pairing: albedo/reader
rating: general
summary: You think it might just be an illusion, a figment of your imagination, and you’re already halfway out of the door until you hear a voice calling your name. Slowly, you turn around, and find a stranger, familiar as though you’ve met him before.
notes: tried to do something different this time, hope its ok! has a mix of a few different au’s: soulmate and modern, sprinkled with a few other elements. in any case, reqs are open for him!
Even as a child, you’ve known a lot about soulmates. Or at least the very concept of them: two souls bound together, destined with each other for all eternity—that kind of thing. You’ve read all about it in books, in the novels you’ve borrowed from your aunt’s collection: romance sprinkled with a bit of a fantasy—damsels in distress and princes who save the world from evil while also falling madly in love with the first person they lay their eyes on; have heard of it from other people: mostly your aunt, who has always been a hopeless romantic and a sheer believer of the concept, always regaling you with stories you aren’t even sure where she’s gotten.
Your mother, too, though that is all from a long time ago—a once upon a time kind of story, something you’ve never tried to talk about, and a memory you’ve tried to bury deep within yourself the way your mother had buried her memories of him deep in the ground, six feet under as though it would stop him from haunting her.
You think it has something to do with your father, her soulmate, the ghost in your childhood home, your childhood memories, and how he’s just woken up one day deciding he couldn’t love her anymore, couldn’t stay in the same place she’s in, packing his bags all of a sudden and leaving out of the blue—out of the city and out of your lives, forever.
A few months later and she finds out that he’s been with another woman all along, biding his time until he could find the right moment, and ever since then, she has changed into something else, as though your father has taken a piece of her since he’s left and she’s never had the chance to grow it back.
Your mother, who has once believed that everyone has a soulmate, including you; your mother, who has once believed that she has finally found hers. Your mother, who has once been foolish enough to think that a soulmate could stay forever.
But she is different now, changed, though you aren’t quite sure if it’s for the better or worse. She’s grown cynical and bitter, scoffing each time your aunt mentions something about soulmates, wrinkling her nose in disgust each time your aunt tries to regale with stories she’s heard from the radio.
For years, you’ve always wondered how your life would turn out if your father had stayed with you and your mother? If he’d never left at all? Would your mother still be the same woman she was before the incident: bright smiles and glittering eyes, giggling and flushing each time your aunt mentions the word love? Would everything still be the way it was: sweet and soft and perfect, as though something straight out of a fairytale book?
Would you be anything like her, if everything didn’t end the way it did: bitter and resentful like the aftertaste of a medicine? Would you be foolish enough to believe in love, in soulmates, in all the fairytale fantasies your aunt has always loved to talk to you about?
But you suppose the only thing you’ve inherited from her is the cynicism, and perhaps a little of her bitterness, taking everything with a grain of salt and never believing everything so easily. You’ve always been a skeptical child, and as an adult you’ve only grown even worse: questioning everything all around you, rolling your eyes each time your aunt goes on a tangent about soulmates, about how each person is destined for someone else.
In moments like these, the best strategy is to tease her about it, ask her how she’s still single even after all these years, and each time the result is the same: her cheeks flushing in embarrassment, her mouth opening and closing like a gaping fish as she tries to formulate a response.
And yet, despite your questions, your constant teasing, remarks that have always left her flustered and embarrassed, she’s never once backed down, never shrunk in on herself, never turned cynical and bitter, completely unlike you and your mother. It’s amazing how she still hasn’t faltered even after all this time.
A familiar voice calls your name, and the sound of it is enough to snap you out of your reverie. Slowly, you turn to the side and find your friend, Lisa, staring at you, a curious look in her eyes. You give her a sheepish grin in response, murmuring an apology under your breath, telling her that you’re merely distracted.
“Something on your mind?” she asks, and you shake your head in response, burying your hands in the pockets of your jeans, tearing your eyes away from her, and choosing to stare straight ahead, studying your surroundings. Mondstadt, the city of wind and freedom, with its rows of houses pushed neatly together like it’s somehow a close-knit community; with its little shops scattered all about the place, manned by strangers with friendly smiles, beckoning the two of you with a look and a simple gesture; and with its fifty-foot statue somewhere in the middle, watching everything that goes on below like some kind of a guardian.
“Just thinking,” you reply, shrugging. You pause for a moment, turning your head this way and that, trying to find the next place that would catch your eye: a coffee shop here, a restaurant there, a tavern somewhere in the corner—places you’re certain are still far too early to visit. Slowly, you turn back to look at her, frowning. “Where do we go from here?”
She hums under her breath and stops walking all of a sudden, her footsteps skidding into a halt as she looks around her, her expression serious as she tries to recall something. A moment later and she turns to look at you, her eyes suddenly alight with newfound excitement. “Have you ever been to the museum before?”
“No,” you reply, shaking your head. You don’t even know Mondstadt has a museum until Lisa’s pointed it out; the last time the two of you have visited here, which is a few years ago, all you’ve ever done is visit every single restaurant you’ve come across, trying out a bunch of things like you’re some kind of gourmet specialists, and then end up having to stay over in her apartment because you’re too full to take the train back home.
“You wouldn’t mind if we checked it out, do you?” she asks, still eyeing you curiously. “It’s a new addition from a few months back, and I’m curious to know what’s inside.”
