludge. Its grainy texture shimmered dimly.
“What is this…?” he muttered and held the box up.
Handwriting on the side read “varma koskitar”. Cogs turned in Albedo’s head. “Varma koskitar” as in Khaenri’ahn for “warm cow shit”…? It certainly wasn’t warm anymore… How long had this been here anyway? Was he seriously considering this option now? No, hold on, wasn’t Ms. Varma Koskitar the name of their host? Huh… unrelated then, as anyone in their right mind should expect.
At that instant, someone’s footsteps sounded from the hallway. They were powerful yet quiet, not like Durin’s hasty ones or Hat Guy’s ones that sounded like he was on edge at all times. Soon, a blue light appeared on the wooden walls. A man in black stopped at the door, glowing yellow eyes immediately drawing Albedo’s attention.
“Ah, there you are, Mr. Albedo. I have come looking for you.”
Albedo was still holding the box awkwardly in the air.
“Evening, Kirill Chudomirovich. Do you happen to know what this is?”
Flins glanced at the box.
“That dish right there would appear to be mämmiä. It is quite the food indeed. Pardon me, but I was actually sent here to talk to you because you have been reported to the Ratniki.”
“Oh? Reported you say?” Albedo said and sat on the bench with the box of cold cow shit mämmi in his lap.
“Yes, someone living nearby claims to have heard you confess to a murder.”
~~~
Durin opened the door for Hat Guy, who was carrying a bag. Already, speech could be heard from the kitchen.
“In other words,” the voice of Flins said, “you finished what Gold started. You felt he was never intended to live or capable of it, is that right?”
“It would be arrogant of me to pretend to be on her level just because she let me live. I did not finish her work, I was merely protecting the people I love,” Albedo told him.
“Are we interrupting something?” Hat Guy asked as he peeked in from the doorway.
“No, nothing whatsoever. It is most wonderful to see you two,” Flins said.
Durin stepped forward and lifted up Hat Guy’s bag.
“We got a recipe for some Nod-Kraian dish. Me and Hat Guy thought we’d make them tonight.”
“That’s great,” Albedo said. “Kirill Chudomirovich, since you’re here, maybe you would want to join us for dinner?”
“That is very kind of you, Mr. Albedo. I shall accept your offer, since I am unable to return home either way, for reasons unrelated.”
Albedo stood up.
“Maybe we can continue our conversation elsewhere and let Hat Guy and Durin have the kitchen,” he said.
As Flins agreed and got up as well, Albedo gave Durin an inquiring look, to which Durin didn’t respond, looking away instead.
~~~
“What are we making exactly?” Durin asked.
“Verilettuja, apparently. If you’ve ever eaten blini, it’s like that, but they put blood in there.”
Hat Guy took out the canister of blood and removed the cap. Shivers went down Durin’s spine as the smell registered in his head and he saw the way the thick liquid rippled inside the casing.
“Blood?” Durin said. “What does that taste like then?”
“Hell if I know, I don’t eat anything in the first place, probably for taste. There’s gonna be other stuff there too, like… sipuli? Like chiburi? Am I supposed to mix this with my sword?”
“What are you talking about?”
Hat Guy made a face of “Do I have the energy to explain myself?” before sighing and reaching with his hand.
“Give me your sword. Keep it sheathed.”
Durin detached the scabbard and handed it with suspicion. Hat Guy struggled to attach it to his own belt while continuing to mix the dough. Then he drew the sword leisurely, felt the weight of it in his hand and examined it. Using Anemo, he lifted some blood from the canister and splashed it on Durin’s sword. The latter wanted to object, which Hat Guy noticed, but nothing was said.
“Now watch.”
Hat Guy flipped the sword in right hand, and with his other, knocked the handle. Blood splattered on the ground to the last drop, while he had already switched the sword to his left and rotated it in a smooth circle, before sliding it into the scabbard.
“That was apparently necessary for the cooking progress. Anyway, what next, eggs?”
There were now small bloodstains on the carpet, but they were barely visible among the many colourful threads. Durin still thought it best to wash it later, so he pulled it aside when Hat Guy went to the fridge.
