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“Albedo, look what I—” you stop, smile fading from your lips when you catch sight of a person who looks like Albedo but most definitely is not Albedo. “Who the hell are you?!”
You point to him in accusation, almost poking him in the eye if he hadn’t leaned away at the very last second, raising his hands as a sign of peace.
The lookalike smiles awkwardly, you’re not fooled by it for one bit. “What do you mean, [Name]? It’s me.”
You lower your head, your hair falling over your eyes and hiding it from sight.
“‘[Name]’…?” you repeat, voice tinged with disbelief. You raise your head, poking him in the chest with your finger (not caring how rude that is, you’re not the one wearing people’s faces and going around pretending to be them), and yell, “When we’re alone, Albedo calls me his sweet baby sunshine pookie-bear!”
His jaw drops. “He what—”
“Gotcha!” You spin on your heels and deliver a sharp kick to his side. He manages to react quickly enough to block it with his arms, crouching down and placing his palms flat on the snow. Ice erupts from the ground, making you jump away and summon your weapon to block the projectiles of ice he sends your way.
Meeting your eyes, he gives you the coldest look anyone has ever given you. You shiver, but not in the way he might have expected. You return his look with a sleazy smirk. He scowls at you and shoots you murderous glares, a manic grin forming on his face when he manages to send you flying over a tree.
You struggle to focus on the fight itself and not on Albedo’s lookalike. If he keeps looking at you like that, especially with Albedo’s pretty face, you might just grab him by the coat and pull him in for a kiss.
After you give him a punch for ruining your favorite sweater.
“I’m back!” you yell at the entrance of the pseudo-lab, stomping your feet to get rid of the snow.
Albedo looks up from his papers, mouth opening to return your greeting.
The words die on his tongue when he sees the state you’re in. Lip busted, hair matted, clothes rumpled and torn in some places, and one shoe missing, leaving your right foot in nothing but a thick woolen sock. You look like you’ve just returned from having a fistfight with a mitachurl. He can’t tell if the state you’re in indicates if you won or not.
“I brought something—or, well, someone—with me!” It’s then that you move aside, showing him what you’ve been hiding behind your back.
Albedo’s eyes widen comically.
Ignoring the laugh you let out at his reaction, he absentmindedly puts down the papers he’d been reading, making his way to the figure tied by what looks like a thin rope and—
“Is that your shoe?” he asks, barely managing to mask the incredulity he feels.
You shrug, scratching your head sheepishly with a smile that is not in the least apologetic. “Couldn’t find any rope, so I had to use my shoelaces.”
The person glares at him so venomously Albedo thinks if looks could kill he’d be dead on the spot. Though the heated glare is barely an afterthought in his mind. After all, he’s looking at what is basically a person who could be mistaken as him with how identical they look.
At first, he thinks it must be a whopperflower. They’re known to mimic organic beings, though a case of a human (or in his case, a homunculus) being imitated by it has never been heard of. An anomaly. It instantly piques his interest.
However, whopperflowers are masters at replicating. It may not copy its target perfectly, but it imitates the distinct features of it enough to pass off as the target itself. He would have passed it off as a similar case, but every detail is spot-on, from the hair to features down to every speck of color in his eye. It would almost be as if he had cloned himself, if not for one glaring detail.
The star on the base of his neck is missing. That golden mark, a symbol of his master’s craftsmanship, is nowhere in sight despite every single feature of his being present in his lookalike.
Why, of all things, did it choose to not imitate that mark?
Unless the person tied up before him isn’t a whopperflower at all.
The hate-filled glare, too personal for him to conclude it as shallow dislike, and the distinct mark his master gave him when she breathed life into him all those years ago, missing.
Recognition flashes in his mind.
Ah.
Albedo gazes at his lookalike with new eyes.
“Are you, perchance, another creation of my master’s?”
Somehow, Albedo manages to convince his master’s other creation—he confirmed it from the unpleasant look he gave him after he asked—to have a seat with him and talk civilly. He thinks his lookalike’s agreement comes in large part thanks to you.
