Chapter Text
“Sheesh, it's cold," Venti says as he slides the folding screen door leading to the balcony shut, a blatant lie if Xiao has ever heard any. He was not the one who decided to sit perched on Wangshu Inn’s roof, fingering his lyre and letting January’s biting winds carry his song afar.
His voice was immensely distracting when Xiao was trying to focus on his duty, moving from one end of Dihua Marsh to another. When he became satisfied that no more unpurged demons were rousing in Liyue that night, he gave in and answered the Anemo Archon’s incessant call.
The bard had not looked any worse for wear from the hours he spent outdoors ─ he is of Anemo, and wind sprites hold little care for other elements’ actions on themselves. They are amplifiers, and at the end of the day, the winds remain to be winds.
He ignores Venti’s humming as the god fiddles with the hinges of the wooden screen, and moves instead to inspect the latter’s offerings for the night, uncorking the inconspicuous white porcelain bottle and lifting it to his nose for a sniff.
The bright, cloying fragrance of plum wine enters his lungs. His eyes narrow ── why does this feel like a bribe?
“If you have something to say, use your words."
"Patience,” the bard says, taking the bottle out of his hands and pouring them a hearty cup each. “But if you insist." He summons a second stool stored in a corner of Xiao’s room with a flick of his wrist and a gentle breeze and plops down in it. “I met another dream eater in Inazuma."
Xiao freezes. His gaze flickers towards the obstructed balcony. “You planned this," he accuses. There is still the window, he supposes, but he doubts the Anemo Archon simply forgot about its existence. It being left open is in equal measure a gesture of good faith and an unspoken challenge. He doesn't think he could live it down if the god of songs waxes poetry about his embarrassing escape.
He sits down.
Venti just laughs at his scowl and raises his hands in surrender, "you've caught me.” Then, his expression sobering, “I think it would be good for you to have someone to talk about your…past experiences with. Someone who understands the weight of what you were made to do."
“You need to learn to stop making everyone else’s business your own," Xiao tells him flatly.
"Maybe,” Venti shrugs. "Just- think about it, okay? You don't have to do anything if you don't want to. I'm just putting a recommendation on the table."
And Xiao thinks back to their very first meeting, when the god before him was a completely different force of nature, and yet the very same all at once.
“You've been following me,” Xiao had said, straight to the point. An intermission had been called for the seven-day meeting of the Seven, but while everyone expected Barbatos to be trying to be drinking everyone under the table, or otherwise flirting around to seek out random sights, Xiao kept seeing ghostly spectres of holy feathers, lingering at the edge of his vision.
He adjusted his careful perch on top of Wangshu Inn, and faced the god head-on with perhaps less respect than was proper ── his patience had truly run thin, “why?”
“I am a god of songs, Xiao,” the Anemo Archon hummed, nonchalant. “Everything has a name, and whatever has a name I can sing songs of.”
He turned to face him, eyes otherworldly bright. “I think you know better than I do, how frightening that kind of power can be ── don't you, ■■■■■■■■?”
“You ──” breathe, Xiao thought. Dissociate. Think. It had not yet been so long since the last time. There was arterial blood in his mouth, its taste saline and metallic, but logically he knew there could not be, because it had been two hundred years since he shouldered his first burden of karmic debt.
His eyes narrowed.
How does a little bird kill a god? It was simple, really. One only needed to devour the god’s dreams and strip them completely of their desire to survive.
It had been the state in which Rex Lapis first found him, wings shredded, arms ribboned, his jaws locked around his previous master's throat. Broken bodies of less fortunate illuminated beasts had been littered around him, the comrades he had convinced to fight back against abuse.
The fact their master had died at all proved that sacrilege was easier than Xiao first believed. The goddess’s dreams had burnt down his throat and set his insides aflame with divine ambition, and Xiao could no longer muster up strength to scream in agony.
“Mercy,” he remembered rasping, wishing for a quick death as his vision faded away.
Morax had listened to him, and heard something entirely else.