Durin was barely done with that, when Hat Guy was already crushing a couple of eggs inside his palm and dropping them into the dough. Durin didn’t know you could eat the eggshells, but now that he thought of it, it wouldn’t make sense for them to be toxic since the little baby chicken was inside it. Hat Guy grabbed the recipe again.
“Four eggs?” he said to himself, and headed to the fridge once more. “They better have more, then.”
By the time he got back, Durin’s mind had drifted elsewhere entirely. That question had come back again. Absent mindedly, he wound up blurting out:
“Would you ever kill someone?”
Hat Guy paused and turned his whole body slowly, in an offended manner.
“What? Was I crushing the eggs too excitedly or something?” he mocked, scrunching his nose. “Oh, wait, it’s about the sword trick, isn’t it?
“Huh? No, nothing like that! I was just wondering, I wasn’t accusing you of anything. Why did you… No, sorry, dumb question.”
Hat Guy studied Durin’s expression for a while, giving time for Durin’s thoughts to race through a million different things.
“That depends on how you look at it. I have decided to not take people’s lives into my hands, because humans don’t like my way of doing things. They make decisions based on different standards, they give more value to their little lives — I’d only disappoint them with my choices.”
“But… then, do you not think killing is wrong?”
“I’m not your ethics teacher. Murder is illegal, figure it out yourself.”
“Would you kill me if I became dangerous again?”
Hat Guy, who had been returning to cooking, paused again. Oooh, so that’s what this is. How didn’t he realize sooner?
“It’s all worthless speculation. You don’t know how, why or if you would become a threat. I don’t know if I’ll become a threat to anyone, like you in this scenario, either. This is above my paygrade.”
He went back to the dough. He crushed the eggshells into smaller bits with the whisk and finally poured the blood in. The recipe seemed to say he should’ve done it earlier, but Durin knew much less about cooking. In a way, the blood was kind of a beautiful color, but the thought of enjoying the consumption of blood made him nauseous. Meat had such a good taste, but every time he bit into it, it was like… taking one of those little wooden creatures — “toy “horses”” — from a child and playing with it while they cry. The meat wasn’t meant for his consumption, it belonged to a more vulnerable creature, the happy life of which could not exist while the evil dragon was enjoying its flesh.
“I don’t get it. Murder is supposed to be the worst crime, but everywhere I look, nobody cares. Sometimes people call it something different, like self-defense, capital punishment, or putting down an animal, but it’s all the intentional causing of death, isn’t it?”
“You should’ve picked your friends better if you didn’t want a bad influence. Don’t hurt innocent people, how about that?”
“But…”
“Listen, if there was someone, who threw away people like garbage after making their lives a living hell, and never felt a hint of remorse, should that person live? Should they not be punished for their actions?”
Again, how was Durin supposed to know? Was this mentioned person only found in stories, or were they a common occurrence?
“You said the only thing we can do is atone.”
“Yeah, and when people don’t want to, you make them.”
Hat Guy grabbed the canister of blood and turned towards the fridge. Durin yelped, and following his gaze led to a red floor. The canister was at the puppet’s blood-soaked feet. His fingers had slipped.
Hat Guy, with his hand on his face, muttered something in a language Durin couldn’t understand.
“I’m so done with this fucking body,” he said. “Do you think these people have a vacuum cleaner nearby?”
Durin crossed the room to a cabinet. His heart was beating a little fast, just like any situation where something was expected of him.
“I think there should be one here… This is a vacuum cleaner, right?”
The Snezhnayan models looked a little different to Mondstadtian ones, but it did look like it sucked.
“That’s so small. Well, whatever. Bring it here.”
To Durin it looked fairly large, but he had yet to become a vacuum cleaner connoisseur. He dragged it across the floor very carefully and placed it a good distance away from the blood, so it wouldn’t get stained. Although, it probably would be soon anyway.
Hat Guy pressed all the buttons, but nothing happened. Kick! Nothing. He looked all around it for extra buttons, until saying:
“Why didn’t you plug it in?”
“Like put a wire on it?”
Hat Guy pulled out the extension cord, handed it, and gestured at the power socket.
“Oh,” Durin said.
It didn’t take more than a few seconds from Durin plugging the cord into the wall to Hat Guy concluding:
“Well, this sure isn’t working.”