“Alright,” you say with another shrug, nonchalant. Slowly, she begins to walk ahead of you, and you follow after her, careful to keep close, studying your surroundings now and then and comparing everything you see to the ones in your memories, noting the little details, the subtle changes—the way it all differs from before. “It’s not like we’ve got anything planned out for today.”
She stops and then turns to look at you with a smile, her eyes twinkling in mischief. “Oh, you never know,” she says, and her tone is playful, teasing—typical Lisa. “Next thing you know, you’re meeting your soulmate and you’re going on dates without me.”
“Oh, come on,” you say, rolling your eyes and laughing as though it’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard in your life. “Is my aunt rubbing off on you already?”
“Aunt Margaret? I think she’s fun,” she replies, still smiling. “We get along very well.”
“You’re not in the market for a new best friend, are you?” you ask, giving her a look of mock surprise.
But she only laughs at you in response, grinning as she shakes her head. “Never,” she says, and then holds her arm out for you to take. “Shall we?”
The two of you finally arrive in the museums a few minutes later, after a lengthy tour around the city, trying to avoid the crowded streets and sticking only to the narrow alleys, dark and cramped that it’s practically a miracle the two of you have even made it out. But the important thing is that you are finally here, and you take your time and look around, taking in as much detail as you could: the pale walls, clean and spotless; the marble floors, shiny as a mirror—everything new and unfamiliar that it almost takes you by surprise.
Around the walls are rows and rows of paintings, each one different than the last, and each one just as beautiful as the one before it: abstracts in different colors, paints splattered and spattered all over the canvas to create a brand new shape, a brand new image; portraits of men and women in different clothes and poses, their eyes seemingly following you all around, watching you; landscapes of different cities, of unfamiliar places, showing you everything there is still to see in the world. Below the paintings are labels, names and numbers printed in tiny letters: The City of Love, 1960; The Lady in Red, 2006; Colors, 1853; so on and so forth.
You wander around, lost and aimless, uncertain where your feet are even leading you, and before you know it, you are already in a different part of the museum, entering a room you’ve never been in before. It is startlingly empty, and inside is a painting in the middle, huge enough to occupy the whole wall.
You walk a little closer, stopping as soon as you’re finally in front of the painting, your eyes glazing over to the label below it, the words written in bold, tiny letters: The Lover and his Muse, 2021. Slowly, you look up and study the painting, closely and carefully, taking in every line, every stroke of color, every detail.
It is of two people—lovers, that much is obvious—lying on the shore, their bodies tangled together as though they never want to be apart from each other. One face is covered, tendrils of hair concealing the details, thick dark lines where the eyes should be, and yet there is still something familiar about it, as though you’ve somehow seen this person before. From a dream or from a memory from a long time ago, you aren’t quite sure.
Beside them is a man, his eyes tender as he stares at the person next to him, his focus entirely on them as though they’re the only thing he could see, the only one he wants to see. Even at a single glance, you could easily guess the emotion it tries to portray: love and nothing but love.
It’s a beautiful painting, you think, staring at it in awe. The colors are soft and muted: pink, red, and yellow mixed together to perfectly convey all the emotions it wishes to portray; the lines are masterfully done, slow and careful down to the very last detail, delicate as though it were something precious, something important.
But then you stop, frowning, struck by the sudden familiarity of it, of the two of them together: the faceless muse and the tender lover. Why does everything about the painting seem so familiar? The lovers tangled with one another as though they’re a single entity; the shore that the two of them are lying on, bits of fine sand clinging to their clothes like a second skin; the sun shining just above their heads, bright and beautiful, casting a golden glow upon the two of them and making it ethereal, as though it’s from a dream?
But is it from a dream, or from a memory a thousand years ago—a memory you’ve already long buried somewhere deep within you? You narrow your eyes into a squint as you try to study the painting a little more, moving closer and closer as though it would somehow be enough to give you the answer you seek. The feeling only grows, a kind of itch you couldn’t ignore, and then all of a sudden, the answer comes to you, unexpected and out of the blue.
The faceless muse is you, or at least, someone who looks like you—a distant relative, maybe? Or perhaps even an ancestor? Staring at it feels like staring into a mirror, your face reflected at you in the vaguest possible way: the crook of a nose, the outline of a smile. But then who is the man beside you?
You look around you, turning your head this way and that, searching the place for another face, uncertain if this is meant to be a prank. But the place is just as empty as before, and you shake your head and tear your eyes away, convinced that this must all be in your head, unreal and imagined—a product of your desires, your fantasies.
You’re already halfway out of the door when you hear someone calling your name, starling you out of your thoughts, and slowly, you turn around to find a stranger, his face recognizable even from a single glance. Bright eyes that twinkle like stars, awakening a memory from somewhere deep inside you. You know him, you do, even if his name is stuck on the tip of your tongue—a ghost from a past you’ve already long forgotten.
Until now.
“Hello,” he says, and there is a smile on his lips, soft and tender, similar to the one he wears on the painting. He keeps his eyes locked on yours even as he steps forward, never once looking away even as he gradually closes the distance between you, as though he is afraid you’ll disappear again from his sight if he so much as turns away from you. There’s a kind of familiarity in his gaze, as though he knows you, as though he’s always known you, and your breath suddenly hitches in your throat because you know, that somewhere deep inside your bones, you’ve always known him, too.
“We meet again.”