Work Text:
All things go
downward.
Even the rocks
settle and sink,
even the flowers bow.
*
Xiao is turning his hand again. He is again noticing its soft shake.
First outside of The Chasm’s toothed throat, and this time under the moon: a catalogued, continuous tremor that stayed long after the traveler left him overlooking Pervases’ dilapidated temple, and long after he left that place, offering nothing.
Xiao is again making a fist. His gloves keep him from pressing crescents into his palm. The moon, liquified, coats his knuckles and arm before it’s netted in the blue shadow his own small body casts.
All is calm—ordinary—at Wangshu Inn.
Xiao, perched on the banister ringing the terrace, closes his eyes as if in prayer.
When he was falling, he felt a warm peace; now he can’t tell if it was because he was ready to die or if it was because he trusted he would be saved. Xiao loosens his fist, empty of the rock he’d carried from the depths.
Was it lost to time or to clumsiness?
The tremor is a muscle spasm, or is it.
*
If Bosacius is no longer Bosacius, who is the Conqueror of Demons? General Alatus? Who is the lapdog that tore into mortal dreams?
His first master was cruel in a way mortals accept. A thief of ambition, of hope—but also of pain, which mortals portray in their legends as a terrible but necessary feeling. When a mortal is devoid of dreams, they are devoid of everything.
Rex Lapis is cruel in the way of the gods.
Xiao has loved them both, with an intensity that corrodes like karma. He loved his fellow yaksha in the ways that mortals speak of love: what he means is that, in the grand scheme of time, it scarcely mattered at all. It is a wound that opens like a dark well but heals quickly, like those Bosacius left in his shoulder, like memory itself.
He feels only the occasional, sparked sting.
*
“Adeptus Xiao,” hums Rex Lapis. “Excuse my intrusion.”
As Xiao turn to face him, so does a leaf fall from the grand tree and come to rest at Rex Lapis’s—Zhongli’s—feet. Xiao bows his head with similar reverence.
“There is nothing to excuse.”
Xiao maintains his posture as the man comes closer. Rex Lapis adopts the leisurely stride of mortals in the harbor, who meander to and from stands and great, wooden boats. The terrace creaks under each footstep until, eventually, Rex Lapis is standing an arm’s length from him, gazing out at the land bruised by nightfall.
“It’s quiet, tonight,” Rex Lapis notes.
“Yes,” Xiao agrees.
It is at least quiet in the marshlands. Xiao feels, as he always feels, the prickle of darkness in a notch of his spine, a fingertip. Unlike Bosacius’ restless spirit, the lands will never fully be cleansed of this evil.
“I was curious,” Rex Lapis says, “about your trip.”
Xiao loathes to play games, so he responds: “Thank you.”
“Hm?” Rex Lapis glimpses Xiao from the corner of a golden eye, mouth set into a line.
“Ah, for my approval,” he decides. “No need. You had already decided to go; I merely told you yes as a formality.”
Xiao lowers his gaze and pinches his brow. “I would never have—”
“You would have, as soon as you heard your name.” Rex Lapis is wearing a soft smile now.
The breeze coaxes more golden leaves from the tree. Xiao’s chest tightens and his lashes flutter as an eel-like karma slithers across the back of his scalp; his exhale shreds in his teeth.
Rex Lapis, kindly, offers no word of comfort. The memories are already kinder to Xiao when Rex Lapis is near; this is enough.
“Rex—Zhongli,” Xiao corrects. “I did not mean…”
“Come, Adeptus Xiao,” Rex Lapis offers. “Let’s continue our conversation over tea. I’m afraid this body cannot withstand the cold.”
*
This is the second time Xiao has tried to ask this question: Why did you save me?
The first time, Xiao had just witnessed Rex Lapis draw his jade bow and pierce the heart of the God of Dreams. He’d been close enough for her blood to speckle his face like a warm rain, and was only that close because he’d been trying to protect her.
The easy version of this story is that her death woke Xiao from a trance. That the version of him that served her was a fragment, like what was left of Bosacius in The Chasm’s maw. That his memories of it are pieces shattered like a window’s glass.
But the easy version is not the truth.
The true version is that Xiao wept for her; that, in the moments after her death, he gnashed his teeth and lunged, trying to tear off one of Rex Lapis’ arms. The true version is that, while Xiao knew he could not kill him, he wanted some part of this god to feel as Xiao felt—like a phantom limb. A necessary but lost thing.
That Rex Lapis saw him at all was a miracle.
That he saw him as a being worthy of a position, of a name—
That he answered his question—Why did you save me? Why? Why? Why?—with the life he wanted to give him, a greater miracle.
*
“Xiao,” Rex Lapis steadies.
Xiao is retracting his hand. With it, his teacup stops rattling against the platter. He again flexes his fingers.
“My apologies.”
“Don’t apologize,” Rex Lapis commands. “Speak to me of Bosacius.”
Xiao is still looking at his hand, at the tendrils of dark matter that swim in his lash line. The pain comes for him again, always expected but always sudden, and he squeezes his eyes closed and grits his teeth to trap a sound. Rex Lapis waits patiently for it to ease.