Not only was the container of the machine now stained red, the blood had started leaking out. It stretched out in long trails and eventually dripped onto the floor.
“Are you supposed to clean up blood with a vacuum cleaner?” Durin asked hesitantly.
Hat Guy bit his lip. That’s how they did it in Fatui labs, but those vacuum cleaners were a whole lot different. However, it always seemed a lot more convenient than any other method. He was rarely ever the one to clean up after he had… done things he was not proud of. Not like he was going to apologize for not doing the dirty work, but maybe he shouldn’t have gone around slicing people in the first place.
“Not if it’s this shitty vacuum cleaner, I guess,” he said. “Tell you what, why don’t you get your alchemist brother to handle this?”
~~~
“How did this happen?” Albedo said, Flins walking right behind him.
“I dropped a container full of blood, what does it look like?”
“His hands haven’t been working well,” Durin added, causing him to get a glare from Hat Guy.
“I see. After we’ve handled this mess, do you want me to look at that? I may not know much about how you work, but I was also made with Khaenri’ahn arts, and—”
“No thanks.”
“Why not?” Durin asked.
He might’ve said more, were it not for Albedo placing a hand on his shoulder.
“Unlike humans, a puny little malfunction ain’t gonna kill me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have something to do.”
Hat Guy passed Flins and disappeared out the door. His footsteps could be heard for a short moment, before they stopped in the middle of the hallway.
“He seemed really annoyed about his arms not working, but now he says it doesn’t matter,” Durin noted.
“Best not to press it,” Albedo said and kneeled down.
He began scribbling symbols into an array on the floor while explaining something probably-insightful about people and how they handle their medical issues or something. Durin was too focused on the fact that Albedo had accidentally written some of the words from his life lesson on the alchemical array. Durin did try to tell his brother about it, but the guy just kept speaking. The master alchemist only stopped once the Geo he summoned got transmuted into a very disfigured bucket. This “bucket” was so tall it created a dent on the roof — not to mention it was full of holes, since the material Albedo had created with his vision was only enough for a normal bucket, not a multiple meters tall bucket.
“Perhaps you require help?” Flins finally chimed in.
“Actually, could you go fetch some water?” Albedo said, correcting the array to transmute a working bucket.
~~~
Durin sat down around the table last. He wasn’t a food expert, but somehow the blood-brown shreds of dough with eggshells sticking out, the darker brown sludge and the also brown fried bugs Albedo had found somewhere didn’t look quite right. Hat Guy was the only one that seemed suspicious, and he said he didn’t eat. Albedo’s face was neutral and Flins was even smiling a little bit. Although, it was akin to a sad or pitying smile.
“Wait, do we not have anything to drink?” Albedo asked.
“We used up all the water in the dough,” Hat Guy informed. “So-rry. Durin, can you go get more?”
“We’re not allowed to use the well ourselves,” Durin said.
“Then ask that lady for some,” Hat Guy said back.
“I don’t speak her language.”
Hat Guy let out a small sigh and told Durin what words to repeat to her.
“Uh, alright,” Durin said while repeating in his head the sentence (?) he’d just heard.
He got up and disappeared into the dark courtyard.
“That reminds me…” Flins said and reached into his pocket.
He pulled out a bunch of small items, including rocks, bottle caps and a Natlanian hair clip. He picked out one blue bottle cap and slid it across the table toward Hat Guy.
“This bottle cap reminded me of you, Mr. Guy.”
It had a Sumerian design on it akin to a blue flower.
“How the hell does this remind you of me?”
“I can see it,” Albedo said and summoned something inside his palm. “May I have that for a moment?”
Hat Guy watched as Albedo attached the bottle cap to a tiny rock sculpture in the shape of an angry cat.
“You think you’re so funny, huh?” Hat Guy said with an irritated smile.
Albedo turned Hat Guy’s empty mug upside down and placed the hatted cat on it. For a while, everyone just stared at it in silence, until Durin opened the door and let in a fierce wind. His cheeks had become red from the cold and he hadn’t bothered to put on warmer clothing, but he did have a bottle in his hands. He quickly went to pour it to everyone, not saying a word or making any eye contact.
“Durin, I don’t know what this is, but it’s not water,” Albedo said, looking at the soupy substance in his mug.