“What do you want?” In the moment, his voice flowed like a tributary of a grumbling glacier: cold, unfazed, a façade of calmness as he calculated his odds. He did not particularly wish to fight the Archon of the land of freedom, nor did he think it is a battle he could push through, victorious, but his heart is sworn to Liyue and Liyue alone, and he would rather die with his polearm in hand than bowing at the feet of another.
“My name, it's Istaroth.” Barbatos carried on, as if Xiao had not said anything. “A blade given freely to you, in the spirit of madness.” The god then grimaced. “Sorry, that was a bad one. I could've done better.”
Madness. Mutually assured destruction.
But on what grounds? Barbatos was a god, an Archon even. Xiao held the power of a deceased god of dreams, but he was not quite divine himself.
(He refused it, rejecting the domain now in his grasp and flowing in his veins. He will never become a god if he had anything to say about it.)
The gesture was nothing more than an olive branch awkwardly offered. He was not so naive as to not understand there were deals he should not try to avoid, not when he did not have the power to bargain.
“What,” he repeated. “Do you want?”
The god answered instead with a strum of his lyre.
“O wild West Wind,” he sang. “Thou breath of Autumn’s being. Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead…”[¹].
“Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing ── ”
//
Xiao finds himself in Inazuma after not quite the happiest meeting possible with Zhongli. He had known from the moment he saw with his own eyes the sight of Liyue Harbour still standing proud, that the Lord of Geo had not perished. It was not uncommon for His Lord to indulge in brief stints of mortal fancy, though never through such a dramatic promise of his absence.
He and the other Adepti may not have understood, but they played along. Well enough, if they may suppose. They sealed Osial once more with the help of the Qixing and the Traveller, and Rex Lapis approached him four nights after the fight.
Xiao was recuperating in his room in Wangshu Inn. Or rather, on top of it. The Traveller had truly been an excellent, bottomless vessel for channeling power, but the combined concentrated efforts of him, Cloud Retainer, Mountain Shaper and Moon Carver, as well as the remnants of Guizhong’s power stored in her inventions and the collective might of the Qixing and Millieth had still only been barely enough to subdue the Overlord of Vortex.
He was keeping a watchful eye on the horizon, noting how demons were becoming more active without him banishing them. He itched to return to his eternal fight, but he would sooner endanger both himself and Liyue if he could not find in himself the stamina required to perform the dance of evil conquering with his polearm for hours on end. Better then, to observe from afar and pick off monsters straying too close to civilisation.
There was a knock on his door, and Rex Lapis invited himself in. He stood, half a step behind him, joining in his silent vigil. When he left, he asked to be referred to as Zhongli the mortal, should they ever meet again.
Two years later, under the ethereal glow of xiao lanterns, he asked if Xiao would wish to void his contract with him. “It could be argued that it was signed under undue influence, and as the influenced party you retain the right to exit the contract at any time.” Then, "I apologise for having taken advantage of you. I had never intended to, but I had not trusted you enough in the beginning, and my own cowardice kept me from righting this wrong ever since."
“Yanwang Dijūn is dead. And I wish for you to pave your own path outside of the parameters set by your contract with him, made in times of war.”
For a moment, Xiao was shocked into wordlessness. Beyond the ringing in his ears several emotions burst forth, and at the forefront ── offense. “Do not dishonour me this way, Dijūn-daren," here, the use of title was not accidental. He knew full well who he was talking to at that moment, and Zhongli had not extended his offer as a mortal. "I have let you bind me willingly and without complaint. Three thousand years, does that mean nothing to you?"
His senses slammed back into him, and he fled riding the winds as he realised who he had just talked back to.
The next day, he made the most impulsive decision in the past few millennia. He picked up his teapot. Filed a request for leave of absence to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, and boarded the first ship headed for Inazuma. The traveller is back in Liyue and has indicated their intention to stay for a while. Xiao knows they will take over his duties for him. And when the traveller needs to rest (mortals are so high maintenance), Venti can well take responsibility for planting the idea in his head.