“I found him,” Xiao says, finally. He blinks his eyes open. “The—image of him. Traces of his memory.”
“I see,” Rex Lapis lends slowly. “If I recall, Bosacius had forgotten who he was long before he disappeared.”
“I see,” Xiao repeats.
Rex Lapis sips his tea. He is deep in thought. “Unfortunately, time will erode the memories of even the most strong-willed.”
Xiao closes his eyes. “That will not happen to you, my lord.”
“Xiao,” Rex Lapis says with a fond sigh. “It is happening.”
*
It has happened. Even the land, as the mortals continue to change its shape, forgets the past. Each year, it blooms new trees and glaze lilies. Rain replenishes the marshlands. The clouds erase the peaks in Minlin. Legends disappear and are rewritten.
There were once five yaksha; now there is one. This yaksha was once a bloodhound, but now he is an adeptus called Xiao. He was once imprisoned and now he is free.
There was once Bosacius. There was Pervases. There were places to worship them all. There was once the village that Xiao, before he was Xiao, was from.
And there was once Rex Lapis. Now there is Zhongli, a mortal, who spends his days consulting, listening to stories, watching birds.
There was a time that Xiao was only a bird.
*
The tea, untouched, is cooling on the table when Xiao finally finds the courage to say this.
“I was not afraid to die.”
This is only the truth as he can speak it. Rex Lapis studies his shaking hand.
“I only wish to understand why you, Rex Lapis, would—?”
“I am Zhongli,” Rex Lapis soothes. “I did nothing.”
“I do not wish to play this game,” Xiao tells him.
Rex Lapis meets and excavates Xiao’s gaze. His gloved finger traces the handle of his delicate teacup. Sometimes it is difficult to reconcile this image with the God of War; the same hands once buried a beast of the sea with spears. They once held a bloodhound by the throat, a promise of death written into his palm. They saved him.
And Xiao realizes—
*
There was a time that Rex Lapis had only been wounded by other gods.
He used to thrive when he battled: his arms glowed like Cor Lapis, the heat of the dragon hidden within him radiated like a warm breath. One night, when sleep would not come for him, he asked Xiao if he would like to spar.
In the memory, Xiao feels the dragon-warmth caress his arms when he’s close enough to strike. He’s faster, but Rex Lapis is sturdier, and surer. Each swing Xiao attempts with his spear makes Rex Lapis laugh. It’s low enough in his throat to make Xiao tingle all over.
Xiao, who easily disarms the mortals and wins most spars against the other yaksha, finds fighting with Rex Lapis exhilarating. Shoved back, Xiao’s feet slide against the ground, dust pluming behind his ankles. His gaze flashes, flitting like a bird in search of an opening.
With a grunt, he uses the wind to propel him forward, the shield cracking under his force. His position shifts: behind Rex Lapis, he turns to sweep his spear across the low part of his legs, expecting to be blocked.
Rex Lapis grunts, a foot coming out from under him. He plants the point of his spear into the dirt and lands hard on a knee.
“My lord,” Xiao hitches—and then Rex Lapis is tossing aside his spear, is lunging for him, is forcing Xiao to the ground beneath him. Xiao’s body reflexively resists until he forces it still, blathering apologies, for a moment certain his lord—the heat of his body—will smother him.
Then Rex Lapis bites his bare shoulder and pain blooms immediately, spectacularly, into pleasure.
“Xiao,” he rumbles. “My great yaksha.” He is kissing and lapping the wound, and then Xiao’s neck.
“R-Rex Lapis, my—m-my lord,” Xiao sputters, twisting to look at the quiet night surrounding them. Rex Lapis maneuvers a knee between Xiao’s legs. “You mustn’t—someone could see—”
He presses his arms into the ground by Xiao’s head, until he is leaning over him, until Xiao is covered completely by him and his large shadow, until Xiao succumbs to want and ruts against his knee.
“Let them,” Rex Lapis growls. His mouth touches Xiao’s as he speaks. “They will know to never touch you.”
*
The inn grows quiet and still. Verr Goldet has long since closed her desk for the night. The kitchen fire, left on for them by the chef, is beginning to diminish.
Xiao is shaking his head. His whole body, now, is shaking.
“When I begin to erode,” Rex Lapis says quietly, “like others have eroded before me, you will again need to protect Liyue.”
“You would keep me alive to torture me?” Xiao demands.
Rex Lapis shakes his head, rising from the table, a last tendril of steam from his tea winding around his wrist. He is walking to Xiao. “I would keep you alive to stay with me until that end.” He is beginning to kneel.
“Do not—debase yourself for me.”
“I am the mortal Zhongli,” he says. “It would be improper to ask something of you without any sign of respect.”
“I told you—”
“I am not playing a game,” Rex Lapis promises. He has kneeled. “Adeptus Xiao, I am asking for this gift. When I am no longer Zhongli—when I am no longer even the memory of Rex Lapis—I put my life, whatever fragment of myself, in your hands.”
Xiao is touching Rex Lapis by touching the mortal Zhongli’s face.
“My lord,” he weeps. “I cannot even steady them.”