“I said what you told me to say, but I’m not sure they understood me,” Durin told them.
“Well, I’m sure what I said is correct. Those who actually wanted to drink are free to go and clear it up, I don’t care,” Hat Guy said.
Flins and Albedo looked at each other and settled it with a shrug. They probably wouldn’t die from this.
“Is there a language you two don’t speak?” Durin asked as he sat down.
“I don’t actually understand spoken Natlanian or Liyuean and my vocabulary in Fontainean is mostly limited to ta gueule, pour qui tu te prends and mes machines. Add to that every sign language that is used today, the language of the adepti, eh, a lot of them,” Hat Guy said dryly.
“Does that mean you speak an ancient sign language?” Flins asked.
“Hundreds of years ago I knew a little Inazuman sign language, but I’ve mostly forgotten everything.”
Albedo thought for a moment.
“I don’t know much about it, but would I be right to say that Inazuman sign language repurposes already existing words as names? Usually words that describe the person,” Albedo said.
Hat Guy raised an eyebrow.
“Am I wrong?”
“No, you’re correct, but like hell I’m telling you what I was called. It was an utterly stupid name.”
Albedo smiled smugly, before signing something in Mond’s SL — first something slow with an asking expression, then a pause, and then two distinct hand motions with a faux angry expression. Hat Guy squinted at it, as if considering whether he was offended or not.
“Did you just call me an angry cat?”
It was just a guess, but come on, that was only two signs and for some of the simplest words too.
“How could you think that? I was just saying how delicious your crêpes were. If I didn’t know any better, I’d assume you made the recipe yourself!”
Hat Guy leaned over the table and started speaking Khaenri’ahn… and probably some words thrown in from other languages, and Durin could no longer understand anything besides the challenging tone of voice.
He reached for more worms — Kirill Chudomirovich sat blankly in silence, not knowing what to do.
After Durin had eaten the worms and gone through all the formulas he remembered in his head, he tried to tune into his brother and friend’s conversation again, hoping he would magically understand them again. The conversation had gotten a little more heated now, and just as it all seemed to quiet down, Hat Guy grabbed the bottle of suspicious liquid and drank straight from it.
“Zrutavan va, Guy-mahodaya?” Albedo asked.
“Svakaryam kuru, tyaktalajja rasayana,” Guy-mahodaya responded sourly.
“Vina karanam kupyati. Tatkaranatah idanim anubhavatu,” Albedo the tyaktalajja rasayana continued mumbling while leaning on his hand, as amused as ever.
Despite Sumeru being the first place in the “real world” Durin had come to be in, Anya Andersdotter had written his story in the Teyvat Common Tongue, and as such he didn’t know much Sumerian outside of “Zubham Janmadinam, Hat Guy!”. That he had told his friend, but probably wouldn’t use anymore after all he had gotten back was: “I don’t celebrate. Hey, why do you know when my birthday is anyway?” Maybe he shouldn’t have asked Mona to scry that information.
His brother was chuckling an awful lot more than usual. It was quiet, but near continuous. Albedo didn’t seem too bothered by the fact that Durin had found out about the impersonator brother. Maybe Durin was overreacting, feeling so uneasy about it?
The shadow of Albedo’s deeds was not the only thing dancing on the walls of this room. Everyone here had lived for long, and it was just a while ago when Hat Guy expressed regret for some unknown past deeds. It was very possible that Durin would live and die without ever knowing anything more about Flins and Hat Guy. Meaning, he could never know if these people had done something similar to Albedo. The smell of lingering smoke, blood pancakes and whatever was in that bottle was starting to become suffocating. Albedo was Durin’s anchor in this world, but even he seemed incomprehensible. It seemed all too clear to him now: it was just the way of the world that everything was fragile — whether it be one’s grip on reality, trust in others, the line between good and evil, and the life of all living things. But if life was just a walk along a shaky bridge above endless abyssal depths, how did people act so happy?
Albedo, Kirill Flins and Hat Guy were all smiling, although in different ways. Albedo, Durin assumed, was drunk and tiredly snickering at Hat Guy, — who was irritated, but almost enjoying the heat of the argument. Meanwhile, Flins was wearing his slight polite smile, genuinely amused by the two younger humanoid creatures.