Despite the fight you two had earlier, you seem to have taken a liking to him. Albedo thinks the other might share the same sentiment, based on how he’s listening attentively as you regale him with yesterday’s mission with Kaeya. Though mission might not be the best word for it, an outing would be more fitting.
“Then Kaeya bought us two bottles of dandelion wine, said he’ll pay for it as a treat. But then, Huffman comes in and says Lisa’s asking for Kaeya to remind him that the due date of the book he borrowed is almost up! And you know what he did next?” You turn to his lookalike with a scowl painted on your face. He seems mildly amused by your expression, though he quickly schools his face into one of indifference, lest you see it and think he’s actually enjoying your company—which he isn’t, by the way. He’s simply indulging you because he’d rather listen to the strange stories about your life than have a conversation with the bane of his existence his master’s perfect creation.
“He left,” he says, not even bothering to say it questioningly because anyone with a working brain can already tell what happened next.
“Exactly! And in any other occasion, I wouldn’t have minded if he left me alone with two bottles of dandelion wine—except that he left me with two bottles of unpaid dandelion wine! Argh! I really hate him!” As if to emphasize your statement, you raise your fist in the air and shake it, imagining Kaeya’s face in the place of empty air.
He takes on a serious look at your last words, not thinking for even a second that you said it without malice. “Do you wish to kill him?”
“What? No!” you squawk, raising your arms in an x motion to stop whatever line of thinking he’s having.
He frowns. “You said you hate him.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t being serious!” you defend. “I know you’re crazy and all—”
He glares at you, taking great offence at your words. “I am not mentally unwell.”
“Tell that to my busted lip!” You gesture to the corner of your mouth where a scab is forming.
“I didn’t cause that. You slipped on the ice I conjured and hit your face on a tree,” he points out.
You wave off his words, waving your hand in front of your face like you just smelled something awful. You didn’t, but if he inferred from your actions that his breath smelled bad, then far be it from you to tell him otherwise. It doesn’t, though. Smell bad, that is. In fact, it smells kinda minty and sweet. You wouldn’t mind testing to see if his lips taste the same.
“You said yourself that you made the ice that I slipped in. If there hadn’t been ice there, then I wouldn’t have slipped. And if I hadn’t slipped, I wouldn’t have busted my lip. It’s all connected, you see, and all the lines are pointing to you as the culprit.” You cross your arms smugly.
He gives you a judgmental look. “If you think I’m crazy, then I fear what you must think of yourself.”
“Huh?! What the hell do you mean by that?!”
Screw his personal feelings, he might just prefer to have that conversation with Albedo than spend another second in your presence.
Turning to the man sitting on your left who’s been silently listening to your conversation the entire time, he nearly opens his mouth to talk to him—until he sees the way Albedo is looking at you, all soft eyes and a sappy smile on his lips that he probably doesn’t even realize he’s sporting. He nearly barfs at the sickening smile, and when he turns to you—dense, oblivious, and stupider than a rock—he’s not surprised to see that you don’t even notice the disgusting look Albedo is giving you as you rant about how you’re not actually crazier than him and how he’s talking total baloney.
If someone told him only a few hours ago that he’d be sitting down a bonfire with the person he hated most and the person he thought would be the easiest to trick—and that he’d actually somewhat enjoy it—he would have run them through with a sword.
And then you turn to him with a smile that’s too wide to be anything but innocent.
“Wanna make out?”
He gives you the absolute, most hateful glare he can muster, but instead of being intimidated by the sight, you only giggle—a real, honest-to-gods giggle.
He moves his gaze somewhere, anywhere that isn’t within your general vicinity. Unfortunately, that somewhere is apparently Albedo, who is looking at him with blank, emotionless eyes, the papers in his hands wrinkled with how tightly he’s clutching them.
Sitting here in a makeshift lab in the middle of Dragonspine, surrounded by a lovesick idiot who doesn’t even realize it and an oblivious moron who never shuts up, he thinks he might just regret approaching you that afternoon.