Venti would probably laugh at him, he muses from his perch on top of the tallest mast, a safe distance from the mortals busying themselves. Is probably laughing at him. Privacy is only an illusion the Anemo Archon sometimes deigns to maintain ─ the wind knows all after all, and the winds tell Venti all he wishes and does not wish to learn. Xiao had once judged on multiple occasions quite harshly at the Archon’s fickleness and minor irresponsibility that his eventual demise into hypocrisy must be hilarious to him.
He does not realise he had no plan in place until he comes face to face with the dream walking Yokai.
“I will be making tea for us both,” the yumekuibaku says eventually, breaking the awkward silence between them. “Do you have any preferences?”
“...What do you have?”
The Yokai hums in consideration, “from weakest to strongest, genmaicha, sencha and matcha.”
“Genmaicha, then.” He stumbles a little over the word, but Mizuki nods and fetches tea leaves from a jar. Steam rises languidly from where the kettle is being heated on a ceramic stove, and Xiao catches trace amounts of sedative herbs in the fumes.
He accepts the cup but does not drink from it, merely holding it between both hands.
“How much did Venti… reveal about me?" He asks finally, when the yokai sets down the kettle with an elegant sweep of her arms, and kneels on the woven tatami with a soft "please, take a seat.” Uncertain with how to position his legs, he crosses them and keeps his feet close to his body.
“Not much at all," comes the reply. “Just that he had an Adeptus friend in Liyue, who also coincidentally was a dream eater. He also told me he hoped we could meet ─ there are so few of us left, here in this world." She pauses. “I must apologise, but I don't actually know your name."
"Xiao.”
"Xiao,” she repeats, testing the weight of the syllable on her tongue. It comes out sounding more like "shou” but close enough. "It sounds rather culturally profound. There must be a lot of significance behind it if one was well versed in Liyuen.”
Apparently social niceties still confound him, no matter the era or region he finds himself in. He bites down his instinctive reaction to reject the compliment, and instead asks, “aren’t you supposed to ask me why I'm here?”
“We don't have to delve into heavier topics yet if you're uncomfortable with them. I usually just spend the first session with my clients making small talk ─ I call that ice breaking.” She sets down her fan. "But, since you asked. Why are you here?"
"My friend,” Xiao says, unable to keep irritation from seeping into his tone. "Has a problem with my eating habits. I think he should mind his own business.”
“This is an establishment with strict prohibitions against stealing dreams from humans,” Mizuki says, eyes narrowing, all previous soft edges in her aura vanishing. "Are we going to have a problem?”
She probably believes she looks intimidating, Xiao thinks. She has a surprising amount of power at her disposal despite her relative youth, but she has never been brought up by war like Xiao had been. With his age and experience, he could probably have crushed her with a single finger if he so wished.
He shakes his head, "you misunderstand me. I have not fed once in the past three thousand years.”
The Yokai blinks. “If you would not mind repeating? I must have misheard the number ─ your diction is sometimes quite hard to parse.”
Xiao winces. “Three thousand," he repeats, and mimes writing down the characters on the desk with his index finger. "I'm ─” sorry. "I have not had much chance to practice my Teyvatian Common.”
“My word," the yumekuibaku mutters. Her gaze flits over the skin of his chosen human form, cataloguing muscles and scars and everything in between. "Goodness. Just ─ you don't have to answer if you find this too invasive, but how are you alive?”
"...Differences in biological constitution would be my first guess,” he says, as truthfully as he can. His physical body may be that of an illuminated beast first and foremost, a golden Peng bird of the dream eaters, but he is also an Adeptus. “I- we can also derive power from human worship. I take it from your reaction that your kind is more dependent on sustenance?"
“I…see,” is the reply, her tone implying that she does not, in fact, understand but is just accepting his deflection out of politeness. "You would be right in your assumption. Dreams are my kind’s source of power, and without them we starve."
There is a slight pause, and Xiao can tell she is choosing her next words carefully, having noticed how the jigsaw pieces he has revealed about himself are not quite fitting together.
"I do not care for wordplay,” he interrupts her. “Speak your mind."