Durin would not say he had become scared of Albedo necessarily. More accurately, he had once again been forced to wonder what the window between him and everyone else was made out of. What was this strange loud world?
Maybe he should’ve stayed in the darkness of the mine. There, at least, it was quiet. Learning new things was fun, and seeing his friends smile (or just be there, because Hat Guy only smiled bitterly) was warm. But even so, every time he read another line in a textbook, asked another question, peeled back another curtain, there could be anything. He was blindly opening doors the labels of which only gave him false comfort and behind which could be an attacker, endless blackness ready to swallow him whole, or a labyrinth that initially seemed inviting but that he would never get out of. As much as his friends smiled, they had unreadable expressions, sometimes digging straight into Durin’s soul.
Albedo had stopped laughing. His face was pained, in his own near expressionless way. His hand was supporting his head, with dirty-blonde hair drooping in front of his face.
“Bhavan api evam vadati va, hm?” Albedo said with a defeated tone of voice, starting to mumble in Khaenri’ahn: “Non amplius audire volo. Scio eam tecum consensuram esse.”
Hat Guy did not look entirely satisfied with this victory, or whatever it was. He just grabbed the bottle and drank again.
“Flins,” he said. “Take care of this, since you’re always eager to help. Durin, see you tomorrow, or something.”
As Hat Guy marched out the room, Albedo kept muttering:
“Verbis meis eum laesi. Durin, sag ihm… hmmh… mir leid wegen des… Ja…”
“Sag was, Albedo? Can you speak TCT?”
“Oh, yeah… Mix up…”
“Perhaps this conversation can be delayed until morning, Mr. Durin,” Flins said.
“Good idea,” Albedo said, pushing himself up with the table as support. “I need to… about… yeah… die Phantome schreiben.”
He wandered off as well, leaving Flins and Durin with a table full of dishes.
“Don’t worry, I shall take care of this. You should go with your brother.”
“Are you sure?”
“I appreciate your concern, but I quite enjoy solitude. It has been a long day and it would be my pleasure to stay here and clean up for the night.”
Already standing up, Durin stuffed the last bits of worms and puolukkamarja-berry jam into his mouth.
“Thank you plenty, Mr. Flins.”
He walked to the door, but stopped to say one last thing:
“Forgive me for speaking with food in my mouth.”
Flins chuckled.
“No need to apologize. Go on, now.”
And so he went.
The hallway was dark, both in lighting and the colour of the wood. A lone old sofa with some patterned blankets sat awkwardly at the end of it. Between the small sofa and Durin was the room he and Albedo slept in, from which light was trickling into the hallway. Behind the boy, Flins was clattering plates — ahead of him, Albedo dropped some papers and groaned annoyedly. But to Durin’s side? There was the side door of the building.
It was late, yes, and he needed to save energy to continue the investigations, yes, but he just couldn’t go to sleep yet. He was too uneasy, especially now that Albedo wasn’t “present”, at least not in a lucid sense… and… especially when he wouldn’t be greeted by the gray dog with its wagging tail in the morning.
Durin’s hand weighed upon the door handle and it made a loud clicking sound. Both Flins and Albedo probably noticed him leaving, but he could answer their questions later.
The air was cold, but fresh. He had too little clothes on, but it would be awkward to go in and fetch them now. The wind had mostly stopped, strangely enough, so maybe he could manage.
He just needed a moment for himself. Maybe he could go watch the neighbour’s cows, if they were still out in the field. Durin headed towards the path that separated the fields from the forest. As he made his way onto lower ground, away from the houses and into the tall grass, he lost his footing. Before his shoulder could hit the ground, a gust of wind flipped him over and he was suddenly stumbling forward on his feet.
“Now where are you going this late at night?” Hat Guy’s voice said from behind him.
“Hat Guy? I just wanted to go for a walk,” Durin said, still processing the last few seconds.
Hat Guy had his arms crossed as usual, and on his face was a hint of worry.
“I could also use a walk,” he said and walked to Durin’s side. “Hey, aren’t you cold?”
Durin looked to the side.
“A little.”
Hat Guy groaned and turned around.
“Wait here, I’ll be back in a moment.”
He jumped back up to the level of the houses, disappeared for only a short while, showed up again with some cloth under his arm and then threw it over Durin.
“Don’t go getting sick on me. We already have enough to deal with in this place as it is.”
It was a blanket, one that had been drying outside at least since morning.
“You have been very pessimistic about everything in Nod-Krai,” Durin said, wrapping the blanket around himself better, making sure it doesn’t drag on the ground. “And thank you.”
“Well, nothing has ever really worked out for me in Snezhnaya, so I won’t try my luck.”
He took a step forward and urged Durin to start walking as well.
~~~
“Are you still thinking about Albedo?” Hat Guy said after a while.
Durin looked at him. It was so dark Hat Guy’s red eyeliner was about as colorful now as his black hair was during the day. If Durin saw Hat Guy for the first time in this lighting, he wouldn’t know it to be red.
“It’s like everyone already knows how the world works,” Durin half-mumbled, too tired and too scared to make his voice noticeable in the quiet of the night. “If I don’t know something, suddenly I’m in the spotlight and people treat me like a kid.”
“Spotlight, huh? A bit like your ignorance is just entertainment,” Hat Guy said with a little more contempt than usual.
“Yeah… I don’t know if they think I’m just entertainment to them but… Yeah. Sometimes they keep me guessing for no reason and snicker at my confusion.”
“Just roll your eyes at them and move on. If they keep making fun of you, teach them a lesson.”
“I shouldn’t be angry at people. They don’t mean any harm, probably.”
Hat Guy scoffed. “And what if they cause harm anyway?”
Durin didn’t respond, instead jumping to another thing altogether.
“Did you come with me, because you were worried I’d be in danger alone?”
“And what’s it to you? Would you rather have gone alone?”
“Not that, it’s just… People have never told me what could actually happen to me ‘out there’. You know, outside, alone, late at night when it’s dark? Is it something I’m just supposed to know, or does everyone think I’m not ready to hear it?”
“Don’t ask me,” Hat Guy muttered. “Nobody told me anything either. I had to discover it all for myself. My first real encounter with a human was through being robbed. Then they ran away when they realized I didn’t bleed, freaked them out. You might also get murdered, kidnapped, raped, just beat up for no real reason, and so on.”
Durin tried to shrink into the shadows of the night. He knew what those words meant, but he couldn’t imagine a person doing those things. Who did that, why? If he didn’t even know that, would he even recognize it if he saw it? Would he know if he was a danger to others? The words of Albedo trying to stop him from carelessly flinging a kitchen knife around as he spoke that one time rung in his head. He saw the Ordo Favonius’ confinement room in front of him, where he had sat with Klee and been told why he shouldn’t do destructive and dangerous things.
“Why do people hurt people?” Durin dared to ask.
Hat Guy sighed as if tired of stupid questions. He pursed his lips for a second and avoided Durin’s eyes.
“It just comes easy to some, I suppose. You’re more human than I am, so you should be telling me, but I do know that some people just don’t care. If you got thrown into a world of violent, frail and stupid creatures, and hurting them would get you something like, I don’t know, money… or maybe just control, why wouldn’t you do it?”
“Violent, frail, stupid? I don’t think people are all that.”
“And maybe they aren’t, but as long as someone believes them to be…”
Durin looked down at the grains of the path blurring as he walked.
“And if I hurt you like that, what would you do?” he said.
“It’s like you think I’ll say that I’d kill you, or are trying to get me to say that. What would you do if someone hurt you ‘like that’? Let them? Are you going to let Rerir just take down Nod-Krai?”
Rerir. Durin hadn’t even considered that somehow. Rerir was more like a mythological creature, too evil for Durin to quite grasp. Of course someone like had to be stopped, no matter what. He was like the villain of a storybook.
Ah.
So that’s how it was.
The dragon of Simulanka and the corpse on Dragonspine could finally grasp what it had been to people. No wonder they wanted him gone. It had been necessary.
Understanding of the pain he’d caused had always come in sudden realizations, larger and larger each time, but he could never see the full picture. Durin was no longer afraid of what would happen to him if he became dangerous again, he accepted it.
“Hey, are you crying?” Hat Guy said and tried to peek under Durin’s bangs, which had gotten a bit too long by now.
“It’s okay.”
The tone of voice was not that of denying his feelings, rather a declaration that this is how it should be.