"Well, if you insist.” She looks at him then, pale pupils eclipsing her irises as she suffuses the room with her calming aura. "Why are you refusing your body what it needs?”
He had been expecting the question, had braced for it even, but the suddenness at which the taste of addiction floats up to the surface, and with it an instinctive urge to empty his stomach still leaves him winded. Xiao has not ingested mortal food in weeks, a simple fact that does not seem to matter to his body as he is forced to awkwardly jerk to one side and gag.
His karmic debt, sensing weakness, flares up.
Who are you? A thousand faces with a thousand voices ask. Who am I?
A little girl in celebratory red steps forward, bells chiming around her wrists and ankles. She has no eyes, no mouth, no name. When her fingertips grazes Xiao’s forehead, he sees glimpses of an innocent life tending to farm animals.
Remember me, she snarls without a voice. Her face distorts into a gaping maw poised to devour all ─
And then that dream is gone. Snatched away.
“What —” He barely has time to register the concern in the yumekuibaku’s glowing eyes, her fingers on an outstretched arm so close they almost brush against his arm, before he does the only thing he knows how to do outside of slaughtering everything in his path. He runs.
Forcing himself through the gaps if closed doors is difficult, but not impossible. He would not have survived as long as he did if he did not learn to escape from even more airtight spaces during the Archon War. Every decision made was the difference between life and death. Every step forward was a gamble on the continued existence of solid ground beneath them — Xiao would not claim he was one of the most skilled of his generation — luck plays a far larger role when it comes to that — but he has never shied from placing pride on his expertise.
He methodically hunts down the creations of Khaenri’ah feeding poison into these lands. (why are there so many in Inazuma? Has no one tried to clean up the wilderness in the past five hundred years? He almost gets knocked out of the sky for the first few times a Ruin Guard’s missiles lock onto him, before he gets used to the crackling of electro in the winds drowning out the winds’ whispers and the thick fog obscuring his vision.) Relying more on Adeptal arts rather than brute strength and the sharp edges of his spear is not his usual style, nor is it the most efficient, but it tires him quicker. When he is sure he cannot muster in himself the strength to hurt civilians even if his karmic debt takes over, he lies down on a patch of dewy grass and stares at the stars.
If he closes his eyes and casts out his senses, he can see the yumekuibaku hard at work combatting nightmares in the distance. He knows too, that the Yokai must be able to sense him lingering on the periphery, but she does not acknowledge him.
On the third day, he steels his resolve and visits Aisa Bathhouse again ─ he had not taken leave to dally.
“I feel as though I should apologise for my behaviour last time. It must have been unsavoury to witness.”
Mizuki’s eyes widen, “no! If anything, I should be the one apologising. I had clearly crossed a line.”
“I was the one who told you to speak plainly,” Xiao shakes his head. “If anything, it was my fault alone.”
“It seems to me we are at an impasse," Mizuki says. “Maybe we're both right. Maybe we're both wrong. Does it truly matter so much to assign blame to one specific person?"
When Xiao does not answer, she continues, tone gentler, “what brings you here today?”
“Don't patronise me," he says, sharply. Then, "I’d hoped to start over again. This cannot be how your relationships with your clients usually pan out.” He lowers his gaze. "So, if it would be amenable to you I would like to try once more. Just so I could tell my friend I did, at the very least."
“That is alright by me," Mizuki says.
“There is something else — it's not that I believe you would carelessly breach the terms of client-patient confidentiality,” he begins. “It's just- I don't know how much of what I am willing to divulge could be considered sensitive information, considering how involved I have been in Liyue’s history.”
“Of course,” MIzuki says mildly. “May I suggest a non-disclosement agreement contract, then? As you Liyuens are so fond of doing. I will not disclose any information you reveal to me, unless you explicitly allow me to. I would be lying if I said I was completely uninterested in knowing what an older immortal thinks of changing times, and that should be consideration enough.”
“May the wrath of the rock fall upon those who shows him contempt,” Xiao says, and the deal is set in stone.
//
References/cut scenes:
[¹]: Ode to the West Wind by P.B. Shelley. [▲]