“Come on, what is it? You’re probably not going to have to personally take that Rächer out, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m not worried about anything,” Durin said and smiled weakly.
Well clearly Hat Guy had done something wrong. That was the look of someone who’d given up, but on what? Durin was already wiping away his tears and smiling a bit more confidently. He glanced around, looking for something to talk about. His eyes settled on Hat Guy’s wooden ball-jointed hand. Usually he kept them out of view, apparently to avoid unnecessary attention.
“You said before you were a puppet. Is it too different from how I’m constructed?” Durin asked.
Hat Guy held his hand out in front of the boy. When he opened and closed it, his fingers made a slight clattering sound.
“It’s a bit different to be made out of wood, obviously.”
“Can you feel touch?”
“Ugh, yeah. Although, I’m not sure if it was the intention. Might just be an Irminsul wood thing.”
“Why would your creator not want you to feel?”
“Jeez, so many questions.”
Durin quickly apologized, but kept observing Hat Guy’s expressions as his gaze drifted along the plains peeking from behind the trees. Owls and cicadas kept the silence from getting too loud. Some sort of bird flew up to the branches and fed its little bird children. They opened their beaks and extended their necks to reach for food.
“It’s because I wasn’t made to live, I was merely made as a test. She was trying to create some sort of copy of herself, or something. I don’t know and I don’t really give a fuck.”
Durin thought for a moment and then blurted out:
“How are you a man if you’re a copy of a woman?”
Sighing, Hat Guy mumbled:
“Things change. And I know myself better than she does.”
Durin was confused.
“So… are you a woman or not?”
“Look, I don’t really care what she intended me to be, and neither should you. I was never built for this world and the world was never meant for people like me. I’m not a human and I don’t follow human rules.”
Durin continued to stare at Hat Guy, who ignored it. Hat Guy’s chest was flat and his voice sounded low. He didn’t have facial hair, although apparently women could have that too and Durin knew plenty of men without it. Given Hat Guy was made out of wood, he probably wouldn’t have chromosomes. Durin didn’t know what genitalia or other reproductive organs Hat Guy had, if any, but as far as he understood, asking about that would not be socially acceptable and could make someone uncomfortable.
“Are you still biologically a woman? Like a man in a woman’s body?”
“It’s not really a woman’s body anymore. As I said, things change.”
“You changed it? Did you use alchemy or something like that?”
Hat Guy grimaced and curled in on himself a bit.
“Oh, sorry for asking,” Durin quickly said.
It wasn’t so much the question as the memory of what actually happened. Like everything in the Fatui, it was an exchange. That man agreed to do it because trying things on the puppet’s body was his whole project — because cutting him up was a regular thing — because it was a bargaining chip to get Kunikuzushi to do the few things he was technically allowed to refuse.
His body would never really be his. Even if he ripped to shreds every last segment of Dottore’s, that man’s fingerprints would still be all over him. Really that only made him want to rip the Doctor to shreds even more, but he couldn’t.
Weirdly enough, it didn’t even make him feel good thinking about killing Dottore anymore. Back in the day, getting to slash someone, torture them or even threaten them with it would give him such a thrill. He got to feel strong, and what could be better than overpowering the one person who most had control over him? The more he had unraveled all of the Doctor’s lies, the more he’d gotten out of the fantasy of painting the walls in that man’s blood, but the more sick he also felt at that thought, until that nauseating feeling that crawled across his skin consumed all the pleasure from the idea of violence.
Every fiber of his body would scream that he must rip that man apart as painfully as possible, that the only way he can live on is if he first skins him alive, but the fun was taken away when the wanderer started to see his previous victims as people. They might’ve been weak and fragile, they might’ve been just predictable humans, but the wanderer was just as weak and predictable.
He could not honestly look the people he murdered in the eye, apologize and then go do it all over again. Doing those things with his hands had become repulsive, taking out his anger by violence and domination felt ever so pathetic, and he was left more vulnerable than ever after the shield of attacking everything on sight was dropped.
Dottore needed to die, and violently too, but even that couldn’t make the wanderer feel powerful or victorious anymore. In that sense, Dottore had already won. Perhaps it was a just punishment, a part of atonement maybe.
“It wasn’t alchemy, but something just about as blasphemous nonetheless,” Hat Guy said belatedly like usual. “My existence has always been ugly to people, so it didn’t make much of a difference either way. I used to live purely in spite of it all, just to intrude on the turfs of humans and Gods.”
“Huh… What changed?”
“Well, it’s not like I don’t still hate everything. But there came a point where I couldn’t pretend to be special anymore. I don’t think there’s a point in trying to be human, but it also didn’t do me any good to pretend I wasn’t.”
“I… don’t understand”, Durin said, trying to not trip up while keeping his eyes keenly on Hat Guy.
“Whatever. I didn’t expect you to.”
“Why would you need to try to be human if you are already?”
“According to many, I’m not. That’s what I wanted to believe too, but that only led me to do things I regret. The bitter truth is that I’m more similar to the people that I hate than I used to think. Humans are weak, stupid, they care too much and they will probably wipe each other out in the end. And I’m not exempt.”
“You define humans so cyanicly,” Durin said.
“You mean cynically? That’s not actually my definition of human. When people like you say they want to be human, you’re not saying you want to be a bipedal mammal belonging to homo sapiens, because that’s not what people mean with the word humanity when they’re being philosophical about it. Human is just a word humans use to describe attributes they value, and those attributes aren’t exclusive to humans, but people assume they are. Non-humans can get to be honorary humans, but they still need to be human.
If you grow up around humans, you assume that’s how you have to be, because your mind is built to avoid ending up alone, which wouldn’t be great for survival. You want to have love and connection, you want to feel like you’re allowed to exist, and humans decided that to have that you need to be human. They decided it’s their thing. But it’s not.”
Durin forgot to respond again, taking in the words slowly. The forest started getting a lot less dense and the road muddier. The stars came out from behind the leaves.
“Even humans born of a human’s womb wish they were human, is what I’m getting at,” Hat Guy said, gazing up.
The stars were the same for everyone. People tended to connect over that fact, but he sure didn’t wanna connect with the Doctor when that man looked up and sought to shatter the false sky.
Well, the shattering of that sky wasn’t the problem. Hat Guy hadn’t taken it too well either when he found out the truth. To think he’d lived for hundreds of years without knowing how cramped the planet really was.
He’d say he didn’t care, but he had to fight that feeling many nights in Sumeru — the feeling of the sky getting closer and closer every night, of living his entire life under a constructed dome, of having his joke of a life decided for him.
He had better things to do usually, though. He’d given up his habit of lurking in the corners of public spaces as a Harbinger, but it was possible again now. Talking to people was a nuisance, but watching them could be stimulating.
It was different now, when everyone wasn’t an enemy by virtue of being a human. It was different now, hiding his joints more to avoid curious questions and less to avoid repeating the time someone tried to kill him for being unnatural. It was different now that people would come asking for his help, respecting but not fearing him.
In a way he missed when people sat straighter in his presence, were quick to respond and didn’t get close, and he particularly had liked the fact that he wasn’t alone in his emotions when he made everyone else uneasy too. He could make sure the puny losers didn’t get to be comfortable when he didn’t, he could make sure his tenseness didn’t stand out if the whole room was on edge, he decided what people felt. The world couldn’t move on while he stood still, he never let it.
Now he was just lazily keeping up with it.
On the other hand, being scary now would just make him all the more lonely. Even the respect he had at the Akademiya combined with his reclusiveness made him somewhat unapproachable. It was a blessing and a curse.
The best people were ones like Albedo — someone who you didn’t have to explain everything to and who could teach you new things, who respected you and didn’t get dramatic and loud about everything, but still treated you with the closeness of a friend instead of a tool. Albedo mostly only said things he needed to say, and as much as the wanderer hated to admit it, the few times Albedo said unnecessary things, it got him to say equally unnecessary things back to the alchemist.
The people around him didn’t need to be made miserable anymore. Partly because the wanderer didn’t feel that miserable anymore himself, but partly because when he did, people seemed to care about it. There was no need to force people around, because they seemed to do things easier if you gave them a mere gentle push.
Hopefully Durin would never be afraid of him, for both their sakes, because the wanderer was already growing way too attached to having people approach him again. There was never really a place where he was safe, but it was nice getting to imagine what it would feel like.